The Watcher

46

My wife talks, and I listen. Her voice is calm, but it’s clear from her face what a strain it is to revisit and talk about the events that followed her faked abortion.

The wound became infected and she developed a fever, but her mind was made up. Her former boyfriend would not get away with what he’d done. Even if it was the last thing she did, she would get even. She had settled on a night when her parents were going out to dinner. The fever was raging in her body. Her mother and father had no idea why, but they left her home alone with instructions to rest and drink plenty of fluids. As soon as they walked out the door, she got to work. She took the items she’d gathered out of the closet—rope, blindfold, duct tape, balaclava, knife, and hammer. She put everything into a small backpack and started to dress in dark clothing from head to toe. Pulling the pants on over the throbbing wound on her stomach was so painful that she saw stars, and yet she forced herself to continue.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where her ex-boyfriend would be that night. At home with his new girlfriend, of course. She had been there several times before, snuck around the house and sat hidden behind a big boulder in the nearby wooded area. Sooner or later, he would come out the back where there was a flowerpot full of old cigarette butts. He would stand there for a while, and she could smell the smoke, see the little glowing point that was his cigarette through the dark. She never got any closer. He was always alone at those moments. The new girlfriend apparently didn’t smoke but preferred to wait inside where it was warm, in front of the TV or maybe in the bed.

My wife says that she took her backpack and walked toward the front door. She was so dizzy that she had to support herself against the walls in the front hallway to remain upright. This night, she wasn’t going to settle for watching from afar. This night she wouldn’t watch while her ex disappeared back into the house and then just slink home filled with the same dark despair as when she had left. The plan was to step out of hiding and lure him into the woods, threaten him with the knife if she had to. Once in the cover of the trees and the darkness, she would put duct tape over his mouth and tie him up so he wouldn’t be able to interrupt her or walk away. Then he would hear everything she had to say—everything. He would listen until he comprehended exactly how betrayed, degraded, and vulnerable his infidelity and subsequent ridicule had made her feel. He would beg for forgiveness. If he refused, there was always the hammer.

It wasn’t a watertight plan. It had a lot of potential holes and shortcomings. She’d actually been planning to wait and prepare even more, but then she developed the infection and realized it was bad, that it was only a matter of time before she collapsed. She wasn’t worried about her health. She was worried about the prospect of not being able to carry out her plan. She didn’t care how it went, didn’t care whether she dropped dead afterward, as long as she got back at him.

Tying her shoelaces took forever since it required bending over, a motion that made her scream in pain. When she finally straightened back up, her face pallid and her vision swimming, she did so just as the front door opened and her parents walked in. Evidently there’d been some misunderstanding. Their dinner party was actually the following weekend. They rolled their eyes and laughed at their own airheaded ways until it dawned on them what they were seeing before them.

My wife remembers only fragmentary images of what happened after that. She knows that she lunged for the door, and that her mother caught her and prevented her from leaving. She knows that someone screamed, and she understands that it was her. She knows that she screamed terrible things about her ex-boyfriend and what she wanted to do to him. She knows that she hit and kicked like crazy as they held her tight, restraining her. She knows that she hated her parents for not letting her go, for preventing her from carrying out her plan. And she remembers how her body finally collapsed, how she fell into her mother’s arms and was embraced by her safety and love.

Up to this point, she hadn’t allowed herself to cry. Not when she realized that her boyfriend was cheating on her with someone else, not when he dumped her, not when he trampled on her dignity. Not even when the sharp edge of the knife cut into her flesh. But the tears came at that moment, with her mother’s arms around her and her mother’s calming words in her ears: “This isn’t what you want, this isn’t who you are.”

My wife pauses and looks down at her hands. I try to imagine the incomprehensible pain and desperation she must have felt, and I think that I ought to try to meet her partway. But I can’t find the words. Instead I just wait mutely for her to continue.

Her parents must have discovered the wound on her belly, because they took her to the hospital right away. She doesn’t remember telling them what she did to herself, but they found out somehow. They were both shocked, but her father took it the hardest. He apparently never got over it. After that he wouldn’t look his daughter in the eye. Instead he would always direct his gaze at a point just above her shoulder.

Her mother was also heartsick. As parents, how could they have missed what was happening in their daughter’s life? Certainly they had suspected that she wasn’t doing well. For example, they had definitely noticed that she’d grown quite thin recently, but they’d somehow hoped it was a phase that would pass. What happened was like an alarm. During the first weeks, her mother didn’t leave her daughter’s side. She made sure that she ate. She slept beside her and stood constant vigil over her. Time passed, and slowly my wife came back to life. She started at the university, made new friends, and developed new hopes for the future. But it would take a long time before she dared to love again, and none of her romantic relationships lasted very long until she met me.

We look into each other’s eyes.

“You are the first person I could imagine telling all this,” my wife says.

“And yet you waited. You waited several years. You didn’t say anything until after we were already married. And you didn’t tell me the whole story until now.”

She nods slowly.

“I wanted to tell you the truth, all of it, but every time I decided to give it a shot, I got scared, scared that you would look at me differently afterward, that you would stop loving me, and turn away. That you would… turn to someone else.”

I avert my gaze, feeling my face grow hot. What my wife feared… had actually happened… Strangely enough, only now does the extent of my betrayal sink in. I betrayed my wife despite all she’s been through, even though I knew that another man’s infidelity in the past had almost destroyed her. How could this have happened?

Before I learned how my wife got the scar on her stomach, I had never even looked at another woman. I was so strongly and unwaveringly convinced that it would be the two of us forever. But the truth upended everything, made me view the woman I thought I knew so well in a different light. Something stole in between us, and I let it happen. I betrayed her, disappointed her, and lied to her. But have I stopped loving her? No, I don’t think I have.

I’m about to move forward and take her into my arms, but then I picture her eyes the way they just looked. I remember how black they became, how I had the sense that she was going to shove me over the edge. I think about Anna’s worry and discomfort, about the questions she asked me about my wife when we last spoke on the phone. Has she shown any other signs of violence or a desire for revenge? The doubt has returned, and instead of pulling closer to her, I lean back a bit.

“What you did to yourself then, what you were prepared to do to your ex-boyfriend—how do I know that that’s not how you still are, deep down inside?”

She doesn’t answer right away, and when she eventually does, her voice is quiet, scarcely audible.

“There were times when I myself was unsure. Now I know, without a doubt, that what my mother said was true. That’s not what I want, not who I am. But only you can say how you feel about that.”

Seconds turn to minutes as we sit there in silence. I know what she’s waiting for, but I can’t give it to her. I just can’t, not right now, not yet. Finally I look up and into her eyes again.

“I don’t know what I want. I need more time.”

I’m prepared for these words to cause her to break down and start crying. Or return to the bedroom and descend again into her passive state. But nothing like that happens. Instead she nods and clasps her hands in her lap.

“All right, then.”

Then she says that she thinks we should separate, that she loves me, but that she can’t do this anymore—that it’s better that we each reflect and decide what we want as individuals and how we will proceed together.

Separate? She can’t be serious, can she? But yes, I can tell from her face that she is. Suddenly it feels as if all the oxygen has gone out of the room. Perhaps I’m unsure what I need and want, but I know one thing: Loneliness isn’t it.

My wife straightens up.

“I hope you’ll decide that you can love all of me, who I once was and who I am, without fear and without disgust.”

Then she gets her suitcase.

Then she starts packing.

Then she’s gone.