The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [36]
Kathryn shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
Robert looked briefly at the ceiling of the car.
“First of all, we don’t even know if it’s true. The Safety Board has already issued a strenuous reprimand. The source who leaked the quotes has apparently been fired. They won’t say his name, and he hasn’t come forward. And second of all, even if it is true, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Or even mean anything. Necessarily.”
“But it does,” Kathryn said. “Something happened.” “Something happened,” Robert said.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
SHE STARES AT THE COUNTER, AT THE GREASY pots and glasses and the caked roasting pan, at the sickening pile of rotting vegetables in the sink, at the dishwasher, which is full of clean dishes and will have to be unloaded before she can even begin to clear the counter. Upstairs, she can hear the muted tap, tap, tapping of the keyboard and then the stuttered start of an online connection.
She looks down at her wool skirt, her black tights, her sensible pumps. This afternoon, she had band practice after school and was late getting home. The three of them ate dinner in near silence — not so much from strain, she thought, as from exhaustion. Then Jack went up to his office, Mattie to her room to practice her clarinet. Kathryn was left in the kitchen.
She climbs the stairs to Jack’s office and stands silently with her glass of wine, leaning against the doorjamb. She has no articulate dialogue, just truncated thoughts, unfinished sentences. Phrases of frustration.
Perhaps she has had too much to drink.
Jack looks up at her with a vaguely puzzled expression on his face. He has on a flannel shirt and jeans. He’s put on weight recently, about ten pounds. He has a tendency to beefiness when he isn’t careful.
— What’s happening? she asks.
— What?
— I mean, you come home from a five-day trip. I’ve hardly seen you. You don’t say a word during dinner. You hardly speak to Mattie. And then, bingo, you vanish, leaving me with all the dishes.
He seems surprised by these accusations, as, in truth, is she. He blinks. He turns his head to something that has caught his attention on the screen.
— Even now, you can’t pay attention to what I’m saying. What is so goddamn interesting on the computer, anyway?
He takes his hands off the keyboard and rests his elbows on the arms of the chair.
— What is this all about? he asks.
— You, she says. — And me.
— And?
— We’re not, she says. — We’re just not. She takes a sip of wine.
— You’re not there, she says. — You used to be so . . . I don’t know . . . romantic. You used to compliment me all the time. I can’t remember the last time you told me I was beautiful.
Her lip quivers, and she looks away. She hears her mother’s voice then, wailing from the upstairs bedroom of Julia’s house, and she feels sick inside. Her mother’s pleading voice, begging her husband to tell her she is beautiful. Has this bit of awful dialogue been lying in wait for her? Kathryn wonders. A kind of grotesque legacy?
She shudders. But she can’t leave it alone. For months now, Jack has been distant, as though not altogether there, as though constantly preoccupied. Preoccupation can be tolerated, Kathryn thinks, if it is finite.
— My God, she says, her voice rising a notch. — We haven’t been out to dinner in months. All you ever do is come up here and work on the computer. Or play on the computer. Whatever you do.
He leans back in the chair.
What possible answer can any man give to the accusation that he hasn’t recently told his wife that she is beautiful? she thinks to herself. That he has simply forgotten? That in fact he thinks it all the time, but just doesn’t say it? That he thinks she is desperately beautiful right that very minute?
That’s the problem with a fight, Kathryn decides. Even when you know the words you are saying are the worst possible utterances, there is always a point of no return. Of no backing off, no retreating. She is already there, and in