John's Wife: A Novel (67 page)

The return of
The Town Crier
was greeted by the usual disparaging wisecracks, but even its severest critics were relieved to find it each week on their front porches again. Things had been happening during its absence, but now it was as though they were
really
happening, and even those events that had gone unreported had been rescued from oblivion by Ellsworth’s reconstruction of them, in the same way that the more ancient past had been recovered through his innovative “I Remember” columns. A popular former town librarian, who had passed on some years back, had written in an “I Remember” contribution of her own that “Memory is all we have to keep time from taking everything away from us,” and not only did most townsfolk agree with her, but many had that column clipped and pinned up somewhere or tucked in a cookbook or the Bible so they wouldn’t forget it. For Marge, the weekly newspaper was less significant as history (she had her scorecards for that, sharing her husband’s respect for numbers as about all the history one could count on) than as a bully pulpit, she having been a frequent contributor to its letters page, though less so now than in the past. Had she lost her crusading zeal? Had John finally worn her down? Not exactly. For dreamless Marge had had at last a dream. Where she’d had it, she wasn’t sure. She remembered being out on the darkening golf course, feeling very tired, and stumbling toward the seventeenth green, which looked very soft and cushy. She’d just holed out and the last thing she recalled was bending over to look in the hole for her ball. Then she woke up at home. But in between. She’d tried to tell Lollie about it, but though she’d had to listen to countless dreams from Lorraine over the years, her friend had refused to listen to the only one Marge had ever had. “I was dancing with … somebody,” she’d said. “Then suddenly it was more than dancing.” “I don’t want to hear about it, Marge!” Was Lorraine reading her mind? No, that was over and even her memory of what she’d heard had dimmed. Lorraine was just being selfish. The dream had begun in the basement of John’s fraternity house where Marge learned that she’d just been elected. They prodded her forward and, because the issue was zoning problems, she took off her clothes or maybe they were already off for the same reason. Likewise her partner, who told her it was time to start straddling the issue, and that was when the slamdance began. Body contact, he grunted bruisingly. I love it! Though it was the only dream Marge had ever had, the amazing thing was, she was still having it, though most of the preliminaries had long since dropped away. No complaints. It was a pretty good dream, even if there was not much to tell anymore, were there anyone to tell it to. Certainly not to Trevor who was too tired even to talk most of the time and who got terribly flustered whenever she even mentioned the bed, not to speak of sleep and dreams. So, in effect, she’d been subverted from within, knew it, didn’t care: dancing John could do what he liked, or almost. When she learned of John’s plans to develop Settler’s Woods after the fire, she had written to
The Town Crier
about it, accusing the city of sinister collusion, but her letter had appeared the same week that they dug up some old human remains out there, including a skull with the middle of the face missing, Ellsworth heading the story, “Grisly Find in Settler’s Woods,” and flaunting his rhetoric in an editorial on the need to clean up that dangerous area, so her message did not get through. No matter. Back to beddy-bye. To speak in the philosophizing manner. Besides, Settler’s Woods was one of John’s most graceful developments and popular with the community. He preserved most of the surviving trees, mature timber enhancing property value these days, carved the area into interesting odd-shaped lots following the old creek bed (Marge and Trevor bought one), and built a pretty little park with a children’s playground around a small grove in the center that had somehow escaped the fire, John thus, ironically, becoming celebrated, like his fondly remembered father-in-law before him, as a builder of city parks.

Opal was proud of her son and loved the park he built, wishing her grandchildren were still small so she could bring them to it, as she used to take them to the old one and her own little boy before them. Oh so long ago. The statue of the Old Pioneer had been rescued from the civic center parking lot and given a nice new pedestal and, though you had to crane your neck to look up at it, it was like having an old lost friend back home again. She missed the old bandstand and the performances there and the family picnics and the summertime speeches her handsome brother used to give, but her husband Mitch, at her urging, had donated a dozen benches in memory of members of the family and old political friends, and they were not as comfortable as the old ones perhaps, but they made her very happy. She liked to sit in them, half dozing in the sun, and watch the children play, letting the past wash over her like a loving embrace, and she often found herself being asked to mind this one or that one for a moment while their mothers dashed off on errands, something she was pleased to do, for it made her feel wanted again. It was so much nicer than the malls, which had no trees or benches at all and no neighborliness either, whatever Kate might say. One day, she found herself sitting on one of the roomier contoured benches of the old city park with that dear friend and with Harriet, too, one on each side. It seemed that Audrey had recently died and they were talking about this, Opal understanding that her friends were really congratulating her on the Audrey inside her having died, since if they were still alive Audrey must be, too. Nonsense! snorted Harriet, and Kate said that, yes, life was, that was what made it so sad. And so beautiful. They saw the young stringy-haired newspaper editor coming their way with a camera, looking sheepish, and Opal exclaimed: All this has happened before! Kate smiled and said, Yes, no doubt, probably everything has. Harriet smiled her own ironic smile and said that the one thing she had no doubts about was that nothing ever happened twice. Opal realized that this conundrum her friends had posed on either side of her and the distinctive smiles on their two lovely faces there in the dappled sunlight were the last things she would see or know before she died, and she felt a pang of grief, and a pang of love.

Ah well, grief, love, sometimes it was hard to tell them apart, so profoundly bound up in one another were they, for no mortal love was free from death nor death’s grief from a grievous love of self. When Yale was killed in the war, Oxford, though paralyzed with a sudden despair that dropped him to his knees, realized that he’d been suffering the loss of his beloved son from the day he was born, and that he’d cherished that suffering. In her suicide note three years later, his cancer-stricken wife Kate wrote: “Why we turn against reason, Oxford, is because it tells us we can never have the one deathless thing we most desire and that all our lesser loves must end in sorrow. It’s almost unreasonable to be reasonable. I love you, Oxford, but can express this now only by inflicting grief upon you, which, alas, I find I would do with pleasure. And so I deny my love and mourn only myself. My own grief satisfies me and, as you are no longer loved—indeed, you no longer even exist for me—you are freed from all mournful thought of me, who certainly does not exist, unless grieving gives you joy.” He’d thought it a cruel letter at the time, but had come to understand that wise Kate had loved him with a rare transcendental love and had found a way, while dying, to express it, and then the tears had come afresh, self-pitying tears, of course, at what he’d lost. For Kate’s friend Harriet, who’d died a couple of years earlier, tears were nothing but a sales hook for the entertainment racket, though she’d happily shed plenty over books and in the movies, if seldom in life. “Meat’s meat,” she always said dismissively. “It has its needs, but you can’t take them seriously,” and her husband Alf, whose hands were daily busied by needful flesh, agreed—until he held her trembling hands in his (“Hey, do you remember when …?” he’d murmured awkwardly) and felt the life go out and knew then that what he’d loved, though rooted in the self, was not the self. Over the years since then, Alf had found some consolation in the healing of others, or at least in the easing of pain, his own included, bourbon being his usual self-prescription, just as Oxford had consoled himself with his multitudinous grandchildren (at least two more now on the way), the two men meeting most mornings for coffee in the Sixth Street Cafe to exchange thoughts on such topics as love and grief and also the news of the day, which on this particular occasion had to do with the building of the new racetrack (“Coming Soon: The Sport of Kings!” was the headline in the
Crier
), the old bones found out at Settler’s Woods which Alf had been asked to examine, the return of Alf’s nephew, a high school classmate of John’s, to run John’s new international transport firm, recent rumors about the hardware store next door, closed since Old Hoot fled town (there was a business associate of John’s visiting from the West Coast this week, she said to be a high-tech hotshot), the surprise marriage announcement of old Stu’s widow, and the decision of Oxford’s daughter, who was also Alf’s nurse, to go back to school and complete her degree, which Alf, generously, offered to help pay for. John’s wife, walking her dogs, passed by the cafe window just then, reminding Alf to tell Oxford about the strange sensation he’d had at the tip of his finger and how it had vanished, but before he could get to it, Trevor the insurance agent came limping in and joined them briefly with a cup of soup which he spooned up hastily with quaking hands, and then as quickly got up to go. There were dark bags under his eye and eyepatch and what looked like bruises on his face and neck. “Are you all right, Trevor?” Alf asked. “I-I’m not sleeping well.” “I’ll give you a prescription.” “No. It won’t help.” He ducked his head, tugging at the cuffs of his linen suit. “It’s all right,” he said. He squinted at them with his good eye, then leaned closer. “It’s a lucky life to have known delight,” he whispered, his soft lips quivering. “Isn’t it?” “He’s suffering from delusions,” Alf explained when Trevor left, as though that explained anything at all.

“Oh, I know, honey, I was just kidding myself, it was a big mistake, but he said he loved me and that big booger between his legs was as hard as brass and all mine, so how could I help it? I’m basically a nice person, you know that, but it was all I could think about, it was driving me crazy and I did crazy things. I still think about it, all the time, but now I have to help him find it. It’s awful, but what can I do? He owns half the garage, I can’t get out of it, I can only hope to hell the pathetic sonuvabitch falls out of his bed and dies. That fitness freak you’re so crazy about who gave him the kiss of life can kiss my ass, goddamn her. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone? Isn’t that Brucieboy’s girlfriend? If so, I wish to hell he’d come back and claim her. She knows Rex from somewhere and keeps butting in, watching over him like he’s her kid brother or something, it really gets my goat. The chilly bitch says she doesn’t trust me, and when he comes home from the hospital, I’m afraid she’s going to move in on us. Do you think she’s trying to get a piece of the action? Probably, hunh? What a mess. And he’s so
mean
to me! Honest to God, it’s the worst thing that’s happened to me since back during my first marriage when I was playing around and got that infected lovebite on the ass. You remember? Thought I’d die. Why the hell was Rex driving John’s car anyway? Oh, I don’t blame your daughter, poor thing, she’s suffered enough. No, it was Winnie’s fault, I’m sure of it. The old ghoul was just getting her own back out at the humpback bridge where she bought it herself. I’m glad they’re tearing the fucking thing down, scares the pants off me every time I have to drive over it. Winnie’s nailed old Stu, and me, too, in her witchy way, sticking me with this murderous basket case, maybe the old battle-ax’ll go away now and leave me alone. What’s worse, I have to admit, honey, I miss old Stu. His hillbilly music, his dumb jokes, his sneezing and farting, all of it. And I don’t have anyone to get swacked with now. It’s so boring tying one on alone! At least you’re back, sugar. I’m so glad, I was lost without you! I’ve got so much to—hey, did I tell you? I ran into Colt again. Why didn’t you warn me John was bringing him back here? It was terrible. He didn’t even recognize me. When I told him who I was, the dickhead just stared at me and said, No shit. Really! It was disgust at first sight. I couldn’t blame him. I’m such an ugly old bag now, who’d want to recognize me, even if they did? Looking in a mirror makes me puke. It’s all over, it really is. Oh God, I’m crying and I can’t stop! The good times are gone, sweetie! I’ll never know hard dick again! I’m so scared! How am I going to get through the rest of it?”

Nevada, whom Daphne called a chilly bitch, had a more professional attitude toward hard dick perhaps than did the likes of sentimental heart-on-her-sleeve Daphne, but it was not as callous a one as those who’d enjoyed her services might have supposed. For Nevada, hard dick was a monument which she helped raise, sometimes merely by what she revealed or concealed, a kind of magical sleight of body, other times more dynamically, using her orifices and appendages like an artist’s tools, making something happen out of nothing—though of course it wasn’t nothing, that was just the point: monuments were never the thing itself, merely an emblem of and tribute to it. All her life, at least since she’d given up oldtime religion, Nevada had believed fundamentally in hard dick—something to hold onto in a time of trouble, she often said to Rex, a mighty rock in a weary land—and in the mystery behind it, something not visible on the surface, part human, part cosmic, which it was her task and fortune to help reveal, or at least to invoke. To erect. Which made her something of a priestess, she knew, a responsibility she took seriously (pleasure, she took seriously, too, most else besides; Nevada was at heart, contrary to the popular perception, a serious woman), keeping herself fit with a rigorous training program and staying alert to the nuances of the vocation. Now, with Rex’s accident, it was not that her faith had been shaken, but that it had deepened, drawing her beyond the iconic and the monumental into the subtler paradoxes of soft-dick love. Or such, at any rate, was the consequence of her decision to stay on here in a small prairie town she loathed with all her heart to be near to and care for the only thing human she’d ever connected to in this world since her old granny cashed in. And he needed her. The fat lady was trying to renege on their contract and might even be dangerous, and John, fearing a major lawsuit, was as usual taking the offensive and might hit Rex with everything from statutory rape to murder to force him to cut a deal. John blamed Nevada for the trouble Clarissa had got into and for what had happened to Bruce and Jennifer as well, both assumed dead, saying that as far as he was concerned she was an accessory to kidnap and murder, but he also owed her a favor for dragging his bloody child out of the creek and saving her life, for dressing both of them before the ambulance came in the clothes she’d found scattered by the roadside while tailing them (until she found the shorts, she’d thought she was following John), and for getting Rex to agree, conditionally, to say that he’d been the one driving. Nevada had expected a substantial payoff from Bruce for setting him up with his farewell cherrypop, he’d even talked about making her a full business partner of John’s, presumably by way of a final will, it was the main reason she’d wanted to go up to the cabin with John that night, but she wasn’t surprised that she’d been double-crossed. By Bruce or John or both. All she got handed by John was a wad of dark-stained bills tagged,
For the pimp
. Was that blood, or had Bruce wiped his ass on them? She handed them back. Suspicious by nature, she didn’t trust them anyway. When she asked John pointblank if there was a will, he said there might have been, but it wasn’t worth much, was it, if there was no body. And that was exactly how much she learned from John about what he’d found up there, though he did have effective operational control of a lot of Bruce’s properties and investments after that. What Nevada asked for, standing there in her bloody clothes in the hospital room that grim dawn, knowing she was beaten, beaten badly, was a permanent job in or near town so as to be near Rex. John gazed at her thoughtfully, then at crushed and unconscious Rex, putting things together. We can work it out, he said, and later he sold her the new health club franchise at the expanded civic center for a dollar where she gave aerobic and weight-training classes and he transferred a couple of investments into her name which were probably hers anyway, and in time they even became something like friends, though they never got it on again, nor did she wish to. Not now. Maybe later when his own dick went soft.