Joyce Oates - Sourland

He said, sucking in smoke, “Everybody always said, Neil wouldn’t stay in Mount Olive long. That seemed evident.”

Yvonne took this as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. She’d been wiping at her smudged mascara with a tissue, trying not to be too obvious. In the acid-bright air her eyes ached but she didn’t want to retrieve her sunglasses from her handbag, the lenses were so dark-tinted as to seem opaque. She wanted to see Woody Clark clearly, and she wanted him to see her clearly. She heard herself say, in a casual, seemingly retrospective voice, not at all an accusing voice but soft-sounding as she could manage, “I really did want you to know, Woody: I think of you often. You were the love of my life.” She paused. Her mouth twitched. Each was waiting for some further remark, a comic oneliner perhaps. But Yvonne couldn’t think of anything funny enough to risk.

(Oh, they’d joked so much together! Yvonne was remembering that now. Every assignation was a conversation and every conversation was packed with laughs. Her laughter with Woody Clark had been like hyperventilating: once you start, it’s hard to stop.)

Woody said, exhaling smoke like punctuation, “Bullshit! You haven’t thought of me in years. Why’d you think of me ?” It was a sincere question, Woody meant it. “You have your family. You have your ‘corporate attorney’ husband and your ‘Tudor mansion’ — yeah, I heard about that — and your ‘social life’ in — wherever.”

“Averill Park.”

“Upscale suburb of Albany? I’ve heard.”

Yvonne smiled. She was embarrassed, just slightly, but she liked it that Woody had heard. Meaning he’d been asking after her, maybe. Or that, hearing of the departed Wertenbakers, Yvonne and Neil, mutual friends naturally passed on the word to Woody Clark as if, in retrospect, their secret liaison hadn’t been so secret after all but a matter of public record like the Police Blotter column in the Mount Olive Weekly .

Yvonne said carelessly, “‘Social life’ is a hobby. It’s for spare time. It isn’t, you know, real .” Though she recalled how Woody had loved parties, Woody Clark glowing and glistening and loud-laughing so people were drawn to him, how people awaited Woody’s arrival, how a light seemed to go out if Woody Clark had to leave early. “Neil and I, when we go out, don’t even talk together, it’s like we just arrive together then drift away. Some parties, they’re just blurs to me. I feel like some kind of amateur porn actress, smiling and smiling, so-happy smiling, Neil Wertenbaker’s wife, and the sad thing is, if Neil and I just met at one of these parties, for instance seated next to each other at dinner, we wouldn’t be drawn together, at all. One time we were, I guess. But that time is past. Now we’re like” — Yvonne was becoming vague now — “opposite ends of a magnet? That repel.”

“‘Diamagnetic.’” Woody sounded interested. For a moment he brooded, as if considering what to reveal of himself, his marriage. “Weird thing, I’m getting that way with my older brother Steve. You know, Steve? In fact, with lots of people. I mean, people I can’t reasonably avoid. You start out attracted, sort of, then somehow the poles get switched and you end up repelled. It actually feels physical.” Woody thumped the edge of his fist against his torso, in the region of his heart. It was a strange, oddly poignant gesture Yvonne could recall afterward with no idea what it meant.

But Yvonne didn’t want Woody to digress. Not now, when time was running out. (She’d been glancing, wincing, at her watch. At noon, when she’d first arrived at the courthouse, she’d had a yawning abyss of time to get through, now precious minutes were rapidly passing, the minute hand was on its upward swath moving inexorably toward 1 P.M.) She said, almost petulantly, as if they’d been arguing, “Social life is like buzzing insects. I can ‘do’ it but so what? The only things that have ever meant anything to me have happened in private. When I’m alone, I’m — well, you know what I’m like.”

“I never did. Frankly.”

“You did, Woody! You saw into my heart.”

Woody laughed. He was feeling good now, in even the shimmering-hot air of the asphalt parking lot. “Fuck I did. Your ‘heart.’ I never saw you without makeup, for Christ’s sake.”

“Come on, you did! Lots of times, you did. It all got rubbed off, believe me. My skin was raw after you. I mean, raw.” She laughed, sounding like hyperventilation. “I’m covered in scar tissue.”

“Oh, man. Are you. That’s what it is, huh?”

Woody took hold of Yvonne’s chin to tilt it upward. She knew that she looked reasonably good, and her scissor-cut ashy-blond hair looked more than reasonably good, so she didn’t flinch, though that was her instinct. She knew that Woody, joker that he was, yet wouldn’t joke about anything so personal/private as cosmetic surgery, which she had not had, yet, or laser wrinkle removal, Botox, collagen injections which she had. Yvonne poked him in his belly, that felt softer now, like foam rubber. She thought that he would kiss her, at least lightly on the lips, but he didn’t. She said, “You just refuse to acknowledge it, don’t you? What we had, for a while, together.”

The for a while was subtle, poetic. Yvonne wondered where it had come from.

Woody was backing off. The cigarette was some sort of protective shield he’d been using, Yvonne saw that now. He said, “Talk of being ‘alone’ — you were never alone, when you were with me. So how’d I know what you were truly like, when you’re ‘alone’?” He laughed, in a whirl of smoke. He was delighted to be tripping her up. Despite the baby face, Woody was a sharp, shrewd guy. In their circle, some of the men had played poker occasionally, including Neil, and Woody Clark was the one to beat. Despite his relative youth, or because of it, he’d been the one to master home computers early on. When your computer crashed, when you couldn’t retrieve a disk, you went to Woody Clark for help. Even Neil Wertenbaker, for all his pride. And more than once.

By the time the county clerk returned, at 1:08 P.M., two other disgruntled citizens were waiting. Yvonne was processed first, then Woody. She waited for him out back, at the Land Rover. She had the death certificate in a manila envelope, in her handbag. She’d only just glanced at it in the clerk’s office, her eyes damp with moisture. Quickly she’d put it away. And now her car keys were in her hand. Her heart kicked with the sudden impulse to escape, before Woody Clark joined her. How surprised he’d be, how he’d been taking her for granted! The surprise on the baby-bandit face, when he saw she’d gone.

If she waited for him, if she lingered, very likely he would invite her to lunch another time, but she’d have to refuse. (Unless she called her housekeeper on her cell phone. Just maybe, Lucia could drive Jill to her tennis lesson, and swing around afterward to pick her up. Though Yvonne hated to ask. Chauffeuring wasn’t Lucia’s usual task. And Jill would be sulky and sarcastic for the remainder of the day.) She was thinking how, if she slipped away, Woody wouldn’t try to contact her. He hadn’t tried to contact her in more than eight years. She hadn’t tried to contact him. (A few postcards, sent from exotic places like Belize, Costa Brava. Nothing too personal, just for fun.) That had meant something final, and sensible. That had meant something profound, hadn’t it?

“Yvonne? Hey.”

Woody came at her, eager and frowning. His big sunburnt face looked as if it must hurt. His impossibly-blue eyes, too, appeared excessively moist. He was clutching a manila envelope identical to the one in Yvonne’s handbag, return address COUNTY OFFICE OF RECORDS, CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY COURTHOUSE, CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK. Except now Woody was looking like a man in a hurry who wouldn’t be inviting Yvonne to lunch after all. More, he was looking like a guilty man who needs to make a quick call on his cell phone even as he drives hurriedly through Main Street traffic.