John's Wife

by Robert Coover

  Meanwhile, Stu’s little darlin’ was staggering out onto John’s back deck, one of the last to arrive, telling everyone she saw, whether they asked or not, what Rex had told her to say: that Stu had something he had to do out at the car lot before coming, one of his trucks had been stolen or something, he’d follow soon. Sounded rehearsed because it was rehearsed, people didn’t seem convinced, she was getting nervous or else was already nervous, hard as she was trying not to be, trying not to appear plastered, too, with even less success, though a courtesy call paid to the host’s gin bottle helped. Hair of the dug, as old Stu called it. “Why in God’s name doesn’t somebody stop it?” she asked out loud, but no one paid her the least attention, nor did she really want them to, her cold feet outvoted by her hot—what? One of that old rube’s worst and truest jokes. She could use a friend, though, dammit, but when she asked, John said he didn’t know, she was probably inside somewhere. Someone said: “She was beautiful in the parade today.” “Parade?” John was duded out like a cowtown sheriff which made Daphne feel uneasy, so, as appealing as his naked armpits were, she moved away. Her face hurt, must have hit something with it, though when people asked if she’d fallen off a barstool again, Daphne said she didn’t fall, she was pushed. That was funny enough but it might not have been the right thing to say, so she added that Stu had something he had to do out at the car lot, one of his trucks was stolen or something, he’d follow soon. No shit, some guy with big ears said flatly, staring right through her, though it was hard to tell whether he saw too much or nothing at all, wasted as she was. Daphne had driven here in a fog, mostly down the middle of the street, pinching herself to keep from passing out altogether. She’d wanted to call the whole thing off somehow, but she no longer knew exactly what the whole thing was, it was all very weird—like she was in a bubble and the rest of the world wasn’t happening anymore. She’d creased a few car doors and crunched a fender or two trying to park in the crowded street out front, but never mind, insurance would pay for it. More business for the lot. Which was where Stu was, she said. One of his trucks. What? Stolen, he’d follow soon. Or something. Really? a woman asked. Daphne tried to focus on her, couldn’t. It might have been the banker’s wife: the lady was worried about the rising crime rate. What was happening? she wanted to know, but Daphne couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t tell her her own goddamned name, if she’d been asked, luckily wasn’t. The preacher’s wife, who was rolling by just then, holding her stupendous belly up with both hands, said what she was worried about was the depletion of the ozone level and also that she might have her baby any minute now. Her husband smiled vaguely and said things aren’t always what they seem. He was gazing at Ronnie who, eyes popping, was crowbarred into a dress that fit her about as well as her old cheerleading costume used to, the bony cunt. She was even jitterier than Daphne was, and when John’s little boy came out of the house wearing one of his father’s white shirts like a jacket, its tails trailing in the grass, and with a homemade stethoscope around his neck, she screamed out: “That nasty little twerp, what does he know about human suffering—?!” Normally, her husband, Daphne’s ex, would have popped her one at that point, but the Mange, wearing dirty suit pants belted high over a golf shirt, seemed somewhat out of touch, one hand in his pocket, playing with himself, his eyes focused on his feet. Mikey came over and stuck a felt heart on Daphne’s ribs, just below her breast, and stabbed it with his stethoscope. Yipes! Everyone was watching and laughing, so Daphne, sweating, told him her heart was full, honey, but her bladder was even fuller, she’d go get him a sample, and she wobbled away, feeling her backside severely scrutinized, but confident she was giving nothing away. Inside, however, she nearly lost it: there was Winnie’s ghost! Oh my god! No, two of them! “Get out of here, you crabby old bitch!” she’d screamed. But it wasn’t her, neither of them were, it was just Lollie’s brats tangled up in sheets. She wanted to strangle the little jerks, but they were already crying and Daphne was determined to remain cool and unruffled, a sober friend of the family whose husband would be along soon, something he had to do before coming. A truck had been stolen. She told the two boys that and it seemed to settle them down. Didn’t do much for her, she was still feeling haunted and oppressed by a nameless dread, but she had a long relaxing pee and felt better. But when, after peeling off the felt heart (it was black), she stepped out of the toilet, there was the preacher’s kid staring at her in horror as though he’d been watching her through the door, the expression on his bloodless face exactly the same as when Rex grabbed him by the scruff and carried him out of her bedroom. Big booted John came striding in from the kitchen, handsome and hairy, read a note that the boy, never taking his eyes off Daphne, handed him, then gave the poor kid a sudden sock in the snoot that sent him crashing into the next room if not into the next world, and charged up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Oddly, this bit of action cheered Daphne up. She felt less exposed somehow, this boy had taken the punch that might have been thrown at her, so, pumped up with motherly gratitude or whatever, she reeled in there with a damp washrag to console the little sweetie and wipe up the blood and snot.

  Philip, however (he was Philip now, and a man, after the convulsive revelations in the manse), was not consoled nor was to be consoled, nor could he, in spite of his newly achieved maturity and all his manly will, turn off the blubbering while that murderous old bag swabbed at his face, which seemed to have a big aching hole right in the middle where his nose should be, and asked him what was in the note that made John so mad. “I don’t know!” he sobbed (he couldn’t stop sobbing, it was humiliating). “It was only about my sister!” She wanted to know what about his sister and who had sent the note, but he wouldn’t tell her, he’d never tell anybody. But then Clarissa came storming in and kicked him in the ribs and demanded to know what awful thing he’d done that made her dad hit him and where was his damned sister anyway? “She’s gone. With your uncle Bruce.” That made her kick him and hit him all the harder—“I don’t believe you, asshole!” she screamed—she even landed blows between his legs and on his face where her dad had punched him, even though people were trying to hold her back. “I didn’t do it!” he whined, curled up on the floor, too stunned to stand. “Nevada did!” That at least brought a momentary end to her frenzy, though he felt he’d betrayed a sacred and intimate trust. “Nevada—? How do you know Nevada?” “She gave me the note,” he said, leaving out the details. Which were the best part. “She wanted me to lie to you about it!” “Hey, isn’t that the kid who mooned the world off old Stu’s roof?” someone laughed. “Aha! Is that why Daphne beat it outa here?” “She the one who popped him?” “No, John’s daughter done it.” Clarissa said again that she didn’t believe him, but he could tell, looking up at her through his tears past the throbbing mass between them (“Whew, he’s got him a honker now like our new mayor,” someone said, and someone else suggested they’d better get the doctor), that she did. Her face looked as punched in as his own. She was straddling him like a warrior, and Philip saw that she was naked under her shorts and she was beautiful inside there, and he knew that, though he’d thought he’d outgrown her with all that had happened to him today, he was mistaken, he still had the hots for her something awesome. “I didn’t want to come here. I only did it for you,” he confessed. “Shut up, Creep! You make me sick,” she snarled bitterly, and she might have started kicking him again, she was really steamed, but then her dad came in with his flight jacket pulled on over his leather vest and said: “I don’t see Mom right now, Clarissa. Take over here until she turns up.” “Is it Jen, Dad? Is she—?” He nodded briefly, looked down at Philip and said to stay away from that sleazy little shit, and was gone. She looked suddenly soft and vulnerable, terribly hurt, trying not to cry, and Philip wanted desperately to reach up and pat her neat little butt, just in sympathy, as a loving friend, but he knew she’d probably break his arm if he tried. Especially after what her dad said. Anyway, it hurt too much to move. The baggy-eyed old doctor shuff
led in with a drink in his hand and squatted down creakily beside him, poking about in a perfunctory way. “Hey, maybe you oughta let John’s boy fix him up, Alf! He looks more like you than you do!” “Lemme tell ya, the kid’s got the same touchy-feely ways, too!” “He’s hilarious!” “Yeah, I loved it when he pulled his rectal thermometer gag on Old Hoot! That dumb cracker jumped a mile!” “Careful! Floyd’s a big man now!” “Looks like it’s broken, son,” the doctor declared wearily, and hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll go get my bag.” Clarissa’s dad was in the room again, very riled up, something about all his missing cars. “Where the hell’s the Porsch?” “Grampa Mitch must have taken it,” Clarissa said. “He went to pick up Granny Opal.” “But the Lincoln’s gone, too!” “I don’t know, Dad.” “Damn it, I’ve got to get out to the airport!” The doctor dragged some keys out of a pocket which seemed to reach to his knee and tossed them to him. “It’s the old—” “I know it. Thanks, Alf. I’ll have someone run it back in.” So, what was in that note? Philip could tell by the way Clarissa’s dad was acting that it must have been important, but why did he hit him like that? His mind blown by all the things Nevada was doing, dazzlingly naked there in his father’s dusty library, Philip hadn’t been paying enough attention to what she was saying. She’d given him a hickey on his neck to remember her by, thanks a lot, but now he had this broken nose as well. Grown-ups were really weird. And also a little scary. Zoe came in wearing a white shirt that reached to her shoes and a folded paper hat with a red cross felt-tipped on it, and he told her to go get Mom or Dad, he had something to tell them about Jenny. “Mommy’s not feeling good right now, she’s got a bad tummy and she’s lying down on a picnic table, and Daddy’s writing his sermon, and I’m not Zoe anyway, I’m a midwipe.”

  Philip’s friend Turtle, who perhaps would once more have to be called Maynard III now that Philip was no longer Fish, was also learning something about suffering as a sequel to celestial bliss. His amazing adventures, begun in some long ago time now forgotten, were, he realized, coming to an end in the very immediate present. And it wasn’t the happy end that he’d imagined. No, forget bliss, boy, forget beatitude, forget the land of glory, Little was back in hell again: his dimensionless paradise now had very serious dimensions, the Christmas tree lights were going out, the hidden angel choirs were screaming bloody murder, and what the sensuous writing of all those tidal floods of color, now mostly a horrible red, were saying was: get your butt outa here, man! And that was what he was trying to do, kicking and punching, but it was getting too cramped to swing and there seemed to be less and less of any place to go! All those vibrant new constellations in all of heaven’s hues which his exploding weenie had helped to make had suddenly started to clot together like they were magnetized and they were bulking up and closing in on him, crowding him for space. Once intimately stroked by all those chromatic ebbs and flows, he now felt intimately pummeled by them. It was awful. The kaleidoscopic colors were burning his flesh, especially the tender bits, a stench like tangible fog was suffocating him through all his orifices, and his malleable body, once majestically stretched out over the whole ecstatic universe, was now getting squashed down into a miserable wet lump. He struck out with all his might at the rubbery walls contracting around him, but it was like punching an old beanbag chair. It was getting dark and hot, he could hardly breathe, and he was afraid that this might be the terrible apocalypse, sinners beware, that Old Hoot ‘n’ Holler was always on about. Our Father which art in heaven, Little began to pray, but he couldn’t remember the next line, he was too choked up, all he could think of was forgive us this day our hallowed bread which didn’t sound right, so he just shouted out: “Please, God! Mom! Dad! Help!” Couldn’t even hear himself. It was like he was underwater or something. It was pitch-dark now, he couldn’t see his knees in front of his nose, which was where it felt like they were, but he had the definite impression, as a clammy hand clawed at his face, then snatched him by the hair, that he wasn’t alone. There was somebody else in here with him!

  Mikey’s grand rabbit-from-the-hat finale was, by general consensus, the best act he’d ever done, though for many present it was the first they’d ever seen, for, as Oxford had noted, this sunny backyard pack-up was dense with strangers, strangers to him at any rate, most of whom when asked had said they worked for John. Of course, Oxford had been out of touch with the town since Gretchen took over the drugstore, the community had grown up around him while he’d been fascinated with the growth of his own little family, eight of whom were with him today. Somewhere. They had learned early how to escape the narrow circle of their grandfather’s myopia, finding him again only when they needed him, and in principle, if sometimes with a doubting heart, he approved of this independence. The three who stayed closest to him were the ones who, alas, had inherited his and their mother’s disability, one fate his own four children had escaped, if other fates had, also alas, ensnared them. It was the curiosity of these three, their little hands tugging at his, that had drawn them all close to Mikey’s, well, hat, so to speak: the lady on the table. She had something between her legs, they wanted to see it, could he lift them up? Mikey meanwhile was being rewarded with well-earned applause and laughter for his uncanny imitation of Oxford’s old friend Alf with his bent-backed slouch and his drooping lower lip where a cigarette always used to hang until Harriet’s cancer when he gave the habit up, and capturing exactly the way Alf’s bony gray head seemed to fall forward off his shoulders as though spring-loaded, bobbing to a heartlike beat. Not everyone here knew Alf, but fingers pointed and smiles broke out when he shambled out onto the back deck with some fellow peeking out past a faceful of bandage, Lennox and Beatrice’s boy maybe, hard to tell from here. Earlier, Alf had talked with Oxford briefly about Beatrice’s interesting condition, saying it seemed premature but he thought she was about ready to pop, if in fact she was really pregnant, then went on, in the confidential manner they’d fallen into over their decades together as doctor and druggist, to describe other recent cases that were puzzling him (“Trevor seems to be under the strange delusion, you know, that somewhere in the past he might have killed somebody …”), foremost his own sensation of something like a soft insistent pressure at the tip of his finger—he’d lifted his finger, the one, Oxford knew, that Alf used to palpate the inner recesses, to let Oxford examine it through his thick spectacles and certainly the pad was spread flat, but, as he was a spatulate-fingered man, they all looked much the same—which Alf believed to be the physical manifestation of a half-remembered missed diagnosis: “A tumor, I think. But the sonuvabitch keeps growing.” He stared at it in some wonderment. “It’s bigger than a goddamned melon now, Oxford, that blimp of a belly over there couldn’t contain it.” “Give Eric a call, see what he thinks.” “He’d think I was senile.” Mikey had also picked up on Alf’s obsession with his finger in his own ingenuous way, miming the frantic effort to get something off it that wouldn’t go away, scrubbing it on his clothes, on other people’s clothes, shaking it, sucking it and spitting, shooting it with a toy pistol, finally pretending to hack it off, put the severed bit on a skewer, cook it over the coals until it caught on fire, douse it in Alf’s own glass of whiskey, then, with a beaming smile of success, head still bobbing like an old turkey’s, put it back on again, holding it up, only a bit smudged, for all to see. Then, with Beatrice’s little daughter Zoe trailing along as a nurse with a pillowed tummy (no doubt Oxford’s own daughter Columbia was this parody’s target, she out on some wild-goose chase after her mindless brother this afternoon, best Oxford could tell from her weepy telephone calls from all over town), Mikey slouched over to the minister’s wife, twisting and groaning on the picnic table, and threw a wrinkled sheet over her, Oxford pulling his grandchild out from between her legs just before the tenting fell. Beatrice was beginning to pitch and yell as the spasms hit and Oxford wondered if he should interfere, but he supposed that Alf, nearby, knew best—“No, let him go ahead,” Alf laughed, “he’s doing a
good job!”—and instead allowed the woman to grab his hand and squeeze it, his grandchildren clambering up on the bench for a closer look, the other five by now having joined them, along with dozens of other children pressing round, adults, too, drawn by the spectacle and Beatrice’s wild yelps. Mikey pulled on a pair of yellow rubber dishwashing gloves and, lower lip adroop, probed beneath the bouncing sheet. Beatrice reared up off the table suddenly, crying out in alarm, and—schluuu-POP!—out came Maynard and Veronica’s long-lost runaway son, yanked by his hair, wet and naked and sputtering helplessly as one rescued from drowning. Everyone whooped and cheered. “That was really cute,” someone behind Oxford giggled. “How’d he do that?” Little Maynard gulped, blinked, looked at the crowds around him, and crawled back under the sheet to look for something. While his sparkling bare behind was in the air, Mikey gave it a newborn’s smack and then all the other children, shrieking with laughter and fighting each other for position, had a turn. The grown-ups would probably have joined in, but the boy was already out of there and down off the table, frantically hauling on the soggy clothes he had just retrieved, while everyone laughed and applauded John’s comical son. Everyone except little Maynard’s parents. His father strode over and boxed his boy’s ears soundly—“Jeez, Dad, what did I do—?!” the child whimpered as his father swatted him again, then dragged him away, still pulling his pants up, Beatrice letting go of Oxford’s hand at last and rising up on one elbow to gasp: “He didn’t mean any harm!”—while his mother Veronica, hysterical until now, just collapsed wearily into a lawn chair, splitting either the chair or the zipper on her dress or both, and said: “Oh, hell, I don’t care.” Beatrice cried out and arched her back again, and her daughter Zoe, her nurse’s cap hanging down over one eye now and tummy pillow fallen between her knees, waddled anxiously over to grab Alf’s hand and pull him back to the table, where Lennox was also waiting now, and that was how Adam was born, but not before Oxford, his memory triggered perhaps by the sudden descent of twilight (time to get the grandchildren home and into bed), recalled something Kate had once written for Ellsworth’s newspaper on the theme of the imagination vis-à-vis the real world, which was always changing, she observed, while the imagination, our defense against the abyssal truth of the subconscious, tried to hold it still. In real life, which she called “crepuscular” (“We are born into a dying of the light…”), everything we try to grasp is already something else; art, she wrote, floods itself with light, or with darkness, which is another kind of light, so as to shield us from the dusky terrors of the flux and feed the appetite for hope. She was speaking about the movies actually, especially the black-and-white ones—this was around the time when films “in living color” were coming to dominate the Palace Theater programs—and how, with their “real” yet chiaroscuro images, they confused art and reality, absorbing them into one another, each, in consequence, destroying each, which, she said, was what made them “beautiful.” Ellsworth added a disclaimer, saying that the views expressed by the author were not necessarily those of the editor, and that he himself believed the only terror that life held was its enduring dullness, which art and the imagination gratefully relieved.