Serial Monogamy (5 page)

“W
here's my blue shirt?”

“Which blue shirt?”

“The striped one, the one I always wear when I present a paper.”

“I have no idea.”

That was how one of our worst arguments began, inconsequentially, over an unlaundered shirt, although I suppose it was about bigger things. The girls were small, three or so, and we still had a nanny in those days; we kept her until the girls started kindergarten. As I recall she usually took the bag of Al's shirts to the cleaner's after he or I asked her to, but that was not how Al understood the matter.

“Sharon. I have to leave early tomorrow. Where the fuck's the shirt?”

I stared at him, uncomprehendingly. Did he really think this was my problem?

“Maybe it's in the laundry bag still,” I said, taking
the bag off the closet door. It was large and stuffed. Apparently, the shirts had not walked themselves to the cleaner's. I opened it up, rummaged around and found the one in question. “I guess…”

“Can't you keep things organized around here? I mean, you have help…”

“I don't quite understand why this is my fault.”

“Well, whose fault is it?”

“It's your shirt.”

“I don't believe you. You know how hard I have to work; you're at home all day.”

“I work at home.”

“Okay, sure. But the book's finished. I mean, if you don't have time to run the shirts to the laundry, the least you could do is warn me…”

“Why are you obsessed with this one shirt? Wear a different one already.”

And so it went on like this, this ridiculous argument over who should take responsibility for his laundry; he was at his worst, haughty and dismissive, and I wouldn't back down because I thought he was in the wrong and I'm stubborn. He eventually accused me of failing to support him in his career, which I pointed out was completely untrue, and we wound up lying in bed in the dark in a sulky silence unable to apologize until exhaustion finally overtook us and we fell into an uneasy sleep. And the next day, in the manner of many married couples, we just moved on and forgot about our fight, without ever
clarifying whose job it was to take the shirts to the cleaner's, let alone figuring out what that was really about.

You always think, when you hear about some woman running off with another man or somebody's heartbreaking separation, that the marriage must have been a disaster, the couple must have known they were headed for the rocks; they were battling ferociously or barely on speaking terms or something. You think you'd get some warning, if such a thing were ever going to happen to you. I swear I had no warning, no warning at all. I thought the bond between us was steely strong, forged with passion and burnished by children. I thought if we occasionally disagreed about trivial things, it was merely trivial. A fight about a shirt was just an irritation, a diversion. Everybody has bad days; those times when you snap at your spouse only because she's the nearest person at hand. Al did not really expect me to wash his clothes. But I guess if I look back, if I have to pick a time where I had some inkling that we might be in trouble, or saw for an instant, quickly to be discarded, that there was a real problem here, it was the night before the fight over the shirt.

It was at a party, a party to launch my third book; we had taken over a restaurant not far from the house. Waiters passed around glasses of wine and trays full of cute little appetizers; I had bought a sleek new dress for the occasion; my publisher made a pretty and flattering speech. I stood up to thank her and everybody else. I pulled out a bit of paper because I can't be trusted not
to ramble at these things and needed to stick to a script. As I was straightening out my sheet of paper, I looked out at my audience, readying myself to speak, and I saw a man who wasn't looking at me; instead, he was staring off to one side. In a fraction of a second, there were three things I noticed about him. The first was that he was so handsome, heart-stoppingly good looking; the second was that he looked annoyed, put out somehow by the proceedings, as though he wanted to be somewhere else. And the third thing I noticed was that this man was Al.

Perhaps to put it in that order is overstating what happened; perhaps I should just say that Al looked unhappy, like an awkward outsider at this party, and that there was this millisecond before I recognized him, probably because he was standing in the shadows. At any rate, I had this tiny moment where he felt like a total stranger to me, a man I had never seen before in my life. Occasionally I have had hazy flashbacks to that night, fleeting moments when I look at Al and see someone else and then have a feeling of déjà vu, that I have known him as a stranger before. I think back to the first time I saw him at the front of a classroom, lecturing on Dickens, the sense of excitement that swirled around this unknown man, but then I realize that's not it. And I think of the shock when he told me he was leaving, my image of him standing at the front door, ready to go, and I know that's not it either, that was a time too full of my anger and sorrow over his behaviour for him to feel unfamiliar. And then I remember the night of the party.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating here. Everybody experiences those occasions when you look at the man who you have slept beside for a decade and wonder what the hell he's thinking.

This Saturday, he's looking puzzled, or maybe it's disgruntled. He's sitting at the breakfast table with the weekend paper spread out before him. With much fanfare
The Telegram
has announced a literary event and begun publishing a serial novel by the distinguished (their word, not mine) novelist Sharon Soleymani to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. The first four weekly instalments have been received with a deafening silence, except for a few emails from Dickens enthusiasts and cranks, making suggestions about future instalments, soliciting advice on their own projects or sharing stories about the first time they chortled their way through
The Pickwick Papers
or wept at
Bleak House
. God bless them for their interest because Jonathan Torres has had nothing to say about the publication of this fabulous project that he so loved until I run out of patience and send him an email asking how he feels it has been received. He takes three days to answer with two words, “Good response,” the terseness of which makes me suspect the opposite is true. There is no word from Stanek either. Typically, dear Frank fires me off a congratulatory missive the first Saturday morning, but I am feeling decidedly unloved at
The Telegram
.

But that's not what hurts. We still have the paper delivered but Al shuns it and always reads the news on his tablet.
The Telegram
, however, has decided to run the serial only in print—this may be an exceedingly clever bit of marketing, or not, we will find out soon enough. I showed Al the first instalment—“Oh, Staplehurst. Very smart,” he said—and I assume he has read the next two. I pick the paper up off the porch every day, weekdays and weekends, and leave it on the kitchen table when I'm finished reading. But so far he has said nothing more. It's mid-February, and I'm growing increasingly nervous. I want him to like it; I know he thinks I should be husbanding my strength, babying myself, but I need to work and want him to see that, to see the old me, the clever one who could match him at his own game.

And now finally, as the fourth instalment appears, he is visibly reading. Ostentatiously reading, sitting in the middle of the kitchen with a cold cup of coffee, frowning at the paper and rustling it occasionally as he does so.

“I always thought that story was greatly overplayed.”

“Overplayed? There was practically a conspiracy to keep the affair secret until the 1930s. Don't sully the name…”

“Yes, but recently it's been so overdone. So he had a mistress. Lots of men did.”

“And still do,” I say, before remembering I'm not supposed to do that.

“Hey, we agreed…”

The phone rings, interrupting our conversation. Marriage, in my experience, is full of conversations you never manage to finish. It is the lovely Jonathan on the line. He sounds panicked.

“Is this just going to be about this Nelly person?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Did you get my email?”

“I haven't got to my desk yet.”

“Don't you have a BlackBerry?” He sounds as contemptuous as my daughters, continually petitioning for a smartphone.

“I'm thinking about going Samsung,” I lie.

“Anyway, I sent you an email. I thought the serial was supposed to be about Dickens. Is this Nelly person his mistress or something?”

“Yes, his mistress. I did tell you Dickens was not the chief protagonist.”

“Yes, but I told the publisher it was going to be about Dickens and he isn't sure about this direction. We hoped after all that stuff about the train crash you would move on to another topic. Follow the people he rescued or something. He thinks what you are doing is unfair…”

“Unfair to Dickens?”

“Yeah. Like you're slandering the man when he can't fight back.”

“I think the legacy of anybody who wrote
A Christmas Carol
can look after itself.”

“But you're making out like he's some pedophile or something.”

“He was forty-five. She was eighteen. That's a fact.”

“Yeah, but you don't have to emphasize it.”

“You read it and edited it. Why didn't you raise these concerns earlier this week?”

“Well…” He clears his throat and attempts a decisive note. “You are going to need to tone it down for next week. We'll have to talk about a new direction. You'll need to come into the office.”

“The direction will be what I decide it to be. Flip me Stanek's email address and I'll deal with him.”

“I don't know. I'm the editor on the project…” He is getting whiny now.

“But he's the one with the problem. Send me his email and I'll respond to his complaints. Politely.”

“Okay.” He sounds relieved.

I am just composing my polite email to Stanek, saying I heard he had some concerns about the fourth instalment and would be happy to talk to him that afternoon after my daughters' ballet class was over, when the phone rang again.

“Sharon. Bob Stanek. Is this just going to be about Ellen Ternan?”

“No. Not exactly…”

There was consternation at Park Cottage. Mrs. Dickens had left her card.

Or, rather, her coachman had left her card, stopping the brougham in the middle of the street—to the annoyance of the coalman waiting in his cart to get by. The coachman had lifted the knocker and, when Mrs. Ternan had opened her narrow front door herself, handed her the small, engraved rectangle of Bristol paper. If he had expected a servant to answer or was surprised at finding himself in the further reaches of Islington, he gave not the slightest sign of it and, despite the gesticulations and shouts of the coalman, took time to give her the lowest bow before returning to his vehicle.

“What are we to do now?” Mrs. Ternan asked her daughters that evening.

“Does she want to visit?” Maria asked.

“No,” said Fanny, “but her husband wants her to visit.” Maria giggled.

Nelly caught the censorious look that her mother shot her sisters.

“Why would he want her to visit?” she asked.

“To show the world that we are ladies!” Fanny replied.

“We are ladies,” Mrs. Ternan said firmly.

“Yes, but there are gossips who say Mr. Dickens' interest in Nelly is not altogether gentlemanly,” said Fanny.

“Fanny!” her mother cried out in reproach at her boldness.

Nelly, recalling a recent walk on Hampstead Heath, a gold bracelet and a welcome audition with the previously unmoved manager in Drury Lane, blushed fiercely and burst into tears.

“It's not my fault!” she protested.

“Of course not, dear. You are blameless,” Mrs. Ternan said.

“You were always the beauty,” Fanny said. It was not an envious or malicious remark; it was accepted family wisdom that if Fanny and Maria were the clever ones, Nelly had inherited her mother's looks.

“So what are we to do now?” Maria asked. “Invite her to tea?”

“I suppose I must,” Mrs. Ternan said. “Leave a card with her indicating an hour I will be at home.”

“Do I have to be at home?” Nelly asked.

“I think we all have to be at home. That is rather the
point, isn't it?” Fanny said. “Maria and I can drop the card in. Or do you think we can trust Colleen?” Colleen was the char lady who came in daily to shovel coal and clean floors.

“That is sweet of you, dear, but I suppose Colleen can go if we give her good instructions on how to find the place. And I will just pour the tea myself.”

“They live in Tavistock Square. It must be a palace,” Maria said. “What will Mrs. Dickens think of us, without even a girl to open the door!”

“She doesn't have a footman to accompany her coachman,” Fanny pointed out.

“Girls.” Mrs. Ternan drew herself up and spoke in a voice trained to carry to the back row: “Mr. Dickens is an artist. He has bought his fine house with his fine talents. But we are artists too, and have also worked with our talents for everything we own. That is not something that may be said of Mrs. Dickens. We have no reason to feel her inferior.”

And so Mrs. Ternan waited precisely two days and then hunted out one of her seldom-used visiting cards and wrote on it in her finest hand
“Mrs. Ternan finds herself at home with her daughters on Tuesday afternoons.”
Fanny and Maria walked Colleen to Tavistock Square to hand it in, and the family prepared itself to receive a visitor.

To that point Nelly had not given much thought to Mrs. Dickens. She had met her briefly, nothing more
than touching her glove and bobbing a little curtsey, after the opening in Manchester. Mrs. Dickens had registered only as a vague maternal figure in the midst of the large retinue of servants and children that accompanied Mr. Dickens. It was her sister Miss Hogarth who seemed to take charge of all practical arrangements while Mrs. Dickens presided benignly if a bit blankly over the proceedings. Used to her mother's organizational skills and lifelong work, Nelly was unaccustomed to anyone permitted the luxury of inactivity and paid Mrs. Dickens little heed.

When she showed up on their very small doorstep the following Tuesday, however, Nelly mainly felt sorry for her. It was a wet and windy day and she was a large woman clothed in a voluminous rain cape, struggling to manage an umbrella and her wraps as she alighted from the brougham. She looked flustered and uncomfortable, and if she had wished to appear as their social superior condescending in paying this call, she rather ruined the effect by knocking over the umbrella stand with her cape on her way into the cottage's tight little vestibule. This seemed to upset her equilibrium yet further, and as Mrs. Ternan righted the stand with a few sorrowful comments about the size of the premises, Mrs. Dickens kept saying, “Yes, how awkward. How very awkward it all is.” It was an annoying reaction that made the situation worse rather than better and yet Nelly could not think ill of her. It was clear she dearly wished herself anywhere else and yet it was
also clear, during the social call that followed, that she was a kind-enough soul that she did not want to give offence.

“I don't believe you have met my eldest,” Mrs. Ternan began when they were finally standing in the cramped parlour. “Mrs. Dickens, may I present my daughter Fanny.”

Fanny bopped nicely; Maria brought tea and they all sat down, with Nelly positioning herself as far into a dark corner as the small space would permit.

“Two sugars, thank you.”

“It was such a pleasure to meet you in Manchester last summer,” Mrs. Ternan said. “I hope your return journey went smoothly.”

“It was uneventful as I recall,” Mrs. Dickens replied.

“So often the trains are late.”

“Our train arrived right on time, and the journey was without incident, I am glad to say.”

“I am relieved to hear that. Did you spend Christmas in the city?”

“No. We have recently bought a house in Kent.”

“How pleasant. It is always so invigorating to breathe country air.”

“Our house is cold and I find that country air exacerbates my catarrh.”

“I am most sorry to hear that. The cold can be very trying. May I offer you a biscuit?”

“Oh no, thank you. I make a rule of never eating between meals. I am afraid it does not agree with me. I am a martyr to my digestion.”

And so the delicate biscuits Mrs. Ternan had purchased specially from Fortnum and Mason sat uneaten while the conversation continued.

“What a cozy parlour this is and how prettily you have decorated it.”

“Thank you. It is small but it suits our needs. I am afraid, however, I cannot take much credit for the decorations. They mainly belong to the landlady.”

“Oh. I find it so comforting to be surrounded by one's own things.”

“Of course, but in the theatre we travel so much. One gets used to keeping a few mementoes in a suitcase.”

“How brave of you. I can't imagine living without my own furnishings, and the piano, of course.”

“Yes. A piano is such a joy. Do you like music?”

And so they continued in this vein for ten minutes, at which point Mrs. Dickens declined a second cup of tea and indicated she had several more calls to pay that afternoon.

“Tuesdays are such a popular day, don't you find?”

“Very much so,” Mrs. Ternan lied, eager to let Mrs. Dickens extract herself as soon as possible without further incident. “My compliments to your husband,” she added as she opened the front door and saw her guest out.