For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,86
night, the four of them, pals that they are, are over Gary’s house—this is when he and Rachel are living in West Windsor—and they smoke, let’s say, a few ‘special cigarettes,’ and down a couple of bottles of wine, okay?”
“So they’re high and tight.”
She chuckled. “Very good. And somebody—probably Martin— says, ‘Hey, it’s back to the Seventies night, with the pot and all. Why don’t we go all the way, and have a wife-swapping party?”
People’s first reactions to unexpected news is always interesting. It’s the most honest we ever really are in our day-to-day lives because we don’t have the time to edit our responses. And so, with great decorum and class, I just burst out laughing. When I finally got myself back into serious reporter mode, I said, quite clearly, “oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. And everybody’s for the wife-swapping but Maddie, who very much likes being Mrs. Martin Barlow and doesn’t want to have all that much to do with Gary Beckwirth again. But they wear her down, and give her a few more drinks, and the next thing you know, she’s over at Beckwirth’s place re-living the bad old days, and taking care of a kid who isn’t hers. Meanwhile, the not so pretty man she really loves— Professor Martin Barlow—is having his mind blown by Rachel, a woman Maddie really can’t stand.”
“Okay, so that’s one night,” I said. “That doesn’t explain how. . .”
“Well, that’s what Maddie thought,” Marie said. Her voice started getting more serious. This was the bad part she hadn’t wanted to tell, and the fun of shocking me was not enough to overcome that. “She figures the next day, she’ll get up, take a really long shower, and go back to her husband Martin. The problem is, she sleeps late, and everybody else decides this is a great arrangement, and they should just stick to it.”
“Why?” It seemed a logical question.
“It solves everybody’s problems,” Marie said, a tinge of disgust and anger in her voice. “Everybody but Maddie’s, but then she’s the only one who’d truly been happy up to that point, and they couldn’t allow that. Gary gets back the woman he really wants, though she doesn’t much want him or his kid. Martin gets the hot blonde he’s always wanted. And Rachel gets to ditch Gary, who’s a loser in bed, for a guy who talks like Lord Byron and is an up-and-comer at this big university. So everybody’s happy, right?”
“Except Madlyn. So why doesn’t she just refuse?”
“I’ve never really been clear on that,” Marie Aiello admitted. “She just couldn’t take on the three of them. One or the other she could deal with, but not all three at once. Maybe she just couldn’t bear to tell Martin ‘no.’ And I think she figured Martin would get tired of old Rachel in a day or two, and that would be that.”
Imagine living all that time with someone, hating every minute of it, and waiting for years for the person you really love to come to his senses and return to you. Having to endure the thought of him in bed with someone other than you every night for twelve years? It should have driven Madlyn Rossi Beckwirth Barlow mad. Maybe it had.
“But it kept on going,” I said. “Why didn’t they just get divorces and make it legal?”
“They didn’t just trade wives,” Marie said. “They traded families. Maddie raised Rachel’s son for her, because that bitch never wanted to have a kid—he was an accident. And then, Gary suddenly hit the jackpot. At that point, there’s no way Rachel’s divorcing him and giving up her right to all his money. So she makes Gary pay big for getting Maddie back.”
“And,” Marie continued, “there’s no way Gary’s giving Rachel half the money he just made. Not to mention, if Rachel divorces Gary and marries someone else, like, let’s say Martin, she loses alimony, too. Better for Martin and Rachel to blackmail Gary, because he doesn’t mind trading them money in return for the chance to keep Madlyn in his household. He starts paying for Rachel and Martin’s house, their cars—all that stuff. And no matter how much Maddie complains, Gary stays in the driver’s seat, and he knows it.
“That is the weirdest story I ever heard,” I admitted. “And I lived through Watergate.”
“You want the rest?”
“There’s a rest?. . . Sure.”
“Maddie’s trapped, but she has information they don’t want her to share—mainly that she’s not Mrs. Gary Beckwirth, and that Rachel Barlow isn’t