She sits at the window and waits, hoping that he might call her from the motorway on his way home, think of her and pull her out of the neat, orderly briefcase of his mind like a foolscap file. Pending, that's what she is. Not the priority - because there's another file,too,marked Urgent. Such is life.
She looks around, checking that the place is tidy in case he turns up, trying to see it through his eyes and judge it with the kindness he invariably shows her.
'That's nice,' he'll say, looking at the way she's arranged the table, or at the curtains she got in the sale at Lewis's when she was wandering around trying to distract herself. Killing time, always killing time, waiting until he walks through the door, and then counting the hours until he walks out again. Every time he's here, the house holds its breath, trying to be perfect for him, just as she tries to be the woman he would choose if he started again and followed his heart. Each time he leaves, the house lets out a long, heartbroken sigh, and hunches its shoulders in despair.
The nights are the worst, of course. During the day there's always something to do, something to be busy with, other people to talk to and be useful to. At night, when she can no longer pretend that she's indispensable - let alone irresistible - she curls up like a child in the too-big bed, nursing the ache of a loneliness which is a way of life. Night after night, she waits for him to come to her. Night after night, he has to be elsewhere. Priorities.
She could leave, of course; she'd have to actually move away, because she wouldn't be able to bear being anywhere near him, and because she couldn't bear to stay in this house and know that he would never walk through the door again. She imagines herself packing - sorting out all the slinky lingerie she only bought to please him, and all the beautiful dresses she hoped he would want to show her off in, out and about in restaurants and theatres and at parties...they hang in her wardrobe like unspoken words.
'I'm nobody,' she tells herself. 'I have no place, no value,' and she knows even as she says the words that she shouldn't feel that way. It's a betrayal of her sex, a surrender to something unspeakable, a settling for secondbest which is something no woman should accept. She wishes - oh, how she wishes - that she could be the Priority, foremost in his thoughts, first on his list.
She could be someone, somewhere else. If she could slip out of this skin of longing, and shed passion like an outgrown party dress, she could believe in herself again. She could put him in a file all by himself, and shove it in the great celestial shredder of her imagination. She could be her own Priority. She'll never be his, despite the ring, and the piece of paper, and the promises they made. Marriage is just a convenience to him, now - a comfortable place where he knows he will always be someone, where he can confuse the urgent with the important and get away with it.
She wishes with all her heart that she could be the mistress, the one who really matters, the one who - at least for now - knows she is someone. But she's just the wife.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.