Wife

Bob Edwards, a computer parts salesman, was average height and of a slender build, and for the whole of his life so far everyone told him he had his mother’s eyes. He was twenty-seven and had never known her, for she died while in labor with him.

Vaguely- can a man be vague, even in his everyday actions? - so he went about the cluttered old store, staring at gaudy, blinking displays, tester promotionals, all the newest must-haves for what they in the business ridiculously referred to as “PC health improvement.”

His girlfriend Madeleine Weeks was a firm and pretty enough woman, with auburn hair that he loved. She spent inordinate amounts of time reading women’s magazines and taking the self-help quizzes. With these as guidance she concluded, one day at lunch, that Bob was unhappy at his job.

“Not unhappy… unfulfilled,” she clarified.

“What do you mean, exactly?” Cautiously, he waded into the waters.

“You need more in your life.”

It was then he said the very thing he had been thinking for years and never voiced. “I’m tired of him. I don’t want to be around him anymore.”

Bob still lived with his father in the same Richland Victorian two-story where he grew up. It was the house his mother loved, the place she’d insisted on buying and renovating with her own sweat. The home of the woman he’d never known. “I’d like to stay. What I’d really like is for him to leave.”

“Don’t say such things. Your father is all alone. He’s helpless in a lot of ways.”

Bob leaned in and caressed the length of her neck. Brushing a lock of hair off her face, he told her in a whisper how much he appreciated her.

“Hey, you may live with him but it’s not because you have to,” she said. “It’s because you feel a strong connection to your family… to your mother, anyway.” Laughing, she explained that according to Cosmo, such personality traits in a boyfriend belonged in the plus column.

When Madeleine said such things, he worried that she over-thought while reading her magazines on relationships and babies and diapers. “It isn’t so much ‘family,’” Bob said. “He doesn’t talk to me. I see him in a chair, staring at old photo albums, and I wonder what might have been- how things could have happened entirely differently. I look at him and I see that I made his life miserable, basically.” He stared at her with a concentrated expression.

She sighed. After a few seconds spent toiling with the remains of her pasta, Madeleine offered the words he’d waited for. “I’m not looking to have kids either, Bobby.”

“I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.” He smiled.

*****

The alliance between the young man and his father was born of a mutually tragic past. When Bob left work, or his girlfriend for the evening, he arrived home many times to find his father asleep on the well-worn living room sofa. It was a plush, brown-grey, heinous thing. On a day Bob felt especially compassionate, he asked his father about this.

“Why don’t you buy a new mattress? Or…make a proper bedroom out of the living room, if you really can’t stay upstairs.” He offered to switch rooms.

The old man, gaunt beyond his sixty-some years, coughed his Smoker’s cough. After coughing, he presently looked at his son and smiled. “Thank you. You know I sleep up there sometimes. It’s worse certain nights than others.”

Bob shook his head and threw himself back in his chair. Looking up, he squinted at the ceiling. At the off-white paint, at the cream color his mother had probably agonized over for weeks. “You should sell this place.”

His father got up to leave, slowly his right hand plucked along the wall for support.

Exhaling, Bob decided suddenly that he wanted to see her. He went to the pastel florals calendar that hung above the sink. Paper-clipped to the bottom of the page on the following month was a Polaroid of his mother, working in the garden that once flourished at the back of their house. On April 16, a Wednesday this year, the calendar read, “Carol is 60.” He looked again at his mother. All of thirty years old, spade in hand, back-lit by the afternoon sun, she appeared as contented as any woman possibly could. “Sixty years old,” he softly said.

Many times, his father referred to that photograph as ‘Rita Hayworth at play.’ On January 1, without fail, transferring it was the first thing he did as he got out the new calendar- always exactly the same or as close as possible to the old one. He never threw them away- or so Bob thought, imagining they were all in a drawer at the top of the house, possibly the old armoire, beginning with that first year. Beginning with Bob’s birthday, the day Carol died.

What little he knew of his mother could fit in the palm of a baby’s hand. All anyone bothered to tell him, all he knew was “She was vibrant, pretty, and young.” Vibrant, pretty, and young when she died. What else could they say? What else do deceased loved ones become but that, in memories? Vibrant, pretty… he had the photographs, that much he could see that much for himself.

“What is it you want your dad to tell you?” Madeleine asked, on a walk one evening. Before Bob could answer, she took his hand and said, “You’re afraid if you let him go, all of a sudden he’ll open up about her to someone else.” She added that the old man probably thought if he spoke to Bob at length, the two would be unable to avoid the fight that was coming, the one that would culminate in Bob’s moving out. “Who knows?” she said. “It could be the way you squint your eyes or how you sit in a chair. That’s all that keeps Carol alive for him.”

“But I want to know something real. She hated golf, she loved ping-pong. She believed in God, she wasn’t sure.” He had only one idea why his father could not grant him some small wish in that regard.

“He isn’t punishing you,” she said. “I can’t believe that. I don’t. If it were true, if he really couldn’t handle it, he’d have given you up for adoption.”

“My mother would have hated him for that!”

“How do you know?”

“It’s about the children.” Bob cut himself off before he said ‘because parents don’t do that!’

Madeleine extended an arm to him- she pulled him into a hug. Bristling at the heavy fabric of her shirt, he buried his face in her hair. As she stroked his back, she whispered to him. There are men, this woman speculated, men who just don’t know how to communicate their feelings. And then there are those who, for some reason or another, keep them hidden- always locked away. “One day he’ll talk,” she said, assuredly.

After a minute, he backed out of her hug. With a few inches separating them, he stared intensely into her eyes.

“What?” she giggled.

“I’m in love with you. I want to get married soon. Tomorrow, maybe. Friday at the absolute latest.”

She jumped ecstatically, and threw her arms around his neck once more. Her eyes overflowed with tears and she called out, laughing, “Why not tonight?”

(In fact, he loved her because she was the opposite of love, completely without challenge for him…)

*****

In the morning, he met his father in the backyard. The old man leaned, coffee cup in hand, reading the newspaper, against the side of the house.

“We set the date.” Bob told him the ceremony would be in a few weeks’ time.

The old man nodded. Without looking up, he asked, “Where will you live?”

“At her apartment for awhile. We’ll decide what comes next after we pay for the honeymoon.”

He lifted the mug to his lips. They stood in silence until he said, “Do you want something from me?”

“I have savings… we have savings.” Eyes wide, Bob said, “I don’t need anything from you.” A nearby collection of birds flew off.

Nodding, the old man seemed satisfied. “Should I come?”

Bob stepped off the patio and turned away from him. “If you want.”

“Truth be told, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not.”

Clenching his fists, he dug his nails into his palms and counted to ten. Both his parents were dead… he started practicing what he would say to Madeleine’s relatives.

His father took another swig of coffee. He swirled it in his mouth for a long time. The old man said, “I’d still like to see you, Bobby. Church has never been my thing.”

“What is your ‘thing?’”

He finally looked up at his son. Folding the newspaper, he tossed it aside. With both hands, he rubbed his face until his cheeks grew red from the flow of blood. He turned then, and gazed at a back part of the yard- the location of her old fruit patch. He shook his head and said nothing.

“What was Mom’s thing?”

“I remember she cried the day we got married. I remember how beautiful and happy she looked.” He sighed. “Weddings were definitely her thing. If she was here, she’d plan every damn minute for you.”

He blinked furiously, his vision now blurred. “You sure you won’t come?”

The old man had a far-off look. Shaking his head, he said, “I never knew just what to do with you, Bobby.”