Twenty-Five Years a Stand-In Wife

My son brought home a girlfriend who looked exactly like my husband's first love.

Mom, even her name carries Dad's surname.

He said it with the eager pride of someone showing off a prize.

The girl watched me, smiling, and everywhere I looked I saw the ghost of someone from long ago.

A shiver ran through me. I stood frozen where I was.

In high school I was a dim, unwanted thing.

And yet later I took the dazzling, brilliant Walter Swanson away from the girl he'd grown up beside.

I married him.

Twenty-five years later.

The reckoning had finally come.

Walter was thirty when he learned to keep his moods off his face.

But just now, I could read the excitement and the guilt in his eyes without trying.

My son pulled Davina Gilbert down into a chair at the dining table.

"Mom, the two of us have this real connection."

"I take after Dad, and Davina was raised by her mother alone, but our interests, our whole outlook on life, we match perfectly."

When Davina spoke of her mother, her gaze slid off me.

"My mom didn't always have to raise me by herself."

"When she was young she had someone she loved, but after she went abroad to study, the man got fed up and married someone else. So out of spite she married my dad. The next year my dad died in an accident, and she's been single ever since."

She sighed.

"They say that man loved my mom so, so much. I wonder, if he knew how things are for her now, would he regret it?"

The words dropped like a heavy stone into the still water of my marriage.

Walter. Would he regret it?

I had just started to lift my head, to watch his reaction.

A voice message came through on Davina's phone.

"Walt, I miss you."

...

I didn't know whether Hilda Gilbert knew her daughter was in my home.

That one word, Walt, soft with longing and devotion.

And just like that, the easy, practiced way Walter pulled out the chair to sit beside me, that motion caught, stalled for a moment.

It dragged me through the rest of the meal tasting nothing.

Until Walter offered to take Davina home, and without thinking, I moved to stop him.

"Mom, I've got an online meeting in a bit, and you can't drive. What's the problem with letting Dad take her?"

My son's irritated voice struck straight at something deep in me.

Yes. What was the problem.

A long time ago, the seat beside Walter belonged to Hilda Gilbert and no one else.

In high school, the back row.

Walter's brazen words, loud enough for the whole class to hear.

"I know I'm good-looking, and I know how to behave myself. Don't anyone bother trying to get close."

"Sweetheart, the seat next to me is yours forever."

Once it was Hilda Gilbert. Now it was her daughter.

Walter watched me in silence as I stepped aside.

Half an hour round trip.

I cleared the table and went to bed.

I waited three hours before Walter came home.

He carried the scent of gardenias.

The flower Hilda Gilbert used to love.

He didn't seem to notice I was only pretending to sleep.

He showered, lay down beside me, and his breathing settled into something even and deep soon enough.

After fifty.

A lot of couples start sleeping in separate beds.

He knew about my nightmares, and Walter had never once suggested it, and I had let myself feel quietly smug about that, all the way to fifty-five.

But that night, for the first time in a long while, I slept badly.

At breakfast the next morning, Walter put on a suit for the first time since he'd retired.

He typed on his phone the whole time he ate, and only when he stood to leave did he say it.

"Ann Fox, I've decided to take the rehire offer."

I looked up, puzzled, and found him studying me the same way.

"Will you come too?"

Last month the company's rehire email had both our names on it.

I had no intention of going back. The older I got, the more I'd started to flinch at the sound of engines.

But after he retired, Walter went to the park in the mornings and came home at night.

The hours we spent together were fewer than the hours we'd once spent at the same company.

Back then I'd assumed he just couldn't adjust, and I'd urged him to take the rehire.

He frowned.

"I have my own plans."

At twenty, Walter Swanson would drop his whole circle of friends for Hilda Gilbert, switch his college applications for her, take a disciplinary mark on his record just to surprise her.

The Walter after thirty was calm. Self-possessed.

Every matter had its own principle.

So what had made him change his mind?

I didn't get an answer until after he left and my son got up.

"Mom, Davina says her mother's back from abroad and wants to meet me."

Seeing my confusion, he went on.

"Davina's mom just got back last night and was recruited straight into the company you and Dad used to work at. You didn't know?"

"She and Dad even added each other on their phones last night."

For a moment my head went blank.

Until a message chime pulled my attention back.

"Don't forget Ms. Gilbert's birthday dinner tonight."

I hurried to change and went out to buy a gift.

Apart from invitations from Lillian Gilbert, the woman who had championed his career, Walter disliked any complicated social occasion.

Even our wedding.

Calm the whole way through, until we exchanged rings. Walter's ring paused, then paused again at the tip of my ring finger, and he said the only thing he said that day.

'From now on, I don't want her name in this house.'

Walter's parents, his friends, all of them, their smiles froze on their lips in an instant.

Everyone around him knew about Hilda Gilbert.

On the subway, holding the gift, I weighed my words again and again before texting Walter back.

"I bought a silk scarf."

I didn't ask whether he was going.

Over the years, we'd grown used to informing each other.

Knowing the other's plans, then accommodating them as much as possible.

Never discussing, never arguing. Just like business partners.

Lillian was hosting a family dinner.

In thirty years, we'd gone from colleagues to friends.

When I joined the company, I crossed paths with Walter again.

By then he had already changed, his whole life revolving around work.

And I revolved right along with him.

My numbers were strong, and Lillian made an exception and moved me to her side, training me into one of only two women in the company's upper ranks.

"Ann, why have you come on your own?"

Lillian took my hand. At sixty, she was still sharp.

"It's because of that woman who started at the company today, the same time as Walter."

She sighed and tried to comfort me.

"When you're young, everyone runs up a messy account or two."

Messy?

But the Walter who had been with Hilda Gilbert was the most dazzling I'd ever seen him in his whole life.

When Hilda got obsessed with some anime character, Walter dyed his whole head blond the next day.

Ridiculous, but he was too good-looking, and the photos went all over the school's network.

Hilda's birthday came around.

He treated the whole class to dinner, all so he could throw her a party during evening study hall.

"Hilda Gilbert, the first eighteen years, and the rest of my life, I'll spend it all with you!"

The candlelight lit up the boy's flushed, excited face.

And stung the eyes of countless girls who loved him in secret.

And now, looking at the candles on Lillian's cake.

My eyes ached again.

It hit me all at once.

So it turned out those candles had been burning in my heart for half my life.

Some things make you uncomfortable at first.

Given enough time, they all turn into habit.

The habit of staying at Walter's side in a faint, half-there way.

The habit of putting my son and my family ahead of myself.

Just like now, when my head was already so clouded.

And still, because of one text from my son.

"Mom, working late again. I want some soup."

I slipped out of the birthday dinner in a hurry.

But even after the soup was done, Walter still hadn't come home.

Passing the subway station near the company, I was suddenly seized by the urge to go find him.

Two days of agonizing, half a lifetime of putting it off, and at last I had the nerve to face those flames, to sit down and talk.

"Should I tell our son about the past between us and Davina's mother?"

"Why did you suddenly accept the rehire offer?"

"All these years, have you... ever regretted it?"

Just thinking the words made my heart stumble into a panic.

Each step toward the station, I rehearsed them again in my head.

But the moment I came out.

There they were, at the roadside stand outside the companyWalter and Hilda.

Both in formal clothes, both with some white threaded into their hair.

And still as dazzling as in high school, standing side by side on the awards stage.

A matched pair. Impossible not to look at.

People streamed past around them, the noise unbearable.

Hilda was smiling, tapping her beer against the one in Walter's hand.

Even from that far away, I heard what she said.

"Walter, I'm back."

The man's hand jerked at the touch.

You only use a word like back when someone's been waiting for you.

After we married.

The invitations had always been printed with both our names, mine and Walter's.

So it turned out there was no occasion he disliked.

He just disliked the person standing beside him.

Two young women passed by.

"Wow, those two old folksthe love in their eyes is practically spilling over. When I'm old, I want to eat at a roadside stand with my sweetheart too."

They pulled out their phones to take pictures and bumped into me by accident.

"Sorry, ma'am."

In the middle of their apologies, I picked up the fallen food container off the ground and fled.

I was going to tell my son the truth.

He had a right to know our past.

More than that, I wanted one word of support, something to keep me standing.

My son came down with Davina to meet me.

"You took the subway? Dad didn't drop you off?"

He opened the chicken soup from the container and handed it to Davina.

I didn't know whether she knew about us, so I lied.

"He's still tied up."

Davina drank it like it was hers by right.

"My mom didn't come home either. Seems she ran into the man she loved when she was young."

"She always goes to bed on schedule. I guess when you really love someone, even that becomes the exception."

"What do you thinkwill the old flame come back to life?"

As she spoke, she nudged my son with her elbow, then asked again.

"If it were you, would you give up everything to be with the person you couldn't let go of when you were young?"

My heart rose with the question.

My son was raised entirely by Walterthe way he handled things, the way he thought, alike in every way.

The two of them talking something over was the happiest sight I'd ever seen.

My son didn't even pause.

"I would."

When I got home.

Walter was already there, and he'd cleaned up the kitchen.

He'd never refused to decorate this home with me.

He just rarely did anything on his own.

Today, was it a reward for me, for going to Ms. Gilbert's dinner alone?

Or was it early compensation for a man who meant to leave me?

Walter met me at the entryway, took my keys, and pulled me down onto the couch with him.

"Did you go by the company earlier?"

I went rigid.

He'd seen me?

And now he couldn't wait another moment, rushing to lay it all out.

My son's call came in.

Asking whether I'd gotten home.

Walter froze for a second, then gave a small laugh to himself and changed the subject.

"So you went to bring our son his soup."

"I'm a little tired today. I'm going to take a shower."

Only then did it strike me as absurd.

He hadn't recognized me at allnot even from a background.

Near the end of high school, the class played a game once.

They turned off the lights, everyone put on a mask and stood with their back to the room on the stage, and the rest had to guess who it was.

I'd been left forgotten in my corner on purpose, watching round after round.

Almost no one got guessed right.

Until Hilda went up, and Walter shot to his feet, slamming the table.

"Hilda Gilbert!"

The whole class sighed over it.

He had carved her into his heart, and he picked her out without effort.

And in twenty-five years, I had never once stepped into his line of sight.

That night, Walter slept closer to me than usual. I lay awake again.

The next day, news reached me that left me stunned.

Lillian had gotten divorced.

I called her, not understanding.

"How did this happen?"

Her laugh came easy.

"We weren't right for each other anymore. Splitting up was the only answer."

I sat out on the balcony the whole afternoon.

So it turned out that I, lying awake beside Walter, wasn't right for him anymore either.

And the answer to that, too, was only one.

Once I'd thought it through, I took the savings I'd built up over the years and split them in two. One half I moved into the household account.

Walter covered most of our expenses. Call it paying him back.

The money I'd set aside for our son's wedding was in there too.

The other half I used to find a place in a senior living community out in the green suburbs.

Even at this age, a divorce takes time, and I needed somewhere to land.

A staff member called to confirm my move-in date.

As it happened, Walter had forgotten something and come back home.

He heard my end of the conversation, his eyes full of confusion.

"Why go somewhere that far?"

"I signed up for a tour group for seniors. To unwind."

More than once I'd suggested we travel together. He'd never given me an answer either way.

Once the place out there was all set up,

I finally worked up the courage to say goodbye to Walter.

I started waiting at five in the afternoon.

By nine at night, he still wasn't home.

I opened my phone, typed out a message and deleted it, over and over.

Afraid he was busy.

Afraid, too, that he'd think I was throwing a fit. I had waited until everything was settled for a reason: I wanted him to see how seriously I'd weighed this.

The next moment, my son sent me a photo.

"Mom, after work Dad and I had dinner with Davina and her mom."

Our son sat beside Davina. Hilda sat next to Walter.

The warmth of it spilled right off the screen.

It stung my eyes.

Once again, I had failed to see where I stood.

Walter would rather marry our son off to Hilda's daughter than not become family with her.

I should have known to bow out long ago.

Yet even planning my exit had taken me days.

When Walter came home,

I had just stuffed the last piece of clothing into the suitcase.

He saw the case, confused for a moment before it came back to him.

"Leaving this early?"

Then he stumbled over and buried his head against my shoulder.

"I've been drinking, my head hurts. Honey, rub it for me."

In all these years he'd rarely been clingy with me, and only ever after drinking.

I just stood there, expressionless, and when he set my hand on his head, I pulled it away, hard.

"Walter, I've decided to give you back to Hilda."