The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  His thoughts are a jumble of discordant notes, painfully sounding in his overwrought brain, beating on his temporal lobes. But something else is going on as well. Even in his alarmed, disgruntled, and apprehensive state, he’s aware of a certain ambivalence. His thoughts are leaning mostly one way but not entirely, not conclusively. Faintly chiming in the fray is the hint of something wholesome, amusing, even comical, a punchy little ditty arising from the orchestral skirmish, having to do with Natasha and all that he feels for her.

  He’s known her for her entire life—from the day she was born, in fact—and in some antiquated part of himself he still regards her as a hapless child whose mother has died, a loudmouthed brat in a school uniform, a pimply adolescent with braces, all of these rolled into one. If he had known then that she would be the one to bear him a child, he would have laughed out loud. It would have been a real knee-slapper.

  He remembers the moment when he first saw her in her fully adult form, in the new and still surprising rendition that he has come to know and love. He was sitting at the bar in the Drake, waiting for Dean, and happened to look around when she walked in, a beautiful stranger who caught his eye and glided toward him in all her succulent splendor, all her scandalous swank, hips swaying, breasts bobbing, earrings swinging—he didn’t stand a chance. When she planted a kiss on his lips, a garden of hopes and dreams blossomed in his fertile mind.

  “Natasha,” she announced. “I’m meeting Dad here. He needs to give me money.”

  He hadn’t seen her in years. She ordered a Manhattan, and by the time Dean showed up, twenty minutes late, they had passed the point of no return.

  He remembers these things and smiles to himself as he walks along. But once he’s back at his desk the trouble he’s in catches up with him and he starts to pace. With Stephanie off he has the run of the place and his pacing takes him out of his office, into hers, and through reception, a full circuit. His hands are clammy and his mouth tastes like a rusty nail. He’s resisting making the call to Jodi, has no idea what he’s going to say, how he’s going to broach the subject of his unofficial life, how he’s going to talk about what neither of them has ever openly acknowledged. In his own mind nothing has actually changed. What is happening with Natasha has nothing to do with Jodi—and vice versa. But the prospect of his two worlds colliding, two worlds that belong categorically in separate orbits, is impossible to imagine, impossible to bear, a vision of the end of life as he knows it.

  He waits through the program of rings until the recorded message comes on, his own voice telling him there’s no one at home to take his call. He ought to feel relieved. He gets the flat tin out of his drawer, scrabbles in the leavings for a roach, lights up, and takes it to the window. A few tokes is all he needs, just enough to clear his head. That bastard Dean will have called her by now. Though it’s possible they failed to connect. Right now that’s the best he can hope for.

  He locks up and walks to his car. It seems to him that the afternoon rush hour starts earlier now than it once did. It used to be that people worked from nine to five, but now there are all these alternate schedules, and nobody puts in an eight-hour day anymore. Sitting in traffic makes him impatient, aggressive, hostile. He uses his horn, changes lanes, crowds the car in front of him. His thoughts vie for space in a mental arena that’s crammed too full.

  Jodi’s parking spot, the one next to his, is vacant. Riding up the elevator he can’t remember when he was last at home on a weekday afternoon. For all he knows Jodi might have had a lover for years, could be carrying on this very minute in his own bed. The teenager two doors down comes to mind, the tall boy with the ball cap. Jodi says he’s good at math and plays the violin. How does she know so much about him?

  When he opens the door the dog comes barreling out and rockets up and down the hallway. His next-door neighbor, en route to the elevator, stops to say hello and laugh with him at the dog’s antics. A woman in her sixties, she is nicely made, with legs that still look good in sheer stockings and high heels. When she moves on he takes the dog inside and advances into the living room. There’s proof of Jodi’s absence in the motionless air and the half-closed blinds, but he nonetheless checks each room in turn. Finding nothing but a neatly made bed, fresh towels symmetrically arranged, cushions standing upright, and magazines aligned, he looks around for the portable handset, spies it on her desk, picks it up, and scrolls through the caller list. Dean’s name appears three times, logged in at half-hour intervals, starting at noon. There is no new message. If Dean left a message Jodi has already listened to it and possibly called him back. Perspiring now, he feels at a loss. If only Dean were not such a hothead. Dean should learn to pace himself, wait till he cools down and not pick up the phone to destroy someone’s life just because he’s a little bent out of shape.

  He retraces his steps to the parking garage and drives uptown to the Drake. It’s still early but the great thing about a hotel bar is that it’s never empty, so you never have to drink alone. In any given hotel at any time of the day or night there are going to be customers because people come to hotels from all over the world and they’re all ticking away on their own private clocks. He orders a double shot and throws it back before starting on his pint. As the drink flows through him the knot of panic he’s been carrying around since lunch begins to dissolve. His muscles relax; the clamp on his nerves loosens its grip. A chink opens up in his defenses, and into it rushes the very concept that he’s so far been unable or unwilling to ingest. Fatherhood. The feeling of it swills around inside him and gradually—as he drains his pint and starts on another—takes on a simple, rudimentary reality, like so much vapor condensing into palpable drops.

  Looking around the room he sees men of assorted shapes and sizes, men who have no doubt fathered children because that’s what men do. He feels love for them, each of them individually and all of them as a group. This is his tribe now, his fraternity, and these men must henceforth accept him as a fellow procreator, a sanctioned member of the assembly of breeders, a contender of proven virility, a dynasty builder. In spite of the way it’s happened he can’t deny that this is what he wanted—what he’s wanted ever since he met her and what he’s always wanted, really, even if he didn’t know it because he was too busy proving himself in other ways. This. The great carnal enterprise. The primordial swamp of genesis and propagation. Certifiable verifiable paternity. The ultimate fulfillment. And this, now, is something to be shared with her. He needs to tell her all that he’s thinking and feeling, applaud her fertility, take credit for his own, engage in a dialogue of mutual veneration. He takes out his phone, doesn’t understand why she won’t pick up, how she can still be mad. Their quarrel was trivial and meaningless. If she would just pick up he could ask and receive her forgiveness and they could move on into their future, their new way of being in the world.

  He returns to his pint and his musings, trying her at intervals, finally remembering that it’s Jodi he meant to call. There’s a reason why he needs to speak to Jodi. He’s going to tell her the news before Dean can beat him to it. But he needs to preserve his mood of celebration, and in keeping with this, instead of making the call, he buys a round for the house, which is filling up as five o’clock approaches. People around the room lift a glass to him, saluting his generosity. He spreads the word that he’s going to be a father, and congratulations are offered. When a group at a nearby table raises a cheer on his behalf, he says with earnest candor, “I’m just hoping that my wife doesn’t know.” Leaving the well-wishers to puzzle this out for themselves.

  5

  HER

  The dismal thoughts that plagued her over the weekend have largely gone from her mind. Whatever he did and whoever he did it with—that’s over now, and she’s never been one to live in the past. If she were inclined to dwell on things gone wrong she would have left him or strangled him years ago. Besides, she’s had her little revenge with the key, and to that extent at least, she feels satisfied.

  With breakf
ast over she skims through her file on Sad Sack, who is about to appear for his Monday morning session. When she’s buzzed him up and he’s put his bony frame in its baggy suit in her client chair, she eyes him as if he were a wild boar that she somehow has to capture and tame, and he looks back at her morosely. It is Sad Sack’s great conviction that he got a raw deal in life. He believes with all his heart that fortune has set itself against him and that nothing he can do will make a difference. This is Sad Sack’s litany, the essential overriding bias that defines him and underwrites his joyless passage through life. He isn’t an overly complex man, but given his obstinacy it’s difficult to make any sort of impression on him.

  Most of Jodi’s clients would benefit by taking themselves less seriously, and her style of therapy involves a certain amount of coaxing and cajoling, which is not exactly by the book, but the way she deals with her clients’ problems is similar to the way she deals with her own. Sad Sack in particular responds to a little good-natured goading, and after she’s listened to him complain for a while she says: “I’m going to charge you extra for the carping. I know the only reason you’re here is because your family can’t take it anymore. Why don’t you tell me one good thing that happened over the past week, just one thing. I bet you can if you try.”

  The challenge, as slight as it is, stops him in his tracks. He looks at her blankly, jaw dropping, and then without warning he reflexively grins, showing her a set of beautiful white, even teeth. It transforms him completely.

  “Seriously now,” she says, seizing the moment. “Think back over your week. Just one positive experience.”

  He is not quite ready for this exercise and shares with her instead the problems he’s been having with his car. But Jodi is pleased nonetheless. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him smile.

  After Sad Sack she sees a new client for the first time, a woman who is so self-effacing that minutes into the session Jodi has her mentally indexed as Jane Doe. Her presenting problem is that she can’t stand up to her husband, a jealous man who rabidly monitors everything she does. The session is spent gathering information—going through the questionnaire about background and childhood that gets the ball rolling. The trouble is that Jane doesn’t remember much of her early years. Her memory is pretty much a blank up to the age of eight.

  Afterward, Jodi feels hyped and shakes it off at the gym. Lunch is a cheese and arugula sandwich and a glass of water. When she’s showered and dressed she returns to her desk to put her client files away and check her messages. Alison has called to confirm dinner, and there’s a message from Dean Kovacs, who says that he urgently needs to speak to her. She can’t imagine why. She knows Dean well enough—during the year or two after his wife died he often came to dinner with his daughter, and she still sees him from time to time at this or that gathering—but Todd is normally the intermediary. Dean and Jodi have not developed a friendship independent of Todd. She calls him back and leaves a message in turn.

  The headliner on her afternoon agenda is a seminar on eating disorders sponsored by her professional association. Although she does not treat eating disorders, she likes to stay informed and enjoys mingling with colleagues. She’s left herself time for errands en route, and as she’s getting ready to leave she gathers up the checks she’s collected from clients and assembles items of clothing that need to go to the laundry.

  Her first stop is the bank. In spite of what Todd likes to say about her practice being a hobby, she probably earns as much as the teller who takes her deposit and more than the barista at the Starbucks next door, who makes her a takeout latte. Enough, anyway, for basic household needs and a few extras. At the laundry she waits for Amy to talk to a man about the bloodstains on his shirt. The man is prim looking, with tasseled shoes and longish, manicured fingernails. He seems agitated, even embarrassed about the state of his shirt, but Amy is a pro and betrays not a glimmer of interest.

  Jodi steps forward in turn, places her garments on the counter, and waits while Amy goes through them—shaking them out, looking for missing buttons and other flaws, checking pockets, and sorting them into piles. When she comes to the worn pair of khakis belonging to Todd, she takes an object from a pocket and passes it to Jodi, who glances at it and drops it into her purse.

  She is parked illegally and hurries back to her car. Her next stop is the framer on the near west side where she picks up the Rajput painting that she took in last week. She’s running late now but has a string of green lights and makes it to her seminar at the library center with several minutes to spare. The lecture room is humming, with some people sitting down but most of the crowd standing around in pairs and groups. Scanning the faces she sees quite a few familiar ones, but before she can make any rounds a presenter takes the microphone and asks that everyone be seated.

  The first speaker is a woman in herringbone tweed and sensible shoes. She’s short and makes a joke about her height as she peers over the lectern and adjusts the microphone downward. Appreciative titters ripple through the audience. The ice broken, she restates her credentials, which have already been detailed by the presenter who introduced her. She is a doctor of social psychology and senior program director for an eating disorder clinic on the West Coast. Jodi has heard that the anorexics at eating disorder clinics are force-fed, which sometimes turns them into bulimics, and that many of them run away. The senior program director says nothing about that. She talks up the clinic’s staff, evaluation process, therapy plan, and nutrition classes. Eating disorders, she says, are difficult to treat, and patients require specialized care that they can only get in an institutional setting. Learn to recognize the symptoms, she advises, adding that the assistance of a trained therapist can be helpful as part of an aftercare program. She refers her audience to a stack of brochures on the information table.

  The second and final speaker is the author of a book titled You and Your Child’s Eating Disorder. He’s a medical doctor, early forties, with a haggard face and a kindly manner. He began his investigation of this subject, he explains, while coping with the anorexia that each of his three daughters developed in turn as they moved into adolescence. He talks about standards of beauty and the American obsession with food and diet. He talks about self-image and self-hatred. He talks about how he felt when his daughters returned time and again from treatment centers only to relapse into their self-destructive habits. Not that he himself has any answers. He wrote his book to offer moral support to other parents in like situations, to tell them that it’s not their fault and that not all afflictions can be cured, whether physical or psychological. As a doctor this is something he can say with conviction. We sometimes have to live with unpleasant realities.

  The discussion period turns on the apparent contradiction arising from the two presentations. The doctor reiterates that treatment centers have failed him. The senior program director takes refuge in figures: her clinic’s success rate—high—and its recidivism rate—low. The doctor’s daughters, she says, may belong to the small percentage of cases that resist treatment. The doctor questions the program director’s figures, inquiring about follow-up studies and methods of collecting data. The two become increasingly embattled, and the assembled audience of therapists and counselors is spellbound to the end.

  Jodi sticks around for coffee, which she drinks on her feet, standing in a circle with her colleagues as they cheerfully dissect the squabble that just took place. Her mind briefly wanders and she thinks of her visit to the laundry and what she has in her purse. She takes it out and shows it to the woman standing next to her, who happens to be a psychiatrist.

  “Sleeping pills, right?”

  The psychiatrist takes the container and looks at the label.

  “Right,” she says. “Eszopiclone.” And absently hands it back, still engaged in the general conversation.

  As Jodi makes her way out of the building she tries to puzzle out what Todd would be doing with a bottle of sleeping pills prescribed for Natasha Kovacs. She hasn’t seen
Natasha in years, and as far as she knows neither has Todd. He did have dinner with Dean last week, though she can’t think what that could have to do with it. Unless Natasha happened to join them. But he would have mentioned it.

  On the drive home she calls up a mental picture of the teenage Natasha—Natasha as she last saw her—a big girl with a forward manner. A little on the manic side, which could account for the sleeping pills. That and the fact that she’s now in university. As Jodi well remembers, university can be stressful. It’s important to study and get good grades, but there are compelling distractions. You stay up late with friends, drink too much coffee and alcohol, take the odd upper, and eventually get so strung out that you no longer sleep. Not until she’s parking her car does she remember Dean—that he called her, that she called him back, that it’s his turn again. When she gets in she checks her phone, but there are no messages.

  She unwraps her picture and props it on the mantel. The gilt frame brings out touches of gold that she hadn’t noticed in the feathers of the peacocks. The woman in her finery is lovely but today seems wistful, even forlorn. She gives off a sense of being cloistered and secluded, even trapped, in her beautiful garden. Maybe the frame is too ornate, too bold for the delicate little painting with its vulnerable central subject.

  Jodi knows that you can come to your senses in a blinding flash because she’s seen it happen with clients, but that’s not how it happens to her. In her case it’s been coming on incrementally for some time. You could almost say it started with the onset of Todd’s depression—that’s when things took a turn for the worse—and then again with his depression lifting the way it did, as if he had suddenly found a reason to live. That was in the spring or early summer, and she was happy to have him back even though he seemed distracted a lot of the time. But now events are accelerating, taking on a sickening forward thrust, and she knows why Dean is calling.