My Only Wife Page 11

  Once caught up to the old man, my wife said, “This one, huh?” She made a slow circle around the statue.

  “Absolutely,” the man said. “See the twist of her neck? Her arms have given out, and now the stone grinds against the delicate bone of her clavicle. Every second she wonders if she should let the weight drop, but she suffers on. Out of pride, perhaps, or duty at any cost. What’s tragic is her only escape now is to collapse, and it’s sure to crush her. She hasn’t the strength simply to set it aside. She’s waited too long. She’ll become a victim of her pride.”

  My wife examined the statue as if evaluating weak spots on the woman’s frame, wondering what would give next. “So you think she should give up?” she asked.

  “Well, for the sake of her survival? Yes. Who cares about pride when you’re dead?”

  My wife walked to my side, took my arm. She was still smiling. “Not pride,” she said. “Honor.” As we walked away, she called back: “Pleasure meeting you. Stay warm out here.”

  She guided us through the double glass doors and the old man called out, “I see it now. It’s a tricky smile, fella. Watch out.”

  My wife pulled the door shut behind us. “He’s right,” she said. “Age shouldn’t immediately demand respect.”

  30.

  MY WIFE RELAYED TO ME a story told to her by an elderly woman in a grocery store. My wife had slipped on some smashed grapes near the woman’s cart, and though the woman was too feeble to help her to her feet, she told my wife a story, while my wife inspected her skin for bruises and her clothing for wet spots.

  The woman told my wife a story about an eyeball that wanted to be a person very badly.

  My wife, for once, was in a bit of a hurry. Though she was tempted by this interesting old woman, she tried to walk away when she saw that she was unharmed and clean, but the old woman held her forearm with one hand while bracing herself against her shopping cart with the other.

  My wife will now admit that she was slightly frightened. The old woman began to tell my wife how the eyeball would roll around the schoolhouse, trying to tell people that it was indeed human and not just an eyeball, but it had no voice because eyeballs have no mouths.

  Again, my wife said, “Excuse me, I really must go. I’m in a rush. Thank you for your concern, though.”

  The little old woman held on and continued. She told my wife about how someone picked up the eyeball and put it on a desk at some point, so as not to kick it around any longer. This had been the only way the eyeball had traveled on flat surfaces, as eyeballs have no legs or arms, or muscles of any sort to propel them through space.

  The desks were slanted slightly though and so the eyeball rolled down the desk onto a desk chair. The eyeball was elated. Now it felt like a real student.

  As class began, the teacher asked a question to begin discussion and no one knew the answer and so no one would make eye contact with the teacher.

  The eyeball, however, could do nothing but make eye contact. The teacher, not recognizing this new student, pointed to the eyeball, and said, “You there. Do you know the answer?”

  The eyeball simply stared back, astonished and small.

  The eyeball had done the reading. Faced with a page, what else could an eyeball do? But in response to the teacher’s question, there is only so much that can be said with a look. The teacher assumed the eyeball didn’t have the answer because of its silence.

  “Do your reading next time,” the teacher said. “All of you, do your reading next time.” Pointing at the eyeball, she continued, “Let that embarrassing case of ignorance be a lesson to you.”

  The old woman had completed her story, but still held on to my wife.

  “What does that mean?” my wife asked, not so eager to go now.

  “You know better than to ask such a question,” the old woman said, wisely. “I say, grapes, eyeballs, what’s the difference? They’re all slippery suckers and I’m still older than I’ve ever been.”

  “Are you here alone?” my wife asked.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, young lady. That logic of mine has carried me home many a time.” She winked and let go of my wife. She hobbled toward the vegetables, and my wife headed toward the meat section. My wife slipped again, this time on some coolant in a refrigerated aisle.

  “I’m still older than I’ve ever been,” my wife repeated under her breath, before she gathered herself up again, this time slightly bruised.

  31.

  MY WIFE WALKED MORE QUICKLY than I did.

  It was raining out and I liked the rain. I lingered behind her, dancing like a talentless Gene Kelley.

  My wife enjoyed walking in the rain as well, but she altered her pace for nothing, for no one. She walked ahead, and I traced her path, not keeping my eyes on her back a few paces ahead, but on the momentary footsteps she left in puddles. I swear for an instant I could see a footstep on the pavement—the shape of her foot in the rainwater lining the gutters.

  I was entranced. It didn’t happen every time. I followed them closely and I picked up my pace so I maintained the same distance behind her.

  “Hurry up,” my wife said, unaware I was so near. “I’m freezing. All I want is my warm bed.”

  “This is amazing,” I said. “You’re making footprints in water!” She had no idea what I was talking about. She glanced back but she didn’t stop. She continued to walk forward, maybe even speeding up. The quicker her strides left the ground, the the easier I could see this phenomenon loiter behind her.

  When we began to walk under a section of sidewalk dominated by awnings I caught up to her. I pulled her arm around and she almost lost her balance in the sudden stop.

  I pulled her to me wrapping my arms around her waist. I traced the path of a cold raindrop down her cheek with my warm fingertip. “You were making footsteps in the rain,” I lifted her chin a bit. “I think that might be impossible.” I kissed her lips softly. Her arms wrapped around my neck. We had been married two years and I still felt surprised and lucky that I had found a way to make her mine.

  When the kiss pulled apart a little, her lips still brushing mine, she exhaled into me, “I think that you might be crazy.” We kissed again and again, rain running from our hairlines, cooling our mouths. We wrapped each other like pythons. We warmed under that awning.

  The white noise of our focus on each other alone drowned out the sound of the rain.

  After the intense, lengthy kisses had faded to little brushes of lips, tickles of cheek to cheek, I whispered, “I think the rain might be stopping.” I hugged her close to me for a while longer.

  We let ourselves drench each other for a moment and when I took her hand in mine, when I pulled her past the drip of the awning’s edge, I took a few large steps ahead. “Watch me walk. See if I can do it, too. Do I make footprints?”

  I tried to walk, with my head turned to see my wife’s reaction.

  She said, “No, no footsteps.” She apologized with her eyes.

  I slowed a bit, though I knew her pace was quicker than mine and she would have caught up with me had I carried on. “Are you sure?”

  “The sidewalk is maybe a bit drier now.”

  “No,” I relented and smiled. I let her fill in the meaning. She took my hand and jumped, tall into the next puddle. She splashed us both, soaked the little that had remained dry.

  32.

  MY WIFE TOOK A CLASS in still life painting. She had been painting for a while, but thought her work was missing something. She signed up for a class, hoping to learn the rules so she could forget them. She wanted the pressure of guidelines and a teacher so she could work against them.

  She was obsessed with the idea of the still life. She liked thinking about the aggression of the painter. The trick with a still life is that it cannot be still at all. There must be something in the painting that has movement and rarity to it.

  Ultimately what my wife had discovered was that the life of a still life had to come from shadows, reflections, an
object that looks like it has so recently been thrown down upon the table that it might still tremble with reverberation. Overturned wineglasses in still life paintings have to appear as if the wine flowing from them is still swelling an ever wider stain beneath it.

  This brutality is why entire game animals so often adorn the tables of still lifes. There is a certain energy to the recently dead. There is a liminality to an animal which has been killed but not yet eaten. The space and time in which it resides is potential and riveting.

  My wife took this class and came home claiming she might not return for the next session.

  I told her if she had paid the class fee already she should at least give it a second chance.

  I asked her, “Why?”

  My wife said she had already taught herself all of the lessons the teacher had to share.

  I reminded her that this had only been the first class and he was bound to venture into new territory eventually. I suggested she tell the teacher her past experience and perhaps he could give her some further guidance. He could suggest some new approaches with which she might attack the genre.

  I was the one who convinced her to stay in that class.

  She smiled at me, the ever-logical presence in her passionate world. She nodded her head in agreement and flipped around the painting she was holding in her hands. It was the still life she had been working on that night. A skull, an open sepia-paged book, a golden goblet, a hunk of cheese: these were the objects of still life.

  “No choice in what you were allowed to paint, huh?” She shook her head.

  “That’s a great book, no matter what. I think that was worth the whole class-time. It’s beautiful.”

  She smiled and flipped the painting back around to herself, examining the book. She nodded, she leaned toward me and kissed me.

  I loved her.

  She tried the class again, and the next week came home empty-handed.

  “Where’s the new painting?” I asked.

  Her eyes turned to mine, tired but excited. It looked like this week’s class had taken a lot out of her, “It’s not done yet. I did what you said. I asked him for some suggestions about approaching the still lifes in other ways and this time he told me I could imagine a context for the objects we were painting. I could reposition them in my painting any way I pleased as long as it looked correct as far as proportions, shading and perspective go. I’m much happier. It’s a much more exciting class now.”

  I pulled her to me, stumbling her backwards to our couch. “I’m glad to hear it. What kind of art teacher would he be if he didn’t let you do whatever you pleased?”

  She rested her head on my shoulder, she wrapped her arms around my chest. “Probably a good one,” she said, with a sighing giggle.

  The next week she was again empty-handed, and by the week after that I no longer expected her to come home with the painting, but I did still ask her about it. I was intrigued and anxious now. It was going to be astounding. “So… where is it?” I asked.

  “It’s almost done,” she said.

  “How’s it going?”

  I needed some more information, but she offered up nothing: “It’s going well. I’m anxious to have it finished, though. I’m getting a little creeped out spending so much time with it. I feel I’m in the painting working my way out. The instructor says that’s natural. He says that obsession often precedes completion.”

  “So what’s it like inside the painting?”

  She was elusive. I kept my eyes trained on her, worried she might disappear. “Come on, I can’t describe it. My instructor did say the most interesting thing to me today though. He asked me if I was an auditory person. I told him I definitely was and asked him why he wanted to know. He told me the painting called up in him a keen sense of synaesthesia. When he looked at my painting he heard something. He said he didn’t want to sound like some crunchy-granola art teacher but there were dull sounds that entered his head when he looked at my painting. I asked him what they sounded like and he said perhaps a saw being played as an instrument, you know, that whining coo. He said he heard a babble of low voices, but he couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. He heard the consistent chime of a grandfather clock. Isn’t that wild? I hear nothing when I look at my painting.”

  “That is bizarre. I can’t wait to see it.” It was all I could muster to say at that point.

  She looked at me, like I had suggested something she had never considered possible. A small smile turned up her lips ever so slightly and she gave a half-nod, unconvincing.

  The next week was the final class and I expected her to come home with her work so that I might hear all the echoes it had to offer me. She walked in the door, once again empty-handed, and winked. She walked to the record player and put on a record before she laid down on the couch.

  “Where’s the painting?” I asked.

  “My instructor wanted to keep it, so I let him. He told me synaesthesia is a rare, rare thing and if someone ever claims to experience it in your work, you should make sure it’s that person that comes to own it.” She relaxed a bit after saying this, closed her eyes.

  “Wouldn’t that be distracting, to have a painting that babbled at you every time you looked at it?” I could see her eyes roll under their lids. “I wanted to see it though. I wanted to hear it. Couldn’t you at least have brought it home for a little while? Can I go see it?”

  She opened her eyes. “Look, I didn’t know it mattered so much to you. I don’t really want to hound this man down now. I already gave it to him. It’s his to do with as he pleases.”

  I was exasperated with her and with all the work she created. “But you worked so hard on it.”

  She closed her eyes again, “That’s right and now I can do whatever I want with it. I gave it away. I didn’t want it in my life. It was too powerful. It made me uncomfortable. I’m tired. I’ll tell you about the painting some other time, alright?”

  This didn’t seem like it should be a big deal. I had the sense that I was behaving like a child, but I didn’t want to give in.

  She looked so peaceful there on the couch, so I sat and I watched her rest. I thought she was spent for the night. In a few minutes though she sat up and reached into the drawer of the end table. She pulled out her tape recorder and went into our bedroom.

  She was going to give a tape more of the story than I would ever know.

  33.

  MY WIFE SLAMMED THE CLOSET door shut.

  She locked it up tight.

  She fell back against the door, scrambling to fasten the bracelet back onto her wrist.

  “What is it?” I asked, startled at the fuss.

  “I shouldn’t have gone in there today. It’s too much.”

  “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

  She gathered herself quickly and forced a smile, nostrils flaring. “No, I’m fine. I need to go to work. I’m late.”

  I called after her as she went into the bedroom to change into her white tee shirt, “But it’s Saturday.” I was whining. I wanted an evening with her.

  “I always work Saturday. Saturday is date night. That’s when the world needs waitresses most.” She searched for her keys in vain on the coffee table, the end table.

  “Kitchen counter,” I said. She stalked into the kitchen, her feigned composure breaking in her frantic effort to leave the apartment.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling again as she emerged from the kitchen, forcing a calm appearance. “I’ll see you later tonight.If you go out, leave a note.” She wandered over to the couch, now seeming like she had all the time in the world, had nowhere to be. She kissed me, sweetly and softly. She said, “Bye, love.”

  She casually swung open the door, stepped out, and slammed it violently behind her.

  34.

  MY WIFE AND I WENT to a bar. In a year she would disappear completely, but I had no way of knowing. By then I believed inertia might carry us on through to the end of our lives.

  That night we
ordered drinks.

  To the bartender my wife said: “Vodka…vodka.”

  To the man beside her my wife said: “A smoke if you’ve got it.”

  Lipstick smudged onto a filter. A match sparked. Two people turned away from each other. I met my wife’s eyes as she exhaled.

  That night my wife took on a trinity of conversation tactics:

  My wife answered questions with questions.

  My wife connected topics in a take-a-penny-leave-a-penny manner, dropping off irrelevant remnants of discussions she knew I would pick up and resurrect along the way.

  My wife delayed her side of the conversation with attempts to tie maraschino cherry stems into knots with her tongue.

  At first she was adept, remarkably talented at this latter feat, pausing only moments to tangle the stem.

  As her tongue grew thick with liquor, the pauses stretched, until she spat out a stem, untied, and admitted defeat. She folded her arms, resting them on the bar, and turned to me. She amused herself.

  Then I asked the question. “What’s in your closet?”

  She rested her forehead on her arms for a moment.

  As the bartender passed, she lifted her head. To him my wife said: “Vodka, please.” The bartender looked at me and I shrugged. To me, my wife said: “That is the least of our problems.”

  I asked again, “What’s in your closet?”

  She mocked me, “What’s in your closet?”

  “What closet?” I responded.

  Sip. “Everyone has a closet. What have you got stacked in yours? You know what’s in mine. I never bother you about yours. I don’t even ask what’s inside, let alone ask to see it.”