Later, I wondered how I could have been so blind. But I had been drunk, and confused, and unhappy, and I did not make the connection.
The truth hit me on the Monday evening when Laura returned home from college.
~
She was working in her study and I was preparing dinner. We had three bottles of red wine to choose from, and I made my way along the corridor to the study to ask which she might prefer. I opened the door and looked in; Laura was reading a sheet of paper, and as I stepped into the room she hurriedly hid it beneath a book and smiled brightly at me.
“Ed?”
“Ah... I was wondering which wine you’d like?”
“The Gallo will be fine.”
I returned to the kitchen, wondering what she had been reading. We had a trusting relationship: I had no secrets from my wife – no pieces of paper that I would be loath to show her – and I liked to think that neither did she.
The jealous fool in me was piqued.
I heard the study door open and close, and seconds later the bathroom door. I made my way to the study, slipped inside and regarded her desk.
The corner of the paper she had been reading protruded from beneath a Penguin Freud.
I pulled it out and began reading.
I had to sit down. I collapsed into the chair and a hot flush rushed through me, making me suddenly nauseous.
The writing was in Laura’s neat, bold hand:
I had a daughter called Ella. She was five. She died in an accident. Ed accidentally reversed the car over her. I witnessed the accident. I’ve removed all her photos. Ed refused James’ help – so he’s still living with the guilt. That’s why he’s so depressed so much of the time. When he wants to talk about it, I refuse. I know it’s hard on Ed, but he did spurn Mem-erase, after all.
There was more, but I heard the toilet flushing; I replaced the paper and hurried from the study.
I returned to the kitchen. I busied myself at the stove. My hands were shaking. I felt angry. Angry enough to hit out, to hurt. I was consumed with rage.
I tried to control my anger, so that when I confronted Laura with what she had done I would be rational, reasonable.
She entered the room; I should say
breezed
into the room, cheerful, smiling.
Why had I been so blind? How had I failed to notice her bonhomie, her blithe high spirits? Hers had not been the demeanour of a woman suffering the loss of a daughter.
She took her place at the table. I served the meal. I sat opposite her, sickened by the sight of the food before me, by Laura’s bright smile across the table.
She ate. She poured two generous measures of wine.
I said, “I’ve been thinking about Ella.”
She winced. “Ed, you know—”
“What? I know how you don’t like thinking about her?” I said with more bitterness than I intended. “But we had a beautiful daughter, Laura; she was our life. She fulfilled us. She made the future something wondrous, to be cherished. And then she was gone, just like that, in a terrible, meaningless, stupid accident.”
Laura stared at her plate, her mouth held oddly, off-centre, stalled mid-chew, an expression almost forbearing, or perhaps guilty?
I went on, “I’ve been thinking as well about that day we went to see Professor Enright, and what he offered us, and I’ve been thinking—” my hands were shaking, and my voice wavered “ – been thinking about how inhuman that offer was, don’t you think? I mean, I mean... grief is a process that has to be lived through, Laura. There’s no easy option. You just can’t sweep it under the carpet, forget the accident ever happened. Also,” I said, near to tears now, “also, Laura, we owe it to Ella, too. I mean... I mean, I couldn’t just let her go. My memories are all I’ve got of her.”
I stopped. I stared across the table, into my wife’s comprehending eyes.
I said, “How could you?” in barely a whisper.
She said, “Ed...” a breath freighted with the desire to be understood.
“How could you wipe our daughter from your memory?”
“Ed, you don’t understand. You can’t comprehend the pain I was going through.”
I hung my head and wept. I was overcome by her treachery.
I looked up and said, “Can’t I? Don’t you think I suffered, still am suffering?”
“Ed, I saw it happen. I witnessed the horror and there was nothing I could do.”
And, although she spoke the words, there was a vital weight of emotion absent from them. They sounded like an editorial, summarising how she
should
have felt.
I stared at her. “I lived through it as well, for chrissake! I’m still living through it! It’s the only way. The only way we can come to some understanding is to feel the pain and accept—”
“Ed, Ed... But why? Why is all the pain necessary? Why torture yourself?” She stopped, a light of understanding in her eyes. “It’s the guilt, isn’t it? You’ve burdened yourself with all the guilt and in a bid to punish yourself, you refused the treatment?”
“No!” I said, but at the same time, consumed by self-doubt, a part of me wondered if she were right.
“It’s a betrayal of Ella,” I said. “We owe it to her to remember the good times.”
Laura held my gaze. She said, “Ella is no longer part of our futures. I saw no reason not to have her expunged from my past, too. Of course I knew I had a daughter, and I can appreciate the pain I must have felt, but I’m free of it now, and grateful.”
I shook my head and whispered, “We can’t live like that. Pain is part of the experience of being alive. How can we claim to be fully alive if we simply wipe pain from our lives every time we don’t like what we’ve experienced?” I stopped, understanding hitting me.
“The other day, when you entered the studio and saw me holding Sam. Your lack of reaction that night... You had it wiped, didn’t you? Rather than learn the truth, you ran off and had it Mem-erased!”
She smiled at me, but the smile was faltering. “What was the truth, Ed?”
I waved. “Would you believe me, anyway? I was painting Sam, and she reminded me of Ella – how Ella might have been – and I lost it. Broke down. Sam tried to comfort me. You came in and saw us...”
“Well, I no doubt thought at the time that I couldn’t live with the knowledge of what you were doing.”
“So you conveniently had it wiped?”
“Sometimes, Ed, you deal with pain in the only way you know how.”
I drank my wine. We sat in mutual, hostile silence. I said at last, “You have no idea how wonderful a little girl Ella was.”
Laura got up and hurried from the room.
I sat in the descending twilight for a long time, drinking.
~
I did not mention Mem-erase again. I tried to act as though nothing at all had come between us. Outwardly we continued as we had for weeks and months and years: Laura went out to work while I painted and prepared the evening meal, which we would eat while chatting amiably of nothing in particular, whiling away the evening with red wine and a film.
But we could no longer connect.
She no longer had the experience of our daughter’s life, or death. She did not know what I was going through – how my grief informed my every word and action – and I could not comprehend the grief-free, care-free world which Laura now inhabited.
One of the wonders of marriage is that shared experience brings greater understanding of one’s partner: the past is a storehouse of mutual emotions from which to draw strength and comfort.
We were denied that experiential storehouse: now Laura looked at life from a vantage point I could not reach, and inevitably we grew apart.
~
One month later we had friends up from London for the weekend. Dave and Sophie DeVere were both artists, Dan an abstract painter and Sophie a sculptor, whom I had met at art college fifteen years earlier. Dave was perhaps my closest friend, and on their first meeting Laura and Sophie had hit it off like reunited sisters.
We had not seen them since the accident, and I suppose the meeting might have been fraught with potential awkwardness on both sides. However, I defused that when I greeted them, putting on a show of exaggerated bonhomie and chatting away about my current work, their respective projects and art in general.
They had a daughter, a year older than Ella had been. They had left her in London. They didn’t even mention her.
The weekend went well, even if Laura was somewhat withdrawn and quiet.
On the Sunday afternoon, before they were due to leave, we went on a long walk through the summer countryside. At one point Sophie fell into step with me and increased her pace, putting distance between Dave and my wife.
“Ed...” Sophie began. I glanced at her. She was pulling a querulous moue.
“Mmm?”
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but is Laura on medication?”
“No,” I said. “No, she came off it a while ago.”
“Oh... Only, it’s just... Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but she seems—” She shook her head. “I know what you went through must have been sheer hell, but Laura seems... not the person she was.” She reddened and quickly glanced at me. “I’m not putting this at all well, am I? What I mean is – I could always rely on Laura for sympathy, understanding. Last night I told her about Dave and me...” Dave had mentioned to me that their marriage had been going through a rocky patch lately. “Laura seemed, well, unconcerned. It was almost as if she couldn’t understand what I was saying, or wasn’t bothered. It wasn’t at all like the old Laura.”
I nodded. “Losing Ella has changed her,” I said, and left it at that.
But what Sophie had said set alarm bells ringing – together with something that happened a few days later.
~
It was early evening; we had finished a meal and were in the lounge, reading. Laura looked up from her book and stared at the print hanging over the hearth.
“I don’t like that painting,” she said.
Something within me sank, deflated.
It was a big abstract reproduction by Bacon, which I adored. I’d bought it five years ago, a present to myself after a particularly important sale. Laura had told me in no uncertain terms that she hated it and didn’t want it in the house, and we’d argued. Our disagreement was heated, and escalated into a shouting match. I accused Laura of selfishness – she had hung pieces around the place which I deplored – and Laura retaliated by saying that I was being insensitive. We hadn’t spoken for days, until she had relented and allowed me to hang the print where I wanted. But the rancour had left a lasting, bitter taste.
“I hate it,” she said now. “It makes me feel uneasy. Would you take it down?”
I stared at her. “We’ve had this argument before. You said that I could keep it.”
Her expression clouded. “I did?”
I retreated into my book, heart racing.
~
Over the next couple of months I lost myself in my work. I retreated to the studio at every opportunity, and where before I had spent time with Laura in the house or the garden because I craved her company, now I sought solitude: to be with her was to remind myself how far away she was.
I no longer employed Sam as a model. I did not want to put myself in a situation where I might weaken and seek comfort in her pity and compassion. I was tempted, for the terrible motive of exacting some kind of revenge on Laura, but thank God the moral being in me stayed my hand.
Nine months after Ella’s death, I received a phone call from one of Laura’s colleagues, a woman I’d met once or twice.
“Is Laura there?” she asked after the customary pleasantries.
“She’s teaching today,” I said.
An odd silence. Then, at last, “Oh...”
Uneasy, I said, “What?”
“Well, I’m not sure that it’s my place to—”
“What is it?”
“Ed, I don’t know how to tell you. Laura was suspended from her post a few weeks ago. I was just ringing to see how she was.”
“Suspended? Why? I mean—”
“The standard of her teaching,” she said. “Her ability to draw conclusions in her work, her lack of empathy with the students. The department thought it best to offer her extended leave.”
All that day, until Laura returned, I thought through what the woman had told me.
Laura had left the house at nine every morning, as if nothing was wrong, maintaining the charade that she was still employed by the university.
I tried to determine which shocked me most: the fact that the university had suspended her, or her duplicity in not telling me and acting as if nothing untoward had occurred.
I cooked the evening meal as usual, opened a bottle of wine.
Laura came home and hurried straight to her study with hardly a greeting, this stranger my wife had become.
She would emerge later to share a quick meal with me, before going to bed early while I sat up and tried to read.
As we ate, I said, “You didn’t tell me you were suspended.”
She avoided my stare. “It was probably for the best. I couldn’t concentrate. I need a little time to get my thoughts together.”
I nodded. “So... where do you spend your days now?”
She regarded her half-empty wine glass. “I go over to the library most days.”
I stared at her. “You have absolutely no idea what you’ve done, have you?”
She looked up. “Pardon?”
“It’s Mem-erase, isn’t it? How much of your past have you had wiped?” I stared at her until she looked away. “It’s changed you, Laura. You’ve lost the ability to... to connect.”
She stood and strode to the door, then turned and said, “Go to hell, Ed! You don’t know what it’s like, living with you these days! You’re always so damned depressing!”
~
A week later I came in from the studio to find Laura packing a suitcase. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched her.
“Leaving?” I said, affecting casualness.
She looked up. “I’ve had enough of your silences, Ed. Your moods. I can’t stand being around you any more. You’re a little black hole, sucking in all my energy.”
“I wonder why...” I said, more to myself.
Amazingly, I achieved a kind of objectivity as she told me this. A part of me was ripped asunder, while another, removed part of myself reminded me that this Laura was no longer the woman I had loved for over a decade.