The Wife

Abstract

The Wife Ellen Rhudy (bio) After the wife met her new husband – before she was a wife, or he a husband – Betsina told her to try shaving. It will be worth the time saved, she promised. When you're sleeping all night you won't regret it. The wife nodded and thanked her for the advice, staring at the plush feathers that sprouted from the hollows around Betsina's kneecaps. Black dots marred Betsina's upper lip and cheeks, as insistent as the thick hairs her future husband scraped from his face each morning. After their fifth date, the first time she spent the night, the wife sat on the edge of his bathtub and watched him lather his face. Why do you shave every day? she asked him. Do you ever wonder what you'd look like if you didn't? He found her in the mirror. You haven't seen me try, he said. To grow a beard. He laughed, and then she laughed. When he had dried his face she held it between her hands, looking for the places where no hair grew. On his cheek, here, and a bare sliver on his chin to which she pressed her thumb. I got cut there, he said. When I was a boy. Usually people don't notice. What happened? she asked. An accident while you were playing? I didn't play that much. He returned to the bedroom, to his closet, for a shirt. The wife was disappointed when she heard this. Why had she thought that? Why had she said it? It was difficult to find a husband, and a wrong guess or misplaced joke could shutter the relationship before it began. She watched her husband sit on the bed to pull on his pants, she watched him tuck his pin-striped blue shirt into the waistband. Her purse bulged with gray feathers as she followed him out, and after leaving him she went to the park where she shook them across the lake. He didn't know yet that she would be his wife. There were so many things he would never know. These were the things she thought as she watched herself drift across the water, spinning and dipping but always afloat. ________ I use Nair, Meredith told her. You can't fold yourself into his life so much that you lose sight of your own. Meredith's husband, the wife observed, was Eastern European and could not pronounce her name correctly. He called her Meredit, he always sounded like he was trying to spit when he said her name. Meredit's arms were a rash of red, she was missing half her left eyebrow. [End Page 36] No thank you, the wife said. I appreciate you sharing the idea, but I'll do it the old-fashioned way. The old ways were often but not always the best ways. If she had done things the old way, the wife would never have met her husband. She found him in a bar, alone, at happy hour. Her own parents had met at a lakeside, where her mother sat with one foot anchored in the water. They shared a romantic story which she would never be able to recreate. Six months after their first date, her husband took the wife back to the bar where they had met. They ate grilled cheese sandwiches with thick tomato slices juicing down their wrists. They drank three beers each, the wife trying not to glance too often at her watch. I love you, he told the wife. You know how lucky I am that you even talked to me that night? It was already ten o'clock. Let's go home, she said, and I can make you feel even luckier. Later, his head resting on her chest, the wife felt how she was unspooling just enough each day to draw him in, how if she stopped here – now – she could remain motionless while he swam closer, closer. Until he was too close to ever slip away. She watched headlights splash along the wall until just after midnight, when she eased herself from beneath his arm. She locked herself...