Andrew once made the mistake of suggesting that since Rosemary spent so much time reading, why not make the effort worthwhile by reading something good. She didn’t speak to him for three days. Instead of perceiving his suggestion as innocent, albeit pompous, Rosemary interpreted it as a comment not so much on her intelligence, for she was confident in her intellect, but a cowardly reminder that she lacked the kind of sophistication her husband found sexy in a woman. Andrew has come to realize that his wife’s homeliness is a particular sore point with her. Also problematic are his world travels as a photojournalist and all the adventures and exotic love affairs such a career rightly or wrongly implies. A background like that makes the differences between them all the more striking.
After his comment about his wife’s choice of reading material, Andrew learned to keep his mouth shut. He truly believes that one of the reasons his wife is so unhappy, and as a result angry, is that she reads romance novels in which all the men are wealthy and dashing and all the women are long-legged and gorgeous. If she stopped reading those novels, Andrew feels, she would be content with the mediocrity of her life. Or, failing that, she would learn to value its many quiet virtues.
Andrew knows Rosemary wasn’t reading before he arrived. More likely she was pacing the kitchen floor, anxiously awaiting his return. However, his wife would rather eat a rotting octopus than let on she was fretting. But despite her attempt to seem nonchalant, he always finds her waiting to tell him how horrible he is for not doing the hundred and one things she asks him to do on any given day.
Normally, Andrew takes exception to her complaints about his shortcomings, but tonight he, too, would concur with her. This morning when his father called and told him to rush to the hospital, Andrew turned off his cellphone and hasn’t checked the countless messages his wife has likely left by now. To make matters worse, he was so overwhelmed by the events of the day that he forgot to let Rosemary know that Ella, the woman who had been more of a mother to her than a mother-in-law, was dead.
Andrew sits on the edge of the bed gingerly looking at his wife, doing his best to seem guilty. He takes his shirt off as Rosemary carefully puts the novel on the night table and folds her arms. Andrew can sense the coming recriminations.
“Before you say anything, I just want to ask you a simple question,” Rosemary says slowly as if talking to one of her more difficult fourth-grade students. “Do I or do I not have the right to be angry? You’re always accusing me of being angry, that I make too much out of —”
“Honey, I’m really sorry. I have —”
“Andrew, no! First, I want you to acknowledge the validity of my feelings and make a genuine effort to understand why I feel the way I do before you try to pacify me.”
He hates the inane therapy jargon she uses on her emotionally troubled students, but this isn’t the time to bring that up. Instead he plays it safe. “Sweetie, I do understand how you feel —”
“Fuck you, Andrew. You have no fucking idea how I feel.”
He is always shocked when his wife swears, even though he has spent more than a year listening to her curse as if she were auditioning for a Quentin Tarantino flick.
“I left you seven goddamn messages and not once did you bother to call me. Didn’t it occur to you there might be a legitimate reason for my calls? I could’ve been raped, for fuck’s sake. I could’ve been strangled and left to die, for all you knew.
Hanna could’ve fallen out of her crib and —”
Andrew’s heart leaps with fear. “Is Hanna all right?”
“No, your daughter’s fine,” Rosemary says quickly as though realizing that bringing Hanna into the fight is a low blow. “But that’s not the point, Andrew.”
“Then what the fuck is the point?” He recently noticed that he only swears when fighting with his wife — her casual use of expletives gives him the permission to do likewise.
“The fucking point is you wouldn’t know if she wasn’t okay. I could’ve been scraping her brains off the goddamn floor and you wouldn’t know because you didn’t bother to pick up the phone.
That’s the fucking point.”
Andrew, who has now taken his pants off, leaving on his blue boxers, gets off the bed and goes over to the closet where he throws in his jeans and sweater and takes out a wrinkled grey T-shirt. He sniffs it to check if it is clean. It could use a spin in the washing machine, but he is too tired to be picky tonight, so he puts it on. Then he returns to the exact position on the bed where he was sitting.
“Well?” Rosemary says.
“Well what?”
“An explanation would be nice.”
“I turned my cellphone off. Is that enough explanation?”
“What’s the point of paying for the thing if you’re just going to shut it off?”
Andrew doesn’t respond. He is too exhausted for tit-for-tat tonight. The death of a loved one has a way of making winning an argument inconsequential. On the edge of the bed he bows his head, lets his shoulders slump, and dangles his arms as if they were deflated balloons. “My mother’s dead,” he whispers, finally giving into the fatigue of this wretched day.
Rosemary doesn’t reply. Either shock or just plain not having a clever comeback has rendered his otherwise cantankerous wife speechless. After a moment, Andrew glances up to see if she heard what he said. Her slap-on-the-face expression indicates she did.
“What the fuck, Andrew!” she screams. “When were you going to tell me? I mean, you could’ve told me the minute you came through the door.”
“You didn’t give me a chance. Besides, you could’ve asked me.”
“What should I have said exactly — hi, hon, is your mother dead yet?”
Andrew glares at her menacingly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That was horrible. All I’m saying is that you could’ve told me rather than let me bitch about the stupid messages. Do you really think I’m so heartless that it wouldn’t have made a difference to me?”
“No, I don’t think that. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Actually, Andrew isn’t really sure if that is true or not.
“Of course, you don’t. How can you?” Rosemary crawls on the bed over to Andrew. She wraps her arms around him from behind, encircling her bony, pasty legs around his waist as she kisses him on the back of the neck and whispers how sorry she is. Andrew turns his head, his face meeting hers. They kiss. It is a sweet, consoling, sexless kiss, the kind he has longed for all day. Rosemary starts to cry.
Andrew wipes her tears with the open palm of his hand. “Don’t cry,” he whispers. “Don’t cry.”
“I loved her. She wasn’t an in-law to me. She was a like a mother.” Her voice cracks.
Andrew knows Rosemary’s words are heartfelt, that her sentiments aren’t the hollow kind people are compelled to offer to the relatives of the dead no matter what their true feelings are. He has always despised false tributes — like the time he was watching the funeral of Richard Nixon in a hotel room in Kinshasa and he threw the can of yogurt he was eating at the television because he couldn’t stand the sight of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and so many other dignitaries pretending to be sad for the loss of one of the most loathsome presidents in American history. So when Rosemary says that his mother was like another mother to her, he knows she is sincere and is moved.
“When did it happen?” Rosemary asks after her tears subside.
“This