The Perfect Wife

The news we got of Danny after the diagnosis was sketchy. Danny was trying out different treatments, we heard, some of them experimental. Danny was being enrolled in cutting-edge research programs. “We’re going to beat this thing,” Tim told people confidently.

Later we heard they’d abandoned any hope of finding a cure and had started looking at special-ed programs.

Alongside that, we heard fragments of gossip. Abbie had started drinking. Abbie had totaled her car. Tim had been seen looking at hookers’ websites in his office. They were going to couples therapy.

Once, Abbie brought Danny to the office. It was the annual children’s party, held by tradition on the day before we closed for the festive holidays. There was a bouncy castle, a petting zoo, and children’s entertainers.

Danny walked in on tiptoe with a weird, prancing gait, his body scrunched up and distorted, holding his mother’s hand. The eyes that had once danced with mischief were now deep-set and bruised looking. He met no one’s gaze, and from his mouth there came a series of wailing sounds. Sometimes he would mutter little phrases from TV programs.

Needless to say, he showed no interest in the bouncy castle or the entertainment. He was fascinated by the photocopier, though. Someone was printing out a big presentation, some thick marketing deck that had to be copied multiple times, and Danny seemed mesmerized by the whirring, flickering automation of it all. When the machine stopped because it had run out of paper, he began howling, absolutely howling with misery, until Abbie set about reloading it.

Seeing the boss’s beautiful wife squatting down, frantically tearing at the nylon ribbon that secured a fresh box of paper, was enough to send the person printing the document running over with scissors and apologies.

“Thank you,” Abbie said gratefully. “We’re not really meant to give in when he screams. But when it’s a party…” She looked over at the bouncy castle, where all the other kids were happily playing, oblivious to Danny’s distress.

The photocopier started printing again, and Danny instantly calmed down. He sat cross-legged on the floor to watch, like it was a TV playing cartoons. After a while he laughed.

“We’re trying this new therapy,” Abbie went on. “We’ve done the research, and it’s definitely got the best weight of evidence behind it. But it’s really hard on Danny.”

She looked over to where Tim was chatting with Mike and Elijah. But Tim wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were following Bhanu across the room. Bhanu was the new project manager he’d just hired from Google. She was slim and sassy and extroverted. Some of us were already predicting that Bhanu wasn’t destined to stay with us very long.

76

The Uber driver doesn’t try to make conversation, for which you’re grateful. You need to think. You’d been hoping to get across the state line before your absence was discovered. That might have to change after what you’ve just done to Sian. Most likely, the school will already have alerted the authorities.

Technically, what you’re doing now is probably child abduction, you realize. But frankly, it can’t make much difference. If you’re caught, you’ll be wiped anyway.

You’ve booked the Uber to take you to Jack London Square Station in Oakland. The traffic’s flowing freely over the bridge, and you’re there in under thirty minutes. Your train doesn’t leave for another half hour.

To pass the time, you take Danny to McDonald’s.

“I had lunch,” he objects, confused by this unexpected change in his routine.

“I know. But you like fries, don’t you? You can have fries as well as lunch.”

“I had lunch,” he insists. “I had fish…fish…” He starts to twitch with anxiety.

“That’s all right, Danny. You don’t have to have anything. Would you like to see the train timetable?”

You get out the timetable and his eyes light up. He spends the next twenty minutes happily working out connections.

* * *

—

You board the train and find your seats. Danny’s still in the mood to treat this as an adventure, with the bonus of added scheduling. While you wait for the train to leave, you get out his Thomas engine and explain that Thomas is especially happy now, because he is a train going for a ride on a train.

A family settles in across the way. The oldest girl, a teenager, immediately demands the Wi-Fi password and logs on to the onboard system. You can see various alerts and messages blipping onto the screen of her phone—

Wi-Fi. You hadn’t thought of that. In your mind, the Amtrak was going to be a bubble, a news cocoon in which no one would be aware of anything happening back in San Francisco. But the reality is that everyone here will have the latest bulletins on their phones. Those smiling conductors settling people into their seats—they’ll have them, too. Already the alerts and lookouts will be going out to all the transport hubs. And once the train starts traveling up the coast, you’ll be trapped, unable to get off, a sitting target for the cops to come and pick you up, farther up the line.

“Change of plan, Danny.”

“Change?” he says anxiously, looking up.

“We’re getting off at the next station.”

“Emeryville. Four thirty-four,” he announces in his staccato mumble.

“That’s right. And soon I might have some more schedules for you to look at.” You log on to the Wi-Fi and start searching.

* * *

—

At Emeryville you transfer to a Greyhound, paying cash. The bus is filthy, full of tired workers with a few crazies thrown in for good measure, but at least no one takes much notice as you find two seats at the back. It gradually empties as people get off at local stops; by eight P.M. you’re the only passengers left. The driver pulls in at a Burger King and cheerfully informs you this will be your only chance to get dinner. You’re glad Danny didn’t have those fries earlier.

And then it’s past eleven and you’re in a small town named Arcata, at the grandly named Intermodal Transit Facility, the end of the line. You start to walk with Danny to the Comfort Inn across the street, then remember the instructions on the website. Don’t use chain restaurants. Don’t use chain motels. Always pay cash. Don’t leave DNA. You’re starting to appreciate just how difficult it is to disappear like this; how incredibly disciplined Abbie must have been, to leave no trace for anyone to follow.

* * *

—

When did the scales finally fall from Abbie’s eyes? Perhaps, after all the other things she’d discovered about Tim, it hadn’t even come as much of a shock. On some level, perhaps she’d always known. There was her art, for one thing. Every single piece she’d made at Scott Robotics had been, in some way, about what that place did to women. Could an artist do that, at a subconscious level, and not admit it to herself?

Later, she must have smelled unfamiliar perfume on his clothes countless times. Or did she choose to believe that was just from some seedy bar he’d been forced to visit in the company of potential investors? “There’s only so much silicone a man can look at, honey. I’d far rather have been home with you.”

And then, abruptly, the memory comes to you. Jenny. Dropping in for coffee that time. You won’t like this, but hear me out. She knew the women’s names, the dates. She’d even worked alongside some of them, passed them tissues, knew how much they’d been paid to keep quiet.

That visit was Jenny’s quiet rebalancing of the books, you realized. Payback for all those years of having to sit at her desk and suck it up.

Even so, you’d sensed there was something more, something she still wasn’t telling you. Something that made all this personal—

And then you’d guessed.

“Did Tim ever try it on with you?”

Jenny held your gaze for a moment. “Just once.” She paused. “After Mike first told him we were dating. And that it was serious.”

You stared at her.

“When I told him to get lost, he just laughed. Claimed he’d only been joking. That he wasn’t into little boys, anyway.”

Jesus.

* * *

—