by Alison Lurie
“Oh, sure,” Lee said. “Tommy made me furious sometimes, he was so opinionated and bossy. But he was a smart guy, and a damn good real estate agent. He found me this place; he helped me get a loan and start the business. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if I’d have had the nerve.”
“You always had the nerve,” Jacko said. “All you needed was a little push. Come on, Marlene. Time for some lovely kibbles.”
Her back stiff under the white pique sundress, her hands hot and wet on the wheel, Jenny Walker drove toward Artemis Lodge. It was Tuesday afternoon, and she wasn’t supposed to be there until Wednesday morning, but she couldn’t wait any longer: she had to talk to Lee. Anyhow, she had to talk to someone, and Lee—so warm, so lovely, so unjudging—was the only possible person.
Since Sunday afternoon, when she saw her husband kissing Barbie Mumpson, Jenny had been in a state of confused misery, gradually deepening to despair. She’d planned to tell Lee about it the next day, but that had been impossible. When she got there Monday morning the place was crowded with people mourning and exclaiming over the death of a local real estate agent called Tommy Lewis, which was featured on the front page of the Key West Citizen. Even Jenny had been drawn into the conversation when she realized that he was the man in the wheelchair whom Wilkie had seen drown at Higgs Beach the day before.
According to Lee’s friends, it hadn’t been an accident at all. Tommy, who was terminally ill with AIDS and in constant pain, had deliberately released the brake on his wheelchair and steered it off the pier into ten feet of water. He was strapped in, so he couldn’t rise to the surface, and by the time the police and the ambulance arrived he was dead. Tommy’s friend Dennis had known what was coming, and just before it happened he went back to the car, pretending to be getting Tommy a sweater, so that nobody would suspect him of murder afterward.
If Wilkie were still Jenny’s trusted and beloved husband, she would have tried to remember all the details in order to relate them when she got home. But he hadn’t really spoken to her in weeks; and since she’d seen him kissing Barbie Mumpson, she was afraid to have him speak to her; afraid of what he might say.
For over twenty-five years, whenever she had a serious problem, Jenny had taken it to Wilkie. He would listen patiently, console her, advise her. After a while, what had seemed “really heavy,” as their son Billy put it, would begin to weigh less. Under Wilkie’s steady gaze the problem would lose substance, like a block of ice gradually melting into water and mist. What helped tremendously was that Wilkie looked at everything in a long-term perspective. Compared to global warming or the destruction of animal species, even awful things like the fatal illness of Jenny’s favorite aunt, or Billy’s flunking chemistry at Cornell, began to diminish and dissolve. Such events, Wilkie’s response suggested, were a natural part of life. They would pass; or they would not pass, but would be survived.
Now, though, Jenny couldn’t go to Wilkie with her pain and her problem; he was the problem. What she’d seen on Sunday had proved to her something she’d dreaded for months, but hadn’t wanted to know: that her marriage was probably over.
And now an unpleasant, long-forgotten incident from the early years of her marriage surfaced in Jenny’s mind, like an ugly catfish rising to the surface of a clear forest pool. It had occurred in Manhattan, when she was making conversation at a literary party with a nervous, goggle-eyed woman who claimed to be a close friend of Wilkie’s first wife. “I’m sorry for you,” this woman had whispered, or rather hissed. “You look like a nice girl. But you’d better watch out. He won’t stay with you either.”
After all these years of happiness the prediction, or curse, of the catfish woman was about to come true, Jenny thought. It was clear that Wilkie didn’t love her any longer—maybe didn’t even like her. She wasn’t sure yet that he loved Barbie Mumpson instead, because he had started being strange and cold and distant long before he’d met Barbie. Besides, how could someone as brilliant and serious as Wilkie love a ninny like Barbie?
But a lot of men did love women like that, Jenny thought. Sometimes even brilliant, famous men. She knew several who had left their wives for girls half their age, often silly blondes like Barbie—who was, Jenny recalled now, thirty-six, about half Wilkie’s age.
Of course not all men were that way. Jenny’s father, as far as she knew, had never run after stupid blondes. And Gerry Grass had said outright yesterday that girls like Barbie bored him. He knew the type: “art groupies,” he called them. In the sixties and seventies, he said, when he started appearing at political demonstrations and writers’ festivals, there were a lot of girls like that around. Most of them were totally uninteresting; they couldn’t tell one poem or one poet from another, and they had no real depth. They weren’t “grounded.”
Jenny had been glad to hear this, even if it possibly wasn’t relevant to her situation. She had felt grateful and warm toward Gerry, but she didn’t even want to see him now, because shortly after that he had become part of her problem.
At first, talking to Gerry in his disorderly apartment over the garage—or rather, listening to him, which was what men always wanted and needed—had been a relief and a diversion. She hadn’t of course told him what she’d just seen. Instead she had listened while Gerry read his poem about the heron, in which he imagined himself becoming the bird and soaring over the “blood-pulsing” ocean. She continued to listen when he went on to deplore the current condition of poetry and its audience. Even ten years ago, he said, he had real hopes for the literacy of our civilization. But now, though he tried to keep up his courage, telling himself that there must be readers out there somewhere, often his energy flagged.
“I keep fighting, keep writing. I hang in there,” he had said. “But it’s damned hard sometimes.”
“Mm,” Jenny replied, with a sympathetic, automatic smile.
“We’re in a bad piece of history.” Gerry took another gulp of vodka and tonic.
“Mm.”
What made it harder, he continued, was not having support at home—having what, when you got right down to it, was an enemy in your own house. Yeah, he meant Tiffany.
“Oh, surely, she ... Jenny began, but then her voice trailed off. Why should she defend Tiff, whom she didn’t like or approve of—who was really just another Barbie Mumpson, with more self-confidence and a degree in accounting. After all, Gerry too was one of those famous men who had left a very nice wife for what in his case had turned out to be a series of younger women.
“The goddamned truth is,” Gerry went on, “women these days, most of them, aren’t on your side.”
“Mm,” Jenny said, thinking of Cynthia, Gerry’s ex-wife, who had certainly been on his side and also very sweet, though not much of a cook and a bit spacey—Wilkie once said she was the kind of person who should stay off all drugs, even marijuana. So why did you leave her? she thought.
“They’re all suspicious of men; they have a chip on their shoulders—Sometimes I think their shoulders are covered with chips,” Gerry said, producing in Jenny’s mind an image of Tiff looking suspicious and sprinkled with wood chips and sawdust. “When you ask for a little help, a little warmth or sympathy, they think you’re trying to exploit them or denigrate them. You want to know what Tiff said before she cut out?”
No, not particularly, Jenny thought, but Gerry did not wait for an answer.
“She told me, ‘If you need your proofs read, you can hire a professional proofreader. I want to relax when I’m on vacation.’”
“Really,” Jenny said, without surprise.
“I have to tell you, I envy Wilkie,” Gerry continued. “There aren’t many women around like you these days, so understanding, so beautifully supportive—and so beautiful too,” he added, giving her an appreciative, romantic look. “I just hope he knows how lucky he is. I hope he’s grateful.”
“Well, that’s—Thank you,” Jenny said, smiling nervously and looking down, suppressing the impulse to tell Gerry how grateful Wilkie
had recently been.
“I mean it.” Gerry reached out, not for his drink this time, but for her hand. Partly out of politeness, she did not pull it away. After all, he was very good looking; and (though irrationally) she valued compliments more when they came from good-looking men.
“That’s what I need: someone like you. I know it now.” He fixed her with his long-lashed dark eyes.
“Oh, I don’t really ... Jenny murmured. Men had often said such things to her before, and she had always gently, firmly, almost automatically discouraged them, putting on what someone had once described (though not to her) as “Jenny’s go-thither look.” But today her response was slower; something sore and lonely in her wanted to savor the moment.
“If you’d like me to look over your proofs, I could,” she said, gently but firmly withdrawing her hand.
“Thanks.” Not discouraged, Gerry leaned closer and shifted his grip to Jenny’s bare arm just above the wrist. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. But it means a lot to me, that you should offer.”
“No, really. I’d be glad to help.”
“You’re a wonderful woman.”
“Not at all, it’s nothing,” Jenny stammered, both warmed and embarrassed by the current of feeling directed at her. “Wilkie doesn’t need me all the time right now.” She swallowed painfully, thinking, He doesn’t need me, doesn’t want me, any of the time. “I mean, I’m sure he’d be glad to share me,” she added with an awkward light laugh.
“Yeah?” Gerry put his other hand on her arm, further up. “That wouldn’t be my reaction,” he said. “If you were mine, I wouldn’t want to share you with anyone.”
“Oh, I don’t know ... she heard herself reply inanely. You see, she said in her mind to Wilkie. Some people still want me and think I’m wonderful. “Wilkie says—” She didn’t know how to complete the sentence: she only knew she must mention his name again, to remind both of them again that she was married.
But it was Wilkie, really, who should be reminded of this, Jenny thought. He was the one who had forgotten. And if he had forgotten, why shouldn’t she? She liked Gerry: his enthusiasm, his seriousness, his thick, curly, graying hair. And he was a famous American poet. Her mother always said, two wrongs don’t make a right. But why shouldn’t they? Wouldn’t that be fair?
“I’m sure you don’t mean—” she said distractedly.
Gerry, paying no attention to these fragments of speech, began to move his hands up Jenny’s arm, like a boy eagerly climbing a soft white rope. “You’re the woman I’ve looked for all my life,” he said. “You know that?”
“No I’m not—” Jenny began, but the rest of the sentence was smothered in an enthusiastic embrace. Still clutching her arm, Gerry launched himself toward her. He smudged a warm, damp kiss on her mouth—as might have been expected, it tasted of vodka and tonic. Then he browsed sideways, finally burying his face in her hair, while Jenny, stunned by the suddenness of it, did nothing.
“Jenny, my sweet Jenny,” he mumbled. “I love you so much.”
Jenny gasped. For the first time in months someone was holding her and kissing her and saying fond romantic things. But it was all wrong, because she didn’t love him.
“Please, don’t!” she choked out, pushing the heavy warm arms and face away, almost weeping with the effort and the disappointment. “I can’t—I mean, I love my husband and he loves me.” It was something she had said before; something she regularly had to say now and then when some acquaintance tried to push a flirtation or a friendship too far.
Always in the past, as these words were uttered, they had magically formed themselves into a delicate but impenetrable thorny hedge. Now, though, they fell to the ground and lay there like the plant debris round the pool outside, broken and faded, because they were a lie.
But Gerry didn’t know this. He moved back, gazing at her, blinking his long eyelashes. “Oh, Jenny. God, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help—”
“That’s all right,” she said weakly, trying to catch her breath.
“I had to give it a try, I guess.” He grinned. “I mean, well, the way I figure it, when you really want something, you go for it.”
“Mm,” Jenny uttered, though in fact this had never been true for her.
“I suppose you’re furious with me.”
“No. Of course not.” Jenny smiled gently.
“God, you’re wonderful.” Gerry spread his arms, as if to embrace her again, this time theoretically. “Most women these days, they’d set the PC police onto me.”
Breathing more normally now, she managed a smile. “Oh, I’d never do that.”
“And you won’t say anything to Wilkie,” he added uneasily.
“Of course not,” agreed Jenny, who had never revealed such incidents in the past. “I wouldn’t want to worry him.”
That’s not true, she thought. I would like to worry Wilkie. I would like him to know that another famous gifted man is romantically interested in me.
Gerry sighed. “It makes me desperately unhappy, your loyalty to him,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I respect it; I honor it. Only, goddamn it, I think it’s a mistake.” Again, he leaned toward Jenny and put his hand on hers.
“Please, don’t—”
“Wilkie doesn’t need you anymore, not the way I do. You have to realize that. He hasn’t published anything important for, I don’t know, maybe ten years. His career is pretty much over. Anyone can take care of him now.”
“That’s not true,” Jenny exclaimed, her voice trembling. “He’s just finishing an important new book—”
“And he’s not all that considerate of you, either. I’ve noticed—Anyone can see it. The other evening at dinner, cutting you off when you were talking, and complaining because the coffee wasn’t already on the table—”
Again, Jenny suppressed the impulse to confide in Gerry. “That was nothing,” she said. “And Wilkie does need me,” she added. “Anyhow he will, as soon as his book is finished.”
“But I need you more.” Gerry smiled. “I’ve got so many projects—Besides, I need you as a woman.”
“Wilkie has lots of projects too,” Jenny said, refusing to hear the implication. “As soon as he finishes this book, there’s so much to do—There’s so many speeches and articles he’s promised—It’s only now, while he’s still writing, that I could possibly have time for your proofs.”
“You mean the offer still holds?” Gerry looked at her with the expression of a large hungry dog.
“Yes, why not?”
“That’s great.” He smiled broadly. “God, you are a wonderful woman,” he added for the third time; and Jenny did not protest the repetition.
But the warming trend caused by Gerry’s romantic enthusiasm had been short-lived. That evening, going through the proofs of his collected essays and reviews of poetry, Walking on Fire, a reaction had hit Jenny, followed by a depression that was with her still. A very well-known and attractive American poet had embraced and kissed her, and though briefly amused and flattered, she hadn’t cared really, because she didn’t love him.
She didn’t love Wilkie either, Jenny thought now. Maybe she even hated him. The only person in Key West she really loved and wanted to see was Lee Weiss.
As she pulled into the driveway, Jenny saw that Lee was on the front porch, framed by the orange and gold of her trumpet vine and—thank goodness—alone. She wore a scarlet mumu, and her lap was full of crimson cloth; but in the brilliant sunlight these usually clashing colors were somehow beautiful, like a flock of tropical birds.
“Well, hello there,” she called as Jenny climbed the steps. “How’s everything?”
“It’s—it’s awful.” To her embarrassment, Jenny’s voice began to shake. “I have to talk to you,” she said in a rush. “I’ve been wanting to for days, but then your friend died, and I couldn’t—There were so many people here yesterday, it didn’t seem right.” She swallowed.
“Oh, Jenny. I’m sorry, I didn’t know—What is it?” Le
e rose and came close, putting one warm hand on Jenny’s bare shoulder.
“It’s, uh, Wilkie. Sunday afternoon—He was late coming home from the beach, and then I looked out the window and saw him, by the gate—” She sobbed and swallowed. “He was just standing there, where anybody could see him, kissing Barbie Mumpson.”
“Sunday afternoon? You mean, when Tommy drowned? But your husband was there, he was one of the people who tried to save Tommy.”
“I guess so. Yes.” You’re missing the point, she thought. But maybe that was part of the point, too, that Wilkie should do such a horrible thing right after he’d seen someone die.
“Jesus, what a creep,” Lee exclaimed. “I’m sorry,” she added in a different voice. “I didn’t mean—Hey, don’t cry.” She sat beside Jenny and put one arm around her. “I mean, what the hell, go ahead and cry if you feel like it.” Pulling Jenny strongly against her, she kissed her wet cheek.
“I don’t—I can’t—” Jenny began to weep in earnest. It was a relief to sob openly, a relief and a pleasure to lie close against Lee’s warmth and strength. “The thing is,” she said finally, still clinging to her friend, “I never thought Wilkie could be like all those men who get tired of their wives after a while and just throw them away. I thought he was different.”
“Has he said he’s going to throw you away?”
“No,” Jenny said, raising her head. “Not yet.”
“Maybe this thing with Barbie is just a kind of temporary insanity,” Lee suggested.
“Maybe.” Jenny smiled weakly.
“It could be. Hell, she’s going back to Tulsa in a couple of days anyhow. Besides, anybody’d have to be crazy to even look at an airhead like her if they had you.” Lee clasped Jenny gently but closely now, stroking her back through her thin cotton dress.
“But it’s not just Barbie. Like I told you before, Wilkie’s been so strange for months, and when I try to ask him about it he won’t listen, he gets all cold and angry and frightening, and then he goes into the study or the bathroom and shuts the door. I think he hasn’t liked me for a long time really.”
