Resigned, Not Stupid

She was stolid, and solid. Immovable, imperturbable. Nothing like when they were young. Younger; they were not yet all that old. Nothing like the slow-moving Elderberries next door, with his wrinkled, pinched face, her grim grandmotherly eyes condemning everything. Reminded him of his own mother.

The Elderberries, together it seemed since time immemorial, yet he couldn’t recall either of them directing a kind word one at the other, or even engaging in the most basic conversation. They communicated through grunts and otherwise seemed to just ignore one another, moving around each other, as though they hardly knew who they were.

His mother; dead now, so it’s not true that the good die young; sometimes the miserable ones do, too. She was adept like no one else he could imagine, at throwing things at him and Hughie. Likely blaming them in some way that their father had left her, gone out on his own rather than continue to live with a shrill fishwife.

Hughie’s done all right for himself, a good cartage business, making money even in this tight-market economy. Like their father, Hughie had that genial kind of personality that drew people to him. He made lots of good contacts at city Hall, knew who to support in an election. Those politicians, they know who put them there; payback guaranteed.

Hadn’t done too badly himself, a born salesman; again like their father. Some people even considered him suave, self-assured, a good talker. You do what it takes. For him it was an act. Hughie was the real thing.

He heard kitchen sounds as he trod quietly downstairs. Walked the short hallway to the kitchen entrance, watched Edith, her heavy, resigned back at the stove, stirring a pot. He had to give her that. She’d developed into a fine cook. Wasn’t always that, not when they were younger.

Her mother had groomed her precious prom queen to be precociously aware of the thrills inherent in attracting the attention of males; they flocked around her as though around a honey pot. She could have had her pick of any of the school jocks, and she chose him. It amazed him then, puzzles him still.

She had no practical knowledge from watching her mother do housewifely things. Little surprising, since her mother never indulged in the pedestrian. Taught her daughter to preen. Well, it worked, caught him. He was the lucky one, the envy of all those other guys who kept asking whether she’d put out yet. He’d kept them guessing until.

He wished her well, just wasn’t prepared to waste any more of his life with her.

“You can’t” Hughie flatly denied.
“I can, I intend to, and I will.”
“She’s given you 25 years of her life.”
“Her life? You have any idea what those 25 years cost me?”
“You’ve had kids together, what about them?”

You just had to laugh. Hughie, for all his experience in handling matters of business, fending off competitors, manipulating the city councillors who had learned to depend on him, had this old-fashioned mindset when it came to the ‘sacred vows’ of the marriage bond. It was all right for him, his wife was intelligent, she was capable, she maintained her appearance, even though she’d had four kids, not two, like Edith. Who just let everything go, desperately trying to cope with two well-behaved kids who would have been a breeze for anyone else to nurture and raise.

“Well, what about the kids? They’re both older now than I was when I was trapped into marriage.”

Hughie laughed, but there was no amusement in his voice. This really bothered him, who would have thought? “You were trapped into marriage? Hey, doesn’t it take two to make that exotic dance? You trapped her into pregnancy, how do you like that interpretation?”

“Well, guess what? She’ll survive the trauma of my leaving. She gets nothing out of my being around, as it happens. We have nothing to discuss, we’ve nothing in common any longer, now the kids are at university. Her financial status won’t change. She’s well looked after.”

“It will humiliate her. You can’t treat her like that!”

“When’s the last time you had a stimulating conversation with my wife, Hughie? Looking at her, the way she appears, would you, in my place, feel stimulated to have sex?”

Hughie flushed, would you believe it, he blushed. As though he were being accused of letching after Edith, and was caught at it. On the other hand, if he ever viewed her as a possible lay, he’d have something to blush about, he mused. Obviously, it was a mistake to ventilate like this, thinking to prepare Hughie for what he’d planned, get some feedback, see how he felt, how he’d think of his plans. Now he knew. A sage he is not; strait-laced he most certainly is. You’d think, he prodded himself, that I’d know my own brother better than that.

“Sex, is it?” Hughie shot back at him. “Got someone lined up?”

“Not your business, not anyone’s business. Anyway, sex would hardly be the primary motivation for leaving Edith. There’s a whole lot more to it than that. Companionship, for one, a huge component. The potential for the occasional lucid remark about something meaningful. Pride in someone who means something to you. There’s none of that with her.

I’ve already given up too much of my life because I didn’t have the guts to defy Mother, and then events just took over. Hughie, I helped raise those kids of ours. I sacrificed enough time to do that. You have no idea, no idea at all, what it’s like to be around her. Even the kids are glad to be away from her morose, miserable presence.”

“You can take credit for a whole lot of her misery, you know that.”

“Look, I’m sorry, really could kick myself for mentioning this to you. I wanted to prepare you, that’s all. Seems I needn’t have bothered.”

“What you do is your own affair”, Hughie responded stiffly. He could hardly recognize him. “Anything I have to say just washes off your back; you’ve got an answer for everything. I’d just like to remind you that your relationship with your wife resulted from your unwillingness to reach her, just as much as her incapacity to engage you. Takes two to make a success, two to reach failure. You could’ve tried harder.”

“Damn, Hughie! What the hell’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever looked at another woman, spoken to someone whose grasp on life’s issues earned your respect? Sorry, forgot, born-agains don’t indulge, and your wife knows all about life’s issues. Look, let’s just give it a rest. I’m leaving.”

That was two weeks ago. He’d been so troubled by his brother’s response that he kept putting off the inevitable. But it was past time, and he was ready to leave. It wasn’t that he feared facing her, to tell her directly he was leaving. He’d spoken of it often enough in the past when his patience had worn to a threadbare mantle of husbandly devotion threatening to unravel, long before the kids were old enough to be independent. He’d tried, he really had, as long as the kids were young. But they weren’t fools, not stupid the least bit, like their mother.

They’d accept with perfect equanimity what they knew would happen sooner or later. It just happened later. Mightn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t met the right person. And that was serendipitous. He wasn’t looking, he didn’t think he was in the market for anything like that. Just fed up, wanting to ease himself out of Edith’s life. Nothing unfair about that. They had nothing, absolutely nothing together; a younger version of the Elderberries. In fact a carbon copy of his own parents’ dysfunctional marriage.

He’d rather emulate his parents’ parting, than stick around and become the Elderberries. Anyway, he knew he wasn’t patterning himself after his father. His memory of being left in the care of a bitter, foul-tempered woman with no father to temper the blows ensured he’d never do anything like that to his children. And he hadn’t, so the comparison is trifling, superficial.

He could not, and would not put the thing off any longer. His leaving. His final departure. Leaving behind the bleak existence he had reluctantly shared with his wife, made tolerable only by the presence of their children. He’d waited too long as it was. Given up too much. His sense of moral and emotional obligation to their children was the only thing that had kept him glued to the sticky mess of that marriage. The glue had gradually dissolved, and he felt completely free now to leave, to make his own way, to finally realize the opportunities he had so long dreamed of, and been forced to evade.

He’d changed his mind about one thing. It would be more honourable, if he could use that word, to face her directly, before parting. He’d meant to leave a note, nothing more. Truth was, nothing more was required. They hardly spoke, hadn’t for years, other than required exchanges of information. Any warmth they had once shared so long ago had utterly dissipated, and so had the memory.

It pained him to force himself to look directly at her. She was so physically unappealing, there was nothing whatever about her that warranted a second look. She was a pitiful façade of a woman, nothing more. Representing one-half of a failed conjugal partnership that any self-respecting man would long ago have abandoned.

He felt not one iota of remorse over his decision. He was well justified. He deserved far better of life. Likely, so did she. He had no idea what she dreamed of, what she envisioned as the closing chapters of her life. And wasn't interested, either. Surely no prolonged extension of their mutual pain.

No shrill recriminations issued from her, nothing like what he so vividly recalled when thinking of his mother and her incessant accusations darkening their days. He and Hughie absorbing the bile meant for their father’s ears, while their father was blissfully removed from it all. No Edith, just slumped about. Did what she had to, without rancour or even a hint of blame. No sense of humour, of proportionality, never attempted to make something of herself. Instead, satisfied to blur herself from the past into the present, become an unattractive, unassertive blank.

Not even the mildest regret passed through his mind when he asked her to come and sit in the living room, where they could talk. He could almost swear he saw the word “talk?” reflected in her suddenly-alert eyes. Those washed-out grey eyes. Washed out? From weeping? He never once saw her crying.

He hardly believed she could surrender to emotions. Her stolid demeanor was all he could ever recall. As though she’d set up a barrier, perhaps protecting herself from ever having to defend herself. Better yet, be encouraged to do something with herself. Her voice betrayed no emotion, when she spoke in response to something he might say; dead, lacking inflection. Denial. Take me as I am, or leave. Well, he was leaving.

When, sitting across from her, and noticing again how lank her hair was, how pale and lined her face, jowls more evident with that ugly turtle-neck sweater so often worn, he hesitated. Looked momentarily beneath the features to find the young woman he had known and married, his own memory unable to supply him with even a notional recovery of her looks.

As he was about to state what to him seemed obvious, there was the sound of clicking nails. Heralding the arrival of Herrold. A golden retriever; typical family dog. Oddly, Herrold positioned himself directly before Edith. He felt a pang of regret; hadn’t meant to take the dog with him, although it had always been ‘his’ companion initially, not hers. In its younger days accompanying him on long walks, on outings with the kids. Though she was the one who fed him.

Edith looked directly at him, Herrald settling himself down before her, laying his shaggy old head on her lap. Her hands absently reached toward the dog, smoothed down the hair on top of its head, began to massage behind its ears. When, he wondered, had that happened?

He cleared his throat, said to her, simply, “I’m leaving”. Then waited. And waited.

She had dropped her eyes, to regard the dog, her fingers in constant motion behind its ears. A swift half-smile displayed itself, then disappeared. But even that brief smile took him by surprise. It completely altered her face, brought back memory of an earlier time. She looked so different in that instant. Then she spoke.

“Finally. I’ve waited long enough.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me. I won’t even ask how stupid you think I am. It’s been patently obvious for long enough. I suppose I should really thank you for this, for finally coming around to collecting enough courage to make the move. What took you so long?” She took a long breath. “You’re a selfish, self-involved man. You’ve no idea how much I’ve suffered over the years. You’re cruel, thought nothing of me but a succubus to you. I was your wife, your slave, your children’s nanny, your cook and house-cleaner. You think I couldn’t see the contempt in your eyes when you spoke to me? How much you hated to look at me? And then no longer did, and spoke only when you felt you had to, as sparingly as possible? Making me feel like a nonentity, a worthless, unintelligent harridan, a slob, an inadequate mother?"

He sat there, speechless. Hardly believing what he heard. He felt like how he imagined the 17th Century Dr. James Murray had, facing the astonishing reality that the most reliable of his volunteer lexicographers - the enigmatic Dr. W.C. Minor who had contributed more than any other to the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary and whom Dr. Murray was intent on honouring - turned out to be an inmate of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.