The Watcher

32

I met Anna today. Just for once we had decided to meet out somewhere. I don’t know if it was that successful. At first everything felt fairly normal. We chatted, and she laughed, but I feel like she changed somehow, that something was weighing on her. We left fairly quickly, opting to go to her place instead and having sex in the unmade bed. But even during that, something felt different, as if both of our minds were somewhere else.

It was the first time we had gotten together since I’d told my wife about us. Anna wanted to know how she had taken it. One thing led to another, and suddenly I was lying there telling her my wife’s story. I revealed the fact that she’d been cheated on once before, in her youth, and what that had driven her to do to herself.

Now, after the fact, obviously I realize that I should have checked myself, that I never should have shared that. It’s my wife’s darkest secret, and I took the liberty of bringing it into the light, a confidence—yet another one—that I’ve betrayed. No matter how terrible her actions were back then, I had no right to discuss them with someone else.

I think about that now, back home again. My wife and I are lying side by side on our marital mattress, silence like a thick wall between our bodies. Why did I tell Anna about the scar and how it came to be? How could I have betrayed my wife so cruelly?

When I shared that, I hadn’t given it much thought. I was mostly focused on Anna. I noticed that she grew quiet and pulled away, but it wasn’t until I rolled over and saw how pale she’d become, how all the color had drained from her cheeks, that it occurred to me how hard she was taking the information. And I was reminded of my own reaction when I found out, reminded of how I sat hunched on the toilet seat, sure that I would vomit every last bit of what was inside of me, that I didn’t understand how I would ever be able to look my wife in the eyes again.

At her place, Anna was the one averting her gaze from me. She rubbed the edge of the duvet between her fingers.

“A kitchen knife?” she whispered. “Do you really mean a completely normal kitchen knife? Like, she just sort of… hacked away at herself with a kitchen knife? And what did she use for stitches? Did she have some kind of medical suture thread? I mean, you don’t just take a regular old spool of sewing thread and start…”

Her voice faltered, and she grew quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I had never asked the kinds of concrete questions Anna was asking now. They’d scarcely even occurred to me. The details weren’t what mattered to me. It was inconceivable that anyone could do such a thing to herself, that it was even possible at all. I pointed this out to Anna, realizing my voice sounded a bit tense, maybe even disapproving, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“She doesn’t seem normal.”

“What do you mean?”

Then she picked up the other note in my voice. She put her hand on my chest and looked me in the eyes, very seriously.

“She’s capable of anything, your wife.”

“Oh, this all happened a long time ago. She was practically a kid still.”

“She was twenty-one,” Anna said. “That’s an adult in my book.”

I was forced to break the eye contact. The intimacy was a little too intense. I wanted to believe that what my wife did back then didn’t have anything to do with who she was now. I wanted to believe that it could be categorized as youthful folly. I wanted to believe that but didn’t succeed. That was the reason we found ourselves here in the first place, Anna and I.

We lay in silence for a bit. Anna had snuggled up to me again, and her skin stuck to mine.

“Should I be worried?” she suddenly asked.

I turned my head and furrowed my brow at her.

“Worried about what?”

“That she’ll come look me up?”

“She doesn’t know who you are.”

Anna rolled over onto her back, taking the hand that had been on my chest with her. That was the wrong answer, apparently. I rolled onto my side, propping myself up on my elbow on the mattress and resting my head in the palm of my hand. There was no mistaking the displeasure in her face.

“She’s not out to hurt you.”

Anna chewed on her lower lip.

“Or me,” I added.

Then she turned to face me again. We looked at each other for a long time. Then she scooted closer and put her arm around me.

“Hold me tight,” she whispered.

When I did as she asked, I could feel how she was trembling.

I’m having a hard time falling asleep. There’s something weird in the air tonight. As has become the norm for her, my wife is lying still in a fetal position with her back to me. It’s impossible to decide whether she’s awake.

It can’t go on like this, I think to myself. We have to break this deadlock, get out of this situation. I don’t know what I want, can’t make any guarantees, but we can’t go on like this. We need to get away somewhere, need a neutral environment where we can talk through everything together, openly and without any preconceived ideas. We can’t do that here at home.

I close my eyes and feel sleep finally coming. It will work out runs through my mind. We will resolve this. But who is “we”? Is it my wife and me or Anna and me? Before I have a chance to contemplate that any further, I’m asleep.