Sourland

Staring at his feet, enormous silver-gray Nikes with bands of rotting black reflector tape, Woody said nothing. Veins and tendons in his muscled neck visibly pulsed.

Suddenly Yvonne was remembering, she’d been hearing about Woody’s wife. They’d been separated, and they’d reconciled. And maybe they’d been separated again. And there was some medical problem. Probably breast cancer, for that was the cancer everyone had, everyone female who had cancer, as prostate cancer was male, and for this reason Yvonne who had long resented, been jealous of, hated, disdained and envied Woody Clark’s wife couldn’t be certain now if she’d heard such grim news about the woman because if she had she’d have blanked it out, blocked it like the kind of caller ID Neil had bought for their phones, where you’re spared even knowing who is trying to call you.

Yvonne swallowed hard. She was frightened suddenly. If Caroline had actually died, was that, somehow, though years later, her fault? Would Woody, unfairly, or fairly, blame her? Or, blaming himself, in his clumsy-blundering-belated way, inadvertently stumble, like a drunk careening across a dance floor, and bring her down with him? Where a minute before he’d been grinning like a high school athlete who’s scored the winning point now Woody was glowering. His mouth was down-turned at both corners. Yvonne thought in dismay Why’d I go there? She could have bitten her lower lip until it bled.

Instead, she took Woody’s hands in hers. He wasn’t responding, so she squeezed harder. “I’m sorry, Woody. I won’t pursue it. I know, well — how you take things. How hard.”

Woody mumbled something that sounded like sure. It was adolescent-boy sarcasm, clumsily disguised hurt.

Yvonne slid her arms around his muscled neck and pressed her face against his muscled-fatty chest. His heart beat beneath her cheek like a fist. She drew a deep, deep breath. If Woody’s arms closed around her, or even if they didn’t, she was feeling good now, she was feeling somehow justified. She had been the one to blurt out to Woody Clark that she missed him, she loved him, and she was sincere, she’d opened herself to him, to be wounded, as he wasn’t opening himself to her. So, she was the naive one, in her heart she was the younger of the two of them. The strange thing was, she hadn’t actually thought much about Woody Clark in years. Not that she’d repudiated him but that, the way she shoved older clothes back into the corners of her walk-in closets, to make way for newer clothes, not a cyclical but a chronological progression, and the older clothes faded from memory as from sight, so she’d ceased thinking urgent thoughts about Woody. There’d been an actor on Seinfeld who resembled Woody to a degree. And sometimes in public she’d find herself watching a tall burly crew cut guy, ex-athlete beginning to go to fat, one of the baby-face bandits as she and her women friends called them: guys that, well into their forties and fifties, and, who knows, into their sixties and beyond, could get away with every kind of bullshit because they had baby faces and you had to love them.

Yvonne said, in a suddenly husky, choked voice, “I think of you all the time, Woody. I just want to tell you.” If the lie came so easily, maybe it wasn’t a lie? “And I don’t mean sexual, Woody. Not just that.”

Pinched-glowering, yet Woody managed to laugh.

“‘Not just that’? I doubt it, honey. There isn’t all that much outside sex. I mean, to take seriously.”

“Well, maybe. But it’s more than that, for me.” Yvonne spoke vehemently. She gave his chest a thump with her fist, as if to push him away. “I miss you, I mean as an individual. As a unique person. You’re the only man practically to make me laugh.” Yvonne was so serious now, she had to speak lightly. Her eyes were welling with ridiculous tears.

“You miss my dick. Good old good old. Reliable.” Woody made a snorting noise. “Or anyway, mostly.”

“Stop talking like an asshole, Woody, when you’re not. It’s like calling yourself a slob when you’re not. What you have is style, a natural kind of style. If you wear slovenly old clothes, rotting old shoes, if your jaws are covered in stubble, it doesn’t matter because you’re you. While other men, no matter what they wear, what car they drive, how their hair is styled, it’s irrelevant. You must know that, God damn. I hate it when you put yourself down.”

Suddenly she was hurt, sulky. He hadn’t moved a step backward when she’d thumped his chest. Now she pushed at his stomach that was perceptibly harder than she’d expected: he must be doing some kind of stomach exercises, from a prone position. His upper arms were thick as hams. And his neck! — she couldn’t have closed her two hands around it, even if she’d wanted to strangle him. The primitive part of her female brain was impressed but the rest was pissed by the dumb-dead weight, the obdurate bulk of the guy. And him protesting, “‘Put myself down’? Like, you’re saying it’s some kind of suicide? When I’m trying to be up front, honest? To you it’s ‘talking like an asshole’? That’s what it is, to you?”

Woody was pretending to be hurt. Woody was wanting Yvonne to remember how, when she’d lost it and screamed at him, really screamed at him those several times, like a crazed woman, stammering and choking and spitting out the most vicious words, he’d never lost control and insulted her. The most agitated he’d been, he’d stammered red-faced, “You — you better stop! You better not say anything more!” He’d let her burn herself out, like a flash fire. Somehow, even at such times, as if knowing he’d provoked her, Woody had been on her side.

That was the remarkable thing about Woody Clark, Yvonne was remembering now. Essentially, unlike anybody else she knew, Woody had been on her side.

She was saying, “It’s just, I do miss you. I wouldn’t be crazy, the way I was. I wouldn’t be, you know, jealous.” Here was a sudden swerve into the subjunctive. Wouldn’t. Would. No wonder Woody Clark was suddenly very still. A damp stain like wings, if you could have wings on your chest, had materialized on the front of Woody’s T-shirt, Yvonne was tracing with her fingers.

“It wasn’t good, Vonnie. You know that. Not just for you, it made you into somebody you basically aren’t, but for me, too. I hated what I, well — was responsible for.”

Vonnie! She wasn’t hearing what Woody was saying but she heard Vonnie which meant their old intimacy. When they were naked together, vulnerable. Vonnie meant a time when they would never, never hurt each other.

“I know! But I could change. I mean, I have changed. I’m older — I’m not so emotional. I wouldn’t be so frantic about you, Woody. So — watchful.” Christ she was hearing herself sound like a defense attorney pleading a cause in which he wants you to believe he believes.

“But — see, honey — we don’t love each other, now. We don’t actually know each other, do we? We’re different people. I know I am.” Woody was pleading, too. Not exactly pushing Yvonne back but holding her at bay, palms of his meaty hands against her shoulders while she was clutching at his forearms.

“I could love you, Woody. I never stopped, it just went underground. You know that, come on.”

“Fuck this, Vonnie. This is bullshit.”

“I’m serious! You know I am.”

She’d begun to cry. The tears were spontaneous, hot as acid. Did this mean they were sincere? The way she was feeling, a sensation like a rag being twisted inside her chest, and something inky running down her face, she felt sincere, like the outermost layer of her skin was being peeled off, but Woody was being weird and not-himself repeating it hadn’t been good, it hadn’t been any kind of life for either of them, and there was Yvonne’s husband Neil, and her daughter, and Yvonne interrupted saying he wasn’t listening! wasn’t hearing her! — “I’ve just been explaining, Woody, I would not be so crazy now. I’ve been telling you and you don’t hear.” Her voice was lifting dangerously. But why did Woody provoke her! “I think I panicked, then. I had to get out. I was going to pieces, and Neil was close to finding out, and you know Neil, I mean you knew Neil, he isn’t like us, he isn’t the kind to forgive. So he was ready to leave Mount Olive, things were falling into place for him, a transfer, a new job, he’s fine, we’re like people digging in different parts of a garden, we’re in the garden together but, you know, not together. Not like you and me. I mean, maybe Neil did know something, the way Caroline knew something, without exactly knowing what it was” — speaking quickly now not wanting to see in Woody’s face how he was feeling about this, that possibly Caroline had known more than she, Yvonne, had wished to believe she’d known — “but it was me, my fault, I understood even then but I couldn’t seem to stop it, I had a hard time not being with you all the time, Woody. I never saw you sleep, for Christ’s sake.” There came the note of reproach, the old indignation, something prim and punitive like a glass struck at a banquet, the heart sinks to hear a glass struck at a banquet meaning toasts, speeches, soul-killing and tedious, and so practically in mid-syllable Yvonne quick-changed her tone, before (she hoped!) Woody could register it, like recognizing an old melody in some scrambled jazz improvisation. She said, lowering her voice, “There were things I stopped, after you,