My Only Wife (15 page)

She looked so peaceful there on the couch, so I sat and I watched her rest. I thought she was spent for the night. In a few minutes though she sat up and reached into the drawer of the end table. She pulled out her tape recorder and went into our bedroom.

She was going to give a tape more of the story than I would ever know.

MY
WIFE
SLAMMED
THE
CLOSET
door shut.

She locked it up tight.

She fell back against the door, scrambling to fasten the bracelet back onto her wrist.

“What is it?” I asked, startled at the fuss.

“I shouldn’t have gone in there today. It’s too much.”

“Are you alright? Did something happen?”

She gathered herself quickly and forced a smile, nostrils flaring. “No, I’m fine. I need to go to work. I’m late.”

I called after her as she went into the bedroom to change into her white tee shirt, “But it’s Saturday.” I was whining. I wanted an evening with her.

“I always work Saturday. Saturday is date night. That’s when the world needs waitresses most.” She searched for her keys in vain on the coffee table, the end table.

“Kitchen counter,” I said. She stalked into the kitchen, her feigned composure breaking in her frantic effort to leave the apartment.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling again as she emerged from the kitchen, forcing a calm appearance. “I’ll see you later tonight.If you go out, leave a note.” She wandered over to the couch, now seeming like she had all the time in the world, had nowhere to be. She kissed me, sweetly and softly. She said, “Bye, love.”

She casually swung open the door, stepped out, and slammed it violently behind her.

M
Y
WIFE AND I
WENT
to a bar. In a year she would disappear completely, but I had no way of knowing. By then I believed inertia might carry us on through to the end of our lives.

That night we ordered drinks.

To the bartender my wife said: “Vodka…vodka.”

To the man beside her my wife said: “A smoke if you’ve got it.”

Lipstick smudged onto a filter. A match sparked. Two people turned away from each other. I met my wife’s eyes as she exhaled.

That night my wife took on a trinity of conversation tactics:

My wife answered questions with questions.

My wife connected topics in a take-a-penny-leave-a-penny manner, dropping off irrelevant remnants of discussions she knew I would pick up and resurrect along the way.

My wife delayed her side of the conversation with attempts to tie maraschino cherry stems into knots with her tongue.

At first she was adept, remarkably talented at this latter feat, pausing only moments to tangle the stem.

As her tongue grew thick with liquor, the pauses stretched, until she spat out a stem, untied, and admitted defeat. She folded her arms, resting them on the bar, and turned to me. She amused herself.

Then I asked the question. “What’s in your closet?”

She rested her forehead on her arms for a moment.

As the bartender passed, she lifted her head. To him my wife said: “Vodka, please.” The bartender looked at me and I shrugged. To me, my wife said: “That is the
least
of our problems.”

I asked again, “What’s in your closet?”

She mocked me, “What’s in
your
closet?”

“What closet?” I responded.

Sip. “Everyone has a closet. What have you got stacked in yours? You know what’s in mine. I never bother you about yours. I don’t even ask what’s inside, let alone ask to see it.”

I was drunk, too, but not as drunk as she was. I harnessed my mouth. I said, “I have no closet. You know all there is to know about me. It’s all out there. It’s all in you.”

My wife said: “What have I gotten from you?”

To a new man who had seated himself beside her, my wife said, “A smoke if you’ve got it.”

I didn’t know what to tell her. Was I supposed to begin a catalog list? And of what? Of all she already knew about me? I searched for the beginning of a thread. I unwound a spool never reaching a frayed tip. When I didn’t respond, my wife, distracted, said: “My eyes hurt. I need a tic-tac.” She rifled through her purse, two fingers clasping the newly lit cigarette, until she found a pack of mint tic-tacs. She popped one into her mouth, grimaced at the mixture of mint, nicotine and vodka. “I found one of the love letters you wrote me when we first met.” She pronounced the word “first” with a delicate slur. “You had written it in pencil,” she said, “so I erased it.”

I stared, appalled. “Really?” I asked. She sucked on her tic-tac. She inhaled deeply. She sipped her vodka. She crunched down. The moment grew immense. Nothing was wrong.

I asked my wife, “Why would you do that?”

The bartender passed and to him my wife said: “Could I get a cocktail glass of cherries?” When he nodded, squeezing a few spears of bright red into the glass, my wife said, “You’re a doll. Thanks a million.” My wife was some brassy moll all of a sudden, playing a part.

My wife pulled a cherry from its stem, chewed it down and slipped the stem between her lips. I waited while she tried unsuccessfully to tie it. What was once titillating to watch, once nimble in appearance, was now clumsy, sloppy. I grew impatient, I asked, “Why would you erase one of my notes?”

She spat out the stem, all her grace disappearing in that moment. She said: “My eyes are blurring. I wonder if I need glasses. I’ve always wanted glasses.” To the man beside her she said: “A smoke if you’ve got it.” She didn’t realize it was the same gentleman whom she’d asked for a cigarette only minutes before. He reached into his inner pocket, pulled the pack from his jacket, shook a cigarette half-out of the pack, and my wife pulled it loose with her mouth. He held his lighter up and flicked the wheel, his finger planted on the button. My wife leaned her cigarette into the long flame. Her cheekbones grew more angular as she inhaled. I had never been so disgusted watching a person smoke. She turned toward me to cough and popped another cherry into her mouth, discarding the stem on the bar’s surface, not willing to attempt a knot again so soon. She savored the brilliant sugar.

I was impatient and alone. I felt suddenly that she was not the wife I thought she was.

My wife chewed, inhaled, opened her eyes, squinted and then stared at me, all sloppy mischief and clumsy sleight of hand.

“What closet and why would you erase my love letter? Where is this coming from?”

“You understand what I mean about the closet, and I erased it because I could. Do you think I might need reading glasses? Little Ben Franklin readers? Wouldn’t I be the picture of a little granny with those?” She wanted a response. “Dearie?” she asked, in her best imitation of an old woman.

My wife gulped her vodka. She inhaled smoke deeply. She stared at me.

I had no idea what she wanted, what I was supposed to say. I tried. “Are you unhappy with me?”

“It’s not that.” She shook her head, for a moment staring beyond the bottles of liquor into the bar mirror. “I don’t ask nearly as much of you as you ask of me. All I’m asking is that we equalize this a little. I’m not saying I want more from you.”

I took a long pull on my beer. “Well, I think you’ve got it backwards, but let me get this straight. You want me to want less of you.”

The brassy moll disappeared and she shrank before my eyes. She looked broken. She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “How do I do that?” “I’m pregnant.”

“Cheap trick for sympathy.” There was no way.

To me my wife said: “Is it?” She sipped her vodka. She waved over the bartender and said meekly: “More vodka, please.”

I shook my head, placed my hand over her glass. She pushed my hand away. More insistently, she said to the bartender: “Much more vodka, please.” I reached over and slid the glass out of her reach, nodding to the bartender to take it away.

She slumped into her lap. She wasn’t crying. I lifted her by the shoulders. “What’s in
my
closet? You can’t be serious, can you? You’re not pregnant. Don’t play like that.”

My wife looked away .

“Even if you thought you were, you aren’t anymore. You’ve had about a gallon of vodka tonight.”

My wife gasped. I lifted my hands from her, brought them to my face, began to massage the hollows above my cheekbones.

My wife shifted her eyes to mine. “I want too much of a baby. I want it to prove my life, my age. I want to forget this selfishness. I shouldn’t require anything of a baby. I can’t do that. I would be a terrible mother. Take it away. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’ll just tell its story now.” She slipped another unnaturally red cherry between her lips.

Who was this woman? “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not pregnant anymore. I lied.”

“Anymore? You got rid of it?” I had to look away and then I had to look back. “You didn’t tell me? When did this happen? Are you crazy?” I was off my barstool. I had her by the shoulders. I had no idea what was happening. I looked away from her and around the room trying to find something familiar.

My wife pushed my hands off. She stood. “Be quiet,” she said. “This is private.” She grabbed my jaw in both her hands and turned my head, pulling my face down so one ear was in front of those bright red lips. “I lost it, alright? Do you like that better? I had a miscarriage. And you know what? It was for the best. I’m glad it happened because I would have done it all wrong.” She paused and I tried to turn my head, but she kept me turned away, my ear close to her lips. “Sure, it’s too bad, and yeah, I’m fucking
sad
. But I know it’s for the better. For me. You would have been a wonderful father. I know you would have been nothing less than perfect. I’m clumsy and selfish though.” Now she turned my face towards hers. I was about to say something, though what I have no idea. She put a finger to my lips, “And a sloppy, sloppy drunk.” She straightened her hand, brought it back and slapped me hard across the face. “That wasn’t because you did anything wrong. I wanted to know you actually felt something.”

I was silent. We sat back down. My wife asked the bartender for two glasses of water. He slid them toward us. We sipped like children, avoided eye contact.

“I’m sorry.” I said.

“Shhh.”

“What can I…”

“Shhh.”

My tongue was a punching bag, returning every time, a muscle I slung around with an anxious lack of dignity.

I wished I could crawl on my hands and knees away from her.

Instead I clutched my cup of water and waited.

I imagined we might be silent for days, communicating through slight shifts in focus or twitches of the mouth.

I was wrong. When I drained my water, she downed hers. I thought we’d head home silently, but she pushed the cups toward the bartender to refill them, then met my eyes, with softness, with weariness, and yet with resolve. “You deserve this story more than my closet does. I thought I might be pregnant a couple weeks ago. I waited. I bought four or five pregnancy tests. I stopped drinking and smoking for a short time. I waited another week. I took the tests. All positive. I wanted to keep it to myself for a few days. I was nervous. I didn’t know how I felt. No matter what I knew I wanted a few days alone with the idea. I wanted to be sure what I thought before I spoke it out loud. I decided I needed to keep it. I’d never forgive myself if I ran away from something so huge. I didn’t know if I wanted to raise it though. I knew if I kept it, it might become my little puppet. I might use it. It might be a toy I got to form, dress up, one more thing I got to control. Grownups can hold their own with me,but a baby I could make do whatever I wanted. A child would mean more power than I should be allowed.

“I was going to tell you when you came home from work that day. I watched you get up and get dressed, and I was nervous as I watched you leave because I knew that I had to tell you when you came home. I went back to sleep exhausted by that idea. I woke up aching in a patch of my own blood. I hadn’t even seen a doctor to confirm what the store-bought tests told me, but I scheduled an emergency appointment anyway.

“It was true. I’d miscarried. They took blood. They gave me a full examination. The doctor told me I would feel good as new in a day or two. I’d only been pregnant about six weeks. He gave me the number of some counselors. I came home and I cried all day for something I hadn’t even wanted.

“The cramps were gone by late afternoon, and you weren’t home by the time I was supposed to go to work. I shouldn’t have gone in, but I thought if I went to work I might be able to pull myself together before I saw you. I thought maybe I never had to tell you what had gone on. I thought you would be angry I hadn’t told you as soon as I knew I was pregnant. I thought if I could save you from that it would be better.

“By the time I got home I had a handle on things and I tried my hardest to behave as if nothing had happened. Yesterday in the morning I began looking through old sentimental stuff I’ve saved. I found your old love letters and I found the one written in pencil and it hit me that only you would have written a letter in pencil, and I got an overwhelming urge to erase it. Something had been taken from me that I had no control over and I wanted to get rid of something by myself. I wanted something that had a bit of both of us and that letter was perfect. You wrote it and it was for me. It was mine to do with as I pleased and right then I wanted to destroy something you had given me before it could escape.

“Today all I wanted was to get you drunk and to learn some deep secret I hated to know about you, so I could tell you mine and make an even trade. All I wanted was to discover that you’d been frightened to tell me something, that there was something you never wanted me to know, but of course you have nothing. You do give every bit of yourself to me and you expect the same of me, and I try, but I still want to grab some things and pack them into my cheeks for some famine when I know I’ll be alone and need them.”

We were both silent for a long time. I searched myself, wanting to find something awful, some dark secret to offer her, but I couldn’t get past everything she’d shared with me. “I wish you would have told me earlier.”