Robert Coover - John's Wife

The early light of day found Barnaby’s lawyer and fellow plotter Maynard in the woods at the edge of town, kicking irritably through the dew-drenched undergrowth. He didn’t remember coming out here; rage must have brought him. The birds had their dawn chorus cranked up full throttle, the shrieking little shit-factories — he wished he had his gun along to shut the fuckers up. He must have dressed in the dark: red-and-orange golf shirt with the green monogrammed pocket now containing the house keys, chafing his left nipple, the shirt tucked into black pinstripe suit pants belted high over his pot, tennis shoes without socks. In the past when he’d stormed away on sleepless nights, Veronica had sometimes locked him out. She could never explain herself afterwards. Maybe she wanted him to hit her, needing the attention. She often hit him back or threw stuff at him. It was about their only way of talking to each other; the rest was mostly just senseless screaming. The only thing in his pants pockets was the ancient garter, always with him, frayed and limp from so much fondling over the years. Maynard fondled it now. It was dark in here and damp, but beyond the leaves a pale violet light was spreading across the sky like a morbid stain. It was probably going to be what some would call a beautiful morning. Maynard hacked up a gob and spat contemptuously. Beauty. Only humans in their egomaniacal perversity could dream up such a sick idea. Warped everything. One night out at the club he’d heard old Alf argue that intimations of beauty were nothing more than the old pleasure/pain principle in operation, and Maynard could go along with that but not with the association of beauty with pleasure. He came on a patch of wild bluebells poking up in the dim light, stepped on them. That’s it, he told himself. Fuck everything. Christ! He loathed — bitterly, deeply, and intimately — this town and everyone in it, loathed his wealth, his career, his family, his past, his future, life itself. What would have happened, he often wondered, had he not been born a Maynard between Maynards? What if he had been free to leave town for good when he left high school as so many did? As apparently his brat of a son had done, a Maynard or no? Same thing probably. And (he twisted the garter around his fingers) fleeing this shithole was just not on, not for him, not for the moony lovesick Nerd. Whom he loathed above all others. Ahead of him, like secret writing in the dark forest, loomed a stand of young birch trees, ghostly in the dawn glow, inviting his admiration. He turned away in disgust, found himself at the edge of a small thorny ravine. Recognized it. A grin spread painfully across his bristly face, couldn’t stop it. The little guttersnipe’s baptism that wretched night had been his as well. In commemoration of the sickening occasion, he took his prick out to pee and was just letting go when his true love came riding by on her bicycle, dressed in her white tennis costume. She waved and smiled, but he could not wave back, both hands busy trying to stop what he was doing and get covered up without pissing all over himself. And then (he was beardy and rumpled, unwashed, smelled bad, was dressed for the circus with his widdling weenie on view, no wonder she didn’t stop) she was gone. He staggered down through the ravine and up to the road, thought he could see her pedaling around the turn just up ahead, a flash of pure white like a bird in flight, and hitching up his pin-striped pants, Maynard II went stumbling after.

The daughter of the lady cyclist glimpsed by the rumpled lawyer at the edge of Settler’s Woods was getting married. It was a modern wedding. The bride was dressed in a string bikini, high heels, and a bridal veil that opened and closed like a shower curtain. It was not clear who the groom was, but Clarissa’s father was there, looking pleased as punch, and chiding Granny Opal for not being with it, the old stick. Jennifer, who had been kept awake all night by the wanderings in and out of her bedroom by her spacey sleepwalking big-bellied mother, was glad her best friend was getting married and so wouldn’t be mad about getting left out of the day’s coming adventures. Which she could not quite imagine but which filled her with a kind of apprehensive delight, like the first time she had to jump off the high diving board, knowing she’d love it if she didn’t kill herself. Her dad was there that time. He didn’t do anything, he didn’t hold her hand or jump with her or even say anything, he just stood down there smiling up at her in that easy way he had, and she knew it would be all right. Nevada had a smile like that and now it was Nevada Jen trusted to see her through whatever was coming next. She could hardly wait, she was so in love she ached all over, but she was scared, too, and Nevada’s smile seemed to say: Stay cool, don’t worry, it’s okay. Jump. Nevada was at the wedding, too. She was arranging the flowers. Heaps and heaps of them, so piled up that people disappeared in and out of them. It looked like fun, sort of like playing house in leaf piles, but when Jennifer started to follow her sister Zoe into a particularly inviting hole to roll around, Nevada, smiling her serene smile, steered her away and up toward the altar where the wedding was to take place. Jen’s mother, who was no longer pregnant, was up there playing the organ (dressed only in her underwear, good grief, Mom as usual), and her father was trying to get her brother Philip to come out from behind the pulpit where he was hiding. Philip was up to some kind of mischief back there, and her father was getting exasperated. “It’s beginning!” he shouted. But it wasn’t. Almost everyone in town was there, wandering about in a completely disorderly fashion like at a very crowded cocktail party. It’ll never happen, Jennifer thought, laughing. They’re just pretending. It was funny and she kept laughing, almost like someone was tickling her. But there was also something dangerous about it all. Clarissa had stained her lips with real blood as though to try to warn Jennifer about something, something she couldn’t tell her out loud, and when Jennifer, trying to be cool and friendly, asked, “So, who’s the lucky guy?” Clarissa’s eyes flashed with anger and something like panic. “Hey, sorry,” Jen said (the church seemed to have darkened: had they started the ceremony?), and she noticed now the little tattoo just below and to one side of Clarissa’s navel. It was of a semiautomatic weapon, its black barrel pointed down into the bikini, butt toward the hipbone. This had several meanings, she knew, like “PULL MY TRIGGER” and “DO IT AND DIE,” which was the name of a hot movie out at the mall, but it also seemed to have a secret message, meant for Jennifer alone. There was a little flame at the tip of the gun barrel like a licking tongue and two words by the handle she couldn’t quite see. It was, she realized, a cry for help. Clarissa was going to die! Or someone was! Jennifer went looking for Nevada but apparently she’d done her decorating job and left. Her dad was gone, too, and the music had turned metallic and heavy, like a funeral march performed by a rock band, not at all the sort of thing her mother played. Old Hoot, the hardware store man, was in the pulpit, looking straight at her and shouting out in his loud nasal whine about the fires of hell, which sounded more like the farce of hail. But in fact it was getting hot in here. Jennifer understood now why Clarissa had been wearing a bikini, it made sense. The flowers had wilted and were beginning to rot, it was suffocating. There was a spotlight on her and the relentless music was driving her up the wall. Then the man in the pulpit shouted out something really weird: “Cut off her hair!” he cried. What—? Jennifer sat up, sweating, with the sun in her face and music blasting out of her brother’s room, remembering now the words she’d seen on the tattoo under Clarissa’s navel: “BUTT OUT.” She smiled to herself, pushing her tangled hair out of her face, wiping her neck and chest with her nightshirt. Her father was right. It was beginning.