The Pretend Wife by Bridget Asher Page A

be an equally good deed, getting Faith away for a weekend.”
    â€œYou don’t get to tell me to do something,” I said,“and then tell me not to do it. You don’t even get to tell me what to do in the first place.” I slipped dirty plates into the dishwasher slots.
    â€œI know that!” he said, as if this were a good-husband fundamental. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s the best idea.” There was a long pause. I suppose he was letting it all settle in. “Maybe I’m jealous.”
    I walked back into the living room, my hands glistening with soap. “Are you jealous?” I asked.
    â€œMaybe,” he said, putting his hands behind his head and stretching his back. It was a cocky pose. Wasn’t jealousy supposed to make you vulnerable?
    â€œI didn’t know you got jealous,” I said. And this was true. He seemed to be missing that genetic coding. I walked back into the kitchen. “It’s just pretend. You can only be pretend jealous over a pretend thing.”
    â€œYou can get out of this,” he said. “Just call Elliot and tell him you can’t. You’re busy.”
    â€œI’ve already talked to him,” I said, though this wasn’t true. I wasn’t even sure he had my phone number.
    â€œYou have? Did he call?”
    â€œYep, and he’s setting it up. He already told his mother.” I decided to let the dishpan soak. I wedged coffee mugs into the washer’s upper deck.
    â€œThat fucker,” Peter said.
    â€œHe called while you were golfing,” I said. “Golf takes a very long time.” Did I feel guilty about lying? Not really. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe because when you lie out of anger, it feels more like righting an injustice. And what was the injustice? Peter was trying to tell me what to do, while pretending not to. And more important, he didn’t think I was the kind of person to do somethinglike this—and Helen was? Regardless, I didn’t like to be pigeonholed.
    â€œDid he really call— already ?” he asked.
    â€œYep.” I sprinkled the detergent into its compartments and shut the dishwasher’s heavy door.
    â€œBut I still smell like coconuts,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Did you set a date?”
    â€œNot yet, but it’ll be soon.” I closed a few cabinet doors.
    â€œWhy do you have to rush? There’s no rush!” he said, and I loved him at that moment—his voice didn’t sound anything like a radio announcer. It was hitched with emotion—there was a boyish whine to it, yes, but it was an honest one. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d sounded so honest.
    I paused, trying to hold on to that love, trying to let it burrow down inside of me. But I couldn’t. It was made of air. It evaporated. And then I said, “Elliot’s mother’s dying. That’s the rush.” I hit the start button on the dishwasher. The room filled with the noise of nozzles spraying water. I said, “She’s on her death bed,” even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

E LLIOT AND I DID eventually talk on the phone, a number of times, and although we said a lot of words, our conversations never covered much ground. He kept asking if this whole thing was okay, if it was really okay, with me, with Peter. I assured him it was fine. He told me again and again that I didn’t have to come, that he needed to grow up, that he’d have to tell his mother the truth and that this would be good for him, like the time he was forced to eat the vegetables that he’d balled in a napkin and tried to hide in the sofa once when he was a kid. “I learned something from that. I grew as a person. I haven’t hidden vegetables in a sofa for years,” he said.
    â€œThe question is a philosophical one, isn’t it?” I asked. “Does something that is wrong, like lying,