There are nights when you cry yourself to sleep. Once, Jonathan would have held you; now he rolls over, turning his back to you, and scoots to the farthest edge of the mattress.
During that terrible time, the two of you go to a faculty party. There’s a new professor there, a female professor, the first one the Anthropology Department has hired in ten years. She’s in her twenties, with long black hair and perfect skin, and the men cluster around her the way they used to cluster around you.
Jonathan’s one of them.
Standing with the other wives, pretending to talk about new films, you watch Jonathan’s face. He’s rapt, attentive, totally focused on the lovely young woman, who’s talking about her research into ritual scarification in New Guinea. You see Jonathan’s eyes stray surreptitiously, when he thinks no one will notice, to her breasts, her thighs, her ass.
You know Jonathan wants to fuck her. And you know it’s not her fault, any more than it was ever yours. She can’t help being young and pretty. But you hate her anyway. Over the next few days, you discover that what you hate most, hate even more than Jonathan wanting to fuck this young woman, is what your hate is doing to you: to your dreams, to your insides. The hate’s your problem, you know; it’s not Jonathan’s fault, any more than his lust for the young professor is hers. But you can’t seem to get rid of it, and you can sense it making your wrinkles deeper, shriveling you as if you’re a piece of newspaper thrown into a fire.
You write Diane a long, anguished letter about as much of this as you can safely tell her. Of course, since she hasn’t been around for a few years, she doesn’t know how much older you look, so you simply say that you think Jonathan’s fallen out of love with you since you’re over forty now. You write the letter on paper, and send it through the mail.
Diane writes back, and not a postcard this time: she sends five single-spaced pages. She says that Jonathan’s probably going through a midlife crisis. She agrees that his treatment of you is, in her words, “barbaric.” “Stella, you’re a beautiful, brilliant, accomplished woman. I’ve never known anyone who’s grown so much, or in such interesting ways, in such a short time. If Jonathan doesn’t appreciate that, then he’s an ass, and maybe it’s time to ask yourself if you’d be happier elsewhere. I hate to recommend divorce, but I also hate to see you suffering so much. The problem, of course, is economic: Can you support yourself if you leave? Is Jonathan likely to be reliable with alimony? At least—small comfort, I know—there are no children who need to be considered in all this. I’m assuming that you’ve already tried couples therapy. If you haven’t, you should.”
This letter plunges you into despair. No, Jonathan isn’t likely to be reliable with alimony. Jonathan isn’t likely to agree to couples therapy, either. Some of your lunchtime friends have gone that route, and the only way they ever got their husbands into the therapist’s office was by threatening divorce on the spot. If you tried this, it would be a hollow threat. Your unfortunate metabolic condition won’t allow you to hold any kind of normal job, and your writing and painting income won’t support you, and Jonathan knows all that as well as you do. And your continued safety’s in his hands. If he exposed you—
You shudder. In the old country, the stories ran to peasants with torches. Here, you know, laboratories and scalpels would be more likely. Neither option’s attractive.
You go to the art museum, because the bright, high, echoing rooms have always made it easier for you to think. You wander among abstract sculpture and impressionist paintings, among still lifes and landscapes, among portraits. One of the portraits is of an old woman. She has white hair and many wrinkles; her shoulders stoop as she pours a cup of tea. The flowers on the china are the same pale, luminous blue as her eyes, which are, you realize, the same blue as your own.
The painting takes your breath away. This old woman is beautiful. You know the painter, a nineteenth-century English duke, thought so too.
You know Jonathan wouldn’t.
You decide, once again, to try to talk to Jonathan. You make him his favorite meal, serve him his favorite wine, wear your most becoming outfit, gray silk with heavy silver jewelry. Your silver hair and blue eyes gleam in the candlelight, and the candlelight, you know, hides your wrinkles.
This kind of production, at least, Jonathan still notices. When he comes into the dining room for dinner, he looks at you and raises his eyebrows. “What’s the occasion?”
“The occasion’s that I’m worried,” you tell him. You tell him how much it hurts you when he turns away from your tears. You tell him how much you miss the sportfucks. You tell him that since you clean up his messes more than three weeks out of every month, he can damn well clean up yours when you’re on four legs. And you tell him that if he doesn’t love you anymore, doesn’t want you anymore, you’ll leave. You’ll go back home, to the village on the edge of the forest near an Alp, and try to make a life for yourself.
“Oh, Stella,” he says. “Of course I still love you!” You can’t tell if he sounds impatient or contrite, and it terrifies you that you might not know the difference. “How could you even think of leaving me? After everything I’ve given you, everything I’ve done for you—”
“That’s been changing,” you tell him, your throat raw. “The changes are the problem. Jonathan—”
“I can’t believe you’d try to hurt me like this! I can’t believe—”
“Jonathan, I’m not trying to hurt you! I’m reacting to the fact that you’re hurting me! Are you going to stop hurting me, or not?”
He glares at you, pouting, and it strikes you that after all, he’s very young, much younger than you are. “Do you have any idea how ungrateful you’re being? Not many men would put up with a woman like you!”
“Jonathan!”
“I mean, do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me? All the secrecy, all the lying, having to walk the damn dog—”
“You used to enjoy walking the damn dog.” You struggle to control your breathing, struggle not to cry. “All right, look, you’ve made yourself clear. I’ll leave. I’ll go home.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
You close your eyes. “Then what do you want me to do? Stay here, knowing you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you! You hate me! If you didn’t hate me, you wouldn’t be threatening to leave!” He gets up and throws his napkin down on the table; it lands in the gravy boat. Before leaving the room, he turns and says, “I’m sleeping in the guestroom tonight.”
“Fine,” you tell him dully. He leaves, and you discover that you’re trembling, shaking the way a terrier would, or a poodle. Not a wolf.
Well. He’s made himself very plain. You get up, clear away the uneaten dinner you spent all afternoon cooking, and go upstairs to your bedroom. Yours, now: not Jonathan’s anymore. You change into jeans and a sweatshirt. You think about taking a hot bath, because all your bones ache, but if you allow yourself to relax into warm water, you’ll fall apart; you’ll dissolve into tears, and there are things you have to do. Your bones aren’t aching just because your marriage has ended; they’re aching because the
transition is coming up, and you need to make plans before it starts.
So you go into your study, turn on the computer, call up an Internet travel agency. You book a flight back home for ten days from today, when you’ll definitely be back on two feet again. You charge the ticket to your credit card. The bill will arrive here in another month, but by then you’ll be long gone. Let Jonathan pay it.