The Last Original Wife Read Free Page B

Still, I decided to dump the blame where it belonged.
    â€œWell, my wife ran off and left me this past summer. And she’s pretty much the main caretaker for our granddaughter, so our daughter was very upset.” I waited for Jane to ask me why Les left, and when she didn’t, it seemed that I was supposed to supply some kind of an explanation. “She said she’d had it with us.”
    â€œI see. Was there any particular reason, a specific incident that led to her, as you say, running off? A disagreement?”
    â€œWell, I guess you might say she thinks our daughter takes advantage of her.”
    â€œDo you think your daughter takes advantage of your wife?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe in certain situations on certain occasions. Maybe.”
    â€œDo you have other children?”
    â€œYeah, a son. He’s been over there in Kathmandu riding elephants with the hippies. Don’t get me started on him. Anyway, she’s been annoyed with me ever since we got back from Edinburgh a few months ago.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œSee, we were traveling with this buddy of mine, Harold Stovall, and his new wife, Cornelia.”
    â€œAnd is Cornelia a friend of your wife?”
    â€œNo. Well, actually, I wouldn’t say they’re not friends, but Danette, who is Harold’s ex-wife, was, well, is still Les’s best friend. But let me tell you, Cornelia’s a beautiful girl. I mean a stunner .” I smiled then thinking about the sheen of Cornelia’s thick copper hair and those perfectly white teeth of hers. And did her curtains match her sofa? And she had these adorable freckles. Were they everywhere? Harold was a lucky man. The dog.
    â€œI see. Younger?”
    â€œOh, yes. I’d put Cornelia’s age somewhere around thirty-two? Maybe thirty-three.”
    â€œHow old is your friend Harold?”
    â€œHarold’s my age. Sixty-three.”
    â€œAnd your wife?”
    â€œI married a younger woman too. Ha-ha.” Jane’s facial expression did not budge one inch. This head doctor was a humorless bitch. I could already see that too. “She’s fifty-eight.”
    â€œDo you think the dramatic age difference made your wife uneasy?”
    Oh, I could see where this was headed. Yeah, boy. Unless I said Harold was a total hog from hell for divorcing Danette and marrying a girl from his firm, then I was a hell hog too. I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to debate the obvious. Jane’s question was my cue to remind her of how it goes in, let’s say, mature marriages.
    â€œLook, Jane. These things happen every day. People get married, they raise a family, the kids leave home and when that happens? They take a hard look at each other, really see each other for the first time in decades, and guess what? They don’t like what they see. You know? That beautiful girl you married is now postmenopausal, things are drooping left and right, she’s a little thick around the middle, and she’s turned into a harpy.”
    I watched as Jane Saunders shifted around in her seat.
    â€œA harpy?”
    â€œYeah, you know. Her life doesn’t suit her anymore. But you’ve got this secretary or colleague, and this girl is young and vibrant and practically a pulsating life force. She’s gorgeous and she hangs on your every word and by golly, she thinks you’re a god! Yes! A god! You’re Zeus hurling lightning bolts from the sky!”
    â€œZeus?”
    â€œYeah, Zeus! But! When you come home at night, there’s the old ball and chain, wrung out from doing nothing, pissed because you’re late and you forgot to call, and your dinner is in the oven so dried out that it’s basically inedible. And after you choke your way through another miserable meal of boneless, skinless chicken and mushy broccoli with fake butter and fake salt because your doctor said you should watch your pressure, there she is,