My Only Wife (8 page)

My wife cast me a disparaging look. “You hate golf. Tell me you didn’t paint that for the irony. I’m so sick of irony.”

I didn’t respond. She painted a glass with a lacy looking pattern and then, on another, a gradated blend of color that evoked Rothko. I painted a glass with a set of small eyes in large eyeglasses, inscribed, “Free vision tests.”

On my final glass I painted two outlines of a square. One square met the circumference of the base at four points. The other I painted plainly on the side of the glass.

My wife’s last wineglass had on it a rather impressively intricate drawing of a spine, each vertebra indicated with the smallest stroke of her paintbrush. Next to the illustration she wrote the suffix “-less.” I eyed her, looking for clues as to its implications, and she smiled proudly.

I begged exhaustion and went to bed soon after, while my wife was still cleaning up the supplies.

It took only a few days before the need for escape passed. It was a hunger that lingered until the point when it could no longer be felt.

M
Y
WIFE
AND I
AGREED
to housesit for a distant cousin of mine.

It was a mansion on the north shore, but truly old, not one of those awkward new behemoths in a cul-de-sac development.

We were to stay in the house for a week. Their dogs needed daily feeding and we would water their plants and take in the mail.

One could say we were doing it as a favor to friends, but it was a great getaway for the two of us. We were lucky to go on one small vacation a year. The opportunity to housesit fell over my spring break. My wife took off a week from work. We packed suitcases, told our neighbors we would be away for a bit, and drove up to the house. Our eighth anniversary was coming up and we welcomed the escape from our everyday lives.

My cousin and his wife gave us free reign: “Eat what you want. Use whatever isn’t behind lock and key. Have people over. Clean up after yourselves when you’re done, and it’s fine by us.”

We were told to stay in the master bedroom. They’d already changed the sheets. It was a massive bed with curtains that shut it off from the rest of the room.

The master bath was, as we should have expected, larger than our entire apartment.

The kitchen was gourmet, and their cookbook selection was elite and extensive.

The living room was breakable-looking yet sturdily restored.

They had a library with a sliding ladder that ran along the bookshelves.

My wife said, “That was my dream. When I was a little girl? I dreamt of gliding along a wall of books.”

My wife said, “This is heaven!” She was not being over-dramatic or sarcastic.

The study, a separate room from the library, had a roll-top desk. I had read about roll-top desks when I was a kid and had imagined organizing an entire lifetime within those cubby-holes and drawers.

Once our hosts had given us a tour, had again told us to behave as we pleased, had shared with us the alarm codes and headed off to the airport, we roamed the house on our own.

We found the attic up a narrow, spiral staircase in the back of the house. The ceilings slanted along the interiors of the peaked roof. We tiptoed among steamer trunks and dress forms. We had no idea why our friends would own these items. They were the type of people that might buy this stuff because it was what should be in an old attic. We found a shoebox of old love letters. My wife became entranced. We spent the entire first afternoon and evening in that attic. We found old typewriters and phonographs. An old grandfather clock, in our first hour, startled us with proof that it was still functioning.

My wife wept in the attic that afternoon, in love and overwhelmed.

I played old scratchy big band and jazz records on the phonograph.

I clicked the typewriter keys.

I found a garden of old music boxes beneath one of the eaves and wound them all to play in a little cacophonous symphony of intricate cylinders.

My wife choked out love letters filtered through her bleary eyes, tripping over words with anxious speed:

A Very Valentine for my Gertrude
,

Thanks for the freedoms that hide beneath our limits. Thanks to mighty age that lets us feel secure in our knowledge. May our parents open their eyes one morning to new knowledge, and tell us to love with all our hearts despite the silly dreams they hold in their heads. May they find new language to say what separates them from us: the first hand from the presumptuous hindsight of practicality
.

You have placed your finger on my pulse. My heart is beating for the pressure of your touch alone now
.

Can you imagine a day when our words no longer are a sign of our separation, but more so our reunion? A compensation for all that has been lost in this time when we live under roofs that bear down, rather than lift high?

Almost everything is yet to be said,
Mason

My wife looked rapidly between the letter and me, in disbelief, waved the letter around as if it were proof of some argument she was making. “This entire box is like this. There are no letters from Gertrude, but there are boxes of letters from other people, too.”

My wife opened another box, began to rifle through them. “But
all
of them are addressed to this house. This is incredible.”

I unfolded ancient easels, set old pastoral oil paintings on them, probably once rotated from their spaces on the walls.

I found hope chests of yellowing old table and bed linens and constructed togas and gowns by folding and draping them on old dress-forms.

My wife, new tears streaming down her face, walked over to me, held a new letter tightly in her hands:

Henry! Oh! Henry!

I snorted. My wife shot me a look.

In this world, I choose you. I choose red wine stained teeth on an ordinary, unknowing face. Oh! How I laughed the other evening as we drank and your mouth grew a heavy purple lining. (Don’t think me unladylike!) I wanted to kiss it from your plump, wet inner lips. I wanted to absorb your color
.

I am eager to drunken you myself
.

(Am I being obscene? I am frightened to record these feelings for myself, let alone share them with you. Ignore this! No! I regret none of it!)

With the modesty of my signature
,
J

My wife and I were both laughing now, with the glee of the innocence of the letter. I wrapped her in my arms. One music box was playing on. The clock chimed midnight. We tucked antiques back into their places and headed downstairs.

My wife was giddy, “What if we left behind an attic like that? What if we became such artifacts? Something for people to find and fall all over themselves with? To hold high in the air and wave around like it was proof of their eternal arguments? What if our desire was chronicled for someone to fall in love with someday?”

“Do we love like that?” I asked. It was a gut reaction. “Does anyone love like that anymore?”

She looked hurt. “Of course! We do especially.”

I looked at my wife, changed the subject. “Well, your tapes are that, aren’t they? Not the story of our love, but a massive amount of other people’s stories that you’ve taken in, that you’ve preserved. Don’t you think someone will delight in finding all of those someday?”

My wife had noticed how I avoided the topic of our love. She graciously galloped ahead, “Those aren’t for the future, though. Those are for the past.” She was thoughtful for a moment. She was always denying me my theories. “We’ll figure
something
out. Now, I’m going to use up an absurd amount of water to take a bath in that massive tub off the bedroom.”

She refused to make the connection, preferred to drop the subject, to go wash the evening from herself.

That night, I read in the immense curtained-off bed, until my wife, returned to me, clean and damp, slipping through the drapes onto the endless plane of the mattress. I went to sleep sure we would spend at least the next day holed up exploring that attic more.

My wife got up before me the next morning. I found only her absence beside me, but laid in bed for a while. She returned babbling about how beautiful it was outside, how we should take advantage of the weather. She dragged me out of bed, into the shower with her. We had our own showerheads in the marble and glass room. We toweled off and lounged around our individual sinks. We were so used to fighting for time under the faucet, for mirror space.

We let the dogs out and chased them around the enormous backyard. We grilled vegetable kabobs for lunch. We struggled to set up a net to play volleyball and badminton and then played for less time than it took to get the net assembled. We remembered how bad we were at both, how not athletic.

My wife and I fell to the lawn exhausted from the fresh air, knees a bit grass stained, noses a bit stuffy from the spring pollen being carried through the breeze.

My wife and I let the dogs lick the sweat from our faces.

We laid there like that through the late afternoon. We watched the sun set, propped up on our elbows, new dew starting to chill through our clothes.

My wife said, “We should share this while we’ve got it. We should have some friends over here. We should throw a bash! We finally have the space for it! It won’t be cramped. It’ll be an experiment. What happens when people aren’t forced to talk to each other because of proximity? Friday, maybe? What do you say?”

I agreed and said I would call people that night, to make sure they were free.

My wife rolled onto me, excited. She kissed my face, voraciously. “Are we going to be the best party-throwers ever? Are we going to set a new standard for the elite house party?” It was a high-society voice.

I raised an eyebrow. “I think probably not, but is that what we want to be?”

“No!” she exclaimed, grinning, getting to her feet, wobbling a bit, dizzy with plans. “We’ll be the most all-inclusive velvet carpet ushers that ever existed. We won’t turn a soul away.”

“I don’t think this is going to be
that
huge, honey,” I said, getting nervous. Perhaps we had different ideas of what this soiree would be. We didn’t see too many people anymore.

She was already walking back toward the house. “We can dream big!” she shouted, arms thrust in the air, spinning around as she headed toward the deck. She tripped on the second stair.

“Big!” she shouted, righting herself.

I called people that night, asking if they were free. Many were. Some asked if they could bring friends. I told them to tell their friends to bring friends. While I called each name in my phonebook I paced up and down the grand staircase in the entryway of the house. My wife passed by several times, pirouetting across the hall, losing her balance in a twirling chaîné. She pumped her arms in the air, each time I said “See you then” or “I’m glad to hear it.” Her enthusiasm convinced me this was going to be good.

We had two days before the party and four days before the owners of the house returned.

We spent the next morning mining the cookbooks for elaborate appetizer recipes. We scanned bar guides for fancy drinks, to offer specialties people wouldn’t expect.

We went on an impressive grocery store shopping spree. We didn’t want to clear out our hosts’ pantries or bar shelves.

My wife and I filled two shopping carts with bottles and jars and loaves and boxes of the good stuff. We had paid no airfare for this trip. My cousin had already insisted on paying us for taking care of the dogs, so these party supplies were to be the only real expense of this vacation.

We spent Thursday preparing food and cooking. We made too much. We knew it. We made mint and cannelloni bean dip to serve with fresh vegetable crudités.

My wife made a buttered nut and lentil dip and breadsticks from scratch.

I prepped smoked fish and potato pate and baked homemade melba toast.

My wife rolled ricotta cheese balls in paprika and chopped nuts and parsley.

We tackled a recipe for Onions à la Grecque.

We baked fennel. We soaked tomatoes in olive oil and garlic and basil. We made crostini alla Fiorentina. We doused mussels in white wine.

We made a mess of that beautiful kitchen, left no utensil untouched, sampled everything, and then cleaned the room from top to bottom.

In the midst of this, the phone would occasionally ring and the friends I had left messages for the previous evening called to say they were or weren’t coming. A few were reluctant to give further details of their other plans, when I asked.

My wife and I collapsed on the couches in the family room, leaking the scent of garlic and brine and ginger from our pores. The house was spotless.

The next morning, we felt useless. There was nothing left to prepare.

We pampered ourselves, took a long bath together, sat in the sauna until we were lightheaded and sweaty enough to shower again. We took afternoon naps. We set up the bar. We got out all of the serving plates and spoons and cocktail plates and napkins.

My wife primped in front of the mirror, arranging long strips of fabric around her torso in unpredictable ways. She had on a pair of brown pants that tied around her waist, the legs flapping open on the sides with the help of a draft or a spin. They were wide and thin and flowing. She tied the fabric around her chest again and again in front of the mirror, while I sat on the edge of the bathtub, silent even when she asked for my opinion. I was in awe.

Her hair knotted on the top of her head left everything from the nape of her neck to her lower back completely bare in between arrangements. She was magnificent: a grand line of a woman.

As she spun to express her frustration with how to tie the fabric, the pants billowed out, revealed the length of her legs as well. I swore she was getting longer.

I could answer no question posed to me. I was entirely occupied with the activity of watching her dress. I wanted this to last forever.

She would sigh at my not answering and turn back to the mirror to rearrange the stripe of fabric around her neck and those pants would spread again in a luminous breeze.