RELATIONSHIPS Spies Like Her

DINNER CONVERSATIONS FDR MOST

families go something like this:

“And what did you do today, honey?”

“Oh, I worked on the widget, fine-tuning the little part that makes the big part force the squiggly thing to hop up and down.”

“Ah. That’s nice. Widgets can be tricky.”

That’s not how it goes at my house. When I ask my wife what she did at work, all I get in reply are heavy sighs and blank stares.

You see, my wife’s work is secret. Janet has a degree in electrical engineering and a complicated title, and she’s also got what a normal person would call a security clearance; she calls it an access-something-or-other. She works for a major defense contractor. No, she doesn’t build bombs (she says), but as for what she does do, well, I have my suspicions, but that’s all. I have never heard a single specific detail concerning the nature of Janet’s work, or how that work fits into the whole scheme of things. Is it a new X-ray laser infrared satellite orbiting shoot ’em down device? Hmmm. A special stealth jack for state-of-the-art flat tires? I don’t know. All I know is that she works long hours, there are computers involved, she sometimes leaves town, and I do all the cooking, though I’m not sure what the last part has to do with her job. Oh, and one more thing: she makes a lot more money than I do.

I’m sure Janet is no( a reservoir of national secrets on the level of the joint chiefs of staff, or even the guy who delivers their pizza, but she and her company take security pretty seriously. She has a badge she must show to gain entrance into work and, in her office, a little safe where she keeps whatever she keeps there. She knows what she knows and is in the dark about what others know and do, which affords her and the others the protection of ignorance. If the terrorists or commies put her under some hot lights, all she has to do is give her name, salary, and work number, and honestly say “I don’t know” to the tough ones.

On the dining table we have some neat little coasters featuring a guy called “Super Security,” so we’re never far from terse reminders like: ’’Super Security says, ’Know who you are talking to.” She is allowed to tell me that employees are asked to report others who complain of money problems, then show up at work with a BMW TOO series. I’ve managed to drive around in her parking lot a few times but have yet to go inside. We used to joke about bugged phones and listening devices in our house. Then we figured maybe it wasn’t funny.

When Janet was hired a few years ago they put her in “the colony,” a gray area between unemployment and legitimacy. She stayed there for several months while the government checked her out. She would talk about the day she would be “getting inside,” much like James Garner’s references to the California state pen on “The Rockford Files.” She did some bogus work to pass the time, sharpened her crossword puzzle skills, worked short hours, and collected full pay.

In the meantime the government was sending agents around talking to Janet’s old college friends and our neighbors (“Do they seem like good neighbors?’1 “Are they on drugs?” “Do you see cars coming and going at odd hours?” or “Do you always drink beer in the morning?’1) and looking into God only knows what. They hit the neighbors across the street twice. I can hear it now. A knock on the door. “Hunney, it’s the EFF-BE-EYE again. Here to ask about the naayburs.”

Not being able to talk about Janet’s work adds some interesting ambiguities to our life together. Since it is impossible to leave work out of conversations altogether, we are left to talk about personalities and office politics but never substance, which creates a peculiar gap. Spouses share the problems and triumphs of their work, discuss how they handled situations, and examine what they learned. Janet’s achievements have been many, but I can’t fully share her pride in them since I am never told of the many small victories that make up her working life.

I’ve learned that other spouses live in similar straits.

“I’ve given up trying to get him to tell me about his work,” says Lisa, whose husband, Bill, works for the same company. “I used to be real curious, but I’ve gotten over that. What 1 haven’t gotten over, though, is all the technical acronyms he uses. They drive me crazy.”

Overall, though, Lisa has grown accustomed to the silence and thinks it has little affect on their marriage. “We don’t even talk about my work,” she says with a chuckle.

This “code of silence” seeps into other types of work as well. Take the case of Jane, whose husband is one of Dallas’s highest ranking police officials. Obviously, he’s required to keep the details of investigations from general consumption.

“Oh, I think it has had a real impact,” says jane. “Especially with the highly publicized cases, like Peggy Railey, for instance, it can actually be a relief not to know.

“But I think our relationship has benefited because we concentrate on other things. At night we give our attention to the kids rather than reciting how the day went.”

These spouses, like myself, work in the professional world. After a while we lose the sense that we are being shut off from something and realize that our working worlds are simply completely different from those of our partners. Instead of military wizardry, a “secret” of my trade is the correct use of semicolons; and I don’t always get that right. When my editors cut a “graph” from one of my stories, they are dickering with paragraphs. In my wife’s universe, a client who demands “graphs” means polygraphs. Janet has yet to take one, but a client can request it at any moment. Bill has taken several. He says they ask the same questions over and over.

“Where were you born?”

“Portland,” Bill answers.

They shake their heads. “We seem to be having trouble with that one. Where were you born?”

All this is of course reassuring in a way. National secrets shouldn’t be on billboards. I asked Janet the other day if she has ever been remotely tempted to let me in on one of her secrets. I got that look again, but this time it was accompanied by a wearisome “no.” Good girl. And I got to thinking: what if Janet ever starts talking in her sleep?