Last Things

by Ralph McInerny

  “He infuriates the philosophers.”

  “Everything infuriates the philosophers,”

  “They don’t understand a word he says.”

  “Neither do the students.”

  “The students!” Like Cassirer, Zalinski despised students. His notion of an ideal college was one in which students were on vacation, all books available on their shelves in the library, and he free to do the New York Times puzzle in the office he shared with Cassirer. A straw vote taken at the last meeting was two to two, leaving Gogarty with the deciding vote. Of course Zalinski passed this confidential information on to Cassirer, prompting an immediate visit on Cassirer’s part to Andrew’s office. He was driven back to the doorway by the presence of Foster.

  “Can we talk?”

  “You seem to be.”

  “I mean in private.” Cassirer put his handkerchief to face and glanced at Foster.

  They went to the cafeteria, where over coffee Cassirer said hoarsely, “My fate is in your hands.”

  “In what way?”

  “My promotion to tenure.”

  “You have years before a decision need be made.”

  “Come on. You know I have applied for early consideration. God knows I deserve it.” There was a yellow fleck in Cassirer’s right eye. He wore a bristly beard, the better to look older; and had a heavy gold chain around his neck.

  “Is that a St. Christopher medal?”

  “Ha. It’s my sign. I am a Pisces.”

  “You realize I can’t talk about the proceedings of the committee.”

  Cassirer glared at him. “Is that your position?”

  “No, it is departmental policy.”

  “If you had any concern for the department, you would vote for me.”

  “I hope concern for the department will motivate us all,” Andrew said, feeling prissy. He found himself enjoying this.

  “I have just had another article accepted by Theseus. I will be on the program of the MLA. I have made St. Edmund’s known to people who never heard of it.”

  “It is a small pond for a Pisces.”

  “In this job market one has to take what’s available. Of course I don’t plan to end my career here.”

  Was this meant to soften Andrew up, tenure merely as springboard to another job elsewhere? “You say you’ve applied for early consideration.”

  “Come on. You know I have. It has already been discussed. I know your vote can make the difference.”

  “Surely Anne didn’t tell you that.”

  “Look, the committee represents the past. When did you get tenure, by the way?”

  “After the usual number of years.”

  “And you don’t even have a doctorate. That’s my point. What has Gogarty published? What has Pistoia done to deserve tenure?”

  “About as much as Zalinski.”

  “Exactly. All this talk about excellence, yet mediocrity is entrenched. My application should be a foregone conclusion.”

  Cassirer had an odd way of soliciting support, belittling those whose votes he needed. Andrew was thinking of Mabel Gorman’s remark that Cassirer had ridiculed him in class.

  “Tell me about your new article in Theseus.”

  Cassirer confided that he had exposed Saussure to withering criticism and offered an alternative to Derrida. One had to realize that a literary text was not about anything, not about the writer’s ideas, not about the world. It was a thing in itself, without analogues, and must be spoken of only in terms of itself. He had hunched across the table, causing a faint olfactory memory of Foster, and the yellow fleck in his eye seemed to pulse like a harbor light.

  “It’s hard to explain in a few words.”

  “I think I get the idea.”

  “It’s not an idea! That’s the point. Criticism too is without analogues.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You’re being condescending.”

  No wonder students hated the man. That was the objective basis for opposing his application for tenure. St. Edmund’s was not a research university—its main task was teaching—and Cassirer’s contempt for their students made Zalinski seem Mr. Chips.

  “Can I count on you?”

  “You can count on us all.”

  Cassirer sat back. “I understand. I threaten you, don’t I?”

  “Horst, I teach creative writing. I have published a few stories. My time is largely taken up with my students, some of whom are very promising.”

  He thought of boney little Mabel. “I am beginning to hate him,” she had said with cold intensity.

  Andrew said to Cassirer, “I haven’t read the French authors who are your passion.”

  “I have read your sister’s novels.”

  “I will tell her.”

  “They are quite good of their kind. You can tell her I said so.”

  “I will.”

  “I have not read your stories.”

  “I will lend you copies.”

  Cassirer shook his head. “I really don’t care for fiction.”

  Then what in God’s name did he do in his course on Victorian novelists? Unfortunately, Andrew already knew, from Mabel. Dickens was a pamphleteer, George Eliot repressed, Trollope a wordy joke. Students had wept in Anne Gogarty’s office when they told the chair of Cassirer’s comments on their enthusiasm for the novels assigned.

  “We have to stop him now,” she said to Andrew. “It’s providential that he has offered us an early chance to cut him down.”

  “But he will still have his job.”

  “For another year.”

  Their tête-à-tête confirmed Cassirer in his surmise that Andrew would not vote for him. He went to Arachne, the dean, and to Holder, the provost, and said the committee was incompetent to judge his work. He demanded an outside review. He was told he would have that in any case. He meant a committee made up of someone other than his colleagues. Holder called in Anne Gogarty and asked if there was any chance that insufferable young man would be voted tenure. She told him how matters stood.

  “I will exercise my veto if he slips through.”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary.”

  “I almost wish it were.”

  But Cassirer’s animus was directed at Andrew. He found the issues of the defunct journals in which Andrew had published and analyzed his stories in class, as Mabel reported. (“I do hate him now.” Dear girl. She would trouble no one’s concupiscence, but she was brilliant.) Cassirer had hired a lawyer named Tuttle to represent him, and the little man in a tweed hat came to Andrew’s office. He seem unfazed by the aromatic Foster.

  “Nice room. Very homey.”

  “Cassirer hired you? What for?”

  Tuttle fluttered a faculty manual. “To make sure correct procedures are followed. The days of academic confidentiality are over. There is the freedom of information act. There will be no secrets, no star chamber, justice will prevail.”

  Tuttle took some chips from the open bag on Foster’s desk: Here was another sign of the times. Now disgruntled faculty regularly sued their institutions, often with success. But that took time.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “Resign from the committee. You are prejudiced against my client.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  The little lawyer pushed back his tweed hat and winked. “I told you there are no secrets.”

  “I suppose I could countersue for libel.”

  “Are you asking my professional advice?”

  “Would you give it?”

  “Not in the present circumstances. But if circumstances changed, let’s just say you’d have a strong case. Is Fulvio Bernardo your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful man. I was sorry to hear about his illness.”

  Tuttle seemed genuinely sorry and Andrew warmed to the man. “He’s a little better.”

  “Thank God for that. A man only has one father, you know.”

  “You really ought to tell Cass
irer to let matters take their course.”

  “Now you’re advising me.”

  “No charge.”

  Tuttle laughed. He did not seem a formidable opponent, if that is what he was. “I am anxious to get into academic law, it’s a growing field.”

  “I’ll keep you in mind.”

  Tuttle took off his hat and fished a card from it and put it on Andrew’s desk. “You might let your colleagues know. Why do you have that machine running?”

  “It records conversations.”

  Tuttle thought he was serious. He got up and went to study the air freshener. He looked at Andrew. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s quite a little breeze it puts out.”

  But Cassirer decided to take the fight to the enemy camp. He published an article in the student paper about tenured mediocrity, a mistake. Dozens of students, not all of them anonymous, wrote at length about Cassirer’s incompetence in the classroom. Mabel Gorman wrote that he was simply the worst teacher she had ever had in her life. Word got to Andrew that Cassirer was sure Andrew had orchestrated the campaign. One night he went out to his car and found both rear tires were flat.

  7

  Phyllis drove Raymond to LAX from their home in Thousand Oaks. There was not much conversation because of the traffic and her faint resentment that he was going. Had she expected to be asked to accompany him? Unlikely. Someone had to meet their patients. The message from Andrew and then Jessica’s call had filled him with dread, not because his father was on his deathbed but at the thought of returning to Chicago. Neither of them had been back since leaving, taking their own sweet time on a crosscountry jaunt in a rental car and living high on the Order’s credit card. They owed him, that was his attitude. He and Phyllis had become licenced counselors and made a good living giving bad advice. It was like hearing confessions without giving absolution. The trick was to convince the patient there was no sin. When Raymond decided to go to Chicago it occurred to him that it would give him relief from Phyllis’s obsession with Julia.

  “In a few hours you will be back there.”

  “You can’t go home again.”

  “Do you still think of it as home?”

  He touched her arm but she shrugged off his hand. They had become one another’s patients. Physician, heal thyself.

  “I’ll cancel your appointments.”

  “You might take some of them.”

  “Julia?”

  “If you’d like.”

  If he had been driving she would have started in on it, but they were nearing the airport now and she had to keep alert for the signs. The prospect of time away from Phyllis filled him with the same carefree madness with which they had run away together years before. It had been on the spur of the moment but a moment when they had already gone too far. Driving west over plains and through the mountains and finally to the Golden State had been like shucking the skin of the past. What a romp they’d had. They had driven away from all restraint. In motels they watched soft porn movies and frolicked like teenagers.

  “You can just drop me off.”

  She made a face. “I’m sure you can buy a ticket for yourself.”

  She found a space near the United entrance and he leaned toward her to kiss her cheek, but she turned to him and gave him a passionate kiss.

  “Be good.”

  “At a funeral?”

  “Call when you get in.”

  He hopped out. She had popped the trunk, and he removed his bags, then ducked down to smile in at her. She stuck out her tongue, then smiled. He turned and hurried inside.

  When his turn came and he told the girl he wanted a ticket to Chicago, she asked his name.

  “I don’t have a reservation.”

  “And you want to fly today?”

  “I have to.”

  She clacked some keys and gave him a figure.

  “Ouch.”

  She looked sympathetic but then he was giving her the full benefit of his professional smile. “If you didn’t have to travel today …”

  “My father is dying.”

  “Oh.” Lips rounding in sympathy. “But that’s different.” There was what was called a compassionate exception. He huddled over the counter; they were coconspirators now. She gave a figure half of the previous one. “I’ll try to get you into first class.”

  “How much more is that?”

  She smiled. She was doing it as a favor. Only there were no seats in first class. She was more disappointed than he was. Rhonda.

  “You’ve been wonderful,” he said when he handed over his credit card.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  There was a definite note of invitation in her voice. “Do you live in L.A.?”

  “I’m in the book.” She slid her card across the counter, and he put it in his hankie pocket and patted it. Another professional smile. He was both flattered and shocked. Were lovely girls like Rhonda so readily available? But it was Julia he thought of.

  Rhonda had put him in a window seat in the row with the emergency exit, lots of leg room. He was buckled in before he remembered that he hated to fly. It was as if he were daring God to take his life. Fulton Sheen had scoffed at those who feared to fly. Did they think God was only on the ground? But it was the fact that he seemed to have a freer hand in the air that disturbed. For a mad moment he wished he was going by car, reversing the flight he and Phyllis had made years ago. He sat back and closed his eyes and almost immediately fell asleep. Phyllis had given him a Dramamine before they left the house. When he awoke they were aloft, going counterclockwise to Chicago, into the past, to his father’s deathbed. He hoped that he would not arrive in time, dreading to face the old man invested with all the authority of the dying. He had not so much as talked with his father on the phone since his desertion. Desertion. Away from Phyllis he could call a spade a spade. He closed his eyes, and their conversation about Julia played in his mental ear.

  “What’s going on, Ray?”

  Out of the blue. “In what sense?”

  “Julia.”

  “She is a perfect pagan.”

  “She wants you.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “And it’s mutual.”

  “Phyl.”

  Their quarreling consisted of falling into a routine where the lines they spoke were not their own but ones borrowed from patients and their own responses to them. Phyllis was obviously annoyed but could not show it.

  “Get mad,” he advised her.

  “There’s no point to that.”

  “So what do you propose?”

  “Get it out of your system.”

  It angered him that she thought she could issue such a pass to him, a furlough from fidelity. And he had been true to her, in his fashion. Over the years they had devised a common personality that was built around their practice, the present, the avoidance of the past.

  “Just use her?”

  “Do you really want to do anything more?”

  Using shared professional tricks on one another, they seemed to have lost the capacity to communicate. What else was their practice but the issuance of passes? Therapy consisted of permitting people to do what they wanted without the pang of guilt. Usually it took several sessions to find out what the supposed problem was. His response to Julia, twenty years younger than himself, made him a type he had often dealt with. As Phyllis was dealing with him. The patient was finally asked if he disapproved of what he was doing or wanted to do. A negative answer seemed called for.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Therapy was aimed at discovering whose opinion the patient feared if not his own: that of a spouse, a child, a parent. His father. The flight attendant arrived with her trolley, and he asked for tomato juice, then changed it to a Bloody Mary. Phyllis was trying to manipulate him as they both manipulated patients. He would be indebted to her for allowing him to indulge himself with impunity.

  On the phone Jessica had told him that Au
nt Eleanor was at the hospital. She had given him a chalice when he was ordained, a beautiful full cup with scarcely any stem and a wide octagonal base. He had rented a safety deposit box in Chicago and put it there before going. Why of all the ties that bound him to the past he should refuse to sever that one he didn’t know. Its value? What is the market for used chalices? No, it was more than that, a sign of which was that he had never told Phyllis about it. He paid rental for the box annually, lying to her that it contained papers.

  “You should transfer them out here.”

  “They’re family stuff.”

  He did feel that he was flying into the past, the great jet a time machine that negated the years since he and Phyllis had left. She had been in campus ministry. It began when they chaperoned a student dance, wearing civvies of course. She asked him to dance.

  “But I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll bet you’re a quick learner.”

  “I never went to a dance,” he told her.

  “I did. I entered after my junior year in college.” The convent. The fact that they had both taken vows in obscure Orders was a bond between them, and as they discussed her reasons for wanting to leave they became his own. Somewhere in an abstract world he must have imagined what it would be like to step back from the life that was his, but it was with her that he had first put it into words. Everything he knew told him the danger of what he was doing; retreats and spiritual reading should have been enough to make him turn away, to stop seeing her. But from the outset she had put him in the role of her confidant, her spiritual advisor, because of course he asked whom she had spoken with about her doubts.

  “No one else.”

  “But you should; you can’t just walk away.”

  “Of course I can. So many others have. Haven’t men left your Order?”

  Quitters, that is how in his heart of hearts he had thought of those who left, who applied for laicization, who for one reason or another claimed they had made a huge mistake. But now the Church herself made it possible to leave, to start over. He found himself beginning to sympathize with those who left as if they alone were serious enough to think the thought and say the word. And act. Within hours, holding her in his arms, her voice sweet as Eve’s in his ear, he could feel the resolution of a lifetime begin to dissolve. Later, alone, in his single bed in his celibate room, he had stared at the play of lights upon the ceiling and trembled with fear. He resolved never to see her again. It was insane to think that a warm body against his own and her subversive chatter could undo what he had built up over so many years, the very self he was. When sleep came he had prayed for strength and was certain his prayer had been answered. In the morning, at the altar, saying Mass, all his actions seemed incredible, unfamiliar. He lifted the bread in his hands and bent to say the words of consecration, and they stuck in his throat. Dear God, I believe, he had prayed, help thou my unbelief. The efficacy of what he did was not dependent on his mood; he was a priest. He managed to say the words. This is my body. And then he took the chalice Aunt Eleanor had given him and whispered the words of consecration over the wine. But when he raised the chalice he had the dreadful thought that it was still only wine.