27
I’m at work, but I’m not getting anything done. I sit in meetings but am hardly even aware of what’s being said. All I can think about is my wife and what happened this morning. In the afternoon, I shut myself in my office and make it clear that I don’t want to be disturbed. Then I stand for a long time, looking out the window, out at the street below my office.
That same morning, I stood at the foot of our bed and looked at the lump under the covers, legs drawn up, back curved, the very same position. And yet, something was different, something about the energy in the room. Suddenly I had the sense that she was about to get up, that maybe she already had. I couldn’t decide whether I felt relieved or worried. I cocked my head and studied my wife’s motionless body, searching for some kind of sign. Is this how it started that time, too? Did she lie there like this right before? A tight, stifling pressure rose in my chest.
Finally I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.
“This isn’t the same,” I said. “Not at all like then.”
Her first love had cheated on her and left her for someone else—I haven’t left her. I’m wavering, that’s true, and I understand that it’s enormously painful news to take in, the news that not only have I been with another woman but also that I’m uncertain of whether I want us to stay together. But I’m still here. I haven’t moved out of our bedroom or suggested we get a divorce, and I haven’t seen Anna since I told my wife about her.
On the spur of the moment, I took her hand in mine.
“You understand that, right? Then was then, and this is now.”
Her fingers were ice-cold, and suddenly I didn’t know if I was trying to convince myself or her.
I cautiously stroked the back of her hand. Thought about the degradation she’d had to endure back then. How her first love had crushed her completely with his lies and deceit, but also with his patronizing attitude. And what it made her do. How she couldn’t handle losing him and how, hurt and desperate, she made up a story about being pregnant in the hope that he would come back. Her plan backfired when the boy didn’t question her story and instead spread it around and made jokes at her expense. That was when she got out the kitchen knife.
I turn away from the window and walk over to my desk, pick up my phone, and call home. It rings and rings, but no one picks up. Either she’s asleep, or she’s not there. But why would my wife do that? Why would she let me believe that she’s sacked out in bed and then go somewhere else while I’m away? My thoughts turn back to what happened in the bedroom this morning, and I shiver a little.
I don’t want you to hurt yourself again. The thought had dwelled on my tongue but didn’t go any further. Because, right then, she moved. She pulled her hand away, and when I turned to face her, she looked me right in the eyes for the first time since the dinner when I’d laid my cards on the table. The look in her eyes was murky and confused. I felt an urge to get up from the edge of the bed, but I didn’t.
She slowly rolled over from her side to her back and folded back the covers. Then she started pulling her nightgown up, over her thighs. I misinterpreted her intentions at first. But soon enough I understood that she had something totally different from seduction in mind. She folded up her nightgown to reveal her stomach. Her fingers felt their way over her skin, and even before they reached their goal, I realized they were on their way there, to the place in her body where she had once stuck in a knife and cut into her own flesh. One cut, which she had then sewn up herself.
The guy who didn’t believe her, who had cheated on her and mocked her, she was going to get back at him. “An abortion,” she’d said when showing him the wound on her abdomen. “Now do you believe me?” He did not. “That’s not how they do it,” he explained before adding: “What kind of monster are you?”
When she told me that the barbed wire was a lie, when she finally revealed the whole truth to me… yes, I felt faint. If I hadn’t been lying down, I would have fallen over. I couldn’t get it into my head that such an act was possible, could hardly imagine what it would take to inflict that kind of injury on yourself. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think that this wasn’t some stranger we were talking about, some crazy person on the news. I couldn’t understand that this was my woman—my very own wife—who had deliberately plunged a knife into her own belly, slicing through skin and fat and muscles, and who then, all by herself, stitched the wound closed.
As if hypnotized, I stared at the exposed scar just above the top of her underwear, which otherwise she usually always kept covered. This time she didn’t. This time, she didn’t try to hide the scar but instead clenched her fist just above it. Then she slowly unfurled her index finger until it was out straight, and her hand was practically trembling with resolve. She pointed straight at the scar, and when I raised my gaze to her face, I saw intense dark clarity in her eyes.
The confusion that had filled them before now was gone.
28
With one tug, I lower the blinds and angle them so that it’s impossible to see either in or out. It makes the kitchen feel smaller. Small and confined, but that’s how I want it. I don’t want to see the house across from me, don’t want to think about the look on Leo’s face as I walked down his stairs and past him out his front door.
At first I thought I would be able to handle the situation. I felt the words forming in my mouth—lying, adult, explain-things-away sorts of words. But then Leo looked at me, and I was done for. I couldn’t get a sound out other than mumbling that I had to go, that I needed to work. That part, at least, is true. The text is waiting, the text I need to finish before I will allow myself to contemplate my future—my and Peter’s future.
The computer sits in the kitchen, sleeping and dark but still alive, reminding me that my departure earlier happened so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to shut it down properly. When I touch one of the keys, it hums and the screen lights up. For a long time, I stare at the last several lines I wrote, and then I look up. Suddenly I have the feeling that I missed something important, something I overlooked, and that I really should… Then I stop midthought. Stop now. Stop putting off what needs to be done.
I fetch a stack of research materials from the living room, books that I have collected and made varying degrees of use of over the years. I used several of them as the basis and inspiration for previous writing projects. I sit down at the kitchen table, making a show of turning my back to the window, and pick up one book at a time. If something catches my eye, I flip through the pages and read a few random paragraphs. My hands are still trembling to start with, but as what I’m reading grabs my attention, I succeed in distancing myself from thoughts of what recently transpired. The stack contains books about psychiatric diagnoses and disorders, about developmental psychology and destructive relationship patterns. There are also quite a few books about grief and loss and death. I feel a pang inside: Mama.
I lay book after book aside. The pile gets shorter until I’m holding Getting Away with Murder. It came out a few years ago, written by a lawyer who was already bathed in scandals. Published by a small, but reliable, publisher, the book approaches the subject as if consulting or coaching the reader, as if it’s targeted at potential murderers. When the book came out, it stirred up a lot of controversy and debate.
With a grimace, I open up the book and read the first few lines: “Every year a number of homicides go undetected by our legal system.” Then I turn the page and browse the accounts of actual murder cases. There are shootings, hatchet attacks, fires, fights that got out of control, drug transactions, and simulated suicides. The attorney’s own commentary and analyses are interspersed here and there. He’s especially interested in what made the cases hard to solve, details that could just as easily have led to the perpetrator going free. Even if no laws were broken, the spirit evident in the title is still present in the text.