The Silent Wife (33 page)

Once home from the hospital, after a day or two has passed, when she can muster the strength to face down the blinking light on her telephone, she finds among her messages one from her brother Ryan. Typically, Ryan has been out of touch and knows nothing of recent events, is just checking in, happens to be thinking about her, and will call again. That's Ryan for you. She's sorry to have missed him, but she has long since learned to keep Ryan in perspective and not tie herself in knots over his comings and goings. Thanks, of course, to Gerard Hartmann.

Odd how life can hand you these unexpected gifts. She went to Gerard in the first place as part of her training but can't dispute the fact that during her work with him she peered through the lens of her own eye and discovered important things about herself, for instance her terrific ability to shut out what she didn't want to see, forget what she didn't want to know, put a thing out of her mind and never think about it again. In short, to live life as if certain events had never come to pass.

Every shrink knows that it's not the event itself but how you respond to it that tells the story. Take ten assorted individuals, expose them all to the same life trial, and they will each suffuse it with exquisite personal detail and meaning. Jodi is the one who never thought about it again. Not once. Not ever. What happened to Jodi in the distant place of her childhood qualifies without a doubt as well and truly forgotten, left behind, defunct, as good as eradicated. Or so she might believe if she hadn't studied psychology. In the end she had to accept that even if you forget that's not the same as if it never happened.

The slate is not entirely wiped clean; you can't reclaim the person you were beforehand; your state of innocence is not there to be retrieved. The experience you've had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it. That pickle jar you threw away all those years ago may have gone to the landfill, but it still exists out there. It may be broken, even crushed, but it hasn't disappeared. It may be forgotten, but forgetting is just a habit.

In this analogy the landfill is the unconscious mind. Not the collective unconscious but the personal unconscious—your own individual, private, idiosyncratic unconscious wherein every object is inscribed with your name and stamped with your number, the unconscious from whence objects can fly at you unannounced—as one flew at her that day while she waited for the elevator after telling Gerard her dream about Darrell. To her credit, and it says a lot about her presence of mind, she did not overlook the value of the event as an object lesson in psychology. Indeed, she got it in a breathtaking flash: The unconscious mind is not just a theory in a book, not some trumped-up paradigm or overblown fancy, but as real as the nose on your face, as real as a pickle jar. According to Jung, everything in the unconscious seeks outward expression; an inner situation that is not made conscious will manifest in outward events as fate. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus made a similar proposition when he said that character is destiny.

How pleased Gerard would be to learn that her dream had
ignited this valuable childhood memory. Here at last was something he could get between his teeth, and he had been edging for it, had sensed that something was waiting in the wings, had forged ahead with patience and purpose as if anticipating this very moment, the falling of this very axe. She wondered what cues he might have picked up, and she would have liked to ask, but as it turned out she never did take Gerard into her confidence, decided against it. Instead, she held the secret close and failed to ever mention it, preferring in the end to keep it in a shut box and starve it of oxygen. This was a choice that she considered to be very much her prerogative and even in her best interests. Her training told her that such things need to be aired, but in the balance she was still the same person, her childhood still a source of happy memories. In life's lunchbox there is no such thing as a hundred percent, and ninety-nine percent is downright providential. The only thing she needed to do was deal with the one percent blight, find a way to contain it.

Abruptly, she ended all contact with her older brother, and ever since, over the span of decades, has avoided him entirely, steeled herself against his lobbies and appeals, set him aside without mercy. He knows the reason why; there was never any need to explain. What he did to her was short-lived—a juvenile blunder, a pubescent tic—but some things must not be forgiven.

Nor would she ever forgive
herself.
Her parents knew nothing, she was sure of that; they would not have put up with such behaviour in a child of theirs, and she never could shift any blame onto them. It was she who should have stopped him
before he got to Ryan—and she knew without a doubt that he had. Ryan's nightmares began literally overnight. His tantrums were spectacular and without precedent. He'd been such a pliable child. Maybe the adolescent Darrell had considered the younger sibling to be less of a security risk. Maybe he was merely exploiting his options. Quite possibly there was nothing going on in his head and it all came down to glands. Whatever the case, the deed was done and the grown-up Ryan, like Jodi, was out of touch with Darrell and left his name out of every conversation.

Her unspoken pact with Ryan is that neither of them will ever revisit the landmarks, unearth the relics, dig up the ground of things gone wrong. Her measure of Ryan's early years and what Ryan himself may or may not remember—this is out of bounds, effectively null and void, a history forsaken, a past disavowed. Forgetting is just a habit but it brings peace of mind, and above all Ryan must have peace of mind, must be kept safe, permitted to layer fresh experience over the silence.

As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn't disbelieve in. Although she can't credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude. Her freedom is a gift beyond reckoning: that she can still awake each day in her beautiful home, walk barefoot on the thick wool carpets, open the silk-and-linen drapes to the sweep of the horizon, drink a latte made with French roast, go on a ramble with the dog. She is keenly aware—never forgets, even for a moment—that she forfeited all this. Her gratitude is like a hard candy that won't dissolve in her mouth.

She is grateful for Harry, too, who is working hard on her
behalf. A court date is set for probate, and he has papers for her to sign. He tells her that Natasha is suing but that he's ninety percent sure she will settle out of court. With her baby due in the spring and the trial coming up, Natasha has more than enough on her plate. In any case she, Jodi, can afford to be generous. There will be plenty of money to go around once the apartment house and the office building are sold. Stephanie will be helping with that, and by the time Stephanie is no longer needed, Jodi will be in a position to offer her a decent termination package. Financially it's Cliff who will be hardest hit since Todd was far and away his best client. But Cliff is good at what he does, and new clients will come along.

She recognizes changes in herself. There's been a softening, a coming down to earth, and along with that a greater sense of kinship with her clients. Having understood that she, too, has been willful and greedy and blind and stuck, that she's been swimming in the soup with them all along, she can only be grateful for their loyalty and kindness. They've been putting up with her lapses, asking after her health. The judge brought her flowers and Bergman baked her a pie. Truly.

But the really surprising thing is that all of them, right down to the wayward Mary Mary, are showing less resistance and making more of an effort to work with her. A certain flow has infected them, a readiness and ease. A willingness to take responsibility and move forward is showing itself in their collective attitude, and everything begins with attitude, meaning outlook, belief, the story you tell yourself, as Adler has said. It's apparent that the changes in her are affecting her clients in turn,
and she is now forced to consider that human nature is possibly more yielding than she once supposed. That her hideous fall from grace should end up making her less of a skeptic is a paradox that doesn't escape her.

It's odd to think, with Todd gone, that a son of his will inhabit the world in years to come. Would she recognize the boy if she passed him in the street? Will Todd's features be layered, ghostlike, over his son's countenance, or will there at least be a sign—a mannerism, something in his posture? She wonders if the boy's mother will tell him the truth about his family, take him to visit his grandpa in the state penitentiary. In Natasha's position, Jodi might be tempted to bury the whole egregious mess, never refer to it, invent some fiction to explain Dean's absence, or better still just forget about Dean, as if he too had died, since forgiving him would be impossible.

Anyway, the story is really about the two men, the boyhood friends, one dead and one as good as dead. A young woman like Natasha has no need to drag their unfinished business behind her, burden herself with their defective karma. If she has any sense she'll find herself another husband, someone to give Todd's son a new name. People make too much of blood ties anyway. But Natasha is probably one of those sticklers for the truth, the way people are these days. Tell the child where he comes from—he has a right to know. Whereas Jodi has no problem with the blurring of facts. There are benefits to be had, and anyway some things are best left unexamined. No need to stare reality in the face if there's a kinder, gentler way. No need for all that grim urgency.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude goes to John Massey for traveling the road with me; to Beth Kapusta, my first and best reader; to psychotherapists Diane Scally and Elly Roselle for sharing their knowledge and insights across lifetimes; to Margaret Dragu for showing me the inside of club life; and to Bruce Bailey for generously loaning his domiciles. For dedicated location scouting I'm grateful to Lisa Harrison, Chelsea Nash-Wolfe, Barb Webb, Steve Reinke, and Philip von Zweck. No one deserves thanks more than my agents, Samantha Haywood and Kimberly Witherspoon, and William Callahan is also to be acknowledged. As well, my appreciation goes to my editors, Tara Singh, Adrienne Kerr, and Marion Donaldson, and to copy editor Sheila Moody. Last but not least, I'm indebted to Karyn Marcus for the edit that changed everything.