It isn’t a circle. Not exactly that. More like a broken ring then, with another lighter X-ray of itself to one side. Both symbols seem to have been burned into the leather, but white-hot, so heated that they have left pale impressions of themselves rather than the charred, blackened versions one might expect. It is almost a brand of sorts, like those found on the hides of cattle in the Wild West of the nineteenth century, but upon inspection can be seen to come from within. The marks are on the inside.
She pulls the wallet closer now, to inspect it a bit more carefully. It’s one of the two she’s given him over the years, a birthday or Father’s Day gift that had, at the time, been much appreciated. Items had been transferred almost immediately from the previous billfold into the new one, as if to physically display approval. Driving license, cash money, that lucky Mexican peso that he had found in the dirt of a roadside rest stop on the way to San Diego. Looking at it now, the wallet in question, she can’t decide if this is the first one or the second—black leather isn’t very forthcoming with details. But she had given it to him, of this she is certain.
How long would it take to create a mark like this one? A year, maybe three? Longer? And in strange, sporadic intervals. True, he travels once or twice a month in his work, but only for days at a time. No more than a week. It would take quite a while for wear of this kind to make itself known. Many repetitions. If she lets herself drift for a moment, she can imagine the often-repeated scenario, see him pulling the ring off his finger in the airport lounge and then tucking it safely away. Or perhaps earlier. In the taxi or even just as he slips out the front door. For once the deception begins, one never knows how quickly the disease may spread.
She sits down on the edge of their California queen, slumping almost, to rest on the plaid comforter that adorns this bed in their master suite. A first-floor master, the kind she’d always dreamed of when they were younger and poorer and happier. Much, much happier than this. This moment in which she has now discovered the circle. A circle that will surely lead to the fiery depths of hell as quickly as any path in the pages of Dante. She looks at it again, this insignificant coin pocket that now seems to hold the key, the missing key to all the silences and layovers and business trips and the slow, seeping death that has crept into her marriage. Into the very fiber of her life. And bones. She studies it, the ringlet, turning it this way and that as she holds it up to the skylight overhead. Not very scientific, to be sure, but she’s not operating in the world of science right now. No. Her thoughts are being fueled by pain and anger and sorrow and doubt. A kind of science, perhaps, the science of emotions, but not a very practical one. Not one that wins any Nobel prizes or cures any cancer or helps any young children sit up straight and walk again. This empirical path leads in one direction only—to the land of regret.
She then makes an effort to squash these thoughts, these random assaults on her own self and relationship. Maybe it is the mark of a coin. Unlikely, she reasons, but certainly a theory worth exploring. Worth seeing it through before jumping in the Benz and driving downtown and confronting him in his office, anyway. Before bursting in on a business lunch or a round of golf, tripping over her own inappropriate shoes as she swings this rogue calfskin pouch wildly about the air in front of him. Yes, it’s well worth a try. She then trots off to the kitchen, making her way to the enamel jar where all loose change is dumped upon arrival home. Both he and she have turned this little action into a kind of practiced ritual. And rituals are nice; they’re lovely, they signal a connection between two like beings. Crawling back up that circular drive and parking and walking through those doors again and dropping a handful of loose change into the jar somehow says, “Honey, I love you,” through these hollow, empty halls. To be sure, it is a language known only to desperate, middle-aged ears, but a language nonetheless.
A quarter won’t do it. A penny has already been tried. The dime, by quick process of elimination and by virtue of its size, seems improbable. Only the nickel can save her now. Save both of them, actually. From what she is not wholly sure, but the notion of being saved is a comforting one. She turns the coin over and over between her fingers, trying to focus and study it. Looking at that profile of Jefferson. The cute little ribbon at the back of his head, the base of his neck. How many people did this fine president save in his day, anyway? Thousands, no doubt, in some fashion or another—so why not now, in her time of great need? Why not, indeed?
The five-cent piece is held to the outside of the wallet first, to give some rough estimation of its size. Shape. Dimension. There, look at that. It is not a horrible fit, if not a perfect one. She is unconvinced by this little test, however, this rough application of matter and mass. Perhaps it’s better to check it from the inside, from deep within, where the offending roundness first began. Yes, that’s it. An ideal solution. She drags the entire enterprise off to the bathroom now, where better lighting exists. A makeup mirror, normally used for tweezering and brushing and flossing and plucking, will also be added to the mix. Help with the deed of unmasking the villain or clearing his good name. To find out the brutal, honest, ugly truth about her chosen mate. Whatever that may mean.
Holding the coin in place with a free finger, she leans in to get a better look. Her reading glasses have to be adjusted this way and that because of the mirror’s glare, but that’s to be expected. This entire undertaking is new to her and a degree of improvisation is not only required but is to be expected. Yet from the outside, it is impossible to tell. Yes. It could be that a nickel has been the culprit, and for this she is most relieved. Or, at least, very relieved. “Most” relieved would only be possible with a clean bill of moral health for her spouse, and this she cannot provide. Not yet. Not at this time.
He’ll be home soon, of course. She knows this, sitting perched on the edge of the toilet seat. A wooden toilet seat, actually, one that he’d spotted in a SkyMall catalog during one of his many plane trips across the country. Or perhaps on his way to Europe. Short bursts of travel that come up without notice and with only the tiniest look of betrayal in his eyes. Dancing somewhere within his pupils. “I’m going but I really don’t have to. They don’t require it, but I want to. I’d like to do it. I offered to, in fact.” This is what she always dreams of on the evening that he leaves. Not of palm tree beaches or missed office parties or even that he is falling into the arms of some younger siren, no. It is simply the nightmare of loss. A Cassandra-like vision of the here and now, a vision that says, “Yes, my dear, it’s true. He’d rather be anywhere but here with you.” He’d seen it, this toilet fixture on which she finds herself, on page 37 and had called the 1-800 number from his business class seat with the magazine open on his lap. He’d liked it that much, this throwback to a different era. Back in the day when the bathroom was not connected to the house, or at least the house proper. It had come by FedEx and been waiting for him when he returned. He came back from Cologne with a box of Godiva chocolates for her (the smaller box, like the ones they sell in Lord & Taylor now) and had gone straight down the hallway with the wooden seat cradled under one arm. Dropped his bags in the bedroom and installed it himself. And was the first to use it, as well. And now here she sits on it, staring at his wallet and wondering. Wondering just what the answer may be. The answer to the puzzle that is this circle. This infernal circle on his coin pocket that carries with it the power to change the world. Her world, at least.
In the end she decides that only his ring can answer to the charges. Only his wedding band, the one she had picked out with her mother back in Akron so many years ago, at the jewelry store on Wicker Street that her second cousin’s father owned. This alone would be able to do the trick. So now she’ll have to wait. Wait for him to return. Or return the call, at least, the one she’d already placed to his cell phone. Then wait longer still, for him to turn back around on the freeway, maybe down near the exit to the outlet mall or even later, where the traffic bottlenecks near the Sacred Heart Hospital. Maybe even there. She’s looked through the pockets and cracks and crannies of the thing earlier, to see what else might be found. It doesn’t surface very often, you see, this wallet of his. He keeps it deep within his pocket at all times, even in his bathing suit, which looks peculiar but she never says a word about it. That’s what had made her curious about it, after all. Its absence. But that’s the case with anything, isn’t it? When you know something is there, has been for so long, and then for some reason it simply goes away, well, you can’t help but notice. You realize when it disappears. A bird on your lawn, a friend from church, an ice-cream flavor down at the Baskin-Robbins. Your husband’s love. When these things go and you still desire them, you tend to notice. And this was the case with his wallet.
In the old days, those heady prechildren days of possibility, his billfold would spend the night on their chest of drawers. Always in the same spot, always placed there before bed. A ritual. But slowly, within the last six years or so, the wallet had disappeared, burrowed down into the man’s trousers, never to see the light of day. Not around her, anyway. And this—not at first, no, not that—had finally led her to this very moment, this haunted hunting through his things. The lowest place she could imagine ever finding herself. Pawing through his drawers, digging through his sport coats looking for a clue. Some clue to this hopeless place that her heart has rented out for the summer. At the corner of despair and desperation. Just across the tracks from damnation. You know the place, or if you don’t, you’ve heard of it. This is where the journey of her married life has led her—crouched down on a wooden toilet seat and searching through her husband’s belongings.
Now, when he returns home to retrieve the offending wallet, she’ll be ready for him. Ready to pounce while he’s still behind the wheel, without letting him even stand so he can utilize his height against her. He always uses this against her in an argument, but not this time. “This will be a full-on attack,” she surprises herself by saying aloud, and she begins to steel herself to the notion. Shove the thing right in his face and demand an answer. Better yet, grab the ring from his hand as it dangles out the window, the way it always does when he drives on balmy days like this. Grab it and run off across the lawn before he knows what hit him—if she can make it around the side yard, back to the pool house and lock herself in, then she stands a decent chance of finding the truth. A moment where she can test the ring against the spots. The circles. These circular wells of truth that stand in sharp relief to the rest of his wallet.
It’s not that the truth would even start to suggest that he’s done anything wrong, at least in the biblical sense or in a court of law. Not at all. It wouldn’t immediately say that he has cheated on her or that another woman or man or whatever he’s drawn to—she hardly knows him, she fully realizes now, even after twenty-some years—is waiting out there, ready to join his life. It merely states, in no uncertain terms, that he is open to it. That on the road, he prefers to appear a single man. Unconnected to her. Alone. And this tears at her very soul, this idea. Her ring has grown tight and tarnished on her gnarled left hand, never even removed during shampooing or gardening. Not once, even during those painful months of pregnancy when her digits ballooned to twice their normal size, did she take off her wedding band. And what she’s found, or believes she’s found, paints a very different portrait of her marriage than the one she carries in the family room of her mind. The den of her dreams. This deceit in his wallet speaks of another life, a life that he has lived out for years now, happily without her.
The sound of wheels rumbling across gravel makes her jump. Stand up. Tense. It is now or never, she supposes, this hideous moment of truth. To let him enter the house would be fatal, like lowering the bridge and inviting the Vikings in for a cup of tea. She knows the advantage is hers and must be taken. So out the bathroom door she goes, padding across the Berber carpet on the landing and heading down the stairs. Plunging into a world she doesn’t understand and is unprepared for. Ill-equipped and unfamiliar with notions of separation and divorce and alimony. Seen them on TV, to be sure, and heard of onetime friends at the club doing it, but it is nothing she was raised on or cares to know anything about, thank you very much. Not until this moment, anyhow. But on she scoots, along the hallway and out onto the porch. She stares down at him, sitting there in his El Dorado all balding and tanned and distant. The man she loves. And then it happens. The gesture. An impatient wave from him that unwittingly heralds her attack. She sees it—that dismissive “hurry up already” shake of the wrist—and she takes a breath. A long breath, there at the top of the steps, with tears starting to collect in the corners of her eyes. His snapping fingers call her to battle. Snap-snap-snap. And then down she rushes, and down and down. Headfirst and growling, moving with surprising urgency toward the big Cadillac. She sees that her husband responds by desperately trying to raise the tempered window as she approaches. Finger tapping the metal button repeatedly.
For a small woman, she hits the door with enormous speed and power. The car rocks on its springs and her husband is tossed hard to one side. Before he can gather himself she attacks again, throwing herself like a rabid dog against the half-opened window. Again and again. And then again. Bang-bang-bang. And for the first time in their marriage—perhaps even in his life—the man senses fear within himself. Feels a squirt of urine shoot out into his briefs. In another situation he would throw open the door and spill out onto the ground, ready for a fight. But not this time. No. For as his wife continues to press herself against the glass and shriek at him, he can only grab the webbing of his safety belt in horror. Leaning for all he’s worth to his right. Holding on for dear life.