My Lovely Wife
When I met Millicent, she had just finished a year of real estate classes and was studying to take the test. Once she passed, it took a while for her to start selling, but she did, even while pregnant, even when the kids were babies. And she was right—we made it work. We are better than fine. And as far as I know, we have not screwed up the kids yet.
Seven
Now, as we stand in that empty house she is trying to sell, Millicent does not make me feel stronger. She makes me feel scared.
“It’s not okay,” I say. “None of this is okay.”
She raises one eyebrow. That used to be cute. “Now you’re growing a conscience?”
“I always had—”
“No. I don’t think you did.”
She is right again. I have never had a conscience when I’m trying to make her happy.
“What did you do to her?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
“Not anymore.”
“You worry too much. We’re fine.”
The doorbell rings.
“Work calls,” she says.
I walk with her to the door. She introduces me, tells them about my tennis skills. They are as young as the last couple and just as clueless.
I head home and drive right by our house.
First, I go to the Lancaster. Naomi is there, behind the counter, with many hours left on her shift.
Next, I go by the country club. I think about distracting myself by hanging out in the clubhouse, chatting with some of my clients while watching sports. Again, I don’t stop.
A number of other places run through my mind: a bar, a park, the library, a movie. I burn through almost half a tank of gas driving around, trying to pick a destination, before I head toward the inevitable.
Home.
It is where I always go.
When I open the door, I hear the sounds of my life. My family. The only real one I ever had.
Rory is playing a video game, electronic gunshots ringing through the house. Jenna is on the phone, talking, texting, and setting the table. The smell of dinner wafts throughout the great room, chicken and garlic and something with cinnamon. Millicent is behind the counter, putting it all together, and she always hums to herself while fixing meals. Her song choice is usually something ridiculous—a show tune, an aria, the latest pop music—and that’s another inside joke of ours.
She looks up and smiles, and it is real. I see it in her eyes.
We all sit down and eat together. Jenna entertains her mother and bores her brother with a play-by-play of her soccer game. Rory brags about his golf score, which today was better than anyone else under sixteen. On most days, our meals are like this. They are boisterous and loud, filled with tales of the day and the ease of us, we who have lived together forever.
I wonder how many times we did this while Lindsay was being held captive.
* * *
• • •
When I get into bed, I am surprised that hours have passed since I last thought about Lindsay, about the police, about what Millicent and I have done. Home, and all that goes with it, is that powerful to me.
My childhood was not the same. While I did grow up in a two-parent family in our nice Hidden Oaks house, with two cars, good schools, and a lot of extracurricular activities, we did not eat meals together like my own family does. And if we did happen to all eat at the same time, we ignored one another. My father read the paper, my mother stared off into space, and I ate as quickly as possible.
They showed up to watch me play tennis only if I was in a tournament and even then, only if I made it to the last round. Neither of my parents would have given up a Saturday for anything. Home was a place to sleep, a place to hold my stuff, a place to leave as soon as possible. And I did. I left the country as soon as I could. It was impossible to imagine an entire life of feeling like a disappointment.
Though I am not sure it was me, not personally. If I had to guess, I was the one who was supposed to fix their marriage. After spending years thinking about it, running through my whole childhood again and again, I have come to the conclusion that my parents had me to try and fix their marriage. It didn’t work. And their disappointment became my failure.
I returned to Hidden Oaks only because my parents passed away. It was a freak accident, impossible to prevent or predict. They were driving down the highway, and a tire flew off a car ahead of them. It smashed through the front windshield of my father’s luxury sedan, and they both died. Gone, just like that. Still together, still undoubtedly miserable.
I never saw their bodies. The police said I wouldn’t want to.
It turned out my parents had far less money than they pretended to, so I came home to a house buried in mortgages and just enough money to pay an estate lawyer to settle everything and get rid of it. My parents weren’t even who I thought they were; they were frauds. They couldn’t afford to live in Hidden Oaks; they just pretended they could. I had no family left and didn’t know what one was.
Millicent built ours. I say it was her because it couldn’t have been me. I had no idea how to build a home or even how to get everyone together for a meal. She did. The first time Rory sat in a high chair, she pushed him up to the table, and we’ve been having meals together ever since. Despite the rising complaints from our growing kids, we still eat together.
When Millicent was pregnant with Jenna, she created our family rules. I called them Millicent’s Commandments.
Breakfast and dinner together, always.
No toys or phones at the table.
Allowances must be earned by doing chores around the house.
We will have movie night once a week.
Sugar will be limited to fruit, not fruit juice, and special occasions.
All food will be organic, as money allows.
Physical activity and exercise are encouraged. No, they’re mandatory.
Homework must be done before TV or video games.
The list made me laugh. She glared at me when I did laugh, though, so I stopped. By then, I knew the difference between when she was pretending to be mad and when her anger was genuine.
One by one, Millicent instituted her rules. Instead of turning the house into a prison, she gave the family structure. Both our kids play sports. They aren’t given money unless they work for it. We all sit down and watch a movie together once a week. They eat mostly organic and very few sugary foods. Their homework is always done by the time I get home from work. This is all because of Millicent.
The same Millicent who kept Lindsay alive for a year while doing god knows what to her.
* * *
• • •
I still cannot sleep. I get up and check on the kids. Rory is spread out on his bed, the covers thrown everywhere. When he turned fourteen, he no longer wanted dinosaurs painted on the walls. We redid the room, repainted it, refinished the furniture, and now it has one dark wall and three beige ones, a smattering of rock band posters, a dark stain on all the wooden furniture, and blackout curtains for when he sleeps. It looks like a child’s idea of an adult room. My son is becoming a teenager.
Jenna’s room is still orange. She has been obsessed with the color almost since birth. I think it comes from the color of Millicent’s hair. Jenna’s hair is like mine, dark brown with no sign of red. She has posters of female soccer players on her walls, along with a few musical groups and a male actor or two. I don’t know who they are, but whenever they are on TV, Jenna and her friends squeal. Now that she has reached the mature age of thirteen, all her dolls have been stuffed into her closet. She is into fashion, jewelry, and makeup she is not allowed to wear yet, along with a few stuffed animals and video games.