The Wonders of the Invisible World (22 page)

English 242, Beowulf to Chaucer. A seminar room with cinder-block walls, and windows you pulled down to open; like an oven door, except they stopped at an acute angle. Outside, blue sky, trees starting to turn. Fall semester, her junior year, first day of class. She waited to learn what name he would
answer to, the one with the violin case and the wrinkled oxford shirt and the full lower lip, unsmiling. Then three unforgivable weeks of catching his eye and simpering. In those days, Ben practiced six hours at a stretch, and he dropped the class before midterms. But by that time—well, not what you want to be thinking about. This much was clear: she had been married to him, but he had never been married to her. It had all been an invasion of his privacy. And it had meant nothing the time he’d come with her to the vet’s to have poor, sick, old Bootsy put down; on a plastic sofa, in a waiting room that stank of disinfectant, he’d turned to her and said, “There’s always me.” So when he left and she learned that he was still growing inside her, she’d had him uprooted. She was still uprooting him, every day.

She checked for tension again, found clenched fists. So puzzling that after being in this body for thirty-odd years you still don’t know how to shut it down. Yet somehow it happens: the crazy thought comes, and that’s the last you know.

Faye set the pies on the counter and turned off the oven. She felt worse for having slept: the inside of her mouth tasted foul, and a pinpoint of headache was coming and going high on the left side of her forehead. She washed the mixing bowls and the rolling pin, ran water through the colander, wiped off the countertop. She took Paul’s book off the dining room table and reshelved it in the living room, between
The Golden Bowl
and
The Penal Colony.

Down at the brook, Karen was sitting against the big beech tree, her hair wet, her shorts and T-shirt dry.

“Hi,” said Faye, seating herself on the big rock. “Looks like you found it okay. How’s the water?”

“Muddy. But nice. You going in?”

“No. I was being polite. What are you reading?”

Karen held up Jung’s
Answer to Job.

“Yikes. How is it?”

“Muddy. Entertaining, in a weird way. He’s trying to psychoanalyze God. I think.” She picked up a beech leaf to mark her place, and set the book on the ground. “You
are
being polite.”

“Okay,” Faye said, “I’ll stop. If you want Paul, you can have him.”

“
What
?”

“Oh, shit. Forget I said it. Please? Sometimes I just get the impulse to say something completely insane just to see what happens next.”

“Faye. What is this? Why would you think—”

Faye shook her head. “You don’t get it. I mean, I don’t blame you.” She stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I’m sorry, Karen. Really. Look, it would be a mistake to take me seriously. Really. I just say things all the time now.”

Karen got up and put an arm around Faye’s shoulders. “You’re really not doing so hot, are you?”

Faye shook her head. Karen moved in front of her to put both arms around her.

Faye twisted away. “Really. Don’t. Karen, just please don’t.” She walked to the edge of the brook and squatted to put a hand in the water. “Too cold,” she said. “You about ready for a drink? It must be almost happy hour.”

“Look. Would it be better if Allen and I left tonight? If we can’t change our plane tickets, there must be a bus or something.”

“Karen, no, really. Absolutely not. Could you just forget it? Just”—she cut through the air with her hand at chest level—“
canceled.
Really. Okay?”

“Do you want to tell me what this is about? It’s not about Paul.”

“No,” Faye said. “I guess it’s not about Paul. Poor Paul. Then again, poor Paul can take care of himself.”

Karen looked at the water. “I was going to ask you before if you still heard anything from Ben.”

“Card on my birthday. With a note.
There
was a shitty day.”

“Where is he?”

“Leavenworth, Washington. I looked it up on the map. The nearest big place is Wenatchee. It’s on Route Two. Which happens to be the same Route Two that goes through Burlington. What you came here on. He said he’s living in a cabin and building violins. I assume he’s there with somebody. He said he still thinks about me.”

“Bastard,” Karen said.

“I don’t know,” Faye said. “Yeah, sure. On the other hand, why not say what you feel like saying? It’s just that it’s so fucking unfair. I mean, I have to take Route Two to get to the fucking supermarket.”

“Listen,” said Karen. “Just one piece of sisterly advice and I’ll shut up, okay?”

Faye shrugged. “Shoot.”

“Wouldn’t it be better all around if you just let go of him? And tried to repair what you’ve got with Paul?”

“Right. Absolutely right. Now shall we go get that drink? Time’s a-wasting.” Faye stood up and motioned with her thumb. Karen sighed and followed her up the path.

They’d gotten all the way up to the road when Karen said, “Crap. My book. You don’t have to wait for me.” She started back down the path, and Faye watched the sunlight and shadow make zebra stripes on her long legs until she disappeared into the trees. Faye ducked through the fence between the strands of barbed wire, pushing the top one up, away from her hair and her back, and keeping her calves clear of the bottom one. Then she straightened up, looked across the road at the house and saw Paul’s truck parked in the dooryard, alongside
Thurston Martin’s. She decided to pick wildflowers and wait for Karen.

She’d gathered a few Indian paintbrushes and black-eyed Susans and was looking for ferns to set them off when Karen came squirming through the fence.

“Lucky you,” Faye said. “You get to see the Thurston Martin show.”

Karen fanned herself with her book. “Will I like it?”

“
De gustibus non est disputandum.
As Thurston might say.”

She could smell cigarette smoke through the screen door. The three men were sitting at the kitchen table. Faye said, “Hello, Thurston,” and breezed past to get a Mason jar for the flowers. Then, remembering her manners, she turned to introduce her sister and saw Karen staring. A shotgun lay across the table, on top of its zippered case, among the beer cans. One, unopened, had the plastic thing still attached: five empty circles. No opera today.

“Oh, for a camera,” Faye said. “Wouldn’t I give Diane Arbus a run for her money.”

Paul’s face was red, maybe from the sun, maybe from drinking. “Thurston’s going to sell me his shotgun,” he said. His accent got thicker when Thurston was around.

Faye shot him a quick fake smile. “Oh. And what will
Thurston
do for a shotgun?”

“Hell, I got two, three over to the house,” Thurston said. “This one here, this used to belong to my father.” He took a last drag of his cigarette and stuck it into a beer can. Hiss.

“What do you intend to do with a shotgun, Paul? Shoot hippies?”

Thurston laughed.

“It’s hunting season coming up,” Paul said. “And I been thinking it might not be a bad idea to have something around anyway. Just in general.”

“In general?” Faye said.

“Plus that woodchuck’s been at your garden.”

“Christ,” said Thurston, who pronounced it to rhyme with
floor joist,
“you don’t want to go after
him
with a shotgun. Tear up the friggin’ plants. You want a twenty-two if you’re looking for a varmint gun.”

“Oh,
do
get a varmint gun,” Faye said. “You could get rid of all the undesirables.”

“Hey, Allen?” Karen said. “Come here a second, I have to show you what Faye’s been doing in the garden.” Allen looked puzzled, but he stood up and Faye watched them walk out the screen door hand in hand, Karen in her little shorts. She turned back to the table and saw Thurston looking.

“That your sister?” he said, wrenching the plastic off the last beer.

“That’s right,” Faye said. “And if we were all as diplomatic as my sister, I could be talking with Paul right now.”

Thurston popped the beer open, stood up and looked at Paul. “You want me to—” He pointed his thumb at the shotgun.

“Just leave it,” said Paul.

“Be outside,” Thurston said.

When the screen door slapped behind him, Faye said, “I won’t have that in the house. You can tell your friend the sale’s off.”

“The hell’s this?” Paul said. “It’s not your money. You sit in the goddamn house feeling sorry for yourself while I’m on the goddamn truck all day. So
you
don’t tell
me.
”

“What is this, the ‘Working Man’s Blues’? Give me a break, Paul. I mean, this is a game: we live in this house because you closed out an IRA and plunked down fifty thousand dollars. So don’t hand me this Merle Haggard bullshit.”

“You think it’s a game? We come here on the strength of God knows what, you get laid off and you decide to have a
breakdown. Where, exactly, do you think the mortgage payments come from every month? Not from
you.
”

“You love to think you’re a helpless victim,” she said. “Because it absolves you of any and all responsibility.”

“
I
love to think
I
’m a victim?”

“And then you get to say, ‘She’s a castrating bitch, she humiliated me in front of my friends,’ and everybody is
so
sympathetic. Why don’t you go out and talk to Karen? I’m sure she’s just dying, just
itching,
to listen to all your little marital problems.”

Paul stared at her. “You’re psychotic,” he said.

“Oh, he’s talking better all of a sudden. Are we dropping the mask? What happened to the working-class hero?” She stuck out her lips and put on a deep voice. “You got it, bitch?”

“Okay,” he said. “End of discussion. I am buying, this gun, from Thurston. Clear?”

“Paul,” Faye said. “In view of everything, do you really think it’s a good idea to have a gun in this house?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it in the truck, how’s that? I’ll go the whole route, the gun rack and everything. And that way you can have the pleasure of complaining to your sister that I’ve gone native.”

She gave him the finger, then said, “It smells in here.”

Out in the garden, she found Karen and Allen, her arm around his waist, talking with Thurston Martin, who was squatting by one of the zucchini plants. The three heads turned, and Thurston got to his feet, dangling his beer can between fingertips and opposable thumb. “Just saying you ought to pick some of these big ones,” he said.

“Thanks for your concern, Thurston,” Faye said. “You can go back in now. The little woman has been put in her place.”

Thurston looked at her, then started for the house.

“Faye?” said Karen. “Allen and I think we should head back tonight. Allen’s got a bunch of work to do before Monday.”

“Oh,” Faye said. “Should I be gracious? That’s clearly what’s called for here.”

Allen looked at the ground. Karen said, “He really does have work. And it doesn’t seem as if our being here is helping things any. I mean, we obviously didn’t pick a very good time.”

“Aren’t you diplomatic,” Faye said.

“Not really,” Karen said, “But I just want you to know, if you ever feel like coming down, either by yourself or—”

“Yeah. Well. Thanks. Look, you’re both handling this very smoothly, and old Faye intends to hold up her end. I’ll tell Paul what’s going on so you don’t have to go through all that again, he can drive you over to Burlington, we’ll find a shopping bag so you can carry that pie, and we’ll just have this whole thing together in no time.”

“Faye, I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Come on, come on, you’re taking this way too seriously. This will all blow over. You guys can come back in December and we’ll have an old-fashioned Christmas, what do you say? Paul can kill us a goose with his shotgun, and we’ll all sit around and drink smoking bishop.”

Faye sat on the doorstep looking across the road. She had listened and listened, following the sound of the truck into silence; by now it had been silent for God knows how long. Here and there the scream of a jay, and that was all. She tried to wish that if the truck were going to crash it would wait to crash on the way back, so only Paul would die. It wasn’t actually a heavy thing, wishing people dead; she had learned this during her analysis. Everybody did it. Obvious example: children wishing their parents dead. Of course they feel guilty if that wish should appear to come true—the child is angry with the parents, the parents coincidentally die in a car crash—and then they need to enter analysis to straighten out
the misunderstanding. But what about when parents wish their children dead? “These are not children,” her shrink had said, when she told him about her abortion. He’d said it angrily, unless she’d misperceived. The
quality
of the life, that was his concern. “We are physicians,” he had said, full of indignation at human suffering. In his work with teenage mothers, he’d seen what damage could be done. Yet damage was the foundation stone of his practice. So it all went around and around and around.

Down the driveway, beyond the mailbox, across the road, the land dipped down to the brook, then rose again to a grassy hillside, belonging to somebody—Paul must’ve said the name a hundred times—whose black-and-white cows stood in a complicated arrangement against the green. The phrase
effictio portrait
came into her head. Above the pasture, the wooded hilltop, a deeper green in which she already saw flecks of red; it was crazy to pretend she didn’t. Strange and terrible powers were available to us, no matter what her shrink had said, but in most cases you could wish and wish and wish—wish people dead, wish the leaves green again, wish your husband, your real husband, back in your arms and babies beyond number issuing from between your legs—while everything just stayed silent and inert, exactly as it was.

She stood up and went back inside. Her wildflowers lay on the kitchen counter; better get them in water. She lowered her palm above the remaining pie until she felt heat, then edged it back up, feeling for the boundary where the heat left off. Then she walked over to the table and touched the shotgun, still lying on top of its fake-leather case. She touched the stock, then the barrel; why should metal feel colder than wood? She couldn’t imagine an explanation that wasn’t mystical. At least touching this thing took away some of the awe. After all, it was just an object: its presence probably wouldn’t change things much,
unless you allowed it to become an emblem of something. She sat down at the table and started lifting the beer cans, found one that was nearly full, examined the edge of the hole for cigarette traces, sniffed, took a sip. It was so quiet in here that her whole body jerked when the phone rang. She jumped up to get it, then sat back down and let it ring and ring and ring, thinking:
As long as I don’t pick it up, it isn’t anybody.