Washington College Magazine
The Trophy Wife
Judge's Comments 2006
"I know this person," said to myself before even finished the first sentence of Lindsey Keller Bowman's "Trophy Wife." Yet the sentence is simple, almost colorless. reads this way: "always had, in hand, a vodka tonic on the rocks." A certain easy confidence steps out of this sentence, as does a profound, almost rueful self-knowledge: the word "always" suggests both that this isn't the first highball our heroine has enjoyed as well as a definite pride in accomplishment, a self-congratulatory sense that she is well on her way to becoming a drinker (although events in the story may change that decision). And then there's that slightly sniffy phrase "in hand." Okay, where else would you have your drink? But that finicky precision speaks volumes; it shows our protagonist making her way carefully through the mine field that separates carefree childhood from the war zone that is sometimes marriage.
In selecting this one entry from the dozen others that could have easily won this year's Beacham Prize, was keenly aware of both the possibilities and limitations of the contemporary short story. This term, am teaching a class in major U.S. authors; the students are responsible for selecting the stories they want to read and defending their choices in class. Over the weeks, I've noticed that the students don't care much for exposition, at least of the kind that seems to be fueled by an agenda. What they do like are visual imagery and dialogue; that is, they prefer stories that read like plays over ones that are more essay-like. Stories with dramatic structure are focused on the moment as well as forward-looking; something big is happening right now, and something bigger is just around the corner.
So it is in "The Trophy Wife." There are people. are drinks. are hors d'oeuvres. It's nighttime! vague sense of menace drifts into the story, like fog off the sea. is a flashback, a child's recollection of adult cruelty. And without knowing quite how we got there, we and our narrator stumble across a couple quarreling.
A blow is struck, yet the person who is hit doesn't react as expected, because that's just the way it is sometimes. There are a couple of more paragraphs, and then the story comes in for a bump-free landing.
But before that happens, there are so many rich evocations. see the straight-from-the-deck dealing of Hemingway here as well as the mastery of detail I associate with Tim O'Brien. The scariness of Joyce Carol Oates is present, but it's mixed with the good-natured kidding of Lorrie Moore and Pam Houston. And beneath everything is that poignancy that I've hinted at before, that growing knowledge that life is hard, but that's okay: life is all we have. The mysterious Alexander Godin, who wrote and published in the 1930s and then disappeared as though he had never existed, is not a writer much mentioned these days, but the sad sweetness of his story "My Dead Brother Comes to America" is here as well.
I have the feeling that, years from now, some future reader will be writing an introduction like this one and saying of an as-yet-to-be-born author, "What a terrific story—this writer reminds me of Lindsey Keller Bowman."
— David Kirby
Poet and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, Florida State University
April, 2006
David Kirby is the author of The House of Blue Light and The Ha-Ha, both selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poets series published by Louisiana State University Press. He has two books forthcoming in 2007, The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems and an essay collection titled Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa Of Avila, And 17 Other Colossal Topics Of Conversation. His work appears regularly in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies.
Illustration: Robbi Behr, Visiting Lecturer in Art
Illustration: Robbi Behr, Visiting Lecturer in Art
By Lindsey Keller Bowman '07
This short story, written by an English major with minors in creative writing and art history, won the 2006 Veryan Beacham Prize. Awarded in honor of Veryan Beacham '92, the prize recognizes writing that reflects the liberal arts tradition and the importance of language in the expression of ideas. The Literary House Press has published this winning manuscript in a limited edition.
I always had, in hand, a vodka tonic on the rocks. It was easy enough, even as a child, to obtain alcohol from the open bar at those infamous Baldwin parties. You might be carrying it as a favor to Daddy or one of his friends or you might just be having an experience that was not worth interrupting, and anyway the adults were too busy with their own drinks to keep much of an eye on you. So as long as you were old enough to simultaneously walk and carry a cup, you could make your choice from three of the night's four selections: beer or boxed wine or a vodka tonic, just not the scotch because that was expensive, and therefore risky. I always chose the vodka tonic on the rocks, never so much as a means of getting drunk—often walked around with the same half-filled cup for hours at a time—but as a strategic weapon to press against the backs of bare knees in order to part the crowd. It was only six o'clock when had to pull my first maneuver. Fabiola Bidwell was so intent in her discussion with Jane Macy-Pheffer, something about Al Blower's third wife (could you believe it?), that half-doubted she would even notice when placed the frozen plastic just below the cuff of her navy blue shorts. A high-pitched yelp, a skipped beat in conversation was my cue, and I slid through the gap in boozy bodies toward the hors d'oeuvres table. At 17, was the princess of the cocktail universe.
Al Blowers was standing not far away, reeling in compliments as partygoers streamed in from the water's edge. He was a big guy, tall and not without a spare tire for all his mileage, but in his peach-colored polo and khakis, he was hardly imposing. Instead he seemed to embody a kind of casual indifference, thinning hair windblown, one hand in a fraying pocket, the other simultaneously gesturing and holding a drink. He was laughing then and talking to Ben's dad. wondered if he had heard Fabiola or any other of the dozen or so women who seemed to be chattering the same conversation in various interlocking circles. He was still smiling, exposing perfect white teeth. But then again, so was everyone.
I made my way toward the grassy embankment where the younger crowd was gathered, barefoot and strewn across the earth. The view from atop the ten-foot slope was incredible. Sailboats danced into the harbor, mirroring the flight of gulls in their graceful motion. The older generation didn't dance as beautifully as their yachts, but they were as eminently worth watching as they played out scenarios in the sand. As reached the group at the summit, most of the chatter stopped abruptly. few kids averted their gazes, turning to light cigarettes. greeted friends with smiles and a flurry of hugs. Three or four boys looked only vaguely familiar, the same boys who were most intent on flicking their cigarettes and biting their lips. couldn't decide if knew them or not. "Hi, I'm Lilly O'Connor," said, extending my hand.
"Ben's girlfriend, right?" somebody asked. I nodded.
"You know, once dated an Irish Catholic. Very frustrating. You can take the girl out of Cork..." Only the new boys laughed. My friends rolled their eyes. Somebody introduced them as a friend of a friend's cousins, or as persons equally irrelevant. Undaunted, I flopped down and settled in for the show.
Baldwin had a few different clubhouses in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but preferred on-the-water events to trashing their own facilities. It was my parents' yacht club and had been since before was born. In their den were pictures of my siblings and me as infants huddled around the Baldwin Family Trophy, a prize that looked oddly like a miniature mahogany-and-gold-plated toilet, but which forever marked us in "true distinction of the Corinthian spirit." My parents insisted that the trophy was actually supposed to be some sort of fancy ice bucket, but it was filled with cubes hardly more than it was with urine—that is to say, the Trophy was something to be admired and put away on a shelf.
I was aware how my parents got accepted into Baldwin in the first place. My family was Catholic; the club was unmistakably WASP. Maybe a little less so by the time was old enough to understand what that meant, but enough to make me wonder whenever caught someone staring down at the tiny red letters inscribed on my plastic name tag, last name starting with a big red O'. People still told me my mom looked like Jackie O. It might have been true once, when she left her hair dark and took to wearing shift dresses and oversized sunglasses, but she'd long since gone gray and opted for Nantucket reds. was my dad's friend Al and his first wife, Star, friends from college and third-generation club members, who sponsored my dad and mom for membership during the Kennedy era. They fought for my parents' induction like real political strategists. "It'll look good to bring in a little diversity," imagined Al promising during some secret beachside meeting. "Trust me, they're the right kind of people." When was younger my dad told me to call Al "Uncle Al." had long since given up the nickname by the night of that party, but was still vaguely aware that owed some part of my childhood to this strange, pastel presence.
That particular night fell on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and the members had turned up in full force for the traditional end-of-summer party on Block Island. Middle-aged couples from various New England suburbs passed most of the Friday and Saturday on their big sailboats in the harbor. Come happy hour on Saturday, they piled into inflatable Zodiacs and headed for the small strip of sand the club rented on the northern edge of the island for the very occasion. As more and more of them landed, the beach reminded me of a sea of baby turtles, freshly hatched.
What was special about the little beach was that half of it was really usable, flat sand. All the people and the drinks and the dinghies were squashed into that one insignificant strip along the water. But there was more to it than that. A hidden stretch of beach was separated by the long row of tall sand dunes. Jointly the two distinct halves formed a kind of parallel universe. The promise of adventure was always hidden just over the other side, where more and more of the young couples, or perhaps new combinations of the old pairs, would disappear as the night wore on. cocktail party itself was never much, a half-hearted hors d'oeuvres contest where the most ambitious entrants were hollowed watermelons with toothpick sails that were supposed to look like boats. Everybody else just brought Triscuits or salted peanuts still in the can, a week past the expiration date and soggy around the edges from a long season onboard. Decorations included little more than a few haphazardly placed tiki torches, maybe a few mismatched faux flower centerpieces that would disappear before long. But I remember how the sky was cloudless and cerulean, and somehow, those nights always started out as glittering as ever hope for my life to be.
My 17th Baldwin End-of-Summer Rendezvous happened to be the first attended without my parents. My older brothers and sisters—am the youngest of six O'Connor children—were all away at college by that point. Even my father, once commodore, was too wrapped up in life on the mainland to make time for tradition. So was staying with my boyfriend, Ben, and his family on their 50-footer, Rascal. Ben was three years older and had himself never known life outside the role of a "BYC Kid." couldn't remember how had even met Ben, or even started dating him seriously, only a string of these events with the two of us stranded on beaches like this with everyone we'd known our entire lives.
I'd known Ben so long that didn't feel the need to impress him. In fact, made sure to dress a little bit younger than my age in weathered khakis and a school rugby shirt. As the night went on, we of the younger generation left our perch and descended upon the rest. The old farts slipped me crumpled five- or ten-dollar bills when conceded that yes, would be a freshman at Loomis Chaffee that year, a reincarnation of the same story I'd recycled for four years straight (including a year before and two years after it was actually true.) Old Mrs. Kelly, half blind and equally tipsy, accidentally slipped me a fifty after pinching my sunburned cheeks. Jackpot.
Ben and made the usual rounds, collecting cash and questions about our families and watching the sky fade from cobalt to black, when spotted something highly unusual among the throngs of pistachio and pale pink. She couldn't have been more than five, maybe eight, years older than myself. A bottle blonde, all fake bake and red nail polish. Reed thin, tall, with wide-set eyes like a doe. couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her. Her outfit was expensive to be sure: a strapless dress in emerald silk-satin, metallic stiletto heels sinking into the sand. Clearly nobody had redefined the word "cocktail" for the poor thing. And as a circle of amused onlookers formed around her, thought how she was not unlike a lamb in a petting zoo—she clearly had her own ideas and appetites, but we were all aware that she wouldn't dare bite back. Her eyes were wide and smiling, and she held in the air a boulder of a diamond engagement ring. I thought about using the vodka tonic to get a closer look, only to realize that my cup was empty.
"The trophy wife," Fabiola whispered to Jane then, unnecessarily. Suddenly realized who she was, if only in connection to another person. So this was Al's new wife.
Besides being my parents' sponsor at some point in the distant past, had a few distinct impressions of Al Blowers. Most everybody considered him a little bit wild. Al had named his boat after something obscurely Asian. The general consensus around the club was that if it sounds like Mimosa, why not just name it after the goddamn thing? But think what really separated Al in that sea of familiar faces was some stowed-away memory from when must've been about eight years old.
Al's boat and my father's were rafted in West Harbor. My mother and Star, Al's nondescript but utterly intelligent brunette of a first wife, were on shore taking real showers and shopping for antiques. My siblings had jetted off to some movie that was deemed inappropriate for the baby of the family. Left to my own devices, pulled a stale loaf of bread from a cupboard in the galley. broke it up into little pieces and tossed them in the water, hopeful that some hungry bird would swoop in and gobble them up. Sure enough, within minutes, a sea gull arrived. After gobbling up the preliminary crumbs, it squawked frantically to alert the other sea gulls of his find. My Dad and Al, who had been until that point too absorbed in some adult conversation to pay much attention to me, were alerted by the call.
"Lilly, what are you doing?" my Dad asked. It sounded like was in trouble. explained.
"You should never feed the sea gulls, only the swans. Put the bread away," he said, laughing a little. demanded to know why.
"The swans are beautiful. And they're smart. With sea gulls, you get one over here, pretty soon it's squawking its head off, attracting attention right and left. Suddenly, you'll have 15,000 sea gulls crapping all over the deck," Al replied. Now he and my dad both laughed.
"Here, if you want to feed the sea gulls, I'll give you something to feed the sea gulls." Al returned a minute later with a bar of soap. He shaved off a small block with a pocketknife.
"Watch this," Al said, and he tossed the little blue chunk into the harbor. did watch, for well over an hour, long after Dad and Al had disappeared back into the cockpit. At first nothing happened. All the birds floated close to the side, hungry for more. Eventually they all left except the one bird that ate the soap. lone gull swam around the bow in pointless little circles. Then finally something happened.
Its feathers ruffled and its whole body began to shake, and it let out one loud, shrill squawk. It tried to fly then, beating its wings madly. The sea gull made it about ten feet into the air before it dropped back into the water. It was dead.
I later learned that sea gulls have some internal flaw that doesn't allow them proper gas exchange. They are incapable, of, well, farting or burping. suppose all birds are, really, but for some reason it must've been especially marked in sea gulls. Or maybe sea gulls are the only birds stupid enough to eat soap. Though am sure it had nothing to do with that event directly, Star divorced Al only weeks later.
"Holy shit. How much did this thing cost?" Ben's friend Grant pulled on the blonde's hand and gawked at the rock on the crimson polished finger. The third wife had joined the younger crowd. All the kids, if in our late teens and early twenties we could still justifiably be called that, had relocated to the plot of sand surrounding the beached dinghies. Except her; she just stood there.
"Al takes care of me," she smiled.
"I'll bet. Seriously, what was it? Like a hundred g—"
"Hey, no problem. A dollar a year for a million years, right man?" someone else interjected.
Everyone laughed, the blonde the loudest of all.
"Who cares? real question everybody's dying to ask is how much did the boobs cost?" Another friend, Eric Christopher chimed in. looked at him. The blonde looked away. She tried to turn dramatically on her heel, but she only sank deeper into the sand. With a dozen of us still staring, she bent down and unbuckled the metallic leather straps. She left her heels by the water's edge as she sprinted over the dune.
"Sorry, this'll do it," Eric Christopher laughed, clanking the ice in his empty cup after her. Her shoes remained, Cinderella-like, in the spot where she'd kicked them off.
"Who is she anyway?"
"She's probably a power boater."
"Al's latest fiancée. Didn't you hear? Christy, think her name is. Used to be a flight attendant. And get this: she's from New Jersey."
"Yeah, that explains it."
The water steadily inched closer to the shoes, threatening to carry them away at any moment. wanted to pick up those shoes and bring them to her. She was better off without them; it was the significance of the gesture that mattered to me. I wanted to let her know that deep down we were not all assholes. I wanted to tell her that that was just our way of joking around, no big deal. stood up to collect them, but at that moment Ben spotted me.
"Lilly, meet me on the other side of the dunes in five minutes. I'll be right there; just have to grab another drink." While could have easily objected, could have continued on my pointless mission, forgot about Christy's feelings and thought about my own. left the shoes but followed Christy's footprints over the dune, if for very different reasons.
At first waited in silence on the other side of the beach, suspecting was alone except for the stars. The temperature had dropped noticeably, and at first inhaled the cool silence. But then heard from somewhere not too far off, somewhere on my new side of the beach, a man's voice, low and loud, and a woman's, softer and shaky. For a second stopped breathing. turned and saw Al and Christy some 25 yards away. could only pick up a few words, and only his. "Absolute embarrassment! What was I thinking?"
And then—I don't remember any anticipation of foreknowledge of this, only a stunned awareness that it had already happened—he raised his right hand, fist clenched, and struck her across her jaw. She stumbled, held her face, but didn't say anything. was just standing there dumbfounded, her shimmery silhouette shivering in the moonlight like the tall reed grass behind her.
The thing he did then was not to turn to her, but to straighten and look around. Our eyes met. His expression, in the dark and from that distance, was unreadable. was certain then that would never again see or hear of Christy, at least not after Sunday rolled around and everyone sailed home. But Al would be unavoidable. Every other time passed him, at summer events like this, in ski houses in Vermont, he would know me as the only person who saw him hit his fiancée. If ran into him on the street, years later, in Palm Beach or Paris—could be married, have children, be an astronaut or an artist—that is what would be to him. I had instantly, irreversibly passed from James' daughter, from Ben's girlfriend, to the singular witness of his personal savagery.
We stared at each other like that for a few moments, frozen in the shadows of the dunes. Though Al was a foot taller and a good 80 pounds heavier, somehow must have intimidated him. He was the first to blink, first to look away.
But it was Christy who finally spoke.
"What are you looking at? This is none of your business. Get out of here!"
I wasn't sure if she was right, but either way didn't—couldn't—move. I didn't say anything either.
"Seriously, what's your problem?" Red-faced and wobbly, Christy advanced toward me. Even without her shoes, she was a lot taller than me. She had to stoop down to get in my face.
"All of you. You think that you're so much better than everybody else. saw you down there when you were all talking about me. You saw my fiancée hit me? So what, maybe you're the ones with the real problems. Think about it." She was practically spitting. recognized the smell of boxed wine on her breath and could tell she couldn't handle it, not like everybody else.
I could have reacted to her statement in a million different ways, but what started to think about then was the old toilet bowl trophy. At that very moment it was sitting on some dusty shelf somewhere in my parents' house next to framed photographs of us and friends and of Al, all in matching orange life jackets. imagined the family dog curled up on the wood floor just below, the whole scene set up like a life-sized diorama. Christy was near enough that could have seen where the nail polish had chipped off one of her fingers, but what saw was this visible manifestation of my family's sportsmanship and good manners, this toilet bowl of good fortune. saw that through no great triumph of my own, would never suffer the same public humiliation at the hands of a man. could gorge myself on cheese and crackers and wine from a box until weighed 200 pounds and still be considered more beautiful to these people than that size zero model ever could be. didn't have to listen to this crazy reprimand from an intoxicated woman in a sand-covered evening dress if didn't want to, and that what was unfolding before me then was unquestionably an isolated incident in the span of my lifetime. No, didn't see the woman in the sparkling green dress. I saw in her why my parents had joined this club in the first place.
I half wondered if Christy might hit me then, but she didn't. wasn't afraid of the physical pain so much as was captivated by the potential consequences. wasn't sure if she was trembling from rage or cold or something else. A minute passed, maybe more, before Al approached us and spoke. "I think that we've all just, ah, had a little too much to drink. Come on Lilly, let's go back to the party." And just like that, my father's old friend was gently steering me back towards the beach. Hands weathered from years of sun and sail steered me strong and sure. Christy, wrapping her own arms around her slender body, waited only a few paces before following us back to the party. Could it be that nothing ever happened?
I saw Ben as soon as we rejoined the party. His sandy hair was sticking up where friends and relatives had playfully messed with it, and he both looked and smelled as if the ocean had turned to beer and sprayed him with a wave. could tell he'd had a good time. By then, the crowd had begun to disperse. Everyone's shirt sleeves were stained, and the prize-winning watermelon sailboats had fallen off the card tables and oozed across the sand. The dinghies that remained were spread out now, so they looked less like baby turtles and more like beached whales.
"Lil, here's your sweater, and brought you another vodka tonic. Oh, hi Al."
Ben grinned. "This is one of the best Baldwin parties can ever remember, and that's saying a lot." I busied myself with the buttons on my sweater.
We cleared up some of the litter and knotted up bags of trash and the adults talked about how much fun they had. Then we all rolled up our cuffs and waded our dinghies out into the water—Ben, his parents, and me; Al and Christy right behind us; a miscellaneous bunch of oldsters and their teenage kids behind them—and left the little beach. As we puttered off into the distance, watched it fade away, empty except for the sea gulls who called dumbly into the night.
Lindsey Keller Bowman '07 won her first writing competition in second grade, and was nominated for the title of "best young writer in Connecticut" on the strength of two short stories she wrote while in high school. "The Trophy Wife" is one of three stories Bowman produced during her advanced fiction workshop at Washington College. In addition to pursuing her writing, she has interned with the State Department in Washington, DC, studied abroad in Spain and, with funding assistance from the College's Cater Society of Junior Fellows, tried her hand at travel writing during a faculty-led summer excursion to Tanzania.
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