Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [79]
And as for Mrs. Flett’s husband—well, what of her husband?
Her husband will be home in an hour or so, having in his usual way taken a taxi from the train station. He will remove his trousers in the dark bedroom, hanging them neatly over the back of the chair.
These trousers carry an odor of sanctity, as well as a pattern of symmetrical whisker-like creases across the front. Then his tie, next his shirt and underwear. Then, unaware of her tears wetting the blanket binding and the depth of her loneliness this September night, he will lie down on top of her, being careful not to put too much weight on her frame ("A gentleman always supports himself on his elbows"). His eyes will be shut, and his warm penis will be produced and directed inside her, and then there will be a few minutes of rhythmic rocking.
On and on it will go while Mrs. Flett tries, as through a helix of mixed print and distraction, to remember exactly what was advised in the latest issue of McCall’s, something about a wife’s responsibility for demonstrating a rise in ardor; that was it—ardor and surrender expressed simultaneously through a single subtle gesturing of the body; but how was that possible?
The brain, heart, and pelvis of Mrs. Flett attempt to deal with this contradiction.
The debris of her married life rains down around her, the anniversaries, pregnancies, vacations, meals, illnesses, and recoveries, crowding out the dramatic—some would say incestuous—origin of her relationship with her partner in marriage, the male god of her childhood. It seems to her that these years have calcified into a firm resolution: that she will never again be surprised. It has become, almost, an ambition. Isn’t this what love’s amending script has promised her? Isn’t this what created and now sustains her love for Barker, the protection from rude surprise? The ramp of her husband’s elongated thighs, her own buttocks—like soft fruit spreading out beneath her on the firm mattress—don’t they lend a certain credence? House plants, after all, thrive in a vacuum of geography and climate—why shouldn’t she?
It’s quite likely, with Barker Flett still rocking back and forth above her, that her thoughts will drift to a movie she went to see when Fraidy Hoyt was visiting last summer, The Best Years of Our Lives, a post-war epic in which a soldier returns from battle with crude hooks where his hands had once been.
What would it be like to be touched by cold bent metal instead of human fingertips? What would it be like to feel the full weight of a man on her body, pinning her hard to the world? She will ponder this, relishing the thin spiral of possibility, but then her thoughts will be cut short by an explosion of fluid, and after that a secondary explosion—of gratitude this time. Mixed with the gratitude will be her husband’s shudder of embarrassment for his elderly tallowcolored body and for the few blurted words of affection he is able to offer. That men and women should be bound to each other in this way! How badly reality is organized.
"Sleep tight, my dear," he will say, meaning: "Forgive me, forgive us."
Mrs. Flett’s House and Garden
The large square house at 583 The Driveway is overspread with a sort of muzziness. The furniture, the curtains, the carpets, the kitchen floor—all have grown shabby during the war years. And now, in the post-war upheaval, there is a worldwide shortage of linoleum, though it is predicted the problem will ease fairly soon.
(Mrs. Flett is already dreaming about a certain Armstrong pattern of overlapping red, black, and white rectangles.) The glass curtains in her dining room have been washed