“Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you.”
“Do you really, really love me, I mean, would you have died for me if the attacker had made you make a choice — it’s her or you — say he said that. Would you have stepped forward?”
“I was tied to the chair,” said John Wildstrand.
“Metaphorically.”
“Of course, metaphorically. I would have.”
“I wonder.”
She began to look at him skeptically. Her eyes measured him. At night, now, she wanted lots of reassurance. She seduced him and scared him, saying things like, “Make me helpless.”
“He made me helpless,” she said one morning. “But he was kind. Very kind to me.”
Wildstrand took her to the doctor, who said it was hysteria and prescribed cold baths and enemas, which seemed only to make her worse. “Hold me, tighter, squeeze the breath out of me.” “Look at me. Don’t close your eyes.” “Don’t say something meaningless. I want the truth.” It was terrifying, how she’d opened up. What had Billy done?
Nothing, Billy insisted on the phone. Wildstrand was ashamed to be repelled by his wife’s awkward need — it was no different from his own need. If she’d been this way earlier on, he recognized that maybe he would have responded. Maybe he wouldn’t have turned to Maggie. Maybe he would have been amazed, grateful. But when Neve threw herself over him at night he felt despair, and she could sense his distance. She grew bony and let her hair go gray, long, out of control, beautiful. She was strange, she was sinking. She continually looked at him with the eyes of a drowning person.
Murdo Harp
JOHN WILDSTRAND WENT to visit his father-in-law in the retirement home which his money had endowed. The Pluto Nursing Home. This place did not depress him, though he could see the reasons why it might. Murdo Harp was resting on his single bed, on top of a yellow chenille coverlet. He’d pulled an afghan over himself, one that Neve had knitted, intricate rainbow stripes. He was listening to the radio.
“It’s me. It’s John.”
“Ah.”
Wildstrand took his father-in-law’s hand in his. The skin was dry and very soft, almost translucent. His face was thin, bloodless, almost saintly looking, even though Murdo Harp had been ruthless, a cutthroat banker, a survivor.
“I’m glad you’re here. It’s very peaceful and quiet, but I woke up at four A.M. before the rest of them this morning. I thought to myself, I hope someone will come. I want to go somewhere. And you came. It’s good to see you, John. Where are we going?”
John ignored the question, and the old man nodded.
“How’s my little girl?”
“She’s just fine.” No one had told Neve’s father, of course, what had happened. “She has a cold,” Wildstrand lied. “She’s staying in bed today. She’s probably curled up around her hot water bottle, sleeping.”
“The poor kid.”
Wildstrand resisted telling Neve’s father, as he always did, “I’ll take good care of her.” How wrong, and how ironic, would that be? The hand relaxed and Wildstrand realized that his father-in-law had fallen asleep. Still, he continued to sit beside the bed holding the old man’s slender and quite elegant hand. With someone this old a little wisdom might leak out into the room. There was, at least, a pleasant sensation of rest. To have given up. Nothing else was expected. The old man had done what he could do. Life was now the afghan and the radio. John Wildstrand sat there for a long time; it was a good place to consider things. The baby would be born in four months and Billy and Maggie were living in a sturdy little bungalow not far from Island Park. Billy was just about to start technical college classes. The last time Wildstrand had visited, Billy was just walking out the door. He shook hands but said nothing. He was wearing his old enfolding topcoat, a long, striped beatnik scarf, and soft, rumpled-looking boots.
As for Maggie, she was often alone. Wildstrand couldn’t get away much because of Neve. Maggie understood. She was radiant. Her hair was long, a lustrous brown. They went into her bedroom in the middle of the day and made love in the stark light. It was very solemn. He’d gone dizzy with the depth of it. When he lay against her, his perceptions had shifted and he saw the secret souls of the objects and plants in the room. Everything had consciousness and meaning. Maggie was measureless, but she was ordinary, too. He stepped out of time and into the nothingness of touch. Afterward, Wildstrand had driven back to Pluto and arrived just in time for dinner.
Leaving the old man, Wildstrand usually patted his arm or made some other vague gesture of apology. This time Wildstrand was still thinking of his time with Maggie, and he bent dreamily over Neve’s father. He kissed the dry forehead, stroked back the old man’s hair and thoughtlessly smiled. The old man jerked away suddenly and eyed Wildstrand like a mad hawk.
“You bastard!” he cried.
The Gesture
ONE DAY NEVE was sitting in her bathrobe at lunch, tapping a knife against the side of a boiled egg. Suddenly she said, “I know who he was. I saw him in a play. Shakespeare. The play had two sets of twins who don’t meet until the end.”
John Wildstrand’s guts went ice-cold and he phoned Billy as soon as he returned to the bank. Sure enough, Billy had been in the previous summer’s production put on by the town drama club. He’d been one of the Dromios in The Comedy of Errors. Wildstrand put the phone down and stared at it. Neve was at the town library at that very moment looking through archived town newspapers. This was how it happened all of a sudden that instead of taking college courses, Billy bolted and joined the army, after all. Wildstrand hadn’t thought that they would take him because he was underweight, but the army didn’t care. Now he was terrified that Maggie’s grief would affect the baby, for she was heartbroken and cried day and night when Billy was shipped off for basic training. She said that she couldn’t feel things anymore, and turned away from Wildstrand when he visited and would not let him touch her. After six weeks, Billy sent a photograph of himself in military gear. He didn’t look to have bulked up much. The helmet seemed to balance on his head, shadowing his unreadable eyes. His neck was still skinny and graceful. He looked about twelve years old.
One afternoon, Wildstrand drove home after having visited Maggie, and all the way down the highway the little face beneath the helmet was in his mind. When he entered his house he saw that Neve was working on another afghan. She raised her clear, blue eyes to his.
“I am leaving now,” said Wildstrand. He put the car keys on the coffee table. “You keep everything. I have clothes. I have shoes. I’ll make myself a sandwich and be going now.”
John Wildstrand walked into the kitchen and made the sandwich and wrapped it in waxed paper. He walked out into the living room and stood in the center of the carpet. Neve just looked at him. Light blazed white across her face. She raised her hand, swept it to the side, then dropped it. The gesture seemed to hang in the air, as if her arm left a trail. Wildstrand turned and walked out the door, across town, and started hitchhiking back to Maggie along the highway. There was only a slight wind and the temperature was about sixty-five degrees. The fields were full of standing water and ducks and geese swam in the ditches. All through the afternoon, as he walked along, the horizon appeared and disappeared. He didn’t take a ride until the sky darkened.