Last Things

by Ralph McInerny

  When he met Raymond’s plane, when for the first time in years they had talked, Andrew resolved not to let his brother know about Gloria. It wasn’t that he thought Raymond would be shocked. It would be worse than that. He would no longer be able to generate in Raymond the uneasiness he sensed on the way from O’Hare. The fact that Raymond had wanted to go home, to see their mother first, obviously postponing the confrontation with Fulvio, made it clear that Raymond recognized his own role of pariah. He did tell Raymond about Cassirer, babbling away like an idiot, wishing he could shut up about it.

  It was at Raymond’s suggestion that he had applied for a position at the college, and it was clear that the way had been smoothed for him by his brother. The Edmundites still had clout in the college then, and the suggestion that hiring Andrew would be smiled on by the order weighed heavily in his favor.

  “I don’t have a Ph.D.”

  “No boasting, please.”

  But if that hadn’t mattered to Raymond it mattered to him. From the beginning he felt at a disadvantage, and his desperate efforts to publish fiction had been meant to be an ex post facto vindication of his appointment. His miserable publication record had increased his sense that he was the benefactor of academic nepotism. Cassirer had spoken more truly than he realized when he said that Andrew felt threatened by his younger colleague’s self-esteem. However overblown it was, it was not without an objective basis. And Cassirer was a bone of contention between him and Gloria, who was a stickler for academic protocol.

  “You didn’t have anything to do with the students writing those things in the Monitor, did you?” Gloria asked.

  “Good Lord no. You must know what the students think of him. They wouldn’t need any prompting to respond to his ridiculous piece.”

  “Ridiculous?”

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “Andrew, he has a point. The deadwood on the faculty resent someone as ambitious as Horst. It is a mediocre bunch.”

  He felt included in the bunch.

  “He won’t take no for an answer. I’ve heard he has hired a lawyer.”

  Andrew had not told Gloria of Tuttle’s visit to his office. Nor that Cassirer considered him the major foe of his application.

  “How will the vote go?”

  He cocked his head. “If I violated the confidentiality of the committee he would have reason to complain.”

  “Someone already has. He knows the outcome of the straw vote.”

  “Have you talked with him?”

  “He talked to me.”

  It occurred to him that Cassirer could easily discover their living arrangements, which, technically speaking, ran afoul of the faculty manual. For the first time, Andrew realized how vulnerable he might be if Cassirer decided to deploy the full artillery available to him. When he mentioned the possibility to Gloria, she fumed.

  “I wish he would make an issue of it. We could get a lawyer of our own and fight it. It is ridiculous that the college still insists on these medieval notions while pretending to be a bona fide academic institution.”

  “That’s not a battle we need.”

  “Andrew, it’s not just us. The point should be made for the entire faculty.”

  “Would you want us discussed in the faculty senate?”

  Her eyes sparked. “I would love it.”

  19

  Anne Gogarty scheduled the meeting of the Appointments and Tenure Committee of the English Department in a seminar room in the library, an unusual venue, but Cassirer’s campaign to intimidate the committee was unprecedented, and it seemed wise not to gather in the office of the chair in the Arts & Letters Building.

  “He’ll call it a rump meeting when he hears,” Andrew said to her.

  “Well, the subject is an ass.”

  Any pretense of neutrality had long since deserted the little committee that held Horst Cassirer’s fate in their elected hands. Anne had told Andrew of the provost’s eagerness to get rid of Cassirer.

  “Does Holder feel threatened?”

  “We all do.” A little cupid smile. Anne was the kind of girl he should have: bright, feminine, serviceable good looks. Of course she was married and had two children. With a shock he realized that she reminded him of his mother, an updated version, but nonetheless. Gloria was a lot more like his Aunt Eleanor, and a lot less.

  Lily St. Clair entered, avoiding everyone’s eyes, her unlipsticked mouth a severe line in her hawklike face. She joined Zalinski on the opposite side of the table to Andrew. Zalinski had been ostentatiously reading student papers since sitting down, groaning as he did so, and making savage marks on the pages he disdainfully flipped through.

  “They don’t know English,” he cried.

  “Well, whose fault is that?” Anne said, squaring the papers before her. “We’re the English department.”

  “My God, it’s their mother tongue.”

  Lily seemed inclined to take this as an assault on her gender, but let it go. Mike Pistoia, hunched shoulders, bald, wearing a baggy corduroy jacket, looked in, looked around, entered. When he sat next to Andrew, Anne called the meeting to order.

  “First, I’ll distribute the external reviews. They are all quite favorable.”

  “Of course,” Lily said.

  Zalinski dropped his student papers on the floor and took his copies of the letters. Andrew too began to read them. Someone from somewhere called Rowan University asserted that Horst Cassirer was the white hope of criticism in the United States.

  “They were in graduate school together,” Lily murmured.

  A second letter was from the editor of Theseus, praising the pieces of Cassirer’s he had accepted for publication.

  “He could scarcely trash them,” Pistoia observed.

  “No one could trash them,” Zalinski said.

  It was agreed that Horst Cassirer was a formidable scholar and that his work was recognized as superior by his peers in his chosen specialty.

  “There are, however, three major criteria for promotion; scholarship is only one. The other two are teaching and collegiality.”

  Anne had laid the grounds for the subsequent quarrel, which went on for an hour and a half, Lily and Zalinski arguing that scholarship trumped the other two, Pistoia reminding them that St. Edmund’s was not a research university but a college whose principal task was the instruction of its students. Cassirer’s hapless record as a teacher could not be ignored. Letters to the student paper from his indignant students in response to Cassirer’s screed were part of his dossier.

  “An orchestrated campaign,” Lily said, looking meaningfully at Andrew.

  “Odd. That is Cassirer’s phrase. He seemed to know all about our last meeting, incidentally.” And Andrew in turn looked meaningfully at Lily. Anne reminded them of the confidentiality of their considerations, and Lily made a little impatient noise. Of course there was much other evidence of Cassirer’s classroom performance and treatment of students, and Anne went through it in a dispassionate voice. There was an eloquent letter in the file from Mabel Gorman describing Cassirer’s contempt for students and the literature he was supposed to teach.

  “So he’s a lousy teacher,” Zalinski conceded. “But he brings distinction to the department.”

  Andrew wondered about the wisdom of telling the committee of the visit he had received from Tuttle representing Cassirer and conveying unveiled threats of legal action. He and Anne had discussed this and left it an open question whether this card should be played. Andrew kept his peace.

  Pistoia said, “As a colleague he makes Attila the Hun look like St. Francis.”

  “That is completely subjective,” Lily said. “I find him very …” She hesitated, searching like Flaubert for the mot juste. “Congenial,” she finally said and Pistoia laughed. It was Lily who brought up Cassirer’s intention to litigate.

  “We should be aware that what we are doing cannot remain private. Of course I acknowledge the confidentiality of our proceedings.” She glared at Anne. “But if
lawyers get into it, everything will become an open book.”

  “Lawyers?” Pistoia said.

  “Lawyers. I have reason to believe Horst has already engaged legal counsel. He may not wait for us to act.”

  All academic hell broke loose. Anne and Lily sparred and jabbed, Lily defending the right of any faculty member to demand that the hitherto sacrosanct records of the college be brought into the light of day, Anne wanting to know if she were willing to deliver her responsibility over to a judge who could not possibly understand what was at issue.

  “I think anyone would understand what is going on here.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You intend to railroad Cassirer,” Zalinski said. “This meeting is a perfect example of what has gone wrong in academe. Here we are, what we are, presuming to thwart the career of a young man simply because his superior talents threaten us. Well, I for one want us to promote people better than myself.”

  “No feat that,” Pistoia said.

  Anne tried unsuccessfully to regain the role of umpire of the discussion, but her own judgment on Cassirer was plain, and her exchange with Lily had removed all doubt. When she tried to bring the matter to a vote, Zalinski slapped the table.

  “I will refuse to vote under these circumstances.”

  “When you could lose?” Pistoia asked.

  Anne said, “You cannot let down your colleagues who have elected you to shoulder this responsibility.”

  “Our colleagues!” Lily said. “You are more concerned for the deadwood in this department than for its future.”

  “I will record your complaint.”

  “Do so. I will put it in writing.”

  “For the judge?” Pistoia asked.

  “For the record!”

  “You’re remarkably silent, Andrew,” Zalinski said in surly tones.

  Andrew replied that he was willing to concede Cassirer’s scholarly accomplishments, obscure as he found them, but he thought him woefully inadequate in the other two categories.

  “The lawyer Lily mentioned has called on me already.”

  “Of course he would,” Lily said. “Your silence today cannot conceal that this is all your doing.”

  “Mine?”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that you lack the ultimate credential of the professor? I wonder what Gloria would make of this discussion.”

  “I’ll ask her.”

  “Confidentiality,” Pistoia purred.

  “Lily makes a valid point,” Zalinski said. “I mean this quite impersonally, Andrew, but you represent the past of this place. We all know how you came to be on the faculty.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Nepotism!”

  “Please,” Anne said. “Let us exhibit a little collegiality.”

  “I cannot exhibit what I do not feel.”

  “Are you calling into question my status as a member of this committee?” Andrew asked hotly.

  “I think you are a perfectly representative member of this committee.”

  “You seem to have picked up some of the more charming traits of Horst Cassirer.”

  “I would rather have a competent curmudgeon as a colleague than …” His eyes were wild, but some vestigial trace of decorum stayed his tongue.

  A stunned silence followed Zaliniski’s incomplete sentence.

  Anne dealt slips of paper around the table. “Let’s vote.”

  Lily said, “Maybe we should postpone it until tempers cool.”

  “Let’s vote!” Pistoia said.

  They voted. Unsurprisingly, it was three to two against granting tenure to Horst Cassirer. Zalinski leapt to his feet when Anne announced the result, stooped to pick up the student papers he had dropped, and headed for the door. Lily followed on his heels.

  “We have struck a blow for Western civilization,” Pistoia said with satisfaction. “You say his lawyer called on you?”

  “In my office.”

  “Was Foster there?”

  “It didn’t faze him a bit.”

  “The odor of sanctity,” Pistoia said.

  Anne thanked them for coming and got to her feet. Then she sat down again. “What a rotten place this is becoming.”

  “Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds,” Pistoia said and, turning to Andrew, “but not perhaps worse than Foster.”

  “I would prefer a competent unbathed office mate to …”

  They adjourned on a note of laughter.

  “Is it true?” Gloria asked in shocked tones when Andrew stopped by her office.

  “You’ve already heard about our vote on Cassirer?”

  “You turned him down?”

  “Was it Lily?”

  “Andrew, I agree with her. If this college cannot accommodate someone with Cassirer’s credentials it is doomed to mediocrity.”

  “My own credentials were questioned.”

  “That was uncalled for.”

  “So Lily told you that as well.”

  “Andrew, what possible difference can it make to you if Cassirer becomes tenured? Your job is safe. You do what you do; he does what he does.”

  “And the students?”

  “Frankly, all this concern about the students strikes me as a little forced.”

  “Gloria, you saw the student letters.”

  She looked away. “I assured Lily you had nothing to do with that.”

  “You sound doubtful.”

  The fact that the execrable Cassirer could come between them seemed a revelation of the nature of their relationship. That night it was silent in the apartment. Gloria had her study, he had his, and they worked that night on separate islands no common water seemed to lap. Later, he put a video in the VCR and watched From Here To Eternity. When Pruitt settled into the apartment of the girl with whom he had formed an attachment, he said, “This is like being married.”

  “It’s better,” she said. In his own case it had become worse.

  20

  Amos Cadbury, now in his late seventies, was still a daily presence in the firm he had founded although he himself supervised only the work of his old clients as they dwindled and departed, one by one, and their estates had to be looked after. Sometimes he thought that he would be kept alive until he had seen the last one through probate, and then his own summons would come. Meanwhile, he was hale and hearty and had devised a number of mental exercises to chase away the thought that he was living in one of the later chapters of the Apocalypse. His knowledge of history was narrow in scope but profound, confined to the great crises in the Church. No previous one could possibly compete with the present dissolution. The apparently terminal illness of Fulvio Bernardo brought back memories of one of his departed clients, Alfred Wygant.

  Many lives end on an ambiguous note, no doubt of that. An orderly dignified exit was the exception rather than the rule. Too many old friends had ended in Alzheimer’s or dementia, there but not there when he visited them, thankful he had power of attorney and could fulfill the will they had expressed when their will was still amenable to reason. Amos loved the precision of the law and the illusion it gave of imposing rationality on the messiness of life. In this very office he had gone over Alfred’s affairs with his widow, Eleanor. And Alfred’s fears about Eleanor’s affair with a man he would not mention, but whose identity, of course, Amos guessed. Eleanor was still a handsome woman, but in her second bereavement she had taken on what Amos regarded as a classical beauty. If only she wouldn’t frown.

  “He has left you amply provided for.”

  “You can tell me everything. I am practiced at this.”

  Joseph Bernardo. Her first husband. She had swept her second into the bosom of the Bernardo family, an equivocal blessing. Alfred too had sat across this desk.

  “Tell me about Fulvio Bernardo, Amos.”

  Alfred had prospered in insurance, playing a role that Amos in his darker moods compared with that of a bookie. Bet your life; enrich your heirs. But where would his own practice be without such concer
n for a future the client would not see?

  “He turned a modest little nursery into a chain of garden stores in the Chicago area. He has done very well. His son is a priest.”

  “What does he know about the market?”

  “The stock market? As little as anyone else, I suspect.”

  Amos was a loyal and patriotic citizen, but in the deeper recesses of his heart he despised what was called “the market.” In the commodities market in the Merchandise Mart men who had never seen a farm bought and sold wheat futures, sow bellies, all sorts of things they never came in contact with, driving the price up and down, their activities light years removed from the activity of growing wheat and raising hogs and all the rest. Yet their speculations vitally affected the prospects of the farmer. And was Wall Street any better? Half-mad dealers dashing about, frantically buying and selling the shares of companies they knew only through their books. The plants, the employees, the product—these in their reality were incidental to the buys and sells of the traders. He knew the replies to these doubts. Without capital the entrepreneur could do nothing, and the market furnishes that capital. Amos had a soft spot for the entrepreneur, the inventive risk taker who alas paved the way for the managers and traders and accountants, the soulless parasites. What money of his own that was not in tax-free municipals was invested directly with such enterprises as Fulvio Bernardo’s chain of garden stores as silent partner. It turned out that the analogy was all too relevant to Alfred’s visit.

  “He knows his own business, certainly.”

  “This is something else.”

  Amos never got clear on what “this” was, possibly because Alfred himself did not understand it. Insofar as he did grasp the idea it had to do with opening the Bernardo family business to investors but keeping it in the family, not going public. Alfred would be an officer of this new entity, his investment getting him onto the ground floor of the enterprise. Fulvio knew the nursery business, and Alfred as a businessman had reason to be confident in that, but Amos with great obliquity and indirection suggested caution. Alfred never spoke of it again, and Amos had been relieved. It had sounded like a way to buy off his rival for Eleanor’s affection. Only after his death, as he went through the grim task of closing Alfred’s account with this world did Amos learn that his mild demur had had no effect.