The Silent Wife (18 page)

She had loved him through it all and loved him still, even though she was far from reconciled with the way he had ended up: with the fact that after opting out of university he had spent his twenties travelling in India and Southeast Asia and had ever since been living half the year in Kuala Lumpur teaching English and half the year in Baja California Sur, where he surfed and waited tables; with the fact that he was a certified, card-carrying black sheep who would one day be too old to continue doing what he was doing and what would become of him then?—without money, far from home, and too proud to ask for help.

She had no way of getting in touch with him because he didn't have a phone or wouldn't give her the number—she wasn't sure which—and so she had to wait for him to call, and
thankfully he did call every now and then, though it was rare for her to actually lay eyes on him. At that point, during her Gerard days, she hadn't seen him for a very long time, not since meeting him at the airport on one of his hasty stopovers. He called her at six in the morning, and she met him for a breakfast of refrigerated sandwiches bought from the airport kiosk and eaten off their laps. It was late November, but being en route from one tropical climate to another he was travelling light, with only a knapsack for luggage. Aside from his T-shirt, jeans, and sandals, he was wearing a string of blue glass beads and a black straw hat with a skull-and-crossbones motif on the crown and the brim turned up at the sides. He'd grown a little stocky and needed a shave but had the same blue-eyed elfin look that he'd always had and seemed fine, just too old to be stuck at this place in his life—still single, preoccupied with surfing, ignoring his talent and potential. As a boy he was good at gymnastics and drawing, took an interest in insects and plants, talked about becoming an athlete, an illustrator, a biologist, and other things. During high school he was a camp counsellor and wanted to be a teacher—not a teacher working on the fly but a teacher who would see his students through and make a difference.

She had recurring dreams about Ryan in which he was lost or on the run and she was frantic to get to him but couldn't manage to book a flight or board an airplane. She still thought about him every day, or rather, he was ceaselessly present within her, a constant companion distinguished by his worrisome absence. Her instinct was to help and protect him, but he made that impossible. She knew that if she ventured to comment on
his lifestyle he would think twice about ever calling her again. Their parents had made this mistake and subsequently had to get their news of him from her. Besides, it wasn't as if he gave her any openings. He liked to keep his distance, Ryan, avoiding talk of anything significant, never letting her in, clowning around and making light of things. All she could do was laugh at the stories he told of his misadventures and resist the urge to offer him money, unwilling to hurt his pride.

By contrast, her older brother, Darrell, had followed in their father's footsteps, taking his PharmD in Minneapolis and then returning home to marry his high-school sweetheart. Their parents held out hope that Darrell would stick around to run the family drugstore, but in the end he chose to move on and was now the director of pharmacy at a large teaching hospital in Canada.

Darrell was six years older than Jodi and a boy, but from the start he was a bright light in her life—a kind, obliging, fun-loving mentor who had time for her and could make her laugh. It was Darrell who took her trick-or-treating on Halloween, Darrell who taught her to tie her shoelaces by the bunny-ears method. She even remembered a dolls' tea party at which Darrell served up the mud pies and lisped the voice of Barbie's little sister, Skipper. When she was older he helped her with homework and played cards with her, even though by then he was in high school and she was still a kid. Darrell was one of those rare, good-natured, obliging boys who got along with everyone—the ultimate easygoing, earnest, diplomatic young man who was destined to do well in life because everyone was eager to help him on his way.

Gerard took an interest in her family life and plied her with questions.

14

HIM

He leaves the office and navigates the old familiar route. As he takes the ramp to Upper Randolph Drive and sees the condo in the distance, he waits for an onslaught of nostalgia, but it doesn't come, maybe displaced by the scrap heap of everything else he is feeling. At the top of the heap is apprehension. He has no sense of what to expect. She was friendly enough on the phone, but these are unusual times. Whatever happens he should try to get his hands on a few of his things while he's there—some sweaters and his winter coat at the very least. He'll have to leave them in his trunk or Natasha will know where he's been. She might figure it out in any case. Natasha has the nose of a jackal. Tonight he's supposedly dining with Harry, going over contracts,
but she may find a way to check on that. This will be their first evening entirely apart since moving in together.

Easing the Porsche into parking spot number 32, he grapples for a moment with a lordly sense of possession. Absurd as it is he can't quite suppress his territorial instincts. These two hundred square feet of pavement are his—he owns them—and he also owns spot number 33, where Jodi's Audi sits—and for that matter the Audi is his property too.

He travels up the elevator and with pride of ownership still goading him uses his key to enter the apartment. The complex smells of her cooking welcome him before he's through the door, eliciting the nostalgia he's been waiting for. Freud is there to greet him, prancing and spinning at his feet. The dog looks well—eyes bright, coat shiny and lush. He moves through to the living room, seeing it with fresh eyes, as if he's been away for a very long time. The place has an opulent feel that he must have become inured to when he lived here, or maybe he's already been corrupted by the squalor of his current domicile, where Natasha's habit of cluttering every available surface with the litter of her daily life is the reigning principle of her housekeeping.

He looks for Jodi in the kitchen and doesn't find her, but when he turns around she's there in front of him, smaller than he remembers and different in other ways too—more fragile and with a longer neck, whiter skin, and features somehow rearranged. How can she have changed this much just because he wasn't looking?

She's wearing her everyday beige trousers and white shirt. Maybe to her this is a nothing occasion, not the momentous

coming together or breaking apart that he's been alternately envisioning. Her eyes show the glimmer of a question as they touch on his cashmere jacket and longer hair. He meant to kiss her but turns toward the kitchen instead.

“Should I make the drinks?” he asks.

The old routine moves them past the awkward beginning, but as he takes down the glasses and gets the Stolichnaya out of the freezer, and as she chops parsley and places tiny crustaceans on a platter, it becomes chillingly clear that nothing is remotely as it was. They could be strangers, so courteous and stilted is their conversation, so carefully do they gauge their movements and monitor the space between them. When they've clinked glasses and taken their first warming sips of alcohol, he sits on a stool and watches as she cuts a lemon lengthwise into quarters. She smiles as she offers him an appetizer, but all he can see is the distance in her eyes. As he chews and swallows, and as she moves around the kitchen in her prim white shirt buttoned to the clavicle, he tries to remember what she looks like naked.

Their conversation during dinner fixes on their work, while other subject matter is avoided: his new living arrangements, her lonely nights, his impending fatherhood, anything to do with the future. The elephants in the room are alive and well. He doggedly talks about plumbing and mildew. She offers updates on her clients. When he hears that Miss Piggy is pregnant and doesn't know if her husband or her lover is responsible, he has to laugh. He's never felt kindly toward Miss Piggy or for that matter anyone who carries on a long-term extramarital affair, in effect, a form of polygamy. A passing fling is one thing, sex with
a prostitute is one thing, but dividing your loyalties as a way of life is a faithless path to take and one that can only end badly.

Jodi, for one, always understood this about him; Jodi could see the bigger picture. As long as he and Jodi were together he belonged to her, and she knew that. A lot of women—probably most women—would make a fuss about the little diversions, get all wound up over the trivial dalliance here and the minor detour there. It's possible that he took Jodi's tolerance and forbearance too much for granted, didn't credit her enough for putting up with him. An easy mistake to make. Jodi has a knack for acceptance. She isn't easily threatened or thrown off balance. She moves along in a measured way and with a sense of scale, doesn't get alarmed or take things to extremes.