Robert Coover - John's Wife

The announcement of Marge’s candidacy for mayor did not, after all, appear as scheduled, inasmuch as its vehicle, The Town Crier , for the first time in its long history, did not itself appear on its scheduled day, and though most people in town did not even notice this until it was pointed out to them, Marge certainly did. She went immediately to the Crier offices to complain, but found them closed and dark, nor could she rouse anyone when she banged on the door, though she was sure Ellsworth was in there somewhere. She called Trevor from a payphone in the Sixth Street Cafe across the street (Oxford, sitting in there with two of his grandchildren, said he hadn’t seen him today, but then he couldn’t see her either, so what did that prove?) to ask him what she should do, but got only his answering machine. Everywhere she looked, there were giant posters pasted up with her would-be opponent’s goonish mug on them, and she felt ganged up on. What she needed was a friend, but Lorraine had been so evasive of late, Marge decided just to go over to her house and confront her directly: was she on her side or not? When Lorraine came to the door, she looked startled and confused, but she invited Marge in, in her clumsy way (Marge was thinking: even if she’s with me, is this sloppy awkward woman a useful ally or a liability?), and Marge, in spite of her momentary doubts (already she was thinking: if she’s with me, she’s beautiful, but she wondered still why she seemed so standoffish), was so grateful to see a friend in this moment of crisis that she wanted to give her a hug and only held back because so many contrary emotions were flickering across Lorraine’s face (the trouble with this woman is that she’s never grown up, Marge was thinking, somewhat contemptuously, she’s a silly cow who just lets the world run over her) and she was afraid of doing something (but she’s nevertheless the smartest woman in this town of dummies, Marge herself excepted, and she has to struggle against so much more than Marge does, starting with the lout she’s married to, she deserves nothing less than the unconditional love and admiration which she is now feeling for her) that might confuse her all the more. The poor woman seemed about to cry. Was she ill, Marge wondered? “Well, yes and no,” Lorraine said, her voice quavering. “Yes and no what?” “It’s sort of like an illness.” “What is?” It’s odd, Marge was thinking, it’s almost like she was reading my mind. “It’s not really like reading, it’s more like, well, just listening.” “What? You hear everything I’m thinking?” “A lot anyway. It comes and goes. And not just you. Everybody.” Though Lorraine was starting to cry, Marge suddenly felt like the vulnerable one: how do you turn this thing in the head off so you don’t give everything away? “You can’t. I can’t either. It’s very tiring. You were wondering why I’ve been avoiding you lately.” “Because you didn’t want to know what I was thinking?” “Are you reading my mind now?” “No, just guessing.” “I was afraid to find out what you really — well, you know, that you might — and now you’re wondering if I’ve always been doing this or if it just started up.” “Something like that.” “It began one night out at the club. That night John’s wife got the drink spilled down her front—” “I remember. I was there.” She recalled how silly Trevor had got that night, staring at those wet breasts. “He wasn’t the only one.” No. But this was terrible! “You don’t know the half of it, Marge, it’s a living nightmare!” gasped Lorraine, dabbing at her eyes with her blouse tails. “I’m sorry,” she added, responding to something unflattering that Marge was thinking, and tucking in her blouse, went into the kitchen, returning with a box of tissues. She blew her nose and said: “Oh, Marge, I’ve so needed someone to talk to!” Marge, who was not one to express her feelings aloud, was therefore relieved that the genuine warmth she was feeling toward her friend Lorraine at this moment did not need further expression, and instead she said, having just thought of it again: “Lorraine, I came to tell you, I’m running for mayor.” “Really?!” exclaimed Lorraine, her face lighting up with the surprise of it, with the surprise of being surprised. “That’s wonderful! I had no idea!”

Marge had been right. Ellsworth had been in the Crier offices when she knocked, still was. Or, rather, he was on the floor above them in what he liked to call, as a struggling artist, his garret, but which was today just his old dusty workroom above the shop. He’d been dozing fitfully on the cot, exhausted but too disturbed to sleep. He had not, for the first time since he undertook the task, kept today the record, he knew that, but the record he had kept all these years, or thought he’d kept, was now, he’d found, dissolving on him, as though to teach him what he had always known — that words were not, as he liked to pretend, the stubborn monitors of time, adamant and fixed as number, but were time’s recombinatory toys and about as hard as water — and so to taunt him with the futility of his record-keeping mission. Or so it seemed last night: he allowed he was not well, his tired mind too lost to imaginary realms to keep its grip on real ones as firmly as a good reporter’s must. Specimen: the caption he had written for the famous cake-in-the-face wedding photo so many years ago, which, when in his most panicky moment last night he’d looked, had seemed to read: “MAID OF HONOR NOURISHES WEDDING GHOST”—but which had resolved itself to “GUEST” once more when, merely, he had rubbed his eyes and taken a deep breath. In short: the word had not lost its stability, his perception of it had. Was this a consolation? That, in effect, this book — the Stalker! — was driving him mad? Not much of one, nor was the less hazardous notion, which he could not quite believe, that what the word had faithfully kept he had simply remembered wrongly: the bride’s dress, for example, or the year the Pioneer Hotel came down. Dates were dates, places places, and that special wedding section was too well thumbed for him to find himself reading, for the first time, a paragraph deep in the story that began: “On the night before the exchange of vows, the groom bade farewell to the solitary life at a well-rounded entertainment provided by his many staunch friends …” Ellsworthian, no doubt, he could not deny it, but he knew he had not written it, or if he had he had not printed it, and if he had he no longer knew what he had done his whole life long. A possibility, of course; another: that he’d somehow nightmared himself into such an hallucinatory state last night that in his fevered eyes, no boundaries were secure. He’d half-reasoned so, half of reason being all he’d left to work with, and so, as history melted and mutated before him, he’d shaken his head, slapped his cheeks, stomped about the room, and looked again, often to good effect. What finally defeated him, however, and deprived this day the town of its weekly self-portrait was what he found in the celebrated photo of John and his bride dashing for the limousine under a shower of rice. This photo was one of his favorites, for it seemed to capture in its communal seed-burst gaiety the great promise of that historic occasion — only now the unanimity of that good cheer was marred by a single solemn face, staring ominously out through the cloud of falling rice, straight at the camera, and when Ellsworth saw that face he knew in an instant who it was: the Stalker! He was sure of it, even though he didn’t really know what the Stalker looked like. And as Ellsworth in dismay stared back, the Stalker’s eyes seemed to widen and his cheeks to tremble (though perhaps it was only Ellsworth’s hands trembling) as if suppressing laughter: Ellsworth fled. And up here remained in full retreat, thinking, somewhat foggily: the book must go. The burning of the forest was not a nightmare, it was a kind of prescription. He rose from the cot, feeling shaky, stared gloomily at the heaps of manuscript pages scattered about the room: on chairs, the table, in shelves, on the floor. A great devastation loomed; probably he should eat something before he commenced it. He picked up a sheet off a nearby chair, read: Art emerges, not from what is seen, but from the longing for what is not seen. Did he write this? He didn’t remember. Who said it? The Artist, consoling himself now for his loss? No, he was inconsolable. But not really the sardonic Stalker’s style. Then—? Good grief! The Model!