The Notebook (21 page)
Why do I mention this? Because I want to underscore that throughout all these events, I never doubted my feelings for my wife. Sure, there were days when we avoided eye contact at the breakfast table, but still, I never doubted us. It would be dishonest to say that I haven’t wondered what would have happened had I married someone else, but in all the years we spent together, I never once regretted the fact that I had chosen her, and she, me. I thought our relationship was settled, but in the end, I realized that I was wrong. I learned that a little more than a year ago—fourteen months, to be exact—and it was that realization, more than anything, which set in motion all that was to come.
What happened then, you wonder?
Given my age, a person might suppose that it was some incident inspired by a mid-life crisis. A sudden desire to change my life, perhaps, or maybe a crime of the heart. But it was neither of those things. No, my sin was a small one in the grand scheme of things, an incident that under different circumstances might have been the subject of a humorous anecdote in later years. But it hurt her, it hurt us, and thus it is here where I must begin my story.
It was August 22, 2002, and what I did was this: I rose and ate breakfast, then spent the day at the office, as is my custom. The events of my workday played no role in what came after; to be honest, I can’t remember anything about it other than to recall that it was nothing extraordinary. I arrived home at my regular hour and was pleasantly surprised to see Jane preparing my favorite meal in the kitchen.
When she turned to greet me, I thought I saw her eyes flicker downward, looking to see if I was holding something other than my briefcase, but I was empty-handed. I kissed her and an hour later, we ate dinner together, discussing our children and my work, the type of conversation that had become routine for us. Afterward, as Jane began collecting the dishes from the table, I retrieved a few legal documents from my briefcase that I wished to review. Carrying them to my office, I was perusing the first page when I noticed Jane standing in the doorway. She was drying her hands on a dish towel, and her eyes registered a disappointment that I had come to recognize, if not fully understand.
“Is there anything you want to say?” she finally asked.
I hesitated, aware there was more to her question than its innocence implied. I thought perhaps that she was referring to a new hairstyle, but looking carefully, her hair seemed no different than usual. I’d tried over the years to notice such things. I was at a loss, and as we stood before each other, I knew I had to offer something.
“How was your day?” I finally asked.
She gave a strange half-smile in response and silently turned away.
I know now what she was looking for, of course, but at the time, I shrugged it off and went back to work, chalking it up as another example of the mysteriousness of women.
Later that evening, I’d crawled into bed and was heaving a comfortable sigh when I heard Jane draw a single, rapid breath. She was lying on her side with her back toward me, and I noticed that her shoulders were trembling. It suddenly struck me that she was crying. Baffled, I expected her to tell me what had upset her so, but instead of speaking, she gave another set of raspy inhales, as if trying to breathe through her own tears. My throat instinctively tightened and I found myself growing frightened. I tried not to be scared; tried not to think that something bad had happened to her father or to the kids, or that she had been given terrible news by her doctor. I tried not to think that there might be a problem I couldn’t solve, and I placed my hand on her back in the hope that I could somehow comfort her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
It was a moment before she answered. I heard her sigh as she pulled the covers up to her shoulders.
“Happy anniversary,” she finally whispered.
Twenty-nine years, I remembered too late, and in the corner of the room, I spotted the gifts she’d bought me, neatly wrapped and perched on the chest of drawers.
Quite simply, I had forgotten.
I make no excuses for this, nor would I even if I could. What would be the point? I apologized of course, then apologized again the following morning, and later in the evening, when she opened the perfume I’d carefully selected with the help of a young lady at Belk’s, she thanked me and patted my leg.
Sitting beside her on the couch, I knew I loved her then as much as I did the day we were married. But as I studied her—noticing perhaps for the first time the absent look in her eyes, the sad tilt of her head—I suddenly realized that I wasn’t quite sure whether she still loved me.
I
t’s heartbreaking to realize that your wife may not love you. After Jane had carried the perfume up to our bedroom, I sat on the couch for hours, wondering how this situation had come to pass. For in this latest incident, I sensed not only her disappointment in an absentminded spouse, but the traces of an older melancholy—as if my lapse were simply the final blow in a long, long series of careless missteps.
Had our marriage turned out to be a disappointment for Jane? The thought disturbed me, for although our life together might be considered fairly ordinary, I always assumed that Jane was as content as I.
Like many men, my life was largely centered around work. For the past thirty years, I’ve worked with the law firm of Ambry, Saxon and Tundle in New Bern, North Carolina. I enjoy golfing and gardening on the weekends, prefer classical music, and I read the newspaper every morning, beginning with the sports page. Though Jane was once an elementary school teacher, she spent the majority of our married life raising three children. She ran both the household and our social life, and her proudest possessions are the photo albums that she carefully assembled as a visual history of our lives. Our brick home is complete with a picket fence and automatic sprinklers, we own two cars and are members of both the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. In the course of our married life, we’ve saved for retirement, built a wooden swing set in the backyard that now sits unused, attended dozens of parent-teacher conferences, voted regularly, and contributed to the Episcopal church each and every Sunday. At fifty-six, I’m three years older than my wife.
As I sat there reviewing the milestones of our years together, I wondered whether the seeds of Jane’s melancholy lay somehow in the fact that we’re such an unlikely pair. We’re different in almost every way, and though opposites can and do attract, I have always felt that I made the better choice on our wedding day. Jane is, after all, the kind of person I always wished to be. While I tend toward stoicism and logic, Jane is outgoing and kind, with a natural empathy that endears her to others. She laughs easily and has a wide circle of friends. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most of my friends are, in fact, the husbands of my wife’s friends, but I believe this is common for most married couples our age. Yet, Jane has always seemed to choose our friends with me in mind, and I’m appreciative that there’s always someone for me to visit with at a dinner party. Had we not been married, I sometimes think that I would have led the life of a monk.
There is more, too: I’m charmed by the fact that Jane has always displayed her emotions with childlike ease. When she’s sad, she cries; when she’s happy she smiles, and her expression when she’s surprised never fails to delight me. In those moments, there’s an ageless innocence about her, and though a surprise by definition is unexpected, for Jane, the memories of a surprise can arouse the same excited feelings for years afterward. Sometimes when she’s daydreaming, I’ll ask her what she’s thinking about and she’ll suddenly begin speaking in giddy tones about something I’ve long forgotten. This, I must say, has never ceased to amaze me.
While Jane has been blessed with the tenderest of hearts, in many ways, she’s stronger than I am. Like most southern women, her values and beliefs are grounded by God and family; she views the world through a prism of black and white, right and wrong. For Jane, hard decisions are reached instinctively—and are almost always right— while I, on the other hand, find myself weighing endless options and frequently second-guessing myself. And unlike me, my wife is seldom self-conscious. This lack of concern about other people’s perceptions requires a confidence that I’ve always found elusive, and above all else, I envy this about her.
I suppose that some of our differences stem from our respective upbringings. While Jane was raised in a small town with three siblings and parents who adored her, I was raised in a town house in Washington, D.C., as the only child of government lawyers, and my parents were seldom home before seven o’clock in the evening. As a result, I spent much of my free time alone, and to this day, I’m most comfortable in the privacy of my den.
As I’ve already mentioned, we have three children, and though I love them dearly, they are for the most part the products of my wife. She bore them and raised them, and it’s she with whom they are most comfortable. I feel the occasional pang of regret at the thought of all I missed while spending so many hours at the office and in my den. But I’m comforted by the thought that Jane more than made up for my absences, as evidenced by how well our kids turned out. They’re grown now and living on their own, but we’re fortunate that only one has moved out of state. My two daughters still visit us frequently, and my wife is careful to have their favorite foods in the refrigerator in case they’re hungry, which they never seem to be.
At twenty-seven, Anna is the oldest. Her looks—dark hair and even darker eyes—reflect her saturnine personality. She was a brooder who spent her teenage years locked in her room, listening to gloomy music and writing in a diary. She was a stranger to me back then; days might pass before she would say a single word in my presence and I was at a loss to understand what I might have done to provoke this. Everything I said seemed to elicit only sighs or shakes of her head; and if I asked what was wrong, she would stare at me as if the question was incomprehensible. My wife seemed to find nothing unusual in this, dismissing it as a phase typical of young girls, but then again, Anna still talked to her. Sometimes, I’d pass by Anna’s room and hear
Anna and Jane whispering to each other; but if they heard me outside the door, the whispering would stop. Later, when I would ask Jane what they’d been discussing, she’d shrug and wave a hand mysteriously, as if their only goal was to keep me in the dark.
Yet because she was my firstborn, Anna has always been my favorite. This isn’t an admission I would make to anyone, but I think Anna knows it. There’s a special bond between us. Lately, I’ve come to believe that even in her silent years, she had been fonder of me than I realized. I can still remember times when I would be working in my den, and she would slip through the door. She would wander around the room, scanning the bookshelves and reaching for various objects, but if I addressed her, she would slip back out as quietly as she’d come in. Over time, I learned not to speak, and she would sometimes sit in the office for an hour, watching me as I scribbled on yellow legal tablets. If I looked up, she would smile complicitly, as if enjoying this game of ours.
Currently, Anna is working for the Raleigh News and Observer, but I think she has dreams of becoming a novelist. In college, she majored in creative writing and the stories she wrote were as dark as her personality. I recall reading one in which a young girl becomes a prostitute to care for her sick father, a man who had once molested her. When I set the pages down, I wondered what I was supposed to make of such a thing.
She is also madly in love. Anna, always careful and deliberate in her choices, was also selective when it came to men, and thankfully Keith has always struck me as someone who treats her well. He’s a resident in orthopedics at Duke Medical School. I learned through Jane that for their first date Keith took Anna kite flying on the beach near Fort Macon. Later that week, when Anna brought him by the house, Keith came dressed in a sport coat, freshly showered and smelling faintly of cologne. As we shook hands, he met my eyes and impressed me by saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lewis.”
Joseph, our second born, is a year younger than Anna, and again, we have little in common. He’s taller and thinner than I am, wears jeans to most social functions, and when he visits at Thanksgiving or Christmas, he eats only vegetables. Like Jane, he was empathetic even as a child and he chewed his fingernails worrying about others. They’ve been nothing but nubs since he was five years old. Needless to say, when I suggested that he consider majoring in business or economics, he ignored my advice and chose sociology. He now works for a battered women’s shelter in New York City, though he tells us nothing more about his job. I know he wonders about the choices I’ve made in my life, just as I wonder about his, but despite our differences, we get along well. It is with Joseph that I have the conversations that I always wished to have with my children when I held them as infants. He is highly intelligent; he received a near perfect score on his SATs and his interests span the spectrum from the history of middle-eastern dhimmitudes to theoretical applications of fractal geometry. It goes without saying that I am often at a disadvantage when it comes to debating him, but it is during such moments that I am especially proud to call him my son.
Leslie, the baby of our family, is currently studying biology and physiology at Wake Forest with the intention of becoming a veterinarian. Instead of coming home during the summers like most students, she takes additional classes with the intention of graduating early, and spends her afternoons working at a place called Animal Farm. Of all our children, she is the most gregarious, and her laughter sounds the same as Jane’s. Like Anna, she loved to visit me in my den, though she was happiest when I gave her my full attention. As a youngster, she liked to sit in my lap and pull on my ears; as she grew older, she liked to wander in and share funny jokes. My shelves are covered with the gifts she made me growing up: plaster casts of her hand prints, drawings in crayon, a necklace made from macaroni. She was the easiest to love, the first in line for hugs or kisses from the grandparents. I was not surprised when she was named the homecoming queen at her high school three years ago.