It is strange having to think about it for this long, my feelings for my wife. If I ask myself the same questions I ask my patients, it certainly does not sound like love. I feel intellectually superior to her. There’s no point hiding that truth. I rarely have patients who don’t know how they feel on this subject. I make all our decisions that involve reasoning and the weighing of costs and benefits. How much of our retirement to invest in the stock market. When to refinance our mortgage. Which contractor to use to fix the roof. She makes the decisions that involve the likes and dislikes of our family. What kind of flowers to send my mother on her birthday. What color ski coat our daughter would like for Christmas. What movie our son might like to see on his birthday. I make the decisions involving discipline and motivation of our children. That falls squarely in my court.
She is very attractive. We met in New York when I was doing my residency. She worked as a waitress while she interned at a publishing house. She would read manuscripts all day in a windowless office, then serve wealthy businessmen at a Midtown steak house until 2 A.M. Julie made an excellent living for a young college grad in those days. She was not above using her looks to boost her tips. She was not above an occasional hand brushing her behind as she passed by a table, or a stroke of her arm as she leaned over to clear a plate. I am not disgusted by her Machiavellian attitude. I believe it correlates with the simplistic way she approaches nearly every aspect of life. She never gave a second thought to the unwanted touches of self-entitled assholes with wedding bands and deficient consciences. It was just easy money to her.
Perhaps that is what I mean when I say I love her. She is simple. She sees things simply. I never wonder if she is hiding a secret agenda or manipulating me in ways I won’t understand for months to come. All day, I hear about lies, secrets, plots, and distrust. And those are just my days in Fairview. When I walk through my front door, feeling pride for a day of hard work, feeling satisfied that I have provided this house and all these things for my family, Julie is there, tending to our kids, tending to our house, tending to me. She generally ignores me until the kids are fed and their homework is done and we’ve done the dishes together. But then she sits with me for a glass of wine and she tells me about her simple day and I see that she is happy. The comfort this provides me is indescribable. I, in turn, feel happy in her company. I feel appreciated and cared for. And so I love her.
Before you think I am stuck in the 1950s, my wife spends her days teaching a class at the community college in Cranston, seeing her friends to play tennis or have lunch, and treating herself to a few hours of reading or a pedicure or something else that she finds enjoyable. She is not a servant in our family. She is free to do whatever she wants. In fact, I have encouraged her to pursue a master’s degree so we might engage in more sophisticated conversations.
There is one aspect of life that is not simple for my wife. I have mentioned before her fear of bad things happening to our children. How she makes herself feel the worst possible outcomes before she can move past the fear. My wife lost both her parents when she was in her thirties. They’d had her when they were in their midforties, so their deaths were not untimely. One went to heart disease. The other to a stroke. I have considered the possibility of genetic weaknesses, as these would affect my own children and might be cause for some early precautions. But I have concluded that these ailments were more a result of time and the sedentary lifestyle her parents maintained. The loss, however normal from an actuarial standpoint, was difficult for Julie. Her one brother lives in Arizona with his wife. They have no children. Our immediate family is all she has, and her parents’ deaths have made her acutely aware that people we love do in fact die. It’s amazing how we all lose sight of that. Maybe life would be unbearable if we did not.
I knew right away from the tone of her voice that she was worried. It was breathy and of a higher pitch than usual. She was trying, but failing, to hide her panic.
Hi, sweetheart. Hope your day is going well. Just wanted to know if you’d heard the news about the arrest. I’m sure you have, it’s been all over the TV. Probably on the radio as well. Anyway … apparently they now want to speak to all the kids again, you know, the ones who were at the party that night. I’m sure they just want to see if any of them can confirm that the man they arrested was the same one parked out on Juniper. No big deal, right? Call me, though. Laura Lyman said they might hire a lawyer to go in with Steven. Mark Brandino is his name. Maybe we should think about that for Jason? Anyway … call me, okay, sweetie? I love you. Drive safely. Give me a call. Okay … bye-bye.