The Pretend Wife by Bridget Asher

be gracious or drink mint juleps or admire seersucker. It’s part of our geographical rights.”
    I walked around the corner of the kitchen still holding a sudsy pot. “Baltimore is technically below the Mason-Dixon line. Plus, southern or not, I gave my word.”
    â€œI don’t think that’s as important as it used to be.” He rubbed his bare feet on the rug. He’d developed hisgolfer’s tan—the one that concentrates on the shins and calves and leaves the feet so pristinely white.
    â€œMy word isn’t as important as it used to be?” I squinted at him.
    â€œYou know what I mean. The whole concept of giving your word. It’s very last century. In fact, ever since Vietnam …” There was no need for him to finish this thought. We both knew his post-Vietnam speeches—how the war had made it necessary for Americans to reinvent literature and politics and a sense of ourselves. It was something he’d learned from an inspiring professor he’d had in college and trotted out gratuitously.
    I leaned against the doorway, the dishpan getting heavy and feeling awkward in my hands. There was a photograph of my mother on the table beside him. It was a picture of her as a young woman, before she met my father, dressed up for some formal, wearing a spaghetti strapped dress, holding a beaded purse. She wasn’t smiling at the camera; she was really laughing, her eyes glancing at someone or something off to the side of the photographer. Her teeth overlapped just slightly but they looked so beautiful, ivory, and she wore a choker with a little blue stone that sat right in the dip between her collarbones. I’d gotten used to the photograph and usually didn’t register it, but every once in a while, it would catch me off guard like this, and I would think of my mother as a young woman, so alive. “I don’t think that giving your word is a concept at all. It’s just giving your word. Does everything have to be a concept?”
    â€œBut you’re not a rental car,” he said, smiling, holding up one victorious finger. “You said that!”
    â€œI know,” I said, turning back into the kitchen. “But I’m going.”
    â€œTo his mother’s lake house?” There was a pause and then finally he said, “Why? Why would you go?”
    â€œI thought you weren’t going to be uptight about this,” I said, standing at the sink.
    â€œDon’t get on me with all of that uptight shit. Leave that kind of mind-game bullshit to Helen. Besides, I think she tricked you into this.”
    I squirted a bit more liquid soap into the dishpan, turned on the faucet, and let it fill up. The soap foamed. I turned off the faucet. “I said I’d go and I think I should.”
    â€œOh, so people can’t have second thoughts? I thought it was a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”
    I ignored this comment. “And, you know, second of all, let’s not forget that you wanted me to go.”
    I hoped he would walk into the kitchen, to have this argument face-to-face. I know that I could have stopped scrubbing and walked into the living room and sat down and looked at him earnestly. But he wasn’t doing anything in there except letting his pale feet breathe. I refused to stop what I was doing to sit with him and talk seriously. Plus, I was afraid it would give the conversation too much weight. Neither of us wanted that. “Okay, so you might not have changed your mind, but what if I have?”
    I lowered my hand into the silky bubbles. “Well, isn’t that a little womanly of you?” As soon as I said it, I felt bad about it. I added quickly, “There’s a boathouse and box turtles and a horseshoe pit,” I said. “I wanted to get away, you said that.”
    â€œYou could get away with your girlfriends,” he said. “Like Faith. Now, Faith needs to get away. That would