The Other Wife

1

The last person I expected to see at my husband’s funeral was his wife.

Yet there she stood, to the right of his casket, wiping away her tears with a lacy white handkerchief, a fancy one with a tatted edge and an embroidered monogram, the kind your grandmother hands down to you because tissues aren’t as ladylike.

She was tall, this other wife, probably five foot eight, and wearing strappy black heels with little rhinestones marching across the toe. I wanted to grab her, shake her, and tell her those stupid shoes were completely inappropriate for the funeral of the man I’d been married to for fifteen years. Go get yourself some pumps, I wanted to scream. Low-heeled, sensible, boring shoes.

I wasn’t mad at her. Exactly. I was madder than hell at the man lying on the top-grade satin in an elaborate, six-thousand-dollar cherry box, a peaceful expression on his cheating face.

Even in death, he looked ordinary and normal, the kind of guy you’d see on the street and think, oh, he’s got the American Dream in his hands. A slight paunch over his belly from too many years behind his desk, the bald spot he’d been trying to hide with creative combing, the wrinkles around his eyes from finding humor in everything from the newspaper to the cereal box.

Just your typical forty-year-old man—a forty-year-old whom I had loved and thought would be sitting beside me on the porch, complaining about the neighbors’ landscaping habits and debating a move to Florida, long into our old age. A man who could make me laugh on a dime, who’d thought nothing of surprising me with flowers or a new iPad, just because. He’d been a typical man in a hundred different ways—and so had our marriage.

Sure, a little dull at times, marked by trips to the drycleaner on Tuesday and scrambled eggs every Sunday morning. But it had been a marriage, a partnership.

Or not, considering the two-wives-at-one-time thing, something I’d discovered last night in a picture of his double wedded bliss, stuffed behind the AmEx in his wallet.

Forty-eight hours ago, my life had been so normal, it would have bored Kim Kardashian into insanity. While I was picking out a roast for dinner that night, paramedics had been rushing him into the hospital. Someone found my number on his cell phone because I, being the practical one, had seen some commercial about setting up an I.C.E. list, in case of emergency, and inputted my cell number. Dave, the spontaneous one, had laughed at me, but kept the number there.

The voice on the other end told me he’d had a heart attack. I’d rushed to Mass General, then stayed by his bedside, fretting, pacing, shouting at the doctors to do something. But there wasn’t anything they could do.

The Big Macs and Dave’s habit of burning the candle on both ends had caught up with him.

Either that or the weight of his conscience had squished an aortic valve. In my less charitable moments, I wanted to think it was the latter.

Penny, someone said, laying a hand on my arm.

Kim Grant, my next-door neighbor, who had baked cupcakes to welcome Dave and me to the neighborhood last month, stood before me in the receiving line with a look of true sympathy on her face. A flash of guilt ran through me. I still hadn’t returned her Tupperware container. It was sitting on top of the refrigerator, beside the KitchenAid mixer, waiting for an opportunity for us to return the favor with an invitation to dinner.

I hoped she wasn’t in any rush for her plastic.

Hi, Kim. Thanks for coming. The words flowed automatically, the same ones I’d said already a hundred times today, feeling sometimes like I was the one giving out comfort instead of receiving it.

Yet, even as I stood in Kim’s embrace, in my peripheral vision, I was always aware of her, standing at the edge, blending in with the other mourners, as well as someone could blend when dressed like Marilyn Monroe. The insurance company my husband had worked for was large, and nearly a hundred people from the offices were there. I doubted anyone noticed her.

How many of them, I wondered, knew about her? Did anyone? Or did everyone?

Had I been the only one left out of the secret? The poor, silly wife, sitting at home with a pot roast waiting on the table, completely oblivious to the train wreck that had derailed her marriage.

I still didn’t know her name, where she lived, or how long she’d been married to him. All I knew was that she’d been with my husband, in the Biblical sense, that day. Dave, the man who preferred T-shirts over sweatshirts and cotton blend over straight cotton, had been rushed into the ER naked. No nice little bag of Patients’ Belongings. I knew he’d left the house dressed that day—I was the one who’d finished pressing his shirt while he hopped in the shower.

I thought of that shirt, remembering how I’d run my hand over the flat fabric while it was still warm, pleased with the neat creases, then, later, the kiss Dave had given me as a thanks. The way he’d smelled of steam and starch and cologne.

That’s the way we found him in the Marriott, ma’am, one of the paramedics told me, shrugging, as if it were completely ordinary to bring in a naked guy on a gurney.

The Marriott? I’d asked—twice—trying to get my head around that. Had it been a meeting gone wrong? A robbery? And then, the worst had hit me. Was he... I paused, my entire marriage flashing before my eyes like a jerky home movie, with edits I couldn’t see, moments left on the cutting room floor, with anyone?

The, ah, bellhop said he checked in with his wife. The paramedic had looked at me hopefully. I didn’t answer, letting the silence push him to add more. She wasn’t there, though. Apparently already left because they were, ah, done.

Done. I didn’t have to ask what Dave had done. The nudity was a pretty damned good clue.

I’m so sorry, Penny. Kim’s voice drew me back to the present. To the reality that Dave, the man I’d pledged to love no matter what, had gone and married a second woman. Dave was such a great guy.

I used to think that. Had even bragged about him to my friends when we met, about how I got the last great guy on earth.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

She crossed my line of vision again, as she read the tags on the flowers to the right of the casket. I maintained my position in the receiving line, stoic and reserved, the portrait of the grieving widow.

Lillian, Dave’s mother, stood beside me, tears flowing non-stop, shoulders shaking a little as she cried. Still, Lillian Reynolds maintained a level of reserve, as always the gracious former debutante who’d married a steelworker. She didn’t know about the second wife, and I wasn’t going to announce it between ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Maybe, I thought, if I never spoke the words, I could pretend it had never happened. That this other wife was a figment of my imagination.

It was so sudden, Kim said, shaking her head as she looked at Dave.

As Kim continued speaking words I didn’t hear, I glanced at my husband, lying there in his good blue suit, the one with the silver pinstripe that we’d picked out at JC Penney last Christmas, and for a second, felt a pang of grief so sharp, I wanted to collapse. He was gone. Forever. For five seconds, I didn’t care about the bigamy, didn’t care what else he had hidden from me, I just wanted my husband back.

I wanted my life back, damn it. Rewind the clock, stop the tape, just get me out of this lily-scented twilight zone.

I wanted to be able to wake up, knowing that today would be the same as yesterday, that each numbered box on the wall calendar in the kitchen would follow each other with reliable sameness of ironed shirts and scrambled eggs.

Insanely, I stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall. It didn’t.

So I stood there in Perkins & Sons Funeral Home, wearing a black suit I’d had to borrow from my sister because I was in no condition to shop, and trying not to picture my husband having a heart attack while he was on top of another woman, probably using the same well-practiced missionary moves he’d used on me last Saturday.

The Marriott, I’d found out, after pumping the paramedic a little more, was in downtown Newton, where they’d met, I assumed, for a little afternoon delight. A convenient location. But for who? For him? For her? The hotel was only three miles from our house. Close enough that he could have stopped by for a little afternoon delight with me. Also close enough that had I gone to my usual Thursday manicure instead of going to a last-minute client meeting, I would have passed right by the hotel parking lot and maybe seen the Insurance: The Investment for Those You Love bumper sticker on his Benz.

For a guy who worked in risk management, he’d clearly liked to live on the edge.

I stepped back from the casket, from the cloying fragrance of the enormous white bouquet sent by the company, pressing a tissue to my eyes, willing my own tears to stop. I was mad at him, mad at myself, mad at the world. And yet, another part of me wanted to curl up in the corner and die, to let the grief consume me, to suck me up into that tornado of emotion and spit me out a month, a year down the road, with no memory of her.

Kim finished whatever it was she had to say to me, so I smiled politely and thanked her for coming. She released me and moved to stand in front of Dave, dropping to the kneeler and making the sign of the cross over her chest.

I had a few uncharitable thoughts about God just then, ones that I was sure were going to get me sent to hell, so I turned away from my husband to do what needed to be done.

Face the other wife.

She skipped signing the guest book and had stopped at the casket, her hands gripping the velvet-covered rail, tears flooding her eyes. Now that she was closer, I could see that she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe--she was a mess, all wrinkled and jumbled. The perfectionist in me wanted to get out the iron and the starch, maybe a lint roller, too, and straighten her out before sending her back out the door.

She was pretty, I’d give her that. Buxom and blond, the typical other woman. Except, I was a blonde, too. Just not so well endowed.

Had it been that simple? He’d needed some 36Ds to keep him company, so he’d married another woman? My 34Bs weren’t enough? I could have gotten a Miracle Bra, for God’s sake.

Her diamond ring, the same shape as mine—apparently Dave hadn’t been inventive enough to get something other than a marquis cut when he proposed a second time—sparkled in the muted light. Her mascara ran in dirty little rivers along her cheeks, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her. Had she known about me before today?

Had she loved him?

And would it really make a difference to me if she had?

She stepped back from the casket but hesitated, clearly wondering if she should do the receiving line. Always the polite girl I had learned to be, I stepped forward, reached for her hand. I’m sorry, I said, before she could turn away, or worse, say it first.

Her eyes widened with surprise. Me too, she said softly. I really am.

I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect baked Alaska. But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.

I didn’t know, she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. Not until I read the obituary in the paper.

I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.

I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.

2

Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin, and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.

I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.

For something to do, to keep me from thinking.

At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.

The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life. That the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. Good man...Loving husband...Devoted son.

At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.

The house where we were going to start a family.

He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason why we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.

But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, finally conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten check-ups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.

I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.

My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. Are you okay, Penny?

Yeah. As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—

No. I’m going back to Florida, back home. She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?

She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.

Yeah. I feel the same way. Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?

A stranger?

I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched onto Lillian soon after meeting Dave.

Thanks for being here for me the last two days, I said. I needed the support.

I needed you just as much, dear, Lillian said, then sighed. He’s gone for both of us.

And for someone else. I bit my