The wife - short story

Tonight his snoring was loud, irritating. It was strange how the sound affected her. When she was overcome by some nostalgic remembrance of how it used to be or when she received his lovemaking with both resentment and grateful relief after one of those long droughts, the steady drone was almost comforting. She would fall asleep, listening to the little ebbs and flows and holding on to the low rumble as if it were a lifetime that bound them together and kept their heads above water.

But tonight was not a good night. He had had too much to drink. He lay on his back as motionless as a dead man, his legs spread-eagled over Most of the bed. If he hadn't been snoring, his stillness would have tempted her to reach out and feel for his heart. But the snore was very much alive. For long moments it sounded like the fitful grinding and whining of an old car refusing to start on a too-cold morning. Or like her Hoover trying to eat the tassels on her Oriental rug. The sound made her stomach ache. She wanted to pinch him in some excruciatingly tender spot or snatch a single hair out of his well-trimmed mustache.

She polled the light blanket, which covered her third of the king-size bed, up to her chin. It was July and very hot outside, but Jonathan liked to sleep in an ice-cold bedroom. Even though the electric bill was a fortune each month and the chill kept her on the edge of awakening, she had long ago decided that it was easier to use a blanket than to argue about the setting of the thermostat. Jonathan had always wanted his way, even as a young man. She met him when he was a student at Howard's low school. He lived in an efficiency apartment over an antique store on Mount Pleasant Street in that kind of grubby poverty that middleclass graduate students accepted as one of the penances suffered in the cause of higher education. Jonathan was at home there, negotiating his way through the winos, exchanging his few words of Spanish with the Hispanic neighbors, tolerating the cockroaches. It was his notion of the Bohemian life. Marta, as middle-class as Jonathan but basically a South Carolina country girl, felt inept in that environment. She was always nervous running the gauntlet of drunks, who yelled out obscure phrases she suspected were obscene. She much preferred the quiet Northeast neighborhood where she rented a basement apartment from the Cuthberts, a couple she shad met at church. Mr. Cuthbert was one of those elderly men who like to pat young ladies on the fleshy part of their bare arms, a gesture that might have been either lecherous or paternal. At his age it was hard to tell. Mrs. Cuthbert claimed to be from a distinguished old Washington family, part of the colored gentry, and had the sour disposition of a woman who felt she had married down.

On their second date Marta had gone to pick up Jonathan at his apartment. His ten-year-old Triumph was in the shop again. Because his apartment building had no intercom system, she had blown her horn to let him know she was downstairs. The loud honk of her Chevrolet Malibu made her self-conscious, although the people hanging out in front of the North Carolina Barbecue never missed a beat in the rhythm of their busy posing. Instantly she felt uncertain about her clothes. She looked like the schoolteacher-and the daughter of schoolteachers from Cheraw, South Carolina-that she was. High heels; a short, straight skirt; a short, nonswinging version of the Jackie Kennedy pageboy; and a string of pearls. Somehow she knew the look was too careful, definitely not the kind of thing a trendsetter would wear. But even at 22 she knew she was no trendsetter. Jonathan opened the locked door of the building. He was dressed in a pink button-down shirt, beige jeans and loafers. Twenty years before it was the thing to do, he wore no socks. Immediately Marta felt apologetic about her own meticulous appearance. She didn't want to appear prissy.

"Go on up," he said as he urged her to climb ahead of him the three flights to his tiny apartment.

"Watch out for the third step on the next landing. The carpet is torn. The lost girl who went tripping up these steps in high heels tumbled over me on her way back down." He grinned. "She was a pretty healthy mama, too. I felt like I had been hit by a Muck truck." Even as she laughed, Marta wondered how many girls regularly climbed those steps. It occurred to her that he was probably getting a good look at her legs and behind as she moved only inches in front of him. The thought made her uptight. In his presence she always felt she was being judged and found wanting.

Jon obviously was unconcerned about impressing her. His apartment was a mess. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. One of those aggressive Washington roaches, with their usual disrespect for company, made an appearance. Jon was unembarrassed. He didn't even try to kill it. Marta, who had come to D.C. thinking that only the disreputable and trifling had roaches, stifled an urge to smash it.

"Do you like Greek food?" he asked.

"I don't know. I've never had any. "

Marta could have added that, in segregated South Carolina, most Black people thought pizza was an exotic dish.

"Would you rather go someplace else? How about Chinese? Italian? This new Greek restaurant, Taverna's, has got great lamb and terrific baklava but we don't have to go there. "

Greek food was Greek to her and Italian was problematic. Despite the familiarity of spaghetti, Marta didn't think she could negotiate a plate of it without wearing some of it home on her blouse.

"Chinese might be nice," she ventured.

He looked disappointed, even slightly annoyed. it was obvious that he had his heart set on the Greek restaurant. Who was she to deny him?

"Of course, I'd love to try Greek food. I'm always game for something new. "

A look of instant satisfaction came over his face. "Greek it is!"

He insisted on driving her car although Marta considered herself quite a good driver. He gave her canary-yellow Malibu a quick once-over. His reaction was a bit scornful.

"American cars are okay. But they aren't built to last," he said. "Now the BMW's the car!"

Marta wasn't quite sure what a BMW was. Where she came from, people raved about Buicks and Cadillacs. But even as she lamented her own lack of taste in cars, it occurred to her that a Chevy that ran was preferable to a Triumph that didn't. What was that verse from Ecclesiastes? Something about a living dog being better than a dead lion. The irreverence was fleeting. She vowed that she would learn about foreign cars.

The dinner at Taverna's was a success. Marta began to believe that she was in love with this man who charmed Greek waiters, knew exactly what to order and calmed her fears by his own intuitive understanding that he belonged anywhere he wanted to go. He seemed a world traveler even though he had grown up in a Washington as restricted and racist as South Carolina. Mrs. Cuthbert had told Marta about the days when Black people couldn't go into Garfinckel's department store, unless they were carrying a mop, but Jonathan had none of Marta's fear of whites. He felt the world owed him whatever he could take.

Marta also lacked Jon's ambition. She had no desire for fame or fortune. But she knew there was something more than the quiet responsibilities and dulling restrictions of Cheraw, South Carolina, or even Northeast Washington. She had a notion of a domestic future gleaned from Father Knows Best, romance novels and 1950's Pepsi commercials-a life where she could be honest and loving, a life where she was comfortable in a house with appliances that never broke down, a husband who adored her and children who never disgraced her. The bills would always be paid -on time. At the same time she dreamed of trips to Paris and weekends at romantic inns in Virginia hunt country. She didn't decide at once that Jonathan would give her these things, but she did believe that he was a man who understood the way to such a life. She wanted to be near him if he would have her.

It was not that she thought of herself as worthless. She knew, despite her inexperience, that she was an intelligent woman, not beautiful but good-looking enough to evoke catcalls from the brothers on the corner. She had, above all, the kind of loyalty that is usually found only in small children and large dogs. She hoped something in her reminded Jonathan of desire.

After dinner Marta climbed Jonathan's stairs and didn't come down again until morning. Back in his apartment, a twin bed that served as a sofa was the only thing that would accommodate the two of them. Apologizing for the lack of air-conditioning, Jonathan opened a window and turned on a small fan. Its hypnotic drone merged with the buzz of street noise and the distant sound of salsa from someone's apartment.

"Have a seat while I get us a glass of wine, " Jonathan said. It was a command, not a request.

Marta searched his face for a sign that a seduction was being staged. His cinnamon-colored eyes in his Black face were startling. They were friendly but cool. She was vaguely disappointed by his seeming indifference.

He offered her in one of his two wine glasses a pink bubbly substance she could not identify.

"I didn't know if you would like a white or red wine. I settled on a bottle of Lancer's. I thought a sparkling rose would be a nice compromise. A kind of poor man's champagne to celebrate a good evening."

Marta studied the contents of her glass. She wondered if he was trying to get her drunk. At all-Black South Carolina State the guys drank mostly beer or rum and Coke. She had known only two women who drank regularly, a wild Geechee girl from Charleston and a New Yorker who suffered culture shock and went back north. Marta had usually nursed the obligatory one beer at the fraternity parties she and her girlfriend frequented. Wine in thimble-size glasses was what you drank on first Sunday at church. Or if you were an Omega or Kappa, you bragged about the destructive powers of Ripple and Thunderbird.

Marta took a sip and decided she liked it, but she was determined that this one glass would do for the evening. She wondered how long it would be before he tried to kiss her.

Jonathan had not sat down with her yet. He stood with his glass in his hand, his muscular body balanced calmly and solidly over her. When he moved, it was a slow, lazy amble. Sort of like Leroy Jones from home returning to the huddle after he had steamrolled over half the opposing team on the football field. Jonathan paced back and forth in front of her as if delivering a summation to a jury.

He sat down on the bed next to her and took the hand without the wine glass. Marta put down her drink and steeled herself for the grab and the grope. Instead he lifted her hand and lightly brushed her palm with his mustache and lips, a gesture that instantly penetrated the anxiety he made her feel. She was willing to allow all of his kisses and caresses and even his unhurried, expert removal of most of her clothes. But she had no intention of giving up so soon, even though she was technically not a virgin. During her junior year at State, she had succumbed to a star basketball player out of curiosity rather than passion. But Ronnie's idea of a conversation was a monologue about the highlights of his last game, so she never slept with him a second time.

She wasn't looking for a genius or a millionaire. just a man who knew things she didn't know, who wasn't afraid. She was waiting for such a man. She wanted to live life, and she was too timid to do that alone.

That night on the narrow bed, Jonathan did things to her that made her want to say yes, but she thought about the other things that she wanted, and her mother's warning that a man never married a girl who seemed easy. Until she knew he was the right one, the answer would be no.

She was expecting rage or at least a prolonged sulk in response to the refusal. Having long ago taken off most of his clothes, he simply gave her a couple of lingering kisses to test her resolve and promptly went to sleep. Marta, not quite knowing how to get up to leave and frightened at the prospect of braving the winos and would-be rapists on Mount Pleasant Street, waited out the night. The fan's breeze was now unpleasantly cold, but she didn't think it was her place to cut it off. As she listened to just a hint of a snore and contemplated his face in the soft glow from the street lights, she didn't have the heart to wake him.

The next morning, with a stuffed-up head and a headache, she put on her rumpled clothes and headed back Northeast and to the astonished stare of Mrs. Cuthbert, who stuck her head out the door to pick up the Washington Post just as Marta hurried around to the side entrance.

The ritual of the interesting dinner, the good conversation and the attempted seduction continued through the month of June. They went on walking tours of Georgetown and Alexandria. They ate the cuisine of China, Thailand, Brazil and Cuba. They, or at least Jonathan, talked about john Kennedy and his relationships with Khrushchev, with Black people and with Jackie; about Martin Luther King and the efficacy of nonviolence. Marta, the good listener and quick study, marveled at his knowledge and accepted his judgments as gospel.

By july she was doing more than sleeping in his bed. She had also been the donor of substantial supplements to his rent money, which he evidently spent feeding her in all those quaint little restaurants. By October of that year they had formed a financial and sexual bond that made marriage seem inevitable. Just as Mrs. Cuthbert had become explicit about her disregard for young lady tenants who frequently stayed out all night, Marta had announced that she and Jonathan were getting married.

Now as she contemplated the years and next month's electric bill, she studied his face with a cold appraisal usually reserved for strangers. Asleep he had none of the pugnacity that made him a successful lawyer and kept her afraid to challenge him. The dark brown face with its usually rock-hard jaw was relaxed into almost toddlerlike roundness. Some nights, watching him in the vulnerability of sleep, she had conflicting urges to kick and kiss him. Tonight, for the first time in 28 years, she merely wanted to hurt him.

Marta tried to figure out what had destroyed the wonder of it all. By the fifth year Jonathan's brilliance no longer overwhelmed her. She discovered, after absorbing the things he taught her and reading much more, that she had opinions of her own. At first when her ideas contradicted his, she was contrite, then truly hurt by his resistance to her ability to think for herself. He had finally reached the point where any independent thought on her part brought petty remarks and putdowns, often in front of other people. His insecurity saddened her, not because she had grown egotistical but because it made him less a man in her eyes. It tarnished the beautiful image of him as a kind of Black giant, arrogant and unperturbed.

Despite the cracks in the armor, she admired the vitality that was still there. He was considered one of the most competent criminal lawyers in town, but he had developed a dull ache in his gut as a result of constantly comparing himself with the hundreds of men in D. C., Black and white, who had more prestige and power than he had. Most people would have considered his income impressive, but over the years it was Marta's salary as a teacher that paid the mortgage note month after month. Jonathan kept the family in debt acquiring the BMWs, the trips to Haiti, the handmade shirts. Marta shopped at seasonal sales, kept her old car and nursed her hurt feelings when he decried having married such a Bama.

She was the one who worried about food bills, the utilities, their daughter's private-school bills. Kim, the product of the dregs of their passion, thought Dad was "neat" and Mom was "a pain. Daddy was the promise of a car for college; Mom would probably be the one who made sure that tuition and book bills were paid.

In the last year Marta had been suffering an almost constant headachy feeling reminiscent of PMS. She finally identified it as her growing resentment of Jonathan's charmed life made possible through her anguish. She was, however, unable to pinpoint the now-distant moment when he had stopped even feigning interest in her. He was rarely home. They had never really talked, but now he didn't even bother to deliver those crudite lectures that she had found so interesting in her more limited days. She understood too well that Jonathan needed an adoring, attentive audience. But no woman with an ounce of brains and integrity could maintain, after more than 25 years of marriage, that rapt look-eyes sparkling, instantly responsive to the touches of wit; lips parted in a breathy smile; body thrust forward as if to capture sooner the gems of wisdom.

She hadn't realized how vital such unalloyed devotion was to Jonathan until today, when she had walked into the American Cafe on Capitol Hill and seen him with the young woman, a youthful Diahann Carroll type, without the camouflaged hardness. She looked like a young lawyer, dressed for success and conquest as she leaned across the table in her eagerness to hear and learn. That she had already slept with the prosperous, smug man who was the center of her gaze was clear in the confidential slant of his head and the absentminded way he toyed with the band of her Gucci watch. His touch had a proprietary air. Marta surprised herself and Jonathan by walking up to their table.

"Hello, Jonathan. Fancy meeting you here. "

Jonathan would not be Jonathan if he had shown any sign of discomfort.

"Hello baby. I don't usually hang out in the American Cafe but Miss Lawrence suggested it as a nice place for a quick lunch. Marta, this is Saundra Lawrence, the counsel for the city council's zoning committee. Saundra, my wife, Marta. I'd invite you to join us, sweetheart, but we have to run to a meeting. "

If Marta had any doubts about Jonathan's relationship with his companion, Ms. Lawrence's response dispelled them. She was nervous at meeting the great man's wife face-to-face but not so nervous that she failed to give the competition a thorough inspection. She checked out the gray temples and the shape of the body, made observations about the taste in clothes, searched the eyes for any signs of recognition or hostility.

Good manners for people raised to be polite die hard. Marta smiled, assured them that she did not feel neglected.

"That's quite all right. I'm meeting Phyllis for lunch in a few minutes. I haven't seen her in months, and we have a lot of gossip to catch up on. It was nice meeting you, Ms. Lawrence. "

At home Marta had cried bitter, urgent tears. She was surprised by the ferocity of her response. She had always felt that Jonathan availed himself of the opportunities that most men had in D.C., with its hordes of attractive, smart, unattached women-Black, white and Hispanic-who fought for jobs and men with a spunky, dog-eat-dog combativeness. But she had no notion of how to deal with the reality of unfaithfulness. Maybe she could put on that Nancy Wilson song, "Guess Who I Saw Today, My Dear?" and then rush to pack her bags. But then what would she do about Kim, who would be sure to announce that she was staying with her beloved daddy? Maybe she could pretend she didn't know, but even her loathing for confrontation would not allow her to ignore a situation that was making her sick with grief.

Tonight as they sat in bed, he watching television, she reading a book, she blurted out her suspicions without introduction or evasion.

"Jonathan, are you having an affair with that woman you introduced me to today?" Marta said this without looking up from the book in her lap.

She could imagine that he furrowed his brow and that his brown eyes were hostile. The few times she had risked a battle he had been fierce in squashing the rebellion. When she finally looked over at him, he was still watching the eleven o'clock news. His body was almost too casual in its repose.

"Marta, be serious. I'm not going to dignify that remark with a response. You come into a restaurant, see me with a woman with whom I have a professional relationship and jump to some wild conclusion that I'm screwing her. You've always been jealous and paranoid, but I'm not going to allow your insanity to make life miserable for me. "

It was at this point that he usually marched into the bathroom and slammed the door. Ordinarily Marta would back off and try to control whatever anger or anxiety she felt. Tonight she was not interested in control. Something like bile rose in her throat and, just as he tried to get up from the bed, she snatched the end of the belt on his robe with such force that she tore off a loop.

"You are going to listen to me. Do you think I'm going to sit here while you parade some young thing all over D. C. ? I suppose everybody knows about this but me. Phyllis was probably feeling sorry for me all through lunch. Poor Marta's getting old. Gray pubic hairs, dragging titties and a stomach that will never be flat again. Poor thing ain't even in the running.'Well, Jonathan, I won't be pitied. I won't be pitied. "

She was still convulsively clutching his belt. Jonathan was taking off his robe in his haste to get away.

"Woman, you are losing your grip. They say the change of life makes you all crazy. When I come back to this room, you better have yourself together again. I'm going to get a glass of wine. Do you want red or white?"

Marta stared at the belt in her hand. When she didn't answer, he left the room, a furtive, almost fearful glance the only hint that tonight was any different from all the nights they had coexisted in civil difference.

Later on, as she lay in bed shivering from the cold and from the violence of her suppressed rage and hurt, she tried to understand what all of this meant. She was pained not merely at the thought of him in bed with a younger, receptive woman. It was also that, in all the years that they had been married, he had never given her credit for the things she contributed to their life. In fact, her growing competence was, to Jonathan, her biggest flaw. He was beginning to detest her because she was no longer that little South Carolina girl who thought he was hot stuff because he drove a British car and had been to every restaurant in town.

She turned her back to him and pulled the covers up to her ears. Jonathan rolled over to her side of the bed and threw one arm across her hip. She heard him call her name in a voice that seemed a plea for help. She realized that he was asleep only when the familiar droning of the snoring resumed. Over the years the occasional call in the night allowed her to fabricate a fiction to live by, and served as a sign that he needed her. Those ambiguous night noises made the waking hours possible.

She knew she wasn't going anywhere. She didn't have the energy. Some days she even thought she loved him. Tomorrow she would get up and go off to work. Tomorrow night the two of them would sit up in bed. She would finish the last chapter of The Color Purple. He would watch the eleven o'clock news. Meanwhile she would add this dose of bitter gall to her store of slights, bad memories and disappointments and pray that, when the next blow came, she could remember one taste of honey.

Jennifer Jordan teaches literature and is pursuing a writing career in Washington, D. C.

COPYRIGHT 1990 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group