Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

She signed up at the Hollywood Canteen as a hostess, of course — we all had to do our part, and Jessica’s specialty was dancing. We went together: I served drinks and dinner, and Jessica danced with soldiers and sailors and flyers: you could see guys walk away from her, delighted by the dance and confused by the conversation. Did she have a boyfriend? they’d ask. Married, she’d answer. Pretend you’re my girl, they’d say, and she’d smile and say she couldn’t. Sure you can, they’d say, but she couldn’t, she was incapable. In some ways she had nearly no imagination, but I can’t say it bothered me much in this instance.

“You let your wife dance with anybody, ” Rocky said, on one of the nights he showed up at the Canteen; we’d performed earlier in the evening.

“Only with guys in uniform,” I told him. Well, if the most valuable thing I had to give to the war effort was my wife, I’d do it, as long as she came home with me at night. And danced in sight of me at all times. And never, ever got talked into a game of make-believe, not with the suavist officer or the most innocent about-to-be-shipped-out sailor boy.

Still, soon enough she got pregnant and even the sailor and soldier boys had a hard time pretending she wasn’t another guy’s girl.

At one elbow, excessive Rocky; at the other, my abstemious wife. When Jessica and I settled into married bliss, it was all I could do not to compare her to Rocky, and not always favorably. She had plenty of rules. She didn’t drink; she hated rich foods; she could deliver a lecture against gravy that made it sound as though gravy had invaded Poland. She couldn’t bear to hear people rhapsodize about food. She strictly forbade indoor smoking.

“This is just a little cigar,” Rocky told her one night, when he’d come over and demanded an old-fashioned midwestern meal; Jess cooked him a cheese omelette, oeufs Des Moines . She’d sent home the cook, an Irish nineteen-year-old named Nora who specialized in rich cream sauces — liquid gout, said Rocky — and mashed turnips. Jess barely tolerated her, torn between hating hired help and despising housework.

“Nevertheless,” Jess said.

“This cigar is next to nothing,” said Rock. But he was already genially sliding it into his jacket pocket. He’d brought over three bottles of champagne and two of wine, all for the three of us, and kept pouring glasses for Jess that she never touched. He emptied his water glass and tried again, as though if he booby-trapped the table with enough vessels she’d eventually fall in.

“Mr. Carter,” Jessica said. From the very start that was their joke, a cheerful and annoyed formality. “I don’t drink wine.”

“A whiskey woman, then. No? Martinis. Gimlets?”

“Coffee,” said Jessica.

“I’m just curious,” he said. “If you wanted to have a drink, what would you have? I’ll buy you the best. Vodka? Or kirsch: I bet kirsch. I once knew a ballerina—”

“I haven’t the slightest,” said Jess. “I’ve never tasted alcohol.”

“Really?” I said. I mean, I knew she didn’t drink, I just didn’t know she never had. I snagged the bottom of one of the glasses Rocky had poured her and sloshed some wine onto the tablecloth, a gift from my sister Ida. Jess got up and went to the bar for some club soda to sop up the stain.

“You married this guy sober ?” Rocky said.

“Drunk with love,” Jess said wryly, which even so delighted me.

“You’ve been to Paris, ” said Rocky. “You lived in New York . Sometime, somewhere, a toast, a prayer—”

“Never,” Jess said.

“Grounds for divorce,” Rocky told me, but of course I loved it: I loved any new thing I learned about her.

I stood up from the table. “We’ll smoke outside.”

“Oh, goody,” he said, “that’s allowed?”

From the lanai, he surveyed my grounds, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what the place was missing. “She’s something. Is she ever something.”

“She’s got ideas,” I offered.

“I noticed.”

I crossed my legs on my chaise longe. “I was hoping the two of you would hit it off.”

He laughed then. “We are . Can’t you tell? We adore each other.”

“Good,” I said dubiously.

“No! Ask her. Jess—” he called.

“Don’t do that. She’ll lie. She’s very polite. . ”

“No she isn’t,” he said.

“No she isn’t,” I agreed.

“But okay. You ask her. Later tonight.” He pulled out the cigar and looked at it. “Oh,” he said, “if only someone would make me straighten up and fly right.”

“Penny’s not the girl for that,” I told him.

“She’s not the girl for anything.” He twirled the cigar with the tips of his fingers, let it slide down the back of his hand, caught it, twirled it again. “She’s gone for good, this time.”

“She’ll be back.”

“Not this time. I told her not to. Penny can take anything except a lack of admiration. I told her”—he sighed—“told her I wasn’t attracted to her. Not after that Sukey business.”

“That Sukey business.”

“Well, really. It’s not that she slept with a girl. It’s that it was Sukey . If Penny was looking, I would have found her a nice date. No, I would have! Some dancer. But Sukey Decker? Who hates me?”

“You finally figured that out, huh? Well, look at it this way. With Penny’s eyesight she probably didn’t realize it wasn’t you till it was too late.”

He pursed his lips.

“Rocky?”

“You’ll pardon me, you son of a bitch, if that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry and laughing, sure. Anyhow, it’s not all Sukey’s fault. Penny’s moved in and out so often I should install a turnstile. Charge admission.”

“Offer to sell her a season pass.”

“You misunderstand. She’s gone . You know, I thought the one advantage of marrying a simple woman was that I’d be able to understand her.”

“You think Penny’s simple?”

“Not dumb. Just not complicated. I thought .”

“You were wrong. She’s plenty complicated.”

“Tell me more.”

“Uh-uh. I’m drunk. I’m liable to say things I don’t mean.”

“Fair enough. Educate me some other way, Professor. Tell me about your wife.”

“She’s not simple either.”

“No kidding. Tell me — tell me what the two of you talk about. It’s late. You’re in the living room. What happens next?”

“Depends.”

“You love her?”

“Yes. I do. Did I forget to tell you that’s important in a marriage?”

“There’s always been plenty of love in my marriage, kid. It’s just that me and the missus have lousy aim . Okay: so you’re in the living room. She’s sitting in her chair. You’re on the sofa. You look at her. What do you think?”

“Mostly, I think it would be nice to crawl across the room on my hands and knees and sit by her feet.”

“Jesus. Well, that’s you. I don’t kowtow to women.”

“You just kowtow with money. You just throw money at the problem. Anyhow, I don’t want to crawl across the floor to kowtow, I don’t think.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. It’s a big room. I think maybe I just want to get across it.”

“Walk.”

“I want to get across it without her asking me where I’m going, and would I get her something while I’m up, and is it time for bed already? I want to get from one side of the room to the other without her noticing.”

“Yeah, but what do you want to do once you get to the other side?”

“I don’t know. Sit there. Put my hand on her ankle.” (Put my hand on her ankle, and feel that tendon at the back of her heel, as subtly lined as a run in a stocking. Put my head in her lap.)