Henry’s Wife


In front of her were her women friends—Lyla, Ursula, Brandy, and Marianne—publishers’ or editors’ wives all of them. Except for Marianne who was recently divorced and not presently known to be attached to any particular man.

“Fabulous, isn’t it!” Lyla exclaimed, referring to tonight’s celebratory party for Ben’s first publication.

“What a sendoff,” Brandy added.

“Lovely party,” Gracie agreed, nodding emphatically. “So happy for Ben.”

Behind her was the elegant but inoperable fireplace. Like many old apartment buildings on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, this one had an elegantly scrolled fireplace that had functioned in the distant past but was sealed up now and served a decorative function only. These old New York City apartments were typically large—spacious entryways, dining and living rooms with high ceilings and parquet floors, two- and three-, even four-bedrooms, oftentimes duplexes. Anna and Ben Landowski, their hosts this evening, had two bedrooms, a formal dining room, and an enormous living room, perfect for giving parties such as this.
Henry had left her there, safe and protected in this corner of the room, her friends surrounding her, the elegant but inoperable fireplace at her back. How good of Henry to have done so. How kind. Ever thinking of her welfare, always protective. He’d gone off to have a chat with someone across the room.

“Great crowd,” commented Ursula. “Great food.”

Gracie smiled and nodded again. (How she despised that habit of hers: head bouncing up and down inanely, subserviently.) Especially when she’d had too much to drink. Not that three glasses of wine were too much. And this one wasn’t even finished. Yet there she was, inanely, subserviently nodding her head, now at Ursula’s comment about the crowd and the food, now at Marianne’s remark about the book: “Can’t wait to read it. I hear it’s awfully good.”

Nodding again (how she wished she’d stop that), Gracie said Henry had vigorously sung the book’s praises. “Not that he could do anything less,” she said. “Being its editor.”
The women laughed as one and said, of course; Lyla adding, “Don’t we know how our husbands tout their books?”

“Don’t we, indeed?” Gracie replied, nodding (yet again!).

“Ex,” said Marianne.

“Sorry?” Lyla seemed genuinely not to know what she meant.

“Husbands or ex-husbands,” Marianne clarified.

“Oh, right,” said Lyla, chagrined.

An awkward pause ensued, and Gracie took the moment to slip away.

Walking a bit unsteadily, the wine remaining in her glass sloshing silently from side to side, she made her way across the room. Her balance was definitely off, but it was a party after all. A mid-March celebration in honor of Ben Landowski’s publication of his tell-all about a prominent Washington politician. “The Ides of March,” Ben had earlier quipped, referencing the evening’s date. “An auspicious day to celebrate a book about a famous politician.” The sloshing of the wine and that slight imbalance in her gait (no more than a barely perceptible favoring of one side over the other) might very well go unnoticed in a room as crowded as this. And with so many people standing about eating, drinking, laughing, shouting (some of them) to make themselves heard. She hardly thought her imbalance or the teetering of the wine in her glass would warrant a second glance.

Now passing near to an end table (almost too near) she attempted to put her glass down on its cluttered surface, but its circular base gave her trouble. “Oh, excuse me. Sorry,” she said as the stem of her glass knocked against an edge of a plate, then against another glass. “Thank you kindly,” she said as the glass was taken from her and settled in a spot hastily cleared for it by another guest.
Nodding (once again!) to show her gratitude, Gracie walked on across the room. Now and then she caught sight of the book of honor’s title—Accountable (available at a substantial discount to tonight’s guests)—peering up at her in enlarged and bolded red and blue letters. How pleased Henry must be to see the finished product of his work (hard, painstaking work, conducted over three drafts and eighteen months’ time) scattered about this living room. It lay on various tabletops and between cushions where people sat on sofas, talking convivially. Even here and there the title could be seen glaring provocatively from the floor beneath tables and chairs where the book had been carefully laid aside, allowing for the better use of hands in holding drinks and plates of food. (Cheese and crackers, crudités, and fat boiled shrimp were in abundance this evening.)

Gracie was on her way to have a quiet word with her husband, standing there by the bookcase on the far side of the room, talking in what seemed his most carefree manner to Elizabeth Parsons, an attractive, tall, slim, young (maddeningly young) woman with soft brown hair falling loose half-way down her back. Gracie loved that about Henry. How he could seem carefree in the most serious of circumstances. Not that tonight’s circumstances were particularly serious. They merely involved her husband talking to his other woman in a crowded room and in full view of his wife.

How lovely she is, Henry thought the first time he laid eyes on her. He was walking along the promenade above the Hudson River. She was approaching the balustrade’s cutout (made for easy viewing of the river), and he was approaching it from the opposite end. There seemed to be someone with her, but distracted by the woman’s loveliness, Henry hardly noticed. Elizabeth (as he would later learn her name) was wearing purple shorts (very short shorts) and a sleeveless white T-shirt. She was slim and tall, had inviting thighs and lovely soft brown hair falling half-way down her back.
It was a humid Sunday morning in mid-August.

As they drew near to their chosen spots, converging upon each other face to face, Henry felt a flash of something like recognition pass through him. I know her, he said to himself. I have always known her, he insisted improbably. Quickly Elizabeth looked away. But she had looked, Henry would swear to that. She had noticed him. And almost immediately looked away. Then gazed down affectionately at a child she was pushing in a stroller. (It was a little girl in that stroller, Henry saw now, who was accompanying this unbelievably lovely woman). He judged the child to be about five, and felt instantly, preposterously, jealous of the affection the woman was showing her. Upon reaching the cutout, this Elizabeth in the purple short shorts and soft brown hair took the child from her stroller and placed her on the flat stone ledge from which she might enjoy an unobstructed view of the Hudson.

How lovely she is, Henry thought again. How lovely her hair. He watched her wrap her arms protectively around the child and felt the same preposterous jealousy of the protected child. Placing her chin on the child’s shoulder, this Elizabeth murmured something to her which Henry could not hear but felt its murmur. Then she raised one lovely slender arm and pointed to a sailboat (he guessed it was) out on the river, or perhaps it was a distant cloud or low-flying seagull. How lovely that arm, he thought. How lovely that pointing finger.

Henry took up a position along the ledge not far from the woman and the child from which he could study them. Not her child surely. She was far too young to have a child that age. Blazingly young. Mesmerizingly young. Not a single line marred her face. Her arms and legs were smooth as glass. An older sister’s child conceivably, for he noted a strong family resemblance between this woman and the child that could easily extend to an aunt. It was there in the eyes: intense and dark in the woman, the same intensity and equal darkness in the eyes of the child. It was there in the chin which came almost to a point in both woman and child. And in the hair, soft brown, worn long by both, falling loose half-way down their backs.

I want to know this woman, Henry said to himself, captivated by the liveliness in her face, by the evident delight she felt in simply being where she was—on this promenade, looking out over the river, the last of the summer’s sun in her eyes, the humid city air ruffling her hair. I will know her, he vowed, envisioning some future time in which he might. Almost he raised a hand in greeting. Not yet, warned a voice, and he stayed his hand.

Gracie knew the woman’s name, having asked Henry when first she noticed her and something about her at Jennifer Strom’s New Year’s Eve party.
“Elizabeth Parsons,” Henry told her. “Jenny introduced me. You, too, I think.”
“No. I must have been getting champagne.”

What Gracie noticed about Elizabeth Parsons at that New Year’s Eve party was first of all her youth. Startling. Almost shocking. She might have been a teenager dressed for the prom. Next, she noticed the way her dark eyes immediately fastened on Henry as they walked in and how, in almost the same instant, glanced away. A moment later, when Gracie looked for her again, Elizabeth had vanished.
She knew at once. Or thought she did.

But she had known even before that. Before the New Year’s Eve party. Before January 20th. Before the sighting in the post office last December. Since the coffee shop in November she had known. Instinctively, intuitively. Or thought she had.

No, certainly not. She told herself. She was mistaken. Not Henry. Not Henry to whom she’d been married for twenty-four years. Not her good dear kind Henry. With whom she’d had two children. She pursed her lips and shook her head, allowing herself the consolation of doubt.

She trusted Henry. Trusted him completely. So completely she oftentimes left her diary (a thing whose privacy was sacrosanct) out on her bedside table—where Henry might easily find it and read it—instead of tucking it away securely in the drawer. But he hadn’t found it, or if he ha, hadn’t read it. Never would Henry do such a thing. She hadn’t left it out to test him. It was simply a mistake. Careless but harmless. Probably she’d nodded off after writing in the diary, as she did every night, and neglected to put it back into its drawer. Drowsiness and carelessness were the culprits, not a test. She’d never be so cruel as to put her Henry to a test.

Yet the very first time she saw the woman—before tonight, before the New Year’s Eve party, before January 20th, before the post office—her stomach sank. It was last November outside the coffee shop. The woman was descending the steps as she and Henry were ascending. Henry and the woman (to come to be known as Elizabeth Parsons) hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t even met the other’s eyes. But something took place between them. A message passed. A signal given. And Gracie’s stomach sank. She knew. Or thought she knew. She tossed off the thought, calmed her stomach, allowed doubt (again) to offer its consolation. A moment later the steps were cleared, the woman gone. She and Henry were inside the coffee shop, being shown to a table. She put the incident out of her mind (or almost). It had never happened (or not quite). Until the post office in December. Until Jennifer Strom’s New Year’s Eve party. Until January 20th. And then tonight.
Coming now to where the two of them were standing, approaching near enough to see the sparkle in the woman’s dark eyes and hear their lowered voices—absurdly lowered, as if they could be heard above the clamor in the room—Gracie wondered. She stood between them and wondered. She remained there a moment, directly between the two, not saying anything, only wondering and thinking she was foolish to wonder, then wondering again. She stood close enough to Henry, her hips grazing his, her breasts actually coming into contact with the buttons on his shirt, to make him stop speaking. Why shouldn’t she stand between them? Why shouldn’t she interrupt their conversation?

Who is that man staring at me? Elizabeth raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and took him in. Tall. Handsome. Serious face. Khaki shorts. Navy T-shirt. Do I know him? He seems to know me. Seems to have met me before. Or thinks he has. He’s raising his hand, retracting it. A flicker of embarrassment crosses his face as if he’d been about to commit some social error but stopped himself in time. Wide chest, broad shoulders. Probably works out. She wonders what he would be like in bed. She often wonders that, glancing at men (the attractive ones, of course) sitting on park benches, reading or taking the sun, or jogging toward her while she walks the promenade with her child. Not that she was in any way dissatisfied with the man she had, the way he performed in bed. Just curious. She truly loved her husband, loved the way he made love to her. But her experience was limited, her husband the only man with whom she’d ever made love. Inexperience left her curious. Probably other women who had married young as she had (barely twenty) and had no one to compare their husbands to, wondered about it as well. Did other men do it differently? Favor certain positions? Have special techniques? It would be fun to find out. Like a game she could play. In her mind only, of course.

Elizabeth turned away from the man with the serious face who’d been staring at her all this time. Feeling a sudden flush in her cheeks, she parked the stroller and lifted the child out.

Gracie meant merely to remind Henry of the lateness of the hour and to suggest they should be leaving shortly. But that would be a mistake. Any mention of the time or suggestion about leaving would only call attention to the age difference between herself and her husband’s other woman, would infer that she was tired, needed to go home and rest. Would make Elizabeth wonder (though not maliciously, Gracie detected no callousness in the woman’s youth) if the older woman’s back was giving out, if she’d had her fill of standing around making small talk, of smiling graciously and endlessly nodding her head. This Elizabeth, it was evident from her youth and the sparkle in her eyes, could make small talk, smile graciously and nod her head until the cows came home. Gracie declined to give her the advantage.
But in fact, the advantage was hers. For she knew about Elizabeth and Henry (even knew where the woman lived, knew the actual number of her brownstone), although Elizabeth and Henry didn’t know she knew. She hoped for Henry’s sake that nothing she ever did, no remark ever made or look let fall, would reveal the knowledge she possessed. And had possessed with certainty since that cold early Monday morning on January 20th. (She couldn’t be absolutely certain about the coffee shop in November, the December encounter in the post office, or the fleeting glance at Jennifer Strom’s New Year’s Eve party, but that morning in late January left no doubt.)

Henry had claimed to have an obligatory early board meeting, and she, unable to sleep after he’d left, had showered and dressed and gone to the health food store on the corner of 82nd and Broadway to get a head start on her weekly shopping. Chancing to turn her head as she exited the store, she saw him there—her beloved Henry—raising the collar of his overcoat against the chill and slipping out the vibrant green front door of a brownstone on the south side of 82nd Street between Broadway and West End. The building’s number, oversized and in shiny black paint, stark against the green, was large enough for her to see from where she stood: Number 304.

She had known at once. Then automatically, as wives do, she’d made excuses for him in her mind. Possibly he knew someone else in that building. A bed-ridden board member requiring an update on this morning’s meeting; a sick friend he was visiting out of the kindness of his heart to see how she (or he) was doing and provide a little company. That would be so like Henry. He was good in that way. Kind. But it was no use. She knew. The last shred of doubt’s consolation fled from her.

Preposterously then, as if betrayal’s guilt were hers to bear, as if she were the one who needed to make reparations, she went into a nearby furniture store and bought Henry the expensive brown leather recliner he’d been pining for for years but considered too immodest an act to purchase for himself.
January 20, she noted in her diary. Bought Henry his recliner.