16. My Wife
MY WIFE
FOX
Ihear my mother through the open master bedroom window as I walk in naked from the bathroom, toweling my hair dry.
Her voice carries the way nails on a chalkboard do—further than you want it to.
For a moment, I simply stand there, dripping, processing—then grab a pair of jeans and pull them on. I find a T-shirt and drag it over my head as I run down, taking two steps at a time.
I step onto the porch and find my wife sitting in her chair, looking confused, still recovering from brain swelling and four fractured ribs.
“Mother, what in the hell are you doing here?”
“Language, Archibald,” Mother snaps.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” I repeat.
My mother is a smart woman. She reads the rage on my face and backtracks, abandons her attempt to derail me by ordering me to watch my language like I’m twelve.
“We came to check on Lucy—“
“She said we’re getting divorced,” Lucy blurts out, and the smallness of her voice guts me.
I crouch in front of her and take her hands in mine. “Sweetheart, you remember how I told you about my mother?”
My mother and Reina both gasp.
Lucy nods solemnly. “She doesn’t like the peonies.”
I catch the amusement in her eyes.
Fucking hell. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She remembers everything I said about my mother—and about her deserving not to be liked.
“Or me,” Lucy adds and flutters her lashes.
I tilt my head toward my mother. “That’s Margaret.”
Lucy’s eyes flicker toward Reina.
“She’s a friend of the family. Her name is Reina.”
“Okay.”
I straighten, kiss her mouth softly, before I turn around to face our two intruders.
“Archibald, it’s important that—“
“Mother, get out.”
“What?”
I swear to God, she looks like she’s about to have a coronary.
I have never been this rude to her.
She knows I’m capable of it, but I’ve always treated her with deference because that’s what you do.
These days I’m not doing what I’m supposed to—I’m doing what I want to.
And what I want is not to be deferential to a woman who walks into my wife’s home and harangues her about a divorce she doesn’t even remember we were having, while she’s still healing from an accident that almost killed her.
My mother is a fucking monster.
Reina steps in front of her. “Fox, you can’t talk to your mother like—“
“You, too. Get out.”
“Archibald!” Mother tries to assert her authority—the kind she enjoys because I permit it.
I walk past Reina and stand in front of my mother, looking down at her artfully made-up face. I know she’s had work done because the family accountants called to check whether she was permitted to exceed her allowance when she handed over her credit card to a surgeon in Los Angeles.
I keep my voice low. That’s the register it goes to when I’m past performance, when what’s underneath the management is right at the surface.
“You brought her here.” I glance at Reina for a beat and then back at my mother. “To my house. When I wasn’t present to open the damn door, while my wife is recovering.”
“Fox, we were just visiting. We…we…care about…you,” Reina sputters.
I look past my mother to my ex, who I hope is comprehending what a miscalculation she made in believing my mother’s story—that I am divorcing Lucy and that she has any kind of chance with me. “Did I ask you to come to visit?”
“Of course not, I—“
“Then what are you doing in my house?”
My mother steps forward—her way of telling me she isn’t afraid of me. “I was concerned about the situation—“
“The situation.” Cold moves through me—the temperature I run at when I’m done being charitable. “My wife was in a car accident. She has brain swelling. She has broken ribs. She is healing. That is not a situation, Mother. That is my wife.” I look at Reina again. “And you came here with her—“
“Fox, we just came to check on Lucy, that’s all.”
Reina is trying to salvage this. She thinks I’m still the boy she remembers—and honestly, I can play him well enough even now—but I decided in the ICU, while I waited for my wife to open her eyes, that I will never again choose stoicism over honesty.
No matter where it takes me…as long as I don’t lose Lucy.
“No, Reina. You didn’t.”
“I—“
“Reina.” I look at her directly. “I know exactly why you’re here. My mother told you we’d make the perfect couple, or some version of that story.”
“Fox, maybe we should go inside and talk.” Reina smiles when she says it.
“And why the fuck would I do that?”
She glances at Lucy, who looks tired, and I know she needs to go upstairs to rest.
I need to close this down.
“We know how much you love Reina,” Mother blurts out. “We know what you did to that man.”
Lucy’s drowsy eyes sharpen at that.
“Luce, sweetheart, Reina cheated on me when we were dating, which was years ago,” I tell my wife, keeping my tone light, like old news.
“She cheated on you?” Lucy shakes her head.
“With a country music star,” I add.
Lucy considers this. “Well, if he was talented, that’s somewhat understandable, isn’t it?”
There she is. My Lucy. The one with the sense of humor.
“I found them together,” I continue.
All three women make a sound.
“Like, actually?” Lucy puts a hand to her chest.
“Yeah. And I made sure his career was fucked.”
“Because you love Reina,” Mother says triumphantly.
“Lucy.” I ignore my mother and my ex entirely and focus on my wife. “I’m not a man who makes empty gestures. What I did had nothing to do with Reina.”
Lucy wrinkles her nose. “But you ruined his career, Fox. I mean—it’s not hard to see why she’d think you were in love with her.”
I smile at my wife. She’s being specific when she says that it’s not hard to see why Reina thinks I’m in love with her, not that I am in fact in love with her.
I turn to Reina, who looks like she’s wishing the floor would open up. This is not what she signed up for. She doesn’t like unpleasantness or confrontation, and she has never had much of a sense of humor.
“He took something that wasn’t his. He made his choice.
I made mine. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with my ego, which was considerably larger and more fragile when I was younger.
” I hold Reina’s gaze. “Here’s the truth.
I never loved you. I didn’t even know what the word meant until—“ I glance at my wife, at the expression of pure delight on her face, and feel my chest fill up with something I spent two years trying to rationalize away— “until I met Lucy.”
Reina’s composure cracks only at the edges. After all, she’s a society girl; she’s not going to let all her emotions show.
“Let’s get you to bed, sweetheart.” I take Lucy’s hand. Her eyes are already drooping. This has been entertaining if you like fucking soap operas, but she needs to rest.
My mother is having trouble with all her plans being upset, and she’s not going to give up easily, not without considerable effort on my part. “Archibald, you said you wanted to—“
“Go home, Mother. Take Reina with you.” I lean down to pick up my wife, slowly and carefully, so I don’t catch her ribs. “Arms around my neck, sweetheart.”
She complies.
I slide one arm behind her back, the other under her knees, and lift—smooth and steady, no sudden movements, keeping her tucked close against my chest.
She makes a small sound, not pain, just the adjustment of it, and tucks her head against my shoulder like she was built to fit there.
“Goodbye, Mother. Don’t come back without being invited.” I start toward the door. “And leave the key you took from your housekeeper on your way out. Tell her she’s fired as well.”
“Her housekeeper?” Lucy mumbles into my shoulder.
“I borrowed my mother’s housekeeper.”
She pulls back just enough to give me a look that says, Well, then you deserved this.
Mother tries again. “Archibald—“
“Sunday dinners,” I speak over her, “are suspended until further notice.”
I carry my wife inside.
Footsteps follow us. “Archibald. Stop and talk to me.”
I sigh.
Lucy giggles.
“Mother.” I stop on the stairs and turn. “I need you to understand—fully—that if you come to our home again without being asked, and if you bring anyone into my wife’s space while she is healing, who isn’t there to help her heal, I will not be diplomatic about it.”
I continue up the stairs and add, “I’m not feeling particularly diplomatic right now.”