“What’s wrong?” I asked.
It was a moment before she answered. I heard her sigh as she pulled the covers up to her shoulders.
“Happy anniversary,” she finally whispered.
Twenty-nine years, I remembered too late, and in the corner of the room, I spotted the gifts she’d bought me, neatly wrapped and perched on the chest of drawers.
Quite simply, I had forgotten.
I make no excuses for this, nor would I even if I could. What would be the point? I apologized of course, then apologized again the following morning, and later in the evening, when she opened the perfume I’d carefully selected with the help of a young lady at Belk’s, she thanked me and patted my leg.
Sitting beside her on the couch, I knew I loved her then as much as I did the day we were married. But as I studied her—noticing perhaps for the first time the absent look in her eyes, the sad tilt of her head—I suddenly realized that I wasn’t quite sure whether she still loved me.
One
It’s heartbreaking to realize that your wife may not love you. After Jane had carried the perfume up to our bedroom, I sat on the couch for hours, wondering how this situation had come to pass. For in this latest incident, I sensed not only her disappointment in an absentminded spouse, but the traces of an older melancholy—as if my lapse were simply the final blow in a long, long series of careless missteps.
Had our marriage turned out to be a disappointment for Jane? The thought disturbed me, for although our life together might be considered fairly ordinary, I always assumed that Jane was as content as I.
Like many men, my life was largely centered around work. For the past thirty years, I’ve worked with the law firm of Ambry, Saxon and Tundle in New Bern, North Carolina. I enjoy golfing and gardening on the weekends, prefer classical music, and I read the newspaper every morning, beginning with the sports page. Though Jane was once an elementary school teacher, she spent the majority of our married life raising three children. She ran both the household and our social life, and her proudest possessions are the photo albums that she carefully assembled as a visual history of our lives. Our brick home is complete with a picket fence and automatic sprinklers, we own two cars and are members of both the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. In the course of our married life, we’ve saved for retirement, built a wooden swing set in the backyard that now sits unused, attended dozens of parent-teacher conferences, voted regularly, and contributed to the Episcopal church each and every Sunday. At fifty-six, I’m three years older than my wife.
As I sat there reviewing the milestones of our years together, I wondered whether the seeds of Jane’s melancholy lay somehow in the fact that we’re such an unlikely pair. We’re different in almost every way, and though opposites can and do attract, I have always felt that I made the better choice on our wedding day. Jane is, after all, the kind of person I always wished to be. While I tend toward stoicism and logic, Jane is outgoing and kind, with a natural empathy that endears her to others. She laughs easily and has a wide circle of friends. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most of my friends are, in fact, the husbands of my wife’s friends, but I believe this is common for most married couples our age. Yet, Jane has always seemed to choose our friends with me in mind, and I’m appreciative that there’s always someone for me to visit with at a dinner party. Had we not been married, I sometimes think that I would have led the life of a monk.
There is more, too: I’m charmed by the fact that Jane has always displayed her emotions with childlike ease. When she’s sad, she cries; when she’s happy she smiles, and her expression when she’s surprised never fails to delight me. In those moments, there’s an ageless innocence about her, and though a surprise by definition is unexpected, for Jane, the memories of a surprise can arouse the same excited feelings for years afterward. Sometimes when she’s daydreaming, I’ll ask her what she’s thinking about and she’ll suddenly begin speaking in giddy tones about something I’ve long forgotten. This, I must say, has never ceased to amaze me.
While Jane has been blessed with the tenderest of hearts, in many ways, she’s stronger than I am. Like most southern women, her values and beliefs are grounded by God and family; she views the world through a prism of black and white, right and wrong. For Jane, hard decisions are reached instinctively—and are almost always right— while I, on the other hand, find myself weighing endless options and frequently second-guessing myself. And unlike me, my wife is seldom self-conscious. This lack of concern about other people’s perceptions requires a confidence that I’ve always found elusive, and above all else, I envy this about her.