Wives & Lovers Read online

  “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Brill said.

  He went into the hallway and down to the end of it, where the doors were, and the brilliant late-afternoon sun. Out in the parking lot, the drunken young woman lay across the shining hood of a red sports car, one leg up, showing thigh. She held some tiny object close to her face, as if to examine it for flaws, and on the curb across from her the young man sat, his arms resting on his knees. Apparently there were no flaws in the little object; whatever she held was just the thing. It was in the way she reached over and offered it to the young man, who looked at it with clear satisfaction, admiring it. Then he put it in his mouth and smiled at her. They were perfect, Gehringer thought, their belief in perfection was all over them. They were without a care in the whole wide world.

  DESIRE

  THINGS ARE WORSENING by the minute,” Ridley says, meaning his own climbing panic, but knowing they’ll think he means the culture—the failures of education and the depredations of the politicians, the general mess all around, the sense that nothing counts for anything anymore, the powerless, disenfranchised feeling of the whole population. This is, after all, what they have been talking about. It is always the major subject of discussion whenever he spends time with the Masons, the old couple who live downstairs, his landlords. And he owes them two months back rent that so far nobody has mentioned. “A whole system of beliefs is disintegrating,” he says, trying to keep them in focus. He wonders if his eyes are showing any signs of what he has ingested. He knows he’s likely to talk a little faster, a little louder, and so he tries to keep it slow and as precise as possible. The Masons have been kindly, and they do not deserve this, any more than they deserve to go two months without rent. They have made meals for him. They’ve befriended him, and he knows they’re wondering about the money he owes them.

  “The history of everything,” Mr. Mason says, “is a path downward. The study of all history is really the study of decline. And this is the decline of the West. Don’t you think?”

  “People get old and pass on, and so do cultures,” says Mrs. Mason. “I think each individual life mirrors the life of a civilization, in a way. It’s the natural course.”

  “Or perhaps it’s the other way around, dear,” Mr. Mason says. Then he hesitates, like someone leading a student through a lesson. “The civilization mirrors the life of the individual.” He nods at her. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Well,” says his wife, “perhaps. I think I meant it as I said it, though.”

  The two of them read a lot, and they like to talk about it all. It’s a way of keeping up, as Mr. Mason once put it, a way of keeping mentally fit. But they are drawn to the most negative prognosticators and philosophers. It’s amazing. They’ve been married about sixty years, and cling to each other now, like children in a storm. Ridley thinks of them holding on in the winds of what they have been reading. There’s plenty for them to worry about right here. Their savings are dwindling. The taxes on this small two-story house, which was paid for more than a decade ago, are more than three times what their mortgage payment was. They rented the upstairs room to Ridley because they needed the extra money. But Ridley lost his job and got involved with Pamela Brill, and what money he had managed to save started going toward trying to keep up with her. Pamela is twenty-three, and because she’s never been without money, she never thinks about it—often forgets to carry any. She lets others spend it, quite unselfconsciously.

  Ridley’s hopelessly in love with her.

  “So,” Mr. Mason says, putting his hands on his bony knees. “We’re happy you came to see us. Is there anything we can do for you?”

  Ridley can’t remember why he’s come down here. He says, “Just, ah, wanted to say hello.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Can’t think,” he says. “My brain, it’s a sieve.”

  “Our young man is a little out of sorts,” Mrs. Mason says.

  “You’ve both been so nice to me,” Ridley says.

  “Would you like something to eat?” Mr. Mason asks him. “I think we can rustle up something.”

  “I’ll help you, dear.”

  It’s obvious that they want to go off and talk about him. He searches his mind for the reason he walked down here. He runs through it all—remembers making his unsteady way down the stairs at the side of the house, knocking on their door, looking at the sky gathering heavy clouds over the mountains, another storm system on its way, rolling over the hills. Remembers standing there on the porch waiting for them to answer, and feeling immediately the sense of guilt for what he owes them. The talk. The genuinely convivial company they make, always so eager to engage him in conversation. And they’re really very interesting people.

  He listens to them moving around in their kitchen. They murmur, but he can hear them. He thinks he can hear the little fibers moving in their throats; he’s attuned to everything. They’re not talking about him, after all. They’re preparing sandwiches, cutting slices of Swiss cheese, opening jars. “Fetch me that, will you, dear?” says Mr. Mason.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Do we have any horseradish?”

  “Should.”

  “Do you know where I put it?”

  “Can’t say I do,” Mrs. Mason says.

  “Why don’t you pay more attention to where I leave things when I forget to put them away?”

  “Guess I’m just falling down on the job.”

  “Now I can’t find the mayo.”

  “It’s on the bottom shelf.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Then I don’t know where it is.”

  EARLIER, OUTSIDE THE high school where her stepmother teaches English, Pamela Brill had offered him some small red pills in a vial. They’d already had some whiskey to drink. “Know what these are?” she said, licking the edges of her lips.

  “Pills?” He hadn’t meant it to sound like a question. His embarrassment was extreme. It was way out of proportion. He forced a smile and tried to seem casual. He cleared his throat and said the word again, hoping the smile was sardonic. “Pills.”

  She lay across the hood of her Mazda. All languid grace, and that amazing skin. They were out in the sunlight, in the school parking lot. In front of the whole world. He was half drunk. He would never do anything like this sober.

  “Okay,” she said with a smirk. “But guess what kind of pill.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “A non-pharmacy kind.”

  She offered it to him. “Very good guess.”

  He was horrified. “Really?” he said.

  “It makes America beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “Oh, shut up. I hate that shit. Stop it. Come on, you know what I mean. It makes everything gorgeous.”

  “Well,” he said, “I think that depends, doesn’t it?”

  She seemed perplexed, considered this a moment with her astoundingly perfect features scrunched up. She was a person who could get a man to commit murder. “Do you mean like, they say an unhappy person doesn’t have a positive near-death experience?”

  “Who says that?” Ridley asked.

  “Like if your attitude is wrong when it happens, you know, they say you suffer the pangs of hell.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I don’t believe in hell.” He thought he could remember her saying that at some point.

  “Is your attitude wrong, Ridley?”

  “My attitude’s right. I said I don’t believe in hell.”

  “That’s nice,” she said.

  “You don’t, either,” he said. “Right?” He tried to smile.

  “I’ve never given it much thought.” Again, she considered. He wanted to kiss the corner of her lips, and thought of touching her hair. Just touching it. It looked like it might burn your hand.

  “Where’d you get this stuff?” he asked.

  “Never mind. Let’s try some. Want to?”

  “I’m a bit drunk,” he managed.
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  “You look a little pale.”

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s what I like about you.” She laughed. “You’re such a nervous cat.”

  “I only seem nervous,” he said, swallowing suddenly.

  “You get so formal with me. It’s nice,” she said. “Here.” She handed him the pill.

  “Thank you,” he said, resisting, just in time, the urge to bow. He hadn’t slept well in weeks. He hadn’t been able to rest at all.

  “Ready?” she said. Then she swallowed hers. “Now you.”

  “Don’t have anything to drink with it,” he said.

  “It’s small. Melts in your mouth.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She was right. It went down to nothing almost as fast as it touched his tongue. And then he was waiting for it to do whatever it would do. At first there wasn’t much sensation at all. But then he began to wonder if things weren’t changing for him in a big way. He decided that he was becoming extremely aware of time. It seemed that time broke down into slow, discrete seconds which stretched themselves out. She had stepped down off the car and was talking about driving away. He wanted to drive, and she said she wanted to ride in back with her legs over the seat. They got themselves into the front, and he saw that someone was standing in the doorway of the school. They had been seen.

  “Someone saw us,” he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Pamela?”

  “I guess we’ll go to jail, then. Have you ever been to jail, Ridley?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I spent a night in jail when I was away at school. Drunk and disorderly. I was close to death.”

  He drove carefully to the Masons’ old house. Home. The idea that he lived there seemed too strange for words. “Jeez,” he said.

  They sat there breathing.

  “I think we should do some more,” she said. “I’ve got it—let’s swallow some of it with orange juice. That’ll be like in the best tradition. Do you have any orange juice?”

  “Orange juice.”

  “Right. You know, the orange stuff in the little frozen cans.”

  “No,” he said. “Orange juice hurts my stomach.”

  “Poor baby. What do you have to drink?”

  “I can get some orange juice,” he said.

  “What else do you have?”

  “Beer?”

  “Ugh,” she said.

  “I’ve got V8 juice.”

  She looked at him. “Why?”

  He had been using it to make up for the fact that he never ate any vegetables, and for the one gram of fiber in it. Ridley’s main concern, when he wasn’t thinking about Pamela Brill, was his digestive system and his health generally. This was not something he felt he could tell her, so he said nothing at all.

  “Well?” she said. It was a challenge.

  “I like it,” he told her. “I make—I make Bloody Marys with it.”

  “Oh, okay. There you go, Bloody Marys. Let’s have that.”

  They made their way inside. She was actually coming into his apartment. He stood in the doorway and thought about how it would look to her. He had become almost fastidious, living alone. As usual, he had made the bed this morning and hung up his bathrobe; his slippers were next to each other under the bed.

  “It’s so neat,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I’m such a slob.”

  “Lady downstairs,” he told her. “Real philosopher type. She cleans it. Comes in every day no matter what. I’m a slob, too, usually.”

  “I keep myself clean, though,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Right. Me too. It’s best to stay clean if you can help it.”

  “I don’t mean I’m anal or anything. You know, I don’t mind a little dust. That’s just living in a place. But mold and mildew and things like that. Things that grow. I’m pretty careful about it.” She exhaled a satisfied sigh. “So the lady who cleans for you is a philosopher.”

  “Not officially,” he said. “She does a lot of reading.”

  “That makes two of us. Except that nothing I’ve read has anything in it really about how I’m supposed to get through the days.”

  “Sure it does,” Ridley said.

  “I finished college, Ridley. I learned how to look at stuff, you know, and identify it. I learned the names of some places and some people and some wars. But nothing I read in the whole four years told me anything about how to get from one day to the next. Not really.”

  He searched his mind for some response. “That’s not quite what it’s ever supposed to do, is it?” he said.

  “Then what good is it?”

  “I think it’s just supposed to be itself.”

  But she was on to something else, looking around the room. “Where’s our Bloody Marys, anyway?”

  He was fairly sure he didn’t have the makings for Bloody Marys, since he wasn’t sure what went into them in the first place. He had no gin or vodka. “I don’t really feel like a Bloody Mary,” he said.

  She sat on the edge of his bed and leaned back on her hands. “I’ve never had one.”

  “It’s a nighttime drink,” he said.

  Frowning, she said, “I thought it was morning.”

  “It’s not a lunch drink.”

  “Brunch. And I haven’t eaten.”

  “Oh,” Ridley said. “I never have a Bloody Mary for lunch. I’m already crocked.”

  “Actually,” Pamela Brill said, “I need a pick-me-up. That’s what a Bloody Mary is, isn’t it? A pick-me-up.”

  “No,” said Ridley, “not for me. I take one, you know, before I go to sleep. Like a sleeping pill. I go right out. Bango.”

  She sat forward. “Don’t mention that to me. Sleeping pills. Don’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know why he was apologizing.

  “Sleeping pills. God. This friend of my stepmother’s—didn’t you see it in the paper? And my stepmother was with her, too—had lunch with her—the day she did it.”

  Ridley watched her run her hands through her hair. Every cell of her was absolutely perfect. His chest hurt. He couldn’t exhale all the way.

  “You didn’t read about it?” she said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This friend of my stepmother’s. Went antiques shopping with my stepmother and another woman, then drove to a motel and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and went to sleep for good.” She lay back. “It must be terrible to be old.”

  He moved to the bed and sat down at her hips. She was inches away. “Pamela,” he said. “I love you. I want to marry you.”

  “Imagine checking into a motel room knowing it’s where you’re going to die.”

  “Maybe it was an impulse,” he said. He was looking at the fine down on her legs, the smooth thighs, the way her shorts bunched up at the top of them and revealed the tan line. Oh God, he thought. Or perhaps he had spoken this.

  “What,” she said.

  He had spoken. “Nothing.”

  “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “What,” he said.

  “Dying like that. All alone in a cheap motel. My mother thinks she did it because she was having to give up her nice farm and everything.”

  “She didn’t leave a note?”

  “Nothing. Not a single thing. Isn’t that eerie?”

  He touched her knee.

  “Don’t.”

  He took his hand away as though it had been bitten.

  A moment later, she said, “Do you ever think of suicide, Ridley?”

  Oh, yes.

  “Well, do you?”

  “I have,” he said.

  She sat forward, so that they were side by side. “Me too.”

  “You?” he said.

  She nodded simply. “Sure.”

  “Recently?” he said.

  “I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s a kind of sickness with me. Sometimes I just don�
��t want to be bored anymore, and I think of doing it. I actually think of it like it might be something to do. It’s that sick. I’ve been unhappy, too. It’s kind of scary that it’s there, like a place you go to. Suicide. It’s like there are times when I think it’s waiting for me. Like I’m this little animal and everything’s going extinct.”

  “If I was you,” he said, “I wouldn’t be unhappy. Ever.”

  “Oh, really?” Her smile was beautifully sardonic.

  He was thinking of saying that if he had the luxury of living in that body, he would spend all his time in bed with someone. But then the someone he saw her in bed with, in this version of his imagined self, was her. She stared at him, and it was as though she were reading his thoughts.

  “You know how to say ‘Kiss my ass’ in Spanish?” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “Hey, seenyore, come and keess my asss.”

  “Oh,” he said, laughing. “Oh, right—I get it.”

  “Hey, seenyore,” she said. “Come and keess my asss.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “So, are you going to fix us these Bloody Marys?”

  “I’ve got whiskey,” he said.

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “Whiskey.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “Well?” she said.

  He leaned toward her, and she kept her eyes on him, watching him. He put his mouth on hers, seeing her eyes still open. He pulled back.

  “What,” she said.

  He tried again. Her tongue was heavy; it moved with a languid, harrowing softness in his mouth. He felt his heart beating at the top of his head. His hands were on her arms, pushing her back onto the bed.

  “Hey,” she said, turning her head away. “Wait a minute, lover.”

  He could feel his weight on her.

  “Get up, will you?”

  “Jesus,” Ridley said. “Oh, man.” He got to his feet. She propped herself on one elbow and regarded him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Hey, seenyore,” she said. “You just want to keess my asss.”

  For a moment, he could say or do nothing at all.

  She reached into the pocket of her shorts and brought out the vial of pills. “Let’s ride on a cloud when we do it. I’m not high enough.”

  “I’ll get the whiskey,” he said, out of breath. In the small cabinet over the refrigerator was a flask of Old Grand Dad. He brought it down, his hands trembling. The neck of the flask ticked against the lip of his glass. He spilled some.