This Christmas (9 page)

“It’s paranoia, Sarah. Reilly’s a model husband. I’ve seen the way the man is around you. He’s smitten. He adores Hunter. He’s a great guy. Why can’t you leave it at that and be happy?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Reilly
never
mentions Prudence?” I asked.

“Um, let me think about it,” she said in a tone that let me know she was not thinking about it at all but, rather, mocking my suspicions. Without missing a beat, she finished, “No.” She didn’t find it one bit unusual, she said. “Why would he talk about his ex-wife?! He has a new life with you. A wonderful new life, if you’d just relax and enjoy it. I’d worry if he
was
talking about her, and I have a feeling you would too.”

“It just seems like he’s hiding something,” I said, watching the flames dance behind our velvet stockings.

“
You’re
hiding something, Sarah—your good sense,” Gwen said. “Listen, you’re my dearest friend in the world, and I’m sticking with you through this, but I have to say, I’m a little concerned. The obsessing, the worrying, the constant fear that your sweet and adoring new husband is cheating on you, it’s just not who you are. What happened to the self-assured Sarah I know?”

I also wondered what had happened to that Sarah. I was no longer a cool customer, but an adult version of the high-strung kindergartner clinging to her mommy’s pant leg. “I don’t know,” was the hollow truth.

I heard Gwen light a cigarette and inhale. “Look, if you’re really worried about her, why don’t you just find her a new guy to keep her occupied?”

“Find her a new husband?” I repeated.

“Isn’t that what she did to Reilly?” Gwen laughed. “Payback’s a bitch, Sarah.”

We laughed for a moment. It was the first time I felt truly at ease in a month. “Do you really think I should?”

“No!” Gwen returned, as though the answer was obvious.

“Really? Because this is the first laugh I’ve had in a while. I felt a huge weight off my shoulders just at the thought of Prudence busying herself with someone new.”

“Sarah, she isn’t busying herself with Reilly and even if she wanted to, he’s in love with
you
! You, his wife of six months. The honeymoon isn’t even over yet and you’re already fast-forwarding to the jealous-wife-who-hires-a-private-investigator phase. Isn’t that supposed to be another ten years off?”

“I’m not hiring a private investigator!” I defended.

“No, you’re entertaining ideas of finding a new husband for your new husband’s ex-wife so she’ll break off their nonexistent affair. Do you realize how utterly Fox television this sounds?”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“I always am,” she teased.

I popped my favorite holiday CD in the player and smiled contently as I looked around my home. What was I so wound up about anyway? Life was good. Hunter was excelling in first grade. His show-and-tell coach said he was making excellent progress on his oral presentation skills. I was doing so well with my freelance reporting, I had to turn down assignments. And Reilly was exactly what I’d always wanted in a husband.

Some may characterize Reilly as dull, but after three years married to an alcoholic I found his steady demeanor reassuring.

What was I worried about? We had a beautiful new life and nothing threatened to take any of it away. The rug couldn’t be pulled out from under me because there was too much heavy furniture resting on it. It was time for me to take a few deep breaths, let the holiday music lift my spirits, and start enjoying my first Christmas with Reilly.

With that thought, I heard the keys opening the door. Hunter burst in immediately before Reilly pulled him back out onto our front stairs and told him to shake the snow off his boots. “You know how your mother loves her wood floors,” he said. I smiled.

“Hi, guys!” I said, to let them know I was in the living room.

Still in his scarf and coat, Hunter ran to me and started his frenetic report. Reilly wiped out in the ice. He beat Reilly in a race. Reilly bought him some “awesome” gizmo that sounded like it might be a computer game. Reilly is the best. Reilly and he are going to go skiing this year. Reilly once went on a snowmobile. Before I could follow up on any of these statements, Hunter was onto the next. In the midst of Hunter’s account of the day, Reilly walked to me and leaned down to kiss me. “Good afternoon?” he asked. “Were you able to start your holiday shopping?” I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You’ll get to it when you feel like it, and if you don’t, you’ll take care of it online.” Turning to Hunter, he shouted, “Stop right there, little man.” My son was my spitting image, right down to his quizzical facial expressions. “Hat off. Coat off. Hang ’em in the closet. You know the drill.”

“Sounds like you two had a good time,” I said, as Reilly watched Hunter struggle to get his coat sleeves through the points of the hanger.

“Yeah, it was great. Guess who we ran into?” Reilly asked. Hunter burst into the living room and told me that Daddy’s friend bought them a cup of hot chocolate at Rockefeller Center.

“What friend?” I asked. “I thought you two went alone?”

“We did,” he said. “We ran into Prudence. She was doing some shopping at Saks and said she came by to watch the skaters. Boy, was she was surprised to see us there.”

I’ll bet she was. She just
happened
to be shopping at Saks and decided to stroll over to Rockefeller Center at the exact same time Reilly and Hunter were there. How likely is that? Okay, it’s not all that suspicious. Intellectually I understood that, but my heart raced like I’d just downed Excedrin with espresso. “Oh,” I said, feigning serenity. “How is Prudence?”

“Seems happy,” Reilly answered.

“How did she look?”

“Pretty good,” he said. “She’s no Sarah Peterson, but she looked nice. Healthy. Clean.”

Clean? She looked clean? What man describes a woman as clean, or healthy for that matter? What was he, her doctor? And how dare she buy hot chocolate for my son and my husband. Clearly, Prudence needed to get her own life and get out of mine. And I knew just how I’d do it.

The next morning I opened the Manhattan Children’s School directory and found Sophie’s telephone number. I spent most of last night awake thinking about the best strategy to find Prudence a new husband. I decided I would need two things. The first was good intentions. Although it was amusing to imagine Prudence on a date with a Sumo wrestler or gold-toothed wannabe rapper, I soon realized that it wasn’t in me to be unkind to her.

The second thing I’d need was a support system. That is, a little help from my friends. And hers. Of course, Reilly could know nothing of my plan. He wouldn’t understand. Even Gwen didn’t understand when I explained it to her that morning, but she also said that she’d try anything I thought would help me get back to my old self.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t understand what was driving me to find Prudence a new husband either. My head and my heart had parted company recently. Once a well-paved two-lane highway, logic and emotion had now split—one road darting north, the other heading south. The wiser version of my newly neurotic self scolded,
Sarah, this is absurd. If there is something wrong with you or this marriage, focus on that—not a phantom ex-wife who poses absolutely no threat to you
. That was the voice of the real me. God, I missed her. This new, lesser version of me couldn’t help myself. I was losing myself to an insane person who looked exactly like me.

Years ago at an Al-Anon meeting, one of the other wives of an alcoholic said that at some point in everyone’s lives they lose their minds temporarily. I remember thinking she was being overly dramatic. Now, as I recalled her comment, I thought,
My time has come
.

I started going to Al-Anon when I was pregnant with Hunter. My husband, Rudy, and I had been married for two years before it occurred to me that he had a drinking problem. I’d always imagined alcoholics as homeless guys on the Bowery who pass bottles in brown bags around a flaming city garbage can. Rudy was an attorney—a prominent one at a silk stockings firm, at that. He made an impressive salary, earned bonuses every year, and used cedar shoe trees. We had season tickets to the opera. Our names were engraved in benefactor plaques at the best charities in New York. Rudy was even once featured in
Wired
magazine for his work with emerging tech companies. This was not my image of an alcoholic. To me, Rudy was simply a charming, successful guy who enjoyed heavy drinking—daily.

It was Gwen who suggested Rudy was more than just a social drinker. At first, I thought she was just on Oprah overdrive, but more and more as I watched Rudy, I realized Gwen was right. Rudy worked all the time. I mean
all
the time. Now, I know many attorneys work long hours, but they shouldn’t come home at four in the morning smelling like gin and soap. The gin could not be showered off, as thankfully everything else from his late nights at the office could. One night, Rudy would be the dynamic guy I fell in love with, erupting with ideas of all of the wonderful things we were going to do together. The next day, he practically ignored me. I wasn’t being oversensitive. It wasn’t as though he was just in a blue mood and needed some space. Rudy was withdrawn and hostile when I dared inquire about his state. One night we were at his firm’s Christmas party, and Rudy was regaling his colleagues with a story about his interaction with the guy at the deli around the corner. He seemed to be having the time of his life at the black-tie gala. He never missed a server passing with champagne, and after probably about three too many, his voice started getting far louder than anyone else’s. He wasn’t upset; he’d just lost control of his volume control. I elbowed him and said, “Rudy, keep it down.” Suffice it to say, this did not go over well.

In the cab ride home, Rudy proved just how loud he was able to get as he shouted that I’d embarrassed him in front of his partners. I doubt anyone even heard me, but he was convinced they were all laughing about how “whipped” he was. (I’ll spare you the full verbiage.) Even the taxi driver asked if everything was “okay back there.”

“Just fucking drive,” was Rudy’s reply.

“Don’t tell me to fucking drive, mon. I don’t have to take that shit from fares. You can get out and walk.”

“What’s your license number, you dumb fuck?” Rudy shouted at our driver.

“See it for yourself,” the driver said, as he pulled over. “The lady can stay but you get out.”

There was never any question in my mind that I’d get out of the taxi with Rudy and hail another for the rest of the trip back uptown, though sometimes I fantasized about what it would have been like to leave him behind that night. Of course, we all have to live in the real world, but I confess that on more than one occasion, I imagined what it would be like to leave Rudy on the curb permanently. I decided if things hadn’t improved with him by our fifth anniversary, I would definitely leave. At that point, no one would be able to say I hadn’t made a valiant effort to make it work.

I got pregnant with Hunter during one of Rudy and my many honeymoon periods. These were weeks filled with apologies, promises, and earnest attempts by Rudy to control his temper and spend more time at home. But Rudy didn’t do moderation. We never had quiet nights with a movie rental and popcorn. It was either complete physical and emotional absence, or over-the-top gestures like expensive jewelry, five-star restaurants, and daily roses. I had only one rule with Reilly when we first started dating—no roses. Every time I see them, I quite unfairly ask of the bearer,
What’s the louse done now?

Roses are a thorny issue with me also because there were far too many of them at Rudy’s funeral, a day marked with not only loss, but abject humiliation. I knew that when guests offered me their sympathy, it wasn’t simply for the loss of my six-month-old baby’s father; it was for the circumstances surrounding his death.

Not surprisingly, Rudy was a casualty of his own drunk driving. I’m thankful that he didn’t injure any other drivers on the road, but he did take one of the firm’s paralegals, Madeline, to her death as well. I met her twice at holiday parties. Young. Attractive. Blonde. I can only assume she and my husband were having an affair since they were driving to New Jersey, where Madeline lived, at eleven at night.

The police officer who came to deliver the news to me assured me that Rudy and Madeline were killed instantly. “Chances are they didn’t know what hit ’em,” the officer said as sympathetically as he could after having delivered this message hundreds of times.
Lucky them
, I did not say aloud. The officer went on to say that neither Rudy nor his tart mistress felt a moment of pain, so I vowed I’d do likewise. I inhaled deeply, thanked the officer for his time, and closed the door on this chapter of my life. I stayed up all night rocking Hunter, despite the fact that he slept soundly and needed no extra coddling. As I looked at his pudgy face, his gumdrop nose, and puckered lips, I promised myself I’d focus on the future and not dwell on the past. Rudy was gone, and that meant it would be especially important for me to be a strong parent, since I now had to fill the role of both mother and father. At seven the next morning, I called the firm and told Rudy’s secretary that my husband had been killed in an auto accident.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “You’re kidding!”

Yes, Kendra, I am kidding
, I thought.
Isn’t that hilarious? Rudy’s dead and so is his paralegal. They were probably having sex while driving. Nah, just joshing. He’s got the flu. Gotcha good, though, didn’t I?!

Six years later, I picked up the same telephone and dialed Sophie’s number to invite her son Oscar over for a play date. More important, I needed her input on what kind of man would be best for Prudence.

“Hello. Is this Sophie?” I asked, as she answered the phone. She confirmed. “This is Sarah Peterson. Our boys go to school together.”

“Oh, yeah, Reilly’s new wife. How are you, Sarah?”

“Just fine, thank you,” I lied. “And you?”

“Good, good. So what’s up?”

“Oh,” I said, a bit startled by her directness. It seemed one step above asking why I called. “I wanted to invite Oscar over to play this afternoon if you don’t have other plans. I know it’s short notice, but—”

“This actually works perfectly. Devie was invited to the Nutcracker so I was going to take Oscar Christmas shopping, but I’m sure he’d rather play,” she said. I heard screeching in the background, which I could translate as approval from her son. “That really takes a load off me, Sarah. Thanks.”

“I do hope you won’t rush off too quickly. I was hoping you’d stay for tea,” I offered.

“Tea?” she asked.

“Tea,” I confirmed. “My friend Gwen will be here, too. I’ve always thought the two of you would get along nicely.”

“Well, okay.”

Gwen arrived a half hour before Sophie was due. “What’s the plan of action?” she asked. She tossed her heavy red leather tote bag onto my floor, seemingly without any regard for its obscenely high price tag. She says they’re indestructible, but frankly, when I see Gwen’s stuffed purses bending her ninety-five-pound frame, it’s not the bags I worry about.

“Gwen, please. I don’t want it to feel so contrived.”

“You want an organic setup?” she said, laughing.

“It’s not a setup,” I replied. “Our sons go to school together. She seems like a lovely person. Why not befriend her?”

“This is Gwenny you’re talking to,” she said. “You can drop the Goodie Two Shoes routine. I remember you when you were fun,” she teased. “You’re using this woman to pump info about Prudence. I’m fine with that. Just tell me how I can help.”

The crassness of it all repelled me, including Gwen’s blind acceptance. I suppose she was being loyal, but what I really needed was someone to remind me that I was not a user. I was a good person, above this sort of thing. As I picked up the phone to call Sophie and cancel, I heard a woman’s and a boy’s voices ascending the stairs to our front door. It was too late to cancel, but I decided to call off my plan. Either way I sliced it, I was not acting like the person I was raised to be.

The doorbell rang and I reminded myself of the holiday film
It’s a Wonderful Life
. Oh sure, vowing not to execute one’s twisted plan is hardly the stuff of an angel earning her wings. But it marked the moment for me. The moment I decided to go through with the boys’ play date—and women’s tea—with no agenda. I breathed freely for a moment, feeling like my old, sensible self again. The bell rang again.

“Wanna see my trains?!” Hunter shot at Oscar, as he ran to greet him. He didn’t answer. The two of them just ran downstairs, beating the steps with the cadence of a rainstorm. It always amazed me how kids socialized without all of the niceties like,
Hello…come in…can I get you something to drink…are you ready for the holidays
? I suppose I’d worry about my six-year-old boy if he were to ask another if he were prepared for the holidays.

“Hello, Sophie.” I held the door open and took her red coat, which was made from what could only be described as Muppet fur. And yet, she made it work. I always envied people who took risks with fashion. It was as if they were making a statement:
I can pull this off
. I might be able to, but I’d be too aware of other people’s reactions to carry it off with any degree of confidence. “Come on in. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Fabu coat,” Gwen said, never leaving her chair. “Where did you get it?”

Figures she’d like it. Gwen would get lost in a coat like that. Her tiny, angular brunette head would stick out from the top and her twiggy long legs would dangle out from the bottom like bamboo.

“Estate sale, if can you believe!” Sophie said, energized by the compliment.

“I can’t! It’s so, so—”

“So gaudy it transcends to chic?” Sophie proposed.

“Yes! I was going to say unique, but yes, it’s so tacky, it’s cute. Gaudy transcended to chic. I love it. I can’t believe you got it at an estate sale. It looks so modern.” Gwen extended her hand and introduced herself.

I excused myself from the Elmo-fur coat love fest and stepped into the kitchen to boil water and set out tea bags, sugar, cream, and spoons. I raised my voice to offer them snowball cookies, but neither could hear me amid their laughter.

I returned to the living room with my grandmother’s Chinese teapot filled only with hot water, and three cups with Morning Lotus painted on them.

Sophie picked a tea bag, dropped it in her cup, then folded her hands across her lap. “So tell me, ladies,” she began, “what can I do for you today?”

Gwen and I looked at each other stunned. She raised a single eyebrow as if to ask me how we should address such boldness. “Sarah thought it would be nice if we could all get acquainted, that’s all.”

“Oh, why’s that?” Sophie asked, smiling as she blew steam from the top of her teacup.

“We have boys in the same class,” I said, not really sure how to respond if she continued. In my job as a reporter, I ask tough, even impolite questions, but socially, this type of directness was unheard of. “You seem like an interesting person,” I stumbled.

“Oh, because I was certain your invitation had something to do with Prudence.”

“Prudence?” I said, because nothing else came to mind.

“Yes, Prudence. Reilly’s first wife,” Sophie said, not sharply, but not softly either. “When you called, I figured it had something to do with her.”

“Whatever would give you a silly idea like that?” Gwen asked. I immediately cringed because I could guess Sophie’s reply.

Sophie was not combative. She had an air of serene fortitude that let us know that neither Gwen nor I was going to rattle her. She was pleasant, but more curious to see how we would respond to her brand of candor. “Well, Sarah and I have seen each other every morning at school since September and she’s never so much as said hello. Yesterday she found out that I’m friends with Prudence and now—” Sophie concluded her thought by gesturing with her arms as if to say, Here I am. She smirked victoriously and finished, “Tea and holiday cookies and all. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the timing struck me as odd. I thought you might have invited me here in hopes that I’d leak information about Prudence.”