Dear Wife(10)

“So? All couples argue, which you would know if you could ever hold on to a man long enough to be in a relationship. Wherever Sabine is tonight has nothing to do with our arguments.”

She cocks an unplucked brow. “You didn’t even know she had a new boss, and that happened ages ago. When is the last time the two of you actually talked? When is the last time you had sex?”

“None of your fucking business, that’s when. And don’t you ever ask me that again. Not while you’re in my house.”

She folds her hands atop the pad of paper, and I’d think she was calm if it weren’t for her paper-white knuckles. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure this house belongs to Sabine.”

It’s the most hateful thing she could say to me, and as much as I hate her for it, the person I really blame for her words is Sabine. Sabine knows the name listed on the mortgage is like the drunk relative trying to talk politics at a dinner party, better just to ignore. It’s always been a touchy subject between us, but like Ingrid said, Sabine tells her sister everything.

“My wife needs to keep her mouth shut. Our personal business is just that—personal. Sabine shouldn’t be sharing every little thing that happens with you, just like I shouldn’t have to tell you that wherever she is right now, I had nothing to do with it.”

Ingrid goes silent, and I can tell she has more to say. She stares at me, chewing her lip, weighing her options. I see the exact instant the decision is made. Her eyes—Sabine’s eyes—ice over.

“She told me what you did to her.”

She says it just like that, her voice low and deceptively calm, like I’ll know what she’s talking about.

I do know, and the fury that rises in me is as familiar as the woman sitting across the table. Sabine told Ingrid what I did, and I want to leap across the table, wrap my fingers around Ingrid’s throat and squeeze until she wipes those awful, horrible words from her brain.

“Did Sabine tell you what she did?”

“I already told you. Sabine tells me everything.”

“Then you know that she pushed me first.”

“That’s not an excuse! A man should never lay his hands on a woman, Jeffrey. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

Ingrid’s condescending tone burrows under my skin like a tick. Sabine told me I was forgiven. She promised we would never speak of it again, and then she went blabbing it to her sister. Of course Ingrid thinks the worst of me now. She only heard one side of the story.

“Sabine accused me of checking out of our marriage. She said I was emotionally and physically disengaged. She kept harping on about her love tank being empty, whatever the hell that means. You know what? I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you. The point is, we had a fight, it was bad, we both apologized and we moved on. That’s what successful couples do—they forgive each other and move on.”

I hear the words coming out of my mouth, and I wonder if they’re true. Not the part about Sabine’s complaints—she’s never been shy about voicing those—but the part about us as a couple. Forgiving each other. Being successful.

Are Sabine and I a successful couple? Once upon a time, we were. For the first few years, we were that couple—the one every other couple wanted to be. Happy. In love and in lust, both of them at the same time. The kind of couple that shoulders major life disappointments together. Her mother’s sudden forgetfulness. My low sperm count, and their decided lack of mobility to reach Sabine’s wonky uterus. “We will get the very best care for your mother,” I would murmur to a sobbing Sabine. “We’ll adopt.” That was back when everything, even the most impossible, felt possible. I was a champion, a supportive husband, a fixer. I could fix everything.

And then something happened that I couldn’t fix: my career stalled out halfway up the ladder at PDK Workforce Solutions. “Account Executive” may sound impressive, but it’s a midlevel slog that entails sucking up to needy, curmudgeonly customers so they’ll buy crap they don’t actually need.

But even more limiting, there’s nowhere for me to go. The next rung is my boss’s job, and he’s blocking the ladder like a king-of-the-hill linebacker, with no plans to retire, change industries, or move to Toledo. I’ve put out some feelers, even talked to a couple of headhunters, but the only companies hiring are all the way in Little Rock, and Sabine wouldn’t hear of moving.

So yes, I may be bitter but I’m not oblivious. I am fully aware how unfair it is to blame Sabine, but her success makes it so easy. I’m forty and washed up, and she’s just getting started. I come home beaten and burning with rejection to find Sabine glowing with the high of yet another sale. Lately, I’ve begun eating dinner alone in the den, mostly because I can’t stomach her hum of satisfaction.

And so, late last year, after a particularly shitty day at work, when I got home and Sabine wouldn’t stop nagging, when she kept pick-pick-picking at every little flaw, when she accused me of checking out of our marriage, of sitting back and letting her do all the hard hitting for our house, our bank account, our sex life, her words filled me with a pure, inarticulate rage. She shoved me, and I hit her. I didn’t plan to. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.

I know how this looks, believe me. I lost my temper with my wife, and now she’s gone. Maybe she’s trying to punish me for what I did, or maybe my earlier hunch is right, maybe something is really, really wrong. Either way, you don’t have to tell me. I am the husband with a history of violence, the man living for free in the house his wife owns, the person with the most to lose or to gain.