Someone Else's Husband(46)

“So, you didn’t wake when Richard came in?” Mikey prompted. “And, therefore, you don’t know what time it was, exactly?”

“No,” she said. “I have no idea.”

Outright lie number…well, it had already been more than one. How many lies would there be, Gretchen wondered, before all was said and done?



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*

Gretchen’s parents had begrudgingly come to accept Richard, but Brooks had been more right than wrong about their response. Her mother, especially, never let her forget that they would have preferred she marry a young man from their world. Thus, forevermore, from her mother’s perspective, everything in Gretchen’s life that was difficult—even Becks’s colic!—was something she’d brought upon herself.

“Life involves choices. Don’t forget that you’ve made yours,” became her mother’s favorite saying.

But not all of Gretchen’s choices had been freely made. It had been her mother who’d shut down the idea of Gretchen going to law school, the second she announced their engagement, just weeks after Dartmouth graduation. Yes, it was quick in some ways. But they’d been dating for years. Also, she didn’t want to be separated from Richard, and it wasn’t as though her parents would have tolerated them living together. “That’s absurd. What do you need with a law degree?” her mother had demanded. “You’re getting married. You’ll have a family.”

They were shopping for wedding dresses at Vera Wang on Madison Avenue. These were the moments when Gretchen and her mother were at their best—when her mother found value in spending time together. She didn’t much like being mother of the bride. It made her feel old. But she did like shopping for expensive things.

“Mothers work these days,” Gretchen had shot back. “All the time.”

“Yes, sweetheart.” Her mother had laughed. “All the dreadful ones do.”

Gretchen never seriously considered law school again. How could she possibly when, over the years, her mother had occasionally been right about her marriage? Not right, exactly. But some of her digs had hit a little too close to home. For instance, Richard always insisting that they support themselves on his salary without the help of Gretchen’s trust didn’t exactly make life very comfortable in the early days. There had even been a few dark moments when Gretchen wondered if she should have married Brooks instead. It would have been ridiculous, of course, like marrying a brother. But deep down, she knew that Brooks would have jumped at the chance. Everyone knew it.

But then she’d inevitably be reminded in some small way of Richard’s warmth and genuineness—picking flowers in Central Park on his way home, leaving her these lovely little notes (always specific, thoughtful) on the bathroom mirror every morning before he left for work—and that rusty deadbolt on Gretchen’s heart would slide right open. She loved who she was when she was with him. More open to possibility than she ever could have imagined.

But it didn’t help that Richard traveled so much for work as he was climbing that (wholly unnecessary) Goldman Sachs ladder. There was nothing quite so consistent among men—regardless of their upbringing or earned success—as the fragility of their egos, and the lengths they would go to protect them.

“Work, work, work,” her best mom friend at the time, Samantha, had sympathized one morning after Gretchen had dropped Cassandra at preschool. They were walking in the park with their younger children, and she’d been complaining about Richard’s work hours, again. It set her teeth on edge to do it, her mother’s voice worming its way into her brain like some kind of parasite. Samantha’s husband was also a banker—Credit Suisse—and her children were almost the exact same ages as Gretchen’s. The Upper East Side was filled with wealthy blond women who looked like carbon copies of Gretchen. “Cartier widows,” they called themselves proudly, referring to the lavish jewelry they received from their husbands in lieu of actual companionship. But Gretchen hated the very assumption, especially because it wasn’t her story. She was freely choosing to be with Richard, which most of the time made her feel better. Even when sometimes it made her feel like an idiot.

“Do you know who she is?” Samantha had asked, instead of launching into her own complaints, as she usually did.

“?‘She’?” Gretchen asked, stomach tumbling. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, never mind—don’t listen to me.” But the look on Samantha’s face—as far as she was concerned, Gretchen was a hapless babe in the woods who should be left alone to die a swift death. “Richard is so out in the open about everything—I’m sure he’s not actually doing anything. Also, not all husbands are mine!”

That had always been Gretchen’s thinking. Richard mentioned lots of people and some, yes, were young women—the brilliant young lawyer on his closing, that saleswoman at Sotheby’s, the new superstar in M&A. But he talked about the young men, too. It was only people with things to hide who hid things. Was that what every dumb wife thought?

And almost as testament to Gretchen’s faith in him, Richard had eventually offered to quit his job, shortly after that ill-fated walk with Samantha. He could tell Gretchen was unhappy, and she was the most important thing in his life, he said. But as soon as he’d offered, the whole thing felt ridiculous. What was Gretchen so upset about, anyway? She wasn’t a Cartier widow. She was an independently wealthy woman making choices. She had vowed from that moment on never to let other people’s compromises become her own. People loved solidarity in their suffering, but Gretchen was no one’s ally except Richard’s. Besides, Richard wasn’t like other men. Once they’d settled the fact that he wasn’t going to quit, he’d even encouraged her to go to law school.