Straight Man

twelfth of Never,” reinforced by weeping violins.
    She’s in the living room, my daughter, sitting at one end of the long sofa, staring out the patio door in the general direction of the wasps’ nest, which, I note, is still attached to the eave. Surely she’s heard me come in, but she doesn’t get up, or say hello, or even turn. From the doorway I can see that she’s still in her bathrobe, though it’s now early afternoon. Seen from the shoulders up, with her slender, graceful neck, she could be her mother sitting there.
    I go around the sofa and over to the patio door, my eye attracted by movement in the air. And there, under the eave, unbelievably, half adozen black wasps are hovering about the cone, darting toward the dry, gray parchment, then veering away, as if repelled by an invisible shield.
    “They don’t learn,” Julie says, and when I turn to answer her, I see her left eye, the same one she injured as a child, is swollen almost shut. The eyeball itself, the small part that’s visible, is a web of broken blood vessels.
    “Julie,” I say helplessly, standing there.
    “I want him out of the house,” she says.
    “Russell did this?”
    “I’ve packed a couple suitcases …”
    “Julie,” I say. “Stop a minute. Russell did this?” Am I wrong that the words need to be spoken?
    She reacts to my simple question thoughtfully, as if it contains a philosophical dimension I’m unaware of.
    “Did Russell hit you, Julie?”
    Again, it takes her a long time to formulate a response. “I fell,” she says finally.
    “You fell.”
    “He shoved me,” she tells me carefully, “and I fell.”
    Throughout this exchange, Julie has made no move to get up from the sofa, and I have not taken so much as a step toward her. What we’re missing, of course, what we need most, is Lily, not so much so we’ll know what to do as so we’ll know how to feel, to be sure which emotions are valid. There are times when I can read my wife’s soul in her face, and in such moments I can almost read my own.
    “Where is he now?” it occurs to me to ask.
    “I don’t know,” she says. “Why? Do you want to check out my story?”
    I study my daughter, her accusation. In truth, I do not want to believe this about Russell, whom I have always liked and whose part I have occasionally taken, on those rare occasions when I’m permitted to take a part. And in truth I would like to ask more questions, keep asking them, in fact, until I’ve ruled out the possibility that this is some kind of accident, some misunderstanding. No doubt Julie has intuited this wish and interpreted it as an act of disloyalty, which perhaps it is.
    She looks down at her hands. “I want him gone. Out of my house.”
    I note the pronoun, let it go. We seem to have gotten through some initial stage and arrived at a point where action is called for, the point where I am thought to excel. “Okay,” I tell her, “you’d better come over to our place for a day or two, until …” I can’t quite finish my thought, it seems, because I’m not quite sure what we’ll be waiting for. Russell’s return? Lily’s return? God on a machine? “Why don’t you get dressed and pack a suitcase?”
    To my surprise, Julie offers no objection, and when she gets to her feet she’s suddenly in my arms and sobbing, “Oh, Daddy,” over and over. This all happens so quickly that I don’t know whether she’s come to me or I’ve gone to her, not that it matters.
    While she throws some things in a suitcase, I study the wasps outside the patio door. Julie’s right. They don’t learn. If this flimsy parchment death trap isn’t home, then what the hell is?
    There are two cars parked in my drive when Julie and I pull in. One’s an anonymous midsize, the other is Paul Rourke’s red Camaro. Seated on the top step of my deck, barefoot and wiggling her toes, is a young woman I recognize, after a moment’s hesitation, as the second Mrs. R. Julie studies her, then sends an accusing glance my way. At least I assume that’s what’s going on behind the dark glasses. “Quit,” I tell her. “That’s a good way to get another black eye.”
    I again count the cars blocking the entrance to my garage, arriving at the same total—two. Unless the second Mrs. Rourke drove them both, we’re short at least one person. Her husband, it occurs to me, may be off in the trees, bringing me into focus in his crosshairs. This thought makes the skin along the back of my neck