John's Wife

by Robert Coover

  That chilling grin of John’s. Once seen, not forgotten. Bruce had been through scores of scrapes and trials with the man—national tournaments and final exams, disciplinary boards, hard-ass negotiations, business crises, high-stake poker nights that turned nasty, dangerous storms, barroom rumbles, and worse (the day Bruce’s old Piper Cherokee stalled out on them while buzzing the penthouse sundecks up in the city one blinding afternoon, for example)—and so had had ample opportunity over the years to witness it, but the most memorable occasion for Bruce was one morning during a fishing trip together up at a remote roadless place a day’s flight and boat trip north of their cabin, when John, while taking a crap, got set upon by an angry grizzly. Bruce had gone down to the river to wash out their skillet after breakfasting on their dawn catch, and on the way back to camp, detouring round to their chosen dumping ground for his own soil-blessing rituals of the virgin day, he had come upon John and the bear doing a little double shuffle, slowly circling one another like sparring partners, John with his pants around his ankles and tracking through his own shit, the two of them just a few feet apart and the bear closing in. John had made a fundamental living-in-the-wild mistake, having left his weapons back up at the tent, but Bruce had not. He knelt, lay the skillet quietly in the undergrowth, raised the rifle to his shoulder—but then, even though the bear was now close enough to take a swipe at John, Bruce hesitated, captivated suddenly by John’s intense concentration and incongruous smile as, in a half-crouch, hands out but elbows in and bent and gaze locked on his adversary’s navel, he continued his shackled, bare-assed chassé around the grizzly as though not he but the animal was this death-dance’s intended prey. As Bruce in utter fascination watched them through his rifle sights, he realized, somewhat to his horror, that however much he cherished his friendship with John, there was something else, something perverse, that he cherished more, and it had more to do with John’s smile than with John himself. The first time he told this story to a bunch of the boys from John’s hometown up at the cabin, he found John staring at him with that same smile iced on his face, and he knew that the story divided them and that it was also a kind of bond. The fat motelkeeper wanted to know if he shot the bear. Bruce wouldn’t say.

  John’s troubleshooter Nevada (call what they had in their pants trouble, call what she did with the things shooting) had also, one chilly night after ass-slapping sex on the bear rug up at the cabin with the log fire dying, heard Bruce tell that story, but she took it as a simple confession of Bruce’s ambivalence toward his friend. Bruce was smarter, richer, handsomer, more cultured and more daring than John, willing to work the most dangerous of trades, even leaner, longer where it counted, and taller, but John, somehow, always had the edge on him. It was hard to explain, impossible to describe, but there was something about John, something like the aura that accompanies the heroes in folktales and popular novels (it was Bruce himself who once said, seemingly without bitterness, that “if John’s a story, then I’m an anecdote …”), that set him apart from all rivals, his terrifying grin a part of that, she’d seen it, too. When Nevada tried to find a phrase for that quality he had, all she could come up with was “John knows.” It was, more than John himself, what Nevada loved, maybe the only thing she’d ever helplessly and unconditionally loved in her entire life. And whatever it was, it meant that, no matter what wit, wealth, power, or pluck he displayed, Bruce was always, in the presence of John, number two, and number two, as any schoolkid knows, is just another name for shit. Still, being around John improved Bruce’s loving, and when she balled the two of them at once, it was Bruce who was usually the better performer of the two, John maybe holding something back on such (“joint-joint,” as Bruce called them) occasions. Bruce, when in John’s company, was passionate and generous and self-deprecatingly funny, with an ever-reliable erection no matter how conventional or how bizarre the scene, or whose the “glory ‘oles,” or how much dope he’d done—able to satisfy, that is, even when not satisfied himself—but when John was not around, Bruce was more conflicted, his dissatisfactions rising to the surface then, making him quirky, difficult, impetuous, sometimes even morose and impotent. At such times he often turned to bondage and ritualized cruelty as ways to quicken his jaded spirit; he was never really sadistic, but rather perversely playful, and therefore, Nevada believed, all the more dangerous, her response to which was always professional but never keen. The truth was, for all the tricks she knew, Nevada liked it plain and simple. What most aroused Bruce nowadays (and maybe this was always true: Nevada had also heard his droll account of John’s wedding-eve stag party all those years ago) was the abuse of childish innocence, and more or less by default, it had fallen to Nevada’s troubleshooting lot to become, with some success (children easier to come by of course than genuine innocence) a kind of procuress. Which was what she was doing out here in kiddyland at this sleazy podunk mall where the air reeked of grease, pot, and burnt sugar, and the deep electronic beat that thrummed volcanically beneath the ugly high-pitched racket was more like a living menace than music. She made sure there were no parents or grandparents around (a photographer: she waited till he passed), then made her move. The two girls sensed her coming and looked up, smiling, glassy-eyed with their puppylove crushes. They were cute. Well. Too bad. It was going to hurt. But it was going to be fun.

  Gordon, feverishly pressing his shutter button, could not believe his fortune, and for it he had to thank his wife Pauline and her peculiar condition which had sent him, yet again, on a shopping trip to the mall. In the lot outside, he had spotted the parked Lincoln, and so had grabbed his camera bag out of the trunk, an old habit. In the food court, John’s young daughter was sitting with a friend, both in leather in spite of the summery weather, but their chauffeur was nowhere to be seen. It had to be John’s wife who had driven the girls out here this time, Gordon figured, for he had just seen John’s mother buying her little grandson an icecream cone downtown at the Sixth Street Cafe, and in fact had taken their photograph, something Ellsworth might use to fill space in The Town Crier during his annual summer slump, more serious this year than most. Ellsworth had apparently lost interest in this town and its inhabitants, his old boyhood pal Gordon included, and had in recent weeks become more eccentric and abstracted than ever, absenting himself from the streets and turning darkly inward as though harboring some secret grief or rancor. It was as though (and Gordon had been predicting this all along) he had lost his way. Gordon had not lost his. He now patrolled the corridors of this sprawling mall, steadfastly persevering in what had been his lifelong artistic pursuit, his camera hastily reloaded with a fresh cassette dug from the fast-film pocket of his bag and his finger on the button, but as usual of late, he must have missed her. Even when their paths crossed nowadays, for some reason they did not cross. As at the nursing home, for example: according to the log, they had both, more than once, been out there at the same time, yet somehow he had never caught so much as a glimpse of her, hover around stricken old Barnaby’s door though he might. He supposed that was where she had gone now and thought to chase after, but decided his chances might be better if he waited for her return to the mall. Perhaps, in so public a place, he figured, it would be harder for her to slip from sight, but he did not know why he thought that. Meanwhile, there was the shopping to do. Pauline was outgrowing all her clothes, even the new ones that fit yesterday, and she was now largely confined to the rooms above the studio, wrapped in sheets and tablecloths. Gordon was fascinated by what was happening to her body and was photographing it exhaustively, front to back, top to bottom, reluctant though his incurious wife was in her new enormity to expose herself to his lens. But she needed him now and this was the price he exacted. She could not even squeeze into the bathtub any longer, but had to stand in it while he washed (and photographed) her, her immense pale flanks, when soaped up, like a sweating mare’s, her belly a vast trembling panorama of gleaming slopes and gulleys. There was little hope of finding any feminine apparel that would still fi
t her, but the fat men’s stores were at the opposite end of the mall from the fast-food section and Gordon was afraid of missing John’s wife, having missed her so often of late. So, skipping the jeans, leather, and fashion boutiques with their improbable half-sizes, he took a chance on a more conservative ladies’ wear emporium, still within view of Clarissa’s table, that seemed to cater more humanely to all ages and sizes of women. When the salesclerk asked him what in particular he was looking for, Gordon replied, glancing back over his shoulder (some woman had joined the two girls, was it—!? no …), that he didn’t care what article it was so long as it was for a person somewhat larger than himself, anything would do, this was an emergency. The sales clerk smiled enigmatically, then brought him some clothing for pregnant women. Most items were cut too small in the chest and shoulders but there was a nightshirt that might cover her top half, so he asked to try it on for size. The saleswoman gave him a very peculiar look, glancing suspiciously at his camera bag (he didn’t even try to explain himself, what good would it do), but dutifully led him back to one of the changing rooms. He had stripped off his jacket and pulled the nightdress on over his shirt and was just about to step out into the light to judge the length and fullness when he saw her and ducked back into his cubicle, started fumbling with his cameras. He couldn’t believe it! It was like a wish come true! She was in front of the full-length mirror, pivoting from side to side, trying on a belted crêpe de chine dress with a bow at the neck. He found that if he pressed his lens up flush against the gap between the louvered doors of the changing booth, he could see quite well and ran less risk of being seen. In his first shot of her, his finger trembling on the button, she was presenting her body in profile to the mirror, hands pressed flat to her tummy. Beautiful! She turned her other side to the mirror, caressed the silky skirt down over her hips: puh-click! She faced the mirror, hands behind her, palms out, resting on her bottom, breasts jutting—puh-click!—then undid the bow—click!—and opened the dress at the throat, spreading it back to her shoulders: puh-click! puh-click! She turned toward Gordon (he winced), but continued to look back over her shoulder at the mirror, and he fired again and again, eye becoming one now with the viewfinder window. He had never seen her with such startling clarity! He felt, oddly, like a visionary. He photographed her as she undid the belt and stood facing the mirror, hands on hips, then turned the little collar up and peeked over it, folded the hem up a couple of inches, checked the price on the tag at the side. As she returned to the changing room across from Gordon’s, he shrank back for fear, of being noticed: the little louvered doors only went down to the knees. Luckily, there was a spare tubular chair in his cubicle: he set it near the door and perched his bulk upon it. When next he peered out through his viewfinder, she was back in front of the mirror, dressed in a knee-length white linen tunic with big pockets and a military collar, that snapped up the front like a coat. As he clicked away, she swung back and forth, making the linen balloon and flutter around her body, opened and closed the collar, shoved her hands deep in the pockets, unsnapped the tunic at the bottom and thrust her bare thigh forward. Already, Gordon was titling his photos: “John’s Wife Striding Through Diaphanous Clouds of White Linen.” “John’s Wife, Mirrored, Bares Her Clavicle.” When she returned to her booth, she pulled on a matching pair of white linen slacks under the tunic, and as she emerged, still tugging them up over her hips, Gordon was nearly blinded by the sight of the little lace fringe across the top of her briefs. He realized that his professionalism was being tested, his objective artistic principles were on the line, and he settled down, breathing heavily, to concentrate on f-stops, focus, and framing. As best he could. His heart was banging away like a jackhammer and his cramped body, asquat on the wobbly chair, was sodden with sweat. She was now, without closing her cubicle door, removing the tunic and replacing it (a glimpse of that precious back! it was his—puh-click! puh-click!—forever!) with a kind of long-tailed cotton twill shirt, which she again tried out before the mirror. Then, in front of the mirror, the pants came off (he photographed the reflected white puddle at her reflected feet, the luminous shadow between her reflected thighs as she stooped, limpidly reflected, to pick them up: and even her stoop was elegant, not a stiff bend from the waist, broad behind in the air like a billboard like most of the women in this town, but a kind of balanced genuflection, like a runner kneeling to her starting pads) and she had a bare-legged look at herself—and Gordon had a look at herself and herself again—in the shirt alone. She was literally aglow. Back in the booth, the shirt came off as the door swung closed (did he get that one? he wasn’t sure) and Gordon frantically rewound, fumbled for fresh film. But before he could reload, a glance through the louvered door told him she was gone. He leaned out the door just in time to see her leave the shop (was it she?) and fell hugely off his chair. By now he had the attention of everyone in the shop. What did it matter? He’d never be back here again, and this was, he knew, one of his life’s great achievements, let them think what they liked. Serious art was always misunderstood. He snatched up his jacket and camera bag, throwing everything into it, and, head ducked, went bulling out, only to be met by the salesclerk at the exit into the corridor: “Sir—?!” Ah. He was still wearing the nightshirt. “Oh yes, I’ll take it.” No time for credit cards, he paid in cash, probably too much, he didn’t care, keep the change, he was out of there.

  Far from losing his way, as his friend Gordon supposed, Ellsworth had found it (dark inward turnings are not always what they seem), and thanks in large part to the nefarious Stalker. This unwelcome intruder had, more than a year ago, crossing some impossible barrier and against the author’s determined will, invaded his novel-in-progress, The Artist and His Model, threatening to destroy it from within, merely by lingering, leeringly, in the shadows at its periphery, seen and not seen, like some incipient but irresistible malignancy. Ellsworth’s courageous efforts to banish the trespasser (he was the author, was he not?) were not only ineffectual, they actually seemed to augment the Stalker’s sinister powers, confirming his presence here once and for all and emboldening his ruthless encroachments. Collapse set in for several months as Ellsworth watched his novel disintegrate before his very eyes, his Artist’s wise and eloquent quest for Beauty (this was the work’s tragic theme: the noble pursuit of the unattainable ideal) turned to hollow self-parody in the presence of the derisory Stalker. The Artist seemed somehow aware of the Stalker’s hovering contempt and grew increasingly querulous and impatient, tearing up what he had not yet begun, which confused his Model, who only wished to please, and brought tears to her eyes, which, on his seeing, caused him too to weep. “Stop! Don’t cry,” she pleaded, sobbing. “Why are you crying?” And gazing then, tearfully, into the child’s tearful eyes, he (the author now, not the Artist) perceived that the theme of his work had changed: the Artist’s arrogant quest for absolute Beauty had given way to a new understanding of the essential innocence of Art, an innocence embodied in this child and now in peril. Whereupon he (the Artist, of course, not the author) turned to face the Stalker. For weeks, then, Ellsworth had been struggling with this confrontation, finding it much more difficult than he could have imagined, but knowing that only by battling through would he rescue his life’s work. No wonder Gordon had found him distant and moody. The Stalker, far from fleeing the Artist’s bold challenge, had welcomed it, and indeed it was he who spoke most often, the Artist frequently reduced to a grave contemplative silence, perceiving that the defense of innocence was more the task of heart than mind, yet could not succeed by heart alone. He said: “Argument is useless. Art knows nothing, which is its power.” “Nonsense,” scoffed the Stalker. “Art, like your meaningless little aphorism, is an idle parlor trick, its so-called power nonexistent, once you escape the stifling oppression of the parlor.” “It is you who have brought the parlor to the forest,” said the Artist, and he took the Model’s little hand and led her back to the abandoned rock beside the riverbank, posing her there as he had done once before i
n pre-Stalker times, experiencing once again the dreamlike quality of the scene as he composed it. He leaned her forward so that she rested more on her hands and thighs than on her backside, and he twisted her hair into a loose braid that fell over her far shoulder, revealing the inquisitive delicacy of her profiled face, the poignant vulnerability of her slender throat. “Art is the expression of Nature’s exquisite insouciance,” he said, setting up his easel. “No kidding!” someone sniggered in his ear. “So, tell me, why is the insouciant little tootsie in the exquisite altogether?” He spun about, but there was no one near. Far away, on a crest bereft of trees, a shadowy figure stood masquerading as—what? a devil, satyr, fiendish critic? “Because Art is pure,” the Artist replied at full throat, “and begs no concealment or disguise.” “So you say,” laughed the voice in his ear, “but I find her maidenly flesh cushions, poised unconcealed above the stone there like the cloven earth rising behind the barren moon, a pure delight, if you’ll pardon my saying so, and so, I think, do you.” “Art, when pure, is delightful,” responded the Artist, refusing to be baited, and with his charcoal blocked in the principal areas of light and darkness, moved, as always, by luminosity’s contrast to its surrounding absence, the pluck of it, the audacity. The soft radiant curve of the child’s back against the dense forest on the far bank alone made his heart ache with something like remorse. He thought (it was perhaps at this moment that Gordon stopped in at the plant to ask if Ellsworth would like a photographic essay of the town’s flower gardens this summer and got such a brusque inattentive reply): Innocence is like the morning dew: it vanishes as soon as light is cast upon it. “Ah, well done there!” laughed the voice of the Stalker, as though peering at his canvas from behind his ear, the Stalker himself, up on the barren crest, dancing lewdly his faunlike dance. “See how you’ve captured the flushed glow of her juicy little buns, and the comic opposition of the shadowy gap between them, spreading naughtily like a dimpled grin! Ho ho! What a genius!” “Who’s there?” the Model asked, breaking her pose and looking round. “No one,” the Artist snapped, regretting his lie as soon as spoken, but suddenly afraid that the boundaries violated by the Stalker were but the first to fall. He reset her pose, but before he had returned to his easel, she had turned again to peer back over her shoulder. “Is someone there?” she called, and the Stalker replied: “Someone there!” “It’s just an echo,” said the Artist irritably, hearing, far away, the infuriating laughter of his adversary, itself echoing and reechoing as it died away. “Now resume your position, please!” But the child could not. Her foot had moved, her thigh was raised, her shoulder turned, her ear was cocked, her gaze restless. She seemed curious, annoyed, excited, amused, apprehensive, all at once. Her love and respect for him were unconditional, he knew that, yet her limbs would not stay where he directed them. “No, tuck your foot under here,” he insisted, showing her where he meant, “then lean forward onto your hands, that’s it—no, no!” He seized her thigh in both his hands and pulled it toward him, his sudden fervent grasp surprising them both. Except to take her hand or to push and prod a bit to set a pose, the Artist had rarely touched his Model. In fact, perhaps, he hadn’t really known he could. He stared now at his broad long-fingered hands and what they—yes, so ardently—encircled. Her childish flesh was firm yet resilient, silky smooth, luminous, cool to the touch yet pulsing with a hidden warmth, and palpably without history. He slid one finger along a pale blue vein on the inside of her thigh, thinking: Art, even when idealized, participates in the Real. But it is the vein, not the blood, the container, not the contained, the design, not the flux. Or, perhaps, it is the finger on the vein … He relaxed his grip but did not release it, allowing his hands to encompass the child’s tender thigh without quite grasping it (she was watching now, not his hands, but his eyes), the surfaces of their respective flesh in unbroken contact with one another, but only as a whisper is in contact with the ear, providing him with a direct heart-stopping apprehension of the radical sensuousness of all Beauty, and he knew then that he had not yet begun to be a true Artist, nor would he be one until he could approach his canvases with the same desire and the same restraint as he now held yet did not hold—as he now, in a word, be-held—his Model’s soft young thigh. Was that the Stalker laughing? No, it was Ellsworth! He was leaping about in his study above the printshop like the Stalker doing his taunting satyric dance, whooping and laughing and yelling all at once! He blew kisses at the Stalker: his savior! All around him, heaps and heaps of paper, scrawled on and typed on and scrawled on again: his novel! Underway at last! It really was! “I am a writer! I really am a writer!”