A Marriage Made at Woodstock (21 page)

“What's the book about?” He hoped Herbert wouldn't see him smirking, there in the July heat, there before the sign that announced ONE-HOUR CLEANING. Or was it ONE-HOUR PUBLISHING?

“Well,” Herbert began, “it's semiautobiographical.” Frederick raised a brotherly hand to stop him.

“Herbert,
everything
is semiautobiographical,” said Frederick. “The flier this week at JCPenney's had to be written by some unfortunate bastard and it, too, is most likely
semiautobiographical
. An Oedipus complex could have caused him to dwell too long on women's lingerie.” He wiped his moist palms. He was destined, it seemed, to explain the obvious to the oblivious.

“Well, it's all about the adventures of Kenny Perkins,” Herbert said. “Kenny is a Vietnam vet who is now a veterinarian.”

Frederick considered this. “He's a
vet vet
?”

Herbert nodded, proud. “That's his nickname at the clinic,” he said. “And get this. He drives a
Corvette
!”

“Really?” said Frederick.

“The book is a collection of Kenny Perkins stories,” Herbert said. “You know, like James Herriot, the English vet? Except mine has a twist. Kenny is a vet who's been to war, so each time there's a pet emergency, he suffers a flashback from Nam.” Poor Herbert. Frederick tried hard not to listen. It was bad enough that he himself had had his share of rejection slips in his lifetime, even ones from little magazines with a subscription smaller than the number of nightly customers at the China Boat. He hated to see Herbert go through it. Sure, Herbert Stone had been to Vietnam, but he didn't stand a sniper's chance in book publishing. Frederick would be there to console him when the time came. This was something he knew things about, after all, this Hades of book editors, agents, and publishers.

“Kenny Perkins?” he asked, edging the conversation forward until he could gently explain to Herbert how high the odds were stacked against him. Why is it, would someone please tell Frederick Stone, that people who are too boring to talk to at a cocktail party decide to write books about their lives?

“Try to imagine Ernest Hemingway as an animal-rights activist,” Herbert said now, “and you've pretty much nailed Kenny Perkins, DVM.”

“Herbert, it's a rough business you're trying to break into,” Frederick began. He would start by noting the oceans of manuscripts mailed daily to New York by would-be writers. Of the massive difficulties in securing the indispensable literary agent.

“I know it is,” said Herbert. “That's why I need your advice.” He pulled an envelope out of his glove compartment and pecked Frederick's arm with it. “I sent the manuscript to an agent in New York who liked it. She sent it to an editor who liked it. But what's troubling me, Freddy, is that the editor wants a two-book deal and I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Here's the contract. What do you think?”

Frederick said nothing for a time. He watched people with dirty laundry go into Portland Cleaners and leave it, give it to someone else to clean for them. He watched people who had already left their dirty laundry with these strangers come back and fetch it, clean again. People were strange. Life was stranger.

“How much longer?” he finally asked Herbert.

“Twenty-eight minutes,” said Herbert.

“Take me home now,” Frederick said.

“But we've only got twenty-eight minutes left,” Herbert told him.

“Take me home
now
, Herbert,” said Frederick, “or I'm going to throw myself across that blasted horn which seems to both fascinate and titillate you.”

“Ouch,” said Herbert, starting up the car. “I smell lame duck cooked in sour grape sauce.” They pulled out of the parking lot and sped toward Ellsboro Street.

“I'm not such a bad guy,” Frederick whispered as the wind whipped against his face. “I'm not such a bad guy.”

Frederick was limping up his walk, vowing to never again trust Herbert Stone as potential good company, when Walter Muller appeared out of the bushes. Could the man simply materialize at will? Was Scotty somewhere up above Ellsboro Street in the Enterprise, beaming Walter up and down?

“I have a favor to ask,” Walter said. “Mrs. Muller can't stop laughing at the fight I taped. Did you know that boy wasn't even fighting back? Is it okay, Frederick, if we sent it to
America's Funniest Home Videos
? Mind you, if we win, we'll split the ten thousand dollars with you.”

“I'm not such a bad guy,” Frederick said again as he closed the kitchen door behind him.

A woman wears a certain look when she is on the move

And a man can always tell what's on her mind.

—Gary Puckett & the Union Gap

Frederick had wakened Tuesday morning to the sound of a car horn bleating somewhere down the street. Maybe Robbie was still cruising the cul-de-sac, like a rat in a maze, looking for a way out. Knees arched beneath the blanket, he twisted his ankle back and forth, with little pain. It had obviously appreciated a night's rest. Still sore, but it was nevertheless on the mend. Just as he thought he might doze off a bit, the phone in his office rang. The answering machine clicked on. “Frederick Stone of Stone Accounting is not available,” etc., etc. He listened to the business tone in his own voice with a certain amount of pride. It was the kind of assured voice to which he would trust his own personal fortune. He wriggled his toes against the horizon of blanket and waited for the caller to speak.

“Yes, I've got a message for you, Frederick Stone of Stone Accounting,” an angry female voice said. It was Joyce. “If you so much as
breathe
upon a child of mine again, I'll have you arrested. It's bad enough that Robbie is under Lorraine's crazy influence. I'll not have
you
assaulting him. There's a word for people like you.” She hung up. Frederick sighed. Would he miss that music, that symphony of lunacy that poured forth occasionally from Chandra's family? The good thing about divorce was that each spouse was obliged to take back his or her relatives. He wondered what the
word
for him was. Chandra would say it was
hubris
, her favorite charge. Robbie would say
freakin'
hubris. Whatever Joyce's word was, Frederick felt quite sure that a little duck would drop down on a string whenever he finally uttered it, and that Herbert Stone would
eat
said duck.
You
Bet
Your
Freakin' Life.

It was sometime after a hot shower that Frederick realized he was famished. There was nothing in the fridge worth salivating over. Pickles. Olives. Gin. Vermouth. A couple of baking potatoes beginning to turn on themselves. A shriveled lettuce. He would need to make a quick trip to Cain's Corner Grocery. He had let his run-down battery charge overnight, and now he unhooked the cables and started up the engine. It roared to life. True, it was Tuesday, his usual shopping day, but there was no need to make an extensive list of things to buy. A loaf of bread, a can of cling peaches, an apple would tide him nicely.

It was on his return journey from Cain's Corner Grocery that he became certain that someone was following him. He had tried to chalk it up to paranoia, but it was difficult not to notice that the car that seemed to make all the turns he made on the way to the grocery was now making all the turns he made on the way
back
from the grocery. He imagined the occupants of the vehicle hit men, well paid by Chandra to take him out. This would avoid a messy and expensive divorce, not to mention a neat bundle of life insurance. If Walter Muller could tape the killing, it might even end up on
America's Funniest Home Videos.
Kenny Perkins could drive his Corvette to the scene of the crime and try to revive Frederick, resulting in a flashback and adding a new dimension to the Kenny Perkins saga.
Kenny
Perkins: Vet, Vet, Paramedic.

Frederick watched as the same brown sedan followed him down Bobbin Road. When he put his foot on the brake, it pulled off to the curb. He watched it go by again from where he had hidden, behind a bread truck that had pulled into Don's Filling Station. The car was definitely following him. And now that he thought about it, he'd seen that car before, in his rearview mirror. Did Chandra think she might get him on a technicality such as adultery? Did she want even more than her fifty percent share of his heart and soul? He put nothing past her these days. He and Mr. Bator had decided that Chandra Kimball-Stone was ruthless. Entirely
without
ruth
. Maybe he hadn't been the best husband, but he deserved more than this kind of treatment. Let her follow him. He had nothing to hide.

When he arrived back home with his breakfast, a moving van was backed up to the screened-in porch. Frederick shut the engine off and stared at the truck for a few seconds before he got out and limped up the porch steps. It wasn't a do-it-yourselfer. She had hired movers. A physical tingling had begun in the pit of his stomach. She might still change her mind, especially if they talked alone for a minute or two. Or if he was allowed to touch her hand, maybe even her face. He hated himself for even thinking about this. Surely the Big Drunk had not been in vain. It had taught him schools of stuff about himself, hadn't it? He opened the door and tiptoed into the kitchen before he asked himself
why
. It was still where he lived, dammit, even if he now lived there alone. He slammed the door and his head throbbed to hear it. He limped to the counter and was just swallowing three Tylenols when she appeared. She seemed surprised to find him there, in his own home. Did she expect him to have disappeared? To have disintegrated for her benefit, all his cells scattering like seeds to the wind? All his genes, all those chauvinistic Y chromosomes tossed into a trash barrel full of empty gin bottles?

“Your Tuesday grocery shopping used to take a couple hours,” she said. She pointed to a box on the kitchen floor. One of the movers appeared from behind her shoulder, a beckoned elf, and lifted it up easily. “That's crystal. Please put that box on the front seat of my car.”

Frederick leaned back against the stove, his hands inside his pants pockets, and waited until the mover was safely out of range before he responded.

“I don't have to pick up things for
you
anymore,” he said. “No more tampons, Post-it pads, raisin bagels, cranberry juice, Weight Watchers snack bars, pearl onions, artichoke hearts, cat food. Need I go on?”

“Well, you never trusted me doing the shopping,” Chandra said. “Don't you remember how that evolved? I wasn't spending hours reading the ingredients list.” He couldn't take his eyes off her hands as they carefully packed the little magnets that had been gathering dust on the refrigerator, souvenirs she'd saved since high school.

“You have to be careful what you buy,” Frederick said. He meant it.

“That's true.” Chandra looked at him. Was she thinking,
And you have to be careful who you marry
? She went to work separating forks, knives, and spoons.

“If I remember correctly, you bought whatever product had the prettiest packaging. I didn't think we could afford to live like that, not in the early years.”

She made no response to this. Silverware rattled and clinked. “I thought the best thing to do with dishes and bedding and linen is to divide it evenly,” she said, shooting him a quick glance. “I can't afford just yet to buy everything new. Is it okay with you?”

“Fine,” he said. He wanted to move, to get away from the atmosphere in the kitchen where the air seemed to be boiling.

“Robbie tells me that you two are officially reacquainted. You're lucky he didn't kill you. He's on the college wrestling team.”

“You lied to me,” Frederick said.

“Oh, no I didn't,” said Chandra. “Your imagination ran wild and I let it.”

“Why?” he asked. “Am I such a bad guy?” Herbert would be proud to hear this.

“An excuse, I suppose,” Chandra said. She hunched her shoulders. “I'd been looking for an excuse to move out for a long time.”

“Were you?” He felt his heart give an alarming kick.

“I woke up last month and asked myself what the two of us had in common anymore, and do you know what the answer was, Freddy? Neither of us has ever had a broken bone. That was it.”

“I see,” he said. Her words stabbed him, but he forced himself to remain calm. He was tempted to tell her that, thanks to the fake address she gave Lillian, he was nearly disqualified in the broken bone category.

“You're letting your hair grow?” He nodded. “It looks good.”

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat. He wondered if he should ask, “Are you sure this is what you want?” But he said nothing. She kept on with her packing, rolling the silverware in sheets of newspaper.

“I'm nearly finished,” she said.

That wasn't the only thing nearly finished. So was their life together, all those years. So was his own life, or so it seemed. He refused to limp but walked instead into the living room. There were empty spaces all over the house, gaps where pictures had hung, where books had lounged, where furniture had crouched. She must have arrived just as he departed to have accomplished so much work. Better yet, she must have been out there waiting, in her Conestoga moving van. It saddened him to know that she had taken up spying, this woman who so hated the tactics of the CIA and the FBI. They had been married for almost twenty-one years and yet she would go to this trouble to avoid him. Frederick merely nodded as he looked at the empty spaces. He was surprised, and then saddened, that he couldn't remember what had been in them in the first place. He went immediately back to the kitchen and took out the bottle of gin, then the vermouth. He found what was left of the olives. It was time for lunch, and why spoil that by Chandra's sudden appearance? He made up a pitcher of martinis. He could feel her eyes as sure as if she were touching him. He smiled as he poured the first glass.

“Well, well,” said Chandra. “Doesn't this interfere with your work, this nipping early in the day?”

Frederick waved his hand as if to say it was nothing, a mere trifle. He imagined Kenny Perkins, DVM, waving in just such a debonair manner.

“Happy packing,” he told her, and then carried the pitcher into the den. He flicked the VCR on and rewound the tape he'd inserted that morning. He settled himself on the sofa to watch a taping of that day's
Sally Jessy Raphael.
The Ku Klux Klan had managed to find a few members with IQs as high as seventy, and had sent them forth to be viewed by the nation as their best and finest. Frederick punched at the remote-control button until their voices were barely audible. From the kitchen he heard the rustle of newspaper as she continued packing, a gentle crinkling.

It was impossible for him to concentrate on Sally's guests. For one thing, their bad grammar stung his ears. And their pale milky faces, their pointed heads—probably from wearing those hats—their wall-eyed glares at the camera suggested to him that they should widen the community gene pool. In short, he felt as though he were watching a lineup of extras for the movie
Deliverance
. He turned off the VCR. Two more movers, like bent gnomes, shuffled down the stairs with a chest of drawers and disappeared out the front door. When they returned Chandra gave them further instructions and they came for the ottoman, upon which Frederick was resting his sore ankle. He lifted his feet and gave it to them freely.

“Sorry,” the older gnome muttered. But Frederick merely gestured good-naturedly with his martini. Did Kenny Perkins drink martinis?

“Not to worry,” he told the movers. “The sofa's mine.”

He went to his office and turned on his computer. It began its sweet language of clicks and then beeps as the hard drive spun toward 1,200 rpm. Had it really been four long days since he'd turned the thing on? As Herbert Stone had been freely advising him, he
needed
to
get
a
grip
. He needed to let his anger surface so that it could take root. How could she wake up one morning and leave, as if twenty-one years had never happened? How could she cut him loose, without a phone call, a letter, as though he were some unwanted balloon? What had he ever done that he deserved such treatment? But these things happened. Spouses sometimes went crazy. He knew this from his television watching of the past five weeks. And he was not embarrassed that he'd taken up television. Let Chandra think what she wished. It was no longer any of her business. Besides, Shakespeare would have watched
Geraldo
. What better way to experience the dementia of these poor souls without having to visit with them in their homes? And dementia was overflowing out there in Middle America, among the current-day Desdemonas and Iagos, there was no doubt about that. Frederick had seen a veritable parade of sick and hurting humanity pass by as he sat on his own sofa and drank his martini lunch every day at eleven o'clock, his feet on
her
ottoman. He had learned about siblings abusing siblings, satanic cults raising stolen babies as members, sisters who sleep with their brothers-in-law, child pornography, husbands who cheat with their secretaries, men who bed down their mothers-in-law, parents of murdered children, children of murdered parents, folks with Lyme disease, folks with AIDS, folks with multiple personality, folks with amnesia. Frederick Stone had seen it all on television.

He looked now at another screen, the blue face of his beloved computer, blue as a Cyclops eye. Did it recognize him, with his longer hair and pale, brooding face? Did it acknowledge the fingertips on its keyboard as
his
fingers? He pulled up the McMurtry Landscaping account. There had been a message from Frank McMurtry just that morning that McMurtry Landscaping was forced to find another accounting firm. A little something about Stone Accounting filing taxes late
and
missing the payroll deadline. Frederick felt saddened by this, but the sadness seemed detached, floating somewhere near him but not affecting his life. Frank McMurtry was a good man. He would miss him. Good-bye, Frank.

Chandra appeared in the office doorway.

“This is how I imagine you, when I think of you,” she told him. “Sitting just as you are, in front of your computer. Have you even moved from the thing since I've been gone?”