ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 209: The Two-Faced Woman

One morning Ernie awoke from a dream and told me of it.

I’m talking to a therapist. I just told him about dreaming of my wife, who’s standing in back of me and whose face is half yours and half Nicole Kidman’s. The therapist asks my wife, whom I don’t look back to see, a question. I don’t hear her answer. Then he tells me: “This woman really loves you.” And I say to him: “I don’t believe you.”

When Ernie relayed this dream to me, it never entered my mind that he was doubting my love for him. I didn’t turn to face his pillowed head and say: I love you. You know that, don’t you?

Not once in the forty years we were married did I say these words to him. I thought they were unnecessary. I thought it was schmaltzy to do so. I thought he knew. Now I know, if I’d said these words to Ernie, it would have been a lie.

Talk elicits feelings elicits trust.

Late in our marriage, Ernie said to me: “You’ve broken trust.”

Now I say to Ernie: How can I break something we never really had?