Jack Ketchum - Do You Love Your Wife?

Sometimes I feel like youre I dont know, not really there anymore, she said. Like no matter what I do, it wouldnt make any difference, would it. Know what I mean?

They were lying in bed. He was tired and a little buzzed from the scotches after work. Greenes The Power and the Glory lay open on her lap. He was halfway through Stones Bay of Souls.

She was right. Stone could obviously rouse himself. He could not.

She was heading to California in a few days, leaving behind the chill of New York and his own chill for a week or so. Her ex-lover beckoned. Perhaps hed become her lover all over again. Bass hadnt asked.

Im not complaining, she said. Im not criticizing. You know that.

I know.

And its not just you and me. Seems like its everything. You used to write. Hell, you used to paint. Its not like you.

Its like part of me obviously.

Not the best part.

Well. Maybe not.

She didnt say the rest of it. Even after three whole years its still her isnt it. She hadnt the slightest urge to hurt him with it. She was simply observing and leaving him an opening should he wish to talk. He didnt. It wasnt precisely the loss of Annabel that was bothering him these days anyhow. It was what was left of him in her absence. Which seemed to amount to less and less a subtle yet distinct difference. He continued to feel himself rolling far beneath the whitewater wake of their parting. Way down where the water was still and deep and very thin.

Confront her, Gary said.

Annabel?

Yes, Annabel. Who else?

After all this time?

My point exactly. Youre not getting any younger.

Its easier said than done. Shes married now, remember?

So are you and Laura. In your very odd way.

He was referring to Laura seeing her old lover again. Gary didnt approve and didnt mind saying so. It was four in the morning. They were closing The Gates of Hell. It was a hot summer night and the thirtysomething crew had come at them fast and furious despite the nine-dollar well-drinks.

Confront both of them then, what the hell.

I dont even know him. We met once when she was bartending for all of about five minutes. Im not sure Id recognize him if he were sitting right in front of me.

So maybe thats part of the problem. You dont know the guy. So you dont know what he offers her. You dont know why him. I mean, sometimes you meet the other guy and hes not all that much, you know? Brings her down a notch. Sometimes thats just what you need.

You miss her and you think youre missing this enormous personality. But youre only seeing her in the context of the two of you. Youve got no perspective. Youre in there yourself, churning things up. Messing with the perspective. You think you know somebody but you dont not until you either live with them or see them in some whole new situation, like with somebody else. Thats my take on it, anyway. And I still think youre fucking crazy letting Laura fly away to some clown in California.

He ignored the last bit. He couldnt tell Laura what to do and wouldnt want to anyway. He had to figure that she knew what she was doing.

But he thought it possible that Gary might be on to something regarding Annabel. When she left shed insisted on cutting him off completely. No phone calls, no e-mails, no letters. A clean break she called it. He remembered wincing at the raw cliche.

At first he didnt believe she was capable of such draconian thinking not when it came to them so he tried anyway. But it became apparent that no confrontation, no follow-up of any sort short of appearing at her apartment was about to happen.

He knew where that little visit would lead. Access to her home was by invitation only. It would only earn him the humiliation of having a door once wide open to him slammed shut in his face.

The very last e-mail shed sent him was calm and deliberate informing him that shed thrown out all her photos of them and suggesting he do the same. That it would speed up the healing process. Yet another cliche but he let it pass. Three months later shed married a guy shed known and dated off and on for a long time before they met and that was the last hed heard of her.

Hed been angry, hurt and surprised over both developments. First the cutoff and then the marriage. But there was to be no court of appeals nor any use howling in the wind. It had seemed intolerable to simply stop, to surrender all communication. For a while Bass damn near hated her.

Yet three years later he felt no anger anymore. He could only wonder where it had gone. Because back then youll get over it in time along with making a ckan break of it and speeding up the healing process had seemed the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of useless psychobabble. They disgusted and infuriated him.

But maybe in the long run theyd obtained after all. Victory through inanity.

Because here he was.

Curious in a passive sort of way about what if anything could possibly wake his dead ass up again, ressurect his sense of engagement in Life After Annabel. But the operative word was still passive. Confrontation? Three years ago, in a minute. But now he wasnt even sure he had the energy anymore. It was possible that the time for explanation and understanding and that most odious of all suspender-and-bowtied words closure had simply come and gone.

Hed never thrown out his own photos.

So he went through them for the first time in a long time over a corned beef on rye for lunch the following day. He felt a brief twinge looking at them. The pinch of a muscle you could stretch a moment later and be rid of.

Still it was something.

He decided to search her out on the Internet. Hed thought of doing that before but resisted it, wary of any further humiliation.

He punched in her maiden name and got nothing. Then tried her married name. What came back was a single photo. A wedding picture two and a half years old Annabel and her husband, Gerard, standing smiling beneath a canopy of healthy green palm fronds in front of some old New Orleans hotel. Annabel looking lovely in a pale green shoulderless gown, her husband slightly shorter than she and balding, wearing a white silk short-sleeved shirt, lopsided grin and a crisp new panama hat. She gazed not at the camera but into the sky. And that was exactly like her. Annabel was a painter and the sky was her true north, her canvas.

It was the only thing familiar.

The caption read INTRODUCING MR. AND MRS. GERARD POPE AT MARDI GRAS. LOOK WHAT WE WENT AND DID!

The photo was off her husbands Web site. Bass had no reason to think he even had one. No idea that what he did for a living was write detective novels fairly successful ones from the look of it. He roamed the site. Book covers and reviews and a bibliography and message board and quotes from Publishers Weekly and Lawrence Block. Not too shabby at all. He had a series character whod appeared first in six paperback originals and then more recently in two hardcovers, presumably with paperbacks forthcoming.

There was that twinge again.

Possibly the twinge was jealousy. Bass had seriously hoped to write one day himself the bartending was supposed to have been temporary.

Or perhaps it was the fact that she and Bass had talked about New Orleans together too, while the farthest south theyd ever gotten was Cape May in the spring their very first year.

But more likely he was beginning to experience what Gary had talked about.

Context.

Here she was, Annabel embraced within the photo. Another, different Annabel. Far beyond the scope or influence of that entity which had once been Annabel and Bass together. With a man he barely recognized, to all purposes a total stranger. And in this mans presence on that day at least she was happy.

So it seemed that she could be perfectly happy without him.