Lately I have been dreaming of an old woman. In the dream, the woman and I are walking. I say, “You must think I’m crazy,” and the old woman says, “I don’t know. If I left you, then I would have to go back to taking a different man every night.”
Then the woman lowers herself down into a push-up position, and she walks on her hands and feet. We talk about her commercial success. In the dream there are mansions. The mansions are tall but thinly drawn, and the sun is near the horizon.
It is wintertime, and my calls to Kate have not been returned.
* * *
The apartment my wife and I shared for three years was on the top floor of an old stone building. Often I had trouble saying the word “wife.” We had the top floor to ourselves, units 15 and 16. Sometimes in conversation, I mistakenly said girlfriend, or referred to our relationship as dating. When I said wife, it felt as though I was telling a lie.
We had two apartments, but one front door. You opened the front door, and at the end of a long entryway were two more doors, to the apartment on the left (#16) and the one on the right (#15). After some thought, we placed two bedrooms in the unit on the left and the common areas on the right.
I was unable to sleep. Each night I fell asleep early, and then woke up and lay awake until morning. I was worried at this time about a number of things. I was growing older, my talents had been wasted, and I knew that my wife would leave me for a younger, more successful man. Also, I worried that I was losing my mind. I was having vicious thoughts. I was full of bitterness. My wife was loyal and kind—everyone who met her commented on how much she loved me—but I nursed my malevolent feelings. I mentioned this to an analyst, a man whom I met with several times. He said, “Malevolent or vicious thoughts don’t necessarily imply insanity.” “So she’s cheating?” I said. He was openly confused by the leap. I was speaking a different language. I couldn’t communicate with the analyst, and so rather than showing up for our meetings, I walked around the mall where he kept an office. I couldn’t share this with my wife. In the middle of the night I sent an email to a new age couples therapist, but when she replied, I deleted the email. After sunrise I woke my wife up, gently, several times. She had trouble getting out of bed. She could only wake up when she was in danger of being late.
“You should take the car and go to the office now while you can still get there on time.”
“I’ll walk, so you can have the car,” she murmured. She fell back asleep.
My wife was very shy. She had a moonlike face. Her features were unusually even. She was pleasant to look at, but not beautiful. When she was nervous, when she spoke to strangers, sometimes her face trembled. She was quiet for long stretches of time, and believed in silly things.
* * *
After she was gone, I stayed in bed and did nothing. I was tired, and then I was frustrated, and after some time I opened my wife’s computer and turned on Outlook Express. I read her incoming mail. It was mostly communications with coworkers about small matters. I read what she had sent. Her replies were short, cordial, and efficient. I couldn’t find any secrets. I typed the name of her last boyfriend into her sent-mail box and read her emails to him. Then I went online and typed in the name of my last girlfriend and looked at photographs of her.
My first marriage ended when I’d had an affair. So I know how quickly these things happen. The wind blows, and a five-year commitment falls apart.
I went back to my wife’s inbox, and I found a love letter that she had written when she was in her twenties, to one of her old flames. She described a trip to the farmers’ market, dresses she wanted to buy, and the color of some berries that she had bought. The berries were green. It was not what she said, it was the way she said it.
I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and ate a handful of Brazil nuts. I stood in front of the sink. I can say these things now. At the time I couldn’t even think them to myself in an honest way.
* * *
In the car, I turned on Siri and said, “Driving directions. Trader Joe’s, Palo Alto.” Siri said, “I don’t understand.” I said it again, four or five times. My wife worked for a company that designed operating systems. I told her she should work on problems like this. “Everyday things. Then you’d make us rich.”
“You’ll make us rich with the new play,” she said, and then she corrected herself. “The new production. Besides, I am happy in our life. We have everything we need.”
Siri called out directions, and I followed them. I managed to get lost. I have a poor sense of direction. I always miss exits at the worst time. This happened and I had to drive ten miles on an open stretch before I could turn around.
The phone rang and I put it on speakerphone. It was my father. He said, “Did you drive by the place I sent? I saw you opened the photos.”
“No.”
“Why won’t you look in the Redwoods? They have nice things there. You could easily find something.”
I was driving on the highway and trying to figure out how to pull up directions on a different program. My father said, “Tom?”
“Don’t use my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t use it when you’re angry. You know like what, you’re not stupid. Besides, the fog is dangerous.”
“What?”
“The fog is dangerous in the Redwoods.”
“It’s not so bad. I drove through it at night.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“But people do live there, don’t they?”
“They don’t commute. I can’t have this discussion.”
“I guess you can’t talk about the sleep clinic.”
“I’m lost on the freeway. I don’t want to discuss checking myself into a new age asylum.”
“Well, are you going to just— Tom, you’re under strain. I’m worried about you. You can’t live in that drafty old apartment. I couldn’t sleep there either, and frankly, if you stay there, you’ll lose Kate. I think your marriage should be your first priority.”
“Boundaries.” I hung up the phone. I took an exit and pulled into the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes.
In the parking lot of the grocery store half an hour later, I called my father and apologized. My father said, “Son, it is not your fault. You’re not sleeping. I wish you all would at least come out to the house.”
“We’ll try.”
My father had struggled with psychiatric problems, and so had my mom.
It’s true I was very tired. Standing in front of one particular segment of floor cleaners, I picked up a scouring sponge and a package of sponges with dual sides. I didn’t know how I was supposed to decide between them.
* * *
At dinner, my wife talked about semaphores, possible synchronization problems, and her junior staff. I often felt worn down when she spoke. I felt frustrated, then nauseated. I realized that I would be sick and ran to the kitchen sink, where I threw up. I put my hands above my head and grasped the cabinet pulls and vomited. Then I turned and put a hand to my throat—I couldn’t get any air. I turned back to the sink and threw up.
When I came back to the table, my wife took her plate to the kitchen. She was trying to be polite, but she was confused.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Maybe you should lie down.”
“I’m not sick. I’m revolted. By you. All this talk about your office. Just to rub my nose in it. Why don’t you just say I’m a failure?”
“Ordinarily you like to hear how I describe things,” she said. “I think you’re unhappy.”
“Is that a joke?”
“What?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
I stood up and walked out of the room. I left my plate on the table. I went to the other side of the apartment. With the lights out, I got into pajamas and went to bed. I heard her go to the kitchen and run water to scrub the sink and wash my dish.
My wife is very particular about being clean. When I first met her parents, and she left the room, her father leaned in and said, “Let me warn you, my daughter is a bit obsessive about hygiene. I once caught her washing the sugar.”
“Really,” I said.
“That is not a joke.”
Later I asked my wife if she washed the sugar, and she said, “That’s ridiculous. How could I wash sugar.”
In bed, I thought about how a few nights before, my wife had gone to eat ice cream. She was on the other side of the apartment a long time. Her phone must have been hidden over there, on the other side of the apartment, so she could write in secret about the color of berries, and things like that, to other men—men from her office, the man who had come to repair the sink. I thought of the places where the phone might have been stowed, and the things they could get up to with just two smartphones. Then I thought of her in her office, and all the possibilities there, and I wondered about setting her phone to “find my phone” so that I could remotely follow her, but I could never do that. Then I planned what I would do the next morning after she left the apartment, how I would go into her email and search for things. But then, I realized, she would have a secret account. When my wife got into bed, she said, “I think I am pregnant.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“What?” She shook my arm. “Tom?”
“Just let me be weird awhile.”
She said again she was pregnant—she had missed two periods. My ex-wife is often telling me that my wife and I should not have a child. She says that her psychologist advised it. I lay there angry about that—how dare my ex-wife get involved in such a way. Really, it was outrageous. She was addicted to Adderall, an attorney who was literally paid in wasps’ nests.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” my wife said.
“Just ignore me,” I said. I was picturing my ex-wife in her psychologist’s office. It made me very angry.
“If you want to be ignored, then say, ‘I’m getting tired, I’m going to sleep.’ Don’t get up and storm out. I said I think I’m pregnant. What the hell is your problem? Snap out of it. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. I’m pregnant. You need to talk to me.”
She realized how mad she was as she spoke. She started to curse, to list my character flaws. When she talks like that, I can’t quite hear it. My adrenaline must shoot up too high. So I can’t remember what she said. She cursed and threw my glasses. They didn’t break. My wife was funny that way. She threw things, but they would never break.
I got out of bed and went to the other side of the apartment. I could not bear to say that I was jealous, that I was all alone, that I spent my life engrossed in imaginary conspiracies and humiliations, that we were haunted.
The next afternoon, while my wife was away, the phone rang.
“It’s Gwen from the Stokes Institute returning your call.”
“The Stokes what?”
“You called me. You’re having some difficulties in your marriage.”
“Oh yes, that was just crazy.”
She laughed. She said she could do a remote reading at no charge.
“Do you have some kind of electronic device?”
“Just my tarot cards.”
“I don’t believe in tarot cards. Think about how that sounds to me. You can help me with my marriage over the phone with your cards? Think about it. I didn’t realize you were like this.”
“The cards help me. I have fixed ideas. The cards help me see it differently, with an open mind.”
“I don’t believe in nonsense.”
“It’s free.”
“Look, I don’t give a damn how you think about it. One day I looked at my hands and they were smeared with shit.”
“A common sign of psychological disturbance.”
“But the shit wasn’t mine.”
“The mind manifests that, honey. It can manifest anything. Flash openness, and I’m going to lay out the cards. Just be quiet.”
I said, “My wife is pregnant.”
“Yeah, this is just your reading. The little being, she’s … if she was human it was a long time ago. She’s not malevolent, but she’s very negative.”
I laughed, “So this is like a devil? My baby?”
“I didn’t do a reading for your wife or for your unborn child. I’m talking about this being that is obsessed with you. There is a ghost on you.”
I felt a cold fear. I also felt similar to how I had felt in school, the time I had lice. I knew she was right, and that I should ask her how to proceed. But another part of me overrode those feelings. The woman was a crazy con artist, or a flake.
Still, I said, “Hypothetically, if one spouse were cheating on the other, could your cards see it?”
“Your wife isn’t cheating.”
“Did you lay out the cards?”
For the short term, she advised me to bathe a lot. She said it was important to get a cleaning. She said she would do it for me. I said to go ahead, and she explained it had to be done in person, as soon as possible. “How much?” I asked. She quoted a price in four figures. She wasn’t available to come to our apartment. She said, “You can come to the center. You’ll have to stay a couple nights.”
* * *
A sign in front of Gwen’s house said THE STOKES INSTITUTE.
“It looks like it was the show house for the development,” my wife said. “I’m surprised they let her put that sign up.”
“If you’re going to be like this, we may as well turn around.”
“What? What did I say?”
“I’ve been very honest with you…”
Gwen came to the door in a purple sweatshirt and sweatpants bunched up to her knees. She was about sixty-five years old, with pin-straight blond hair that reached her shoulders, and perfectly cut bangs. She had a smooth brow and round, gentle eyes. She was very thin and walked with her hips tilted forward. I started to introduce myself and she cut me off. “I know.” She introduced herself to my wife and offered us tea. She took us on a tour, starting with the sewing room, and then each of the four bedrooms. She showed us the bathroom and pointed out the small tub. She went back to her enormous kitchen with skylights showing the fog and glass patio doors to more fog rolling outside. Then she said, “Let me show you my work space.” On the walls were photographs of Gwen in her twenties. She had been remarkably beautiful.
“That looks like a Helmut Newton,” my wife said.
“It is,” Gwen said. “I used to be somewhat attractive.”
“Somewhat,” I joked. She ignored me. I could tell that Gwen’s past changed my wife’s impression of her.
We went into a garden room that was made almost entirely of glass and had a shining wooden floor. There was a kind of shrine, like a series of stacking tables, each in a different kind of natural stone. They had crystals jutting from their sides so they looked like slices of rock from a rock-and-gem show. On each surface were golden bowls full of water, or flowers, or cake. One held a mirror and a painting of a lady.
“Each stone has its own power,” Gwen started to explain. “That first layer is pure amethyst. After that is agate—”
My wife said she needed to use the restroom. She asked me to come in with her. She closed the bathroom door, sat on the toilet. She rested her head in her hands. “We have to drive home through all this fog.”
“No, don’t worry. Gwen said we can stay a couple of nights—actually, we need to for the purification.”
She moaned. She said, “How did this happen? How did I wind up in this position?”
She got a Valium out of her purse.
“Can I have one?” I said.
She took it out of her mouth, split it, and gave me half. In moments like this I saw my wife correctly. She said, “What are we going to eat?”
“I’ll go and ask.”
I was halfway down the stairs when I stopped. I put my hand on the wall to catch my breath. All of the grievances and burdens of my life overwhelmed me, and I went upstairs and apologized to my wife. I said, “I couldn’t ask.”
“Well, if we’re staying here, we’re staying here,” she said. “Let’s just go downstairs, tell her we’re tired, and ask her where we’re sleeping.”
* * *
My wife and I got in bed and held each other. She said, “Scratch my back.”
I put a hand through the sleeve of her T-shirt.
“No, higher. Higher. There, now over to the middle.”
I scratched with both hands.
“Hey, there’s a wolverine,” she said. “Ow.”
“There’s a wolverine?” I stopped scratching and looked at my nails.
“Yeah.”
“Where?” I held out my left hand.
She touched each of my fingers with her tongue. She said, “I don’t know. I can’t find it now.”
I looked at my pinkie. “I think it’s this one.”
“Maybe so, I didn’t check that one.”
I bit the nail down and said, “Turn over.” I scratched her back again.
She said, “Ow, it’s still there. The wolverine.”
“I had it lifted!” I said.
She turned over and I held up my hand to show her that the pinkie was curled up.
There was a knock at the bedroom door.
“Come in,” I said. “Come in.” I said it a few times. Then I got up and opened the door. I didn’t even bother putting on a shirt. Gwen didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m going to the store,” she said.
“We were just going to sleep.”
“Isn’t your wife hungry?”
I turned. My wife shrugged.
“Let me go,” Gwen said. “I don’t mind. She’s got to eat for two, right? I’ll get some materials for a purification while I’m gone.”
“You told her I’m pregnant?” my wife asked.
I got back in bed beside her. We were both in our underwear. I said, “Let’s cuddle until she gets back. Enfold me in your wax wing.”
She chuckled. I turned my back to her and she put an arm around me.
Gwen was gone for an hour. She came back with takeout: steaks, gumbo, and arugula salad. It was too much food for me—too rich and too late, but my wife ate everything. I was ready to go to bed, but Gwen lit a fire. She read a prayer, and burned food. I kept looking at my wife, to say, “Where are we, this is crazy?” but my wife was watching Gwen intently. Gwen said, “I am offering everything nice in the world to the being—whatever she would like. I’m asking her to go.”
“What being?” my wife asked.
“There’s a ghost living on me,” I told my wife. “Gwen said so.”
Gwen said, “Don’t pin it all on me.”
My wife said, “Actually, right now, that makes a lot of sense.”
When Gwen was finished, we all felt better. I felt better because I could go to sleep, and my wife felt better because she hoped something would change me back to the man I used to be. Gwen said, “The being is still there. She is happy now, but she is strong.”
As we were falling asleep, my wife said, “Why don’t we just live here?”
“In Gwen’s house?”
“No, in a house like it. In the Redwoods.”
* * *
The next afternoon Gwen sent my wife and me to the Kroger’s near the house to get materials for the next ritual, what she called the real purification. I coughed several times each block. My wife said, “Could you not make that last sound?”
“It hurts.”
“I know. Just that last sound.”
“It hurts me.”
“It feels very aggressive.”
I rolled down my window and leaned against my elbow. I coughed more, and hacked. I coughed in the grocery store. People turned to watch, so I did it louder to show them it was up to me whether I coughed. I even considered spitting in the aisle, to show them. The grocery store was much bigger than the kind of grocery store I was accustomed to, but the food was not arranged well at all. My wife said she would get the ritual materials from Gwen’s list. She told me to get food. I was too disoriented to shop. I put ice cream and salt-and-vinegar potato chips into my basket. When my wife found me, she looked at the two items and then at me. I was angry. I didn’t know why I was angry, so I coughed. I said, “We can always come back.”
At the checkout register my wife said, “What about Gwen? She’s hosting us. I bet she’d like a burger.”
“I don’t think so. She strikes me as a vegetarian.”
My wife gave me a funny look I didn’t understand. I understand it now. It was very simple, of course. My wife was hungry. My wife would have liked a burger.
* * *
Gwen performed the big purification when we got home. It took her several hours to prepare. She had to cook an elaborate meal, and she took some time in her bedroom getting dressed in an organza robe and a crown. By this time, I had hope. Maybe, I thought, maybe it will all work out. Maybe it’s true what she says—hadn’t I been acting strangely? Wasn’t jealousy another word for possession? She lit a fire outside and read a long text. The fog lifted during the ceremony—due to the sun, I thought, but Gwen said it was auspicious.
“I’m cured?” I said.
“I don’t know. The being is a bit more powerful than ordinary. If it were me, I would not ever set foot again in your apartment.”
We would stay a second night. She wanted to call another expert. She warned me that the being had her feelings hurt and might get up to mischief.
* * *
That night, my wife and I got a DVD from Gwen’s collection. We chose No Country for Old Men. We were both exhausted. During one of the first scenes, Chigur was handcuffed behind his back. He slipped the handcuffs down his legs and stepped over them, so he could have his arms in front. My wife said, “Why don’t people do that more often?”
“They do. I did it every time I went to jail. It’s just they fuss at you.”
“They fuss at you how?”
“They say, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’”
I was too tired to stay up. I said, “I think I’m going to sleep.”
When I woke up, my wife was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She was in the corner with her phone and the movie had started to replay.
“Who are you texting?” I said.
“My mother.”
“Why is the movie starting over again?”
“I wanted to see something I missed the first time.”
“Why are you on the floor?”
“I was eating pretzels.”
“Let me see the texts.”
She sighed. She stood and handed me the phone. There were two or three recent texts between her and her mother. A text message rolled in from a phone number. I recognized the number. It was an old boyfriend of hers. I felt sick, like I would faint. I didn’t read what it said. I threw the phone across the room.
“You were texting an old boyfriend.”
“I was texting my mother.”
She got the phone from the other side of the room. I tried to take it, but she held it behind her back. I knocked her onto the floor. It happened quickly.
“Show it to me,” I said. “I don’t care if you like him. I want you to go and be with him. You two are a very good match, in my opinion.”
I hit her in the face. She said, “Hit me one more time.”
I said, “Show it to me.”
“No. I won’t put up with this tyranny anymore.”
I stomped my wife’s foot and knocked her over. She tried to fight me. I took her hands and hit myself in the face.
I said, “Why, if you were going to do this, did you marry me? I was perfectly happy to be alone.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I saw the number.”
She gave me the phone and said, “So call it. Go ahead.”
I went to the bathroom. I locked the door. I thought she might come in, and so I got into the tub. I clicked the number, and after a few rings, a man answered. He said, “Hello?” I saw a plastic razor and imagined taking it out, how I would like to rake it across my wrist, or her face, and then for just a moment I saw the imp. She was dirty and slimy like something that had been in the drain for decades. She was made of hair and slime. She had her hands around my throat. But I must have been hallucinating, right?
When I came out of the bathroom, my wife was on the floor. I kneeled and lifted her head. I took her into my lap. She was my only friend in this world.