Missing women & others

by June Spence

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Selected by E. Annie Proulx for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1997, and winner of the Willa Cather Award, June Spence is one of the most original new voices in fiction today. In her collection of short stories, Spence offers us rare glimpses into the hidden lives of so-called ordinary people, those people we think we know: our neighbors, our co-workers, our relatives, ourselves?

Release date: July 1, 1999

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Print pages: 208

Sample

“These stories are not only rich in characters, events, and perceptions of the way we feel and think, they are also imaginatively written on every level, from the choice of particular words to the flow of sentences to the shape of whole stories. One sees great promise in this writer—and then one thinks, No, it isn’t promise—this writer has just plain entered the city.”

—Leonard Michaels

“Spence’s skills in depicting the ordinary and in conveying the fragility of even the closest relationships make this a strong collection.”

—Booklist

“The people in these stories walk that fine line between happiness and loneliness, sorrow and joy, contentment and fear. They are merely human and trying to make their way through a world that is often daunting and confusing, a world that can shift and change suddenly and without warning. In her beautiful sentences June Spence writes about them with knowledge and intelligence, with wit and insight, and a generous helping of compassion.”

—Larry Brown

“Deep, rich language filled with metaphor and meaning is unquestionably one of the more stirring aspects of this collection. These stories . . . tap into and try to make sense of the hurts and pleasures common to all by virtue of simply being alive.”

—Greensboro News & Record

“Short stories that write of life as it is, in language measured and sure. A promising debut.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Many thanks to

Gloria Hickock

of Helicon 9 Editions,

Leonard Michaels,

Cindy Spiegel,

and Nicole Aragi

CONTENTS

OTHER
HALVES

The couple in the other half of Fay’s duplex has been gone about two weeks now. The rhythmic creaking of their lovemaking has ceased, and now the night sound is mostly faded, somber crickets. She misses the soothing racket of her neighbors. They were familiar details, if not friends. The girl played bagpipe music at six A.M. and had a pleasant, horsey smell. The guy had no muffler in his jeep and often left his mud-caked thongs out to dry on the front porch. Fay is wondering where they went, why.

She has never been so interested in anyone’s business before now. Alone, she pays attention to the background noises. More is at stake. A rustle at the window, and she listens for distinctions: unintentional, the wind at the branches again, or deliberate, a hand parting the brush.

When the front door swelled from the heat a few nights ago, Fay couldn’t push it shut enough to make the bolt click locked. With Cliff around, she’d have just put on the chain and gone to bed. But she sensed how fragile the chain was, how just a shoulder braced against the door could snap it. She slept in the foyer that night, ready to greet the intruder right off.

Evenings alone are sometimes more difficult than Fay would like to admit. A little wine tends to soften this knowledge and make the night noises less interesting. Fay usually buys Chablis or Rhine in two- or three-liter jugs for greater economy. She prides herself at how long it took to finish the last bottle at the rate of one or two glasses a day: two and a half weeks. She figures this surely is a normal rate of consumption for a single person. She paces herself by taking occasional delicate sips. She traces up the stem of her glass, cups the bulb in her palm, lifts it slowly to her lips, tips the cold, tart liquid gently into her mouth.

Drinking must remain a deliberate act, she feels. Developing and adhering to new routines, certainties to rely on, has been a nice distraction for Fay. Breakfast is always an apple or a pear, a glass of tea, and two Dexatrims. She enjoys the anxious spurts that the capsules send thrilling through her veins all day. They don’t seem to break her appetite; by lunch she is usually hungry for a cheeseburger, fries drenched in gravy, and a salad with blue cheese dressing. Dinner is the cautious intake of wine.

She has tried to explain this to Cliff, how it illustrates the control she has begun to exert over her actions. He appears to be listening, but his response is then to ask about the car or whether she needs money. He stops over now only to pick up leftover items: a tire iron, his aftershave, the jacket with suede elbow patches. He cannot stay long; a tic begins to pulse at the corner of his mouth, curling it into a snarl.

Fay considers it bad sportsmanship on his part. After all, she stayed with him and was faithful for a full year after he tore up her car and slapped a bruise on her cheek, six months after he was rumored to be dating the seventeen-year-old waitress at Captain Nemo’s. These things had pissed her off, of course, but she was slowly deadening to them. Then Lou.

Lou had gotten apprenticed to Fay’s uncle Bert shortly after the Cliff-waitress talk began. Bert, a crusty old sign painter, whose hand was still true but whose eyesight was going fast, was glad to have him. Bert wanted someone to pass on the business to, since his own uninterested children had gone into banking, used-car sales, and prison. Lou was an art school dropout with a care for detail and an eye for color that gladdened Bert’s heart.

Before Fay got the accounting job at Fritzi’s Junior College, which offered medical insurance, she kept the books at Bert’s shop and ran the vinyl letter cutter that he never quite got the hang of. She had made a point of not talking too much to Lou when he was first hired; her suspicions of Cliff still made her crave revenge sometimes, so she felt it dangerous to get to know any new men. Still, she watched with interest as he learned the rudiments of sign painting. Bert had eaten apprentices for breakfast for a good two years before Lou. Fay lost count of how many had broken under Bert’s rasping criticism. She was ready for the day that Lou would be driven cursing from the shop.

Curiously, Lou lingered on, undaunted by the abrasive instruction he was given.

“You call that blob an oval?” Bert would taunt. “I said serifs, not tree branches sprouting off the goddamn letters. Give me a good clean Times, not some psychedelic hippyshit.” Lou might snort in appreciation or shift to get a better angle on the board, but he never wavered in his gaze, never stopped painting. Bert’s razzing began to take on a more affectionate tone.

“Look at that crazy sonofabitch,” he’d tell Fay, palming the greasy shock of white hair off his forehead. “Works his sorry ass off for six an hour and no benefits. Look at him! Barely even pencils in his designs. Fucking Rembrandt up there!”

And Fay looked. No harm in that. Only there was such focused power in his stance, the sweeps and arcs of his arms, his wrists, the fluid motions of his hands. She’d never seen a more deliberate man. Fay began to ponder what all else those graceful, capable hands could do, and found she could barely look him in the eye after that. I am married, she told herself often, but that only underlined the fact that she needed to be touched with some skill.

Lou’s and Fay’s birthday fell within a few days of each other, so Bert brought a cake to the shop. It had Happy Birthday Fay written in pink cursive frosting, with & Lou added in blue. Bert is an economical man. If two birthdays could be covered with one cake, then so much the better. Now he feels somewhat responsible, as if by pairing them on the cake he set something inexorable in motion.

In a way, he did. The very notion of sharing a birthday cake with Lou, their breaths mingling over the blown-out candles, proved too much for Fay. She devoured the mealy white cake. When Lou leaned over and gently brushed a glob of frosting off her chin, something inside her just shifted out of place.

That oddness inside still remains, keeps her perpetually dissatisfied. She surveys her half of the little duplex: the bad gold rug, her carefully framed seascapes on the walls, Cliff’s extravagant big-screen TV, which takes up so much space. She despairs at how all the furniture slants expectantly toward it. She doubts the couple next door even has a television. She has never heard the dim murmuring through the walls, never glimpsed a pulsating glow through their windows when she came home late.

She has heard their most intimate sounds, though, and wonders what they might have heard from her. She remembers one night when she was unable to keep from yelling at Cliff. Her tirade was incomprehensible to him, something about skilled hands versus hands that slap, hands that touch other women. “Which do you think I have chosen?” she shouted imperiously. But he simply had no idea yet what or whom she meant. How much did they know?

But the couple is not here to be asked, and Cliff is no longer around to fuel her anger by shrugging helplessly at it. Fay takes a measured gulp from her glass and ponders her next move. Once she would have gargled, changed panties, run a brush through her hair, and headed back over to the shop. Lou would be there even now, probably, practicing his curlicues, airbrushing shaded spheres onto scraps of resin board.

That first night she went, she found him straddling a bench with a pint of whiskey, quietly regarding a steer-shaped sign Bert had left him to finish. Sample Sadie’s Succulent Sirloin, it read. Exit 22 miles. The letters were painted a raw-meat red, streaked white with fat. Fay had come to talk to him but had some leftover paperwork to finish in case she lost her nerve.

He greeted Fay with a surprised smile, then gestured at the sign for her opinion.

“Gross,” she offered. “But . . . technically brilliant?”

“Story of my life.” He sighed, offering her the bottle.

Fay sat next to him on the bench and took a long swig. It made a good burn down her throat. She thought if she could just break down and cry, he’d have to comfort her. But she felt too happy. She said to herself, My marriage is wrecked; sometimes that thought would cause tears to well up. But now it just made her giddy with desire. She tried it aloud: “My marriage is wrecked.” She felt her face smirking around the words. “Oh God,” she cried, covering her face with her hands, too late to conceal the laughter erupting from her.

She shook with it for a few moments. Lou, bewildered, sipped the whiskey in silence. When she had quieted down some, he handed her back the bottle. She took another long pull and felt her face and chest flush.

“My marriage,” she said, “is wrecked.” She snorted, giggled, howled with laughter. She reached again for the bottle.

“Good Christ,” said Lou. “Drink up.”

“You have such nice hands,” she told him, laughter suddenly gone. She touched his wrist lightly, then pulled back, frightened.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Come here.” And with those deft, gentle hands, then the length of his body, he drew her in.

There had been a brief period of halfhearted subterfuge before Cliff found out. Fay might say carelessly to him, “I’m out with the girls tonight,” as she left, or, “Late night at the shop,” as she came in. Barely adequate, but they went unchallenged. Soon she dispensed with even the lamest excuses, just came and went.

Then Fay drifted in one morning about three A.M. She wriggled out of her bra, peeled off her panties, glimpsed herself in the dresser mirror, her body contoured by moonlight. Another shape loomed in the reflection, and she whirled around. It was Cliff, sitting straight up in bed.

She got that caught feeling, of course, but like at age six, standing before her mother, who asked her, “Were you eating candy?” and though she was sticky with it, hands, face, hair, the lie spilled easily from her mouth. So she was then, sticky with evidence: face and neck scraped raw by Lou’s stubble, dried and peeling spots on her breasts and stomach, and the lie spilled easily from her mouth.

It wasn’t so much her sleeping with Lou but the consummate ease with which she did it that angered him most. Cliff threw some clothing into a gym bag and left; Fay slept like a sated baby.

She longs for that easy sleep now. But with night coming and no word yet from Lou, she is coiled tight, expectant. There is no rule that says he will come, that she will even hear from him, but something prevents her from seeking him out instead. Not pride, exactly, but she tallies his advances and hers, tries to keep them even.

The girth of him, the fit. It is as though her body has been indelibly molded by his. The curve of her cheek conforms to the nape of his neck; her belly presses flush against the small of his back when they sleep like spoons. They shift and relink in endless combinations, multiplied, the sum of parts: a shoulder wedging into an armpit, hair meshing, palms cupping hips, buttocks, the soft thudding of pelvic bones, nails dancing down a spine, a tongue glistening a nipple erect, breath caressing hollows, the dip between breasts, the navel, tickly parting hairs, working slowly into the warmth, the clasping, the tugging in.

When she runs into Lou around town, it is as though this never was. He greets her with a curt nod, if at all. It is like getting punched in the stomach, this public denial. She wants to tell him how she gave up everything for him, but in truth she lost little or nothing. The old constancy, perhaps. The deadening feeling. And he never asked her to, anyway.

It grows late, and Fay feels with grim certainty that there will be no call, no visit, tonight. The house feels hollow, silent, in need of blotting out, but Fay empties her wineglass into the toilet and turns out the lights.

A sputtering, mufflerless jeep careens into the driveway, its headlights illuminating her bedroom for a swift moment. The neighbors are back, Fay realizes with delight. She pauses in the doorway of her bedroom, relishing the door slams, the familiar clapping of his thongs, the crunching of her boots on gravel as they approach the house. They enter and their footfalls become soft wooden creakings that quickly fade into silence.

She undresses slowly, deliberately, then stretches out on top of the bedcovers. It is as though she is unwilling to penetrate that layer of down without damn good reason. After Lou stays over, the bed takes on a ravaged, haggard look: the pillows are flung away, the sheets and pad wrenched back to expose striped, stained ticking. It is small consolation that the bed will require only a light smoothing tomorrow morning.

Fay listens hard, hoping to be lulled by the neighbors’ sounds, but the house has settled and grown still again. They must be tired from a long trip. She imagines them lying together, their bodies linked and quiet in the dark, and for now it is enough. She pats the empty space beside her and lets the trees whisper her to sleep.

A NICE MAN,
A GOOD GIRL

Emile does sometimes, idly, consider his alternate life, add eighteen years to the day his baby might have made it to birth alive, blood illuminating the skin. Her skin, a daughter. Assuming no other mishaps occurred, by this time he might have watched her graduate high school, hauled her possessions to a college dormitory in a nearby city, walked her down the aisle—any number of touching fatherly things. Her face is an amalgamation of Emile’s and her mother’s, so her eyes are his, sharp, her nose and the curve of her cheeks have a familiar tilt but vague; he hasn’t seen her mother, his ex-wife, in more than a decade.

This isn’t something he dwells on too often. It was a long time ago, and though the loss was of course tragic, he senses only undertones of guilt and relief, glimpses of a baroque toy casket. But he adds, nonetheless. Eighteen years to the machine shop where he might yet be, assuming no layoffs occurred, or if they did, some other venue for a young, honorably discharged soldier with a new wife and kid. Or perhaps he would have opted to stay in the military. That plus eighteen years would have equaled what? Instead of now, his life in a rental house, funky and remote, full of stray animals; his liberal arts degree serving only decorative purposes in its hand-painted frame while he conducts tours and tastings at the winery; his state-of-the-art bicycle and stereo system; a diverse and fascinating string of lovers, their bodies, various and pliant, now open only to his reminiscences. He has worked hard, nonetheless, without the wife and kid. His hands bear the same thickened ovals of callus they would have, only these were acquired in an assortment of jobs and places, with interims between for travel, for reassessments. Luxuries he would likely not have had.

His parents would define his present state as an interim, certainly, though he would not. They quibble over the use of terms. Success, for example, has markedly different connotations for him than for them. He accepts this and knows they do too, despite their ritual indications of displeasure on holidays. And they are fond of Penny, though less fond that she is moving in with Emile, because this they have seen before. It is the kind of thing that can drag on for years without producing a marriage or children, nothing they can claim as partly theirs. The living situation only compromises his already infrequent visits—gain with no payoff, because they can’t say, Emile’s with his in-laws. It just appears as if he’d rather be with somebody else’s parents.

This may be true, but only because Penny’s parents are closer to his age and fairly enthused about his plans. Over icy gin drinks, they conspire mildly in Penny’s absence over her future. She was named Judith but since the Girl Scouts has answered only to Penny, for her middle name, Penelope, and for her copper-colored hair. There is a budding campaign to coax her back to her original name, and Emile intends to participate in a teasing way. “Hey, Jude,” he plans to greet her in singsong fashion when she arrives from work, knowing she will stare humorlessly at each of them in turn before dismissing them with, “That just doesn’t even sound like me.” Penny will then express admiration for the cut-glass pitcher of lemonade as she pours herself a drink and douses it with gin. Her father, Stu, will gas up the grill for salmon and ribs, and Emile and Penny will eat until they are swollen and tired, a way they rarely eat on their own. As they are preparing to leave, her mother, Daphne, will wrap up the leftovers to send back with them and present Penny with the pitcher as a gift. Penny will refuse and her mother will insist and there will be a petty, affectionate squabble at the door before Emile swoops down and accepts the pitcher, saying thank you, thank you, for everything, and her parents will look back at him meaningfully because they know he is referring to those moments just before their daughter arrived, when they agreed to lend him five thousand dollars—which is why he has come to their house early, before Penny. To ask.

But instead of asking, Emile freshens Stu’s drink, then Daphne’s, then his own. He admires Stu’s new casting rod and they make vague fishing plans. He inspects Daphne’s shortwave radio, and they all listen on the patio intently to a German broadcast, accompanied by Stu’s halting translation. That is what makes Emile and Penny’s father ostensibly close: the military. Emile has a better grasp of German from his college classes but defers to Stu’s age and rank and stories of revelry in Amsterdam. Emile has been, understandably, reluctant to discuss his brief stint in Mannheim at age nineteen, not there six months before he married his first real girlfriend. She wasn’t even a German girl but an army brat, the daughter of the chaplain. Her face now a blur but full then, as broad and anguished as the moon; she delivered stillborn the end of an era. Penny has told her parents of this, no doubt, but he offers it up to them anyway in short form: I don’t know if Penny ever told you about my first marriage I was very young just trying to do right by her the baby died it seemed there was no more reason to be married shipped back to the States had a whole other life. Met your daughter. There he places the emphasis.

•   •   •

An impromptu afternoon wine tasting was where Emile met Penny; where Emile met anyone, for that matter. If enough people toured the winery, then lingered in the gift shop, Emile was prone to start opening bottles. It boosted sales, and people left jovially, with high color on their cheeks. That fit Emile just right, he felt, to be a giver of good cheer. Last year was a pivotal time for the winery. They were just evolving past the sweet Catawbas and Concords into Zinfandels and Merlots. Still a little brackish, the new batches, but not without promise.

Penny had come only to make a purchase, but Emile convinced her to join the others who had congregated for the tour. She was the snide, strange, messy sort of pretty he liked. “It will give you a good story to tell,” he tempted, “when you serve this wine. You can tell them how it’s made.” She’d been all over town that day, making arrangements for an open house her company would be throwing to show off their new offices, or “digs,” as she called them, with a mild smirk. She’d been assigned to coordinate the snacks, greasy meatballs and cheese chunks to skewer on toothpicks, and she thought it would be good to offer some local wines, both to pay homage to the community and to unclog the arteries of those who were reckless enough to eat the snacks. “I’m almost certain we’d be liable,” she quipped. Emile got the feeling she was always quipping and that it wearied her.

After the fifth or so sampling, most of the others were leaving, bottles under their arms. Again at Emile’s prompting, Penny stayed on, still sipping, and eating crackers, “to line my stomach,” she said. “I didn’t have lunch today. Inspecting all those meatballs . . .” She scrunched her face. Emile asked what her job was, and she explained that her title was Administrative Assistant, “sort of a catchall name for one who does everything nobody else wants or is able to do.” On a typical day, her duties might range from reconfiguring the network to taking out the garbage. “Secretary” denoted a finite set of duties, she claimed. She was, by now, wishing she were “only a secretary.” But one problem: She was a horrible typist! Being extremely flexible had helped to conceal that fact.

Emile felt he was getting glimpses into a strange and mysterious world. He’d held many jobs but thus far had managed to avoid being sealed inside an office. The business types did visit the winery frequently enough, but he rarely got to know them past brief attempts at one-upmanship over tasting terms. Wine was a business-type person’s show-off hobby, Emile believed. But this one, in her ill-fitting blazer, knew little about wine. She tipped back each thimbleful, sweet or dry, with equal enthusiasm. It had been a while—long enough, he reasoned—since he’d connected with a woman, and she would do, she would certainly do. He opened for them what would be a very good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, given one more year. Now, a year later, he thinks of that wine, how it would have grown subtly richer and many-layered, how even Penny might appreciate it now.

It was too late in the afternoon, luckily, for Penny to have to return to work. She looked at her watch and announced, “Quitting time,” then ceased her funny odd talk of her office and encouraged Emile to tell her about himself. He felt, palpably, that the modes had shifted. He became aware of her youth then; the few worried, cynical lines in her face that had aged her were relaxing smooth. Penny was doing a little math of her own as she listened to him, gauging age from all the places he’d lived, all the jobs. At her age, which Emile guessed to be early twenties, he had been just newly cured of his innocence, and he supposed some of that still clung to him, as nothing more terrible had happened. He knew he’d managed to hold the pallor, the outlines, of youth. And within himself he perceived only the merest slackening, a fatigue that was creeping in earlier in his bike rides.

They decided Penny should drive Emile home, ostensibly to get a better view of the grounds—an extension of the tour “for special customers only,” he joked. Emile wedged his bicycle into the back of her car and loaded a case of assorted wines into the trunk. It was getting closer to harvest, and the grapevines edging the parking lot were vibrant and beaded with purple. The yield was pretty but insubstantial, he explained to Penny as they drove past. They brought in the bulk of their grapes from California. It would be years yet before the winery was fully self-sufficient again. It was experiencing a rebirth after Prohibition days, when the fields had been razed and the cellars used to cultivate mushrooms. Emile honored bearing witness to its slow, sure rebuilding. The wine would be good, was already drinkable.

Emile’s house was more of a hut really, set forlornly at the edge of an abandoned field. They seemed to be miles from town but were barely out of the winery’s backyard. The vineyards had at one time been vast, extending out to these now wide and weedy spaces. Penny’s little car lurched up the sparsely graveled driveway, and she yanked the emergency brake up. The motor still running, she turned to him quizzically: What now?

“Do you like cats?” Emile asked her. Penny nodded. “You have to meet the animals,” Emile urged. “They love women; haven’t seen one in months.” He wasn’t sure if this sounded good or bad, but Penny went inside, sat on his sofa, and gathered them to her. They engulfed her almost at once, the three of them, nudging and purring, swatting jealously at each other. Emile nodded approvingly, then excused himself to quickly inspect the rest of his house. He shoved clothes under the bed, sniffed around for litter box stench, and went to the kitchen for food. After some foraging, he returned to the den with crackers, olives, and cheese, and was surprised to find her sleeping, the cats sprawled out along the length of her. He knelt by the sofa and stroked her shoulder tentatively, but her sleep was so deep and trusting he didn’t disturb her again that night.

Their beginnings were pure, he likes to tell people.

•   •   •

Yes, Penny has mentioned he was married before. Daphne rests her hand lightly at Emile’s elbow. Stu directs his gaze benevolently into the blue-orange dusk. Emile appreciates the light touch of their response. He’s relieved even though he has rarely met anyone who was not understanding about his first marriage. Though Penny can be hard and act as if she has lost more—and perhaps that is much of the attraction, Emile thinks behind the gin, stirring it with his index finger, swirling it in the glass. He shifts in his folding chair, and the cane fibers split and bite the backs of his thighs. Where might he be instead of on this parents’ patio, balking at his own intentions? He likes Penny’s parents, loves Penny, but right now he has lost sight of what seemed like the best idea—get the money down—only days earlier, when he was struck resolutely with the notion of ownership.

Yesterday, today even, ownership has been ringing in his head as he considers how he has come so thoroughly to know his remote and funky rental house, from its flaky plaster walls through to its warped aluminum siding, from its lightly shedding roof down to its concrete pad. It is at best a modest property, cheap and livable. It holds no secrets from him, and he wants to possess it. Proportionally, he knows it is a small request to make of Penny’s parents. They don’t appear to have the retirees’ frugality he sees in his own parents, but they have made wise investments; he knows they have “set aside” a good bit for their daughter. And they are, without question, delighted with Emile.