The Man of the House

by Stephen McCauley

  “Everybody’s getting married. I don’t know why they bother, since they’re all so miserable once they do. Do you have any ice cream or anything?”

  Agnes returned after eleven, nervous and apologetic. I brought her into the kitchen, where Barbara had fallen asleep on the sofa with Otis on her chest and a bowl of melting ice cream on the floor beside her.

  “You had a nice time?” I asked quietly.

  “I did,” Agnes whispered.

  Barbara shot up, wide awake. “Where’ve you been, Ma?” she asked in the whine of a six-year-old.

  “We went back to New Hampshire,” she said. “We couldn’t find parking around here, and there’s that wonderful steakhouse near the condo.”

  “Sorry I asked,” Barbara said, and dragged her mother out the door.

  BEN AND LOUISE USUALLY SPENT THEIR Sundays driving through the New England countryside. Ben, with his love of maps and geological surveys and meteorology, planned the trips, figured out the routes, and navigated, while Louise drove. Louise had an indifferent appreciation of landscapes, like someone who chooses a seat near a window with a view, but then turns away from it. The one time I’d gone with them—an ill-advised five-hour marathon drive along the coast of Maine—Louise had contentedly kept her eyes forward, except when Ben reminded her to look right or left to catch some striking vista. Mainly, she seemed satisfied to be with her son in an enclosed little world where no one could get to them.

  The Sunday after Agnes’s date with Donald, they stopped by the house early to pick up Otis. I waited for them on the front porch, half hidden from the street by the sagging branches of the pine tree. “Remember,” I told the dog, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just call home and I’ll come pick you up.”

  Otis looked at me warily.

  I could see Donald through the windows of his apartment. He had on a heavy royal-blue bathrobe that came down to the middle of his thighs, and he was moving around the few pieces of furniture in his living room, dragging the sofa and a busted-up end table into something resembling a sitting area. He caught me watching him, gave a brisk salute, and then quickly rearranged his hair.

  When Louise pulled up to the curb, I led Otis down to the street and watched, with a slight flare of resentment, as he leapt onto Ben’s lap and began to lick his face. To my surprise, the inside of the car—the arrangement of the incomplete little family, the maps at Benjamin’s feet, and the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard in front of Louise—looked the same as always. Somehow, given what Ben knew, I expected a change.

  “Newport,” Louise said indifferently when I asked where they were headed. “Though really I’d rather be going back to bed for about a month.”

  “Make sure you’re wide awake for your big debut in class this week,” I said. “My students can hardly stand the excitement of not having to listen to me for once. Not that they ever do.”

  “I wouldn’t think of missing it. I’ve got the whole thing planned. Sort of.”

  Ben unfolded one of the maps and showed me the route he’d charted for them. Traitor, I thought. The door to their private world had been slammed in my face. When they drove off, I waved to Otis, who was looking out the rear window and barking.

  Donald had emerged from his apartment and was on the front porch in his bathrobe, cradling a steaming paper cup in his hands. He nodded toward the street and said, “Nice couple, those two,” in a genial, lighthearted way that made the accuracy of the comment all the more unsettling. Leaning against the porch railing, he looked out at the street, and sipped. He was wearing a pair of green ankle-high sneakers that clashed so loudly with the bathrobe, and looked so foolishly clownlike, it seemed unfair to even notice them. “What’s she doing with Agnes’s cookbook?” he asked.

  “Louise? I’m not sure she’s doing anything.”

  He glanced up over the rim of his cup with a look of hurt surprise. “She hasn’t shown it to her publisher yet?”

  “Between you and me,” I said, “I don’t think she has a publisher right now.”

  He shook his head. “No kidding. I thought she was a big shot. In her own little way.”

  “I doubt she has connections in the cookbook world. Maybe,” I said with an unattractive smirk I usually manage to keep in check, “we should try to interest Julia Child. I’ve heard rumors she shops around the corner.”

  Donald finished off whatever he was drinking, crumpled up the cup, and stuck it in the pocket of his bathrobe. “Now, why didn’t I think of that? I guess that’s why some people teach at Harvard and some don’t. I’m going to ask her next time I see her.”

  “Next time you see her? You’ve seen her before?”

  He shrugged. “Not for a few weeks, now that you mention it. I help her carry her bags home every once in a while. Not that she needs much help, big lady like that.” He shivered and bundled the bathrobe around his chest. “Your sister’s got a great sense of humor, Clyde. I guess she’d have to, to go out with a guy like me, right?”

  I was still reeling over Julia Child.

  He put his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry—it was a rhetorical question. Agnes and I are going to one of those comedy clubs next weekend. I figure it should be good for a few laughs. I just have to get up the nerve to ask her.”

  I’d invited Louise to talk to my class because even though she hadn’t written a nineteenth-century novel—the ostensible subject of the course, after all—I thought it might breathe some literary life into the room to have a working author say a few words about her craft. It could, for example, drive home the point that a human being had actually struggled to compose the assigned work, a fact that might induce a few guilt-prone students to read a page or two. I felt a special urgency about making sure the students finished the semester having learned something, since there didn’t appear to be any intramural romances developing. Nothing helped my teacher evaluations more than an in-class romance. The flirtatious rapport of a couple-in-the-making lit up classroom discussions and added a note of sex and glamour to the atmosphere that the other students could enjoy vicariously. Of course, the lovebirds always stopped attending classes as soon as they began dating in earnest or sleeping together, but they invariably showed up for the last meeting, holding hands and making everyone present, me included, feel as if something worthwhile had been accomplished over the wearying course of the semester.

  I’d been extraordinarily, boringly apologetic in inviting Louise, but she’d assured me it was all part of her job and might, in the long run, translate into the sale of a book or two.

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” I told her. “My students don’t read the assigned books. A few of them bring in crumbling copies they had in college decades earlier, but most don’t even bother with that charade.”

  “I think you’re too hard on them, Clyde. You never read the assigned books when you were in college, and neither did I.”

  “True, but that was college, a whole other kind of distraction.” For the most part, colleges have become companion pieces to day care centers, places to store people for a few years when they’re at an awkward, inconvenient age. Your average college student is too old to keep at home and too young to start a career. Most parents are willing to accept that their offspring are in college to learn about “life,” a term that’s usually understood—correctly or not—as having more to do with sexual experimentation, drinking binges, and shopping than with Euripides. But my students had other options they could have pursued for their Thursday evenings; the fact that they’d voluntarily signed up for a literature class made me feel they had a greater responsibility to do the assigned reading, even if I was secretly relieved when they didn’t.

  I met up with Louise at her house, and the two of us walked to The Learning Place. It had rained for two days that week, and the fallen leaves were matted into damp pads on the sidewalk. The air smelled strongly, sweetly of decomposing matter. Autumn and the scent of rot always make me feel a special kinship with N
ew England, a sense of security in knowing that my life is rooted in a particular time and place, however shallowly or unhealthfully. Louise, on the other hand, appeared to derive comfort from knowing that she didn’t belong in one place more than any other. She was free to float across the whole vast continent with her few pieces of luggage and her son and their portable alienation. How much that would change now that Marcus had entered the picture, I couldn’t guess. For days, I’d been longing to talk with her about my discussion with Barbara, but it all seemed so confusing, I thought it best to stay on the periphery, where I belonged. Besides which, Louise’s weariness seemed to be increasing, and I didn’t want to add to her distress, at least not until after she’d put in her appearance in class.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” I said.

  “They bring food?”

  “The class has become a banquet, with gossip thrown in between courses to cleanse the palate. Last week, someone had huge platters of sushi delivered during the break.”

  “Maybe they’ll have Indian food tonight. I’m in the mood for a nice hot curry.”

  Although I was nervous about having her make an appearance (whether for her sake or mine, I hadn’t decided), Louise was perfectly composed. She didn’t have any notes for the talk she was going to give, but she had brought along a copy of her first novel, in case a reading was called for. And she’d obviously dressed with care. She had on a starched man’s white dress shirt, a pair of tight black pants, and tall black boots that laced up the front. Over this, she was wearing a long herringbone tweed coat with the sleeves turned up several times so that the lining formed elegant cuffs. She’d bought the coat at a thrift shop I’d taken her to; but it was Ben who’d managed to talk the cashier down on the price, from thirty dollars to five. Her hair was tied into a loose ponytail and held in place with a rawhide lace. I was flattered she took the occasion seriously enough to dress for it, and struck with remorse that I hadn’t made enough of the class to deserve such a display of respect.

  “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t let them ask too many questions. I’ll intervene if they start hounding you about your bank accounts and medical records, anything too morbidly personal.”

  “I can handle personal questions. I always answer truthfully but with a grin, as if I’m lying. Everyone ends up confused. Me especially.”

  “What I mean is, don’t let them push you around.”

  “That isn’t one of my weaknesses,” she said.

  “No,” I said, “it isn’t.” Still, you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she looked walking along beside me, small and slightly hunched, overwhelmed by the heavy coat and the big, gorgeous boots. She seemed to be sinking into herself.

  When we got to the school, the sky was dark, with only hints of a rosy glow at the edge of the treetops. All the lights in the mansion were on, and from the front walk, the pillared facade and the golden windows were undeniably impressive, like those of some great institute of learning.

  “But you made it sound like a third-rate high school,” Louise said, looking up and sighing.

  “The education, I meant, not the facilities.”

  There was a group of seven students standing at the back of the classroom, clustered around the ornate commode, talking and laughing uproariously. As we walked in, they gave a little round of ambivalent applause and then, for the most part, went back to their private conversations.

  “I love these low-maintenance groups,” Louise said quietly.

  Brian, the divorced lawyer, was the first to speak up from the back of the room. “Hey, guy,” he said. “We thought you weren’t coming.” A couple of weeks earlier, in defending a scene in a television movie I had read about but hadn’t watched, I’d made my sexual preference clear, and since then, Brian had been addressing me in absurdly jocular ways, just to show there were no hard feelings about my being queer. “We thought we were going to have to run the show on our own tonight, Clyde.”

  “What’s new about that?” I asked, perhaps a little less jovially than I’d intended.

  There was more laughter, loud and curiously effusive. I thought I could detect a whiff of something tart and alcoholic—in the laughter if not the air itself. I showed Louise the layout of the classroom, introduced her to Edwina on the wall, and told her I’d make a few introductory comments before I turned the class over to her. She sat down, shyly, it seemed to me, in one of the bow-back armchairs at the side of the room, while I tried to establish my academic credentials by needlessly shuffling around some papers on the table at the front. The crowd at the nightclub in back cracked up at someone’s hilarious comment and dispersed just enough to reveal that Tim, the aspiring actor, had converted the top of the commode into a full-service bar, complete with sweating ice buckets, glasses, cocktail shakers, and an assortment of pretty booze bottles. I had a dim memory that in the first weeks of class he’d somehow managed to bring his weekend bartending job into a discussion of Emily Brontë’s prose style.

  “What can I fix you, Clyde?” he asked, catching my gaze.

  “Oh, fix him one of these,” Eileen Ash said. “He makes a perfect martini. Then again, who doesn’t?”

  “I should hold off,” I said. “Designated driver, all that.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You’re off the hot seat tonight. We’re going to grill Louise.” Eileen advanced toward the front of the room with the delicate caution of someone with only one sip left in the bottom of her martini glass. She had on a pair of slim beige pants that moved in silky ripples when she walked. Since spotting her at the aquarium, cuddled up to her handsome, bearded husband, I’d become more forgiving of her pointless statements in class; if I were as in love as she, I wouldn’t bother to read the books, either. She pulled a seat up next to Louise’s and, after telling her how honored the entire class was that she’d agreed to come, gave a thumbnail biography of each of the students standing around the bar at the back. “Of course we adore Clyde,” she said. “He has a real knack for the group dynamics aspect of it all.”

  Although I’d hoped that having a guest lecturer would boost attendance, twenty minutes after the official start of the class, only one other person had shown up. Because half the students were already on their second drink I thought it best to get things rolling before anyone passed out or launched into a rambling drunken confession about a love affair or a murder.

  I began by making some broad justifications for inviting Louise, trying to tie her work into the tradition of the novels we were supposedly reading, and hauling out, for the grand finale, the tired Jane Austen comparison that’s been used on virtually every contemporary writer who hasn’t attempted a war novel. I listed Louise’s three books, her various grants, awards, and teaching credentials, and I even made the mistake of mentioning that she’d managed to raise a twelve-year-old son on her own while racking up her other accomplishments. The tidbit of personal information was the only one that seemed to arouse any genuine interest.

  Before I’d come to the end of the introduction, Dorothea, the retired schoolteacher, cut me off mid-sentence.

  “I understand she has a grant of some kind from Radcliffe,” she said, “but I was just wondering if she’s ever taught there.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “but we can ask her. You haven’t taught at Radcliffe, have you, Louise?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said apologetically.

  “I only ask,” Dorothea said, “because she looks very familiar to me and I thought perhaps I’d met her at a faculty-alumni gathering. I attend them regularly to keep in touch with my old classmates.”

  Brian shifted in his chair until he was in position to announce his alma mater: “I don’t suppose you’ve taught at Yale, have you, Lorraine?”

  “Maybe Clyde should list all the schools poor Louise hasn’t taught at,” Eileen said cheerfully. “Well, I just want to tell you”—she laid a hand on Louise’s arm—“that I took a copy of your story out of the library”—she held up a battered hard
cover edition of Louise’s second novel—“and I thought your photo on the back was absolutely charming. It made me long to dive right in.”

  The copy of the book was passed around as I finished my introduction, and then I turned the class over to Louise. She took a seat behind the library table, looked out at the students, and gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t suppose you allow smoking in here?” she asked in her raspy voice. Most of the class chuckled appreciatively at what was assumed to be a joke. They wanted to like her, and why not? They’d paid their tuition, so they might as well enjoy the show.

  Louise got up from her chair and moved to the front of the library table. She leaned against the edge of it, folded her arms, and started to talk, in an effortless but impassioned way, about her work and her career and her struggles at making writing a central part of her life—crying baby, kitchen tables in sublets, long nights of self-doubt. She’d never talked with me about her work in quite this way, so different from her customary self-deprecation. I’d assumed that motherhood had been the guiding force in her life and writing a sometimes profitable adjunct. But sitting there in front of her, another member of the audience, I realized that I’d been misjudging her for years. The books were what stood square in the middle of her life, and all the rest, even Benjamin, fed into them. And maybe not even the books themselves, but the frazzled passion that drove her toward their creation.

  Where, I wondered, was my passion? What had I been striving for in all the years Louise and I had been friends? I knew what Marcus meant when he’d said he felt as if he’d been stumbling over the rocks in his path for years. But he had a path, even if he wasn’t advancing along it. As I sat there listening to Louise, I began to wonder if I had.

  When Louise came to the end of her talk, a hush settled over the room, a comfortable silence during which we could hear the naked branches of the beech trees scraping against the bay of curved windows. I took this admiring quiet as a tribute to Louise, and I felt tremendously proud of my diligent, insightful students.