The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  She couldn’t really bear to look at the Indian girl, whose name was so like her own but prettier: they were both long-haired brunettes but “Jelena” suggests a country girl, an aging courtesan, housemate to a genius running for governor, whereas “Juliana” suggests an exotic enchantress of indescribable beauty whose very walk, Jelena observed during the turtle feast, was lithesome and graceful beyond compare. Never mind even the fact that Juliana must have been at least twenty years younger than Jelena, Jelena was smart enough (boy, was she smart enough) to realize that she was no competition for that trophy doll.

  For a while, Jelena had had only her secure knowledge of Vernon’s ludicrous woman-shyness to ward off the thought that he might be drawn to her. So long as Vernon couldn’t even speak to the Indian woman, Jelena was safe. But she hadn’t reckoned with the idea of darkness. She hadn’t realized that if somehow Vernon could speak to Juliana without seeing her he wouldn’t necessarily be shy with her, not any more than his ancestor Jacob had been shy with her ancestor Kushi—or, rather, both their ancestors, because in a way Juliana was an Ingledew, which, as Jelena had tried to tell Bo, was the only reason that Vernon wasn’t shy with Jelena.

  Jelena knew that Vernon had spent at least three nights with Juliana. Whether or not he had actually slept with her Jelena didn’t know, and couldn’t know, without asking him. The first night she had awakened around 1:00 a.m. and ordinarily would have made nothing of Vernon’s absence from the bed—he habitually stayed up reading in his study until and beyond the wee hours. But something—intuition perhaps—made her look into his study and discover he was not there, and then to throw on her kimono and hike up to the parking space atop the mountain and discover that his Land-Rover was not there. She went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. Around dawn she looked into his study again, and he was asleep in his Barcalounger. She didn’t wake him, and she didn’t later confront him with the fact of his absence. That night the situation was repeated. And the third night. It was not like Vernon to get into the Land-Rover and drive around at night; she could only surmise that he had been going down to that wigwam which Uncle George had helped that queer Indian gorilla build, a wigwam in which Juliana had expressed her intention to sleep each night. Was Juliana openly attempting to recreate the setting in which Jacob and Kushi had screwed? Whenever she had got the chance, Jelena had given Vernon a hug and a kiss on the morning after and attempted to pick up any scent of the Indian woman, or any of the musky scents of sexual activity, but there had been none.

  Earlier tonight she had told Day and Diana of her suspicions. Or, rather, she had told Day first, in the living room while Diana was busy preparing supper. Jelena wanted so much to say to Day, “Well, if Vernon is fooling around, now you and I can fool around at long last.” But she knew beyond question she could never say that. Diana was her best friend. The only way she would ever be able to actualize her sexual fantasies for Day would be to ask Diana for permission, which quite possibly Diana would be happy to grant, but which Jelena could never request.

  “Even if it’s just a fling,” Day had tried to reassure her, “he’s going to be too busy between now and the election in November to give her any more of his attention.”

  And later, when she’d told Diana too (did she detect a jealousy in Diana? as if Diana wished it were she that Vernon was fooling around with), Diana simply reminded her that skeptics are imperturbable, and that Jelena was the most imperturbable skeptic on earth, and there was nothing Vernon could ever do that would stir Jelena up. Then Diana, trying to be light or even funny, had said a disquieting thing: “Since you don’t want to live in the governor’s mansion anyhow, let him take the redskin chick to Little Rock with him!”

  They had laughed, but Jelena had only been able to remark, “Her skin is lighter than mine.”

  Which was true. Jelena had spent so much time in her garden this summer that she was sunburned. In fact, the vegetable garden hadn’t satiated her; as one more secret from Vernon, from everyone (she hadn’t even told Day and Diana about it), she had created a secret garden: about the time Vernon had announced his candidacy, back in March, she’d begun the digging and the planting and the transplanting, on a quarter-acre of forest-enclosed clearing not too far from the house but not at all visible from it. She had a secret path to it which she could use from a corner of the vegetable garden, so that Vernon would never see her going to the other garden. Not that he’d ask her anyway. He never once asked, “Where have you been?” She could take a five-mile hike through the woods and he’d never ask, “Where have you been?” She could spend the whole day driving around to the nurseries of Harrison and other towns in northern Arkansas, hunting for the most exotic plants for her secret garden, and when she got home long after supper time, he would never ask, “Where have you been?”

  Because she was so proud of that other garden, which now in July was thriving luxuriantly and blooming spectacularly despite the drought (she ran an underground hose from her vegetable garden hose to keep the secret garden watered), she had been tempted to show it to Bo, who would’ve appreciated it, but if she’d done that, then it wouldn’t be secret any more, it wouldn’t be her very own. It was so hidden, so secluded, so private that she could do things there she couldn’t even do in her house when she was all alone in it, because even in the house with Vernon gone she still had the thought that it was Vernon’s house too and he was still somehow involved if for example she masturbated. Which she did, more often than she wanted to reflect, so she didn’t reflect, she just did it. The shower had been her favorite place until she had created the secret garden, and then she’d much prefer doing it out-of-doors surrounded by flowers and weird shrubs and the idea that plants themselves couldn’t ever stop thinking about sex, and did it constantly, all the time, theirs lives devoted to it entirely.

  Jelena wanted to be a plant in her reincarnation, which she didn’t believe in despite Day’s and Diana’s involvement with it. But thinking of Day, she realized that although nobody had seen her secret garden, not even Bo, she always took Day with her when she went to visit it for the purpose of autoeroticism, a word she wouldn’t ever have thought except it was such a good match for Vernon’s autodidacticism. It was Day, the outdoorsman, the forester, the plant specialist, who crept into that secret garden with her, at least in her mind, and held her, and touched her, and kissed her, and licked her, and entered her, and made her gasp and sigh and come. Their lovemaking was like that of the flowers, burgeoning and bursting and bright, in all colors.

  She didn’t do this because Vernon was undersexed or inept or not desirable in any way. They had a rich and full life—she almost thought in bed but realized they didn’t spend very much time together in bed, except maybe in the middle of the afternoon or late Sunday morning—they had a rich and full sexual life which was probably, she thought, better than most couples’. But after thirty years it was like something you just did, not because you particularly wanted to but because you’d been trained through thirty years of repetition to keep on doing it. Jelena had no standards for comparison except her ex-husband Mark who had been even worse than Vernon in one respect: when he ejaculated, not too long after he started getting busy, that was it, that was all. She was left high and dry.

  When she’d first started her affair with Vernon, while she was still married to Mark, they often did it in the woods, mainly because it was safer than doing it in her house, where she might be discovered, and she still treasured her memories of those wild, abandoned frolics, with all their clothes off, on pine needles and fallen leaves or even the hard earth. They hadn’t had sex outdoors since then, even though Jelena had broadly hinted that she’d like to recreate the passion and abandon and naturalness of doing it in the open air.

  Thinking of this now, she decided to take a kerosene lantern to light her way, and pay a visit to her secret garden. She hadn’t been there at night before. She wanted to go out there and lie down among the flowers that did their fucking by moonlight or starli
ght and try to keep count of their orgasms and her own.

  But as she was preparing to leave the house, the phone rang. “Hi. Guess where I am. Guess who I’ve been talking to. Guess where I’d rather be.”

  “First I have to guess who you are,” she said, laughing. “Uncle George?”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Do I sound like George?”

  “Where are you?”

  “The Stay More Hotel. I have the Jag or else I’d have driven straight up to your house. Could you come and get me?”

  If she went and got him, she’d have to give up her immediate intention, going to the secret garden in the night to count the orgasms of the flowers and herself. Or would she? She could take him with her. “Is Juliana around?” she asked.

  “As a matter of fact, she’s sitting on the porch, and I’ve been talking to her for hours. Why?”

  “I would be embarrassed if we saw each other.”

  “Oh? Well, I suppose I could ask her to go inside when you arrive.”

  She knew of course that if she went and got him he would spend the night. He had spent the night a few times when Vernon was gone. Nothing wrong with that, although there ought to have been. He ought to have at least flirted with her, or have made an outright proposition, but although they’d talked and talked and drank and drank, finishing a bottle of Glenfiddich between them, to the point where she herself had almost blurted, “Want to sleep with me?” he had never done anything, never even hinted at doing anything. They had talked about Harrison, Arkansas and Harrison High School until they had exhausted the subject. They had talked about gardening until there was nothing left to be said. Naturally he was Vernon’s campaign manager and therefore his employee, and you don’t fuck the boss’s wife, even if she wasn’t a wife and Vernon wasn’t really a boss and it wouldn’t have been fucking, but something, she hoped, far grander than that.

  She sighed. “Why don’t you just start walking in this direction, and I’ll pick you up at whatever point you’ve reached when I get there.”

  “Fine. Starting now?”

  “Start walking.”

  And that was the way it happened. She set aside the kerosene lantern that she’d been preparing to use to light her way to the secret garden, and, first checking to see that the guestroom was tidy, the bed neat, everything in its place, she walked instead up to the place where her Isuzu 4-by-4 was parked, got into it and drove down the mountainside. Her headlights picked him out as she rounded a hairpin: he had covered maybe a mile from the village. He was carrying only his briefcase, in which, she supposed, he had his toothbrush, comb, and a change of underwear. She was always glad to see Bo; he was a physically imposing man, quite muscular, and his neatly trimmed beard gave him character and kept him from looking like a businessman, which he was.

  When he climbed into her car, he gave her a kiss. It was quick but it was on the mouth. Then he said, “Sorry to put you out. I didn’t know I was coming, or I’d have brought the Nissan. Cast and I spent the day in Little Rock, sparring with the governor himself—I’ll tell you about it. And on our way back to Fayetteville I decided I deserved to see you again, and inspect our garden and pick a few hornworms off the tomatoes.”

  “But you spent hours talking to Juliana.”

  “Only because I was invited to dinner, and because I learned you were having dinner with Day and Diana.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Didn’t they tell you that they had invited her too? But that she declined?”

  “No,” Jelena said. “Maybe they were going to surprise me. And what a surprise that would have been! I’m glad she turned them down. Did she say why?”

  “For the same reason that you don’t want to see her.”

  It was after ten o’clock when they got back to the house, too late to visit the secret garden. Maybe she could show it to him in the morning. She offered him a nightcap. He said he’d do the honors and poured a Glenfiddich for each of them. They sat side by side on the sofa. She came right out and asked, “How much do you know about her and Vernon?”

  “If it will make you feel any better, I’m almost certain they haven’t made love.”

  “How do you know? Did he tell you?”

  “She did.”

  “What else did she tell you? I’m not stupid, you know. I have an idea that Vernon has spent quite a lot of time in her company, late at night.”

  “Oh, they’ve spent hours talking. In Osage as well as in English. There’s no denying that they’re fascinated with each other…the same way I’m fascinated with you.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “Bo Pharis, that’s the first flattering thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “No, it isn’t, but if you’d like to be flattered, I could do it all night.”

  “Do what all night?”

  He blushed. “Accidental. Oh, hell, maybe it was deliberate.” They both laughed, and she couldn’t help winking at him. “I love your wink,” he said. “Did you know that you wink at me?”

  “It’s just a nervous tic,” she said.

  “No, it makes me feel as if you and I exist together in a world of our own, that we have our own secret way of communicating.”

  “What a nice thing to say. Flatter me some more!”

  “Gladly.” He finished his drink quickly and poured himself another. “Remember Miss Nettleship? Eleventh grade English? She certainly remembered you. Whenever she returned one of my papers, it would have an A plus on it but it would say something like ‘This reminds me of the good work that Jelena Ingledew always did. It is almost worthy of her.’ All my life since high school, Jelena, I’ve wanted to be that worthy.” She was so touched by that she didn’t know what to say, and she was thinking, If ever there was a moment for a real kiss, this is it, but he didn’t move to kiss her, and she didn’t know what to say, and it was something that a wink couldn’t answer. After a while, he went on, “My ex-wife—I don’t suppose you ever knew Patricia Harmon or heard of her?—when she divorced me she said one of the problems was that whenever she said or did something wrong I would always remark, ‘Jelena wouldn’t have done that!’ even though I’d never known you. I guess it wasn’t fair to her, but she wasn’t the only victim. I’ve always, whenever a woman did or said anything, asked myself, ‘Would Jelena have done that?’ You have made life difficult for dozens of women.”

  She gathered enough aplomb to remark, “After years of setting me on a pedestal like that, it must have been a terrible let-down to see what I’m really like.”

  “On the contrary. From the very first I discovered that I hadn’t raised the imagined standards high enough. I discovered that you are far more beautiful, and charming, and wise, and intelligent than I had ever dreamed.”

  “Oh, Bo,” she said. “That’s enough. That’s enough flattery to last me for the rest of my life.”

  “One more thing,” he said, and put his big powerful hand on top of hers, and her breath caught in the expectation that he might really be getting ready to give her a passionate kiss. “When I was with Juliana earlier tonight, our chat reached the point where she practically invited me to join her in the wigwam tonight, but I turned her down because I’d rather be with you.”

  “Now that was a dumb choice,” Jelena said. “If you had that opportunity, you should have taken it. Unless you’re already beginning to think of her as Vernon’s woman.”

  “You’re much more Vernon’s woman than she could ever be,” Bo said. “But that doesn’t stop me.”

  “Doesn’t stop you from what?” she wondered aloud.

  “Doesn’t stop me from telling you I love you.”

  When he said that, there really was nothing for her to do, no choice for her, nothing to say. Since he still didn’t make the first move, she made it. She scooted closer to him on the sofa and inclined her head to his and waited for their lips to meet. Which they quickly did. Quickly and ardently, and for a long time. She knew she wouldn’t have to take him to the secret garden. He
had already created his own secret garden and surrounded her with it. It was a garden that had the power to enchant her to the point where she couldn’t even think of Vernon, let alone of Juliana. She did have one brief thought about Miss Nettleship, a very nice teacher and one of her favorites. But then she thought of no one except Bo and herself, and she said to him, when at last they broke their long kiss, “Now you’ve made it supremely difficult for me to allow you to sleep alone in the guest room.”

  He was just a little slow in getting that, and she realized it sounded a bit as if she were going to refuse him sleeping privileges. But he said, “Then why don’t you join me?”

  She preferred it that way, to use his bed instead of theirs. In fact, for the convenience of their rare guests that bed was king-sized, a larger field for sport, whereas hers and Vernon’s bed was only queen-sized, for sleeping closer together if the chance ever occurred.

  He declared, “I’d like to shower first. And you could join me for that.” He was grinning as if he knew a joke, as if perhaps he’d already said that to someone else and was enjoying his repetition of it to her. Or maybe he was grinning because he meant not the guestroom shower but the shower in the master suite, which could accommodate all the Samurai at once if need be. It had been a very long time since she and Vernon had used the shower together. And they had never used it before making love, always after. What about during? which was what she did by herself.

  But Jelena was mildly reluctant to reveal her body naked for the first time in thirty years to anyone other than Vernon. “I’m sorry,” she apologized to Bo, “I’m just much too modest for that.”

  “My goodness, honey, I’ve worked hours in the garden with you when you were dressed just in shorts and a tee-shirt without a bra and I had no trouble pretending you were totally nude. You have a sensational body.”