The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

Big Macs and Dave’s habit of burning the candle on all 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.

      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 that 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 E.R. naked. I knew he’d left the house dressed that day—I was the one who’d finished pressing his shirt while he hopped into 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 Stetson.

      “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 good clue.

      “I’m so sorry, Penny.” Kim’s voice drew me back to the present. “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 nonstop, 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 lawyer. 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 JCPenney 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 the numbered boxes on the wall calendar in the kitchen would follow one another with the 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. A convenient location. But for whom? 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 just wanted to curl up in the corner.

      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 marquise 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,”