Stoner

by John Williams

  Two days after his declaration of retirement, in the middle of a busy afternoon, he got a telephone call from Gordon Finch.

  “Bill? Gordon. Look—there’s a small problem I think I ought to talk to you about.”

  “Yes?” he said impatiently.

  “It’s Lomax. He can’t get it through his head that you aren’t doing this on his account.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Stoner said. “Let him think what he wants.”

  “Wait—that isn’t all. He’s making plans to go through with the dinner and everything. He says he gave his word.”

  “Look, Gordon, I’m very busy just now. Can’t you just put a stop to it somehow?”

  “I tried to, but he’s doing it through the department. If you want me to call him in I will; but you’ll have to be here too. When he’s like this I can’t talk to him.”

  “All right. When is this foolishness supposed to come off?”

  There was a pause. “A week from Friday. The last day of classes, just before exam week.”

  “All right,” Stoner said wearily. “I should have things cleared up by then, and it’ll be easier than arguing it now. Just let it ride.”

  “You ought to know this too; he wants me to announce your retirement as professor emeritus, though it can’t be really official until next year.”

  Stoner felt a laugh come up in his throat. “What the hell,” he said. “That’s all right too.”

  All that week he worked without consciousness of time. He worked straight through Friday, from eight o’clock in the morning until ten that night. He read a last page and made a last note, and leaned back in his chair; the light on his desk filled his eyes, and for a moment he did not know where he was. He looked around him and saw that he was in his office. The bookshelves were bulging with books haphazardly placed; there were stacks of papers in the corners; and his filing cabinets were open and disarranged. I ought to straighten things up, he thought; I ought to get my things in order.

  “Next week,” he said to himself. “Next week.”

  He wondered if he could make it home. It seemed an effort to breathe. He narrowed his mind, forced it upon his arms and legs, made them respond. He got to his feet, and would not let himself sway. He turned the desk light off and stood until his eyes could see by the moonlight that came through his windows. Then he put one foot before the other and walked through the dark halls to the out-of-doors and through the quiet streets to his home.

  The lights were on; Edith was still up. He gathered the last of his strength and made it up the front steps and into the living room. Then he knew he could go no farther; he was able to reach the couch and to sit down. After a moment he found the strength to reach into his vest pocket and take out his tube of pills. He put one in his mouth and swallowed it without water; then he took another. They were bitter, but the bitterness seemed almost pleasant.

  He became aware that Edith had been walking about the room, going from one place to another; he hoped that she had not spoken to him. As the pain eased and as some of his strength returned, he realized that she had not; her face was set, her nostrils and mouth pinched, and she walked stiffly, angrily. He started to speak to her, but he decided that he could not trust his voice. He let himself wonder why she was angry; she had not been angry for a long time.

  Finally she stopped moving about and faced him; her hands were fists and they hung at her sides. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  He cleared his throat and made his eyes focus. “I’m sorry, Edith.” He heard his voice quiet but steady. “I’m a little tired, I guess.”

  “You weren’t going to say anything at all, were you? Thoughtless. Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

  For a moment he was puzzled. Then he nodded. If he had had more strength he would have been angry. “How did you find out?”

  “Never mind that. I suppose everyone knows except me. Oh, Willy, honestly.”

  “I’m sorry, Edith, really, I am. I didn’t want to worry you. I was going to tell you next week, just before I went in. It’s nothing; you aren’t to trouble yourself.”

  “Nothing!” She laughed bitterly. “They say it might be cancer. Don’t you know what that means?”

  He felt suddenly weightless, and he had to force himself not to clutch at something. “Edith,” he said in a distant voice, “let’s talk about it tomorrow. Please. I’m tired now.”

  She looked at him for a moment. “Do you want me to help you to your room?” she asked crossly. “You don’t look like you’ll make it by yourself.”

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  But before he got to his room he wished he had let her help him—and not only because he found himself weaker than he had expected.

  He rested Saturday and Sunday, and Monday he was able to meet his classes. He went home early, and he was lying on the living-room couch gazing interestedly at the ceiling when the doorbell rang. He sat upright and started to rise, but the door opened. It was Gordon Finch. His face was pale, and his hands were unsteady.

  “Come in, Gordon,” Stoner said.

  “My God, Bill,” Finch said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Stoner laughed shortly. “I might as well have advertised it in the newspapers,” he said. “I thought I could do it quietly, without upsetting anyone.”

  “I know, but—Jesus, if I had known.”

  “There’s nothing to get upset about. There’s nothing definite yet—it’s just an operation. Exploratory, I believe they call it. How did you find out anyway?”

  “Jamison,” Finch said. “He’s my doctor too. He said he knew it wasn’t ethical, but that I ought to know. He was right, Bill.”

  “I know,” Stoner said. “It doesn’t matter. Has the word got around?”

  Finch shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Then keep your mouth shut about it. Please.”

  “Sure, Bill,” Finch said. “Now about this dinner party Friday—you don’t have to go through with it, you know.”

  “But I will,” Stoner said. He grinned. “I figure I owe Lomax something.”

  The ghost of a smile came upon Finch’s face. “You have turned into an ornery old son-of-a-bitch, haven’t you?”

  “I guess I have,” Stoner said.

  The dinner was held in a small banquet room of the Student Union. At the last minute Edith decided that she wouldn’t be able to sit through it, so he went alone. He went early and walked slowly across the campus, as if ambling casually on a spring afternoon. As he had anticipated, there was no one in the room; he got a waiter to remove his wife’s name card and to reset the main table, so that there would not be an empty space. Then he sat down and waited for the guests to arrive.

  He was seated between Gordon Finch and the president of the University; Lomax, who was to act as the master of ceremonies, was seated three chairs away. Lomax was smiling and chatting with those sitting around him; he did not look at Stoner.

  The room filled quickly; members of the department who had not really spoken to him for years waved across the room to him; Stoner nodded. Finch said little, though he watched Stoner carefully; the youngish new president, whose name Stoner could never remember, spoke to him with an easy deference.

  The food was served by young students in white coats; Stoner recognized several of them; he nodded and spoke to them. The guests looked sadly at their food and began to eat. A relaxed hum of conversation, broken by the cheery clatter of silverware and china, throbbed in the room; Stoner knew that his own presence was almost forgotten, so he was able to poke at his food, take a few ritual bites, and look around him. If he narrowed his eyes he could not see the faces; he saw colors and vague shapes moving before him, as in a frame, constructing moment by moment new patterns of contained flux. It was a pleasant sight, and if he held his attention upon it in a particular way, he was not aware of the pain.

  Suddenly there was silence; he shook his head, as if coming out of a dream. Near the end of the narr
ow table Lomax was standing, tapping on a water glass with his knife. A handsome face, Stoner thought absently; still handsome. The years had made the long thin face even thinner, and the lines seemed marks of an increased sensitivity rather than of age. The smile was still intimately sardonic, and the voice as resonant and steady as it had ever been.

  He was speaking; the words came to Stoner in snatches, as if the voice that made them boomed from the silence and then diminished into its source. “ ... the long years of dedicated service ... richly deserved rest from the pressures ... esteemed by his colleagues ....” He heard the irony and knew that, in his own way, after all these years, Lomax was speaking to him.

  A short determined burst of applause startled his reverie. Beside him, Gordon Finch was standing, speaking. Though he looked up and strained his ears, he could not hear what Finch said; Gordon’s lips moved, he looked fixedly in front of him, there was applause, he sat down. On the other side of him, the president got to his feet and spoke in a voice that scurried from cajolery to threat, from humor to sadness, from regret to joy. He said that he hoped Stoner’s retirement would be a beginning not an ending; he knew that the University would be the poorer for his absence; there was the importance of tradition, the necessity for change; and the gratitude, for years to come, in the hearts of all his students. Stoner could not make sense of what he said; but when the president finished, the room burst into loud applause and the faces smiled. As the applause dwindled someone in the audience shouted in a thin voice: “Speech!” Someone else took up the call, and the word was murmured here and there.

  Finch whispered in his ear, “Do you want me to get you out of it?”

  “No,” Stoner said. “It’s all right.”

  He got to his feet, and realized that he had nothing to say. He was silent for a long time as he looked from face to face. He heard his voice issue flatly. “I have taught ...” he said. He began again. “I have taught at this University for nearly forty years. I do not know what I would have done if I had not been a teacher. If I had not taught, I might have—” He paused, as if distracted. Then he said, with a finality, “I want to thank you all for letting me teach.”

  He sat down. There was applause, friendly laughter. The room broke up and people milled about. Stoner felt his hand being shaken; he was aware that he smiled and that he nodded at whatever was said to him. The president pressed his hand, smiled heartily, told him that he must drop around, any afternoon, looked at his wrist watch, and hurried out. The room began to empty, and Stoner stood alone where he had risen and gathered his strength for the walk across the room. He waited until he felt something harden inside him, and then he walked around the table and out of the room, passing little knots of people who glanced at him curiously, as if he were already a stranger. Lomax was in one of the groups, but he did not turn as Stoner passed; and Stoner found that he was grateful that they had not had to speak to each other, after all this time.

  The next day he entered the hospital and rested until Monday morning, when the operation was to be performed. He slept much of that time and had no particular interest in what was to happen to him. On Monday morning someone stuck a needle in his arm; he was only half conscious of being rolled through halls to a strange room that seemed to be all ceiling and light. He saw something descend toward his face and he closed his eyes.

  He awoke to nausea; his head ached; there was a new sharp pain, not unpleasant, in his lower body. He retched, and felt better. He let his hand move over the heavy bandages that covered the middle part of his body. He slept, wakened during the night and took a glass of water, and slept again until morning.

  When he awoke, Jamison was standing beside his bed, his fingers on his left wrist.

  “Well,” Jamison said, “how are we feeling this morning?”

  “All right, I think.” His throat was dry; he reached out, and Jamison handed him the glass of water. He drank and looked at Jamison, waiting.

  “Well,” Jamison said at last, uncomfortably, “we got the tumor. Big feller. In a day or two you’ll be feeling much better.”

  “I’ll be able to leave here?” Stoner asked.

  “You’ll be up and around in two or three days,” Jamison said. “The only thing is, it might be more convenient if you did stay around for a while. We couldn’t get—all of it. We’ll be using X-ray treatment, things like that. Of course, you could go back and forth, but—”

  “No,” Stoner said and let his head fall back on the pillow. He was tired again. “As soon as possible,” he said, “I think I want to go home.”

  XVII

  “Oh, Willy,” she said. “You’re all eaten up inside.”

  He was lying on the day bed in the little back room, gazing out the open window; it was late afternoon, and the sun, dipping beneath the horizon, sent a red glow upon the underside of a long rippling cloud that hung in the west above the treetops and the houses. A fly buzzed against the window screen; and the pungent aroma of trash burning in the neighbors’ yards was caught in the still air.

  “What?” Stoner said absently and turned to his wife.

  “Inside,” Edith said. “The doctor said it has spread all over. Oh, Willy, poor Willy.”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. He could not make himself become very interested. “Well, you aren’t to worry. It’s best not to think about it.”

  She did not answer, and he turned again to the open window and watched the sky darken, until there was only a dull purplish streak upon the cloud in the distance.

  He had been home for a little more than a week and had just that afternoon returned from a visit to the hospital where he had undergone what Jamison, with his strained smile, called a “treatment.” Jamison had admired the speed with which his incision had healed, had said something about his having the constitution of a man of forty, and then had abruptly grown silent. Stoner had allowed himself to be poked and prodded, had let them strap him on a table, and had remained still while a huge machine hovered silently about him. It was foolishness, he knew, but he did not protest; it would have been unkind to do so. It was little enough to undergo, if it would distract them all from the knowledge they could not evade.

  Gradually, he knew, this little room where he now lay and looked out the window would become his world; already he could feel the first vague beginnings of the pain that returned like the distant call of an old friend. He doubted that he would be asked to return to the hospital; he had heard in Jamison’s voice this afternoon a finality, and Jamison had given him some pills to take in the event that there was “discomfort.”

  “You might write Grace,” he heard himself saying to Edith. “She hasn’t visited us in a long time.”

  And he turned to see Edith nodding absently; her eyes had been, with his, gazing tranquilly upon the growing darkness outside the window.

  During the next two weeks he felt himself weaken, at first gradually and then rapidly. The pain returned, with an intensity that he had not expected; he took his pills and felt the pain recede into a darkness, as if it were a cautious animal.

  Grace came; and he found that, after all, he had little to say to her. She had been away from St. Louis and had returned to find Edith’s letter only the day before. She was worn and tense and there were dark shadows under her eyes; he wished that he could do something to ease her pain and knew that he could not.

  “You look just fine, Daddy,” she said. “Just fine. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Of course,” he said and smiled at her. “How is young Ed? And how have you been?”

  She said that she had been fine and that young Ed was fine, that he would be entering junior high school the coming fall. He looked at her with some bewilderment. “Junior high?” he asked. Then he realized that it must be true. “Of course,” he said. “I forgot how big he must be by now.”

  “He stays with his—with Mr. and Mrs. Frye a lot of the time,” she said. “It’s best for him that way.” She said something else, but his attention wandered. Mo
re and more frequently he found it difficult to keep his mind focused upon any one thing; it wandered where he could not predict, and he sometimes found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand.

  “Poor Daddy,” he heard Grace say, and he brought his attention back to where he was. “Poor Daddy, things haven’t been easy for you, have they?”

  He thought for a moment and then he said, “No. But I suppose I didn’t want them to be.”

  “Mamma and I—we’ve both been disappointments to you, haven’t we?”

  He moved his hand upward, as if to touch her. “Oh, no,” he said with a dim passion. “You mustn’t ...” He wanted to say more, to explain; but he could not go on. He closed his eyes and felt his mind loosen. Images crowded there, and changed, as if upon a screen. He saw Edith as she had been that first evening they had met at old Claremont’s house—the blue gown and the slender fingers and the fair, delicate face that smiled softly, the pale eyes that looked eagerly upon each moment as if it were a sweet surprise. “Your mother ...” he said. “She was not always ...” She was not always as she had been; and he thought now that he could perceive beneath the woman she had become the girl that she had been; he thought that he had always perceived it.

  “You were a beautiful child,” he heard himself saying, and for a moment he did not know to whom he spoke. Light swam before his eyes, found shape, and became the face of his daughter, lined and somber and worn with care. He closed his eyes again. “In the study. Remember? You used to sit with me when I worked. You were so still, and the light ... the light ...” The light of the desk lamp (he could see it now) had been absorbed by her studious small face that bent in childish absorption over a book or a picture, so that the smooth flesh glowed against the shadows of the room. He heard the small laughter echo in the distance. “Of course,” he said and looked upon the present face of that child. “Of course,” he said again, “you were always there.”

  “Hush,” she said softly, “you must rest.”

  And that was their farewell. The next day she came down to him and said she had to get back to St. Louis for a few days and said something else he did not hear in a flat, controlled voice; her face was drawn, and her eyes were red and moist. Their gazes locked; she looked at him for a long moment, almost in disbelief; then she turned away. He knew that he would not see her again.