by Annie Zaidi
The wife had noticed the shopping bags. He had never shopped for himself, not once in all the years they’d been together. First it was his mother, then a girlfriend, then the wife. The sight of the shopping bags was proof that he was already learning to live without her and that brought on the tears.
He hadn’t been prepared for tears. He sat down on the bed, staring at her. Finally, he went to where his wife was squatting on the floor, howling. He sat down on the floor and took her hands to his lips. It was a not a sexual move. He just couldn’t bear to stand by and watch her howl. But the moment he touched her, the wife seemed to calm down. She took his hands to her lips.
It took as little as that. They tumbled into bed quickly, as if afraid that a second’s delay might make it impossible. Later, the wife snuggled into his shoulder and fell asleep.
He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t move, though it wasn’t because he was concerned about disturbing the wife. He was just afraid that if she woke up, there would be conversation.
As his eyes finally grew heavy towards morning, the image of the other woman slipped in. He could see her clearly, her body pressed against the car door, her woman’s eyes latching onto his own.
He sat bolt upright. It wouldn’t do. It just wouldn’t do, he repeated over and over to himself. For five days, he didn’t call her. She didn’t call either.
The wife went about putting the household back in order, though he couldn’t discern any trace of disorder. But the wife said she wanted to restore the sort of order she was used to. An order from which she could extract the old essence of their solidity, their togetherness. She had often said things like this in the past. It had seemed sweet once. Now he wanted to sneer.
He mentioned to one of his friends, the one who had never married, that there was a new girl in town. Surprisingly good. The friend winked and said, she must be.
He flinched internally but shook his head, laughing. She’s a sweet girl, he said. Look at her work; there’s a deep set of eyes there. She’ll be a somebody soon. Trust me.
The friend shrugged, gestured with his hands as if to say, whatever you say, okay, I’ll look at her work.
It gave him an excuse. He sent her a text message, asking if she wanted to show her stuff around to a few senior people. He could help with introductions.
She called him back. She said, hello, and then she fell silent. He said, hey, and what are you doing? Nothing, she said.
Nothing? Lazy child, why don’t you come over and meet people you should be meeting. Like who? Come in about an hour, same hotel. Alright. Alright? Yes. No enthusiasm? No, I mean, yes, why not? You’re coming? I will. What’s the matter? Nothing. Are you sure? No, I mean, yes, I’m okay.
It was the coffee shop again. He could see that his old friend found her sexy – cold amber eyes resting on her full figure and turning to warm toffee. She was dressed in one of the skirts they had picked out together at the flea market, her bare arms hanging at her sides like a schoolgirl’s. It was the first time he’d noticed how vulnerable she looked. Just like his own child. The thought tightened his chest, made him want to pull her into his arms, hug her until it hurt.
She walked up to the table unhurriedly. They talked a little of this and that. Politics. Families. The idea of nationhood. Immigration. The idea of family as republic. The difference between republics and democracies. Work. She talked animatedly, without reserve. He brought up the problem of love.
His friend’s presence gave him confidence. They could now be good friends, chatting in a café, creative minds jamming across age and gender walls. Two other friends of his sauntered past. Everyone was introduced. There was more laughter. She revealed more, laughing all the while, as if everything about her life was a joke.
After she left, the older friend said, you could have dropped her home, or gone out for dinner? What’s your problem?
He shrugged. Why would we want to go off for dinner?
Because you want to have dinner with her and, maybe afterwards, you would have other things to do. Nothing of that sort. Oh no? No! No? No, look, she’s very sweet, very bright; I think she deserves a break. That’s all? Come on, you know me. Yeah, that’s why. No yaar. Yes, yaar; there’s something there. Like what? You two. Nonsense. It is. Nothing’s happening. It’s happening. No.
The older friend leaned forward, patted his knee. Whatever it is between you two, anybody can see it. I saw it right across the room. The moment she walked up to the table and looked at you. Crazy, how tangible it is. Like the two of you were literally bound together with a piece of cloth. Threads of silk. As real as that. It was almost like watching somebody make love, the way you two talk to each other.
He shook his head, but all argument had been knocked out of him. After a quiet pause, he repeated, nonsense, we’re not making love.
His old friend shrugged. You will some day. He said, no. There’s the wife, the child. They’re back home.
His friend looked at him with a mixture of pity and disbelief. Home? So everything is back on track?
He bowed his head, locked and unlocked his fingers. How did relationships come back on track? How did homes fall apart and then become whole again? Was his home pulling itself together? Why had his wife come back, after saying that their home was a dead relic? Did she think the dead would come to life? Was he going to have a ghost marriage? He could talk about it but it wouldn’t change anything. He had a marriage. The wife was waiting at home. That’s how it was.
He went home slightly drunk that night and, after god alone knows how many weeks, he ate a meal cooked by the wife. He’d already eaten at the coffee shop, but the wife was waiting up for him and had not eaten yet. She wanted to eat with him so he ate again.
He noticed the way his wife looked – bright black lines of kajal, a faint touch of lipstick, well-fitting jeans. Pleasant, he thought. He wondered if that was how he thought of his wife now. Pleasant?
When they were at college he had thought of her as sizzling hot. He had wooed like his life depended on it. He had actually believed it – that his life depended on wooing and winning and marrying and having kids with this woman. This one, nobody else. He had done it all and done it right. And here he was today, eating some kind of pasta, thinking that she still looked pleasant.
He waited to catch her eye so he could read the corollary. Was he just about pleasant in her eyes? Was his wife looking at his body and thinking of how the husband could still pass off as good-looking?
He kept looking at her face, waiting for her to meet his gaze. She raised her eyes finally, but before she could haul up a smile and smear it across her pale mouth, he caught a trace of fear.
In a flash he knew. The wife wasn’t back for his sake. It was the money, the house. If she had bothered to build a career, if she had a house of her own, if she had enough money to live independently, she would never have come back to him.
He guessed that it was his in-laws’ doing. They would have told their daughter the plain truth; her discontent was not their problem. They were the type to speak the brutal truth. If he had been beating her up, or sleeping around indiscriminately, it was another matter. But ‘feeling alienated’ was not good enough. That she wanted more than he could give wasn’t a good enough reason to walk away from a marriage. They would have told her not to count on them for support. And so his wife was back, child, discontent and all.
She must have had the time to take a good, hard look at her own situation. Her mother must have stood in the kitchen and reminded her of what each little item cost: detergent, onions, rice, arhar, distempering of walls, repair of ceiling, installation of new water tanks, society maintenance, electricity. Starting afresh wasn’t going to be easy. She had made her point about being taken for granted, no? It was time to go back and reclaim her rights as a wife. He could imagine the sort of lecture his mother-in-law would have delivered, twisting the knife slowly until the wife let herself be persuaded that dead-relic feelings could be sparked into life again.
Perhaps, that night when she had returned, before they had sex, she had wept because she was so afraid of things like paying rent and taxes. Not because she was still in love, still aching for him.
With that flash of recognition coursing through his blood, he thought he would have to rush to the bathroom and throw up all that nice pasta. He stood up slowly, looking this way and that, as if he was searching for something, but he couldn’t remember what. Then he stumbled to the sofa and lay there, face pressed into a cushion. Foolish, foolish years. All this time he felt solid, like a responsible, loving family man. Foolish years of believing he was loved.
The wife rose from the table and came to his side. Are you okay? What’s the matter? Is it the food? I’m fine, so it can’t be the food I cooked. Did you eat something outside?
He asked her to leave him alone. The wife stood there for a while, but when he didn’t turn around to face her, she moved away and cleared the table.
Dozens of thoughts ran through his head at the same time. She needs me, he thought, like a current account. A minimum-risk investment bouquet. Like insurance-linked mutual funds. Maybe it means more. Maybe, once upon a time, it did. Or maybe she needs my friends, my work. Maybe because it means something, to be my wife, to be known as my Mrs.
Why did it hurt so much? Many women are like that. Because she’s not going to stay if it is all gone – the money, the career. No. No. She’s going to stay. No matter what, she will stay. It is too late for her to leave. I should make her go away. But how? Where will she go? Should I keep the child? She’s going to take away my baby. I should find her a job. I wish I hadn’t eaten again. I need to leave. She wouldn’t marry me until I could afford this house. What are rents like in this area? I loved her, I loved her. I have to make her leave somehow. I should have known. Her parents have always been this way. I have to take the child away. She’s going to make my baby grow up to become a woman like herself. I can’t stop her. Does she hate me? What have I done? What have I done? Everything is such a mess.
It took him an hour to calm down, separate one thought from the other. Fine. It was about money. The wife didn’t have much of her own, so she was frightened. That was all.
He told himself it shouldn’t matter. Many wives were like that. Heck, most wives he knew. But he couldn’t bring himself to get off the sofa and go into the bedroom.
He heard her clearing the dining table, washing up, going into the bedroom. He heard the silence swoop down from the ceiling and blanket the household. The child was already asleep.
After a few minutes, the wife stepped out in her nightie. She asked if he was coming to bed. He said, I will, later, you go to sleep. So she did.
At four in the morning, he was still awake, head pounding. He decided to put on his canvas shoes and go out for a walk.
There were several women out in the early light. Some jogged. Some wore tiny shorts, the sort no woman would be seen in, at least not outdoors, not when he was a boy. Now things were different.
Many of the jogging girls smiled at him. Some recognized him from the newspaper photos. He smiled distractedly. It was odd how he barely noticed girls these days. They were attractive. But the shape of their legs, their length, their muscle tone, their arms, the sort of water bottles they carried – everything was different from what he was used to. He was getting old, he told himself. Too old for this sort of young woman.
His mind drifted towards her automatically. The other woman. He couldn’t imagine her jogging, not in shorts like these. It wasn’t just her body. It was her. She was different.
He couldn’t even imagine her sipping from a fancy water bottle.
He wondered what she might be doing this morning. Probably still sleeping. Probably in a loose, faded shirt. Her body would be soft in sleep, her stomach like fresh dough. Her thighs would be like, like what? Like eucalyptus, like ripe papaya. She would probably have a loose bottom. A few moles somewhere. A few scars on her knees. At her neck, shallow cream bowls would be formed by her clavicles.
He stopped, feeling a sharp jab in his chest. He had almost forgotten to breathe. But as he imagined the other woman’s body, he realized that all he wanted really was to just hold her and to fall asleep.
When he returned from his walk, the wife was still in bed, stirring slightly. He stepped into the bedroom to get out a fresh pair of clothes and went to take a shower. When he emerged, he didn’t ask if the wife wanted some tea, like he used to in the old days. He made a strong cup of tea for himself and sat down in the kitchen to read the newspaper.
The maid arrived. Another cup of tea was made for the wife. The child was fed. Breakfast was set on the table. The child was bathed and taken away to school. The wife had finished dressing. She came to the dining table and took the chair opposite him, folding her hands as if waiting for an explanation.
He turned a page. Finally, the wife took his name. He lowered the newspaper.
What is wrong, the wife asked. He shrugged. You have to talk to me, she said. Since last night, suddenly, you have been behaving like, I don’t know, like I don’t exist. I thought things were going to be better in our home.
His mouth stretched into a mirthless smile. He hadn’t planned on saying it but the words tumbled out of his mouth. Home? I thought this home was a dead relic? Dead things don’t get better; they rot.
The wife clenched her fists. A quaver crept into her voice. I don’t understand you.
Forget about me, what about you? What about me? What do you want? Respect, to start with. When have I ever treated you with disrespect? You never respected me; you just respected your friends and industry colleagues, not me. That is not true, it is not fair to accuse me of that. It wasn’t fair on me to be reduced to something lying around in the house, a woman who nurses the baby and supervises the servants. Oh please! Yes, I was just someone you hired to run the house so you could be left free to create, to become this famous, rich person. You tell me, was that all you were? I felt like it. I can’t control how you feel; I didn’t know how you felt. How come you notice small details about the world, about cities and railway stations and music and landscapes, but don’t know how your own wife feels? For god’s sake, I didn’t marry cities and landscapes. So marriage means a licence to stop caring? Are you seriously suggesting that I didn’t care for you? Well, I didn’t feel cared for. Then why did you stick around all this time? Oh, of course, now that is my fault too. Yes, it is, because you never said a word about what I was doing wrong. Did I not say that I want to do my own thing? Well then why didn’t you; who stopped you? You never supported me. I did everything I could for you. You weren’t there! Great! So now we are back to square one, me not being there. Yes, yes, yes, because you had all the time in the world for others, for work and I had nobody. Bullshit, I never even went out anywhere except for work. You had girls crawling all over the studios! No, there was never anybody else, you know that. Oh yeah yeah, I believe that! Even when you didn’t let me touch you these last five months, I didn’t go to another woman. So I’m supposed to be grateful? I’m just saying it because you brought it up. Did you expect me to have sex even when I was unhappy? No, I just expect a little honesty and consideration. You are such a self-absorbed, self-obsessed bastard. And you are what – a lazy, gold-digging bitch?
He buried his head in his hands. The words were out of his mouth now.
The wife’s fists were still clenched, eyes round with shock and fury. He waited until she called him a bastard again. And a sadist and a bully and a selfish dog and a filthy animal and his family low-born middle-class vermin.
Then the silence slowly filled with a crystalline peace. He counted until a hundred before he said, it has gone too far, I will never ring this doorbell with the confidence that my life, my joy lies behind this door. I will never be able to wake my wife up in the middle of the night, convinced that she wants me. I don’t trust you now.
The wife started crying, saying, it is not about trust.
It is about trust
, he said. I trusted you to tell me the truth. About you, about me, our baby, this home. But you told me nothing, and then it was too late. We just have old habits left over. Fear and convenience. Ugly habits.
Maybe for you, she said. No, he said, for you, especially for you. You are just tolerating me because you don’t want to risk a divorce.
Her mottled face contorted. I never said I want a divorce, she cried out. I will not give you a divorce. You’re trying to abandon us.
She waited for him to say something, take back that word, divorce. But he just sat there. It was, he realized, the first time in his marital life that he was not worried about how to resolve this, how to appease the wife and go back to normal.
Because they couldn’t go back to normal. He couldn’t. He thought of what would happen if they made up now. If he apologized, he knew she would say, forget the past, let’s give it another shot. She would cook for him sometimes, keep house, yell at the child, invite his friends. Normal living. It wasn’t impossible.
Husband and wife sat opposite each other, sniffling, heads bowed. Finally, he asked, what do you want? The wife thought carefully before she replied. A happy married life.
For a moment, he was tempted to do what he had done before. Kiss her, hold her hands, say he had always loved her, and they could be happy again. But his head was pounding and he wished he didn’t have to say it. He wished the wife would say it. Promise him happiness, gather him into her arms, tell him she loved him still. He would try to believe her.
The wife, however, sat still, waiting for him to play out the rest of the scene. As if this was a tableau, an ancient drama she was familiar with, their roles already decided upon.
He said, I’ll move out; you can keep the house. He caught the look on her face and then he knew that it was the only thing left to do. There was relief on her face. No pain. Just relief and a little shame, as if she had been caught undressed by a stranger.
He called up a friend, the one who had separated and recently moved out of the marital home. Brokers were discussed. Rents. A studio apartment. He wanted minimal paperwork and no fuss. It had been years since he’d thought about all this. Exorbitant deposits. Being single. Landlords.