by Alison Lurie
She looked at his hand, fallen slack against the pink sheet printed with pinker flamingoes: the square-cut nails, the faded-red scar shaped like a quarter moon, the underwater watch. That was Wilkie’s watch; and the scar on the veiny hand was the one Wilkie had got fighting a brush fire in Canada while researching an article about wolves for the Smithsonian. The man in the bed was her husband, Wilkie Walker; but at the same time he wasn’t.
It was like in Convers last fall, she thought, only worse, because when after a minute or so Wilkie half opened his eyes again and looked at Jenny the illusion didn’t end. His expression remained unfocused, weak, even confused. And she wasn’t the same either, she too was weak and confused.
“Jenny?” Wilkie said, opening his eyes again. “Come over here.” He smiled and indicated a place beside him on the shiny pink bedspread.
“I—” She hesitated, then automatically moved to sit in the designated spot. Wilkie, levering himself up from the pillow, put one heavy arm around her, and gave her half a hug.
“That’s better, isn’t it, darling?” he said.
“Mm,” Jenny lied. Slowly, because it was so clearly expected of her, she leaned forward to touch the shoulder and kiss the dry, ruddy cheek of the person who used to be Wilkie Walker.
“All right now?” he asked.
“All right,” she repeated. But it wasn’t all right, she thought. Everything had changed.
“Why don’t you try to sleep a little more?” she suggested in the gentle, controlled tone of voice she would have used to a fretful child. “I’m going out now, I have some errands.”
“Yeah. I might,” Wilkie agreed, subsiding against the flamingo pink pillows.
“I’ll be back soon,” she lied.
This time there was no answer. Jenny left the bedroom, descended the stairs, got into the car, and drove to Artemis Lodge.
Alone in the house, Wilkie Walker did not sleep, but rather fell in and out of a restless doze. He was no longer in pain, but he felt heavy and waterlogged, like something washed up on a beach. Last night, still aching all over in spite of the drugs, he had rejected the little doctor’s diagnosis. In the morning, though, after speaking to the senior physician, he had had to consider that they might both be right. If so, he had not had a heart attack, but had passed a painful but non-life-threatening gallstone. Also, if the doctors were correct, he did not have cancer of the colon and was therefore not going to die agonizingly and shamefully in a few months, unless he killed himself first.
After the doctor had left a cold wave of rage and depression had washed over him. For years more, if the man was right, he would not only live, he would have to go on playing the worn-out part of Wilkie Walker, formerly famous naturalist and environmentalist. He would have to continue writing and speaking: shouting about all that was going wrong in the world. Greed, stupidity, waste, the exploitation and extermination of species, the destruction of the environment, it’s happening now, you’ve got to do something about it! He had shouted for nearly fifty years, his voice growing weaker every year. Most people who heard him didn’t give a damn. The few who seemed to care were mostly either lying or incompetent. Now he could go on shouting for years more, while the world continued to spiral downward, into the dark and muck.
But I don’t have to go on, Wilkie thought. I know the way out: it’s located just off Higgs Beach. I can still swim away from life whenever I want, and no one will ever know it wasn’t an accident. Or maybe they’ll think it was a heart attack, proving the doctors wrong. And they could be wrong, after all. He didn’t have the strength for it today, but tomorrow, or the next day—
It wouldn’t be the same, though. If you’re terminally ill, killing yourself is an act of courage and generosity to your survivors; if you’re healthy, it’s cowardice. Of course if he was successful nobody would know. But he would know, though not for very long. Lying in bed, with the warm wind blowing the elegant shadows of palm fronds across the flamingo pink wall opposite, Wilkie heard his own breath come shallow and fast; his head spun.
If I’m not terminally ill, I probably should hang around for a while, he thought, so as to get The Copper Beech into final shape, get all the graphs and tables and illustrations right. That could take a month, maybe two months ...
To his own surprise, at this idea Wilkie felt not a darker wave of depression, but a kind of dizzy euphoria, like that of a prisoner temporarily reprieved from execution. He was going to live, to survive for a little while at least: he would be here tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and next week and probably next month. He glanced out the window, where two bright green palms tossed against a bright blue sky. They were alive, and so was he.
Maybe it’s like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of dying, he thought. If death was what you’d expected and sought for months, the news that you weren’t necessarily going to die soon produced the same series of emotions: first denial, then rage, then bargaining, then depression. After that there was nothing left but stage five, acceptance.
If he didn’t drown himself, he would have to go on living, with all that implied. In fact the next few months would be hell, because of all the stupid and unnecessary jobs he’d taken on in the belief that he’d never have to perform them: the lectures, the meetings, the articles and letters of recommendation and book blurbs he’d promised to compose, the conferences he’d promised to attend. Some of them Jenny could write and cancel, giving some excuse (what?), but each excuse, each withdrawal, would create resentment and ill will somewhere in America or, in a couple of cases, abroad.
And there were jobs too immediate for cancellation. He had, for example, promised to appear on a panel at a symposium here in Key West a few weeks from today on The Writer and Nature. A younger and more fashionable naturalist from out of town had opted out, and Wilkie had agreed to fill in, thinking at the time that when the day came the only thing he would be filling was a watery grave.
There was also Jenny to consider: his wife, his one true love. For months he’d been trying to shield her from his illness and his rage and his despair, and from what he planned to do about them. With great difficulty, he had been avoiding her so as not to break down in front of her. As a result he had seemed—how had she put it, with her usual gentle tact?—“very strange and unfriendly.” And also, as a result—Wilkie groaned and turned over in the hot, rumpled bed—Jenny had come to believe that he no longer loved her and was screwing that ninny Barbie Whatshername.
And it was not, Wilkie realized, completely irrational for Jenny to believe this, considering the way he had been behaving. And considering how the world went today. Statistically, genetically, he was aware, a man of his age was supposed to wish to discard his aging wife and impregnate younger and presumably more fertile females. His selfish genes were said to be urging him constantly to produce more and more children, so that they, the genes, could be sure of survival. The results of this for established marriages were reported all the time in the media, and he had observed it frequently among his acquaintances. If a man was well known and well off and successful, it was almost expected of him.
But Wilkie Walker was not interested in the survival of his genes. It was the survival of his work that he cared about, not some random, rather unsatisfactory collection of DNA like the two he and Jenny had already produced. Besides, in his opinion there were far too many human beings on the planet already.
Jenny didn’t believe that he was involved with Barbie anymore, of course. She would forgive him for being difficult and distant, she would understand why he had behaved that way. No, she already understood. It was all right now, she had said so, with her usual wonderful generosity and kindness. She would realize that it had been irrational of her to suspect him; probably she would never mention it again.
But he had had a very narrow escape, Wilkie realized. If he hadn’t been taken ill, yesterday afternoon he would have put on his swim trunks and bathrobe and sandals and walked down to the sea and done his best to drown himself. Pro
bably he would have succeeded. And Jenny would have gone on thinking that he no longer loved her and had become sexually involved with some sappy, bubbleheaded fan.
For the rest of her life, maybe thirty or forty more years, his beloved wife would have believed that lie. Maybe, if the pain were great enough, she would eventually have told someone; perhaps more than one person. Gradually, whispering and sniggering talk would have started to circulate; the story would have reached one or more of his biographers. Finally this plausible lie would have been recorded as truth: a sordid, shaming blot on his otherwise reasonably creditable life.
“Jesus Christ,” Wilkie said aloud, contemplating these possibilities; but he did not hear himself speak. Instead, inside his head, he heard another voice, that of his beloved grandfather, dead now nearly sixty years. “Willie-boy,” it said in a strong Kentucky accent, “you’ve been a goddamned fool.”
15
AT THE ARTS CENTER on Stock Island a panel discussion titled “Naming the Natural World” was moving toward its end. On stage, at a long table under bright overhead lights, the four speakers (including Wilkie Walker and Gerry Grass) were more or less patiently listening and responding to questions from the floor. Gerry had opened the session with his new poem, “White Crane Woman,” which made a dramatic and moving, but fortunately obscure, comparison between his love for and loss of Jenny Walker, and the decline of various equally picturesque Florida bird species. Though it did not rhyme or scan, the poem was given shape and form by the alternation of two refrains:
It is going, it is gone.
and
She is going, she is gone.
Wilkie, like most of the people present, had not made the connection. He had spoken with polite appreciation of Gerry’s work, and gone on to recommend the conservation not only of Florida’s birds, but of its aquatic mammals—thus, he hoped, paying his debt to Barbie Mumpson for once and all. Not that he owed her a great deal: true, she had driven him to the hospital at the time of his gallstone attack, but she had also flung herself on him in public in a way that had caused his wife days of suspicion and misery.
For Jenny, however, the reference point of Gerry’s poem was all too obvious, especially as during the reading he had several times sent a burning glance in her direction. She also thought it quite likely that many members of the audience—at least those who knew her—had made the connection. But she couldn’t worry about that now: there was heavier freight on her mind.
This morning at breakfast, breaking off a low-key discussion of the relative merits of two brands of marmalade, Wilkie had suddenly brought up the subject of Lee Weiss.
“This woman you’ve been working for, that I met last night at the reception,” he had remarked, setting down a section of English muffin.
“Yes,” Jenny said, her voice almost trembling. From his tone, it was instantly clear to her that he hadn’t taken to Lee—and indeed, when they were introduced she had suspected as much. Lee was not the sort of woman Wilkie usually liked: she was too outspoken, too abrupt. She had looked beautiful last night, but too flamboyant, Jenny knew, for her husband’s taste. The party had been a grand affair, held outdoors under the palms at one of the big motels, and Lee had worn a kind of gypsy costume, all swishing sequinned silk and gold beads. Also, though Lee’s manner had been friendly, she hadn’t shown any particular awe of Wilkie or expressed any admiration for his books.
“I really didn’t care much for her. I know she was helpful to you while I was so preoccupied.” This was the term Wilkie had settled on to describe the weeks and months of his fear of death and resulting cold and unkind behavior to his wife. “But I think it would be better if you were to let the relationship cool off now.”
“I can’t do that,” Jenny said. Though internally panicked, she managed to match his casual, affectionate tone. “Lee’s my friend.”
“But you must see that she’s not an appropriate friend for you, darling.” Wilkie smiled and took another bite of English muffin thickly spread with Oxford-cut English marmalade. For the last two weeks, ever since he left the hospital, Wilkie had been amazingly considerate and agreeable to Jenny. He had asked her advice constantly about the manuscript of The Copper Beech, and accepted her suggestion (Lee’s suggestion, originally) that each chapter should be headed with a drawing by Molly Hopkins. He had deferred to her wishes about times and menus for meals; he had assured her often of his affection, and also demonstrated it, though never passionately. All that, he seemed to imply, was over.
“No, I don’t see it,” Jenny declared shakily but loudly. “She practically saved my life, that time I was stung by the jellyfish. I mean, it could have been serious—I could have gone into shock, maybe even drowned—”
“I appreciate that, darling. But you’ve got to admit that Lee Weiss isn’t the kind of person we usually know.” Wilkie smiled in a conciliatory manner. “The manager of a bed and breakfast.”
Not trusting herself to speak calmly, Jenny remained silent.
“And what troubles me more, I understand she rents rooms only to women, many of them lesbians.”
“I told you it was a women’s guest house,” Jenny said. “And I suppose some of the people who stay there—But what difference does that make?”
“I’ve heard on good authority that your friend may be homosexual herself, even though she’s been married. Or at least she’s had some homosexual relationships.” Wilkie held out his coffee cup for a refill.
“I don’t know,” Jenny lied, breathing hard but managing to keep her hand steady as she poured the coffee. “But even if that’s true, why is it so terrible?”
“I didn’t say it was terrible, darling. But it does suggest that she’s not the sort of person I’d like to think was a close friend of yours.” Wilkie smiled and put his hand on Jenny’s for a moment, then moved it back to his coffee cup.
“I don’t—I don’t understand, really,” she said, trying to turn the subject, to avoid direct confrontation. “I mean, if homosexuality is unnatural, why are there so many of them? Why doesn’t it just die out, by natural selection?”
Wilkie smiled. “Well, of course it is a genetic anomaly, darling,” he said. “But it probably had survival value in the past, among primitive people.” He leaned back in his chair and assumed his lecturing voice, deeper and slower and more confident. “A tribe or a family that included extra adult men, men who didn’t reproduce, had a competitive advantage. There would be fewer children to care for, and more adult males to hunt and fight for them. If some of these males were sexually attracted to each other, they would be less likely to fight over the women, or to leave the group and form families of their own.”
“Yes, I see that,” Jenny murmured, falling into her own customary role of student. She thought of Jacko, who seemed to have made no effort to hunt or fight for his family. But he was planning to set up a trust fund for his mother; it was in the will she and Wilkie had witnessed.
“The same might be true of the females, of course,” Wilkie continued. “If some of them were genetically programmed to be sexually attracted to each other, they would remain available to care for the children of their brothers and sisters. Naturally this would give the family, or the tribe, a better chance for survival. Whereas a family or a tribe with no excess adults would be less able to protect and feed its children.”
“Yes, I see,” Jenny repeated.
“Even today, in some societies, you find this pattern. It can occur without actual homosexuality, of course. Late marriages, the economic responsibility of unmarried siblings for their nephews and nieces. But it’s unusual in our society. Most homosexuals in America today are pretty useless. They don’t take any responsibility for their families, in fact many of them break with their families. They devote their resources entirely to lavish, unproductive spending on themselves, and they’re often drawn to a kind of depraved extravagance. I mean, for example, look at this house. Gold faucets in the shape of fish that never existed, and that table you
hate so much.” Wilkie smiled broadly, gesturing at the glass coffee table in the next room, with its supporting plaster monkeys, and Jenny managed a matching though weaker smile.
“Homosexuality isn’t as useful to the species as it once was,” her husband continued. “It may even die out eventually, but genetic change is slow. Still, the numbers are declining even now. Partly as the result of AIDS and other diseases, of course. Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books.” He leaned back, the lecture concluded.
“But Lee Weiss is perfectly healthy,” Jenny burst out in spite of her resolve. “And she’s not useless or selfish. She’s very close to her daughter, she’s putting her through graduate school in Boston right now. And she does lots of other good things, she lets women come and stay in the guest house free if they need to and can’t pay.”
“Darling,” Wilkie said, leaning forward and putting his hand on her arm. “I didn’t mean to upset you; I was speaking in general terms. I know you think of this woman as a friend, and I’m sure she’s quite admirable in her own way.”
“She is admirable,” Jenny insisted. Amazed by her own boldness, she gazed directly at Wilkie. In the past, he would have become visibly impatient or even angry by this time; but today he only sighed slightly.
“Maybe it would be easiest if you didn’t try to end the relationship right now,” he conceded. “Just let it lapse while we’re away, and then if we do come back to Key West next winter, you don’t have to take it up again.”
Oh yes I do, Jenny thought.
“But it might be best if you were to stop working at her bed and breakfast. All you have to say is that you’re going to be busy now with my book. I’m sure she can find someone else.”
“No, she can’t,” Jenny said, surprising herself again. “And I can’t let her down now. Besides, it’s only three mornings a week.”
