MY WIFE RETURNED THE MANUSCRIPT OF THIS STORY WITH her usual spelling and punctuation corrections and her usual comment, “I don’t see how a man can become a distinguished jurist and a successful writer and not be able to punctuate.”
I had long ago given up defending myself, since no defense was ever accepted.
Further comments on the substance of the story were always available on request, but the unwritten rules that guide our peaceful coexistence is that we comment on the professional work of the other only when asked.
Heaven help me, however, if I should fail to ask!
So I asked at the lake the following weekend. We had the cottage to ourselves, the children and grandchildren blessedly busy in other activities. Even Biddy the water sprite.
We lay side by side in bed holding hands. Outside, the full moon flickered on the rippling waters. The horror was still chained, but as always still ready to break loose.
“What did you think of the new book?”
“I liked it a lot.” Squeeze of the hand. “Best yet, maybe.”
Who worried about The New York Times after that review.
“I don’t sound too garrulous?”
“You sound like a man looking back on his youth with perspective and respect. And a little wisdom, but not oppressive wisdom.”
Well.
“What didn’t you like?”
“I think you make yourself look like a nerd at the end.”
“Nerd?”
“Well, maybe only a wimp. A man who quit when he shouldn’t have quit.”
“I see.…” Now the next question in our scenario: “How do you think I should end it?”
“You’re too hard on yourself.” She ignored the question until she had finished her sermon. “I’ve told you that all along.”
“Without much effect.”
“I didn’t say that, but you are still too hard on yourself … why don’t you have him look at the sad eyes of that big blond trench-coat being once again and then chase the train just a moment too late. It pulls away before he can catch it.”
“Then?”
“Well, then he walks back to the terminal and there she is waiting at the door of the platform. He rushed by so quickly that he didn’t see her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She looks shy and kind of frightened and all tired out and he says something real intelligent, like why didn’t she get on the train, and she says she couldn’t and might she please have just one more chance, and he says a couple of thousand, and she says one will do for the moment; then, though there is no reason to think he has to revert to caveman behavior, he picks her up and carts her off—his choice of words—to Roxinante, his car, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then he has to return to pick up her suitcase, about which he’d forgotten. She waits in the car, because she has nowhere else to go and, with her just one more chance, no desire to go there, anyway. And maybe she’s found that being ‘carted around’ is sexually interesting.”
“Right.”
“You don’t think the reader will know that all happened. I mean, I kind of hint …”
“Not if you don’t tell her.”
“Or him.”
“Or him,” she agreed.
“Yeah.” I thought about it. “I could end it that way.”
“You’d be much nicer to him if you end it that way.”
“It might work. What about her? Am I too hard on that dreadful girl?”
“I don’t think so, poor confused child. How many times do I have to tell you that you always romanticize women?” She touched my cheek. “That’s all right. You’re sweet.” Her fingers remained, softly caressing. “Very sweet.” The caress became more tender. “Always have been.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“I suppose,” she said with a sigh, the drawn-out martyr’s protest that usually accompanies her schemes to do what she wants to do, “you’re planning on that orgy I promised if you finished your book?”
“You’ve been reading my mind, Maggie Ward”—I drew her close to me—”since that day when we heard Bing Crosby sing ‘Ole Buttermilk Sky’ in the railroad station forty years ago next week.”
Still mystery, still gift, she yielded herself to me. But not without the last word.
“It was Hoagy Carmichael.”