Read Online The Pretend Wife by Bridget Asher - Free Book Online Page B

Peter said. “Let’s not be all bourgeois about it!” Bourgeois was one of Helen’s favorite words. I hated the sound of it coming out of his mouth—the way he squeezed a tiny bit of French accent into it. “What do you say, Gwen?”
    Everyone turned and looked at me.
    â€œI’m not a rental car,” I said.
    â€œShe’s not a rental car,” Elliot repeated quickly, as if that settled things. He was letting me off the hook, but I wasn’t sure I liked being let off the hook by him so quickly.
    Helen sighed mightily.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Peter said. “Gwen’s not the kind of person to do something like this. And that’s a compliment. She’s too …” He stopped then, weighing some options, perhaps.
    â€œI’m too what?” I asked. I wasn’t so sure it was going to be complimentary at all. Could you be too anything and still be complimented?
    â€œYes,” Helen said. “What is she?”
    But Peter didn’t have to answer.
    Elliot said, “Look, I don’t need a wife. I need to grow up and not lie to my mother. That’s what I need.” Was this what he really wanted though—why had he brought up the subject in the first place?
    â€œGwen’s a great wife,” Helen said. “She’s the greatest wife in the whole wide world. She should have a T-shirt with that written on it. Do you have a T-shirt with that written on it?”
    â€œNo,” I said, insulted by her effusiveness.
    â€œShe’d make the perfect pretend wife for Elliot,” Helen said. “It would probably only be for just a weekend. Right? You should do it, Gwen. You should be Elliot’s pretend wife. Don’t be so uptight about it.”
    â€œThat’s right!” Peter said. I looked at him and he seemed far away, and it didn’t help that he wasn’t talking as much as he was shouting like he was on a beach. “Look, I’m fine with this,” Peter said, almost barking. “I’m not uptight. Gwen can do it if she wants to. It’s okay by me.” This was the only hint that Peter might have had a tiny doubt in his mind. He lived in mortal fear of being perceived to be uptight, because he was uptight—desperately so. And he was, after all, deeply convinced of us, or maybe the institution of marriage itself, and perhaps most of all his family’s legacy of imperviousness. He goaded and bullied himself too when he was drunk.
    Elliot shook his head and waved Peter off. “No, no, no.”
    I looked down over the balcony’s railing and watched a couple, hand in hand, running across the street even though there were no cars. “I think I met your mother once,” I said to Elliot. “She came to the awards ceremony for English majors. There was a little punch-and-cookies thing after.”
    â€œDid she come to that?” Elliot said.
    â€œWe talked for a minute,” I said. I remembered her as a woman who looked like she played tennis. She had this arched nose and Elliot’s eyebrows. Elliot’s parents had divorced when he was ten. His father had since invested in a new family and almost ignored Elliot and his sister, Jennifer. At twenty-one, I couldn’t understand why anyone would have divorced Elliot’s mother—she was so stunning. When I introduced myself to her, she said, “Oh, so you are Gwen Merchant,” as if she’d heard a lot about me from Elliot. I remembered being complimented by that, though I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not. By this point Elliot and I had broken up and he was seeing Ellen Maddox again. “She looked like a Kennedy,” I said. “She was more elegant than the other mothers.” I was a watcher of mothers.
    â€œGwen, you should do it,” Helen whispered urgently.
    I wanted to do it, and I was surprised by how very much I wanted to. I wanted to be alone with Elliot Hull. I wanted to