Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

Tessa went downhill fast. Within two years, she endured spells of homelessness, punctuated by temporary jobs, none of which became permanent, because of her imperious nature, her contempt for owners and bosses. She never merely left a job, she stormed off. She took over the homes where she was briefly a guest. But even as her fortunes fell, Tessa didn’t lose her rakish airs, though they began to seem almost detached from her, and just a bit automatic as she strode around town in worn-out clothes.

I was one of several who helped in small ways, but I rarely saw Tessa. I had established myself in a small-town practice that would not make me rich, though it might make me happy. Hoxey had since returned to California in powder form, leaving nothing behind him. In those years I seemed to have awakened from my own background and, without boasting, I can say that I had become somewhat less of a fool, though I was aware that my foolishness could recur at any time, like a dormant virus. I can’t say that I saw Tessa as my responsibility, nor can I claim to have quite got her out of my system.

Bob Kavanagh took me to lunch on a Thursday. Bob was a hearty, shifty fellow who would do anything for a laugh. He owned a motel in Gardiner and the movie theater here in town. During that morning’s digital prostate exam, he had deliberately farted into my examining glove, and taking me to lunch was by way of making up for his bad manners, which I had not thought funny. “How’s your sandwich?” he asked. His incongruous smile suggested that the sandwich, too, was amusing. He must have been proud of his Panama hat because he wore it all through the meal.

“It’s very good.”

He smiled; he’d made it up to me. He said, “You know how people would find things in their food, cockroaches, fingers, stuff like that?”

I answered him warily. “Yes?”

“Last week guy come in here orders a chicken potpie and there was a cell phone in it. Just imagine if someone called that number and it rang in the pie.”

“I can’t.”

The conversation rambled on until Kavanagh brought up the subject of Tessa, whom he described as a community eyesore. He wanted to get up a collection to ship her back to California. I said, “What if we ship you back to California?”

“I’m not from California. I’m from here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I thought I was onto something.”

I wanted to leave the restaurant, but I was spotted by Adrienne Wilmot and her husband, Raymond, dining alone by the bricked-up fireplace at the north end of the room. She was an attractive, actually wonderful woman, though it was mildly to her discredit that she seemed, in the absence of any other sufficient explanation, to have married for money or social standing. She’d had a couple of affairs in our town and left her lovers grateful. I say that from experience. There was really nothing wrong with Raymond, exactly; he sold high-end recreational properties to members of his far-flung society. He was known in the business as “Tightly Held” Wilmot because no matter what obscure neighborhood he was promoting, he always described it as “tightly held.” She once admitted her moderate infidelity to me but added, “I never do it to get anywhere.” Perhaps Raymond was the exception. In any event, Raymond Wilmot was making money hand over fist.

Wilmot’s face and head, his small moustache, projected a sort of gloom. I thought he looked like Edgar Allan Poe. He told me that the lovely small towns of New England where he had once lived were now “stiff with fairies fixing up houses.” He had a habit of throwing his head back, looking into space, and laughing; the effect was one of extreme condescension.

Adrienne said, “They don’t call them that anymore. You’re not keeping up, Raymond.” And Wilmot said, “Oh, very well.” To this he attached an elegant and contemptuous ennui. Wilmot knew of my family and often teased me about my breeding or sardonically complimented me on triumphing over my origins. I would always be displeased with myself for laughing at this, as I was actually quite offended.

Raymond got to his feet, pressed his napkin to his chest, and gave me a hearty welcome. He was the sort of person who smiled with blatant insincerity from one side of his mouth while addressing you as “Mr. So-and-So,” sometimes preceding that with “Well, if it isn’t old—” I think he was trying to be funny but I’m not sure. I hugged Adrienne as she stood, running the end of my forefinger up the small of her back to feel her shiver. Very responsive, that Adrienne, and she rewarded me with a twinkle. The three of us sat down together. They both beamed at me with the intense curiosity which we save for people we suspect might not be stable. I do think I was viewed as not quite under control, but some women liked that. Adrienne had once said of her husband, “I wanted him so badly, I can’t believe I’m sick of him now.” I thought she was either being provocative or just covering her tracks.

Quite inadvertently as my hand rested in my lap our fingers touched, and as she didn’t withdraw hers, I let them intertwine. Raymond did notice this. “A little wine?” he asked sarcastically. “Some candles, perhaps?”

“Raymond, be a sport and let me at him.” Expressed like this, we had to laugh. “Really, all of my antics are just for Raymond’s entertainment.” Good one, that, and it took Raymond in, as his returning complacency attested.

“In English class,” Raymond said, “we once had to write an essay on one of Dante’s circles of hell, and we could pick whichever circle we wanted. I picked ‘the Sea of Excrement’ and it really has stayed with me.”

When Adrienne and Raymond came with me one afternoon for a visit to my father, Raymond kept saying about his meager house, “It’s all you need!” He seemed antic and uncomfortable. Afterward, my father remarked, “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”

I knew Raymond didn’t like me. My cherished friend Jinx said he hated me, but I thought that was a bit much. As a single woman, Jinx gets around more than I do, invited here and there: she had a very sharp ear and a sharper memory.

I had by now acknowledged my solipsism, my slow winding inward. I also noticed that Kavanagh left without a word. I supposed I had impolitely abandoned him, but after all, he had farted in my glove. Still, I’d been discomfited by the cold stare I had caught from Raymond Wilmot before he realized I’d seen him.

“You can make Adrienne very happy if you’ll come for dinner.”

“I’d love to,” I intoned.

“And in the interest of appearances, I’ll join you.”

I told Raymond that that was entirely up to him. I knew how unsatisfactory that was, since he undoubtedly knew there had been more to Adrienne’s and my flirtation than met the eye. I just didn’t think he cared. I was wrong about that: he cared. It would later seem that it was all he cared about.

The December night that I was celebrating my fortieth birthday with a small cake in the emergency room, they brought Tessa in: into her abdomen she had plunged a serrated bread knife, an item she continued to clutch while on the gurney. I took it from her hand, and feeling the heat of her gaze, I quickly moved to dealing with her wound. I knew that if she were admitted to the clinic itself she would be subjected to what I viewed as diagnostic imprudence — laparotomy and various explorations, which experience had caused me to associate with increased morbidity. Though I would later have a chance to review these judgments, I honestly felt that they didn’t alter the way things turned out. In effect, I was keeping Tessa to myself. I had hoped that this was a cry-for-help injury — the timing, during my shift, aroused my suspicions — but the knife, it turned out, had pierced the skin, the subcutaneous layer, the linea alba , and the peritoneum, and I could only hope that it had gone no farther, that is, into the viscera. Over the next four days, attending Tessa round the clock while she stared at me without speaking, I failed to contain the major leakage, the uncontrolled granulosis of the peritoneum, the necrosis, and an infection that laughed off antibiotics in a general cascade. She was looking right through me when she slipped away.