The Whore's Child

waiting for his wife to return, as dusk gathered in the street below. It
was
foolish and arrogant, he had to concede, to think you could imagine the truth of another human life, to penetrate its deepest secrets, as he had been credited with doing in his book on Emily Dickinson. What, in the end, could he know of her heart? Maybe the young man they’d hired to replace him was right to scoff. But there
were
things you could know, even if you didn’t want to. Pain, humiliation, fear of inadequacy—these were knowable things. He had known them, felt and shared them, all at once, when he’d told his wife to cover herself. But despite his flaws, he wasn’t a different species. Maybe he’d forgotten who June was. Maybe he’d never known. But how exquisitely he who had caused her such pain had felt and shared it in that moment, and was sharing it still.
    Down in the empty street he saw a woman who looked like June, though he couldn’t be sure, not anymore. She had stopped at a crosswalk, though there was no traffic and no signal, and seemed uncertain whether to head up the street toward him or in the opposite direction. Whoever the woman was, she appeared to be listening, as if to the distant sounds of the sea, perhaps imagining how it felt to be borne gently aloft on a wave.

Poison
    I’m not surprised to see that Gene’s driving a ten-year-old Volvo, that it’s a drab olive green, that it’s dirty and bruised-looking. And I’m not surprised that his new wife in the front seat is decently in between homely and pretty. Like the wife Gene recently divorced, this one’s the sort of woman of whom it might be said that she’d be pretty if she made an effort. That she makes absolutely no effort is no doubt part of what makes her acceptable to Gene. When she gets out of the car and stands squinting in the sunlight, I see she has the sooty coloration of a mulatto, though I doubt Gene would have failed to mention it if she were black. More likely she’s Italian, like he is.
    I make a conscious effort not to prejudge her on the basis of what mutual friends have said. “Grim” is the adjective that comes up most often. If Clare were here, I’d say, “She certainly
looks
grim,” to which my wife would reply, “No, she looks like someone who’s ridden halfway across the country with Gene.” I wish Clare were here. I could use a hug.
    When Gene gets out of the car, he looks grim himself, which makes me wonder if they’ve been arguing and their arrival at our door has necessitated a truce neither of them really wants. One of the things I’ve heard is that Gene’s new wife is publicly contemptuous of him, and this woman certainly looks capable of such behavior. But that’s unfair. I remind myself that it’s late afternoon, which means that they’ve probably been waiting in the ferry’s standby line since morning, which in turn means that they’ve seen at least three ferries come and go without them. To see that big ferry dock and know you’re in the wrong line, well, it isn’t easy. It makes you think of all the other boats you’ve missed, the other things that required reservations you didn’t know how to make, or refused to make on principle. And it’s no fun sitting there in the hot summer sun trying to gauge what cannot be gauged: how many no-shows there’ll be, how many standbys will get on, how many times the boat will come and go without you to the place you want to be. Clare and I have warned Gene to be prepared. “It’ll be a struggle,” I told him. “It may be more of a struggle than it’s worth.”
    â€œI want to see you,” he insisted. “And I want you to meet Portia.”
    So, they are here, early. I have just enough time to change out of the shorts I’m wearing and into a pair of pants that was hanging on a hook inside the closet door. I start downstairs to meet them, but not before I see Gene bend stiffly and a little painfully at the waist—a sure sign of our shared middle age—and then glance up at the second story of our cottage, as if he’s intuited I’m up here somewhere. He’s looking at the master bedroom, next to the room I’m in, the one I use as a study. I instinctively step back from the window before he can spot me.
    What struck me is what always strikes me when I see Gene again after a long time. He