In the Flesh

by Hilma Wolitzer

  Was he deaf? A moron? “How-ard,” I said again, slowly, with exaggerated lip movement.

  “I know,” he said sadly. “Yes. Won’t you come in? I’m just making something.” He waved the spoon and I passed down the hallway to the kitchen of the apartment where something was burning on top of the stove.

  “Soup,” he said, raising the flame for a moment and then shutting it. The soup frothed and sizzled over the sides of the pot, and then subsided. “Would you like some?” he asked.

  “Look,” I said, and I sighed. “This isn’t a social call. You must know that.” I looked around, snooping for clues. Did they have children? Had Mrs. X left something of herself there, a sign of intended return? Why was this idiot eating soup?

  “I’m hungry,” he said, as if he had read my thoughts. “I haven’t eaten much for a few days.” The hand pouring soup into the bowl trembled. His knuckles were white.

  “Well, go ahead,” I said grudgingly. “I guess you’ll need your strength.” And even then, despairing, feeling wildly restless, “I noticed that the burnt canned soup smelled good, that under other circumstances I would have had a bowlful myself.

  If only Mr. X had been handsome, or at least craggy, a possible contender for his wife’s affections. But he was awful, those thin defeated shoulders and the neat little paunch of cartoon husbands. Thin hair, bad teeth. He smiled at me and blew on the soup, causing a small temporary tide.

  “Has she ever done this before?” I asked. “Gone off with anyone?”

  He shook his head, slurped and swallowed.

  I drummed my fingers on the tabletop and I was glad to see it made him nervous. “Well, are you going to do anything about it?”

  In another room a bird began cheeping and trilling. Mr. X smiled. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I thought I’d just wait it out.”

  He was even crazier than my mother. Leave them alone and they’ll come home. “You mean see if she’ll lose interest and come back to you?” It was all I could do to keep from hooting, from pulling him up from his chair by his shirt collar. I felt like beating him up. All that misplaced anger was turning me into a bully. Who was this passive freak? If he had been different, assertive, attractive, maybe his wife wouldn’t have left him in the first place. But my anger settled when I realized he could counter with similar conjectures about me. There was obviously some great shared deficiency or we wouldn’t be sitting there together, deserted, would we?

  It was hard to tell, sitting in the kitchen, just what she might have taken with her. Not pots and pans, I imagined. “Do you have any children?” I asked, without much hope. It was usually harder for women to make the break from kids in a situation like this.

  “No,” he said. “We tried for a while. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason. Not medically. We’ve both been tested. Bunny’s okay. My little fellows were sluggish under the lens, but far from dead. Sometimes these things are psychological, sometimes …”

  “Okay, okay!” I said. “I don’t want to know about it.”

  He seemed both offended and close to tears.

  “Did she take her clothes with her?” I asked, in a more reasonable voice. I was the cool detective now, questioning the skittish but important witness.

  “Take a look,” he invited. I followed him into the bedroom. This room, I thought, this place, that bed. Now its surface was smooth and innocent, but it was easy to imagine the tangle of bedclothes, the haste, the heat. How could Mr. X be so calm?

  He opened a closet door. There were dresses inside and my hope quickened, but he said, “She took a lot of stuff with her. I guess these are discards, more or less. Bunny is a great dresser.” He said it with such obvious pride, he might have been her love-blinded father rather than her cuckolded husband.

  From the corner of the room, the bird, a parakeet, eyed us nervously from his perch in a gilded cage.

  Childless, I thought. A keeper of caged birds. A vain, selfish woman with clothes to spare. Spike-heeled shoes like weapons on the floor of the closet, atomizers still containing her man-trapping scent on the dresser top.

  “What’s her real name?” I asked.

  “Bernice,” he said, and for some reason I felt a small flash of happiness. Howard would find out that nothing is as it seems.

  “Listen,” I said. “Mr.—er—”

  “Clark,” he said, with that helpful, eager expression he’d had at the door. “Call me Clark.”

  He’d always be Mr. X to me. “This is going to sound terribly personal, but I think you and I can dispense with all that formality, considering our situation. I don’t want to know what you do for a living. I mean, you’re not rich or you wouldn’t be living here. I don’t want to know your life history, your sperm count, or any of that junk, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “The thing is, I’d like to know what kind of marriage you had. Have. It’s really important.”

  “Average,” he said promptly.

  Average! What kind of marriage was that? People with average marriages were statistics, were silhouettes in insurance ads, were bloodless, passionless shadows. I wanted to know what kind of marriage they had. I was breathless with impatience and with the knowledge that I had to control myself.

  “Mr. X,” I said, through my shark’s smile. “Nobody has an average marriage. You can’t say that about marriage. It’s a complicated relationship. Fire and ice. Passion, camaraderie, bonds of sin, love, ecstasy. It’s a dangerous, even a death-defying act.” I grabbed his shirt-sleeve and held it.

  “Why did you call me that?” he asked.

  “What? What did I call you?”

  “Mr. X. That’s a strange thing to call me. I told you my name is Clark.”

  “Okay,” I roared. “Clark. Clark Gable, Clark Kent, Superman, Mr. X. Who cares? Tell me about your fucking marriage.”

  “For one thing,” he said, pulling my fingers one by one from his sleeve, “we never used language like that.”

  “Maybe that was your problem,” I said.

  “Chacun à son goût,” he answered.

  I stamped my foot and the parakeet flapped and fluttered, scattering seed. Mr. X looked alarmed.

  “All right. Forgive me,” I said. “Look, I’m a little distraught right now. I love Howard, despite everything. We really have a wonderful marriage.”

  He snorted.

  “No, really,” I said, pinching my fingers bloodless for self-control. “This is a kind of insanity and I’m hoping it will pass. Like an existential crisis? God, don’t you ever read a book or go to the movies? Men go through things like this sometimes for no apparent reason.”

  “I could imagine reasons.”

  “Don’t be bitchy now. Please. I can’t stand it. Clark?”

  “What?”

  “Did you write the notes?”

  “What notes?” His answer was fast, seemed genuine.

  “The letters I got from someone who claims to be my friend, telling about Howard and your wife.”

  “Why would I do that? It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said. “I tend to be a fatalist,” he added, smiling.

  And I tended to be a murderer. But I had to control myself. “Clark?”

  “What?” He was clearly growing intolerant, a parent being harried by an endlessly questioning child.

  I gathered my face into an expression that might have conveyed friendship, or at least neutrality. “Maybe we could get together on this?” I said.

  He decided to be coy, feeling his sudden advantage. I could tell by the artful pause, by the way he took off the apron and hung it carefully in her closet, next to the abandoned dresses. “I don’t see what you mean.”

  “Don’t you want to win her back?”

  He seemed to think about it. “I guess so. Sure.”

  “Then maybe we could cooperate, work out some strategy between us.” I wasn’t exactly certain of what I had in mind. I just wanted an ally at that point, someone on my side.

  A slow
, sly expression crossed his features. First the eyes, opening a little wider, blinking knowledge; then the muscles of his cheeks passing the message to his mouth, which curled at the news.

  I hated him then. No wonder Mrs. X had gone. She probably would have gone with anyone, with the scissors grinder if her tolerance had exhausted itself on a Tuesday when he came around, or with the superintendent of the building if he had had the imagination to match his lust, or with any of those faceless, faithless husbands who opened and closed doors in the complex a thousand times a day. Of course she would be willing to go off with Howard—there wasn’t any mystery in that!

  “Two can play the same game, you know,” Mr. X said, and he winked at me.

  I stared at him. It took a few minutes for his meaning to take hold. Jesus! “Thanks,” I said. “Really, but my heart wouldn’t be in it.”

  “Large women are not exactly my favorite either,” he said, obviously wounded.

  There was a dark, brooding silence between us. “How’s your health?” I asked, after a while.

  “My health?”

  “Yes, heart, lungs, stomach, that sort of thing.”

  “Why, do you want me to fake a heart attack or something?” He was incredulous.

  “Of course not,” I said irritably. As a matter of fact, it was exactly what I had intended.

  “I’m in great shape,” Mr. X said. “And I’d never pull anything like that anyway. What kind of lousy victory would it be?”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. Say, have you spoken to her since they—she—went away?”

  “Yeah. On Wednesday. No, Thursday. She called to have me mail dry cleaning tickets to her, and to let me know where I’d find certain things.”

  “So you know where they are?” I moved toward him.

  He stepped backward, just out of reach. “Don’t get excited. Of course I know where they are. Don’t you? What good does that do?”

  “In a hotel? A motel? In another apartment? Where?”

  “Take it easy, for Christ’s sake. You really come on strong. Say, did you ever think—”

  “Don’t!” I screamed. “Don’t you dare tell me what I did wrong! I don’t want to hear it from you. We had a gorgeous marriage! The best!”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Give me the address.”

  “Please go,” he said. “I believe you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

  “Oh, come off it. We’re in this thing together.”

  “I prefer to keep my silence. Hey, you’re hurting my arm.”

  “I’m sorry. Listen, I blow up, but it doesn’t mean anything. Ha ha. I’m just a volatile person.”

  “We don’t have anything in common,” he said.

  “How can you say that?” I cried.

  “If you don’t leave …” he began.

  I was desperate, but still willing to try something else: wile, even seduction, if necessary, a step-by-backward-step to our original cautious but friendlier relationship.

  But he did something then, some silly, vain gesture. He passed the dresser mirror and he looked at himself, tucked in that little paunch and smiled a yellow, satisfied smile. He was humoring a madwoman, a lumbering lunatic who dared to think she had a chance in hell against his Bunny, that debutante, that famous great dresser. It was too much. I lunged at him, aiming for vital parts.

  He yelled, “Help! Police! Help!” He yelled with operatic courage and surprising volume for such a little man.

  Of course nothing happened. That was the thing about living in the city. You could act out the drama of your life without interference from strangers. No one hammered on the wall promising aid, no sirens sounded in the distance. I could have murdered him, or at least done him serious harm, and nobody would have cared. But it was too easy, and pointless, besides. My own eyes filled with tears. “Oh, be quiet,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m heartbroken. Can’t you see? Won’t you give me their address?”

  He shook his head and maneuvered quickly ahead of me, back down the hallway. “Go,” he said. “Just go before I …”

  “Before what?” I shouted. He had opened the door and my voice bounced around the walls of the corridor. Finally, there was a little action. Chains clinked at other doors. Eyes peered through the prisms of peepholes. Invisible dogs growled.

  “Before what?” I bellowed, playing to the unseen but listening crowd. “Before you sic that bird on me? Oh, you little prick! What do you know about anything? With your apron and your soup and your little fellows and your average marriage!” Even empty-handed, without the address or an ally, I felt buoyed by the glory of having the last word.

  But he had the last wordless gesture, the slam of that heavy door, and its resounding echo still in my pounding head and heart when I found myself back in my own apartment.

  27

  I DIDN’T NEED MR. X after all; my faithful anonymous friend supplied the address I was looking for, only a few days later. Howard and Mrs. X were still in Queens, in a residential hotel just a bus ride away. Howard had taken the car. He needed it to get to work, especially at night, and I hardly used it myself. In one phone call he had instructed me to take taxis whenever necessary; he was going out of his way to be generous and fair.

  I decided to do my dirty work on a Saturday, a time when Howard usually didn’t go to the studio. When I woke that morning I felt nervous, and my nervousness took the form of fatigue. I yawned and stretched. “I can’t stop yawning,” I told Jason, and even as I spoke my mouth pulled wide again, and my eyes closed over weary tears. I went back to bed with my clothes on, pulling the covers up over my head. I’m too tired to go, I thought, letting one arm move slowly out. It looked thinner than it had a few hours before. I was struck by its whiteness, its frailty. I yawned again. Where was I going to find the energy to get out of bed, to walk to the bus stop, to board the bus?

  Yet later I combed my hair. I took the children to the baby-sitter’s apartment and I left on my mission. When I got to the street where they lived, I saw that I’d have a choice of places to wait and watch. At the corner near the bus stop there was a pharmacy, modern and lined with cosmetics and boutique items and school supplies. Somewhere behind the depths of merchandise a white-coated pharmacist peered out, hands poised on the cash register.

  Then there was a luncheonette and from the street I could see the long line of the counter with its squat row of stools, the gaudy chrome of the fountain and the mammoth signs that tell you that Pepsi-Cola hits the spot. At any hour there would be at least one slouched figure on one stool, bent over inhaling the steam of coffee, and the fountain man would be slowly moving down the length of the counter with a rag. All the necessary sustenance of life was in these two places. If I became hungry or thirsty while I waited, I would have something to eat or drink at the luncheonette, and there were magazines and books to read for amusement. If I felt wounded or unbearably sad, the pharmacist would fortify me with patent drugs, and if a cinder blew into my eye, he would roll back the lid and pluck out the pain. At both places there were telephone booths and if I became lonely I could call a friend.

  Next to the luncheonette there was a laundromat and then a storefront dancing school and then a beauty parlor. The corner building was an apartment hotel, a fraternal twin to the one I’d be watching across the street.

  I hesitated, not sure where to begin, and I thought of the dangers involved. There was, of course, the danger of being seen, of being recognized. Don’t look now, but you-know-who is spying on us from the drugstore. No, there, behind the Modess, don’t look.

  But they wouldn’t see me. I had an omnipotent sureness of that. I had come to see, not to be seen. I had come to seek final and absolute information, to know what was happening. That was the real danger, that the knowledge would be intolerable, that the reality of seeing them together would be worse than all my fantasies and dreams of it. A huge yawn broke loose inside me and opened like a parachute. God, would I be able to stay awake?


  Then I saw the blue car with the license number I knew by heart, with the red ribbon Howard had once tied to the antenna to help me find my way back in large parking lots. Is it possible to love a car? I hadn’t missed it, yet I was stunned by the sight of it. I was parked on their side of the street, directly opposite the laundromat. I remembered that I still had the key to that car on my keyring and that I was able, if impulse inspired me, to open the door and drive away.

  Sitting in that blue interior (would it still smell the same?), taking it somewhere private and then tearing at it for clues, for clues to them: ticket stubs, candy wrappers, a comb. But would there be clues to me as well, to Howard and me together? I always loved sitting beside him in that car, enclosed, cozy. Everything went by—cars, houses, streets—but we were constant in the cool blueness of our car, listening to the whoosh of landscape.

  If I saw them, if they came out of the building, I would watch them enter the car and I would have to imagine the rest. For a moment I wondered why I had come at all; no one had forced me to. That cold and empty place in my bed, that absence from every room meant that he was somewhere else, in a warm place, and with her. But I had to see for myself.

  I began my vigil in the pharmacy, and I listened while other women bought bath powder and decongestant and mineral oil. When it was my turn I bought a roll of film, remembering too late that Howard had taken the camera.

  “Anything else?” the pharmacist asked, and I glanced around for ideas.

  “Do you mind if I browse?” I asked. I wandered up and down, restlessly bringing my eyes to the window where I could see the car, at least the trunk end of it. My fingers glided over gilded clocks, over boxed soaps, and cradle gyms. And then I came to the little glass case that held the accoutrements of sex: the jellies and salves, the powders and douches. I began to tremble and I thought, perhaps I am going mad. The pharmacist was watching like a ferret from behind the fort of his apothecary jars. Did he think I’d take something?

  The blue car was immobile. People walked past it: a boy carrying a sack of laundry, two girls holding hands, a man who turned suddenly and looked directly at me. My heart thumped in response, but he kept walking. When I came outside again, I held my hand palm-upward, testing for rain. The early morning had been cloudy and I had hoped for rain. Rain would have been a natural screen and an excuse to linger in doorways and in stores. But maybe they wouldn’t come out at all if it was raining. And I remembered the languorous joy of rainy days in bed, leaving the warmth occasionally to bring something back: a book, a cigarette, something to eat.