A Marriage Made at Woodstock by Cathie Pelletier Page B

leaned over and whispered to him once, the sweet smell of cooking sherry on her breath. Frederick would call upon this frosty inheritance while he gathered the essential data.
    He felt confident as he lingered over a second cup of his special coffee. But at ten o’clock Chandra arose to begin packing—impressively early for her—and the argument commenced.
    â€œI’m not leaving for another man,” she said. “I’m leaving for Chandra.” More of her cute, cryptic poetry, her little metaphysical singsongs. Frederick wondered how Lorraine felt about it all. He had decided, while he was running the monthly profit-and-loss statement for Portland Concrete, to elaborate on betrayal first, and then perhaps make a cutting swath or two about how marital strife could affect both their careers. This was a mere gratuity on his part, since, after all, only the loonies dallied with Chandra’s seminars. A little strife was probably good for his wife’s business.
    â€œHe’s not a man, he’s a boy , for heaven’s sake,” Frederick said. He hoped to stick a pin into Chandra’s own nest of hubris.
    â€œYou seriously don’t remember Robbie?” she asked. Well, why should he remember the dolts and dimwits who paraded through their home? “What solar system do you live in, Freddy? What planet do you live on? What street? In which house? Surely not the same as mine!”
    â€œYou flaunted him beneath my nose,” Frederick said, and then hated his voice for declining into a whine. And he hated what his feet seemed to be doing: following her from room to room as she packed.
    â€œAt last,” Chandra said, “I can flaunt something beneath your nose that doesn’t make you sneeze.” Then she slammed the bathroom door and locked it. Waiting for her to reemerge, Frederick sat on the top step and listened to several minutes of shower spray, a scattering of deodorant cans, the bathroom scales announcing her weight, toiletries being noisily packed. Damned infernal woman. She’d better not pack his Ultra Brite. He had researched for hours to find the best product for removing tartar. Even his oral hygienist had commended him on his deep interest in dental health. Chandra, however, had said he was excessive. Well, the judge in divorce court would have no trouble telling them apart. Frederick Stone would be the one with teeth . A rattle of bottles came at him now from behind the closed door, most likely those organic perfumes she was forever collecting, eau de cow shit or some such.
    Chandra padded out past him. She had wrapped a towel about her head, her hair wet beneath. She had always reminded him of an Egyptian queen wearing a headdress when he saw her like this, Nefertiti maybe, who had stood firmly at her husband’s side in all those Egyptian reliefs, who even followed him into a new cult—and Frederick Stone saw the computer age as a new cult—who bore future queens for him. He thought of Chandra’s swanlike neck rising up from the collar of her blouse. He felt the beginning of a sadness he hoped was temporary. Surely this was an act of civil disobedience, of marital discord. It would pass.
    â€œYou were the one who said that couples should always communicate,” Frederick said. His whine seemed to have modulated upward. This was not how he had imagined things would turn out. He had envisioned her crumbling beneath the guilt—if indeed she was guilty—flailing in the face of Stone stoicism. Bambi against Mount Rushmore. But Chandra, good Woodstockian soldier that she was, turned on him with the same zeal she had used against Dow Chemical.
    â€œI married an English major,” Chandra said. “A man who loved poetry, long walks on the beach, picnics. A man who had the same vision as I did, that the world could be a better place. But I ended up with a computerized machine.” Frederick shook his head since it was all he