Stoner

by John Williams

  After the disastrous party with Gordon Finch and Caroline Wingate, Edith seemed almost contented, calmer than she had been at any time during their marriage. But she did not want to have anyone in, and she showed a reluctance to go outside the apartment. Stoner did most of their shopping from lists that Edith made for him in a curiously laborious and childlike handwriting on little sheets of blue notepaper. She seemed happiest when she was alone; she would sit for hours working needlepoint or embroidering tablecloths and napkins, with a tiny indrawn smile on her lips. Her aunt Emma Darley began more and more frequently to visit her; when William came from the University in the afternoon he often found the two of them together, drinking tea and conversing in tones so low that they might have been whispers. They always greeted him politely, but William knew that they saw him with regret; Mrs. Darley seldom stayed for more than a few minutes after he arrived. He learned to maintain an unobtrusive and delicate regard for the world in which Edith had begun to live.

  In the summer of 1920 he spent a week with his parents while Edith visited her relatives in St. Louis; he had not seen his mother and father since the wedding.

  He worked in the fields for a day or two, helping his father and the Negro hired hand; but the give of the warm moist clods beneath his feet and the smell of the new-turned earth in his nostrils evoked in him no feeling of return or familiarity. He came back to Columbia and spent the rest of the summer preparing for a new class that he was to teach the following academic year. He spent most of each day in the library, sometimes returning to Edith and the apartment late in the evening, through the heavy sweet scent of honeysuckle that moved in the warm air and among the delicate leaves of dogwood trees that rustled and turned, ghost-like in the darkness. His eyes burned from their concentration upon dim texts, his mind was heavy with what it observed, and his fingers tingled numbly from the retained feel of old leather and board and paper; but he was open to the world through which for a moment he walked, and he found some joy in it.

  A few new faces appeared at departmental meetings; some familiar ones were not there; and Archer Sloane continued the slow decline which Stoner had begun to notice during the war. His hands shook, and he was unable to keep his attention upon what he said. The department went on with the momentum it had gathered through its tradition and the mere fact of its being.

  Stoner went about his teaching with an intensity and ferocity that awed some of the newer members of the department and that caused a small concern among the colleagues who had known him for a longer time. His face grew haggard, he lost weight, and the stoop of his shoulders increased. In the second semester of that year he had a chance to take a teaching overload for extra pay, and he took it; also for extra pay, he taught in the new summer school that year. He had a vague notion of saving enough money to go abroad, so that he could show Edith the Europe she had given up for his sake.

  In the summer of 1921, searching for a reference to a Latin poem that he had forgotten, he glanced at his dissertation for the first time since he had submitted it for approval three years earlier; he read it through and judged it to be sound. A little frightened at his presumption, he considered reworking it into a book. Though he was again teaching the full summer session, he reread most of the texts he had used and began to extend his research. Late in January he decided that a book was possible; by early spring he was far enough along to be able to write the first tentative pages.

  It was in the spring of the same year that, calmly and almost indifferently, Edith told him that she had decided she wanted a child.

  The decision came suddenly and without apparent source, so that when she made the announcement one morning at breakfast, only a few minutes before William had to leave for his first class, she spoke almost with surprise, as if she had made a discovery.

  “What?” William said. “What did you say?”

  “I want a baby,” Edith said. “I think I want to have a baby.”

  She was nibbling a piece of toast. She wiped her lips with the corner of a napkin and smiled fixedly.

  “Don’t you think we ought to have one?” she asked. “We’ve been married for nearly three years.”

  “Of course,” William said. He set his cup down in its saucer with great care. He did not look at her. “Are you sure? We’ve never talked about it. I wouldn’t want you to—”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m quite sure. I think we ought to have a child.”

  William looked at his watch. “I’m late. I wish we had more time to talk. I want you to be sure.”

  A small frown came between her eyes. “I told you I was sure. Don’t you want one? Why do you keep asking me? I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

  “All right,” William said. He sat looking at her for a moment. “I’ve got to go.” But he did not move. Then awkwardly he put his hand over her long fingers that rested on the tablecloth and kept it there until she moved her hand away. He got up from the table and edged around her, almost shyly, and gathered his books and papers. As she always did, Edith came into the living room to wait for him to leave. He kissed her on the cheek—something he had not done for a long while.

  At the door he turned and said, “I’m—I’m glad you want a child, Edith. I know that in some ways our marriage has been a disappointment to you. I hope this will make a difference between us.”

  “Yes,” Edith said. “You’ll be late for your class. You’d better hurry.”

  After he had gone Edith remained for some minutes in the center of the room, staring at the closed door, as if trying to remember something. Then she moved restlessly across the floor, walking from one place to another, moving within her clothing as if she could not endure its rustling and shifting upon her flesh. She unbuttoned her stiff gray taffeta morning robe and let it drop to the floor. She crossed her arms over her breasts and hugged herself, kneading the flesh of her upper arms through her thin flannel nightgown. Again she paused in her moving and walked purposefully into the tiny bedroom and opened a closet door, upon the inside of which hung a full-length mirror. She adjusted the mirror to the light and stood back from it, inspecting the long thin figure in the straight blue nightgown that it reflected. Without removing her eyes from the mirror she unbuttoned the top of her gown and pulled it up from her body and over her head, so that she stood naked in the morning light. She wadded the nightgown and threw it in the closet. Then she turned about before the mirror, inspecting the body as if it belonged to someone else. She passed her hands over her small drooping breasts and let her hands go lightly down her long waist and over her flat belly.

  She moved away from the mirror and went to the bed, which was still unmade. She pulled the covers off, folded them carelessly, and put them in the closet. She smoothed the sheet on the bed and lay there on her back, her legs straight and her arms at her side. Unblinking and motionless, she stared up at the ceiling and waited through the morning and the long afternoon.

  When William Stoner got home that evening it was nearly dark, but no light came from the second-floor windows. Vaguely apprehensive, he went up the stairs and flipped the living-room light on. The room was empty. He called, “Edith?”

  There was no reply. He called again.

  He looked in the kitchen; the dishes from breakfast were still on the tiny table. He went swiftly across the living room and opened the door to the bedroom.

  Edith lay naked on the bare bed. When the door opened and the light from the living room fell upon her, she turned her head to him; but she did not get up. Her eyes were wide and staring, and little sounds came from her parted mouth.

  “Edith!” he said and went to where she lay, kneeling beside her. “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

  She did not answer, but the sounds she had been making became louder and her body moved beside him. Suddenly her hands came out at him like claws, and he almost jerked away; but they went to his clothing, clutching and tearing at it, pulling him upon the bed beside her. Her mouth came up to him, gaping a
nd hot; her hands were going over him, pulling at his clothes, seeking him; and all the time her eyes were wide and staring and untroubled, as if they belonged to somebody else and saw nothing.

  It was a new knowledge he had of Edith, this desire that was like a hunger so intense that it seemed to have nothing to do with her self; and no sooner was it sated than it began at once to grow again within her, so that they both lived in the tense expectation of its presence.

  Although the next two months were the only time of passion William and Edith Stoner ever had together, their relationship did not really change. Very soon Stoner realized that the force which drew their bodies together had little to do with love; they coupled with a fierce yet detached determination, drew apart, and coupled again, without the strength to surfeit their need.

  Sometimes during the day, while William was at the University, the need came so strongly upon Edith that she could not remain still; she would leave the apartment and walk swiftly up and down the streets, going aimlessly from one place to another. And then she would return, draw closed the curtains of the windows, undress herself, and wait, crouched in the semidarkness, for William to get home. And when he opened the door she was upon him, her hands wild and demanding, as if they had a life of their own, pulling him toward the bedroom, upon the bed which was still rumpled from their use of it the night or the morning before.

  Edith became pregnant in June and immediately fell into an illness from which she did not wholly recover during the full time of her waiting. Nearly at the moment she became pregnant, even before the fact was confirmed by her calendar and her physician, the hunger for William that had raged within her for the better part of two months ceased. She made it clear to her husband that she could not endure the touch of his hand upon her, and it began to seem to him that even his looking at her was a kind of violation. The hunger of their passion became a memory, and at last Stoner looked upon it as if it were a dream that had nothing to do with either of them.

  So the bed that had been the arena of their passion became the support of her illness. She kept to it most of the day, rising only to relieve her nausea in the morning and to walk unsteadily about the living room for a few minutes in the afternoon. In the afternoon and evening, after he had hurried from his work at the University, William cleaned the rooms, washed the dishes, and made the evening meal; he carried Edith’s dinner to her on a tray. Though she did not want him to eat with her, she did seem to enjoy sharing a cup of weak tea with him after dinner. For a few moments in the evening, then, they talked quietly and casually, as if they were old friends or exhausted enemies. Edith would fall asleep soon afterward; and William would return to the kitchen, complete the housework, and then set up a table before the living-room sofa, where he would grade papers or prepare lectures. Then, past midnight, he would cover himself with a blanket he kept neatly folded behind the couch; and with his length curled up on the couch he would sleep fitfully until morning.

  The child, a girl, was born after a three-day period of labor in the middle of March in the year 1923. They named her Grace, after one of Edith’s aunts who had died many years before.

  Even at birth Grace was a beautiful child, with distinct features and a light down of golden hair. Within a few days the first redness of her skin turned into a glowing golden pink. She seldom cried, and she seemed almost aware of her surroundings. William fell instantly in love with her; the affection he could not show to Edith he could show to his daughter, and he found a pleasure in caring for her that he had not anticipated.

  For nearly a year after the birth of Grace, Edith remained partly bedridden; there was some fear that she might become a permanent invalid, though the doctor could find no specific trouble. William hired a woman to come in during the morning to care for Edith, and he arranged his classes so that he would be at home early in the afternoon.

  Thus for more than a year William kept the house and cared for two helpless people. He was up before dawn, grading papers and preparing lectures; before going to the University he fed Grace, prepared breakfast for himself and Edith, and fixed a lunch for himself, which he took to school in his briefcase. After his classes he came back to the apartment, which he swept, dusted, and cleaned.

  And he was more nearly a mother than a father to his daughter. He changed her diapers and washed them; he chose her clothing and mended it when it was torn; he fed her and bathed her and rocked her in his arms when she was distressed. Every now and then Edith would call querulously for her baby; William would bring Grace to her, and Edith, propped up in bed, would hold her for a few moments, silently and uncomfortably, as if the child belonged to someone else who was a stranger. Then she would tire and with a sigh hand the baby back to William. Moved by some obscure emotion, she would weep a little, dab at her eyes, and turn away from him.

  So for the first year of her life, Grace Stoner knew only her father’s touch, and his voice, and his love.

  VI

  Early in the summer of 1924, on a Friday afternoon, Archer Sloane was seen by several students going into his office. He was discovered shortly after dawn the following Monday by a janitor who made the rounds of the offices in Jesse Hall to empty the wastebaskets. Sloane was sitting rigidly slumped in his chair before his desk, his head at an odd angle, his eyes open and fixed in a terrible stare. The janitor spoke to him and then ran shouting through the empty halls. There was some delay in the removal of the body from the office, and a few early students were milling in the corridors when the curiously humped and sheeted figure was carried on a stretcher down the steps to the waiting ambulance. It was later determined that Sloane had died sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning, of causes that were obviously natural but never precisely determined, and had remained the whole weekend at the desk staring endlessly before him. The coroner announced heart failure as the cause of death, but William Stoner always felt that in a moment of anger and despair Sloane had willed his heart to cease, as if in a last mute gesture of love and contempt for a world that had betrayed him so profoundly that he could not endure in it.

  Stoner was one of the pallbearers at the funeral. At the services he could not keep his mind on the words the minister said, but he knew that they were empty. He remembered Sloane as he had first seen him in the classroom; he remembered their first talks together; and he thought of the slow decline of this man who had been his distant friend. Later, after the services were over, when he lifted his handle of the gray casket and helped to carry it out to the hearse, what he carried seemed so light that he could not believe there was anything inside the narrow box.

  Sloane had no family; only his colleagues and a few people from town gathered around the narrow pit and listened in awe, embarrassment, and respect as the minister said his words. And because he had no family or loved ones to mourn his passing, it was Stoner who wept when the casket was lowered, as if that weeping might reduce the loneliness of the last descent. Whether he wept for himself, for the part of his history and youth that went down to the earth, or whether for the poor thin figure that once kept the man he had loved, he did not know.

  Gordon Finch drove him back to town, and for most of the ride they did not speak. Then, when they neared town, Gordon asked about Edith; William said something and inquired after Caroline. Gordon replied, and there was a long silence. Just before they drove up to William’s apartment Gordon Finch spoke again.

  “I don’t know. All during the service I kept thinking about Dave Masters. About Dave dying in France, and about old Sloane sitting there at his desk, dead two days; like they were the same kinds of dying. I never knew Sloane very well, but I guess he was a good man; at least I hear he used to be. And now we’ll have to bring somebody else in and find a new chairman for the department. It’s like it all just goes around and around and keeps on going. It makes you wonder.”

  “Yes,” William said and did not speak further. But he was for a moment very fond of Gordon Finch; and when he got out of the car and watched Gordon driv
e away, he felt the keen knowledge that another part of himself, of his past, was drawing slowly, almost imperceptibly away from him, into the darkness.

  In addition to his duties as assistant dean, Gordon Finch was given the interim chairmanship of the English Department; and it became his immediate duty to find a replacement for Archer Sloane.

  It was July before the matter was settled. Then Finch called those members of the department who had remained in Columbia over the summer and announced the replacement. It was, Finch told the little group, a nineteenth-century specialist, Hollis N. Lomax, who had recently received his Ph.D. from Harvard University but who had nevertheless taught for several years at a small downstate New York liberal-arts college. He came with high recommendations, he had already started publishing, and he was being hired at the assistant professor level. There were, Finch emphasized, no present plans about the departmental chairmanship; Finch was to remain interim chairman for at least one more year.

  For the rest of the summer Lomax remained a figure of mystery and the object of speculation by the permanent members of the faculty. The essays that he had published in the journals were dug out, read, and passed around with judicious nods. Lomax did not make his appearance during New Student Week, nor was he present at the general faculty meeting on the Friday before Monday student registration. And at registration the members of the department, sitting in a line behind the long desks, wearily helping students choose their classes and assisting them in the deadly routine of filling out forms, looked surreptitiously around for a new face. Still Lomax did not make an appearance.

  He was not seen until the departmental meeting late Tuesday afternoon, after registration had been completed. By that time, numbed by the monotony of the last two days and yet tense with the excitement that begins a new school year, the English faculty had nearly forgotten about Lomax. They sprawled in desk-top chairs in a large lecture room in the east wing of Jesse Hall and looked up with contemptuous yet eager expectancy at the podium where Gordon Finch stood surveying them with massive benevolence. A low hum of voices filled the room; chairs scraped on the floor; now and then someone laughed deliberately, raucously. Gordon Finch raised his right hand and held it palm outward to his audience; the hum quieted a little.