Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

What it came down to was that in an important sense, Wendell didn’t really give a damn about much. He liked sports — TV sports, that is; he was a little heavy in the gut to play any himself — and he was very fond of his son. Not like Risa was, of course, for she was much more intense about everything than he, but sufficiently fond to have his heart broken by the boy’s death.

Wendell is like the rest of us, a person whose life has two meanings, one before the accident and one after. I doubt, however, that he worries much about connecting the two meanings, as the rest of us do, but that’s Wendell Walker. That was always Wendell Walker. Even so, I felt guilty because, before his life became a tragedy, he was basically a likable fellow. Just as, before her life became a tragedy, Risa’s superstitious nature was an aspect of her character that was downright attractive. At least to me it was.

I was a widower and a relatively young man still, with two small children in a big house and a business that was making money but was top-heavy with debt. Those were the facts that filled my head night and day — the death of my wife, the needs of my children, and cash flow at the garage. For a year or so after Lydia died, and even for most of the year before she died, it was as if I had no sexual nature. From the time she went to the hospital to stay, I woke alone in that huge king-sized bed of ours every morning in darkness and never once had an erection or even thought about the pleasures Lydia and I had taken from each other in that bed at exactly that time of day so many hundreds of times; I couldn’t permit such a thought. I had work to do, children to wash and dress and feed and get off to school so I could get to the garage by eight, and at the garage I’d work like two men until the kids got out of school, so I’d be free then to drive them to Cub Scouts and Brownies, to their friends’, to the dentist in Placid, to Ames in Saranac for winter boots, stopping off at the Grand Union for groceries that I’d cook for supper and popcorn for after supper while watching TV together, and when they had gone to bed, I’d stay up late drinking and doing the garage account books that Lydia used to take care of. I had started drinking pretty heavily by then; but nothing like now.

For a long time, though, that was my whole life. There was no way I could let myself think about anything that did not lie directly before me — the death of my wife, the physical and emotional needs of my children, and my business. It was as if during that period I were crossing a crevasse on a high wire, and if I once looked down at the ground or off to the side or even ahead of me or behind, I’d fall, and I’d take down with me anyone holding on to me, meaning my children.

Then I started to change. First in erotic dreams and after a while in fantasy — little pornographic movies in which I was both actor and audience: my sexual nature had begun to reassert itself. It was only chromosomal and glandular, but even so, whenever it happened I felt oddly disloyal to Lydia. While she was alive I had been able to wake from my dream or fantasy and immediately cast her in the leading female role and let reality take over; but with her gone, if I tried casting her, the dream turned instantly to grief and sorrow. It was specifically to avoid that pain that I auditioned for the sex scenes numerous women I knew personally and believed I could be attracted to — the wives and daughters of the town of Sam Dent. And to my surprise, my number one sex goddess turned out to be Risa Walker.

I say surprise because Risa was by no stretch of the imagination the sexiest woman in town. That title went by male consensus to Wanda Otto, whom the boys in the garage called The Beatnik Queen, because of her long straight hair and her eye makeup and the low-cut knit dresses she wore. It was probably the image of 1960s hippie sex that she evoked — most of my mechanics suffered from a kind of time warp anyhow. Also, Wanda behaved in what you might call a provocative way — at least it provoked the boys in the garage, who scrambled to fill her Peugeot with gas whenever she drove in. Normally, when someone pulled up to the pump, Bud or Jimbo or whoever was on duty only crawled further into the vehicle he was working on and pretended not to see or hear it. Selling gas was strictly a necessary frill at the station, and whoever happened to be on duty was supposed to look after it; there was no regular attendant, and I myself spent most of my time in the office, with Lydia when she was alive and alone afterwards, or supervising the more delicate and difficult jobs out in the garage. No one wanted to pump gas. But Wanda Otto never to my knowledge wore a bra, and so long as she was without her husband, Hartley, or her son, the Indian boy Bear, she had a habit of driving into the station with her dress pulled halfway up her very attractive thighs. Wanda could get a mechanic out from under the hood and beside her open window faster than any other customer. She laughed easily and flirted and used expressions like “Shit!” and “Fuck!” if you told her she was down a quart, and that turned men on. Although it probably scared them too, because I don’t know of anyone who ever made a direct pass at Wanda, at least not when he was sober. They just talked about it with one another.

Risa, by contrast, though she is an intense person and when present fills your entire screen, drawing all your attention, is unadorned, shy, and private. Her manner, until the accident, was upbeat and warm, but her smile was undercut by a look of permanent sadness that she seemed to be trying to hide, as if she were struggling to protect you from it. Everyone liked Risa, but when she pulled in with her Wagoneer, no one rushed out to fill her tank, and like most people, she often had to fill it herself. She is tall, broad-shouldered, with ample breasts and a nice large female butt that she covers with somewhat mannish clothes, flannel shirts and loose jeans, that sort of thing. Typical for up here. She is the kind of woman who makes a man think of his favorite sister, if he has one, or his best friend’s sister, if he doesn’t. Not a likely candidate for erotic fantasy.

But lying half drunk in the darkness in that king-sized bed in my house on the hill, the twins sleeping soundly in their room at the end of the hall, I’d imagine Risa Walker naked and ecstatic, and it positively thrilled me. Took me straight out of the misery of my daily life and let my hormones run things for a while. Risa released me sexually when no other woman could. Women like Wanda Otto are already so close to naked and ecstatic in public, it’s not much of a thrill to take them one more step alone and in private. In fact, what you imagine is a woman you can’t satisfy — an image that is well known for dousing the fire in a man. But picturing Risa — calm, reticent, controlled, decent, and modest Risa Walker — picturing her wild with passion, sweating and naked, long legs akimbo, hands digging into your back, mouth grunting and licking into your ear … well, that’s a picture a man can cook with.

In time, the fantasies were insufficient. That’s how it is — the more vivid the imagined sex, the less satisfying it is as sex. You have to keep upping the ante, just like they do in pornographic movies, until finally you have to either replace it with the real thing or else rent a different movie. I didn’t want a different movie; by then all I wanted was Risa Walker. Any other woman was a diminishment, and even a slight diminishment was a total loss. I wanted, I needed, Risa.

The trouble was, Risa was thoroughly married to a friend of mine, and in all the years I had known her, she had not once shown the slightest interest in going to bed with anyone other than her husband. Especially not with me. To be fair, I had not given her much opportunity. I am known as a self-contained man and am probably not very approachable, which has always been my choice of character anyhow, insofar as a person can choose his character.