John Barth - Letters

Not much sleep. I heard her drinking and smelled her smoking cigarettes in her berth off and on through the night: two Verbotens on my boat, but there was no point in making a fuss. I wished heartily our berths were reversed; tried to stay awake lest she go up on deck without my hearing her; but fatigue overcame me. Near dawn I woke alarmed that she might have gone overboard, deliberately or accidentally. On pretext of using the head I got up to check and found her heavily asleep, a full ashtray and the empty gin bottle (it had been only a quarter full) on the cabin sole beside her. She’d turned in naked; the cabin air was wet and chill, the sky gray in the first light, my head dull with solicitude and short sleep. I drew her bedsheet up, disposed of the butts and bottle, turned off the anchor light, and went back to my own berth, wondering what I’d have to deal with later in the morning.

But to my great relief, she behaved herself. We stayed abed late for two old sailors; at nine I heard her pumping the head and took the opportunity to enter the cabin, discreetly pajama-bottomed, and light the stove for coffee. She stayed in there awhile, but there are no toilet secrets on a small boat: I was gratified to hear no vomiting, just the cozy sounds of female urination and, more and more cheering, the turn of magazine pages. I put out apple juice and aspirin; put the aspirin back as too obvious. Let her ask for them. She asked instead, from the head, neutrally, for her blouse from the hanging locker and clean underpants from her bag, also a cigarette from her purse if I didn’t mind. When I handed the items in to her, she herself suggested, without looking up from her magazine (an old New Yorker) that I radio the yacht club about cabs and flight times; she had an open ticket, and was sure they wouldn’t mind calling the airline and radioing back the information. That way we wouldn’t have to rush. But she’d like to get started as soon as possible. Never mind breakfast for her; all she wanted was coffee.

I made the call; no need for her to leave the island before noon. Jeannine came out, looking not very fresh-faced, and began stripping her bed and assembling her gear. The sky refused to brighten; the air was clammy; there was nothing to say. I went up the companionway in my shorts, swabbed the deck, and took a swim to ease the strain, proud of her and a bit ashamed of myself. Presently Jeannine came on deck too — the air temperature was shooting up — still in her blouse and panties, another cigarette in one hand and a beer can in the other. She considered for a while, then flicked away the butt, skinnied out of her clothes, and let herself carefully down the ladder, not to get her hair wet.

Now, Dad: your old son is a prevailingly benevolent, even good man. But he has never presumed to moral perfection. My relief and pleasure in Jeannine’s behavior, together with the knowledge that upon her departure (in an hour) I would not likely see her again — and the further knowledge that the comely woman before me was the last unclothed female I’d likely ever lay eyes upon — inspired me to a lust that was undeniably, though not altogether, perverse. As, our positions reversed, I stood dripping in the cockpit now, a towel around my waist, and watched her paddling glumly, cautiously, pinkly astern, I not only desired Jeannine one last time: I desired her specifically a tergo, puppy-dog style, the way I’d first seen myself in the act of coition, in the mirror of my bedroom in your house, with Betty June Gunter, on March 2, 1917, the day that young woman relieved me of my virginity.

I plead by way of extenuation only that, had Jeannine genuinely protested, I would not only not have insisted; I’d’ve been quite unable to carry through. But when she came unsmiling up the ladder — and, as she’d left her towel below, I removed mine, began drying her with it, then embraced her from behind, pressing into her cleft my half-erection — she only stiffened, gave me one sharp and tight-lipped look, then let me have my way. Which was to lead her below, return behind her, draw her down to hands and knees on the cabin sole, apply saliva in lieu of more natural lubrication, rise to a full, fine, and culpable hard-on as I entered her, and bang in six or seven deep strokes to ejaculation: the last sex in this letter and my life.

I held her a few moments by the hips, Dad, breathing hard and wishing mightily to fall atop her; then withdrew, postcoital remorse surging in like the tide through Knapps Narrows, and rose to wipe myself on our beach towel. Jeannine lingered discomfitingly on all fours, her hair loose and head and shoulders down, a smear of semen across one prominent buttock and along the back of one thigh. I would get the dinghy ready, I murmured: easier to row over to the club than to unanchor Osborn Jones. I slipped into go-ashore shorts, shirt, and boat shoes and fussed about on deck, wondering what to do if she simply stayed where she was, arse to the breeze, a wordless reproach to my abuse of her. But just as time began to grow tight she came up with her purse and flight bag, dressed as when she arrived, but with disheveled hair and tear-swollen face. My practice has included legal counsel to the recently raped. Jeannine looked recently raped.

Apology seemed but further aggravation; even so, I told her as I rowed that while that had been a sore mistake on my part, her visit had most certainly not been, et cetera. No response. At the dock she clambered out of the dinghy and told me shortly that I was not to follow her into the club, much less (what I’d requested) see her to the airport. Her eyes filled; remorse smote; what’s more, I needed ice. But I let her go, a sorrying figure hauling through the heat, toward that building familiar to her girlhood. I paddled back to the boat and watched dejectedly with binoculars until I saw a cab come and return across the causeway; then I fetched my ice and ascertained at the bar that My Daughter had indeed taxied off to Friendship Airport (Yessiree, the barman said with practiced incuriosity). After washing the weekend off me in the clubhouse showers, I weighed anchor and recrossed the Bay, very alone, to Chester River and snug Queenstown Creek, to sort out my feelings in home waters and try to make peace with myself.

It was not an especially difficult job. I was glad that Jeannine Mack had come to me for counsel, reestablished our connection, gone sailing with me, and listened to my advice. I was surprised and happy to have made love with (oh well, to have got laid by) her, and even now couldn’t manage to feel monstrous or even exploitative except there at the end. I was sorry to have disappointed her; mighty anxious that she’d do herself injury; awfully glad to be by myself again. That was that — and remains so, except that my concern for her welfare mounts with each newsless day.

Oh yes: and I was gratified by her reasonable attitude concerning Harrison’s estate, on which agenda item I was quiet enough of spirit by midnight to focus my attention. I had supped, swum in the silky water, napped for two hours, and come back on deck to try the Perseids again, with slightly better luck. In the trail of one particular dazzler that swept through Pegasus (so our Author would have it), as I wondered whether Jeannine and Polly Lake and Jane Mack might be watching that same meteor, and from where, there came the damnedest, the farthest-fetched, but just possibly the most inspired notion I’d had all year as an attorney-at-law.

It was an open secret in the Tidewater Foundation that Harrison in his last madness had emulated his father’s whim of preserving the products of his dying body, but that in keeping with the times he had caused his excrement to be freeze-dried rather than pickled in company jars. It was no secret at all to me, nor any wonder, that though Jane had humored this aberration (and many another) in her husband, she had refused to let the stuff be stored at Tidewater Farms. One inferred that it was kept somewhere in the plenteous warehouses of Mack Enterprises. It was a conspicuous fact, however, that m.e. was feverishly hatching Cap’n Chick, who so filled the nest of its parent company that other Mack Enterprises were already smitten with sibling jealousy; Jane herself had merrily complained that she might have to convert the Dorset Heights Apartments into an auxiliary Crabsicle warehouse, so pressed was Cap’n C. for cubic footage. Finally, it was a howling obviousness that my own life, like a drowning man’s, had been set since March on Instant Replay…