Laura Rider's Masterpiece

by Jane Hamilton

  Laura thought that, in reality, when your spouse died it would probably be like having a gangrenous arm amputated, that even though the limb had been diseased you’d still miss it.

  Five minutes later: “What the fuck!” Charlie cried from upstairs. “Laura, what the fuck!”

  So Jenna had written back to him something about the mix tape, and he’d seen Laura’s initial message on the subject pasted into the response. E-mail, Laura said to herself, was so gratifyingly thorough and quick.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted as he came rushing down the stairs in his adorable cat-pajama bottoms and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. That was her husband, calibrated exquisitely, male and female together.

  “What’s the matter?” She lay with her hand over her eyes, resting in the balm of Jenna’s fantasy, in the idea of herself dead and gone in order that the couple might have their happiness.

  Charlie had already made Jenna a mixed CD. He wasn’t going to tell Laura that he had burned one two weeks before that included, yes, his old favorites, his new favorites, each one in some way, it’s true, embodying his feelings for Jenna. Did he have to inform his wife every time he said hello to Jenna, every time he gave her a posy, every time he wrote down an original line? Had she sniffed out the fact that he’d done this thing in secret, or had she been spying on him? Was she psychic or psycho? Jenna had written him back about the tape just then, clearly scratching her head, saying, “Dearest, you already made me the most magnificent compilation. You know how much I love it. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

  Laura had a silken gold shawl over her, and an enormous book on her stomach. Jenna often talked about Laura’s beauty, but in the moment it was not visible to him. There was a smugness in the corners of her mouth, a taunt in the slight upward curve of her lower lip.

  He made a superhuman effort to speak calmly. “I thought,” he said, “I heard the barn door slamming. In the wind.” She still had that look on her face. “Did you leave it open?”

  “Did I leave it open? I think”—she turned the page of her book—“that if anyone left the barn door open, Charlie, it was you.”

  He almost said, I have a secret but I’m not going to tell you. He could have elaborated, could have said, I happen to know that Jenna is going to do something for you. Something exceptional, something she doesn’t do for very many people. Maybe now, unfortunately, she’ll change her mind. Maybe now, for whatever reason, it won’t happen. Ha, he wanted to say. Ha. Under the present conditions, however, what could he do but turn on his heel and pound up the stairs? What could he do but begin to work on another CD, every song another portrait of his very own Jenna?

  What I need to do, Laura thought after he’d gone, is sign up for the writing workshop in the Dells over Labor Day. There were workshops in all the genres: romance, mystery, self-help, literary, memoir, western, children’s, poetry, creative nonfiction, and, the brochure said, so much more. Charlie had been having his fun, and she would have no problem informing him that she was leaving for four days to follow her bliss.

  “Your wife is so lovely,” Jenna said once more, a few days later, in bed, beneath the picture of a mesa and a lone chief with his horse in the glow of a very pink and very orange setting sun. She thought it the worst kind of art, solemnity in bright colors, but there was something right, under the circumstances, about the sincerity of the trashiness.

  Charlie said nothing.

  “Does she know how lovely she is?” Jenna was sitting atop him, leaning over and holding his head in her hands. He had unfastened all nine of her barrettes, and her long dark hair hung down her back and around her face. She had deeply etched crows’ feet, and parenthetical lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked to him, with her mass of hair, like a creature—a good creature—out of mythology, a goddess who had laughed a great deal in her life. He wanted to tell her that he loved the way time and her nature had marked up her face.

  “Most women don’t believe they’re gorgeous,” he said, tracing her lips with his index finger. “Most women have no idea. It’s ridiculous, how much they don’t know. It’s dumb of them, and sad.”

  “I want …” she began. Tears had sprung to her eyes. “I want to be beautiful to please you.” It was horrifying to admit this, terrible, and yet it was the truest thing about her lying, cheating, sexing self. She had lost twenty pounds with no effort. Her eyes were larger now that they weren’t hidden by the puff of her formerly fat cheeks. It seemed to her as if she’d taken one look at him, and in a breath shed several layers of Jenna Faroli. She had no appetite for food or sleep. She no longer read serious tomes about the war, the Middle East, the Administration, the climate. She was having trouble reading anything. Her mind was washed clean. She was thin, exhausted, and exhilaratingly vacant.

  A week or so after Mrs. Rider’s first mischief, after the CD episode, Laura wrote another meddling message.

  Subj: The Knees

  From: crider@kingmail.com

  To: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  Lovey,

  Did you know that in my knee there lives a family? Little Yardley Knee, the boy, and Samantha Knee, who is older than Yardley by two years, and Mrs. and Mr. Knee, and the valet, Gregory, who is a distant cousin, and his sister Mary Ruth Knee, the maid. There is an orphan nephew named Gerald Knee. Today Mr. and Mrs. Knee are celebrating their 17th wedding anniversary by not speaking to each other. I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this before. There is probably, matter of fact, a family in your knee, too, that might want to come and visit my knee. I love you, C

  Laura had read a novel in which a gay couple invented a family who lived in their elbows. Because they were never going to adopt, never going to have the trouble of children to invigorate their dinner conversations, they were always inventing drama for the make-believe family, the Elbows, who had taken up residence in their joints. Laura could understand this need for daily spice. She and Charlie had their cat kingdom, starring their real-life cats, Polly, Mighty, Shawna, and Doofer. Polly had gone to the prom with the enormous feral tiger down the road, a bad boy named Julius. She had come in late with a bite on her ear—such a whore! It seemed to Laura that if Jenna and Charlie had characters they could share, their messages might become more interesting. This prodding them to enjoyment seemed to her yet another act of her own generosity. She was sure Jenna would take to it, that Jenna would be grateful.

  And what do you know? Ten minutes later:

  Subj: Re: The Knees

  From: JFaroli@wis.staff.edu

  To: crider@kingmail.com

  Oh God, dearest, you are so funny, so brilliant, so you. So you. SO YOU. Are the Knees not speaking because Mary Ruth Knee, as usual, has pitted Mother and Father against one another, because, wicked girl that she is, it was she who broke the Ming Dynasty vase (why are vases always from the Ming Dynasty?) and yet blamed it on Gerald, and the parents have taken sides? Or am I wrong? I love how you reveal your facets bit by bit. You draw, you sing, there is of course Harvey!—and, as always, your pure whimsy is on the tip of your sensational tongue. I love you, I love you.

  Laura had known Jenna would take to it like a duck to water, a pig to shit, a horse being led to the trough and drinking. Charlie was fully capable of inventing this kind of garbage himself, and she was merely speeding up the process, reminding him of his own talents, his facets.

  At dinner, the Riders ate without speaking. He had grilled hamburgers, and they had baby carrots and potato chips, the sound of which, when being chewed, and no one was talking, filled the echo chamber of their heads. At the end of the meal, after he had drained his beer, and carefully set his glass down on its coaster, he looked at her midriff, raising his eyes a notch to her sternum, another to her clavicle, up the neck, until, finally, he rested his gaze on the shining face of his beloved wife. She was wearing the diamond earrings he’d given her for Christmas. “The Knees,” he said.

  She nodded. “The Knees.”

  They rose fr
om the table, put the dishes in the sink, and went to their computers, one upstairs, the other down, to commence the evening correspondence.

  Chapter 13

  CHARLIE AND JENNA HAD NEVER EATEN A REAL MEAL TOGETHER, and so, at the beginning of August, when Frank went to Washington, the two arranged to have dinner in the city. They would never, probably, be granted a whole night through, and the evening in a restaurant would have to serve as a token of the dream life. The plan had seemed a good one a few days earlier, but in the hours before it, Jenna was not sure. She had considered inviting him to the house and had decided she wasn’t up to the smell of him in the rooms, his fragrance something she’d have to flap out afterward, opening the windows, swishing away the smoke of him. She did not want her sin in Frank’s kitchen.

  She was sitting at the table in the trattoria when Charlie came along on the other side of the street. His washed and pressed self was gleaming from half a block away, his Bora Bora cologne no doubt wafting down the avenue. She felt her heart tighten. He was wearing a creamy linen sports coat with light-gray trousers, and—she squinted—sandals with socks? As if he suddenly had become Italian to match the restaurant. Surely, she thought just then, surely all of him was the work of Mrs. Rider. Who were these people, the Riders! His hair would have product squirted lightly through it to make his curls more vivid. Softer but also bold. Like Charlie himself. Soft but bold. Two qualities that were not complementary.

  When he came through the door, she stood and, leaning over the table, the two kissed quickly. “You look so beautiful, so beautiful.” He spoke in one low gusty breath, shaking his head in wonderment. That he was nervous made her heart go colder. It was unlikely that she was beautiful, especially in her present mood. She watched him taking up his napkin, unfolding it and spreading it carefully on his lap. “I like this place,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Leave it to you to find a restaurant like this, to discover it, to realize a good thing when you see it. They know you here, I’ll bet—I’ll bet they know exactly what you—”

  The waiter had arrived at the table. “Good evening, gentlemens,” he said to Charlie. “I like very much, ah, to see you tonight.”

  “Same here!” Charlie said. “It’s great to see you, too.”

  Jenna had never hated him before. It had been wrong, she realized, to expose him to the light, to remove him—to remove them—from the Kewaskum Inn, that sanctuary for their most private selves. “Carlo, per favore, per incominciare, voglio forse caponata, prosciutto, e olivi, va bene? E una bottiglia di vino bianco, forse un Pino Grigio o un buon Orvieto, d’accordo?”

  Carlo bowed and retreated. Charlie was staring at her. “Your voice in Italian. It’s even, it’s even more incredible than your English voice. You are—”

  “My Italian allowed me to order wine and appetizers. This is not unimportant, but it has its limitations.” They should have met at a bar near Hartley. It would have been easy to feign innocence, and on his turf she could have happily gobbled up chicken wings and had beer by the pitcher. Although she had already made her choices, she studied the menu. “You once used pasta e fagioli in a rhyme to me,” she muttered.

  Without thinking, he said, “The contribution of Mrs. Rider.”

  “What?”

  Jenna, he would admit, did not look as lovable when her brow was wrinkled, her frown lines were so severe, and she let her mouth hang open. “She had that dish at a restaurant when she was sixteen and has never stopped talking about it— Golly, you look good.” He was leaning halfway across the table. “I love your dress, the brownness of it, and the buttons. It looks French, not that I know what a French dress looks like, but if a dress could look French, then this dress does. The buttons remind me of Milk Duds. Do you remember eating Milk Duds and how they’d get mashed together into one gluey lump on the roof of your mouth? I love those buttons, I could eat them, I love the idea of you—”

  “Stop!” she cried. “Please.” She had startled him away from the center of the table, startled him into the corner of his chair. “It’s probably best,” she went on, “if I order for both of us. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll love whatever you decide,” he said slowly, adjusting himself, coming forward, advancing a little. “Darling,” he added. He picked up the small bottle of olive oil next to the vase of begonias and he smiled at it, which made her dislike him even more. “How are you?” he murmured, as he replaced the bottle.

  She laughed then, at the absurdity of him, the absurdity of the dinner, and it had not even yet begun. She laughed at how she’d fallen into all the love traps—imagining that the affair could go on forever, that their feelings would always be fresh, imagining that somehow they would grow old together in their separate households. Poor dumb Jenna and poor Charlie, the yokel. Poor unsuspecting Laura and Frank; poor Suzie and David Oberhaus; poor Vanessa, far from home.

  “How am I?” she said. “Yesterday a colleague of mine tried to kill himself. I’d had warning about this from my producer, but I’d dismissed her without hearing her out.” David Oberhaus had taken an overdose of pain pills, just, apparently, as Suzie had feared. He had done this at home after his wife had phoned the program director at the station, telling him about Suzie. David’s daughter, another poor girl, had found him in time, so that he could wake up in the hospital to more shame. “I don’t know that I could have prevented it,” Jenna said, “but I should have listened to Suzie’s appeal. Probably I should have listened. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  She stared at the centerpiece as she spoke. “And Vanessa. She falls in love at the drop of a hat. The boyfriends either have no ambition or no sense of humor or no job, or else they work all the time. She needs to ditch her Ph.D. and go to choosing school.” If only there were choosing school! It was remarkable how some of Vanessa’s friends went about their sex lives as if intercourse were on a to-do list, and when it didn’t suit, they easily cast aside the beau and found another, or did volunteer work instead. They seemed not to be vulnerable to beauty. “Also,” Jenna went on, “she sprained her wrist, so she’s having trouble doing simple tasks in the lab. Her purse was stolen in the emergency room, and she’s worried about identity theft. She can’t seem to get up in the morning without having a crisis. I can’t leave at the moment, can’t rush to St. Louis to hold her wounded hand.”

  “You’re a good mother,” he said. “That’s obvious.”

  “Obvious?” She snapped the menu shut. “I did the best I could, but that’s saying very little.” She should not have told him about David Oberhaus or about Vanessa. She never talked about Frank; Frank had nothing whatsoever to do with Charlie Rider. And Vanessa: even if Jenna wanted to, how could she explain the tailspin Vanessa could send her mother into by being disappointed in the seasoning of her entrée or sneezing or having a lonely day? Furthermore, Jenna could never admit that every now and then, for the smallest, sharpest measure of time, she wished for a different child, a better child, a child who was not as difficult.

  Carlo soon brought the wine and the eggplant and olives. Jenna ordered for both of them: the pappardelle, and veal chops with garlic and anchovies, and boiled zucchini salad, which, she explained to Charlie, tasted far better than it sounded.

  “Cool,” Charlie said.

  The wine was nicely fruity with a mineral follow-through and a clean finish. She began to feel better despite Charlie’s having said Cool. “Love is merely a madness,” she thought, “and … something, something … deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do.” If Frank were along, he’d quote many of Rosalind’s lines, his favorite heroine in all of Shakespeare. If Frank were here—how ashamed she’d be. She took another swallow and for a moment closed her eyes. “Does your wife dress you, dear Charlie Rider?” She had always meant to ask.

  “I am outfitted daily by Herself. Sometimes I am draped two or three times an hour by Mrs. Rider. I am her Ken doll.”

  Jenna laughed. “Why do you let her?”
/>   “Why do I let her?”

  “Are you afraid of her?”

  He took four bites, each a toothful, to polish off a small niçoise olive. “In a way, I probably am,” he said.

  “What way?” Jenna said. She was beginning to enjoy herself.

  “I’m afraid of a force in her. A force that is always there but lying low. A force that could spring up at any moment.”

  “What kind of force?”

  “Dissatisfaction, maybe, I’d call it. Unhappiness coiled and at the ready? Or rage, waiting in the wings?”

  She wouldn’t say, but that was exactly the problem with Vanessa.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. I’d like to tell you one thing, and that is, if I could go backward in time, I’d have children. I would have liked to be a father.” He was gazing into the street as if there before him were lined up the tykes of an alternative life.

  “Charlie!” she said, touching his hand. He would have been as boyish and playful as his sons, all of them running around the yard after fireflies on a summer night, all of them tumbling into a hammock. She covered her mouth, and then, of all the terrible thoughts she’d had so far that hour, she entertained the worst: she imagined having Charlie’s baby, she, without a womb and nearly over-the-hill, bearing him a miracle, a rotund version of himself, a baby with luscious thighs and fat little fists, and the tear-shaped eyes, and a happy, toothless smile. She put her head into her napkin and—how mad!—began to cry.

  “Honey, sweetie, it’s all right, it’s okay.” He reached over to stroke her forearm.

  “But why didn’t you?” she choked. “Why didn’t you have them?”

  “We made the decision not to spend the money and the time on Laura’s issues. Scar tissue down there, and a screwy cycle. We decided to concentrate on the farm and to enjoy our nieces and nephews. Laura has never liked doctors, and to her it didn’t seem worth it, the pain, the money, when there are enough people on the globe.”