Ordinary People

by Judith Guest

  “Who says?” Stillman asks. “Your mom?”

  He ignores that, not answering. The ride seems long. Even though he is the first to be dropped off.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Lazenby says. “About eight-twenty.”

  “I’ve got to go early tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll get a ride with my dad.”

  “How early? I can go a little early—”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll see you there.”

  Let them find out from Salan that he is finished with them. He gets out and closes the door without looking back.

  His father stops at the door of his room that night. The ritual stop. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. Fine.” He returns the ritual answer. It is not a lie, really; just the safest thing to say for now. He does not want to discuss it tonight. A small thing, after all. To mention it is to make too much of it, and there will be flak—“Why? Did something happen? Is anything the matter?”—and he isn’t ready for it. Not yet. He has done it, maybe for the wrong reasons, but it was the right thing to do. There is no problem improving your timing, or perfecting a stroke, if the desire is there, but you cannot fire up, cannot manufacture desire, when there is no spark at all to build on. This was not a mistake, what happened today. It is not to be looked at as a failure.

  Summers ago when they all took the trip to Maine and climbed Cadillac Mountain, looking in every direction—nothing to see but water except for the thin strip of land, an arm and a fist, holding the mountain and the park to the state of Maine. They tried to look beyond the water to the east and Portugal; to the north, the Hebrides, Iceland; to the south, the Antilles and farther, South America and the Antarctic Peninsula. Impressive, they tossed out the adjectives, Majestic. Awesome. And then somebody said excessive, and they all laughed. That was it. Everything seems excessive, now, and too intense, too important. Karen is right, learn to relax, don’t think so much, just be.

  Night is fast replacing morning as the worst time of day for him. The way it used to be in the months after the accident. He wasn’t sleeping much. And suddenly, he wasn’t sleeping at all, he was unable to close his eyes, his body was tense, his brain seethed from night until morning. He would set his alarm at eleven and crawl into bed, praying, and he would lie there and lie there until at last he would hear the warning click as the radio turned itself on and it was morning again. His father would come down the hall, to make sure he was awake. Awake. And he was never able to tell them, he would get up, get dressed, eat his breakfast, go to school, just as if his ass wasn’t dragging on the goddamn ground, he was so tired, so tired. He told Crawford once that was why he had done it—he had to get some sleep.

  But things are not that bad. Not yet. There are still methods that work, and he rolls onto his face, hands between his legs. They used to kid each other about it. Sixty seconds or you haven’t got it, well, he can beat that record anytime. Banging the bed. Or the shower. That is his specialty.

  11

  Ray sticks his head inside Cal’s office. “Nobody knows,” he says, “the trouble she’s seen.”

  “What’s up?”

  “It seems our secretary is minus a boy friend. At least that’s what I get from the stuff going out over the telephone wires. She’s got her own personal Ann Landers on the other end, I guess. Lord, I wish she’d blow her nose!”

  “You’re a hard-hearted bastard,” Cal says.

  “Yeah, she’ll find out how hard-hearted if she doesn’t get some of this mail out. Not that I’d presume to compare it with the tragedy of the century that’s going on out there.”

  “Somebody who’s going through a romantic crisis shouldn’t be expected to get the mail out.”

  “Hey, whose side are you on?” Ray comes in; shuts the door behind him. “You through with that pension plan yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Hey, buddy, what have you been doing all morning?”

  “Hey, buddy, don’t get on my back. I’m not Cherry.”

  Ray laughs. “See? What she’s doing to me? Making me into a browbeater and a nagger, with my own partner, Jesus!”

  An endless parade of secretaries. He has seen them interviewed, instructed, hired, used, and lost, forever and ever, on into eternity. They have been doing it for seven years. It has been that long since they have had a good legal secretary. Since Lynn Searles.

  Poor Cherry. People are like icebergs; one-seventh visible and operative, and the rest just so much proto plasmic energy, seething around under there, looking for a target to funnel toward. Too bad she picked the wrong target. Yet it’s hard to imagine that giddy, empty girl with any hidden energies; how did she summon up that much feeling for anybody? Watch it—your immunity is showing. That is it, of course. He has become immune to the sufferings of others. I don’t give a damn. Let them hurt. The things which hurt instruct—Benjamin Franklin. That was one of Arnold’s favorites. Not true, though. The things which hurt don’t always instruct. Sometimes they merely. hurt. Ask me. Ask Nancy Hanley. Instruct sounds like such a positive word, but he doubts whether Ray’s wife, even now, would believe in that saying. In any case, he would not ask her. A long time ago, and water over the dam.

  Lynn Searles. What made him think of her? Stern, straight-thinking Lynn, who always looked right into your eyes when she spoke to you, as if she could see behind them and into your head. He wonders, idly, what she is doing now. He wonders if Ray knows; if he knows where she is. Another question he would not ask. What was that? Water over the dam? Con is right, he will have to watch it, he is getting to think more like Howard every day.

  He runs into Carole Lazenby downstairs in the Plaza. Hatless, wearing a tweed pantsuit, her large-boned, square figure looks farmlike, out of place here, among the coeds and snazzy secretaries parading the streets of Evanston at noontime. And because she looks so real and so alive, he is absurdly glad to see her; asks her to go to lunch with him on the spot.

  “Gee, nobody’s asked me to lunch in ages! I wonder if I’ll know how to act!”

  She offers to take him to the University Sandwich Shop, where she commands a discount with her student I.D.

  “What are you taking?” he asks.

  She laughs, self-consciously. “It’s called Search for Identity.”

  Funny, he would never have picked her out as a woman with identity problems. He tells her so, but she just laughs.

  “Oh, come on. Everybody has them, Cal. Looking forty in the face is what scared me. Maybe if I was your wife, I could handle it better.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She laughs again. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess because she doesn’t look it.”

  A pleasant lunch. He has forgotten how easy she is to talk to, how genuine. She asks about Con, and that makes it easy for him to inquire after Joe, to mention how he misses seeing him around the house, as he used to.

  “Yes, they don’t spend much time together, do they? Well, you tell Connie that I miss him. Tell him to stop over some time soon. Beth, too. How is she? I only see her at bridge once a month, and we never seem to get a chance to talk.”

  “She’s busy, too,” Cal says. “She’s chairing the tennis tournament at Onwentsia next spring. She spends a lot of time over there.”

  “I admire her organization,” Carole says. “She’s such a perfectionist. And yet she never lets herself get trapped into things she doesn’t want to do. Now, there’s an art. I’m just beginning to learn the trick myself. I hope it’s not too late!”

  He walks Carole to the corner; sends his greetings to John, and to Katy, their daughter.

  “We’ll get together,” he promises.

  On the way back to work he thinks, She never lets herself get trapped. Not strictly true. He can remember a period of their lives when she felt distinctly trapped. When Jordan was two years old, with Connie toddling around after him at ten months, both of them spreading havoc in that tiny northside apartment. Those first five years just passed in a blur! he has heard her say gaily
at parties. But he remembers them, and remembers the scenes: her figure, tense with fury as she scrubbed the fingermarks from the walls; she bursting suddenly into tears because of a toy left out of place, or a spoonful of food thrown onto the floor from the high chair. And it did not pay him to become exasperated with her. Once he had done so, had shouted at her to forget the damned cleaning schedule for once. She had flown into a rage, railed at him, and flung herself across the bed, in hysterics. Everything had to be perfect, never mind the impossible hardship it worked on her, on them all; never mind the utter lack of meaning in such perfection, weighed as it was against the endless repetition of days, weeks, months. They learned, all of them, that certain things drove her to the point of madness: dirt tracked in on a freshly scrubbed floor; water-spotted shower stalls; articles of clothing left out of place. And, he had to admit, he liked a clean house; he liked the order she brought into his life, perfectionist that she was.

  And so had he been, after a fashion. No more. Not since the summer before last and an unexpected July storm on Lake Michigan. He had left off being a perfectionist then, when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a house circumspectly clean, not membership in Onwentsia, or the Lake Forest Golf and Country Club, or the Lawyers’ Club, not power, or knowledge, or goodness—not anything—cleared you through the terrifying office of chance; that it is chance and not perfection that rules the world.

  “I saw Nancy Hanley today. Having lunch at the Deerpath.”

  “Oh?” He keeps one eye on the newspaper before his face: Welfare Fraud Investigated.

  “She said Ray’s been putting on weight.”

  “He has?”

  “He has?” she teases. “Darling, Ray Hanley. Your partner.”

  “Oh, yeah, him.” Grinning, he puts down the paper. “I hadn’t noticed. Yeah, I guess he has been.”

  “Twenty pounds. That’s a lot not to notice.”

  “That much? How did she happen to tell you that?”

  Beth shrugs. “Just conversation. She said she’s been trying to get him to see a doctor. It’s just since he quit smoking. She looks terrific, by the way. Have you seen her lately?”

  “No. That’s what Ray said about you.”

  “Well, she’s thin. As thin as I’ve ever seen her, and she’s done something to her hair. A rinse, I think—”

  ... officials in the downtown office say as much as

  $300,000 may have been misdirected by the

  fraudulent claims....

  “—asked her how she stays so thin. She said, ‘Worry, and a bad marriage—’ ”

  “What?”

  She smiles. “Just checking. To see if you were listening. Would you like a drink before dinner?”

  “No, thanks.” He glances at his watch. “Is Con home yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s six-thirty.”

  “He’s been later the past couple of weeks.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” he says. “Why don’t you come down tomorrow, and take a look at that car with me? We can have lunch.”

  “I can’t tomorrow.”

  “I ought to put the order in soon, to get delivery before Christmas.”

  “Then, do it,” she says. “Do what you like. I’m not good at picking out cars anyway.”

  “You don’t sound terrifically sold on the idea.”

  “I’m sold. I think it’s a nice idea.”

  “Well, it would give him some independence. He wouldn’t have to rely on us for rides.”

  “Fine. We can make it a combination Christmas and birthday present. You decide. I’ll leave it up to you.”

  If it was up to him, he would give him everything—sun and moon, eternal happiness, serene and uncomplicated, Here, will this fix it? But nothing needs fixing, does it? Things do seem better, more relaxed, just since Thanksgiving. No, even before that. Is that illusion or reality?

  Illusion or reality. Seven years ago, he had had a conversation on that very subject with Nancy Hanley. At the Law Club Christmas Dance, sitting on the upper deck of the Chicago Yacht Club. Nancy had leaned over and said to him, “Tell Beth for me how lucky she is, will you?”

  “Why?”

  “To have you. And never to have been disillusioned.”

  He had laughed, embarrassed, knowing where it was leading. He had emphatically not wanted to go into it, had never wanted to take sides in the thing, but Nancy was not about to let him off the hook.

  “People make mistakes, Nance.”

  A mirthless laugh. “Yes, they do.”

  Carefully, because he had no desire to disturb the truce that had been so recently effected between them, he had said, “Don’t you think people are entitled to a few mistakes in a lifetime?”

  “No,” she said. “What people are entitled to are their illusions, and frankly, I preferred my illusions about him. I would have preferred it if he had screwed her until he was sick of it and gotten rid of her without my ever having found out about it at all.”

  “I can’t believe that,” he told her. “Illusions are for fairy tales. Your marriage is stronger now—”

  “Don’t bet on it. And if you ever do a survey, you’ll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even. Any odds you want to give, I’ll cover.”

  Worry and a bad marriage. Beth was joking. She said she had been joking. It had been seven years since Ray’s affair with Lynn. Seven years since Nancy had packed up the girls and gone to her parents in Oklahoma, and Ray, wild with grief, had come charging into the office to tell him.

  “How could I have been so stupid, Cal? How could I have been so selfish, thinking I had it so tough, having to come home to a squalling baby every night? She’s gone, Call She left me! What the hell am I going to do without her?”

  Well, things change; people change. Lynn had left, and Nancy had come back, and they had moved out of their apartment and bought the big house in Glencoe. And surely Nancy is not the type of woman to live with somebody she doesn’t love “for the sake of the children.” No illusion there. They are still married; therefore, they are happy. But he sees the point she had been making. Depending upon the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.

  He wants so much to believe that all is well. But, then, if it is, why does he keep taking pulses, and looking for signs?

  The front door opens. He hears the familiar sounds, of his feet scuffing the doormat, of the hangers clanging against each other in the closet as he hangs up his jacket.

  “Hi. You’re late tonight.”

  “Am I?” He looks at his watch. “Yeah, a little. Hey, it’s snowing.”

  “Is it? Must have just started.”

  “Yeah, it looks nice.” He sits down, and Cal hands him the sports section. “You finished? Thanks.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Great. He gave back the trig quiz today. I got an A on it.”

  “Great. Terrific.”

  “Well,” he says and shrugs, “it was just a quiz.”

  But a gift. To have offered it is to show that it must have value for the giver, also.

  “That your first A this semester?”

  He looks up from the paper. “Yeah. I’m getting back in the swing of things, huh?” He grins.

  So truth is in a certain feeling of permanence that presses around the moment. They are ordinary people, after all. For a time they had entered the world of the newspaper statistic; a world where any measure you took to feel better was temporary, at best, but that is over. This is permanent. It must be.

  Beth comes in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”

  Conrad puts the paper down. “I’m coming. Just have to wash my hands.”

  “Didn’t you just take a shower?”

  He grins again. “Forgot to wash my hands.”

  Cal laughs. “Tricky.”

  12

  At first he was afraid that the hours after school would drag, but they do not. He fills them with studyi
ng, at school, or in town, at the library. The old building is comfortable and secluded and dark, with its narrow stained-glass windows and soft leather chairs. He can stay there until five-thirty and make it home on time. Or else he walks, keeping an eye on his watch, checking the time. Down Deerpath, past the Presbyterian church to the north campus of Lake Forest, where he can sit on a park bench and watch the birds. Nut-hatches, creepers, chickadees, grosbeaks (he bought himself a bird book, and is learning to identify them) go sedately and earnestly about their business, which is eating. He carries envelopes of sunflower seeds in his jacket pockets. He has his own Life List.

  This month he has another activity. Christmas shopping. He wanders through the stores of the U-shaped, outdoor mall admiring the piles of merchandise in the windows—sweaters, shirts, gloves, scarves, jewelry, sports equipment, shoes—the monotonous beauty of wealth. Crystal wine goblets on red velvet. Onyx chess sets. Japanese cameras. Golf clubs. Books. Undaunted, the traditional Christmas scene-stealers—carders, coaches and horses, shepherds, angels, wise men, kings —do battle in the same windows, with the tainted goods that surround them. Good for you. Fight the good fight. He is not daunted, either. Christmas means gifts, and he puts his money down with the rest; says, “Have a nice Christmas,” when he is handed his packages. “You, too,” they say.

  Before class one morning, Lazenby corners him at his locker. “What happened? Salan says you quit.”

  He nods curtly.

  “Why?”

  The halls are teeming with people. Mild frenzy. Two minutes before the final bell.

  “I felt like it,” he says. “It was a bore.”

  “Some reason.”

  He doesn’t answer; busies himself with rummaging in his locker for his chemistry book. Lazenby leans an elbow against the wall. “Con, is something the matter?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs his shoulders, looking worried. Big, blond, sincere-type. When he was in the hospital, Lazenby wrote him his only letter, told him the scores of the Cubs and White Sox games; at the bottom of the page, “I miss you, man.” He had read it a million times before he finally threw it away.