Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife

Wryly, Dena says, “We managed to make time for you.”

“I bet you both are wondering why I dropped in out of the blue.”

Neither of them replies, and then Dena says, “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Well, first, I wanted to see you—I wanted to know what had become of you, Dena. But also, a news story is about to break that’s indirectly related to you, Pete. I’m not sure whether it will be a television program or a newspaper that will report it first, but in the next day or so, it’ll become public that I—that in 1963, I had an abortion. And I’m telling you because, although the media won’t have any idea of this part, Pete, it was you I’d gotten pregnant by. I don’t know if Dena ever mentioned—”

“He knows.” Dena says this matter-of-factly, and when I glance at Pete, he does not contradict her; he watches me with little emotion. (Would Andrew have become so heavyset as he aged? I doubt it, because they had different builds.)

“If I had it to do over again, obviously, it would have been more respectful to have told you at the time,” I say.

“Who’s spilling the beans?” Dena says. “Someone you know?”

“It’s—” There are several ways to describe Gladys Wycomb, but I decide to leave my grandmother out of it. “It’s the doctor who performed the procedure,” I say. “She’s very old now, and she’s doing it to protest—I don’t know if you two have been following the Supreme Court nomination of Ingrid Sanchez, but that’s what the doctor is protesting.” I look at Pete. “I hope this isn’t a news story that will have legs, but it’s possible some reporters will get it into their mind to try to figure out who I was involved with at the time, and I don’t think they’ll be able to except through one of us. But I wanted to warn you. I’d prefer that you don’t talk to reporters if you hear from them, but it’s your decision, and if you’d like, someone in my office can connect you with a media coach.” Lest this sound condescending, I add, “Although I’ve had loads of coaching, and I still haven’t learned all the tricks.”

Dena and Pete exchange a look, and Dena says, “Yep, we hear from your friends at the tabloids on a regular basis. Well, not just the tabloids—babe, where was that guy calling from a few weeks ago, was it Croatia? It was a country I wouldn’t be able to find on the map, I’ll tell you that much.”

This should not surprise me—exposés and tell-alls about Charlie’s administration or his family or his early years are published on a weekly basis, both articles and books, in tabloids and reputable magazines alike, and during the 2000 campaign, when the first reporter discovered the accident that killed Andrew Imhof, that was big news that I addressed by giving an interview to a USA Today reporter. I said, “It was incredibly sad. I know it was very hard for his family and our classmates and really the whole community, including me.” In all the times I’ve been asked about it since, I have repeated these comments without expanding on them. To pad out the various books and articles, therefore, the writers must find more loquacious subjects, so they talk to anyone we ever so much as passed on the sidewalk. I know of at least one biography of me that identifies Dena as my childhood best friend, which must be how other journalists know to track her down. The biographer’s source for this information was our old classmate Mary Petschel née Hafliger, she of the hairy forearms, she who kicked me off Spirit Club after Andrew’s death, and she whom Ella and I ran into when I fled to Riley in 1988; since that encounter, I haven’t seen Mary.

And I realize in this moment that neither Dena nor Pete has ever spoken about me to the media. For so long, I was so sure Dena would that it felt like she already had. Even earlier today, she was the first person I thought of when Hank came to tell me the abortion story was going to break, but she’d had nothing to do with it. That Dena and Pete have stayed quiet even though they’ve been together all these years, even though they’ve each had separate reasons for wishing me ill, and even though surely they could have reinforced each other’s antipathy, justifying their right to get back at me—I haven’t been sufficiently grateful, it occurs to me, I have never properly appreciated a thing that hasn’t happened. I haven’t thought of them as having opportunities they declined when clearly that’s been the case, clearly the opportunities have been plentiful.

I say, “So when the journalists call and you say no—why do you?”

“Are you kidding? You think we’d talk about you to some sleazy reporter?” Dena scoffs. “We were raised better than that, and hell, we didn’t even vote for your husband!” She leans forward, extracting a cigarette from the pack, and after she’s lit it and taken a puff, she says, “At least I sure didn’t. Pete here just doesn’t vote.”

Pete smiles the way Charlie does when he’s broken wind particularly loudly, as if he’s half sheepish and half pleased with himself. Fleetingly—I don’t want to think this—I wonder if Pete is brain-damaged. Not that any single terrible event necessarily happened, but it could be that alcohol and perhaps drugs have had a cumulative effect.

“Hey, why won’t Charlie talk to that black guy?” Dena says. “You tell him old Dena thinks he should.” She means Edgar Franklin, I’m pretty sure, though unlike Gladys Wycomb, Dena does not use an accusatory tone; instead, she sounds self-effacing, as if she doesn’t really believe her opinion could matter. Or maybe it’s that, having once been married herself, she knows regulating one’s husband’s behavior is no small feat, so she doesn’t hold me accountable for Charlie’s decisions. She lifts a clear glass ashtray from a shelf beneath the coffee table and taps her cigarette into it. “Now, am I allowed to get a picture, Alice, or will your goons freak out?”

“Of course,” I say.

“Otherwise my sisters will never believe me you were here.” She stands.

“How are your sisters doing?”

“They’re plugging along. Marjorie’s oldest son’s over in the first of the 158th Infantry, so that’s hard.” Again, there is a notable lack of blame in Dena’s voice. How is it that she’s forgiven me for both the past and the present? “Peggy’s living in Mom and Dad’s old house, which you couldn’t pay me enough to do. The place is falling down around her, not to mention she’s due to have hip surgery, so I don’t know how she plans to get to the second floor.”

“Maybe she can have one of those chairs put in like my grandmother had,” I say, and Dena chortles, though I wasn’t kidding. It is sobering to think of Peggy Janaszewski needing hip surgery when, as little girls, she and Marjorie were our students the times that Dena and I played school and pretended to be teachers named Miss Clougherty.

Dena disappears down the hall, to find her camera, presumably, and Pete and I are left alone. The room is silent except for the whir of the air conditioner, and then Pete says, “A lot of water under the bridge, isn’t there?”

“There sure is.” We both start to speak at the same time, and I say, “Go ahead.”

“When I look back, I don’t feel real good about everything,” he says. “That was a tough time.”

Is he referring to after Andrew’s death or to the pyramid scheme?

“And the papers, they can’t leave it be. Every time it goes away, someone brings it up again, but they don’t care what he was like—they act like he didn’t do anything his whole life but get in the car and drive to that intersection.”

“I hope you know that I still think of him,” I say. “I still wish I could change what happened.”