My Only Wife Read online

  The clerk looked back with an apologetic plea.

  My wife untucked one leg from beneath her and slid both of her feet into her shoes again.

  “Thank you,” the young man said. He continued on to wake up a man in an armchair a few paces away.

  My wife turned back to her book and kept reading.

  “What were you going to say?” I asked.

  She looked at me and searched my face. She was confused.

  “What?”

  “You were going to say something before he asked you to put your shoes on. What was it?”

  She thought for a moment. “I’m not too sure.” She looked back to her book, then lifted her head again.

  My wife said, “Was I going to say something?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “Did you want me to say something?”

  “I thought you were going to say something.”

  “Oh.” She looked back down at her book.

  I watched her stare at the page for a few moments, and then begin reading again, her lips moving.

  I looked back to the magazine I was flipping through, stalled on an article whose title attracted me, called “Wolves at the Door.”

  Her voice: “I would die on a daily basis if I could. I think that’s true.”

  She could smile so wide. I was sitting in her smile, and I admit this reluctantly because there are times when my stomach turns at the thought of that smile, where I regret those smiles of hers so much and wish I could have ignored them and escaped them.

  She nodded her head and shifted her position on the couch, kicking her shoes off again and sitting on her feet: “I would die everyday if I could.”

  I wasn’t humoring her this time. “You would be coming back to life though. If you knew you were dying every day, it wouldn’t be difficult. You’d know you have more chances.”

  She wasn’t even looking at me, just shaking her head, repeating “Every day,” stressing different syllables, saying the words every way she could muster.

  I was irrationally angry about the confidence she had in this being some sort of grand statement. “Dying would be nothing more than falling asleep.”

  Something lit her face anew. “I’d be a man in bed.”

  My wife said, “I’d be an opera singer. Yvette Guilbert in her black gloves. I’d capitalize on my deficiencies. I’d make a name for myself from nothing.”

  My wife looked me in the eye, and her face saddened, “I’d fall asleep in the back seat of a car and let someone else drive. I’d stop making decisions, but I’d still get where I needed to be.”

  My wife grabbed her bag and began rifling through it. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and kissed my cheek. “I’m gonna run outside for a smoke. I’ll be right back.” She ran off, practically skipping.

  It was like she had her own sense of reason. It’s such a commonly accepted notion that people have their own sense of humor. Often people with differing senses of humor don’t get along very well, but there is the odd occasion where two people with extremely different senses of humor can find themselves in admiration of one another.

  I watched my wife through the window of that bookstore and wondered where she came up with the things she did.

  I wondered where my wife found the energy to chase after the reasoning she constantly tried out.

  I admired it, but I would never understand.

  I watched my wife outside that window and her cigarette disappeared quickly. She inhaled and exhaled like a sturdy steam engine, manic with direction and focus.

  I watched her drop the tiny stub on the sidewalk, grind it out with the toe of her shoe.

  My wife sped through the door and anchored onto the couch beside me.

  My wife began: “When I was a kid I had this fear of the opera.

  “People spoke of opera as if it were a natural disaster on some grand scale.

  “I heard people speak about it like there was no greater punishment on this earth and I heard people make it sound like it was what made life worth living.

  “Either way I was sure it was something far too large for me. It was insurmountable. When people even so much as mentioned opera, I equated it with speaking of god. My parents told me never to take the name of the lord in vain, but they never said anything was wrong with talking about opera. Of course, I said ‘God’ in exasperation constantly and my parents quickly stopped even trying to chastise me for it; they would just give me a look. No one, however, ever noticed that I didn’t talk about opera.

  “The reason was that I feared what opera could do to me, the way other little children fear the punishment of god if they cry wolf one too many times. I thought opera would find me, and— change me, I guess. That was what I was so afraid of. Something was so irreversible about it.”

  My wife took a sip of her coffee, her hands began to wave: “Everything is bigger: the stories, the voices, the people, the sets, the theaters, the distance between you and the stage. All those people sitting with their flippy little binoculars, squinting towards something enormous. There are so many holes. There’s the language barrier. There’s the sense that in watching opera one is bridging a gap between the time on the stage and the time this opera was written. And the audience is so far from the action, it’s like the delay of starlight. The opera might be over, but you’re still glowing with it as the radiance of it travels out to you in your seat. And all of those spans of time are so enormous.

  “But I didn’t know any of that when I was a child. I had no idea what it even was. It was this thing, opera, that people talked about ominously, like it was some omnipotent dictator that could not be brought down. People either loved it or hated it, but it couldn’t be touched.

  “Now, I’d like nothing more than to be an opera singer. It seems the role to play.

  “There are so many things I have been sure of in my life. They have changed so constantly.”

  She slumped. I stared at her.

  “I’m exhausted,” I said, and turned back to my book.

  27.

  AROUND OUR SIXTH ANNIVERSARY, my wife cut off all of her hair. It had been long, to the middle of her back, and a honey blond color she’d never dyed.

  My wife donated her hair to have it made into a wig. Her hair had been thick: it was soft and fine, but there were masses of it.

  After, she was left with a pixie cut.

  My wife had never really styled her hair when it had been long. She washed it regularly, combed it through, and let it fall down her back for the rest of the day. At work, she wound it into a regulation bun to wait on tables.

  Now that her hair was short, she filled a once almost-empty shelf of our bathroom cabinet with molding waxes, gels, mousses and sprays. When I came home each day I was always surprised to see how she’d arranged her hair. Some days she matted it to her head. Some days she fluffed and flipped it out. She spiked it, sometimes subtly, other times in a punky mass of confusion. One evening I came home to her lying on the couch, a Mohawk flaring above the pillow upon which she rested her head.

  On our sixth anniversary I gave her a variety of barrettes I found in an antique store. I brought an enormous ancient silk flower I’d discovered in a box marked “Miscellanea” and a selection of pillbox hats with netted veils.

  Digging through the bins at the back of the store, I’d also secured a variety of scarves she might tie around her head as headbands.

  She opened the box before we left for dinner. “We’re going to be late now.” She smiled.

  “Why?” I moved to touch her and she slapped my hand away.

  “Fiend! I have to try all of these on and figure out which one to wear tonight.”

  “Our reservation is in twenty minutes. If we don’t leave now we’ll wait for a table all night.”

  She darted into the bathroom with her box of goodies, “So call and ask if they can hold our table or maybe move our reservation down a bit.”

  I called and they could get us
in a half hour later than we’d originally planned. “You have fifteen minutes to primp like a schoolgirl in front of that mirror and then I am leaving whether you’re on my arm or not.”

  My wife appeared wearing a dramatic smile. “Do you like?” She wore the hot pink pillbox hat.

  “If I say I adore it, does that mean we can leave?”

  “Silly.” She straightened my lapel. “You’ve moved our reservation to a half hour from now. So, do you like this hat? Because if you like it, I have an idea for something else we could do.” She pulled me to her by my lapels.

  We unbuttoned, unzipped, unclasped. We fell, rolled, fumbled. It felt old and new, exciting and comfortable, deviant and spontaneous. I made many comments about how much, indeed, I enjoyed that pillbox hat.

  Although my wife had always called the shots sexually, she called them that evening with the vigor of our earlier years. Lately, she’d become hyper-aware of the posturing involved in lovemaking, how even when genuinely motivated, a moment’s objective glance at the situation could pull her out of the action. When she found a way to ignore these thoughts, we were terrific, like we’d been when we began. She found passion and whimsy and belief in us.

  We arrived at the restaurant on time, a little mussed, and the maitre-d’ ushered us to a table at the back of the restaurant.

  We ordered an extravagant meal, beginning with an artichoke soaked in a Brie and mustard sauce. For our entrees my wife had fricassee of chicken and I had marinated steak. For dessert, profiteroles doused in chocolate sauce. We savored each bite, vocal in our enjoyment. About halfway through our meal, when each of us had downed two martinis apiece, a couple was seated next to us. Quite a bit older, probably in their fifties, they glanced over when we both moaned at the first taste of our entrée. We apologized; they laughed. They asked us if our meal marked a special occasion.

  “Sixth anniversary.” My wife responded with actual joy. Her tongue sprang out to catch a trickle of sauce threatening to spill from the corner of her mouth.

  “Is that right?” the woman asked. “This is our twenty-sixth anniversary. You both still seem very much in love. So nice to see a young couple making it work so well.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “Although most of our friends are married, too, have been for a while, and they’re all holding strong. I don’t believe we’re an anomaly.”

  The woman smiled. “I suppose I hear the divorce statistics and assume nothing works out anymore. This is both of our second marriages. We both married while still in college, and neither lasted more than a couple years. By the time we were trying to find jobs and a place to settle, the differences were too wide.”

  “It’s true,” the man chimed in. “My first wife and I thought we had it all figured out, and one day she just went crazy, said I didn’t care about her goals, only worried about myself. The day I knew it was over she kept shouting, ‘When are we going to start thinking about me?’ Every decision I made, every word spoken had been for her. I didn’t know what to do. We went to a few marriage counseling sessions, and decided we were too young to spend a lifetime making it work. Then I met this one,” he nodded at his wife, “and it all came clear. We both wanted to live in the city. She took a job at a gallery. I’m a lawyer. Our life is logical and clean and easy. Twenty-six years of smooth sailing.”

  His wife leaned in, whispered, “Not always entirely smooth, but certainly better than the first marriages ever could have ended up. My first husband is a high school wrestling coach out in some bumbling farm town. Now tell me, can you imagine me in a farm town?” She looked at us as if we knew her, as if she wanted a straightforward answer, valued our opinions.

  I froze, but my wife exclaimed, “Absolutely not. That would be absurd. Look at you. You’re a city girl all the way.”

  “Exactly!” The woman sat back in her chair. “You’ve known me five minutes and you could tell. How on earth did I marry a man who couldn’t see I’d never be a country wife?” She chuckled to herself.

  My wife never turned away, wanting to appear polite; she was, I’m sure, loving this odd little encounter.

  The woman next to us showed no sign of stopping. The waitress came, took our plates away, our new friends at the next table received their food and the man slowly began to eat. The woman eyed her steak, but carried on as she cut it into ever smaller bites, talking a mile-a-minute. “I’m a reader,” she said.“My first husband followed me around college like a charmed snake. We had nothing in common, but he listened intently to everything I said. I rambled on and on about the work I was doing. I was an art history major. He wrestled. We met in a lit class that we needed to take for a general education requirement. I was a hot ticket back then and he was handsome, friendly, popular. I was arty and exotic, and I had a great body.” She held the back of her hand to shield her mouth. “Though you’d never be able to tell now! We were sure we were in love and we’d last a lifetime. He wanted to get married, so we’d never have to hide anything from our families, could begin our lives together. I’d been terrified of commitment and settling down, but for some reason, with this huge decision, I decided to attempt to overcome my fear. After my junior year, we married, a smallish wedding, reception in my parents’ backyard. We’d known each other less than a year.”

  Our dessert arrived. Coffee was poured. While my wife and I spooned mouthfuls of puff pastry, ice cream and chocolate sauce, the woman inhaled the majority of her plate of food. When she’d finished, she continued. “Anyway, we went on our honeymoon: Hawaii. We began living our lives in a little apartment our senior year. He had a collection of sporting equipment he horded in the one communal storage closet. I bought masses of shelving.

  “Enter books. Mine. The beginning of the problem. He didn’t understand why I had so many. Nor why they needed to cover the walls. He thought the apartment would look so much nicer without all that clutter. He didn’t get why I needed to buy the books, why I couldn’t take them out from the library. Finances immediately came into play. I worked extra hours to pay for books I wanted to own. He said I was never around and that I never did anything for him. What he meant was I worked instead of cooking him dinner, which I actually did quite often. Not every night, but often, and not once did he make dinner for us. He said I should be putting the money I earned toward something for the both of us, or save it for the future. I told him the reason I worked was books. If I didn’t buy books, I wouldn’t work. I told him, I’m not giving up books for you. We fought about priorities. We were young and foolish. All those times I thought he was interested, even fascinated in what I was talking about, I realized he was just being a good listener, an honorable trait certainly, but I’d been under the illusion that listening implied we would build a relationship marked by fulfilling exchange.

  “I kept working. We both graduated. We stayed in the college town for some time after, all the while I tried to convince him that I needed to move back to the city. He nodded, I thought genuinely, but actually, I later learned, dismissively. He thought he had me pinned. He was sure eventually he’d break me, cow me into doing whatever he pleased and he waited me out slumped in an easy chair, expecting me to calm into my domesticated self any minute. One evening near the end, a slow day at the gallery allowed me to go home early. My first husband and I had had a spat the night before, again about how committed each of us were to making the marriage work, our willingness to sacrifice personal pleasures for the sake of our general well-being. Again he’d brought up my books, suggested I sell them to used bookstores, suggested I stop buying more. I came home from the gallery and collapsed in his easy chair. I stared at the book shelves that dominated the living room. They climbed every wall. Almost immediately, I felt dampness sink into the bottom of one pant leg. I felt the seat, cool and wet with something, beneath me. I stood and then crouched beside the chair lowering my face to the dampness.

  “It was beer. He’d spilled a beer and made no attempt to clean it up. Upon closer inspection I found a herd of cheese snack
s packed into the crease of the seat. Disgusting! I brought a trashcan and some paper towels. I scooped the remaining debris into the waste bin and found a layer of Fritos, a layer of corn chips. Under that, deep in the groove, I brushed out anonymous grime and lint. I scrubbed the beer stain out. Then I disposed of my tools and I looked again, standing this time, at all of my books. I was feeling dramatic. I began taking the books down in stacks. I brought them to our bedroom first and laid them end to end, overlapping so no space lay between them. I opened each to a random page, covering the floor, the bed, every horizontal surface. I did this in every room of that tiny apartment.

  “By the time I finished, my books blanketed the place. Every surface covered. Every binding broken. The content of all of those books released into the air. All the theories, images, stories I’d processed in my lifetime, lay around me and sang out their silence together, pages shuffling. I sat on the couch, and looked over them, this miraculous garden of my notes, my influences, and I heard my husband fumbling to turn his key in the lock. I heard him twisting and pushing the door in at the same time.

  “I had laid the books all the way to the door. He had to add a little pressure to swing the door open against the books’ resistance. When he came in, I grinned, Sheherazade laying out all one thousand and one stories in one night, asking for it. I smiled with the relief of an ending. Surely, this had to be the last straw. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he asked.

  “I said nothing. I had no answers to give, no approximations I thought even remotely appropriate. I sat and grinned, let words I’d read speak, pipe up into the air from their grounded pages.”

  The waitress came and took their plates, asked if they’d like a dessert menu. The husband nodded. My wife and I had our coffee cups refilled. We were no longer humoring this woman; we were riveted.

  “He kicked some of the books, furious at the state of the apartment and my silence. ‘What the fuck does this mean?’

  “I sat and smiled, tears dripping down my face. I knew they’d be fine. Even if pages ripped, they could be taped. The wear they withstood in this beating would only add to their history. Several books of theory he shredded —the fiercest deconstructionist critic I’d encountered, that hillbilly man I’d married.