The Carpenter's Wife Read online

  “Courtesy of the boys,” Tom replied.

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Raff had lunch with us yesterday.”

  “The lady told me all about it.” There was acid in his tone.

  “Who’s that…?”

  “...The wife.”

  Tom wondered, “Gina?”

  “Yeah.” Ralph’s smile became slightly pained.

  “I see…” Stark remembered that he’d been all lovey-dovey at New Years. “She tried to pick him up, but Romy had already taken him over to my parents—I guess you know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A wordless moment passed. Ralph didn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry. He just stood there, at ease with Tom and eminently content with saying nothing.

  Stark’s eyebrows bounced once. “Want to come?”

  “Sure.”

  Tom stepped outside. After flipping a lever in the lock to disable it, he pulled the front door shut. Accompanied by Coco, who had calmed down by now, they walked back, down the yard, and entered the amber glow of the garden house. The unhinged window leaned on the wall behind the door. Stark grabbed it and handed it over.

  Delors studied it carefully for a few seconds, giving special attention to the seams, where the glass met the wood. Then he said, “Not a problem. I think I have a spare pane that’s just right.” He looked up confidently. “You’ll have it back by tomorrow.”

  “No need to hurry. From what I understand, the weather’s not going to change.”

  “Probably not.” He smiled again, tucking the window under his arm.

  Mute seconds stretched into eternity.

  Stark shifted on his feet, wondering how Gina ever wound up with such a slowpoke. Nice slowpoke. But a slowpoke nevertheless.

  Delors’s smirking face didn’t move, but his squinting eyes slid over the chrome of the fly-speckled motorcycle.

  Tom noticed him. “Like it?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Nice bike.”

  When nothing more came, Stark said, “Why don’t you have one?”

  “No license.”

  “I see…” Tom nodded.

  Ralph’s chin swung toward the bike. “I don’t think I have ever seen one like that. What is it?”

  “Harley-Davidson.”

  “I know. But what model?

  “Actually, it’s a chopper; you know, pieced together from other chopped-up Harleys. It’s actually three or four bikes. Took me the better part of a summer to assemble it.”

  Delors whistled a high note. “Custom-made. Assembled it yourself, huh?”

  “With a buddy. Brought it with me from America.”

  Ralph cocked his head. “You really are American, then?”

  Tom was startled. “Thought you knew. It’s no secret. I told you all along.”

  “I know your wife is,” the carpenter said. “You can hear that. But you?” He shook his head. “Listen to yourself; your language is better than mine.”

  Tom waved him off. “It’s not.”

  “Good enough to fool me. And your name… So, I didn’t want to believe Miss Bony when she said—”

  “Miss who?”

  “My wife.”

  “I see.” Oh, he thought. Now, there’s a nick.

  “She said you worked for the government…?” He pointed at the wrinkled welts of torn tissue on Tom’s chest.

  Stark sighed. “Let’s not get into this…”

  “Sure.” Ralph fell silent again.

  “I’m a pastor now, ordained evangelical pastor.”

  “Sure.” Delors’s face turned somber.

  “You guys Catholics?”

  Ralph nodded. “Catholic. Actually, the dame’s evangelical.”

  “Gina? Really?”

  “Yeah, she’s Lutheran. But her mother sent her to a Catholic boarding school when she was little.”

  “You don’t say…” That was about the last thing he’d expected.

  “She spent five years there,” Delors said glumly. “Her teenage years.” He drew up his nose and stared into the distance. “I’m telling you, all that seclusion breeds ornery women.”

  “I see.” Buddy, you just don’t know how to take her. A second later he became quietly mad at his self-assurance. He should feel pastoral right now but didn’t.

  “She even thought of becoming a nun.”

  “You don’t say.” Stark was now genuinely awed.

  “Yeah. Wanted to go on the mission field. She says.”

  “That so…?”

  “But her mother took her out before she could make any vows, and so she’d become normal again.” He sighed. “She became normal, all right.”

  Tom laughed. “You don’t seem to be too happy about that?”

  Delors didn’t reply. He just stood and smiled and shrugged.

  “None of my business anyway.”

  “No, no.” Ralph gestured feebly with the cap in his hand, eager to put Stark at ease.

  There probably wasn’t a problem. Tom figured, Delors just didn’t know how to carry on a conversation. With an intellectual like him.

  The phone warbled up in the house. Coco barked and ran off.

  Tom said, “Work’s calling. If you’ll excuse me.” He cast an apologetic glance at Delors.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be seeing you.” Stark left the little house and jogged up the sun-scorched walkway until he disappeared in the open basement door. A moment later he sat down in his office, and while speaking to Carlos, he heard the Ford van outside pull away.

  The phone lay once again in the upper paper tray, still warm from the fifteen minutes of animated talk to a troubled husband. But today Tom had just consoled him. Concrete steps on “How to Love Your Wife” hadn’t been necessary, just a little encouragement, just an ear, and he’d been glad to lend it. To “rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” was time-consuming business, but it was good, fulfilling business.

  Weep with them that weep.

  Some men were their own worst enemies. But since forgiveness existed, and transformation existed, sometimes victory came with the tears.

  Stark sat up.

  On the monitor, the message to Gina stood open. Tom was staring at it now. Fifteen minutes ago Ralph had relieved him of a reason to send it.

  What now...?

  He re-read his verse again.

  For crying out loud, he wasn’t handing her a proposal, was he. He was just chatting. Sans titillation. This was his shot at evangelizing her. He’d share the gospel with a woman oozing appeal, all right, but there would be no physical transaction. He wouldn’t even be laying eyes on her—for weeks they might not see each other.

  Despite the misgivings screaming from a suppressed corner of his soul, he dialed himself into the Internet.

  Twenty seconds later his outbox was empty.

  16

  Tuesday, 8 July 2003, Noon, 35°C

  The morning had been spent amiably among the ladies, whose weekly breakfast group was growing rapidly. 22 chatty women had populated the green villa on the outskirts of Bad Kissingen today, plus seven explorative toddlers, crowding even Betty Leiermann’s spacious living room.

  The last ladies had departed half an hour ago, lugging baby seats and diaper bags out to their family vans, and now only the pastor’s wife remained behind. Romy had actually intended to help her hostess with cleaning up the cold buffet on the dining room table, but Betty insisted to let her two maids do that. They should arrive at any moment. Romy lingered anyway, settling with Betty into an unmolested parlor by the terrace.

  The two of them spoke about this and that, and Romy never knew exactly when their conversation turned to love and marriage, but presently Betty put her paper-thin china cup down and said, “Men are so different from women, Rom’. Can’t let that fact intimidate you.”

  Romy sat in an overstuffed chair next to the doctor’s wife, her eyes wide with attention. Without realizing it, she saw a mother in the self-assured olde
r woman, who was proper enough to wear even her jeans with a crease. Betty was competent, not a mere doormat as her natural mother had been during Romy’s formative years. Mom had changed too, of course. In time she had emancipated herself from a lot of her father’s more peculiar notions. She even wore make-up now. But she still wasn’t Betty.

  Betty said, “If you don’t realize and reconcile the differences between the sexes, you’ll likely grow unhappy.”

  Romy wasn’t sure whether her hostess had chosen the subject on purpose, picking up on her discontentment, or whether their talk had merely followed a natural course, but she was thankful for the turn and remained silent and listened.

  “You know, my husband, being a doctor, pointed out to me many years ago that it was God who performed history’s first surgery. The Lord even used anesthetics.”

  “Really?”

  Betty gave her a surprised look. “Back in the garden. He took Eve out of Adam. He literally amputated him, extracting not just the rib but the entire female part, if you will.”

  “I’ve never seen it that way.”

  Betty smiled. “Let me give you a side thought. Imagine being married for all eternity. Many—perhaps most—people recoil at the thought; frequently couples are mismatched, and even among the good ones there’s often not enough oneness to warrant wedded bliss forever. But yet, that’s exactly what God intended in the beginning. He invented marriage before mortality ever became an issue.”

  She wiped a stray hair off her forehead.

  “How can God yoke two people together infinitely and without parole? What about differing development, if we presuppose eternal personal growth. What about conflicting preferences, interests? If nothing else, wouldn’t boredom settle in?” Betty glanced at her guest. “Well, that’s why God didn’t create a second person, but split the first one. He took Eve out of Adam. That’s why Adam said, when he met her, ‘She’s flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,’ in essence saying, she’s me. That’s why they meshed perfectly and would have had a sense of something amiss should they not have met. Only together did they form one complete entity. And that’s why, even when given a choice, they would have desperately wanted to stay together infinitely, just like you’d absolutely want to keep your left leg and our right arm if you’d have to decide on your eternal bodily makeup.”

  Betty sighed. “But let me get back to us today. So.” She concentrated. “We find that God divided mankind into sexes. He separated them completely. That’s the reason men and women don’t intuitively understand one another.” She paused again to reflect. “They never have. There has never been a golden age of unspoken mutual understanding between a husband and his wife—after the fall, that is.”

  “But before they did…?” Romy’s curiosity was aroused.

  “Sure, like I said…” Betty’s green eyes began to drift. “Remember that they were naked?”

  Romy shifted in her chair.

  “Now, forget the erotic aspect of nudity for a moment, if you will. I am not talking about sex; I’m on to something different. What I am trying to point out is that before the fall they hid nothing from one another. They saw—and knew—one another completely.

  “Only after the fall were they ashamed to be naked. Only then came the urge to mask, to obscure, to cover up, to hide from God and one another. The first thing their new sinful nature accomplished was to destroy their relationships.”

  The doctor’s wife sighed. “In hanging themselves with fig leaves, our first parents started a tradition; they tried to cover up perceived imperfections. Imitating them, we do the same thing. We carefully choose how much we reveal of ourselves to others.” Facing Romy she added, “That’s because most of us don’t think we are very attractive.” She leaned closer. “Now, you understand that I’m not speaking about the physical.”

  Romy picked her lower lip.

  Betty went on, “Before the fall, everything one partner did brought unadulterated joy to the other. I’m not even sure they were capable of displeasing one another. Their personalities, their abilities, their impulses, their bodies, their deeds; they all meshed perfectly.

  “It’s not so anymore. The fall changed everything.

  “Today, if a woman draws conclusions about the needs and desires of her husband based on her own, she is bound to be wrong every time, because they are fundamentally dissimilar.”

  Romy nodded thoughtfully. Tom’s perception of reality was profoundly “dissimilar” from hers. He was strong, she was—

  “The days of easy unity are gone,” Betty said. “Intuitive understanding doesn’t work anymore. Today we are forced to communicate by words.

  “But talking is easy only up to a certain point—much like undressing.” She paused again. “Talking honestly is baring the soul.”

  Facing Romy, she said, “Baring the soul is more difficult for men than stripping the body by the way. With women it is the other way around, don’t you think?” She bunched her cheeks in an impish way.

  Romy echoed the smile.

  “But if satisfaction is the goal, we must allow our partner to ‘undress’ his inner man. Both sexes are called upon here. We need to foster a relational environment where we can share our predilections, fears, joys, and pains without fearing exploitation of our trust.

  “As you can see, openness is actually hard work.

  “It requires a covenant-strength bond between two people, because if we open up, we hand the partner a significant amount of power over us.” The imp straightened her face. “Nobody cherishes the possibility that his innermost feelings might achieve public airtime because the partner runs off at the mouth.

  “Another uncherished possibility is that of manipulation. If another person knows exactly what makes me tick, he or she is enabled to punch my buttons. So, in a way, individuality is at stake here.

  “It is an interesting question to ponder whether our notion of privacy came about before or after the fall. The worth assigned to community in the Bible is directly proportional to…”

  Romy’s head began to swim. Betty could be worse than Tom. Both shared a firm belief in the brilliance of their conclusions, just that Betty was usually less dogmatic about them than her pastor-husband. Tom was a man of strong convictions. But different from her father. Tom’s Christianity actually seemed to free him. Betty’s freed her. And hers?

  Romy tuned back into the monologue.

  “That’s why God invented marriage,” Betty was saying. “It is the strongest covenant possible, and within its confines people should be free to be entirely themselves.” She fell into a ponderous silence.

  Tea cups clacked as they sat them back down.

  After a while Romy asked, “You said something about differences between the sexes. Want to elaborate a bit?”

  Betty inhaled deeply. “Sure. Have you ever noticed that women flock easier, and that men are lone rangers? That’s because men are task-oriented, whereas women are relationship-oriented. Women gab their heads off about family and friends and children, while their men stand around, either detached and cool and mute, or, if they talk, talking about their achievements. They all want to be King of the Mountain.” She giggled. “I observe that constantly when I visit dinner parties with my husband.”

  Romy didn’t get invited to society get-togethers. But she went to church, where there were lots more activities for the women than for the men. In spite of them, Romy still felt lonely. Tom on the other hand seemed so immersed in his work that he didn’t miss relational interaction. The Starks didn’t have any friends, which Romy regretted and Tom didn’t notice.

  Betty continued, “Men are goal-oriented, women are detail-oriented. You know, a man looks in one direction,” her hands indicated tunnel vision, “a woman looks all around.”

  Romy giggled. “The one track mind…”

  “…and the bucket full of posies.”

  “You’re right, you know,” said Romy. “Last year, in March, Tom burst into the kitchen and proclaimed that we’ll
fly to America in the summer that year. We weren’t sure if we could go, with prices going up and all. But he had already made up his mind to fly. But when I asked him about the airline, he hadn’t considered one yet. When I asked him if we’d need new suitcases, and if the kids could get children’s menus, and how much the trip would cost, he didn’t have a single answer for me.”

  “He probably thought these were just annoying details.”

  “Yes. He even said as much. He used different words, but…” she gestured, “same message.”

  “Am I surprised?” She put her hand on Romy’s. “You’re not the first to live through that, Honey. And you won’t be the last either.”

  Romy gazed into the distance. “I guess not…”

  “Don’t think he’s callous. He’s not. He’s just a man. He doesn’t know better.” Her eyes became wily. “Let me ask you something. Do you think he doesn’t talk much to you?”

  Romy sat up and said, “Yes!”

  Betty sighed. “Another …glitch in the male. You see, Darling, a man relaxes by being silent, while women relax by talking. Now, if your husband comes home—or steps out of his office in your case—and he doesn’t want to talk, don’t needle him. He really doesn’t want to gab. Needling a woman would be right, because if a woman is excessively silent, something is wrong. If he tells her, ‘You don’t talk,’ and asks, ‘What’s the matter?’ and she says, ‘Nothing,’ he better keep asking, because the natural thing for a woman to do is to share. Something aggravates her and she needs to overcome her silence. If a man on the other hand says, ‘Leave me alone,’ he generally means it.”

  A question popped into Romy’s mind. She hesitated. “Betty…”

  “Yes?” The calm eyes of the doctor’s wife studied her guest.

  “What do you think is a man’s greatest desire—or need, if that’s a better word. Like, what does a man need most?”

  Betty pondered that for a good few seconds. Then she said, “Two things come to mind. First, all men crave respect.” She looked Romy into the eye. “Now, a woman’s greatest need is to be loved unconditionally, but we’ll get to that. We are speaking of men.” Gazing straight ahead again, she clasped her hands and settled them in her lap. “They all need respect. There’s a little king in all of them that desires nothing more than to be admired. Truth is, no man can resist a woman who genuinely adores him. It feeds his soul.” She fell quiet.