Robert Coover - John's Wife

Veronica had been a witness to Daphne’s attention-grabbing act with the strawberries that day of John’s wedding, a day that for Veronica was also, as it was for Stu, a day of destiny, but like all such days in her life, a dark one. She was still haunted by the consequences, it made her shudder to think about it. Or him. Gave her migraines for a week. Ronnie, as she was known back then to her classmates, Daphne being one of them, had always been intimidated by that brash, promiscuous, and unpredictable girl, a girl who always seemed to have so much more fun than Ronnie did, even when she did such awful things, things Ronnie could not bring herself to do, and then did anyway. It was a no-win situation. When she resisted Daphne she got ridiculed, and when she tried to keep up with her she got in trouble. Like that night before the famous wedding when Daphne subverted the hen party and led an assault mission out to the Country Tavern to invade the stags. Ronnie had argued against the idea, which she thought of as dangerous though didn’t say so. What she said was, let the boys be, they won’t like it. Daphne said the boys didn’t know what they liked until they saw it, and if Ronnie was chickenshit she could stay behind. So, naturally, she had to go, feeling she had a certain reputation to defend since that night at the drive-in with John which everybody seemed to know about, but first they argued about it for a while. There were others who had their doubts like Ronnie and a couple of them went home. Finally, when they did get out there, the party was pretty much over; certainly that guy Daphne had had her eye on all day was gone, and so was John. Daphne blamed Ronnie for that, said if she hadn’t been such an uptight pain in the patoot, they’d have got out here sooner and maybe had some fun tonight. Then they all got back in their cars and gunned it out of there, leaving her behind; Ronnie had to walk home all alone, kicking herself all the way, hating Daphne, but hating her own timidity, too. Now and then lights would appear on the road behind her, guys coming back from the tavern, no doubt, and she would have to hide down in a ditch or behind trees or bushes, not knowing how to explain herself out there and afraid of what they might do if they found her alone, drunk as they were. Sometimes she felt like just letting them do whatever they wanted, what did it matter, and she only half hid as they passed by, but no one stopped. Not until she reached town, a few blocks from Main Street. A car pulled over. A silvery Ford Mustang, looking like a ghost in the moonlight: Veronica recognized it, and her heart skipped a beat as the door opened to her. When she saw who the driver was, she realized she was about to do something Daphne would never have dared to do. A first. Though it would be hard to brag about it. Happened in another town. Something about wild oats, he said. She got home a little before dawn. And a few weeks later, she had to go see Alf, tears in her eyes, and ask him for that dreadful favor, he stubbornly reluctant (it was a big crime then, he had a lot to lose, she knew that) until she told him who the father was.

Ronnie had tears in her eyes again that night, years later, when her nemesis’s slobbering hubby, drunk as a dog, spilled his drink down John’s wife’s front in the country club bar, but this time they were tears of laughter. That it should happen to her! It was too funny! Everyone in the club was laughing, everyone except the father of the child Veronica finally did have, who was about to barf. Happened to Maynard from time to time. His “tender sensibilities,” as someone had cracked so many years ago, same cause then as now. A form of mourning, as he thought of it. He took a deep breath and held it, staring hard at the kid behind the bar, who was trying to act cool, wiping glasses, moving bottles around, but whose wide-eyed gaze was locked on the wet blouse. Whose wasn’t, but suffering Maynard’s? John’s linen-suited accountant Trevor was sniggering in his hiccuppy way while he stared at it, lard-ass Waldo was hee-hawing, John’s old man was grinning and grinding away at his cigar the way Maynard, back in school, used to chew rubber bands. Beside him, Maynard’s wife tittered and snorted like the witless beak-nosed twit she was, pushing her own cups forward, no doubt secretly jealous of the attention John’s wife was getting. Veronica was the material form Maynard’s bottomless misery had finally taken, the objective embodiment of his own self-loathing which it pleased him to strike out at from time to time, to slap and pummel and bury in curses, trying to purge himself of that which could not be purged, but giving him relief at least during the blind moments of his rage. The first wave of nausea passed (he was startled to notice Waldo’s wife Lorraine staring at him as though alarmed and he quickly looked away, that stupid cow, was he that transparent?), but then old Alf, coming back in from mailing Stu and Daphne home, jokingly poked his bent snout at her cleavage and sniffed, and the sickness returned, forcing Maynard, desperately clutching the frayed garter in his pocket, to swallow hard, then bolt down his own martini, hoping only it would not come right back up. His eyes watered and for a moment John’s wife was just a formless blur, not quite there. He blinked and brought her back, suddenly frightened about the risky moves (this was just before all the shit came down, when Maynard the eternally damned still thought he was going to whip his hateful cousin’s ass at last) that he and Barnaby were making. He was doing it for her sake, hers and her father’s, and John sure as hell deserved the pasting they were about to give him, but what would be her take on it? Well, she would be hurt, of course, that was unavoidable, but could she come to understand the issues at stake, the principles involved? In his fantasies, orphaned by the brawl between husband and father, she would turn to him for guidance and consolation (over and over, she had fallen, weeping, into Maynard’s gentle and caring embrace), but did she have even the foggiest notion of what John had done to her father? It might look like sheer madness to her. Well, they’d all know soon enough, it was fast coming to a head. John had invited them all over to dinner on the weekend to announce the merger. Barnaby would be there, John’s parents, his own dad, John’s accountant, people from the bank. There was no turning back. Maynard set his empty glass down on the bar as though to end a sentence, just as John’s depraved college buddy Bruce, a frequent hangabout in town of late, tucked his cigarette in the corner of his smirking lips, took the bar rag away from Kevin, and turned to John’s wife to help her wipe her blouse — Maynard headed for the men’s room, hoping his urgent stride would get him there in time.

Kevin, who doubled as country club pro and barkeep, was keeping a close eye on events that night, after what had happened earlier in the day. John’s wife had always been a mystery to him, more so now. Kevin had come to town a dozen years ago, just out of university and one boozily happy but ineffectual year in the backwaters of the pro circuit; he’d meant to move on, get back in the competition, never did. His father, an upstate political friend of John’s and a business colleague, had got him the job here, his predecessor having flown the coop that summer with a wild teenybopper, we should all be so lucky. The place sounded like more fun than it was, but given his prospects he might have ended up in scummier holes. He managed the club, gave lessons, ran the bar and the pro shop, entered a few smalltime tournaments just to keep his hand in and his name in circulation. Long hours, but they paid him for them. Women were easy enough to come by, everything from high school kids to their grandmothers, he got in at least seventy-two holes of golf a week, the food and booze were free, and there was a lot of loose change lying around, so not a bad life. Giving lessons could be a drag, but it was extra money, and it was sometimes a way of making out. He found that women often liked him to help them with their grip and swing by standing behind them and reaching around to take hold of their hands on the club, one thing sooner or later then leading to another. And that was why he was watching John’s wife closely that night that Stu gave her knockers a gin bath. She’d had a lesson with him that day and had seemed puzzled when he’d tried to correct her open grip. Almost without thinking about it, he had stepped behind her and reached round to cover her hands with his, and as he pressed up, almost ritually, against her soft buttocks in their pink and green Bermuda shorts, he was overtaken suddenly by a delicious sensation unlike any he’d ever felt before, not exactly sexual though it gave him a hard-on that nearly ripped his fly apart, more like the silky feeling he sometimes got when lying with a woman and staring at a starry sky. Then, just as suddenly, how could he explain it, she didn’t seem to be there. He was holding only the club. He let go of it in alarm: and there she was, going into her swing. And so tonight, a night at the club like any other, the noise, the corny jokes, the usual barbs, John’s wife the center of attention as she always was, Kev was just into his third scotch and beginning to relax — and then, suddenly, there was the spilled drink. Did she seem to dim slightly, to slip from view as the gin splashed down her front? Kevin reared up straight, grabbed a glass to wipe. No, there she was, plain as day, he was just imagining things. Maybe even trying to. Probably he ought to take it easy on the hootch. When John’s pilot pal snatched up the bar rag and dabbed at her boobs, no problem, they bounced like anyone else’s, and Kevin felt reassured.