Steven Millhauser - The King in the Tree

Do you know what I wanted? What I really wanted? What I wanted, the thing I wanted — it was to become a little girl again, in saddle shoes, with a dab of Mercurochrome on my knee.

Yup, you got it, sister. To start over. .

Oh and by the way. I was wrong. No bookcase here. But the ghosts of books — from Robert’s time. See? One on the radiator — one on the floor — and there, on the edge of the tub.

You know, when you hate your body, then you think continually about your body, and when you think continually about your body, then you become nothing but a body. You become a disgusting little materialist. You become a secret sensualist, a sort of — a sort of hangdog sensualist. Oh, I like that. Hangdog sensualist. I do have a way with words sometimes, you will grant me that. “You have a way with words,” Robert once said, and then he paused, thinking it over, and then he said: “Sometimes. I grant you that.” So. Let us grant me that. But here’s the thing: I hated my body. I hated my body because it wasn’t your body. You look as if you’re about to maul me with a compliment. Please refrain. Besides, I didn’t hate only my body. I also hated your body. Why don’t we change the subject?

Robert’s study. Wall-to-wall books, arranged by historical period. And listen to this. Within each period? — alphabetical by author. Is that order, or what? All summer long I seemed to hear him pacing. Scrape the chair back, pace, scrape the chair forward. Scrape it back. Pace, scrape, pace, scrape. God. Why no rug? Sometimes I blame his book for everything. Of course that’s too easy, it lets everyone off the hook: you, Robert, and li’l ol’ me. Besides, a man set on betraying his wife is bound to find an excuse. Bound to. Still! That awful book. Robert was too self-critical ever to write a book. A book for him was pure torture. He should never have taken that leave. Poor Robert. And there you were, waiting for him in that little house, with your long legs practically sticking out the window. You must have seemed — the solution. Of course he needed consoling. Those long walks he used to take that spring! That was the time, you know, when I felt something was a little wrong between us, a little. . off. Later I realized he must have met you on one of those walks — unless he’d met you before, and was simply walking straight to your bedroom. What drove him crazy wasn’t the knowledge that he wasn’t going to finish his book. It was the knowledge that he wasn’t going to begin it. He took notes, billions of notes, typed up parts of a chapter, fragments — never good enough. Scrape, pace, scrape, pace. A body in a bed was something he could count on. Makes a man feel young again, m’boy. Nothing like greasing the old engine. Of course you got something out of it, too. A needy man. A man wanting to be rescued. What could be better than that?

Did I fail Robert? Was there something I didn’t understand? Of course I brooded over that too. Because if your heart is broken, if I may use that dear old expression, famous in song and legend, then the time comes, sooner or later, when you begin to wonder. . at first only for a second or two, then for longer periods of time. . whether you deserved to have it broken. . if I may continue to make use of these time-honored phrases. Because surely it wouldn’t just happen to you, something like that, for no reason.

So maybe Robert’s little infidelity was the very sign that was supposed to alert me to my own lack of something. It was supposed to show me the way. And I misread the sign. Imagine! A bad reader, after all.

Oh my. I do hope I’m not sounding histrionic. That’s what he called me once: histrionic. It was a way of showing he disapproved of my sadness. Robert’s histrionic wife. I just love the theater, darlin’—don’t you? All those histrionic people.

I don’t know when I began to suspect he hadn’t stopped seeing you. After my. . breakdown, I somehow imagined. . But you see how naive I was! I thought a sense of decency — a sense of respect. . Even you, I thought. . But no. He must really’ve liked those black lace undies. And you must have enjoyed showing them to him. That fall he began teaching again, three days a week, but he’d always rush right home. Make sure nothing had happened to the crazy wife. A girl can fall down the stairs, you know. She can get dizzy in the bathroom. She can fall out a window and break her pretty neck. Razor blades have been known to cause trouble in the most well-regulated families. A house is a dangerous place: kitchen knives, deadly hammers, sleeping pills, gas stoves. . Ours is electric, but I’ve always preferred gas, at least for disposing of unwanted wives. Rope. Gasoline. Matches. No wonder he hurried home, the poor man. He’d find me lying in bed, in my nightie, or else in the shower. But I was already getting better! I was eating a little. I felt like a house that had burned down, leaving the charred foundation and half a chimney. Of course, I was still a burned-down house. It’s just that I wasn’t burning down any more.

Besides, what was all the fuss about? Men have affairs every day. It’s chic — it’s cool — and good for you too. Keeps down that bad cholesterol. And great for your lower back. The numbers say it all. According to the most recent survey, ninety-nine point eight percent of all American husbands have been unfaithful to their wives at least twice in the last year. Did you know that? Also, and this may surprise you, ninety-two point four percent of all American men have slept with their own mothers. Sad but true. But here’s the good news. Ninety-four point six percent of men with erectile dysfunction say that it doesn’t really matter — they never enjoyed it anyway. I found these facts in women’s magazines. I was beginning to eat, as I mentioned, and I was starting to go out a little in the car: CVS, Grand Union, you name it. Wherever I went, women’s magazines sprang out at me. Sleek, insolent panther-women looking at me with jungle eyes. Cheekbones like ski slopes. Thumbs hooked in bikini underpants, like a guy wearing jeans. Forty-three Ways to Snag Your Man. One Hundred Sixty-three Ways to Drive Him Insane with Lust. All over America, housewives were reading this stuff. Was I the only one who wasn’t in on the secret? I bought a few and read them sitting in the car. Eat All You Want and Get Thin. Twelve Sizzling New Positions. Apparently the thing to do was find his E spot. When you found it, you pressed it. Then he raped you. Your marriage was saved. The trouble with the E spot was that it was very hard to locate; it was somewhere near the abdomen, or the pancreas. You could waste a lot of time looking for it, and meanwhile your man might fall insanely in love with someone else— someone thinner than you. I think I’m talking too fast. Am I talking too fast? I feel that I’m talking a little rapidly and I am going to make a conscious effort to control myself.

There.

One evening after returning from the Grand Union — I liked to walk up and down the long aisles pushing my basket, how it soothed me — I took a drive to your house. I parked almost across the street and watched the front windows. In the living room the blinds were down but the lights were on. Your bedroom was dark. After a while I saw the light go on in your bedroom. The blinds were closed and lowered halfway. I saw you move toward the window and lower the blinds some more, as if to keep me from spying. I could see only part of you, from a little above the waist to about mid-thigh. You were wearing an Indian-print skirt with a wide red belt. I thought of my bathroom mirror: I was the woman without a bottom half, and you — you were nothing but a bottom half. Then I imagined you were a mermaid in reverse, legs below and fish scales above, and the idea struck me as so absolutely incredibly hysterical that really I nearly died laughing.