All He Ever Wanted(80)

I am pleased to be invited to call you Etna and shall do so. Thank you as well for inquiring about my life, which though academically satisfying is largely uneventful on a personal level. This is just as well, I think, since I find I must devote nearly all of my energies to my new post. In that regard, Gill Street is a good address. It is comfortably furnished and well run and the cook is remarkably competent for a college town (my cook in New Haven was appalling), so I have no complaints.

It is, however, difficult to write of my new life when yours is in so much turmoil. The dinners to which I go and the meager social life Thrupp has on offer (your husband did warn me about this) pale into insignificance when compared with the struggle in which you are involved.

I did, on the advice of Gerard Moxon, take up snow skiing this winter, which was, at best, a highly comical endeavor.

Fondly,

Phillip

Exeter

March 9, 1915

Dear Phillip,

I cannot express to you how distressed and troubled I am at the removal of my son from my protection. It is not just the personal sadness that sweeps over me so many times during the day — a kind of emptying out of any joy in the moment and then a filling up, as of a well, with sorrow — it is the knowledge that my Nicodemus is in the custody of his father, who has shown himself to be so violent in his temper and so disturbed by our marital circumstances that I fear he will be, at best, a preoccupied parent, and at worst a frightening one. Is this retribution for my wanting the solace of occasional solitude? Swift and devastating retribution, if it is, and, I cannot help but think, so much greater than the crime.

So it is with some trepidation, born out of parental love and necessity, that I shall be returning to Thrupp so that I may be nearer to my son. It is my hope that I shall be allowed to see him on a frequent, not to say regular, basis until such time as I am able to regain custody of him. I cannot tell you my future address at this moment, but as I shall be leaving Exeter before the week is out, I do not think it wise to write to me again until you hear from me.

With respect,Etna

April 20, 1915

My dearest Phillip,

Would you be kind enough to meet me at the Payne Street Market in Worthington at ten o’clock next Thursday morning? There is something I should like to show you.

E. VT.





A marriage is always two intersecting stories. I can tell only mine. As for her story (as for their story), I was not privy to it apart from the letters I was to find in Etna’s tin cake box, letters I append here with a clip, somewhat reluctantly, not only because of their revealing (and, to me, dismaying) content, but also because I rather liked the slim, neat package my leather journal made, as if a life could be contained within its elaborately tooled covers.

Etna was by nature a reticent individual, not given to verbal displays of emotion, and therefore hardly likely to have apprised me of her relationship with Phillip Asher. Had it not been for my accidental discovery of Etna’s and Asher’s correspondence (my hand nervously strumming the front of the tin cake box, thus tripping the latch of the door), I might never have been aware of, for it almost certainly would have been destroyed in the fire. I cannot say that the enigma that was my wife is entirely revealed to me here, but some questions are answered.

I learned in Etna’s letter of October 22 that she had once been engaged to a Mr. Bass from Brockton, but that the betrothal had been broken off. It is a wonder such a fact was kept from me, that William Bliss, in all innocence, did not reveal it, or that Keep, not so innocently, did not seek to wound (or rather nick) me with this bit of information. A betrothal in those days was a serious matter and nearly as difficult to undo as a marriage. I can conclude only that William Bliss, after having seen me disintegrate so completely upon the news that Etna had left for Exeter to become a governess for Keep’s children, thought it best not to trouble me with facts that were, after all, not his to tell. Indeed, both Bliss and Keep might well have imagined that Etna had already discussed the matter with me. Most women would have done so, but, as we have seen, Etna was not like most women. Etna was a woman of secrets.

Indeed, what was I to think of what is clearly revealed in the correspondence to have been a passionate love affair between Etna and Samuel Asher? Truth to tell, this revelation was not as agonizing as I might have expected — I who have shown myself to be quite capable of agony on any number of occasions. In fact, this knowledge was almost a relief, for somehow I had always known. I remember speculating even on the first day I met Etna as to whether she had had one or many lovers before me. A woman who has known love has about her an aura of having been — how shall I put this? I do not wish to be indelicate here —plundered is the only word I can think of, and I do not think it an inaccurate one in this circumstance. Etna had been plundered, soul and body, however willingly, by Samuel Asher. I will not now dwell upon the images that this avenue of thought produces; suffice it to say that the senses have an intellect that may be denied the conscious mind, and that my senses accurately detected, on my unpleasant wedding night, more than just a previous deflowering of my bride. Etna had been well and truly loved.