The Secret Lives of Married Women (15 page)

The...heroine? of the film was Jenny J., who has made a career of marrying for money. Her several husbands have all been wealthy and too old to be a nuisance for long. Naturally a woman like that needs some action on the side, so Jenny gets it on with the pool guy—a fine specimen of manhood with a penchant for leather and head games (vaguely recognizable to me as a boyfriend Leda had at the time). As promised in the copy on the back of the box, it’s not long before Jenny gets her cum-uppance, in the form of sexual slavery. With the pool man as master, overseer and inheritor-by-proxy.

I’d never watched a movie like this before, not for lack of opportunity, of course, but by choice, adamant choice. And if ever I’d wondered whether I might be missing something, well, now I had an unequivocal answer. The whole thing was an infuriating affront: the sordid story line and crude dialogue; the artlessness, inanity, misogyny.

Leda.
Leda. My
sister, with her beauty and talent, her fine mind and formidable charisma.
This
was what she had chosen to do with all of that?

And suddenly I could hear her voice in my head, clear and cool and amused:
Would you get a fucking grip, sister-love? I was nineteen years old and it was one week out of my life.

And of course this was true. So why did the idea of this single youthful indiscretion make me crazy? It wasn’t just that she’d taken such a degrading role. It was something else, something unmistakable about her performance: the fact that she’d loved playing that part,
loved
it.

I restarted the DVD and was halfway through the second viewing when Darren walked into the room. I hadn’t heard his key in the front lock, hadn’t heard his footsteps.

He stared at the screen for a moment, then dropped onto the far end of the couch. “Ah, Christ,” he said.

How long have you had this?

A long time.

I never even knew Leda did this. Why didn’t you tell me?

Because I knew how you’d react.

You! With all your supposed support for my activism, after the countless times you’ve agreed that porn demeans
all
of us, that it’s linked to human trafficking, that it’s woman-hating and...and alienating and...

Yes, you see, this is why I never felt I could tell you.

So how long have you had the hots for Leda?

I don’t. Really. I mean, I know how it looks, but I’m not attracted to Leda. I never have been. I don’t know how to explain it, but you need to believe this
—
it’s about you, not her.

Oh, come on, Darren! I’m sorry to break this to you, but that...is...not...me!

I know that. But I guess it’s just...my fantasy of some secret side of you, or something.

When we finally got into bed, I moved as far away from my husband as I could and lay on my side, facing the wall. Darren put a hand on my back but I jerked away.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

He withdrew his hand and didn’t try again.

My good feeling about Leda was irretrievable, at least for now, and I didn’t even mention the idea of visiting her. My thoughts kept wandering to certain scenes between my sister and her old boyfriend and then eventually, inexplicably, to my blind client and his assistant. After a while, I realized that the aura—an annoying, new-age word but I couldn’t find a better one—around Leda in the movie was something like the aura around Nan: a force field of whole-hearted focus, devotion, self-abandonment. Rapture.

Even after several months in Abel’s office, it was hard for Nan to believe that she could be with him full-time, and often her workday was like a dream of floating above the floor. She would find her rhythm before the coffee was brewed, put in a full day’s work by noon, anticipate what Abel wanted before he asked for it. He’d call her into his office to read, then ask, “Would you mind getting me a cup of coffee before we start?”

“I brought one in with me, Abel, it’s right here.”

There were glorious moments, like the one that came several weeks into the job, when Abel’s notes to himself came off his printer and she read the top line out loud without thinking. “Bedford construction postponed until March?”

Abel went very still for a moment before half-turning in his chair.
“Do you know Braille?”

“Well,” she said. “I’m learning it. At least I’m trying to learn it.”

“For what?”

“Just because I—I imagined it could be useful to you.”

There was another pause. Then, in a dry tone that meant he was more pleased than he was willing to let on, he said, “I imagine it could be.”

And it was useful, it was continually useful. At outside meetings, whenever written materials were distributed, she took out her metal slate and transcribed them for him on the spot. She labeled his file folders, slipped him notes while he was on the phone, and even made the office calendar—where everyone’s schedule was posted—accessible to him.

Braille was harder to learn than Nan had imagined. Before she knew anything about it, she thought it was just a matter of mastering the alphabet. But there were hundreds of symbols to memorize, symbols that stood for whole words or letter combinations, more symbols still to denote capital letters and punctuation marks and italics, and rules for their use that were anything but intuitive. To create the raised print using her stylus, she had to work from the reverse side of the paper, across the page from right to left, with each letter rendered as its own mirror image.

She worked on her Braille every night. Whatever issued from Abel’s thunderous printer and was later discarded, she took out of the trash and brought home with her. The better part of each evening was spent at her desk, bent over these documents with her transcriber’s guide. The circle of lamplight cast her silhouette on the wall and surrounded it like a halo as she pored over the near-invisible text, the pages of white on white.

* * *

And sometimes her workday was like a long swallow of something bitter. One of the worst days—she could see this now, though she hadn’t then—had to do with Abel’s crime.

“Nan,” he said that morning, on his way past her desk, “I need a copy of what you sent the board of directors yesterday. The final version of the Roscoe estimate.”

And opening the file folder, Nan realized the mistake she’d made the day before.

“Oh no,” she said, half to herself.

Abel turned back to face her. “What is it?”

“I just realized I did something wrong.”

He stood there, waiting, and she saw his knuckles whiten around the top of his cane.

“I’m sorry,” Nan added, still staring at the papers in her hand. “I don’t know how it happened.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what you did?”

She realized then that he was afraid—more afraid than the situation seemed to warrant—but reining himself in so she would tell him what she’d done, which broke her heart because she would tell him anyway, she would never withhold the truth from him, no matter what the cost to herself. But his reaction was making her, in turn, more frightened than she’d ever been in that office, and she had no idea what was at stake—had she incriminated him in some way? betrayed him?—so her confession came haltingly.

“I—by accident I...sent them the signed original. Not the copy.”

“Oh,” he said, and exhaled, and even in her state she could tell it was an exhalation of relief. “I thought you were going to tell me you sent the earlier version.”

“No,” she told him. “No, I sent the most recent version. Definitely.”

“I was trying to decide whether to fire you on the spot, or take you into my office and fire you,” he said.

It took Nan a moment to make sense of this.

“Are you...” The words were like a bone in her throat; she had to stop and swallow hard. “Are you serious?”

“As the day is long.”

Tears came into her eyes and for once she was grateful that he couldn’t see, more grateful still that no one else was around.

“Oh,” she said finally.

“There are some mistakes,” he said, “that you can’t make.”

And he walked away.

Later that afternoon, the door opened and his four-year-old daughter Lulu ran past the reception area. She was trailed by Deirdre, who was still lovely at forty-two, with silver threading her long dark hair, and eyes that made Nan think of Monet’s water lilies.

Lulu paused at the threshold to Abel’s office. Then with exaggerated stealth, she sneaked across the room, darted behind his desk, and shrieked, “Boo!” Nan had never seen Abel laugh harder than he did then. He grabbed the little girl up in a hug and cradled her in his arms before setting her down again.

But most of the hard days contained nothing so dramatic. More often, they were just empty of real contact with him. Every employee in the office would claim his time, one after the next, and he’d have no immediate need for her. She’d listen to him talking on the phone, sometimes with a special warmth he reserved for certain women. Eight hours could go by in which he barely spoke to her.

It was so important, she thought, not to look back, but once in a while, during these unyielding hours, some memory of the Nutcracker would come to her. A class ring on a man’s hand could remind her, a hint of aftershave or maybe a certain accent. At those times, she couldn’t help craving the luxury of such an explicit understanding.

The drawl of the fax repairman made her think of the Texan and his laconic threats.
I’m gonna tan your hide,
he used to tell her.
I’m gonna wear you out.

There was more than one way to wear someone out. Not doing what you longed to do, what you were meant to do, could wear a person out. It was a daily and wearying effort to be on her feet in Abel’s presence, to call him by his given name instead of
sir
.

Whenever she came up hardest against that wall, life inside the convent could seem like another enviable arrangement. Anyone who believed the sisters had sacrificed their earthly lives for an uncertain hereafter had never known the joy of worship. To understand that the nuns were already living in a better world was to recognize a literal truth. The brides of Christ were never forsaken or alone; they were always beholden, always beheld. They shared the assurance that no act of devotion, however private, was lost on the most important witness. And love came to them in a ceaseless stream: every sunrise was a benediction, each snowflake a kiss.

Nan understood this now. It was like that every weekday morning when she walked to work; the beauty of that first morning had never faded. Each city block held something lovely to look at: green tendrils twining along a barbed wire fence, a red embroidered mitten dropped on the sidewalk, jeweled pastries in a bakery window. The world was brimming over with beauty and she could see it everywhere, because she belonged to Abel.

Harsh weather never kept her from walking. Coming into the office out of the rain or sleet had its own special appeal. Abel was warmth, he was shelter, as sure as he was her touchstone and her rosary. She loved to strip off her wet coat and drape it over the radiator, shake off her umbrella, heat a pot of water for tea.

Walking home in the evening was bittersweet. She was never more aware of the miracle of sight than when she had just spent eight to ten hours in Abel’s domain. Outside, the twilight was tender, dreamy, laden with mystery. Sometimes she stood there a moment just taking it in: the sky like a child’s chalk drawing, the branches etched against it, the patina of steeples in the distance. Clothes fluttered like flags on their lines, linking one building to another.

The day Roscoe made his fateful offer to Abel was as vivid in her memory as if it were yesterday. He had been to the office many times by then, with his own assistant in tow: a young woman roughly Nan’s age. Erica.

They arrived that morning for a meeting with Abel. Nan brought both of them coffee in the reception area. Then she went to Abel’s office to let him know they’d arrived.

Abel liked to make people wait.

“I want Matt at this meeting too,” he said, referring to his project manager. “You can get him when I’m ready. In the meantime...” he held up one of the papers from the stack on his desk. “What’s this?”

“That’s your fax from Ken Cartwright.”

“Okay. And this?”

“It’s your letter to Mandy Yee.”

“Great, that’s what I wanted. I need you to fax a copy to Phil”—Phil was Abel’s planning director—“and send it out to her today.”

“Someone’s coming to repair the fax machine at eleven,” she told him. “In the meantime, may I have you sign it?”

“Oh. Yeah. Good point.”

This was a rare chance to touch him. She put a pen into his hand, placed her own hand over his, and set it directly on the line. His signature was nothing more than a jagged wave, but those who knew it could still tell the difference between the real thing and a forgery.

It was at least ten minutes before Abel summoned Matt and went out with him to the reception area. Nan watched Erica kiss Matt’s cheek and then waver over whether to do the same with Abel. In the social arena, so much physical contact relied on visual cues—intentions signaled in advance, consent sought and granted, as one person leaned in and the other bent in reception. Who would dare such an intimate gesture without implicit permission? Not Erica. So often, amidst these exchanges, Abel was set apart, an island—as if blindness warranted a kind of quarantine.

But the truth was that Nan was grateful for people’s reluctance to touch him. She didn’t know how much of it she could stand. She was jealous enough—jealous of everyone else whose arm he took; jealous of the dog, who was free to follow him from room to room; even jealous of the man she’d read about in the paper, who donated a kidney to his boss. She dreamed of a situation in which she could do the same for Abel: give him her kidney, her blood, her bone marrow, her breath. This, she knew, was how the nuns felt about Christ, and what the church said He felt for his human flock. It made His endurance easier to fathom. There must have been at least a moment, hanging there, when He was beyond exhaustion, beyond pain, hovering above His executioners, high enough to see for miles. Drunk on the grandiosity of His gesture, arms nailed forever open.