Robert Coover - John's Wife

It was during a routine business call home while on his second honeymoon in Paris that John learned of Yale’s fall on the field of battle, so it fell to him to break the tragic news to their hostess Marie-Claire, an awkward situation, made worse by hainqui-dainqui’s recent mischief, but John handled it with his usual panache, as the natives there would say, and proved that he was a man, as his mother Opal often asserted, not without compassion. Although, true, few who knew him would have described John so, in this matter John himself would have agreed with his mother: he was, he had no doubt of it, a compassionate man. Except when he was in a tough ballgame. Which of course was just about all the time, since that was mainly how he defined life. Compassion was the most natural thing in the world but you could rarely get down to it, that’s how he felt. Too much of life’s rough-and-tumble in the way most of the time, and a good thing, too, else he’d be bored silly. Compassion, in effect, was what was left over when the game was easy: a generous party, a timely job or a business tip, a tax-deductible gift. It was a bonus at Christmastime for his employees, even if he planned to fire them. A visit to the bedside of a guy you’d hit, flowers for the wedding of a rejected lover. Sometimes just a thoughtful phonecall, or a slap on the butt. Three rooms and bath in a retirement community was what stricken Barnaby got, Oxford an offer to save his pharmacy which he foolishly rejected, Lenny a piano for the church basement that Beatrice had asked for, Snuffy new team uniforms, then an airport job, and later, in politics, John’s endorsement. Waldo got business trips when Lollie was too hard on him, Lollie the chance to partner John sometimes in mixed-doubles foursomes. He suffered nights of bridge with his hardware man and his simple wife, even to Mad Marge threw a cookie now and then, though usually by way of her husband’s insurance business, and to Harvie he once sent a marabou stole to show he cared and understood, compassionate man that he was.

“Compassion? He calls that shit compassion?” his cousin Maynard would have snorted bitterly had he known John’s thoughts, though of course he didn’t. Couldn’t. He had trouble enough reading his own dark mind, forget the minds of others. And the Nerd, or Backdoor Mange, as his ex-wife Daphne sometimes called him, was not the sort of person John or anyone else would ever confide in, except for Veronica of course, who did, and wed him, then suffered ever after having her past flung back at her like those custard pies they throw in the movies. Sympathy was not in Maynard’s vocabulary, compassion wasn’t, nor in his heart either. Love was, but narrowly so, so narrowly only he knew it was lodged there. Like a rock, a deeply imbedded stone that his thoughts tripped over, losing coherence, and that sometimes turned red-hot and caused his senses to fail him and his body to shake as though with a fever and his organs to expel their contents. It was strange, he did not understand it, never could, thought of it as something completely crazy, but he could not shift it out of there, it was as much a part of him as his stubby dong, his hairy flat feet, his five o’clock shadow. So instead of kicking at it, he tried to polish it, but everything he did, always for her or for his love for her and his need to be near her, went wrong somehow, whether it was marrying her best friends to be closer to her or producing a kid to companion hers or trying to protect her and her father from John’s cruel depredations or just keeping up the pretense of a social life (he hated the social life) so as to see her from time to time (only she could polish what he could not): all failed. His love was dumb and blind and taught him nothing: he was, classically, its hapless fool. And now, since her father’s foiled raid, though he’d only done it for her: anathema. The great deceiver, cast as, he was, and so cast out wholly. He could not even speak to her anymore nor look her way when she passed by. If ever she still did, it was as though they existed in different worlds. Compassion? Hey, save it for the Nerd, whose pain was deep and, save for a frayed garter in his pocket, utterly without balm.

Certainly no solace from his same-named son, a rival of sorts who also had his eye on John’s wife, or hoped to soon; according to his best pal Fish, it went with the paper route. Love was not in Little’s vocabulary either, not yet anyway, though it was growing — his vocabulary, that is (other things, too, as he excitedly showed to Fish) — growing by lips and buns, as you might say, laps and bums, mostly filling up as it was at this time with words for bodily parts and what you did with them. Fish, as always, was his master in this, and not just in the naming but also in more practical instruction, the preacher’s son being a talented artist in his own right and also having access to certain books and magazines in his father’s collection that he said were attempts to depict what really got God mad at Sodom and Gomorrah. Nowadays, according to his dad, God was more understanding, humans were only humans, after all, so what the heck, let it happen. Fish often had interesting things to say, not just about girls and what made them tick (“—and tuck,” Fish would always add and pump his fist), but also about God and cars and drugs and computer games and what happened to you when you died, lots of things. He taught Little how to skateboard, how to roll a joint and smoke it, how to tell real rock from pop music (which he called “poop music”), how to play poker and chess and do tricks with matches, how to sneak into the swimming pool without paying, and how to tell if a girl was a virgin or not. He promised to show him how to drive when he got his own license and gave Turtle to understand that all his worldly wisdom was at his young friend’s beck and call. A born teacher, he was. The only thing Turtle couldn’t understand about Fish was that he had his eye on Turtle’s bitchy cousin Clarissa, a total pain in the neck if ever there was one, though it was true, she was more Fish’s age, and she did seem, in her tight jeans and torn shirt or in her string bikini at the new pool, as Fish put it, “hot to twot.” Or something like that. He’d seen her naked, or almost naked, Fish said, and when Turtle asked him if she was a virgin, he said he hadn’t been able to test her out yet, but he thought she was. Fish’s sister Jen was her best friend and so she hung out at the manse a lot, sleeping over sometimes, the two of them listening to music, girl-talking, drinking diet pop or sometimes beers, smoking dope when Fish’s folks weren’t around, and often on hot days when they were high, or even sometimes when they weren’t, they liked to goof around in their underwear. The reason Fish thought Clarissa was still a virgin was because he heard her complaining about it to Jen in her bedroom one night while he was watching them through the keyhole. He said she said she couldn’t wait to do it. It? Fish told him. Turtle also had to admit he didn’t know exactly what a keyhole was, not if you could see through it, but when Fish showed him one (their manse was much older than Turtle’s house, and more interesting in lots of ways) he could see how it might be useful.

Clarissa knew that Jennifer’s creepy goggle-eyed big brother was lurking outside the door that night, as he did most nights she stayed over. She didn’t know how a girl as cool as Jennifer could even have a jerky brother like that, but then who was she to talk, what with the retard she was stuck with? At least Philip wasn’t still wetting the bed. “Oh yes, he is,” Jennifer giggled. “Every night! Only with different stuff!” Clarissa thought Philip, better known at school as Fish, had got his nickname from his stupid bug-eyed buck-toothed look, but when Jennifer told her that she’d given him that nickname when she was a baby, he’d had it forever, Clarissa was not surprised. People grow into their names, she believed that, just as she was growing into hers. “Marie-Claire once had a lover she walked like a dog,” she told Jennifer, always a good listener. They were lying around in their underwear, listening to some new CDs. “With a leash and a chain and everything. She took him to the park and made him do tricks for her and spanked him in public with a rolled-up newspaper.” She had to fill in some of the details, but the main points of the story were all true, she’d overheard her daddy tell it. Up in an airplane with Uncle Bruce. “Well, one night he went wild and started frothing at the mouth and he attacked her and tried to bite her in her, you know, between the legs. Hard!” “Boy! Talk about getting eaten out!” “It wasn’t funny, Jen! He was trying to kill her, but Marie-Claire strangled him with her legs until he quit. After that, she wouldn’t let him be her dog anymore, but he never got over it. All the rest of his life he walked around on all fours, until one day a car hit him.” Jennifer thought it was a great story and said she’d turn all her lovers into aardvarks because of how long their tongues were, a fact she’d picked up from a silly poem in a children’s book. Jennifer seemed obsessed about tongues lately. “Or else Bambi’s father,” she sighed dreamily, running her fingers inside her briefs. Philip wandered in then, trying to look bored. “Mom’s coming home soon with Zoe,” he said. Clarissa didn’t mind other people’s moms, just her own. Whom she seemed to see less and less of these days, so it wasn’t too bad. Her mother was useful, but deep down Clarissa wished she’d go away and leave her alone. And take dumb Mikey with her. She pulled down her bra cup to poke at her nipple as though she might have a mosquito bite there, then peered up at Philip to watch him redden. She tried to think of what Marie-Claire might say, and then she thought of it: “You look like a fish out of water,” she said. “Why don’t you flop on out of here, Popeye, and go suck air someplace else?” And as Jennifer spluttered with laughter and hugged her thighs, he ducked out. This was the woman Clarissa was growing up to be. Because of her name. It was — she had just recently learned the word for it — her destiny. Knowing what was coming, what was really coming, was pretty scary, but it gave her an edge. She liked it. Whatever she did, it would come out the same, so there was nothing she couldn’t do. No one could intimidate her, not even teachers or her parents’ friends or the parents of her own. Certainly not the local police goons: during the bust at the mall, she’d collected everybody’s stash, walked it coolly right through the assault lines. She owned the school corridors and lunchroom, was queen-elect of the mall rats and pool punks, would meet any dare. At the new downtown civic center pool that her daddy built, she hung around all day in a string bikini that drove the guys bananas. But if they tried to touch her, she’d scratch their eyes out. Not too close, Creep. Danger, High Voltage. This is what love was. It was great. Totally intense.