Chapter 9
"Divorce?" Ardis yawped, jerking back in her chair as if someone had lashed her across the face. "What in heaven's name are you talking about, Bob? Is this some rotten game you're playing? Don't tell me you're drunk again?"
He fixed her with a hateful, unflinching glare. "No, Ardis," he spat, "I'm not drunk. This is no game. It's for real. I've had enough. I want out."
And just as he and Penny had agreed during their last idyllic hours together, he made no mention of another woman. Ardisand Crane, on Penny's end-must be made to think it was simply a matter of the human spirit being able to endure so much and no more. If they thought there was someone else, they would get mean; they would hang on. For spite, if nothing else.
He hadn't meant for it to come out quite this soon. But the moment had been right; an opening had presented itself. The first faltering overtures were made before he knew it.
And now, as Ardis mocked him, hacked at his most vulnerable weak spot, he forgot his resolve. "Divorce, is it?" she sneered. "What in the world will you do with yourself? A clumsy fool like you? You can't cook for yourself. You don't know how to mend or pick up after yourself. You'd be utterly helpless."
Her lips curled in disdain. "One thing is certain-no other woman in her right mind would give a lout like you a second look."
It was as if she'd known just which button to push. And the male ego being what it is, he blundered right into her trap. "Is that right?" he snapped. "Well, we'll see about that too. You'd be surprised what a man can find once he sets his mind on it."
"What, some of your Ashland streetwalkers? Is that what you'd trade me ... the kids ... for? You talk like you're struck with the heat, Bob."
"No!" he flared back. "Not some streetwalker. A good woman. A clean, pretty woman. A woman who knows what it's like to love a man ... really love him!" Almost as if he was. striking out at Ardis, he finished with a proud flourish. "I've found her, Ardis. I have, I tell you. And nobody ... not you, not the law, not that silly-assed God of yours ... is gonna keep me from her. I want her. I am gonna marry her, hear!"
Suddenly Ardis' face twisted and went white with panic. "Don't blaspheme," she hissed. "I'll stand most anything from you, Bob. But don't you dare take the name of our blessed Savior in vain." Her eyes rolled confusedly. "Another woman, Bob?" Recognition of the truth registered in her gaze. "Then you have been with someone else. All those nights? Them weekends? I thought ... "
"Never mind what you thought." And now, deciding to make a clean breast of things, and consequences be damned, he said, "I want a divorce, Ardis. I'll do right by you; I'll see that you and the kids are taken care of." His face twisted in disgust now. "Though I sure's hell hate to leave them with you. I pity them. I pity the mess you'll make of their minds."
"You're the last person on earth to talk about twisted minds! Who? Who is she? Is she anyone I know?" Desperate terror and disbelief froze her features. And for the first time Bob realized how sick she was in her head; he realized the low esteem she truly held him in. She'd actually believed he'd been with his men cronies those nights; she'd thought those weekends were spent in aimless, doddering, male wanderings! The existence of another woman had never really crossed her mind. His guts bucked and kicked. Cold fury flooded him.
"God!" he groaned, more to himself than anything else. "Dear God! You do despise me! How you must despise me!"
That fanatic panic still remained. "I don't despise you, Bob," she said, a strange pleading invading her tone. "I just don't understand you, that's all. I don't know what it is you want from me."
"You don't know what I want?" he groaned. "How many ways can a man tell you? All those nights of crawling and begging? Could a man make it any plainer?"
"I know, Bob," she said bewilderedly. "I know. But you have to try to understand. I've tried, really I have. I can't help it if I'm not a sensual woman. I'm made different, that's all." Her expression actually became contrite. The craven terror became more pronounced in her eyes. She was afraid of losing him. Or was she?
"I've tried, Bob," she singsonged again. "Really I have. You don't know how much it cost me to give in to you those nights." She paused. "I'm willing to try again, Bob. Anything, just so you'll forget this foolishness. Divorce! You know that's impossible. It's against God's rules. 'Cleave ye unto one man so long as ye shall live', " she intoned.
Her voice became more shaky by the moment. "I don't know who she is or what she is. I don't care. Go on with the slut. Go on shacking up with her, if you must. Only don't make it a town scandal. Don't disgrace me; don't disgrace the children. Anything you say, Bob. I'll do it. Only don't do this to me. Divorce ... it's unthinkable."
"No!" he groaned. "None of that. A clean break. A divorce. That's the only way. This ain't a marriage. This is a prison. This is a rotten cell ... where a man's got no self-respect, where a man can't hold his head up. You've stolen my balls, Ardis. You ain't gonna do it no more..."
"Please, please," she cut him off, her voice actually breaking, real tears flooding her eyes. "If you'll just forget this divorce foolishness. I couldn't hold my head up in the community; I couldn't..."
"No!" he groaned. "To hell with you! Shit on y'r damned reputation. You ain't gonna chain me down no more, Ardis. I'm going. I'm breaking free and clear. Once and f'r all, hear!"
He couldn't believe the transformation that was taking place within Ardis. Gradually she became a grotesque caricature of her former self. Her eyes rolled wildly; her mouth was coy and simpering. "Please, please, Bob," she pleaded. "Another chance, that's all I ask. I never realized ... until now ... just how much all that meant to you. I'll try, I swear I will. I'm your wife; you owe me that much. I'll be better. I will! If it kills me."
She rose from her chair; turned off the lamp as she did so, leaving only the foyer light glowing. She advanced on him, predatory and sly in her movements. "Try me, Bob, that's all I ask. Don't turn me out without another chance. Your other woman. What does she do? Tell me? I'll do it, too. I swear. If that's the price a woman's got to pay..."
Then she was actually twining her arms around Bob's neck, actually grinding her body-her breasts, her belly, the firm-yet-soft mound of her pubis against his. "See," she whimpered, "see, honey? I'm still a woman. I can learn. I can be like I once was. Kiss me, Bob. Try me. See if I'm not good. Oh, please, Bob..."
He was actually ripped by desire; he felt his penis harden in his pants. He wanted to rip Ardis' clothes off, to rape and ravish her. Her voice became still more sultry and teasing. "See, honey? You do want me. I can feel it. You're getting hard. So nice and hard."
He gasped and recoiled as Ardis' fingers forced themselves around his penis, as they tightened and tugged playfully. How long, he agonized. How long since she's touched me that way? God, it's good-so good! Moment by moment he weakened. And when her lips closed on his, began to kiss and gnaw and flutter, when her fingers became even more adventurous-
He shuddered convulsively. "Ardis," he choked, his bewilderment crushing. "Oh, Ardis!"
"Yes, baby, yes ... that thing you've always wanted ... that thing I couldn't make myself do. Tonight ... I will. I promise. If you'll just tell me you'll stay ... that you'll forget this divorce nonsense. Any way you want it. Go see her, be with her. But come home to me ... be my man..."
Everything was happening too fast for him, both of them were moving and reacting as if in some trance, and he found Ardis sliding down his body. Her arms around his shoulders, now his waist, now his buttocks, and, at last, around his thighs. Her face actually burrowing into his crotch, her hot breath on his stone-hard phallus.
No man in his right mind could have resisted that. When Ardis began unzipping his fly, when her fingers groped inside his trousers, brought out his dripping penis-
He froze, groaned, arched his body, buckled his knees, the better to accommodate her. He wanted to scream with agony and rapture when he heard her clicking tongue, actually felt-for the first time in their married life-her hot, liquid mouth at his penis.
How Ardis made herself do it, how she made herself take him in her mouth, to house and suck him, he never knew. And then, when she began to piston herself back and forth on his jawbreaking tool, when she took him down her throat as deeply as she could, when she gagged and coughed-
He didn't know what to think. Torn between love and this manifestation of sexual lust in its grossest form (on both sides), he was deprived of reason.
He took Ardis then and there. Right on the living room carpet. He had but to command her to undress, and, like some crazed, mindless robot, she complied. Tearing at his own clothes, he watched with disbelieving eyes as she tauntingly, lasciviously exposed her still beautiful, still maddening body before his eyes. The first time in how many years-since the night Of the rape?-that she'd let him see her totally naked. He gaped, felt his heart hammer insanely. No man could have behaved differently than he did.
"Again..." he grated, that grinding sense of power over Ardis too much to resist. "With your mouth ... your lips. Do it! Or else..."
Without a moment's hesitation, the lovely, white-bodied creature floated up from the floor, licked the tip of his penis, and enveloped as much of it as she could in her mouth. Bob groaned brokenly; he had all he could do to keep from clutching his wife's head, working it on his penis, forcing her to take his churning, molten load down her throat.
Somehow he resisted the impulse. Instead, he pulled away from Ardis, fell onto the floor beside her, flung her onto her back. His fingers groped between her legs, found her hot, juicy-ready. Just like the old days, when they'd first been married. like those days before they were married. With a cry, he fell upon her, guided his penis into her vagina, squirmed it deep into her belly. A second later he was pumping himself into her like some sort of a machine. He gasped and wheezed; he groaned and exhorted her.
"Please, baby!" he choked, the old terror and frustration suddenly back. "Don't change now! Don't stop. Finish it! You can; I know you can! You knew how to, once upon a time. You were all the woman any man could ask for."
"Please!" she snarled, her mood suddenly reversed. "Don't talk about that. Just do it. Use me, take your pleasure with me. Get it over with. Only..."
In that moment he wanted to kill Ardis. He wanted to batter her face to a pulp with his bare hands.
It was the old Ardis, cold and disdainful. "I can't, Bob," she called, her voice flat and cold. "I tried. I'm trying. Only there's something that just won't..."
"Fuck you!" he howled. "Don't talk if that's all you've got to say. Be still, you lying bitch! You rotten prick-teaser! Lay there like a lump! Take this. And this! And this! Every fucking drop!" His voice broke. "For a minute there, I really believed you ... I actually thought that for once ... there was a chance, a chance..."
Afterward, he took her underwear and wiped his penis off with it. His hate bubbling, he stood away from her while he dressed. He paused at the door, looking back.
"You will stay with me, Bob?" she called in a cracked, pleading voice. "No divorce? It's against God's bidding, you know. It's..."
He spat a last curse at her and hurled himself from the house's hateful confines. This time he did go down to the mill. He hammered the door until he brought old Saul Ephraim out of a sound sleep. He gave him two dollars for a pint of his most devastatingly potent "white lightning."
He sat with his back to the barn wall, listening to the rats and mice whisking in the quiet night. Otherwise he heard only the gurgle of the throat-searing moonshine. At that last moment before he passed out, fell face down into a pile of straw, he remembered fighting to formulate garbled words.
What did it mean? What did any of it mean?
Then he was falling, tumbling through a thousand miles of black, terrifying emptiness.