Laura Rider's Masterpiece (16 page)
Laura thought that, in reality, when your spouse died it would probably be like having a gangrenous arm amputated, that even
though the limb had been diseased you’d still
miss it.
Five minutes later: “What the fuck!” Charlie cried from upstairs. “Laura, what the fuck!”
So Jenna had written back to him something about the mix tape, and he’d seen Laura’s initial message on the subject pasted
into the response. E-mail, Laura said to herself, was so gratifyingly thorough and quick.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted as he came rushing down the stairs in his adorable cat-pajama bottoms and a Green
Bay Packers T-shirt. That was her husband, calibrated exquisitely, male and female together.
“What’s the matter?” She lay with her hand over her eyes, resting in the balm of Jenna’s fantasy, in the idea of herself dead
and gone in order that the couple might have their happiness.
Charlie had already made Jenna a mixed CD. He wasn’t going to tell Laura that he had burned one two weeks before that included,
yes, his old favorites, his new favorites, each one in some way, it’s true, embodying his feelings for Jenna. Did he have
to inform his wife every time he said hello to Jenna, every time he gave her a posy, every time he wrote down an original
line? Had she sniffed out the fact that he’d done this thing in secret, or had she been spying on him? Was she psychic or
psycho? Jenna had written him back about the tape just then, clearly scratching her head, saying, “Dearest, you already made
me the most magnificent compilation. You know how much I love it. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
Laura had a silken gold shawl over her, and an enormous book on her stomach. Jenna often talked about Laura’s beauty, but
in the moment it was not visible to him. There was a smugness in the corners of her mouth, a taunt in the slight upward curve
of her lower lip.
He made a superhuman effort to speak calmly. “I thought,” he said, “I heard the barn door slamming. In the wind.” She still
had that look on her face. “Did you leave it open?”
“Did I leave it open? I think”—she turned the page of her book—“that if anyone left the barn door open, Charlie, it was you.”
He almost said, I have a secret but I’m not going to tell you. He could have elaborated, could have said, I happen to know
that Jenna is going to do something for you. Something exceptional, something she doesn’t do for very many people. Maybe now,
unfortunately, she’ll change her mind. Maybe now, for whatever reason, it won’t happen. Ha, he wanted to say. Ha. Under the
present conditions, however, what could he do but turn on his heel and pound up the stairs? What could he do but begin to
work on another CD, every song another portrait of his very own Jenna?
What I need to do, Laura thought after he’d gone, is sign up for the writing workshop in the Dells over Labor Day. There were
workshops in all the genres: romance, mystery, self-help, literary, memoir, western, children’s, poetry, creative nonfiction,
and, the brochure said, so much more. Charlie had been having his fun, and she would have no problem informing him that she
was leaving for four days to follow her bliss.
“Your wife is so lovely,” Jenna said once more, a few days later, in bed, beneath the picture of a mesa and a lone chief with
his horse in the glow of a very pink and very orange setting sun. She thought it the worst kind of art, solemnity in bright
colors, but there was something right, under the circumstances, about the sincerity of the trashiness.
Charlie said nothing.
“Does she know how lovely she is?” Jenna was sitting atop him, leaning over and holding his head in her hands. He had unfastened
all nine of her barrettes, and her long dark hair hung down her back and around her face. She had deeply etched crows’ feet,
and parenthetical lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked to him, with her mass of hair, like a creature—a good creature—out
of mythology, a goddess who had laughed a great deal in her life. He wanted to tell her that he loved the way time and her
nature had marked up her face.
“Most women don’t believe they’re gorgeous,” he said, tracing her lips with his index finger. “Most women have no idea. It’s
ridiculous, how much they don’t know. It’s dumb of them, and sad.”
“I want …” she began. Tears had sprung to her eyes. “I want to be beautiful to please you.” It was horrifying to admit this,
terrible, and yet it was the truest thing about her lying, cheating, sexing self. She had lost twenty pounds with no effort.
Her eyes were larger now that they weren’t hidden by the puff of her formerly fat cheeks. It seemed to her as if she’d taken
one look at him, and in a breath shed several layers of Jenna Faroli. She had no appetite for food or sleep. She no longer
read serious tomes about the war, the Middle East, the Administration, the climate. She was having trouble reading anything.
Her mind was washed clean. She was thin, exhausted, and exhilaratingly vacant.
A week or so after Mrs. Rider’s first mischief, after the CD episode, Laura wrote another meddling message.
Subj: The Knees
From:
[email protected]
Lovey,
Did you know that in my knee there lives a family? Little Yardley Knee, the boy, and Samantha Knee, who is older than Yardley
by two years, and Mrs. and Mr. Knee, and the valet, Gregory, who is a distant cousin, and his sister Mary Ruth Knee, the maid.
There is an orphan nephew named Gerald Knee. Today Mr. and Mrs. Knee are celebrating their 17th wedding anniversary by not
speaking to each other. I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this before. There is probably, matter of fact, a family in your
knee, too, that might want to come and visit my knee. I love you, C
Laura had read a novel in which a gay couple invented a family who lived in their elbows. Because they were never going to
adopt, never going to have the trouble of children to invigorate their dinner conversations, they were always inventing drama
for the make-believe family, the Elbows, who had taken up residence in their joints. Laura could understand this need for
daily spice. She and Charlie had their cat kingdom, starring their real-life cats, Polly, Mighty, Shawna, and Doofer. Polly
had gone to the prom with the enormous feral tiger down the road, a bad boy named Julius. She had come in late with a bite
on her ear—such a whore! It seemed to Laura that if Jenna and Charlie had characters they could share, their messages might
become more interesting. This prodding them to enjoyment seemed to her yet another act of her own generosity. She was sure
Jenna would take to it, that Jenna would be grateful.
And what do you know? Ten minutes later:
Subj: Re: The Knees
From: [email protected]
Oh God, dearest, you are so funny, so brilliant, so you. So you. SO YOU. Are the Knees not speaking because Mary Ruth Knee,
as usual, has pitted Mother and Father against one another, because, wicked girl that she is, it was she who broke the Ming
Dynasty vase (why are vases always from the Ming Dynasty?) and yet blamed it on Gerald, and the parents have taken sides?
Or am I wrong? I love how you reveal your facets bit by bit. You draw, you sing, there is of course Harvey!—and, as always,
your pure whimsy is on the tip of your sensational tongue. I love you, I love you.
Laura had known Jenna would take to it like a duck to water, a pig to shit, a horse being led to the trough
and
drinking. Charlie was fully capable of inventing this kind of garbage himself, and she was merely speeding up the process,
reminding him of his own talents, his
facets
.
At dinner, the Riders ate without speaking. He had grilled hamburgers, and they had baby carrots and potato chips, the sound
of which, when being chewed, and no one was talking, filled the echo chamber of their heads. At the end of the meal, after
he had drained his beer, and carefully set his glass down on its coaster, he looked at her midriff, raising his eyes a notch
to her sternum, another to her clavicle, up the neck, until, finally, he rested his gaze on the shining face of his beloved
wife. She was wearing the diamond earrings he’d given her for Christmas. “The Knees,” he said.
She nodded. “The Knees.”
They rose from the table, put the dishes in the sink, and went to their computers, one upstairs, the other down, to commence
the evening correspondence.
CHARLIE AND JENNA HAD NEVER EATEN A REAL MEAL TOGETHER
, and so, at the beginning of August, when Frank went to Washington, the two arranged to have dinner in the city. They would
never, probably, be granted a whole night through, and the evening in a restaurant would have to serve as a token of the dream
life. The plan had seemed a good one a few days earlier, but in the hours before it, Jenna was not sure. She had considered
inviting him to the house and had decided she wasn’t up to the smell of him in the rooms, his fragrance something she’d have
to flap out afterward, opening the windows, swishing away the smoke of him. She did not want her sin in Frank’s kitchen.
She was sitting at the table in the trattoria when Charlie came along on the other side of the street. His washed and pressed
self was gleaming from half a block away, his Bora Bora cologne no doubt wafting down the avenue. She felt her heart tighten.
He was wearing a creamy linen sports coat with light-gray trousers, and—she squinted—sandals with socks? As if he suddenly
had become Italian to match the restaurant. Surely, she thought just then, surely all of him was the work of Mrs. Rider. Who
were these people, the Riders! His hair would have product squirted lightly through it to make his curls more vivid. Softer
but also bold. Like Charlie himself. Soft but bold. Two qualities that were not complementary.
When he came through the door, she stood and, leaning over the table, the two kissed quickly. “You look so beautiful, so beautiful.”
He spoke in one low gusty breath, shaking his head in wonderment. That he was nervous made her heart go colder. It was unlikely
that she was beautiful, especially in her present mood. She watched him taking up his napkin, unfolding it and spreading it
carefully on his lap. “I like this place,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Leave it to you to find a restaurant like this,
to discover it, to realize a good thing when you see it. They know you here, I’ll bet—I’ll bet they know exactly what you—”
The waiter had arrived at the table. “Good evening, gentlemens,” he said to Charlie. “I like very much, ah, to see you tonight.”
“Same here!” Charlie said. “It’s great to see you, too.”
Jenna had never hated him before. It had been wrong, she realized, to expose him to the light, to remove him—to remove them—from
the Kewaskum Inn, that sanctuary for their most private selves
. “Carlo, per favore, per incominciare, voglio forse caponata, prosciutto, e olivi, va bene? E una bottiglia di vino bianco,
forse un Pino Grigio o un buon Orvieto, d’accordo?”
Carlo bowed and retreated. Charlie was staring at her. “Your voice in Italian. It’s even, it’s even more incredible than your
English voice. You are—”
“My Italian allowed me to order wine and appetizers. This is not unimportant, but it has its limitations.” They should have
met at a bar near Hartley. It would have been easy to feign innocence, and on his turf she could have happily gobbled up chicken
wings and had beer by the pitcher. Although she had already made her choices, she studied the menu. “You once used
pasta e fagioli
in a rhyme to me,” she muttered.
Without thinking, he said, “The contribution of Mrs. Rider.”
“What?”
Jenna, he would admit, did not look as lovable when her brow was wrinkled, her frown lines were so severe, and she let her
mouth hang open. “She had that dish at a restaurant when she was sixteen and has never stopped talking about it— Golly, you
look good.” He was leaning halfway across the table. “I love your dress, the brownness of it, and the buttons. It looks French,
not that I know what a French dress looks like, but if a dress could look French, then this dress does. The buttons remind
me of Milk Duds. Do you remember eating Milk Duds and how they’d get mashed together into one gluey lump on the roof of your
mouth? I love those buttons, I could eat them, I love the idea of you—”
“Stop!” she cried. “Please.” She had startled him away from the center of the table, startled him into the corner of his chair.
“It’s probably best,” she went on, “if I order for both of us. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll love whatever you decide,” he said slowly, adjusting himself, coming forward, advancing a little. “Darling,” he added.
He picked up the small bottle of olive oil next to the vase of begonias and he smiled at it, which made her dislike him even
more. “How are you?” he murmured, as he replaced the bottle.
She laughed then, at the absurdity of him, the absurdity of the dinner, and it had not even yet begun. She laughed at how
she’d fallen into all the love traps—imagining that the affair could go on forever, that their feelings would always be fresh,
imagining that somehow they would grow old together in their separate households. Poor dumb Jenna and poor Charlie, the yokel.
Poor unsuspecting Laura and Frank; poor Suzie and David Oberhaus; poor Vanessa, far from home.