Barney's Version (43 page)

Following the previous night's quarrel, The Second Mrs. Panofsky and I were inordinately polite to each other all morning. I boiled and
peeled the eggs for her salad Niçoise and she, appreciating my condition, made me a Bloody Mary. But the silence in the kitchen was choking, until she flicked on the radio, looking for relief from “
CBC
Sunday Morning Round-Up.” A Toronto writer, who was being interviewed, said not one bookseller would give him a window display, because he wasn't American or British. Hell, he added, was the blank sheet of paper that confronted him in his typewriter every morning. The Second Mrs. Panofsky turned up the sound. “I don't believe it. He's being interviewed by Miriam Greenberg.”

“Is that who it is?”

“I'd recognize that unfortunate voice anywhere. I can't explain it, unless she slept her way into that job. She had some reputation at McGill.”

“Did she?”

“Would you open that tin of anchovies for me, please?”

“Certainly, darling.”

Boogie, his sheets soaked, was too sick to come downstairs for lunch. I took a tray to his room, and then explained to The Second Mrs. Panofsky that I had to get to the office to sign some cheques, among other things that couldn't wait, but I promised to drive back in time for dinner. “Careful on the road,” she said, offering her cheek for a kiss.

“Yes, certainly,” I said, obliging. “Oh, anything you need from town?”

“I don't think so.”

“I'll phone before I leave, dear, just in case.”

A grumpy Hughes-McNoughton was waiting for me at Dink's. “What was so urgent?” he asked.

“I want a divorce.”

“Like tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

Quebec law is rooted in the Napoleonic Code, and in that Church-ridden province, back in 1960, divorce was possible only through a private member's bill introduced in the House of Commons, and the grounds had to be adultery. “
Deo volente
,” said Hughes-McNoughton, “she's having an affair, and you can prove it. What are you laughing at?”

“She'd never be unfaithful to me.”

“Well then, will she agree to sue you for divorce?”

“We haven't discussed it yet.”

“If she were amenable, the usual procedure is I hire a hooker, and the two of you are discovered
in flagrante delicto
in a squalid motel in Kingston, or wherever, by an alert private detective of impeccable honour.”

“Let's go.”

“Not so fast. She has to agree to the comedy first. And there is unfailingly a price tag.
Lex talionis
— the law of retribution. Her lawyer can take you for a mighty big chunk of your income now and forever-more. I speak from experience, my child.”

“It's worth anything to me.”

“That's what you say now. That's what they all say now. But five years down the road you will feel differently, and you will blame me. Now, I don't mean to pry. But I take it there is such urgency because you are smitten with somebody else, you rotter. Is she with child?”

“No. And I'm not smitten. I'm in love.”

“Which explains your stupid behaviour. Maybe if you talk to her first, and she is agreeable to subverting the law, then her lawyer and I can agree to a settlement in advance that will allow you to retain one chair and table, a bed, and a spare pair of socks.”

“She's going to inherit scads of money.”

“My God, Barney, you shouldn't be allowed out without a keeper. What's that got to do with it?”

“Shit, what time is it?”

“Going on eight. Why?”

“I promised to be back at the cottage in time for dinner.”

“You can't drive in your condition. Besides, I just ordered another round.”

I went to use the pay phone in back.

“I knew once you got there you'd start drinking,” she said. “Now what am I supposed to do? Entertain
your
guest? I hardly know him.”

“He won't budge from his room in his condition. Honestly. Just bring a tray to his room. A couple of boiled eggs. Dry toast. A banana. Keep it simple.”

“Go to hell.”

“I'll be back in time for lunch tomorrow.”

“Wait. Don't you dare hang up. I'm going crazy here. We go through the morning like a couple of robots, as if nothing happened. It's torture. I must know something. Are we going to try to make this marriage work, or not?”

“Of course we are, darling.”

“That's what I thought,” she said, hanging up.

Hughes-McNoughton had settled the bill. “Shall we move on to Jumbo's?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“Did you tell her you want a divorce?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“Good riddance.”

“I've clocked our consultation at three hours and change so far. At a hundred and fifty an hour, you owe me four-fifty, and of course we are now moving into overtime.”

It was stifling, the first evening of a heat wave that would last for days, and Jumbo's air-conditioning was on the blink. The bar was also jammed with singles, but we managed to find a quiet corner. “What happens if she won't cooperate?” I asked.

“I thought you said —”

“But what happens if?”

“It could take ages and be considerably more expensive. Barney, whatever you do, you mustn't admit you are in love with somebody else. Wives are surprisingly touchy about such things. Why, they can even be vengeful. The best strategy is for you to move out and let her think you are in no hurry for a divorce.”

From Jumbo's we moved on to the Montreal Press Club, so it was later than three a.m. when I got home. But I wakened at six a.m. all the same. Depressed. Riding alternating waves of guilt and anxiety. Worried about Boogie. Convinced she would make me crawl before she agreed to sue me for divorce on harsh terms dictated by her mother and some cutthroat lawyer of their acquaintance. I shaved, showered, went through a pot of coffee, lit a Montecristo, and drove out to the
cottage, rehearsing variations of my I-think-it-best-for-you-that-we-divorce speech, every one of which sounded disconcertingly farouche to me. The Second Mrs. Panofsky was not to be found in the kitchen, or in our bed, which had already been made up. Maybe, as troubled as I was, she had also risen early, and gone for a swim. Certainly it was already hot enough for that. What if I scrawled a note, saying I will agree to divorce you, left it on the kitchen table, and beat it. No, that would be cowardly, I thought.
So what, Barney? No, I mustn't
. I decided to waken Boogie and talk my problem over with him. And, lo and behold, there they were, my wife and best friend, snug in bed. I couldn't believe my good luck. “Well, well, well,” I said, simulating outrage.

“Shit.” The Second Mrs. Panofsky leaped out of bed, starkers, scrambled for her nightgown, and fled.

“It's your fault,” said Boogie. “You were supposed to phone before you left town.”

“I'll settle with you later, you bastard,” I hollered, and then pursued The Second Mrs. Panofsky into our bedroom, where she was already dressing.

“I came back here hoping we could be reconciled,” I said, “determined to make our marriage work, and I find you in bed with my best friend.”

“It was an accident. Honestly, Barney.”

Stacks of cliché-ridden
TV
scripts hadn't passed through my office for nothing, and now I began to crib from the worst of them. “You betrayed me,” I said.

“I brought him a tray, like you asked,” she said, between sobs, “and he was trembling, and his sheets were soaked, and I lay down beside him just to keep him warm, and he began to do things, and I was putty in his hands because you haven't touched me in months, and I'm only human, and one thing led to another. I hardly even knew what was happening until it was over.”

“My wife and my best friend,” I said.

She reached out to comfort me.

“Don't touch me,” I said, hoping I wasn't overdoing it.

“We shouldn't talk about it now,” she said, “when I'm so upset.”

“
You're
so upset?”

Tears flying, she grabbed her purse, snatched her car keys off the dresser, and started down the stairs, me following after. “I'll be at my mother's,” she said.

“Tell her we're getting divorced.”

“You tell her. No, don't you dare. She has a dentist's appointment this afternoon. Root canal.” She whirled to confront me in front of her car. “If you loved me, you never would have left me alone with a man like that.”

“I trusted you.”

“You have no morals, guys like you and Boogie. I'm so inexperienced and he's such a — I had no idea what was happening. He seemed so distraught, so sad, I thought his hand — that he didn't even know he was stroking me there — that it was by accident — I pretended it was — I didn't want to seem like a square — make a fuss. I — he's your best friend, I — then it was too — I still don't know how he got my nightie off. I — he — Oh, what's the use? Nothing I do is right, so far as you're concerned.” She got into the car and lowered her window. “Shit. Now I've broken a fingernail. I hope you're happy. You haven't stopped yelling at me, but he was the one who started it, honest to God he was, your best friend, I'll bet he fucked your first wife too, a man like that. Some friend. So what are you going to do about him?”

“Oh, I'm going to kill him is what I'm going to do, and then maybe I'll come after you and your mother.”

“My mother. Shit. I can't let her see me like — I forgot my makeup kit on my dressing-table. I want my eye-liner. I need my Valium.”

“Go get it, then.”

“Fuck you,” she shrieked and, hitting the accelerator, she raced down the driveway, her rear tires spitting pebbles. Once she was safely out of sight, I slipped into a Hotch on the porch, bracing myself against the banister. I followed this up with a nifty Shim Sham and a Da-Pupple-Ca, and nearly got caught at it as she roared back up the driveway and lowered her window again. “You can keep a whore in Toronto, I'm not supposed to complain, you're a man and I'm not, that's life. Well now you know that two can play at the same game. Tough shit, isn't it?”

“I married a fishwife.”

“You want a divorce? Be my guest. But it will be on my terms, you bastard,” she said, and off she went again, grinding gears, narrowly missing a tree.

Yabba dabba doo. Barney Panofsky, you were born with a horseshoe up your ass. I decided to put off phoning Hughes-McNoughton until later, but I wasn't going to need a hooker or a private detective any more. Nosirreebob. Composing myself, looking, I hoped, appropriately stern, I started inside to confront Boogie. He was already downstairs, unshaven, a scrawny sight in his boxer shorts, lifting a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan, and two glasses, out of the bar. “It's cooler down here, isn't it?”

“You screwed my wife, you son of a bitch.”

“I think we should have a drink before we get into this.”

“I haven't even had breakfast yet.”

“It's too early to eat,” he said, pouring both of us stiff ones.

“How could you do this to me?”

“I did it to her, not you. And if you had phoned before leaving Montreal, this embarrassing business could have been avoided. I think I'll go for a swim.”

“Not yet, you won't. So it's my fault, is it?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. You've been shirking your conjugal duties. She said it was seven months since you last made love to her.”

“She told you that?”

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers.”

“She came into my room with a tray,” he said, pouring us another drink, “and sat down on my bed in that short nightie. Now it was already awfully humid, so I could hardly blame her, but I suspected there was a message in there somewhere. A subtext.
Skoal
.”

“Skoal.”

“I laid my book aside. John Marquand's
Sincerely, Willis Wayde
. Now there's a novelist who is sadly underrated. Anyway, following a forced exchange of niceties (Hot, isn't it? I've heard so much about you. It's so good of you to put up with me in my condition, et cetera
et cetera), and an awkward silence or two — I'd really like to go for a swim. May I borrow your snorkel and flippers?”

“Goddamn it, Boogie.”

He poured us another drink and we both lit up Montecristos. “I guess we're going to have to fix our own lunch today,” he said. “
A votre santé
.”

“Sure. Now get on with it, please.”

“And then, unbidden as it were, she began to tell me about the problems you two were having, hoping for some good advice. You preferred the bar-room companionship of losers to home most evenings, and on the rare occasions you deigned to come straight home from the office, you didn't talk to her but read a book at the table. Or
The Hockey News
, whatever that is. If she had other couples in to dinner, old friends of hers, you ambushed them. If they were of the right, you argued that it was the Soviets who had won World War Two, and that one day Stalin would be recognized as the man of the century. But if they were of the left, you claimed there was scientific evidence to prove blacks were of inferior intelligence and too highly sexed; and you praised Nixon. Whenever you joined her parents for a sabbath dinner, you whistled at the table, an offence to her mother. She married you over the objections of her father, a distinguished intellectual, and then what? You neglect her in bed and she discovers that you are keeping a mistress in Toronto. Say, I happen to know there are some devilled eggs in the fridge. What do you think?”

So we moved to the kitchen table, taking the bottle and our glasses with us. “
L'chaim
,” he said.

“
L'chaim
.”