For Maggie and Philip life was different, but only for a while. By June the scandal had gone away for good, and by that time they had long since agreed not to talk about it, to let it rest. For the most part they succeeded.
And then one day, as they were cleaning the garage, Philip was suddenly stricken.
“Have I ruined everything?”
They were getting rid of household junk that Philip had not been able to part with: a lamp from his study, a computer keyboard, boxes and boxes of old drafts of articles, and offprints, and ancient tax records. He gasped for breath. He looked over at Maggie in her jeans and work shirt, a scarf around her hair, and, breathless, he felt his heart drop. He had almost lost her. She was aging, she was very beautiful, he loved her, only her. And he had never told her the truth: he had almost ruined everything by that one night ride, the break-in, and Dixie Kizer. He must have been insane.
He would tell her now. It was not the secret itself that mattered. It was what it signified: the last dark corner within, that even he himself had never penetrated. He would do it, and he would do it now.
“Have I ruined everything?” he asked.
Maggie heard the fear in his voice and turned to look at him.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Maggie, I’ve never told you,” he said.
She dropped the box she was holding and came to him. She put her arms around his neck and held him close and whispered, “You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s all right.”
“You don’t know what happened,” he said.
But they were talking about two different things.
“No, I don’t. I know that I loved you and then for a while I didn’t love you, I didn’t love you at all, and then I loved you again. And that’s enough.”
“I’m so lucky,” he said, and held her for a long time.
And still he did not tell her.
FIVE
25
Dean Thurgood rose to offer a toast. “John McGuinn and his lovely wife Nancy,” he said, and then he went on to enumerate their many virtues, and John’s in particular, to demonstrate how right and good it was that John McGuinn should occupy the Howard K. Merk Chair of Clinical Psychology. “To John McGuinn,” the Dean said, “long life, good health, our warm congratulations.”
They all raised their glasses in a toast.
It was Thurgood’s first anniversary as Dean of the Medical School and he took the opportunity to thank everybody at the dinner by name. He had needed their support, he said, and he was grateful for their generosity, for everybody’s generosity really, but particularly for Philip Tate’s. “To Philip Tate,” he said, and again they all lifted their glasses in a toast.
In a few more minutes it was all over. Then good-byes and thanks and more good-byes, and Maggie and Philip Tate were in their car driving home.
“What a nice evening,” Maggie said. “I’m glad for John and Nancy.”
“It was a nice evening,” Philip said.
They drove in silence, thinking.
Philip was thinking how strange life was and how wonderful. It was just over a year now, a year and a few days, since the Aspergarter dinner when he’d been toasted as the new Tyler P. Goldman Chair of Psychiatry. His life had been a mess then, he’d been deluded and self-righteous, and Maggie had been drifting away. Now everything had been restored to him: his work, his wife, his great kids, everything. It was like something in the Old Testament, a wrestling match with an angel, a wager with God. He reached over and put his hand on Maggie’s leg.
“What?” she said.
“How lucky we are.”
“Keep it in mind,” she said.
He patted her leg and smiled.
“How’s the book coming?” he said.
“I did my two pages.”
“Very good. Very good.”
“I don’t know if they’re very good, or even half good, but I did them, and that’s my promise to myself.”
“You can do it,” he said.
“I will,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Maggie was writing a novel. She wouldn’t tell him what it was about except that it was not about them. The plot was a secret but, just to reassure him, she had told him this much: it concerned a woman whose life is on the skids until she has an affair with her psychiatrist, or maybe with a bartender; she hadn’t decided yet. Hmm, Philip said. And it’s about a man who does not know how to love. What happens to them? She wouldn’t tell. She didn’t know for sure, she said, and besides, if she talked about it, it might go away. She was doing two pages a day, five days a week, when she wasn’t teaching. When she was teaching, she dropped the count to one page a day. She was very anxious, she said, but he could see she was happy too, insofar as anybody gets to be happy.
“I’m feeling happy,” he said.
“Me too,” she said.
And then they were home.
In the kitchen they had a Coke and their vitamin pills and then Maggie kissed him good night. She paused on the stairs. “Are you gonna read for a while?”
“I think so. Unwind a little.”
“I’m beat,” she said. “Don’t wake me when you come to bed, okay?”
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you,” she said.
Philip poured himself another Coke and went into the study to read the newspaper. The usual stories: the decline of civilization, the end of the human race, who could care? And then, in the Arts section, he came across a notice of Dixie Kizer’s one-woman show. It was being held at a museum in the Berkshires for the entire month of August. Dixie was flourishing. Why did that not surprise him? She had stalked him like a crazy person. She had wanted her husband dead. And what had come of it all? Trouble. Nothing but trouble. Dixie was one of those strange and dangerous women, the only survivor of every wreck she was in. She had her own gallery in Baltimore now and she was taken seriously by serious painters. She was taken seriously too by Cole, who lived ten minutes from her and saw her regularly. What could you do? What could anyone do? And poor old Hal was still very much dead.
Philip had thought a great deal about Hal during the past year. He had been so convinced that Hal had no inner life at all, that he was dangerous and evil, but lately he had a nagging worry that perhaps, in a peculiar way, Hal was right. Perhaps there was an inner life unknown to him, a passage through the flesh rather than above it, with an impulse that was dark and mysterious and unfathomable.
Certainly Hal had been convinced that he was on some suprarational quest, that he had some kind of hunger for ecstasy that justified being horny all the time. St. Augustine, with a twist, sort of. But at least Hal knew what he was after. Whereas, housebreaking? What was that about?
For a second, for a fraction of a second—it was like a stroke—his mind split open and he saw that Hal was right; they were alike; they were not resigned to life and then death; they wanted to get outside their skins. And then—that blow to the brain—his mind closed up, and he was back where he began.
He had broken into the Kizers’ house. It was crazy. It was mad.
The Kizers’ house had been bought by a new couple at the Medical School. They had been at the party tonight: an older woman, a younger man, no kids. The husband was very unhappy and the wife was knocking herself out to make him feel he mattered, and you could see it was never going to work. She was something in hospital administration. God knows what he was. He had a kind of surly expression, defying you to entertain him. Philip hadn’t tried very hard, he had to admit. Still, the guy was interesting in his way. He was so obviously hurting.
Philip went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. It was a cool night, beautiful June weather; he could take a walk. Or a drive. Why not?
The sky was dark, with a sliver of moon and lots of stars. He stood in the driveway and looked up at the Big Dipper, the North Star, at Arcturus with his sword rampant. The air was clean. Everything smelled sexy.
He drove out to Harvard Square and then—a
mused at the idea, not in the least tempted this time—he drove over to Winchester and parked down the street from the Kizers’ old house. It was very late and there were no lights on, unless there was a light in the sunroom. You couldn’t see the sunroom from the street.
He could get out of the car and walk down the driveway and around the back and take a little look. What harm?
His heart began to beat faster. It was silly. It was crazy, really. Think of the past year. He felt sick to his stomach but he went ahead anyway.
He got out of the car and walked slowly down the drive and around the back of the house. There seemed to be a light in the sunroom, but because of the garden wall, he couldn’t be sure. His heart was beating very fast now. He moved quickly to the door and ran his hand along the top of the frame. The key was there. He slipped it in the lock and turned the knob. He could walk in. He could walk through the house, just looking, not touching, a quiet, secret, harmless night visit.
He paused, the door ajar, ready to enter.
“Maggie,” he said, and he did not know if he said it out loud or merely to himself.
Instantly he pulled the door closed, removed the key, and put it back above the door. He went out to his car and got in. He drove home.
His heart was racing now. He was going to have a heart attack, a stroke, something. He parked the car in the driveway—he did not have time to mess around with the garage.
He got out of the car, quickly, quickly, and started toward the house.
If she was still awake, he would tell her right now. He would tell her who he was and what he had done. He would wake her and tell her.
It was his only hope for salvation.
He approached the house running, a man possessed.
Having Everything Page 20
