Robert Coover - John's Wife

“Radiance” was a word often used when speaking of John’s wife, though what was meant by it, few could say. “Radiant” was how her parents Barnaby and Audrey described her as a baby when astark, delighting in the little creature, excessively so perhaps, she being the only one they ever had, though others, too, privileged back then to behold her entire, John’s folks Mitch and Opal among them, often remarked that the precious child truly “glowed with health.” She was still “dazzling” (see the testimonials in her high school yearbooks) as she blossomed into the well-dressed woman whom John undressed, starkly, to his great delight, but whom others glimpsed in similar state along the way, or thought they did, Gordon’s friend Ellsworth, for example, who babysat her and dressed her up (and down) for the make-believe games they played. “Babes in the Woods.” “Sleeping Beauty.” “Narcissus and Echo.” “Alice Through the Looking-Glass.” And games that Ellsworth made up from scratch, like “Dreaming Awake” and “The Artist and His Model.” “Narcissus and Echo” was a particular favorite of both of them, copycat play that was lots of fun, followed by a kind of hide-and-seek. Ellsworth would hunch over his own reflection — in a rain puddle, a paddling pool, a hubcap, kettle bottom, or snow shovel, most often just a handmirror at his feet — while she “vanished,” leaving her clothes behind, the playacting ones she wore on top. While she was looking for a hiding place, Ellsworth, his gaze fixed upon the pale acne’d image of himself (sometimes, cheating, he’d tip the mirror to see, between his legs, the dress-up clothes come off), would call out to her in phrases stolen from Ancient Mythologies and she would shout back at him the last words that he said—“Won’t anyone come play with me?” “Play with me!” “Why can’t I see you?” “See you!” “Don’t be such a nincompoop!” “Poop!” “Where have you gone?” “Gone!”—until she had finally hidden, and then she would be silent and he would go looking for her, tickling her when he found her. But not too hard. Just a little. The tickling was not her favorite part. Nor, though he liked it, his. After that, they’d get dressed up and do it again, though sometimes, just to be fair, he’d be Echo. Of course, this was a long time ago, when Ellsworth was even younger than Fish was now.

Fish, whose proper name was Philip, Fish being the name his baby sister Jennifer gave him when they were both just toddlers, was the oldest of three children and the only son of Beatrice and Reverend Lenny, though when he was born his parents were still known mostly as Trixie and Knucks. That is to say, he was certainly Beatrice’s oldest, she never able to say for sure, after what happened that night at the fraternity house toga party, that Lennox was the father, in fact probably he wasn’t, though of course she told him he was, and he seemed to accept that and married her willingly when she asked him to, being a good man at heart, whatever he believed. “Why not?” he said. “Let it happen.” A good man, but also, truth to tell, a weak man, with a talent for trouble, trouble she had had to share over the years, and as for what he believed, that was always pretty vague, whatever the subject, rather too vague for a man of the cloth, as she often remarked, though always with understanding and forbearance. Needful virtues in their trying years adrift. When Philip was born and Lenny had graduated, thanks to a fraternity brother named Brains who wrote three of his final papers for him, she and Lenny had left the baby with her mother and taken a little honeymoon, a spiritual holiday, as Lenny called it, irony being one of his redeeming qualities. He had signed up for a dozen or more credit cards and they had gone on an international spree, living like royalty all over the world until the credit limits were all used up and the collection agencies came after them. Not much those blue-suited bullies could do. All she and Lenny had left when they got back was an old car hidden in her mother’s garage and the baby. The bullies found and took the car. Carted it off on a truck bed, Lenny having sold the wheels. Well, she and Lenny had had a wonderful time, quite literally the time of their lives, and they felt no guilt about the credit card companies, it was their fault for giving them all that credit in the first place, right? But now what? In college, Lenny had majored in philosophy and religious studies, and jobs in these fields were scarce, especially now that he had more or less lost his credibility as a moral exemplar, at least in the eyes of the establishment. About the best they could find were part-time jobs in charity organizations, working with the underprivileged and the handicapped, Beatrice sometimes able to give music and dancing lessons or, until she got pregnant with Jennifer — who was more likely Lenny’s, most likely of the three — to play the piano in bars and restaurants. Finally, like a miracle, Lennox landed a job teaching religious studies at a small liberal arts college, hard up for cheap staff and willing to overlook his minor misdemeanors. In fact, the times were such, his credit card-burning had a certain heroic luster: down with the system, yay. The teaching went well, the students seemed to love him, and he even managed, at Beatrice’s insistence, to get ordained in his spare time. Beatrice helped the students put on an underground satirical revue, they experimented with the drugs that were popular at that time, little Zoe was born. If it had not been for that unfortunate incident with one of Lenny’s hysterical freshman students they might be there still. When he got fired, Lennox seemed to lose all his self-esteem and stayed stoned almost all the time. Luckily, Beatrice had been a zealous sender of Christmas cards, so over the years, throughout their travels and travails, they had stayed in touch with John. It was not exactly Christmastime, but she got in touch again. It was good timing. For all his faults, she thought, God bless John.

Reverend Lenny, ever more ambivalent than his wife, would have to agree and, of course, disagree. Even about the timing, for as it happened, when they first came to town a decade ago, their arrival coincided with the violent death of Stu’s first wife Winnie, Lenny’s first service here — or anywhere — therefore a funeral, a discouraging omen, and besides, Lenny knew nothing at all about funerals, having always, on principle, avoided them. Even his own father’s he had skipped out on. So, to gear up for this newest trial and because he feared it was expected of him, he decided to pay a pastoral visit, hat in hand, to the bereaved, hoping that if they had to pray, they could pray in silence. He had found the old boy on his knees, all right, but only because he couldn’t stand up. He was pie-eyed, nose bandaged, tongue loose in his mouth as a bell-clapper, and his pants looked like they’d been used for a floor-mop in a men’s room. He offered Lenny a drink on condition that he’d pour two, having lost his bottle grip, and Lenny decided it was probably the Christian thing to do, his own throat parched moreover with all his day’s — week’s, month’s — hypocritical posturings, he badly needed one. Time passed, during which old Stu tried to sell him a car (credit no problem), sang a song about honkytonk women, confessed to murder, and told him what he said was a true story about a nun, eventually canonized, who had a second rectum where her other business ought to be. The worst thing was that Lenny found himself laughing like a heathen, another bottle, at least one, having been opened in the meantime. Actually that was probably the second worst thing. The worst thing was that he realized he couldn’t walk, he was alone in a darkening kitchen with a confessed murderer, and there was a committee of ladies from the church at the front door, bearing gifts of food, John’s wife among them. There was the honorable and manly way to behave on such occasions, and there was the despicable tail-between-the-legs sneak-thief way. He chose as always the latter, snatching up his hat and Bible and clattering on his hands and knees into the bedroom and under the bed, where he awoke four hours later, his nose full of dust balls and his erstwhile host snoring overhead like a pneumatic drill. He crept out, thinking about his wife and the terrific story he would have to make up, and found himself face-to-face with a woman, stretched out on the bed beside the brain-dead widower, fully dressed, even to a hat and black veil, and resting a bottle on her belly. “Hey, Preacher, good to see you back among the living,” she slurred throatily this side of the raucous snores, the bottle doing a little dance as she spoke. She wore the veil tossed back like a ballplayer with his cap on backwards. “Whaddaya say we take a little communion, hunh?” She winked broadly, raising her knees and spreading them, her green eyes crossing, then refocusing. “If you do, honey, I’ll tell you where your shoes are.”