with ague.
“What if I got pregnant?” Marguerite asked when we were spent, lying in each other’s arms.
We had not paused to consider that possibility. Not even for a fleeting second had I considered the future, had my mind been willing to leave the present, to go beyond it to wonder whether she was on the pill, whether she needed to use a diaphragm. But, now suddenly, I thought of the future, and I remembered the past. I remembered Nerida. I remembered I had a wife, a wife who was pregnant. I remembered I had a child, a son I adored.
But Marguerite did not want an answer to her question. It was as if it had slipped to her tongue without her being conscious of it. She would not make that mistake again. She would take a firm hold on what was in her heart, in her mind. She would prevent it from leaking into words that could come between us, thatcould spoil our happiness. She would exercise this control until I pushed her, until I forced her into admitting what she knew, what she feared. But for now I let her drift into unconsciousness. I said nothing to stop her from turning on her side, throwing her arm across my chest, closing her eyes, and slipping happily into oblivion.
11
T he apartment where I lived with my wife had style. Everything in it had been carefully planned, had been deliberately designed. Nothing in it was the result of spontaneity or impulse. Yet when I entered it, I could not be sure that what I saw there was a reflection of my wife’s taste, for my wife decorated our apartment for me, to please me.
Marguerite’s apartment did not have style, at least not the kind of style likely to get photographed in magazines about home decorating, but it made a statement. You knew when you were there that you were in a place where an artist lived. My wife was not interested in making statements about her personal tastes. She was interested in my welfare, in the welfare of our son, the welfare of our family.
We did not have much money, though we had things that people would have needed money to obtain. We had a beautiful apartment overlooking the Potomac River. It did not belong to us. It belonged to the government of my country. Ordinarily it would not have been assigned to us. I was not yet an ambassador. I was merely part of the retinue of an ambassador, but I was the husband of the daughter of a president, so my apartment was larger than most andlocated in the stylish part of Washington where, if he wanted to, the president of my country could visit his daughter without embarrassment.
Nerida seemed surprised that others could have been jealous of our good fortune, and, indeed, she did nothing to cause them to be so. Though we had an allowance for furniture, she never bought more than she thought we needed: a bed, a dresser, a full-length mirror for our bedroom, the same for my son’s room, a mahogany dining room set for the dining room, a couch and two armchairs for the living room. She kept all the walls in the apartment white. She said it helped to simplify things, to keep our apartment from feeling too small or too cluttered. To keep me from feeling hemmed in.
My wife knew that though I slept and worked within concrete walls in my country in Africa, only a door separated me from the vast openness of the grasslands. She wanted to give me this feeling of space in Washington. She gave similar reasons for the potted plants in the living room and the earth tones of the fabric that covered our furniture. She said they were closer to the colors I had left behind in Africa. Sometimes I wondered what colors she would have chosen if she were not choosing colors for me. I did not know what colors she would have preferred. I did not feel the need to ask her. I liked the way our apartment looked. It made me feel at peace. Calm. It was the way my wife had planned it. She was making a home for a husband who provided the food on her table and the financial support for her child. In this view of the role of a wife,
“What if I got pregnant?” Marguerite asked when we were spent, lying in each other’s arms.
We had not paused to consider that possibility. Not even for a fleeting second had I considered the future, had my mind been willing to leave the present, to go beyond it to wonder whether she was on the pill, whether she needed to use a diaphragm. But, now suddenly, I thought of the future, and I remembered the past. I remembered Nerida. I remembered I had a wife, a wife who was pregnant. I remembered I had a child, a son I adored.
But Marguerite did not want an answer to her question. It was as if it had slipped to her tongue without her being conscious of it. She would not make that mistake again. She would take a firm hold on what was in her heart, in her mind. She would prevent it from leaking into words that could come between us, thatcould spoil our happiness. She would exercise this control until I pushed her, until I forced her into admitting what she knew, what she feared. But for now I let her drift into unconsciousness. I said nothing to stop her from turning on her side, throwing her arm across my chest, closing her eyes, and slipping happily into oblivion.
11
T he apartment where I lived with my wife had style. Everything in it had been carefully planned, had been deliberately designed. Nothing in it was the result of spontaneity or impulse. Yet when I entered it, I could not be sure that what I saw there was a reflection of my wife’s taste, for my wife decorated our apartment for me, to please me.
Marguerite’s apartment did not have style, at least not the kind of style likely to get photographed in magazines about home decorating, but it made a statement. You knew when you were there that you were in a place where an artist lived. My wife was not interested in making statements about her personal tastes. She was interested in my welfare, in the welfare of our son, the welfare of our family.
We did not have much money, though we had things that people would have needed money to obtain. We had a beautiful apartment overlooking the Potomac River. It did not belong to us. It belonged to the government of my country. Ordinarily it would not have been assigned to us. I was not yet an ambassador. I was merely part of the retinue of an ambassador, but I was the husband of the daughter of a president, so my apartment was larger than most andlocated in the stylish part of Washington where, if he wanted to, the president of my country could visit his daughter without embarrassment.
Nerida seemed surprised that others could have been jealous of our good fortune, and, indeed, she did nothing to cause them to be so. Though we had an allowance for furniture, she never bought more than she thought we needed: a bed, a dresser, a full-length mirror for our bedroom, the same for my son’s room, a mahogany dining room set for the dining room, a couch and two armchairs for the living room. She kept all the walls in the apartment white. She said it helped to simplify things, to keep our apartment from feeling too small or too cluttered. To keep me from feeling hemmed in.
My wife knew that though I slept and worked within concrete walls in my country in Africa, only a door separated me from the vast openness of the grasslands. She wanted to give me this feeling of space in Washington. She gave similar reasons for the potted plants in the living room and the earth tones of the fabric that covered our furniture. She said they were closer to the colors I had left behind in Africa. Sometimes I wondered what colors she would have chosen if she were not choosing colors for me. I did not know what colors she would have preferred. I did not feel the need to ask her. I liked the way our apartment looked. It made me feel at peace. Calm. It was the way my wife had planned it. She was making a home for a husband who provided the food on her table and the financial support for her child. In this view of the role of a wife,
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