The Shadow Wife

Liam practically jumped from the bench, turning to face Sheila with his hands held in front of him, fingers spread as though he was trying to keep himself from strangling her.

“Not okay!” He said the only two words he seemed able to force from his mouth. “That’s not okay, Sheila! I don’t want anyone hitting my son. Ever.”

“Oh, Liam, I didn’t hit him. I didn’t leave a mark on him.” She put one hand over her eyes to block out the sun as she looked up at him. “I spanked him. Parents have been spanking their kids since Adam and Eve. Weren’t you ever spanked?”

“No. I wasn’t.” His voice was growing louder, and a woman walking up the path to the nursing home glanced at him as she passed by. He didn’t care who heard him. “Not ever,” he said. “It’s barbaric. It teaches children that violence is a solution. How could you do that to him? How could you hurt him? You, who made me baby-proof every inch of my house? He—”

“Liam, you’re really being silly.” Sheila wore a patronizing smile he wanted to wipe from her face. “I gave him a few gentle swats on his bottom while he was turned over my knee. How else can you teach a fifteen-month-old right from wrong? You can’t explain it to him.”

“Do you honestly think he had a clue why he was being punished?” Liam asked. He paced three feet in one direction and three feet back, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand. “He misbehaved in the grocery store for whatever reason. For a reason our grown-up minds can’t fathom. For reasons that had meaning to him. Then you warn him you’ll spank him, when he hasn’t ever heard the word before. And then you do it when you get home. How is he supposed to make a connection? I mean, even if it could possibly be considered an appropriate form of punishment?”

“Well, he knows the word now.” Sheila pursed her lips. “He’ll know what I mean the next time I say it.”

“There won’t be a next time, Sheila.” Liam stopped pacing to look at her. “I mean it. This is absolutely nonnegotiable. No one is hitting Sam.”

“When they’re too young to reason with, there’s no other way to—”

“I turned out all right,” he said. “My parents somehow managed to teach me right from wrong without resorting to…the humiliation…the physical violation of smacking the crap out of me. And Mara would never approve.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sheila said. “You’re overreacting, Liam. I didn’t smack the crap out of him, and you know it. And, as for Mara, she was spanked any number of times.”

She was? He hadn’t known that. They had never gotten around to discussing how they would discipline their child.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I still don’t think she would approve.”

Sam suddenly ran over to him and wrapped his arms around Liam’s leg, clinging, obviously aware that something was wrong between his father and his grandmother. Liam rested one hand on top of Sam’s head.

“Look,” he said to Sheila, attempting to lower the angry pitch of his voice, “I appreciate all you’ve done for Sam. But please, just promise me you won’t hit him again.”

“I can’t promise that, Liam,” she said. “I think you’re being absolutely ridiculous.”

“I don’t want you hitting him!”

Sam let out a wail and clung harder.

“Then I just won’t take care of him anymore,” Sheila said, standing up. “You can find someone else to do it. And you can pay for it yourself.”

Liam closed his eyes in frustration. “That’s not what I want,” he said. Bending over, he lifted Sam into his arms again, and this time the little boy buried his face against Liam’s neck.

“Then I’ll spank him when he needs it.” Sheila folded her arms across her chest.

Liam couldn’t respond. He felt helpless and realized that, if he tried to say something, anything, more to Sheila, his voice would break. He pressed his cheek against Sam’s head.

“When Mara is well enough,” Sheila said, “she’ll agree with me. I can assure you of—”

“She’s never going to get well, Sheila!” he said angrily, eliciting another cry from his son, but he couldn’t stop himself from spitting the words at her. “Don’t you understand that?” he asked. “Never. She is in this nursing home for the rest of her life. She’s never going to understand that Sam is her son. She doesn’t even know you’re her mother.”

Sheila’s face was red, her cheeks puffed out as though they might explode. Turning on her heel, she walked back down the pathway toward the parking lot.

Liam sat on the bench, his body shaking, and watched her go.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he whispered, and the little boy relaxed against his neck once more. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Although he couldn’t see the parking lot because of the landscaping, he heard Sheila’s car door slam and the engine turn over, and he felt pleased that she was leaving. He would have to find a way to repair the damage he’d just done to his relationship with her, but he didn’t want Sheila in Mara’s room with him and Sam today.

“I’m sorry you had a rough day, Sam,” he said, rocking the boy a little. “I’m so sorry.”

Damn, this was hard! There was so much he wanted to talk to Mara about, so much he needed to talk to her about. He wanted to tell her what Sheila had done to Sam, to ask if, perhaps, Mara did approve. How did she feel about it? Maybe he had projected his values about parenting onto Mara, since she could no longer speak for herself.

He wished he could tell Mara that her mother was stuck in denial. That he was, too, at times. It was so comfortable there, in that imaginary place where there was always hope. Hope was both friend and enemy, he knew: it kept him going, but it also prevented him from planning realistically for the future. And in his darkest moments, he was certain Mara’s future was in that bed in the nursing home. He honestly didn’t know how to plan