The Other Mrs.(53)

I glanced across the table, imagined Will eating with me, imagined I wasn’t alone.

How was your day? I asked Will, but before he could reply, the phone rang. The sound of it was unexpected. I startled, bounding from my chair to answer the phone, feeling aggrieved that someone would call in the middle of Will’s and my dinner together.

I lifted the receiver from the cradle, pressed it to my ear.

Hello? I asked. It was an old rotary phone. The kind no one in the world still used.

Is this Mrs. Foust? he asked. The voice belonged to a man. He was chipper.

I didn’t miss a beat. This is she, I said, leaning my back against the countertop, grinning. This is Sadie Foust, I said.

He was from the cable company, calling to see if Will and I wanted to upgrade our cable package. His voice was persuasive, friendly. He asked questions. He called me by name.

Well, not my name exactly.

But still.

How is your current package treating you, Mrs. Foust? Are you happy with your choice of channels?

I told him I was not. That the selection was quite slim.

Do you find yourself ever wishing for the hottest premium channels, Mrs. Foust, or your husband the MLB Network?

I told him I did. That I wished for that all of the time. That I longed to watch movies on HBO or Showtime. They’re not part of our current package, are they, sir?

Unfortunately, no, they’re not, Mrs. Foust, he told me. But we can change all that. We can change it right now over the phone. This is a great time to upgrade, Mrs. Foust.

His offer was hard to refuse. I couldn’t say no.

I set the phone back into its cradle. I left my casserole where it was. I ran my hands over the countertop. I opened and closed drawers, fiddled with the knobs of the gas range.

I turned the dial, bypassed the ignition valve.

It didn’t take long for the smell of gas to reach my nose.

I moved to the living room, laid my fingers on photographs, sat on the sofa, played the piano.

I turned and headed toward the stairs, where I gripped the handrail, climbed the steps up. The steps were wooden, sunken in the middle. They were old, as old as the house was old.

I moved down the hall, looked in each room.

It didn’t take long to figure out which bedroom was his.

The bed was wide. A pair of his pants was draped over the edge of a laundry basket. Inside were his shirts, his socks, her bras. I thumbed the lace of her bra, dropped it back in the basket, dug through until I found a sweater. It was brown wool, a cardigan, ugly and worn, but warm. I slipped my arms into it, ran my fingers along the ribbed trim, touched the buttons. I sank my hands into the big apron pockets, did a little spin.

I went to Sadie’s dresser, where her jewelry hung from a stand. I draped a necklace over my neck, slipped a bracelet over my wrist. I slid open a drawer, found makeup there. I watched on in the attached mirror as I patted my nose with her powder puff, as I swept her blush across my cheeks.

Don’t you look lovely, Mrs. Foust, I said to my reflection, though I’d always been so much prettier than Sadie. But even so, if I wanted to, I could do my hair like hers, I could dress like her, pass myself off as Mrs. Foust. Persuade others to believe that I was Will’s wife, his chosen one. If I wanted to.

I went to the bed, grabbed ahold of the top sheet and pulled it back. The sheets were soft, gray, the kind with a high thread count, no doubt expensive.

I ran my hands over the sheets, I fingered the hem. I sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t help myself; I had to get inside. I slipped my feet under the sheets, moved down beneath the covers. I lay on my side, closed my eyes awhile. Pretended Will was beside me in bed.

I was gone before he came back. He never knew I was there.

  I was there at the pier when he came. The day was dingy, gray. The clouds sank from the sky, they fell to street level, like smog. Everyone and everything was blurred because of it. Everyone was gray.

There were people outside just for the hell of it. As if they liked this, the dreary cold. They stood, staring at the ocean, watching a dot at sea that may or may not have been the ferry. It moved in, getting closer, leaving small boats behind. They rolled back and forth in the ship’s wake.

The wind cut through me like a knife. I stood with my ticket in hand, holed up behind the ticket booth, waiting for Will to come. I spotted him as he made his way down the street for the dock.

His smile was electric. My heart beat hard.

But he wasn’t smiling at me.

He was smiling at the hoi polloi, making small talk with the commoners.

I waited behind the ticket booth, watched him take his place at the end of the line. I waited, then fell in line behind him, a handful of people between us.

I draped a hood over my head. With sunglasses, I hid my eyes.

The ferry was the last of us to arrive. We paraded across the bridge, prisoners on a death march. There were holes in the bridge, one of those you see straight through to the churning water below. I saw seaweed. I smelled fish.

Will went up the steps to the upper deck. I sat where I could watch him without being seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I watched as he stood at the stern of the ship; as he gripped the guardrail; as he stared at the shoreline as it slipped from view.

The water beneath us was briny and brown. Ducks circled the boat.

I watched the whole time. Will stood like a ship’s figurehead, Poseidon, god of the sea, keeping watch over the ocean. My eyes orbited his body, traced the shape of his silhouette. They circled his windblown hair, rounded his broad shoulder, slipped down an arm, counted each fingertip. They followed the seam of his jeans from his thighs to his feet. Dropped beneath the soles of his shoes, went up the other side, the same way they came down. Feet to thighs to fingers. I ran my hands through his hair. Remembered what it felt like when his hair got tangled up in the webs of my hands.