Page 19 of The Echo Wife
I nodded, and he let me go. Even then, I could admit that I knew why my mother hadn’t gotten out of bed. It wasn’t really that I’d wanted an explanation for that. It was that I’d wanted an explanation as to why it couldn’t go another way. Why did they fight, even when my mother bent to his every demand? Why was it inevitable that, after they fought, my mother had to be in a condition that rendered her unable to speak to me for a whole day?
That was the question I’d really wanted the answer to. That’s what I’d wanted to learn. And after that conversation with my father, I’d learned that some questions simply weren’t for asking.
Not every child learns that lesson. It’s unspeakably galling, having to talk to people who never learned, who never felt the pain of a wrong answer, who never saw that fish-flash of rage in the eyes of the only adult who could tell them the truth.
In the months after I left Nathan, while I was staying in a temporary apartment, before I signed the lease on my bare-walled town house with its wall-to-wall carpet and cement-slab patio, I swam in that anger. I fielded countless questions from friends and colleagues and acquaintances, questions about what had happened and why things fell apart and who was to blame. Every time, I felt those same fish flashing behind my own eyes.
I couldn’t tell my well-meaning friends and colleagues totry again,I couldn’t grip their faces until their bones creaked, I couldn’t make them understand that they shouldn’t ask.
They weren’t afraid of me.
They had no reason to be.
So I had to give polite, no-one’s-fault answers that stuck in my throat like a sliver of bone. I’d tried so hard to structure my life in a way that would prevent me from ever having to swallow that kind of pain again, but I don’t suppose Nathan considered that when he put me in a position to protect his reputation. Once he had Martine, I don’t suppose he ever thought of me at all.
In the week following Nathan’s death, I left those bones to lodge in the flesh of Martine’s throat. She was the one who had to answer questions about why Nathan hadn’t returned his colleague’s calls, hadn’t attended their lectures. But no one ever taught Martine to be angry when people asked the wrong questions. She was young and soft and afraid. No one had ever shown her how to access contempt for them and their savage curiosity.
I will confess that I misunderstood Martine’s fear, when she called me the evening after we put our husband in the ground.
A friend of his had called to confirm dinner plans, and she had to cancel on Nathan’s behalf. “They thought I was his secretary,” she said, her voice shaking. “They usually think that. I told them Nathan was unavailable. Was that the right way to do it?”
“Sure,” I said, distracted. The HGH issue with specimen 4896-T was intensifying, and I was deeply embroiled in trying to find a solution I could explain to the director of the lab, next time heasked me why things took as long as they did, why they couldn’t happen faster and cheaper. I remember thinking that I didn’t have time to coddle her, that she should have known by now how to deflect curiosity.
She had, after all, remained hidden for a year and a half. Surely she could stay that way without my help.
“Does it always feel like this?” she asked. “I’ve never done it before.”
“What, murder? I can’t say as I’ve ever done it either, Martine.” I was snappish, impatient. I didn’t like the idea that Martine was asking me for advice about murder. I’d neutralized specimens before, but I’d never killed aperson.
“Not murder,” she hissed back. “Lying.”
I froze.
She’d never told a lie before. She’d never had cause to. She’d stayed hidden, she’d allowed people to believe untruths, but she’d never actually spoken falsely.
When I was married to Nathan, our days together were pocked with small lies, the kinds of lies that made it possible for us to reach the end of the day intact. What must it have been like for her, I wondered, being unable to lie to him? Never knowing that it was an option? What measures had he used to teach her to think what he wanted her to think, so that she never had to mislead him about her opinions and ideas?
How many times had she learned to fear what would happen if shetried againand got it wrong?
She’d never lied before, to him or to anyone. I ached with impatience at the thought of the learning curve she’d need to scale in order to survive.
“It gets easier,” I told her. “You’ll get used to it.”
Martine called me frequently in those first two weeks, telling me about people who were calling the house to ask about Nathan. Most of them thought they were talking to his secretary,and Martine didn’t disabuse them of the assumption. It seemed to be the thing that kept her hidden: Nathan hadn’t told anyone that she existed, and it didn’t occur to them that he would have a secret wife who happened to keep his calendar for him.
She told all of them that he was sick. His teaching assistant, who had covered five days of classes when Nathan didn’t show up to teach, and who wanted to know when to expect him back. His department chair, with whom he’d missed a lunch. A friend who waited at a golf course for an hour for a round that Nathan had scheduled. All of them heard the same story: Nathan was on a trip to the mountains, he would be gone for a while, he would call them as soon as he returned.
After the eighth phone call from Martine—nearly as panicked as the first phone call, and no less disruptive—I decided that enough was enough, and I returned to her home. I strode up the front walk with my coat unbuttoned and billowing, the wind biting at me, making me sharp and alert. Maybe that’s a lie; maybe I would have been sharp and alert anyway, and I just liked the way the cold hurt the skin of my face and throat.
When Martine opened the door, I pushed my way inside. Her hair swung loose around her face; she twisted her fingers together in front of her, the knuckles overlapping in a way that was painful to watch. I tried not to look at her belly, but even so, I could see how much it had grown. She was more obviously pregnant than the last time I’d seen her. She was unavoidably, unquestionably pregnant. Somehow, that baby was still growing. That baby that shouldn’t have existedat all,much less beenviable.
She hadn’t miscarried. She should have miscarried.
The baby should have been a tumor. It should have been a lie. It shouldn’t have been growing. It shouldn’t have been possible.
I forced myself to swallow thehowand face the immediate problem.Howwas a question that could be answered later, I reminded myself; there were more pressing matters at hand.
“We need his schedule,” I said. “You can’t just keep telling people he’s on a trip forever. You can’t keepcalling me.”
