John's Wife: A Novel (27 page)

The dress Pauline wore to John’s bachelor party, torn and stained though it was after, lasted her all through high school; nowadays, her clothes didn’t seem to last her a week. She had been carhopping at a rootbeer drive-in that spring (Daddy Duwayne turned up sometime before Memorial Day, drunk and dangerous, and lost her her job), so when the fat boy invited her to the party, she used up all she’d saved to buy a sleeveless princess dress, a see-through bra, and new panties with a little lace fringe all round. She didn’t have enough left over for new shoes or tights, so she had to go in her old school shoes and socks, the ones with the school colors at the tops. These, one shoe, and the dress were all she got home with, the dress in bad shape already and even worse after Daddy Duwayne got done with her, but she mended it and washed it and went on wearing it right up until the time she moved into Gordon’s studio—in fact, it was still in the trailer when she and Otis went there after Daddy Duwayne’s arrest, only Daddy Duwayne had hung it up in the toilet and shot it full of holes. For three or four years after that, she and Otis were close friends and visited the trailer together a lot, until something happened, she never figured out what (when she went to the police station and asked him, Otis turned red and wouldn’t even look at her and said in his barking way that “that case was solved,” or something like that), and they didn’t become really good friends again for several years. In the meantime, though, the city cleaned up the trailer park and condemned Daddy Duwayne’s trailer and hauled it away, and Otis got them to give her compensation for it, which she appreciated, since Gordon was nice to her but never gave her any money to spend. She bought some new designer jeans, a quilted anorak, some pretty blouses and a beaded vest, new pantyhose and underwear, a slinky sweater, a pair of ankle boots and some wedgies, popular back then, and three new dresses, including one with screenprint reproductions of the World’s Fair, which was her favorite, and she was still wearing almost all these things seven or eight years later—really, right up until the last couple of weeks, when suddenly nothing seemed to fit anymore, not even the boots. Well, age was catching up with her, she supposed, you can’t stay in kid sizes forever, and she made a trip out to one of the malls to buy a few new things, using money from the cash register that Gordon never missed. She’d hardly got used to her new clothes, however, when they no longer seemed to fit either. She split the new pantyhose trying to get them on, the jeans seemed to have shrunk before they’d even been washed, she couldn’t get the nice sloppy sweater with silver tears and glitter on over her head, and her new full skirt suddenly wasn’t full anymore. So, in pinned skirt, bedroom slippers, and one of Gordon’s cardigans, she went hurrying out there again. As she passed through the food court with its delicious smells, she felt a terrible urge to stop for pancakes or a hamburger or maybe several, but she was afraid if she did she might not make it to the fashion shops in time. The safety pin popped on the skirt even as she ran past the video arcade. She not only needed new clothes, she needed them right away.

Clarissa, Jennifer, and Nevada were sitting at a table near the taco bar when Pauline went galumphing by, but only Nevada noticed her, the girls too absorbed with Uncle Bruce’s beautiful girlfriend, whom both supposed to be at least a famous model and maybe even a singer or a movie star. It was amazing running into her out here, and they were both flattered that Nevada recognized them and actually took time to sit down with them and have a smoke and a diet cola with a lemon slice in it. This was hardly Hollywood or the Riviera, and Clarissa suddenly felt embarrassed about this place that she and Jennifer loved so, but when she tried to apologize for it, Nevada waved at her own smoke and said very emphatically, “Your father’s a great builder,” and that made it all right again. Clarissa knew that everyone sitting around them was watching them, and she wished her dad had not made her promise not to take up cigarettes because she felt it would be really cool now to share one with Nevada. When Clarissa asked if Uncle Bruce was in town, Nevada exhaled with pursed lips, smiled, and said: “Well, he’s been in … and out…” When she smiled, you realized she wasn’t quite so young after all, but the little lines that appeared, Clarissa thought, made her more beautiful than ever in a kind of wicked and knowing way. It was how Marie-Claire must have looked. She could see why Uncle Bruce would be crazy about her, at least for a while, but she wasn’t at all jealous, or anyway not very. Jennifer was the real problem. When Nevada asked her where her mother was, Clarissa said she was pretty busy these days and didn’t seem to be around much (busy at what? Clarissa didn’t know), maybe she was on a trip somewhere, and Jen said, “My mom’s always on a trip somewhere,” which made Nevada smile again. Clarissa started to say that Granny Opal, who had brought them out here, had gone to the nursing home to visit her granddad who’d had a stroke, but thought better of it in the nick of time, and instead, pushing her hands into her leather jacket, she asked: “Did Uncle Bruce fly here in his own plane?” “Yes, we both did. He has a new one, you know, a jet. A real dream. Would you two like to go up with us sometime?” “Oh yes!” they both exclaimed at once, and Nevada smiled again, but this time more at Jennifer than at Clarissa, and this gave Clarissa a very unpleasant feeling. What was worse, she could see Granny Opal coming through the door at the far end with that dippy old-lady smile on her face, which for some reason made her want to hit Jennifer. Maybe Bruce’s girlfriend saw her, too, or saw it all in Clarissa’s face, because she stubbed out her smoke, tossed some money on the table (way too much, it was very flamboyant and showed the kinds of places she was used to), and rising in a very smart way that was almost like from a TV commercial, said: “Hey, it’s been cool, team. I like this place. It’s funky and real.” Was she making fun? It didn’t seem like it. Certainly Nevada seemed very sincere when she smiled down at them and added: “I’ll catch you here again sometime soon.”

It disturbed Opal to see the two children sitting with that older woman with the mask-like face who worked for John (when Opal asked her son one day what the woman did, he said she was his troubleshooter, and Opal wondered then: what trouble?), especially when the woman got up and left hurriedly without looking back as though sensing that Opal was approaching the table—what did it mean? what was going on?—but Opal was disturbed by so many things of late, this particular disturbance seemed relatively insignificant and was quickly shelved in a back corner of her mind: little Clarissa was a clever child and could take care of herself. Opal was less assured of her own ability to do so: she felt bewildered, apprehensive, and alone. She had just been visiting Barnaby who as usual mistook her for Audrey, and Opal, for one disorienting moment, had found herself answering back as though she were indeed Barnaby’s dead wife, defending her in her own voice, as it were, from Barnaby’s befuddled harangue. Then, that peculiar goggle-eyed photographer had lumbered into the room uninvited and started taking pictures of poor old Barnaby, standing there scratching his neck, unshaven and dentures removed, dribbling a bit, head cocked awkwardly to one side, bathrobe gaping and the fly of his boxer shorts, too, and Opal, finding this rude intrusion an insult to the old gentleman’s dignity, had upbraided the photographer smartly and sent him backpedaling out the door, again behaving more like Audrey than herself. She had felt certain she had done the right thing, but such outbursts were so rare for her, she had felt faint afterwards, her heart palpitating and her hands shaking, and she had had to sit down suddenly, while Barnaby, cursing her and the rest of the world, staggered off to the bathroom, dragging one leg like an accusation. What was worse, Opal had seen something inside the gaping robe that made her believe Barnaby might be contemplating taking his own life, and she didn’t know what to do about it, or whom to tell. The truth was, at this time in her life, Opal no longer had anyone she could confide in. Her grandchildren, though still dearer to her than her own life, had begun to distance themselves from her; her husband Mitch, having become very important up at the state capitol, was rarely in town anymore, much less at home; her best friends were all passed away; her brother Maynard, with whom she had never been close anyway, was slipping into senility; the young preacher, whom she had also run into at the retirement home, making his pastoral rounds, seemed to her to be on cloud nine most of the time (something Audrey always used to say) and of no use as a source of sane counsel; and even her son and his wife were rarely to be seen, seeming each to be living a life at some remove from her own—even when they were in the same room together, it was as though they existed on different planes, able to pass right through one another without touching. If she spoke up and said, “I believe Barnaby may be thinking about killing himself,” who would listen? She was invisible. Perhaps Barnaby felt the same way. He was very angry about something, and no one was paying any attention. It seemed to have to do with business. He believed Audrey had done something that had destroyed his company. But of course it wasn’t destroyed, it was ticking along very nicely, thank you, one reason Opal saw so little of her son these days. So maybe it was something that had happened years and years ago, if at all. Barnaby took business too seriously. As if he should be worrying about such things now, poor man! It was what had brought on his stroke, as best Opal could tell, she having been at that sad dinner when the old fellow collapsed. There had been some sort of bad news phoned in—Opal, distracted by little Mikey who had come into the dining room to show her his disappearing lipstick trick, not even trying to understand it—and down he’d gone. A shock to everyone. She herself had not been able to move, and later remembered what her friend Kate had said about the moment she got the news of her son Yale’s death: “Time stood still’ That hackneyed line from cheap novels. I suddenly understood it, Opal. Everything stopped. Cold. It was the freezing form that anguish takes in the human heart and mind, turning everything, even time, to stone.” When the ambulance came to take Barnaby away, Opal had found herself in the kitchen, washing dishes, though John and his wife had more than enough domestic help, and talking out loud about the strange but beautiful accidents families were. Was John’s wife standing there with her? She seemed to be. “He’ll be all right,” Opal had said, but perhaps only to her invisible self. And now, here he was, the shattered old man, consumed by rage and resentment, and much of it directed against his own son-in-law, in spite of all that John was doing for him, finding the best doctors, watching over his business, naming the new civic center after him (the dedication ceremony one of the few wholly happy events in Opal’s life of late), and providing generously for him now when he was no longer able to provide for himself. It was tragic, really. Opal hoped her own mind would be clearer when the time came for John to take care of her, so that she could let him know how appreciative she was. It was scary to think about. But it might not be the worst thing that had happened to her. She’d be free from her frettings, for one thing, which now, in her solitude, were quite getting her down. And even if she might not be able to understand it all perfectly, she and her son would be close again, for the first time really since he was a little boy.

Who was that tedious old woman who had just left him? Barnaby couldn’t remember, didn’t really care. Thought for a moment it was Audrey and he started taking his frustration out on her, but the words didn’t come out right. And then he knew it wasn’t Audrey, Audrey was dead, and he shut up, feeling like a fool. Or two fools, more like it, he seemed to have two brains working at once, and neither of them worth a bent nail. What was on his mind, or minds, when he first got out of hospital, was how to kill himself. Whatever he attempted, they’d try to stop him, he knew that, and though it wasn’t his intention, trying to outwit them probably helped keep his broken cookie from crumbling altogether, at least for a while. John had already arranged for his incarceration in this “assisted living” complex, as it was euphemistically called, and it was well-furnished but in John’s style, which is to say, as impersonal as a chain hotel suite. Barnaby told them with what words he could find and get out that he wanted some of his own things, and he insisted on being taken to his old home to sort through his stuff by himself. This was not easy. Nothing worked right. It took him hours to open and close a drawer. They wanted to help, or so they said. He had to throw tantrums to chase them away and let him be. Bad luck on the hunting rifle, they’d already found it. But not his handgun. Bit of an antique, but it still fired, and it was loaded. He smuggled it out in a shoebox which he hid at the back of the closet of a senile old granny who lived down the corridor, knowing they’d search his own place, and they did. Only trouble was, he forgot where he hid it, even for a time forgot that he
had
hidden it, demanded to be taken back to his old home again, and when he couldn’t find it anywhere, thought they’d confiscated that, too. But hadn’t he just seen it? It was all confusing. Then, on a more or less sleepless night at four in the morning, he suddenly remembered and he went staggering down the hall, dragging his dead leg behind him, and got it. The old lady was wide awake in there, sitting propped up in bed. He nodded at her, but she just stared dimly. It was a long painful shuffle back to his room, seemed like miles, but he finally made it and prepared to shoot himself. Trouble was, he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to his daughter. He wanted to warn her about what was happening and to tell her he loved her. He’d tried writing this out before, but his writing was illegible. Even he couldn’t read it right after he’d written it. The next time she visited him, he’d tell her, and then he’d shoot himself. If she ever did visit him again. It had been ages. Not, as best he could remember, remembering not being what he now did best, since those ruthless civic center dedication ceremonies, when she’d turned toward him for a moment and looked him straight in the eyes, and he’d felt then like his heart was cracking just like his brain had done. Meanwhile, he hid the gun under some old letters and photos in a desk drawer and then realized, even before he’d pushed the drawer shut, that he had almost forgotten already where he’d put it. So he spent the rest of that morning stitching a kind of holster made out of a thick sock into the inside of his lounging robe, under the armpit where it was less obvious, forcing his old builder’s hands to do what, clumsied by a sundered brain, they didn’t know how to do anymore.