20 by John Edgar Wideman Read Free Book Online Page A

uncertain of her intent, unable to enter a rhythm of conversation because he didn't know what to anticipate next. She sat five feet from him, legs and arms crossed, a knot of intensity, her shorn head stretched forward in expectation of an answer from him—sincere, too sincere; serious, too serious; and above all, too logical, the supralogic of the insane. Her eyes were drawn into a stare too focused to sustain, the Detective waiting uneasily for them to jerk into their jittery searching again. Beyond all this, though, beyond the facts before his eyes, her physical presence, was the suspicion that she was acting, this entire conversation a contemptuous deception, the murderess's self-defense. But a suspicion based on what—what besides the paranoia he had absorbed from Sally lately? The Detective wasn't sure, and sitting within the Klein living room, that oddly antiseptic opening to the stark Maine coast, he felt himself trapped in some visual conundrum, the impossible metaphor of his own confusion, poised at a fulcrum where paired opposites met—time and timelessness,nature and artifice, pity and suspiciousness, all coming full circle and fusing at a border as paradoxical as glass.
    â€œNo answer for me, Descartes?” Mrs. Klein said. “Too confused to answer?—It's the not knowing, isn't it? It's the not knowing that upsets you so. Don't worry, Descartes; something should turn up soon. Something definite.”
    Sarcastic and yet pitying, contemptuous and yet compassionate—the Detective couldn't be sure. Although they were not at all alike physically, in some illogical way that he couldn't quite conceptualize, this strange woman, this murder suspect, reminded him of his wife; aroused in him a similar complex of conflicting emotions, a frustrating urge both to accuse and embrace, to punish and console. Yes, that was it; Mrs. Klein was right, the Detective suddenly understood; it was the not knowing that bothered him so, the lack of certainty that paralyzed him with second thoughts and indecision. If he knew, if only he knew which were true: grieving widow or deceiving murderess; loving, loyal wife or…The Detective thought of Sally; missed her. She would be in the kitchen now, at the table or at the stove, on the phone, keeping informed while making supper, a vigilant ear for incipient trouble; and he could almost hear spoons striking pots, the familiar tattoo of her knife against the cutting board, the way those sounds eased into consciousness as he lay half-asleep in his shuttered study. That was his reality now; not crime or detection, not the intimate dance of interrogation, but the muffled preparation of the bourgeois dinner—soft, safe, distant.
    â€œI say that to Andy,” Mrs. Klein said. “I've said it for years now. It's a joke, an in-joke. You know, the sort of silly thing that couples share?”
    The Detective nodded. He knew; he knows: the wine mispronounced on their first wedding anniversary is mispronounced on the second, and on the third, and on the tenth, is forever mispronounced, and no one else may mispronounce it, an exclusive right of Sadie's and his, giving shape to their marriage, to their special, secret life together—now and forever.
    â€œWhenever he's stumped, whenever he's reached a dead end in his work, whenever those tiny pieces of matter in motion have confused him so much that he begins to despair of ever finding out the truth about them, I say to him, ‘Don't worry, Descartes, something will turn up.’ It's an in-joke now, one of those little rituals that make up a marriage, one of those littleboosts that sustain our momentum. It keeps him going, he says. I'm his inspiration, he says. His accomplice.”
    â€œHis accomplice?”
    Mrs. Klein ignored his question. “Should I do that for you—be your inspiration, help you to discover something definite? Should I become your accomplice?”
    â€œAbout your