Wives & Lovers

by Richard Bausch

  “Let me get you a clean glass,” she said.

  I sat back and waited for her. On television a man in a bright T-shirt was biting into a hamburger, and the juices went flying. Mrs. Sweeney came back from her small kitchen and handed me a plastic tumbler, then poured far more whiskey than I wanted into it. We drank. I had an abrupt sense of how truly solitary my existence had become in the weeks since my arrival in Virginia.

  “Well,” Mrs. Sweeney said, “I sure didn’t think you’d actually come back and visit me.”

  I smiled at her and held up my glass, as if to offer a toast.

  “You know, I unplugged my phone. I don’t even look at the mail, except to see if there’s something from my boy.”

  Mrs. Sweeney had been leading her own solitary existence.

  “I’ve got plenty of room,” I said, “where I’m staying.”

  She swallowed her whiskey and looked at the television screen. “One time Sweeney killed a cat,” she said.

  I waited.

  “We were on our way to Florida and the cat was in the road and he just pulled right over it—swerved to get it.” She took another swallow. “Just—wham. Like that. No cat. A smear in the road behind us. And when I asked him why in the world he’d do a thing like that he said it was because he felt like it.”

  “So—” I said. “So that was—”

  “That was scary,” she said. “It scared the hell out of me.”

  “When was it?”

  “Year after we were married.”

  I drank my own whiskey.

  “You know why I divorced him?”

  I shook my head.

  “The laziness. I couldn’t get him to do anything. All he wanted to do was watch television—Westerns. He loved Westerns. John Wayne and Randolph Scott. Horses and dust, and leather saddles and boots, and the cowboy hats. And—and clothes, you know, he loved clothes. He bought stuff he’d never wear even if he could’ve got around to it. Shoes and shirts and ties and belts, and pairs of socks. I couldn’t get him to do anything around here that needed doing, so finally I just told him to pack his things and get out. Which he did.” She was emphatic now. “Which he did. And he went as peaceful as a lamb. Now, you tell me.”

  I was beginning to feel the whiskey. I put my glass down and stood up. “Mrs. Sweeney, I have plenty of room where I’m staying—you’re welcome to come stay there if you want to get away from here.” I thought this was the least I could do.

  “Isn’t that nice of you,” she said.

  I said, “I mean it.”

  “Well,” she said, rising. The whiskey had had its effect on her as well. She tottered, sat back down. “Stay and watch television for a while.”

  I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and yet I made my excuses and went out to my car, which was blazing hot in the afternoon sun, and drove back across the campus to William Brooker’s apartment, where I intended to lie down and sleep off the effects of what I’d had to drink. As I climbed the stairs to the landing, already sweating profusely in the heat, I thought I caught a glimpse of someone peering at me from the other side of the building. When I looked, there wasn’t anything, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t imagined it. When I was at Brooker’s door, I looked out at the parking lot and saw the Volkswagen bug—the same one, with the same battered fender, the same rusty, gouged finish. Inside, in the cool of the air conditioning, I went straight to the bathroom and took a lukewarm shower, my mind made up to ignore all news and all thoughts of the Brookers or Elaine or poor Mrs. Sweeney, and when I was finished I got into Helen Brooker’s bed and took a fitful, erotic-dreaming nap: someone, a woman, a spirit, was leading me into a velvet room.

  I woke to the sound of the doorbell. It was dark. There was music coming from somewhere; the doorbell kept sounding, and I hurried down the stairs, trying to get my pants up without missing a step, or tripping over my own feet. “Just a minute,” I said. I had no shirt; my eyes were sleep-filled and probably swollen. I opened the door, and of course even half asleep I knew it would be Maria Alvarez.

  “Mrs. Brooker, please,” she said, in that Spanish-soft voice.

  “I should’ve told you—she’s out of town,” I answered, peering around the door at her. “They’ve been gone a few days now.” And I was not too groggy to add, “They’re separated.”

  She looked at me, then muttered something I couldn’t catch.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Separated?”

  I nodded.

  “Separated,” she said, looking out at the dark. For perhaps a minute she simply stood there. “Separated.” This time it was as if she were trying to hold back a laugh.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “You know this,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Separated.”

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked, holding the door open a little more.

  “In there?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed about to laugh again. “You’re very kind, but no.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Her eyes took in the room behind me, and her expression seemed now only curious. “Mrs. Brooker—what is she like?”

  “Why don’t you come in?” I said.

  “Mrs. Brooker is nice?”

  “Yes.”

  “A nice woman. Poor Mrs. Brooker.” And now she was laughing, though she tried to stifle it, holding her hand over her mouth. “Separated.”

  “Look,” I said, “what is this about?”

  She turned and went back down the stairs, still laughing, and when I followed her partway down she only went faster, until she was on the lawn, almost running.

  “Miss?” I said. “Miss?” But she went on. The little, ragged-edged old car roared as she pulled out of the lot and on down the street.

  THAT NIGHT, ALL NIGHT, I spent in Brooker’s study, looking through his papers, his photographs, his files, for some sign of this young woman who had wanted to talk to his wife. I thought I knew why she wanted to talk to Helen Brooker, and I believed I understood exactly why Brooker had asked me to do what I had in fact done—to tell the lie that he had doubtless known would send the young woman away. Yet it was a fool thing to think I might find what I was looking for in the study of a man like Brooker, even knowing that he had a weakness for alcohol, and therefore might be expected to be careless; and if I did find the incriminating letter or note, I certainly had no plans for it—there wasn’t anything at all that I could possibly want with it. No, this rummaging through Brooker’s papers was only another kind of undignified snooping, and the fact that I found nothing seemed finally to be a sort of judgment of me, as if my nosiness had earned me exactly what I deserved.

  Even so, when I finally lay down in Helen Brooker’s bed that early morning, I felt elated, and this is perhaps the most difficult thing to explain; I’m not even quite certain that I understand it now. I didn’t know Brooker, really, at all: yet I had at his request relayed a bald lie to a young woman who had believed that lie, and then I had spent most of the night searching for evidence that, I suppose, would merely have proved what I felt I already knew—all of this just as undignified as my nocturnal voyeuristic journeys through Helen Brooker’s private things…and even so, I felt this sense of elation. I remembered Helen Brooker saying to me about Jack Kennedy, “He was an awful womanizer, you know.” And perhaps I was merely feeling the excitement of interest, to have been privy to something Brooker would want hidden.

  6

  Dearest Helen,

  J. says he likes your eyes best. He especially likes tall, leggy types, very smart, very sexy. All of which you are. I think he has designs on you and so you must be very careful this April. I’ve been working on a speech for the visit to B. Harbor. Lots of ward types down there. I wish you’d call me once in a while; I mean one could get the feeling you’re not letting the absence grow your heart fonder, or words to that effect.

  Love, W.

  Brooker called late
the next morning. I had been up for an hour or so, hiding the signs of my recent strangeness—putting Helen Brooker’s photographs where they belonged, her letters and cards back in their bundled order (though I had taken the time to copy down a few things to take with me, things I knew would be of interest to me later, most notably the one set out above, with its reference to a J. that simply must be Jack), and rearranging the casual disorder of Brooker’s study. I had mostly finished all this—there were just a few envelopes to be put away—and was taking a short break to watch the morning report. (For the first time in many mornings, no mention was made of Sweeney.)

  “Well,” Brooker said, through the hiss of long distance. “Did she come back?”

  “She came back,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I told her you were separated.”

  “Did she buy it?”

  I thought of the first time I had seen him, of the confidence with which he had leaned toward me to murmur his obscenity. And then in an odd shift of mind I had an image of that boy behind the counter at the beach house and restaurant, the day I met Elaine.

  “Well?” Brooker said.

  “She believed what I told her,” I said.

  “She bought it.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she come back?”

  “Last night. I think she’s watching this place.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Mr. Brooker, what is she to you?”

  “Listen, why didn’t you call me last night?”

  “It was too late. It was late. What is she to you, Mr. Brooker?”

  “She’s nothing. Don’t pay any attention,” he said.

  “Well, then what does she want?”

  After a moment, he said, “She was a student of mine. She had a problem.”

  I waited.

  “She got the wrong idea of things—the way things were. And now she wants to make trouble for me.”

  “Did you by any chance have an affair with her?”

  “She’s just a kid,” he said.

  I could feel the adrenaline running at the back of my neck. “Yes,” I said, “but did you?”

  After another pause he said, “Look, I appreciate your help. You do have the use of my apartment. I don’t think that entitles you to make assumptions about my affairs.”

  “I think I have to know what the situation is if I’m going to be of any more help,” I said.

  There was still another pause. “I told you,” he said. “She got the wrong idea of things. There’s something unstable about her that I should’ve seen—she’s of age, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Does your wife know about her?”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, “what is this?”

  “She says she wants to talk to your wife—she was asking questions about your wife.”

  “Look, I can’t talk about this anymore. You told her we were separated and you said she bought it—did she buy it or not?”

  “I guess she bought it,” I said.

  “Well, then—fine. If she comes back again will you call me?”

  “Do you want to talk to her?”

  “Jesus Christ, no. Call me after she shows up again, if she does. And if she bought what you told her she probably won’t.”

  “All right,” I said.

  He muttered, “Jesus Christ,” then thanked me for my help, and we said good-bye. The line on his end closed; I listened until the dial tone started.

  Outside, the parking lot was ablaze, the sun reflecting too brightly off the cars for me to see much. I went out and walked around the building, hoping that I might find her waiting on one of the landings, or behind one of the parched-looking sycamores in the grassy square across from the main entrance. There wasn’t a soul, it seemed, anywhere. All the windows of the building were closed against the heat, and the little park for children was empty; a hot breeze disturbed some sheets on a line that had been strung across one of the landings. Cars going by on the road looked as if they were trailing fire.

  IN THE MORNING, there was another article about Sweeney. He had talked to police from surrounding states, and apparently all of his stories were checking out; authorities were finding remains where he said he’d left them. In describing these burial sites, the article said, he often fell into a kind of reverie, and his crimes became nouns. That one, yeah, that would be a knife. And, let’s see, oh, this one’s a strangle.

  I read all this with the same, sick fascination, and then called Elaine. She was in bed; she had been down with a cold. “I miss you,” she said.

  I had the TV on, the midday news, and was lying back in Brooker’s easy chair with the telephone in my lap. “Elaine,” I said, “I’m going out of my mind.”

  “Maybe our separation isn’t going to work out,” she said.

  “Are you finished with everything?” I asked. And then I didn’t hear what she said, because the local news was showing film of Maria Alvarez standing out on the roof of the college library building. I sat there with Elaine’s familiar sleepy voice in my ear and understood what I was seeing. It was Maria Alvarez. Before I could get out of the chair, the picture shifted, everything changed: a crowd of police and firemen were gathered around a broken shape under a blanket in the street.

  I pulled the telephone from its table, reaching to turn the TV up, and when I did get the sound up there was only the announcer, a man looking far too calm for what his camera crew had just shown, talking about the morning’s tragedy with a series of eyewitnesses, who all reported the same thing. The poor girl jumped. They had seen it all; they were afraid, and their voices shook, and the announcer remained calm, holding the microphone to their mouths.

  I don’t remember what I said to Elaine. It’s entirely possible that I blurted out everything I knew of Brooker and his trouble, speaking, no doubt, with that peculiar clarity that horror sometimes provides an otherwise cloudy mind. But it wasn’t long before I was dialing the number Brooker had given me, and having trouble accomplishing it because my hands were shaking so. I don’t think I quite expected to get through to him at this hour, and I left a little pause of surprise when he answered.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “What did you do to her, Brooker?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Did you tell her you were in love with her?”

  He said nothing for a moment. Then, “I can’t talk now.”

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “I lied to her for you. My God, I don’t believe this—I told her your lie, and sent her on her way. I helped you do it.”

  “Now, hold on,” he said. “She had a lot of trouble—there were things that had nothing to do with me or any lie. For God’s sake, what’s happened?”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Let’s calm down,” William Brooker said. “Just tell me what she did.”

  THAT NIGHT I SLEPT on the sofa in the guest room. In his horror, Brooker had been fatherly and philosophical: there was nothing to be done, nothing he could do, at any rate; he was very sorry for the troubled Miss Alvarez, he had tried his best to help her, but in the end he was powerless. He hadn’t known her very well, in fact, and perhaps no one ever really gets to know a suicide. Miss Alvarez had wandered into a seminar he had taught as a visiting lecturer the previous fall in Atlanta, and he had seen right away that she was barely holding on. He described his concern for her, his work with her while she was his student; it was all very much a professional relationship, candid and aboveboard, he said; and of course it was quite clear that he was lying. I told him I couldn’t talk anymore and hung the phone up. I didn’t care what he thought about this, and I don’t mean that I was as full of moral outrage as I must have sounded. For the facts of the matter are that something had occurred to me concerning my own part in it all, and I simply wanted no more to do with anyone or anything for a time. What occurred to me was the unpleasant truth that I had held something back in the first minute Maria Alvarez had stood star
ing at me in the dim light of the landing. She had asked to see Mrs. Brooker and I had said only that Mrs. Brooker wasn’t there; I had kept back what I knew about where Helen Brooker was and how long she would be gone, and I had done so, without having to think about it, because of course I understood in an instant what Maria Alvarez had come for, and what she would want with William Brooker’s wife. I had, then, already begun the lie that Brooker would later ask me to complete—and this not out of friendship for the man, or loyalty to his interests, but out of something else.

  In the days that followed, Brooker called two or three times, wanting to get what details he could. I told him I would not be staying in his apartment anymore, and so there were practical things to consider as well. He didn’t say much about his own part in the affair, and yet I was able to piece together a version of it from what he did say: Maria Alvarez comes to him looking for what she imagines he can give her; she’s pathologically unhappy, but he doesn’t see this. He sees her shapely figure and Spanish-dark features, her deep black eyes. He charms her, seduces her, then finds that she is quite mad, quite unable to understand the casual way he means this sort of thing, and he decides it is necessary to evade her. The rest is, of course, an unfortunate chain of events over which he has no control. If only the world weren’t the way it is. I had no trouble at all imagining the whole scenario.

  What I never imagined had to do with Helen Brooker. She showed up on a Friday afternoon from New York, having set out at the request of her husband, to make certain that things were in order for my departure. (We had no signed agreement, and Brooker was a thorough man.) She came breezing into the living room, where I lay on the white sofa in a bath of letters and photographs—the whole history of William and Helen Brooker. She went into the kitchen and poured us both a bourbon, then came and stood over me, holding my drink out, her eyes not quite settling on what I had in my hands and on my lap. I took the drink, and she sipped hers, still standing over me. “I suppose writers have to be spies,” she said. “It must be a perfectly seedy little part of the job.”