Jack of Spades (7 page)

13 Immunity

You have immunity now.

No one will believe the witch if she accuses you.

Frequently Jack of Spades teased.

Frequently Jack of Spades taunted.

In the interstices of my “own” life—my writing-life as Andrew J. Rush—the sibilant words sounded like leaking gas.

Especially in my attractive study built above the old stable. In what had been my place of refuge I felt vulnerable, edgy.

Anything you wish to do, C.W. is your target.

See what is before your eyes! The most delicious challenge.

“I have absolutely no interest in C. W. Haider. I am not even going to make inquiries about her health.”

This was so. This was my resolve.

In the weeks following the summons, and the hearing. In the weeks following the collapse in the courtroom. The screams.

Jus-tice!

Yet it seemed that my work was not going well. The meticulous twenty-page outline of
Criss-Cross
suddenly did not make sense. Much of my work-time was spent listlessly rereading, revising. Before the summons, I had been at approximately page 120 of the novel but now, with daily corrosion, I had barely half that much that I could bear to read.

All that I’d labored diligently at, through the crisis, now rang hollow in my ears. My prose, mocked by the wild-white-haired woman in the courtroom, was revealed as flat and unconvincing. My “characters” whom I had, I’d thought, lovingly created, and whose pencil-drawn likenesses were tacked to the corkboard beside my table, seemed to have conspired against me, behind my back, to utter empty banalities of the sort you see in cartoons.

You see?—the witch has put a curse upon you.

What will you do, to exorcise it?

14 “Nephew”

She’d been transferred to a psychiatric clinic in New Brunswick. I knew, I’d made more than one discreet call.

“Would you like to speak with Ms. Haider, sir? She’s in the dayroom right now. I can see her from here.”

Quickly I told the nurse no. No thank you. I didn’t want to upset my aunt.

“Ms. Haider wouldn’t be upset, I think. She’s been lonely. She has been making excellent progress here but it’s very helpful if a patient has visitors. Especially, older patients need to ‘connect’ with familiar faces to keep them from delusional thoughts. Did you say that you are Ms. Haider’s nephew?”

Explaining that yes, I was Ms. Haider’s nephew, but only the son of a stepbrother of hers, living in Duluth, Iowa—(but was Duluth in Iowa?)—and too far away to come visit her at the present time.

“Well, we’re hoping Ms. Haider will be an outpatient soon. She’s the brightest and most talkative patient here right now. ’Course, she’s got a lot to grumble about, it seems. Sure is a
grumbler.
” The nurse laughed, as if her remark were some sort of understatement, which I, as a relative, might appreciate.

“So—my aunt is making progress? She’ll be discharged soon?”

“Yes, sir. What’s your name? I will tell her you called.”

“Stephen. My name is Stephen.”

“‘Stephen’—Haider?”

“No. Stephen King.”

There was a startled silence. Then, “You mean—like the writer? The same name as the famous writer?”

“The same name, yes. But not the same person.”

“Well—good! I will tell Ms. Haider you are thinking of her, Mr. King!”

“Call me Stephen, please.”

“
Stephen
. Gosh!”

15 “I Like Not That”

“If you don’t mind, Andrew. I think I should attend . . .”

Hesitantly Irina spoke. Between us was the issue of Irina’s hours at the Friends School, which seemed to me excessive for the (modest) salary she received.

“Most of the staff will be there . . . I won’t stay for the buffet supper.”

“Don’t be silly, darling! If you want to, you should.”

“Well, I don’t
want to
. I
want to
have dinner with my husband of course . . .”

To placate my dear wife who was looking apologetic, in a way that was both touching and annoying, I told Irina that she should certainly stay for supper with her colleagues, at the headmaster’s house. It would seem rude, or perhaps unprofessional, or might cause them to think she was less committed to her job than others if she rushed home to her husband whom she saw (after all) seven days a week. I would use the opportunity to have dinner with a (recently divorced) friend in Harbourton.

In addition, I would drop by the Harbourton library, to donate a box of books that had accumulated over the summer. Several times a year I donated books to the local library, that were sent to me by publishers; not always, but sometimes, I used the occasion to donate a paperback or two by Jack of Spades whose novels, I’d noticed, were not purchased by the library.

(Once, I’d made an inquiry about this omission to the head librarian who was an old friend and she’d said, with a crinkle of her nose, “Oh, well—we don’t purchase books like that.” But I saw that no one at the library seemed to mind if Jack of Spades was donated, to be displayed on the Mystery Paperbacks shelf alongside such hallowed rivals as Michael Connelly, James Ellroy, Mary Higgins Clark, and, indeed, Andrew J. Rush.)

When Irina was hired to teach art at the Friends School in Hadrian, she’d been very happy and I had been happy for her. Since the children left home she’d tried with varying degrees of success to work on her own art, such as it was—landscape watercolors, glazed ceramics, macramé—but there was nothing quite like teaching to invigorate her. Irina also had our house and property to maintain, which she enjoyed, and on which she spent a considerable amount of money—(of course, with my approval); she was generous with her time at local charitable organizations, and served on various fund-raising committees. There is no term that so sinks the heart of a husband as
fund-raiser—
but I have tried to be supportive of her in these efforts. I have always wanted my dear wife, who is inclined to emotional moods and “melancholia,” to be productively happy.

At the same time, I don’t want Irina’s good nature to be exploited by others.

“If anyone is going to exploit you, darling, it should be
me
.”

With a little wince Irina laughed. I leaned over to kiss her warm cheek and felt her stiffen just slightly for Irina does not always like my jocular side, as she describes it.

When we’d first met at Rutgers, as undergraduates, it had certainly seemed that we were equals; in fact, Irina’s grades were higher than mine. In our writing workshops, which we’d happened to take together, it was Irina Kacinzk with her “poetic” prose in the mode of Virginia Woolf whom the other writers and our instructor most admired, and not Andy Rush whose Hemingway-derived stories were flatly written, awkwardly earnest, and plot-driven with melodramatic “action” scenes and Hollywood-type dialogue. The first story of Irina’s I’d read, about a deaf, dumb, and blind girl, brilliantly evoked and convincing, made a powerful impression on me. I’d thought, with the naïveté of a nineteen-year-old—
Here is the girl I will marry.

It did not matter to me that, in our workshop, Irina was often too shy to speak; and that, among other young women at Rutgers, she was not strikingly attractive or sexually provocative, but rather quietly appealing, with ashy blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses, intense eyes. An intelligent person—obviously. The kind of person who must be cultivated, to be appreciated and who is, if female, grateful for the interest of one with a stronger personality than her own.

Of the numerous girls I’d known, none had seemed to be so impressed with me as Irina. In her eyes the
Andy Rush
who was reflected scarcely seemed, at times, to be
me.

“Irina? Call me ‘Andy,’ please.”

“‘I think that I would rather call you ‘Andrew.’”

This was flattering, somehow. For everyone I knew called me “Andy”—a name comfortable as an old sneaker. There was dignity in “Andrew,” and a kind of depth, complexity. Perhaps I began to fall in love with Irina Kacinzk for seeing more in me than I saw in myself at the time.

Of course, from time to time, Irina has called me “Andy.” In her most affectionate moments, when she feels comfortable in my love, she even calls me “dear”—“darling.”

But it is “Andrew” that is most natural to her for it seems to suggest a slight distance between us: “Andrew” the husband, father, protector and provider.

Soon after we were married, Irina gave up writing. I had been her most enthusiastic reader and had continued to encourage her, going through drafts of stories and novels, but something hesitant and self-doubting had crept into her sense of herself as a writer. Gently I admonished her—“Darling, you care too much for precision and perfection. There’s no need to polish each damned sentence—just
say what you want to say
.”

But Irina grew ever more shy about her writing. I hope it wasn’t because I insisted upon reading everything she wrote, and offering my heartfelt, sincere, and sympathetic critiques.

Though we’d begun as equals, to a degree, both of us finding teaching jobs in the Highland Park area, Irina’s salary from the start was less than mine; her high grades at Rutgers and the great enthusiasm of her professors didn’t so much matter outside the university. Many times in those early, strained years I had to assure Irina that it didn’t matter in the slightest—(indeed, it did not matter in the slightest!)—that the income she brought into the household was rarely more than 70 percent of my own, and went almost entirely for day care when the children were young.

As in a fairy tale we changed places over the years. My first serious stories, Irina helped me revise, even typed for me; it was Irina who provided ideas for plots that weren’t so far-fetched as mine, but lively and surprising; it was Irina who provided dialogue where my dialogue was flat and repetitive. Irina had written a senior honors thesis on prevailing themes in fairy tales, and these themes she’d suggested to me as concepts for my mystery novels, to give them what Irina called
gravitas
. Memorably, when she was eight months pregnant with our firstborn, Irina carefully retyped a forty-page story of mine, with corrections, and sent it to the venerable mystery magazine
Ellery Queen
where it was promptly accepted for publication.

Following that, agents began to write to Andrew J. Rush. I chose a Manhattan agent whose clients included some of the bestselling mystery writers in the country, and I have remained with this excellent agent ever since. Though my stories were frequently rejected, my first attempt at a novel—(with my dear wife’s help)—was met with encouragement and enthusiasm; within two years I had a contract for another novel, with a (moderately) generous advance from a publisher with a strong mystery-crime-detective list. I was not yet thirty years old.

Since that time, I have never been without a writing project—a plan of action. And I rarely look back.

Having given up trying to write, Irina turned to “art.” As I am not any sort of expert on art I am always supportive of her efforts even when I can see (I think I can see) that her watercolors are only just wanly pretty, and in no way original; so too, her glazed ceramics and her macramé are interchangeable with those executed by her women friends in the area, who take courses at the Mill Brook Valley Arts Co-op and whose houses are gradually filling with their creations, like ships gradually sinking beneath the weight of ever-more cargo.

Of course, I didn’t suggest any of this to my dear wife who
tries so hard
.

Sometimes, I came upon Irina’s notebooks around the house. She’d given up trying to write prose fiction but was trying to write poetry—mostly just random lines that were exquisite (I thought) but made no sense.

And sometimes too, I came upon Irina crying.

At first, Irina would deny that she was
crying
.

Just—“Sitting here thinking.”

Or—“It’s just nothing, just a mood. I don’t really have anything to do that I want to do, I guess.”

Or, after I’d questioned her—“Maybe it’s some stupid thing like being lonely. Please let’s forget it.”

Or, suddenly, one day, wiping angrily at her eyes—“You take my ideas from me, Andrew. I don’t have anything left that is my own.”

This was stunning to me. Almost, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard.

“Irina, that’s ridiculous! I’ve never taken any ideas from you except those you’ve given me freely, that I’d thought you had wanted to give.”

This was true! Irina laughed wanly, and did not disagree.

“In fact, Irina dear, you’ve taken ideas from
me
.”

I was referring to suggestions I’d made to her, to improve her watercolors. And years ago before she’d given up writing I could see (I thought that I could see) fairly obvious variants of themes, settings, even characters and dialogue appropriated from my novels though I would never have spoken of this to my dear fragile wife.

The fact was, the children were growing into adolescence, and beyond. The children did not need their mother so much any longer though it seemed, painfully at times, that their mother needed them. I insisted that Irina see a therapist—in time, a sequence of therapists. She began to write again, though she didn’t show me what she was writing. (I did not inquire.) We went on vacations to St. Bart’s, Paris and Nice, Rome, Florence, and Venice. We stayed for as long as two or three weeks. During such interludes I managed to get some work accomplished (for I brought my laptop and notes everywhere with me—I am nothing if not industrious!) while Irina spent time sightseeing, taking photographs, befriending other tourists.

When we returned, Irina seemed quite energized, for a while. But soon she began to lapse into her moods—her “melancholia.”

But teaching at the Friends School was rejuvenating to Irina, at least. Though the private school paid a paltry salary and seemed to exult in its very “specialness”—its quasi-amateur faculty grateful for their jobs in a worthwhile mission. Those colleagues of Irina’s whom I’d met seemed like unusually dedicated people—mostly women. But the headmaster was male, with an impressive degree from Princeton; and Irina’s particular friend at the school was an Asian-born math teacher with an unpronounceable name resembling “Huang Lee.”

I’d met “Huang Lee” just once at a Harbourton library fund-raiser. It was startling to me, “Huang Lee” wasn’t at all what I’d expected, a somewhat stiff and deferential Asian-American but a quick-witted individual who made his (white) listeners laugh. Irina had happened to mention to me that “Huang Lee” was one of the more popular teachers at the school and that girl students were “always falling in love with him.”

At this, I had to laugh. Back at Highland Park High School, girl students were always falling in love with their English teacher Mr. Rush.

I wondered: would “Huang Lee” be at the school meeting? Would “Huang Lee” (whom I believed to be married, with young children) stay for the buffet supper?

From my octagonal study window I watched Irina drive away in the Subaru station wagon (the less glamorous of our vehicles: the other, more usually driven by me, is a new-model Jaguar). I watched her turn left at Mill Brook Road, in the direction of Hadrian six miles away. For a moment I felt a curious impulse to follow her.

I like not that.

Such phrases Jack of Spades inserted into the stream of my thoughts, that were random and inexplicable and not to be taken seriously.

I like not that. Nor should you.