Ordinary People

by Judith Guest

  “No. Not all.”

  He looks down at his hands, clenched into fists on his knees. “I wish,” he says, “that I knew what the hell I was doing here.”

  “I could use an objective opinion on my coffee,” Berger says. “Your son tells me it’s lousy.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  He gets up and goes to the table in the corner. “I’m getting a feeling from you,” he says, “of heavy guilt. About missing the signals. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Cal says, “sure.” It is easier now that Berger’s back is to him. He hadn’t realized it was the eyes that were making him nervous. “You don’t have something like that happen and not feel the responsibility.”

  “Guilt.”

  “Guilt. Yes.” He takes the cup Berger is holding out. “Well, I’m guilty. And lucky, too. I was there at the right time. I could have been at a meeting, we could have both been at meetings.”

  “Your wife was there, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Banging on the door, begging to be let in, while Beth called for an ambulance: “He wouldn‘t, Cal, oh, he wouldn’t!”. “Just call!” he had directed her over his shoulder.

  “So, you think of yourself as a lucky man.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so. Not any more. I used to, before —before the accident.” Then his voice shifts, cuts through the film of the windows, through thousands of pages in hundreds of books, “Hell, all life is accident, every bit of it—who you fall in love with, what grabs you, and what you do with it....”

  “That sounds more like the philosophy of a drifter than a tax attorney from Lake Forest,” Berger says.

  “Okay, I’m a drifter,” he says. “I’m drifting now. I can see myself—I see both of them, drifting away from me while I stand there, watching. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “Nothing! I don’t want to do anything but sit here on the fence. Until I fall off. On one side or the other.”

  Berger sips his coffee. “You see them on opposite sides of the fence, is that it?”

  “Yes,” he says. “No. I don’t know.”

  Berger nods. He strokes his upper lip with the edge of his coffee cup.

  “I see her,” Cal says, “not being able to forgive him.”

  “For what?”

  He shrugs. “For surviving, maybe. No, that’s not it, for being too much like her. Hell, I don’t know. She’s like a watercolor. They’re hard to look at, watercolors. You disappear in them sometimes. And after, you don’t know where you’ve been, or what’s happened—” Abruptly he snaps his gaze back inside the room. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I’m not a drifter. I’m not on any fence. I’m not any of those things. Except maybe a lousy husband and father.”

  “Ah.” Berger nods. “Well, maybe rotten sons deserve lousy fathers. Yours tells me Tuesdays and Fridays what a rotten kid he is.”

  “He shouldn’t. It isn’t true.”

  “He comes by it honestly, though.” The smile, open and friendly, invites him to relax, and he wants so much to do it.

  He leans back in the chair, rubbing his face with his hands. “He used to call the hospital the Zoo. I asked him if coming to see you was like going to the Zoo, but he said no, it was more like the Circus.”

  Berger laughs. “That’s either a compliment,” he says, “or damn poor PR, I don’t know which.”

  He takes a deep breath; the first since he has entered the office.

  “I think I know why I came here. I think I really came to talk about myself.”

  “Okay,” Berger says. “Why don’t we do that?”

  18

  Exam week. The first day dawns, sunny and below zero. His car barely has time to warm up before he pulls it into the school parking lot. He leaves it unlocked. Someone might want to take a cigaret break in it, cry in it, who knows?

  English. On Miss Mellon’s desk is a stack of plain white paper, and next to it, the sheets of exam questions. She has written, in her spiky, up-and-down handwriting across the chalkboard: RELAX. NO BIG DEAL. Nice. She really is a nice person. He sits down near the door and glances out of the window. Shadows of trees, blue on the snow. Everything glittering out there. She has not been trying to smother him, after all; just trying to be nice. Don’t get distracted! He looks around the room at the rest of the class: Joel Marks, Buzz Fayton, Neva Welles sitting dutifully hunched over their papers on three sides of him. The room is thick with the silence of concentration. He looks down at the sheet of questions:

  1. Discuss Hardy’s view of Man’s control over his inner/outer environment, using Jude the Obscure as example.

  2. Are the characters in Of Human Bondage people of great strength or great weakness? Support your theory.

  3. What is Conrad’s viewpoint, as illustrated in Lord Jim, concerning action and consequence? Suggested time limit: 40 minutes per question.

  Automatically, he takes out a pencil, even though his mind has gone stubbornly, soddenly blank. Well, that’s that. Three lousy questions to sum up one semester’s work. What does he have to say about them? Nothing. He has read the books. Period. Miss Mellon passes by his desk, and her skirt brushes the edge of it lightly. During A lunch each day she sits with Mr. Provosky, the algebra teacher. They lean toward each other across the table. Miss Mellon’s hands form neat, geometric shapes in the air when she talks. Probably explaining to him how Jude Fawley was powerless in the grip of circumstances. Yeah, probably. He keeps his head down. He needs his virtue intact this morning. She is one of the females whose bodies he imagines in various stages of undress. And other things. This is waking up? He shudders. Not today. Please. Concentrate, damn you, Jarrett. He has read the books. Okay, so he is no further behind, no less equipped than anybody else in here. “Relax,” she says. Okay. Okay.

  At his locker he collects the books he needs for his chemistry exam on Thursday. He notices, then is noticed by a group of girls at the end of the hall. Someone calls out, “Hi.” He waves; out of the corner of his eye he sees them heading for the exit doors. All but one of them. Jeannine. She shrugs into her coat, tying a scarf firmly about her head. God, if she should come down this way! He has not spoken to her since they came back from Christmas vacation. He wonders now, why he ever put 7. Girls on the list. To frustrate himself, for sure. Girl would have been ambitious; Girls was ridiculous.

  He takes another cautious look; she is gone. Nice going kiddo. Another opportunity missed. So easy, too. She was by herself; no one to see or hear him stammer around—Ha. No one but her. This is worse than any exam. He stares fixedly into his locker, wasting precious seconds; then he slams it closed, locking it in one lightning motion, and sprints down the hall.

  He bursts through the first set of double doors, breathless.

  She is standing in the tiny, overheated lobby, pulling on her gloves, her books balanced on the radiator.

  “Hi.” He sets his books next to hers as he zips his jacket.

  “Hi.” Cool and reserved.

  And rightly so. Exactly what has he to offer someone like her? Someone with directions, goals, interests. “What did you have today?”

  “History. You?”

  “English,” he says. “It wasn’t too bad. How was yours?”

  “Easy.”

  “Big, smart senior.” He grins at her. She smiles.

  He opens the door for her and the air hits them, a wall of piercing cold. She shivers, gripping her books tightly. “’Bye. See you.”

  “Would you like a ride home?”

  She hesitates; gives him a small, grateful smile. “Oh, that’d be nice. Thanks.”

  In the car he turns the radio up loud; it relieves him of the need to talk. Ragged piano blues. They listen intently. She sits, gloved hands in her lap, her books beside her on the seat.

  “I didn’t know you had a car,” she says.

  “Christmas present. My folks.”

  “It’s nice.”<
br />
  Her voice is soft; he turns the radio down so he can hear her better.

  “I live on Wisconsin,” she says.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She looks over in surprise. “You do?”

  “Yeah, you told me. Before Christmas. Remember?”

  “Oh.” She nods. “Well, it’s that one, there.” She points out a white frame house, with dark green shutters. He pulls to a stop in front, leaving the motor running. Her hand is on the door handle. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Welcome.”

  “I’d ask you to come in, but my mother—she’s funny about that. She works—” She turns suddenly to face him. “There was something I wanted to say to you. That day we—I said a stupid thing that day. I didn’t know about your brother, then. I’m sorry.”

  Stunned, he sits there, not moving. He had almost forgotten the incident. Now it rushes back to him. An embarrassed silence while they sit; he, staring out at her house, she, at her hands, lying limply in her lap.

  He gives a small, brusque flick to his pants leg. “You know the rest of it, too? I mean, about me?”

  “Yes.”

  Should have told her. Should have known someone would tell her. Sometime. Sure. Bring it up over a Coke, “Oh, by the way—” whip out the newspaper clippings. “... police chief... Lake Forest... reasonably certain ... no drugs involved.... ”No drugs. Part of the shame. Somehow it is not such a personal failure if you are on something anybody can do something crazy if he is stoned but crazy on your own time is much more serious damning in fact.

  “There are worse things,” Jeannine says, still looking at her hands. “People do worse things than that.”

  “Yeah.” He wants to help her through the awkwardness of the moment, but it comes out rudely, as if he is cutting her off.

  “Well,” she says. Her hand moves quickly downward; the door swings open. “Thanks again for the ride. I would have frozen.” And she is out of the car, safe on the sidewalk, turning away, hurrying up the steps and into the house.

  He pulls into the driveway to turn around. Nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe not. Nothing anybody particularly wants to be associated with either.

  The circular drive in front of the house is choked with cars, some of which he recognizes: Truan’s mother’s Mercedes; the Lazenbys’ white Pontiac; Mrs. Genthe’s Cadillac. He parks in front and walks up the driveway; lets himself in through the garage. As he enters the kitchen, the dining-room door swings open. “I thought I heard somebody trying to sneak in!”

  Mrs. Lazenby confronts him. He smiles at her, awkwardly. “Hi, how’re you?”

  “I’m fine, you dreamer. Thinking you could get away with that! Up the back stairs without saying hello to anybody, huh?”

  He grins. “That was the plan.”

  “Carole? Bring him in here!”

  No way out. She takes his hand, leads him into the dining room. He is greeted by his mother’s bridge club —Mrs. Cahill, Mrs. Genthe, Mrs. Leitch, Mrs. Truan, two other women he hasn’t met; he nods, smiling politely during the introductions. His mother sits quietly through his ordeal.

  “He’s thin, Beth,” Mrs. Truan says. “You should fatten him up.”

  She smiles. “How was your exam?”

  “Not bad.”

  Mrs. Lazenby has cut him a piece of chocolate cake. She hands it to him, on a napkin. “Here. For being such a nice boy, humoring the old ladies. Where’ve you been, anyway? We miss you.”

  “I’ve been meaning to stop by,” he lies. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Well, don’t be so busy,” she says sternly. “Come over some night, I’ll make lasagna. Talk to Joey about it.”

  “I will,” he says.

  He escapes then, to his room, where he sits staring out of the window. The problem of connecting is partly that of fitting mood with opportunity. When he sees Lazenby’s mother, he remembers their house, all warmth and friendliness; eating toast spread with peanut butter, playing catch in the back yard with Major, the fawn-colored boxer; he and Lazenby and Buck, each trying to kill the other in a game of Horse under the basketball net. If Lazenby were here. In the room, this minute. But, no. Passing each other each day in the hall doesn’t do. The moment is wrong; the mood is wrong; too much clanging—of lockers, bells, echoes of other conversations. It wouldn’t work anyway.

  Likewise, Jeannine. But if there were a telephone number here on his desk pad. So that when the feeling hit, he could go directly to the telephone, without stopping to think or to collect himself; just dial the number and it would be done.

  He gets up; goes to the telephone table in the hall, flipping through the telephone book. D. Pratt on Wisconsin. Carefully he notes it down. On the desk pad in front of him is another number, written months ago. 356-3340. Under it, in pencil: Karen. He looks at it for a long minute. Then, he gets up and goes again to the telephone.

  The telephone is answered on the first ring. The voice is suspicious.

  “You want Karen? Who is this?”

  “It’s—I’m a friend of hers. From Northville.”

  “Northville.” The voice goes flat. “Well, she isn’t home right now. She’s at school. Don’t you go to school?”

  Her mother, of course. Nobody else would take the trouble to cross-file him, or to be so damn worried. No ma’am no school. No time. Too busy being crazy.

  “Yes,” he says. “I do. But we’re off this week. Exams. Would you tell her I called? My name is Conrad—”

  “I’ll give her the message.”

  The receiver bangs loudly in his ear.

  “Thanks very much,” he says politely to no one. Replacing the receiver, he goes to his room to fall, face upward on the bed, arms outstretched. Nice. A nice cool zero for the day. Well, she wouldn’t have wanted to talk to him anyway. Why should she? Why would anybody? He tries again for the image of the woman outside the library, but it won’t come. If she had stared, it was merely out of curiosity. Wondering why one of his eyes was set higher than the other, or if his head was too small for his body.

  Anyway, a person who performs these joyless and ritualistic sex acts upon himself, this is what he deserves. He rolls onto his stomach, hands behind his neck. Downstairs, the laughter of women escapes the living room, finding its way up the stairs to lie beside him. Fairy. Fag.

  He rises grimly from the bed. Get it over with. Cross off both numbers in one afternoon why not? He dials Jeannine’s number.

  “Hello?” Her soft voice, musical even over the telephone.

  He clears his throat, nervously. “Hi. This is Conrad,” he begins. “Jarrett.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh, hi.”

  “Listen, I was wondering.” What Jarrett? What were you wondering? “Would you be interested in going out sometime?”

  A long pause. “You mean, with you? Like, on a date?”

  Eyes closed, he grinds his forehead, slowly and deliberately against the wall, a bubble of laughter loose in his chest.

  “Yeah,” he says, “well, it wouldn’t have to be a real date. We could fake it. See how it goes, sort of.”

  She giggles. “Okay, that was dumb, I agree. Just pretend I didn’t say that. Start over.”

  He grins at the receiver; obligingly he clears his throat. “Hi,” he says. “This is Conrad. Jarrett.”

  “I’d love to,” she says. “When?”

  19

  “What we need,” Ray says, “is a secretary.”

  “I thought we had one.”

  “No. A legal secretary. A widow, sixty years old, bad legs, good eyes, willing to work nights, willing to knock herself out for this goddamn job—”

  “Gee, how come we can’t find her?” Cal leans back in his chair. “Sounds like a terrific deal for her.” He stretches, arms over his head, glancing at his wristwatch. Eleven-thirty.

  “This is ridiculous,” Ray says, rolling down his sleeves. “We are not accountants, we are lawyers, goddammit. Why do we mess with these returns? Why don’t we tell ‘em all, ‘
Look, guys, we advise, that’s all, we do not prepare tax returns, we do not do your busy work‘—What’re you laughing at?”

  “I’m laughing because we have this same conversation every year. Here, give me those files. I’ll take care of them.”

  “Nah, just leave ’em. Sandy’ll do them in the morning.”

  “Sandy,” Cal says, “is a lousy filer.”

  Their new secretary. Cherry has gone, but the new one has the same fake smile, the same wide-eyed, over-made-up look and apologetic, fluttering hands. And the file baskets are still overflowing. Business as usual.

  Ray sighs. “She’s an improvement, though, huh? Three letters this week, no errors. She doesn’t crack gum in your face when she talks to you.”

  Her name is Sandra Farentino. She also has a boy friend who goes to Northwestern. A bad sign, he told Ray.

  Ray said, “Well, that’s what happens when you let your partner do the hiring, buddy.”

  They lock up; descend the smooth and silent elevator to the street. A hollow quiet fills the building, even though it is not empty tonight: there are lights behind many doors on their floor. The building glows as they walk away from it.

  “Want to grab a sandwich?”

  “Sure.”

  They walk the two blocks to the Carriage Grill, a fancy name for a dull spot, with its menu of pale, warmed-over food. A lawyers’ hangout. Down the street, at the Orrington Hotel, are the accountants and data-processing men. Just the same as college, when groups of look-alikes had their own spots: fraternity men, independents, foreign students, med students, art students, the rich, the working (no poor students—just the rich or the working). So. Nothing has changed. Beside him, Ray complains over his coffee cup. “... said I gave her a raw deal, I was the villain because I overex pected, I was a narrow-minded, arrogant chauvinist—her exact words—Christ, I ask you, is it chauvinistic to expect six hours of work out of somebody, when you’re paying for eight—”

  “Cherry? She told you all that?”

  “She wrote it in a letter. Addressed to me. You were innocent, I’m not sure why.”