After Gregory

by Austin Wright

  She kept stuffing her mouth and wiping her lips. He wondered what her nipples looked like and her navel and the rest. He guessed her hair was black. After dinner she told him he was free to read his book. You proposed chess. Okay, Sharon Trace played chess, she played fast, the game was close, she edged you out. She was amused. Any other games you want to play? Ask again: Tell me where you come from? This time she answered. Indiana, like through a screen, far away, indifferent. He was disappointed. Where in Indiana? Cowland, you never heard of it. Sounded like a made up name. They played pingpong in the cellar, and she edged him out again. She laughed and swung her paddle and reached for the ceiling and her toes. She was an athlete, lithe and restless.

  That night after the muffled sounds of bathrooms and showers, Stephen Trace in his robe with a more definite idea slapped his slippers down the hall and stopped to knock at her door. Stopped by a Gregory qualm. It took a moment and a deliberate decision.

  In this silence she could be shocked or scared or victorious. You heard the feet, the doorknob, the door opening. She looked out, face wet, the bright robin look in her eyes, her black hair wet and straight to her shoulders, a knee-length white puckered robe hugged across her front. He concealed himself by holding his robe out a little in front with his folded arms.

  Can we talk? No games now, she looked at him straight and serious. What a sweet simple face. Sure, she said.

  He sat near the bed, folding the robe to conceal his feelings, while she sat by the mirror and dried her hair. Talk above the whinny of the dryer. What do you want to know? The puckered short white robe slipped off her knee, but she put it back.

  So what did you do in Cowland, Indiana? She grew up there. What was it like? Boring. Routine farm stuff. Horses and cows and pigs? Corn and wheat and clover. Silos and barns? Roads long and straight for miles between fields. Grade school, high school, college. And then you left? She came to New York. And what did you do in New York? First a restaurant, then an office, eventually Jack Rome. So how did you get such an important job, so privileged and close to The Boss? She shrugged, maybe her supervisor recommended her. Meanwhile the white robe kept slipping off her knee and exposing her thigh, and sooner or later she would put it back again. Her knee and thigh were white and pink.

  How old does this make you? About thirty. Born on September 19, whatever year that was. She put the robe back in place though really too short for sitting, and turned off the dryer. She fluffed her hair. She looked great.

  His chair was between her and the bed. He did not know if she had anything on beneath the robe, or if she wanted to go to the closet for pajamas or nightgown. He didn’t want to do anything without her consent. He considered and said, Well I guess that’s what I wanted to know, would you like me to go now?

  The robin’s eye flashed with intelligence. Not necessarily. Would you like to stay?

  Is it all right with you?

  I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.

  The robe fell off by accident as she stood up. She grabbed for it, but too late, enabling him to compare her with his thoughts. Real skin and hair and light freckles on her sides and arms and belly. She came over to him in her sturdy bare feet. In case you and I get married, she said. She slipped him out of his own blue silk robe revealing you all ready to go. She laughed. They slithered onto the bed and got tangled up close and intimate. Oh ho, he roared in his millionaire house alone with her in the night, oh ho.

  After that, they spent every night in one room or the other. They had a great time. The most important part of the day was when you and Sharon Trace lay on a bed or couch or floor removing clothes or already without them. She had performative zest, and seemed to come from sophisticated worlds of usage and tradition, which made Peter Gregory’s experience (consisting mainly of married nights with Linda and the unforgotten memory of Anita Long) seem like forms of idiosyncrasy and solitude. There was something public about Sharon Trace, which made you avoid the word love, though it had a tendency to pop out of your unconscious like Jung, as if you had been born with it. In an instant, even while deploring it, Stephen Trace had become obsessed with dallying and horseplay, infatuated and capable of almost any sacrifice for its sake.

  In the second step of the courtship, you tried to broaden their lives. You didn’t want Stephen Trace to be a simple idiot with nothing on his mind but screwing his girl friend. When she was at work, you restored lost dignity by walking around his property and puffing him up with ownership. Talk to Mr. Jollop about plans for gardens and shrubbery. More flying lessons to look down on the world.

  When she was home, you took walks with her in the early spring countryside, played games (scrabble, arm wrestling—whatever you played, she won), went to plays, movies, the opera. You took her with you in the plane.

  The main thing in the second step was talk. At dinner, after sex, in the garden, the porch without lights. She talked about Rome’s Empire, and you talked about Gregory and Trace. You told her about Linda and Louis the Lover, but you didn’t mention Florry Gates or the Sebastian case.

  She had been Jack Rome’s Secretary for Personal Projects for three years, but she knew little about the Rome Matrix. She didn’t understand Rome’s dealings but was sure he meant well and did much good. She did know your gift wasn’t unique, he had made similar donations to others. You mentioned Crazy James. Probably James Dziadech, petty hoodlum from Brooklyn, paroled for an armed robbery, after which Jack Rome gave him a fortune to see if it would turn him into a sober citizen. She said Jack Rome knew perfectly well who Crazy James was and agreed he was the most likely conduit from you to Rome.

  You told her the Adventures of Gregory-to-Trace. You knew the story well by now, its parts had hardened in their molds. She already knew much, but you filled in details.

  You mentioned Rome’s theory of competitive ego. She preferred the Thomas à Becket theory of character formation. People behave according to the roles in which they are cast. Thomas à Becket was a playboy friend of the King’s until the King made him Archbishop of Canterbury. This caused Becket to behave like an Archbishop, making himself such a thorn in Henry’s hide that Henry finally had him killed. People strive, she said, to fit their behavior to their parts in the cast, Professor, Student, President. If they don’t know their roles, they improvise like actors who have forgotten their lines. Sharon: You are learning Rich Man. You and I together are studying Man and Wife. It’s not you who makes you behave as you do, it’s your money.

  On the porch, facing the Sound on a dark night. Your parents would not have understood Jack Rome’s theory of competitive ego, nor Sharon’s role theory either. Your father, the alcoholic ACLU lawyer with this severe notion of service, did half his work for no pay at all. Your mother, remembered as a religious person who believed in and taught Character, was even more severe about the Self, selfishness, selfish people. Your glamorous stockbrokering yacht-sailing Uncle Phil’s mildly patronizing attitude toward his poorer brother’s family was offset by their equally mild and quiet contempt for him.

  As for Sharon, talk about her job and Jack Rome but not about herself. Cowland, Indiana, who cares? she said. How did she get into the Rome Corporation? It doesn’t matter. How did she get so close to the top? Briefly jealous, you asked pointblank, did Jack Rome screw her? If he did I wouldn’t tell you, she said.

  In the golden bathtub under the overhead mirror (from the previous owner) she pointed to the little lines on her lower abdomen. Child marks.

  By now she’s five, she said. Her name is Melly. David’s got her. David got Melly, I got the job.

  The job? Jack Rome’s job. More questions, then. For example, how long and how often has Sharon Trace been married? Answer, five years and just once. David who? David Trace. Which gives us another Trace in the world, two if you count Melly. Question, Who was David Trace besides your husband? First answer, a high official in the Rome Matrix. Second answer, a rich alcoholic. Third answer, Jack Rome’s older brother.

  Brother, hey? You do
have the connections.

  So it would seem.

  If he’s Rome’s brother, how come his name is Trace?

  Oh, it’s an old family name.

  Does that answer the question?

  I don’t know. Doesn’t it?

  You then. If you married David Trace, you had a different name in Cowland. (You don’t want to know.) Tell me. Sharon Sharalike. Come on, cut it out. Sherlock? No. The name embarrassed her, she left it behind with the rest of Cowland. Stuff your ears, here it comes, don’t listen. The name came out through the water she splashed in the tub.

  Who wants to be Sharon Grubbs in a world like this? If you mention that name to anyone as long as you live.

  Obviously you were going to marry her. The third step was to eliminate the negatives. Rule out the alternatives. You had this old notion marriage should develop accidentally. Before marrying her you had to decide if there was anyone else you knew or might meet later whom you would regret. Anita Long. Florry Gates. Nancy Nolan. Genevieve Desmond. Ephemera of past and future against the solid presence of Sharon Trace. Marry Sharon then: You got along with pretty good fun, you didn’t fight, what else did you need? If Stephen Trace had come from a family, with roots and relations—but already in a month’s time there was no one he knew better or who knew him better than she.

  Yet he knew nothing about her parents, childhood, home. No family anecdotes. He did not know what lovers she had had, what friends, what aspirations she had abandoned. If you take that negative approach you’ll never marry anybody. He asked her if she still wanted to marry him.

  Sure, she said. Love to.

  They got married at the beginning of April in the high glass office of the Rome building, attended by Jack Rome and Jane Delaware and Mrs. Heckel and a minister named Dr. Nose.

  TWENTY SIX

  Mr. and Mrs. Trace went on a honeymoon for two and a half months. In the joy of life together they risked death on the Interstate highway, in the wind and the engine, the vicious pavement, the teetering walls of trucks. Bridge abutments, ditches. Parallel rubber streaks veering off the road.

  Ignoring death, they went out into the world and filled themselves with country. Key West. New Orleans. San Francisco. Yellowstone. From the beginning of April to the middle of June.

  No one in the other cars knew their wealth. They were caught speeding in the Bible Belt. Slowed by road construction and traffic jams caused by accidents. They ignored the hitchhikers at the entry ramps. They wore jeans and bright shirts and shorts. They staggered in the lobbies at truck stops or Bob Evans, staring dazed at vending machines with key chains and combs. Their faces were shiny. They looked just like everybody else and pretended that’s what they were.

  They came back finally to Mr. Jollop’s garden full of roses. The house had been cleaned, the furniture polished, the lamps gleamed. The lawn was rich and green, the silver globe sparkled, the irises bloomed. As Stephen Trace on the longest evening of the year you sat in a wicker chair with a drink, next to your wife. As Stephen Trace you looked at the purple waters east to a blank horizon and wondered, What next?

  Here’s your chance to live closer to nature and the rhythms of life. Thoreau. You got a notebook and wrote across the top of the first page: JUNE. You got up early and went outside with binoculars to look for birds. Learn the flowers, wild and tame. Name the bittern among the reeds on the inland shore. You forgot to keep your record up, forgot to get up early, with Sharon waking up there beside you and pinning you down. Too many distractions to be Thoreau.

  You bought a sailboat and went cruising in the waters nearby. The sailboat made you feel guilty when you didn’t use it. You joined the tennis club, where Sharon put on her sexy white shorts and beat everybody. You sat in the bar and watched her through the window. She had given up her job in town. She bought a horse and wrote a postcard to her five-year old Melly, living with the parents of David Trace. The postcard showed a tiger at the zoo. She declined an offer to keep Melly for July.

  There were tense moments and peculiar impulses. You woke one morning thinking you had committed bigamy. It took a while to get rid of that. Testing the unthinkable, you allowed yourself to fly over Westchester, seeking the old house over the ravine where Peter Gregory was born. You resisted the impulse to retrace Murry Bree’s route across the country.

  On the porch in the wicker chair, looking at the water, lead gray on a cloudy day, watching a pair of sailboats with billowing jibs defying the forecast, while Sharon was inside polishing her tan with the sun machine, you said, I loaf too much. You couldn’t postpone the question much longer. What is Stephen Trace to do with his millionaire life?

  The answer appeared quietly, where it had been all along, hidden in your name. One fact distinguished Stephen Trace from what he would otherwise have been. This was his fortune, which made him Stephen Trace. Here was his occupation, the proper business of his life, designated at the start when he accepted that life: money. To hold, nourish, and use well that with which he was endowed.

  The care of his wealth then. This was in the middle of July. He began to study in earnest. He consulted Mr. Peck. He brought home prospecti and announcements, newsletters, and company reports. Little by little he took charge. He threw out his Thoreau notebook and opened a new set labeled FINANCE I, FINANCE II, and FINANCE III. These were full of ledgers, graphs, plans to buy and sell. He took an office in the Rome Building, and hooked up his computer at home. He learned the companies he had shares in and made detailed studies of others. He knew stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposits, was familiar with options, intimate with ginny and fanny mae. He recognized nature’s law. the only humane thing to do with a thirty million dollar fortune is take care of it like a sunflower or a puppy, so that it may fulfill its nature. His immediate goal was to double everything within the year. He named himself Stephen Trace, Financier. He became a Republican. He told Jack Rome, who laughed.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  You were coming out of the Rome Building late one afternoon and heard a call, Hey, Gregory, I’ll be damned.

  Gregory?

  You recognized the face, then who he was: Archie McWare, a college friend who used to get drunk all the time.

  Christ, he said, I haven’t seen you in fifteen years. Come have a drink.

  You played Peter Gregory like an actor. You went into a bar with him, which he settled into like an old home. You’re doing well, he said. Nice suit. What brings you to the Rome Building?

  His life was a tragedy (fortunately for you, since it dulled his curiosity), full of woe, and woe swam in his drinks. His wife gone, his children too, because of drink. One thing saved him, his profession, for in Boston he was still an excellent brain surgeon. Work kept him proud, when he was working he was okay, excellent concentration. It was the rest of his life that was a mess. Do his work, then go to pieces. Today for instance. He had come to New York for a consultation, should be getting the train now, but was going to get drunk first. No way to prevent it. Get drunk tonight, sleep it off, fly back tomorrow, appointments in the afternoon. An operation Thursday. He’ll be all right for that. Just the rest of his life was shot to hell.

  He thought Gregory was a teacher. Yes, but you gave it up. You’re doing other things now. A bit of money, yes? How’s Linda? Linda? Oh? Sorry pal. So it’s woe for you too, alas. Unless you found somebody new, hey? Not impossible, that. Well, I’m glad to hear at least some good coming out of woe.

  The question was whether it would be wiser to take Archie McWare into your confidence. You doubted he could keep the secret. The alternative was to say nothing. Masquerade as Peter Gregory and hope the news won’t spread before time can confuse the dates. The next alumni book won’t be out for five years.

  Of course, you could wink and say, please don’t mention meeting me, I’m supposed to be in Chicago. But that would be too much of a strain on Archie. You said goodbye without telling him, leaving him in the bar with his drink, and you never heard from him again.

  You ha
d another shock one afternoon when Sam Indigo showed up at your house by the water. Sam Indigo was the police investigator who had interviewed you when Jock Hadley was killed. From the study window you saw this man coming up the walk from his car, tall, bald, familiar, frightening you with memory flapping loose from its stays. You didn’t know him and then you did, right out of Gregory’s past, and immediately understood he had been following you across the country for more than a year and had finally caught up with you.

  Voice soft, face mild, he said, Mr. Gregory? Your answer being slow, he added quickly, I’m Sam Indigo. I used to be a police detective. You remember talking to me last year?

  You: My name is Stephen Trace. He: Are you saying you’re not Mr. Gregory? You: What do you want? Indigo (surprised): Why, I don’t know. Friendly visit. He looked almost timid. Then, perhaps because of the look on your face: No harm, I just came to chat. Is it inconvenient?

  I won’t talk to you. There was screaming in your voice, though you kept it quiet. I won’t allow it. I won’t have you destroying my life.

  Destroy your life? How could I do that?

  I won’t have you coming after me. I’ll die first.

  No, no, relax, calm down. I had no such thought.

  He kept peering around at your place. I’m not with the police. I’m private, on my own.

  Then why are you here?

  He took a seat on the porch without being asked. He looked out at the harbor. I’m in New York on business. Nothing to do with you. No ulterior motives.