“How was your day?” I finally asked.
She gave a strange half smile in response and turned away.
I know now what she was looking for, of course, but at the time, I shrugged it off and went back to work, chalking it up as another example of the mysteriousness of women.
Later that evening, I’d crawled into bed and was making myself comfortable when I heard Jane draw a single, rapid breath. She was lying on her side with her back toward me, and when I noticed that her shoulders were trembling, it suddenly struck me that she was crying. Baffled, I expected her to tell me what had upset her so, but instead of speaking, she offered another set of raspy inhales, as if trying to breathe through her own tears. My throat tightened instinctively, and I found myself growing frightened. I tried not to be scared; tried not to think that something bad had happened to her father or to the kids, or that she had been given terrible news by her doctor. I tried not to think that there might be a problem I couldn’t solve, and I placed my hand on her back in the hope that I could somehow comfort her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
It was a moment before she answered. I heard her sigh as she pulled the covers up to her shoulders.
“Happy anniversary,” she whispered.
Twenty-nine years, I remembered too late, and in the corner of the room, I spotted the gifts she’d bought me, neatly wrapped and perched on the chest of drawers.
Quite simply, I had forgotten.
I make no excuses for this, nor would I even if I could. What would be the point? I apologized, of course, then apologized again the following morning; and later in the evening, when she opened the perfume I’d selected carefully with the help of a young lady at Belk’s, she smiled and thanked me and patted my leg.
Sitting beside her on the couch, I knew I loved her then as much as I did the day we were married. But in looking at her, noticing perhaps for the first time the distracted way she glanced off to the side and the unmistakably sad tilt of her head—I suddenly realized that I wasn’t quite sure whether she still loved me.
Chapter One
It’s heartbreaking to think that your wife may not love you, and that night, after Jane had carried the perfume up to our bedroom, I sat on the couch for hours, wondering how this situation had come to pass. At first, I wanted to believe that Jane was simply reacting emotionally and that I was reading far more into the incident than it deserved. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I sensed not only her displeasure in an absentminded spouse, but the traces of an older melancholy—as if my lapse were simply the final blow in a long, long series of careless missteps.
Had the marriage turned out to be a disappointment for Jane? Though I didn’t want to think so, her expression had answered otherwise, and I found myself wondering what that meant for us in the future. Was she questioning whether or not to stay with me? Was she pleased with her decision to have married me in the first place? These, I must add, were frightening questions to consider—with answers that were possibly even more frightening—for until that moment, I’d always assumed that Jane was as content with me as I’d always been with her.
What, I wondered, had led us to feel so differently about each other?
I suppose I must begin by saying that many people would consider our lives fairly ordinary. Like many men, I had the obligation to support the family financially, and my life was largely centered around my career. For the past thirty years, I’ve worked with the law firm of Ambry, Saxon and Tundle in New Bern, North Carolina, and my income—while not extravagant—was enough to place us firmly in the upper middle class. I enjoy golfing and gardening on the weekends, prefer classical music, and read the newspaper every morning. Though Jane was once an elementary school teacher, she spent the majority of our married life raising three children. She ran both the household and our social life, and her proudest possessions are the photo albums that she carefully assembled as a visual history of our lives. Our brick home is complete with a picket fence and automatic sprinklers, we own two cars, and we are members of both the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. In the course of our married life, we’ve saved for retirement, built a wooden swing set in the backyard that now sits unused, attended dozens of parent-teacher conferences, voted regularly, and contributed to the Episcopal church each and every Sunday. At fifty-six, I’m three years older than my wife.
Despite my feelings for Jane, I sometimes think we’re an unlikely pair to have spent a life together. We’re different in almost every way, and though opposites can and do attract, I’ve always felt that I made the better choice on our wedding day. Jane is, after all, the kind of person I always wished to be. While I tend toward stoicism and logic, Jane is outgoing and kind, with a natural empathy that endears her to others. She laughs easily and has a wide circle of friends. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most of my friends are, in fact, the husbands of my wife’s friends, but I believe this is common for most married couples our age. Yet I’m fortunate in that Jane has always seemed to choose our friends with me in mind, and I’m appreciative that there’s always someone for me to visit with at a dinner party. Had she not come into my life, I sometimes think that I would have led the life of a monk.
There’s more, too: I’m charmed by the fact that Jane has always displayed her emotions with childlike ease. When she’s sad she cries; when she’s happy she laughs; and she enjoys nothing more than to be surprised with a wonderful gesture. In those moments, there’s an ageless innocence about her, and though a surprise by definition is unexpected, for Jane, the memories of a surprise can arouse the same excited feelings for years afterward. Sometimes when she’s daydreaming, I’ll ask her what she’s thinking about and she’ll suddenly begin speaking in giddy tones about something I’ve long forgotten. This, I must say, has never ceased to amaze me.
While Jane has been blessed with the most tender of hearts, in many ways she’s stronger than I am. Her values and beliefs, like those of most southern women, are grounded by God and family; she views the world through a prism of black and white, right and wrong. For Jane, hard decisions are reached instinctively—and are almost always correct—while I, on the other hand, find myself weighing endless options and frequently second-guessing myself. And unlike me, my wife is seldom self-conscious. This lack of concern about other people’s perceptions requires a confidence that I’ve always found elusive, and above all else, I envy this about her.