The Charmed Wife

by Olga Grushin

  Every word was a slap.

  She felt the blood mounting higher and higher in her cheeks.

  “But none of this is true!” she cried at last, hardly knowing what she was doing as she took a step, leaned on his desk, thrust her flaming face forward. “I wasn’t like that at all! I was young, and I was in love, and I tried to make you happy, I tried so hard, I did my best, I wanted to be a good wife to you, it was you—you—you who . . .”

  “Who what?”

  “Who fucked anything that moved, that’s what, from the day we got married!”

  He appeared momentarily stunned, his mouth flapping loose. Then he was shouting again, their faces so close now she could feel his spittle on her skin.

  “Oh yeah? And what would you have me do? And why would you even care? From the day we got married, you made it painfully clear that you wanted nothing to do with me, that I repulsed you! You felt no passion for me, it was like I married a paper doll. Have you ever, ever in your life, enjoyed a single kiss? I was twenty-four—and my beautiful young wife was so frigid she couldn’t even be bothered to part her lips for me, much less her thighs!”

  She recoiled, pressed her hand to her mouth, her lips suddenly, treacherously, burning with an unbidden memory of another man’s fiery kiss. A shocked silence rolled over the room, tolling with vast, terrible things that could not be unsaid. Across the ringing stillness, they measured each other, two people wearing the black of mourning, two people who had just lost someone they loved. She knew that, in that moment, he hated her every bit as much as she hated him.

  He pushed his chair back, away from her, spoke through his teeth, in control once again. “But here we are, and this is how it is, how it will be, from now till the end, and I will have my little diversions to which you will kindly close your eyes, and you will have your porcelain knickknacks, or whatever else catches your feebleminded fancy, and I will pay for it. I will tolerate this intolerable situation because I need to protect the public face of my company and because you happen to be the mother of my children. I just hope to God they will grow up to be like me, not like you. Now get out. I am mourning my father.”

  The last thing she saw, before turning and leaving the study, was the brilliantly painted man smiling his beautiful, loving, mocking smile into her eyes.

  That night, she did not sleep. Transparent Brie and Nibbles hovered above the mantelpiece, trading anxious whispers, but she ignored them. After torching the nettle shirt in the fireplace and stomping the two pearl buttons into dust with her heel, she lay in her starched white bed, staring at the cupid-infested ceiling, her thoughts a feverish jumble of disjointed, whirling images, fears, losses all running together—her children growing up with that man for a father, the beekeeper’s kiss, the kind old king’s death, the deceitful portrait, the magic mirror, the green-eyed duchess, the duchess’s hapless cuckold of a husband and his sorry end . . . It would have been better had you, too, fallen off your horse long ago, it flashed into her mind out of nowhere—but immediately, horrified by her own savagery, she disowned the unworthy thought. Yet once unleashed, it would creep back again and again, as she lay tormented, night after night after night, for weeks on end. For time passed, of course, as was its wont. Her husband was crowned king, and she became queen; they saw each other at official functions, but avoided each other’s eyes and exchanged not a word. Her heart broke every time she looked at her son, at her daughter. At night, she would go back to her room, to her bed, and lie there, not heeding the timid consolations of the mice, glaring at the cupids on the ceiling, the same thoughts churning round and round in her head: Oh, if only he had fallen off his horse early on in their marriage—after she’d become heavy with Ro, but before she had time to look into that poisonous mirror and learn the truth about the conception. She was still blind to the man’s true nature then, small lapses in their life had not yet joined together into one impassable gulf, and she would have been able to smooth over the more inconvenient incidents in her mind, would have been able to cherish the memory of their love for each other. And instead of wanting to scream “Your father is a monster, a monster!” into her children’s sweet, innocent faces, she would be telling her daughter how proud he’d been of her and asking her son to find the bright star that his father had become in the skies, then crying herself to sleep every night with soft, affectionate tears. Her life would be sad yet full of warmth, solid at its heart, good. Now it felt hot, not warm, but the heat was hollow, hollow and angry, and she was forever seized with fear for Angie and Ro.

  For how, how would they grow up, with that man in their lives?

  Spring turned into summer. One especially stifling morning, worn-out by the constant weight of her unhappiness, she gathered her courage and sent a servant over to the beekeeper’s cottage with a carefully worded note requesting a jar of honey for her breakfast table (to be delivered by the beekeeper in person). The servant returned alone, to inform her that the beekeeper’s place had been abandoned for weeks, his bees dispersed, and he himself gone, no one knew when or where. She tried to hide her disappointment, her apprehension, from herself, tried to forget the taste of cider on the man’s warm lips, tried not to worry about her husband’s ubiquitous spies, or think about exiles and executions that he meted out with such ready ruthlessness—but all through that day, she felt increasingly aggrieved by what she had come to regard as her one chance at her own small, private joy being wrenched away from her, so unjustly, so cruelly; and that night, all her suppressed emotions bubbled over in one great explosion of scalding fury, and she screamed a silent scream.

  I wish he would fall off his horse!

  Or get eaten by a dragon. An occupational hazard of being a ruler; though not his kind of ruler—not the kind who wields a quill instead of a sword—and there are no dragons left in our land, in any case. So instead he might choke on a fish bone during one of his fancy state dinners with the servant wenches pouring wine into his glass while he pinches them under the table. He would bite into his fish, and cough, and it would be a small, delicate cough at first, but then his perfect, gorgeous face would turn red, first red and then purple, and suddenly there he would be, those cornflower-blue eyes bugging out, not so pretty now, is he, mouth gaping, gasping for air, and before anyone even knows what is happening—dead, dead, dead!

  Or maybe a heart attack. Of course, he is but thirty-eight, but they happen at any age, do they not, and more so if one’s lifestyle is so vice-ridden. Or a freak accident, there are always those—a lightning strike, a flash flood, a chance tile falling off a roof just when my husband is passing below, his expensive suede shoes stepping ever so confidently along the sidewalk . . . But no, I do not wish him ill, I’m not a vindictive person, I’m kind and good, all I want is justice, only justice, I want him to pay for depriving me of any chance at my own happiness, for marrying me when he knew he didn’t love me, for cheating on me with impunity from the very beginning, as if there were nothing at all wrong with it, as if I—I!—forced him into it myself, but of course I did not, I was so very young and I loved him, I loved that man, once upon a time I loved him, I did my best to love him—but not dead, of course I do not wish him dead.

  Although—if he were dead—all the memories of my miserable years as his wife, all my humiliations and mistakes, all my poor choices, would die with him, and that would be just, that would be well deserved, being granted a clean slate like that, having a future again, unburdened, unmarred, haven’t I earned it after everything he’s put me through? Because I hate what our marriage has made me, a small, mute, unloved thing. If he were dead, she, too, would die with him. So, perhaps, I do want him dead.

  I want him dead because I hate the woman I am when I am with him.

  Oh, and my children, my children would be so much better off without him. Because, of course, I would be doing it for my children, not for myself. Not that—not that I would actually do anything, ever! Although hasn’t th
e magic mirror mentioned a witch who helps unhappy wives with their marital problems? There would be no harm, perhaps, in going to see her. Just to talk, nothing more—I wouldn’t have to follow through with anything. In truth, I couldn’t, for isn’t a lock of hair always required for such spells to work, and how would I get a lock of his hair, I’m never close enough to him, I would have to pretend to a reconciliation, force myself to sit down to a private dinner with him, distract him enough to slip a sleeping draught into his wine, then, worse, feign passion, trick him into my bed . . . But I would never do any of that, would never go that far, that would be so base, so treacherous, so shameful, I would never, and even if I would, he wouldn’t go along with it in any case, he wouldn’t be interested, would he, not after all those hateful things he said to me, none of them true, because I loved him once upon a time, I did love him, of course I did, so I couldn’t, I would never.

  So, then, just a consultation. One brief little consultation with the woman. Just to hear what she has to say, just to explore my options, just—

  My lawyer’s voice, kinder than usual, reaches me as if from another place.

  “Tell me what happened at the end,” she says.

  And I meet her eyes and, at last, tell her the truth.

  “Nothing. Nothing happened. I understood some things, that’s all. Hard things. Ugly things. Things I haven’t felt ready to admit to anyone.”

  “Such as?” She is gently insistent.

  “My marriage was not as I thought. And Roland may not have been the only one to blame for things ending. And also . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing,” I say, firmly. “Can we talk about the trial now, please?”

  And also, I was far from the innocent fairy-tale princess I had believed myself once.

  The Fairy-Tale Ending

  “Divorce is not unlike temporary insanity,” my therapist observes. “You can’t judge yourself too harshly. You can’t judge him too harshly, either. Believe me, life will go back to normal by and by.”

  This is our last session before the trial, which is set to start on Friday.

  “But he is doing all these awful things!” I cry. “He wants to take the children away from me, he wants to give me nothing and rob me of what little I have . . . And I—I did nothing wrong, you know. I tried to be a good wife. Never lied to him. Always did my best to help him. Put my marriage first.”

  Dr. Wand jots something down in her notebook, ponders briefly, and crosses it out. “You feel betrayed, and that’s understandable. Consider his point of view, though. He gave you everything he thought you wanted, he took care of you and the kids, surrounded you with luxury—and you ran away from it all and would now rather be cleaning other people’s toilets than go back to him. And to be frank, you never seemed that involved in his life while you were together, either. Do you even know what precisely he does for a living?”

  “Whose side is she on, anyway?” Melissa says loyally when I repeat the conversation to my sisters the following night, as we sit in Melissa’s living room drinking Gloria’s expensive Bordeaux.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Gloria muses. “Everyone has his truth. Roland may see things differently.”

  Melissa turns on her.

  “Whose side are you on, then?” she says fiercely.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the asshole, never did.” Gloria shrugs. “All I’m saying is, I bet he’s not the villain in his mind. Everyone is a hero of his own story.”

  Everything seems so ordinary, so peaceful—Melissa’s cheerful living room with its striped couches, floral pillows, polka-dotted curtains, and her daughters’ framed drawings on the walls, the company of my sisters, so easy to slip into, even after all these years, like some old, stretched cardigan—and yet I know that everything is about to change. The trial is only two days away now, and my anxiety is such that I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I can barely think straight. I notice Melissa glancing at me with concern. When she notices me noticing, she smiles, a bit too brightly, and says, in a clear ploy to distract me: “Speaking of stories, remember that book of fairy tales we used to love, the one in the red leather binding? I found it in the attic the other day, and now the girls don’t want anything else before bed.”

  “I never liked it,” Gloria announces.

  “You did, too!”

  “No. I never did. The women in these stories are all wimps and ciphers. No feelings, no thoughts of their own. No balls. All they want is to get rescued and to get married. Artifacts of masculine oppression, the whole bunch.”

  “Not true,” Melissa says. “Most fairy tales are subversive. Feminist, even. No, don’t snort, listen. These are stories women told to other women, old wives’ tales, spinners’ yarns, right? And who are their heroes? Women again. Snow White, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood. Girls who run away from home, choose husbands, escape wolves. They have names, they have characters, they have adventures. But the men? Just nameless blanks, the lot of them, and some are downright evil. Did you know, there is a version of Sleeping Beauty in which a married king comes across her, rapes her in her sleep, then goes back to his wife. She gives birth, still in her sleep, and it’s actually her baby who wakes her up trying to suckle her. And I’m sure the storytellers knew exactly what they were saying. And the Cinderella prince, what a dolt! First he takes one ugly stepsister to the palace, then the other, and he can’t tell they aren’t his true love until someone else points out their feet are bleeding? Not exactly the romance of the century! But Cinderella, she knew what she was doing marrying the guy. It never says she was in love. She just wanted to be a queen, and it sure beats washing dishes . . . Hold on, let me tiptoe upstairs, I’ll get the book from Myrtle’s nightstand.”

  She brings it down, and the three of us sit on the couch and look through it together, Melissa in the middle, turning pages, and Gloria, unconvinced by Melissa’s rhetoric, making dismissive noises as each new wide-eyed princess floats into view. Inwardly, I find myself inclining to Gloria’s opinion. The illustrations, though, are beautiful and unexpected, with the familiar tales of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm set by the artist in Victorian manors filled with glowing gas lamps and grandfather clocks, in Jazz Age mansions full of bobbed flappers, in oppressive suburban mid-century homes, all beige-tinted bourgeois comforts. My memories of the book are vague at best—as the youngest, I did not always share in my sisters’ pastimes—and yet, as the next picture comes into view, I seem to recall seeing it before, and am studying it with mild interest when Gloria takes the book out of Melissa’s hands.

  “French Baroque is appalling.” Only she is capable of infusing so few words with so much disdain. “Methinks we’ve had enough of regressing.” She shuts the book firmly. “Shall we now do something more age-appropriate and open the third bottle? By the way, remember how, when you were four or five, you went about talking with some ridiculous made-up accent, sniffing some precious bouquet you unearthed somewhere, drinking milk with your pinkie stuck out, and pretending you were an adopted child of some foreign grandee and we your evil stepsisters?”

  “I did not!”

  “You most certainly did.”

  “You did, you know,” Melissa chimes in, smiling.

  “No, did I, really?” I had honestly forgotten all about it. “I must have been a horrible sister,” I say, half laughing, half repentant. “But it was hard growing up as a follow-up act to you two.”

  “Nonsense, you were always the prettiest,” Melissa says.

  “Maybe so, but it didn’t count for much with our mother, did it? I mean, Gloria, you were tough, you had brains and ambitions, and you, you were so outgoing, and you had that laugh, everyone liked you. But what did I have, apart from my silly blond curls? I wasn’t good at anything, Mom said so all the time. Not good at anything other than mopping dirty bathroom floors, that’s what she told me, over and over, until I re
ally couldn’t stand working in that hotel. You two were always her favorites. Even the name she gave me, I always hated it, the most boring name of the lot . . . Well, I guess I just needed to get away from home so badly, I had to marry the first suitable man who asked. And Roland was certainly suitable. Of course, we all ran as far and as fast as we could, though in very different directions, no?”

  “What a load of horseshit.” Gloria pours more wine into her glass, then, after a moment’s hesitation, mine. “Mother never played favorites. Hers was tough love with all of us, you don’t know half the stuff she said to me and Mel. Every time I brought home a less-than-perfect grade, she told me I’d die drunk in a gutter. ‘Just like your father.’ That’s what she said to me. Every single time. There were days I was sure I would always hate her. Well, what did I know then, I was fifteen. So, fine, she wasn’t easy to live with, but she worked herself sick for us and she raised us the best she knew how . . . And there is absolutely nothing wrong with your name. It was our great-grandmother’s name. It’s beautiful. And it suits you perfectly.”

  Melissa is frowning at me.

  “But you loved him, right?” she asks. “When you got married? Didn’t you?”

  And just like that—whether because of all the wine I have drunk, or the relief of speaking to my sisters after the decade and a half of near-estrangement, or the coziness of Melissa’s home, her girls’ happy drawings on the walls, her good, stolid husband asleep upstairs, or Gloria’s matter-of-fact, plainspoken vulgarity—something in me breaks loose, something vast and cold slides away, and from below, released, the emotions swell, and the truths, their dark, warm, salty flow much like the sea tide, much like weeping, and I see what I have been afraid to see, what I have hidden from myself for so long behind the story of an innocent lovesick wife put upon by a heartless man who tricked her into a marriage without a spark.