A Reliable Wife (17 page)

WISCONSIN . WINTER INTO SPRING . 1908 .

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The sheets of his bed were changed twice a week, and he sometimes looked with sadness at the other side of the bed, seeing
the pillow where no head ever lay. He felt embarrassed to think of Mrs. Larsen taking the sheets off his bed twice a week,
to see them so little used. It was one of the ways his loneliness was made visible to the world, and he was ashamed.

The glass of water comforted him, and he clung to the habit with tenacity. The water meant nothing in itself. He was rarely
thirsty. The ritual meant everything, a moment to close the day, the moisture on his dry lips like a soft kiss.

He could smell his clean white shirts in the armoire, soap and bluing and starch. He could see the day’s clothes, neatly folded
in a chair, waiting for Mrs. Larsen to sponge and press them fresh in the morning. Everything he owned was clean all the time.
He could smell Mrs. Larsen’s industry in the still night air, the laundry, the furniture polish, the floor wax, and he was
grateful for her, that she looked after him so well. It was a comfort. Even though he paid her, and took care of her and Mr.
Larsen well, it was a kindness. He paid many people, and not one felt it necessary to be more than cordial.

He had never called her by her first name, a name he must have known once, but had long ago forgotten. Mrs. Larsen had been
only a girl when he first knew her, Jane, Jeanette, something, unmarried, not pretty, and she had grown into middle age learning
his habits and making his life comfortable. He presumed she never liked Emilia. She showed no sorrow when she was gone.

He thought of the endless meals she had cooked and served to him. He thought of the shirts and the trousers and the shoes
polished and the tears mended and the mud scraped off his boots, and he loved her for her kindness. So little was done to
tend his creature comforts, and these comforts, in the absence of passion, had meant everything to him. She had witnessed
the terrible sadness, the betrayal, and managed to treat him as though her heart went out to him and, at the same time, as
though the past had never happened. She knew his awful solitude and didn’t pay notice. She cooked enough food every night
for four or six, since the sight of the food pleased him, and then she and Larsen ate later, after he had finished and gone
to his study. He had asked, but they had never sat down to the table with him. It wouldn’t be right. They wouldn’t have been
comfortable.

He had meant to be so many things. He had meant to be a poet. He had meant to be a lover and collector of art, to encourage
young artists and have them gather around him. He had meant to live his life in an orgy of sensation, according to the sensual
rules of attraction and seduction. He had meant to be a father, to have children to inherit his love of the arts and the flesh.
Instead, he had lost his heart’s deepest passions; one day he woke up and realized they were gone, amputated as surely as
an arm, cut off by the death of his little girl and the infidelities of his wife, the intractable rage he felt toward his
bastard child. His affections and obsessions had been replaced by clean shirts and half-slept-in sheets and polished boots
and clear soups. The world of the body and its pleasures had closed over, as a scab closes over a wound.

Catherine Land had stepped off the train from Saint Louis, softer, warmer in her face, unexpectedly beautiful, and the wound
had opened and filled him with its pain. Antonio was not by her side, and neither one of them said a word about him.

Standing in the station, he had felt that something in him would break forever if he didn’t touch her. He reached up and shyly
fingered the collar of her coat. That was all. That was enough. He was lost in hope and desire, as lost as he had been in
his first days with Emilia. Catherine was everything. She was not a woman; she was a world. She might wound him, she might
lie to him, and still he would do anything to hear one word of kindness from her lips, to feel his flesh touch her flesh without
humiliation. He was willing to take the chance. And all this because she had stepped from the train with a small scarlet bird
in a cage, and she was coming home to him, bringing a fluttering life. He was at last waiting for someone whose name was known
to him. People saw her come home to him, people in his town. She smiled at him, and he knew then that he would die for her.

His skin was soft as a clean chamois. He was strong, he was lean. But he was not young. His heart had for so long been open
only to bitterness and regret, but now his sexual passion, buried for so long, was once again wild in his heart.

She looked solemn, almost stricken. The bird sang sweetly. She kissed his cheek gravely and there she was. She was home.

The snow still lay around them as they rode home, and neither one spoke. His heart pounded in his chest. He wanted her. He
wanted to know about his son, but he couldn’t speak or make a move. He wanted to say something, to remark about the difference
between her first arrival, so wild, and this, so calm and peaceful. He wanted to be affectionate and familiar, but he couldn’t
form a sentence. He fingered the faint scar on his forehead and stared straight ahead.

At home, they sat across from each other in front of the fire. Her dress was new. Her hair and her face had softened. He knew
her news before she spoke it, because Antonio was not with her, and because he could see in her face that she wished it were
otherwise.

“He’s not your son. He swears he’s not your son.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that what he says is all we’ve got to go on. Any more . . . there is no more. He says his name is Moretti. He says
his parents run a restaurant in Philadelphia. He says he’s never seen you or heard of you or been closer to Wisconsin than
Chicago. Malloy and Fisk say he’s not a nice man, without scruples or morals or decency. I . . . there wasn’t any farther
to go with it. I tried.”

“What does he look like?”

She was careful. “He looks Italian. Exotic. He looks refined, like an aristocrat of some kind.”

“How does he live?”

“He plays the piano in . . . in a music hall, a cheap place. I never saw it. He likes it. I went to see him, to where he lives,
to offer him anything to come home. He simply said it was not his home, he didn’t know what I was talking about. His rooms
are done up like a circus tent. He dresses like a dandy. A fop.”

“What did his voice sound like?”

“Malloy and Fisk say he’s a useless, pretty object, good for nothing. They’ve followed him for months. They say he’s not worth
the finding.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he’s your wife’s son and Moretti’s. I don’t know. He’s whatever you want him to be. I think he’s lying. I think he
can’t forgive you and won’t come home. Not now. Not ever. I think he’s a lost cause. I wish . . .”

“Wish what, Catherine?”

“I wish I could have done more. I tried. I went to him. I saw a flicker on his brow the first time he heard your name, something
that gave him away. Or so I thought. And I knew he was lying, and I went to him and offered him money. I talked to him for
hours. I told him about your regret, that you were sorry. That you had never forgiven yourself. He doesn’t care. I gave him
the ring from my finger. Your ring. He asked for it and I gave it gladly, instantly, but he laughed and handed it back. He
won’t be persuaded. Even if . . .”

“Even if what?”

“Even if he is your son.”

“And you say he is.”

“I do. He doesn’t.”

“Andy.”

“He calls himself Tony.”

“He asked for your ring?”

“I gave it to him. He was teasing.”

She could see the agony on his face. He wanted the thing that frightened him the most, and the pain was terrible, worse than
the wound on his forehead when she stitched him up. She hoped he believed her. She counted on it.

“We’ll move to the big house. We’ll move next week. Give this place to Larsen and his wife.”

“We don’t have to. There’s no reason. Now there’s no reason.”

“It’s been ready for him for years. Malloy writes that he’s greedy, that he never has any money. He’ll come when everything
else has failed. We’ll move in and we’ll wait.”

She thought of her garden and the delight it would bring her. She thought of the high halls and the crystal chandeliers and
the portraits of people unknown to her. She thought of herself, skirts trailing, walking the long halls of the upper galleries,
and she knew it was what she wanted, that he was doing it for her after his own hope was gone.

“I’ve been happy here. We could go on.”

“I want a child. I won’t die without having a child. If you’re willing. If God is willing and you’d be so kind, I’d be grateful.”

“Of course.”

“It’s a house for children. A palace of adventures and secret staircases, and . . . I was a child when I built it, a spoiled,
willful, stupid child. We go on, as you say.”

They ate dinner in silence, Mrs. Larsen bringing and removing the plates. They ate little. Even after her long train trip,
Catherine respected Truitt’s sorrow, and her appetite seemed nothing to her. How could her heart not go out to him, knowing
what she knew, steeled as she was?

He had no mechanism to discuss his sorrow. He had not had a single unmitigated joy in twenty years, and now a real sorrow
had hit him, without explanation or protection, and he was just as mute. His lost son. The dream of his life, to save something
out of all that terror, his own terrible behavior, and now even that gone.

And she, over coffee growing cold, she couldn’t resist speaking of it, as much as she felt for him.

“We saw him. In a restaurant. We heard him play.”

“How did he sound?”

“Charming. Sad. I’m no judge.”

“You play beautifully.”

“I’m no judge.”

I’ve lost everything, he wanted to say. I have denied myself and tortured myself and done every single thing that has been
expected of me, and it was for nothing. My shirts are clean. My behavior is above reproach. And it means nothing. He was caught
in the softest places of his heart, his gaze at her face, the beginnings of a fondness for her, because she came home and
he was glad to see her, a bird in its cage, singing, and his anguished memory of the cruelties he had shown this boy who now
denied his existence. It was too much. And he was struck mute.

The coffee was cold. The dinner was over, and it was late. When they went up the stairs, he asked her gently if she would
like to sleep in her own room.

“Whatever for?”

“You must be tired from the trip.”

“You’re my husband.”

His glass of water was by the bed, a good night gift from Mrs. Larsen while they had lingered over their sad cold coffee.
He went into the bathroom, to give her time to dress for bed, and knelt on the floor with his forehead on the cold commode
until his fever had cooled. When he came back to the bedroom, he neatly undressed and folded his clothes for Mrs. Larsen to
take care of, then turned back the sheets, shocked and aroused and touched to see that she was for the first time naked in
bed, ready for him, waiting naked, knowing his need.

He made love to her with a ferocity that surprised him, that caused rivulets of sweat to run down his back and chest, his
mouth on hers, his hand on the soft curve of her thigh, the thrill of his weight supported on his arms, his hands everywhere.
Making love to her was like bathing in warm water. She washed over him. She was pliant and helpful, not forward, but helpful,
and he was pleased that he could please her even as he pleased himself. To feel the action and passion and flesh of his body,
his own sweat, his own manipulations of a woman’s desires, beyond speech, so that he became, in the end, pure movement, pure
desire, obliterating his body and his business and his terrible agony and even her face and body until his own body and his
need and his own mute sorrow were the only things in the whole wide world. He heard her soft moan of pleasure, and for a moment,
for one moment, he felt at peace, his breath coming in long slow sighs, his hands stilled, his angers forgotten and his passions
dissipated. He held her in his arms, his weight fully on her now. He smoothed the wild hair back from her forehead.

“Thank you,” he said, and she turned her head and said nothing, and he knew that it was the wrong thing to say. It was the
kind of thing he had said, long ago, to wanton women in hotel rooms. It was not even what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell
her that his heart was finally broken, broken beyond repair or solace, leaving only his sorrow and his rage to hold him upright.
But Ralph Truitt couldn’t speak of the workings of his heart, it wasn’t his habit. So he thanked her and instantly regretted
it, regretted also the tears he could not shed over his son. He wanted to weep. But having shed not a single tear after all
these years, he had no tears now. Not for himself. Not for Antonio. Not for his wife who would, in the end, bear the awful
burden of the man he would become. And she would sleep beside him, and she would know and she would be helpless and he would
come to hate her, hate her helplessness.