Stricken

Mark Wisniewski

My wife’s name has changed at least four times. It was Elizabeth at birth, Betsy when I met her, Liz-Ann just before we married—and Beth when she fell out of love with me, which might or might not have been my fault.

If you’re struck by lightning, you have a decent chance to survive. And the odds say that most of your skin will appeared untouched. Your wrist will redden if you were wearing a watch when hit; blisters will appear beneath any keys in your pockets. Almost certainly, you’ll suffer hearing loss, at least for a time, as well as muscle spasms, coordination problems, attention deficits, and the inability to sit still. If your memory remains unaffected, doctors will consider you lucky.

One evening when my wife was Beth, I behaved idiotically. There are reasons for what I did, but they’d seem like excuses to the average person, and given the state of my memory, I mistrust myself when I think I was justified. What I do know is that, not long before this idiotic behavior, my wife kissed our brother-in-law Len as we arrived at her sister Karen’s house. I’ll admit it was a hello kiss, in that sense presumed innocuous, but it landed more on his mouth than his cheek, and it lingered, and her fingertips petted the stubble on his jaw as she ended it, as if to tell him or me or her sister Karen—or all of us, including her sister’s two young sons, who stood behind me then—that she, Beth, was falling out of love with me. For my part, observation of that kiss seemed to pass through my eyes and no further, my thoughts and feelings about it arising in disparate wisps months later. In any case I’m sure that, despite my troubled memory now, a kiss of that sort did happen.

Maybe half an hour after that kiss, the obligatory initial conversation among the adults played itself out, and Karen and Beth (she was then most definitely Beth) and Len and I found ourselves playing hide-and-seek with my nephews Jeff and Hunter. Jeff was It first, which gave me a rules-sanctioned excuse to hide, which was all I wanted to do. In fact—or at least among the facts remember—I even declined a beer Len offered in order to head straight for the unlit basement, tiptoeing down the stairs like a child, then rushed to what struck me as an excellent spot: the tub in the unfinished bathroom. Not long after I yanked closed the navy blue shower curtain, someone pulled it open halfway, and I shrunk back damning myself for having been found by Jeff so soon, but then Karen stepped into the tub and stood with her back to me.

A cloud need not be overhead for you to get hit. Certainly rain isn’t necessary, though a rush of clouds and a downpour often preface the worst strikes. If a mountain, or even a hill, obscures your view of the sky, you face an increased risk.

I’ll probably never know whether Karen saw me before she closed the curtain. In any event, her shoulders were now inches from my chest, warmth from her scalp rising against the underside of my chin. Her presence of course had me startled, though I also recall thinking our proximity had resulted somewhat naturally: we’d both hidden downstairs because we’d both seen the kiss and felt drawn toward descent. Then, in an attempt to get a laugh we might share with Beth and Len at dinner, I simultaneously covered her mouth with one hand and, with the other, clutched her waist. In my mind, the precise manner in which I did these two things has never changed. What changes is why I did them. Usually my memory assures me I wanted to scare her into humor yet not have her scream loudly enough for us to be found.

I’ve never told my wife what I’ve thought about her shifts from name to name. But at that point in our marriage—the year we visited Karen and Len in Missouri—the shifts she’d made irked me. Sometimes, often when I was alone, I’d worry that she was trying out names the way Karen was known to try on clothes during shopping sprees: capriciously, endlessly, insisting nothing fit perfectly. To me, each new name suggested that my wife, when she got down to it, didn’t know who she was. What will happen, I’d think, when she does finally know? Will she care about me? Will she leave? If she never understands who she really is, how will I?

Karen didn’t scream. Instead, she allowed herself to relax against me, pushing me against the tile wall. She giggled, and then she licked my palm, a gesture I took as payback for my hijinks or an awkward sexual advance. Either way, I liked her even less—she and I had never hit it off owing to her materialistic bent—but if this were her way of suggesting we kiss to even our scores with our spouses, my pride told me to indulge hers. That’s when I removed my hand from her mouth. And that’s when she turned and faced me. And we did kiss: her lips just beyond the edges of mine, a greeting well beyond obligatory, a jilted lover’s kiss, the kind you feel the need to prove you can continue well, with finesse.

Inattentiveness might be the worst result of all. It’s not really inattentiveness, but that’s how it appears to anyone close to you. You are, in fact, trying to concentrate on your surroundings, but the amount of information at hand exceeds your capacities, and you simply can’t take it all in. The hum of an airplane and the sight of a wasp, on top of, say, your hatred of war and the reluctance of an elm leaf to follow the sweeps of your rake—these things together could overwhelm you to the extent that you find yourself watching the sky to revisit the starting point that, yes, a plane is flying overhead. And then: No, it is not a military plane. Often you will conceive of yourself as hyper-attentive, but the person close to you will see you as unfocused. Now and again you’ll find that apparent peace between the two of you has burst into argument. If such an argument proceeds logically, you will lose, but you won’t know that you have, or how. It is therefore crucial to your marriage that your spouse try harder to understand.

Maybe I don’t need to detail what happened just after Karen and I kissed. Truth be told, I tend to remember those moments haphazardly. I conjure various moments well, but their chronology escapes me, as if, all these months later, my mind is trying to render them on the whole senseless and therefore impossible. There was Karen unbuttoning my shirt. There was me untucking her blouse. There were more giggles—hers, I often believe, though some very well could have been mine. There were more kisses, a number of them pecks bereft of emotion save perhaps the desire to buy time to consider our options. There was a deft unbuttoning of my trousers. There was the nick of a protruding nipple, and certainly hesitancy on my part that seemed to fuel her breathing. There were fears—disguised hopes?—that someone would discover us, and there were recurring thoughts of Beth kissing Len, thoughts that, at least then, I was sure Karen and I shared.

It’s difficult to swallow just after you’ve been hit. For days afterward, you’ll crave ice chips. Your libido will be reduced or, in effect, gone. If urges for sex return, they’ll time themselves inconveniently. Often they’ll manifest themselves quickly, then vanish, bolstering your confusion.

Whether or not Karen and I had a single thought in common, the curtain beside us opened about halfway, and Hunter said, Mom?—and I doubted he could see me for the darkness and the curtain, but I cringed: he must have noticed that Karen’s blouse was undone.

You’re not It, she told him. Are you?

Jeff already found me, he said. And I have to pee. Bad. Aunt Betsy is using the bathroom upstairs.

Aunt Beth, I thought, and Karen asked, You wanted to pee in the tub?

No, Hunter said. But I kept hearing noises.

That was just me, Karen said, and what happened after that generally fails me. I do remember that I buttoned my trousers confident that, yes, I’d remained hidden, and it also occurs to me now that, while I was otherwise gathering myself, Karen was smoothing things over with Hunter, who told her Jeff had found their Aunt Betsy first, meaning Beth would be It in the next round. I’ve always known that I waited behind that curtain, holding onto it, listening to Karen and Hunter discuss yellow cake as they walked upstairs to use the bathroom off the master bedroom, feeling relieved that I was again alone—but then, as I sensed that my marriage could end, I absentmindedly pulled the curtain free from two of its plastic rings. I will never deny that, as I steadied myself against the cool tile wall, I feared the upstairs: feared this woman who, if you asked me then, was more of a Beth than she was my wife. Worse, I didn’t want that woman to know who I’d become: a husband who’d crossed a line with his wife’s sister for reasons healthier minds might have deemed petty.

In some respects, it won’t matter whether you or your spouse was the actual victim: for both of you, the marriage will change fundamentally. If you’re the one who was hit, you might not be able to work, so your spouse might need to take a second job, or change careers. And your spouse will sleep fitfully on the nights when you wake repeatedly. You will both become sleep-deprived and as a result irritated. If one of you suggests separate beds, the other might agree, in which case you’ll both be reminded of how it felt to be single. And medical care can be an issue—if you can’t work and your spouse is away from nine to five or longer. You might not need constant care, but common sense will suggest you not be left alone for long stretches.

Blame Karen, I thought as I stepped out of the tub. She did, I told myself,press her backside against me. And Beth had kissed Len too fondly, and no denial of that could stand as the truth. And I was, after all, human, and male at that: weren’t men presumed unable to control themselves in the throes of insecurity and temptation?

And: I had hesitated. Pretty much all I did, I thought then, was hesitate. Hesitation shows commitment, I thought. Doesn’t it?

Then I heard, I see you! And there, in the bathroom doorway, stood Jeff, all five years’ worth of him, pointing at the man he’d needed to find before he could hide from his aunt in the second round of our game. Wait a minute, he said. Hunter told me my mom was in the bathtub. You were hiding in there too?

Yes, but only for a little while, I said.

Two people can’t hide in the same place, he said.

Why not?

That’s the rule.

Since when?

Since my dad said so, he said. Dad, isn’t that the rule? he shouted as he ran upstairs.

Isn’t what the rule? I heard Len call, and the door to the basement closed, presumably at the hand of Len, who would now, no doubt, learn that his wife and brother-in-law had hidden together in the tub in his dark basement. I wasn’t sure, as I failed to decipher the ensuing conversation, if I’d been tucking in my shirt when Jeff had discovered me, but my shirttail still hung over my belt. I tucked it in, wiped my lips hard with the backs of both hands, then paced the length of a cinder block wall. Across the basement was a refrigerator, the largely abandoned kind couples with children tend to stock with soft drinks and a six-pack for old times’ sake. I bolted toward it, opened it, twisted a can of lite free from its plastic collar, shouldered the door closed as a chill hissed against my finger.

I sipped hungrily, then walked upstairs. There was Len, making a fruit salad beside the kitchen sink. He didn’t as much as turn my way as I strode past him for the living room, where the eyes of Jeff and Karen and Hunter shifted to me as Beth, with her hands over her face, began to count out loud: her stint as It had begun. Karen shot me a look that confirmed everyone knew we’d been in the tub, then dashed upstairs so quickly I wondered if she needed to compose herself privately—or was she suggesting I join her? The boys were now also gone, down a hallway that led to rooms I’d never seen. I sipped more beer, Beth’s count at twenty-six. I had no idea how high she needed to go, no desire to play. I returned to the kitchen, where Len nodded at the table and said, Try under there. No one ever looks there.

Listen, Len, I said.

She’s on forty-one, he said. Better get under there. Or somewhere.

But I want to talk to you, I said.

About what? he asked.

What happened downstairs.

So you took yourself a cold one. That’s what they’re for.

I’m not talking about the beer, I said.

Then Beth called out: Fifty!

Now or never, Len said, and I ducked under the table, spilling foam onto the thigh of my khakis. I was crouched uncomfortably, my neck resisting my head’s desire to rise despite the underside of the table. I was half of a silence shared with Len—until I heard Beth’s high heels.

I’m not playing, he told her.

I know, she said, and soon, from the sound of things, she was gone.

Just after a strike, sleep escapes you. Months down the road, though, you and your spouse might sleep as many as fifteen hours straight. Of course the physical body needs to recover, but either of you—or both—might now be depressed. Even if you were blissful before you were hit, you can find yourselves feeling doomed. And if either of you suspected infidelity before the strike, you risk wallowing yourselves into trouble.

Game’s over, dude, Len said, and I had every intention of facing him and the boys and Karen immediately, but the proximity of the table to my head and the effects of middle age on my knees—along with, perhaps, a pair of shock-stiffened shoulders—had frozen me. It was as if I’d hidden in a broom closet and someone had locked and leaned against the door: that’s the nature of the claustrophobia I felt, if only briefly. Then, after a few grunts intended to explain my delay, I maneuvered myself out and stood eye-to-eye with Len.

You were right, I told him. No one looks there.

Yeah, he said. You just gotta know where to go. He stepped toward the fruit salad, and, wiping his hands on a paper towel, seemed to frown, though he did appear to be swallowing quickly, as if he’d just sneaked a mouthful. Karen! he yelled toward the living room.

Yeah? she called.

Get the boys’ butts in their chairs!

We’re eating now? I asked him, and he left the kitchen, passing Beth as she walked in.

There you are, she said. She glanced at my thigh.

That’s beer, I said.

I guess you’ll always be hopeless, she said—and Karen shouted, Betsy? Time to eat!

Can you believe it? Beth asked as I followed her to the dining room. After all these years, she still calls me Betsy.

Sometimes I still fatigue easily, and I still fear thunderstorms. Many times these days, I consider only what happens to cross my path. For example: Do butterflies know where they’re going? Do they distinguish one flower from the next?

Dinner offered the interruptions children naturally bring, the kinds that don’t allow adults to converse in linear fashion, and for those interruptions, I was grateful. At the same time, I knew what was happening: the kisses my wife and I had shared with our in-laws were being distanced from us by time, food, drink, and the needs of the boys. In that sense, those kisses were now more difficult to discuss than they would have been had I allowed myself to be found first while Beth was It.

I could have crouched beside Len’s recliner in the living room so she could have found me just after she’d reached fifty. I could have told her, in whispers, that Karen followed me into the tub and came on to me, and everything could have been over.

But I hadn’t allowed myself to be found. I’d hidden. In order to win.

At the boys’ request, Beth, Len, Karen, and I—and the boys themselves—took our slices of frosted yellow cake to the rec room, to watch Saving Private Ryan on Len’s large-screen TV. The carnage was as graphic as I’d remembered it, far more so than that in Apocalypse Now, and I wondered, while we watched and ate and then merely watched, how startling the newest war movie thirty years from then would be, as well as how tame Ryan would seem to the boys after they had aged into their forties. Would both of them marry? I thought. Would either cheat or be cheated on? How long would Hunter be able to picture Karen, standing flustered, as exactly what he’d seen before he learned that I’d been in the tub with her? Would Jeff always remember that his mother had been with me when she broke the rules of the game? Was the sight of war all anyone needed to forget certain horrors of love?

Confusion can feel like a friend after you’ve been hit. It was bonded to you when you returned to consciousness, and then it remained with you, always at your side as you recovered. It followed or led where you walked. It wanted to hang out regardless of your spouse’s moods. There was tightness there, between you and confusion.

Len clicked off the video, Private Ryan’s credits be damned. Sack time, boys, he said quietly.

That goes for me, too, Karen added through a yawn, and I was sure Beth believed that she and I were on the verge of a war of our own.

What you and your spouse will want to keep secret are the seizures. They are, of course, hideous. They might not happen until weeks after the strike. The first one, while it occurs, might scare your spouse more than you. Probably one of you, and then finally both, will suspect epilepsy before you are told otherwise. EEG’s don’t access the parts of the brain short-circuited by lightning, so you’ll be told you’ve experienced a pseudoseizure, and you’ll be advised not to worry, to soldier forth, to trust that such episodes, like most aberrations of the human body, will pass.

As Beth and I left Karen and Len standing just outside their front doorway, I was sure Beth and I faced a decision: either mention our kisses as soon as we closed ourselves inside our car, or agree implicitly, by silence, that we preferred not to discuss kisses of any kind: that only children need concern themselves with strict expectations, that for all practical purposes, our day was done. And after both of our doors were closed, we did fall into a silence. I never imagined then that, months later, I’d wish we’d spoken our minds. In our car then, a kind of wisdom suggested we let our separate thoughts take us into the night.

It happened after the brown rice was boiled for dinner, after Karen had called and talked to Beth and Beth had strolled into the kitchen and hung up the phone. I was beyond casual hunger, so I halfheartedly asked, What’s the word?

Len filed for divorce, Beth said.

Oh, was all I could say. Then: Shit.

She’s upset, of course, Beth said. I mean—naturally. Though not as upset as you might think.

When did he file? I asked.

Two weeks ago.

What were his grounds?

Infidelity.

His or hers? I said, a half-assed joke to hasten us toward eating.

You can probably imagine, she said.

What’s that supposed to mean?

She just told me. About you and her. In the tub.

I’m sorry?

In the tub. In their basement. When we visited last year. The details are in the divorce papers, in case your memory needs refreshing. She told me because she wanted me to learn everything from her first.

Another man might have lost his appetite right then, but I didn’t. In fact, as those moments passed, hunger ate at me.

Hey, I said. We didn’t fool around. I mean, it was mostly just a kiss.

That’s not what she said. And at least she apologized right away. That is, after she admitted it.

Well, I don’t know what she admitted to. I mean, who knows what those divorce papers say. But I apologize for the kiss, if that’s what you want. But since we’re all suddenly being so up-front about that night, I’d like an apology—for that gooey kiss you planted on Len. Which, I might add, happened before Karen came on to me.

Now she came on to you?

When did I say she didn’t?

I thought it was mostly a kiss.

Whatever it was, it was no worse than what you did to provoke it.

Don’t go trying to put this on me, Tom.

Why not? You did what you did, in plain view of me and everyone there, including those kids. You show off like that—the great kisser—and people notice. In this case those people included your sister and your husband, who, whether you like it or not, had feelings.

That doesn’t mean they go fuck in a tub.

I walked from the stove to my side of the kitchen table, then back to the stove. This is stupid, I thought. No, I told myself. You were stupid. But that doesn’t mean you need to take all the blame.

I turned around and said, We didn’t fuck, Beth.

But you didn’t just kiss.

I was clutching the sides of the stove, the rice fattened, ready to burn.

Yes, I said. I suppose we didn’t.

You suppose?

To be honest, I said, I don’t remember it exactly. Which is, as you know, understandable. I was really thrown by how you kissed Len—

For Christ’s sake, Tom. She’s my sister.

And Len is my brother-in-law.

I don’t think I’ve ever even pecked Len.

Now that’s a goddamned lie, I said, and I headed straight for her, two stiff fingers aimed at her as if one, and she flinched as if she thought I’d hit her, so I pivoted, left the kitchen for the hallway, and walked into the mud room, where I told myself that hunger had gotten the best of me. But if you accept blame just to eat, I thought—and I swung at the wall with a punch that missed, then flung open the screen door and dashed to the far corner of the back yard, stopping only because of our chainlink. I heard thunder but saw no lightning, but then a bolt did appear, only the top of it visible, most of it hidden by trees on the rise behind the chainlink itself. It was then that Beth appeared at the side of the house, marched nearly all the way to me, and pointed at the sky. As I remember, I shrugged callously, and she said, But there’s lightning, and I said, I don’t care, and she said, Just come inside with me, and I turned and huffed off, at first to underscore that I was on my own way in, then on the assumption that I was leading as we made our ways separately. Out of that wistfulness that rises when you’re freshly ticked off but already wishing you weren’t, I looked over my shoulder, now hoping she’d join me, now worried about her safety, and I saw her standing more or less where I’d been, near the chainlink, glancing up, as I had, after the sound of more thunder, and that’s when it struck. It was thick, so oddly wide that I knew only respect for it, respect I now believe I needed to cling to as I absorbed the truth that she was down, stricken, lying on grass, eyes closed, hands open, fingers curled. Her heart wasn’t working when I got to her, but in some number of moments it was, no thanks to me in the sense that I had yet to attend to it directly, maybe, I now often hope, thanks instead simply to my presence: it was my hand squeezing her wrist. I doubt I will ever be able to both remember and focus enough to explain everything that goes through you when you feel your wife’s pulse begin again, on its own, as if the worst off-chances in nature, the ones that allowed her to be hit by lightning in the first place, also allowed her to survive what by all appearances should have killed her. You know she has changed. You accept that she is now aged beyond her years. You understand all at once the superfluousness of the human kiss, the inexactitude of names.

Judge's Comments

Claire Davis, final judge

While in graduate school, one of my instructors, Lynn Freed, once said: “If you can teach me something new in a story, you’ll be ahead of the game.” Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate this advice, having come to understand how learning about a job, say, or an art, or some particular of life that the reader is otherwise unaware of, adds so much to the piece. I felt that connection in the story “Stricken.” In a narrative that is sparsely elegant, it weaves together the physics of lightning strikes and a couple’s infidelity. The characters are well drawn, and the narrator in particular is both believable and painfully human. While the arc of story is certainly satisfying, it’s neither a convenient nor comfortable ending. There’s no easy conversion here for those stricken.