The Wife

by Meg Wolitzer

  Suddenly the brunette flight attendant appeared again, the same woman Joe and I had been served by on our way over, she of the booming bosom, who had leaned across him with her scented acreage of flesh and her basket of cookies and brought him briefly to attention. If she’d been there in the moments when he was dying, would she have saved him? He’d always been so directed toward women, yet so uninterested in them at the same time, a disparity that caused a kind of bored erection to lift, a pointless hot-air balloon, a need to possess a woman that was immediately followed by a need to be somewhere else, to be out in the world, walking around and thinking of simple things that men like Joe Castleman love: the taste of a barely cooked steak with a heap of fried onions, the mossy smell of an aged single-malt scotch, the perfect prose of a novella written by a genius in Dublin nearly a hundred years ago.

  “Mrs. Castleman, I’m so sorry about your loss,” the flight attendant said to me when she leaned over now with a tray of canapés, and I thanked her. Mrs. Kirsti Salonen and I chewed the soft dough in silence. Then dinner was placed in front of us, and we ate that, too, and drank wine and settled back into our seats for the ride.

  Hours passed, and eventually we reached the time in any transatlantic flight when travelers fall into a kind of shallow sleep, eyes skittering beneath their lids, no dreams penetrating the endlessly rebreathed air above everyone’s lowered or thrown-back head. Mrs. Salonen was now asleep beside me, her head leaning slightly too close, as though we were a couple, two lovers crossing the Atlantic. She would have been embarrassed if she saw how near to me she was; she would have drawn back and murmured apologies, but I would have seen for myself that even beneath a thick lacquer of formality, there was often a stirring toward love.

  If Joe had lived, he would have been wide awake beside me. Bored and restless, his fingers moving on the thick, fleshy armrest. I would have been dozing and he would have been the sentinel, staying alert. I thought of how, that first day we’d met in his class at Smith, he’d read the end of “The Dead” aloud, a piece of writing so memorable that it briefly silenced everyone who read it or heard it. Who in the world could write like that? Neither of us could; neither of us could even try. We’d just shaken our heads, marveling. Then one day we’d talked, and stirred, and met in Professor H. Tanaka’s bed, and started a life. It had swiftly carried us here, to the highest point, the lowest point, the end.

  Now the lights were all off up and down the rows of the airplane, except for my own, which sent its yellow beam spreading down onto me and onto the edges of Mrs. Kirsti Salonen’s hair. I was almost asleep when I suddenly became aware that someone was standing over me, saying something.

  “Joan.”

  I looked up and was startled to see Nathaniel Bone. His trip was over, too, and he was returning home.

  “Nathaniel,” I said. “I didn’t know you were on the plane.”

  “Yeah, I’m way in the back. In steerage,” he whispered. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here. You probably want to be alone.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Listen, my God, I’m so sorry about Joe. I was going to write you a condolence letter when I got home. I’ve already started composing it in my head. I’m stunned, Joan. Stunned.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Beside me, my seatmate moved around and opened her eyes briefly.

  I turned back to Nathaniel. “We can’t talk here,” I said. “Maybe we should go back to where you’re sitting.”

  He nodded eagerly, and I stood up and followed him down the aisle, parting the ice blue Marimekko curtains that separated the first-class passengers in the nose of this Finnair plane from the larger group lying in repose in business class. They were, it seemed, actually all businessmen, their ties loosened and tossed to the side, their heads flung into profile, eyes shut, computers resting on tray tables, or clutched in laps like transitional objects. Then, onward through the next curtain we went, entering the bad-breath air of Economy, the long, enormous cabin with its pockets of darkness and light, entire families sitting four across, with bags of chips openmouthed, rustling, their bodies turning rotisserie-style under inadequate squares of blanket, the occasional baby howling and being dandled by an overworked mother singing a Finnish lullaby. The aisle itself was littered as though there had been a windstorm. I stepped on a newspaper, and then on a woman’s shoe.

  In the second-to-last row, Nathaniel’s seatmate was asleep, leaning halfway onto the other seat, and because the seat across the aisle was taken, we stood together in the very rear of the plane, by the bathroom and the metal drinks cart.

  “Who’s meeting you at Kennedy?” he asked.

  “My daughters.”

  I’d called Susannah and Alice from the hospital, and their voices, even from so far away, and with the accompaniment of that inevitable overseas hiss, had sounded so forlorn. Heartbroken. “Oh no, Mom,” Susannah had said, sobbing. “Oh my God,” said Alice. “Dad.”

  I’d had to leave a message on David’s answering machine with the news. (It was a miracle to me that he even owned an answering machine.) I didn’t like telling him this way, but I wanted him to learn it from me, instead of from somewhere else. He hadn’t called back yet. I didn’t know what his reaction would be, whether he would seem indifferent or glib or even, maybe, heartbroken, too. I really had no way to predict.

  “You won’t have to go back to Weathermill alone,” Nathaniel was saying now. “That’s good.”

  “I know,” I said, imagining the way Alice would come in and commandeer the house, and Susannah would immediately make me a jar of preserved lemons that I would never use and which would become barnacled in the back of the pantry. But at least both daughters would be there at night, sleeping in the rooms they grew up in. Now grown women too big for their childhood beds, they would return, briefly leaving their own families to help their widowed mother find her way, and to help themselves through the bewilderment and clumsy sorrow brought on by the death of a parent.

  At night, when I found myself unable to sleep, just like Joe I’d wander the house and pause outside their doors. I’d hear them breathing, and maybe it would calm me down a little. They were still my girls, my children, Joe’s and mine, along with everything else we had: the huge flea market of things we’d assembled, gathered up, the astonishing array we’d amassed throughout the years, like any couple does.

  “I came to the Academic Bookstore like I said I would,” Nathaniel was telling me softly. “You didn’t show, and I was surprised. Then I heard someone talking about Joe Castleman, saying he was dead, and I thought, This can’t be, and I ran back to the hotel to ask the concierge if what I’d heard about Mr. Castleman was true, and he said it was. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.”

  Bone was both heartfelt and unconvincing, I thought, and I was reminded that Joe had never liked him, and that I didn’t either. He was insinuating, he was always around, he was like a cat in a bookstore window, letting his tail slowly drape across all the books as he wandered by. Joe’s instinct was sound when he’d decided not to give him anything all those years ago.

  Now Bone was waiting to see what I would tell him. I wanted to tell him nothing. What Joe and I had done together was my business and not his. I didn’t want to make a gift of this information; I didn’t want to let him run with it. It was mine, and I’d do with it what I wanted, but not yet. Joe had just died and I was now alone, the slap of it stinging, the rest of life waiting.

  Talent, I knew, didn’t just disappear from the earth, didn’t fly up into separate particles and evaporate. It had a long half-life; maybe I could use it eventually. I could use parts of what I’d seen and done and had with him, making something vicious or beautiful or loving or regretful out of it, and maybe even putting my name on it.

  “What you were talking about the other day at the Golden Onion,” I said to Nathaniel. “About Joe and me? About his writing, and how he hadn’t seemed talented early on?”

  Bone nodded, and his long hand jerke
d slightly, as though his impulse, like any journalist’s, was to reach for his notepad. But he stopped himself and ran his hand through his hair instead.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, I wanted to say that what you implied isn’t true.”

  “It’s not?” His voice became suddenly flatter, and he looked hard at me.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. It would be great if it were,” I went on. “If I could claim to have written like that.” He kept looking at me, shaking his head. “I guess in a way I was sort of playing with you the other day,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh,” he said, slouching down, turning into himself. “I see.”

  Then he shrugged, absorbing the disappointment all at once, starting to move on. For though he hadn’t gotten what he’d hoped, he’d actually been there in Finland when Castleman died, and that was an extraordinary feat, he imagined. He would flesh out the final scenes for his manuscript based on the words of ancillary figures in the story: nurses’ aides in strange, pie-crust-crimped hats, frightened maids at the hotel, the young Ibsen-character doctor, who may well have provided him with a physical description of Joe in his last moments: the slack mouth, the powerlessness of an old man with a fragile heart.

  Nathaniel Bone would be all right, I saw; he’d go on and on, rarely at a loss, always being slipped information, treated specially, given access, allowed to roam the world. He didn’t really need anything further from me now, after all, and yet here we were together, and for some reason I felt I ought to think of something else to say before I went back to my seat.

  “Look,” I told him, “I’ll help you with the archives if you want. You can publish a couple of the letters, maybe.”

  “All right, great,” he said, but his voice was neutral and he was probably already thinking about something else: about how odd and shocking this trip had been, or about resetting his watch back to New York time, or about a woman’s long, warm back pressed up against him.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” I added.

  All around us, people rearranged themselves in their seats like dogs in little beds, trying again and again for comfort. Another flight attendant, this one blond, opaque, unknowable, eased past us in the narrow space, carrying a tangle of headphones down the aisle. The airplane shuddered, bounced slightly, and then lifted itself higher above the world.

  “Joe was a wonderful writer,” I said. “And I will always miss him.”

  A SCRIBNER READING GROUP GUIDE

  * * *

  THE WIFE

  1. After attempting her first short story in the library stacks at Smith College, Joan, the protagonist of The Wife, imagines “what it [is] like to be a writer: Even with the eyes closed, you [can] see” (page 46). Explain how this observation could also be made of wives. What does Joan see even when other people think her eyes are closed?

  2. In Chapter 2, Joan meets the writer Elaine Mozell, who warns Joan against trying to get the attention of the literary men’s club. How might Joan’s life have been different without Elaine’s discouraging advice haunting her?

  3. On a trip to Vietnam with Joe, Joan finds herself on an airstrip, in a segregated clump, with the wives. But Lee, the famous female journalist, chats with the men. Joan laments to herself “I shouldn’t be here! I wanted to cry. I’m not like the rest of them!” (page 134) How is Joan different from the rest of the wives who appear throughout the novel? In what ways is she similar?

  4. Joe’s friend Harry Jacklin praises Joe’s work, telling him, “You’ve got that extra gene, that sensitivity toward women” (page 25). Indeed, we discover that Joe’s “sensitivity” is primarily thanks to his wife. How do you think Joan would have been received in the literary world if her name had been attached to the same material? Do you think she would have been as successful?

  5. After Joe receives the call confirming he has won the Helsinki Prize, Joan envisions the days ahead, realizing that “I wasn’t going to handle this well; it would inflame me with the worst kind of envy” (page 37). Discuss envy, regret, and loss with respect to Joan’s choices regarding her writing career.

  6. Over the years, many people come to admire Joan for her steely resolve in the face of blatant betrayal and infidelity. Is Joan, in fact, an admirable character? Why do you think Joan waits so long to decide to leave Joe?

  7. There is a lot of talk from the women about “The Men.” Specifically, Joan describes Joe as “one of those men who own the world” (page 10), and Elaine Mozell harbors contempt for the men who conspire to “keep the women’s voices hushed and tiny” (page 53). What is your opinion of Joe and the men he represents? Considering that the reader sees him through the eyes of his wife, do you think he is presented fairly?

  8. On being a wife, Joan admits: “I liked the role at first, assessed the power it contained, which for some reason many people don’t see, but it’s there” (page 119). Discuss the quiet power of wives, particularly during the late fifties, when Joan is initiated into wifehood. Do you think the power wives wield is more visible today?

  9. Toward the end of the novel, Joan reveals the secret that she and Joe long shared about his career. Joan acknowledges that, among others, her “children, each in their own separate ways, had suspicions” (page 201). As a reader, are you surprised by Joan’s revelation or does Joe’s sudden merit as a writer seem suspect? What clues support your hunch?

  10. At one point, their children, David and Alice, go so far as to confront both Joan and Joe about their secret. Do you think the children are convinced by Joan’s staunch denial? If Joan were your mother, would you be disappointed or proud of her?

  Look for more Simon & Schuster reading group guides online and download them for free at www.bookclubreader.com.

  About the Author

  MEG WOLITZER is the author of five previous novels, including Surrender, Dorothy and This Is Your Life. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City with her husband and sons.

  MEG WOLITZER is the author of Sleepwalking; This Is Your Life; Surrender, Dorothy; The Position; and The Ten-Year Nap. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS

  COVER DESIGN BY JENNIFER LEW

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY MYRIAM BABIN

  ALSO BY MEG WOLITZER

  Surrender, Dorothy

  Friends for Life

  This Is Your Life

  Hidden Pictures

  Sleepwalking

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Meg Wolitzer

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  First Scribner trade paperback edition 2004

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

  Text set in Aldus

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:

  Wolitzer, Meg.

  The wife: a novel/Meg Wolitzer.

  p. cm.

  1. Authors’ spouses—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Co
llaboration—Fiction.

  3. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 4. Married women—Fiction.

  5. Novelists—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.O564 W5 2003

  813'.54—dc21 2002036660

  ISBN-13: 978-0-684-86940-7

  ISBN-10: 0-684-86940-3

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-5666-1 (Pbk)

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-5666-1 (Pbk)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8488-9 (eBook)