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Charade

La Crosse, Wisconsin, doesn’t have a lot to offer after ten P.M. There’s the late-night talk shows or basic cable or, as a last resort, the Million Dollar Movie if the opening monologue and tracking weather patterns in Timbuktu don’t strike your fancy. I doubt that a million bucks pays the catering bill on a movie set these days, but tonight’s feature presentation is a classic. Charade. They say Cary Grant was a big old homo. It may be a matter of common knowledge in our enlightened times, but the very idea is blasphemy to my mother. When I was a child and did something chivalrous like open the car door or help her with her jacket, she would tell me I was her own little Cary Grant. Little did she know.

The more Audrey Hepburn bats her eyelashes-well, not exactly bats, more like flutters-the more standoffish he seems. He seems fixated on her flat chest. Maybe it’s wishful thinking that he’ll pull the cashmere over her head and discover she’s really a little boy. You can hardly blame him for not wanting to jump her bones. Let’s face it. She’s not exactly the type of babe to make Woody Woodpecker spring into action. Elegant, chic, thin, European, yet no more threatening than the All-American Girl Next Door, she’s an ideal most men are indifferent to, but many women aspire to be.

Including Alice. Granted, an alabaster icon seemed an unlikely idol for my freckle-dusted wife. It’s hard to imagine Alice posing for the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster with a three-foot-long cigarette holder dangling from her lips. Givenchy would have blanched at her ample Irish hips. Alice is more Kennedy than Hepburn, with an open, toothy grin rather than a sly smile, incapable of seeming coy. Her angular beauty is of a different sort, not coarser, but certainly more substantial. And her graceful gait is more athletic, more suited for racing down the soccer field than descending a staircase in a designer gown. One thing they do share is a soft voice, without harsh edges. Alice ’s is bit deeper, but, whatever talents Hepburn may have had, she couldn’t touch Alice when it comes to singing the mezzo parts of a Bach cantata. All in all, stand them side by side and I’d choose Alice. Hands down.

I know this fucking movie by heart. This one and the musical with Fred Astaire and, of course, Tiffany’s. Please, please, please, just one more time, Alice would plead and I had to concede, quid pro quo for forcing her to suffer through countless evenings watching chain-saw attacks on nubile flesh. This motel bed feels so fucking empty without her. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept. No more long nights buried under a mountain of down, drinking wine and eating popcorn, watching movies and falling asleep in each other’s arms. This is better than sex, Alice would say.

Maybe what she meant was that it was better than sex with me.

No, she didn’t think that, not my Alice. She’s not clairvoyant; she isn’t a psychic. I was determined to never give her any reason to question or doubt me. I was a good husband, or at least I tried to be. I studied the arcs of her moods, armed and ready at the slightest hint of discontent or restlessness with surprise trips to Paris and tickets to the Metropolitan Opera and newly issued gift editions of classic cookbooks. The price tags didn’t matter to her. A Cracker Jack prize would have done the trick. The clouds would disperse, the threat of showers would pass, and the forecast was bright and sunny again. And I did my duty in the sack, even going above and beyond it with the occasional gold medal performance, scoring a perfect ten. What else could all that sound and fury, all that rutting and humping, signify but the sincerity and depth of my desire?

Desire.

What a fluid concept. Would Mr. Webster, Mr. Funk, and Mr. Wagnalls say I desired her? Of course they would. I desired her during the comfortable silences on the long drive to my mother’s home. I desired her on those happy evenings spent playing board games at the kitchen table. I desired her as I fell into a deep sleep while she lay propped against her pillows, captivated by Audrey and Cary. I even desired her, at least something about her, on those nights when she would fall asleep first and, tortured by insomnia, I would mute the television, silencing the sirens of the police drama or the explosions of a war epic. I desired her even though I didn’t stroke her shoulder or roll her toward me and wake her with a kiss and stiff penis but, instead, would slip quietly out of the bed and take solace in the dungeon of the Internet, sometimes only staring at the lurid images, sometimes engaging in cybersex with another bored and restless suburban husband in some remote corner of our great nation. And I desired her when I slid quietly back under the covers and finally fell into dreams of citrus groves inspired by the conditioner she’d used on her hair.

And I desired her even more when I woke in the morning and heard her singing softly in the bathroom. I would open my eyes to watch her brush her hair. She would squint at the image that stared back from the mirror as she carefully tinted her lips and dabbed color on her cheeks. Lying there, her side of the bed still warm, I desired her, maybe not like the Continental lover my family name would lead you to assume I might be, but in a quiet, sort of British way, sneaking off to the kitchen to steep a cup of Earl Grey for her and being rewarded with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. This is better than sex. Damn right, Alice. Anyone can fuck you, but where would you ever find anyone else to serve up such a heady brew of tea and sympathy?

Only once did she take a pass, after we “lost” the baby. At first, I assumed it was a reaction to the brutal shock of the D and C and that it was only a matter of time until her hormones restored her body to equilibrium. But a month passed, then another, and she remained beyond my reach, a distant buoy bobbing on the surface of a placid but unnavigable lake. I would hear her talking on the telephone, jovial and lighthearted with her sisters and her girlfriends. Her shoulders would grow stiff if I approached her from behind and gently touched her. A slight edginess, probably noticeable to no one but me, would creep into her voice. I would rub her neck, trying to persuade her to relax, but her muscles would resist me and she would burrow deeper into her conversation until, defeated, I would walk away. I would hear the tension recede from her voice as I walked out of the room.

She carefully avoided me, keeping me at a safe distance, studying me. She was subtle as always, never cruel, rejecting every attempt at physical intimacy as kindly as possible. Yet her reticence was lethal as Kryptonite, leaving me powerless to assure her that all was well and good in our little kingdom. For the first time, I felt as if I could lose her. Nothing, nothing, she would say, when I asked if anything was wrong. I’m fine, when I suggested she was fatigued, that a checkup and maybe blood work might be a good idea. Finally, I said we needed a change, to get away. Spring had been cold and wet and Rome might be pleasant, or maybe Santa Barbara. She looked up from her dinner plate and gave me an indulgent smile.

“Not this time, Andy,” she said.

I sat there, exposed. And, assuming the game was finally up, I found the nerve to ask the question I was afraid to have answered.

“Do you still love me?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” she said.

I should have known better than to make the fatal mistake of asking one question too many.

“Why?”

She stood and picked up her plate, her appetite lost.

“Because I don’t give up that easily.”

We made the trip to Santa Barbara after all and, over time, her faith in my gestures of love and affection seemed renewed. One night, not that many months ago, we sat on the deck, reading in the soft, extended daylight of midsummer, tropical bossa novas spinning on the disc player. I looked up from my book and saw her staring at me. She hadn’t aged a day since college, at least not in the fading light. She could have been that quiet, determined college girl who summoned the courage to join me, uninvited, while I tugged my hair and struggled with Absalom, Absalom! at the cafeteria table. What’s up? I asked, and she grinned self-consciously.

“I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That it’s good to be friends.”

“Yes, it is.”

Damn, how this night has slipped away. Audrey and Cary are in the final clinch, about to embark on the happily ever after. Oh shit. I hadn’t remembered how this fucking thing ended. I’d forgotten Audrey’s last words.

Oh, I love you, Adam, Peter, Alex, Brian, whatever your name is. I hope we have a lot of boys and we can name them all after you.

Goddamn it. It would all have turned out different if I had been more like Cary Grant. The son of a bitch was never stupid enough to do it in a public toilet and, if he did, he was smart enough to never get caught.