Free The Dutch Wife by Eric P. McCormack Page B

go,” I said.
    He put his thin hand on my arm.
    “Will you be able to come and see me tomorrow?” he said.
    “Of course I will,” I said.
    “Good,” he said. “I’ve a lot more to tell you—if you’re interested.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m interested.”
    He nodded and lay back with his eyes closed again, the mask to his face. He looked as though his soul was gradually seeping out of his body.
    – 14 –
    THAT NIGHT, I ATE A LATE DINNER, then poured myself a second glass of wine and phoned my wife on the West Coast. She was about to travel north for a trial and would be out of touch with me for a while. I didn’t look forward to that, for we enjoyed talking to each other. When she was at home with me, we always used to enjoy our after-dinner conversations over a glass of wine.
    One of our recurrent topics was the nature of love and the various theories about it. The idea that it might only be an illusion, a romanticization of animalistic impulses, we didn’t even consider. We both favoured the notion that, in its perfection, love was the uniting of the only two souls in the world destined for each other (we liked to think that was our own state).
    Just for the sake of argument, I’d once posited the counter-theory: namely, that love is divided into a million pieces and can be reassembled only by making love to as many people as possible in one’s life. Oddly enough, we’d agreed that, though that theory might sound a little self-serving, from certain points of view it might also be a form of idealism.
    Frequently, we’d come to the conclusion that while love might not be an illusion, attempts to define love might well be.
    “Someone could be in love,” my wife had once wisely said, “without even having a word for it. And someone else could have all the right words yet never have experienced the feeling.”
    Anyway, in the course of this particular phone conversation, I told her all about Thomas Vanderlinden’s mother and the man who appeared at her door and how she took him in and lived with him for two years without ever knowing who he really was. “Can you imagine?” I said. “Their entire relationship was founded on mystery. I must say, I was surprised Rachel put up with that. I always thought that, for women especially, real love depends on openness and complete honesty. Isn’t that so?”
    Four thousand miles away, my wife laughed. I loved her laugh, just as I loved talking to her about love, because we loved each other.
    “Men always think they know what women feel,” she said.
    I was still considering that when she said something that surprised me even more. “Rachel must have believed it was boredom, lack of mystery that ruined her marriage,” she said. “So she felt she’d be better off living with someone who was essentially a stranger. It certainly seems to have worked for her. She spent two happy years with that man who appeared at her door. Then she spent the rest of her life remembering him as her great love.”
    “But what about honesty?” I said. “Doesn’t true love mean you’re able to unveil your soul to the person you love and he or she will love you even more for that?”
    “Maybe it’s the other way round,” she said. “Maybe you have to love someone first, before you really know all that much about them. Then, no matter what revelations may come, the love’s too strong to be destroyed by them.” She paused for a moment. “Certainly a mother’s love’s like that, isn’t it? How do you explain a mother’s love?” It was one of those questions asked to call attention to the impossibility of an answer.
    At the end of our phone conversation, I told her how much I loved her and I promised I’d let her know how the Vanderlinden story worked out. Then I went into the library and sat in front of the fire with my wine. Corrie came in too and jumped on my knee, making little cat-noises as she often did, trying to simulate conversation. So we chatted