The Carpenter's Wife Read online

  “Mine too.”

  “Yours is at least funny,” Gina said.

  Romy looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we e-mail back and forth—I’m sure he told you about it.”

  Romy’s jaw descended slowly.

  “And sometimes he writes stuff… I could throw myself away after reading it. Believe me, he is funny.”

  Really?

  “You have a precious husband.” Gina reached out and put her hand on Romy’s. “He’s so considerate.” She cast her eyes down.

  Romy swallowed. “What’s he say?”

  “Only nice, helpful stuff. He’s helping me with some problems.”

  “Uh-huh.” The tone in her voice was slightly ominous.

  But Gina didn’t react. “He got me to thinking, I can tell you that. Tom has some interesting ideas.” She paused. “We write quite a bit. But I’m sure he told you that. He writes late at night; I mean, I can see that when his mails come in.” She reflected again. “He’s one of the most entertaining men I know.”

  Romy smiled vaguely, pinching her chin.

  “Yesterday…” Gina laughed her high, tinkling laugh, “yesterday he finished with a line of just random letters. You know, just xyz and so on. Under it he wrote, ‘Oops. I’m so tired, my head fell on the keyboard.’” She giggled.

  Romy’s smile became strained.

  19

  Tuesday, 15 July 2003, Night, 26°C

  It was 10:25 PM. The sun’s last light slowly vanished behind the western hills of Elmendorf, darkness rolled in from the east, and Tom lay swaying in his hammock out back. He was alone. Romy had gone to bed an hour ago.

  Far away the Americans were exercising the 25-mm cannons of their Bradleys. The sounds were satisfying floops, melodious as cannon blasts went. Stark had heard that detachments of the Big Red One were preparing to go to Iraq. He didn’t envy them.

  Earlier, Ralph had come by, delivering the fixed garden house window. It had taken a few days longer than expected, but now it hung on its hinges again, good as new.

  “How much?” Tom asked.

  “Nothing,” Delors dismissed him. “Had a spare pane. Wasn’t new. You can see a couple scratches on it if you look real close. Figured it didn’t matter. It’s only for the house out back.”

  “Sure.” Tom nodded. The man was frugal. “Thanks.”

  Ralph stood around for a few more minutes, talking about dogs—his father used to own two German shepherds—until he decided to go home for supper. Gina was waiting. That had been at seven.

  Now the peaceful summer night enveloped the village, crickets chirped in the black grass, and a late bee buzzed by, hurrying for its stall. But Stark lay brooding, wondering whether he hadn’t bitten off more than he could safely digest.

  A week ago, he’d e-mailed Gina. And she had written back. Actually, she’d written to him every night since. And he had replied each night. He, a boy, had exchanged little notes with a girl. Like back at school. By now they had exchanged more than a dozen messages, most of which had been pleasant. Some had been sweet ‘n sour, because he was no hypocrite, but overall the sweet had outweighed the sour by far. And now a tone was set, a habit begun, and they had a relationship.

  And nobody knew.

  Nobody suspected anything. Nobody had a clue of what they were doing. Late at night, the world consisted of two people connected by computers.

  But Stark couldn’t shed his skin. Tonight, the unholy exhilaration of the first few days had morphed into a persistent gnaw on his conscience. The emotion was disturbing. He hadn’t felt in many years.

  It was difficult for him to admit, but Gina had positively changed his routine. His life now was different from what it had been just last week. It had acquired a secret dimension.

  A chill rolled down his spine.

  He, Pastor Tom Stark, had begun a secret life with the knock-out from down the block. The most attractive female in his universe had begun to write to him daily, telling of joys and hurts and little things, and he was listening. His humor and wit had impressed her quickly, and now she shared her problems, at home and on the job, believing he had the answer. She was opening up. The thought made Tom’s head to swim. At the same time desperation tore at his heart. Because he was falling in love.

  With whom?

  Tom swallowed hard, staring up into the indigo sky.

  A silly, overgrown teen. He knew her that well already.

  She hadn’t answered his lines concerning the window. Instead, she had e-mailed him the address of a “humorous” website, which he had duly visited. The joke hadn’t been funny. A picture of a bouquet of roses changed into an unshapely behind when touched by the mouse pointer. There was also a coarse heading to read. He hadn’t laughed. Actually, he’d been appalled and had racked his brain to come up with an intelligent reply, signaling disgust, but not too much. It also had to be short, as not to indicate too great an interest in her, and it had to be worded in a way that made her write back. In the end he’d said, “My goodness. Is that you in that picture?”

  Late that same night came the inevitable answer, “Ahem. No! Mine looks much better.”

  To which he replied the next day, “I hope it’s not on display on the Internet.”

  “Nooo. Mine can only be observed on my person.”

  “I’m sure it’s quite a sight.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “A compliment?”

  “I guess.”

  Tom in his hammock closed his eyes and groaned. What had he been thinking? He hammered his forehead with his fist. The pastor-man had been dallying without shame. 99 percent of women left him cold. Had he written to one of those? No. He’d made nice with the only one calling on his instincts.

  How dumb can you get and still breathe?

  A light breeze caressed his oily body. The heat of the day was receding now, but not his inner turmoil. He had written impossible things and had done so flippantly. Sitting up, he adjusted his posture impatiently, setting the hammock into motion again. Then he laid back down, thinking.

  Virtual communication was a tricky thing. For one, writing from within the privacy of your office at night had made you lower your guard. He had found he could write things to Gina that would have died as wisps of hot air on his tongue had he met her in person. Online, he didn’t take their conversation quite as serious, not as he would in an eye-to-eye encounter. In a way the virtual Gina didn’t exist. She was a phantom, a foil for his imagination without any connection to the real woman down the road. Which brought him to the next thought:

  It had to be the same for her.

  What was he to her?

  If she had the same problems with Ralph that he had with Romy, they were toying with fire. The idea reverberated in his mind; he heard it loud and clear. They were toying with fire. They’d burn. In due time they’d burn.

  If she was doing okay with her carpenter on the other hand, then this was his shot at bringing her the gospel. Then he’d have to take advantage of the situation. She was opening up. He wasn’t. Yet.

  Virtual communication somehow elicited directness. The familiar surroundings of home led to unwarranted openness. But they were still two real people of the real world with real problems. Consequently, those silent little letters, everyone disappearing down the memory hole after having been read and re-read a thousand times—analytically and with a cold heart, of course—could turn into spiritual land mines. He was learning that. He had to tread lightly.

  His mind returned to his wife.

  Romy had made a half-hearted attempt at inviting him last Wednesday, after he’d come home from midweek service. But he’d been too dense, or too distracted, to catch on to her, which had disheartened her to the point that when he finally did catch on, she’d withdrawn the offer.

  It was a pain with that woman.

  He thought of Gina’s playful attitude again.

  “A compliment?”

  Yes, you
toad! It’s a compliment. “I guess.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Of course, I don’t look at that object in the picture on your person. None of my business.” Good sentence.

  She came back with, “But you can look into my eyes!”

  “They’re nice too.”

  “Ha! You don’t even remember what color they are! Come on. Tell me!”

  “Oh yes. I looked into them at New Year’s. What an experience. Was dizzying. Now, don’t get any ideas. Let me think. Think. Blue. They’re blue, aren’t they? Like mountain lakes.”

  “Wrong! They are green. So much for the ability of men to pay attention. Men. Puh. Grin.”

  “Green. Blue. What’s the big deal. They’re mountain lakes. Deep and misty, mystical, whatever.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Never mind.”

  Friday evening she had written, “So, what did you do today?” He’d stared at those six words for about as many minutes and had pondered their implications. She wanted this to go on. Obviously. Would he oblige her?

  Deciding to cut down on the flirting, he had.

  “Nothing spectacular,” he wrote. “Tell me what you did. You are more interesting than I am.” There. That wasn’t flirting. That was keeping her attached for later witnessing.

  His strategy worked. That night she sent a two-page message detailing almost everything she’d done on Friday, from being late for work to fending off of a flirtatious colleague to cleaning her kitchen to her daughter’s guitar lesson to her husband’s later monosyllabism. It had to have taken her at least an hour to put it all down. He’d felt soft and cuddly reading.

  He’d felt privileged.

  Listening to Gina was somehow totally different from listening to Sister Weimer recounting many of the same mundane things. There was no comparison. Tom had chuckled. What difference a little emotion made.

  She had ended with confiding in him that she now had to wake her husband. As usual, he was snoozing in front of the TV, and she had to kiss him awake when it was time to go to bed.

  Good night. He rubbed his eyes.

  Saturday had been weird. In her mail that night she’d shifted from playfulness to bluntness, stating that she wasn’t a church-going person and therefore wasn’t bound to the rules a gaggle of old men had established hundreds of years ago. What was good for them was not necessarily good for her. She had gone on to mock Catholicism with the insolent loud-mouth of a drunk person. Then she had described what a pastor, her pastor, had to look like, should she ever deign to join organized religion. Her criteria hadn’t been very spiritual. The man had to be to be jovial, friendly, outgoing, smiling, not too strict; in other words, the exact opposite of tight-lipped Tom Stark. She’d been taunting him.

  Then she had wandered totally off the mark.

  “My thought life is mine,” she’d written. “What I think is my affair and nobody else’s. I may lie next to my husband, but my thoughts are free. I can roam. I can think whatever I want. Are your thoughts free, Mister Stark? Blink. Blink?”

  Her bluntness had put him off.

  “Well, now, Missie,” he’d answered late that night. “Wait just a minute. Not so fast. What am I to think of you? To imagine such things is sheer bad taste in my eyes. No. I go further. It’s outright hypocrisy. I for one can’t do that. I’m bad with façades. Usually you can predict what I think by plain looking at my face. You’ll always know what I think, I can promise you that. You may not always like it, but…”

  He’d realized that he might chase her away with words like these. But on Sunday she was a changed person, meek as a lamb, admitting to having been soused the night before. Apologizing profusely, she’d played coy, promising never again to write in such a state. “I’m so sorry. Please, please, say that you’ll keep talking to me.”

  Well now…

  “How often does this happen?” he’d asked sternly.

  “What do you mean? How often does what happen? That I think of things…?”

  There you go again.

  “No, that you drink a swig too much?”

  “Oh, that. It began about six months ago.”

  “Uh-huh. And why? Can you talk about it?”

  “I know it’s wrong.” In his mind’s eye Tom could see her cast her gaze to the ground, bashfully, humbly. “It won’t change a thing. But it helps a little at the time.”

  “So, you can’t talk about it.”

  “There are reasons. If you insist, I’ll talk… But I want to tell you in person. There are things I have a hard time to commit to writing,” she’d said in Sunday’s final e-mail.

  “You make me nosy.” She wanted to see him; the thought made his heart race. It would be a guilt-free counseling session. All the better. “Do you want to come up to us? I’ll tell Romy, and we can sit in my office and drink coffee. We can talk there.”

  “I really don’t want Romy to know that I have problems…”

  “She’s trustworthy and quiet as a grave.”

  “Still. This is personal. What’s she going to think if I show up at your doorstep all of a sudden? One thing for sure, she’d know we write. Ralph for one doesn’t know.”

  That miserable mix of excitement and guilt washed through his gut again. “If you’re not comfortable around our house, come up with a reason, and I’ll visit you at your house.” On her own turf she’d be relaxed; she’d talk openly there. And he was nosy. Right now, no more interesting person existed on the face of the earth than Gina Delors. He’d do good. He’d plant the seed of the word into her. Her picture of Jesus needed to undergo a drastic change. The Lord was not a soft and melancholy shepherd with big eyes gazing at the horizon. Not by a long shot. He was a hero, tougher than nails, who knew what he wanted, and that was to save her soul. Tom was sure he could do it—if he could only sink his steely gray eyes into hers. Hers were blue… no, green. Mountain lakes.

  What nonsense.

  On Monday she’d written, “You could come to me on Wednesday at 2 PM. My dad, my real one in America, told me to download something from the Internet and I can’t do it. Now, don’t go on about women and technology. Ralph couldn’t do it either. Maybe you can, Mister Superbrain. Smile.”

  “Wednesday’s not so good. I have midweek service and need to prepare. How about Thursday?”

  “Okay. The kids will be around then, but that’s okay. Ralph might drop in too. He’ll probably sit around for a while. Are you sure you don’t want to do this on Wednesday? We’d be more to ourselves that day.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Okay, okay. Thursday it’ll be.”

  In that same e-mail she’d asked him about his opinion on the plight of a male colleague.

  She worked part-time at the Sachs Ballbearing Company’s marketing department, where she had a 45-year-old friend—she called him that—who had been involved with another woman at Sachs. The guy, a married man and father of five, had fallen madly in love with this girl in her twenties, who had played along at first, but had then returned to her family—she was married too—effectively ending the affair. They still saw one another, but without getting close—most of the time. Gina said, the girl wanted to remain friends with that man, because he was such a special person, but he wanted her whole.

  His wife, a chubby little thing with whom Gina was somehow familiar too, had told him, he could stay or he could leave. If he chose to leave, she would always be there for him. He was the father of her children. There could never be an other man in her life.

  But the man couldn’t make up his mind. The poor guy was torn inside and suffered unspeakably. She worked with him; she knew. He’d bared his soul to her.

  Funny, Tom thought. Gina wasn’t exactly the therapeutic kind. But desperate people sometimes clung to the most unlikely helpers.

  The situation had been going on long enough to thoroughly nauseate everybody involved. The matter begged for a solution. They had even talked to her, Gina. Would he, Pastor Stark, have any advice for th
ose people?

  “Sure,” Tom had answered. “The solution to that dilemma lies with his wife.”

  “His wife?”

  “Yes, the one he has no respect for. Since she allows him to have her as well as his lover, he will never change his behavior. He doesn’t have to. Two women are currently fawning over him. In a weird way, he lives in a wonderful world, feeding on the affection from two women who love him. Men love that.

  “So, she needs to roll up her sleeves, and the next time her despondent little Harry comes home from committing adultery… or better yet, the next time he as much as mentions the other woman’s name, she must throw him out on his ear. She needs to create a crisis; she’ll need to act. He’s too bound for that; he’s too weak. She’ll need to rise up and confront him with some tough choices. She has to say: ‘It’s either me or her, buster.’ Only when forced by a strong hand will he make up his mind. Only then will the matter be resolved once and for all.”

  “You’re a hard man,” she’d answered today.

  “Love is like that sometimes.”

  “Love is hard?”

  “Christian love. I love you, by the way.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You don’t know too much about the love of Christ, do you? That’s the love I love you with. Ralph too.” And Romy.

  20

  Thursday, 17 July 2003, Afternoon, 37° Celsius

  Romy sat next to the desk, overseeing Ben’s homework, when Tom walked in. “I’ll be going now,” he said.

  “Already?” She looked up from the papers in her lap, cocking her head when she saw him. “Gee, you look spiffy.”

  Tom looked down on himself. He wore Indian flip-flops he’d brought back from a missions trip to Bombay, blue jeans, and a maroon-striped sport shirt. His sleeves were rolled up, and—

  “Your hair is hanging out,” she said. “Why’s that?” She frowned.

  Ben giggled and turned around to look at his father.

  “Keep writing,” Romy said, pointing at the exercise book on the table.