Aaron looped me in on this story and asked for thoughts, and it was a real quick yes from me. The way this story of a troubled marriage unfolds was mesmerizing, and there are so many lines that hit like a gut punch. The POV is so intimate, so deep inside our narrator’s head that it feels almost like reading someone’s diary. There’s so much restraint in what Michael chooses to show us, and I think that’s what really got me while reading. Somehow, from this almost stream of consciousness collection of thoughts from our main character there is such a clear picture of who these people are and the arc of their relationship. I think of negative space in painting and photography, and how the places left empty are as important as the subject in the finished piece. It’s a tough balance to hit, knowing what to leave out, and I think it’s done beautifully here.
—Jessica Dawn
Assistant Editor, Short Story, Long
“Labyrinth”
I
My wife told me in bed this morning that she had dreamed she was having an affair with an actor. Which was strange. Not for her to dream but for her to say. Because I have it on good authority that she is in fact having an affair with an actor.
Recently, our son Z told me that a stegosaurus’s brain was the size of a walnut. Or if you’re into nut facts, he said, a walnut is about the size of a stegosaurus’s brain.
My wife is a partner in a political consulting firm. At one time, I could legitimately say that I made my living as a book critic.
The actor in the dream, it turned out, was a movie star living on a yacht in Europe. The real actor lives here in Los Angeles and, like most actors, struggles to find work.
My wife has always been quick to form deeply absorbing friendships with men. I knew from the time I met her that she could not be with a guy unable to handle that.
After Z was born the only sensible arrangement was for me to stop looking for a job and remain home with him. Since then I have been what is referred to in the family-law system as his primary caretaker. Since then my wife’s career has gone, as they say in finance, parabolic.
My wife’s friendships have typically included rendezvous that stretch past midnight, long phone calls, and out-of-town visits. She has never hidden any of this. In fact, she tells me quite a bit about these friends, as she does about most things she finds interesting.
I haven’t always enjoyed this degree of honesty, but it beats secrecy.
When she’s between campaigns, my wife tries to make it home for Z’s bedtime. During campaigns, she rarely makes it home for mine.
I am confident that people at our wedding did not whisper to one another that my wife could have done better. Now when I meet my wife’s friends or colleagues and they tell me how remarkable she is I am quick to acknowledge that I am punching above my weight.
In the past month I have reviewed five books and collected nine hundred dollars for my efforts. I have managed this many reviews because Z recently entered kindergarten. I have managed this few because I can’t concentrate on reading or writing for even a minute.
In recent years my wife and I have kept to a routine of sex on Sunday nights.
“Routine” is a misleading word. My point is that sex once a week seems reasonable for a couple who have been together fifteen years and are parenting a small child.
Something my wife said after meeting the actor: This guy is just about the most attractive human being I’ve ever met, but he’s a mess, psychologically. You don’t have to worry about me leaving you for him.
My wife makes the most of her limited time with Z. There is no doubt that if she and I switched roles Z would watch less TV, go places more often, and play with his caretaking parent in ways that were more developmentally fruitful.
What I would have preferred to hear my wife say about the actor: This guy is the most together person I’ve ever met, but he’s hideous. You don’t have to worry about me sleeping with him.
When asked what I do for a living I still say that I’m a book critic.
Something I’ve always thought possible: that my wife would come home one day and tell me she’d had sex with someone.
What I’ve thought impossible: that she would have sex with someone and not come home and tell me.
My first thought when my wife raised the possibility a few years ago of having a second child: She’s looking into a future that includes me!
My next thought: I don’t want a second child.
What I told my wife: Let’s go for it.
Some things I can name off the top of my head: one of the actor’s recurring nightmares, two of the medications he takes to manage his mood disorder, and three concerns he has about his appearance.
An hour later, my wife decided that she did not want a second child.
A question I have never asked my wife: Do you talk to your friends about me as often as you talk to me about them?
Something my wife mused post-coitally eight months ago: You know, I don’t really understand sexual jealousy. I don’t think I have the gene for it.
What she wanted to hear: You know, now that you mention it, I don’t think I have the gene for it either.
What I wanted to say: It’s easy to believe you don’t have the gene for sexual jealousy if your partner has never given you anything to be jealous of.
What I did say: Huh.
My wife has always hated how she looks in a swimsuit, so I thought nothing of it when she got a bikini wax. When her A1C result came back high it made sense for her to buy an exercise bike. Pretty soon she was a size smaller, so what could she do but buy all those new outfits?
One night my wife came home from dinner with a college friend she had not seen for ages and said they’d had an unbelievably fascinating conversation. The friend had disclosed that she was polyamorous; my wife had insisted that she tell her everything.
My wife in turn told me everything.
What I kept saying: Huh.
That week my wife initiated sex twice and introduced two fun positions. I wished I could simply thank Bridgerton and Outlander, the shows she watches late at night while riding the exercise bike, but I knew she was sending a message. Don’t worry—our sex life would only get better!
Something surprising I learned while reading obsessively to prepare for the inevitable conversation: Before and during their time in the White House, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt conducted an open marriage.
Something Z said, apropos of nothing: If you had to change me into a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would it be?
Eleanor’s chief paramour was a woman. Franklin’s was his secretary.
I’m serious, Z continued. I need to know.
A quote from Eleanor I wished I hadn’t come across: It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.
II
A sample of things my wife said in the first hour of Day One of the conversation: We’re only here for so long. Me wanting this doesn’t have anything to do with you. All we have in the end is the connections we’ve made with people. It’s like it’s wired into me. The sex isn’t the important thing. This doesn’t have to affect you at all. But the important thing can only be there if sex is part of it.
Something my wife said repeatedly on Day One: I would never leave you.
Something she never said: It’s okay if you say no.
The obvious question I was afraid to ask: Does “would never leave” mean “I will never leave you,” or “If you agree to this, I will never leave you”?
A question my wife asked that I had already considered at great length: What if you knew there were lots of good-looking, fascinating women out there waiting to have sex with you?
A follow-up question I had already considered at great length: What if you were spending all of your time out in the world doing things you loved doing? Would that make it easier?
My wife’s attitude toward both of my responses: polite skepticism.
Something I said at some point that made my wife laugh: I mean, I get nervous asking women about playdates for our kids.
Something else I said that made her laugh: The women I want to have sex with are all characters in nineteenth-century novels.
What I said the first time my wife asked why I couldn’t at least give it a try: I know how one of these scenarios would affect me the first time. It would crush me, and then what?
What she could have said: If it crushes you that’s it, it’s over, I accept that you can’t do it and we get on with our lives.
What she did say: You can’t know how it will affect you.
Something I said that made my wife sort of laugh: How about we just spice things up ourselves? I’ll bet you Amazon could have some whips and chains here by tomorrow afternoon.
A question my wife asked several versions of: If I’m going to spend that time with someone regardless, why does it have to matter to you what we’re doing with it?
A sincere statement I made toward the end of Day One: It’s possible we’re on two different paths.
My wife’s snap reply: We’re not on two different paths.
What my wife said at the start of Day Two when I raised the hypothetical possibility of limiting her exploration to out-of-town sex with people she likely wouldn’t see again: You’re missing the point.
What I said: I don’t think I’m missing it, exactly.
What my wife said when I raised the hypothetical possibility of limiting her exploration to guys anchored in polyamorous marriages: Where would I meet guys like that?
Her snap reply when I said she would be surprised by the apps out there: I’m not using an app.
A sincere statement I made toward the end of Day Two: I still think we might just be on two different paths.
My wife’s snap reply: No.
Something my wife and I both kept saying on Day Three: We’ve already been over this.
Some things my wife said repeatedly on Days One, Two, and Three: But you already agreed that jealousy is irrational. There has to be something I can do for you that would help. But we’re not most people. I still don’t understand why you can’t at least try.
Something I said repeatedly on Days One, Two, and Three: I understand and I wish I could give this to you but I can’t.
My wife’s response at the end of Day Three when I asked her to please tell me that my answer was okay: It is what it is, I guess.
III
What was suddenly everywhere: books, movies, TV shows, magazine profiles, even New York Times opinion pieces about middle-aged women who have begun living polyamorously or are leaving husbands they love and get along with because something is missing they can’t live without.
My first thought when my wife, who is a touch hypochondriachal, told me she had been experiencing tingling and numbness in her hands and feet and was afraid she had MS: As long as she thinks she might have MS I’m safe!
One day Z came running to me and said, I almost got stung by a wasp that wasn’t even a wasp, it was a bug that doesn’t sting. It felt like my wife was speaking through him.
What I used to tell myself: I will walk out the door for good before I check my wife’s texts or otherwise spy on her.
What I kept telling myself now: That way madness lies.
The self-image I formed while reading about a middle-aged novelist who remained good friends with her “academic” husband after leaving him: paunchy, balding, smoking a pipe, wearing a sweater vest, sitting with my khakis hiked high enough above my black socks to reveal pink, almost hairless calves.
I believed still in my wife’s fundamentally honest nature but the rationalizations she could make in spite of it were potent: If I do this I’ll be a happier person and as a happier person I will make him happier. If I don’t do this I’ll be unhappy and we’ll end up divorced and he’ll be miserable and Z will be destroyed.
My actual appearance: decent shape, full head of hair, wouldn’t touch a pipe or sweater vest, inclined to wear jeans, just the right amount of hair on my calves.
One night Z got out of bed, came halfway down the stairs, and asked us, You’re sure I don’t have an older brother or sister around here somewhere?
What I wanted to say the subsequent times my wife brought up the tingling in her extremities: You’re right, it does sound like MS.
What I did say: You don’t have MS.
A quote I came across from James Baldwin: One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself—that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving.
My downfall was the Mac in my wife’s home office and the ready access it gave me via iMessage to her hundreds of daily texts. I found lots of flirtation with a few guys in particular but nothing to suggest additional activities. It was possible of course that, knowing I could see her texts, my wife was saving communications of that nature for a different messaging app.
My wife no longer experiences any symptoms indicative of MS.
My thoughts now returned insatiably to The Subject while driving, reading, walking, showering, cooking, cleaning, writing, eating, brushing my teeth, watching TV, lying sleepless in bed, listening to people talk, and talking in turn to them. Already I had been tuning Z out to an unconscionable degree. What’s worse than unconscionable? Criminal?
Paradoxically, I thought least about The Subject while in the company of my wife.
What I told myself every time I gave in and checked my wife’s texts: If I can just confirm that nothing has happened yet I will never do this again.
The fact of the matter: You can’t prove a negative.
IV
A month before Z started school I watched the kids at our block party play Kick the Can and Capture the Flag and was flooded with nostalgia.
To alert everyone that a round had ended, the kids shouted, “Olly olly in come free.”
Many times I have tried to wrap my mind around telling my wife yes, she can do what she wants. An equal number of times I have concluded that I could not endure being in that relationship and if it comes down to her insisting upon it then I will have to leave.
“Olly olly in come free,” like “olly olly oxen free” and other variants, is what child folklorists call a “truce term.”
A quote I came across from Nelson Algren, who was involved for years with the polyamorous Simone de Beauvoir: Do American faces so often look so lost because they are most tragically trapped between a very real dread of coming alive to something more than merely existing, and an equal dread of going down to the grave without having done more than merely be comfortable?
A thought that often repeats itself: This can only end badly.
The most fun I’ve ever seen Z have: playing Kick the Can and Capture the Flag at the block party.
A question I sometimes ask myself: If there were a life with a big house and great job and tons of friends waiting for me to step into it would I just put us out of our respective miseries?
The day of the block party my wife was at the office and then at a fundraising gala with the actor as her plus-one.
Some jobs I can see myself being hired for: grocery-store bagger, fast-food worker, nurse’s assistant, Amazon warehouse associate, crossing guard, TSA agent.
Something I can’t see: listing one of those in my OKCupid profile.
Presently the actor is in Baltimore, where he is filming a small but recurring role in a TV series.
The truce term we shouted when I was a kid: Polly Polly Ocean Free Free Free.
When my wife flew to D.C. on business two weeks ago she told me she had plans to see the actor on her last night there.
My reply to Z when he told me one day that his cough was really making his throat hurt and talking made it worse so he didn’t want to say a lot: That’s smart. The rest of the day you should only say stuff you absolutely have to.
My wife and I talked while she was waiting at the airport for her flight home and she told me that she and the actor had ended up back at his place and stayed up “crazy late” talking.
As she spoke, I was looking at the texts she and the actor had exchanged minutes earlier. Last night was great, she’d begun. Agreed, the actor responded. Though I’m beyond exhausted. My wife’s reply? Me too. But worth it.
As I parsed the texts, the actor’s somewhat standoffish complaint regarding his fatigue gave me pause. Though “exhausted” might have been a wink and nod to strenuous, long-lasting sex.
Also, it was hard to imagine that, knowing I could see her texts, my wife would have incriminated herself like this. Unless she believes I’m constitutionally incapable of illicit activity like reading her texts.
Some lines from Yeats I came across: Does the imagination dwell the most / Upon a woman won or woman lost? / If on the lost, admit you turned aside / From a great labyrinth out of pride, / Cowardice, some silly o’er-subtle thought / Or anything called conscience once.
Since her return my wife has been as open and affectionate as ever. Even now, my suspicions dim in her company.
I have to keep reminding myself that if I confront my wife I can’t refer to the texts, because what if she (a) has not in fact crossed the line, and (b) loves me in large part for being constitutionally incapable of things like reading her texts?
Presumably, sex that night with the actor would not have been the first time. And the actor would more than likely not have been the first guy.
A thought that often repeats itself: This is no way to live.
Something I can just barely imagine: getting by on spousal support and freelance work while living in a small two-bedroom apartment.
Something I can’t imagine: explaining that to a date.
“Confront” might be the wrong idea. “Come clean” might be better. Tell my wife that I have become a jealous obsessive and I hate it and something has to change.
What I will tell my wife I need from her: assurance that I need not worry about a thing, she doesn’t like these constraints but she has fully accepted them as a condition of preserving our life together.
A quote I came across that made me feel like the universe was toying with me: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
It is unlikely, of course, that putting words in my wife’s mouth will provide lasting reassurance.
Some words that have been echoing in my head: Polly Polly Ocean Free Free Free.
This is no way to live.
That last quote was from Jesus, in the Gnostic Gospels.
This can only end badly.
Something Z said yesterday: What does seventy million years even mean?
What I said: Good question.
STORY:
Michael O’Brien grew up Chicago and graduated from Carleton College. His fiction has appeared in Salamander, Sou'wester, Southern Indiana Review, Washington Square Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Idaho Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. He now lives in Chicago with his family.
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ART:
Nikita Andester is an author and multimedia artist living in Toulouse, France. She runs Snail Mail Sweethearts, a Substack about history's juiciest correspondence featuring monthly microfiction and original artwork.
Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Michael about this story.
Poignant, powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Well done! A great read.
This one sucked me right in. Great story!