The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [22]
As for her own marriage, Kathryn thought on balance that it had probably been more difficult for her to make the transition from being lovers to being a couple than it had been for Jack. It had come later for her and Jack than she suspected it came for other couples, and in that they had been lucky. Was it when Mattie was eleven? Twelve? Jack had seemed to withdraw ever so slightly from Kathryn. Nothing she could point to or articulate exactly. In every marriage, she had always thought, a couple created its own sexual drama, played out in the bedroom or silently in public or even over the telephone, a drama that was oft repeated with similar dialogue, similar stage directions, similar body parts as props to the imagination. But if one partner then slightly altered his role or tried to eliminate some of his lines, the play didn’t track quite as well as it once had. The other actor, not yet aware that the play had changed, sometimes lost his lines or swallowed them or became confused by the different choreography.
And so it had been, she thought, with Jack and her. He had begun to turn to her less often in bed. And then, when he did, it seemed as though an edge was gone. It was just a gradual sliding away, so gradual as to sometimes be almost imperceptible, until one day it occurred to Kathryn that she and Jack hadn’t made love in over two weeks. She’d thought at the time that it was his need for sleep that had overwhelmed him; his schedule was difficult, and he often seemed tired. But sometimes she worried that possibly she was responsible for this new pattern, that she had become too passive. And so she had tried for a time to be more imaginative and playful, an effort that wasn’t entirely successful.
Kathryn had vowed not to complain. She would not panic. She would not even discuss the matter. But the price for such steadfastness, Kathryn soon realized, was the creation of a subtle gauze all around her, a veil that kept her and Jack just beyond easy reach of each other. And after a while, the gauze began to make her anxious.
And then there had been the fight. The one truly terrible fight of their marriage.
But she wouldn’t think about that now.
“There wasn’t anything,” she said to Robert. “I think I’ll go up to bed.”
Robert nodded, agreeing with the idea.
“It was a good marriage,” Kathryn said.
She ran her palm over the table.
“It was good,” she repeated.
But actually she thought that any marriage was like radio reception: It came and went. Occasionally, it — the marriage, Jack — would be clear to her. At other times, there would be interference, a staticky sound between them. At those times, it would be as though she couldn’t quite hear Jack, as though his messages to her were drifting in the wrong direction through the stratosphere.
“Do we need to notify any other of his family?” Robert asked. Kathryn shook her head.
“He was an only child. His mother died when he was nine,” she said. “And his father died when he was in college.”
She wondered if Robert Hart already knew this.
“Jack never talked about his childhood,” she said. “Actually, I don’t know much about his childhood at all. I always had the impression it wasn’t a very happy one.” Jack’s childhood had been one of those subjects Kathryn had thought there was all the time in the world to talk to him about.
“Seriously,” Robert said. “I’d be happy to stay here.”
“No, you should go. I have Julia here if I need someone. What does your ex-wife do?”
“She works for Senator Hanson. From Virginia.”
“When you asked me about Jack,” Kathryn said, “about his being depressed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there was one time I would say he was not depressed, exactly, but definitely unhappy.”
“Tell me about it,” Robert said.
“It was about his job,” she said. “This was about five years ago. He became bored with the airline. Nearly, for a short time, terribly bored. He began to fantasize about quitting, giving it up for another job — aerobatics, he said. In a Russian-built YAK 27, I remember. Or opening his own operation. You know, a flying school,