The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  Lydia felt the wet outline of his kiss on her forehead. It tingled, like a snowflake. She wanted to wipe it off, but she didn’t want to insult him. It was strangely exciting, sitting in the car outside the woman’s house. But she wasn’t sure she deserved the privilege. She’d been on the other side, once, and she felt she had to tell him.

  “There’s something I have to tell you, Reverend,” she said quietly.

  He just smiled at her. “I don’t believe I need any further personal information from you, Mrs. Haas,” he said, starting the engine. “You’ve already told me everything I need to know.”

  15

  ON SEPTEMBER 5 Annie turned thirty-five. She spent the day solemnly working at her computer on an article for the Times-Union, listening to Sarah Vaughan and wallowing, a bit indulgently, in discontent. Thirty-five seemed conspicuously adult to her. She was planning a quiet, unceremonious evening at home when Michael burst into the room with two dozen irises and announced that he was taking her out. Christina appeared behind him, grinning. “At your service, madame,” she said, giving a little curtsey.

  “I see you’ve thought of everything.”

  Michael handed Annie the flowers and kissed her on the mouth. It was a kiss that a man gives to the woman he loves after many years of knowing her, a kiss intended to remind her of all she means to him—a kiss that whirled her back to their past and all they had shared together. “Happy birthday, Annie.”

  She hadn’t thought he’d remember her birthday—he’d been at the hospital all night delivering twins—and the fact that he’d gone to the trouble to make a reservation made her incredibly happy and she kissed him again and went upstairs to change. She chose her reliable black dress and her grandmother’s crystal beads and the earrings Michael had bought for her on their honeymoon in Paris, all of which, when assembled together, produced what she liked to imagine was a beguiling sensuality. Downstairs the children were running through the house, screaming wildly as Michael tackled them on the floor, tickling them mercilessly. After supplying Christina with a list of instructions (no eating in front of the TV, lights off at nine o’clock), none of which would be followed, they walked out, leaving behind the jubilant chaos of their life together—their life together—and suddenly it was just the two of them, opening the doors to Michael’s car with terrific nonchalance as if they did this sort of thing all the time, when in fact they rarely went out together. He took her to Etoire, a swishy French restaurant on the lake, where they indulged in two bottles of expensive wine, behaving like strangers on a first date. As they eyed each other over the flickering candle with the black water out the window, he looked good to her again and she loved him after all, of course she did, and he loved her. They had changed over the years—children did that to you—and she was no longer the college girl Michael had fallen in love with, in a black leotard and print skirt, arguing with feverish eloquence some obscure topic of importance. Now she wore turtlenecks and itchy wool sweaters, wool clogs and baggy jeans, and refused, for political reasons, to wear sexy undergarments. She made cookies and bread and planted bulbs in the garden and had chapped hands that smelled of onions, and she succumbed readily to sentimentality; even the Pledge of Allegiance could move her to tears.

  At thirty-five she was his, and she would be his at seventy—of this she had no doubt.

  Fall semester began at St. Catherine’s and soon the narrow black paths were covered with yellow leaves. Annie put aside her writing and focused assiduously on teaching, happy to discover that she was something of a celebrity on campus, even though her fierce, incendiary articles were usually relegated to the pages of obscure and progressive quarterlies that her students had never seen. As a journalist she had a reputation for tracking down misery and deceit, she had a nose for it, and a few of her articles had gained her notoriety. But her minimal success gave her a sordid feeling of worthiness. As a writer Annie had maintained a safe distance from the problems of the world. Although she had a deep sense of compassion, she’d never really put herself on the line for anybody, and she saw this aspect of herself as her most significant flaw. While her early stories might have inspired her readers from time to time, they didn’t really change anything, and on some nights, after a glass or two of chardonnay in the sweet warmth of her kitchen, her own hypocrisy was enough to make her choke. The truth was, she no longer had the courage to invite the lives of desperate strangers into her heart, and this explained her diminished passion for her work. But to the dean, Jack Spaull, a scrupulous administrator and the man responsible for hiring her, she was a great success, an exciting addition to the faculty, and certainly not an imposter.

  They gave her an office in the South Cottage, a little room crammed with books and an array of dust-covered trinkets that the other visiting professors had left behind. The office overlooked a sculpture garden and the path that led to the art building, the domain of the painter Simon Haas. For a period of time, Haas had been at the very top of the modern art world. He’d fled to High Meadow and lived in a house on Crooked Lake, guarded by six vicious Great Danes, who lurked in the unfenced woodlands around the property and had once chewed off the hand of a photographer who’d snuck in one night to get some shots. Years ago, when Annie was a graduate student in Manhattan, she’d attended the artist’s first gallery opening, an exhibition of paintings that had caused quite a stir. The art dealer, Norma Fisk, an elegant vulture of a woman who was famous for exhibiting work by new artists, had discovered him on the street, selling his paintings out of a battered station wagon. Homeless was the word she’d used, tsk-tsking with relish as she described the young artist as being so hungry he could barely stand up. But the talent— her beady eyes watering, her mouth savoring the bloody gravy of success—the talent could not be denied. Annie had been disturbed by the paintings, which focused rather obsessively on a girl at the height of puberty, no more than thirteen or fourteen, a beauty so aching and suffering you almost couldn’t bare to look at her or, perhaps, you felt it was wrong to look. Her dark eyes, the raw flesh of her lips, the hesitant, disparaging smile. Haas had painted his subject immersed in various routines of hygiene, but unlike the works of the Impressionists he’d studied obsessively as a boy, his results were vastly different. The girl had been displayed in every conceivable position, the paint applied with a kind of feral contempt, vigorous strokes of color that only repressed her beauty and slaughtered her youth. There was a certain palpable nastiness, dare she say misogyny, that could not be overlooked and seemed to encourage aggression in the viewers, suggesting that the girl deserved whatever she got. The show was a great success. Most of the reviewers had chosen to overlook the obvious exploitation of the girl, emphasizing, instead, the vigor of the artist’s brushstrokes, the thrilling evocation of sexuality. Both Fisk and the artist contended that the girl was merely an invention, but shortly after the opening, the Enquirer published photographs of Haas in a motel parking lot, kissing a teenager who resembled the girl in his paintings, generating a host of unpleasant accusations. Shortly thereafter, Haas disappeared. He became a recluse, moving from place to place like a fugitive, leaving nothing behind. People would spot him here and there; a few were even lucky enough to get snapshots that would turn up in the supermarket rags, portraying the artist as a mythical iconoclast, brandishing a bottle of Colt 45, his long hair the color of tarnished bronze. His collectors had no quarrel with his disappearance; it only enhanced the value of his paintings. It was not until Annie had begun teaching at St. Catherine’s, where Haas was chairman of the Art Department, that she realized that the girl in the paintings was the artist’s wife, Lydia Haas.

  Annie had spied on him now and again through the windows of his studio. Even from outside, she could smell the tart odors of oil paint and linseed oil, and could hear the Doors on his crappy stereo system. His students stood at their easels, sketching a nude woman who was lounging on a platform that had been draped with a velvet tapestry. The woman wore an expression of resolute impassivity, putt
ing Annie in mind of the nudes by Matisse. Haas appeared, closing the door to his office, a cigarette in his mouth—the fact that smoking was forbidden in campus buildings seemed of no concern to him. He roamed the room like a prowling lion, as if the very air annoyed him, snarling with disapproval, inspiring in his students nothing more than loathing and self-doubt. They slouched with defeat. A few students emerged from the building and caught her spying; their conversation halted and they pretended, with grand finesse, to ignore her. Annie conjured a look of terrible importance and walked away, managing to conceal her embarrassment. The art students possessed a certain insouciance that intimidated her. Their dreary thrift-shop clothes and indiscriminate body piercings seemed to declare them as members of an exclusive tribe. Her journalism students were far more predictable. They were not fearless participants, keen to alternative points of view; rather, they preferred to observe events from a safe distance. She wasn’t sure where she fit in anymore.

  On numerous occasions she had passed Simon Haas on the stone path. He’d be walking with students, immersed in heated discussion. Or sometimes he’d be alone, his head to the ground like a man consumed with his own genius. He had very blue eyes that teared in the cold and he was seldom dressed properly for the weather. He walked briskly with his arms hugging his chest as if to protect himself from the wind, a wool scarf the color of violets around his neck. She’d see him from time to time on campus, riding a wobbly black bicycle with a transistor radio in the basket, blaring out the Spanish station—he did not, to her knowledge, speak the language. Rumors clung to him like flies to butter, and the entire staff of the college indulged in speculation. There were reports that he retreated to his office between classes to drink. He had a reputation for mistreating the students and, once or twice, had been reprimanded for making sexual overtures. It was known that he had a violent rapport with his wife, and that the wife had been briefly institutionalized at Blackwell, the tony private hospital in Saratoga, but to the trustees these were discourteous details. The artist’s controversial presence attracted students, making his nasty discrepancies more than tolerable.

  Their first real meeting was in the pool. Annie had been swimming on teams all her life and had a swimmer’s body, tall and leggy with broad shoulders and big hands. She still worked out like an athlete, without compromise, but the truth was that she’d never liked competing. Now she just swam to stay in shape, to maintain her sanity, and that morning her sanity had been somewhat compromised. Just trying to get the children ready for school had demanded an inordinate amount of effort. The alarm had failed to ring, and the children were groggy and disinterested, in no particular hurry. They’d inevitably missed the bus and she’d raced them to school, hoping to beat the morning bell, driving well over the posted speed limit, risking their lives simply to avoid the grim consternation of the teachers, only to get stuck behind a logging truck and arrive late anyway. Her forlorn children had had to go to the office for late slips—oh, the shame, the shame—while other mothers stood idly chatting in the parking lot in their riding chaps and boots, pretending not to notice, their children having been there on time. When she’d finally entered her small classroom with its stained glass windows and pigeons cooing on the rafters, her students had eyed her with casual suspicion, a hint of contempt. Her excuses were pedestrian, the travails of maintaining a civilized existence: wife, mother, professor, can’t even find her lipstick, her hairbrush, socks that match. Bumbling through the hours, trying to sound coherent. Just wait! she thought hotly, accosting them with her sweet gaze, you with your jaded minds, your impaired curiosity. She pressed on, lecturing vaguely, feeling as though her mouth were full of peanut butter, watching their eyes drift and waver, lulled to drowsy distraction by the somnolent wheezing of the radiators.

  After class she crossed the muddy brown field to the athletic center, where she planned to swim out her frustrations, even though the idea of removing her clothes and immersing herself in cold water held little appeal. The pool was nearly empty: two women in the slow lane and a man in a gold cap cranking down the fast lane. In no mood for competition, she chose the empty middle lane, where she could lose herself in her thoughts. She slipped into the cold water, adjusted her goggles, and began her laps. The man in the gold cap stopped at the wall, briefly, and eyed her through the foggy lenses of his goggles. Even behind the goggles she could see that it was Haas.

  They swam side by side in adjacent lanes. Throughout the half hour, she was conscious of his stroke, the way he moved, his rushing wake. Once he even brushed her thigh by accident, sending a fluid quiver up her side. She kept swimming, flustered, pretending she hadn’t noticed. When she had finished her mile she saw that he was sitting on the wall in the shallow end, watching her with interest. “You’re a hell of a swimmer,” he told her.

  “Hello, I don’t believe we’ve ever met.” You touched my thigh, but we’ve never met. You stroked my flesh—inadvertently. She reached out her hand for a shake. “I’m Annie Knowles.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “I know.” He eyed her steadily, then slipped back into the water, sidling closer to her in his skimpy black trunks, the kind that Michael wouldn’t be caught dead in. For a man in his late forties, Haas was in excellent shape. He had a wide, muscular chest and developed arms that suggested he’d been athletic for most of his life. His goggles were pulled up on his forehead, making indentations in his skin. “How’s it going for you here? Everything all right? It’s been years since they hired anyone new—a stagnant pond till you came along.”

  “I hope I’m not making too many waves.”

  “On the contrary. I hope you are.” His smile sliced through her. “I trust people are treating you well?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your students?”

  “Very nice. Hardworking.”

  “Well, good. Glad to hear it. I happened to read something of yours the other day. I was at my therapist’s.”

  “Really?” A therapist, huh?

  “He’s a very erudite fellow.”

  “Your therapist?”

  “Massage therapist, actually—very erudite indeed. He’s got Playboy and the Christian Science Monitor cohabitating on the table—I couldn’t live without the man. Anyway, I started flipping through a journal of some sort and saw your name.”

  The journal was an esoteric little magazine published by a couple of aging hippies in Colorado. They’d printed an article she’d written on late-term abortion. “You mean you weren’t reading Playboy? I’m impressed.”

  He smiled at her. “Truth is, I’d already seen that particular issue. Never seen so many fake tits in my life. Disappointing, actually, but then perfect women bore me.”

  He had succeeded in completely flustering her. She stood there and said nothing and waited for him to go on.

  “Anyway, I read the entire article, which for me is quite a feat. I’m not much of a reader—I don’t ever finish anything, truthfully, I have the attention span of a mosquito—but, really, I was quite enthralled, even though, as I said, I know nothing about medical ethics and the issue, for me, is somewhat”—he paused—“difficult.” He glanced at her again. “The abortion stuff. I’m not”—he coughed—“really sure how I feel about it.” He smiled meekly. “But you. I can see you’re somebody with strong feelings.”

  “Well, yes, about certain things it’s true, I have strong feelings.” She paused for a moment. “I have strong feelings about magazines like Playboy, for example.”

  He looked at her carefully. “You’re very interesting, aren’t you, Annie Knowles?”

  “I don’t know what gave you that impression.” She smiled. “You’re the one with the interesting life, Mr. Haas.”

  His face flushed crimson. “You of all people shouldn’t believe what you read in the papers.”

  “It’s all true, I presume?”

  “You know those journalists, they love to make up stories. But that’s your department, isn’t it?”

  “It alwa
ys helps to have a couple of interesting characters. You know, people with passion and substance.” She smiled at him and his eyes danced around her face.

  “What do you say we have a race, a little friendly competition among colleagues?”

  “A race? You’re kidding?”

  “Just for fun.”

  “Okay.” Racing Simon Haas was the last thing she felt like doing, but she didn’t want to seem like a poor sport. It was important that he liked her, that they became friends. “All right, what stroke?”

  “Freestyle, up and back.” He slid down into the water and pulled on his goggles. Even though he was wet, she could smell his aftershave, a murky sandalwood. “Hey, Claudia,” he called out to the lifeguard, “come over here a minute.”