I give it one last try, though.
“We shouldn’t go off and leave the children all alone.”
“Nonsense,” Annie says. “I woke up Andrew. He is perfectly capable.”
And away we go. Laughing and scratching.
Here comes the next problem of that evening. Happens that our car is in the garage. Guy was supposed to have it ready, but he didn’t. We have a loaner. Good enough. Not long at all, a few blocks maybe, as we drive toward Whispering Pines, our heap drives right past a John Wesley station wagon. But we think nothing of it. We are looking for a sporty red Triumph. You are on the lookout for a new Pinto not an old Plymouth.
Ships that pass in the night …
We get to your place, hang around awhile. Then decide maybe you went to our house. We go back, passing without noticing, almost certainly, a John Wesley station wagon. You arrive home and find Annie’s crisp, curt, cool, condescending, and correct note. We get home to find Andrew highly amused by something.
“Mr. and Mrs. Wadley were just here. Mr. Wadley had a gun with him. He said Daddy is a very bad man and he’s going to shoot Daddy.”
I get myself a big drink. Annie lights up a cigar and considers the situation. Since they haven’t called, it behooves us to go back and try again. As we drive away, I hear, faintly, our phone begin to ring. Annie doesn’t hear that well, especially when she is thinking. Andrew won’t answer it, you can count on that. He hates the phone.
I think I could save us all a lot of trouble if I drove into a telephone pole or something. Except the local cops know me too well already. They will nail me for drunk and reckless driving. Engine trouble? Annie knows more about cars than I do. The whole thing is, Annie likes Ray and Ray likes Annie. And I …? Well, I like Geraldine all right. As a friend, I mean. And I am willing to forgive and forget the way she treated me. What the hell? Annie will work it out. Then we’ll all get drunk together and watch the sun come up. Fix breakfast …
Well, Ray, we missed you twice again, going and coming. Then everybody quit trying. I know from Geraldine (believing about half of it, of course) what happened with you all. Thoroughly beaten down, frustrated, you were ripe for a long serious talk. Tears and a plea for forgiveness from her. An appeal to your emotional maturity and natural generosity. Promises for the future.
About that unfortunate incident in the office. Knowing you had an eight o’clock class, I came early. Not to ambush you, as it may have seemed. Nor to go through your desk. I figured that, since we share the same office, I’d better get there first, take what I needed, and cut out. I won’t brazenly sit there, I told myself, with my very presence an insult to Ray, until we have straightened it all out. I’ll just get what I need from the office, enough for a couple of days. By the Wednesday Department Luncheon everything will be okay, I’m sure.
It was my thought that prior to the Luncheon I would give you the benefit of a wide berth. At the Luncheon I would be as friendly as can be and you would have to respond in kind. Because our Chairman likes that. A friendly Department is a good, productive Department, he says. I intended to make sure he was standing right there when I greeted you effusively and then asked you how the Debate trip went. Not out of irony or a vulgar desire to rub it in. Shock, yes. To shock you into wakeful attention and the possibility of a meaningful dialogue. You would understand my effort to communicate. Being a genuinely sensitive and intelligent guy, you would be amused too. What dramatic irony! You have to stand there and kill me with comradely kindness. One pout, one snarl or sneer, one snotty remark, and you would be on the Chairman’s shitlist. Unfriendly guys have no future at John Wesley. And least in the English Department. And you were still trying to hustle yourself a promotion.
Lest I sound cynical and cruel, let me remind you of the truth that if you play a role well enough, becomingly, as it were, it becomes you.
Trouble was, I overslept. And then I forgot that my watch was running slow. Even so, I probably would have had plenty of time to collect my things and get out before you got there. You never in your life arrived one second early for your eight o’clock class. Except on that particular morning …
I got to the office, quickly packed my briefcase, and was ready to leave. Felt suddenly a little sad, like I sensed an unhappy ending. Reached for a cigarette. Had forgotten. Remembered you kept a pack somewhere in your desk. Went and sat in your chair to rummage and find … one cigarette, that’s all. Among some papers a glossy shine, the edges of some photographs caught my eye. Took a look. Some pleasant Polaroid shots of Geraldine. Flipped through the pictures. Whoa there. Flash of flesh! Geraldine in buff, inimitable birthday suit, taking various and sundry poses. Pretty good horn shots. A natural model. Couldn’t help looking, Ray. Once I found them, I mean. Admittedly, it was wrong to poke around in your desk drawers like that. But I found them only by accident.
I thought maybe I would take one, just for a souvenir, so to speak. Which one? Preoccupied, I spread the pictures across top of desk to pick and choose. Put one in my pocket. Figured the next time I was with Geraldine I’d show it to her. Tell her you sold it to me for two dollars. Geraldine sometimes a very gullible person. I was sitting there laughing out loud imagining the possibilities of that scene when you walked in on me.
I was not laughing at you or Geraldine.
Intended to put pictures back where I found them and leave.
Unfortunately, with pictures in hand like a hand of cards, I never had a chance. You came in and made your own erroneous inferences.
You threw your attaché case at me.
Started around desk after me. I went under the desk, diving and crawling, and made it to the hall. Hall full of students going to class. Bells ringing to add to confusion. I staggered into wall across the way, caught myself, and turned around. You gave me mouthful of knuckles and my head banged hard against wall. Saw pinwheels and stars of light. Trying to duck and to keep from falling. Second blow grazing my ear and side of head.
Bent over, I started to come up with a punch. Then realized I was still holding onto the photographs. Checked my swing. From my position—please try and see it from my point of view—I was helpless. Head ringing, mouth and lips bleeding. All I could see was your two legs firmly planted, solid and set to hit me again. What could I do?
I swear to God, Ray, I never meant to kick you in your bad leg. Second, and by the same highest authority, with my head and eyes down I never even saw that the students had grabbed you and were holding you. Not until you yelled from the pain and fell to the floor. By then it was too late for anything.
I hurled the pictures away and ran off to the parking lot.
Ray, I doubt that you ever fully understood about your unpleasant interview with President Butterman. Objectively speaking, I don’t look too good on that one. And I’ll be the first one to admit it.
The thing is, the mitigating circumstance, I was desperate. I checked with old Butterman’s secretary, Grace. Remember Grace? Not bad; not good-looking; high-spirited and eager to compensate for her lack of beauty by energy, activity, and a sense of adventure. She always responded with enthusiasm and took my intentions for exactly what they were—polite and strictly political. Within those rational limits we got to be good friends.
Grace told me that I didn’t have a prayer. She said Butterball was planning to drop me anyway because I still didn’t have my Ph.D. She also told me that Butterass hadn’t decided what he was going to do about you. You had about an even chance to be allowed to stay on. There were some advantages for him if he did that. For one thing, he would have you permanently over a barrel if not in it. He would have another grateful slave on the faculty.
I want you to know that it was more to wipe that possum grin off his ugly face than to hurt you personally that I did what I did.
Grace told me that your appointment was set for Friday afternoon. That gave me time. I typed the letter over at her place, and then she drove me down to the P.O. so I could mail it off Special Delivery. I have fo
und that many people are inclined to attach an undue importance, certainly a significance which is not intrinsic, to the fact that a letter arrives by Special Delivery.
I’d rather not quote it or fake it, if you don’t mind. A confession doesn’t have to be completely embarrassing to be efficacious does it? Indirect discourse will have to suffice.
I said to Butterworth that much as an apology seemed to be called for in view of my unseemly behavior, much as good manners and, yea, even honest self-interest demanded of me at least a measure of regret, a show of repentance and contrition, yet I had no intention of so honoring him. As far as I was concerned he could stick it up his ass now and forever after. That the only time I ever wanted to see his name again was when I would read his obituary. Which, statistically speaking and barring unforeseen accidents and the whims of Fortune, I would almost certainly live to read and enjoy. However, I continued, I would like to do him one last favor before I faded from the scene at John Wesley. I would like for him to know something he really ought to know, lest he should mistakenly misinterpret the Geraldine Wadley Caper and surmise that it must be a one-shot misfired adultery, chiefly distinguished by its comic elements, and very unlikely to recur. Lest he, like stupid, well-meaning Raymond Wadley himself, might reach the conclusion that a single and wholly exceptional infidelity, nipped in the bud, so to speak, might, in the manner of some broken bones, not only heal, but also weld the original union more firmly than before. Geraldine, I hastened to assure him, was no character out of conventional women’s magazine slick fiction. More likely out of Olympia Press.
I then made a list of fourteen members of the faculty who I knew for a certainty had, at one time or another during the current academic year, had one or more rolls in the hay with the aforesaid lovely Geraldine, adding that the list was woefully incomplete, since I did not choose to include members of the Athletic Department, the coaching staff; nor did I wish even to venture even a guess as to whether the entire football team or only the starting lineup had so indulged. Furthermore, I added, in the case of undergraduates, it was practically a professional venture on Geraldine’s part. I wished only to call attention to the amateur amatory activities of this charming faculty wife. However, should he wish to check through his sources and spies, his undergraduate stoolies, he might well inquire whether or not a number of compromising photos, not at all unlike the enclosed, of the aforesaid Geraldine Wadley were not at this very moment in well-thumbed circulation in dormitories and frat houses.
I added that I was doing him a hell of a big favor because with a piece of nymphomaniacal dynamite like that in his already partially corrupted University community, a scandal of really major proportions was, by all odds, likely. And the only reason I was doing this was that when it did hit the fan and nothing at John Wesley was left spic and span, he would have no bitch or whine or hand-wringing coming, and I should be entitled to laugh my ass off at his acute discomfort.…
By Friday when you appeared, innocent enough, in your best dark suit, with all the dignity an aggrieved cuckold can muster, you had already had the ax, just like me, only you didn’t know it. Not knowing any of these things, you must have wondered at the ease and audacity with which he simply fired you. You had probably prepared yourself against the eventuality of being told that you would not be promoted or, even, if worse came to worst, being told that at the conclusion of the current academic year your services would no longer be. needed. But—virtually unheard of!—to be fired on the spot. And not gently, but curtly and gruffly. And for what? For “moral turpitude.” That old bugaboo, define it as you will, like “incompetence.” Defined in this case, neatly and irrevocably as attacking with fisticuffs a fellow member of the faculty—in the presence of students! Never mind why. There is no sufficient cause of justification. For, even should violence have been a legitimate response to whatever wrong Mr. Towne may have done you, it should never, ever have taken place on University property and in the presence of students. Therefore he had no alternative, as chief administrator of this institution, save that of asking you to leave quietly and without untoward theatrics or rancor; for surely you must acknowledge the justice of his decision? Adding that it might well serve your self-interest to accept this verdict gracefully in view of the fact that every time you applied for a job in the academic world in the future, or for that matter in any other field of endeavor, the matter would sooner or later come up and he, Butterman, would be asked confidentially for an explanation of the details and for an evaluation of the man, you, Raymond Wadley. He, Butterman, would then be personally grateful if, upon leaving this office and this campus, you, Wadley, would demonstrate those qualities of patience and fortitude he knew you to possess at your best moments. Your resigned acceptance and self-control would be matched, he promised you, by a willingness on his part to forgive, forget, and to do everything in his not altogether inconsiderable power to assure you a decent second chance in the academic world. In fact, as a token of his faith in your ability to rise above this one surprising lapse, he was willing even now to get on the phone to a friend of his, the Chancellor of a small but honorable agricultural and mechanical institution in South Dakota, and arrange for a job for you there, perhaps at a slight, temporary reduction of salary, but money isn’t everything and we all have to tighten our belts and put our shoulders to the wheel from time to time, nobody being perfect.…
According to Grace you shook hands with him, gratefully, Ray, tears in your eyes. And he walked you out of the office, the reception room, and the building, briskly to be sure, but with his arm around your shoulder like a real pal.
By Friday night, thanks to her many friends and my many enemies (plus, I guess, my own track record, which helped to impose a certain pattern on the circumstantial evidence), Annie had pretty well figured out everything that happened. At least she knew all she wanted to know.
“You are no damn good, rotten to the core,” she told me. “It is bad enough, by all known standards, to fuck your friends’ wives. But you don’t stop even there. You have to find a way to fuck your friends too.”
I had time to get in only one good solid slap across her face when the phone started ringing. She ran to answer it. I lit a cigarette and stood there trying to think of the proper rare quixotic gesture which would work as an effective apology when Annie came back, rubbing the side of her face and looking furious.
“That was Geraldine.”
“Geraldine who?”
“Women can be a problem,” she said. “They tend to get involved in spite of themselves.”
“Oh goddamn …!”
“Are you going to beat her up too?”
Bad scene, Ray. Boring and bad. Best I could hope for from then on was a reconciliation. Fall-back position was “a few days for both of us to think it over and sort things out.” Which I got. We agreed to separate for a while, beginning the next morning. I could take the car and go somewhere. She was quite comfortable at home, thank you.
Saturday morning I drove out to the Finlandia Sauna. Ready to sweat until I became a pure spirit and could vanish or fly away. There was one of the college wagons parked out there, but it meant nothing to me. I figured a couple of coaches had come to bake out the Friday-night booze. I undressed, noticing some clothes on a hanger but not paying any attention to them either. Grabbed a towel from the stack and slipped into that dry, hot, wonderful, wood-smelling, low-ceilinged little room. Parked my butt gingerly on a hot bench, sweating already, before I looked up and saw you. I must have jumped and started to get out of the room by instant reflex.
“Aw, sit down, Jack,” you said. “Can you think of anything sillier than a couple of old crocks like us fighting it out, bare-ass, in a sauna bath?”
“It’s my nerves, Ray,” I told you. “I guess I just can’t take it like I used to. It’s been a rough week. Let’s see … I lost my job and my best friend and I’m about to lose my wife and kids. Old age, Ray. A few years ago I could have taken it with a shrug. Now it kind of smarts.
”
Well, it was, for an hour or so, like old times. We sweated a lot. We had a few inconsequential laughs. We even stopped at a place down the road on the way back to town and drank a couple of beers together. Nothing like a freezing cold can of beer after you’ve had a sauna bath.
It was then, with the two of us sitting in the Wesley wagon, drinking beer, that you told me how you and Geraldine had agreed it was better to break up for keeps. You were very calm and sensible about it. She would go off and visit her Aunt Clara this weekend, leaving you time to pack up your things and anything else you felt you wanted. All she wanted was the little red Triumph. Which is why, of course, you were driving the Wesley wagon.
We finished our beers. Shook hands and said good-bye. You drove off to pack up. And I drove to Boston to be Geraldine’s Aunt Clara for the rest of the weekend.
We had a wild weekend. Never left the hotel room. Couldn’t break it off until Tuesday. (Or maybe, I think now, she may have planned it that way, to give you a whole extra day in the empty, lonely house in case you changed your mind.) We got back to your house after dark. She went in first to look around. Came to the doorway and motioned me to come on inside.
“He left everything!” she said. “All he took with him was his own clothes.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I was afraid he would take the TV or the stereo or something, just for spite. But he didn’t. It proves I’m right.”
“About what?”
“About people,” she said. “Trust them and give them freedom and responsibility and they do the right thing almost every time.”
“It just proves Ray is a good guy.”
“He’s a sweetie pie,” she said. “Just a sweetie pie.”
I grabbed her up in my arms and carried her, laughing and kicking, into the bedroom. Dropped her on top of the bed. Started pulling and peeling her clothes off.
Evening Performance Page 46
