How to Read an Unwritten Language

by Philip Graham

  *

  The following morning I returned to my office and an image of my own that I hadn’t shared with Kate. A batch of old Life magazines had been left behind, by a previous tenant, and I’d often page through them in between the disappointments of my phone sweeps. That’s how I discovered a photo taken during the Depression, though it could have come from any time of trouble: a black-and-white close-up of a girl standing before a shack, her face streaked with dirt, her eyes holding in a starved childhood, lost innocence. As far as I could see, this young grim face held nothing else. Perhaps this was why I kept staring at it, for even in my deepest unhappiness as a boy, I knew I’d managed to find brief solace in a book of mazes or some goofy cartoon stunt on TV. Sadness and illogical joy would flicker through me at any moment: despair could indeed contain its own escape.

  This was what seemed absent in the photo of that girl—it didn’t begin to hint at the hundred little contradictory births that percolate on a face. All of us have more than one—we just don’t give them names, as my mother did. How many had there been? Margaret, who disliked cooking; Tamara the Magnificent, who juggled; Rosario, the nurse; Valerie, a photographer; Tina, a dancer; Daisy, the furious artist; and many more whose names I’d forgotten. All of those women, I now knew, were hands reaching up out of something inside Mother, hands searching for a firm hold.

  Then I knew what I had to do. Skillful listening might be a watchword of the insurance business, but words aren’t all that one can listen to. So, suppressing what pride I had left, I called an old classmate who’d already become a successful local broker and I begged for a lead, anything that would bring me face to face with a potential client. With a head-shaking pity clear to me even over the phone, he offered me a tip. He said it couldn’t miss.

  *

  The next day I sat across from a young couple in their living room cramped with upholstered furniture and, in one corner, a baby bassinet. In the brief pause after our introductions, Pete plucked at his shirt collar, coughed, and announced, “Well, I suppose it’s time to talk about buying some life insurance.”

  “Because of our daughter,” Judy added. “She’ll be a month old next Tuesday.”

  “Well, congratulations,” I said, opening my briefcase while the couple waited with a hint of skeptical silence—I didn’t exactly project an air of authority, fumbling through a stack of policy literature. Contact, make some personal contact, I thought, and so I said, “This sure is a nice house you have here.”

  They nodded and shifted in their seats, now even more ill at ease, for they knew as well as I that their home wasn’t much more than a square little box painted dull green. I tried to recover from my mistake but my voice rose nervously with each word as I asked, “Is this your first home?”

  A gurgling arose, then a tiny groan and a shifting in the bassinet. Judy hurried across the room and leaned over, her hands gently plucking and soothing. I said nothing, ashamed that I’d disturbed their baby, and then I stood, with no sense of why I’d done so. I offered an apologetic smile. Pete’s hand rose and tried to hide his frown.

  Suddenly afraid that he was about to ask me to leave, I padded over to the bassinet—how could he possibly throw me out while I gazed at his child? I saw little wisps of brown hair, delicate eyelids closed in sleep and tiny puckered lips echoing the tuck of the blanket. This was a face that knew no trouble, and I found myself at the center of a vast stillness.

  “My wife and I don’t have children yet,” I said quietly. “I wish we did.”

  Such a thought, so unasked for, surprised me, and I tried to push it away and hide it. But returning to my seat I saw that Pete and Judy had heard in my voice that I’d confessed something, offered a secret part of myself. Now they sat back together on the couch and served up their own secret: they were afraid they could barely afford the right policy.

  I had a number of options to offer and I spoke softly, careful not to disturb their daughter again. Pete and Judy had to lean forward to catch my words, and as they did I searched for the tiny, revealing changes that rose up in their faces. The faint wrinkling of Pete’s brow, and Judy’s pursed lips easing, then slightly crimping, helped me understand just what they were willing to sacrifice, just what level of coverage made them feel secure.

  *

  My first success generated another, then another. Soon I began receiving calls, and my days filled with house and office visits. As my clients spoke I listened and watched and tried to understand the vague unease on their faces and match it with the right policy, because I was always more concerned with their comfort than their money. Sometimes business picked up when a disaster dominated the news, whether it was a national park eaten up by huge fires or a Midwestern trailer park mauled by a tornado. Before making my recommendations I probed any averted glances, sudden sighs or brittle chumminess. I knew all of this masked my clients’ fears that within them hid their own flood or conflagration, their own condemned building or quarantined sick ward.

  I shouldn’t have revealed to Kate that reading others was the source of my recent success, for now her blue eyes rarely met mine, and when I watched her smallest movements about the house she tried to keep my unrequited curiosity at bay by living in a dream of neatness: no piece of paper could be out of order, no pristine surface was ever dusted too often, no carpet long left un-vacuumed.

  Kate still worked evenings in her study. I paced through our house, and though it had more fire insurance than we needed, I was easily seized by the thought of a frayed wire, a stray spark. One evening, as I passed our bedroom doorway, I stopped and watched Kate kneeling before her dresser, arranging her shoes in straight rows. What sort of carefully constructed barricade was this? Then she crawled over to my adjacent wardrobe and did the same for my shoes, after first tying their laces into neat bows.

  With a little grunt of satisfaction she stood, and when she saw me a tremor of surprise ran through her. I waited for Kate to speak. She said nothing, her face so studiously casual I almost cried out in alarm, but then she smiled and her fingers unbuttoned her blouse down to her waist. Then she tugged at her skirt until it fell to the floor. Moments later she beckoned to me with a flip of her hair.

  Later, with Kate breathing gently beside me, I lay too long on the edge of sleep. My eyes closed, a black field of barely defined shapes and colors drifted before me, only slowly blending into the face of a client considering replacement cost insurance, squinting and struggling to account for the contents of his house as I helped him recall his objects, one by one. Then another face rose up, a woman whose lips produced a wheezing intake of breath at the mention of accident liability for her car. Again and again my clients’ features appeared, superimposed over a pale floating disk that I eventually realized was Kate’s face. The swift play of their features became a flickering of shadows over that eerily calm expression that Kate had first offered me in our bedroom, a gaze as smooth as the contours of her skin.

  I bolted up in bed and scattered those ghostly faces, my hands clutching at the blanket. Kate stirred briefly, then settled, and I looked down at her dark outline, a fear slowly growing within me that even her body was just another line of defense. Had those paths we’d traveled tonight been nothing more than a series of dead ends?

  I slipped quietly from bed and hurried downstairs in the dark as if being stalked. It was true, true—no matter how many disasters appear in the form of car collisions or flooded basements, they more often arrive from some secret place inside us. I circled through the rooms, passing the dark outlines of our furniture without touching a single hard edge, walking like some stunned sleepwalker until it seemed I might actually disappear into the darkness. Exhausted, I simply slumped on a couch, longing to vanish, yet all the while hoping that somehow Kate would come downstairs and find me before I could.

  *

  Kate indeed searched for me: I heard her voice whispering my name, “Michael, Michael?” Then, in a gray light, her face peered into mine. “Michael, silly, you
fell asleep down here.”

  “Oh Kate,” I managed, in a rush of surprise. “I feel so …”

  I stopped. The sun streamed through the slats of the blinds, casting bright bars on the rug, and Kate wore a skirt, a blouse, earrings. It was morning, and she’d actually showered and dressed before coming downstairs. What had she thought at the sight of my half of the bed, empty and cold?

  I was ready to speak openly. “Kate, we need to—”

  “Look at the bolsters, the pillows,” she broke in, “they’re almost as rumpled as you are.” Kate made a great show of tidying, as if the real disorder was our living room. When she finished with the imaginary mess she said, “I’m so hungry, aren’t you?” and set off for the kitchen. I listened to the busy clatter of her breakfast extravaganza and imagined it drowned out the words she couldn’t bring herself to say to me: “Poor dear, you’re working too hard,” perhaps, or “Please don’t stay away from our bedroom again,” or “Why do you have to bring up our troubles?”

  When I finally entered the kitchen the morning paper was opened invitingly by my place setting. I sat down and swiftly paged through it—I had no interest in examining the unhappy headlines. But when I arrived at Dear Abby I paused, half-considering writing her a letter:

  Dear Abby,

  My wife hides inside herself, and though she’s standing before me right now, organizing the largest breakfast I’ll probably ever eat, I don’t think I can succeed in finding her. Abby, sometimes I wonder if she’s been hiding so long that she’s lost, and even if she wanted to break out of herself she wouldn’t know where to begin. Why, just this morning—

  But what was there to say? This wasn’t the style of letter Abby usually reprinted. I hadn’t been insulted by a sister-in-law during a holiday dinner, I hadn’t received an embarrassing gift from a co-worker, my dog hadn’t chewed a resentful neighbor’s newly planted shrubs, and I had no minister to consult. Certainly there must be a special trash bin for letters like mine.

  I glanced down to the Daily Horoscope—maybe the mysterious conjunctions of the stars and planets would do better than a syndicated busybody. Though I knew it was a foolish indulgence, I laughed grimly to myself and scanned the prediction for my day: The advantages regarding an ambitious endeavor you are presently involved in can be forcefully expanded at this time.

  Of course—I should shout or cry, sit Kate down for a blunt assessment of our miseries. Not bad advice at all. But there was more, so I read on: It’s best to keep your decisions to yourself until you understand how you want to use them. The horoscope was right—straight talk would only make her shrink further away. No, I had to intuit unwritten rules for an invisible playing field.

  Kate stood before me, holding a tray brimming with breakfast. “Time to eat.”

  “Good,” I said, reaching for my fork and knife. “I’m so hungry.”

  *

  The horoscope became a morning ritual. If you concentrate too much on a needless detail, you may find disappointment in a joint venture. Was this business or personal news or both? I knew which possibility was most important to me, but the horoscope never distinguished between the trivial and the significant. Should, if, may, could, perhaps were words that tantalized, quietly urging me to interpret and act, and I delved into second guessing, hampered by my desire to make the prediction come true or not. Of course I knew there weren’t only twelve types of people in the world, marching individually through twelve singular fates. But none of my skepticism was truly conscious, and I continued to read strategies in those ambiguous sentences. Though there were times when I found no connection, that didn’t stop me from trying the next day. I needed to believe.

  Caution, my horoscope consistently counseled: You might give in to an urge to test your will against the will of those with whom you’ll be involved today. I remembered those words that evening as Kate and I ate dinner at a local steakhouse, our table lit by the artificial glow from the dining room’s fireplace.

  “Another, sir?” the waiter asked, deftly gathering up my empty wineglass.

  “No, thanks,” I replied, forgoing a third, knowing it would make me too loud and Kate even more quiet. The waiter continued on to the next table, and though Kate said nothing, an appreciative smile spread across her face in the flickering light.

  Another morning I read You might have trouble today realizing when victory is within your grasp, and I was grateful for the warning. I looked for clues all day in every gesture Kate made, some hint that she’d tired of hiding. I found nothing, and as I lay in bed beside her I thought of her sudden coughing fit earlier in the evening when we washed the dishes—did part of her want to speak plainly, while another part tried to prevent this?

  Suddenly Kate awoke in a grip of a nightmare, words bursting from her as she bolted up—“Oh! No!”

  I reached for her hand, found it under the blanket, and then she was oddly calm.

  “Michael?”

  “Yes, I’m here. You were having a nightmare.”

  “A nightmare,” she repeated, as if the word held no special meaning.

  “Yes,” I said, “tell me?”

  She remained quiet for a moment before burrowing under the covers again. “I can’t remember.”

  “Try,” I whispered, but she was already breathing deeply in sleep, or pretending to, and I knew the moment the horoscope had warned me of had passed. If only I hadn’t asked, she might have told me on her own.

  *

  Were my new designs against her resistance the source of her nightmare? She did seem preoccupied, staying up late and working with an almost alarming intensity at the new project she’d taken on for the local university: detailed drawings of the latest potshards and artifacts some archaeology professors had uncovered. While Kate carefully sketched under her desk lamp’s circle of light, sometimes I lingered over her portfolio and stared at those bits and pieces of something larger that was now lost. Each page boasted a single shard, as if hurtled alone through the air after some explosion. Kate shadowed in the jagged edges in a way that suggested what was missing, yet left it a mystery, and I remembered that drawing she’d made of me years ago when we first met—maybe it hadn’t been incomplete after all, but only as much as she’d wanted of my distant, curious gaze.

  *

  Today may bring you a mutual understanding you’ve long sought, but you must take advantage of an unusual offering. I looked across at Kate, lost in concentration over her butter knife and English muffin. Soon she would politely offer me half, and I would accept, thanking her politely—nothing unusual there. What could the horoscope possibly mean? I scanned the rest of the page and discovered an announcement for a traveling carnival, in its second day of a weeklong appearance. Yes, this was a perfect excursion for a Saturday evening and, since Kate and I had never been to a carnival together, perfectly unusual. By this time, though, I made no move without consulting her sign too: A greater understanding of what is best for you and your family can be accomplished today. Bingo.

  “Hon, when was the last time you were on a roller coaster?” I asked, passing her the paper.

  Her eyes swept over the ad. “A carnival? Michael, that’s for children.”

  “All of them accompanied by adults,” I replied, “who’re easily having as much fun.”

  We drove to the fairgrounds in the late afternoon, the sky heavy with darkening clouds. “Rain?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, I think it’ll pass over. Let’s take the chance,” I said, knowing the horoscope’s prediction wouldn’t be in effect tomorrow.

  Kate gave in with a sigh. Her blond hair looped across her face from the air rushing through the open window, those light strands a shifting form of camouflage, though of course a sudden gust of wind could just as easily sweep it away.

  We paid the entrance fee and parked, then bought a book of tickets for all those rides that cluttered the fairgrounds: the spider ride, its passenger cabs like the thick footpads of an enormous insect; the distant, crackling sparks
of the bumper cars; a fun house, its entrance lined with wavy mirrors, the recorded laughter of a clown booming from a speaker; a double Ferris wheel, the two circles twirling over and under each other like a giant, untethered figure 8. Soon the lights would turn on and then the magic of the place would take hold. But now it all looked shabby under the gray sky, and a steady drizzle soon made it worse. Before long, thick ominous drops splattered about us, and then it was pouring. Kate and I ran to the nearest shelter—the carousel.

  We stood among the still herd of horses and watched as the dirt paths winding through the fairgrounds turned into long stretches of mud. There was much Kate could have said about this sight, but she leaned against me quietly, her damp hair flat against the back of her blouse, and I matched her silence gratefully. Perhaps this little disaster was what we needed—at least it was unusual.

  A longhaired attendant wove his way toward us through the horses, his Guns ‘n’ Roses t-shirt rolled up at the sleeves. His smile a bit wary, he hesitated before asking, “Tickets?”

  Kate glanced at me doubtfully, but I said, “Sure, how many do you need?”

  He grinned. “Three apiece—not bad for a roof over your head, eh?”

  “Quite a bargain,” I said, tearing the tickets from the book. He walked off, whistling, and I turned to Kate. “Why not, honey? That’s what we’re here for, right?”

  She managed to smile and nodded. I picked a nice brown horse with a rearing head, fit my shoe into a stirrup and pulled myself up. Kate settled on the palomino in front of me.