My Only Wife Read online

  I was drunk, too, but not as drunk as she was. I harnessed my mouth. I said, “I have no closet. You know all there is to know about me. It’s all out there. It’s all in you.”

  My wife said: “What have I gotten from you?”

  To a new man who had seated himself beside her, my wife said, “A smoke if you’ve got it.”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. Was I supposed to begin a catalog list? And of what? Of all she already knew about me? I searched for the beginning of a thread. I unwound a spool never reaching a frayed tip. When I didn’t respond, my wife, distracted, said: “My eyes hurt. I need a tic-tac.” She rifled through her purse, two fingers clasping the newly lit cigarette, until she found a pack of mint tic-tacs. She popped one into her mouth, grimaced at the mixture of mint, nicotine and vodka. “I found one of the love letters you wrote me when we first met.” She pronounced the word “first” with a delicate slur. “You had written it in pencil,” she said, “so I erased it.”

  I stared, appalled. “Really?” I asked. She sucked on her tic-tac. She inhaled deeply. She sipped her vodka. She crunched down. The moment grew immense. Nothing was wrong.

  I asked my wife, “Why would you do that?”

  The bartender passed and to him my wife said: “Could I get a cocktail glass of cherries?” When he nodded, squeezing a few spears of bright red into the glass, my wife said, “You’re a doll. Thanks a million.” My wife was some brassy moll all of a sudden, playing a part.

  My wife pulled a cherry from its stem, chewed it down and slipped the stem between her lips. I waited while she tried unsuccessfully to tie it. What was once titillating to watch, once nimble in appearance, was now clumsy, sloppy. I grew impatient, I asked, “Why would you erase one of my notes?”

  She spat out the stem, all her grace disappearing in that moment. She said: “My eyes are blurring. I wonder if I need glasses. I’ve always wanted glasses.” To the man beside her she said: “A smoke if you’ve got it.” She didn’t realize it was the same gentleman whom she’d asked for a cigarette only minutes before. He reached into his inner pocket, pulled the pack from his jacket, shook a cigarette half-out of the pack, and my wife pulled it loose with her mouth. He held his lighter up and flicked the wheel, his finger planted on the button. My wife leaned her cigarette into the long flame. Her cheekbones grew more angular as she inhaled. I had never been so disgusted watching a person smoke. She turned toward me to cough and popped another cherry into her mouth, discarding the stem on the bar’s surface, not willing to attempt a knot again so soon. She savored the brilliant sugar.

  I was impatient and alone. I felt suddenly that she was not the wife I thought she was.

  My wife chewed, inhaled, opened her eyes, squinted and then stared at me, all sloppy mischief and clumsy sleight of hand.

  “What closet and why would you erase my love letter? Where is this coming from?”

  “You understand what I mean about the closet, and I erased it because I could. Do you think I might need reading glasses? Little Ben Franklin readers? Wouldn’t I be the picture of a little granny with those?” She wanted a response. “Dearie?” she asked, in her best imitation of an old woman.

  My wife gulped her vodka. She inhaled smoke deeply. She stared at me.

  I had no idea what she wanted, what I was supposed to say. I tried. “Are you unhappy with me?”

  “It’s not that.” She shook her head, for a moment staring beyond the bottles of liquor into the bar mirror. “I don’t ask nearly as much of you as you ask of me. All I’m asking is that we equalize this a little. I’m not saying I want more from you.”

  I took a long pull on my beer. “Well, I think you’ve got it backwards, but let me get this straight. You want me to want less of you.”

  The brassy moll disappeared and she shrank before my eyes. She looked broken. She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “How do I do that?” “I’m pregnant.”

  “Cheap trick for sympathy.” There was no way.

  To me my wife said: “Is it?” She sipped her vodka. She waved over the bartender and said meekly: “More vodka, please.”

  I shook my head, placed my hand over her glass. She pushed my hand away. More insistently, she said to the bartender: “Much more vodka, please.” I reached over and slid the glass out of her reach, nodding to the bartender to take it away.

  She slumped into her lap. She wasn’t crying. I lifted her by the shoulders. “What’s in my closet? You can’t be serious, can you? You’re not pregnant. Don’t play like that.”

  My wife looked away .

  “Even if you thought you were, you aren’t anymore. You’ve had about a gallon of vodka tonight.”

  My wife gasped. I lifted my hands from her, brought them to my face, began to massage the hollows above my cheekbones.

  My wife shifted her eyes to mine. “I want too much of a baby. I want it to prove my life, my age. I want to forget this selfishness. I shouldn’t require anything of a baby. I can’t do that. I would be a terrible mother. Take it away. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’ll just tell its story now.” She slipped another unnaturally red cherry between her lips.

  Who was this woman? “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not pregnant anymore. I lied.”

  “Anymore? You got rid of it?” I had to look away and then I had to look back. “You didn’t tell me? When did this happen? Are you crazy?” I was off my barstool. I had her by the shoulders. I had no idea what was happening. I looked away from her and around the room trying to find something familiar.

  My wife pushed my hands off. She stood. “Be quiet,” she said. “This is private.” She grabbed my jaw in both her hands and turned my head, pulling my face down so one ear was in front of those bright red lips. “I lost it, alright? Do you like that better? I had a miscarriage. And you know what? It was for the best. I’m glad it happened because I would have done it all wrong.” She paused and I tried to turn my head, but she kept me turned away, my ear close to her lips. “Sure, it’s too bad, and yeah, I’m fucking sad. But I know it’s for the better. For me. You would have been a wonderful father. I know you would have been nothing less than perfect. I’m clumsy and selfish though.” Now she turned my face towards hers. I was about to say something, though what I have no idea. She put a finger to my lips, “And a sloppy, sloppy drunk.” She straightened her hand, brought it back and slapped me hard across the face. “That wasn’t because you did anything wrong. I wanted to know you actually felt something.”

  I was silent. We sat back down. My wife asked the bartender for two glasses of water. He slid them toward us. We sipped like children, avoided eye contact.

  “I’m sorry.” I said.

  “Shhh.”

  “What can I…”

  “Shhh.”

  My tongue was a punching bag, returning every time, a muscle I slung around with an anxious lack of dignity.

  I wished I could crawl on my hands and knees away from her.

  Instead I clutched my cup of water and waited.

  I imagined we might be silent for days, communicating through slight shifts in focus or twitches of the mouth.

  I was wrong. When I drained my water, she downed hers. I thought we’d head home silently, but she pushed the cups toward the bartender to refill them, then met my eyes, with softness, with weariness, and yet with resolve. “You deserve this story more than my closet does. I thought I might be pregnant a couple weeks ago. I waited. I bought four or five pregnancy tests. I stopped drinking and smoking for a short time. I waited another week. I took the tests. All positive. I wanted to keep it to myself for a few days. I was nervous. I didn’t know how I felt. No matter what I knew I wanted a few days alone with the idea. I wanted to be sure what I thought before I spoke it out loud. I decided I needed to keep it. I’d never forgive myself if I ran away from something so huge. I didn’t know if I wanted to raise it though. I knew if I kept it, it might become my little puppet. I might use it. It might be a toy I got
to form, dress up, one more thing I got to control. Grownups can hold their own with me,but a baby I could make do whatever I wanted. A child would mean more power than I should be allowed.

  “I was going to tell you when you came home from work that day. I watched you get up and get dressed, and I was nervous as I watched you leave because I knew that I had to tell you when you came home. I went back to sleep exhausted by that idea. I woke up aching in a patch of my own blood. I hadn’t even seen a doctor to confirm what the store-bought tests told me, but I scheduled an emergency appointment anyway.

  “It was true. I’d miscarried. They took blood. They gave me a full examination. The doctor told me I would feel good as new in a day or two. I’d only been pregnant about six weeks. He gave me the number of some counselors. I came home and I cried all day for something I hadn’t even wanted.

  “The cramps were gone by late afternoon, and you weren’t home by the time I was supposed to go to work. I shouldn’t have gone in, but I thought if I went to work I might be able to pull myself together before I saw you. I thought maybe I never had to tell you what had gone on. I thought you would be angry I hadn’t told you as soon as I knew I was pregnant. I thought if I could save you from that it would be better.

  “By the time I got home I had a handle on things and I tried my hardest to behave as if nothing had happened. Yesterday in the morning I began looking through old sentimental stuff I’ve saved. I found your old love letters and I found the one written in pencil and it hit me that only you would have written a letter in pencil, and I got an overwhelming urge to erase it. Something had been taken from me that I had no control over and I wanted to get rid of something by myself. I wanted something that had a bit of both of us and that letter was perfect. You wrote it and it was for me. It was mine to do with as I pleased and right then I wanted to destroy something you had given me before it could escape.

  “Today all I wanted was to get you drunk and to learn some deep secret I hated to know about you, so I could tell you mine and make an even trade. All I wanted was to discover that you’d been frightened to tell me something, that there was something you never wanted me to know, but of course you have nothing. You do give every bit of yourself to me and you expect the same of me, and I try, but I still want to grab some things and pack them into my cheeks for some famine when I know I’ll be alone and need them.”

  We were both silent for a long time. I searched myself, wanting to find something awful, some dark secret to offer her, but I couldn’t get past everything she’d shared with me. “I wish you would have told me earlier.”

  She stood. “Why don’t we dance?”

  I pulled her hand down, so she’d sit back on the barstool. “No. I don’t want to dance. You don’t want to either. You just don’t know what to say. Why don’t we go home?”

  She nodded and gathered her purse. I lifted her jacket from the back of her stool and held it up behind her so that she could easily slip her arms through the sleeves. I spun her around and buttoned her up as well. I ran my hands through the short length of her hair, brought her forehead to my lips and kissed her lightly there.

  “We’ll be alright.” I held the door open, and while lightly pressing my hand on the small of her back, my wife passed in front of me, into the cool night.

  35.

  SOON AFTER MY WIFE LEFT I wrote her a letter. I wrote her a letter I knew she would never receive. I wrote it so that I would remember exactly how I felt right after she left me.

  I knew it was going to appear overblown if read in hindsight, but I knew it was the honest expression of that moment. I knew the immediacy of the letter, how close to the situation it was, I knew how this would resonate even a year later. I would appear to be a mad man, angry and inordinately wronged.

  I wrote the letter for all of these reasons. I wrote this letter hoping an address might commit the impossibility of appearing so that I might mail it.

  I sealed the envelope and put her name on it. I carefully penned the return address and put on a stamp, a stamp that is now a few cents away from being the proper postage.

  I left the address blank because I had no idea of where she was. I knew I was never going to find her again and that even if somehow I did, I would still not have anything to write in that silent spot on the envelope. If I met her again I would become immediately disoriented. I would be so eager to never release her from my sight that my eyes would stay tightly focused on her. I would never know where I was again.

  I wrote her a letter that was vicious and hurtful and honest about exactly what I felt toward her.

  I dug in deep, I pressed my foot against the top edge of the dirtiest spade I owned, my ballpoint pen. I stomped on that shovel until it was full of earth and grime, and I brought it all to light and deposited it on a page in a crumbling heap, filthy but appropriate, baroque, incoherent and sick:

  To my lovely wife,

  I wish you were here right now so I could give you a slew of gifts for what you have put me through.

  I would give you a needlepoint pillow sewn with the hair of cancerous children, a woven pattern of hopeful eyes, stitched from the spoils of their war.

  I would give your fingertips the discovery of the mound of a lump under your breast’s fatty tissue, coated with layers of Vaseline indented with the ripped tips of fungal fingernails.

  I would give you the pinching twitter of lice scrambling your scalp gnawing your bubblegum dandruff, popping bubbles that cause your hair to mat with insect vomit.

  I would give you the iron taste of blood in your mouth, only after you’ve noticed the INFECTED sticker clinging to the outside of the bag.

  I give you the musky smoked scent of our miscarried child’s remains smeared from your thighs to your tits in triumph.

  I give you the drag of your old soul records, played slowly and melted into the quiver of a dirge, the low death rattle of the recently deceased singing for companionship in their demise.

  I am made ill by the thought of you. By the way in which I believed we belonged and functioned together. I gag at the thought of the love I thought you had for me.

  I miss you. I’ve found bruises under my skin, now, weeks after you’ve gone missing, that stagnate and wait for you to heal them to a clean clarity of flesh, instead of corrupted purple and green stains that anchor themselves in the depth of my tissue.

  I’m not sorry I said what I’ve said. I may look back on this and think it extreme, but it is truth.

  I am going to assume your absence is your truth.

  I wish I would have known. I am furious and I still love you.

  Since you are gone I am going to claim you as my own. Maybe someone else is busy claiming you for themselves right now.

  I don’t care. I assume the you that was mine will never be anyone else’s. Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe you are simply a pattern.

  May you replicate with agility and grace. May you compound steadily, simplifying infrequently and only out of necessity.

  I will write you letters the way a young lover whispers his secrets to a scarecrow loudly enough for his lover nearby to overhear.

  Eavesdrop.

  Love,

  Your husband

  I hated writing this letter and yet it made me feel better. I knew she would never read it and yet the cruel act of voicing such terrible thoughts was enough for me.

  I could have gone on, but this was my concentrated worst and I wanted her nauseated.

  I repeat that I knew she would never read this letter.

  But I imagined instances in which she would.

  I imagined her on a Greyhound bus next to a child who had demanded the window seat. I imagined her turning away to throw up in the aisle at the thought of what I’d written. I imagined her vomit splattering the lap of an elderly woman seated across the aisle from her. I imagined her throwing the letter into the puddle in an attempt to erase it before she could read the rest. I imagined waves of her remorse at leaving me flooding through, weaving her
with surging nausea.

  I imagined her at the bottom of a lake, still and bloated, watching the letter float before her eyes. I imagined her waterlogged fingers clumsily fumbling the letter open. I imagined the moment her eyes fell upon the first abuse was when her eye sockets dilated to a slackness that set her eyeballs loose to float a bit in front of her face. I imagined those eyes reaching toward the letter, not believing what they were reading. I imagined the loosely ballooning skin of her mouth opened wide in horror and apology. I imagined her floating to the surface, letting the tide drag her to shore, any landmass being that much closer to me.

  But mostly, I imagined an instance in which some distantly renowned god had turned her into a statue so that she might become eternal and universal. I imagined her missing an arm, perhaps a dent in the stone where her nose once was. I imagined smooth planes where the age she wanted had worn away what few curves she had, sanded them down to mere angles. I imagined her old in an ancient sort of way that would have pleased her immensely. I imagine her a caryatid, one arm still raised above her head supporting nothing more than air, air and sky, and at night, when viewed from the right angle, resting in her palm: one star shining so clearly it must have burnt out already, its light still on its journey to earth’s eyes. I imagine her situated in a museum, salvaged and displayed in a courtyard. I imagine one guard slipping out into the garden on his rounds. I imagine him looking from side to side, checking to make sure none of the other guards were passing through the windowed corridors inside. I imagine him placing my letter onto the stretched tall palm of her hand. I watch his face shift as he walks away as if he has done nothing out of the ordinary, his usual disinterest shifting back into his features. I imagine the guard letting himself back into the museum proper with his heavy ring of keys. I imagine him thoroughly locking off the corridor again, and glancing out to make sure the letter still lies on my wife’s palm.

  Only when no human eyes rest on her any longer does the statue of my wife feel the weight of my letter in her hand. She cannot bring her arm down; it is made of stone. Even if she could bend she has no other arm and hand with which she might open the letter. She can only feel the great heaviness of my sentiments funneled into words, deposited onto paper, wrapped into an envelope. She cannot know precisely what they say, can only feel the burden anchoring her shoulder into its socket, heavier than any ruin’s lintel she has before hefted high above her head.