John's Wife: A Novel by Robert Coover Read Free Book Online Page B

Lollie’s halfwit sons were getting dragged around by John’s boy like trained bears, and she herself, watching John’s wife temporarily distract attention from her own son’s popular dumb show (the kid’s act was easy, that crazy photographer was a clown, and like all clowns, no joke) simply by passing by, felt near to tears. Damn it, it wasn’t fair! They’d promised her a happy ending! Whereupon, Mikey’s bitchy big sister Clarissa snuck up behind him while he was concentrating on trying to balance his goofy apparatus on a tripod made of three golfclubs and lit a tin bucket full of firecrackers at his feet. Everyone jumped when they went off, even Lorraine who had seen it coming, everyone except Mikey, who merely pointed his “camera” in different directions and pushed the penlight button as though each pop were the taking of a shot. He dropped the contraption to his side when the explosions stopped, then slowly lifted it again as though guessing there must be more to come, or maybe he peeked. He pivoted, pointed the toilet-roll tube lens at his shocked sister, and— POP! POP! —snapped her turning on her heel in frustration and rage and stomping away. It was a sensation. Lorraine felt, just for a moment (much worse was to happen, she knew that), reconciled to the goddamned world once more, and even laughed and applauded with the others as the little photographer-clown took his waddling exit by chasing his mother up onto the deck and into the house again.
    Beatrice’s perspective on this Pioneers Day barbecue in John’s backyard, not sharing Lorraine’s chronic vexation, was that smalltown life out here on the prairie was pretty crazy (a couple of years later it would be her turn back here, no hosts but the children—what curious times lay ahead!—to be, popping her own cracker, the star attraction), but what the heck, God was good and a generous know-it-all who cared for the little sparrow even, so, as her husband would say, chirp chirp, Trix, let it all happen. After the fireworks (where did John get those things? it was fun but was it legal? or did it, John being who he was, even matter? not to Trixie did it), Lenny was looking positively beatific, and that made Beatrice, who was cheerful by nature, even more cheerful, for in truth she worshiped her goofy husband, only wishing that he, like she, might have some notion of what worship might be. She would watch him in the pulpit on Sunday mornings, delivering his famous sermons, everybody talked about them, and she would know, even if no one else did, that he was just pretending, like with everything else. He pretended to be a preacher, a father, a friend, a lover, the cosmos as unreal to him as a B movie, but he was a good pretender, so what difference did it make? Well, one. Beatrice felt certain that Lenny’d never had, though he’d pretended to, a really great orgasm, and this made her feel somehow inadequate and caused her to wonder sometimes what it was they really shared. Beatrice believed, with all her heart, in the mystical power of the orgasm, it was what linked you to everything else in the whole universe, and she surrendered to it wherever and whenever it came upon her just as a saint would do when God called, for that was exactly how she saw it, and no matter what it might cost her, sometimes quite a lot. But saints suffered, too, didn’t they? Just look at Jesus: he had it about as rough as it could get, but in the end he ascended, an experience Beatrice herself had enjoyed, it was great. As a little girl, she got off all the time on Jesus, just thinking about him and his spacey life, so weird and beautiful, and she still could and did, though she no longer needed him or anybody else, she was directly wired now, she could turn ecstasy on like flipping a light switch, and maybe it was just as well that cool Lenny was there to switch it off when she’d been gone too long and lovingly bring her home again.
    Her mother’s freaky ways