The Whore's Child

another. What she’d sent him, crated so expertly against the possibility of damage, was a third, but all three mysteries together aroused little curiosity in Martin. That the parcel contained a painting was obvious from its shape and packaging, but he’d idly assumed that talentless, bitter Joyce herself was the painter.
    So he’d left the package unopened for more than a week. Beth had been curious about it, or maybe just intrigued by his own lack of interest. She loved presents and received a great many, it seemed to Martin, although the majority were from her doting father, a man not much older than Martin himself. Daddy, as she referred to him, lived in Minnesota with a wife his own age, and Martin, thankfully, had never met either of them. Beth displayed little urgent affection for her parents, though her eyes always lit up when one of her father’s packages arrived. “You never buy me presents, Martin,” she sometimes said, feigning complaint, when she opened one of these. “Why is that?”
    Whatever instinct prevented Martin from opening the painting in front of Beth, he was grateful for it as soon as he tore the outer covering off the skeleton of protective latticework. Seeing Laura there, just behind the crosshatched slats, he had to suppress a powerful urge to lock the front door and pull the curtains shut against the brilliant California sunlight. After she was uncrated and leaning against the wall, he’d remained transfixed for a long time—he couldn’t afterward be sure how long—and for almost as long by Robert Trevor’s signature in the lower right of the canvas. He didn’t need the signature, of course, to know that Joyce was not the painter. She hadn’t anything like this measure of talent, for one thing. For another, she never would’ve seen Laura like this. It wasn’t just his wife’s nakedness, or even her pose, just inside an open doorway, light streaming in on her, all other objects disappearing into shadow. It was something else. The painting’s detail was minutely photographic where the light allowed, yet it was very much “painted,” interpreted, Martin supposed, an effect no camera eye could achieve. Joyce would’ve gotten a charge out of it, he had to admit, when the spell finally broke. The sight of him kneeling before Laura would have covered both her trouble and the expense.
    â€œSo what was it?” Beth asked when she returned from work that evening. He’d opened a bottle of white wine and drunk half of it before he heard the garage door grind open and Beth’s Audi pull inside.
    â€œWhat was
what
?” he said, affecting nonchalance.
    She poured herself a glass of the wine, regarded him strangely, then held up a splintered slat from the latticework he’d broken into small pieces over his knee and stuffed into one of the large rubber trash cans they kept in the garage. Had he forgotten to put the lid on? Or was it Beth’s habit to examine the trash on her way in each evening, to see if he’d thrown away anything interesting?
    â€œSomething hateful,” he finally said, believing this to be true, then adding, “Nothing important,” as pure a lie as he’d ever told.
    She nodded, as if this explanation were sufficient and holding her wineglass up to the light. “Not our usual white,” she remarked, after taking a sip.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA hint of sweet. You usually hate that.”
    â€œLet’s go to Palm Springs for the weekend,” he suggested.
    She continued to study him, now clearly puzzled. “You just finished shooting in Palm Springs. You said you hated it.”
    â€œIt’ll be different now,” he explained, “with us gone.”
    â€œSo, Martin,” Trevor said when he returned with two bottles of sweating domestic beer, a brand Martin didn’t realize was even brewed anymore. He’d partially buttoned his blue denim work shirt, Martin noticed, though a tuft of gray, paint-splattered chest hair was still visible at the open neck. The man sat in stages, as if negotiating with the lower half of his body. “Have I seen any of your films?”
    â€œ
My
films?” Martin smiled, then took a swallow of cold, bitter beer. “I’m not a director, Robert.”
    The man was still trying to get settled, lifting his bad leg straight out in front of him by hand, clearly annoyed by the need to do so.