The Silent Wife (14 page)

But her parents' troubles were adult troubles and hadn't much affected her life as a child. It would have been hard to improve on her thriving middle-class family with its solid core values of hard work, earning power, community spirit, and education. Or on her stable, balanced childhood filled with summer holidays, piano lessons, swimming practice, church on Sundays, and sit-down family dinners. Growing up, she was loved, praised, disciplined, and encouraged. She did well at school, made and kept friends, went on dates with boys, and entirely missed going through any sort of awkward phase. An only girl in a family of three children, she was cushioned between an older and a younger brother, and in her talks with Gerard it came to light that this, too, had worked to her advantage. She was spoiled but no more nor less spoiled than the baby of the family, her younger brother, Ryan. And her older brother, Darrell, was enough years older to be a mentor and not a rival.

At times, during her work with Gerard, her undeniable advantages
could make her feel awkward, even apologetic. The way he looked at her (quizzically, hopefully), his habit of waiting for her to say more, to add something to the mix—this could cause her to falter and question herself. There were moments when she felt like a fake—or like he must think she was a fake. It became a concern that he suspected her of dissembling, hiding some deeper truth about herself, failing to disclose a darker, bleaker side of her story, resisting him, resisting therapy. But he never actually said such things, and so she had to conclude that it was all in her mind, a smattering of paranoia, a slight discomfort with the psychotherapeutic process.

8

HIM

Over the next little while Todd is taken in hand by Natasha, who insists that he accompany her all over town on various errands and excursions. Every day he breaks from work at odd hours. They visit the obstetrician, look at rental apartments, and buy things for the baby—toys, a carriage, a matching crib and dresser—which Todd has to store in the damp basement of his office building for lack of anywhere else to put them. All the more reason, says Natasha, to hurry up and find a place for them to live.

In the third week of September he signs a lease on a two-bedroom apartment in River North. Natasha likes it because it's newly renovated, with a teak and granite kitchen and a Jacuzzi.
She also likes that they can move in on the first of October, which is just around the corner.

After the lease signing, which takes place midmorning on a weekday, Natasha declares that celebratory sex is mandatory, so they check in to their usual room at the Crowne Plaza and Todd does his best to perform in spite of the news he received from Cliff earlier in the day about the leaky basement at the Jefferson Park apartment house. They knew that moisture was getting in, but Cliff is saying that it's worse than they thought, that yesterday's downpour was a wake-up call. As soon as he can get away he drives to the site to see for himself the seepage along the west wall (where he plans to put the laundry room) that is only going to get worse. This will mean a major dent in his profit margin and does not leave him in a good mood, coming on top of today's lease signing. Paying for two residences in the same city is a fool's game, but what choice does he have? Given that Natasha has his balls in a vise and things with Jodi have still not come to a head. Although Natasha insists that Jodi knows the truth, he's not entirely sure that he believes her. He's thought about having a talk with Jodi, but when he runs that conversation through his mind it comes to a dead end, considering that he himself has not made any final decisions about his future, that leaving Jodi is by no means a fixed item on his agenda. Natasha can nag and Natasha can pressure, but he will come to his own conclusion in his own time.

Another thing that's taxing his patience is Natasha's jealousy of Jodi. Natasha wants him to leave Jodi and move to a
hotel. It isn't right, she says, that he goes home to Jodi every night when she, Natasha, is incubating his baby. Worse, she's developed a ghoulish curiosity about his and Jodi's life together. She wants to know what they talk about, what they eat for dinner, what they wear to bed. He tells her that he and Jodi are friends, that they haven't made love in years. He even told her once that Jodi wished them well. But nothing seems to appease her. If only she would get a grip and settle down. He's been with Jodi for a long time. Natasha is young; she doesn't understand the pull of the years. She's impatient and lacks perspective, has a hot head, tends to be stubborn and willful like her father.

She's also a born mother, a nurturing type who wants a big family, and he likes that, can just about imagine himself as a patriarch, the benevolent head of a brood of boys and girls in staggered sizes. He sees them lined up as if for a family photo, clean and pressed, quiet and well behaved. Above all else, kids need to mind their manners; you can't have them running wild and taking over. When his boys are old enough he'll teach them the trades, show them the city, explain to them how the neighbourhoods have grown up through the years, how property values have changed, how to spot a deal when they see one, his accumulated knowledge passed on and not gone to waste. It's a different life from the one he's been leading, and in many ways it appeals to him, but so far it's just an idea, a projection, a possibility. Natasha needs to be patient and take things as they come because nothing is fixed. Nothing is decided. He won't move forward till a clear path opens up in front of him. He isn't going to heedlessly walk away from the home he's made with
Jodi and everything they've shared for so many years. Jodi is his touchstone, his world, his promised land. When she came into his life—when she showed up a sight for sore eyes in a downpour at a congested intersection, when she helped him consecrate the Bucktown mansion, when she decided to believe in him and came another day to help him paint and balanced on the ladder with supreme grace, back then on any given day he wanted only to inhabit her—her flawless skin, her supple form, her open heart. And then, as things progressed, as their togetherness deepened, something in him shifted, the ground solidified beneath his feet and he lost the sense that he couldn't take a right step, that any step he took would land wrong.

In his boyhood home there was never any sense of equilibrium; it was always a matter of uncertain alliances: his mother protecting him from his father, his father setting him against his mother, his own confusion and shifting sense of loyalty. He spent a lot of time with the Kovacses, eating dinner with Dean and his family and sometimes sleeping over, finding it strange and impressive that Mr. Kovacs was always present at the table, that he'd compliment his wife on the meal, that he was rarely seen with a drink in his hand. Mrs. Kovacs would invite Todd to join them for Thanksgiving, and one year she asked him to come along on their summer vacation, to keep Dean company she said. She was nice that way, making it seem as if he was doing them a favour instead of the other way around.

When he met Jodi's parents they reminded him of Mr. and Mrs. Kovacs. They had the same easy air of cordial good nature, and their home had the same feeling of dependable middle-class
comfort, and sitting down with them to a pot roast and a glass of apple juice, he felt a keen sense of deja vu. He was impressed by the ease between Jodi and her mother as they got the meal on the table and by the camaraderie between Jodi and her father, who teased her about her rapid advancement through the education system, calling her Frau Doktor Jodi, which made her becomingly blush. He felt himself to be an interloper from an underclass, the boyfriend who had opted out of an education and entered into the perilous, possibly doomed life of a struggling would-be entrepreneur. He was broke, untried, and unproven, and it went without saying that he would not pass muster with Jodi's parents.

But Mr. Brett—a stocky man with black-framed glasses, a man who didn't smile even when he joked and who, according to Jodi, had been a firm disciplinarian with his children—turned out to be gracious and attentive, and Mrs. Brett was also very nice, a handsome woman with an air of refinement who welcomed Todd with a great show of warmth.

When everyone was seated with their napkins in their laps, Jodi said, “Todd is restoring a grand old mansion in Bucktown. The previous owner turned it into a rooming house and left it in a mess. Todd is doing the city a great service, if only they knew it.”

“Is that so, Todd?” said Mrs. Brett.

“Sounds like a challenging project,” said Mr. Brett.

“He's doing all the work himself,” Jodi added. “He knows all the trades and he's really good at them.”

“What kind of timeline are you on?” asked Mr. Brett.

“Well, sir, I guess I'm just going as fast as I can,” said Todd.

“He's brilliant at the business end of it too,” said Jodi.

He hadn't exactly lied to her but he'd never told her the truth either—that the Bucktown mansion was as good as quicksand, that the swamp of debt was about to suck him under, that he would end up working construction, a job he'd done summers during high school and then again for several years afterward—and at this critical moment, the moment when he was meant to swagger a little in front of Jodi's parents, his confidence deserted him entirely.

“It takes guts to do something like that,” said Mr. Brett.

“But now's the time for it, while you're still young and have the energy.”

“You bought the drugstore when you were young,” Jodi said to her father.

“Your mother and I were about the age you two are now,” said Mr. Brett.

“The worst thing is to let your dreams slip away without fighting for them,” said Mrs. Brett.

“Mom wanted to be a singer,” said Jodi. “She has a beautiful singing voice.”

“Used to have,” said Mrs. Brett.

“Running your own business is the way to go,” said Mr. Brett. “Doesn't matter what you do, as long as you're your own boss.”

“Some people care more about security,” said Todd, doubtful of all this approval.

“That will come in time,” said Mr. Brett.

“You have to start somewhere,” said Mrs. Brett.

“What sort of a house is it?” asked Mr. Brett.

Todd obligingly answered that it was built in 1880 but that—unlike many Chicago mansions of the period—it was more Gothic Revival than Victorian, was a bit of a monstrosity, in fact. “It looks like your typical haunted house,” he said. “And it's gone to ruin. Even the grounds are a mess, all rubble and weeds. I'll need to rent a tiller to turn the soil.”

“You'll want to put in your grass seed any time now,” said Mr. Brett. “Give it a chance to root before the cold weather comes. Or your sod, if that's what you're planning, but seed does better in the long run, and it's cheaper.”

“Take his word for it,” said Jodi. “He knows about grass.”

“I noticed the lawn when we came in,” said Todd.

“The lawn is his pride and joy,” said Mrs. Brett.

“Don't let grass intimidate you,” said Mr. Brett. “Growing grass is simple chemistry.”

Later, when Jodi and Todd were out walking, Todd said, “I love your parents. They're so nice.”

It was late summer, a time of year for lush, fading blooms and dusk descending with slow, archaic majesty. The evening light lingered in the western sky as they rambled through the quiet streets, past Jodi's old high school and the United Methodist church she had attended with her family and the houses of friends who, like her, had grown up and moved away. Jodi by then was solidly in his life, but there was still a flavour of mystery about her, a glamour with origins he couldn't quite divine.
What he did know was that he'd never met a girl he wanted so much to impress. He longed to live up to her faith in him, to be the man she needed and deserved. Walking beside her in the radiant dusk, in the otherworldly trafficless quiet of the small rural community, lapped by scented breezes, the air itself a lulling bath, he felt that his life could finally begin, that she was the god he would worship and the talisman that would make things come out right.

By the time they returned from their walk, the sky had darkened and the streetlights were on. The plan was to stay the night and drive back the next day after lunch. He knew that the visit would be a chaste one because Jodi had forewarned him that her parents were the old-fashioned sort, and true to form Mrs. Brett made a point of showing him into the room that had once belonged to Ryan, the younger boy, whereas Jodi, he understood, would be spending the night in her own room down the hall. He found this endearing, even commendable, the impulse of the parents to cocoon their daughter as best they could, at least for the time she was under their roof. Like most parents they no doubt saw their grown child as a youngster still, and on some level he must strike them as a menacing stranger who had somehow found his way into the family compound. Still, he was content to take their hospitality at face value and not concern himself with whatever might be crawling around under the tribal bedrock. He knew, for instance, that there was some sort of trouble between Jodi and her brothers—that she didn't speak to the older one and that she worried about the younger one,
who had turned out to be a black sheep of sorts—but the brothers didn't figure in the general conversation, and nor was there any sign of strife between the parents.

A few months later, in the glory days of autumn when the tree-tops burned with colour and the side-angled light cast the city in a golden glow—he always feels in fall that there should be trumpet blasts or bugle calls—after he'd sold the Bucktown mansion and consolidated his future, in his own mind at least, he and Jodi found a small apartment in the Loop and merged their belongings and their lives.

He wanted to marry her, intended to marry her, and thought about ways he could propose that might overturn her resistance. Being together was perfect, she said, and why mess with it, but it seemed to him that she might be persuaded, flattered himself that he could slip past her guard. Commitment appealed to him, a fortress of togetherness, a pledge to guarantee their future. If you couldn't secure your stronghold at the outset, how could you expect it to survive when the storms blew through? He wanted them to vouchsafe their love, give it over to something greater than the two of them.