Melanie Gideon - Wife 22

She smiles at me. “I had a feeling you might join me.”

“What are you doing up?”

“It’s seven for me. The question is, what are you doing up?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep.” I hug my ribs.

“Alice, what is it?”

I groan. “I’ve done something really bad, Bunny.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Addicted to painkillers bad ?”

“Bunny! No, of course not!”

“Then it’s not that bad.”

I pause. “I think I’ve fallen in love with another man.”

Bunny slides into a kitchen chair slowly. “Oh.”

“I told you it was bad.”

“ Are you sure, Alice?”

“I’m sure. And wait-it gets worse. I’ve never even met him.”

And so I tell Bunny the entire story. She doesn’t say one word while I’m speaking, but her face tells me everything I need to know. She’s an amazing, responsive audience. Her eyes widen and narrow as I show her the emails and Facebook chats. She murmurs and clucks and coos as I read her my answers to the survey. But mostly what she does is receive me-with every bit of her body.

“You must be heartbroken,” she finally says when I’m done.

I sigh. “Yes. But I feel so much more than that. It’s complicated.”

“It seems simple enough to me. This man, this researcher-he listened to you. He told you exactly what you wanted to hear. I’m sorry to say you’re probably not the first woman he’s done this to.”

“I know, I know. Wait. Do you really think that? God, I don’t think so. I really don’t. It seemed we had something kind of special, something just between me and-”

Bunny shakes her head.

“You think I’m a fool.”

“Not a fool, just vulnerable,” says Bunny.

“I feel so humiliated.”

Bunny waves my words away. “Humiliation is a choice. Don’t choose it.”

“I’m angry,” I add.

“Better. Anger is useful.”

“At William.”

“You’re angry at William ? What about this Researcher?”

“No, William. He drove me to this.”

“Now, that’s not fair, Alice. It just isn’t. Listen. I’m no saint and I’m not sitting here in judgment. There was a time with Jack and me-we went through a rocky patch. We actually separated for a while, when Caroline left for college. Well, look, I don’t need to go into the details, but my point is no marriage is perfect and if it looks perfect, the one thing you can be damn sure of is that it isn’t. But don’t blame this on William. Don’t be so passive. You need to take responsibility for what you’ve done. What you almost did. Whether you end up staying with William is not the point. The point is don’t just let this happen to you.”

“This?”

“Life. Not to be morbid, but honestly, Alice, you don’t have enough years left to just fritter away. None of us does. God knows I don’t.” Bunny gets up and puts the kettle back on. The sun has just risen, and the kitchen momentarily fills with an apricot light. “By the way, do you have any idea what a natural storyteller you are? You’ve held me enraptured for the past two hours.”

“Storyteller?” William walks into the kitchen. He surveys the mugs. The dried up teabags.

“How long have you two been up,” he asks, “storytelling?”

“Since four,” says Bunny. “We’ve had a lot of catching up to do.”

“Fifteen years’ worth,” I say.

“It was a beautiful sunrise,” says Bunny. “The backyard was the color of a peach. For a moment there, anyway.”

William peers out the window. “Yes, well, now it’s the color of a Q-tip.”

“That must be the legendary Bay Area fog everybody always talks about,” says Bunny.

“Clear one minute, can’t see a thing the next,” says William.

“Just like marriage,” I say under my breath.

John Yossarian added Games

Sorry

Lucy Pevensie added Activities

Looking for the lamppost

Please tell me you had a very good reason for not coming last night, Researcher 101.

I’m sorry, I really am. I know this sounds clichéd, but something unexpected came up. Something unavoidable.

Let me guess. Your wife?

You could say that.

Did she find out about us?

No.

Did you think she would?

Yes, I did.

Why?

Because I was going to tell her about us after I met with you last night.

You were? So what happened?

I can’t say. I wish I could. But I can’t. You’re looking for the lamppost?

That’s what I said.

You’re saying you want to go home, then? You want to leave this world. Our world?

We have a world?

I’ve been thinking that maybe things worked out for the best. Maybe it was fate that we couldn’t meet.

It wasn’t that we couldn’t meet. I was there. You stood me up.

I would have been there if I could, I promise you. But let me ask you something, Wife 22. Didn’t you feel the least bit relieved that I didn’t show?

No. I felt toyed with. I felt ridiculous. I felt sad. Do you feel relieved?

Does it help to know I’ve thought about you nearly every minute since?

And what about your wife? Have you thought about her nearly every minute since, too?

Please forgive me. The man who doesn’t show is not the man I want to be.

Who’s the man you want to be?

Someone other than who I am.

IRL?

What?

In real life?

Oh. Yes.

Are you trying?

Yes.

Are you succeeding?

No.

And would your wife agree with that assessment?

I’m working very hard not to hurt either one of you.

I need to ask you a question now and I need you to tell me the truth. Can you do that?

I’ll do my best.

Have you done this with other women? Been like this. The way you are with me.

No, never. You are the first. Stay here. Just a little while longer. Until we figure this out.

Are you telling me I should stop looking for the lamppost?

For now, yes.

“And that, my dear, is material,” says Bunny, nudging me. “I could definitely work that into a scene.”

Standing under the Tasty Salted Pig Parts sign at Boccalone is a line, at least twenty men long. Down the aisle, standing under the pastel blue Miette sign is another line, at least twenty women long. The men are buying salumi, the women petits fours.

“Actually, that’s a play unto itself,” she amends.

“Do you think women are afraid of mortadella?” asks Jack.

“Intimidated, maybe,” I say.

“Disgusted more like it,” says Zoe.

It’s 9:00 on a Saturday morning and the Ferry Building is already packed. Whenever we have out-of-town visitors this is one of the first places we take them. It’s one of San Francisco’s most impressive tourist attractions-a farmers’ market on steroids.

“It makes you yearn for a different kind of life, doesn’t it?” says William as we wander outside onto the wharf, strolling past bundles of gleaming red radishes and perfectly stacked pyramids of leeks. He snaps photos of the vegetables with his iPhone. He can’t help himself. He’s addicted to food porn.