Emily looked terrific. How had she managed, all this time, to keep her black Dennis Nylon suit in perfect condition? If anything, she was more beautiful in life than she was in my memory, or when we kissed goodbye at the airport.
She was the greyhound beside Stephanie’s yippy spaniel. The Mercedes beside Stephanie’s Hyundai. Stephanie cooked the steaks the way I liked them, but Emily had never bored me.
I rose to embrace her, but Emily’s stare froze me in an awkward position, half sitting, half standing. And all at once I knew that this wasn’t the happy dream of the resurrected beloved. I could tell that this was going to be a very special kind of nightmare.
“Don’t get up,” Emily said.
The maitre d’ pulled out a chair for her, and we waited until there was no one within eavesdropping distance before we spoke.
“I thought you were dead” was all I could think of to say.
“Obviously, you were wrong.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“You didn’t believe me,” she said. “You didn’t trust me.”
“Then who is dead? Whose body was it? Who was wearing Mum’s ring?”
“You don’t need to know,” Emily said. “If I told you, you would probably just tell Stephanie.”
“That’s a low blow, Emily. That’s unfair.”
“Don’t you read her silly blog?” asked my wife. “All about your happy, healthy, perfect blended family, about her consoling poor little Nicky for the tragic loss of his mom.”
“I never read her blog. I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . .”
“Well, you should have,” Emily said. “It’s been very informative, I can tell you.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Don’t,” said Emily. “Please don’t.”
That was when we should have gotten up and left. There was nowhere for this to go but down. And yet I kept on hoping.
Emily said she was hungry. We ordered food.
I told Emily that I didn’t care about Stephanie. I never had. She was like a nanny we didn’t have to pay. And she’d been helpful. Maybe I shouldn’t have said helpful.
Emily recoiled, then sat up very straight. I recognized her head shake. Her merciless implacable no. I tried to tell Emily that she was the only one, that she had always been the only one, that I was sorry. She yawned.
It was too late. I was a fool. Just as my wife had always secretly, or not so secretly, thought. She told me that she would never forgive me. She said that I would be very sorry.
Very sorry.
She was threatening me. But what could she do? Another foolish question. Emily could do anything. She’d accused me of underestimating her. But she couldn’t have been more wrong.
She got up and left.
The waiter came over and stood beside me as we watched her go.
“Hell hath no fury,” he said. “Shakespeare got that one right.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “It wasn’t Shakespeare who said that.”
The waiter shrugged. What did he do? A while later he sent another waiter over with the bill. I actually finished my veal chop. It was half raw and awful, but I was starving. I left the waiter a big apology tip. Why not? I’d been apologizing all evening.
I caught the last train out of Grand Central.
I went straight to Nicky’s room and hugged him, even though he was asleep. I didn’t wake him. I don’t know what I would have done if Stephanie had come into the room and tried to tell me how to put my own son back to sleep. If she’d instructed me in that annoying, cloying Captain Mom voice.
I went into my room and lay down next to Stephanie and rolled onto my side. I couldn’t touch her, nor did I want her touching me.
“Rough day?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
I didn’t move till I heard Stephanie snoring softly and making that gummy click at the back of her throat that had started driving me mad.
I got up and lay on the living room couch. I was awake all night.
The worst aspects of Stephanie’s personality seemed to have rubbed off on me. Her anxiety. Her cow-in-the-slaughterhouse-chute paranoia. Who would have dreamed that such things were contagious?
I couldn’t get over the feeling that Emily was out there in the darkness. Watching our house. She knew that Stephanie was here.
How long had it been since Stephanie asked me if I was sure that Emily was dead? Of course I’d been sure she was dead. Stephanie had said she was afraid that Emily was alive. And I didn’t believe her.
I no longer knew who or what to believe.
After that, I stopped sleeping. I tried Stephanie’s useless homeopathic remedies. Herbs and foul-tasting teas and whatever. Nothing worked. She said I didn’t give them a chance. I ignored her. Her voice got even more irritating when she felt she was being ignored.
My doctor gave me sleeping pills along with a warning that two of his patients had had unpleasant side effects, in one case a psychotic episode. I said that I would be psychotic if I didn’t sleep. I would take my chances with the meds.
When Stephanie asked why I seemed jumpy, I blamed the sleeping pills. I said that my bad mood was worth it. Insomnia was worse. Nervousness was a side effect. Some people got psychotic.
I didn’t mention meeting Emily. I didn’t ask if she’d contacted Stephanie. To say that my wife was still alive would have felt like another betrayal. When Stephanie had suggested that Emily might be alive, I’d thought Stephanie was deluded. But I’d been the delusional one.
I have no excuse. I’m trying to keep it together. I am living with the wrong woman, and I am being threatened by my wife. I’m under a lot of pressure. I’m not thinking clearly.
That is my excuse. That was always my excuse. I have no excuse.
One Saturday afternoon, a car came down our driveway and stopped in front of the house. A light-skinned, middle-aged African American man got out and, checking our address against a sheaf of papers in his hand, walked up to our door. I watched him from the window. He reminded me of someone . . .
The blue blazer, the white shirt, and the dark bow tie snapped the memory into place. He reminded me of a man I used to know as a child, a Mr. Reginald Butler. Mr. Butler was the pastor of a local church, a kind of religious group, maybe a beneficent sort of cult, the Manchester Brethren. His parishioners were all immigrants and local people of color. He came to Mum’s door—much as this stranger was coming to our door now—seeking donations, warm winter coats to distribute to his flock. Mum invited him in, and they became friendly. Until Mum had a bit too much sherry and said something—I never found out what, and Mum never told me—at which Mr. Butler took offense. And we never saw him again.
Here he was in Connecticut. I opened the door. Of course it wasn’t Mr. Butler.
The man said, “Mr. Sean Townsend?”
I admitted that I was.
“I’m Isaac Prager. From the Allied Insurance Company. I’m working on the claim payable on the accidental death of your late wife. For which I am deeply sorry.”
Was he saying he was sorry that Emily was dead? Or sorry that he was working on the case? Or sorry that the claim was payable? Was it a coincidence that I’d just learned that Emily wasn’t dead? I hadn’t really had the time, or the peace of mind, to figure out my next step. Should I have notified the insurance company as soon as I came home from having dinner with my supposedly dead wife? It was way too confusing to explain what had happened and what hadn’t happened and what I thought had happened. And especially what we’d planned to happen. Everything I could think of to say made us look guilty, which, I suppose, we were. It had been easier to put my head in the sand and pretend that nothing had happened. And to hope for the best.
This was the moment I’d dreaded, even though—until quite recently—I hadn’t known exactly why. This was the moment when our game became real. Maybe I’d thought that Emily would give up our little charade before it came to this. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Prager said, “I thought about trying to reach you at work, but I decided that this might be the sort of conversation you would prefer to have at home. I tried to call you here, but—”