Robert Coover - John's Wife

Clarissa’s understanding friend could hear the phone ringing when she arrived at the manse, but she told Philip, gripping his arm, not to answer it. He flushed and said he didn’t mean to. Without letting go of his arm, Nevada said: “Your sister’s gone, Philip.” “Yeah, I know, she’s up in the air with Clarissa’s Uncle Bruce.” She gazed at him gravely and, somewhat sheepishly, he looked away. She could see how Rex must have had fun with him, but he wasn’t an ugly kid, just scrawny and awkward with a bit of an overbite a beard would hide and a pimply complexion he’d probably outgrow. If he bulked up a bit, he might almost pass for cute, and later she would tell him that and change his life. For now, she said: “It’s worse than that, Philip. Listen, do you have anything to drink around here?” “Uh, well, my dad … in his library …” “Okay,” and still clinging to his bony arm while that damned phone kept ringing, she shrank toward him as though needing his support, letting her hand tremble just a little, and his body quivered in return. He reminded her of somebody, something in his brow or eyes, an old adolescent boyfriend maybe, or some guy who’d kissed her at church camp. She’d taken this on as a job she had to do, but she began to think she might have fun as well. It had been a while since she’d had one of these to play with. “Let’s go there. We can talk.” Once, when she was young and her parents were still trying to get it together, she’d been sent to live for a while with grandparents who were very religious in a gospelly oldtimey way, and for a time Nevada had been taken in, hook, line, and sinker, by the whole Jesus scene, down the aisle, soul to Christ, and all that, so it gave her a special kick now, even though his dad’s study looked more like a prof’s than a preacher’s, to be seducing a green-ass kid in a place like this. Before she let go of him so he could get the drinks, she pulled him close and whispered in his ear: “I don’t think she’s coming back, Philip. Ever.” She pressed her cheek against his scraggy pecs to hear his heart banging away as if he’d just been through a massive workout, and Philip, clumsily, put his hand on her back, then took it away. She withdrew, turning her face aside as though she might be crying, and went over to examine his father’s books while he got the bottles out. “There’s some brandy and, uh—” “Great. Just a couple of fingers. No ice.” Keep it simple. “I feel so shaky.” Jen had told her about the sex manuals, so she looked for them, all the while telling Philip how much she cared for his sister and how upset she was about what might be happening, dropping hints that Bruce was her lover and had made her do this (Philip had overheard their conversation, after all, something she had to worm her way past), and so she also felt betrayed and vulnerable and, well, just a bit heartbroken. When Jennifer had told her about her brother listening in, Nevada had asked in barely concealed alarm if he was going to tell her parents: “No, he’s going to tell Clarissa.” And of course Clarissa would be pissed off and probably run to her father and then they’d all be up shit creek. So, yes, she’d assured Jennifer, shepherding her to her tryst, she’d figure out some way to keep Philip home from the party. “Trust me.” Though now she had different ideas. The poor boy, she knew, had an unrequited crush on John’s snotty daughter and she’d have to get around to Clarissa sooner or later, that was after all why she’d said she was coming over here, and anyway she’d be useful: Nevada had a note in her purse that Philip would have to deliver soon, and Clarissa would be the bait. But not yet. There was still some time to kill. And a novice dong to blitz: she might as well enjoy this. “I’ve been so worried,” she said softly. She’d found the book she wanted, picked out a good page. “I feel somehow calmer … with you, Philip … in a place like this.” Philip was pouring brandy out self-consciously, his back to her, so she stepped up behind him and laid the book open in front of him, wrapped her arms tenderly around his chest, and murmured, her jaw gently massaging his meager traps and dorsals: “This is some kind of church, Philip! I think I’ve, you know, seen the light! How do I join, lover?” She let her hand slide down over his fly, while the other crawled under his shirt. “Like they say,” she whispered, stretching up to lick at his ear while unzipping him, “if you can’t save the soul, at least bless the body.”

While Philip, on this annual Pioneers Day, was finding adventure, not by leaving home, but by returning to it, an ironic experience that must have been shared by many of those forgotten stay-at-homes the oldtime pioneers left behind in the glorious past, his missing sister Jennifer had, earlier in the day, embarked upon the more traditional course to fresh discovery, launching herself irrevocably (Nevada was right, she would never return) into the unknown, feeling herself literally uprooted as she rose into the air inside the magic chariot (as she thought of it, for it did all feel like a fairytale, thrilling and enchanting, but not quite real) that was taking her, princess of the moment, to the royal ball. Though she had no clear idea as to what that ball might be like, Jennifer was not afraid and chose to let herself be surprised, letting her thoughts drift instead to what it was she was leaving behind — willingly of course, but sadly, too, and with nothing but an overnight bag — even as it shrank away below her. Her parents had come here when she was not even five years old and the only thing she remembered from that seemingly infinite time before then was a sudden happiness after great unhappiness, like when (like now!) an impossible wish comes true. And also a favorite Red Riding Hood doll she once had with all its clothes gone except for the hood (whatever happened to it?) and holding Zoe as a newborn baby. All the rest of her remembered life had transpired in that little town down below which now looked like a model village for a train set or a Christmas department store toy town. She could see the shopping mall where she and Clarissa had spent so many funny and exciting times together, and, silly as it looked from up here (it was like an ant farm she’d once had — she’d always called it her “ant theater”—which she’d spent long hours staring at and which had led her to write a line in her diary that said: “If you can’t help doing it, then you might as well make a show out of it!”), she knew she was going to miss it, just as she’d miss her family and especially her dad and her new brother or sister she’d never know and also school and the swimming pool (she could see that, too, like a bright blue postage stamp on her little postcard town) and her own bedroom and her father’s church and Sunday School, and above all her friend Clarissa, who would be hurt and would absolutely hate her for what she was doing, but hopefully not forever, because she just couldn’t help it, and she thought that Clarissa, more than anyone in the world, would understand, since it was Clarissa who had first talked to her about how when you wanted something badly enough nothing else made sense, no matter how crazy your wanting was, back when Jennifer had never known that kind of wanting nor could even quite imagine it, though she’d tried, since Clarissa had made it sound so interesting. The title of an X-rated movie at the mall which they never saw had finally summed it up for them: “Helpless Victims of Desire.” That’s what she now was, one of those. “I’ll never go to my senior prom,” she said out loud, and then she asked to circle the town once again before they flew away forever. As she picked out the places she knew, she realized that they were all associated with some memory or other, such that her life, which was lived in time, and so was here and then, as quickly, not here (when had they taken off? it seemed like a century ago! no, more like: once upon a time …), had somehow got imbedded in all those places down there, so that the town was, well, not her life itself, but a kind of map of her life, and of course the lives of everybody who lived there, all laid on top of each other. And so, though from up here it looked like something you might see in a geography book, a fixed and geometrical something you could pinpoint in space and anchor yourself by, it was not a real place at all, you couldn’t have pinpoints in infinity, after all, didn’t one of her teachers tell her that? That was just an illusion, the sort of illusion she was now leaving behind, escaping, in her fairytale fashion, the fairytale of her childhood. The only thing real was right now. And then again (her heart was banging away like crazy): right now. “Okay,” she said, feeling a bit woozy from staring down at the turning town (it was like being on a fairground ride, and it reminded her of those magical fairs they used to have down there in the city park when they first moved to town, and how excited she always was before they all went, the whole family was, her mom and dad, too, and how one night she got sick on a scary ride that whipped and spun her about like suddenly the world was broken and wouldn’t stop no matter how much she screamed); she leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed, searching for the right words for saying goodbye, which, when found, she spoke, calmed by them, with a dreamy smile: “Let it happen.”