One from Without

by Jack Fuller

  “Not honesty. What I’m asking you is whether you feel you have surrendered too much of your self to the organization, your personhood. That kind of integrity.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you mean.”

  “You certainly seem to be a unique individual.”

  “That’s a new one. Usually they just say that I’m out of it.”

  “Who does?”

  “The secretaries. We call them the Admin News Network.”

  “They say it to your face?”

  “They might as well.”

  “Maybe what they are saying is that you are you, more than you know.”

  “Could you actually stay for the game?” Megan asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was off somewhere.”

  “It would be great if you could.”

  “That’s the idea, sweetie.”

  She sat down next to him.

  “Are you saying you came home so you could watch me play?” she said.

  “That’s a pretty good reason, isn’t it?”

  Megan picked up a trig textbook and set it on her lap.

  “That means you had other reasons,” she said.

  “I don’t need others.”

  “I’m onto you,” she said. “Oh, am I ever onto you.”

  She got into her trig, from time to time punching something into a calculator, fingers quick on the little keys. He wished his reason had been pure: just to be close beside her on the couch, with her totally onto him and yet staying there.

  The front door opened. Footsteps.

  “What are you doing here?” his wife said.

  “Happy to see you too,” he said.

  “He’s going to take me to the game,” Megan said.

  “Betty Cadwalader’s set to give you a ride,” said Maggie.

  “I’ll call her,” said Megan.

  “It isn’t that simple,” said Maggie.

  Plans were important to Maggie, but it wasn’t as if arranging for him to do the driving was trig.

  “I can take Anna too,” he said. “That way you’ll both have the night off.”

  “I wish I’d had a little warning,” said Maggie.

  “It just takes a phone call,” said Megan.

  “All of a sudden everything is up in the air,” said Maggie.

  Megan had her new cell phone out, punching a single key and putting it to her ear. Her father’s daughter, she had already figured out all the features.

  “Hi. It’s me. I’m going to the game with my dad. Yeah. Very nice. You can come with us if you want. OK. See you there then.”

  She snapped the phone shut.

  “All set,” she said.

  “I wish we’d talked about it a little more,” said Maggie.

  Megan picked up her book and calculator and left the room.

  “Sweetie?” he called to her. It did not even slow her down.

  Maggie tossed her purse and keys on the coffee table and slumped in the chair across from the couch.

  “If we had a son, I’d be the one butting heads,” he said.

  “I thought it was your head I ran into,” she said, standing up and leaving him there to listen to her loud on the stairs.

  Well, at least he would have some time with Megan on the long drive. He would get her talking about school, maybe even boys. She was easier with him about such things than he had ever been with his parents. At least she was when Maggie didn’t add a third center of gravity to the equation, making the whole thing unsolvable.

  Maybe they’d talk about college. It was still a ways off, but he knew she must be thinking about it. Perhaps he could sound her out about their next vacation. He didn’t have many of those left with her. He wondered if she might want to see some of the national parks out west or maybe spend a week in New York City. He hoped she would not want to bring along a friend.

  Maggie returned and sat down next to him where Megan had been. He leaned her way until they touched briefly.

  “I’ll go with you tonight,” she said.

  “You really don’t have to,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin your plans.”

  “You already did,” she said.

  “We’ll have a regular family outing,” he said.

  The north wind brought in dry snow that squeaked underfoot. After dinner Gunderman got the shovel from the back porch and cleaned the wood stairs, trying not to take a divot with the blade. Then he did the walk to the garage, the gangway between their house and the Fords’, then on to the front. When he finished, he looked back at his work: sharp-edged, right up against the lawn so just a shadow of grass showed. The snow continued, and soon it would cover the pavement again.

  He put the shovel at the top of the front steps, leaning it next to the wrought-iron mailbox. Maggie’s car needed warming. He went to it and knocked his shoes against the rocker panel before getting in. The engine fired up beautifully. Maybe he would take this one and get her a new car. Not right away. They would have to see how the money worked out in the new position, get Megan going in college. Maybe then.

  He turned on the radio and switched it from all-news to WFMT, which he had programmed on her last preset button. The announcer was reading an ad for a play at the Steppenwolf Theater. After freshman year he had always driven himself to and from college. Crossing Pennsylvania, for long stretches he couldn’t find anything but country stations. Then came Ohio and the sounds of Motown straight down from Detroit. There was a point as he approached the Indiana line where he could finally pick up WFMT. He would spin the dial and hear the soft voice of the announcer saying the names of the conductors and soloists of all nations, pronouncing them just right, and at least in one small sense, he felt at home.

  Back on campus, he never did. His friends were not social, not really even quite friends. To women he was the invisible man as he walked with his stack of punch cards to the computer center. Then suddenly he crossed Maggie’s trajectory. In chaos theory they talk about “strange attractors” that organize the welter into some kind of shape. Maggie used to do that for him.

  Mother and daughter burst from the front door and marched down the sugar-sprinkled walk to the car. Maggie got in next to him, Megan in back.

  “I told you he’d be waiting,” said Megan.

  “You tell me a lot of things,” said Maggie.

  “My fault,” said Gunderman. “Do you want to drive?”

  “I don’t care one way or another,” said Maggie.

  The trip was as silent, as dinner had been, except for the oldies station that had replaced WFMT, a family compromise: “Up on the Roof,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “A Little Help from My Friends.” The wind swirled the snow in the headlights like a flurry of zeros and ones.

  He had first met Maggie in the university dispensary, where she did work-study.

  “You look lost,” she said as he inched toward the reception desk.

  “It’s that I’m, well, I’ve been having these . . . but not always. They kind of come and go,” he said.

  “Pains? Dizzy spells?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Both?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean I’m just, well, just not right.”

  The way she gave a little laugh actually pulled him in instead of pushing him out to the edge of the universe.

  “So what are you feeling right now?” she said.

  He looked at the blouse tight around her, the eyes bright, the hair shining like a precious metal, and he was ashamed to say.

  “Well, at least you’re getting some color back,” she said. “Why don’t you take a seat? The doctor won’t be long.”

  “Sam Gunderman,” he said. “I mean, don’t you need to take my name?”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re the one who always answers questions in Symbolic Logic. If p, then q. It isn’t really fair. I mean, you’re a math major, right? ‘Mr. Gunderman, can you please deliver these humanists from their misery?’ The old fart actually seems to like you.�
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  “Why don’t I recognize you?” he said.

  “You’re in your own world,” she said. “Minding your p’s and q’s. Look, try to help the doctor. Answer his questions. Pretend you’re in class.”

  “You’ll be there?”

  “I always sit way back,” she said.

  “I mean with the doctor.”

  “I’m not the one who’s dizzy.”

  That was obvious. She always seemed to be at equilibrium, never swept away. Eventually, he felt that this was his fault.

  The sports complex smelled of mildew and warm ice. Megan raced ahead to get suited up.

  “Would you like something?” he asked Maggie. “A Coke?”

  “Diet,” she said and kept on moving when he stopped for it.

  The high ceiling echoed with the carom of pucks and scrape of skates.

  “Well, who have we here?” said a voice.

  It was Bill Cadwalader.

  “They let me out of my cage early,” Gunderman said.

  “You work too hard,” said Cadwalader.

  He was a stocky, talkative guy who looked like he did much of his work at home with free weights. Rinkside, he was never at a loss for advice, most of it directed at poor Anna. “Center it! Center it! Left foot! Shoot!” he would shout from his place in the bleachers just above the level of the Plexiglas. Sometimes Betty would shush him, but he was not a man who shushed easily.

  “The job keeps me occupied,” said Gunderman.

  “You’ve got to learn to chill,” said Cadwalader.

  Anytime Anna wasn’t on the ice, Cadwalader lounged back, his arms stretched across the bleacher bench behind him, as if the whole world were his TV.

  “You must be talking to Maggie,” Gunderman said.

  “If she accuses me, I’ll deny it,” said Cadwalader, hale with delight. “You buying?”

  “Sure,” said Gunderman and went back into his pocket.

  “Whatever you’re having,” said Cadwalader. “You know, Megan is really coming on. Her puck handling. Her shot.”

  “Her grades. Her piano playing,” said Gunderman.

  “Don’t let her spread herself too thin.”

  “I wish I’d had a little more breadth when I was her age,” Gunderman said. “Or now.”

  “She has a chance to play at a Division 1 college,” said Cadwalader. “That’d save you a hell of a lot of money, old sport. But it takes focus.”

  “I’m not sure it’s what she wants.”

  “At their age they don’t know,” said Cadwalader. “You’ve got to do the wanting for them.”

  Gunderman handed Cadwalader the drink and carried his two supersized cups to the bleachers, where he spotted Maggie.

  “I’ll have to swim home,” she said.

  She took a sip, and he put his hand in the small of her back. At one time, before they were married, she might have shaped herself to the touch. The important point now was that she still accepted it. That was what happened over time. Acceptance.

  “I wish you could be at games more often,” said Maggie

  “I may be able to,” he said.

  On the weekend he would have to get Maggie off somewhere where he could talk logically to her about their new situation. If p, then q.

  “I hope she shows you a good game tonight,” Maggie said. “She’s really coming on.”

  3

  It had been a good table: the Stones, the Abbotts, the O’Connells, and Tom Rosten with a new friend, whose name Donna Joyce had already lost. The room, as always, had been too loud for conversation, and once the chairs of the ball had given their speeches, it had gotten even louder. Now the band was playing “Girl from Ipanema,” which should have licked gently at the ear like a warm ocean kissing the beach. Amped through huge speakers, it was a tropical depression.

  The O’Connells, who had flanked her throughout the meal, had gotten happy enough on the merlot to go to the dance floor. Tom and his date had sneaked off somewhere, perhaps to an early exit. The Stones and Abbotts were working the room, as was Brian, of course. This left Donna widowed, and OK with that.

  The hospital’s women’s board had chosen a “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme. Every place setting had a little faux-leather sack full of Godiva chocolate doubloons wrapped in gold foil. Bird-of-paradise floral arrangements that must have cost a fortune screened one side of the table from the other. Remarkably realistic cutlasses held the flowers upright. Last night it had been something antebellum—in a careful, thoughtful sort of way, just Spanish moss and peach blossoms—and Monday night Harry Potter.

  Brian had arrived uncharacteristically late. She hadn’t worried, because Marcia had called to say he was running behind, which was always a personal defeat for Marcia, who would have fit in at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Donna had lingered near the main door of the ballroom, passing truncated moments with dear friends, interrupted by introductions of people she knew she would forget. When Brian finally appeared, he sailed right past her, as if into battle. When she caught up with him and touched his arm, he jumped.

  “It’s you,” he said, as if she were the fleet come to the rescue.

  He led her into a crowd that would not let them through without paying a bounty. As they crossed the room, late enough that people watched, Brian failed to notice when the Cardinal rose to his full red-draped height to greet them. She took Brian’s arm, slowing and turning him, and said, “Your Eminence.”

  “Brian,” the Cardinal said straight past her, “we missed you at Holy Name last Sunday.”

  “Early mass,” Brian said, managing a wink as he took the hand the Cardinal presented him.

  “You will be at our event in April, I hope,” said the Cardinal.

  “Three tables,” said Brian. “Donna and I are bringing the kids.”

  “A fine example,” said the Cardinal. “I would have expected nothing less.”

  Whether the example was for their children or in the number of tables went unclarified as the Cardinal declined into his chair to the fussing of the clerics around him. The whole ballroom was beginning to settle down. She could see the length of it under the chandeliers of crystal icicles that sparkled over the Caribbean. The master of ceremonies, with his famous voice, had begun to speak as they reached their table and made a once-around, bent over as they moved from guest to guest so as not to induce them to rise.

  During the meal the O’Connells and the Stones had taken turns talking with Donna. Across the table Rosten had seemed easy with his latest date; whatever was distracting Brian tonight did not appear to involve him. Of all the senior executives, Brian seemed to trust him the most. At first Donna had not, since it was no secret that the man had once served in the Central Intelligence Agency. But over time she had warmed to him. He was polite but straightforward. She sensed that if she had some lettuce stuck between her teeth, he would simply tell her.

  She really did not know much about the people Brian worked with. He protected her from office politics as much as he could so that she could focus on her own work. Of course, he couldn’t come to every concert, let alone travel with her when the symphony toured. She did not like it that they spent so much time apart, which was why, even though she did not fish, she loved the trips they took together in search of the perfect river. Sometimes she sat on the bank watching him cast, the line unfurling from the rod like notes from a flute.

  Because of Brian’s job, she did not have to take on viola students to pay the bills, though she always liked to have one or two of special promise. There was enough live-in help that she had no chores and the children were always well looked after, not to mention the wing he had built for her to practice in and the new Steinway C for accompanists.

  He loved her music with an intensity untempered by learning. When they met, he was not yet forty and just home from the Navy. He had been at sea much of his adult life up to that point, with little access to the refinements found on land. And yet, from the beginning he had simply loved to hear
her play. For her this was more than enough compensation for having to endure, from time to time, a dance band blaring Jobim.

  “May I?”

  She turned and there was Rosten, solo, bowing to be heard. She was not as accustomed to seeing him in a tuxedo as she was some of the others. She could not quite picture him in his past life. Even in evening dress, he was no James Bond. His bow tie bobbed like an oboist’s.

  “Thank you for having us,” he said as he sat down in one of the O’Connells’ chairs.

  “I’m sure it was a command performance,” she said. “But nice of you to pretend. I hope the band didn’t drive your companion from the building. I never met her properly. I’m ashamed to say I don’t even remember her name. She’s new, isn’t she?”

  “Old, actually.”

  “Well, she certainly doesn’t look it.”

  “We’ve known each other since college.”

  “Did you find her on the Internet and rekindle a spark, the way they say people do these days?”

  “She’s married,” he said, “with bright children and a Manhattan apartment. In town on business. We would have gone to hear you play if there had been a concert.”

  “You’ll have to let me know when you’re going to bring someone to Symphony Center,” she said.

  “I’ve always wondered, do you sometimes get so full of the music that you keep playing after?”

  She glanced at his eyes to be sure he was not making a joke.

  “It’s work,” she said, “just like yours.”

  “A calling, I always thought,” he said.

  “I hope yours is too,” she said.

  He picked up the little sack of chocolate doubloons and weighed it in his hand.

  “I was drawn to it,” he said.

  “Well, good,” she said. “But I’m sure there are days and there are days.”

  “Lately, it’s been nothing but blue skies.”

  He was different from the others Brian had close to him. Not like a spy, but not corporate either.

  “Do you play?” she asked.

  “My mother tried and tried, but I was hopeless.”

  “I know the feeling,” she said. “With me it’s balancing the checkbook.”