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Story by Andrew Coburn
A Woolf In Vita's
Clothing
Ten years ago a man named Benson married her and took her to
North Dakota, where gigantic skies diminished her, winds haunted
her, and winters oppressed her. Her only means of escape was
a Greyhound bus. People in the town called it "riding the
dog." She rode the dog to Chicago, arriving with forty-four
dollars in her bag, which was a weight because much of it was
in coin.
In a coffee shop she chose to sit beside a man who appealed to
her in a comforting way. He had the sort of face, not entirely
unattractive, that looked as if it wanted to be forgiven, the
sin left to the imagination. At other moments, however, when
he gazed at her over his coffee mug, she sensed something unexplained
and inaccurate in his face.
Eating a blueberry muffin, the first food she'd had since boarding
the bus, she said that the greatest loneliness in the world resides
in North Dakota, the loneliness limitless in winter and hellish
in summer. The roads, she said, were made for high speeds and
suicides, the suicides usually called accidents.
"I've never been to North Dakota," he said.
She told him that her husband owned a stereo, which he tuned
to farm reports in the morning and country music at night. Their
only child, a son, she said, died before his second birthday.
From her weighted bag she produced a color snapshot of the child.
Glancing at it politely, the man said off-handedly, "So,
you've left your husband."
She returned the picture to her bag.
"You're a good-looking woman," he said, staring intently
at her. "He might come looking for you."
"No. He won't do that."
"How can you be sure?"
"I'm sure," she said.
Later he took her to a hotel, where she soaked in a hot bath
and then wrapped herself in a voluminous towel. He was sitting
low in a chair and watching television news. Suddenly he gripped
the arms of the chair and sat erect. "Jesus," he said.
"That's you!"
She peered carefully and critically at the screen. "I wish
they hadn't used that picture."
He was looking at her in a whole new way. The color in this face
had risen. "Why did you do it?"
"Do you need to ask?"
He thought for a moment. "No, I guess not."
"Are you going to turn me in?"
He used the remote to kill the television. "I suppose I
should, but I won't."
She let out a breath. "I don't know your name."
"Chuck," he said.
She held out a hand. "I'm Caroline."
***
During the night he woke with a start, raised himself on an elbow,
and peered down at her in the light from the bathroom. In sleep
she looked imaginary, a product of whatever dream she was dreaming.
In the morning he ordered breakfast for them through room service.
She stayed in the bathroom until it was delivered. Over coffee
he said, "You should dye your hair."
Her hair was very blond. "No, I like it as it is."
"Then tie it in a knot or something."
"Yes, I can do that."
"You can't stay in Chicago."
"I don't know where else to go."
The morning paper had come with their breakfast. He refrained
from looking at it. "We'll think of something," he
said, rising. His suitcase was of dark leather and fully packed.
Hers was of cracked plastic and contained changes of underwear
and little else. "We'll have to get you some different clothes,"
he said.
"Are you rich?"
"I have credit cards."
Her bag was on the dresser. He felt the weight of it when he
moved it and wondered whether the weight was a gun. Opening it
he saw a load of coins. He took out a handful for the maid.
***
She kept pace with the fast sidewalk crowd. Newly outfitted in
navy and white--a jacket with outsize lapels and pockets, a blouse
full of frills, and a skirt billowing from the hips--she came
across as the sails and rigging of a slender ship braving rough
waters. The eyes of a derelict went small looking at her.
She waited at a corner, where the air of traffic stood tall.
The springtime sky had a summery touch. A crowd waiting to cross
compacted around her and then, when the lights changed, hurried
on without her. Presently Chuck arrived in a gray rental and
flung open the passenger door.
"Get in."
Several blocks later they got snarled in a gridlock at an intersection.
It was almost as if a malignant force were binding them in. She
looked out her window at a man maneuvering a shopping carriage
brimming with redeemable cans. She gazed past him to a window
of dinette furniture.
"I was born in this city," she said.
"Do you have family here?"
"Nobody. My mother and father are dead."
"I like your outfit."
"It's not me," she said.
They did not speak again until they were free of the gridlock
and nearing an artery that would take them out of the city. She
said, "Where are we going?"
He said, "We'll know when we get there."
***
Road-weary, they checked into a motel off a highway in Indiana.
Again she had a long hot soak in the tub, as if to steam away
not only North Dakota but Chicago. When she emerged in one of
his shirts, he was watching television, which did not surprise
her.
"Was I on again?"
"Only for an instant," he said, viewing her with sober
eyes. "You should've bought some jeans. We'll get you some
in the next town."
"I'm running up a bill."
"I don't keep chits."
She stepped behind his chair and gazed down into his hair, which
held a few threads of gray at the part. "Chuck," she
said in a near whisper.
For a moment he did not respond. Then he did, quietly. "What?"
"You haven't told me anything about yourself."
When he closed his eyes and remained silent, she moved to the
television and scrutinized the pay offerings. "They have
dirty movies," she said. "I've never seen one."
"Do you want to?"
"No," she said.
In bed, the light in the bathroom left on, he made love to her
with her consent but without her full attention. She would have
rather turned over and gone to sleep. When he finished, she was
wide awake. Lying on her side, facing him, she began talking
about her husband, how she had managed it. He was sleeping, she
said. When she cut his throat, she saw a quart of blood.
"I don't want to hear," he said.
"I'm sorry."
He lay still. "My wife is dead."
"Like my husband?"
"No, it was different."
She waited for him to go on, but he did not. Soon he was asleep,
and eventually she drifted off. In a dream her husband's corpse
came to life and went crazy over the condition it was in.
***
They stopped in a small town in Ohio for lunch. She had on a
white blouse and jeans, and she wore her hair in a severe bun,
which gave her face a broader definition. They lingered at the
restaurant to the point that the other tables began to stand
empty. Without prompting, he told her he had taught literature
at Dartmouth College, where he had met his wife, a graduate student
of uncommon abilities and diverse opinions.
"I knew you were educated," she said.
He sipped his coffee. "We were married twenty years."
"Did you love her?"
"Very much, but it's not clear whether she ever loved me."
"Did you have children?"
"Two boys, grown now. They hate me."
"Do they have reason?"
"They think so," he said and fell into one of his silences,
which threatened the air between them.
"Please," she said, "tell me what's going on in
your mind?"
"You don't want to know."
"But I do."
"A drama," he said, his tone turning light. "Vita
Sackville-West, handsome in men's clothing, is having tea with
Virginia Woolf. Virginia places a hand on Vita's trousered knee
and says, 'I wish I had your balls.'"
"Are they real people?"
"They were real once. They're mythology now."
"I'm not sure what you're telling me."
"My wife left me for another woman."
The waitress dropped off the check. She wanted to pay it, but
he took it from her and laid out a gilt credit card. She said,
"Did you kill your wife?"
He smiled thinly through the dark of his face. "There were
two trials, mistrials, deadlocked juries. They finally let me
go."
"Tell me about your sons."
"I already have. They hate the ground I walk on. They testified
against me. They raged at the district attorney when I was freed."
Without warning one of his hands began to tremble. Instinctively
she reached over to steady it, but he drew back. "It'll
pass," he said.
The waitress processed the credit card and returned it. He scratched
his name illegibly on the receipt and managed a smile. Moments
later, from across the room, the waitress gave them a hard stare.
"Let's get out of here," he said.
***
Springtime sleet fell in upstate New York. Chuck squinted through
the windshield, for the wipers were smearing what they plowed.
On the interstate, after paying the toll with quarters from her
bag, he drove at a moderate speed, and she counted mileposts
along the way.
"Why are you doing this for me?" she asked. "You
probably could get any woman. You don't need me."
"We need each other," he said. "I saw that right
away."
Within the hour the sky cleared and the sun came out. The defroster
had made the air in the car humid. Her white shirt felt clammy
against her skin. She felt she had gone bad in it.
Chuck said, "How did you meet your husband?"
"He came to Chicago. He wore a tan suit. It was summer,
and I was clerking in a convenience store."
"Why did you marry him?"
"He put his hand over his heart and said he loved me."
They passed a disabled car squatting in the breakdown lane. The
sun, wheeling in and out of clouds, showed itself in momentary
shocks, as if someone were shooting at them. She lowered the
visor.
"When things went wrong at the farm he blamed me. Some things
were my fault, but I did my best. He said my head was in the
clouds."
Chuck's eye was in the rearview. "Reality craves fantasy."
"When the baby took sick he wouldn't call the doctor. He
didn't believe in doctors, only in God. He was a church-goer.
I'm sure all the people at the church hate me now."
"Yes, you can bet on it," he said abstractedly.
"Is something wrong?"
"There's a police car behind us."
"I'm not scared." She raised the visor. "Why aren't
I, Chuck?"
"You haven't come down yet. In time you will, and then you'll
be scared of yourself."
"How do you know?"
"I know," he said.
Watching starlings descend like a rock slide onto the grassy
center strip, she thought of people at the church. The only one
she would miss was eccentric Mrs. Hager, who wore wide-brimmed
hats and smoked while she prayed.
Chuck's voice loosened. "It's gone," he said.
Turning, she glimpsed the state police cruiser veering around
the curve of an exit ramp.
***
They checked into a motor inn in the Berkshires. He had bought
her a nightgown with lace. Humid from her bath, her backside
was a rosy glow inside the gown. She pulled at the elastic on
his boxer shorts and let it snap against his skin.
"That hurt," he said.
She apologized in a soft voice. "That wasn't my intention."
From the bed they watched one of those movies, her idea. She
thought it might be fun. A nun lifted her skirts and revealed
long splendid legs. Then a man came into the picture. The mole
on his back looked like a penny.
Chuck spoke in her ear. "Turn it off if it offends you."
"No," she said. "It's what people do."
He said, "There's nothing people won't do."
After the movie was over he propped himself on an elbow and seemed
to find something wondrously pristine about her body, as if no
hand other than her own had ever touched it. He bared her breasts
appreciatively, as if removing gift apples from their tissue
wrappings. Some women are unforgettable in their nakedness. He
told her she was one of them.
After they made love they lay locked in the dying intensities,
with neither wanting to let go.
He stroked her hair. "I hope I'm wrong,"
he said, "but this may be our last night together."
She breathed up at him. "Why do you say that?"
"I've been foolish about money. It's added up to quite a
bit. They're after me too."
She embraced him harder. "We've become close."
He said. "I love you, Caroline."
***
"Are we still in Massachusetts?" she asked.
"New Hampshire," he said.
Here in New England the sky seemed closer, the clouds pushed
low, not at all like North Dakota where the heavens are gigantic,
the clouds massive and aloof, and the emptiness awesome. She
remembered storms so horrendous they threatened to crack the
planet.
"Are you scared yet?" he asked.
"No," she said.
He was driving on back roads and finding excuses to stop in each
small town they came to. The strong scent of potpourri issued
from a gift shop. He went into it and bought her a silver bracelet,
a perfect fit for her slim wrist. At a small shopping center
he picked out a stylish trench coat with slash pockets and a
wide belt. She looked quite nice in it.
"Why do you keep putting me in different clothes? Are you
trying to make me someone else?"
"You are someone else," he said.
"I feel like I'm in the movies."
Back on the road she stretched her legs out as much as she could
and dozed off. In a dream a fully uniformed police officer, the
brightness of his brass vying with the shine of his leather,
tapped her solidly on the shoulder and said, Are you Caroline
Benson? Pointing at Chuck, she said, You'll have to ask
him.
***
At nightfall he reached the end of the line, a town where landmarks
evoked memories and raised ghosts. The Texaco station was a beacon.
Blue neon burned over the doorway of Bill's Cafe, a hangout for
rural riffraff. He could see into the drugstore, which was stuck
in time. It had a marble soda fountain and round revolving seats.
The soda jerk was in his nineties.
He drove through the center and past the lights of the library,
where forsythia was in gushing bloom. Caroline sat with her head
back and her eyes closed, but he knew she was not asleep. As
he neared the far edge of town the roadside went wooded. Headlamps
of an approaching car were pale strains adhering to nothing,
and the car, which may have been a van, floated by without sound
or shape, driverless for all he knew.
Warm air from the day clashed with the cold of evening, and swirls
of mist ran yellow in the moonlight and hovered ghostly wherever
the road dipped. He drove with a fear he might hit something,
for the road was rerouting itself the way a river sometimes abandons
its bed to make another. Then the road straightened, and he knew
exactly where he was.
Caroline said, "Why are we stopping?"
"You grew up in Chicago," he said, "I grew up
here."
He stepped from the car, waited while she buttoned her trench
coat, and then gave her his arm. The moon irradiated a path that
took them through the pinewood and the ring of peepers. A pond
opened in front of them.
"I used to take my boys fishing here. We never caught anything
but perch."
"I've never seen a perch," she said.
"They're not very big."
They stood at the edge of the pond, mist scaling off the surface,
the moon mirrored on it. The moon fascinated him. It was a dead
thing that looked alive on the water. It was gloom wearing bridal
white. He said, "We grow, we reach a height, we contract,
we die. Ever ask yourself why, Caroline?"
"Yes," she said. "When my mother died."
"Beautiful stars up there," he said, raising his eyes.
"What we see as up could be down."
"How can we tell?"
"We can't. Think of God as a mathematical genius and a perverse
toy-maker. Who else would have put worlds spinning on their axes?
Leaves us not knowing which end is up."
"But he must have done it for a purpose."
"Pure amusement, Caroline."
"You're fooling me," she said. "Tell me what you
really believe."
"At some point the universe will dissolve into an idea of
itself, from which it evolved. Put another way, when God grows
bored with his idea of us, we're finished."
She tightened her grip on his arm. "That can't be true."
"Truth is relative. A lie told in Chicago is gospel in North
Dakota."
"You know so much."
He wanted to tell her that he knew nothing. He was a product
of group therapy, disturbed strangers bathing in a communal pool
of unhappiness polluted by self-pity, their troubles traced to
others, not themselves, responsibility seldom mentioned.
Passing geese skimmed their shadows over the water and eclipsed
the mirrored moon. Dark air currents carried the scent of pine.
"I'm getting scared," Caroline said. The moisture of
night sheathed her face the way it did apples in an orchard.
"What's going to happen to me, Chuck?"
"We devise our own punishment. A woman I mentioned, Mrs.
Woolf, waded into a pond like this one and never came out."
"I wouldn't want to do that."
"Nor would I," he said and led her from the water's
edge.
***
In a country inn a mile from the pond she shrugged off the trench
coat and said, "You were wrong. We have another night together."
"We got lucky," he said.
The room was unlike the others they had shared and gave her an
uneasy sense of being back at the farm. The furniture could have
been acquired from an old funeral home. A high-back chair stood
somber and still, the arms rubbed smooth as if by grieving hands.
A settee issued a prayerful air of rectitude. Decorous endtables
and a dropleaf desk stood stolid. The only thing missing was
a sampler on the wall.
"It's like you've brought me back," she said.
"I've brought us both back."
"Why?"
"We can face anything together."
In her mind the room was not here but where it should be. The
sampler appeared on the wall. Fascination held her eyes open.
A blink would have exploded the image.
"Yes," she said when he kissed her.
He undressed her and told her she was lovely everywhere. On the
bed he kissed the soles of her feet. No man had ever done that
to her before.
"Yes," she whispered. "I love you too."
***
They rose late and checked out after a slow breakfast. The air
was warm, but the sky threatened. When they climbed into the
car they saw sprinkles on the windshield. He did not drive far,
only a few miles beyond the inn. Pulling over, a grove of birch
and maple in sight, he let the car slow to a standstill.
A fine rain netted trees and veiled shrubs. The grass steamed
and wet her shoes. Violets lay cool in their foliage. She hiked
the collar of her trench coat and took his arm. He had on a nylon
jacket and sturdier shoes.
"I used to bring the family here," he said. "Picnics."
In the grove they passed tables and benches. She could hear the
light rain in the trees, the sound like metal points pricking
the leaves, which were tender, not yet at full strength. There
were trees in North Dakota, but she could not remember any of
them.
Leaving the grove, they climbed over a low crumbling wall of
unmortared stones and stepped into a meadow. A single leafless
magnolia in full bloom gave her a sense of being a bride again.
Beyond the meadow was a grassy hill, over which they saw a small
slash of lightning. "This isn't the best place to be,"
he said.
"I don't mind, if you don't." She reached for his sleeve.
"Do you believe in God, Chuck?"
"I don't believe anything can come from nothing, so there
must've always been something. That's as far as my mind will
take me."
"I believe there has to be something other."
"That's a whole new ballgame," he said and gazed toward
the hill. "Will you climb it with me?"
***
The gray sky darkened as they crossed the meadow. The rain weighted
their hair but not their steps. When she glanced at him, her
smile resembled his, giving them a fleeting physical likeness.
Seen from a distance, they looked cut from the same hide.
At a roll of thunder he glanced back as if something had been
lost. She gazed ahead as if much were to be gained. On his mind
were things no longer worth telling, on hers matters too complex
to mention. He heard another roll of thunder and imagined it
chasing him. She believed it was leading her. Climbing the hill,
he believed nothing more was at stake, and she believed everything
was. He expected to die and be nowhere. She anticipated an elsewhere.
At the top of the hill they held hands and let go at the vital
moment. Surging from the sky like a white shark, the bolt of
lightning struck her and missed him.
She had won. He had lost.
***
Driving back through the town, he considered seeing his sons
but didn't want to shock them.
Later, the sun brilliant, an elderly couple with birding binoculars
found her where she had fallen, her trench coat scorched black.
Her bag, split open, was a spill of coins.
Andrew Coburn resides in Andover, MA. He
is the author of 12 novels, 3 of which have been made into French
films. His work has been translated into 14 languages.
Andrew Coburn resides in Andover,
MA. He is the author of 12 novels, 3 of which have been made
into French films. His work has been translated into 14 languages.
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