The Wives. Tarryn Fisher
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has whipped up chicken salad on a croissant. A tall mimosa sits next to my plate. I slide into my chair, grateful. My freshly stocked fridge hadn’t disappointed her. I learned to cook by watching her, and if there was one thing she emphasized, it was to always keep your fridge stocked for that surprise meal you’ll have to cook.
“How’s Seth?” is her first question as she takes her seat across from me. My mother: always to the point, always on time, always organized. She is the perfect homemaker and wife.
“He was tired on Thursday when he was here. We didn’t have a chance to talk very much.” The truth. I’m afraid my voice has betrayed more, but when I glance up at her face, she’s preoccupied with her food.
“That poor man,” she says, cutting into her croissant with determination. The undersides of her arms flap as she saws at the roll, her mouth pinched in disapproval. “All of that commuting back and forth. I know it was the right decision for both of you, but it’s still very hard.” The only reason she’s saying it was the right decision is to not upset me. She’d told me in no uncertain terms that my duty was to be with Seth, and that I should give up my job to be wherever he was. She used to nag about marrying him, and now she’s transitioned comfortably into the topic of a baby.
I nod. I have no desire to have this discussion with my mother. She always finds a way to make me feel like a failure at being Seth’s wife. Mostly, it’s about giving him a child. She’s convinced he’ll stop loving me if my uterus doesn’t woman-up. I could silence her by telling her that he already has another wife, two actually, who fill the spaces where I fail. That one of them is growing his baby as we speak.
“You could always rent this place out and join him in Oregon,” she offers. “It’s not so bad. We lived there for a year when you were two, in Grandma’s house. You’ve always loved that house so much.” She says this like I don’t know, as if I haven’t heard the stories before.
“Can’t,” I tell her through a mouthful. “He has to be in the Seattle office two days a week. We’d have to have a place here, anyway. And besides, I don’t want to leave. My life is here, my friends are here and I love my job.” True, true, not true. I’ve never liked Portland; I thought of it as the poor man’s Seattle: same scenery, similar weather, grubbier city. My grandparents lived and died there, never once leaving the state. Aside from their main house, they had a vacation home in the south, near California. The thought of Portland makes me feel claustrophobic.
My mother looks at me disapprovingly, a fleck of mayonnaise smeared across a pearly pink fingernail. She’s old-school that way. In her mind, you went wherever your man went or he became susceptible to cheating. If only she knew.
“This was the agreement we made and it makes the most sense,” I say firmly. And then I add, “For now,” to appease her. And it is true. Seth is a builder. He recently opened up an office in Portland, and while his business partner, Alex, oversees the Seattle branch, Seth has to spend most of his week in the Portland office overseeing his projects there.
Monday and Tuesday are there, living in the city. They get to see the most of him and it makes me sick with jealousy. He often has lunch with one of them during the day, a luxury I don’t have, since he spends most of Thursday traveling back to Seattle to see me. On Fridays, he spends the day in the Seattle office, and then sometimes meets me for dinner before heading back to Portland on Saturday. The rotating day the wives share is spent on travel for the time being, but with two of his wives living in Oregon, I’ve begun to think it will be permanent. It’s hard being part of something so unusual and not having anyone to talk to about it. None of my friends know, though I’ve almost blurted the truth to my best friend, Anna, half a dozen times.
Sometimes I wish I could reach out to one of the wives, have a support group. But Seth is set on doing things differently than what he grew up around. We, the wives, have no contact with each other, and I’ve respected his wishes not to snoop. I don’t even know their names.
“When will you try for a baby?” my mother asks.
Again. She asks this every time we’re together and I’m quite sick of it. She doesn’t know the truth and I haven’t had the heart to tell her.
“If you had a baby, he’d be forced to be here more permanently,” she says conspiratorially.
I stare at her, my mouth open. My sister and I were the sum of my mother’s life. Our successes were her successes; our failures, her failures. I suppose it was fine and dandy to live for your children while you raised them, but what happened after? When they went off to live their own lives and you were left with nothing—no hobbies, no career, no identity.
“Mother, are you suggesting I trap Seth with a baby?” I ask, setting my fork down and staring at her in shock.
My mother is a bit of a live wire, known to make offhanded comments about other people’s lives. But telling me to get pregnant to force my husband home is too far, even for her.
“Well, it’s not like it’s never been done before...” She’s chuffing, her eyes darting around. She knows she’s gone too far. I feel a wash of guilt. I never told my mother about the emergency hysterectomy. At the time I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and admitting it now would make me even more of a failure in her eyes.
“That’s not who I am. That’s not who we are as a couple. Besides, who would take over for Seth at the Portland office?” I snap. “You’re talking about our finances and our future.” Not just mine, either. Seth has a rather large family to support. I drop my face into my hands, and my mother stands up and comes around the table to comfort me.
“I’m sorry, little girl,” she says, using her pet name for me. “I overstepped. You know what’s right for your relationship.”
I nod appreciatively and pick up a stray piece of chicken salad with my finger, licking it off my thumb. None of this is normal, and if Seth and I are going to make it work, I need to have a talk with him about my feelings. I’ve spent so much time pretending to be cool with everything that he has no clue about my struggles. That isn’t fair to him or to me.
My mother leaves an hour later, promising to take me to lunch on Monday instead. “Rest up,” she says, giving me a hug.
I close the door behind her and breathe a sigh of relief.
I’m desperately tired, but instead of heading to bed, I wander into Seth’s little closet. Despite being gone for most of the week, he keeps a stash of clothes here. I run my hands over the suit jackets and dress pants, lifting a shirt to my nose to find his smell. I love him so much, and despite the awful uniqueness of our situation, I can’t imagine being married to anyone else. And that’s what love is about, isn’t it? Working with what your partner came with. And mine came with two other women.
I’m about to turn off the little overhead light and leave when something catches my eye. Poking out of a dress pants’ pocket is the corner of a piece of paper. I pull it out, at first worried the pants will be washed with the paper in the pocket and ruin the rest of the wash, but once I have it in my hands, I’m curious. It’s folded into a neat square. I only hold it in my palm for a moment before opening it to have a look. A doctor’s bill. I scan the words, wondering if something is wrong or if Seth went in for a checkup, but his name isn’t anywhere on the paper. In fact, the bill is made out to a Hannah Ovark, her address listed in the top corner as 324 Galatia Lane, Portland, Oregon. Seth’s doctor is in Seattle.
“Hannah,” I say out loud. The receipt in my hand says she was in for a checkup and labs. Could Hannah be...Monday?
I turn off the closet light and carry the paper with me to the living room, unsure of what to do. Should I ask Seth about it, or pretend I never saw it? My MacBook is sitting next to me on the sofa. I shift it into my lap and open Facebook. I have a vague sense that I’m breaking some sort of rule.
I type her name into the search bar and tap my finger on my knee while I wait for the results. Three profiles come up: one is an older woman, perhaps in her forties, who lives in Atlanta; the other is a pink-haired girl who looks to be