Sourland (33 page)

“What fantasy? I was there, wasn't I real?
I
thought I was plenty real.”

How to make Woody, or any man, know, the more real he is in ac
tual life, the more real in fantasy? Yvonne began to stammer, “But you, you must have fantasies, too? Don't men? I mean, sometimes? Come on, Woody, you must have masturbated, too—”

Woody said, appalled, “No! Why'd I do that! I wasn't thirteen for Christ's sake. This is really sick, Yvonne. This is so
you
. Telling me now, eight years later like a delayed kick in the groin.”

Yvonne laughed. Woody was so hot-eyed and excited, the blond fuzz covering his flushed scalp looked radioactive. You'd have thought she had insulted his lineage, his dignity. “Oh, Woody. Come on. I'm only just telling you how it was with me, it's a compliment to
you
. How many female residents of Mount Olive, all ages, are fantasizing about Woody Clark any given time of the day, or night? Live with it.”

Woody was sulky-mouthed, skeptical. “I suppose now you're going to tell me, jacking-off was better.” Better than what, Woody left unsaid.

Yvonne said, hurt, “‘Jacking-off' isn't what women do. With women it isn't so crude, it's more fantasy, romantic. I mean, it isn't all that physical.” Yvonne paused, not knowing what she meant. For certainly it had been physical. And yes, often it had been better than the seemingly real thing, with the man. She began to laugh, a little short of breath. The courthouse was nominally air-conditioned, but you'd hardly have known it in this submerged corridor that smelled like the interior of an old refrigerator.

Woody said, frowning, “Baby, cut the bullshit. You're breaking my heart. My balls, you're breaking.
Was
it better? ‘Mas-tur-bating' some secret place where Neil wouldn't be likely to find you?”

Yvonne laughed. Ohhh no she wouldn't say one word more on the subject. Almost, she'd think that she and Woody had been smoking dope in the basement of the old courthouse, he'd been passing her one of his “fantastic” joints (he'd acquired, he said, from the same high school dropout kid who supplied the local teenagers) and laughing at the dazed-silly expression on her face, hilarious when she coughed, choked, wheezed and couldn't seem to keep her mouth closed.

There were footsteps at the farther end of the corridor, on the stairs.
Someone else was coming to the county clerk's office? A man in what appeared to be a rumpled seersucker suit, looking like a courthouse lawyer. Thank God, no one Yvonne recognized. He bypassed the clerk's door to unlock another door, and disappeared inside.

During this exchange, Woody had been looming over Yvonne. She remembered with a thrill his air of menace, the way sometimes he'd use his big body aggressively, in the guise of seeming-playful so you'd think
He's kidding, but this is the real thing
. In their circle, Woody Clark's reputation was up-from-blue-collar, therefore frank-talking, cut-through-bullshit, straight-Democratic ticket, though in fact (not that Woody would talk about this, much) his father ran a family-owned business, Woody had gone to one of the small, good colleges in New York State (maybe Colgate? Hamilton?), had a business degree from Cornell and was a partner in Mount Olive's preeminent accounting firm. “Let's get some fresh air, Yvonne. It's badly needed.” He'd been herding her in the direction of a rear door marked
EXIT
.

Unexpected bright air! After the dim-lit corridor, it felt like TV exposure.

The asphalt lot was shimmering with heat. A surprising number of vehicles were parked there. Woody inquired which car was Yvonne's and she explained she'd parked on the street, her car was a metallic-green Acura; Woody pointed out his massive black Land Rover, parked close by in a way to take up two spaces. Yvonne said, “Why am I not surprised, Woody? The Land Rover was invented for guys like you.”

Woody took this as a compliment. He offered her a cigarette, some low-tar filter brand Yvonne didn't even recognize, and she declined, though with regret. (Yes she'd stopped smoking. Was trying to. Like the personal trainer, the Atkins diet. Other things that made the navigation of a single day like a voyage in a kayak in white-water rapids.) Woody was talking about cars, or maybe he was talking about the economy, looking over her head now restless-eyed, smoking his cigarette with zest. It was sharp as pain, how badly Yvonne wanted to ask about Caroline, or anyway who'd just recently died in Woody's family, for surely it
had to be family, to upset Woody the way it had seemed to upset him, unless she was misreading him but no: she was sure she'd read Woody just right, a few minutes ago. But she couldn't ask, and he wasn't going to volunteer, though Woody was asking, circumspectly, politely, about Neil, Neil's work, for he'd heard Neil was “doing really well” and, you could see that Woody sincerely meant it, he was “happy” for them both.

He said, sucking in smoke, “Everybody always said, Neil wouldn't stay in Mount Olive long. That seemed evident.”

Yvonne took this as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. She'd been wiping at her smudged mascara with a tissue, trying not to be too obvious. In the acid-bright air her eyes ached but she didn't want to retrieve her sunglasses from her handbag, the lenses were so dark-tinted as to seem opaque. She wanted to see Woody Clark clearly, and she wanted him to see her clearly. She heard herself say, in a casual, seemingly retrospective voice, not at all an accusing voice but soft-sounding as she could manage, “I really did want you to know, Woody: I think of you often. You were the love of my life.” She paused. Her mouth twitched. Each was waiting for some further remark, a comic one-liner perhaps. But Yvonne couldn't think of anything funny enough to risk.

(Oh, they'd joked so much together! Yvonne was remembering that now. Every assignation was a conversation and every conversation was packed with laughs. Her laughter with Woody Clark had been like hyperventilating: once you start, it's hard to stop.)

Woody said, exhaling smoke like punctuation, “Bullshit! You haven't thought of me in years. Why'd you think of
me
?” It was a sincere question, Woody meant it. “You have your family. You have your ‘corporate attorney' husband and your ‘Tudor mansion'—yeah, I heard about that—and your ‘social life' in—wherever.”

“Averill Park.”

“Upscale suburb of Albany? I've heard.”

Yvonne smiled. She was embarrassed, just slightly, but she liked it that Woody had heard. Meaning he'd been asking after her, maybe. Or that, hearing of the departed Wertenbakers, Yvonne and Neil, mutual
friends naturally passed on the word to Woody Clark as if, in retrospect, their secret liaison hadn't been so secret after all but a matter of public record like the Police Blotter column in the
Mount Olive Weekly
.

Yvonne said carelessly, “‘Social life' is a hobby. It's for spare time. It isn't, you know,
real
.” Though she recalled how Woody had loved parties, Woody Clark glowing and glistening and loud-laughing so people were drawn to him, how people awaited Woody's arrival, how a light seemed to go out if Woody Clark had to leave early. “Neil and I, when we go out, don't even talk together, it's like we just arrive together then drift away. Some parties, they're just blurs to me. I feel like some kind of amateur porn actress, smiling and smiling, so-happy smiling, Neil Wertenbaker's wife, and the sad thing is, if Neil and I just met at one of these parties, for instance seated next to each other at dinner, we wouldn't be drawn together, at all. One time we were, I guess. But that time is past. Now we're like”—Yvonne was becoming vague now—“opposite ends of a magnet? That repel.”

“‘Diamagnetic.'” Woody sounded interested. For a moment he brooded, as if considering what to reveal of himself, his marriage. “Weird thing, I'm getting that way with my older brother Steve. You know, Steve? In fact, with lots of people. I mean, people I can't reasonably avoid. You start out attracted, sort of, then somehow the poles get switched and you end up repelled. It actually feels physical.” Woody thumped the edge of his fist against his torso, in the region of his heart. It was a strange, oddly poignant gesture Yvonne could recall afterward with no idea what it meant.

But Yvonne didn't want Woody to digress. Not now, when time was running out. (She'd been glancing, wincing, at her watch. At noon, when she'd first arrived at the courthouse, she'd had a yawning abyss of time to get through, now precious minutes were rapidly passing, the minute hand was on its upward swath moving inexorably toward 1
P.M
.) She said, almost petulantly, as if they'd been arguing, “Social life is like buzzing insects. I can ‘do' it but so what? The only things that have ever
meant anything to me have happened in private. When I'm alone, I'm—well, you know what I'm like.”

“I never did. Frankly.”

“You did, Woody! You saw into my heart.”

Woody laughed. He was feeling good now, in even the shimmering-hot air of the asphalt parking lot. “Fuck I did. Your ‘heart.' I never saw you without makeup, for Christ's sake.”

“Come on, you did! Lots of times, you did. It all got rubbed off, believe me. My skin was raw after you. I mean, raw.” She laughed, sounding like hyperventilation. “I'm covered in scar tissue.”

“Oh, man. Are you. That's what it is, huh?”

Woody took hold of Yvonne's chin to tilt it upward. She knew that she looked reasonably good, and her scissor-cut ashy-blond hair looked more than reasonably good, so she didn't flinch, though that was her instinct. She knew that Woody, joker that he was, yet wouldn't joke about anything so personal/private as cosmetic surgery, which she had not had, yet, or laser wrinkle removal, Botox, collagen injections which she had. Yvonne poked him in his belly, that felt softer now, like foam rubber. She thought that he would kiss her, at least lightly on the lips, but he didn't. She said, “You just refuse to acknowledge it, don't you? What we had, for a while, together.”

The
for a while
was subtle, poetic. Yvonne wondered where it had come from.

Woody was backing off. The cigarette was some sort of protective shield he'd been using, Yvonne saw that now. He said, “Talk of being ‘alone'—you were never alone, when you were with me. So how'd I know what you were truly like, when you're ‘alone'?” He laughed, in a whirl of smoke. He was delighted to be tripping her up. Despite the baby face, Woody was a sharp, shrewd guy. In their circle, some of the men had played poker occasionally, including Neil, and Woody Clark was the one to beat. Despite his relative youth, or because of it, he'd been the one to master home computers early on. When your computer
crashed, when you couldn't retrieve a disk, you went to Woody Clark for help. Even Neil Wertenbaker, for all his pride. And more than once.

 

By the time the county clerk returned, at 1:08
P.M
., two other disgruntled citizens were waiting. Yvonne was processed first, then Woody. She waited for him out back, at the Land Rover. She had the death certificate in a manila envelope, in her handbag. She'd only just glanced at it in the clerk's office, her eyes damp with moisture. Quickly she'd put it away. And now her car keys were in her hand. Her heart kicked with the sudden impulse to escape, before Woody Clark joined her. How surprised he'd be, how he'd been taking her for granted! The surprise on the baby-bandit face, when he saw she'd gone.

If she waited for him, if she lingered, very likely he would invite her to lunch another time, but she'd have to refuse. (Unless she called her housekeeper on her cell phone. Just maybe, Lucia could drive Jill to her tennis lesson, and swing around afterward to pick her up. Though Yvonne hated to ask. Chauffeuring wasn't Lucia's usual task. And Jill would be sulky and sarcastic for the remainder of the day.) She was thinking how, if she slipped away, Woody wouldn't try to contact her. He hadn't tried to contact her in more than eight years. She hadn't tried to contact him. (A few postcards, sent from exotic places like Belize, Costa Brava. Nothing too personal, just for fun.) That had meant something final, and sensible. That had meant something profound, hadn't it?

“Yvonne? Hey.”

Woody came at her, eager and frowning. His big sunburnt face looked as if it must hurt. His impossibly-blue eyes, too, appeared excessively moist. He was clutching a manila envelope identical to the one in Yvonne's handbag, return address
COUNTY OFFICE OF RECORDS, CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY COURTHOUSE, CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
. Except now Woody was looking like a man in a hurry who wouldn't be inviting Yvonne to lunch after all. More, he was looking like a guilty
man who needs to make a quick call on his cell phone even as he drives hurriedly through Main Street traffic.

Of course, Woody would have another woman by now. Women. That was obvious.

He fumbled in his pocket, gave Yvonne his business card. He brushed his lips, that felt parched, against her cheek. Like a man out of breath he said, “O.K. look, what we said—if you want to, you know, pursue it.” This was a new business card of Woodrow Clark, Jr.'s, made of a stiffer material than the old. It would have e-mail, cell phone information on it, as the old card had not.

She didn't watch Woody maneuver the Land Rover out of the parking lot. She knew he expected it, but no. She was in a hurry, too.

By 1:35
P.M
., Yvonne was driving east on the Thruway. She'd slipped Woody's business card into the envelope with the death certificate, for safekeeping. What was worrying her immediately was, the adrenaline charge she'd felt, first seeing Woody, that had lit her up like a Christmas tree, was rapidly receding now. You could practically see the brave little glitter-lights going out one by one. If she wasn't careful she'd have one of her blinding migraines on the drive to Albany. This feeling of fatigue, a taste of something sour and brackish like panic. Sometimes all that was required to set off a migraine was a sudden sharp knife-blade of light reflected off the hood, windshield, chrome of another vehicle. A pulse beat in her head, behind her eyes, in warning. Not even the dark glasses could spare her, if a migraine was imminent.