John's Wife

by Robert Coover

  It disturbed Opal to see the two children sitting with that older woman with the mask-like face who worked for John (when Opal asked her son one day what the woman did, he said she was his troubleshooter, and Opal wondered then: what trouble?), especially when the woman got up and left hurriedly without looking back as though sensing that Opal was approaching the table—what did it mean? what was going on?—but Opal was disturbed by so many things of late, this particular disturbance seemed relatively insignificant and was quickly shelved in a back corner of her mind: little Clarissa was a clever child and could take care of herself. Opal was less assured of her own ability to do so: she felt bewildered, apprehensive, and alone. She had just been visiting Barnaby who as usual mistook her for Audrey, and Opal, for one disorienting moment, had found herself answering back as though she were indeed Barnaby’s dead wife, defending her in her own voice, as it were, from Barnaby’s befuddled harangue. Then, that peculiar goggle-eyed photographer had lumbered into the room uninvited and started taking pictures of poor old Barnaby, standing there scratching his neck, unshaven and dentures removed, dribbling a bit, head cocked awkwardly to one side, bathrobe gaping and the fly of his boxer shorts, too, and Opal, finding this rude intrusion an insult to the old gentleman’s dignity, had upbraided the photographer smartly and sent him backpedaling out the door, again behaving more like Audrey than herself. She had felt certain she had done the right thing, but such outbursts were so rare for her, she had felt faint afterwards, her heart palpitating and her hands shaking, and she had had to sit down suddenly, while Barnaby, cursing her and the rest of the world, staggered off to the bathroom, dragging one leg like an accusation. What was worse, Opal had seen something inside the gaping robe that made her believe Barnaby might be contemplating taking his own life, and she didn’t know what to do about it, or whom to tell. The truth was, at this time in her life, Opal no longer had anyone she could confide in. Her grandchildren, though still dearer to her than her own life, had begun to distance themselves from her; her husband Mitch, having become very important up at the state capitol, was rarely in town anymore, much less at home; her best friends were all passed away; her brother Maynard, with whom she had never been close anyway, was slipping into senility; the young preacher, whom she had also run into at the retirement home, making his pastoral rounds, seemed to her to be on cloud nine most of the time (something Audrey always used to say) and of no use as a source of sane counsel; and even her son and his wife were rarely to be seen, seeming each to be living a life at some remove from her own—even when they were in the same room together, it was as though they existed on different planes, able to pass right through one another without touching. If she spoke up and said, “I believe Barnaby may be thinking about killing himself,” who would listen? She was invisible. Perhaps Barnaby felt the same way. He was very angry about something, and no one was paying any attention. It seemed to have to do with business. He believed Audrey had done something that had destroyed his company. But of course it wasn’t destroyed, it was ticking along very nicely, thank you, one reason Opal saw so little of her son these days. So maybe it was something that had happened years and years ago, if at all. Barnaby took business too seriously. As if he should be worrying about such things now, poor man! It was what had brought on his stroke, as best Opal could tell, she having been at that sad dinner when the old fellow collapsed. There had been some sort of bad news phoned in—Opal, distracted by little Mikey who had come into the dining room to show her his disappearing lipstick trick, not even trying to understand it—and down he’d gone. A shock to everyone. She herself had not been able to move, and later remembered what her friend Kate had said about the moment she got the news of her son Yale’s death: “Time stood still’ That hackneyed line from cheap novels. I suddenly understood it, Opal. Everything stopped. Cold. It was the freezing form that anguish takes in the human heart and mind, turning everything, even time, to stone.” When the ambulance came to take Barnaby away, Opal had found herself in the kitchen, washing dishes, though John and his wife had more than enough domestic help, and talking out loud about the strange but beautiful accidents families were. Was John’s wife standing there with her? She seemed to be. “He’ll be all right,” Opal had said, but perhaps only to her invisible self. And now, here he was, the shattered old man, consumed by rage and resentment, and much of it directed against his own son-in-law, in spite of all that John was doing for him, finding the best doctors, watching over his business, naming the new civic center after him (the dedication ceremony one of the few wholly happy events in Opal’s life of late), and providing generously for him now when he was no longer able to provide for himself. It was tragic, really. Opal hoped her own mind would be clearer when the time came for John to take care of her, so that she could let him know how appreciative she was. It was scary to think about. But it might not be the worst thing that had happened to her. She’d be free from her frettings, for one thing, which now, in her solitude, were quite getting her down. And even if she might not be able to understand it all perfectly, she and her son would be close again, for the first time really since he was a little boy.

  Who was that tedious old woman who had just left him? Barnaby couldn’t remember, didn’t really care. Thought for a moment it was Audrey and he started taking his frustration out on her, but the words didn’t come out right. And then he knew it wasn’t Audrey, Audrey was dead, and he shut up, feeling like a fool. Or two fools, more like it, he seemed to have two brains working at once, and neither of them worth a bent nail. What was on his mind, or minds, when he first got out of hospital, was how to kill himself. Whatever he attempted, they’d try to stop him, he knew that, and though it wasn’t his intention, trying to outwit them probably helped keep his broken cookie from crumbling altogether, at least for a while. John had already arranged for his incarceration in this “assisted living” complex, as it was euphemistically called, and it was well-furnished but in John’s style, which is to say, as impersonal as a chain hotel suite. Barnaby told them with what words he could find and get out that he wanted some of his own things, and he insisted on being taken to his old home to sort through his stuff by himself. This was not easy. Nothing worked right. It took him hours to open and close a drawer. They wanted to help, or so they said. He had to throw tantrums to chase them away and let him be. Bad luck on the hunting rifle, they’d already found it. But not his handgun. Bit of an antique, but it still fired, and it was loaded. He smuggled it out in a shoebox which he hid at the back of the closet of a senile old granny who lived down the corridor, knowing they’d search his own place, and they did. Only trouble was, he forgot where he hid it, even for a time forgot that he had hidden it, demanded to be taken back to his old home again, and when he couldn’t find it anywhere, thought they’d confiscated that, too. But hadn’t he just seen it? It was all confusing. Then, on a more or less sleepless night at four in the morning, he suddenly remembered and he went staggering down the hall, dragging his dead leg behind him, and got it. The old lady was wide awake in there, sitting propped up in bed. He nodded at her, but she just stared dimly. It was a long painful shuffle back to his room, seemed like miles, but he finally made it and prepared to shoot himself. Trouble was, he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to his daughter. He wanted to warn her about what was happening and to tell her he loved her. He’d tried writing this out before, but his writing was illegible. Even he couldn’t read it right after he’d written it. The next time she visited him, he’d tell her, and then he’d shoot himself. If she ever did visit him again. It had been ages. Not, as best he could remember, remembering not being what he now did best, since those ruthless civic center dedication ceremonies, when she’d turned toward him for a moment and looked him straight in the eyes, and he’d felt then like his heart was cracking just like his brain had done. Meanwhile, he hid the gun under some old letters and photos in a desk drawer and then realized, even before he’d pushed the drawer shut, that he had almost forgotten already
where he’d put it. So he spent the rest of that morning stitching a kind of holster made out of a thick sock into the inside of his lounging robe, under the armpit where it was less obvious, forcing his old builder’s hands to do what, clumsied by a sundered brain, they didn’t know how to do anymore.

  An impersonation of his cloven grandfather was the centerpiece of one of little Mikey’s wordless plays, one of the more awesome nights in John’s house, of which Lorraine had seen a few when John’s wide-eyed deadpan boy took center-stage. Not all those present understood what he was doing, but those like Lollie who did, did not know whether to laugh or scream. He’d put on the old man’s famous barn-red hardhat, a toybox acquisition since the stroke, and with wooden blocks had nimbly built with Barnaby’s stubborn caution a fanciful village, intricate and solid. He’d taken measurements and stroked his chin and ordered up a toy earthmover to shift a block an inch and scratched his neck and perched a pediment on high and pulled his ear and smiled the old builder’s dry manly smile to see what he had done. Trixie’s little girl, meanwhile, stood by with kerchiefed hair and John’s wife’s nubbly autumn sweater falling to her ankles, an admiring gap-toothed smile pasted flatly on her freckled face, the object of her mimicry missing the performance. Where was she? Preoccupied maybe with caterers in the kitchen. Lorraine felt like something was slipping away, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It wasn’t John. He passed through, big as ever, clapping backs and squeezing hands, harvesting congratulations for the recent acquisitions which had inspired the night’s festivities, a company party of sorts in honor of the expanding empire. He seemed distantly amused by his son’s show, watching it with one eye only, until he was dragged away by his father Mitch, who, back turned on his odd little namesake, gruffly asked him for another drink. Lorraine’s own kid came in then with a golf club, John’s visored golf cap down round his doggy ears, and Trixie’s girl, smile stuck on her face still like a sign on a door, stepped back. Lorraine, too, glimpsing the horror of what was yet to come: she stepped back, her own face rigidly rictus-gaped as though aping little Zoe. As her boy teed up and Mikey/Barnaby, looking like he’d got his sneaker caught under a railway tie with the night express bearing down, sought frantically to wall round his town with alphabet blocks, many at the party laughed and cheered and Waldo (“Don’t do that!” Lorraine was rasping, heart stopped, voice snagged in her throat: “You’ll break something!”) yelled out: “Chin down and elbow straight, son! That’s it! Now swat that sucker!” He did, grinning under the golf cap like a moronic pinhead, a blow that sent blocks splattering every which direction, causing the guests to whoop and duck, Waldo hollering “Fore!” and falling backwards on the sofa where John’s mother Opal in all her prissy dignity sat, insouciant as the storm’s dead eye, even as that dumb clunk crashed hooting down on her. A terrifying clatter as the blocks flew, but, miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken after. Except the little builder. He rose from the rubble, his hardhat cockeyed, stumbling confusedly like one of those malfunctioning movie monsters, dragging his dead foot like a sack of concrete, one arm seemingly shriveled, the clawlike hand trembling at his belt, his face so contorted that one half somehow hung lower than the other. Mikey opened one side of his mouth and, faintly, spoke the only word he spoke all night. Most present probably heard only an animal-like grunt, but spellbound Lorraine knew what word it was: Goodbye. Marge had told her all about it. Including the part her husband Waldo, that indispensable Asst. Veep for Sales (which Lorraine pronounced, “asswipe for sale”), had played in bringing the old fellow down. “Haw! Ain’t that cute!” that corkhead snorted now, lifting himself off Opal’s lap with a stupid wink and grin, as John’s boy slowly took his crippled twitching exit, applause polite but widely scattered, most witnesses frozen where they stood like Lollie. Little Zoe, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, her part not so much a walk-on, it seemed, as a walk-off.

  Little Zoe’s big brother Philip missed his sister’s turn, putting on a show of his own at about the same time in the downstairs toilet at the back of the house, very embarrassing. And now he had a story to tell, not about his performance (forget that), but about how it happened he was in there in the first place and what happened afterwards, a weird story but nobody he could trust enough to tell it to, now that Turtle and his family were no longer invited to this house and Turtle anyway nowhere to be found, the dumb kid’s touchy parents just barking at him when Philip dropped by asking for him. Had they locked him in his room? Wouldn’t be the first time, Turtle’s dad could get pretty mean. Zoe said she’d heard he’d run away. Fish couldn’t blame him if he had, he’d thought about it plenty of times himself, but he was surprised and, if it was true, a little hurt that Turtle hadn’t asked him along. Not that he’d have gone. No? So what was keeping such a big fish here in this little puddle? Well, in a word, Clarissa. Philip couldn’t help himself, he lusted after her sweet bod day and night. It was hopeless, she hated him, but then, he had the consoling impression she hated everybody, everybody but herself, he wasn’t the only recipient of Ms. P. T. Big Head’s icy jabs. But someday she’d need him, or need someone, and he’d be there at her elbow, and then she’d love him for the good and faithful soldier that he was. This was the centerpiece of his intensest fantasies: repentant Clarissa melting in his arms. Meanwhile, though: whatever he could get wherever he could find it, young or old, of which in this town no shortage, or such was the story he told. The truth was a bit different, sorry to say, for though he laid claim to at least a dozen girls from school, all of whom had conveniently graduated or moved elsewhere, and had lots of stories about older broads in town whose lawns he’d mowed or sidewalks shoveled, Fish in point of fact had yet to score and wondered if he was the only guy his age in the Western world whose hand was all he knew of that great mystery. Such a mystery was not even on his mind, though, when that ugly old fart with the meaty honker walked in on him in the john a few minutes ago and started upbraiding him for weakening all his manly faculties with self-abuse. That dickhead was running for mayor? What a town. All Fish was trying to do at the time was pee through a hard-on. So how come he had a hard-on? For starters, because he always had one, or anyhow almost always, the main exceptions being in gym class showers, on trips to the dentist, and during his old man’s Sunday sermons. But also in this instance because of, one, Clarissa’s underwear drawer (he’d been pawing around in there while everyone else had headed into the living room to catch the kiddy mime show) and, two, Clarissa’s mom, who had smiled at him when he stepped out of Clarissa’s room with his hands deep in his pockets before she disappeared into the bathroom. That smile: it was weird, she’d never even looked at him before, his occasional brags notwithstanding. But now, wow … He’d waited there in the hall for a while, all alone, holding the hot pole between his legs as though, not to raise it, but to plant it, and when time passed and she did not come out he took a chance, walked over, and tried the door. It opened. As he entered, trying to seem casual while unzipping his pants (oops, sorry, didn’t know anyone was in here), he realized that his mouth was hanging open, something he always tried to stop himself from doing, since he knew it was not his most flattering expression. He closed it and the door, blinked: the room was empty. He glanced into the shower stall, the towel cupboard, did a slow three-sixty: how had he missed her? Well. Not the first time opportunity had slipped away as though it never existed. His pants were open, his rod poking partway out: he decided he might as well go ahead and do what he’d pretended to come in here to do. In case, he found himself thinking, he needed an alibi. Which is when the old fart who was running for mayor blundered in, glowered at what he was holding, and laid into him for betraying his own body, sapping its vital juices and turning red corpuscles white. “You’ll be old and dead before your time, son. Now put that little stick away before you break it, go wash your hands, and get your damned sissified butt outa here!” Fish was only too glad to oblige. Jesus. Didn’t bother to wash his hands either, just ducked his head and shot out
of there, headed for the twilit backyard, pausing only long enough in the empty kitchen to glance back at the toilet door in time to see Clarissa’s mom come out of it, she smiling at him when she noticed him gawping there. Which was the strange yet true story he had to tell, but couldn’t, the middle of it being the difficult part to explain. He saw Jennifer and Clarissa back in the shadows of the rose garden gazebo, also giving little Mikey’s dumbshow a miss. He could tell by the way they were hunched over they were doing lines of coke. He approached them hopefully, trying to remember to keep his jaw closed, even though he knew they didn’t want him around and would only insult him. But what could he do? Could he help it if he was madly in love with the little fast-track queen of the mall rats? “Hey,” he said, drifting up. “Hey, it’s the Creep,” said his ladylove. “Get lost, asshole.”

  The Creep’s mother, also Jennifer’s and little Zoe’s, once known as Trixie the go-go dancer and now as Beatrice the preacher’s wife, had arrived at that party straight from church choir practice, feeling exhilarated. The singing had been unusually harmonious that afternoon, as though God had got inside them all and made his presence felt, an experience that always had an agreeably erotic effect on Beatrice. After everyone had left, many to get dressed for John’s party, Beatrice, wishing to prolong this sweet musical communion, had stayed on to practice the organ for a while, letting the sacred melodies flow through her and into the organ pipes like the pumping of God’s blood, feeling at one with herself and with the universe. And with the organ, she becoming its adjunct, the instrument’s instrument, the pedals and keys her feet’s and fingers’ very reason for being, their raisin-something, as a teacher, one of her many teachers, once put it, and the same could be said for score and eyes, bench and bottom, music and mind—all of a piece, like some kind of magic! How happy she was! She’d never played better! Or been played better! As the music throbbed through her expanded body, her heart beating, her pipes resonating, in time to the turning of the spheres, tears of gratitude and intense well-being came to her eyes—and were still there, in the corners of her eyes, giving them an appealing twinkle, when she arrived at John’s party just before sundown, still a bit breathless and full of nameless joy. John squeezed her hand with both of his when she came in, gave her a hug; her husband smiled at her from across the room; her smallest child, dressed in a sweater miles too big for her, one of Mikey’s mother’s, came to ask for her help in tying a kerchief in her hair; someone brought her a glass of bubbly wine. It was as though Beatrice had foreseen all of this before she entered the house, perhaps during choir practice or while playing the organ, and it was all very beautiful. Her husband was beautiful, John’s house was beautiful, her friends were beautiful, her daughter was beautiful as she stepped into the luminous center of everyone’s attention. Beatrice loved this town, these people, this moment in her life. Things weren’t perfect, but Beatrice hoped they’d never change, not at least until she got to heaven. But of course they were already changing. That’s how the world was, you couldn’t stop it, harmony was unnatural to it, constancy was. A sudden presentiment of disaster sent a shiver down Beatrices spine and deep into that core of her which till now had been the seat of such holy ecstasy. She set her glass down, her eyes beginning to mist over. Her daughter had faded from sight somehow, even as she was watching her, her husband, too, though she was not. Something violent and irreversible was about to happen. Or had already happened but was about to be made manifest. Beatrice couldn’t see it, blind to everything at that moment except her own panic and despair (where was John’s wife?), but she could feel it. “Yipes!” she yelped when the blocks flew, and shrinking back, reached down with both hands to touch her tummy. Oh no, she thought. It can’t be. I’m pregnant again.