20

by John Edgar Wideman

  I found Marina writhing from bug attacks. They loved her sweet blood. I mixed some baking soda with water, and while cradling her I dabbed it over her itching red sores. I would have to keep the worms and spiders from chewing her. Marina could not stop scratching, and I remembered a touch my mother would give me when I was afraid at night. She would run her thumbs up under my eyebrows, along the bone and out to the temple. This sweeping over my eyelids always melted my nerves.

  Marina rested back against my chest while I put her to sleep with my mother's eye-stroking. Here is the seal from which all grace comes: We must create Pietàs in order to live. Flesh that is torn, flesh that is dead or dying, even as it is rotting through your fingers—hold it next to your heart. Find ripe and tender flesh too, and hold it in your arms, because your life depends on it. Hold it for as long as you can, and ask for its blessing.

  1998

  THE WOMAN IN THE HEADLIGHTS

  Barbara Croft

  In dreams, the headlights make two narrow tunnels through the darkness. The woman appears on the right. The dun-colored grocery bag she carries shields her face, so that all that Chapin sees is a fringe of curly white hair and a white-gloved hand. He lifts his foot to apply the brakes, but something prevents him. He struggles and presses backward and feels the prickle of nylon upholstery on his neck. She starts to cross, and there is that moment that Chapin can't get past.

  Then the bag flies upward in slow motion, cartwheels, and spills over the hood, dumping a shower of pickle jars and paper towels and Jell-O pudding boxes. There is no sound while this happens. There is no color, except the pearly pale green of a cabbage, tumbling slowly toward the windshield, casting its shadow over the dashboard, striking noiselessly.

  Chapin awakes. The sheets are tangled around his ankles. Marilyn stirs but seems to know what has happened. It is the same dream, and not a dream. She reaches over and rubs his shoulder automatically.

  Chapin gets up and walks down the hall to the kitchen. Sunlight is pouring in. He starts the coffee, feeds the cat, brings the paper in. The sea is brilliant. The light makes Chapin dizzy, and only opening the patio doors to the chilly, copper taste of the air clears his head. He goes out on the deck and down the wooden steps to the beach.

  ————

  It happened two years ago, during a guest semester at Grinnell College. Someone had loaned him a battered white Toyota. He drove to Iowa City; he did that often. The woman must have been deaf, senile, something. The coroner said that she never knew what hit her. The verdict was that Chapin had not been at fault. The woman was eighty-one, had a history of erratic behavior, one of those reclusive types that lives in a crumbling house with a zillion cats. Chapin had, for once, not been drinking.

  He stops at the little coffee shop on the beach. The girl behind the counter is wearing cut-off jeans that barely cover her ass and the sort of tight knit top they call a “sports bra.” She is lean and tan. Her hair is, of course, blond. And when she hands Chapin the coffee cup, she lets her fingertips slide over his so lightly that he's not completely sure he feels anything. A faint disturbance of air, perhaps, that's all.

  “Have a good one.”

  Chapin was not invited back to Grinnell. The department chair denied there was any connection. “Fresh faces,” he said, “new points of view.” And maybe, in fact, there wasn't any connection. Maybe they liked his work. Chapin remembers standing in the flat wash of late afternoon sunlight, he and the chair, on the walkway to Old Main. The chair's voice was like the hum of insects. Staring down, Chapin saw the bricks of the sidewalk begin to separate. They lifted and floated apart, but very slowly, the way dye spreads in water, the way clouds move.

  ————

  Two children are playing on the beach. A golden retriever chases between them. They are six or seven, a boy and a girl. The sunlight striking the reds and blues of their clothing is almost painful against the pale sand.

  His first impulse had been to just keep going. Independent of his will, his right foot pressed down hard. The pedal went clear to the floor, and the car surged forward. Then, again of its own will, his foot jumped off the gas and hit the brake. The car swung to the left. Chapin remembers revolving on the wet pavement, the car spinning slowly like a tired carnival ride. When it stopped he was facing the way he had come.

  ————

  “It was two years ago,” Chapin told his therapist. Seeing her was Marilyn's idea.

  “And?”

  Chapin bowed his head slightly toward her, raised his eyebrows. This was back in New York, three months ago.

  “Have you been able to put it behind you?” she said.

  Chapin surveyed the cluttered landscape of her desk: pictures of children—a boy and a girl—in various poses, in ornate frames, “Daddy” leaning into some of the shots; papers, folders, desktop toys, the kind of thing you give a professional person in order to show you are not intimidated. Underneath the gild of our educations, these things insisted, aren't we all just simply human beings?

  “It's not really the kind of thing you ‘put behind you,’” Chapin said dryly.

  “Still having the dreams?”

  “Dream. Yes.”

  She glanced at her watch, pulled a pad of paper from a desk drawer. “I'm going to give you something to help you sleep.”

  She scribbled quickly, folded the paper, and handed it over.

  Chapin stood, extending his hand.

  “The directions will be on the bottle.”

  He nodded.

  “Take them,” she said, looking into his eyes with professional concern. “Promise me?”

  He nodded again.

  He walked out, closing the door on the tasteful mauve carpet, the well-groomed plants. Smiling at the receptionist, Chapin crumpled the prescription in his pocket.

  ————

  “Have a good walk?”

  Chapin nods.

  Marilyn is puttering with petunias in a cedar windowbox. Dirt streaks her long, freckled forearms. “Have Kit and Harry opened up their place?”

  Chapin appraises her bones. Her lankiness delights him, the functionality of her frame. “I didn't notice,” he says.

  She smiles, for no reason. Why does she do that?

  Chapin has decided to leave his wife, or, better yet, to make his wife leave him. It's too much trouble now, keeping it up. The daily exercise of marriage exhausts him, the effort of slogging through the little things: shopping and holidays, laundry, and brief and boring vacations to all the predictable places; her family and his family and their mutual friends. And, he thinks, any kind of change…

  “I'm driving into town later,” she says. “Want to come along?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You could drive.”

  He says nothing.

  “You know, you should get back to it,” she says. “Start driving again, let go of the past.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, David.” She tilts her head to the left. “Come with me.”

  “I just don't want to,” he says.

  ————

  The moment she goes, he feels a sense of relief. Not happiness, but the freedom to be depressed. He feels almost lighthearted. He changes into swim trunks, selects a paperback book he's been meaning to read, finds a beach chair on the deck, and goes down to the sand.

  The sea is a flat gray-blue. No breakers today. The waves uncurl in creamy ruffles and pull back with a sigh. Other than the scuff marks left by the children, there is not a footprint anywhere, not yet.

  How to do it. Quickly. How to make it easy and all right. She has this loyalty thing, and so domestic. A good soldier, Marilyn. He doesn't want to hurt her.

  When they met, she was seventeen. He was two years older. It seems impossible to ever have been that young. His parents and her parents belonged to the same club. They met at the pool. He remembers showing off, pulling funny stunts on the low board; he almost feels it physically: the cannonball, the fake fall, his arms a
nd legs cocked at odd angles, dropping through sunlight, falling, falling; then the cold explosion of the water. In the silence he almost hears her laughter.

  The girl from the coffee shop walks by, smiles at him. He gets the feeling she does this to every man. It amuses her to turn them on, gives her a sense of power. Chapin on the beach, the grizzled hair on his sagging chest, the blue-veined legs, the twisted toes with their horny, yellow nails, is no longer the man young women yearn for. He knows this. He feels satirized.

  She sets up near him, makes a show of spreading her yellow towel, bending at the waist to give him ideas. Then the meditation: standing, left knee bent. She must have seen this on a postcard somewhere. Her left hand fanned on her left hipbone, she puts the right demurely to her brow, shades her eyes, and looks out on the sea, pensive. Ah, my dear, Chapin thinks. Such an amateur.

  Chapin opens his book and tries the first paragraph. Individual words make sense, but not the whole thing. He tries it again. He reads the first two pages. Nothing grabs him. He flips to the middle and reads a passage or two, goes back and starts at the beginning. Three pages in, he is still not connecting. He turns to the back cover and finds out what the book is about.

  “Good?”

  Chapin looks up.

  The girl nods toward the book.

  “Not very.”

  “Those bestsellers are always a disappointment.”

  Like she would know, Chapin thinks. On the other hand,…

  An airplane goes over, a prop plane, pulling a gaudy banner. The drone of the engine sounds like a giant insect. They ought to ban those things, Chapin thinks. An Airedale trots by, yards ahead of his owner. No leash, Chapin notes. And the rule is, always has been, all dogs must be leashed.

  “Would you like to get a drink?” This comes out so predictably Chapin would have felt negligent not to have said it. Of course, it was inevitable. So much is.

  She smiles. “Love to.”

  She has that kind of downturned smile that Marilyn always makes fun of, the kind that says, Ain't I cute? Well, why not? She is.

  They walk to The Cove, an ersatz pirates' lair, and order daiquiris, which, Chapin thinks, is just about perfect.

  ————

  “You had an affair.”

  “I had a fling.” He told Marilyn right away.

  “With a woman who drinks daiquiris.” Marilyn is a scotch drinker. Glenfiddich, no ice. “Were these banana daiquiris?” she says.

  Chapin says nothing.

  “I'm more hurt than angry. You know that.” She lights a cigarette. “Now you've got me smoking again,” she says.

  The hard part is that it would be so easy. Just the one word—“Sorry”—would probably do it. Marilyn loves him. As though he were worth it. Amazing.

  ————

  Chapin sees the girl again, more daiquiris, and, yes, as a matter of fact, they are banana. She is a comfort, someone that he can't hurt. Ironically, the tacky nautical setting of The Cove, all fishing nets and lobster traps, the overripe appearance of the girl, make the thing look a little like cartoon lust: an aging intellectual with a faithful, classy wife making a fool of himself with a nubile gum-popper half his age. He can imagine his therapist shaking her head.

  But with such insight.

  ————

  Hurricane lamps on the glass-top table, white linen, a small crystal bowl full of unassuming, pastel flowers. The table is set by the patio doors, which are closed against the wind. Dusk. The glass reflects them at their dinner—ghost marrieds, keeping it under control.

  “‘Through a glass darkly,’” Chapin says, nodding toward the glass doors in which an echoing Chapin is nodding back. “I feel watched.”

  “I'll open them,” Marilyn says

  “No, don't.”

  Chapin's wife is an excellent cook. She does simple things, but in such a way that the essence of the dish—in this case, chicken simmered in a light wine and tarragon sauce—presents itself. Chapin eats quietly, slowly, savoring a glass of chilled Chablis.

  “Why don't you say something?” she says.

  “Me?”

  She looks around the room pointedly. “Do you see anyone else?”

  Chapin nods discreetly toward the patio doors. “Mon frère.” Marilyn smiles.

  “It wouldn't take much,” she says, “to save it.”

  “I know.”

  Sand drifts across the patio floor. The darkness deepens. Chapin puts down his fork and stares out to sea.

  ————

  Once you have killed, it is easy to kill again. Crossed the line, something like that.

  But how?

  He and the bimbo discovered in bed? Tacky. Chapin rejects it. Suicide attempt? Too predictable. The silent treatment takes too long, and uncontrollable lapses into happiness intrude, set you back for months. Something quicker.

  Marilyn is sleeping in a canvas deck chair, an old New Yorker open in her lap. The sun bleaches her out. She seems transparent, no more substantial than her magazine. She has pushed her glasses up on her forehead, and Chapin watches her eyes. REM beneath the eyelids. Does she dream? Her hair is down. Chapin lifts a lock and tickles her ear. She tosses her head like a colt but doesn't wake. He slicks it into a thin red strand and holds it under her nose—a Fu Manchu, drooping, comic, Yosemite Sam.

  Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Chapin makes a low, cluck-clucking sound. The fact is, he is not a very good writer. Or, maybe he is, and his style is just not in fashion. In an age of memoirs, Chapin avoids first person, strives for a clean narrative line, shaped by character. Character is the heart of fiction, Chapin tells—used to tell—his students. Plot is just revelation. But which came first?

  Her hair is a paintbrush. He trails it down her neck, dusts the hollow at the base of her throat. She stretches as though responding to a caress, and Chapin notes how fine her hair is, how the color reminds him of strawberry jam. The midday sunlight ignites it, and just as he is about to kiss her, Marilyn awakes and smiles at him.

  ————

  Chapin's wife believes he is suicidal. No, he just wants his life to fit. The mismatch of their spirits causes her pain. So, this is a love story after all.

  “I called for reservations,” she says.

  She is dressed for dinner in beige silk and stands before the hallway mirror, primping. Chapin watches. Thinking, thinking, he cannot find a way out. Guilt would be easy, but Chapin, in fact, is not guilty. So much for a ritualized release.

  “Want to drive?”

  Chapin shakes his head.

  “Do you good.”

  How can he tell her he doesn't want good done?

  She tilts her head, fastening an earring. Light falls on the delicate curve of her neck, a simple thing that almost breaks his heart.

  “There won't be any traffic,” she says.

  “I don't know.”

  She puts her arms around his waist. “Do it for me,” she says.

  They take the dark blue Crown Victoria, purchased with money from Marilyn's father's estate. It's four years old, but looks brand new, and Chapin delights in the feel of the wheel in his hand, the way the engine responds to the slightest pressure on the gas. They take the narrow two-lane road to the restaurant, the one that winds southwest through the forest preserve. The night is damp, the road like satin; the smell of the pine trees hits them like a jolt of pure oxygen.

  “I'm glad to see you doing this,” she says.

  Chapin doesn't take his eyes from the road. “Like riding a bicycle,” he says. “I thought I'd forgotten.”

  “Feels all right?”

  Chapin nods.

  Marilyn settles back and closes her eyes. “Things are getting better,” she says. “I know it.”

  Chapin's eyes are riveted on the road. He senses the depth of darkness to his left but dares not look into it.

  “Were you working this morning?” Marilyn says.

  “Sort of. Looking over some old starts.”

&nb
sp; “That's great.”

  “What's so great about it?”

  She smiles. It's an indulgent smile. Chapin hates the triumph he sees in her face. Doesn't she know that the question is still open? The ancient, cosmic question of chicken and egg. Was Chapin's character the causal egg, the “accident” a revelation of sorts? In that case, the sour downward spiral that brought him here was, in classical terms, inevitable.

  “What about the novel?”

  “I've got pieces,” Chapin says. “Some of them pretty good, but…”

  On the other hand: wasn't he just like everyone else until then? Promising, compromised, flawed. In that case, killing an old woman, lugging pudding boxes back to her flat, was impersonal, circumstantial, truly an accident, and in that case,…

  “So?”

  “I can't sort it out, I guess.”

  Unjust.

  “Not true,” Marilyn says. “You ‘sorted out’ that magazine piece in—what was it?—three days?”

  “How I spent my summer vacation.”

  “You made some very clever observations.”

  “Dreck,” he says.

  “Why do you insist…”

  “What?”

  Marilyn says nothing.

  “You think everything can be fixed,” he says.

  “If you want it fixed, yes, I do.”

  The road has modulated into a series of tricky curves, poorly banked so that Chapin has to fight the wheel for control. They seem to come up faster than he expects.

  “Slow down,” she says.

  The woods close in. Only six o'clock, and yet a smoky blue-green darkness hovers around them.

  “I'm thinking omelet,” Chapin says.

  The curves get tighter. They're like a puzzle with no clues. You have to guess the way the road wants to go.

  Marilyn shifts in her seat. “Want me to drive?”

  Chapin feels he is getting the hang of it. The trick is to accelerate through the curves.

  “There's a great one-liner,” Chapin says. “Groucho Marx, I think.”

  “Watch the road.”