by Packer, Vin
• • •
Fern Fulton had said in her last session, “I wish Freddy would think we were having an affair! If there were only some way I could make him believe it!”
“Why do you want him to believe that?” Jay had said, even though he knew the answer, even though for her sake he, too, almost wished Freddy Fulton wouldn’t laugh it off.
• • •
Then, there was Virginia Fulton’s telephone call yesterday afternoon:
“I’d like to come and see you, Doctor.”
“Well, Virginia, how are you?”
“Did you know Gloria Wealdon is back in town?”
“Is she?”
“I’d like to come and see you on business.” “I wouldn’t worry about Gloria Wealdon, Virginia.” He supposed Fern had been making the same threats at home as she did during her analytic hour. He added, “She can take care of herself, don’t you think?” chuckling. “Perhaps.”
“How have you been, Virginia?” “All right.” “And your dad?” “He’s fine.”
“Gloria Wealdon can take care of herself, honey.”
“I’m sorry if I bothered you…. It was just — ”
“You didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I’m just about ready to go and play some golf, get the kinks out.”
“Yes,” said Virginia Fulton. “Well, goodbye.”
But it was not Freddy Fulton’s family alone who were affected by the novel. Jay could think of others, and that noon he thought of two in particular. One person was Roberta Shagland from the high school.She was attempting to cope with an altogether different sort of threat — the threat of an intense attraction to Milo Wealdon. It had come over her while she was reading his wife’s book.
“I just feel so sorry for him, Doctor,” she had told Jay. “I know that woman is mean to him, mean as anything! Every time I think of it, I just hate her! I can’t concentrate on another thing but him, do you know? I mean, I’d like to make him feel wanted, do you know? Then I start this hiccuping I was telling you about. Doctor, I get hiccups.” She was always twisting a wet hanky in her hand during her hour. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I don’t think it’s so serious,” said Jay. “I don’t think we have to worry a lot about it.” “But what can I do to stop it?” “We’ll work it out.”
“I’m just so pent up, do you know? I even dream about him.” “I know.”
“And I feel like crying all the time, Doctor.”
Miss Shagland was Mannerheim’s newest patient. She had begun her consultations (the doctor was convinced that was all they would amount to, that she would hardly need continual treatment) immediately after readingPopulation 12,360. There was another who had done the same, though he had started a week or two before Miss Shagland. He was the second person Jay Mannerheim thought of — Louie Stewart.
Louie did not cry, and he refused to stretch out on the couch. He sat soldier-straight in the armless, leather high-back chair, opposite Jay’s desk, and pared his nails with a squeaky silver clip. At some sessions, Louie said very little. After long silences, he would announce in flat, deep, staccato: “Hate!”
“Hate who?” Jay would say.
Louie’s answers varied.
“I am not as quixotic as you may think,” he said once, ignoring Jay’s question. “I have hidden, vitriolic potential!”
Another time, he said, “It’s a huge joke!” “What is?”
“A surreptitious undertaking of mine, which I am not at liberty to think about fully at this time.”
When he was voluble, he concentrated on the mechanical and grammatical errors in Gloria Wealdon’s novel.
“On page 232,” he would say, “there is a typo! Words run together!” His face would get very flushed, and he would lean forward in his chair and crack his knuckles, gripping his hands together so tightly the knuckles went white. He would complain that the pronouns and antecedents in the novel did not agree, that prefixes were not solid with their stems, that there were infinite bromides and redundancies.
“Aren’t you dwelling too much on the book itself?” Jay would ask him. “What’s really bothering you, Louie? What she wrote about some character in the book?” Silence … then: “Do you think you’re in the book, Louie? Is that it?”
Louie would give no indication he had heard the questions.
“She said ‘feeling ran high’ eighteen times,” he would answer. “Eighteen times!”
Jay Mannerheim was deeply concerned about Louie Stewart. The boy (and no one in Cayuta ever thought of him as a young man, though he was well into his thirties) had always been mixed-up and sissyfied. But now, it was quite another story. Jay was pretty certain that Min Stewart’s son was not even a neurotic, but a full-blown certifiable psychotic. This afternoon, during Louie’s session, Jay was going to decide whether to continue treatment or to recommend to Min that Louie be examined by the physicians at the Cayuta Retreat.
• • •
The credit was not Gloria Wealdon’s for all of this, not by any means. In all cases, she simply touched off something that would have gone off sooner or later anyway; she was the catalyst. But the less serious irritations, the minor embarrassments many in Cayuta had suffered since the publication ofPopulation 12,360 shecould take credit for. For her portrayal of Virginia Fulton, for that of her hero, Milo, for the thinly disguised characterization of Min Stewart. For these, the blame rested fully on her, and for some others, probably — smaller ones, where there was only a sting instead of a full punch to the stomach. She had made war on Cayuta, New York, and there was no doubt that there were battle scars and casualties, no doubt either that there would be law suits. Out of it all, Jay felt mostly sorry for Milo Wealdon; yet again, why was that thought always followed by the thought that probably Milo did not need his sympathy? It was an enigma.
Jay himself had minded only one thing about Gloria Wealdon’s portrayal of him, and that was her emphasis on the fact that he was not a medical doctor. It had angered him, in fact. All of his patients understood that he was a psychologist and not a psychoanalyst, and in the county he really had no competition. So his anger was not inspired out of any feeling that she had exposed him, or driven potential patients to an M.D. in the same area. It was rooted primarily in two sentences of conversation in the novel, when two women were discussing entering analysis:
“Don’t go to Dr. Hammerheim,” said Gina to Fernanda, “if you have to get psychoanalyzed. Go to a real doctor, an M.D. Then you can take it off your income tax as a medical expense, but you can’t do it unless you go to a real doctor.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Fernanda exclaimed. “Why, I’d never thought of that!”
Neither had a good many people in Cayuta thought of that, Mannerheim knew; neither had the local tax inspectors. It had probably never occurred to them to notice this very technical but terribly damaging fact. Jay was a perfectly legitimate psychologist, but the tax exemption rules could not be clearer. Only last week at Tuesday’s Rotary, Bill Farley, one of the county government men, said, “That’s a Ph.D. you’ve got, eh, Mannerheim.”
“Yes,” Jay had said. “Why?”
“I just got to get all these D’s straight,” Farley’d smiled. “Ph.D., M.D. — just try to sort them out.”
“Sure,” Jay had said. “That’s your job.”
“ ‘At’s right.” Farley’d clapped him across the back, chewing his half-smoked cigar. Then, unnecessarily, he’d added: “I got nothin’ against either, mind you. It’s just that I gotta keep ‘em straight.”
• • •
Remembering it, Jay shrugged. She was a bitch, all right, he thought, boy she was a bitch! He turned west on Genesee Street, and as he did he spotted Stanley Secora idling on the corner. It reminded him that the front windows of his office needed cleaning, and he slowed to call the boy over to the car. Even Secora was not unaffected by Gloria Wealdon’s novel, Jay mused, as he waved at the young fellow, though how Stanley Secora managed to
squeeze himself into the confusion, Jay couldn’t figure out. He supposed Secora just had a good case of celebrity worship. The last time he had done the windows for Jay, her picture, cut from a newspaper, had fallen out of his trousers’ pocket as he had reached there for a rag to wipe dry the panes.
Nine
He taught school, but whatever he inspired in his students was a mystery, save for Gina’s guess that he might inspire all of them to want to be anything in this life but a teacher…. Who would want to be like Miles?
— FROM Population 12,360
AFTER he had been dropped off at the high school by his wife, Milo stopped by the tennis courts to watch little Mickey Lewis practice for the term play-offs.A few of his students were also watching, a scattering of them on the white benches behind the high rails. He waved at them and then thought what he was always thinking lately — they were talking about him. He had an idea that what they said was favorable. He knew there were jokes around about Gloria’s book, and he knew that a few of his pupils even called him Miles behind his back, but he also knew that for the most part everyone wondered why he stayed with Gloria, why he didn’t divorce her because of the book. He knew he was well-liked, but he knew lots of the boys in his classes wanted to ask him the same question Mickey Lewis had asked him last week:
“Mr. Wealdon, sir, why don’t you divorce her?”
It had just popped out of Mickey’s mouth, and his quick gesture of clamping his palm across his lips had not saved the moment for Mickey.
“She’s my wife,” Milo had answered. “You know, Mickey, it’s a little like a ball team, a marriage is — smaller, but still a team.A good team sticks together, even when someone on it doesn’t do right by the team. You have to have a lot of patience and understanding. Remember a couple of days ago when we were talking about Ken Boyer with the Cardinals?”
“I remember,” said Mickey. “They almost traded him in ‘58.”
“That’s right, and now it looks like he’s going to be the same kind of heavy-handed slugger that started with Rogers Hornsby and went from there to Bottomley, to Medwick, to Mize — ”
“Right up to Musial,” said Mickey. “I suppose I get your point. I’m sorry I said it.”
“Don’t be sorry, Mickey,” Milo had said. “Just keep in mind that responsibility toward the members of a team can sometimes make that team, when nothing else can.”
Milo knew that if Gloria had been witness to his comparison of her with a third-baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, she would have burst with that particular brand of Gloria Wealdon mocking hilarity. Yet a sense of responsibility was instinctive to Milo, no matter how poorly he had put it to Mickey Lewis. Whether or not Gloria could pay her own way now (and she could), so long as she was alive he was obliged to care for her. To care about her. The fact that some people thought him an utter ass to persist in this under the circumstances did not deter him. He felt no need to defend his philosophy of life beyond explaining it. The only thing that really annoyed him about his situation was the surreptitious pettiness sneaking up on him and showing in his own actions. The satisfaction he had gotten from hitting her with the car keys a while ago, his sarcasm as he had slammed the door of the car. (He had said, Remember your stomach pill, pet….) There was no need for that. She would have taken the pill and that would be that; there was no need for the remark. It was small, piddling. His reactions to her lately were very much like hers to him, and he was embarrassed for himself.
• • •
He very nearly decided to go home for dinner in the evening, to go home and change his clothes and play the proper husband — meet this literary agent of Gloria’s and serve as host for the dinner she had planned. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was the least he could do. Yet if he were to change his plans, he would have to alter his course of action, and he had planned that for too long,put it off too often. He must see his plot through in every detail, or it might not work.
At the end of Mickey’s set, Milo walked over to the fence where the youngster was picking a hand towel up off the ground to rub away his perspiration. Mickey was nearly sixteen, but he was barely five feet tall and Milo had known him since he was a kid of ten, when Mickey hung around the Y courts, eager to learn about tennis. Because he was so small, Milo had taught him a two-forehand technique which would give him more power and more reach, and by the time Mickey entered high school he still did not use a backhand. Milo never tried to make him learn it. The youngster was naturally ambidextrous. He wrote left-handed, and threw a ball right-handed, and in the back court during a game he switched his racket from one hand to the other so swiftly and easily that the lack of a backhand went hardly noticed.
Mickey grinned at Milo. “How’m I doing, Mr. Wealdon?”
“You’re doing okay, Mickey. Those were good hard hits from the base line.”
“There’s still something wrong though, huh?”
“You know it as well as I do. You have to charge that net and volley, Mickey.”
“I know.”
“You can do your racket-shifting just as well close. You try it. You’ll need it for your doubles game.”
“Yessir. I know that. I like my opponents to take over the net, but it’s a bad habit. Say, want to volley with me, Mr. Wealdon? You can use Dave’s racket?”
“Right!” Milo said.
• • •
After twenty minutes of play, Milo returned the racket to Dave Pompton. Pompton was a huge fellow, Mickey Lewis’s age, with muscles that were short and bunchy like a weightlifter’s or a furniture mover’s. He was a good baseball player, with ambitions to become a professional, but with all the quick stops and starts in the game, he was always pulling and tearing the muscles. Milo had gotten him to take up swimming for his arm and leg muscles, pushups for his back, and tennis to coordinate everything.
“How’s everything coming now?” said Milo.
“I think I’m getting there. I feel loose, no kidding.”
“You’ll be fine, Dave. You know Moose Skowron had your trouble.”
Dave Pompton laughed. “You meanI had his trouble, don’t you?”
“You’ll be better than Moose if you hit the way you did last Monday!”
“Thanks, Mr. Wealdon,” Mickey Lewis called as Milo walked away from the inside of the court. Dave’s thanks echoed Mickey’s. Then before the pair resumed their game, Milo heard Mickey say, “He ought to have kids.”
“With her?” was Dave’s answer.
• • •
Milo went back by the benches and continued to watch Mickey. He watched him charge the net a few times, and saw him handle the racket shift adequately. He watched Dave’s muscles flex as he reached for the high balls, and while he watched, he kept hearing the last words Dave had spoken: Withher? Like a broken record: Withher? Withher? Her?
He wished, in some ways, that Gloria had consented to have a child with him. He knew all the psychologists and moralists and arm-chair philosophers claimed a child needed the love of both parents, parents who were in love; but when he thought of Freddy Fulton and his daughter, he wished he had a son or a daughter himself. In many ways, Freddy’s kid was more similar to Edwina Dare in her personality than she was to Fern. Virginia was bright and shy and retiring, and probably never going to be very pretty — but shewas real. Milo supposed it was particularly unkind of him even to have the thought that Freddy’s daughter was like Freddy’s ex-love. (Ex? No, that was just a convenient way of stating the fact she was no longer visible in Freddy’s life, but she would always be there, Milo guessed.) But Milo often wished he had even that much, some human reminder that his personality had been integrated into something more than soap sculptures, or shrubbery, or kids that came back after they’d been graduated from college and said, Do you remember me, Mr. Wealdon? and shook his hand and were glad to see him again.
Gloria had always said very bluntly, “I wouldn’t be afit mother, Milo. I hate children,” and he could hardly disagree with her about the impr
acticality of their having any. But he quite often mourned the missed opportunity, and though he was not one to really brood over past mistakes, occasionally, when he reflected on his own shortcomings, he was sorry that he had never discouraged that trait in him which was responsible for his having confused love and pity to such an extent.
He had read somewhere that love and hate had the same opposite — indifference. He had never been able to be indifferent to Gloria, not from the first moment he had seen her standing alone in that crowd at Cornell, looking sullen and sadly neglected. He supposed that what he felt even now, whenever someone laughed at her or showed her up, or even thought of him as a fool to stand by her — whatever made him still want to shield her, made him feel the inner twinge of anger at others’ abuse of her — must no longer have to do with his love for her; rather, now, it had to do with his hatred for her. Because the fact remained, he was not indifferent to Gloria.
He was standing there pondering this when Roberta Shagland drove up in her tiny Volkswagen. It was an old model, not a convertible, and Milo didn’t know why he felt sorry aboutthat, but he did. She looked all the more large (though she was really not a big woman) as she got out of the car, and because she got out legs first, what Milo saw first were her gigantic ankles. He turned away, not to avoid her, but to make her think he did not see her in that situation. As he turned away he was aware that his gesture, intended as kindliness toward her, was horribly unkind, and he was glad that it was impossible for people to know others’ thoughts. Even Gloria had sensed something about him — a detestable something that had warranted her remark this morning: “You married me becauseI was a creep, or didn’t you think I’d figured that out?” It had stunned him slightly when she had said it. It had made him feel quite ill in his stomach. How had the act of love come to be interpreted in so many ways nowadays; how had its manifestations come to be all sorted out and classified in ugly vials and labeled so that now love was almost a danger, a trap, a way of exposing your most horribly personal inner self.
