The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

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СКАЧАТЬ or the extra wife, secret. After Susan left, I brought the dog into the house, opened his crate to let him out, then sat down to read. Three hours later, I looked up to find Harvey the Wonder Dog still in his cage, shaking like a leaf, apparently not wonderful enough to conquer his fear of my kitchen.

      How had he ever gotten up the gumption to appear on Letterman?

      Then I remembered the note on page three. For every good deed he did, Harvey received a treat.

      As I went to retrieve the bag of Beggin’ Strips that had come with the dog, I wondered if that had been Dave’s philosophy for everything. The new house, the tennis bracelet on my wrist, the love seat I’d admired in the showroom window of Newton Furniture—each thing bought after I’d done something that Dave decided needed a celebration. A new promotion, landing a big account—

      Accepting his proposal of marriage.

      I hated my husband right then, hated him as much as I had loved him. I felt the hatred boiling up inside of me, choking at my throat, begging for release. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed up my life but good by dying and then springing a secret existence on me at his funeral.

      I didn’t even want to think about what his dual marriage was going to do to our finances. To the life insurance, the 401(k) money. The house. Not to mention to my plans, my life.

      “I hate you,” I screamed at the walls. “I hate what you did. I hate how you left me. And I hate that you left me a dog instead of a goddamned explanation.”

      Harvey let out a bark and raised himself onto his hind paws, begging.

      My sister, who’d always been a bit on the flaky side, would have said it was Dave’s spirit, communicating through his canine counterpart to offer contrition. To me, it was a dog who’d spied the bag of treats in my hand and knew when to put on his sad face.

      “Sorry, Harvey. I wasn’t talking about you.” I withdrew one from the package and waved it in Harvey’s direction. “Here, puppy.”

      He bounded out of the crate, snatched the strip from my hand, then sat down in front of me, tail swishing against the floor. He didn’t eat it, just held it between his teeth, his mouth spread so wide it looked as if he was grinning. His pointy brown-and-white ears stuck up, tuned to my every move.

      “I don’t know what to do with you,” I said. “I’ve never even owned a dog, for Pete’s sake.”

      Harvey wagged his tail some more.

      “And I can’t take you to…” I looked down at the book, flipping to the page of upcoming appearances, “the Dog-Gone-Good Show on Thursday. I have a job, you know, and it’s not puppy chauffeur.”

      Harvey stretched his front paws across the floor, then laid his head down on them and let out a sigh. The Beggin’ Strip tumbled from his mouth and landed on the beige ceramic tile.

      “I’m just going to have to find you a good home.”

      Harvey looked up at me, wide brown eyes in a tiny, triangular face, and waited. He wasn’t an ugly dog, I reasoned. Why had Dave bought him? Trained him? Toured the country with him?

      And most of all, why had he kept him secret?

      A snippet of a conversation came back to my memory. Years ago, Dave had asked about getting a dog. I had turned him down, afraid that adding one more thing into my perfectly balanced life would make everything topple.

      It was why I had gone into accounting. Nice straight lines, perfect columns of numbers. Everything adding up at the end.

      Before I put one foot on the floor of my bedroom, I liked knowing what was coming each day and how the day was going to end. And yet, I wanted more. Wanted to have a taste of spontaneity, which was what had attracted me to Dave.

      He was the Mutt to my Jeff, the Felix to my Oscar. I’d married him, thinking he’d help me loosen up a little, and he’d said he’d married me to keep him on track. But once we had the joint checking account and the mortgage to pay, it seemed those plans were dampened a bit.

      I had liked our life just fine. Dave, clearly, had not.

      The fact that I could have been so wrong hammered away at my temples. How could I have let details like this slip past me? What had I missed?

      I looked again at the book, flipping back to the prior appearances page. Harvey had been at the Dog-Gone-Good Show last year. And the year before. Where had I been then? Where had I thought Dave had been? I tried to think back, but my mind was as jumbled as a bag of jelly beans. “Maybe there are some people there who knew Dave,” I said aloud, talking to the dog, for God’s sake. He barked, as if he agreed that it was about damned time I tried to sort this out and restore order.

      He was right. If I was ever going to move past the shock of Dave’s second wife—and his well-trained dog—I had to find out where things had gone so totally wrong. “I need to find some people who can give me some answers.”

      Harvey perked up, his ears cocking forward. His tail began again.

      “And maybe I’m just nuts for talking to a dog about my cheating late husband.” I tossed the book onto the sofa and crossed into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.

      The knock on my back door made me jump and nearly spill the Chardonnay. Through the glass oval I saw my sister. I groaned.

      I love my sister Georgia, and though we’ve always been close, our personalities couldn’t be more distant. We were as far apart as Venus and Earth. She’s the Venus, I’m the Earth. Georgia believes in taking life as it comes, living by the seat of your pants and saving for retirement when you get over the hill, not while you’re still climbing it.

      The most spontaneous thing I ever did was buy Tide without a coupon.

      I looked down at Harvey and realized I hadn’t managed to avoid a damned thing.

      “Hi,” Georgia said, letting herself in. “I figured you could use some company tonight. I brought wine.” She hoisted a bottle of Lambrusco.

      I have told my sister at least seventeen times that drinking a sweet, full-bodied red is the equivalent of downing sugar straight from the box. Give me something dry, unadorned and I feel I’m actually having a drink.

      Georgia never listened. She’d probably gone and bought the bottle because it was the prettiest one in the aisle at the Blanchard’s liquors.

      Still, she was here, and no one else was. I had to appreciate her for trying. “Come on in,” I said, gesturing inside. “And meet Harvey.”

      She halted inside the door, blinking at the Jack Russell terrier. “Harvey’s a…dog.”

      “Dave’s dog, to be precise.”

      “When did Dave get a dog?”

      “According to his notes—2000.”

      Georgia’s eyebrows knitted together. She laid the unopened wine bottle on the counter. “Notes?”

      “It’s a long story.” I suddenly felt tired, so tired. I wanted to collapse onto the floor and stay there until a different day dawned. СКАЧАТЬ