And then he read on. He dropped the note onto the tabletop and stared at it, his hand clamped over his mouth.
He’d signed it Yours, Larry — but his name had been crossed out. And over it had been written, in shaky block letters: Wayne.
December 24, 1975
If Jenny ever had to tell someone — a stranger, the sympathetic man she imagined coming to the door sometimes, kind of a traveling psychologist and granter of divorces all wrapped up in one — about what it was like to be married to Wayne Sullivan, she would have told him about tonight. She’d say, Wayne called me at six, after my parents got here for dinner, after I’d gotten the boys into their good clothes for the Christmas picture, to tell me he wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. He had some last-minute shopping, he said.
Jenny was washing dishes. The leftovers from the turkey had already been sealed in Tupperware and put into the refrigerator. From the living room she could hear Danny with her mother; her father was playing with Alex in the playroom. She could hear Alex squealing every few minutes or shouting nonsense in his two-year-old singsong. It was 8:40. Almost three hours later, she told the man in her head, and no sign of him. And that’s Wayne. There’s a living room full of presents. All anyone wants of him now is his presence at the table. And he thinks he hasn’t done enough, and so our dinner is ruined. It couldn’t be more typical.
Her mother was reading to Danny; she was a schoolteacher too, and Jenny could hear the careful cadences, the little emphasis that meant she was acting out the story with her voice. Her mother had been heroic tonight. She was a master of keeping up appearances, and here, by God, was a time when her gifts were needed. Jenny’s father had started to bluster when Jenny announced Wayne was going to be late — Jennifer, I swear to you I think that man does this on purpose — but her mother had gotten up on her cane and gone to her father, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, He’s being sweet, dear, he’s buying presents. He’s doing the best he knows.
Danny of course had asked after his father, and she told him, Daddy will be a little late, and he whined, and Alex picked up on it, and then her mother called both of them over to the couch and let them pick the channel on the television, and for the most part they forgot. Just before dinner was served, her mother hobbled into the kitchen, and Jenny kissed her on the forehead. Thank you, she said.
He’s an odd man, her mother said.
You’re not telling me anything new.
But loving. He is loving.
Her mother stirred the gravy, a firm smile on her face.
They ate slowly, eyes on the clock — Jenny waited a long time to announce dessert — and at eight o’clock she gave up and cleared the dishes. She put a plate of turkey and potatoes — Wayne wouldn’t eat anything else — into the oven.
Jenny scrubbed at the dishes, the same china they’d had since their wedding, even the plates they’d glued together after their first anniversary dinner. She thought, for the hundredth time, what her life would be like if she were in Larry’s kitchen now instead of Wayne’s.
Larry and Emily had bought a new house the previous spring, on the other side of the county, to celebrate Larry’s election as sheriff. Of course Jenny had gone to see it with Wayne and the boys, but she’d been by on her own a couple of times, too. Emily spent two weekends a month visiting her grandmother at a nursing home in Michigan. Jenny had made her visits in summer, when she didn’t teach, while Wayne was at work. She dropped the boys at her folks’ and parked her car out of sight from the road. It was a nice house, big and bright, with beautiful bay windows that let in the evening sun, filtering it through the leaves of two big maples in the front yard. Larry wouldn’t use his and Emily’s bed — God, it wouldn’t be right, even if I don’t love her — so they made love on the guest bed, narrow and squeaky, the same bed Larry had slept on in high school, which gave things a nice nostalgic feel; this was the bed where Larry had first touched her breasts, way back in the mists of time, when she was sixteen. Now she and Larry lay in the guest room all afternoon. They laughed and chattered; when Larry came — with a bellow she would have found funny if it hadn’t turned her on so much — it was like a cork popped out from his throat, and he’d talk for hours about the misadventures of the citizens of Kinslow. All the while he’d touch her with his big hands.
I should have slept with you in high school, she told him during one of those afternoons. I would never have gone on to anyone else.
Well, I told you so.
She laughed. But sometimes this was because she tried very hard not to cry in front of Larry. He worried after her constantly, and she wanted him to think as many good thoughts about her as he could.
I married the wrong guy was what she wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t. They had just, in a shy way, admitted they were in love, but neither one had been brave enough to bring up what they were going to do about it. Larry had just been elected; even though he was doing what his father had done, he was the youngest sheriff anyone had ever heard of, and a scandal and a divorce would probably torpedo another term. And being sheriff was a job Larry wanted — the only job he’d wanted, why he’d gone into the police force instead of going off to college like her and Wayne. If only he had! She and Wayne had never been friends in high school, but in college they got to know each other because they had Larry in common, because she pined for Larry, and Wayne was good at making her laugh, at making her seem not so lonely.
And then Larry met Emily at church. He called Jenny one night during her sophomore year to tell her he was in love, that he was happy, and that he hoped Jenny would be happy for him, too.
I’m seeing Wayne, she said, blurting it out, relieved she could finally say it.
Really? Larry had paused. Our Wayne?
But as much as Jenny now daydreamed about being Larry’s wife (which, these days, was often) she knew such a thing was unlikely at best. She could only stand here waiting for the husband she did have — who might as well be a third son — to figure out it was family time, and think of Larry sitting in his living room with Emily. They probably weren’t talking, either. Emily would be watching television, Larry sitting in his den, his nose buried in a Civil War book. Or thinking of her. Jenny’s stomach thrilled.
But what was she thinking? It was Christmastime at the Thompkins house, too, and Larry’s parents were over; her mother was good friends with Mrs. Thompkins and had said something about it earlier. Larry’s house would be a lot like hers, except maybe even happier. Larry and his father and brother would be knocking back a special eggnog recipe, and Emily and Mrs. Thompkins, who got along better than Emily and Larry did, would be gossiping over cookie dough in the kitchen. The thought of all that activity and noise made her sad. It was better to think of Larry’s house as unhappy; better to think of it as an empty place, too big for Larry, needing her and the children—
She was drying her hands when she heard the car grumbling in the trees. Wayne had been putting off a new muffler. She sighed, then called out: Daddy’s home!
Daddy! Danny called. Gramma, finally!
She wished Wayne could hear that.
She looked out the kitchen window and saw Wayne’s car pull up in front of the garage, the wide white circles of his headlights getting smaller and more specific on the garage door. He pulled up too close. Jenny had asked him time and time again to give her room to pull the Vega out of the garage if she needed to. She could see Wayne behind the wheel, his Impala’s orange dash lights shining onto his face. He had his glasses on; she could see the reflections, little match lights.