April 2017
David Huddle
dhuddle@uvm.edu
dhuddle@uvm.edu
I rarely feel conflicted about writing both poetry and fiction. When I can’t write in one genre, I turn to the other and usually the muse has been waiting there for me to show up. “The Husband’s Tale” came to me as a poem--and I quickly understood that loose-sonnet sections would work for detailed “episodes” in chronicling this couple’s relationship over a number of years. It’s pure fiction--almost nothing in it is autobiographical--and I have no idea where these characters came from. Well, that’s not really true--I know they came out of their basic situation, which is that the husband can speak and the wife can’t. Everything follows from the way that friction informs their “love story.” Nowadays when I look back at it, I always think it might have been a short story or maybe a novella. But then I also see that writing it as prose would have slowed it down and perhaps made it ponderous. What I think it really wants to be is a movie--but so far I haven’t received any calls from Hollywood.
The Husband’s Tale
…the difficult signs for flight, for
danger, as well as the simpler one
for love
--“Adam Signing,” by John Engels
1.
I know what they say--it was her silence
I married her for. They’ve got it right. She’s
never spoken. She has no voice box,
so she can’t even hum to herself. Yes,
she can write--her elegant hand can fly
across a page, every sentence crackling
with intelligence and passion for life,
the world and its creatures, books, art, music--
and when she signs, people gather around
her as if her hands and fingers reveal
how we came to be here, what we must do
with our lives, and what happens after we
die. No matter they can’t read her gestures.
They want what I want. To listen anyway.
2.
Forty years we’ve been companions--a long,
intricate dance begun the day we met.
In high school, someone said, That new girl can’t
talk, and I went to see her for myself.
So her stillness was the first fact I knew
about her. Her looks were ordinary--
no one said she was pretty--but her face
had a kind of power. Kids got quiet
around her, and if she looked straight at you,
it could make you shiver. She and I locked
eyes that first day, and nowadays we joke
that was the moment we made our wedding vows.
She was voted our commencement speaker.
Beside her, I read her speech. Sounded her words.
3.
Never a man, but when women see us
together--their faces say it--they suspect
a talking husband with a silent wife.
Like it’s a new sexual perversion.
They might not be wrong. When Ruth Ann and I
make love, it’s the words I say that excite
her, the flutter and caress of her hands
and fingers that move me along with her.
Is this too intimate? Well, there you have it--
The other side of power is a cool,
secret place, a meadow where two can go
to lie down in smooth grass to spend hours.
A fingertip brushing along the skin
inside a wrist. Just you whispered like Amen.
4.
Yes, children. And yes, they must have suffered
difficulty and embarrassment they
never even told us about, schoolmates
with hands over their mouths mocking Ruth Ann,
exaggerating the long stare at a face
that’s become my habit. Robert’s oldest,
Michelle only a year younger. They’re sweet
kids and never told us of any trouble
we might have caused them. School’s where you find out
how the world views your parents. They brought home
friends, and the friends watched us. We know they had
their thoughts. But somehow we passed inspection.
Once we even chaperoned a school dance,
danced the jitterbug for them--but just once.
5.
Once, furious, her hands seemed to explode:
You use silence against me! It’s not fair!
I must have blinked, because her mouth opened
like that agonized person’s in Munch’s The Scream--
and she made the same sound the painting makes--none
whatsoever. It was just so eerie!
Married a few years, we suddenly saw
that navigating love all right didn’t
mean we could handle fear and rage. I don’t
know how I knew to do this, don’t remember
deciding to do it, just knew to drop
straight to the floor, kneel, hug her knees, bury
my head, and say, “I’m so sorry!” When I
looked up, she smiled and signed, Keep talking.
6.
My worst fear was she’d be hurt somewhere near
and I’d be oblivious. More and more
I’d go check on her wherever I thought
she was--gardening, ironing, watching TV.
I got so I could do it without her
noticing, just a glance from a window
or through a door, but in the course of years
I realized she knew almost every
time but pretended not to notice. What
this says about marriage or the two of us
I don’t know, but once when she sat reading
in the back yard sunlight, I passed the porch door
like a ghost spying on a statue, then
stepped back and caught that slight to-herself grin.
7.
Gardening would be only the general
term for what she did with flowers, trees, rocks,
water, grass, shrubs, even daylight and shadow.
It took years for me to see how the odd
little pieces of land around our house
had evolved into a park for ghosts or
angels, or maybe it was outsider art
for a few discerning pedestrians
who could recognize arrangements she’d changed
dozens of times--buried hoses made fountains,
one that washed down a rock face into a pool
lined with stones she’d found, a miniature
grotto with a bench beneath soft Chinese
chimes that called Come sit down in paradise.
8.
One more won’t hurt. Saying it swung open
the door to Les Bon Temps--and Ruth Ann tipsy
was funnier than a dozen speaking
women. “You’re slurring your words,” I’d tell her,
and she’d gesture gibberish and cross her
eyes. Oh, we said it a lot in those years
before the night I hip-checked her across
the kitchen and broke her wrist. What had seemed
only giddy pleasure turned in that instant
to a drunken husband (me) abusing
his disadvantaged wife (Ruth Ann), waking
their sleeping kids with his violent act.
Right hand in a cast. The left didn’t feel
like talking, and our sad silence a jail.
9.
One Monday morning at Dunkin’ Donuts
I realized I was pointing at what
I wanted. I actually forced myself
to say Thank you to the woman counting
change into my palm. I sat in the car
a long while, thinking about when I’d last
spoken aloud. As if they were someone
else’s, my hands signed--Friday afternoon
at work. Kids away at school, with the house
to ourselves, Ruth Ann and I, without
ever agreeing it was what we wanted,
had given ourselves over to silence.
Or maybe released it from the basement,
attic, and closets. Treated it like a guest.
…the difficult signs for flight, for
danger, as well as the simpler one
for love
--“Adam Signing,” by John Engels
1.
I know what they say--it was her silence
I married her for. They’ve got it right. She’s
never spoken. She has no voice box,
so she can’t even hum to herself. Yes,
she can write--her elegant hand can fly
across a page, every sentence crackling
with intelligence and passion for life,
the world and its creatures, books, art, music--
and when she signs, people gather around
her as if her hands and fingers reveal
how we came to be here, what we must do
with our lives, and what happens after we
die. No matter they can’t read her gestures.
They want what I want. To listen anyway.
2.
Forty years we’ve been companions--a long,
intricate dance begun the day we met.
In high school, someone said, That new girl can’t
talk, and I went to see her for myself.
So her stillness was the first fact I knew
about her. Her looks were ordinary--
no one said she was pretty--but her face
had a kind of power. Kids got quiet
around her, and if she looked straight at you,
it could make you shiver. She and I locked
eyes that first day, and nowadays we joke
that was the moment we made our wedding vows.
She was voted our commencement speaker.
Beside her, I read her speech. Sounded her words.
3.
Never a man, but when women see us
together--their faces say it--they suspect
a talking husband with a silent wife.
Like it’s a new sexual perversion.
They might not be wrong. When Ruth Ann and I
make love, it’s the words I say that excite
her, the flutter and caress of her hands
and fingers that move me along with her.
Is this too intimate? Well, there you have it--
The other side of power is a cool,
secret place, a meadow where two can go
to lie down in smooth grass to spend hours.
A fingertip brushing along the skin
inside a wrist. Just you whispered like Amen.
4.
Yes, children. And yes, they must have suffered
difficulty and embarrassment they
never even told us about, schoolmates
with hands over their mouths mocking Ruth Ann,
exaggerating the long stare at a face
that’s become my habit. Robert’s oldest,
Michelle only a year younger. They’re sweet
kids and never told us of any trouble
we might have caused them. School’s where you find out
how the world views your parents. They brought home
friends, and the friends watched us. We know they had
their thoughts. But somehow we passed inspection.
Once we even chaperoned a school dance,
danced the jitterbug for them--but just once.
5.
Once, furious, her hands seemed to explode:
You use silence against me! It’s not fair!
I must have blinked, because her mouth opened
like that agonized person’s in Munch’s The Scream--
and she made the same sound the painting makes--none
whatsoever. It was just so eerie!
Married a few years, we suddenly saw
that navigating love all right didn’t
mean we could handle fear and rage. I don’t
know how I knew to do this, don’t remember
deciding to do it, just knew to drop
straight to the floor, kneel, hug her knees, bury
my head, and say, “I’m so sorry!” When I
looked up, she smiled and signed, Keep talking.
6.
My worst fear was she’d be hurt somewhere near
and I’d be oblivious. More and more
I’d go check on her wherever I thought
she was--gardening, ironing, watching TV.
I got so I could do it without her
noticing, just a glance from a window
or through a door, but in the course of years
I realized she knew almost every
time but pretended not to notice. What
this says about marriage or the two of us
I don’t know, but once when she sat reading
in the back yard sunlight, I passed the porch door
like a ghost spying on a statue, then
stepped back and caught that slight to-herself grin.
7.
Gardening would be only the general
term for what she did with flowers, trees, rocks,
water, grass, shrubs, even daylight and shadow.
It took years for me to see how the odd
little pieces of land around our house
had evolved into a park for ghosts or
angels, or maybe it was outsider art
for a few discerning pedestrians
who could recognize arrangements she’d changed
dozens of times--buried hoses made fountains,
one that washed down a rock face into a pool
lined with stones she’d found, a miniature
grotto with a bench beneath soft Chinese
chimes that called Come sit down in paradise.
8.
One more won’t hurt. Saying it swung open
the door to Les Bon Temps--and Ruth Ann tipsy
was funnier than a dozen speaking
women. “You’re slurring your words,” I’d tell her,
and she’d gesture gibberish and cross her
eyes. Oh, we said it a lot in those years
before the night I hip-checked her across
the kitchen and broke her wrist. What had seemed
only giddy pleasure turned in that instant
to a drunken husband (me) abusing
his disadvantaged wife (Ruth Ann), waking
their sleeping kids with his violent act.
Right hand in a cast. The left didn’t feel
like talking, and our sad silence a jail.
9.
One Monday morning at Dunkin’ Donuts
I realized I was pointing at what
I wanted. I actually forced myself
to say Thank you to the woman counting
change into my palm. I sat in the car
a long while, thinking about when I’d last
spoken aloud. As if they were someone
else’s, my hands signed--Friday afternoon
at work. Kids away at school, with the house
to ourselves, Ruth Ann and I, without
ever agreeing it was what we wanted,
had given ourselves over to silence.
Or maybe released it from the basement,
attic, and closets. Treated it like a guest.
“The Husband’s Tale” appeared in Blacksnake at the Family Reunion, Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
© 2017 David Huddle
© 2017 David Huddle
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