John's Wife: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  Was that Waldo’s toothbrush that Lorraine found in the motel bathroom? It was. Also the traces of whiskey in the water glass, the half-full (always the optimist) flask from which it came now tucked in his back pocket. But had Dutch called to warn him? He had not. Their decampment in the old station wagon parked out front had been the bright idea of the gum-smacking charmer in the raggedy cutoffs whom his shotgun-toting spouse had nicknamed Sweet Abandon and whom Waldo, but only to himself, called Sassy Buns. She it was who’d lured him out here to the darkened country club this moonless night because she said her biggest fantasy was to get balled on one of those velvety golf greens, or maybe on all eighteen, a hole at a time, how many corks you got to pop, Pop? Haw. He wasn’t sure yet he’d get to pop one. She was something of a mystery, hard to figure. When he’d poked his finger in one of the gaps in her shorts back at the motel, making some good-natured crack about holing out with a clean stroke, she’d leapt off the bed, yelling: “Hey, I came for the high, man! What are you, some kind of sex maniac?” “Naw, only when I’m awake,” he’d said with a sad grin, and she’d laughed at that and snapped her gum and picked her shirt up off the floor, her handsome bare tits, dusted with spilled coke which he’d hoped to snort directly therefrom, bouncing freely, and said: “This dump sucks, come on, let’s split!” When he’d told her he was disappointed, he’d sort of hoped to get laid, she’d said, all right, no problem, and told him about her fantasy which had to do with an early sex experience with a caddy. Or did she say, her daddy? Never mind, here they were, approaching the first green, and he felt in good form even if wick dipping in the wild was not his wont. “What’s par for this hole?” she asked. “Four,” he said. “With a good drive and a bit of luck you can be on the green in two.” As a rule, he counted himself lucky if he was on in five with nothing worse than a pair of putts to go. But if he was going to have to go the round, he wanted to keep his strokes to a minimum. “Have you ever noticed,” she said, “how the first holes on golf courses are always the easiest and most inviting? It’s like the first stages of puberty when it’s all just a lark. Only after you’ve left the clubhouse far behind do you realize, led on by the easy openers, what you’ve got yourself into.” Waldo paused and unscrewed the cap of his hip flask, took a hit, and contemplated this pale half-naked waif skipping down the fairway in the darkness before him. She wasn’t exactly what she’d seemed. “Do you sometimes wish you’d stayed back in the clubhouse?” he called out. She turned around. He could just barely see her nipples, black pinpoints on her narrow chest. He couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not. “Oh no. But sometimes I wish the people I was out on the course with had a better sense of how the game was played.” He supposed that was a dig, like many he’d heard before, but what he said, trying to revive her fantasy and his plainer hopes (he hadn’t been around one of this sort in a long while and he wasn’t sure he could handle it), was, “I know what you mean, baby, a big driver might separate the pro from the duffer, but the game’s won or lost around the greens.” “What separates the pro from the duffer,” she said, “is knowing how to change your stroke when the old stroke fails. And how to find your balls again when they’re lost in the rough.” She laughed, sounding more like her old sassy self, and added: “Drop your pants.” “Hunh?” “Come on, old man, you wanted it so bad, let’s get to it!” She stripped off her own shorts, kicked them away. “Your lie!” She was beautiful but he couldn’t see much: a kind of ghostly cartoon cutout with two dots on the chest and a black patch down in the middle. Instead of green and hole, though, he was thinking sandtrap. Nevertheless, he worked his shoes off, moved the flask to his breast pocket, lowered his pants and drawers, and stepped out of them. He didn’t know if she could see how things stood with him, but if she could she had to be impressed. “Okay,” she laughed, “catch me if you can!” And she turned those saucy cheeks by which he’d christened her and was off and running down the open fairway. Not too fast. More like a glowing hop, skip, and, if he ever caught her, a jump. She looked like a flitting moth, rare and tender and just aching to be pinned, as they used to say back in the old chapter room, and with his trusty one-eyed scout pointing the way, Brother Waldo, yawhawing boldly in the hollow night, went galumphing after.

  One-eyed Trevor, home alone and still monstrously hungover, his bloodshot good eye nearly as blind as his bad, sat huddled over his actuarial charts, searching for some sort of reassuring pattern, a set of probabilities he could count on, but it was like trying to read underwater. Nothing stood still, everything flowed into everything else, it was making him nauseated, or rather, more nauseated than he already was. When Alf dropped him off on his way to the hospital, the first thing he’d done was wolf down half a box of brown sugar, he didn’t know why, it just tasted good. Then he’d swallowed some aspirin and antacids with cold coffee and rinsed out with mouthwash and sat down with his volatile actuarial charts to wait for Marge to come home. That image of the fluttering moth that had occurred to Waldo would have applied as well to Trevor’s headachy experience of the points on his charts: not only John’s wife’s now (he couldn’t even find hers), they were all dancing capriciously all over the charts, sometimes flying right off the page, other times sinking like stones or bloating like spilled ink. He tried to trace his way, step-by-step, back to the source of his despair, and though it hurt him to think at all, never mind in any systematic way, it seemed to him that the root cause of it all was his clandestine pursuit of the photographer’s clandestine pursuit of John’s wife. A whimsical and innocent game at first, it had become an unconscionable obsession, having little to do with pursued or pursuer, but all to do with himself. The buried treasure he had sought to uncover was his own sick soul. It was horrible. He could hardly bear to sit in the same room with himself. Where was Marge now that he needed her? Marge—? The question finally penetrated his miserable self-absorption. She’d left the barbecue early, begged him to go with her, he’d been in no mood to caddy for her while she worked off her temper, had scornfully refused. She was obviously in pain. How could he have been so insensitive? And where was she now? It was the middle of the night! Good heavens! Something must have happened! He was suddenly on his feet, wobbly as he was, and out the door. Trevor hated driving by night even more than by day, but he had no choice, he had to find Marge. His sudden anxiety made him tremble so, he could hardly get the key into the ignition, but at the same time he felt energized, strong (maybe it was the brown sugar), and ready for come what may. He headed straight for the country club, hunched over the wheel, to see if her car was still there, and come what did, before he reached the turn-in, was that girl from the barbecue who’d been excited by his eyepatch. She was standing on the road that ran alongside the course with her shirt over her shoulder, a bundle under her arm, and her thumb out, radiantly aglow in the beams of his headlamps. The excitement her excitement had engendered had long since left him along with his barbecue supper, but she was, as he was, alone in the night, so what could he do? Though it gave him a strange feeling, as if he were being willed by his action, not willing it, he swerved to a stop to let her in. “Hey, look who’s here!” she laughed. “My knight in the shining eyepatch!” She kissed him on his cheek, her bare breast brushing his arm, and the car stalled, then he flooded it. “So what’re you doing out here, big time? I was afraid for a minute you were going to run me down! Have you been following me?” “Oh no, no! I, uh—my wife! She hasn’t come home and—!” “Your wife? You didn’t tell me you were married—well, but what does it matter, right?” She popped her gum and gave his thigh a squeeze. “Anyway, you won’t find anybody in their right mind out here, man. Nothing but chiggers and spiders and gross crawly things. It’s the pits!” She brushed off her breasts, her legs, peered inside the waistband of her raggedy shorts, an expression on her face of mild annoyance, or else (it was familiar somehow) of placid consent. “Some old drunk dragged me out here and tried to rape me—you know, the make-out-or-get-out kind—I had to run away. It was awful!
I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along!” She snuggled closer, stuck her gum under the dashboard, laid her head on his shoulder. “Hey, I don’t mind if you were following me,” she murmured. “Really. I’m flattered that a cool guy like you would even be interested.” She reached up and nibbled at his ear. He had the strange sensation that she was reminding him of something he’d forgotten. Or that she was correcting a flaw in his computations: something certainly was shifting. “I’ve got the key to a motel room in this bozo’s pants,” she whispered. “Wanna go?” “Well, I, uh, never…” “You don’t like me—?” “Oh no, I do! But—” “Don’t worry, then. I know how to show a guy a good time, honest, just give me a chance.” Her tongue was in his ear and her hand inside his shirt. Her bare leg crossed his thighs and nudged between them like an eraser scrubbing away an error. “But what?” she breathed. “Tell me, killer. You never what?” He hesitated, closing his good eye. “I have never,” he confessed softly, feeling everything come round for him at last (perhaps he had followed her out here!), “I have never … known delight…”

  As for John’s erstwhile troubleshooter, who had so known but who had always, successful businesswoman that she was, given more than she had received, the gumpopping hitchhiker’s disparaging judgment upon the local country club applied equally to this whole pig’s ear of a town, Nevada having come round to Bruce’s bitter take on his friend’s backwater fiefdom: a living nightmare. It was, the pits, a house of horrors. Where the hideous crawly things were the deadbeats who lived here. Nobody in their right mind, like the lady said. Nevada rolled along through the creepy half-lit streets, empty but for a stray dog or two, a car crossing several blocks up, a distant siren. She felt like she was touring the land of the dead or a wax museum after hours. Remote shimmerings of heat lightning stirred memories of her white-whiskered granddad’s apocalyptic fantasies. It was time for her to blow this sick scene once and for all before it fucked her mind completely, which was what she was going to tell Rex when she saw him. She’d like him to come along, meal ticket on her, but if not, not. She’d gone out to his motel, nobody in, though his car was there. Out jogging maybe. She’d made herself at home, put on some music to beat back the silence, worked out a bit with his weights, but in the end the emptiness had spooked her, so she’d hit the road again, looking for lights. Downtown was dead, she cruised the strips, feeling oddly panicky whenever the darkness welled up around her. Her hotel out on the interstate was full of John’s friends, down for the holiday, even her own suite was being used, couldn’t go there without getting sucked into bad shit. She drifted past the malls, where the young were buzzing around restlessly like flies on dung, having no one to take their anger out on except each other. There were a few cars dragracing in the mostly empty parking lots, tires squealing. She heard a bottle break hollowly: the sound of her own empty fantasies gone bust, she thought. But what could she have done? She’d got caught between two old pals, playing rough. She’d grabbed what she could while she could and now it was time to turn the page. She had met John out at the airport after sending him the note, supposing she’d be invited along, but after he’d got out of her what he wanted, he’d told her in effect to go fuck herself, looking down his broken nose at her like a lord at his dirty kitchenmaid. Something he had to do himself, he’d said. He’d seemed suspicious: did he know about the signed agreements Bruce was leaving behind for her? Well, what if he did, fuck-all he could do about it, they’d be partners now in effect, and if he didn’t like it he could shove it up his royal wazoo. That was how Nevada had put it to herself, glaring at his back as he’d crawled up into the cabin, but she’d been crying when he took off without her. Like that old bluesy song Rex so loved: Goodbye, good times… The tears had dried now but she was still feeling wasted and strung out, so she decided to make a pit stop at an all-night drugstore where she had a friendly connection. Just as she was pulling in, though, that steely black Porsche she knew so well went rocketing past, horn blaring and brights ablaze, announcing: look out, buttheads! this is an emergency! John? He’d found them? Her heart was in her throat as she leapt back in her car. What now—?!

  No, Clarissa: going nowhere, anywhere, ready for come what may, as she’d been ready all day, or so she’d thought, for come what didn’t. Betrayed! Not just by two-faced Jennifer, but by Bruce and Nevada, too! Those shits! She could never forgive either of them. Her only real friends! Or so they’d seemed: she’d been suckered yet again by her infantile trust of others. When was she going to grow up? She spun up onto the interstate and, burning rubber as she accelerated, went barreling down the open highway in her daddy’s blazing saddle, as he called it, daring anyone or anything to get in her way. She watched the speedometer rise past 140, but she felt like she was sitting still, not moving at all. Signs, cars and trucks, light poles whipped past as though under their own power: it was the sensation she used to get on merry-go-rounds and rollercoasters, the world going into a wild spin while she sat anchored at the center of stillness. She slowed and a sense of her own motion came back to her. A bird caromed off the windshield, startling her, and she cut her speed even more, took the next exit ramp, looped around, and headed back toward town, see who’s hanging at the mall, a rock station at full blast, fanfaring her coming. She wanted to hit somebody or rape them or tear their eyes out or something, she didn’t know what she wanted. She found the usual crowd. More of them outside than in, that kind of night. The Porsche impressed them. They passed around some grass cut with angel dust or smack or both, a vague blend of pass-me-downs, that did nothing to soften the implacable fury that gripped her mortified heart. A couple of the girls had stripped off their tops, and Clarissa did, too. A guy with his shirt off said, “Let’s walk through the mall like this and see if they throw us out,” and she told him to fuck off. Kid stuff. Mall-rat Mickey Mouse. She’d always loved this mall, ever since her dad brought her here on her seventh birthday, just after he’d built it. A day in her memory when the sun shone as though for her alone. It was magic and it was hers. Now the magic had suddenly left it, like when somebody dies and leaves nothing but a cold clammy body. These scuzzy candy-butts were spoiling it. When a girl asked where Jen was, Clarissa snapped: “She’s dead, man. Gone. Forget her.” “Really—?!” They wanted to know more, but Clarissa had nothing to add. These assholes were getting on her nerves. She felt surrounded by flesh-eating aliens and it was making her want to throw up. Even the light was weird. As often in moments like this, when she felt completely alone in a scumbag world, Clarissa asked herself, what would Marie-Claire do next? Her destiny: whatever it was, let it come. The guys started pressing her to give them a ride, suggesting in their dork-brained way that they wanted more than one kind, so she said: “Okay, show me what you got, I only go with the biggest.” “Got?” “In your pants, stupid. Haul it out. Let’s measure up.” The girls were giggling with their heads down like they’d just seen someone poop themselves. “Lay them out on the hood there, if you can find them. The longest gets a ride he won’t forget.” A couple of the bigger boys unzipped, but the others started backing off, the wimps. One of them asked if she even had her license yet, and she heard someone say she was so ripped a ride with her was like a one-way ticket to nowhere. The class nerd mooned her, his mashed-potato ass being the only joke he knew, but not close enough for her to stub her roach out on it. So she flicked it in its general direction, gave them all the finger, and gunned it out of there, tires screaming in her behalf.

  The class nerd was not alone in assisting the heavens on this moonless night, others including Clarissa’s father’s Assistant Vice President in Charge of Sales and his clairaudient but troubled helpmeet, as well as the motelkeeper, her father’s old battery mate, who’d caught it (his destiny) but good, and at this moment lay mooning the indifferent world in the very room serially occupied so recently by the other two, though now it was his alone. He had just knocked the telephone over and was groping for it with his left hand, finding it oddly elus
ive even though he knew just where it was. As he knew where everything was, it was all quite clear to him, Dutch felt perfectly sound, composed and carefree, a bit bored if anything, and he seriously considered simply locking up for the night and sorting things out in the morning. At the same time he knew he was dying. He could see himself lying there in the shattered glass, fatally wounded, fumbling for a fallen phone which, when dragged to his ear, turned out to be dead. Poor bastard, he mused. Pity he had to check out in such undignified circumstances. Of course, Dutch thought (always thinking), he could still use the two-way radio the police chief had given him. If—big if—he could reach his back pocket, now somewhere down around his ankles. Which were miles away in some other room. He could hear someone frantically rattling the door. Probably Waldo’s old lady wanting back in to get her pants back. Could he go over and open it up for her? He couldn’t, right though he was about it being under-clad Lorraine. She’d fled the room in abject terror (her impression was of someone exploding bloodily right through the mirror), then had thought better of it, but the door had snapped shut behind her and locked her out. She shook it and shouldered it and kicked it, but no dice. And no help from within. She raced for her car, tugging her shirt down as she ran, feeling dreadfully exposed, but the old wagon wasn’t there! Someone must have stolen it! Oh my God! She ducked into the scraggly bushes at the edge of the lot; her thighs were wet and it felt like someone with icy breath was breathing on them. No one around, though, or she’d know it. She did pick up something like a fuzzy overview as if from a low-flying plane (she glanced up into the empty sky), but it didn’t seem quite human, whatever it was, her own imagination maybe, all atingle as it was, as was her bare ass also. She was crouched there, drying her thighs and tears with her shirttails and meditating on the awesome vicissitudes of death, wisdom, and paradox (her destined lot), when it occurred to her that there might be a spare room key at the reception desk. So she crept around to the front, braced herself, leapt into full view from the highway, and threw herself at the double glass doors. But they were locked, too. The scurrilous sonuvabitch must have shut up shop before waddling off to his peepshow. She tried to force them, but felt her backside light up from the passing traffic like a billboard, heard sirens not far away, had to beat a quick retreat. Thus, on opposite edges of the town, both Lorraine and her maiden-chasing spouse found themselves this night in paired plight, let loose in the wild without prospects and in nothing but their shirts, her corkhead hubby, all forlorn, now slashing around in the rough somewhere on the back nine at the country club. He’d been taken in. Not for the first time. He had a gift for it. She whom his wife called one thing, he another, having lured him out here and in here, had, sassily, abandoned him, her pale will-o’-the-wisp buns dancing elusively through the underbrush ahead of him the last sweet glimpse he’d had of light itself. All dark since. Couldn’t see his hand in front of his nose before. Where was he? No idea. Hopelessly lost and getting eaten alive by mosquitos, Waldo was consoled only by his pocket flask, which, though drained dry, he sucked on like a pacifier, in the same way that his wife, when distressed, as now, found solace in nibbling the polish off her nails, or their friend the motelkeeper, who had so recently hosted them both, in scratching his balls. When he, like Adam, had ‘em.