The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage
That afternoon, after her Intro to Journalism class, she drove out to the motel. She tried the room; it was locked. She went down to the office and tapped the little bell. The manager came out from the back room, slid the key across the counter. “He’s not here yet.”
“Oh. Well, thank you.” Awkwardly, she took the key. On quivering legs, she walked down to the room as if she were high on a rope bridge over a deep ravine. Simon was always there first, waiting for her, which made the whole situation so much easier. Unlocking the door, she considered the strange reality that her secret union with Simon was the first thing she had done on her own, entirely for herself, since the day she’d married. Even her decision to marry Michael had been prompted and promoted by others for as long as she could remember. Like fulfilling some subliminal family contract, Annie had done all the right things. She’d married in her twenties—a doctor—had had children before it was too late, and had salvaged something of her career. But when she was honest with herself, Michael’s profession had proved to be a disappointment. His career had chipped away at the compassionate young man she had fallen in love with and had turned him into a weary, desensitized workaholic. The change had been a tedious betrayal that took greedily from him, from both of them, without remorse. On the surface, Michael was handsome and successful and Annie could easily rationalize his neglect, overlooking the emotional toll it was taking on her. But now she had changed. She couldn’t do that anymore.
During the few hours a week she spent with Simon Haas, she had blown the dust off her prim middling self and gotten reacquainted with the woman underneath, a slippery, lithe, ravenous animal—the woman Michael had been ignoring for too long. The awful truth was that, at some point soon, she would have to banish her again. She knew this. And she would miss her profoundly.
The little room was cold and seemed haunted with the ghosts of dissolute guests. She sat down on the bed and waited. An hour passed. Maybe something had happened, she thought. His wife, perhaps. Maybe something had happened with his wife and he couldn’t call her. Or maybe he’d decided to end it. It was too painful waiting here, not knowing, and she felt foolish in the negligee. She couldn’t stand it another minute. She decided to leave a note with the manager, but where was a pen? She looked around the shabby little room. It was dark and pathetic, as was their alliance. Guilt bullied its way into her heart, and for the first time she felt ashamed. She should have just ended it, she thought. Her marriage was already in jeopardy. Who did she think she was, having an affair? She was not the sort of woman who did this kind of thing.
Resolute, she decided to write a letter to Simon explaining her feelings. She didn’t want to hurt him; no, that was the last thing she wanted— in fact, her feelings for him were very deep—but the affair would have to end. Yes. She would have to put aside her desire for him for the benefit of her family. It was the right thing to do, of course it was, and he would understand. If he wanted, he could find another writer for the article. There was still time, if he felt that was necessary.
Strangely relieved, Annie grabbed her bag and opened the door only to find her lover standing on the other side of it, the key poised in his hand like a weapon.
“Don’t bother, I’m leaving.”
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“No apology necessary.” She attempted to get around him but he held her arm and pushed her back into the room rather violently and closed the door. Her heart began to pound.
“Stop this nonsense. Take off your clothes.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“You’ll be sorry.” He smiled. And then, unwittingly, she smiled, too. “I’ll have to give you a spanking.”
She could feel her face flushing red. “Where were you? It wasn’t nice of you to keep me waiting like this.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I was painting, Annie.” He opened his hands, revealing the splotches of color. “It’s because of you.” He came toward her.
“Look, Simon. This isn’t right. We can’t keep doing this. Even though I want to. You know I want to.”
“I don’t know why you do this to yourself.”
“What we’re doing is wrong. You know that.”
“We have this incredible thing, Annie. We have this, this heat between us. It doesn’t happen every day. It’s a gift. You think I’ve ever had this?”
She desperately wanted to believe him.
“You think I have this with her?” He sat down heavily on the bed. “I’m trapped,” he said. “Her and me. We’re both trapped.” He sighed deeply. “I never meant . . .”
“For this to happen?”
“I never expected to feel like this.” He looked at her. “I never expected to feel this way about you.”
“Me either.”
“I love the way your hair falls down your back, for example. Your hair.” He ran his hand through her hair. “It’s like ink spilled out all over the place, it’s like a whole bucketful of water. Cold river water. Or the mane of a horse.” He grabbed her hair like a tail and pulled on it hard. “You are my wild horse.”
It was true that he loved her and that she loved him, it was all true yet there was nothing either could do about it. There was no future for them, nor did they have a past. She could not call him whenever she wanted, or see him whenever the spirit moved her. And yet, in so many ways, he was the one person who seemed to know her best. He was the single person on earth she wanted to be with.
It seemed to her that life was full of missed opportunities, that nearly every moment in a day contained fragments of loss.
She loved his painter’s eyes, the moody complexity of his mouth. And she loved the boy that lingered there, the sad boy in his fingertips as they ran their lovely rain across her back.
“Come here, let me kiss you.” He reached out for her, unbuttoning her coat. When his hands came in contact with the satin fabric of the negligee his face opened with surprise. “What do we have here? Is this for me?” Kissing her face, her neck, he ventured beneath the raincoat to the negligee below. “Lovely.” He kissed her wrists and elbows and shoulders and neck. Her thighs, her knees, her long calves. Her toes. They moved back on the bed, spinning inside each other’s arms, and she closed her eyes and indulged in the commotion of desire, holding on to him very tightly as if in the midst of a terrible storm. In his arms, she had found a quiet place, far away from everything she knew, and for the first time all day she could breathe.
38
THEY HAD LAIN THERE for a long time, watching the rain. Simon sensed her uneasiness, as though she were playing out some premonition in her mind. He rolled onto his side and put his arms around her. She turned her head and smiled at him. She said, “You shouldn’t send things to the house. I mean I love that you did, but you really shouldn’t.”
He looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“This,” she said, touching the negligee on her body, “I’m talking about this.”
He saw in her face that she’d thought he’d sent it.
“A bit conservative for my taste, don’t you think?”
“What? You mean you didn’t send it?” Her skin turned a queasy pea green.
He shook his head. “Maybe your husband’s trying to tell you something.”
“Tell me what?”
“Well, I assume you’re not sleeping with him terribly much.”
She didn’t like the comment, but she did not deny it. “I have to go.” She got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He could hear the plastic curtain sliding across the rod. He went into the bathroom and picked up the negligee off the floor. If her husband hadn’t sent it, who had?
The tag said Delectable Intimates, but that meant nothing to him. He wasn’t the sort of person who knew about things like tags and designers.
He yanked on the shower curtain and appraised his lover’s shape. “Hello there.”
“Hello.”
“I was just wondering. Do you come with the roo
“Go away.” She slid the curtain back.
He yanked the curtain open. “I was hoping for a little room service.”
“Room service?” she asked, her grin an invitation.
“I hope you don’t mind.” He stepped under the hot streaming water. “I’ve got a very big appetite.”
She opened her arms. “Help yourself.”
With the retrospective looming, Simon had begun to paint regularly in his studio. Besides the motel room with Annie, it was the only place he wanted to be. He knew, however, that he could not afford to abandon his wife just now. On her last visit to the psychiatric hospital they had diagnosed her with severe cyclical depression that required careful monitoring. They’d set her up with a local psychiatrist, but Simon suspected that she didn’t keep her appointments. Now he feared that the cycle had returned, and that without the proper medication, she would be swept up in an emotional tornado that had the potential to wipe out whatever it came in contact with.
To the outside world, Lydia exuded a modesty and temperance. Simon knew that, as an employee at the catalog, his wife was tirelessly reliable. He also knew that the people she’d entertained from church saw her as a veritable saint. All those happy people who sat in his house around his kitchen table talking about the great Lord Jesus and His wondrous deeds. It gave him a headache just thinking about it.
When he returned home from the motel that afternoon, he took it upon himself to search through her things. He did so methodically, like a detective would, craving an understanding of the woman he called his wife. His instincts told him that she was up to something ugly. Her world, it seemed to him, was that of a teenager’s, full of high peaks and dramatic valleys, but her sordid pathology made it impossible for him to predict her behavior. Her bureau was crammed with bowls of bracelets, childish bangles and necklaces adorned with charms of the day, such as peace symbols and crosses and words like Happiness and Tranquillity, two things his wife knew nothing about. There was an assortment of religious objects, crucifixes and candles and small figurines of the Virgin Mary. Garbage, he thought, fighting the impulse to sweep the surface clean.
He tugged open her underwear drawer, stuffed with little white panties that had at one time been the prurient substance of his affections. He picked up a pair of panties and examined them, amazed to see that their tag read Delectable Intimates. Fiercely interested, he searched the entire dresser, but found nothing more with that label on it. Perhaps it was a popular brand, he thought, and moved on to the closet. The closet was full of new clothing still fastened with tickets from McMillan & Taft, clothing, it seemed, that she had no intention of wearing. He wondered if she had stolen it. Sitting on the top shelf was an old sewing box that he vaguely remembered from her father’s house. The box was oval in shape and had a cloth exterior that portrayed a scene of children at a skating pond. He took it down and lifted off the lid, under which was a tangle of embroidery thread and a piece of fabric that resembled burlap—a sampler, folded neatly across the top of the box. He removed the sampler and examined it and saw that Lydia’s mother, Frances, had stitched it when she was a child. It showed a little red barn, four white chickens, and a yellow-haired girl tossing feed. He turned his attention back to the box, where he found the white Bible Lydia had received from one of the nuns in school, a dour Sister Louise he had met only once, and a leather-bound volume of nursery rhymes that was so old the pages had come loose from the binding. Gently turning the brittle pages he discovered an inscription from Lydia’s mother. To my darling daughter, Love, Mama, she had written in ornate script. Taped to the page beneath it was a small photograph of the woman and child; Lydia’s mother, Simon presumed, and Lydia as a little girl.
Simon sat down on the bed and sighed, all at once overcome. He studied the photograph. At three years old, the child was already exquisite, a rare and dazzling jewel. Why had he been the one to find her? And what would have become of her if he had not?
He was putting the book away when an envelope dropped out. The envelope was full of cash: an assortment of bills, ones, fives, tens, twenties, and a fifty, totaling nearly six hundred dollars. He wondered where she’d gotten it. Simon deposited all of her paychecks and had sole control of their checking account. He gave her a weekly allowance for groceries and whatever else she needed. In truth, his wife was innately penurious. She spent modestly. The perfect match for a fledgling painter, although, as it had turned out, he hadn’t struggled for long. Money had never particularly interested him; it had certainly never motivated him. As long as he had paint and canvas and food in his belly, that’s all that had ever mattered to him. When he’d hit it big in the art world and the money had gushed in like a river tainted with pollutants, he couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Unbeknownst to her, he’d stashed most of it in a private account and had hired a local management firm to invest a portion of it in the stock market. The rest of it he’d spent quickly, foolishly, and when there was little left he did not regret it.
When Lydia had told him she needed to work to pay off creditors (he was terrible at paying the bills), he had acquiesced, wanting to promote in her mind a sense of responsibility that she was contributing to the family till, so to speak. But this money, this money she’d been saving. Perhaps she’d gathered it like a little squirrel, loose change left around the house, piling up in the ashtrays, ceramic bowls, five dollars here, ten dollars there. He supposed it added up. But to this amount?
The dogs began to bark and a moment later he heard her car pulling into the garage. Swiftly, he put everything away exactly as he had found it. He hurried downstairs to the kitchen, put up water for tea, and situated himself at the kitchen table with his small sketchbook and charcoals, as though he’d been there all afternoon. She came in through the side door, the fire of winter in her eyes. In their early days together, she’d liked interrupting his work. On some occasions, she would spend whole afternoons watching him work, content to just sit and see the thing come to life before her. It was an aspect of their lives that had come to an end when he’d stopped painting. He knew she blamed herself. He ventured that she believed he no longer painted her because she’d grown hips and breasts and the fertile intelligence of a woman. He could see this in her eating habits, which verged on anorexia. It seemed to him that she no longer knew where she stood in the world now that her body, her persona, was no longer on public display, vulnerable to the malicious interpretation of strangers. And not knowing drove her mad. It made her do things to herself.
“How was work today?” he asked her.
She turned around, startled by the question, her long yellow hair rushing over her shoulder. “Fine.” The teapot whistled and she took it off the flame. “Would you like me to make it for you?” Not waiting for his answer, she began to fix him a cup. Then she brought the two cups over to the table, her face bright with expectation like a little girl at a tea party.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Do I like what?”
“The job. Working there. Is it a nice place to work?”
She shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m on the phone all day. Taking orders. It’s nothing great.”
“What do people order usually?”
“Clothes, of course. From outerwear to underwear,” she said in a charmed voice. “That’s the company motto.”
“Underwear, too?”
“Why all this sudden interest in my work?”
“Just wondering, that’s all. Just wondering what my wife does all day. Isn’t that all right?” He manufactured a tone of propriety. “Doesn’t a husband have the right to know what his wife does all day?”
Her eyes looked glassy. She smiled, seemingly pleased by his attention, and her face bloomed like a flower, a dahlia with its crimson secrets. “It’s really very boring.”
“Have you made any friends?”
“Yes. A few. From church. We eat lunch together in the lunchroom. We talk about our work. Our charity. But you wouldn’t know any