John's Wife: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  When Trevor saw Gordon come careening out of the ladies’-wear shop like a foundering old tanker, blowing steam and wearing a pink nightie as regalia, he went immediately to a payphone in the restrooms corridor of the mall and called the police to leave an anonymous complaint together with the name of the shop where they could get confirmation of this bizarre behavior. He did not know why he did this. He did not even know why he was out here. He had been having a late lunch in the Sixth Street Cafe, his usual, a cup of soup (beef noodle today) and a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat, with a slice of lemon meringue pie for dessert, no coffee, and he was still thinking about his wife Marge’s latest insurrectionary venture and what problems it might cause him with John, when John’s mother came in with her little grandson to buy him a chocolate icecream cone, followed almost immediately by Gordon and his camera, and they posed for pictures which Gordon said were for the newspaper, the chef, who was also the owner, coming out from the kitchen to get in them. Gordon had seemed to be in a hurry when he popped in, his mind elsewhere, but the moment he began the photo-taking session, frivolous though the occasion was, he became completely absorbed in his work and Trevor found himself becoming equally absorbed watching him. Gordon shifted his big hips about fluidly, searching out the best light, the right angle, moved a table and chairs, pulled down a sign taped to the counter near the cash register, took lightmeter readings with and without flash, switched lenses and filters, all in a matter of seconds, and before the icecream was even being scooped, he was already snapping away, bobbing, leaning, rearing, crouching, and it slowly dawned on Trevor that Gordon was not photographing the people at all, he probably didn’t even see them: his focus was on the cone, passing from hand to hand and hand to mouth. Where it went, his lens went, and as it did, Gordon asked the little boy where his sister was. Opal said she thought she was out at the mall, “Mikey, how did you get chocolate on your nose?,” and before she could scrub it away with a licked paper napkin, Gordon, without apology, was gone. The pie came, a house specialty, the meringue almost four inches high and light as air, but Trevor only poked at it. He was still thinking about the photographer, his amazing intensity, and the thought that came to him then, which he did not understand at all, or even quite believe to be true (there was the pie in front of him, for example), but which remained with him for all the rest of that day, was: I have never known delight. He knew of course where Gordon had gone, he’d made the same calculations Gordon had. Trevor paid his check, received an inquiry about his appetite, and went to pick up his car in the lot behind the bank building. He took his time, driving cautiously as he always did. At the mall, he spied John’s daughter at a table with a couple of friends, but did not find Gordon until he came flying out of the ladies’-apparel store in his pink gown, though Trevor had peeked in there earlier as he made his rounds. Alarmed, almost as though in self-defense, then, he put in that panicky call to the police, regretting it as soon as he had done it, he hadn’t even disguised his voice properly. This was not the first time, he had reported Gordon twice before, but those times only for fun. One day when, from his office window in the bank building, he had seen Gordon sidle swiftly into the card shop and travel agency across the street and, from behind the scenic posters of beaches and hill towns, aim his telephoto lens at the bank door (Trevor knew why of course: John’s wife’s car was parked at the curb below), he called, also anonymously (“a worried bank customer”), to report the “suspicious behavior” of a person “lurking secretively” near the bank entrance, last seen peeking out from inside the travel agents’ across the way. He was still giggling about it that night, it was the first time he’d ever done anything like that, and when Marge asked him what was so funny he fumbled for a moment in confusion and then said that John had taken out another half million of insurance and he was still feeling giddy. Then there was the even funnier time he’d called the police and in a high-pitched voice accused the photographer of sneaking around outside the women’s changing room at the civic center swimming pool, a complete fabrication, since Trevor himself had never even seen the pool in operation, his only visit to it being before the dedication ceremony when the retractable roof was being demonstrated. Though he had thought of that call as only a kind of practical joke, he nevertheless felt more or less justified because of things he’d seen the photographer up to elsewhere, and he told himself it was even possible he’d guessed at a truth. Not likely, though. Gordon was not an ordinary voyeur, any more than Trevor was. It could even be said that he and Gordon were both searching for the same thing, Gordon more directly, fully aware of what he was doing and why, Trevor more speculatively, but more prudently. Though he had begun this little game as a mere lark, Trevor had come to believe that if he took it seriously enough, something, he didn’t know what, would be revealed. It was as though Gordon and his camera were leading him, unwittingly, to buried treasure, and if he reported him mischievously to the police now and then it was only to remind himself that it was just a game, a harmless amusement. It was different today, though. He was frightened, he didn’t know why. Was it because of Gordon’s mad lumbering flight through the crowded mall, the disturbing impropriety of it, or had he suddenly become appalled at his own improper fascination with such madness? He ducked into the men’s room after the call, afraid of being seen near a telephone (had anyone recognized him?), and was shocked when he peered in a mirror and saw the panic in his face, his rumpled clothing. And was that a floccule of meringue on his lapel? Trevor was known for his cool aplomb, his tidy dispassionate composure—something was terribly wrong! “The trouble is,” he said to himself, dabbing at the sweat on his brow (he had sweat on his brow?), “you don’t know who you are.” “Who does?” asked some voice in one of the stalls, and Trevor, now thoroughly flustered, fled again.

  The insurrectionary venture that troubled Trevor feared was his wife Marge’s decision to challenge Snuffy, the popular ex-high school football coach, airport manager, and can-do councilman, for mayor, not because she didn’t like Snuffy (she certainly didn’t), but because she could not let John’s handpicked candidate run unopposed. Was this a democracy or one bully’s fiefdom? She was afraid she already knew the answer to that, but even knowing it, she could not accept it, and she planned to run, not against Snuffy so much, he was just a proxy anyway, but against her old classmate and nemesis, the number one honcho himself. It would necessarily be a grassroots affair, she had no money for it, she’d have to confront all that wealth and power with a few volunteers (she had been trying to enlist Lollie’s help, but the woman seemed strangely aloof these days; she hoped her cretinous husband hadn’t finally turned her head), handmade posters and flyers, an exhaustive door-to-door campaign, tough talk, and an attention-grabbing platform, including a call for radical electoral reform. So far she’d kept everything under wraps, only Trevor knew, and he wasn’t all that excited about it. As she expected: Trev was an accountant and this enterprise looked to fall pretty much in the loss column, she understood that; in the end John would find some way to clobber her, and Trevor, who needed John, knew it. Probably she told her husband just so he could brace himself, though she could have used a little moral support. Trev was an older grad student up at State when they met, a teaching assistant for Marge’s Econ 101 class. She’d invited him to a civil rights rally and they had developed a kind of activist paldom, though Trev wasn’t even political. Probably just lonely. That was all right. So was she. Just why marriage should have followed the way a street march follows a resolution was not that clear to either of them, but they had got used to and respected one another, discovering that they were about the only persons they didn’t argue with, and the alternatives were few. Or rather: nil. No regrets. They were helpmeets in the true sense of the word, and now that she was finally launching her campaign, she knew he’d be at her side, no matter what his misgivings. She wanted maximum impact when she did announce formally, and she was doing that now with a concise but forceful and passionate position paper,
the exact wording of which she had just finished drafting, to be published in this week’s edition of The Town Crier. She was determined that this was not going to be a negative campaign, but she was pointing out that her opponent had a lifelong reputation for dealing ruthlessly and arbitrarily with those who were younger and less powerful than he and had frequently shown alarming evidence of undemocratic gender-biased attitudes. There were other rumors about the old coach’s behavior that today would open him up to charges of sexual harassment, and she would not be disappointed if those rumors should come out as the campaign proceeded, and perhaps even be substantiated, though she herself of course would never bring them up. She had wanted something that would give the announcement of her candidacy a bit of a kick-start, so she had gone out earlier to see Barnaby at the retirement center to try to obtain his endorsement, but no help there. He seemed to think she was his bath lady, and he started yelling at her incoherently, something about his dead wife doing it, and probably telling her to get the hell out, which anyway she did. So she had called Trevor to tell him what she was doing and then delivered the document that would change her life and that perhaps of the entire town as well (she could beat that meathead!) to the newspaper office—which, oddly, was closed, no signs of life inside: she had to push it through the slot in the bottom panel of the door, her sense of drama offended, and angry that already, as she took her first dramatic step into bigtime electoral politics, she was being made to stoop instead of stride. Her fateful turn taken, she stood up, took a deep breath, looked around at the disappointingly empty sidewalks, and headed for the club where she could work off her tensions with a round or two of golf, have a quiet drink and supper with Trevor, lighten him up a bit (when she finally did see him, he seemed to be taking it much worse than she’d thought), and get ready for all hell to break loose tomorrow.

  Kevin, the golf pro and manager of the country club, saw the dweeby linen-suited accountant come into the bar late that afternoon, looking a bit wigged out (he went straight for the gin instead of his usual mineral water at that time of day), but he paid him little attention, there was too much else to do, the new season was in full swing, first club tournament just two weeks away, his own urgent staffing problems were as yet unresolved (he’d appealed to the board, there was plenty of money for more help, what were they being so chintzy about), the greens and fairways were in shitty shape after the spring drought, the buttbrain groundskeepers handing him some crap about the water pressure being too low for the sprinklers to work properly, one of the local wives he’d been jamming was giving him a hard time since he’d tried to call it off, the new cook was threatening to quit (three in the last six weeks), one of the coolers was on the blink, also the pool filtering system, there were lights out over the east parking lot, potholes in the access road, dogshit in the sandtraps at the tenth and twelfth greens, Kevin hardly had time for that limp noodle, not even a golfer, more like a golf widower, husband of maybe the best all-round player at the club, her only weakness being her impatience around the edges of the greens. Her impatience generally: a pain in the hunkies. She was due in soon, old Marge—or Sarge, as some called her when not calling her worse—always one of the first ones back in, no matter when she went out. She just played through everybody like a bulldozer through butter: make way, you zombies. Big beef, Marge. This was one wife out here Kevin had not planted and would not. The crowds began to arrive, he was still shifting the beers into the working cooler from the dead one when they started pouring in, some clopping in off the course like old nags entering the feedbarn, others, as Trevor had done (he was over by the picture window now, staring blankly out on the dimming sky), joining them from town, full of all the usual asinine jokes and urgent demands. When John got back to town, Kevin would have a private chat with him about the workload out here. John always had a solution, and he didn’t need the goddamned board to get things done. Kevin missed him when he wasn’t around, the place always seemed a bit seedy without him. His wife had been out earlier in the day, or she probably had been, Kevin wasn’t taking any bets on that lady’s whereabouts anymore, or her ifabouts either, didn’t even like to think about it and mostly didn’t, but he was pretty sure he saw her, heading to the locker-rooms. He hadn’t seen her since, but only John’s wife could wear a gold lamé top over emerald-green slacks like that and look casual doing it. Another local hausfrau Kevin had not staked and would not, he knew, though would that he could. Just brushing up against her was magic. At the bar, the story of the day was about the bareassed preacher’s kid crawling up onto Stu and Daphne’s roof to retrieve his pants, and everybody had their own account of how those articles got up there in the first place. Some of them were pretty wonderful, and Kevin found himself loosening up a bit as the evening wore on, a tumblerful of iced single malt helping somewhat as well. Most of the stories had old Stu coming home from the car lot and finding Daphne in bed with the kid, throwing the pants on the roof himself, usually with some one-liner from Stu directed at Daphne or the kid. One version: “This time, son, you gotta crawl up there to get your britches back. Next time you’ll have to crawl up there to get your balls back.” Others said that Stu had tanned his ass before sending him up there, which accounted for the spectacular glow, or sent one of his mechanics over to do that bit of routine rear end realignment for him (that was another rumor: the brazen young mechanic), but others said they heard the kid threw them up there himself, a dare or something, or maybe just showing off: he’d also climbed up on the sign out in the front yard and started whacking off in full view, or so someone claimed who said they saw him. PKs: the same everywhere. An old regular out here named Alf said he didn’t know about the monkey business on the sign, but that the kid, feeling cocky, had tossed his own bluejeans up there himself before going on inside was what he’d heard, too. Said it was like a kind of signal flag, you know, like raising the old blue peter, which meant his ship was ready to sail and let the world know it. Kevin had been ready to believe half the stories being told, but he figured the deadpan doctor, known for his hoard of ancient anecdotes, was pulling one out of the hat here. Alf was a hopeless old bent-backed duffer who approached the ball in a slouch, swinging from the elbows and carrying his neck out in front of his shoulders like a turkey buzzard, but he was hell to beat with a putter. “Old Stu came home and said he’d give him a blue peter, goddamn it, if he caught him around here again! He didn’t mind him taking his wife for a spin with his little banger, but he’d be damned if he’d let him have free advertising!” There was also the more plausible rumor that Stu and Daphne had actually hired the kid to enrich their sex life, Stu himself was known to tell a lot of jokes on the subject, while someone who’d had a beer with Stu out at the Getaway this afternoon said Stu had claimed that it wasn’t what it seemed, the kid was innocent, only came by to mow the lawn, it was just another prank of Winnie’s ghost which even Kevin had heard Stu say was haunting him nowadays. “Knucksie’s kid? Innocent?” old Waldo snorted, already half-bombed. “Naw, haw! Gimme a break, fellas! That boy’s been cuttin’ scrub all over town, he’s a menace to virtue everywhere! But Daph was too smart for the rowdy little jackrabbit. When he tried to jump her, she told him first he’d have to put his pants on the roof, that was the only way not to have babies, and then when he’d got them up there, she told him old Stu had got wind of it and was on his way home with a bodyshop mallet to work his chassis over, but if he got his butt up there on the roof in a hurry and put those pants to use, she’d tell Stu she’d hired him to polish the shingles!” Well, while they were all laughing to beat hell at that one, who should come in but Stu and Daphne themselves, both shitfaced, hardly able to walk, Stu asking what’s the joke. The sudden silence was earsplitting, but Waldo, not losing a beat, boomed out: “Haw! Look who’s here! Hey, you hear what happened to old Stu?” People were choking on their drinks, Kevin included, ready to fall through the floor, and Waldo’s better half grabbed his sleeve to yank him out of there, but the paint salesman winked with hal
f his face and said: “Well, he was out in the sticks a coupla nights ago, miles from nowhere, and his car broke down, goddamn tin buckets they sell nowadays, can’t trust ’em, and so, you know, he needed a place to stay overnight. But the rube at the only farmhouse in sight said, sorry, mister, all he had was two beds, one for him and his wife and the other one for his daughter. That’s all right, says Stu, I’m harmless, my dingus got shot off in the war. I’m dreadful sorry to hear it, says the rube, okay, you can sleep with my daughter.” By now, everybody was relaxed back into their drinks once again, laughing more than the joke was worth, most of them having heard it before, the old nine-inch stub gag, but so relieved to have Waldo cover for them everything seemed funny. But then, while everyone was still falling about stupidly after the punchline, Waldo turned to Stu and asked: “So what’s this I hear about you sellin’ fresh hotcakes off your roof, ole buddy?” Stu grinned blankly, pretending not to know what Waldo was talking about, started telling some tired old joke of his own about a pretzel salesman, Daphne meanwhile keeping her mouth shut through it all. Not at all like Daphne, most people were beginning to get the picture. The two of them threw down a couple of stiff ones and staggered out early, the cluster at the bar by then having pretty much scattered. And then, later, as Kevin more or less anticipated, some woman came in and said she’d found some green pants with a gold top hanging in the lockerroom, she’d have kept them for herself if she could have got into them, whose were they?

  Nevada lay smoking that night in the brazen young mechanic’s rustic one-room cabin in a prehistoric motel cluster halfway into the next county on what used to be the main road through here before the interstate link got built and all the action slid to the west and the dinosaurs died out. John was off on a business trip somewhere, Bruce due in tomorrow, but had left no messages, they both were together maybe, probably not. Cool jazz played on Rex’s old hi-fi system (the CD player she’d given him sat, gathering yellow prairie dust, on a kitchenette shelf), punctuated from time to time by a dull metallic clang as Rex’s elbows hit the rusty sides of the ancient shower stall. Paranoia drove Rex this far from where his daily bread got earned or otherwise acquired, his qualms about humanity in general augmented by his more particular mistrust of hicktown collusion, hypocrisy, and stupidity, and by, above all, his deep misgivings about John, misgivings nettled by seething rancor (Rex forgave no trespasses), something they could not talk too much about, since John was Nevada’s principal ticket, and had come to mean more to her than that really, and Rex knew it. Made his heart heavy, she knew, but he never complained, needing her, as was mutual. John kept a suite out at the new luxury motel on the interstate where he could come and go without notice, and Nevada stayed out there when in town, but whenever, as now, she was tensed up and had to mellow out, she came here. Rex gave her soothing body massages, a skill he’d picked up in one of his previous careers, and they had sex that was long, satisfying, and blissfully unpretentious. Sometimes they jogged together, or worked out a light set or two, and there was always some quality dope to do and stories to exchange from their respective workplaces. Tonight, for example, after a funny story about a kid she suspected might be little Jennifer’s brother, Rex had shown her the contract he’d got the car dealer’s wife to sign, to be postdated later, which gave Rex half the dealership and sole ownership of the service department, but which, by description, obliged him to marry the woman first. “She’s an old pig, I know, and drunk more than not, but she’s got what I want. You’re drifting away from me, baby, I can’t help that, but I want to be ready to do right by you when the show closes down and you come back to me.” She’d started to protest, thought better of it, agreed instead that she was indeed feeling somewhat adrift but had no clear idea, as he seemed to, which way the wind was blowing (she felt unlinked with John away and as though jobless, somehow endangered), and then had asked him how they were going to get the husband out of the picture. “I’ve worked it out,” was all he’d say, his reticence causing her some unease, since mostly he told her what was on his mind. Now, when he came out of the shower and sat on the bed, handing her the towel to dry his back, she told him about the operations she was running for John’s pal Bruce, including their plans to take John’s daughter and her little friend from the mall for a skyride in Bruce’s jet tomorrow, providing that soldier of fortune got back from his Caribbean fun and games and the girls could escape their babysitters. Just a preliminary step; next move more serious, and nothing she could do really to stop it. She might, no choice of her own, be moving on. “Bruce is a cool guy but, deep down, something of a psycho. It’s like he’s always walking along the edge of a cliff and can’t think of one good reason not to step off except for something like plain old animal hunger: he still wants more than he wants not to want. But if his appetite ever fails him, so long, brother, he’s gone.” Actually, she thought Bruce and Rex were a lot alike, but she knew Rex would resent her saying so, since it was always the old apples and oranges argument with Rex whenever it came to rich folks and poor. “That makes him an easy spender with other people’s lives, too,” she added, reaching around to towel Rex’s drum-tight abs, “life itself probably being the thing he has the least respect for. He thinks life was some kind of fundamental mistake the universe made back when it orgasmed and the less of it the better.” Rex got up to change the record, choosing something a bit more progressive and so more to his tastes, but not so far out as to chafe her gentled spirit. She lay back on the bed, gazing at his well-toned lats, firm butt, and dark muscular thighs, thinking: Bruce was right about one thing. Life was not, as some poetical types liked to claim, a dream, but being rooted in dreams (and dead ones at that) and more like them than not, if you were crazy enough to live life out, you might as well be crazy enough to live it as though it were a dream. It eased the suffering, and nothing more meaningless in a meaningless world than to suffer for nada. A spin on things, she noted, that gave you a lot of license. Rex rolled a fresh spliff and lit it, passed it down; she took a deep toke, then coiled smoke rings out at his semitumescent cock. “Straighten that muscle up,” she said, “and we’ll have a game of quoits.”