The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  She’s aware of her fondness for ledger keeping, a term that marriage counselors use to castigate their clients for keeping a running tally of who did what to whom, which is not in the spirit of generosity that supposedly nurtures a healthy relationship. The way she sees it, generosity is admirable but not always practical. Without some discreet retaliation to balance things out, a little surreptitious tit for tat to keep the grievances at bay, most relationships—hers included—would surely combust in a blaze of resentment.

  The thing is, eleven sleeping pills did not then and do not now strike her as very many. The alcohol could tip him over the edge, but he’s a big man who can take a lot of abuse. The most likely outcome, the intended outcome—and let’s not forget she has a pharmacist for a father—is that sooner or later he’s going to wake up.

  Avoiding the bedroom and its en suite bath she makes use of the powder room off the foyer. Still in her bare feet and nightgown she busies herself opening drapes and blinds, folding her blanket, and pounding the sofa cushions till they’ve decompressed and resumed their natural shape. When she’s given the dog his breakfast she sits down at her desk to check her daybook and her e-mail. Bergman has canceled, leaving only Mary Mary, her first client of the day. It’s a bit of good luck as she can’t have any fuss while clients are here, and if he’s going to get up and stagger around, chances are he won’t do it before eleven, by which time Mary Mary will be gone.

  When it’s no longer possible to avoid the bedroom, she enters like a wary animal, all nose and ears in the lurking gloom. The stagnant air has a sour note that fondles the back of her throat, forcing into her mind the appalling thought that he might have survived the pills and alcohol but choked to death on his vomit. She’s heard of that happening. If he’s breathing, he’s doing it soundlessly. Pausing at the foot of the bed she studies the swell in the covers, the menacing alpine ridge. As far as she can tell, its shape has not altered since she last looked at it some eight hours ago.

  She dresses quickly and in the bathroom brushes her teeth, ties back her hair, and applies her daytime makeup—mascara and a light gloss of pressed powder. Her face in the mirror is incongruous, youthful and pretty to the point of reproach. Passing again through the bedroom she watches and waits for an intimation or portent of the kind of day it’s going to be, but receives no sign.

  The closet in the foyer yields up a leash for the dog, and there she also finds her Nikes and a windbreaker. She and Freud take the elevator down to the lobby, where she waves to the doorman and greets a neighbor who is coming in as she is going out. It’s good to be under the open sky and breathing the fresh, unsullied air. Only now, as it’s leaving her, does she notice the constraint she’s been under, creeping around like a felon in her own home. At least there’s been no recurrence of last night’s sickness or vertigo or whatever it was. That was a new one on her and something she really didn’t care for.

  She follows her usual morning route, walking the shoreline to the pier and then cutting back through Gateway Park. The sky is gray and the lake a dull bottle green, but the bracing air and her pumping legs give her some new life. When she’s back inside with her takeout latte, she cautiously opens the bedroom door and without crossing the threshold peers intently into the gloom. As far as she can tell, nothing has changed.

  —

  Mary Mary is a twelve-year-old girl whose parents send her to Jodi because she’s wayward and rebellious. She loves her therapy sessions, which get her out of school and make her feel special, but makes a point of being pushy and intrusive. The child has boundary issues. If there’s trouble with Todd, Mary Mary is sure to put her nose in it. Jodi counts herself lucky when Todd stays put and the girl comes and goes without any hitches.

  Standing on the balcony to cool her head, she takes stock of her situation. While she was in with Mary Mary, Todd’s phone was sounding from its place on his dresser behind the closed door of the bedroom, where she left it last night when she was emptying his pockets as she helped him get undressed. Todd keeps his phone in vibrating mode, and throbbing on the wood surface it sounded like there were workmen in there with electric hammer drills. Loud enough to wake him, she would have thought, especially given that Todd is so keenly attuned to his phone. His phone going off, to him, is like a crying baby to its mother, calling for immediate, tender attention. And he isn’t the type to ignore it, roll over, and go back to sleep. Todd is someone who springs out of bed the second he opens his eyes.

  She watches a pair of gulls swooping and diving out on the lake. Far from hesitating or prevaricating, when they spot what they want below the water’s surface they attack at high speed, headlong and brash. Their raucous calls—a gullish version of chuckling and gloating—don’t seem to warn off their prey, who are swallowed whole before they know what hit them.

  She’s tempted now to push on with her day as if there were nothing out of the ordinary going on. Turning a blind eye is something she knows how to do. She’s adept at leaving well enough alone, waiting to see what happens. It’s time for her workout, and after that she would normally have lunch. She’s been looking forward to the small fillet she has thawing in the fridge. But when Todd wakes up he’s going to be asking questions. “Why did you let me sleep so late? Didn’t you think that something might be wrong?” And in the event that he doesn’t wake up the questions will come from elsewhere. The paramedics. The police. She should make up her mind what she’s going to say if she’s put on the spot—what her story will be, how she can account for her behavior, the fact that she did nothing, nothing at all, when her loved one failed to get out of bed in the morning. She can just hear some enterprising policeman saying to her: Mrs. Gilbert, your husband was dead for six hours—or eight hours or twelve hours—before you called 911. And on it would go from there. Didn’t you think you should at least look in on him? Didn’t you realize? Didn’t it occur to you? Didn’t it just happen to enter your mind? That your husband might be sick. That he might be in distress. That he might be unconscious. That he might be dead, Mrs. Gilbert.

  Unconscious, she thinks. He could be unconscious. And on the heels of that thought comes another more ominous one—the thought that he could be in a coma, a possibility that has somehow eluded her up to this moment. Like a winking intruder the term brain damage slides into her mental landscape and with it a vision of Todd as a human vegetable, failing to either live or die, belonging to no one, not even himself, but calling the shots nonetheless as people scurry about to feed him, bathe him, massage him, sit him up, and lie him down as days and nights become months and years and his loyalties, along with his assets, remain in escrow. And even so there will be questions. She’s starting to feel that she is seen and judged, her every move logged to be used against her. It’s no comfort that Freud has been nosing the closed bedroom door off and on all morning. Mrs. Gilbert, even your dog knew that something was wrong.

  6

  HIM

  He sits on the toilet, elbows on knees, face in hands, urinating in a fetid stream. It’s all he can do to stay upright. He thinks about coffee, the smell and taste of it, and that propels him from the toilet to the shower, where he turns the taps to cold. The icy pellets are pure unmitigated pain but a poor match for the jackhammer going off in his head. He lifts his face to the spray, takes some in his mouth, gargles, and spits it out. He hawks up some phlegm and spits that out too.

  When he’s finished toweling off he stands at the sink to lather his face. His fingers are numb and clumsy with the razor. He has an idea that he’s overslept, and this is confirmed when he returns to the bedroom to dress. Jodi is already up. It must be later than he thought. Still, it’s not until he’s fully clothed and pulling on his wristwatch that he checks the time.

  He finds her in the kitchen, beating eggs with a whisk. “My watch is running slow,” he says, hovering. “Battery must be dead.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” she says. She fills a mug, stirs in cream and sugar, and hands it to him.

 
“What time is it?” he asks. “My watch says half past one.”

  “It’s half past one in the afternoon,” she says.

  “You’re joking,” he says.

  “That’s what time it is,” she says.

  “It can’t be,” he says. “I’m meeting Cliff at ten.”

  She shrugs. “You’ll just have to call him and tell him that you overslept.” She pours the eggs into a sizzling pan and moves them around with a fork.

  “But that’s crazy,” he says. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “You needed to sleep it off.”

  “Jesus,” he says. He drinks some coffee, presses a hand to his temple. “I must have really tied one on. I can’t remember getting into bed.”

  Hit by a wave of fatigue, he takes his coffee to the table. She has it set with a place mat, a knife and fork, and a napkin.

  “I had to help you get undressed,” she says. “You couldn’t even get your shoes off.”

  She turns the eggs onto a plate and adds bacon and potatoes from a pan that’s been keeping warm on the stovetop. She carries the plate to the table and sets it down in front of him. He picks up his fork.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I’m starving.”

  As he eats, his tongue gets in the way, a foreign body in his mouth. He shovels in the food nonetheless, feeding his weakness and fatigue. He’d like to collapse—go back to bed, curl up on the floor—and compensates by sitting up straight and planting his feet.

  “I didn’t think I drank all that much,” he says. “No more than usual, anyway.”

  He tries to remember what happened at the bar—what time he got there, how long he stayed, how many rounds he ordered—but the math eludes him. What he does remember is his celebratory mood. And in the spirit of celebration, it’s possible that he overindulged.

  “I mean, okay, it might have been a little more than usual,” he says.

  “You probably needed the extra sleep.”

  “Tell that to Cliff. And Stephanie.”

  She brings the coffeepot to the table and refills his mug.

  “Jesus, Jodi. I don’t understand why you didn’t wake me up.”

  “Are you planning to be home for dinner?” she asks.

  “The way I’m feeling,” he says.

  “I’ll make you a nice cassoulet. Pork is full of iron.”

  His phone starts up as he’s lingering at the table, and he follows the sound to the bedroom. Natasha’s number on the call display gives him a little boost. One thing he does remember is that last night she wasn’t speaking to him.

  “Where are you?” she asks. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

  “Sleeping off a hangover.”

  “You’re still at home?”

  “Almost out the door.”

  “What did she say?”

  He struggles to grasp her meaning. His mind feels stuck, a burned-out engine sunk in a pool of sludge.

  “Maybe you can’t talk right now,” she prods.

  He glances at the open door. Hears the tap running in the kitchen. “Only for a minute.”

  “So? What did she say?”

  “What did who say?”

  She gives a noisy little sigh. “How upset is she? Is she going to be decent about it?”

  The pregnancy, he thinks. Did he promise to tell Jodi?

  “I got home late,” he says. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”

  He’s resting a forearm on his dresser. Its white surface is mottled and cracked, an antique effect that cost him more than he would have paid for the real thing. “You know I love you,” he says.

  “For God’s sake, Todd. What happened after she spoke to my father?”

  “Jodi didn’t speak to your father.”

  “Yes she did. Yesterday. He told her everything.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “How is it impossible? It happened. What’s going on there? Are you okay?”

  He sits down heavily on the bed. He’s starting to wonder if he’s caught some sort of bug. “I’m fine,” he says. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll have to call you back.”

  He breaks the connection and it dawns on him that this is typical of his and Jodi’s life together: the stubborn pretense, the chasms of silence, the blind forging ahead. He must have known this, but the weirdness of it, the aberrance, has somehow never struck him. Other couples are loud, vocal, off and on again, working things out, but with Jodi and him it’s all dissimulation. Put up a front, go through the motions, don’t say a word. Act as if all is well and all will be well. Jodi’s great gift is her silence, and he has always loved this about her, that she knows how to mind her own business, keep her own counsel, but silence is also her weapon. The woman who refuses to object, who doesn’t yell and scream—there’s strength in that, and power. The way she overrides sentiment, won’t enter into blaming or bickering, never gives him an opening, doesn’t allow him to turn it back on her. She knows that her refusal leaves him alone with his choices. And yet he can see that she suffers with it.

  He understands suffering; he was raised Catholic. What he understands is that life has suffering in it, can’t not have suffering in it, because in life there is everything. Life is a mosaic of everything, and there are no clean edges either. In the mosaic of life things overlap because nothing is all one way. Take, for instance, his father. He came to despise his father, and that’s a given, but there were times with his father he can think of even now with something like pleasure. An afternoon at the airport watching the planes come and go. He must have been seven or eight at the time. He loved seeing the rotund bodies of the jumbo jets lumber across the tarmac and then lift off with effortless grace, the sunlight glancing off their wingtips. For years afterward he wanted to be a pilot, and his father encouraged him, told him he could be whatever he wanted to be. There was something like love between them then, love mixed with other things of course, getting back to the principle that nothing in life is just one way. The old man had goodness in him, even laughter and fun, but the darkness at the center was growing, always growing, and when your father is at bottom a drunk and a bully, there comes a sense of biding your time, waiting for the day when you’ll be big enough and strong enough to intervene, and you look forward to that day as one of ultimate liberation, which it does turn out to be, but that’s not all, and here again is the lesson that life is a mixed bag.

  The day came when Todd was sixteen. By then he was growing tall and husky, had gained strength and confidence working construction over the summer, heaving sacks of cement and buckets of tar. It was a Saturday in fall, cold and rainy, a day of hanging around the house doing homework and watching TV. The old man had been restless, testy as a land mine and surfacing at intervals from the basement to nag and carp at his wife. Anyone could see there was a storm brewing. It was just a matter of when it would erupt. But there was always this underlying optimism, a stubborn disbelief that things could go very badly wrong, something his mother felt, too, he knew, because she said to him as she peeled potatoes, “He’ll settle down when he’s had his dinner.” But then, when they were sitting with their plates in their laps watching something on TV (an episode of Bewitched is what he remembers), and meek as she was his mother reached out with her napkin to dab at a spot of gravy on her husband’s chin, they were suddenly, all three of them, on their feet with their dinner overturned and the old man holding her hair in his fist, and in Todd’s ears there was a rushing sound, and with black spots decimating his vision, he swung his fist, throwing a punch, as wild and clumsy a punch as ever there was, and one that landed he knew not where, and his father without ceremony folded up like a collapsible chair and fell to the floor and lay there bleeding from his nose, and in the days that followed, the boy, now a man, was overcome with grief, despising how it all lay bare between them, how there was no more father and no more son but just two adult men in hateful and impoverished proximity.

  Now, at home in the afternoon on
a weekday, when he ought to be at work, sitting on the bed holding his phone, confused by what Natasha has told him, his eyes roam idly around the room taking in the height and breadth of it, the ample proportions, tall windows, receding ice blue of the walls. There’s no sound anywhere in the apartment and no sound from the outside. When you’re this high up you don’t even hear the birds. It couldn’t be more peaceful, and yet he feels his weight dragging him down and his spirit besieged as if by devils or wild dogs.

  As he understands suffering he also understands devotion, and he’s made his offerings with an open heart, his offerings to his beloved, to Jodi. He’s provided her with comforts, yes, but not just that. He’s been attentive, devoted, massaging her feet sometimes for hours when they’re home together watching a movie, and spending his weekends in the kitchen helping with her jellies and jams, endlessly stirring the pot, the watery mixture that seems like it will never thicken. She loves it when he puts on an apron and turns domestic. She feels close to him then. It’s the kind of intimacy she craves, a companionship that makes her happy. And he’s taken it on willingly, even religiously, with a devout spirit, and he’d do more for her if she asked, but Jodi rarely asks for anything. If she asked more of him maybe things would be better. His mother was like that too—didn’t ask—but that was for the best because his father would not have responded well. As far as cheating goes the old man was in a different league. Cheating with the bottle is not a mere distraction, not an evening’s entertainment, but an out-and-out commitment, a contract, a pledge, and it led him to turn away from his wife utterly and with finality. Todd’s mother was a forsaken woman, her loneliness a mist that enveloped him throughout his childhood.