He put down his fork. “God, you sound exactly like Jenn.”
“In what way?” Anna asked.
“In the way that she thinks it’s very weird that I can not care about something she finds so care-worthy and she doesn’t get it. Maybe that’s a girl thing. Ya think?”
Anna recalled there was a party once, a backyard thing. Just four or five couples. Three of the women had read a book in their book club about a woman who found a sealed envelope in her attic. It was in a box full of records—taxes, receipts, house records, legal correspondence. On the outside of the envelope it said, To be read by my wife in the event of my death. But he wasn’t dead.
Everyone at the party weighed in on whether they would read what was in the envelope. What if it was written by a woman for her husband, would the men read it? To the last one the women said they would tear open that envelope and read the contents immediately. Likewise, none of the men wanted to know what was inside, not even Chad.
Chad said, “There’s nothing in there I need to see.”
One of their best friends said, “That couldn’t be good news.”
She told Mike the story. “Would you open the envelope?” she asked him.
“No way,” Mike said. “It was sealed for a reason. Would you?”
“In less than a second,” Anna said.
“Then it is a girl thing,” he pronounced.
She laughed. “How is Jenn?” she asked. They’d been dating about six months and she was certain Jenn was very fond of Mike. She thought maybe this was the one.
“She’s fine,” he said, filling his mouth again. After a couple of moments he said, “I don’t think things will go long-term with us.”
“Really?” she said, shocked. “I guess I thought it was getting serious.”
“Jenn is great. And I care about her, I do. But...I’m just not there yet. Something is missing. I don’t see myself and Jenn being anything like you and Dad were.”
Probably a good thing, she thought dismally.
“I’ll know I’m with the right woman when I can see us being as good a married couple, as good as parents, as you and Dad.”
She twisted spaghetti around her fork but didn’t bring it to her mouth. “I’m not sure we were that great at either,” she said. “You might be idealizing us a little. Maybe because of missing your dad so much.”
“I know you had your issues sometimes, but you were a great couple and great parents.”
Of course neither of them had ever mentioned the affair to the kids. Anna had told herself that if they had divorced and she had to explain one day when the kids were old enough to understand, she probably would have told them. But they put things back together and explaining was moot. If it didn’t do anything positive, there was no point. She wondered how Mike would react if she told him now about their latest struggles and the fact that she was planning to suggest they separate and were perhaps heading for divorce. Would it break his heart even more? Or would it help him understand that relationships are never easy?
“Do you suppose that has something to do with you not being curious about your father’s anonymous recipient?”
Mike shrugged. “I guess it could. I want to respect his wishes and his privacy. And also, what will it change? Will it make me happier? Sadder? Why open that envelope? The girls, though. They want to know. They think they have a right to know.”
Anna was a little surprised. “Even Bess?”
“She doesn’t stir things up much, but yeah—even Bess. Though you know Bess will do just about anything to avoid confrontation. But eventually Jessie is going to push you to try to find out.”
“I doubt that will do any good,” Anna said.
“Can’t you contest or something?” Mike asked.
“Sure, if I want to build a case that I deserve that ten percent, which I don’t. But even if I won the ten percent I might never learn the identity of the anonymous recipient.”
“But you do want to know?” he asked.
“Here’s where I am on that,” Anna said. “I thought your dad and I didn’t have secrets. Not important ones. I knew his passwords, his bank card code. I even made his doctor appointments. It galls me that he had such a big secret. Maybe a secret life of some kind. I’m equally pissed that he died.”
“Maybe he was sick,” Mike said. “Ever think of that?”
She shook her head. “Your father was a strong and brave man in many ways, but not with his health. He couldn’t endure a hangnail without complaining. Remember how we used to laugh at the ‘man cold’? That was the main reason I didn’t want him to go on that rafting trip. He sprained almost everything on his body on the last long-distance bike ride he took and swore to never do anything like that again. You know how we met. He fell off the pier and nearly drowned in the San Francisco Bay! But he wouldn’t be stopped on the rafting trip. It was mysteriously important to him.”
Mike sopped up some sauce with his bread, chewing thoughtfully. “I guess he was kind of a candy-ass.”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “Emotionally and psychologically he was a brick. The things he had to hear in therapy sessions were sometimes stunningly terrible, things that would make a meeker man sleepless for a year. That was his true gift. Not to mention the number of people he helped.”
“Like I said, Jessie is eventually going to push you to try to find out the identity of the person getting the money,” he said.
“But not you,” she said. It was not a question.
“Not me,” he said. “You were his wife. I think he should have always been honest with you and you with him. You probably have a right to know. But he should be able to have a private life from his children. If that’s what he wanted and needed.”
She rested her chin on raised folded hands. “I think that’s just an extension of refusing to open that sealed envelope. You’re afraid of what might be inside.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Yes,” she said. “What if there’s something inside that causes you to lose respect for your father? What if you don’t admire him as much? Missing him and grieving him is hard enough, why add another dimension to that?”
“I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“What we all have to get through this process is the reality that none of us is perfect and it’s okay, even admirable, to love an imperfect soul deeply. Right now, snatched from us, he appears perfect. Remember that old saying—the good die young? It should be the young die good. Live long enough and there’s plenty of time to screw up. At the end of the day, we are all human. And imperfect.” She paused, thinking about that long-ago affair she’d never told her children about. “We all have secrets.”
Michael pushed his plate away. “Remember that pot you found in my backpack? That I said was Matt’s?”
“Yes,” she said, remembering it clearly.
“It was mine,” he said.
“I know,” she said, laughing.
Anna loved Mike best. That was the thing a mother was never supposed to say, so she kept it her shameful secret. But they sat in the great room after spaghetti casserole and talked until eleven and it was a bit like coming home. She tried to ignore the fact that Mike was like Chad in his sensitivity, his perceptiveness. His empathy. He asked her pertinent questions: Did you feel he understood you? Do you miss him or the idea of him?
And Michael said profound things. He was really just a goofball who liked playing with kids, that’s where we bonded. In his own way he was charismatic and knew how to make people follow him—not only was that his gift, it was the thing most important to him. I think what he really wanted was to be most popular. Anna thought that was entirely true.
That was it, of course. Chad knew how to make people follow him, lean on him, need him—her, Joe, a mistress some time ago, clients, perhaps other women along the way. Chad was their guru.
She was filled with her son’s spirit all the next day. Mike came back to finish chores around her house, but while he let her make him a sandwich, they didn’t share a meal or sit up late talking. He had plans and off he went.
The next day was Monday and because her colleagues were still giving her plenty of support and covering for her quite a bit, Anna took a long lunch despite the fact that the cases were piling up in her office. For the first time in her memory she was having trouble staying focused. Instead of working, she dwelled on her grown children, starting with Mike. She grabbed a sandwich and sat on a bench in a small park near her office and thought about her son.