Таррин Фишер - The Wives

My mother drops her head like this is all too much. I watch the tips of her lashes, the bridge of her nose, as she stares down at her shoes. From this angle she looks ten, twenty years younger. Just a girl who has bent her head in exasperation...frustration...hopelessness? I’ve never been good at telling what she’s really feeling. I know all of the brands she likes, I know her thoughts on shallow, useless topics, but I don’t know how to uncover what she’s truly feeling. I’m not quite sure if she knows, either.

“Regina is Seth’s ex -wife. He was married before you, yes. You’re right—she didn’t want children and so they parted ways.” My mother leans forward, her eyes imploring. It’s true. How can I argue with that? Regina is technically his ex-wife. He divorced her to marry me, after all. But they’re still together, still a couple, just without the title.

“Mother,” I say. “Please listen to me. Seth is trying to cover his tracks. They’re still together.”

She drops her face into her palms. When did I become the type of woman who isn’t believed by her own mother? When you started lying to yourself , I think.

When she looks up, her eyes are wet. She reminds me of a cocker spaniel with those wet eyes. “You have an unhealthy fixation on his exes. But, Thursday, he’s not with them. He’s with you. Seth is worried sick about you.” She reaches for my hand, but I pull it away. I won’t be coddled that way—spoken to like I’m a child. Her hand drops uselessly back into her lap.

“Why do you think he’s always in Portland? He has two other wives.” I stand up, begin pacing.

“He works there,” she hisses. “He loves you, we all do. We want you to get well.”

“I am well,” I say stiffly. I stop to glare at her. “Why hasn’t he come? Where is he?” That’s when she gets shifty, averting her eyes, crossing and uncrossing her ankles. She doesn’t know what to say because she doesn’t know where Seth is, or why he hasn’t come.

“In Portland...” she says. It sounds more like a question. “He still has to work, Thursday. Life goes on.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not when I’m in the hospital. He has other wives to tend to his needs,” I say. “Why come see the loony toon in Tonker Town?”

She looks at me quizzically for a moment before she stands up. We face each other and I can read the disappointment on her face.

“I need to get going,” she says. Fifteen minutes. She lasted fifteen minutes in the psych ward. I watch as she retreats toward the doors, her shoulders sagging with the weight of my failures as her daughter. At least this time she came.

I am alone. I realize that it’s always been this way, my whole life, and anything my mind constructed to convince me otherwise was a lie. A comfortable lie I needed. My parents were occupied with my sister, Torrence, who was always getting into trouble at school or with her friends. I was the good child; I parented myself well while they were busy. I knew the rules, the moral confines they’d built around me: no drinking, no premarital sex, no drugs, no sneaking out, top-notch grades only. It was easy to follow their guidelines; I wasn’t the rebel of the family. My sister, on the other hand, dabbled in all of the above. My father grayed at his temples, my mother started getting Botox and I tried my best to be perfect so there was one less daughter to worry about. Then, when Torrence straightened up and married the right man, they’d been so relieved they’d showered her with a different type of attention. She’d put in three well-behaved years and they’d both forgotten the decade she spent snorting their money up her nose and fucking every dealer in town. Maybe all of that trying made me go crazy . Maybe the lack of attention from my parents pushed me toward Seth, my desperation to be accepted trapping me in a relationship any normal person would think bizarre.

I poke at my Jell-O. They love to feed you Jell-O in this place—wobbly and colorful, like our minds. Today is orange, yesterday was green. It’s like they’re trying to remind you that you’re weak and unstable. I eat my Jell-O.

I have to get the fuck out of here. I have to find Hannah, make sure she’s okay. Where once I slept, I am now awake. I saw Dr. Steinbridge today. I’ve realized that he is my keeper—not the electric doors with keycard access, nor the burly nurses who wrangle us like toddlers if we get out of hand. Calm down, little Thursday, or we’ll put you in the padded time-out room.

Dr. Steinbridge has the power to say I’m well; he is God in this place of speckled sterile tile and fluorescent lights. One swipe of his pen (a Bic) and I am a free bird.

Hannah... Hannah. She’s all I think about. I’ve become her savior in my own mind. If something has happened to her, I am responsible. If she is to be saved, I must get out of here. I married this man, gave my blessing for a third wife. When I saw that first bruise I should have spoken up, forced her to tell me what he did. For a moment, I doubt that she is real. That’s how good they are—they can make you doubt your own mind in this place.

Eat your Jell-O!

I realize it is my duty to convince the good doctor that I have come to my senses, that my head is cleared of its delusional fog. That I am whole and my husband is a one-woman man! That Hannah and Regina are not real, but a sexual game my husband and I played. That’s what they want to hear, isn’t it? All I have to do is say I’m lying about Seth’s penchant for plural pussy and I am a cured woman!

It can’t happen too fast, my change, or Steinbridge will suspect that I am lying. During our daily sessions, I pretend to be confused. Seth only has one wife? That wife is me? Gradually, I become more myself, each session I am less confused, less insistent.

“What is wrong with me?” I ask the doctor. “Why don’t I know what’s real and what is not?”

I am diagnosed! The trauma of losing a child, never dealing with that loss in a healthy way, it put stress on my relationship with Seth. I blamed other women instead of focusing on my healing. When the good doctor asked what I thought triggered the mania that led to my mental demise, I thought of Debbie: chatty Debbie, nosy Debbie, Debbie with the big hair who suggested I snoop on the women who made me feel insecure. I don’t blame Debbie for any of my actions; if anything, she woke me up. I wasn’t the only one who suffered crippling insecurity, you could be any age. Hell, Lauren seemingly had a perfect life. I always thought she taped those anniversary cards to her locker to brag, to rub it in the rest of our faces that she had it better than us. But now I see the truth: women are stuck in a cycle of insecurity perpetuated by the way men treat them, and we are constantly fighting to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are okay. Sure, women occasionally lose their minds over men, but does that mean we’re all unstable, or that men made us unstable with their careless actions? I don’t tell Dr. Steinbridge about Debbie or Lauren; he would say I was deferring responsibility. But that’s not what I’m doing at all; I’m holding everyone accountable, because it takes a village to put someone in a mental institution.

My lack of dealing with issues is part of my unraveling, according to Dr. Steinbridge. I like the way that sounds: my unraveling.

But I’m not unraveling in the way they think I am; I’m unraveling out of my infatuation with my husband. I play the part of frail, painfully unaware woman. Stress has eaten at me, I have no coping mechanisms, my parents’ lack of attention coddled me into a tight, naive little cocoon.