Duke of Deception

by Geoffrey Wolff

  The fall of my sophomore year a friend from Philadelphia came to our house in Wilton. Duke was about to get the gate for nonpayment of rent, and he wanted to shut down in style, with a party. It was the weekend of the Yale game, and some of us went. Yale won. When we returned from the game Duke said he was sorry for Princeton but happy on his own account.

  My Philadelphia friend was an oddly tenacious fellow; he was inquisitive, and willing to bore in for answers to his questions. He was not exactly a snob and not exactly not, a St. Paul’s man who despised social fakers, and loved to ferret them out. I knew this. When my father made his harmless remark about Yale’s victory I said to my friend:

  “Dad went to Yale. Right, Dad?”

  My father blushed. He had not invited this.

  “He was Deke, Bones too. Right?”

  “Bones men don’t discuss Bones,” my father said.

  My friend was interested. “Which one is Skull and Bones? The Palladian or the Georgian building?”

  My father was silent.

  “How about Deke? Where’s it located?”

  My father said nothing, and began to shake his head. His face was deep red. My friend, almost seven feet tall, was not in the least intimidated by my father’s frown.

  “Which college faces Trumbull Street?”

  “Saybrook,” my father said.

  “You’re wrong,” my friend said. For all he or I or Duke knew, my father was right.

  “It’s been a long time,” my father said. “The memory’s not so hot.”

  “The truth is,” my friend said, as my father walked away, “he didn’t go to Yale.”

  He said this loud enough for my father to hear it. My father left the house, walking slowly and erect, with his shoulders back. My friend, anxious not to embarrass me further, turned his back to me. I hated them both. I hated myself.

  The section from This Side of Paradise called “Spires and Gargoyles” is Princeton’s public shame and private pride. It accurately evokes a certain Princeton of my day, lush and soft, delicate, beyond the grip of time. Fitzgerald characterizes the eating clubs:

  Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic; Cottage, an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic … Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant Colonial …

  At the end of sophomore fall semester my friends and roommates didn’t dream of Tiger Inn, and even less of Cap and Gown, though these were two of the Big Five of twenty-some eating clubs on Prospect Street. They had eyes for the Big Three, Ivy, Cottage and Colonial, in that order, though there were sometimes crossovers by men bid by Ivy who went to Cottage or Colonial because of a father’s or brother’s membership, or to hold together in one club a band of friends.

  The process of club selection, known as “Bicker,” was complex and debasing. After the night of Architectural Tour (the first time underclassmen were meant to have seen the clubs), groups of roommates were visited in their dormitory “suites” by clubmen. Every club came once at least to every suite, but the winnowing was quick and ruthless. Club members recognized their types, and after each interview gave a grade to the sophomore, from the highest (1: “ace”) to the lowest (7: flagrant neglect, “fleg-neg,” “lunchmeat,” “banana,” “wonk,” “wombat,” “turkey”). It frequently happened that from a room of six sophomores only one was wanted by a particular club, or three were wanted, or five. The desirables were courted avidly, sometimes double-teamed, while the unwanted was treated to small talk by a specialist at dumping.

  “Are you a legacy anywhere?” (Did your father, grandfather, cousin belong to a Princeton club, other than ours?) “No? Pity. Where did your father go to college? Maybe Yale? Never heard that one before. Say, could I have a glass of water? What do I major in? I thought I was asking the questions. Oh, well, I major in English. Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. Do you like sports? Yes? That’s nice. Where did you get the jacket? New, isn’t it? Well, I’ll say this: you’ve taken good care of it, it looks brand-new to me. Really, you never use wire hangers? Good idea, I guess wire hangers do stretch the shoulders out of shape, thanks for the tip, time to roll, I guess the other guys are talked out too.”

  My roommates were: the son of a diplomat, son of a textile magnate, son of the senior partner of an investment banking house, son of an insurance company president. They were very much wanted by Ivy, Cottage, Colonial, for many reasons. The other clubs recognized these men to be beyond their dreams, and quit their visitations to us. Sometimes when visiting Ivies, Cottages, and Colonials left our room we heard loud laughter from beyond the shut door. This was not understood to bear on my roommates. People, friends, whispered in my ear that I was thought “odd,” not “serious” about the enterprise of Bicker, not “polite.” It was accurately rumored that on the night of Architectural Tour I had told the president of Cottage that I would like less to see the library, dining room, pool tables, and television room than the kitchen, basement, plumbing, heating plant, and circuit boxes. And that when I left I told the Cottage president: “It’s sound; I’ll buy it.” This had not been a politic jape. It was said that I had a reputation for savage, and sometimes conspicuous, drunkenness, for want of purpose. It was said I had run up debts. I was held to laugh abruptly, from no evident or reasonable motive.

  After a week only three clubs came to our room, and I was spending five and six hours a day in small talk with imperious and condescending young gentlemen. There would be another ten days and nights of this. Not for me there wouldn’t.

  I walked away from a chat with a Grosse Point Ivy boy who wondered aloud, again, how the hockey team would “fare” this year. I explained, again, that I couldn’t skate and didn’t care. He could not believe that I could not skate and did not care. I just took a walk, enough now. It was January, snowing. I followed Washington Road toward Route One. Every dormitory window was lit. Washington Road was dark. I stopped at the corner of Prospect Street, considered putting a brick through an Ivy window, something dumb like that. It was cold. I walked downhill about a mile, to the bridge over Lake Carnegie. The snow was falling thick; far off I could see the spires, imagine the gargoyles. My roommates would worry; they had worried for days, unable to look straight at me or think what to do. They wouldn’t patronize me. I stood on the bridge looking into the dark below. I thought this was it, end of the road, end indeed of Prospect. The bridge railing was wide and low, and I stood on it, then sat on the edge looking down into the water I couldn’t see. Now and then a car passed, throwing dirty light on the hunched figure so out of place and expectation. A car stopped. A man asked if I was all right, did I need a ride? I waved him away. I couldn’t see the water, but it was down there, almost nine feet below me, three feet of water covering a foot of muck. I thought of my grandfather Loftus’ suicide attempt in the reflecting pool in Washington. I wouldn’t drown, for sure. I wouldn’t even freeze: I was wearing a coonskin coat; Duke had given it to me for Christmas, had told me it had been his “at university.” I began to laugh. I shook with the laughter from my chest. I couldn’t stop the laughter; it almost rolled me off the bridge. I lay on my back on the bridge, letting the snow hit my face. Then I lay in the middle of Washington Road. I’d lie there till the count of a hundred. That was it: let someone else decide. Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four … forty-one, forty-two … I was counting fast … f’r six, sen … I saw low beams coming out of Princeton, past Prospect Street. I stopped counting, held my breath, stood slowly with plenty of time to spare, and walked home to my room. I shared a six-pack with my friends, who looked at one another relieved as I told them my decision. They didn’t argue with it. I packed, and the next day withdrew.

  The deans were kindness itself. I’d be welcome back anytime after twelve months had passed, on condition I settled my outstanding accounts. Counting my debt to Eastbourne, I owed twenty-five hundred, give or take a hundred. I said I might not be back, ever, but
I’d pay my bills. I wasn’t a college boy, I said. Well, they said, you may feel differently later. Good luck.

  Duke drove down to get me. He kissed me, and said whatever I wanted was fine with him, “fuck ’em.” Would I live with him? I didn’t have to, of course, but he hoped I would, he had missed me. Sure, I said, sure. Was Alice at home? No, she’d just left again that morning. Oh, I said, she didn’t look forward to her stepson’s return? Not that at all, he said, just one of those things, you know Alice.

  My father was aces that day. He took me to “21” for dinner, and paid in cash. People made a fuss over me, he must have kept his account there current. He told me I had done the just, wise, courageous, defiant, honorable, only possible thing.

  A couple of weeks later he ran into his cousin Ruth Atkins in Hartford. Her late brother Art Samuels, president of Cottage half a century back, came into their conversation.

  “Tried to get Geoffrey to go Cottage for the family’s sake,” my father told Ruth. “No dice, he went Ivy, wanted to stick by his friends, what can I say?”

  19

  THE new place was in Newtown, on Birch Hill Road. There were no birches in sight, but it perched on a hill my father’s car couldn’t climb my first snow-blown night home. The sprawling ranch house was unfinished, as though its builder-owner, two weeks before the house-warming, had remembered he had forgotten his hat in a restaurant somewhere and had been looking for it ever since.

  A swimming pool out back was full to the three-foot mark with rain water, now skimmed with ice and dirty snow. With the spring thaws, mud sluiced down Birch Hill and dammed up along the neighbors’ sagging snow fences. I never met anyone who lived in a house contiguous with ours until I went with my father to court. A neighbor had charged him with dumping garbage beside our road, and this was true. He was fingered by his name on the envelopes of unopened bills, fined fifty dollars, and scolded. I paid the fine.

  I paid for everything that year. Food (after our grocery accounts were closed), rent (for the first few months, a hundred ten a month), cigarettes, and booze. I didn’t want to pay. I wanted to save what I earned to settle my debts. But if I didn’t pay, no one would.

  It was the time of the Eisenhower recession; Newtown is near Danbury, a depressed community if ever there was one, and at first I couldn’t find work. My father got it for me at Sikorsky, a helicopter manufacturer in Bridgeport for whom he had twice worked. He got me my job, he said, by selflessly withdrawing his own job application there, making room for me. Five years later, taking a leaf from my father’s résumés, I described my work at Sikorsky to a prospective employer:

  In charge of distribution of all engineering data. Did an analysis of the efficiency of the system and recommended a complete change in the various processes of distribution. This proposal was accepted, resulting in more efficient distribution methods.

  Sikorsky called me “Engineering Communications Co-Ordinator.” I was the mail boy, at two-seventy a month; I dressed for work in overalls, and lugged dusty canvas sacks from place to place. My résumé was accurate, to a point. I had encouraged at least one procedural change, that someone be hired to help me. Nick—a tall, proud Pole about my age—got twenty dollars a month less than I, and toted heavier loads, so he looked up to me. He covered for me while I read novels in the can, and I covered for him while he slept there. He didn’t mind that I read my employers’ private communications, and I didn’t mind when he threw into the shredder letters he didn’t wish to deliver.

  My immediate supervisor was an émigré Russian prince who hired me because his son was at Choate, which had improbably written him testifying to my “excellent character.” Sikorsky made the ubiquitous H-58 helicopter, choice of the Armies, Navies, and Air Forces of our country and others’. Many blueprints and parts diagrams were required, with notations in dozens of languages. It was in part my responsibility to guard the blueprint cage and ensure that diagrams were returned and replaced in their proper folders after they had been checked out. There were so many drawings that many of them seemed to me frivolous or expendable, and the diagrams I least highly prized I tucked beneath my shirt and took home. There I boiled them. They were gelatin on cloth, made to survive eternity, and when the coating had been boiled off its Irish linen backing, one was left with glue stuck to the sides of a pot and with handkerchiefs twelve inches square, soft and tightly woven.

  My father taught me this trick. So I owed him, as he owed me. Our arrangement—his arrangement—did not comfort me. I was to keep an account of what I earned (twelve months times two-thirty or so, after witholding), give it all to him to use as he wished, and in twelve months he would repay me in full. Sure. My situation seemed to me hopeless. I would care for him, as Alice had, and there would be an end to it.

  Our days and nights in Newtown settled into routine. We rarely saw anyone or went anywhere. Sikorsky was more than an hour’s drive; as I was due at the plant by eight I rose at six, while my father slept, and came home after dark, just as he had in Saybrook, when he worked at Sikorsky. Birch Hill’s elevation gave us irreproachable television reception, and we watched Westerns, cops, game shows, anything. That winter of 1958–59, my father drank and played with his toys, an electric train and a gruesomely expensive model of a supercharged Bentley he built during six months of spare time. Since all his time was spare time, he invested a lot in the car.

  We burned up time. We smoked Camels, and I remember fumbling drunk with their cellophane wrappers, swearing at them. The beast on the Camel logo was mysteriously reduced and paled, made less aggressive in response to marketing advice. We were enraged, and wrote R.J. Reynolds so scalding a letter that they returned their camel to its dark color, and full complement of humps.

  My father was meant to clean the house and cook, but didn’t. I cooked TV dinners and hash out of cans, and he complained about the food. We listened to Bessie Smith—“Gimmee a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer” and “Up on Black Mountain”—and my father played an upright in the storeroom. The storeroom was cold, and as time passed it filled with stacks of magazines and the garbage no one would collect because we didn’t pay to have it collected, and finally it got too high in there, especially in warm weather, to enjoy music.

  Sometimes I’d announce that I had a date in New York for the weekend, or wanted to go alone to a movie, or have a drink with Nick after work. Then my father would pout, and get ugly-drunk, and visit my bed to tell me how I’d screwed up his life, how he’d given up everything to get me through Choate, had married a woman he couldn’t bear to send me to Choate. And what had I done? I’d kicked his ass, that’s what I’d done. Then he’d talk big, he was pulling out, he didn’t need me or Alice or anyone, he had put up with all the crap he could take, he’d had it, and this time he really meant it, he was washing his hands of me, see how I did on my own, for a change …

  Some nights we would read quietly, and be friends. Other nights, listening to rain leak through the roof into plastic buckets, we’d laugh and fume and be friends; we’d telephone the landlord (owed four months’ rent) to complain about his shoddy upkeep of the place. Dishes piled up in the sink, and empty bottles everywhere.

  “Tomorrow,” my father would tell me, “I’m going to get cracking.”

  We listened to Sounds of Sebring. Yes: racing car engines recorded winding up at Sebring. We also listened to Sounds of Monaco and Sounds of Silverstone. We listened to Whistles in the Night, trains going from somewhere to elsewhere, till the power company cut the switch on us.

  Alice returned briefly in April. She and my father quarreled at once, but she cleaned the house anyway, and seemed to dig in. She let me borrow her car; it was a chance to get off Birch Hill, and I took some time off from work (sorry, got the grippe) to drive north to Stowe to ski with Princeton friends. I slept in the parking lot of their lodge and met John, a Harvard boy. He was my first hipster and I was his, he thought. I had never taken to anyone as quickly, and he became the chief witness to that Newtown year, for
when I returned home Tootie packed and left, yelling: “All you do is read! The trouble with both of you is your damned books!”

  No, that was not the trouble with us. I saw my stepmother two years later for the last time; I’d like to see her again, if she’s alive, and tell her I know she deserved better from her golden years than what she got from my father and me, but when she left her husband for good, while he lay sick with pneumonia in California, she went to deep cover, where no Wolff could find her.

  Only one girl visited the place in Newtown. I had met her about the time I left Princeton, in Philadelphia, where her mother asked the father of my roommate during lunch at the Gulph Mills Club whether his houseguest, that young man so interested in her daughter, was a “gentleman or a Jew.” My roommate’s father said he didn’t understand the question, its purpose or its either/or construction. (Still, I learned of the question, and his response, from him.)

  This girl, whom I had busily courted at Smith, washed up at our house by an unexpected circumstance, a missed train from New Haven, a phone call to me, a ride from New Haven to Newtown with my father. It was May. When she arrived I was shoveling leaves and frogs from the swimming pool. There was something else in there, too. This was a woodchuck, I think, a long time dead. I was fishing for it when my love arrived with my father, who had stopped for “fortifications” at a joint called The Three Bears Inn. I was paddling with the shovel, my trousers rolled up to my knees, and then I had it, something soft, white, rancid, unspeakable that I flung down the hill toward the neighbors who had complained about my father’s garbage disposal. I greeted the girl and went inside to clean up.