Michael Bishop: Ancient of Days

I tacked about. “Can’t I come in for some eggnog? Come the holidays, this place used to reek of eggnog.”

“I have a visitor.”

“A man, huh?”

Somewhat gravely, she nodded. “He’s… he’s allergic to cats.”

“Why can’t I meet him?”

“I don’t want you to. Anyway, he’s shy.”

I looked toward the carport. Although RuthClaire’s navy-blue Honda Civic gleamed dully in the sheen of the yard’s security lights, I saw no other vehicle anywhere. Besides my own, of course.

“Did he jog out here?”

“Hiked.”

“What’s his name?”

RuthClaire smiled a crooked smile. “Adam,” she said.

“Adam what?”

“None of your bee’s wax, Paul. I’m tired of this interrogation. Here, hang on a sec.” She retreated into the house but came back a moment later carrying a piece of Limoges ware featuring her painting Angels . “This is the plate for January,” she explained. “Over the course of the year you’ll go from Angels to Archangels to Principalities —all the way up to The Father —and I’ve seen to it that you’ll receive the other eleven without paying for them. That’s my Christmas present to you, Paul.” She took the kitten’s shoebox from me so that I could look at the plate without endangering either the mystified animal or the fragile porcelain. “See the border. That’s twenty-four-karat gold, applied by hand.”

“Beautiful,” I said, and I kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Bring this Adam fella to the restaurant, Ruthie Cee. Frogs’ legs, steak, wild-rice pilaf, coq au vin, anything he wants—on the house. And for you, of course, the gourmet vegetable plate. I’m serious now. Take me up on this.”

She returned my chaste kiss along with the kitten. “This is the way you behaved when we were courting. Good night, Paul.”

On my drive back to Beulah Fork, the kitten prowled all over my shoulders and thighs, miaowing obnoxiously. It even got tangled in the steering wheel. I put it out about a mile from Ruben Decker’s place and kept on driving.

In January, as I have alluded, the pieces began coming together. To my surprise, RuthClaire called to make reservations for Adam and herself at the West Bank; they were actually going to avail themselves of my offer. However, even though only the two of them were coming, RuthClaire wanted the entire restaurant, every table. If I would grant them this extraordinary boon, she would pay me the equivalent of a night’s receipts on a typical weekday evening in winter. I told her that she was crazy, but that if she and her inamorato came on a Tuesday, always my slowest night, I would donate the premises as well as the dinner to their Great Romance. After all, it was high time she indulged a passion that was erotic rather than merely platonic and painterly.

“That’s a cheap dig,” my ex accused.

“How many kinds of generosity do you want from me?” I snapped back. “You think I like playing Pandare to you and your new boyfriend?”

She softened. “It’s not what you think, Paul.” No, indeed. It wasn’t at all what I thought.

On the appointed evening, Main Street was deserted but for Davie Hutton’s police cruiser, which he had parked perpendicular to the state highway as a caution to potential speeders. Precisely at eight, as I peered through the gloom, RuthClaire’s Honda Civic eased gingerly around the cruiser and slotted into a space in front of the West Bank. Then she and her mysterious beau exited the car and climbed the steps to the restaurant.

Sweet Jesus, I thought, it’s a nigger kid in designer jeans and an army fatigue jacket. She’s not in love. She’s on another I’m-going-to-adopt-a-disadvantaged-child kick.

Disagreements about starting a family had been another front in our protracted connubial war. I had never wanted any offspring, while RuthClaire had always craved two or three Campbell’s Kids clones or, failing that, a host of starving dependents on other continents. She believed wholeheartedly that she could paint, market her work, and parent —this was her ghastly neologism—without spreading herself too thin. I surrendered to her arguments, to the ferocity of her desire for issue, and for two years we went about trying to make a baby in the same dementedly single-minded way that some people assemble mail-order lawn mowers or barbecue grills. Our lack of success prompted RuthClaire to begin touting adoption as a worthy alternative to childbirth; the support of various international relief agencies, she avowed, would compensate the cosmic élan vital for our puzzling failure to be fruitful and multiply. We ended up with foster children in Somalia, Colombia, and Vietnam, and a bedroom relationship that made nonagenarian abstinence seem shamefully libertine. Because I had wanted no part of adopting a biracial child to bring into our home, RuthClaire had unilaterally decided that sex with me was irrelevant and thus dispensable. She would rather paint cherubs on teacups. Now here she was at the West Bank with a gimpy black teenager from Who-Could-Say-Where? Guess who’s coming to dinner….

“Paul, Adam. Adam, Paul.”

I did a double take, a restrained and sophisticated double take. For one thing, Adam was no adolescent. More astonishing, he was the same compact creature who had come traipsing naked into the Paradise Farm pecan grove in September. His slender, twisted feet were bare. At a nod from RuthClaire he extended his right hand and grinned a grin that was all discolored teeth and darting, mistrustful eyes. I ignored his proffered hand.

“What the hell are you trying to pull, RuthClaire?”

“I’m trying to have dinner with Adam. This is an integrated place of business, isn’t it? Interstate commerce and all that. Besides, our money’s as green as anyone else’s.”

“His color’s a non-issue. So is your money. He’s—” I gulped my indigestible objection.

“Go ahead, Paul, say it.”

“He’s an animal, RuthClaire, an animal in human clothing.”

“I often thought the same thing of you.”

I backtracked: “Listen, Ruthie, the county health department doesn’t permit barefooted people in its licensed eating establishments. He needs some shoes. Sandals, at least.”

“Shoes are one of the things I haven’t been able to get him to wear.” RuthClaire reached over and lowered the habiline’s outstretched hand, which was still waiting to be shaken. “In comparison to you, Paul, Adam’s all courtliness, chivalry, and consideration. Look at him. He’s terrified to be here, but he’s holding his ground, he’s trying to figure out why you’re so jumpy and hostile. I’d like to know myself. Why are you being such a jackass?”

“He belongs in a zoo. —Okay, not a zoo, a research center or something. You’re turning a scientific wonder, a throwback to another geological epoch, into a goddamn houseboy. That’s selfish, RuthClaire. Pathetic, even. There’s probably a law against it.”

“We’ll sit over here,” my ex said. “Bring us two glasses of water and a menu.”

“Only one menu?”

RuthClaire gave me a look that was blank of all expression; it was also withering. Then she led Adam to a corner table beneath a burlap sculpture-painting (abstract) that she had completed during the first few months of our marriage. Once the habiline was seated, I could no longer see his bare feet; the maroon tablecloth concealed them. RuthClaire deftly removed the beige linen napkins (folded into fans) that I had earlier inserted into the waiting water glasses, for she had made up her mind that my humiliation must continue. This was my reward for making the West Bank available for their preposterous parody of a rendezvous.