From: Netherfield Center
Subject: Marriage Survey
Date: May 4, 5:22 PM
To: alicebuckle
Dear Alice Buckle,
Thank you for your interest in our study and for filling out the preliminary questionnaire. Congratulations! We’re happy to inform you that you have been selected to participate in the Netherfield Center Study—Marriage in the 21st Century. You have successfully met three of the initial criteria for inclusion in this study: married for more than ten years, school-age children, and monogamous.
As we explained to you in the preliminary questionnaire, this will be an anonymous study. In order to protect your anonymity, this is the last email we will send to you at [email protected]. We’ve taken the liberty of setting up a Netherfield Center account for your use. Your email address for the purposes of the study is Wife22@netherfield
center.org and the password is 12345678. Please log on to our website and change the password at your earliest convenience.
From this point on, all correspondence will be sent to the Wife22 address. We apologize if the pseudonym sounds clinical, but this is done with your best interest in mind. It’s only by striking your real name from our records that we can offer you complete confidentiality.
A researcher has been assigned to your case and you will be hearing from him shortly. Rest assured all our researchers are highly credentialed.
The stipend of $1,000 will be paid upon completion of the survey.
Once again, thank you for your participation. You can take pride in the fact that you, along with a carefully selected group of men and women from across the country, are participating in a landmark study that may very well change how the world looks at the institution of marriage.
Sincerely,
The Netherfield Center
I quickly log on to the new Wife 22 account.
From: researcher101
Subject: Re: Marriage Survey
Date: May 4, 5:25 PM
To: Wife 22
Dear Wife 22,
Allow me to introduce myself—I’m Researcher 101 and I will be your point person for the Marriage in the 21st Century Study. First, my credentials. I have a PhD in Social Work and a Master’s in Psychology. I have been a researcher in the field of marriage studies for nearly two decades.
I’m sure you’re wondering how this works. Basically, I’m on a here-if-you-need-me basis. I’m happy to answer any questions or address any concerns you may have along the way.
Attached is the first questionnaire. The questions will be sent to you in a random order; this is done intentionally. Some of the questions you may find atypical, and some of the questions are not about marriage per se, but of a more general nature (about your background, education, life experiences etc.); please strive to complete all the questions. I suggest you fill out the questionnaire quickly, without thinking too much about it. We’ve found this kind of rapid-fire response results in the most honest responses. I’m looking forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
Researcher 101
Before I took the preliminary survey, I’d Googled the Netherfield Center website and found out it was affiliated with the UCSF Medical Center. Because of UCSF’s stellar reputation, I filled it out and emailed it off with little thought. What could answering a few questions hurt? But now that I’ve been formally accepted AND assigned a researcher, I’m having second thoughts about participating in an anonymous survey. A survey I’m probably not supposed to tell anybody (including my husband) I’m taking part in.
My heart ca-cungs in my chest. Having a secret makes me feel like a teenager. A young woman with everything still in front of her—breasts, strange cities, the unfurling of hundreds of yet-to-be-lived summers, winters, and springs.
I open the attachment before I lose my nerve.
1. Forty-three, no, forty-four.
2. Bored.
3. Once a week.
4. Satisfactory to better than most.
5. Oysters.
6. Three years ago.
7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
8. Ambien (once in a blue moon), fish oil tablets, multi-vitamin, B-Complex, calcium, vitamin D, gingko biloba (for mental sharpness, well, really for memory because people keep saying “That is the third time you asked me that!”).
9. A life with surprises. A life without surprises. The clerk at 7-Eleven licking her finger to separate the stack of plastic bags and then touching my salt and vinegar potato chips with her still damp licked finger and then sliding my potato chips into the previously licked plastic bag, thus doubly salivating my purchase.
10. I hope so.
11. I think so.
12. Occasionally, but not because I’ve ever seriously considered it. I’m the kind of person who likes to imagine the worst, that way the worst can never take me by surprise.
13. The chicken.
14. He makes an amazing vinaigrette. He remembers to change the batteries every six months in the smoke alarms. He can do minor plumbing repairs, so unlike most of my friends I never have to hire somebody to fix a dripping faucet. Also he looks very good in his Carhartt pants. I know I’m avoiding answering the question—I’m not sure why. Let me get back to you on this one.
15. Uncommunicative. Dismissive. Distant.
16. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
17. We’ve been together for nineteen years and three hundred and something days, my point is very, very, well.
This is easy. Too easy. Who knew that confession could bring on such a dopamine rush?
Suddenly the front door is flung open and Peter yells, “I call the bathroom first.”
He has a thing about not using the bathroom at school, so he holds it all day. I close my laptop. This is also my favorite time of the day—when the empty house fills back up again and within an hour all of my de-cluttering is for naught. For some reason this gives me pleasure. The satisfying inevitability of it all.
Zoe walks into the kitchen and makes a face. “Tuna casserole?”
“It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“I already ate.”
“At volleyball practice?”
“Karen’s mother stopped on the way home and got us burritos.”
“So Peter’s eaten, too?”
Zoe nods and opens the fridge.
I sigh. “What are you looking for? I thought you just ate.”
“I don’t know. Nothing,” she says, closing the door.
“Dang! What did you do to your hair?” asks Peter, walking into the kitchen.
“Oh, God, I forgot. One of my kids was playing hairdresser. I thought it was kind of Audrey Hepburnesque. No?”
“No,” says Zoe.
“No,” echoes Peter.
I slide the elastic out of my hair and try and smooth it out.
“Maybe if you combed it once in a while,” says Zoe.
“Why is everybody so comb crazy? For your information, there are certain types of hair that should never be combed. You should just let it dry naturally.”
“Uh-huh,” says Zoe, grabbing her backpack. “I’ve got a ton of homework. See you in 2021.”
“Half an hour of Modern Warfare before homework?” asks Peter.
“Ten minutes,” I say.
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
Peter throws his arms around me. Even though he’s twelve, I still occasionally get hugs. A few minutes later, the sounds of guns and bombs issue forth from the living room.
My phone chirps. It’s a text from William.
Sorry.
Client dinner.
See u 10ish.
I open my laptop, quickly reread my answers, and hit Send.
7
&n
bsp; From: researcher101
Subject: #13
Date: May 5, 8:05 AM
To: Wife 22
Dear Wife 22,
Thanks for your first set of answers and for getting them back to me so quickly. I have one question. In regards to #13, did you mean to write “children,” not “chicken”?
Regards,
Researcher 101
From: Wife 22
Subject: Re: #13
Date: May 5, 10:15 AM
To: researcher101
Dear Researcher 101,
I’m sorry about that. I suspect my chickens, I mean children, are to blame. Or more likely auto correct.
Best,
Wife 22
P.S. Is there any significance to our numbers or are they just randomly assigned? I can’t believe I’m only the 22nd wife to participate in the survey.
From: researcher101
Subject: Re: #13
Date: May 6, 11:23 AM
To: Wife 22
Dear Wife 22,
Both of our numbers are randomly assigned, you’re right about that. With each round of the survey we cycle through 500 numbers and then with the next round we begin at 1 again.
Regards,
Researcher 101
From: Wife 22
Subject: #2 upon second thought
Date: May 6, 4:32 PM
To: researcher101
Dear Researcher 101,
“Bored” is not the reason I’m participating in the study. I’m participating because this year I will turn 45, which is the same age my mother was when she died. If she were alive I would be talking to her instead of taking this survey. We would be having the conversation I imagine mothers have with their daughters when they’re in their mid-forties. We would talk about our sex drives (or lack thereof), about the stubborn ten pounds that we gain and lose over and over again, and about how hard it is to find a trustworthy plumber. We would trade tips on the secret to roasting a perfect chicken, how to turn the gas off when there’s an emergency, how to get stains out of grout. She would ask me questions like, are you happy, sweetheart? Does he treat you right? Can you imagine growing old with him?
My mother will never be a grandmother. Never have a gray eyebrow hair. Never eat my tuna casserole.
That’s why I’m participating in this study.
Please revise my answer to #2.
Best,
Wife 22
From: researcher101
Subject: Re: #2 upon second thought
Date: May 6, 8:31 PM
To: Wife 22
Dear Wife 22,
Thank you for your honesty. Just so you know, subjects frequently revise their answers or send addendums. I’m very sorry for your loss.
Sincerely,
Researcher 101
8
18. Run, dive, pitch a tent, bake bread, build bonfires, read Stephen King, get up to change the channel, spend hours on the phone talking to friends, kiss strange men, have sex with strange men, flirt, wear bikinis, wake most mornings happy for no good reason (likely due to flat stomach no matter what was eaten night before), drink tequila, hum Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs,” lie in grass and dream of future, of perfect life and marriage to perfect one true love.
19. Make lunches, suggest to family they are capable of making better choices; alert children to BO, stranger danger, and stray crumbs on corners of lips. Prepare preteen son for onset of hormones. Prepare husband for onset of perimenopause and what that means for him (PMS 30 days of the month rather than the two days he has become accustomed to). Buy perennials. Kill perennials. Text, IM, chat, upload. Discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store, ignore messages, delete, lose keys, mishear what everybody says (jostling becomes jaw sling, fatwa becomes fuckher), worry—early deafness, early dementia, early Alzheimer’s or unhappy with sex and life and marriage and need to do something about it?
20. Burger King cashier, Royal Manor Nursing Home Aide, waitress Friday’s, waitress J.C. Hilary’s, intern Charles Playhouse, Copywriter Peavey Patterson, playwright, wife, mother, and currently, Kentwood Elementary School drama teacher for grades kindergarten through fifth.
9
“Alice!” William yells from the kitchen. “Alice!” I hear his footsteps coming down the hall.
I quickly close the Netherfield Center questionnaire window and log on to a celebrity gossip website.
“Here you are,” he says.
He’s dressed for work: khakis and a pale purple dress shirt. I bought him that shirt, knowing how good he’d look in that color with his dark hair and eyes. When I brought it home he’d protested, of course.
“Men don’t wear lavender,” he told me.
“Yes, but men wear thistle,” I said.
Sometimes all you need to do to get men to agree with you is call things by another name.
“Nice shirt,” I say.
His eyes dart over to my laptop. “Gwen Stefani and the Sisterhood of the Terrible Pants?”
“What do you need?” I ask.
“Oh, those are terrible. She looks like Oliver Twist. Yes, I need something but I forgot what.”
This is a typical response—one I’m used to. Both of us frequently wander into a room bewildered and ask the other if he or she has any idea what we’re doing there.
“What’s up with you?” he asks.
My eyes fall on the bill for the motorcycle insurance. “Well. I wish you’d make a decision about the motorcycle. It’s been sitting in the driveway forever. You never take it out.”
The motorcycle takes up precious space in our small driveway. More than once I’ve accidentally tapped it while pulling in.
“One of these days I’ll start driving it again.”
“You’ve been saying that for years. And every year we keep on paying the excise tax and the insurance.”
“Yes, but I mean it now. Soon,” he says.
“Soon what?”
“Soon I’ll be driving it,” he repeats. “More than I have been.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, distracted, going back to my computer.
“Wait. That’s all you want to talk about? The motorcycle?”
“William, you came looking for me, remember?”
And no, the motorcycle is not all I want to talk about. I want to have a conversation with my husband that goes deeper than insurance policies and taxes and what time will you be home and did you call the guy about the gutters, but we seem to be stuck here floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool propped up on those Styrofoam noodles.
“And there’s plenty of things we can talk about,” I say.
“Like what?”
Now is my chance to tell him about the marriage study—oh, you wouldn’t believe the ridiculous thing I signed up for and they ask the craziest questions but it’s for the good of science because you know there is a science to marriage, you may not believe it but it’s true—but I don’t. Instead I say, “Like how I’m trying, completely unsuccessfully mind you, to convince the third-grade parents that the geese are the most important roles in the school play, even though the geese don’t have any lines. Or we could talk about our son, Peter, I mean, Pedro, being gay. Or I could ask you about KKM. Still working on semiconductors?”
“Band-Aids.”
“Poor baby. Are you stuck on Band-Aids?” I sing that line. I can’t help myself.
“We don’t know if Peter is gay,” says William, sighing. We’ve had this conversation many times before.
“He may be.”
“He’s twelve.”
“Twelve is not too early to know. I just have a feeling. A sense. A mother knows these sorts of things
. I read this article about all these tweens coming out in middle school. It’s happening earlier and earlier. I bookmarked it. I’ll email it to you.”
“No, thank you.”
“William, we should educate ourselves. Prepare.”
“For what?”
“For the fact that our son might be gay.”
“I don’t get it, Alice. Why are you so invested in Peter’s sexuality? Are you saying you want him to be gay?”
“I want him to know we support him no matter what his sexual orientation. No matter who he is.”
Wife 22: A Novel Page 3