Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  My wife had no friends here in the country, and no one came to visit. Frankly, I was glad for the solitude. But she was a woman who was used to having friends, used to dealing with shopkeepers and tradesmen. Out here, it was just the two of us, thrown back on our resources. Once upon a time a house in the country would have been our ideal—we would have coveted such an arrangement.

  Now I can see it wasn’t such a good idea. No, it wasn’t.

  Both our children had left home long ago. Now and then a letter came from one of them. And once in a blue moon, on a holiday, say, one of them might telephone—a collect call, naturally, my wife being only too happy to accept the charges. This seeming indifference on their part was, I believe, a major cause of my wife’s sadness and general discontent—a discontent, I have to admit, I’d been vaguely aware of before our move to the country. In any case, to find herself in the country after so many years of living close to a shopping mall and bus service, with a taxi no farther away than the telephone in the hall—it must have been hard on her, very hard. I think her decline, as a historian might put it, was accelerated by our move to the country. I think she slipped a cog after that. I’m speaking from hindsight, of course, which always tends to confirm the obvious.

  I don’t know what else to say in regard to this matter of the handwriting. How much more can I say and still retain credibility? We were alone in the house. No one else—to my knowledge, anyway—was in the house and could have penned the letter. Yet I remain convinced to this day that it was not her handwriting that covered the pages of the letter. After all, I’d been reading my wife’s handwriting since before she was my wife. As far back as what might be called our pre-history days—the time she went away to school as a girl, wearing a gray-and-white school uniform. She wrote letters to me every day that she was away, and she was away for two years, not counting holidays and summer vacations.

  Altogether, in the course of our relationship, I would estimate (a conservative estimate, too), counting our separations and the short periods of time I was away on business or in the hospital, etc.—I would estimate, as I say, that I received seventeen hundred or possibly eighteen hundred and fifty handwritten letters from her, not to mention hundreds, maybe thousands, more informal notes (“On your way home, please pick up dry cleaning, and some spinach pasta from Corti Bros”). I could recognize her handwriting anywhere in the world. Give me a few words. I’m confident that if I were in Jaffa, or Marrakech, and picked up a note in the marketplace, I would recognize it if it was my wife’s handwriting. A word, even. Take this word “talked,” for instance. That simply isn’t the way she’d write “talked”! Yet I’m the first to admit I don’t know whose handwriting it is if it isn’t hers.

  Secondly, my wife never underlined her words for emphasis. Never.

  I don’t recall a single instance of her doing this—not once in our entire married life, not to mention the letters I received from her before we were married. It would be reasonable enough, I suppose, to point out that it could happen to anyone. That is, anyone could find himself in a situation that is completely atypical and, given the pressure of the moment, do something totally out of character and draw a line, the merest line, under a word, or maybe under an entire sentence.

  I would go so far as to say that every word of this entire letter, so-called (though I haven’t read it through in its entirety, and won’t, since I can’t find it now), is utterly false. I don’t mean false in the sense of “untrue,” necessarily. There is some truth, perhaps, to the charges. I don’t want to quibble. I don’t want to appear small in this matter; things are bad enough already in this department. No. What I want to say, all I want to say, is that while the sentiments expressed in the letter may be my wife’s, may even hold some truth—be legitimate, so to speak—the force of the accusations leveled against me is diminished, if not entirely undermined, even discredited, because she did not in fact write the letter. Or, if she did write it, then discredited by the fact that she didn’t write it in her own handwriting! Such evasion is what makes men hunger for facts. As always, there are some.

  On the evening in question, we ate dinner rather silently but not unpleasantly, as was our custom. From time to time I looked up and smiled across the table as a way of showing my gratitude for the delicious meal—poached salmon, fresh asparagus, rice pilaf with almonds. The radio played softly in the other room; it was a little suite by Poulenc that I’d first heard on a digital recording five years before in an apartment on Van Ness, in San Francisco, during a thunderstorm.

  When we’d finished eating, and after we’d had our coffee and dessert, my wife said something that startled me. “Are you planning to be in your room this evening?” she said.

  “I am,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I simply wanted to know.” She picked up her cup and drank some coffee. But she avoided looking at me, even though I tried to catch her eye.

  Are you planning to be in your room this evening? Such a question was altogether out of character for her. I wonder now why on earth I didn’t pursue this at the time. She knows my habits, if anyone does. But I think her mind was made up even then. I think she was concealing something even as she spoke.

  “Of course I’ll be in my room this evening,” I repeated, perhaps a trifle impatiently. She didn’t say anything else, and neither did I. I drank the last of my coffee and cleared my throat.

  She glanced up and held my eyes a moment. Then she nodded, as if we had agreed on something. (But we hadn’t, of course.) She got up and began to clear the table.

  I felt as if dinner had somehow ended on an unsatisfactory note. Something else—a few words maybe-was needed to round things off and put the situation right again.

  “There’s a fog coming in,” I said.

  “Is there? I hadn’t noticed,” she said.

  She wiped away a place on the window over the sink with a dish towel and looked out. For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she said— again mysteriously, or so it seems to me now—”There is. Yes, it’s very foggy. It’s a heavy fog, isn’t it?” That’s all she said. Then she lowered her eyes and began to wash the dishes.

  I sat at the table a while longer before I said, “I think I’ll go to my room now.”

  She took her hands out of the water and rested them against the counter. I thought she might proffer a word or two of encouragement for the work I was engaged in, but she didn’t. Not a peep. It was as if she were waiting for me to leave the kitchen so she could enjoy her privacy.

  Remember, I was at work in my room at the time the letter was slipped under the door. I read enough to question the handwriting and to wonder how it was that my wife had presumably been busy somewhere in the house and writing me a letter at the same time. Before reading further in the letter, I got up and went over to the door, unlocked it, and checked the corridor.

  It was dark at this end of the house. But when I cautiously put my head out I could see light from the living room at the end of the hallway. The radio was playing quietly, as usual. Why did I hesitate?

  Except for the fog, it was a night very much like any other we had spent together in the house. But there was something else afoot tonight. At that moment I found myself afraid—afraid, if you can believe it, in my own house!—to walk down the hall and satisfy myself that all was well. Or if something was wrong, if my wife was experiencing—how should I put it?—difficulties of any sort, hadn’t I best confront the situation before letting it go any further, before losing any more time on this stupid business of reading her words in somebody else’s handwriting!

  But I didn’t investigate. Perhaps I wanted to avoid a frontal attack. In any case, I drew back and shut and locked the door before returning to the letter. But I was angry now as I saw the evening sliding away in this foolish and incomprehensible business. I was beginning to feel uneasy. (No other word will do.) I could feel my gorge rising as I picked up the letter purporting to be from my wife and once more began to read.
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  The time has come and gone for us—us, you and me—to put all our cards on the table. Thee and me.

  Lancelot and Guinevere. Abelard and Heloi’se. Troilus and Cressida. Pyramus and Thisbe. JAJ and Nora Barnacle, etc. You know what I’m saying, honey. We’ve been together a long time—thick and thin, illness and health, stomach distress, eye-earnose-and throat trouble, high times and low. Now? Well, I don’t know what I can say now except the truth: I can’t go it another step.

  At this point, I threw down the letter and went to the door again, deciding to settle this once and for all. I wanted an accounting, and I wanted it now. I was, I think, in a rage. But at this point, just as I opened the door, I heard a low murmuring from the living room. It was as if somebody were trying to say something over the phone and this somebody were taking pains not to be overheard. Then I heard the receiver being replaced. Just this. Then everything was as before—the radio playing softly, the house otherwise quiet.

  But I had heard a voice.

  In place of anger, I began to feel panic. I grew afraid as I looked down the corridor. Things were the same as before—the light was on in the living room, the radio played softly. I took a few steps and listened. I hoped I might hear the comforting, rhythmic clicking of her knitting needles, or the sound of a page being turned, but there was nothing of the sort. I took a few steps toward the living room and then-what should I say?—I lost my nerve, or maybe my curiosity. It was at that moment I heard the muted sound of a doorknob being turned, and afterward the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing quietly.

  My impulse was to walk rapidly down the corridor and into the living room and get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. But I didn’t want to act impulsively and possibly discredit myself. I’m not impulsive, so I waited. But there was activity of some sort in the house— something was afoot, I was sure of it—and of course it was my duty, for my own peace of mind, not to mention the possible safety and well being of my wife, to act. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The moment was there, but I hesitated. Suddenly it was too late for any decisive action. The moment had come and gone, and could not be called back. Just so did Darius hesitate and then fail to act at the Battle of Granicus, and the day was lost, Alexander the Great rolling him up on every side and giving him a real walloping.

  I went back to my room and closed the door. But my heart was racing. I sat in my chair and, trembling, picked up the pages of the letter once more.

  But now here’s the curious thing. Instead of beginning to read the letter through, from start to finish, or even starting at the point where I’d stopped earlier, I took pages at random and held them under the table lamp, picking out a line here and a line there. This allowed me to juxtapose the charges made against me until the entire indictment (for that’s what it was) took on quite another character—one more acceptable, since it had lost its chronology and, with it, a little of its punch.

  So. Well. In this manner, going from page to page, here a line, there a line, I read in snatches the following—which might under different circumstances serve as a kind of abstract:… withdrawing farther into… a small enough thing, but… talcum powder sprayed over the bathroom, including walls and baseboards… a shell… not to mention the insane asylum… until finally… a balanced view… the grave. Your “work”… Please! Give me a break… No one, not even… Not another word on the subject!… The children… but the real issue… not to mention the loneliness… Jesus H. Christ! Really! I mean…

  At this point I distinctly heard the front door close. I dropped the pages of the letter onto the desk and hurried to the living room. It didn’t take long to see that my wife wasn’t in the house. (The house is small—two bedrooms, one of which we refer to as my room or, on occasion, as my study.) But let the record show: every light in the house was burning.

  A heavy fog lay outside the windows, a fog so dense I could scarcely see the driveway. The porch light was on and a suitcase stood outside on the porch. It was my wife’s suitcase, the one she’d brought packed full of her things when we moved here. What on earth was going on? I opened the door. Suddenly—I don’t know how to say this other than how it was—a horse stepped out of the fog, and then, an instant later, as I watched, dumbfounded, another horse. These horses were grazing in our front yard. I saw my wife alongside one of the horses, and I called her name.

  “Come on out here,” she said. “Look at this. Doesn’t this beat anything?”

  She was standing beside this big horse, patting its flank. She was dressed in her best clothes and had on heels and was wearing a hat. (I hadn’t seen her in a hat since her mother’s funeral, three years before.) Then she moved forward and put her face against the horse’s mane.

  “Where did you come from, you big baby?” she said. “Where did you come from, sweetheart?” Then, as I watched, she began to cry into the horse’s mane.

  “There, there,” I said and started down the steps. I went over and patted the horse, and then I touched my wife’s shoulder. She drew back. The horse snorted, raised its head a moment, and then went to cropping the grass once more. “What is it?” I said to my wife. “For God’s sake, what’s happening here, anyway?”

  She didn’t answer. The horse moved a few steps but continued pulling and eating the grass. The other horse was munching grass as well. My wife moved with the horse, hanging on to its mane. I put my hand against the horse’s neck and felt a surge of power run up my arm to the shoulder. I shivered. My wife was still crying. I felt helpless, but I was scared, too.

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?” I said. “Why are you dressed like this? What’s that suitcase doing on the front porch? Where did these horses come from? For God’s sake, can you tell me what’s happening?”

  My wife began to croon to the horse. Croon! Then she stopped and said, “You didn’t read my letter, did you? You might have skimmed it, but you didn’t read it. Admit it!”

  “I did read it,” I said. I was lying, yes, but it was a white lie. A partial untruth. But he who is blameless, let him throw out the first stone. “But tell me what is going on anyway,” I said.

  My wife turned her head from side to side. She pushed her face into the horse’s dark wet mane. I could hear the horse chomp, chomp, chomp. Then it snorted as it took in air through its nostrils.

  She said, “There was this girl, you see. Are you listening? And this girl loved this boy so much. She loved him even more than herself. But the boy—well, he grew up. I don’t know what happened to him.

  Something, anyway. He got cruel without meaning to be cruel and he—”

  I didn’t catch the rest, because just then a car appeared out of the fog, in the drive, with its headlights on and a flashing blue light on its roof. It was followed, a minute later, by a pickup truck pulling what looked like a horse trailer, though with the fog it was hard to tell. It could have been anything—a big portable oven, say. The car pulled right up onto the lawn and stopped. Then the pickup drove alongside the car and stopped, too. Both vehicles kept their headlights on and their engines running, which contributed to the eerie, bizarre aspect of things. A man wearing a cowboy hat—a rancher, I supposed-stepped down from the pickup. He raised the collar of his sheepskin coat and whistled to the horses.

  Then a big man in a raincoat got out of the car. He was a much bigger man than the rancher, and he, too, was wearing a cowboy hat. But his raincoat was open, and I could see a pistol strapped to his waist. He had to be a deputy sheriff. Despite everything that was going on, and the anxiety I felt, I found it worth noting that both men were wearing hats. I ran my hand through my hair, and was sorry I wasn’t wearing a hat of my own.

  “I called the sheriff’s department a while ago,” my wife said. “When I first saw the horses.” She waited a minute and then she said something else. “Now you won’t need to give me a ride into town after all. I mentioned that in my letter, the letter you read. I said I’d need a ride into town. I can get a ride—at least, I think I can—w
ith one of these gentlemen. And I’m not changing my mind about anything, either. I’m saying this decision is irrevocable. Look at me!” she said.

  I’d been watching them round up the horses. The deputy was holding his flashlight while the rancher walked a horse up a little ramp into the trailer. I turned to look at this woman I didn’t know any longer.

  “I’m leaving you,” she said. “That’s what’s happening. I’m heading for town tonight. I’m striking out on my own. It’s all in the letter you read.” Whereas, as I said earlier, my wife never underlined words in her letters, she was now speaking (having dried her tears) as if virtually every other word out of her mouth ought to be emphasized.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I heard myself say. It was almost as if I couldn’t help adding pressure to some of my own words. “Why are you doing this?”

  She shook her head. The rancher was loading the second horse into the trailer now, whistling sharply, clapping his hands and shouting an occasional “Whoa! Whoa, damn you! Back up now. Back up!”

  The deputy came over to us with a clipboard under his arm. He was holding a big flashlight. “Who called?” he said.

  “I did,” my wife said.

  The deputy looked her over for a minute. He flashed the light onto her high heels and then up to her hat.

  “You’re all dressed up,” he said.

  “I’m leaving my husband,” she said.

  The deputy nodded, as if he understood. (But he didn’t, he couldn’t!) “He’s not going to give you any trouble, is he?” the deputy said, shining his light into my face and moving the light up and down rapidly.

  “You’re not, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “No trouble. But I resent—”

  “Good,” the deputy said. “Enough said, then.”

  The rancher closed and latched the door to his trailer. Then he walked toward us through the wet grass, which, I noticed, reached to the tops of his boots.