Michael’s Wife by Marlys Millhiser

She avoided his eyes and waited until he’d carried the plants outside.
    â€œI’m important to me!” Paul’s insistence on her insignificance as a human being was getting irritating. And the idea of living with this husband she didn’t know … well, that was out of the question.
    â€œYou will never repair your marriage living here, and Michael won’t give you a divorce. He’ll never do that, Laurel, so what other choice is there?”
    Instead of answering him she picked up a book lying on the table by the window. There had to be another way out of this problem. He had to be wrong. The frontispiece read, “ The Sonoran Desert; Plant Life, Animal Life, and Nature’s Philosophy of Survival and Scarcity , by Dr. Paul Elliot Devereaux II, Ecologist, Philosopher, and Professor of Sonoran Studies. The University of Arizona Press.”
    â€œWhat was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”
    â€œThe authorities in Denver have been notified of your casual reappearance and a hearing has been set for June 16.”
    The book hit the edge of the table and landed on the floor. “Will I go to prison, Paul?”
    â€œI doubt it. You are somebody’s mother. And for some reason that holds great weight in the courts.” He hunched over a microscope and didn’t bother to look up as she left.
    By afternoon the puffy clouds had all but filled the sky over the valley, their bottoms growing darker as the day wore on. It was hard for Laurel to believe that it ever rained on the desert, but the smell of rain was in the air.
    She went to Jimmy’s room and sat in the rocking chair she had carried from the old nursery and watched as he played at her feet. Maria had probably rocked in this very chair, watching Michael. It had taken much persuasion to get Consuela to unlock the old nursery and let her take the chair. But why keep it locked up in that room of shattered, dusty memories when there was a baby in the house?
    Tiring of his trucks, Jimmy crawled up on her lap with a high-pitched giggle and snuggled against her, his thumb in his mouth. She felt the bond growing between them, not so much that of mother and child but of two lonely people looking for comfort.
    His skin had such a pale, milky tone for a child who lived in so much sun. But then he was seldom allowed out of this room. The house was a prison for him, too. And Paul had offered them an escape, the only one possible. “Take Jimmy and move to Phoenix with Michael.”
    The room darkened as the storm gathered outside and she rocked harder, holding his warmth close to her. “What other choice is there?” Paul had said.
    She sang Rock-a-Bye Baby because it was the only lullaby she could remember and because she wanted to shut out the sound of the rising wind. Soon Jimmy slept, his head tilting back and forth with the movement of the chair. And still she sang; repeating the lullaby over and over, the wicker rocker creaking an accompaniment. There had been a storm brewing inside her from the moment she’d entered Laurel’s world, and she feared the turmoil would break out now if she stopped singing.
    It was getting dark and the wind rushed at the house with rolling gusts that left short breathless spells in between, the great bell in the bell wall clanging hollowly with the stronger gusts. She jumped as lightning tore at the sky and lit the room and sang louder, trying to drown out the answering rumble that seemed to thunder above the house.
    And then the door facing her, the door to the balcony, opened and Michael Devereaux was in the room. The lullaby stuck in her throat. It was Friday and she hadn’t expected him until Saturday.
    The welcoming smile for his son faded, leaving his lips parted, frozen. It was like a dark still life, she sitting motionless in his mother’s rocking chair, his son asleep on her lap, and he in uniform with his cap in his hand and his hair mussed by the wind.