Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

I drove around instead, just drove around, trying to decide where to stop. As I drove I tried to think of a word, a single word to sum up the way Daphne’s been behaving lately. Inscrutable. The woman has become inscrutable.

Take yesterday morning. Daphne was right outside my study, watering the flowers in the window box, warbling to herself — a pretty little racket, and I was somehow enjoying it and getting a little work done at the same time. Then suddenly she stopped and said, “Well, St. John. . You know what Ralph Waldo Emerson says. . ”

I waited quietly, held my pen still to show I was paying attention, braced myself for some cloying scrap of verse she’d just remembered from her high school yearbook. But she didn’t finish her sentence. Nor did she continue with the singing. So I said, “Go on, D., I’m all ears.”

She made a little moue with her mouth, blowing a couple of stray curls out of her line of vision so that I felt the full force of her stare. “What do you mean, ‘Go on’? I don’t know what Emerson says.”

“Oh, you don’t?” I asked, and I laughed. She didn’t laugh with me.

“ You know what Emerson says, St. John. That’s why I said, ‘You know what Emerson says.’ ”

Her sleeves were rolled up, and her voice kept going from flat to sharp. I got the distinct impression that she was steaming mad at me for failing to supply her with an Emerson quotation.

“Can I ask — would you mind telling me — where you got this idea that I know what Emerson says? Have I ever mentioned in passing that I know what Emerson says?”

She yawned at me. “Come on, St. John. Don’t be shy. Tell me something Emerson said.”

I dropped my smile.

“Did someone tell you that Emerson’s a great friend of mine? Did the ghost of Ralph Waldo Emerson call one day when I was out and leave a message for me— Well, now, Fox, my boy, you know what I always say? ”

“I really think you ought to know what Emerson says, that’s all,” she returned, without batting an eyelid.

I stood up and went to the window. When I got close to her she looked down at her watering can. “Mrs. Fox,” I said. “You’re a horror today.”

To which she replied, “Why don’t you write a book about it?”

Why don’t you write a book about it?

Why don’t you—

Speechless, I gestured for her to stand away from the window; then I closed it. We looked at each other through the glass — she had this cool, triumphant smile on. She really felt she’d said something extraordinarily cutting. God knows what I looked like. Then she moved on to the next window box. What the hell am I supposed to make of a conversation like that?

Then there was the picnic D. and I went to last weekend — neither of us wanted to go, but my publisher was hosting, and it seemed necessary to show my face. Some of the women had brought their little kids along to run around in the meadow, singing their nonsensical songs and making daisy chains. There was this one girl with a pair of angel wings on — she actually had quite a lot going for her. She could whistle around two fingers, and she showed some of the little boys how to skim stones off the stream, and she didn’t scream when water splashed her. I wouldn’t mind having a kid if she turned out to be like that. Daphne was watching her, too, and scowling. At one point the girl with the angel wings bumped into Daphne and said sorry real sweetly. Daphne just ignored her, looked straight ahead, tight-lipped. I told the child there was no harm done, but if I could have gotten a million miles away real fast, I would have. Then my publisher’s wife, a new mother, offered to let Daphne hold her little boy, and Daphne looked at me with these eyes of mute suffering, as if asking, Do I have to? Do I really, really have to?

I don’t know what’s got into her. Well, I guess I do, but it doesn’t justify—

On the other hand, it was presumptuous of Ellen Balfour to think that every woman in the world wants to hold a three-month-old baby just as soon as she catches sight of one. Daphne’s right, it was presumptuous. Daphne held the kid, her arms really stiff, as if he could roll out of her arms and bounce off the grass and she wouldn’t care. I chucked the boy under the chin a couple of times, and said he was a little prince, and he cried his head off. Then Daphne gave him back to his mother. Mrs. Balfour seemed to think Daphne was just overcome with delight and kept saying, “Oh, bless you, bless you. You’ll get one of your own soon, Daphne — may I call you Daphne?” English manners.

Daphne whispered to me, “That’s the ugliest child I ever saw.”

“Bad stock,” I whispered back, less because I actually thought so and more because I’ve been thinking that Daphne and I should be allies; I want us to be allies even when she’s misbehaving. I got a laugh out of her, anyway. Nothing’s even happened to us yet — we haven’t had a broke spell yet, or watched each other lose people, lose our looks, face down sickness. But D. seems to be holding out on me, refusing to go all the way into this thing unless there’s a child, too. Once I think my way past a lot of stuff that hasn’t got anything to do with anything, the thought of being called “Dad” doesn’t give me the jumps — well, not as severely as it used to. I didn’t used to think about these things. I must be getting older. Daphne could be onto something, but I won’t be hustled into it.

The other day I went on an urgent mission to retrieve my wallet from a jacket pocket before D. sent our stuff out to be cleaned. D. had left a book on top of the laundry basket: Happy Husband, that was the title. And underneath, in smaller letters: Make him happy, keep him happy! An advice manual. I took it away, read a few pages, chased them down with a couple of despairing drinks. There are real books all around the house, everywhere. She could pick one up and in mere seconds she could be involved in something that makes her laugh and feel nervous and hot and cold and forgive the world its absurdity — Pushkin, maybe, or Céline. Instead she’s spending her time reading up on what to do about me. It got me down. The book itself was useless, too. All the advice it offered about the timing of meals and affecting a cheerful disposition and trying to take an interest in the husband’s doings even when they’re fearfully boring and never saying “I told you so”—these aren’t the reasons a person looks with favour upon another person, these aren’t the reasons someone stays in love. I put the book back before she knew I’d seen it. If I said anything about it she’d tell me I was taking it too seriously, that she was just looking at it for amusement.

As for Mary, I’d been trying to get her to show up, but she wouldn’t. I don’t know what that means. Am I drying up? My book about the killer accountant is going as well as it can be, considering that I hardly know what I’m writing; I’m just jogging along behind the plot like a carthorse, ready to drop it as soon as Mary shows up and it’s time to get out of here. But no sign of Mary. She could be staying away deliberately (if so, I didn’t know she could do that), or my brainpower’s getting weak. Maybe once I’m alone in my beard things will be the way they used to be with her — friendly, I mean. I wrote her name in the steam on my bathroom mirror, as a kind of invocation, and after a couple of slow minutes I added a middle name for her. A kind of incentive, a step towards reality, bait. I wrote Jane. A good, plain, sensible name. Mary Jane Foxe, I wrote. Before my eyes the letters changed; the name grew longer. “Aurelia.” Mary Aurelia Foxe. This is what it’s come to.

I pulled up outside a bar I’d been to a couple of times. I knew I could be kind of alone there, especially during the day, when the social drinkers are waiting for the clock to strike a respectable hour before they start. There were a few guys inside, spaced well apart, one of them sitting at a corner table. He was groaning into his hat, but no one else in there even looked at him. I took another corner table, set down my scotch, lit my pipe, opened my copy of Metamorphoses, and pretended to read. The other guys started giving me the eye then, including the one who was wailing into his hat. “Gentlemen,” I said, from behind the cover of my book, “it’s a free country.” That had no effect, so I told the bartender to get them drinks, on me — there were only five of them in total. They left me in peace once they got their drinks.