His Perfect Wife

by Natasha Bell

  It’s such a delicious mindfuck. I need you to help me work it out. I need you, period, actually. Sometimes I think I need you more than anyone needs you, Al. More than Lizzie and Marc and your silly students. I can’t wait to have you here.

  See you very soon, babe.

  Am x

  MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2003

  I glanced at the old woman’s face. Who was she? A neighbor, perhaps. Marc was by my side and I entertained a brief fantasy that he might lift me up, carry me away from this woman, away from all these solemn strangers eating canapés and spouting clichés.

  “It was a lovely service,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. Marc was watching me. That morning I’d sobbed so violently I’d fallen to the kitchen floor. He’d tried to catch me, ended up crouching and cradling my crumpled form. I loved him for it, but it wasn’t enough to stop me crying. He was trying to be my rock, I knew. But what use is a bloody rock when you’re burying your father? He’d held my hand during the service and now, at the wake, he’d appointed himself my personal bodyguard. He was ready to whisk me away as soon as I gave the nod, as soon as he thought I couldn’t stand it anymore. And his presence, well, it meant the world to me, even if it couldn’t actually fix the world.

  A couple, now, were giving me their condolences. I nodded and said the right things, but my mind was wandering. I was thinking about last night, when I’d found Marc standing over Lizzie’s cot, deep in thought. I’d wanted to ask what he was thinking, but hesitated. These past few weeks I too had stood over our child and thought the unthinkable. My warped mind had tried to picture our beautiful little girl one day sitting on a wooden pew sobbing for us. How could I reconcile my own mortality with my love for my child? Or my husband? I didn’t want to have these thoughts, but they barged their way into my brain. Would it be better to be the one buried or burying? Could I cope with going through this again? With Marc in the coffin? With nobody by my side, nobody to catch me when I fell to the kitchen floor or bring me fresh tissues and tell me I was still beautiful even with snot running down my face?

  I blinked and realized I was about to cry. I said a flustered thank you to the couple before me and turned to Marc with a panicked expression. He understood. He placed a protective arm around my shoulders and led me toward the door. I slumped into his torso and imagined the respectfully apologetic expression he was directing toward anyone trying to interrupt our exit. Once, I thought, I’d been an independent, capable woman. I’d flown off around the world, taken risks, felt like my life was my own. Today, though, I needed this man. I needed our family, our life. The relief of submission was absolute.

  Marc led me to his car. He strapped me into the passenger seat and kissed my forehead before walking around to the driver’s side. I looked over at him releasing the handbrake and checking his mirrors and let out a sob. If I couldn’t live without Marc, I realized, the only alternative would be to leave him to bury me. To condemn his heart to be broken and him to face all this, plus the rest of a lifetime alone. Could I do that to him? Maybe we could die simultaneously, so romantically co-dependent that one heart could not continue beating without the other. Could that happen except in a film? And what about our daughter then, left to bury both her parents at once?

  “We’re home,” Marc said as we pulled into our street. “Let’s go inside and send the babysitter home. We can lock all the doors, snuggle up with Lizzie and shut out the world.”

  I nodded and offered a weak smile. The answer was obvious really. Marc knew what to do, how to act, how to cope. I, on the other hand, would be lost without him.

  Three Months Gone

  My ninety-third day missing was Charlotte’s birthday. Marc knew it was just another date on the calendar, but it seemed more significant somehow. He wondered if I noticed the day, wherever I was. He was struggling so much that he almost forgot it altogether until Fran caught up with him at the school gates a few days before and asked what he had planned. Seeing the flash of panic on his face, she took pity on him. They spent the rest of the week in whispered phone conversations concocting a last-minute party.

  He searched high and low for our daughters’ smiles on the day. He roped Lizzie in on the plan and she told him with a roll of her eyes that Char wouldn’t want princesses, balloons or anything pink. She offered to make breakfast and brought a tray up to our room with three soft-boiled eggs accompanied by soldiers with Marmite heads, like I used to make them every weekend.

  Char’s bottom lip trembled as she looked down at her plate, but Lizzie squeezed her sister’s hand and told her she should open her presents.

  She’d been sent home on Friday with gifts from her school friends, and Nana and Grandpa had posted an enormous box of presents. She unwrapped clothes, books, DVDs and a magic kit. Lizzie had made her a chalkboard sign to put on her door, reading “Current Mood…”

  “I’ve got one too,” Lizzie said. “It’s so Dad doesn’t have to keep asking how we are.”

  Charlotte giggled, but Marc studied Lizzie’s face, unsure how much of a joke it was.

  He gave Char a digital camera. She’d asked for one like Lizzie’s for Christmas and we’d said it was too expensive, she’d have to wait until she was older. She beamed as she tore the paper and, once Marc had helped her install the memory card, began snapping away. Marc and Lizzie hid beneath the duvet shouting, “Paparazzi, Paparazzi!”

  They headed into town so Char could take pictures of the river and the boats. “Let’s start on the bridge,” Marc suggested as they walked past the old fire station and toward the opera house. They collided with an alighting crowd at the bus stop, and Marc and Lizzie lagged back so Char could step around the corner first. It had the desired effect. She turned and saw six of her school friends standing at the front of the queue for the Dungeons. She swiveled back to him and began to say, “Look, Daddy, Emma and Rose and Becky are he—” but her friends interrupted, jumping up and down and shouting, “SURPRISE!” Fran offered a conspiratorial wink from the back of the group.

  They were given a private dungeon tour, complete with jump-worthy zombies and hideous prosthetics. Charlotte clung to him a couple of times, but then she saw an actor with bloodstained sleeves flapping where his arms should be and cried, “It’s just a flesh wound!” She dissolved into such rolling giggles that even the actor cracked a smile.

  At the end of the tour, the guide gave Charlotte a souvenir book and each child got a goodie bag. He ushered them into place in front of a gruesome hanging scene for a group photograph and they waited as they printed eight copies. Marc thought the party a success, but studying the photograph later, he found an unmistakable frown pasted to Lizzie’s face.

  Back at home, with the girls plonked in front of a film, Marc and Fran retreated to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

  “Thank you,” he said, handing her a steaming mug. “Seriously, thank you so much. For today and, you know, everything.”

  “My pleasure.” She smiled and he noticed dark shadows hiding beneath her foundation.

  “Are you…” he began unsurely. “It’s a long time since I’ve asked this of anyone, but are you okay?”

  “Me? Yes, fine!” Her lips curled less convincingly this time. “Just, you know, a little fight with Ollie, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not wanting to hear the details.

  “How about you?”

  Marc wondered if she could sense his indifference and felt a pang of guilt. “As expected, I suppose.”

  “What are the police saying?”

  Marc shrugged. “To prepare for the worst. I seem to ping-pong between accepting that this might be the way it is now and rebelling against all such thoughts. It’s hardest on Lizzie, I think.”

  “She seems okay,” Fran said, reaching to touch his arm. “She had a good time today and she’s such a good sister to Char.”

  Marc n
odded. “Thank you for organizing all this. Really, you’ve been a godsend. I’ve been asking far too much of you. If there’s anything I can do in return—”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I want to help. My heart is breaking for you, you know? You don’t deserve this.”

  Marc watched a frown flash across her face.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, more sincerely this time, and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  Fran folded into him. He prised the mug from her fingers and placed it on the counter, then wrapped his arms around her back, feeling strange about touching an adult like this for the first time in months.

  “I’m sorry,” she said into his shoulder. “I shouldn’t be doing this to you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, smoothing his hand over her back.

  “It’s not. Nothing’s okay.”

  Marc patted her thin cardigan and made shh noises while she sobbed into his shoulder, but still wasn’t sure he cared. For months he’d barely registered other people’s lives except to grow envious of their simplicity. Marital arguments and petty jealousies, financial headaches and personal grievances didn’t seem important anymore. If I came back, he knew he’d never worry about such things. Even while holding Fran, trying to comfort her, he tasted disgust upon his tongue, as if her unhappiness, whatever its cause, was unsavory. A cruel part of his brain wanted to push her away, shake her by the biceps and tell her to go home and make up with Ollie, because at least she still could.

  He kept holding her, though. The quiet crying continued and he wondered if it’d be rude to reach for his tea and sip it over her head.

  “Alex and I used to grumble about the little things,” Fran said through her tears. “About being torn between what we wanted for ourselves and for our families. But she had you. Ollie just doesn’t understand.”

  My sweet husband resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

  “It’s simply not fair, when someone like you—” Fran stopped herself and Marc stiffened. She pulled her head from his shoulder, but still clung to his torso. She looked up into his face, all puffy-eyed, mascara flecking her cheeks.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  “Alex never appreciated you.”

  Marc frowned. He knew Fran was hurting, knew her words were about her and Ollie and not us, but still. He held his tongue, conscious of trying to support our friend in this moment.

  A beat went by when perhaps he knew what was coming, but it still came as a shock when Fran launched herself on to tiptoes and pressed her hot, fleshy lips to his.

  He pushed her away, but not before registering her lipstick on his skin, the sensation of her urgent, desperate kiss.

  “What are you doing?” he said, wanting to gag.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and backed away, fear in her eyes.

  “What kind of sorry slut are you?” he shouted, forgetting the children in the next room.

  Fresh tears came to her eyes, but she flashed him a stony look. She shook her head. “Maybe I was wrong, maybe you’re just the same. You men are so fucking oblivious. You deserve everything you get.”

  Fran stalked out of the kitchen. Marc followed her into the hallway. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She turned to face him and gave a dry laugh. “You act like it’s this great surprise, like we’ve suddenly woken up and changed overnight, but you must have been walking around with your eyes closed not to realize how unhappy we’ve been.”

  “Who’s we?” Marc said, his voice angry but fear creeping down the back of his neck. “I’m sorry you and Ollie are having problems, but Alex and I were—”

  “Happy?” she said, cutting him off with a sarcastic smile. “Perfect? Just as in love as when you met?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she said. “I just can’t stand to see you moping over Alex like she was some sort of saint. You need to wake up, Marc. Alex wasn’t the smiling doll you think she was. She used to cry on my shoulder about how fucking dull everything was. She hated this city, she hated her job, she even said she hated this house.”

  “That’s not true,” Marc said, shaking his head. “Alex loves—”

  “Isn’t it?” Fran said, a cruel smile playing on her lips. “Your wife told me she hated her life.”

  Marc felt like he’d been winded. He stared at our friend as if she was a stranger. Where was the woman who’d helped us paint the dining room, who’d held our children when they were tiny, who’d driven to pick us up when we broke down halfway to Newcastle, who he’d watched me wrap in my arms the day she found out she’d miscarried?

  “Emma!” Fran shouted, her eyes still locked with Marc’s. “Come on, we’re leaving!”

  Marc watched Emma tie her shoelaces, aware Lizzie and Charlotte were hovering curiously in the doorway. Fran pinched her mouth into a smile and said good-bye to the girls, then dragged Emma out on to the pavement. Marc closed the door behind them and stared at the stained glass panels, imagining he could still taste her lips. He wanted to scrub layers of his skin away with the memory. Alex is no longer the last person you kissed, he kept thinking in horror.

  * * *

  “You really think Fran offered herself up like that?” he says, amused. He’s been asking about our life, like it gets him hard to think about the sweet, gentle husband I’ve lost. I’m tired of fighting him, though. Answering his questions is easier than the alternative.

  “Well?”

  I shrug. Why not? I saw the way women looked at Marc.

  “Okay, fine,” he says. I wonder if he’s jealous. The husband I sit here picturing is attractive and sexy and desirable, while the man before me has to lock a woman in a room to get her to talk to him.

  “Maybe she did,” he muses. “Maybe Nicola threw herself on him too, maybe there was a queue down the street. But what makes you so sure he pushed them away? The man loses you for what looks like forever and you still want him to remain pure and true?”

  “What do you want?” I say, too exhausted to scream. “For me to imagine them fucking on our kitchen floor? Someone moving in, looking after our kids, taking my place?”

  As I say it I realize that is what he wants. Exactly what he wants. For me to picture my family without me. He looks at me as if he knows me, as if he sees what’s going on in my head.

  He laughs and turns toward the door. “Time’s running out, Alexandra. Your time is running out.”

  2004

  9/27/04

  Dear Al,

  How are you? How is little Lizzie? How’s being back at work? It must feel like you’ve had your brain handed back to you now you’re allowed to discuss more than poop and potty training!

  Sorry, I only tease. But you need to talk to Marc. I know he wants another kid and I know you want to give him what he wants, but you can’t do that to yourself, babe. And you can’t just keep taking birth control and not telling him. Your desires are just as important as his—more so when it involves your body. He needs to respect what you’ve gone through, what you’ve sacrificed. I mean, it’s enough for any woman, but you in particular. Becoming a mom after what yours did to you is not nothing. You’ve achieved an enormous amount. I don’t know many women who would be able to move on from that. I remember your face in that tattoo shop in Boystown as your scar was finally replaced by something beautiful. I remember you saying you never wanted kids. I know all that’s changed and Lizzie is the light of your life, but just because you changed your mind once doesn’t mean you can’t trust it now. You’re in a great place: you have a child and an opportunity to reclaim some of yourself. Don’t give it up because Marc has some idea about the perfect happy family.

  I’ll shut up now, I’ve said my piece.

  I don’t want to jinx anything, but I too am finally in a positive place. I feel like I’m fin
ding a balance between the things I love. I’m in the final stages of tying pretty pink ribbons around something to present to a gallery, and I also have this other, tiny piece that I initially thought was a bit of fun that’s totally spiraled and become this thing every motherfucker’s talking about. I was looking through the videos I made with my mom a year or two ago and felt the urge to play with the project some more. I came up with this installation board game based on the film Terms of Endearment. (Have you seen it? It’s this terrible, totally wonderful film that everyone loves here—all schmaltzy, weepy, family stuff with a mother and daughter who fall out and marry and divorce and get cancer and make up and fall out and make up and et cetera, puke-my-guts-out-and-wipe-my-face-in-it, et cetera. Won all the Oscars, obviously.) I pitched it to PS1 and they had this last-minute opening, so I set it up within a couple of weeks. I thought it’d be there for ten days and that’d be it, but it’s been two months now and every day more and more people seem to be schlepping across the river to sit and play my game. It’s a simple dice-roll thing for moms to play with their daughters, but each square asks them to face something personal about their relationship, to share a secret or ask something they’ve been afraid to say. I figured hardly anyone would be willing to volunteer, but apparently most days there’s a queue. All these assholes acting out their private therapy sessions for the crowd. They’re paying me to keep it going and there’s word a couple of museums are interested. Plus I got a write-up in The New York Times and now every snot-nosed journalist wants a piece of me. (I’m being very coy and telling them I’m “unavailable for interview.”)