From In the Lake of the Woods

This is from pages 186-188. John Wade is the main character in this book. He was a politician who ran for the U.S. Senate only to lose in a landslide. He was also a Vietnam veteran. Kathy is his wife and has disappeared for a day by the time this passage occured. Pat is Kathy’s sister. And the book is by Tim O’Brien.

For a while he let the guilt take him, then later he heard Pat sit up and clear her throat. A woodpecker was rapping in the woods behind them.

“John?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing. Forget it.” A few minutes passed. “You know what I keep thinking? I keep thinking what a good person she is. Just so good.”

“I know.”

“In love, too. Crazy about you.”

“It went both ways.”

Pat shook her head. “Like a little girl or something, all tied up in knots. Couldn’t even think for herself–John this, John that. Drove me up the wall.”

“I can understand that.”

“Can you?”

“Sure. I think so.”

Pat brushed a clump of pine needles from her arm. In the streaky sunlight her hair took on a color that was only a tone or two away from gray. “What I mean,” she said, “I mean Kathy sort of–you know–she almost lost herself in you. Your career, your problems.”

“Except for the dentist,” Wade said.

“That was nothing.”

“So I’m told. It didn’t feel like nothing.”

“Knock it off. The guy was just a walking panic button, something to wake you up. That’s what the whole stupid fling was all about–to make you see what you were losing. Besides, it’s not like you didn’t have some private crud of your own.”

“Not that kind. I’ve been faithful.”

“Faithful,” Pat muttered. She waved her hand. “And what about Little Miss Politics? Wooing the bitch day and night. That’s faithful, I’m the rosy red virgin.”

Wade looked straight at her. “I had my dreams,” he said. “So did Katy. It was something we shared.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“Man, you really didn’t know her, did you? Kathy despised it all. Every shitty minute. The political wifey routine–paste on the smiles and act devoted. It gets pretty damned demeaning.”

“But we had this–“

“John, listen to me. Just listen. Hate, that’s a polite way of saying it. She used to get the shakes out in public, you could actually see it, like she was packed in ice or something. Completely obvious. All you had to do was look.”

“I did look.”

“All the wrong places. Which is something we haven’t touched on yet. The great spy.”