Laura Rider's Masterpiece

by Jane Hamilton

  She meant to be subtle rather than schoolmarmish in her grammar correction. “I’m not sure if the blush and burst of spring,” she rhapsodized, “in front of you and me is lust as much as desire.”

  In the two weeks before they met for the second time, there were thirty-seven messages between them. A few were paragraph-length, but most were short, a line or two, including among them three LOLs. That was the extent of their wish to abbreviate. Neither of them used emoticons. She later thought that if he’d used them she would not have continued to write him. She could not take anyone seriously who littered his communications with smiley faces and frowns, the exchanges seemingly written by a primary-school teacher to her charges. Jenna would rather her correspondents have been abducted by aliens than resort to picturegraphs, to colons and parentheses to express themselves.

  She hadn’t planned for an epistolary relationship with him, but when he’d written her back, telling her about the night in the field, she had felt compelled to say a few more words. She was suspended, she said in her second message, in a pocket between disbelief and belief, as perhaps he was, a space made possible, finally, by being in her forties. She was now able to hold two opposing views in her head and see virtue and meaning in both—a trick youth hadn’t afforded her.

  If she was writing to Charlie Rider so earnestly, it was because she remembered a quality of striving in him; it was that quality to which she spoke. She had no doubt, she’d assured him, that he was telling the truth, and even if memory and experience itself weren’t always to be trusted, there wasn’t much else a person could do but trust the fragments, the distortions, the longing that is memory.

  He had written back a rhyme:

  Subj: Tartoli

  From: crider@kingmail.com

  To: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  Jenna Faroli, Queen of Tartoli,

  The muse of Men, Women, and Mice,

  She sings, she dances, she makes pasta e fagioli,

  She’s smarter than Jesus H. Christ.

  There were eleven more stanzas, each beginning with her name, each in the same spirit of encomium, ending with:

  Jenna Faroli, the Dame of the Bandwidth,

  Knows not how the world loves her voice.

  Beyond all her kin, beyond all her kith,

  Ninety-point-four FM is the choice.

  “I am sure,” she replied, “that no one has ever before rhymed bandwidth with kith. This poem is the closest thing made for me that sounds like it has been, but in fact was not, written by Dr. Seuss. I am going to render it in counted cross-stitch and hang it on my office wall.”

  Jenna received two hundred e-mails a day at work, and was not in need of more correspondents. She had three accounts, one of which Suzie vetted, and another for in-house station business, and, last, her private address, which of late had been flooded by her daughter. Vanessa was working on her doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, and she called her mother every day, in addition to writing her, sometimes hourly. Her study of postsynaptic 5-HT receptors and offensive aggression in rats was turning out literally to be a rat race. There were other troubles as well, including the two boyfriends in the last year who had proved to be enormous jerks, and there were the inconsiderate housemates, and quarrels with the lab technician. There was no end of misery for Vanessa, and Jenna was ever poised to listen and offer what little solace she could. She had come to dread the phone ringing at home, because she knew that whatever Vanessa was going to complain about was news that Jenna would then have to carry with her, another piece of unhappiness that daughter had carelessly unloaded on mother.

  She had had Vanessa when she was twenty-two, ten months after her marriage to Frank, because she’d been told she would have trouble conceiving. The child bride got knocked up immediately, but in delivery her uterus had ruptured, nearly killing her and the baby. That Jenna had had a hysterectomy at such a young age was a great sadness in her otherwise lucky life. She often wished, when Vanessa called, that there were sisters for her to phone instead of the one helpless and perhaps overly indulgent and involved mother. Vanessa could have used a phalanx of siblings to absorb her complaints, but her busy parents had put off adopting, and finally it had been too late.

  Charlie’s e-mails amid all the chatter were less of an annoyance than Jenna might have admitted. She knew she should have been irritated by them, she who, like many of her contemporaries, felt that e-mail had robbed her blind, stealing hours that could have been spent reading. E-mail, she often said, had ruined her life, and yet there were always those most seductive questions in her approach to her desk: who would have written? What astonishing morsel, what wisdom, what battling wit might there be at the click of the mouse? It was out of largesse, she told herself at first, that she was writing to a stranger in Hartley, a stranger who did not always observe the rules of grammar—although, in fairness, he had used pasta e fagioli in a rhyme with ease. She might come from the studio to her office after a show to find a message from him, a bit of whimsy, or flattery so outrageous she actually did laugh out loud. What did it matter if he didn’t always use good and well correctly? Why should she judge? She knew enough people who were so vigilant about the use of the English language it was dangerous to speak to them.

  If her replies were acerbic, he seemed amused rather than offended. And when he was contrite about something he’d said, he was abjectly solemn about his error. She once signed off as “The Dame of the Bandwidth,” and he’d fired back with “FUCKING A!” Five minutes later his moniker reappeared:

  Subj: I’m so sorry

  From: crider@kingmail.com

  To: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  Dear Jenna,

  Please forgive me for being a crass idiot. I should not have said F***ing A. It was so very crude. Please forgive me. I do hope you can forgive me.

  She replied:

  Subj: Re: I’m so sorry

  From: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  To: crider@kingmail.com

  Dear Crass Fucking Idiot,

  The Silver People will smite you.

  And he returned with:

  Subj: Re: I’m so sorry

  From: crider@kingmail.com

  To: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  Dame Bandwidth—

  I am smitten.

  She did not feel as if she were flirting with him, not really, nor he with her. That was impossible. She had succumbed to the silly exchange, and it was playful, that was all. She did not often feel a sexual charge, a condition she blamed on her hysterectomy, and she could also blame her hectic life. She and Frank had become accustomed to perpetual motion and perpetual exhaustion. Her private sadness had been with her so long, was so much a part of her, that she would have had a hard time separating the pure foundation of herself from the sorrow. At twenty-two, she had been rendered barren—such a desolate, awful word—and there was the other difficult piece, the fact of Frank’s indifference to her sexually after the crisis of Vanessa’s birth. Jenna had lost her drive, but he seemed not to mind. She had thought in the beginning that he was being careful with her, of his girlish wife who had been close to death, was nursing a squalling infant, recovering from major surgery, and suffering from mastitis in both breasts. Hormone therapy did not restore her passionate nature, but even when, out of consideration, she offered him the opportunity, he took up his book or made a halfhearted attempt.

  For some time, that absence in their lives plagued her. He was fifteen years older, pushing the advanced age of forty, and she wondered if he suddenly could have become impotent but was too embarrassed to say. Maybe he had not ever loved her physically, maybe in courtship he had put on a show of ardor and worship out of love for everything else about her, or maybe the bloated pustule of her mother-self was a permanent turnoff. Maybe at a simple biological level he could find no reason to couple with a barren woman. Had she always been undesirable—was that it? She realized that he’d from the start treated her in a fatherly way, something she didn’t want to ponder
too deeply. Was he having an affair? No, his probity was unquestionable, and even if he’d been the type to have a woman on the side, his schedule would prohibit a dalliance.

  They had not had success talking about the problem. They seemed unable to muster the strength to begin, or if the thought of what they’d given up made her weep Frank became nervous and irritable. While men and women everywhere were discussing their sexual dysfunction, on the street, on television, and in print, she and Frank were silent on the subject. They were always racing in and out, they adored Vanessa, they were fond of each other and devoted, and beyond their routine and the life of the mind, what they shared, Jenna believed, was their unspoken grief.

  She knew, certainly, that there were greater sorrows in life. She had done her best to rout out bitterness and focus her energy on her work. She, Jenna Faroli of the sexy mind, was satisfied that if the multitudes wanted to fuck her, it was her brain they wanted to penetrate, the luscious cranial fruit on those broad shoulders of hers—what hidden folds, so soft, so moist, so yielding. She considered that big fruit, and then the rest of her, the drag of her body, to be the ultimate product of the feminist revolution. She more or less had it all, as promised: terrific job, caring husband, healthy daughter, and the bonus of public adulation. Not least, she’d managed to avoid the sniper shots of her co-workers as she rose up in the ranks.

  She had mentioned to Charlie a few days ahead of time that she was planning to stop at Prairie Wind Farm on the upcoming Saturday morning. And though she expected to see him at some point in the venture, she was not thinking, as she opened her car door in the small parking lot, that he’d appear at her side as if he’d been dropped from above. She let out a shriek.

  “Oh, honey!” He gripped her elbow. “I’m so sorry.” He was wearing what looked like a farmer costume, blue-and-white-striped overalls, a light-blue chambray shirt, and a cap to match.

  “Jesus,” she breathed. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I’ve been told I was spawned by a fish. A trout, I always thought.”

  “You must have gotten your eyes from the father,” Jenna said. “A creature who was unrelated to the ichthyoids. Bovine, I’d say. A trout and a bull coupled to make Charlie Rider.”

  “And you,” he said, “you were—”

  “Adopted. My birth mother was one of those girls who were sent to homes far, far away to have their bastard babies. This occurred before shame went out of style.” His great lashed eyes widened, and she laughed at him. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What? What exactly am I thinking?”

  “You’re thinking that I have been liberated to invent my parents. They can be washerwoman and prince, they can be slave and master, they can be anything else besides a desperate sixteen-year-old girl and a boy who was going off to the army. At least, that’s what I would think if I were you.”

  “Doesn’t everything,” he said, looking at her slantwise, “depend on how you tell it?”

  “You are extremely dangerous,” she said. “You don’t forget a word. I am going to shop rather than speak to you.”

  He stood in her way, would not let her pass. “But who,” he said plaintively, “raised you?”

  “A childless middle-aged couple. Remote father, distracted mother. Maybe parenthood hadn’t been the dream-come-true, after all. Both with high expectations. I was lonely and bookish, went to boarding school, and then to college. Very Victorian, you could say. The parents, the four of them, as far as I know, are dead.” She stepped to the side of him. “May I purchase some blooms now, please?”

  She had come to buy whatever he would recommend to set along the path to the woods. She wanted wispy flowers that would grow tall and fall over. Dame’s rocket was supposed to be an evil, invasive weed, but she wanted a brilliant stand of anything that would run rampant. She had been thinking in the last day or two that instead of ordered beds she wanted a mess; she wanted riot and indelicacy. She had not planned to make a morning of this errand, and when he offered a tour of the farm, a stroll to the Lavender Meadow, a walk in the forest, she said, “Yes, yes,” in a distracted way, hoping they would hurry.

  Off they went along a path with black iris in bloom, a blossoming sage, yellow iris with orange centers, and a long row of peonies going from pink to red to dark red. He opened a wooden lattice gate, and they climbed mossy steps to a line of birch trees planted in parallel form. The fractured sunlight wavered on the grass, the slim, straight birches were nymph-ish and regal, and there was nothing in the distant opening but pale-green rye swaying in the wind. The world behind them was fading. She tried to speak but found she could not. “Charlie,” she croaked so softly he did not hear her. She wanted him to wait, but he had turned a corner into what could only be called a room, a group of small apple trees, and underneath them a wooden table and two chairs.

  “Charlie!” she tried again. No one had told her about the beauty of this place, about the simplicity of its charm. No one had warned her. He did seem to understand that she was stricken, and so he kindly said nothing. They went down a mowed path into another sanctuary, this one an old cherry orchard, the thick limbs gnarled, the ancient bark papery and peeling. Someone else would have cut down the trees, but the mastermind here had studied the elemental Gertrude Jekyll, and a host of others, Penelope Hobhouse, Edith Wharton and the Italian villas, Bunny Williams, Tasha Tudor, Beatrice Farrand, and perhaps even the godly Olmsted himself. There was nothing overly rusticated, nothing cute or cluttered or studied or pretentious. They came to a terraced pond with chipped Tuscan oil jars defining the entry, fieldstone walls around the beds of lady ferns, meadow rue, soapwort, and forget-me-nots. When Jenna touched the top of the wall, Charlie muttered, “One fuc— I mean, one stone at a time.” She wished he had not spoken, but then the fact of his labor came to her, Charlie, alone, building the perilous wall, rock chinked to rock, one after another, his tendrils falling into his eyes.

  Jenna was unaccustomed to being speechless. She was sure he sensed her awe, and perhaps he could tell that, as much as their silence was a part of the wonder of it, she did also want to understand how, rock after rock, the place had been made. As they went on, he now and again quietly pointed out a structural challenge, or he explained what the hillside had looked like when they’d arrived. At first he gave all the credit to Laura, for seeing the potential, for giving the farm what amounted to a makeover. He had merely done the grunt work, he said; he had merely followed her commands. But then, trailing his hand on the wall, he said, “I’ve never told anyone this—I would never tell her—but there were times when I disobeyed orders, because I knew that from an engineering standpoint—and sometimes even visually—I knew that she was wrong. There are tokens all over of my adjustments which for whatever reason we never mention.”

  “That’s nice,” Jenna murmured.

  They climbed another set of steps that led to the field of lavender—an acre of romance, he called it—that Laura had planted on a whim. Jenna would have liked to fall into the flowers, into the windy softness of the smell; she wanted to climb into the field itself, to be of it somehow. She wanted—she wanted—she hardly knew what. She turned to look at Charlie, to try to see in him how Laura Rider, the pretty, glassy-eyed woman who had not seemed forceful, had held all of this in her head, and urged it into being.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” he said.

  She could only nod. If the three boys had been abducted by aliens, then why not say a spell had been cast upon her, rendering her mute and yet also happy. It was a feeling that was only slightly disturbed when they came out—after how long? an hour? two!—back to the barn where the plants were sold, where several Hispanic men were watering potted perennials on planks. There was no sign of Mrs. Rider.

  She had felt at peace with Charlie in the quiet, walking through the woodland hallways, breathing together, smelling the mossy undergrowth, the sweet decaying loam. She was not, she would have said, accustomed to peace. She’d had the oddest sense t
hat she was a girl again, that she was with a boy roaming the forest in a childhood she hadn’t ever had. She’d wanted to take his hand. In his overalls and cap he seemed a boy at play, a boy who could show her things that, for all her experience, she had not known were in the world.

  Chapter 7

  AT THE RIDER HOUSE, THE FIRST COMMUNICATION FROM Jenna had been a giddy occasion. Charlie had been in his office when the message came through. “At my desk,” he later said to Jenna, “waiting for you.” He was in the nook upstairs, watching Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin clips on YouTube, when JFaroli@wis.staff.edu appeared. They had met on Highway S that same afternoon, four hours earlier. “You wrote me!” he said. In a whisper he read the letter: “ ‘There is something comforting about the idea of alien life forms’—Yep,” he agreed, “there is—‘in fiction, in nonfiction, and in life, the idea that the adventure of man, something we seem to be botching up, is perhaps not a one-shot deal.’ ” He said again, “Yep.” And “You really get it, JFaroli.”

  Charlie Rider was capable of being a decisive person. He felt what he felt and he knew what he felt. He already knew that he loved Jenna Faroli—that is, as a person. He loved her voice, her open mind, and her coiffure. Not that it would happen, but in the event that it did, say, in the next life, he knew he would love her form. He would have no problem unbuttoning her shirt, one pearl button at a time, and kissing her small, high bosoms. He loved the way she’d gotten out of the car and spoken without looking at him, as if they’d been friends for years, as if they always met on the shoulder of the road, as if they’d always had the bond of that place on Highway S. He loved how, clearly, she didn’t think she was beautiful, and how she didn’t care if her hair was falling out of the fifteen barrettes that looked as if she’d stapled them to her scalp. He loved how she’d probably been speaking to the President that day, or Steven Spielberg, and how she’d given Charlie the same consideration as the big shots.