The Witch (18 page)

That is what I think would serve justice.

Again, I thank the court.

He was her first husband, but she was not his first wife. Of course Edie knew this, everyone knew this, since her husband was a public figure, a prominent, even famous man, at home in the wider world. He was exactly twice Edie's age, fifty-six to her twenty-eight. It was only to be expected that given his years and his stature, he had a history, had endured paroxysms of romance, tragedy, betrayal. Edie had a little old history herself, but it was pretty much like everybody else's.

Anyway, the first wife had died, all those years ago. Died! Struck down by a galloping cancer, leaving him with two small children. When Edie said how dreadful, sad, lonesome, it must have been, he turned his face away, the memory unmanning him. “It was a terrible time,” he said. “I wasn't the parent I should have been.”

“You were overwhelmed. Anyone would have been.”

“I was not at my best. I have some regrets.”

“Well,” Edie said, when it was clear he was not going to say more, “You got through it. Your children got through it and they turned out fine. That's the important thing.” She had not yet met his children, the two boys, who were by now grown-ups, a few years older than herself. She assumed they were fine, because he had not said otherwise.

He gave her a sideways look from beneath the hooded crescents of his eyelids. “You always believe the best of me. I love that about you.”

“Thank you,” Edie said, although there was a whiff of something insulting about his words, as if she was being praised for a charming stupidity.

“I have my share of rough edges. Rotten history. Sometimes I think I haven't been fair to you, gobbling you up so fast.”

Edie murmured that he mustn't be silly.

“I was lost in the wilderness for such a long, long while. I had become a caricature of myself, an intellect on legs. Such a glittering surface! So much abominable cleverness! But when I groped around for my heart, there was only this hard, stunted kernel. I lashed out. I hurt people. I caused damage.”

“I can't imagine,” Edie said, meaning, she could not imagine he'd done anything all that terrible. He was fond of talking in grand terms.

“There are still some resentments circulating out there. Bad blood. Just so you're aware.”

He waited until she nodded: Okay. “But everything's different now, thank God. Thank God for you.” He buried his mouth in her soft and ticklish places, and Edie mewed and giggled.

Edie imagined he might have had a difficult relationship or two, or three, in his past, women who had tried to fill the awful void that made all his fame so hollow, only to fall victim to
his bitterness and confusion. She understood how such things might have played out, though she wished he'd given her a few more specifics. They had only been married for a very few weeks, if you counted the actual civil ceremony and not the extended, honeymoon-like trip to Barbados that had gone before it, and they had not known each other all that long no matter how you counted.

Edie knew a fair amount about the second wife, the one who had preceded her. The Afro-Swedish beauty, even more famous in her own realm than her husband was in his. She of the long Masai limbs and cinnamon skin and unearthly clouds of pale hair. Edie thought she understood this chapter also. The woman was dazzling; he was bedazzled. They were both celebrities, it was a celebrity thing. It was not a marriage that anyone expected to last very long, and it had not. Her husband was not considered an attractive man. People had made certain jokes.

Edie remembered, before she actually met him, seeing him from time to time on television, catching glimpses of him as she clicked through the news channels and serious panel discussions. (She was so shallow. Her own viewing tastes ran to reality shows about wealthy people behaving badly, and crime dramas with wisecracking detectives.) And she had not paid him much mind. Honestly? Because he was not attractive. Yes, shallow, she had wallowed in shallowness, if that was possible. He had a funny name too, Milo. Milo Baranoff. Milo's forehead was bald and shiny. Two wings of dark hair crept down over his ears like horns. His nose bent slightly to one side. He commanded interest and attention because of his widely read pronouncements, the force of his personality, the droll and entertaining gloss he brought to important issues.

And once Edie did come to know him, she saw how this
could be so, how a person's magnetism, how their
soul
,
could shine through, transcend the fleshly wrapper. She understood then how a particular fault—the pallid wart protruding through one of Milo Baranoff's eyebrows—might become something you could stare down, acknowledge, accept, dismiss, once you were well and truly in love, as she was.

They had met at one of his lectures, part of a Great Thinkers series sponsored by the midwestern university where Edie had matriculated, graduated, and then hung on grimly as an instructor in English composition. She had meant to make her big move by now. Her life embarrassed her. It was a February night. The darkness outside was sleety. The lecture hall was in an elderly building; the room swooned with radiator heat. Perhaps because of the bad weather, only a smallish audience had assembled, feeling self-conscious about their lack of numbers. Edie's roommate, another instructor, had talked her into going because the roommate wanted to seduce the professor in charge of the Great Thinkers series.

Edie squirmed inside her too-hot sweater. Her head felt clogged and she was pretty sure she was coming down with something. She wondered if she was even capable of a Great Thought. It seemed unlikely. All her thoughts were tiny and ignominious, a swarm of outdated coupons and missing socks.

The professor, the one her roommate had the thing for, took the podium and wrestled the squealing microphone into submission. He said it was a particular privilege to introduce tonight's speaker, who was known far and wide for his elegantly formulated commentaries on matters cultural and political, for his many well-received essays and books. He rolled out the list of Milo Baranoff's publications, accomplishments, awards. “He is a man who brings formidable gifts of intelligence,
observation, and humor to bear on the issues and dilemmas of our troubled times. Please join me in welcoming him.”

As he ceded the microphone, the professor singled out Edie's roommate with a smile. The roommate bridled and nudged Edie in the ribs. Milo Baranoff stood at the podium and made a show of riffling through his notes, which he hardly needed. He had given such talks so many times before, and besides, he was buoyed by his honorarium check and the excellent dinner at the college town's one good restaurant.

He began, “Ours is an age of near-constant scientific discoveries and hurtling technological innovation. Who can keep track of it all? At what a breathless pace we take on challenges both unimaginably vast and unimaginably small. We now know that in four billion years' time, our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy will collide. We have a branch of physics called supersymmetric theory, which postulates as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particles. It is a time of wonders. We have computers that sing to us, and prosthetic hands controlled by impulses from the brain. A hundred years ago, who could have imagined such a thing as the Hubble Telescope? As a cell phone? Let us not forget to bow down to the humble television remote control!”

This was a laugh line, and Milo Baranoff allowed the laughter to run its course. “It's true that certain natural phenomena, certain diseases, and even mortality itself still elude our efforts at understanding. But here is what I offer up for you to ponder tonight: Is existence itself a solvable problem?”

Edie did not much care. She had a headache that felt as if a thick rope was being pulled from one ear to the other. By touch, she rummaged through her purse and came up with a Tylenol, which she dry-swallowed. She closed her eyes and Milo Baranoff's voice seemed to draw her through passageways and
corridors, tunnels and labyrinths, always floating back at her from somewhere just beyond her comprehension. His voice coaxed and exhorted, demanded and wheedled. It was exhausting to try to keep up with it, and to fathom what it wanted from her. Acquiescence? Counterargument? Synthesis? She lacked a sense of larger purpose. Her existence was a problem waiting to be solved.

The sound of applause brought her out of it. She opened her eyes. They felt sticky. Her roommate said, “Come on, let's go be conspicuous.”

“I think I have the plague,” Edie said, but she followed her roommate up to the front of the room, where Milo Baranoff was receiving tributes.

The roommate made a beeline for the professor while Edie sagged into a chair. Nearby, Milo Baranoff was signing copies of his books for people, asking them how their names were spelled. It was oddly comforting to hear him speak from so close, as if she'd finally caught up with his voice and now could rest. Her roommate returned. “Come on, we're all going out for a drink.”

“I can't.”

“You have to. It looks weird if it's only me. Edie!”

So she went. She and Milo Baranoff trudged across the icy parking lot behind the other two, who were chatting and bumping against each other as they walked. Edie had muttered something to Milo when they were introduced, something about having a cold, sorry. Milo kept silent. Edie didn't look at him, only down at her own shuffling feet, which seemed much farther away than usual. When they reached the professor's car, Milo said that no, he was fine riding in back, and he opened the door for Edie. They went to a grown-up bar, a place serving
pomegranate martinis and cognac. Edie and Milo sat on one side of the leather booth like a pair of elderly chaperones. Across from them, the professor and Edie's roommate made vivacious conversation and sniffed each other's hair.

When it came time to order the drinks, Edie said she didn't want anything. Her lips were chapped. She drained her water glass and bit down on the ice cubes. Milo spoke to the waiter. “Have the barman boil some water, steep a slice of lemon, then add two spoonfuls of honey and a shot of whiskey.” The waiter gaped at him. “And I'll have a Scotch rocks.” To Edie he said, “People often suffer through my speeches, just not literally.”

Edie saw her roommate giving her a warning look:
Don't be a giant buzzkill. “
Ha ha,” Edie said, and when her toddy arrived, she drank it. Stealthy heat invaded her bones and she felt recharged, almost jolly. The other three were talking about a frivolous movie that had just come out, a movie that none of them would ever see but which was easy to make fun of without seeing it. Edie joined in with a remark or two and laughed along with them and then toppled sideways off the slick leather seat and got herself tangled up in Milo Baranoff's knees.

She had not really passed out, but she pretended she had, since she was so mortified. She was revived with cold cloths and face patting and she let her eyelids flutter open weakly. Yes, she told them, she was all right, just a little woozy. She was not going to admit that the whiskey had ridden an express elevator to her brain and she had simply lost her balance.

“At least you didn't barf on him,” Edie's roommate said, once they were back in their apartment and Edie was laid out in bed on her back, like a tomb effigy.

“Please don't say ‘barf.'”

“Next time you don't want to go someplace, just say so.”

“How did you leave it with him?” Edie asked, meaning the professor.

“He told me to have a good semester. Something about you falling into that guy's lap made everyone focus on their inappropriate behavior.”

Three days later, a package arrived for Edie via express delivery. She opened it and found a volume of classic Japanese poetry, illustrated with beautiful ink drawings on rice paper. Enclosed was a note from Milo Baranoff, three lines typed on a folded sheet.
Dear Edith, I wanted you
to have a keepsake that might serve as a better
memory of your evening. I hope that you are feeling
much better by now, and that this small gift will
find favor with you. Best regards, M.B.

Edie wrote back.
Dear Mr. Baranoff, you are too kind. Yes, I am on the mend from my illness. The poems are lovely both to look at and to read. I wish I could be as wise and graceful as they are. Please call me Edie, since the only Edith anybody's ever heard of is Edith Wharton, which is fine but a little misleading.

She read the note over again and again before she dared send it, wondering if it was too smart-aleck or flirty. What she got back was a copy of
The Age of Innocence
bound in soft green leather, and a note:
Do you suppose you might bring yourself to call me Milo?
She felt a little bad because while she thought Edith Wharton was all right, she did not consider herself a huge fan.

They exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Edie sent him a CD of a band she liked who played '80s pop songs on a theremin. And a cartoon she clipped from a newspaper, showing a lady reclining on a fainting couch with her enervated wrist pressed to her forehead. He sent flowers, irises and peonies.