John's Wife

by Robert Coover

  Cornell didn’t think the old fart would help him, and he didn’t. He said to come see him at his office. Sure, man. See you around. Like many in town, Cornell was plagued by an elemental question about life, only his was not so much “Why am I here?” as “How did I get here?” He used to live here, back when his family was still all together, and then, for a time which he thought was going to be forever, he didn’t, and then suddenly he did again. The first part was the best part, being taken around by his big brothers, playing with his sister, being read to by his mom, and his dad still liked him then, even if he was always on his case about hanging around the house too much, playing with games and toys, you’re a big fellow now. Then he went away. It was his dad’s idea. His brother had got killed and now Cornell got sent away with his brother’s girlfriend. Who was nice to him at first and even let him take her clothes off, he could see why his brother liked her, but who then did a terrible thing. And Cornell had to admit that he probably didn’t make the coolest move when he saw what she’d done, he could hear his dad chewing him out for not using his old noodle, why don’t you grow up, Corny, and all that: he ran. Not smart but he was scared. He didn’t know anyone in that faraway place. He didn’t even know how to speak the stupid language they spoke, though he’d had a year of it in high school, it was all slurred when they talked it, like they were trying to hide what they were really saying. They were unpleasant to him and he was afraid they might blame him somehow for what had happened to Marie-Claire. So he ran, and the more he ran, the more scared he got. He’d left all his clothes and things behind, all he had was a little bit of money and the bottle of wine. He pulled his shirt over his head when he passed the wine shop where he’d bought it. There was something about “Love” on the label, he was afraid it might give him away, so he got rid of it in a street bin, or what he hoped was a street bin, it might have been a mailbox. He spied the big church he could see the top of from up in Marie-Claire’s flat, the one on all the posters, and headed for it, but suddenly there were a lot of police everywhere, so, in a panic, he turned and ran the other way. It was late, after nine o’clock, but the streets were lit up like the downtown back home at Christmastime and full of scowling people with cigarettes hanging in their mouths. He tried to stop running, he was just drawing attention to himself, but he couldn’t, he kept breaking into nervous little trots, stopping, running again, everyone was looking at him, and there were police here, too. Then he saw a sign with some steps down into a hole under the street, and though he didn’t know what the sign meant in French, from what he could remember of his high school Latin, he felt he would be safe there, so he ducked down the stairs. There was some kind of underground railroad at the bottom. He bought himself a ticket (should he give a tip? he didn’t know, but just to be safe, he did) and for a while he rode around, trying to think what he should do next. He didn’t know how long this went on but someone in a uniform woke him up when he fell asleep once and he had to get off. He pretended to leave the place where the trains came and went but he didn’t. He snuck down one of the tunnels. It was dark and smelled bad and he was afraid, but he was even more afraid to go back up on the streets again. There were little pockets in the walls he could squeeze into when the trains came by, which they did less and less. He found a tunnel that had no tracks and he went down it, a shortcut to other tracks, he figured, but he never found them. One tunnel led to another and he got completely lost. There were people living down there, he discovered, they were like half-dead and slept in newspapers and plastic bags and they spoke the same language as the people on top but they didn’t seem as bad somehow. None of them at least were police, he was pretty sure. He pretended to be deaf and dumb and they gave him something to eat sort of like tough baby chickens in a soup that smelled like bad breath, but he was hungry and ate it. Time passed like this, he didn’t know how much, seemed like forever, but he couldn’t tell because there weren’t days and nights down there, and his watch was gone, must have lost it, or maybe he gave it to somebody, until eventually he began to forget why he was down there and started looking for a way out. He had always avoided the tunnels that stank the most, but now he thought those must be the sewers and maybe he could get out that way. So he held his nose and plunged in. He was right, but it was pretty sickening. By the time he saw some metal stairs leading up into the roof, he was a soaking mess and feeling dizzy from trying to hold his breath all the time. He thought he’d have to crawl out a hole when he got to the top, but instead he found a door up there. He opened it, and stepped out, the light blinding him at first; he held his hands over his eyes and peeped out through his fingers: didn’t seem to be anyone around. He glimpsed a shady place and crept over to it, huddling there behind a trashcan until he could get used to the daylight and figure out where he was and what to do next. And that was when he noticed that the sign on the trashcan read KEEP OUR TOWN BEAUTIFUL. He could read it, this was not French. He peeked around the side of the can. Some things seemed different, but he recognized where he was. He was in the alleyway behind his father’s drugstore. He felt like crying, he was so happy. He ran in to say hello to everybody and an ugly old woman with thick glasses and a clubfoot started yelling at him, saying he smelled like rotten fish. She closed the place down, banging about furiously on her clubfoot, dragged him back out into the alley and into the old pharmacy delivery van, and took him home (it was his home, but it was like she owned it and it was full of crying babies) and gave him a bath. There was nothing fun about this bath, she was very rough with him, though the usual happened a couple of times when she touched him there, and she smacked him for it. It turned out he was married to her and all those kids were his. Of course, by now he figured he was only dreaming and went along with everything the way you do in a dream, it was anyway better than a French sewer, which was where he supposed he really was and where he’d be again when he woke up. Only he never did. Or at least he hadn’t so far. Was this normal? That’s what he would have asked old Doc, if he’d got the chance. That bossy crippled lady who said she was his wife wouldn’t listen either. She only boxed his ears when he tried to tell her about it and sent him out to play pinball machines or video games, which were maybe the dream’s most interesting new things. His mom would have listened but she wasn’t in this dream. But what if it wasn’t a dream? He went back out in the alley and looked for the door he’d come through, but he couldn’t find it. If only he’d been paying more attention when he stepped out. He didn’t want to go back down there, he just wanted to know where it was so he could show it to that woman who wouldn’t let go of his ear (her name was Gretchen), and get his mixed-up life sorted out.

  That woman whose name was Gretchen lay in Lumby’s bed longer than usual that night, clearly troubled, and not just because they’d broken the plastic penis while trying out some new positions Gretchen had found in a marital manual which were a bit beyond their athletic abilities. They had both pretty much worn themselves out playing with all those things and now they were in a more reflective mood. And what was troubling Gretchen, as she said, was her marriage. Well, it would trouble anyone, that was what Lumby replied, unable to come up with anything more humorous, feeling too contented and exhausted and also a little bit sore here and there, and having heard Gretchen’s complaints about her mentally defective brother Cornell many times before. Tonight, though, Gretchen seemed to have something else on her mind, and Lumby waited, half-dozing, for her to spit it out. They could hear one of the children crying, a nightmare or a wet bed or something, but they could also hear Granddad shuffling down the hall to take care of it. We haven’t had any more babies for over three years now, Gretchen said, not since the second twins, and Columbia, who felt that the eight that came the first five or six years were already eight too many, much as she enjoyed playing Auntie Lum, said she thought that was because of the IUD which she’d helped her put in, but Gretchen said no, she took it out almost the same day, it made her too twitchy, like it was all the time humming or buzzing or so
mething. But what I mean, she went on, is he keeps avoiding me all the time, oh, I know, Cornell’s not exactly what you’d call an attentive husband—but, well, in a way that’s just the point, he used to pay me no mind at all except when I crawled into his bed, and then for only a second or two, which was enough for me, given the mess his pajamas and linens are always in, but now whenever I go over to his bed, he either pulls the sheet over his head, or else he jumps up and runs out, and during the day he won’t even stay in the same room with me or let me give him his baths any more, and you know what kind of baths he gives himself. Lumby still couldn’t see where all this was going, and she was starting to drift off, dreaming awake, sort of, about playing doctor with her little brother (she had to play nurse in just a few hours, she should try to get some sleep), and he asking her what she heard when she put her stethoscope to his weewee, she replying music because she’d once heard it called an organ. But then she woke up again, because what she heard Gretchen say was, I think there’s another woman. Corny? Columbia felt like laughing, but was careful and didn’t. Come on, Gretchen, who’d have the little pest? I don’t know, maybe someone before he met me? Before he met you, the only girls he knew were in comicbooks. Except for Marie-Claire. Who scared the pants off him. Do you think she did? Gretchen asked. You know, get the pants off him? Are you kidding? Lumby said. She was Yale’s girlfriend. Do you think she’d go for a basket case like Corny? I did, said Gretchen simply, and Lumby, sorry now she’d put it that way, realized that there was a real problem here. Her sister-in-law was truly and helplessly in the grip of the green-eyed monster, and if she was jealous even of a dead girl, making jokes would not release her. So instead she said: I’ll keep an eye on the little dimwit for a few days and let you know what I think. That seemed to make things better for Gretchen somehow and she snuggled up against Lumby as though in loving gratitude and when, in anticipation of her father’s wake-up knock, dawn cast its dim glow through the curtains like a movie on a screen, Gretchen, smiling in her sleep, was still there beside her.

  The dawn movie on Veronica’s screen was more like a horror flick, or the fluttering tails of one, it was still ripping through her consciousness, shredding her sleep, leaving her too shocked and exhausted even to pry open her eyelids, which were mucky from crying all night. Everything was mucky, her whole body felt covered in slime from the awful thing. It seemed so real! She’d come across it while cleaning house, or dreaming that she was cleaning house. It was hunched down in the dirty place behind the refrigerator, where sometimes she was frightened by mice. She pulled out the ironing board and there it was with its large eyeless head like a cowled mendicant and bent shriveled limbs with little clawlike hands and feet. Veronica knew immediately who it was, of course: “What are you doing here?!” she’d screamed, holding the folded ironing board in front of her like a shield. No reply, just a wet raspy breathing as it huddled there in the dim niche, all curled up, throbbing faintly. Her first impulse was to throw the ironing board at it, but she was too terrified to move, her limbs were like stones, her heart, too, and she felt something hurting down deep behind her navel somewhere. She wished Maynard were home to shoot it (where was he?), but at the same time she was relieved he hadn’t seen it. Not yet anyway. He’d been in such a rage of late, this thing could make him dangerous. Yes, she had to get rid of it before he came back, but how? She realized that this was a question she had asked before, in real life, and all the guilt and pain of that came rushing back and made her scream again: “No! I didn’t mean it!” The thing in the corner cocked its high-domed head like it was trying to hear through the puckery hole in the side of it. Snot dripped from its nose and when it breathed it made a bubbly sound as if it were breathing underwater. She heaved the ironing board up against the space between the wall and the refrigerator so it couldn’t escape and went scrambling for the phone to call the doctor at his home. He wasn’t in; she left a message on his answering machine, still screaming, she couldn’t stop herself. She was afraid to go back to the kitchen, she needed help, she couldn’t face this alone. Help came. Ringing the door chimes. A miracle! “Yes! I’m coming!” she screamed. It was what’s-her-name, John’s wife. She used to be one of her best friends, probably still was, she told her all about it. About what was behind the refrigerator, about where it came from and how she got her bottom smacked in the motel shower after, about everything. Even about how she celebrated what would have been Second John’s birthday every year. “He would have been seventeen in March!” she cried. “The same age I was that night at the drive-in!” The drive-in? She told her about that, too, it all came shrieking out, high-pitched and delirious, like something had burst inside, even Ronnie didn’t know what she was saying half the time. “I was so scared!” John’s wife was very understanding. She said she was there to help. On behalf of the PTA, she said. Okay. Ronnie began to calm down. But she was still screaming. “Come, look! It’s horrible!” She ran into the kitchen to show her, but it wasn’t there any more. The ironing board had been pushed aside and there was a gleaming viscous trail from the refrigerator to the head of the basement stairs. “Oh no!” It was lying in a squishy heap on the concrete floor at the foot of the stairs. But it was still breathing. Sort of. John’s wife explained that it would be all right, its bones were too soft to break. This was not a consolation. Veronica wanted to smash it with something and put it out in the garbage, but instead she had to help John’s wife carry the slippery mess back up the stairs between them. Yeuck! It was oozing gunk and it got all over her. John’s wife wrapped it in a sheet (had she taken it off the bed upstairs? was that where Maynard was?) and together they took it out to a supermarket shopping cart John’s wife seemed to have brought along for the purpose. The swaddled creature’s wet strangled wheezing was terrifying and pitiable at the same time. Veronica felt like crying she was so sorry for it, but she also felt like throwing up. Then John’s wife told her something very important, so important Veronica stopped crying and carrying on and just watched, stunned, as the woman disappeared down the street, pushing the shopping cart with Ronnie’s unborn son in it. But when she woke, she could not remember what it was John’s wife had said. She lay there with her eyes closed, listening to Maynard’s bubbly wheezing beside her, trying to remember. It was so important! Something about—uh-oh. Wait a minute. Bubbly wheezing? Maynard—? Oh no …! It can’t end this way! she thought confusedly, trying to go back to sleep, or else to wake up again. She could hear the thing snorting and whuffing as it cuddled closer, blindly reaching out its slimy monkey’s paw. Oh my god! Was it trying to suck her breast—?! She screamed and, her eyes still glued shut, leapt from the bed.