by Larry Watson
Harriet tightened her hold on Jake’s wrist. “This is so sweet of you. But tell me, Jake—who will pull the trigger?”
“Another minor detail. Nothing we can’t work out.”
“Do you own a gun?”
“We could buy one.”
“Would you even know how to load and fire one?”
“All right, all right. Suppose you come up with your own goddamn plan, instead of just raining on everyone’s parade.”
Harriet had to release Jake’s wrist in order to put down her drink and draw herself up straight. “Very well. I personally think for sheer simplicity and effectiveness this cannot be topped. One would wait until Ned’s asleep, very soundly asleep at that, in his bed on a night when he’s had too much to drink. One walks stealthfully—stealthily—into the room and brings crashing down on his head a brick. It wouldn’t have to be a brick, of course. A large stone would do. A crowbar. Something of suffice— sufficient—weight that even a person without much strength could deliver a mortal blow. Or blows, I should say. One wants to leave nothing to chance. Not when one has come that far.”
Throughout this little exercise in make-believe, Jake had kept a straight face, but now the lines in his face seemed more deeply drawn. What had she done! This man whom Harriet thought she might seduce now regarded her with equal parts pity and horror.
Jake took two quick swallows from his drink, and that seemed to lubricate the machinery of his speech, although he spoke much more solemnly than before. “Harriet, I can call down there. I have friends in Chicago. I can call someone, and they can tell us if it’s really snowing down there.”
“Oh, Jake, Jake. Where’s your faith? They told us it was snowing, so that’s what we must believe. Didn’t Caroline describe the conditions for you?”
“She just said it was coming down hard.”
“See now, Ned went into great detail. They started out, he said, but north of the city, just past Evanston, it really got bad. The snow was coming down sideways and drifting across the highway.” Harriet put up her hands to grip an imaginary steering wheel, and as she did, her robe fell open, but then that no longer mattered. “Ned was fighting to keep the car on the road, but he could feel it sliding out of control. He crossed the center line, but fortunately, no car was coming.” Here Harriet twisted the wheel so hard she lost her balance and toppled from the sofa.
“See?” she said, trying to act as though she intended to end up on her knees next to the coffee table. “See how dangerous conditions are?”
Jake reached out to help her up, but Harriet twisted away from any assistance. She pushed herself up from the floor. Her nightgown had ridden up high on her thighs, but she was too exhausted to rearrange or cover herself. Not that Jake was looking.
“The thing is,” Jake said sheepishly, “I love her. The little bitch doesn’t deserve it, but there you have it.”
“Well, you see? You are a believer. A high priest in the Church of Caroline.”
Jake’s expression brightened once again. “Ah, if only my dear mother were alive. She always hoped one of her sons might enter the priesthood. Hell, she didn’t give up on me until my divorce.”
Harriet reached over and traced with her fingernail the crease that ran from the corner of Jake’s eye toward his ear, exactly the path a tear would follow if he were to lie flat on his back and weep for his wife who was at that very moment probably enfolded in another man’s arms. “Just remember your creed,” Harriet said. “Your Caroline creed. Repeat it every day. ‘The little bitch doesn’t deserve it, but I love her.’ ”
After Jake left, Harriet sat up for another hour, waiting, she told herself, to feel a little steadier before she climbed the stairs. Another thought, however, tried to hide itself behind that practical consideration: If Jake decided to come back, she didn’t want the house’s darkened windows to discourage him.
When she finally headed for bed, she left the living room as it was. The thought had occurred to her: For her strategem to succeed she didn’t have to actually seduce Jake Bram; she only had to allow Ned to believe that she had. Let Ned come home and find empty martini glasses and an ashtray brimming with her cigarette butts and the half-burnt kitchen matches that Jake used to light and relight his pipe. Let Ned find these when he returned, and see if his faith would waver.
Harriet’s original intent had been to stay in bed until Ned returned, but she woke early and, though her head felt as though it were filled with a viscous, toxic fluid, she rose and hurried downstairs.
First, she emptied the ashtray, making sure to bury its contents deep in the garbage. Next, she put the liquor bottles away, hiding Jake’s Martini & Rossi in the back of the cupboard. She washed and dried the glasses and the cocktail shaker and put them away. Finally, though the morning was cold, she opened all the windows in the kitchen and living room in order to air out the place. Because Ned had insisted that the house’s design let in as much light and air as possible, the winter wind instantly blew through the house as freely as it would across an open field.
As Harriet worked, the straps from her nightgown kept slipping from her shoulders, just as they had while she slept. Finally, frustrated and partially recalling the previous night’s dreams that had over and over assumed a theme of entanglement, she shrugged out of the garment and let it fall to the floor. The silk had so little weight, she almost expected the breeze to carry it away. She stood in the middle of the living room and shivered, but she waited until she could be reasonably confident that the aroma of pipe smoke no longer lingered in the room. Then she closed the windows and made once again for her bed.
When she stopped on the landing, she looked down on that beautiful paisley puddle of silk. Left on the floor like that, her nightgown might have been more damning than martini glasses or a few burnt matches, but she could not make herself go back down to pick it up. She no longer entertained any thoughts of trying to make Ned jealous. What if she succeeded and as a consequence his ability to concentrate on his art became impaired? Besides, what would be gained by doubling the suffering in a marriage? But the nightgown’s colors looked so brilliant against the hardwood planks it just had to remain where it was. It was as close as Harriet could come to the making of art, and she could not help but wonder if it was also as close as she could come to understanding what Mr. Ned Weaver felt before his easel.
18
“What’s that,” Henry asked, “on your back?”
Instantly Sonja knew the mistakes she had made. Assuming he was asleep, she had undressed in the bedroom instead of the bathroom. The moon was almost full, and she stood close to the window. Too close, and enough light shone in to reveal the continent-shaped areas of paler flesh on her back and shoulders.
“Come over here,” he said.
She walked to the bed, clutching her nightgown to her chest.
“Turn around,” Henry said.
She turned, and he snapped on the lamp. “Jesus,” he said. “Your back. You’ve peeled.”
The night before she had pulled off the last of the dried skin. It was a wonder he hadn’t noticed earlier.
“I was . . . I got a bad sunburn. Going out too long with bare shoulders.”
“I guess you got burned. What were you wearing?”
She didn’t answer. She simply stood still, knowing he was examining her.
“Because I have to tell you, I don’t see any marks where your straps were.”
She still said nothing.
“Back up here.”
With one long backward step she placed herself within his reach.
“Your whole backside is burned. Christ.”
“Yes.”
He blew his cooling breath across the small of her back. “Does it hurt?”
“Now not so much.”
Delicately, he slipped a finger inside the elastic of her underpants. He tugged them down until her buttocks were partially exposed, and though she knew he was not blowing on her anymore, she felt goose bumps form as sure
ly as if a chill had found its way into the room.
“You’re burned all over.” He let go of the elastic and traced his finger down the back of her leg. “Jesus. Turn around. Let me see the front of you.”
Once more she turned, still covering her torso with the bunched cloth of her nightgown.
“You can let go of that,” he said. “One way or the other, I’m going to see.”
She dropped the garment and let her arms fall to her sides. She was tanned and burned on this side as well, but in no area had her skin blistered and peeled. Weaver had not made her pose as long lying on her back as on her stomach.
Henry stared at her a long time before he began to nod, understanding at last. “You’ve been lying naked out in the sun, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
He slapped the mattress with such force Sonja flinched and stared at the sheet, expecting to see the imprint of his hand as if the bedsheet were wet sand.
“Where?” Henry asked. “Was this where people could see you?”
“By the lake.”
“By the lake where? For Christ’s sake, what did you do—strip right there in front of everybody and just plop down on the goddamn sand?”
“I was . . . It was deserted.”
“I know this shoreline a hell of a lot better than you do. There aren’t many goddamn spots left where you can be sure no one’s watching you.”
“I was careful.” She remembered when she lay on her back, and the sun beat down on her with such ferocity it seemed as though it had just been waiting to get at those parts of her that had always been covered to its heat and light. Her breasts had tingled, and her nipples puckered and hardened. Just as they were doing now when Henry stared hotly at her. That was it! The sun had been like an eye, looking down on her so intently that she became aroused under its gaze, and then, when there was nothing to do with her arousal, her flesh simply burned with the sun’s heat and her own.
“Do you want to tell me where you were,” Henry said, “and let me decide how alone you were likely to be?”
“It was a private beach. The owners were not at home.”
“So you were trespassing.”
She shook her head, pretending not to know the meaning of the word.
“You know what I’d do if I saw someone coming on my property without permission?”
“You would load up your shotgun.”
“Don’t joke about this.”
“I won’t.” In fact, she had meant nothing humorous by her remark.
“What the hell got into your head to try something like that?”
“I wanted . . . I wanted to feel the sun.”
“If somebody would have seen you . . . Do you know what people would be saying about you? About me? Maybe you don’t know it, but we’ve got reputations in the county.”
That seemed much funnier than what she said about his shotgun, but she knew she mustn’t laugh.
“You keep yourself decent outside this house,” Henry said. “Now turn around again. I want another look at your back.”
Sonja did as she was told, and immediately Henry slapped her buttocks so hard the blow swayed her back.
“There,” he said. “And that wouldn’t have hurt nearly so bad if you weren’t red as a lobster back there.”
Did the air behind her vibrate as Henry prepared to strike her again, or did she simply know her husband well enough to be certain that, having spanked her once, he would do it again? She didn’t wait to find out. She walked from the room with such speed that for the only time in her life she felt as though she and the horse in the barn had something in common, as Buck, when he was slapped in the rump, always took that blow as a command to move forward.
Harriet was about to climb into bed when her husband called her into the bathroom.
Ned was sitting in the bathtub, smoking and drinking what she presumed to be gin. At the sight of her, he leaned forward and stiffly pointed toward his back. “Can you pull off this loose skin?” he asked. “It’s driving me nuts, and I can’t reach it.”
She walked around behind him and looked down at his back. He had gotten a sunburn so severe that the skin had blistered, popped loose, and then cracked like parchment.
“My God, Ned.” She knew the water was cool—at the end of these hot summer days he always soaked in a bath as cold as he could stand before going to bed—but she still reached down to confirm that his burned flesh had not heated the water.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “It’s just a goddamn nuisance. I feel like I’m molting, for Christ’s sake.”
His upper back and shoulders had taken most of the sun, but as far down as Harriet could see, Ned’s back was red. “Bend over a bit,” she said. Yes, it looked as though his buttocks had been burned. “Have you found a nude beach somewhere?”
“Over at Edith’s. I’ve been working over there, and one day, I just thought, well, hell: I know what the light on the sand looks like. What do you suppose it feels like?”
“Let me guess. Hot.”
“There you have it. If you had only been there you could have saved me some time and a nasty sunburn. Hot. By God, you’re right. It was hot. I might go a bit further: It was very fucking hot.”
She crouched down behind the tub. “Do you want me to do this or not?”
Weaver drank off the last of the gin and then dumped the ice cubes in the water. “Go ahead. Skin me. Here’s your chance. It’s probably what you’ve always wanted to do. Skin me alive.”
The analogous behavior should have been peeling fruit, something that actually had a protective skin and a fleshy interior—a pear, a peach. An apple. But pulling Ned’s loose skin away instead reminded Harriet of a household chore she had not done for years: removing wallpaper. And she remembered the special satisfaction that came when the wallpaper peeled away in an especially large swatch. The key, then as now, was to pull slowly, not to become impatient or greedy. Like that, like that—with the thumb and two fingers working under the skin’s hard, dried outer edge and then simultaneously lifting and pulling.
Harriet had long known—Ned said it himself—that only to his art did he bring his best self. All the other hours of his life he simply tried to slay as pleasantly as he could until it came time to pick up his brush again. Nevertheless, Harriet kept waiting for Ned to display that capacity for generosity, honesty, and wholeness that he revealed when he put images on paper or canvas and thereby translated his private visions to public truths. If these qualities were in him, Harriet frequently wondered, why didn’t they come out in his relationships as well? In the end, she loved him not for what he was but for what he could be. Did Ned similarly love the weeds growing in the ditch—the burdock, for example, depicted in his dry-brush painting “Road to Loyal Farm”—not for what they were but for what he could make of them in art?
As she carefully, gently pulled away Ned’s outer layer, she looked closely at the blotchy, pink-tinged skin beneath—was that where his goodness lay? Could she peel and keep peeling until only the decent Ned was exposed to the world?
The question she finally asked him, however, had nothing to do with Ned’s potential for goodness or her patient willingness to wait for it. “Were you alone on Edith’s beach?”
He didn’t answer, but Harriet felt his spine stiffen under her fingertips.
“Tell me,” she said, “is there someone out there with a sunburn that matches yours—only, her arms and legs and knees are burned instead of her backside?”
“Jesus, Harriet. What the hell kind of question is that?”
“The kind that I’m usually able to bite back and keep from asking. But even I have my limits, Ned.”
“I told you. I was working. And you are not allowed to question my methods of working.”
“I believe I’m allowed to ask, Ned. But you’re under no obligation to answer. Or you feel no obligation.”
“Look, I asked you in here to help me get this loose skin off my back. If you can’t even do th
at without trying to start something, then get the hell out.”
Harriet pinched a horny little tab of skin and pulled it hard, hoping a yard of Ned’s flesh would rip away. What came loose, however, wasn’t much larger than a fingernail, and she doubted she had caused Ned any pain.
She stood and looked down on his narrow, hunched shoulders. The ragged border of peeled skin looked like a faded tattoo, as if Ned had long ago had his back illustrated with a map of the country where he alone lived.
The bathwater was murky and of course distorted everything below its surface, but when Harriet glanced down on her way out of the room, it looked as though Ned had an erection. If she could have been sure not only that it was there but also what caused it—whether her touch teasing away tiny patches of his skin or his memory of a woman with whom he’d lain under the sun—she might have stayed.
19
It was a Friday night, and the Top Deck Tavern was full of the men and women who spent the week waiting on, serving, guiding, or cleaning up after tourists. Even at the height of summer, the Top Deck remained a bar for locals, one of the only spots in the county where they could take the edge off their frustrations and spend a night cursing and mocking the summer people who drove up from Milwaukee or Chicago, rich bastards and their kids who may have had money in their pockets but didn’t know their asses from their elbows.
The four or five glasses of beer Henry had drunk were just enough to make it seem as if the dim light and the haze of cigarette smoke, rather than the noise, kept him from hearing clearly the remark Jimmy Lauer tossed Henry’s way. Henry waved a hand in front of his face and peered down the bar to where Jimmy stood, then he cupped a hand to his good ear and shouted back, “I know you’re talking to me, but I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”
“I said, What do you think this is—some kind of Wild West saloon?”
