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.
