The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  She had no way of getting in touch with him because he didn’t have a phone or wouldn’t give her the number—she wasn’t sure which—and so she had to wait for him to call, and thankfully he did call every now and then, though it was rare for her to actually lay eyes on him. At that point, during her Gerard days, she hadn’t seen him for a very long time, not since meeting him at the airport on one of his hasty stopovers. He called her at six in the morning, and she met him for a breakfast of refrigerated sandwiches bought from the airport kiosk and eaten off their laps. It was late November, but being en route from one tropical climate to another he was traveling light, with only a knapsack for luggage. Aside from his T-shirt, jeans, and sandals, he was wearing a string of blue glass beads and a black straw hat with a skull-and-crossbones motif on the crown and the brim turned up at the sides. He’d grown a little stocky and needed a shave but had the same blue-eyed elfin look that he’d always had and seemed fine, just too old to be stuck at this place in his life—still single, preoccupied with surfing, ignoring his talent and potential. As a boy he was good at gymnastics and drawing, took an interest in insects and plants, talked about becoming an athlete, an illustrator, a biologist, and other things. During high school he was a camp counselor and wanted to be a teacher—not a teacher working on the fly but a teacher who would see his students through and make a difference.

  She had recurring dreams about Ryan in which he was lost or on the run and she was frantic to get to him but couldn’t manage to book a flight or board an airplane. She still thought about him every day, or rather, he was ceaselessly present within her, a constant companion distinguished by his worrisome absence. Her instinct was to help and protect him, but he made that impossible. She knew that if she ventured to comment on his lifestyle he would think twice about ever calling her again. Their parents had made this mistake and subsequently had to get their news of him from her. Besides, it wasn’t as if he gave her any openings. He liked to keep his distance, Ryan, avoiding talk of anything significant, never letting her in, clowning around and making light of things. All she could do was laugh at the stories he told of his misadventures and resist the urge to offer him money, unwilling to hurt his pride.

  By contrast, her older brother, Darrell, had followed in their father’s footsteps, taking his PharmD in Minneapolis and then returning home to marry his high-school sweetheart. Their parents held out hope that Darrell would stick around to run the family drugstore, but in the end he chose to move on and was now the director of pharmacy at a large teaching hospital in Canada.

  Darrell was six years older than Jodi and a boy, but from the start he was a bright light in her life—a kind, obliging, fun-loving mentor who had time for her and could make her laugh. It was Darrell who took her trick-or-treating on Halloween, Darrell who taught her to tie her shoelaces by the bunny-ears method. She even remembered a dolls’ tea party at which Darrell served up the mud pies and lisped the voice of Barbie’s little sister, Skipper. When she was older he helped her with homework and played cards with her, even though by then he was in high school and she was still a kid. Darrell was one of those rare, good-natured, obliging boys who got along with everyone—the ultimate easygoing, earnest, diplomatic young man who was destined to do well in life because everyone was eager to help him on his way.

  Gerard took an interest in her family life and plied her with questions.

  Gerard: Which of your brothers did you play with?

  Jodi: I played with Ryan. Darrell would play with me, but that was him coming down to my level.

  Gerard: Who did you fight with?

  Jodi: Ryan and I would sometimes fight.

  Gerard: You’ve told me that Ryan went through phases—compliant and good-natured as a toddler, then later obnoxious, contrary, paranoid. (Here he was referring to his notes.) What would you say about him overall? If you had to use one word to describe him.

  Jodi: Sensitive. Ryan was the sensitive one. We used to tease him about it.

  Gerard: And what kind of a kid were you?

  Jodi: I had a reputation for being bossy.

  Gerard: Who did you boss?

  Jodi: Everyone, but only Ryan would do what I said. Until he got older, that is.

  Gerard: When you were growing up what was your father like?

  Jodi: He expected a lot from us. But he was stricter with the boys than he was with me.

  Gerard: So you were let off easy because you were a girl. What was your mother like?

  Jodi: A little on the dreamy side. She did a good job of cooking the meals and keeping house, and she did her community service, but she pretty much lived in a world of her own.

  Gerard: What kind of community service did she do?

  Jodi: Organized food drives. Volunteered at the soup kitchen. My father coached Little League.

  Gerard: So community service was a family value.

  Jodi: They were big on community service. Also getting an education.

  Gerard: Who had the most community spirit among you kids?

  Jodi: Darrell. He used to read to seniors every Saturday. He did it for years.

  Gerard: And who had the least community spirit?

  Jodi: That would have to be Ryan. I can’t remember Ryan ever getting involved in that kind of thing.

  Gerard: What about you?

  Jodi: I helped with bake sales at the church. But I didn’t have Darrell’s zeal.

  Gerard: Who got the best grades in school?

  Jodi: Darrell.

  Gerard: Who got the worst grades?

  Jodi: Ryan.

  Gerard: Who was the favorite?

  Jodi: Darrell. Everybody loved Darrell.

  Gerard: And the least favorite?

  Jodi: Ryan. The way he was, it was almost like he didn’t belong to us. Sometimes they would call him their little foundling. My parents did. They called him that when he was acting up.

  Gerard: Who conformed and who was the rebel?

  Jodi: Darrell and I conformed. Ryan was the rebel.

  Gerard: So Darrell carved out his place as the favorite, and Ryan distinguished himself as a rebel. Where did that leave you?

  Jodi: I was the girl. I was not expected to compete with the boys.

  Gerard: But you held a more favorable position in the family than Ryan did. And you fought with him and bossed him around.

  Jodi: I think that in my own mind I was taking care of him. But maybe he didn’t see it like that.

  Gerard: How do you think he saw it?

  Jodi: I guess he needed to get out from under me. Because we were very close as kids, but we’re not close anymore.

  Gerard: How does that make you feel—that you’re not close anymore?

  Jodi: It’s hurtful, I guess. The distance he’s put between us. And I worry about him. But maybe it’s my own fault. I suppose I was more competitive than I give myself credit for.

  14

  HIM

  He leaves the office and navigates the old familiar route. As he takes the ramp to Upper Randolph Drive and sees the condo in the distance, he waits for an onslaught of nostalgia, but it doesn’t come, maybe displaced by the scrap heap of everything else he is feeling. At the top of the heap is apprehension. He has no sense of what to expect. She was friendly enough on the phone, but these are unusual times. Whatever happens he should try to get his hands on a few of his things while he’s there—some sweaters and his winter coat at the very least. He’ll have to leave them in his trunk or Natasha will know where he’s been. She might figure it out in any case. Natasha has the nose of a jackal. Tonight he’s supposedly dining with Harry, going over contracts, but she may find a way to check on that. This will be their first evening entirely apart since moving in together.

  Easing the Porsche into parking spot number 32, he grapples for a moment with a lordly sense of possession. Absurd as it is he can’t quite suppress his territorial instincts. These two hundred square feet of pavement are his—he owns them—and he also owns spot number 33, where J
odi’s Audi sits—and for that matter the Audi is his property too.

  He travels up the elevator and with pride of ownership still goading him uses his key to enter the apartment. The complex smells of her cooking welcome him before he’s through the door, eliciting the nostalgia he’s been waiting for. Freud is there to greet him, prancing and spinning at his feet. The dog looks well—eyes bright, coat shiny and lush. He moves through to the living room, seeing it with fresh eyes, as if he’s been away for a very long time. The place has an opulent feel that he must have become inured to when he lived here, or maybe he’s already been corrupted by the squalor of his current domicile, where Natasha’s habit of cluttering every available surface with the litter of her daily life is the reigning principle of her housekeeping.

  He looks for Jodi in the kitchen and doesn’t find her, but when he turns around she’s there in front of him, smaller than he remembers and different in other ways too—more fragile and with a longer neck, whiter skin, and features somehow rearranged. How can she have changed this much just because he wasn’t looking?

  She’s wearing her everyday beige trousers and white shirt. Maybe to her this is a nothing occasion, not the momentous coming together or breaking apart that he’s been alternately envisioning. Her eyes show the glimmer of a question as they touch on his cashmere jacket and longer hair. He meant to kiss her but turns toward the kitchen instead.

  “Should I make the drinks?” he asks.

  The old routine moves them past the awkward beginning, but as he takes down the glasses and gets the Stolichnaya out of the freezer, and as she chops parsley and places tiny crustaceans on a platter, it becomes chillingly clear that nothing is remotely as it was. They could be strangers, so courteous and stilted is their conversation, so carefully do they gauge their movements and monitor the space between them. When they’ve clinked glasses and taken their first warming sips of alcohol, he sits on a stool and watches as she cuts a lemon lengthwise into quarters. She smiles as she offers him an appetizer, but all he can see is the distance in her eyes. As he chews and swallows, and as she moves around the kitchen in her prim white shirt buttoned to the clavicle, he tries to remember what she looks like naked.

  Their conversation during dinner fixes on their work, while other subject matter is avoided: his new living arrangements, her lonely nights, his impending fatherhood, anything to do with the future. The elephants in the room are alive and well. He doggedly talks about plumbing and mildew. She offers updates on her clients. When he hears that Miss Piggy is pregnant and doesn’t know if her husband or her lover is responsible, he has to laugh. He’s never felt kindly toward Miss Piggy or for that matter anyone who carries on a long-term extramarital affair, in effect, a form of polygamy. A passing fling is one thing, sex with a prostitute is one thing, but dividing your loyalties as a way of life is a faithless path to take and one that can only end badly.

  Jodi, for one, always understood this about him; Jodi could see the bigger picture. As long as he and Jodi were together he belonged to her, and she knew that. A lot of women—probably most women—would make a fuss about the little diversions, get all wound up over the trivial dalliance here and the minor detour there. It’s possible that he took Jodi’s tolerance and forbearance too much for granted, didn’t credit her enough for putting up with him. An easy mistake to make. Jodi has a knack for acceptance. She isn’t easily threatened or thrown off balance. She moves along in a measured way and with a sense of scale, doesn’t get alarmed or take things to extremes.

  As they work their way through the salad, the squid, and the salmon en croute, he begins to feel as if he never left. Here they are in their usual places at the table, eating their dinner off the everyday plates. Not only is she wearing her ordinary clothes, but she hasn’t bothered with the crystal, the silver, or even a tablecloth. The food is good, but Jodi has always known how to cook. The table is set with candles and cloth napkins, but this, too, is normal.

  And then he gets it. She’s intentionally giving the occasion a commonplace twist. This is not something that can happen only once, not a special event but a staple, something to be repeated. She wants them to go on as usual, behave as if nothing has changed. Making him dinner is part of ordinary life, and routine pleasures have always been her mainstay, the crux of her happiness, the theme of her existence. A bottle of wine, a homemade meal, the delights of the domicile, predictable diversions, dependable comforts. He sees exactly where she’s coming from. It’s almost like a game.

  He’s been guilty of underestimating her. She has an admirable practical intelligence. There’s a lovely clarity about her. It crosses his mind that men are going to notice her, that maybe they already have. It could be that in the time he’s been gone other men have eaten their dinner off these very plates. And it could be that these other men have loved her, slept in his bed with her, made use of the toiletries he left behind. These are not pleasant thoughts and he struggles to quell his spiraling imagination, the part of him that wants to get up from the table and rage around the room, assert his dominance, his ownership.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” he abruptly asks.

  “Oh, you know,” she says. “The usual things.”

  “Uh-huh.” He rearranges himself in his chair. “Who have you been seeing?”

  “Is this the third degree?” she asks mildly.

  “Not at all,” he says.

  “Ellen, June, Alison.”

  He drums his fingers. “Have you been seeing anyone, you know, romantically?”

  Her eyes open wide. He can tell that she’s surprised not only by the question but by the very idea.

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “But you’re attractive. It’s going to happen. Men are going to pursue you. If they haven’t already started.”

  She has the food on her plate triangulated: salmon—peas—squash, the dividing trenches forming a loosely drawn peace sign.

  “Which men?” she asks. “I don’t know any men.”

  “Well, ha ha, the world is full of men,” he says.

  “Not in my profession. Psychology is full of women.”

  “Adler and Freud and Jung are men,” he says, naming the stars in her professional constellation.

  “Times have changed. It’s all women now.”

  He ought to shut up, he knows, but can’t get the image out of his head now that he’s conjured it up—a nameless, faceless male standing naked in his bathroom, still wet from the shower, schlong dangling, helping himself to the towels, the toothpaste, the shaving foam he left behind.

  “You’ve been friendly with the Carson kid from down the hall,” he says.

  “Joel Carson? He’s only fifteen.”

  “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “He’s a nice boy. Very sweet and innocent.”

  “Teenage boys are not innocent.”

  “Well, maybe not. But I’m old enough to be his mother.”

  “You may be old enough to be his mother, but you’re not his mother. And I bet he can tell the difference.”

  “Todd, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “When I was his age I was in love with my history teacher. Her name was Miss Larabee and she was pretty and refined but also tough-minded and a hard marker, and she really turned me on. Come to think of it she was a lot like you. I thought about her all the time. I’d imagine calling her up, taking her out on a date. I even offered to fix her car once. But it wasn’t her car I was interested in.”

  “Well, if that’s what’s going through Joel’s head he gives no sign of it. The one time he was in here he stood by the door with his hand on the knob as if he couldn’t wait to escape.”

  “When was he in here?”

  “He came in once to borrow a magazine. There was an article on the violinist, what’s-his-name, the one who did the solos for Angels and Demons. Joel plays the violin beautifully.” She gets up to fetch another bottle of wine, brings it to the table and opens it, refills their empty glasses.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she says. “Under the circumstances.”

  “When did you hear him play?” asks Todd.

  “I heard him play at his school concert.”

  “You went to his school concert? Man, you are really tight with this kid.”

  “Yeah, right. Joel Carson and I. Well, now that you’ve guessed, I might as well admit it. We’ve been having a torrid affair for quite some time now. It started on his fifteenth birthday. Or was it his fourteenth? Or maybe it was his twelfth.Funny, I can’t remember. Maybe he was only nine or ten when we fell in love.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he says. “But you’re attractive, beautiful, you know that, and anyone with eyes in his head is going to notice you—even a pimply kid who plays the violin.”

  “Joel is not pimply.”

  “Whatever,” says Todd, losing interest in the Carson boy. “The point is that you’re a knockout and you’re fantastic and I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you, and yes you were soaking wet and you’d just smashed up my car, but you were magnificent. And you still are.”

  He sees her eyes welling up, reaches across the table for her hand, suddenly understands that he’s been wandering rootless, that he woke up one day in someone else’s life and couldn’t find his way home. Sitting here now, clasping her hand in his, he feels that time is passing at a distance, like a train on a faraway track, that in this open-ended moment all the thoughts and feelings that he’s pushed aside are gathering in force.

  “I’ve missed you,” he says. “I’ve missed coming home and I’ve missed getting into bed with you and I’ve missed waking up beside you—and all I can say is that I must have been out of my mind to think I could give you up.”