A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [157]
During my time in jail I wasn’t always sure that Howard and I would weather the storm, and I often tried to think what it was, a single thing, that went deep enough to hold us. I knew that what had brought us together in Ann Arbor was the mysterious chemical bonding that is not rational, eyeball to eyeball, so that we both went to our respective apartments and dreamed each other up, yearning, never straining against the force that drew us right against each other. Emma had been conceived shortly after we met, we had bought the farm, and then Claire came along. There were children and real estate to bind the ties. His parents, Nellie and Walt, had had a strong union, and Howard believed, with a kind of fervor that seemed nearly Christian, that there was a sanctity in marriage to uphold, that the husband and wife were to make their way through the world, shoulder to shoulder. I hadn’t known anything to speak of about marriage when we met, but I had found his aspirations impossible to resist. Lying in the hospital bed I thought to myself that my passion for Howard had soon been replaced by something that was stronger than respect, or habit, or maybe even need. It wasn’t a simple connection like affinity, because there had been periods when I felt as if I was living with a stranger, that I didn’t know or particularly like the man asleep beside me, the man who always got up so early. There were dozens of feelings that came to me in varying strengths as I lay still. I recalled my affection for Howard, my admiration, the attraction I felt to him, and the way he could take me by surprise and amuse me. Those feelings were on the side of what I called love. On the other side there was rage, irritation, disappointment, boredom. Somewhere in the middle was endurance, stolid and essential as air. I wasn’t certain the group of feelings wouldn’t cancel each other out, if any of them could possibly be powerful enough to carry me along by his side, shoulder to shoulder.
Because I couldn’t make out the blur of the next week, or month, I tried to see through to the end. I would die, and if I was still married to Howard I would be buried next to him. Where would we rest our useless bodies? We might not be allowed a plot in the Prairie Center Cemetery, but it would be of little matter, save for our hurt feelings, because Howard would want to be buried with his relatives in Minnesota. Imagine lying down near Nellie, having, even in death, even as a pile of bones, to feel her disapproval. Howard would want to be laid between the two of us, for old time’s sake. “Look on the positive side, sweetheart,” Nellie might say over Howard’s bleached carcass to me, “the worms need to eat too.” I would never feel at home in the Goodwin plot outside of Hastings, Minnesota. In the end maybe what marriage offered was the determination of one’s burial site. We would be laid to rest and little children would come along in the fall and kick leaves around and jump off the stones while their parents reprimanded them. Emma and Claire would grow up and die and go off and be buried with their husbands—oh, it was too lonely, too desolate to think about.
I sat in my bed while my head pounded and the guard sat outside chewing his gum. I thought of a time right after we’d moved to Prairie Junction. Emma was a baby. We had put her in her crib in the otherwise empty nursery. When she was sleeping soundly we went out, locking the swollen door behind us. Howard assured me it would be all right. We would be gone for just a minute. It was so hot and she was asleep. We had run down the lane in the dark and yanked off our clothes, dropped them in the sand. Howard carried me in the good, cool water, kissing my neck and my breasts. He had let me go and we had swum side by side, going under, opening our eyes to the darkness. And I wondered, as I came up into the air, if my mother and father had ever done anything of the kind, swum naked together on a sweltering