The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  “I don’t know how you put up with it,” he says.

  “If you could see her you’d understand. She’s feisty, a real fighter. She’ll never give up, and eventually something will change for her.”

  “I wouldn’t have the patience.”

  “You would if you cared about them. You know my clients are like my children.”

  A shadow crosses his face and she understands that the mention of surrogate children has reminded him of the actual children he doesn’t have. Reverting to Bergman she says, “I worry about her, though. It’s one of those cases where she can’t believe in herself if no one will hire her, but no one will hire her because she doesn’t believe in herself, and the thing is I don’t know if I’m actually helping her. Sometimes I think I should fire myself as her therapist.”

  “Why don’t you?” he says. “If you’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Well, we’re not getting nowhere. Like I said, she’s at least figured out that she’s doing this to herself.”

  “I love this beef,” he says. “How did you get the meat inside the pastry?”

  As if it were a ship in a bottle, but she knows he isn’t joking. For a man who can raise walls and sink foundations, he’s surprisingly simpleminded when it comes to cooking.

  “It’s wrapped,” she says. “Think of insulation around a pipe.”

  But he’s staring into space and doesn’t appear to register her answer.

  He’s always been prone to these lapses, though it seems to her that lately they’ve been more frequent. Here one minute, gone the next, carried along by a river of thought, conjecture, worry, who knows? He could be silently counting backward from a hundred or mentally reciting the names of the presidents. At least she can’t fault his mood. For a while now he’s been distinctly more cheerful, more like his old self, to the point where she’s starting to think that his depression is a thing of the past. At one time she feared that it might be permanent. It went on for so long and not even Freud could snap him out of it. Freud as a puppy, with his goofy antics, was as good as a court jester.

  At least he could always fake it at a dinner party—keep the liquor flowing, turn on the bonhomie, make people feel good. Women respond to Todd because he’s so ingenuous and openhanded. Rosalie, you’ve been drinking from the fountain of youth again. Deirdre, you look good enough to eat. He gives it up to the men, too, letting them talk about themselves without competing, and he gets people laughing with his mimicry: the East Indian naturopath (You are taking too much tension . . . you must go slowly slowly), the Jamaican mechanic (De car wan tree new tires . . . fly di bonnet, mon).

  He’s definitely better now, more alive, ready to laugh even when they’re alone, more easygoing and relaxed, less of a worry, more like his old self, the way he was in the early years—although the days are gone when they used to get naked in bed to read the paper and watch the game and share a bowl of cornflakes, the milk carton balanced on the bedpost, sugar spilling out of the Domino bag onto the sheets. Back then they had the freedom of knowing each other barely at all; they were in gleeful possession of a leisurely future with all the doors still open and all the promises still fully redeemable.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she says.

  His eyelids flutter and he gives her a smile. “This is delicious,” he says. He reaches for the half-empty bottle and refills their glasses. “What do you think of this wine?”

  He likes to talk about wine. At times, what they are drinking can form the hub of an entire dinner conversation. But now, instead of waiting for her answer, he smacks his palm on the side of his head and says, “I meant to tell you. There’s a fishing trip this weekend. Some of the guys are going.”

  “A fishing trip,” she says.

  He’s polished off his two slabs of beef and is mopping up the juices with a piece of bread. “Leaving Friday after work. Back Sunday.”

  Todd doesn’t go on fishing trips, and as far as she knows neither do any of the guys. She understands immediately—there’s no doubt in her mind—that he’s using the term “fishing trip” euphemistically.

  “Are you going?” she asks.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Still working on her meal, she’s trying to hurry now. The way she sometimes eats—taking minuscule bites and holding them captive in her mouth—can try his patience, she knows. She swallows a tidbit that’s only half chewed and it lodges in her throat, triggering her gag reflex. Gallantly, he leaps up and pounds her on the back as she sputters and heaves. At last, the shred of matter that caused the problem erupts into her hand. Without looking at it she places it on the edge of her plate.

  “Let me know what you decide,” she says, using her napkin to blot the corners of her eyes. “If you go I might have the carpets cleaned. And make some marmalade.”

  She doesn’t plan on doing either of these things; it’s just something to say. She has always counted it a plus that he doesn’t lie to her, meaning that he doesn’t embroider his accounts of himself with the kind of detail that would turn them into lies. The problem here has nothing to do with his circumlocution. The problem is that he doesn’t go away for the weekend, that going away for the weekend is something he’s never done before.

  “Hey,” he says. “I got you a present.”

  He leaves the room and comes back with a package—a flat rectangle roughly the size of a paperback book, wrapped in brown paper and secured with masking tape. He puts it on the table next to her plate and sits down again. He often gives her presents and she loves this about him, but she loves it less when the presents are meant to placate her.

  “What’s the occasion?” she asks.

  “No occasion.”

  There’s a smile on his face but the atmosphere is crackling. Objects should be flying across the room; heads should be spinning on their stalks. She picks up the package and finds it nearly weightless. The tape peels off easily, and from a sandwich of protective cardboard she extracts a beautiful small picture, a Rajput painting, an original. The scene, blocked out in blues and greens, portrays a woman in a long dress standing in a walled garden. Surrounded by peacocks and a gazelle, adorned with elaborate gold jewelry, she is evidently not plagued by any material worries or worldly concerns. Leafy branches arch protectively over her head, and the grass beneath her feet is a wide green carpet. They study the scene together, comment on the woman’s hennaed hands, her little white basket, her lovely figure seen through the voile of her gown. As they take in the fine detail and flat blocks of color, their life unobtrusively returns to normal. He was right to get it for her. His instincts are good.

  It’s nearing bedtime as she clears the table and starts on the dishes. He makes a perfunctory offer of help, but they both know that it’s best if he leaves the cleanup to her and takes the dog for a walk. Not that she’s so terribly exacting. Her standards are not unreasonable, but when you wash a roasting pan it should not be greasy when you’re done, nor should you wipe the grease off with your dish towel, which you are then going to use on the crystal. This is common sense. He isn’t careless when it comes to construction. If he were putting up a shelf he wouldn’t set it at an angle so that objects placed on it slid to the floor and broke. He’d pay attention and do the job right, and nobody watching would call him a perfectionist or accuse him of being fussy. Not that she’s inclined to complain. It’s a known fact that in certain contexts people’s great strengths become their epic failings. His impatience with domestic work stems from the fact that his expansive energy overshoots the scale of the tasks to be done. You can see it in the way he fills a room, looming and towering in the limited space, his voice loud, his gestures sweeping. He’s a man who belongs outside or on a building site, where his magnitude makes sense. At home, he’s often at his best asleep beside her, his bulk in repose and his energy dormant in a kind of comforting absence.

  She moves through her lovely rooms, drawing drapes, plumping cushions, straightening pictures, picking lint off the carpe
t, and generally creating the setting that she wants to wake up to in the morning. It’s important to have everything serenely in its place as she begins her day. In the bedroom she turns down the covers and lays out pajamas for him and a nightgown for herself, smoothing the fabric and folding back appendages to make the garments look less like uninhabited bodies. Even so, something about them gives her a turn—the white piping on the dark pajamas, the silky ties on the nightgown. She leaves the room and steps outside onto the balcony. There’s a raw wind, and in the moonless night the vista is a bottomless black. She leans into the bristling darkness, indulging a sense of isolation, liking the fact that she can control it—linger till she loses her taste for it and then go back inside. She’s grateful for the stability and security of her life, has come to treasure the everyday freedoms, the absence of demands and complications. By forgoing marriage and children she has kept a clean slate, allowed for a sense of spaciousness. There are no regrets. Her nurturing instincts find an outlet with her clients, and in every practical sense she is as married as anyone else. Her friends of course know her as Jodi Brett, but to most people she is Mrs. Gilbert. She likes the name and title; they give her a pedigree of sorts and act as an all-around shorthand, eliminating the need to correct people or make explanations, dispensing with awkward terminology like life partner and significant other.

  —

  In the morning, after he’s left for work, she gets up, dresses, and takes the dog along the waterfront to Navy Pier. The sun shimmers in a milky haze, casting a net of silver over the lake. The onshore breeze is pungent, scented with the heady marine aromas of motor oil and fish and rotting wood. At this time of day the pier is like a sleeping giant, its pulse slowed and its breath subdued. There are only the locals—the dog walkers and the joggers—to witness the rocking boats, the slapping water, the abandoned air of the carousel and Ferris wheel, the gulls diving for their breakfast. When she turns back toward the city the skyline appears like a vision surging up along the shore, dramatically lit by the rising sun. She came to Chicago as a student more than twenty years ago and felt immediately at home. She lives here not only physically but temperamentally. After the privations of a small town she was thrilled by the soaring buildings, the crush of people, the lavish variety, and even the dramatic weather. This is where she came of age, forged her identity, learned to thrive as an adult and a professional.

  She started her practice the spring she finished school. By then she was living with Todd in a tiny one-bedroom in Lincoln Park. Her first clients were referred by her university contacts, and she saw them in the living room while Todd was at work. Having decided early on, while still an undergrad, that her approach would be eclectic—that she would draw on whatever she had in her repertoire that made the most sense in the situation—she practiced active listening, took a Gestalt approach to dream interpretation, and openly challenged self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. She counseled people to ask more of themselves and take charge of their own well-being. She gave them encouragement and positive feedback. During her first year she discovered how to be patient and bring people along at their own pace. Her greatest asset was her genuine friendliness—she liked her clients and gave them the benefit of the doubt, which put them at ease. They spoke well of her to others, and her practice grew.

  For nearly a year she skimmed along nicely, getting her stride, developing skills, gaining confidence. And then one day a client of hers—a young man of fifteen who’d been diagnosed as bipolar, a good boy who did well in school and seemed perfectly fine—Sebastian was his name—dark hair, dark eyes, curious, engaged, liked to ask rhetorical questions (Why is there something rather than nothing? How can we know anything for sure?)—this client of hers, young Sebastian, was found dead on the pavement underneath the tenth-floor balcony of his apartment, the apartment where he lived with his parents. When he failed to appear for his regular session she called his home and heard the news from his mother. By the time she found out, he’d been dead for five days.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” his mother was kind enough to say. But he’d jumped on the very day of their last session. She’d seen him in the morning and he’d ended his life not twelve hours later. What had they talked about? Some small problem he was having with his eyes. He’d been seeing things in his peripheral vision, fleeting things that weren’t really there.

  That’s when she enrolled for additional studies at the Adler School, and that’s when she started picking and choosing her clients.

  She crosses Gateway Park, passes the time of day with a neighbor, and stops at Caffé Rom for a latte to go. While eating her soft-boiled egg and buttered toast she reads the paper. After breakfast she clears away the dishes and then gets out the file on her first client, code name the judge, a gay male lawyer with a wife and children. The judge has certain things in common with her other clients. He’s hit a wall in his life and believes or hopes that psychotherapy will help him. He’s made a commitment to himself to see it through. And he doesn’t bring to the table more than she can handle. This last point she has determined through a screening process. People with self-destructive behaviors are referred elsewhere. She doesn’t take addicts, for example, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, or gambling, and she rejects anyone who has an eating disorder, has been diagnosed as bipolar or schizophrenic, suffers from chronic depression, or has thought about or attempted suicide. These are people who should be on medication or in rehab.

  Her schedule allows for just two clients a day, before lunch. The clients she ends up with, after screening, tend to be stuck, lost, or insecure, the kind of people who find it hard to know what they want and make decisions based on what is expected of them or what they believe is expected of them. They can be tough on themselves—having internalized the judgments of insensitive parents—and at the same time behave in ways that are irresponsible or inappropriate. On the whole they can’t get their priorities straight, fail to create personal boundaries, neglect their own best interests, and see themselves as victims.

  The spare bedroom, which serves as her consulting room, comfortably holds a desk, a filing cabinet, and a pair of armchairs that face each other on a six-by-eight-foot antique kilim. Between the chairs is a low table that holds her clipboard and pen, a box of Kleenex, a bottle of water, and two glasses. The judge is wearing his usual dark suit with black oxfords and vivid argyle socks, revealed when he sits down and crosses his legs. He’s thirty-eight and has sensuous eyes and lips, set in a long face. Taking her place across from him she asks how he’s been keeping since she saw him last, a week ago. He talks about his visit to a leather bar and what happened in the alley out back. He goes into detail, maybe hoping to shock her, but sex between consenting adults is not going to do it, and anyway this isn’t the first time he’s tried her patience with something like this. He’s talking fast, changing direction midstream, reliving it, doing his best to draw her in.

  “My pants were down around my ankles—imagine if someone had—oh my God did the garbage stink. I focused on that—the garbage—to slow things down—I had to do something. He’d been staring at me in the bar. I’d seen him there before but didn’t think—I haven’t been to that bar in ages.”

  As the story peters out he watches her slyly, eyes glistening, lips slick with saliva. He’d like it if she laughed and said naughty boy, you’re a wicked one, but her job does not involve filling in gaps in the conversation or performing social rescues. He waits, and when she doesn’t speak he fidgets and looks at his hands. “So,” he says finally. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m very sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.” These are words that he can’t say to his wife, so he says them to his therapist.

  His pattern is denial followed by indulgence followed by a renewed period of denial. The denial stage is cued by statements such as “I love my family and don’t want to hurt them.” The remorse is genuine, but he can no more give up his gay pursuits than forgo the security blanket of his home life. Both play a part in fulfilling h
is needs, and both are important to his sense of identity. He pretends to himself that his interest in men is a passing phase and doesn’t see that abstinence and guilt are ways he has of charging his batteries for a fully loaded thrill. Like many people who cheat, he likes to self-dramatize. He’s more of a queen than he knows.

  “You be the judge,” she tells him. But he’s still a ways from owning up.

  Wednesday is cheaters’ day. Her next client, Miss Piggy, a coy young woman with chubby cheeks and freckled hands, maintains that having a lover stimulates her appetites and keeps her marriage alive. According to Miss Piggy her husband suspects nothing and would have no right to complain if he did. It’s unclear why Miss Piggy is in therapy or what she expects to get out of it. She differs from the judge in her lack of a nagging conscience and the practical way she goes about things—on Monday and Thursday afternoons between shopping for groceries and picking up the kids from school.

  Miss Piggy appears to be less conflicted than the judge, but from Jodi’s point of view she’s a greater challenge. Her anxiety flows beneath the surface in underground streams, rarely bubbling up or creating a disturbance. Tapping into it and bringing it into her field of awareness is not going to be easy. Whereas the judge is simply an open book, a sensitive man who’s landed himself in a pickle. Eventually, with or without Jodi’s help, the judge’s problem will come to a head and work its way out of his life.

  In spite of Miss Piggy’s belief that her husband is in the dark, Jodi thinks that he probably has his suspicions. There are always signs, as she well knows. For instance, the cheater is frequently distracted or preoccupied; the cheater dislikes being questioned; inexplicable smells cling to the cheater’s hair and clothes. The smells can be anything: incense, mildew, grass. Mouthwash. Who uses mouthwash at the end of the day before coming home to bed? A shower can eliminate telltale body odors, but the soap the cheater uses in the hotel bathroom is going to be different from the brand he uses at home. On top of this there are all the usual clues: the stray red or blond hairs, lipstick stains, rumpled clothing, furtive phone calls, unexplained absences, mysterious marks on the body . . . not to mention the curious acquisitions—the fancy key chain or bottle of aftershave—that appear out of nowhere, especially on Valentine’s Day.