The Wife (Kate Chopin Pastiche)

Alberta having looked not very long into life, had not looked very far. She put out her hands to touch things that pleased her and her lips to kiss them. Her eyes were deep brown wells that were drinking, drinking impressions and treasuring them in her soul. They were mysterious eyes and love looked out of them.

The first person to take Alberta by the hand was her mama, who was not really her mama. Alberta’s mama often collected stray creatures and brought them home to keep her company while her husband was away. When he was gone, the thought of him alone dwelt in her mind, and his name and none other was on her lips.

Alberta liked to listen to her mama talk about her daddy. Alberta’s mama showed her how to plait her hair and how to curl it and told her what it meant to fall in love. She dipped her fingers in rosemary oil and ran them through Alberta’s dark locks and then her own, reminding Alberta that men prefer women who know how to tend to their beauty.

And when Alberta wanted to learn to love a man with her hands and her lips, the way that her mama loved her daddy, her mama taught her that there were other ways to reach a man. She told Alberta that it was not only with the hands and lips and eyes that she would make a man love her, but with the soul, as well; that soul must be pure and patient and wholly devoted to the man whom she would wed.

Alberta became encompassed in dreams of marrying, of mothering. She liked nothing better than holding the attentions of young gentlemen callers, wondering if she might later become the wife of one of them. And though many did ask, she was selective.

While many women her age had settled on their mates and were on their way to growing plump with soon-to-be born children, Alberta had not yet found the soul worthy of her own.

It was not until the age of twenty that Alberta met a handsome young lawyer. And when his hand first touched hers, he cast her into a dreamlike daze from which she never quite awakened. A wave of warmth rushed through her body and lit the apples of her cheeks with a soft, pink glow. Before his hand left hers, Alberta had arrived at the unmistakable conclusion that this was the man to whom she would belong.

Alberta dedicated herself to the young lawyer in a fashion that can only be described as worship. She awoke thinking of him in the morning and fell asleep dreaming of him at night. She hungered to know him and spent her time studying him, praying to bring herself closer to him, attempting to penetrate his thoughts and seer her silhouette into his mind. Her devotion did not go unnoticed and was not unwelcomed. The lawyer was entranced by Alberta’s beauty and by her enchanting ability to make him feel that he was the only man in the room, the only man in existence, even.

The two were married six weeks after their first meeting and promptly moved in to a modest but handsome house in the country. Alberta took great care in decorating their home. She deliberated over each item before allowing it a place in their household. Each candlestick was examined by her careful eye before her husband would see it. Each goblet was inspected by her delicate lips before it could be deemed worthy of her husband’s. Each cross in their home hung straight, owing to the gentle caress of Alberta’s white hands.

Alberta needed no instruction in loving—how to move her body, where to place her hands, when to kiss and when to hold back came to her instinctually. She did not have to think, she understood. She loved him when he was tired, when he was weak, when he could not bring himself to tell her that he ached for her love and nothing else. She loved him, only him, always, as if she had been created with his sole purpose in mind.

Alberta did not know that she was lovelier than she had ever been. She would rub a bit of rosemary oil into her hair before joining her husband in bed. He would wrap his arms around her as she rested her head on his shoulder. He did not tell her that the warm whisper of love that used to play about her face then smoldered and carried through her whole being, setting his senses ablaze once he eagerly stole a glance at her. He believed Alberta’s magnetism to be an indisputable fact, as obvious as stating that God is good. Her husband was not the type of man to waste words on the apparent, so he keeps silent, admiring Alberta’s exquisiteness in his own quiet way.

One morning Alberta’s husband left on a trip for business. He kissed her before he left, promising that he would not be away too long. She wished that he would not go but did not protest, only frowned as he packed his bag and let her eyes tear when his back was turned.

It was not until days later that Alberta received news that her husband would not return to her. There had been an accident, and he was not among the survivors.  

Though Alberta had no reason to expect his sudden end, the possibility of his death had occasionally disturbed her thoughts. From time to time the notion would startle her, slithering into her mind like a shiver would creep up the spine—without warning, a foul shudder, then gone.

Alberta wept very bitterly for her loss. Her husband’s death left her only to contemplate her own nothingness, for what purpose was she living, if not to love him body and soul?

Though he had left her enough to live comfortably with, she feared that she would never adjust to life without him. She often blamed herself for his death, feeling as if the business trip had been a senseless attempt to please her, to bring home gold to squander. She understood that he had wanted to provide her with more, to have more to share with her, to demonstrate his passion for her in one of the few ways that he felt capable, but she could not devote herself to gold. She could not love it with her body; it could not keep her warm, could not save her from being by herself.

But when Alberta brings her hands to her stomach, she does not know the she is not alone. Growing inside her is the culmination of all of her loving. She will carry him in her self, keep him safe with her own flesh, keep him warm with her boundless affection, and he will rip through her, a force of life that will leave her swollen, bloodied, but never, never empty.