The Replacement Wife (12 page)

“It’s more than that with her. Don’t forget, she does this for a living.”

“I see,” Hugh said, frowning. “And does she intend for you to—”

“No. God, no.” Edward was quick to disabuse him of
that
notion. “It’d be strictly platonic. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy,” he said bitterly. “The way Camille sees it, unless I have someone waiting in the wings, I’ll either die of grief or turn into a crusty old widower.”

Hugh scratched his head, wearing a troubled look as he considered this. But like always, he quickly rose to the occasion. “There’s no one-size-fits-all in dealing with terminal illness,” he said, speaking in measured tones. “I’ve had patients refuse to accept the inevitable; they cling to the hope that a cure is imminent. Others accept that they’re going to die but feel the need to control every aspect.”

Camille was like that, Edward thought. When she’d gone back to work after the births of their children, she’d compiled a list of instructions for the nanny so detailed it could have served as a child-rearing manual. Before every business trip or hospital stay, she’d stocked up on enough food to feed a family of ten. And already she’d assembled an entire layette for Holly’s baby.

“Camille wouldn’t stop at that,” he said. “She’ll be orchestrating everything from the grave.”

Hugh gave a knowing smile. Some years ago, he’d approached her about a nephew of his who, at age forty, showed no sign of wanting to settle down, to the despair of Hugh’s sister. Camille had swung into action, and six months later, the once confirmed bachelor was walking down the aisle. “It might help if she had something to distract her,” he said after giving it some thought.

“What do you suggest?”

“When was the last time you went on vacation, just the two of you?”

Edward thought of the glossy brochures from the travel agency, which he’d ended up discarding. If he had briefly considered the tantalizing possibility they offered, he now saw it merely as wishful thinking. Besides, a “romantic” getaway would only underscore the fact that the spark had gone out of their marriage. He and his wife hadn’t had sex in so long, he couldn’t remember the last time they did. Camille was usually too tired, and in all fairness, he hadn’t actively pursued it. Only in the shower did he allow his fantasies to run wild. He’d close his eyes as he was soaping himself down and picture himself making slow, sweet love to his wife. Back when they were first married, they couldn’t get enough of each other—all it would take was a brush of fingertips or meaningful look to send them ducking out of a theater in the middle of a movie or slipping away early from a party—and now he was reduced to masturbating in the shower. It wasn’t that he didn’t still find his wife desirable. But mostly what he felt was the desire to protect.

“I don’t think a second honeymoon is the answer,” he said wearily.

“It doesn’t have to be a getaway,” Hugh said. “The important thing is for the two of you to find something mutually fulfilling that will make both of you feel her final days were well spent.”

“Such as?”

“That’s for you to decide, not me. But if you want my advice, I suggest that you listen to what she has to say,” Hugh counseled. “Even if it makes no sense. Even it seems downright crazy. There’s power in that, my friend. You and your wife may even find something you can agree on.”

“You mean like my going along with this crazy scheme of hers?” Edward replied sarcastically.

“If nothing else, you’d be in it together,” Hugh said.

EVERY SUNDAY, WITHOUT FAIL
, Edward phoned his parents in Milwaukee. He always timed his calls so as to catch them when they were likely to be home from mass, but on this particular Sunday, the third in his season in hell, he found himself hoping he’d get the answering machine instead.

No such luck. His father picked up after two rings. “Heya, kid. What’s cooking?”

“Not much,” Edward lied. “How’ve you been, Pop?”

“Not bad, not bad. Back’s been acting up, but other than that I got no complaints.”

As with many retired brewery employees, Vasile Constantin was suffering the effects of having hoisted heavy barrels for decades in the era before forklifts. “What does the doctor say?” Edward asked.

“He wants me to have an operation. Like I can afford to be laid up for six months,” he scoffed. These days, Vasile worked part-time as a security guard to make ends meet. He was too proud to accept his son’s offer of assistance, other than the airline tickets Edward sent so his parents could come visit once a year. “Hell with it,” he threw in for good measure.
Like mother, like son
. Edward thought once more of Nana Clara. Normally he’d have injected one of his speeches about the importance of listening to one’s physician, but right now he didn’t have the heart to get into it with his dad. He had bigger problems.

“How’s Mom? She taking her medication?” he asked.

“Sure, sure. Doc says it ain’t serious, though. You know, just old age.”

“Is she resting like he told her to?”

“You know your mom; only time you can get her to sit still is in church.” Vasile gave a throaty chuckle. He’d been a two-pack-a-day man for years, until he finally quit smoking at his wife’s insistence, but he still sounded like Edward G. Robinson with a bad cold. “How’re the kids? How’s Camille?”

“Everyone’s fine.” Edward squeezed his eyes shut, massaging his forehead with his thumb and forefinger where a headache was setting in above his right eyebrow. They chatted for several minutes more, about the weather in Milwaukee and which of the relatives were ailing or had another grandchild on the way, and why next season was sure to be a winning one for the Brewers.

When Edward finally asked to speak with his mom, Vasile informed him, “She’s at Mrs. Dubieski’s. She stopped in to check up on her on the way home from mass.” He recalled that his parents’ elderly neighbor had recently suffered a fall that left her with a broken hip. “I’ll have her call you when she gets back.”

“No, don’t. I’ll try her later,” Edward said, with a glance at the open door to his and Camille’s bedroom across the hall. “Camille’s still asleep. I don’t want the phone to wake to her.”

“She not sick, is she?”

A lifetime of getting up to go to work each morning before dawn had made an early riser of Vasile even in semi-retirement, so he assumed anyone who slept in past nine was either sick or lazy, and since Camille was the opposite of lazy, it could only be the former. Edward felt his incipient headache take root like some noxious weed. But he kept his tone even. “It’s Sunday, Pop. People sleep in on Sundays.”

“Other people, not your old man. The day I’m not up with the sun is the day they carry me outta here in a box.”

His dad chuckled, and Edward winced. “Don’t talk that way, Pop.”

“What? We all gotta go sometime.”

Edward was quick to change the subject. “Listen, Pop, I don’t know that we’ll be able to have you and mom out for a visit this year. There’s a lot going on.” An understatement. “We’ll see how it goes.” Normally, his parents came for a week every summer, and they all went to their beach house, in Southampton.

Thinking of the beach house reminded him of happier days: splashing in the surf with his kids when they were little; he and Camille, each with a child on their lap, sitting around a campfire at night roasting wienies; the four of them strolling along the tide line, Kyra and Zach squealing with delight as they stomped on the tangled strands of kelp to make them pop. Soundlessly, he drew in a breath and eased it out of his lungs.

“Sure, I understand. You’ll let us know, okay?” His dad was nothing if not easygoing.

“You bet. Listen, Pop, I’ve got to go. I’d put the kids on but they’re eating breakfast.” In actual fact, Kyra and Zach had already eaten and at the moment were battling it out, playing a heated game of Nintendo “NASCAR Unleashed,” but right now, he’d have sawed off his own leg to escape. His head was throbbing, and his gut burned from the two cups of coffee he’d drunk on an empty stomach.

“Okay, sure. Give ’em a kiss from Pop-Pop. And tell the little slugger, next time he visits he’ll be rootin’ for the Brewers whether he likes it or not.” His dad gave another throaty chuckle.

Edward hung up feeling more depressed than ever. Why hadn’t he told his father the truth? He would have to eventually.
Because you’re still holding out for a miracle,
answered a voice in his head. Also, because his devoutly Catholic parents, who placed more stock in religion than in medicine, might support Camille in her decision. He didn’t need to give her ammunition.

He could see Camille stirring in her sleep in their bedroom across the hall. Fearful of disturbing her, he got up and went to close the door to the study. But his hand lingered on the doorknob, and some impulse made him step into the hallway instead. He crossed over into the bedroom, his footfalls muffled by the carpet. Moments later, as he stood gazing at his slumbering wife, her brow creased even in sleep, the past and present collided and he was caught in the crush.

EDWARD HAD BEEN
thirteen when Nana Clara fell ill. She refused to see a doctor, and when she finally went, it was only to confirm her deeply held belief that the medical profession was of little use outside stitching cuts and setting broken limbs.
What do I need with doctors?
she’d say. All they ever did was poke and prod, then charge a fortune for it. She relied on folk medicine, and had gained somewhat of a reputation in their community, as had her mother before her in their village in Romania, as a healer.

“This will make the swelling go down,” she informed Edward when he was nine, after a cut on his arm had become infected and she applied a poultice of finely shredded cabbage to the inflamed area. Another time, after a neighbor had suffered a heart attack, she brought him a jar of dried, ground hot peppers and instructed him to put a pinch on his tongue if he should have any more chest pains. (Mr. Janovich later reported that it had worked like a charm.)

Edward could see Nana Clara clearly in his mind’s eye: a leathery strip of a woman with hair like spun glass and dark eyes in a round face quilted with lines. If she was missing a few teeth, her smile was no less quick because of it, and if her step had slowed with age, it never wavered in coming to the aid of anyone who was in need. When she wasn’t brewing some potion that stank up the house, she was filling it with delicious smells, that of
caltaboşi
or the garlicky
stufat de miel,
or the mouthwatering stew
tochitură moldovenească
from her native Moldavia.

He recalled sitting on her lap as a very young child while she sang to him—Romanian lullabies and the few pop tunes she knew, for which she always garbled the lyrics. She smelled of starch from the laundry she took in and more strongly of the unfiltered cigarettes she smoked. When she was a young girl growing up in Romania, the films shown at the village cinema, starring the likes of Mae West and James Cagney, were all she’d known of American culture before she came to this country, and as a result, her English was peppered with slang from that era. “Hiya, doll,” she would greet the neighbor ladies who brought her their laundry. And to Mr. Sokolowski, the owner of the Polish grocery on the corner where she did her marketing, she’d carp, when returning some perishable item she’d deemed inedible, “Mister, I got a beef with you.”

One time, Mr. Sokolowski saw her coming and ducked into the storeroom in back. He learned the hard way there was no avoiding the force of nature known as Nana Clara. When he poked his head out a short while later, it was only to find her instructing a gaggle of female customers in the proper way to select produce by demonstrating the flaws in his. “See that? All wax, no taste,” she sniffed, holding up a shiny red apple. “You want wax, you come eat off my kitchen floor. You want fruit, go to Mr. Santangelo down the street.” To suggest patronizing an Italian’s place of business over a fellow Eastern European’s was tantamount to heresy, but to her, fair was fair.

Nana Clara, all four feet and eleven inches of her, took nothing lying down. But even she was powerless against the kidney disease that ultimately claimed her life. Neither her potions nor the pills the doctor had prescribed did any good. She grew weaker by the day while Edward watched with growing despair.

His parents were of little help. Vasile had been informed his mother wasn’t eligible for benefits under his company’s insurance plan and instead of contesting it, he’d accepted it, as he did all edicts from his superiors, with shoulders bowed. When Edward urged him to appeal to his boss, Vasile only shook his head while Edward’s mother, Anca, wept and wrung her hands, saying, “Your father could lose his job. These are important people. What are we to them?”

Meanwhile, Nana Clara grew ever more frail. Then one morning, when he was getting up to go to school, Edward found her passed out on the bathroom floor. He shouted for his mother—his father had already left for work—and when she came running, he cried, “We have to get her to the hospital!”

“No! Look, she’s coming around.” His grandmother had begun to stir by then. He knew what his mother was thinking: Hospitals were for rich people, people with insurance, not the likes of them. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Nana Clara, but her fear that they would be ruined financially by an extended hospital stay eclipsed all else in the moment. “I’ll send for Dr. Costa. He’ll know what to do.”

Edward knew with a sinking heart there would be no relying on his parents. After his mother had dashed off to phone the doctor, he did what any normal thirteen-year-old would do, in his view. He donned his sturdiest pair of shoes and then picked his grandmother up in his arms, carrying her downstairs, where he paused only long enough to bundle her in a blanket and throw a coat over himself before stepping out the door into the frozen grip of winter in Milwaukee. He was tall and strong for his age—six feet one and still growing, and on the junior varsity track team at his school—and his grandmother so tiny and frail, he was able to carry her without too much difficulty as he navigated the icy sidewalk. Even so, every muscle in his body was on fire by the time he reached the bus stop, four blocks away. The other passengers gaped at him—the tall boy with the shock of black hair, still in his pajamas and with his coat flapping open, carrying an old woman in his arms as if she weighed no more than a sack of laundry—as he boarded the bus. Ignoring the curious stares, he appealed to the driver in a breathless voice, “Sir, I need to get my grandmother to the hospital. Can you help me?”