Review: The Wife Between Us

With all the PR and media hype (without teeth or accepting responsibility), women's value has not changed since the beginning of mankind's memory. Women are seen as brood mares or status symbols and not as having a value beyond their ability to produce children.

In those few marriages where children are not wanted--likely because the husband wishes to retain cock of the walk fawned over by all females present--his wishes dictates remain unchallenged once the women learn their place. That place is under constant surveillance and under threat. Nothing and no one she loves are tolerated to ripple the placid waters between then. What follows is either reward and, more often, punishment.

The woman who does not follow the man's dictates and does not respond by changing her attitude and falling into step two or three paces behind him will be cast into outer darkness. Divorced.

For the woman who actively pursues her freedom, often after the death of her favorite companion (a dog purchased for protection when the husband is out of the house), she will look for opportunities to distance herself, gain a modicum of freedom, and inveigle an option, suggesting her husband take advantage of a co-worker's needs and flexibility over her own sickness, urging him, with her permission of course, to take her place.

The problem with such machinations is that the wife is putting some other unsuspecting and undeserving woman her place with the same dangers and well known outcomes since she has begun to figure out how well shackled she was in his prison. It may have looked like heaven, but it was closer to hell, and now that she is finally free of him, she must in good conscience help free the woman she threw into the villain's evil clutches. No one, not even an unsuspecting younger woman falling into the same trap, should be forced to suffer that.

While Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen thought that when they put their heads and experiences and knowledge together to write The Wife Between Us, it was apparent to me their literary skills may have been firmly entrenched in the societal norms of how women are treated by men and, worse, by each other, blaming their comrades in the battle between the sexes and clinging to the man who has been so good to them, and who looks far too good to be true.

There is a vertiginous feeling when beginning the novel. It seems straight forward. A young woman who is a grade school teacher and lives with her friend is giving up her job in order to be with the man who has asked her to marry him. He doesn't want her teaching other children when she will have to teach and care for her own children after they are married. She moves out of town into the suburbs of an exclusive community and gives up her friends and everything she worked for to take a leap up into her brand new husband's rarefied world. She is getting use to dealing with her sister-in-law. She is after all her only in-law and she is so good to her younger and oh so accomplished brother. She even has a solid, strong, and faithful dog to protect her in her stunning suburban home and she doesn't miss her friends or her remaining family member while she tries to fill her time in the palatial and protected suburbs. Except that she cannot get pregnant and is soon cast out of her idyllic wealthy life, divorced, replaced by the other woman she made room for in her husband's life.

But she is free.

She is safe.

Or is she?

She has to clue her replacement in to what she is in for as she gives up her grade school teaching job and is forced to move into the secluded and exclusive life that has been cloned for her. The replacement wife may be luckier than she and may well give her ex-husband the child she could not, but she must be warned before it is too late. Or is it already too late?

Hendricks and Pekkanen deliberately created a situation where the obvious gas lighting and abusive cycle are blurred and the reader is not sure what is going on and who is trying to protect whom. On that level, they succeeded admirably, creating a modern version of Ingrid Bergman's danger at the hands of her unscrupulous husband as he drives her slowly and inexorably insane, questioning her sanity and reality, until at last either Ingrid or Charles Boyer will win and the truth will finally surface or one of them will be dead and broken, ruined.

As a psychological thriller, The Wife Between Us succeeds admirably to the point that the reader is also drawn into the trap and may not survive the ride. That is not too difficult since women are often their own worst enemies when vengeance and men are concerned. I see Hendricks and Pekkanen urging the trapped fox to chew off its own foot in order to be free, except that the fox trapped is not the fox you would expect, but the fox firmly caught in the trap urging the other caught fox to chew off its foot. There is no honor among contestants for the privileged life . . . and, considering the recent falls from grace, there may never be. There never has been.

Women are ornaments, chattel, brood mares, arm candy. As in Islam, so in the enlightened western world. There is no honor among women when men are concerned. Puts a different spin on Stand by Your Man.

Illegal immigration: Eater or Eaten

I'll bet you never watched Babylon 5 or realized you watched contestants playing the Game of Life. Forget that B5 hung in space over a dead world. Forget the gate technology that allowed ships to traverse the darkness from civilization to civilization. See the episodes as ripped from the headlines depicting current events. The two players in the Universe were the Shadows, the Great Evil, and the Vorlons, the Light. They were more than Evil and Good. They were warring siblings fighting their battles through the people of the Universe, the younger races that looked up to the Shadows and the Light as we look to our political parties. The Shadows and the Vorlons were the two sides of a coin, separated by perspective, the two sides of the Galactic Mirror. No different, except in our perception of them. Ultimately, Shadows and Vorlons enslaved the younger races. The Shadows and the Vorlons were the masters and the younger races their slaves, puppets playing out the end game, choosing which side of the mirror reflected what they saw, the image of their deepest desires.

Mr. Mordon was the human face of the Shadows whose only question was: What do you want? The answer bound the person to the Darkness or the Light, reflections of siblings, remnants of the Old Race, brothers or sisters depending on your point of view, destroying worlds and systems in their seemingly eternal tug-of-war. The Shadows preferred kicking over an ant hill to stir up the ants to battle other ants so the winner emerged as a stronger, smarter, and better ant while the Vorlons nurtured the races, tampering with their DNA to make them stronger, better, and smarter than the ants that preceded the ants the Vorlons reshaped to create better ants. It didn't matter which species died as long as the winning side was their side. The Vorlons cared that their nurturing would win and the Shadows preferred their aggression would be the winning side.

How is the illegal immigrant question different? You may think it's a matter of degree, but essentially it is the same. It is always the same. The only thing that has changed is the label we put on it to make what has become immature, irresponsible, and wrong acceptable and palatable. It is the same thing it always was and the new label changes nothing but our perception of the problem. Labeling garbage as art or social justice. It is still garbage. The Conservatives are the Shadows and Liberals are the Vorlons. The methods vary, but the end is the same. Slaves are slaves whether they are nurtured or forced to action. Illegal immigration is just another label for slavery. All the arguments for the rights of illegal immigrants and the liberal calls for social justice change nothing. White washing manure doesn't change manure. It may look better painted white, but it is still manure.

When we discuss illegal immigration we are still discussing slavery. Let's get that straight from the outset. Give us your poor, your starving, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. They are people willing to give up everything so their children have food, shelter, and clothing, a reason to get up in the morning to earn a few pesetas or pennies or dollars to buy food, shelter, and clothing to make the future less frightening and more comfortable. Centuries ago the system was called feudalism. A lord claimed title over the land and the serfs who inhabited the land and took what they wanted from the serfs: their daughters' virginity, the food from their mouths, and their freedom to choose their own lives. Though the resources were the Lord's due (determined by the Lord and taken from the people who had no say), those resources were stolen.

Feudalism became colonialism and serfs became slaves, conquered tribes, the losers in tribal warfare or stolen to be sold as slaves for money and goods that could be sold or traded for more food, shelter, and clothing. The serfs were slaves to their Masters as surely as the tribesmen, women, and children were slaves to be chained, bound, and packed like sardines in the holds of ships and given just enough to eat to keep them alive until they could be hosed down and sold at auction. Tribes preyed on their neighbors as predators prey on the old, the sick, the weak and vulnerable, and the young to be brought down and killed to feed themselves and their offspring. It has always been thus: the larger and more powerful prey on the weaker and their continuation was assured. Big fish prey on little fish and the bottom feeders get the scraps, but every species wins as they prey on weaker species, and sometimes on each other, in the never ending struggle to continue. Might makes right. Vegetarians point to the grass eaters as harmless because grass eaters consume only grass. What about the grass? Does grass not live? Does grass not grow, procreate, and live? So you choose not to eat animals, make a point of eating nothing with a face; you eat plants. You are harmless, as harmless as a cow, sheep, or buffalo. What if plants don't want to be eaten? What if plants have feelings? Are you not destroying another species for food, to quiet the rumbling in your belly? You kill to eat. Plant or animal, you end their life to continue your own. That is the cycle of life on this planet and in this time. That is also the reality of slavery. Illegal immigrants are the slaves who choose to walk through any danger, endure any hardship so they can feed, clothe, and house themselves by any means necessary. Those means in this time and in this country mean breaking this country's laws, the United States of America's laws to sell their labor, their time, and themselves for food so they can continue another day, another hour, another minute as long as they continue to exist. When this country was a colony belonging to Great Britain, an extension of the Great British Empire, people sold themselves and their children for a specified period so they too could come to this unexplored land to make their fortune, but really to ensure they would have a place to live, clothes to wear, and food to eat. These indentured slaves were guaranteed a certain quality of life and they were fed, usually with the scraps from their Master's table, but they were fed. Captured enemies were sold to enterprising men and sent across the vast oceans in the bellies of ships where they might die, but they might also live to be sold as slaves. Slaves were cheaper than indentured servants and there were no contracts. Masters paid more for indentured servants than slaves and that cut into profits. It is a simple equation. Cost must never equal or exceed profits. Smart Masters spent less in producing a crop in order to reap great rewards. Indentured servants cost more than slaves. Indentured servants worked only for the term of the contract. Slaves worked until they were traded, sold, or died. Pay one price and slaves will work, breed more slaves who will breed even more slaves. Slaves were an investment for the future that continued paying dividends for generations to come. Illegal immigrants are the latest label for slaves. These slaves provide the labor to pick the crops that will be sold at the market and cost less than hiring documented workers. That means more profit after the crops are sold. Call them resources, undocumented workers, illegal immigrants, whatever label you choose to salve your conscience and give slavery a makeover. In the end, these poor huddled masses are still slaves, resources that will make more money for their employers. These resources with faces and names are the latest on the list to be plundered, raped, and pillaged. Yes, there are good employers (masters) and bad employers, but ultimately they are Masters and the people are slaves. You are either the big fish that eats or the smaller fish that is eaten. No matter the perspective and no matter how you agonize over the rights of the fish that ends up as food, the fish is still eaten and nourishes another. Why else would the wealthy and powerful hire illegal immigrants? It is not to save them from poverty and ignorance. It is to cut the cost of the labor so that there is more money to buy bigger and better comfort. It's economics. The best economy is one where the cost never exceeds the profits and comfort at a cheaper price is much more comfortable. It all comes down to degree. Will you sell yourself for enough food to live another minute, another hour, another day or will you sell someone else for your comfort to someone who is buying so they will have more money to buy more comfort? It is always one species preying on a smaller, weaker, more vulnerable species. Have no doubts about that. Whether you eat meat or plants, you prey on life. What do you want? When you play the Game of Life, you eat or are eaten.

That is all. Disperse.