He turned to head back inside, and saw Mrs. Big Bad Wolf standing in the doorway.
“What’s the problem, dear?” she asked.
“Flat tire. I’ll have to call a garage and-”
She smiled and interrupted him. “Just take my car. I’ll call the auto club and wait for them. I don’t mind at all and you can still go to your research meeting.”
“You absolutely sure you don’t mind?” the Big Bad Wolf asked, brightening considerably at the offer. “It’s a total pain in the butt, I know…”
“Not in the slightest. I was just going to watch television while you were away anyway. I can easily wait for the service guy while I’m watching.” She handed him the keys to her car. “Now, take care of my little baby,” she said, joking. “You know she doesn’t like to go fast on the thruway.”
The Big Bad Wolf looked down at his watch. He still had plenty of time. “Well, honey,” he said cheerily, “thanks. I’ll see you late tonight. Just leave a light on inside and I won’t wake you up when I come in.”
“You can wake me up. It’s okay,” she replied.
This was the most routine and commonplace of exchanges, one that a million couples have in some variation every day. It sang of normalcy.
“Here,” the Big Bad Wolf added. “Take my keys in case the auto guy needs to start it up.” He handed them to his wife without thinking, and got behind the wheel of her little car. He gave her a jaunty wave as he pulled down the driveway.
21
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf watched her car disappear down their little suburban side street. There was a flash of red brake lights at the corner before the vehicle disappeared into the evening. Just as it went out of sight she lifted her hand and made a small half-wave, although she knew her husband wouldn’t be looking back in her direction. She was happy to see him go and happier still that she had helped make it possible. Sighing, she stepped back inside their home, walked directly to the kitchen, and dutifully called the auto club, just as she had promised. The dispatcher told her it would be between thirty and forty-five minutes before a tow truck would arrive with someone to change the flat. She hung up the phone. In the living room the television was already playing. She could hear canned laughter and familiar sitcom voices. She put the car keys down on the kitchen countertop and was about to join the characters toiling at Dunder Mifflin or working on the Big Bang Theory when she stopped short.
Car key. Black electronic car door opener with red alarm button. House key attached to a single ring. She recognized those.
Beside them a fourth key. The key to her husband’s office.
She stared at that key. She realized that she had never before, not once, held it in her hand. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever seeing it, other than during those fleeting moments when her husband stood just outside his office. There were no other doors requiring locks in the entire house. It was, as best she knew, the only key that would open up that particular door. Perhaps he had a spare, hidden somewhere in some drawer, or taped behind a mirror, but she had never seen one and had no idea where he might have concealed it and had never hunted for it despite her constant curiosity about what exactly went on when he was inside working. She lifted her eyes from the key to the office door, looking back and forth as if following the flight of a tennis ball during a match. There was nothing special about the key-a single, silver-coated slab of metal that fit into the dead-bolt lock her husband had installed within a week after their wedding.
“I need to keep my writing space private,” he’d told her.
He had said this in an offhand, matter-of-fact manner that fifteen years earlier had seemed to make perfectly reasonable sense. That he needed total isolation to invent plots, scenes, and characters hadn’t seemed anything out of the ordinary to her, especially in the first happy weeks of marriage.
She could remember him kneeling beside the door, drill and hardware spread out on the floor beside him, a handyman of secrecy. It had not bothered her in the slightest. We all need some secrets, she’d thought during those heady first days.
Except, right at that moment, staring down at the office key, she couldn’t immediately recall any of her own that she had hidden from him. Then she told herself to stop being foolish. Of course you have secrets, she insisted. Like when you got so sick and believed you were going to die and you wouldn’t tell him how scared you were and how much pain you had. Those were secrets.
Except she knew he had always understood the truth.
But doubt crept inside her. Did he?
Of course he did, she sternly replied to her doubting half. Remember how attentive he was? Remember how concerned? Remember how he would bring flowers to the hospital and he would hold your hand and the soft, reassuring tone of voice he always used? He was sweet.
More canned laughter echoed from the living room. Uproarious. Unbridled. Enthusiastic. Irrepressible. Undoubtedly fake laughter, manufactured by a machine.
Without even internally asking herself the crucial question, she answered out loud. “You can’t. You just can’t.”
A rapid argument took place within her. It’s his private space. He’ll never know. You can’t violate his trust. What’s the harm? The two of you share everything. That’s what marriage is all about. All you’re going to do is read a little bit of the book you know he’s writing just for you. A few words, just to get a handle on it. Something to dream about while he works so hard to get it finished.
The clinching argument wasn’t about privacy or curiosity but about love and need, and her own curious obsession: I know he’d want me to read a few pages. I just know he would. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t read some to me already.
This was categorically untrue, and she knew on some level that she wouldn’t approach. She would not say the word liar to herself. She felt reckless and adventurous, like a child, drawn by uncontrollable fascination, peeping through a bathroom keyhole to see some adult’s naked, unsuspecting body. She was excited by the illicit nature of what she was doing, but unable to harness her desire as it mingled with the guilt of seeing something strangely forbidden.
She took the key in her hand and, shaking a little because somewhere within her she knew she was doing something incredibly wrong that she was altogether powerless to stop, went up to the office door.
The key slid effortlessly into the dead-bolt lock. The bolt slid open with a small click.
She pushed the door and stood in that transitional space between the two rooms. Light from the kitchen and living room behind her crept forward into the pitch black of the office. She told herself not to hesitate, and reached out and switched on the overhead lamp as she stepped into the room.
For a moment, she shut her eyes as light flooded into the office. Like some better-half conscience, a voice told her to stop: to shut off the lights, step back, keep her eyes closed, slam the door, lock it, and go watch television.
She felt a hot rush of danger. A benign danger that was cooled by curiosity. She told herself, Just learn a little. It will be your secret. She smiled, and opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was a wall covered with different-sized photographs. There were lined 6-by-9 note cards in wildly bright colors-lime green, lavender, yellow-bearing dates and small, pithy observations about location and time beneath the pictures. It looked both terrifically organized and oddly haphazard at the same moment.