My Lovely Wife(50)

“Not right now. I’m going to go home.”

“You sure?”

He nods and walks away. Andy does not go back into the clubhouse; he goes toward the parking lot. I start to tell him he cannot drive, but I don’t. The valets will stop him. Liability and whatnot.



* * *



? ? ?

My lessons continue. There is no news. No calls, no further disruptions. Not until I leave work and stop at the car wash on the way home.

I normally check my phone—the disposable—at least every other day, but I broke my own rule. Too much going on, too many other things to deal with.

The phone is hidden inside the spare tire in my trunk. At the car wash, I take everything out of the back so it can be vacuumed, grabbing the phone along with everything else. As the car goes through the wash, I turn on the phone. The new-message beep startles me. Both the sound and the phone are old-fashioned. It’s not even a smartphone, just a prepaid phone that is heavier than it looks.

I bought it at a discount store years ago. It took me a while to decide. Not on the phone itself—back then all the prepaids looked the same. It took me a while to decide to get one in the first place. A nice saleswoman came along and asked if she could help. She looked too old to know a lot about electronics, but it turned out she knew everything. And she was so patient, so kind, and I asked one question after another. The answers did not matter. I did not care about the technical details. I was trying to decide if I wanted a second phone, the disposable kind, and I think I ended up with one because at some point it would have been rude not to buy something. I had taken up too much of her time.

I have had this thing ever since. Annabelle is just the latest entry.

I have not thought about her since deciding she would not be the one. There has been no reason to think about Annabelle, not until she called. Or texted, I mean. It does not do any good to call a deaf man.

Hey stranger, let’s have a drink again soon. Oh, and it’s Annabelle ?

I have no idea when she sent the message. It does not arrive on my phone until I turn it on, but she could have sent it a week ago. At least a week has passed since I checked it.

I consider answering the text, at least to say I was not ignoring her on purpose.

My car is still being washed, so I scroll backward on the phone. Before the text from Annabelle, there is the one text from Lindsay. The one I ignored. It is now fifteen months old.

Had a great time the other day, Tobias. See you soon!

Tobias. He was never supposed to have a personality of his own. And he wasn’t supposed to sleep with anyone.

Millicent and I came up with him together. It was on a rare cold night in Florida, where the temperatures dipped below forty degrees. Between hot cocoa and a pint of ice cream, Tobias was born.

“You can’t really change how you look,” she told me. “I mean, not without some kind of wig or paste-on beard.”

“I’m not wearing a wig.”

“So then you need something else.”

I was the one who suggested pretending I was deaf. Just a few days before, I had taught a teenage kid who was deaf and we used cell phones to communicate. It stuck with me, so I suggested it.

“Brilliant,” Millicent said. She kissed me just the way I like it.

Next, we discussed my name. It had to be memorable but not weird, traditional but not common. It came down to two: Tobias and Quentin. I wanted the latter because of the nickname. Quint was better than Toby.

We debated the pros and cons both names. Millicent even pulled up the origins of them.

“Tobias comes from the Hebrew name Tobiah,” she said, reading from the Internet. “Quentin comes from the Roman name Quintus.”

I shrugged. Neither origin meant anything to me.

Millicent continued. “Quentin is from the Roman word for ‘fifth.’ Tobias is a biblical name.”

“What did he do in the Bible?”

“Hang on.” Millicent clicked and scrolled and said, “He slayed a demon to save Sarah and then he married her.”

“I want to be Tobias,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Who doesn’t want to be the hero?”

That night, Tobias was born.

Not many people have met him—just a few bartenders and a few women. Not even Millicent has met him. Tobias is almost like my alter ego. He even has his own secrets.

I do not answer Annabelle’s text asking me out for a drink. I shut off the phone and put it back in my trunk.





Thirty-four




Christmas, six years ago. Rory was eight, Jenna was seven, and both had started asking why they had only one set of grandparents. I had never talked about my parents, never said anything about who they were or how they died. Their questions made me think about what I could say. What I should say.

One night, I went down to the kitchen, hoping that if I filled up my stomach it would make me sleepy enough to get past the insomnia. I ate leftover black bean casserole right out of the pan. Cold, but not half-bad. I was still eating when Millicent came into the kitchen. She grabbed a fork and sat down with me.

“What’s going on?” she said. Millicent took a big bite of the casserole and stared at me, waiting. I never got up in the middle of the night to eat. She knew that.

“The kids are asking about my parents.”