The Engineer's Wife

by Tracey Enerson Wood

  “Not my best moment. But I paid for my mistake.” The sad memory rose to the surface, but I tamped it back down. I thought instead of our healthy baby boy, now nearly grown. Chilled by the damp air, I tugged my wrap closer.

  “We paid. Or am I the only one who wanted more children?” he said.

  “You know that’s not so. Why are you bringing this up now? You want to discuss what happened sixteen years ago?”

  “No. I want to discuss what happened eighteen years ago. You might recall that event.”

  Finally, the moon emerged from the cloud, and I could more clearly see his face, creased and weary, strands in his beard shining silver in the light.

  “Our wedding? I know we haven’t properly celebrated our anniversaries, but—”

  “Not the wedding. Our marriage.”

  The dread building in the pit of my stomach deepened.

  “My vision may be weak, but I’m not blind. And of course there’s talk.”

  “Good heavens, you know better than to listen to gossip. Especially if it concerns me—an irresistible target.”

  “Perhaps. But there’s truth to it. We’ve been torn apart.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  Wash shook his head. “I never had the brain my father expected of me. I lost my soul in the war. My body has been broken building this bridge. But I know this much. I still love you too much to hold you against your will…as if I or anyone could do that.”

  “I never left you. Quite the opposite.” What did Martin tell him? I was about to ask.

  “I’m not the man I was eighteen years ago, it’s true, so you have some reason to find another. But if I am to preserve what is left of my heart and my dignity, you must choose. I cannot—I will not—have a wife who seeks another man’s affections.”

  Oh God. Martin’s whispered confidences with eyes flicking toward me. The discussion in the street, pointing to PT. I blinked as it all clicked into place. Martin, that bastard.

  “Nothing happened.” I spun to peer with him into the dark water far below. He still cringed at an unexpected touch, but I took a risk and gently placed my hand over his.

  He slid his cane back and forth along the railing, knocking my hand loose. “I disagree.”

  I tried to catch his eye. “Wash, there isn’t—”

  “You remember when the workers were striking, and you offered an ultimatum?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “They were to report to work or walk away.” He grimaced with a mixture of anger and sadness. “Well, this is my ultimatum. It shouldn’t be difficult to decide. You have always known what you wanted.”

  “Wash—” I pushed against his shoulder to turn him to me. “Listen to me.”

  “No, you listen.” He stepped away, pointed his cane toward Manhattan. “Come with me to Trenton and never see him again.”

  “Wash, you don’t mean this. I don’t think you understand.”

  “Or leave me.” The moon shone behind him, lighting his profile but shrouding his face in darkness.

  I froze in place, my tongue and lips refusing to form words. A gust of wind blew my dress, and it glowed strangely in the eerie light. Tendrils of my hair broke free and whipped at my face. I no longer knew the man standing a few steps away. Does he not love me anymore? Is this his way of telling me to go? For once in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say. I held my hands out to him in a silent plea.

  “But a soldier fights fiercest for his own turf. And I am not ready to give up the fight.” He threw down his cane, his face tight, arms up as if to strike. He crushed me to him, nearly taking my breath. “God help me, I love you.” His eyes shone with tears and moonlight, and his wet cheek against mine told me all I needed to know. He kissed me passionately, and I dissolved into him, lost in the warmth of his arms. Overwhelmed by his kisses, I was barely aware of him lifting my dress.

  I believe we unintentionally made history when we made love in the middle of that moonlit bridge.

  Thirty-Eight

  The note Stone had given me seemed some type of joke, as in it, he requested I search for yet another note on the bridge. So the next day I went back, this time with Johnny. He was old enough to understand more things now, and I felt it important to prepare him for the changes ahead. We watched workers repairing damage from the panic and ignored the passersby as they stared, pointed, and shook their heads at us.

  Johnny seemed oblivious to all this, being consumed with self-interest like most fifteen-year-olds. “So I’m definitely thinking of attending Rensselaer.”

  “Son, you shouldn’t feel obliged. If anything, all this should scare you away.”

  “No, I want to. And I have the grades, at least so far.”

  I dodged the spit of a passerby. Johnny lunged toward him, but I grabbed his arm. “No question you’re capable, Johnny, but your father and I agree, it is better to follow your own heart. We’ll send you anywhere you want to go. Besides, I’m not sure I could endure another generation of this life.”

  “Mother.” His newly deepened voice still startled me. “This is who I am. John, not Johnny anymore.”

  We arrived at the blockade that Wash had relocked the night before. I searched for Stone’s note.

  “Come on. Let’s go on the bridge anyway.” He rattled against the barrier.

  “No, John.”

  “Then why did we come here? So you could torture yourself? And me?”

  “You’ll survive.”

  “How would you know?” he asked in that churlish manner of a boy not yet a man.

  “Because I raised you to be strong and independent.”

  “You raised me? Ha!”

  “Well, it was a community effort.” I could admit that much. I searched the area. “His note said he’d leave something for me here. Strange man. Help me find it.”

  “Raising a child, caring for Pa, and building the bridge must have been difficult. Is that…is that why I’m an only child?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He cocked his head.

  “We were blessed with only one child. I’m not sure knowing any more would interest you.”

  “I’m grown now.”

  “So you are,” I said, admiring my tall, dark-haired son with Wash’s blue eyes and earnest face. I wanted that moment back. That moment in the nursery, bouncing the ball with him, perfect in his innocence. I wanted back all the moments that I didn’t have with him. The hours I spent at the work site instead of helping him with his homework, going to the park or the zoo, watching him delight in the animals.

  I wanted both worlds and to show that women could do it all. But maybe we had to choose a slice of this and a slice of that. My choices kept me from having another child and from a good part of raising the one I had.

  “Childbirth can be dangerous, Son.” Perhaps American doctors couldn’t have done any better, but Wash would never forgive me anyway.

  But John was already back to the task at hand, searching for the note. “What’s this?” He found a very tattered and faded rag doll, tucked behind the Do Not Enter sign. He handed me the rag doll. “What happened when I was born?”

  I pressed my lips together; it wasn’t fair to burden him with that newly raw wound.

  John’s eyes softened. “It doesn’t matter. I love you, Mama.” He draped an arm across my shoulder. “And the bridge is beautiful.”

  “I love you too, Son. It is beautiful, isn’t it?” My brow furrowed. I had to break the news to him that we might be moving and he would have to change schools. “But now that it’s nearly done, our lives will change.”

  I turned over the old rag doll and found an envelope pinned to its back. In faded ink, I could just make out an 1847 English postmark and the addressee: Mr. Benjamin Stone. Scrawled over that were chilling words: We shall be together in the cold depths, our
fates forever entwined.

  Stone had told me to be there. Was he waiting for me? My mind raced, and I looked past the barrier to see if anyone was on the bridge. Sure enough, a figure in dark clothing was leaning over the guardrail. It seemed he was talking to someone who had gone over the side. Panic rose within me. Whose fate was to be sealed with his? What about Wash’s strange behavior?

  “Good God, Johnny, they’re going to jump!”

  Johnny hurdled over the barrier and ran full speed. I fumbled with the key in the padlock, my hands shaking. At last, the lock opened, and I hurried after Johnny.

  I reached the middle of the bridge in time to see a figure hanging on the outside of the safety railing. As I rushed toward it, the hands gave way, and the figure disappeared. I whirled. Where was Johnny? The memory of him falling off the barge as a toddler flashed through my mind. Surely, he wouldn’t jump from that great height to save someone? Unless it was his father. I screamed, “Johnny!”

  * * *

  We stayed long enough to see the police pull Stone’s body into a boat, then call off the search. We returned home shaken but unharmed. Johnny had scrambled up the cable for a better view, and I was too relieved to scold him.

  The tattered old rag doll and Stone’s note found its way back with us as well. My instinct had been to toss it in the water, but his curious postscript prevented me: Say goodbye to Gertrude for me. My fingers tracing the doll’s face, I pictured the little girl who had once done the same. Perhaps I should have shared the story with Wash. Instead, I tossed the doll into the fireplace and let the flames lick away the pain.

  In the library, a police officer was on his way out. Wash poured whiskey in the far corner.

  “Like a glass?” he offered, his eyes flitting to my tear-stained face and disheveled hair. “Don’t cry for him. His soul is finally at peace.”

  He handed me the glass, and I allowed the liquid to burn sense into my throat.

  “And your soul?”

  “Unlike Stone, the problem is not mine to solve.” He circled the whiskey in his glass.

  “So it’s all my fault.” The bridge closure, the suicide, or PT? I wasn’t sure which problem he was referring to, only that he blamed me.

  “I wasn’t cavorting with other women.”

  Oh, that one. “That was never a problem.”

  “Not possible, you mean.” Clearly, he had no intention of soothing my rattled nerves from the horror his son and I had witnessed. Of course, he had no idea of the anxious moments I had spent, wondering if he had also plunged out of my life forever.

  “Wash, last night—”

  “What? Surprised I still can?”

  “Only when you’re angry. Not exactly the best timing.”

  “Blame me for things I can’t help.” He slammed his glass onto the table.

  “I understand your condition. For thirteen years, I’ve seen you able to walk one day and confined to bed the next.”

  “Hard to live with, I know. So you have a choice.”

  “Wash, I do love you.”

  “That isn’t the question.”

  “It’s not your condition I find unbearable.”

  “Just me.”

  I winced. “You know that’s not so.”

  “Then you love PT in the way you don’t love me anymore.”

  “No!”

  “You deny loving him?”

  “No. I don’t deny that.” I drained my glass. “God, this is difficult.”

  Wash folded his arms across his chest, self-defense of the heart. “Tell me.”

  “I’m not a man, so perhaps I don’t understand some things.”

  He put his palms up as if to say What?

  “You left me. Abandoned me when things changed in our bed.”

  “Good God.”

  “I don’t mean only physically.”

  “How can I not turn away when you get what you need somewhere else?” He scrunched a fistful of his hair. “How much do you wish me to suffer?”

  A terrible realization washed over me. “You still think I’m having an affair.”

  A slight nod.

  Why didn’t he believe me? Damn that Martin!

  “I’ve told you nothing happened. How long have you felt this way?” I gently palmed his cheek and held his face toward me. There was to be no escaping into his shell. But the pained squint in his eyes said A very long time.

  “Dear Lord, Wash!”

  “Am I wrong?” Finally, he held my gaze, but the mix of anger, hurt, and resignation caused me to wince.

  “A supportive ear? Yes! I’m guilty of finding that outside our marriage. But I never shared his bed!”

  “Do you want to?”

  I crossed my arms and regarded my toes.

  “Well, there we have it.”

  “I’m being honest. Have you never wanted another woman? What matters is whether you act on it.”

  “It’s not the same. Clearly, he’s in love with you and you love him. This isn’t a matter of mere lust.”

  “No. It’s about sharing a life.”

  “You’re blaming me again.”

  “No, I’m trying to understand you.”

  He sighed. “A faulty, broken man.” He opened the humidor, releasing the sweet scent of Cuban cigars, selected one, put it in the chopper, and guillotined off its head.

  “You used to confide in me.” I tried not to sound accusing.

  “Emily, I’ve always wanted—”

  I held up a finger, then lowered it, my anger fading to sadness and guilt. “Maybe at some point, I stopped listening.” My own admission stung.

  “I am afraid of losing you. At the same time, I should set you free.” He sank into his favorite armchair, calmly lighting his cigar as if this were a business meeting.

  “Ugh! Set me free, as if I am a caged bird?” This argument was not over, despite his retreating to his place of comfort. But now, wiser from experience, I wouldn’t turn away. I would dig deeper until I brought out the truth, however ugly and uncomfortable it might be.

  “Oh, dear Em. You know better than that. Have you already forgotten who sewed all those bloomer costumes?” Chaucer brushed by me, sat at Wash’s feet, and rested his graying muzzle on his lap.

  I sank down in my usual chair. Whiskey dulled my senses, and exhaustion set in. It would be easier to accept our situation. Why dredge up these buried emotions? Move on, my weary soul told me. But complacence had only led to distance.

  “Why do you fear losing me?” I asked.

  He held his cigar aloft and gazed into the curling smoke. “This business with Stone reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about for years. Perhaps it affected my judgment.”

  I held out two fingers for a taste of his cigar.

  “Some time ago—over twenty years now—there was one who loved me before you. A college friend.” He patted the dog’s head and smiled. “We had great fun and were very close.”

  “I didn’t expect I was the first.”

  His smile faded. “It was an unrequited love. And it ended badly.”

  “Those things usually do.” I was beginning to regret my vow to be a better listener. “What does this have to do with us?”

  “Well, he died it seems…”

  “He?”

  “By his own hand.” He took back the cigar and pulled from it. “I tried to be kind in my rejection but in fact could never love him in that way, and thus he killed himself. It’s nothing to do with you, I know here.” He pointed to his head. “But it has everything to do with you”—he pointed to his heart—“here.”

  “Wash, you never told me—”

  “Do you think for one moment I didn’t want you? But you can’t hold on to something not yours. I’ve never forgotten you were the belle of the ball. That you could have a
ny man with the crook of a finger. Men enjoy your company”—his eyes flashed at me—“and you theirs. This is not to say that’s your fault. But I lived in constant fear of losing you, perhaps not in the extreme measure of my classmate but overwhelming all the same.”

  The deep, wounded appearance returned to his eyes, as after the war. Chaucer seemed to sense Wash’s pain, looking at me to take it away. “I gave you more freedom than most in an effort to make up for…uh…shall we say, my deficiencies, and see how you repay me.”

  My head jerked in surprise. It had never crossed my mind that he was knowingly sacrificing a good measure of pride, allowing me my flirtations and apparently considerably more. In fact, it wasn’t the more that so greatly troubled him. Rather, it seemed it was the affection and emotional bond I shared with PT that he found intolerable.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the spinning in my mind. So many years, he knew—or thought he knew—yet said nothing. “Why now, Wash?”

  He shrugged. “You asked.”

  “Why? Why would you suffer in silence, believing yourself cuckolded?”

  “I told you why.”

  “There’s something else. I know you too well.”

  He sighed, tapped his cigar on the ash tray. “Do you really want me to say it?”

  Yes, damn it, I thought. Admit your motivation for accepting an unfaithful wife had more to do with a certain engineering project and less to do with guilt from a distant unrequited love. But before I could form the words in a somewhat less offensive manner or decide if they even needed saying, he turned away, the shell closing around him to protect his tender soul.

  I wondered if it were possible to continue to love this man. There was, after all, another man—a friend who loved me and had waited for me while my own husband had been willing to trade my fidelity for his own damned project.

  * * *

  Things remained strained in our household. Wash’s ultimatum and startling revelations hung over my head, but the parade of journalists, politicians, and investors through our home prevented resolution.

  One Sunday evening, we attempted a normal family dinner. That was until Johnny asked about PT’s bandaged nose.