The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  “Talked to me about what?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to do this, I really do. But surely you can see that I have no choice. I can’t afford to keep the condo. And it doesn’t look right. Please try to understand.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “But to spring it on you in a letter. That was not my intention.”

  “What is going on here, Todd? What kind of game are you playing?”

  “Listen to me, Jodi. I want you to know that I’m not going to haggle about the furniture. Whatever you want is yours. Take it all if you like. I want you to have it.”

  “Todd, what’s got into you? You need to come to your senses. I’m not moving. And you don’t want me to move. Think about it. Think about our life together.”

  “Jodi, try to be reasonable. Things have changed.”

  She hits the off button, puts the phone down, and walks away from it. What does he mean he has no choice? It’s just like Todd to dramatize his circumstances, relinquish responsibility, pretend that it’s not him running his life but a force beyond his control—a way he has of excusing his bad behavior. She knows of course that he wants to buy another office building; he’s talked about it for years. It’s going to be his next big project, possibly his last, the one that will set him up for life. This will be no four-story makeover with a warren of suites rented out to mini-startups and struggling entrepreneurs. He has something bigger and grander in mind—a building that’s on the map—and he thinks he can make it happen by selling the condo out from under her. Their waterfront condo with its unobstructed view of the lake and its bamboo floors and spacious rooms, with its walk-in wardrobe in the master bedroom, and in the kitchen the terrazzo countertops and stainless-steel appliances and built-in effing coffeemaker. Pay no attention to the middle-aged Caucasian female and youngish golden retriever who happen to be living here. They will be gone in no time.

  —

  When Dean phones later in the day she’s feeling just reckless enough to take the call.

  “Dean,” she says. “Sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I’m sure you know how it is.”

  “I do know how it is,” he says. “I know very well how it is.”

  “I get that this is tough on you, Dean. You’ve been on my mind.”

  “Well, and you’ve been on my mind. I keep on saying to myself that I’m not the only one who’s been hit by this, that Jodi has been sucker punched, too. Well, you know what I mean. It can’t be very pleasant for you either.”

  “No. It hasn’t been pleasant.”

  “I know. I know. That’s what I’ve been thinking, and I wanted to reach out, let you know that I feel for you, that you’re not alone. You and I, we’re in this together.”

  “That’s kind of you, Dean. To think of me when you have so much to deal with yourself.”

  “No, no,” he says. “I really wanted us to connect. You’re just the person I need to talk to. Well, you know. Try talking to my daughter. I’m just glad her mother isn’t here to see her throw her life away.”

  “I’m sure her mother would be very upset by this,” says Jodi.

  “Natasha has always been a good girl, and the thing is, she doesn’t have to do this. I don’t think she understands that she can just walk away. What she really needs is someone who can talk sense to her. A woman, you know. She won’t listen to me. Someone who knew her mother. Someone like you. I think you could really have an influence on her.”

  “You flatter me, Dean.”

  “Did you hear that she’s moved the wedding date up? Second Saturday in December. Bloody hell. She wants me to give her away. Can you believe it? I’d rather see her boiled in oil.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.”

  “Have you talked to Todd about it? Why do you think he keeps calling me? What do we have to say to each other? Thirty years of friendship and he throws it away. I’m telling you, he could cancel the whole thing tomorrow and it wouldn’t make a speck of difference. It’s too late. He’s crossed a line. I’m sure you feel the same.”

  Dean is such a good talker he could have this conversation without her. An asset for a salesman, no doubt. Keep your mark distracted; leave no room for independent thought.

  “Look, Jodi, why don’t you let me buy you a drink. Or better still I’ll take you to lunch. We need to stick together, share the burden, show each other support. What do you say I come pick you up tomorrow? We can go for Chinese.”

  He doesn’t just want to commiserate; he has an agenda for her. Curious how he thinks that she, of all people, could have an impact on Natasha. It’s actually kind of sweet. Not something she can hold against him. But lunch would be a mistake.

  18

  HIM

  He’s in his Porsche driving north on Michigan, heading for the Illinois Center. The gym has become a refuge of sorts, the only digression he’s allowed on his way home from work, and he’s taken to spending more hours getting fit, even when he’s not in the mood for it, even when he badly needs a drink. Like now. The conversation with Jodi has unsettled him. He can’t understand what her problem is. Does she think he’s going to support her for the rest of his life, while he and his family do without? It’s not as if he’s trying to hard-line her. He offered her the entire contents of the apartment. Does she have any idea how much that’s worth?

  He thinks about calling her back but gets Harry on the line instead. “What did you think you were doing sending Jodi that letter?” he says. “I was going to talk to her first. We discussed that.”

  “Must have been Daphne,” says Harry. “I’ll have a word with her.”

  “That’s right, blame your assistant,” says Todd. “The point is that Jodi is now officially pissed off and digging in her heels. Damn it, Harry, don’t you think I have enough problems?”

  “I have news for you, Todd. She was going to be upset no matter how she found out.”

  “We’ll never know now, will we, Harry?”

  “Just keep your objective in mind, why don’t you. The important thing is to get this done, and there isn’t much time.”

  Harry is probably right in that it wouldn’t have mattered how she found out, but the eviction notice seems unnecessarily cruel. And it makes him look bad. Ruthless. Cold-blooded. Still, it’s done now, and maybe that’s for the best because he really needs her out of there. Natasha asks him every day if Jodi is gone yet and what he’s planning to do if she won’t leave. An ugly scene is the last thing he wants. Jodi locking herself in, the sheriff breaking down the door, marching her out of the building. She would never forgive him.

  It could be that she just needs time to adjust. If nothing else Jodi is practical. Give her a week or two and she’ll find herself a cozy little rental where she can settle in and feel at home. It won’t be anywhere central, given her income. She’ll have to move to a suburb, someplace like Skokie or Evanston, at least until she revs up her practice and starts seeing clients full-time. It’ll do her good to take her profession more seriously, take herself more seriously. Maybe she’ll even get a real job, put her education to better use. She’d do well in the corporate world, and she’d make good money.

  Wherever she lands he hopes she’ll let him come and visit, maybe even make a thing of it. In odd moments, when he lets himself, he misses her terribly, misses her cooking and her common sense, the ease and comfort of their life together. Maybe it’s the season that’s making him nostalgic. Autumn can be glorious but menacing too—the long shadows, brisk winds, scurrying leaves, impending frost. He doesn’t want to knock Natasha, but coming home isn’t what it used to be, and the clutter is the least of it. Natasha seems to thrive on chaos: neighbors dropping off their kids, people showing up for dinner, the TV blaring even when she’s studying. And it will only get worse when the baby is born.

  He has the heat turned up in the Porsche, the airflow directed at the windshield to keep the glass from fogging up, the radio tuned to the news. The announcer’s voice is buttery and rich, com
forting in spite of the words being spoken, reports of the day’s calamities. It’s only just past five and night is falling fast. The short days would be hard to take if you lived in the country, but the city generates its own light, a bright mirage in all the colors of the rainbow. Seen from outer space it would look like a glowing dome, the force field of the great city where he lives. He’s been driving these streets all his life and every stretch of pavement, every city block is known to him. In his younger years he used to fantasize that he owned it, that the city was his—the streets, the buildings, the power generators, the water purification system, even the sewers—the entire infrastructure. Even now, when he’s on the street or when he walks into Blackie’s or the Crowne Plaza, he has a sense of being in charge.

  How he loves driving around in his car listening to music, scoping out the neighborhoods, watching the street life. In your car you’re in your own private world and in the world at large, both at the same time. He likes snacking in his car, too, and usually has some licorice whips or salted peanuts in the glove compartment. This is not much different, he has to admit, than his father’s love of holing up in the basement with his bottle and his transistor radio. You have your throne, your dignified perch (in the old man’s case a dilapidated La-Z-Boy) that places you at the center of your world, and there you sit like a goddamn lord. Sometimes in his car he even starts to feel like his father, gets a taste of him. The way he used to nod to himself, for example, a barely perceptible nod pertaining to nothing in particular. Todd does that sometimes too—nods his head to the air currents or the ebb and flow of traffic.

  19

  HER

  She’s sitting in the office of Barbara Phelps, BA, LLB, the lawyer recommended by her friend Ellen. Barbara is petite and older, possibly in her midseventies, with hennaed hair, penciled-on eyebrows, and tiny wrists. Her power suit sags on her puny frame but she carries herself like a pillar. According to Ellen, Barbara took her law degree when that was still rare for a woman and has devoted her career to turning dependent, unhappy wives into liberated, freewheeling ex-wives—a sisterhood of prosperous divorcées.

  Barbara’s offices, on an upper floor of a Loop office tower, are furnished with inhospitable Bauhaus furniture and gigantic ab-ex canvases that testify, in dollars spent, to the woman-power on which her practice is built. She has seated Jodi in a Wassily chair and asked her some preliminary questions. Now, as she fans herself with Jodi’s eviction letter, she patiently explains that Jodi was a fool not to marry Todd while she had the chance, because at this junction Jodi has as much right to her home as a colony of cats.

  “Without a marriage license you have no interest in anything he owns. He has you at his mercy, my dear. No judge is going to rule against him. Common-law marriage does not exist in this state.”

  Jodi feels that Barbara has somehow failed to grasp her situation.

  “I’ve been a wife to him for twenty years,” she protests. “Everything we have we built up together. He can’t make me move. If I refuse what can he do?”

  Barbara shakes her head. “You have no legal right to be there. If you choose to ignore the law, you’ll make things worse for yourself in the end. Most likely scenario, you’ll be out on the street with little more than the clothes on your back. It will happen in front of the neighbors. I don’t recommend it.”

  “I’ve made a home for him,” says Jodi. “I’ve cooked, kept house, looked after him. He can’t kick me out just because he finds me inconvenient.”

  “He can. And by the looks of it he will.”

  Jodi tries to absorb this. It makes no sense, fails to accord with her notion of justice. But then she sees where Barbara is going. “Okay,” she says. “I get it. It’s his condo.”

  “Right,” says Barbara. “It’s his condo.”

  “But he’ll have to support me,” says Jodi.

  “Why?” asks Barbara.

  “Because he always has. It’s our arrangement.”

  “On the contrary,” says Barbara. “Under Illinois law you are not entitled to any kind of maintenance. But all things considered, your position is not a terrible one. You have his verbal permission to take away whatever items you want. If he’s sincere about that, you avoid squabbling over household goods, and you avoid the pain of losing your possessions. So. You preserve your dignity and your belongings.”

  Thinking about it on the way home, Jodi doesn’t see it like that. How is her dignity preserved by allowing him to turn her out, with or without her belongings? They’re ganging up on her: Todd, Harry, and even this Barbara Phelps, who’s supposed to be on her side. What they’re doing may be legal, but it’s far from humane.

  On arriving home she takes off her coat and shoes and lies down on the sofa. Napping is not a habit with her but she feels like a rock sinking in muddy water. When her eyes open again the sky beyond the windows has lost its color and left the room in semidarkness. She gets up, changes out of her Valentino skirt suit, and gives the dog his dinner. Watching him eat, she can only wish that she had half his appetite. Doubtfully, she stands in front of the open fridge and scans its contents. In the end she takes the vodka out of the freezer, pours a small amount into a tumbler, and adds a splash of tonic. She doesn’t normally drink alone, but this is a special occasion, calling for a celebration of sorts. She’s always been a woman in charge of her life, someone who manages well, but today she’s been toppled, and it turns out that all it took was a little shove, a gentle boot; her position was that precarious. Two decades of believing that her way of life was secure, and it turns out that she was hanging by a thread all along. Ever since moving in with Todd she’s been as good as delusional—there’s no other way to think about it. She built her life on a faulty premise, on wishful thinking. The person she thought she was has never existed.

  She downs her drink and pours another, this time omitting the tonic. Thirty days. That’s what she’s been granted. Thirty days to extract herself from her own present tense, much as you’d extract a sliver from living flesh. This is what it’s come down to. She’s been reduced to the status of a foreign body in her own intimate surroundings.

  She knows women who have gone through something like this, and none of them are in any way role models. These women, whose numbers include her friend Ellen, have not emerged with any degree of wisdom or grace, have not succeeded in reclaiming their lost years or reviving their goodwill. And yet most of them are better off than she will be. Most of them at least got to keep their homes.

  The Adlerians would have a heyday with this, the muddle that she’s made of things. They’re big on routing out the error in the client’s way of life, the screwy private logic and harebrained assumptions. All that privilege and opportunity and she drove it into a wall. She could do this because she took it for granted that life would treat her well, that there was no need to look ahead or take precautions. It was a form of hubris; she sees that now. If Gerard Hartmann had spotted this back when she was his client, he would have set her straight in no time. Indeed, it’s highly likely that Gerard would have saved her from herself entirely if she had let him, if only she had stuck it out with him. He knew his stuff, Gerard, and had an instinct about her that drove him on—in spite of the fact that she appeared to have no problems and was not (in her own opinion, at least) in need of his services.

  Which is not to say that her sessions with Gerard were a waste of time. Once they got into her relationship with Ryan, she could see it was a knot that needed to come undone. And picking it apart was not even all that painful. Gerard was good at what he did—skilled and knowledgeable, with exceptional insight. He was also the kindest and gentlest of inquisitors.

  Gerard: About Ryan’s outbursts. You mentioned nightmares and self-inflicted wounds. What was the problem exactly?

  Jodi: He’d wake up screaming some nights. He’d be screaming and kicking and wouldn’t settle down. Other times he’d bite himself till he drew blood. He’d go for his arm or the fleshy part of his palm.

>   Gerard: Was he taken to a doctor for this?

  Jodi: They must have taken him to a doctor. You would think.

  Gerard: Do you know if there was any sort of diagnosis or treatment?

  Jodi: He was never labeled as having a mental disorder if that’s what you mean. It was just a phase. He did eventually grow out of it.

  Gerard: When Ryan was acting out, how did your parents handle it?

  Jodi: It was me who handled it. That was my job.

  Gerard: How did that become your job?

  Jodi: It became my job because my parents only made things worse. Dad would get all disciplinarian, and Mom would just, you know, stand around and helplessly wring her hands.

  Gerard: Did your parents call on you to intervene, or was that your own idea?

  Jodi: I think it was my own idea at first, and then after a while they just assumed I would handle it.

  Gerard: How did that make you feel?

  Jodi: Oh, it was all good. Ryan settled down. Mom settled down. Dad backed off. And everything returned to normal.

  Gerard: And their assumption that you would handle it, that it was your job, how did that make you feel?

  Jodi: I guess I’d have to say that it made me feel great. I was just a kid, and here I was with all this authority and responsibility. I think it empowered me. It certainly had an effect on my self-image, and then ultimately of course it influenced my choice of profession. The fact that I was the one who could make Ryan better.

  Gerard: You mention responsibility. How did you feel about having responsibility for your brother’s welfare? You were just a kid, as you say.

  Jodi: I loved Ryan. Helping Ryan was second nature to me. I didn’t think twice about it.

  Gerard: Has that sense of responsibility for Ryan carried over into your adult life?

  Jodi: You mean do I feel responsible for the Ryan who is now an adult? The Ryan who is not in an intimate relationship, not engaged in meaningful work, not speaking to most members of his family? In fact, pretty much thumbing his nose at Adler’s basic life tasks? Do I feel responsible for that Ryan?