Independence

E very six months or so, my wife Pam disappears.She's gone right now.Left this morning after a hot exchange between us.Not that she leaves only when something is wrong.The three other times it's happened, she's stayed away for two to four weeks.I could find out where she goes and why.I could ask her.But my sense is that if she wanted me to know, she would just tell me.I know that much about my wife.Pam and I don't have much money, so I doubt that she stays at a hotel or gets on a plane.For one thing, if she used a credit card, I' d be able to see where she was.So my guess is that she stays with someone she knows and that the place is not far away, probably here in California, or not farther away than Nevada or Arizona.I don't suspect that she's with another man.Not that that's impossible.But I believe she loves me and takes our marriage vows as seriously as I do and would not betray me.I believe she wants to stay married to me and enjoy the happiness that our marriage often brings.One thing I noticed over the course of her three previous disappearances is that she is usually calmer and clearer-headed when she returns than she was when she left.This is one of the reasons I don't try to pin her down about the disappearances.They seem to refresh our marriage.Pam and I got married two years ago, in June, twenty-nine days after we met.I proposed on the Gold Line, between Heritage Square and Lincoln/Cypress, heading downtown.I had bought Pam an engagement ring-a statement ring, the shop owner called it, perhaps as a way of knocking up the initial bargaining price-at one of those places on Seventh Street that has gold necklaces hanging in the front window next to a national flag you don't recognize and a buzzing red neon sign that says we buy your jewels.When I presented the ring to Pam, she paused, then tucked it into her front pants pocket."Try it on, spice box, moon rocks, bridge locks," I said.During the twenty-eight days we dated, Pam didn't tell me much about herself that was intimate.A week before I proposed, she did tell me one intimate thing-that when she was six, her father died, and when she was eight, her older sister, who was twenty, died.I didn't ask her to expand.I didn't think she wanted to.I just let her know that if she wanted to talk, I was here.It must have worked because from that day on we became closer.We started walking together in public with our arms around each other's