by Owen Thomas
He had already put in his time around the campfire singing Kumbaya. He could afford to support her without devoting the level of effort – the hands-on attentiveness – it had once taken to compete with her milieu and all of the suitors for her affections. They were married now. She had chosen and he had prevailed. Susan would still be there when the rallying stopped and her friends decided it was time to leave. So he felt free to help her set things up and then to simply disappear to the library or the bookstore or the office while they plotted and schemed to help Ms. Chis reshape the country to their liking. And when he returned, he would help her pick things up and wash the dishes and put away the extra patio chairs, and she would give him the highlights of the evening to which he listened with genuine interest, if not enthusiasm, and affirmed that she was making a difference. He knew Shirley Chisholm did not stand a snowball’s chance in hell. So did Susan. But there was no point in rubbing her face in it. And if she found a personal satisfaction in fighting the good fight against an overabundance of testosterone in the halls of governance, then who was he to suggest that she was tilting at windmills. He was her husband and her interests were his to support.
Of course, this ethic of compassionate indulgence and marital egalitarianism was largely academic, requiring little more from Hollis than his attention and his restraint. There had been occasions, however, when Susan’s gender politics had positioned Hollis’ personal and professional lifestyle choices at the sharpened end of her opinions. Here, when she had seemed convinced that he was not an ally, but part of the greater societal problem, he had found her more ferocious than adorably misguided. It had been difficult on these infrequent occasions for him not to feel a little put out that his unquestioning acceptance of her opinions was not to be reciprocated; that his tolerance would be met with intolerance. But Hollis had relearned many times that once fully engaged on an issue, Susan tended to dig in and was not easily convinced or dissuaded from the fight.
She had been unmoved, for instance, by his careful and almost scholarly explanation of the importance of marketing and networking in the selling of real estate. If the big property buyers – the commercial players – spent time playing golf, then real estate sellers also needed to spend time playing golf, and that meant him, even if that meant partaking in his firm’s membership to the Lakeland Golf and Country Club, a venerable but, yes, exclusively men’s establishment. He had explained to her that sellers who let their personal opinions and politics interfere with business did not usually sell very much real estate and they tended not to make a name for themselves in the circles where the real business was conducted. He knew the real estate market; she did not. He had an agency to answer to and owners to impress; she did not. He, not she, had a business career to build and if that meant occasionally playing the back nine at Lakeland and then having cocktails at The Buckeye Sundown Show Club & Gentlemen’s Lounge, then that is simply what it would take.
But Susan had been unmoved and unmovable and in the end she had buried him in such an avalanche of shame and civic moralizing that he gave up trying to convince her, resolving instead that there was really no reason he had to inform her of the specific golf courses and eating or drinking establishments at which he felt obligated to cater to the preferences of his clients. He stopped telling and she stopped asking and the issue fell into the limbo of a quiet, uncomfortable truce.
Hollis’ subscription to Playboy Magazine had been another memorable point of contention. Susan was not a feminist taken in by the Hugh Hefners of the world. She knew the difference between sexual independence and sexual subjugation; the former entailing a measure of personal control of one’s body and sexual expression, and the latter entailing the bartering of one’s physical integrity for male approval. Notwithstanding the efforts of Mr. Hefner and an adolescent-minded, male-centric American culture to blur the distinction, Susan knew the difference between a woman who burns her bras and a woman who is paid by men to bare her breasts. Playboy was not a pictorial of feminine independence. Nor was she inclined to accept Hollis’ insistence that Playboy offered sophisticated satirical humor and intriguing political analysis.
“It’s exploitative,” she had insisted. “It’s candy-coated misogyny is what it is.”
Hollis had argued that the magazine exulted women, not hated them. It idolizes them. Susan had countered that it objectifies women and thereby dehumanizes them and that maybe Hollis did not fully appreciate the more insidious and subtle forms of sexism. Hollis had then made the mistake of suggesting that maybe Susan had simply internalized her mother’s prudish sensibilities. It had not gone over well.
“Prude? Leonard Hollis Johns, you know damn well I’m no prude!”
She had, back then, taken to calling him by his full name whenever she was angry. It was an effective way of summoning the spirit of his mother and of taking a good ten or twenty years off his self-confidence.
“I’m as open about sex as anyone you’ll ever find. My mother would never speak to me again if she knew about all the sex I’ve had in my life. Sex is good. Nudity is good. Hell, Hollis, I think public nudity is good. The world would probably be a much safer place if everyone were nude. But splaying 18 year old girls in Technicolor for the lurid enjoyment of dirty old men is not good, Hollis. Not good!”
She sure had him there. Hollis had dared not argue with Susan’s free-love hippie credentials. Wherever she may have chosen to draw the line between the mere advocacy of making-love-not-war and the actual practice of making-love-not-war, it was by then purely an issue of history that Hollis did not particularly care to investigate. He was comfortable in his belief that for all of her talk and counter-culture chest-beating, Susan had loved him and only him, desired him and only him, and that when they had periodically separated she, like he, had chastely waited for their inevitable reunion.
Sure, she had frequently left him wondering. She had intentionally fomented some concern that she might move on without him, even that she had moved on without him, and that there were plenty of men out there who could keep her satisfied. And Hollis had even fallen for it now and then. More than once he had reconciled sooner than he otherwise would have just to hedge his bets that she was bluffing.
But Hollis had known – he had been reasonably sure anyway – that the stirring up of such uncertainties was all just part of playing the dating game. When it came right down to the truth of things, Hollis believed Susan had more of her mother in her than she liked to admit. Nancy Kimbell, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was a woman who knew the virtues of fidelity and commitment and she and husband Herb had raised a good girl. Smart and independent minded. But good. So Hollis was fairly confident that he could dismiss Susan’s free-love alter ego as a culturally inspired conceit.
Just the same, Hollis had not been interested in pursuing the Playboy argument so recklessly into the past. He had not felt good about forcing her to wake the dead to disprove her goodness. Let the dead sleep, he had thought.
So he had shoved the Playboy argument in the opposite direction.
“I am not a dirty-old man, Susan! You are so inflammatory sometimes. I do not… I do not… masturbate to these…these women!”
She had looked at him with an infuriating expression of restrained disbelief.
“I don’t!”
She had put up her hands in an if you say so gesture, demonstrating her unwillingness to stoop to fight him on the issue. Hollis had been relieved. But then Susan had added that it was just so very curious that he felt compelled to save each issue in a collection that he kept in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
“You won’t allow them anywhere else in the house, Susan! Besides,” he had shouted, “I do a lot of reading in the bathroom. And, hey, I’ve got to put up with your little peace pipes! Your little bongs! Your little bowls of Mary Jane! You want to talk about that? Is that something you teach those kids about?”
Susan had shown hurt and anger on her face, but was not to be distracted, icily c
onfessing to being unable to decide which was more ridiculous, the idea of using the toilet as a library or someone actually “reading” pornographic magazines.
“It’s got some of the best political writing you will find anywhere.”
It was a point that had been easy for Hollis to make because he genuinely believed it to be true, although when Susan had asked why he chose to throw away issues of Rolling Stone rather than squirrel them away beneath the sink with the treasure trove of political discourse, he had not had a good answer except to proclaim that there just was not nearly enough room under there for both publications.
He had made another push to prove that Playboy was a publication of political substance by retreating to the bathroom and finding the edition that featured an interview with Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert that he had in fact, by God, read entirely on the toilet.
“You should approve, Susan,” he had said almost pleading. “They print it all. The looting, the executions, the rapes and murders. All of the war crimes he brought to light. If Anthony Herbert chooses Playboy Magazine to expose the atrocities of the Viet Nam War, then why shouldn’t we be reading about it? Are you saying you and your friends can broadcast the same goddamned atrocities on megaphones and great big cardboard signs, and stir up all that trouble, but if Playboy Magazine wants to do it in a way that millions of people will actually …”
But Hollis had stopped in mid-sentence as he watched his wife’s face turn almost instantly to stone and the tears had welled up, deepening over her eyes, and it had been as if she were looking up at him through still water. He had realized he had gone too far.
He had tried to apologize quickly, with enough force that she might not disappear into the abyss of memory, diving into the past and grabbing her beneath the arms and swimming for both of them, kicking hard, pulling her to the shore of the present.
“Susan, I’m sorry,” he had said, grabbing her and wrapping his powerful arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I got carried away. It wasn’t your fault. Say something. There was no way you could have known.”
But she had not spoken and she had not moved and he had stood in their tiny kitchen embracing a cold, weeping stone. He let go and stood back and bent forward just enough to look directly into her drowning blue eyes.
“They each made their own decision to be there, Susan,” he had said. And for a moment he feared that she would continue as a stone. But then she had blinked and she had pushed him hard in his barrel chest and had slapped at him violently, screaming at him in painful rage.
“They were all my friends! Every last one of them! They were there because of me! Me, Hollis! Me! Not you! Certainly not you! You keep your …your fucking magazines. You keep them. But don’t you talk to me about … about that…ever again!”
The argument had destroyed the evening and all of the next day. Susan had returned fully to the present only gradually. She had wept her apologies for striking him and he had assured her that he had deserved that and more. He had kissed her and stroked her hair and they had made love right there in the living room. Within a week’s time they were back to normal. Back to perfect.
As a gesture of remorse, Hollis had promptly unsubscribed to Playboy, and mailed in a subscription to Ms. Magazine instead. He had also purged the bathroom cabinet beneath the sink, heaping a dozen magazines dramatically into the kitchen trash and, in a far less dramatic, indeed wholly undetected manner, he had relocated four of the most “interesting” issues to a box of junk in the top of the bedroom closet.
Susan had insisted that the gesture was unnecessary and that she felt like she had won the concession unfairly, even granting her consent to reactivate the subscription if he so desired. But the adoring look and the humor had fully returned to her eyes and that had been all that mattered to Hollis.
“I am quite satisfied, thank you, jerking off to the political commentary of Rolling Stone.” And they had laughed and kissed and had carried on as ever before. Perfect.
Hollis had tried, above all else, to be a reliable presence for his wife. He wanted to be counted on. Trustworthy. A granite colossus to cling to in the high tide of worry; against which to smash the moments of hatred and frustration; upon which to climb for a better view of the horizon. He wanted to be as devoted to Susan and to her career and to her needs as he was to himself, and he wanted her never to doubt that he always had her best interests at heart, whatever his mistakes. If her well being had meant conceding the fight, then he would want nothing more than to concede the fight. He had wanted to be that reliably devoted to her and to them, the perfect couple.
And now, looking back, he believed that he had been. He had been that granite colossus. He had been reliable in every respect, large and small.
Among many other things, that meant he had dutifully shuttled Susan to and from Patterson Elementary, every single work day, in the cartoonish, daisy-emblazoned Volkswagen Bug that, for the sake of his career, she had fully ceded to his control. It had meant that he started his day later than he would have liked, and that he needed to schedule his appointments around the mid-afternoon pick-up. As inconvenient as these detours had been, they were, in the scheme of things, minor burdens well worth bearing. No wife of Hollis Johns would be riding public transportation anywhere if he had anything to say about it.
And he certainly had had something to say about it. They were a team. He would hold up his half and then some. He would have her to school on time in the mornings and he would be there promptly at 2:30 to take back home, and if he had to wait outside her door in the tiny hallway of Patterson Elementary for her to finish teaching her class, then he did so, and he did so happily. And when the door opened and the children burbled out around him like a torrent of multi-colored soda water, he had peered into the classroom and looked at his new wife, the woman for whom he had bided his time and for whom he had waited with such single-minded desire, hoping against hope that the turbulence of those times would not catapult her in directions so radical or unseemly as to wrest her from his affections, and there she would be, sitting behind her big wooden desk or, with her back to him, erasing the chalkboard, and he would send out a silent intention of gratitude to whatever divine force had kept them together.
Often, Hollis had not announced himself, choosing instead to stand quietly in the doorway. Watching. Marveling. Letting the reality of their new relation fill him. None of her hippie brigade had thought it would last. Not one of them. But Hollis had been patient. He had held on loosely so that she would not feel trapped, and he had been patient and he had proven all of them wrong. They had all wanted her for themselves, they had all loved her, they would all have followed her anywhere, and yet, miracle of miracles, she had followed him and he had survived them all. She had survived the drugs and the free love and the cult of Aquarius and the mind-numbing scourge of untethered idealism. She had survived the bullets and the shattering of ideals among the flesh and blood and splintered bone. She had crossed the desert of the great cultural divide for him, and he had been waiting on the other side. And now she was his and he was hers and there she had stood cleaning the blackboard or sitting behind her big teacher’s desk, waiting for him to pick her up and take her home to the place where they lived.
And when, at last, she would turn or look up and see him leaning in the doorway in his starched white shirt and one of his ridiculous ties and the shoes she had shined the night before, she would smile in the way she has always smiled and her entire presence would radiate a sense of utter wellbeing. Hollis knew he was only partly responsible for her satisfaction. There was, after all, the teaching and the students to factor in. But he understood that, somehow, his mere presence in the doorway of her life had completed that satisfaction.
And now here he was, standing in a different classroom, looking at a different teacher, time threatening to collapse around him like a house of cards.
“I see. And just how are we teachers?” asked Miss Daley.
; “Oh, you’re a bossy, treacherous lot,” said Hollis, not looking at her breasts, the left one or the right one. “And you’re thick as thieves.” He winked and patted her on the shoulder, not lingering. “But you’re also wonderful with my son and he sure loves you, and since Ben’s the best judge of character I know, you’re okay in my book.”
She laughed, patting his hand. Her skin felt smooth and warm to the touch.
“I’ll be by to pick him up after school,” he said. “Two-thirty sharp. And tomorrow I’ll be on time.”
Hollis left with a jaunty wave, exiting the low, gray school building that had long since been converted into a sleepy community center catering to regularly scheduled congregations of the elderly, the civic minded, the unvaccinated, the unregistered and the mentally impaired.
The flags out front were limp in the still air of a morning without any atmospheric personality. It was not sunny. It was not overcast. There was no promise of precipitation. The day hung by its pole, waiting for instructions. He looked at the bank of windows thinking that maybe he would catch a glimpse of Ben. He could see nothing but a reflection of enigmatic sky behind him. He imagined Ben on the other side, watching him drive by. Maybe a bounce and a clap and a pointed finger. Maybe something more quiet and interior. He drove on, looking back in the mirror.
He remembered the Vanguard Academy. A lifetime ago. The V.A. as they had called it. The Academy. He remembered David’s face as he had driven away, disconsolate and suffused with dread. Hollis had actually choked up at the sight of his son in the rear view mirror; had actually felt the knot in his throat and the twinge in the muscle of his heart. His boy! What was he doing leaving his boy?
But he had managed to shake the feeling within a hundred feet or so. He had forced himself back into understanding. He was providing David – his boy – with a superior education. Certainly nothing to regret. Nothing to get choked up about. It was the Vanguard Academy for Chrissakes. How many parents would have killed to give their child such an opportunity? How many parents would have killed to have those kinds of connections? How many parents were able to sacrifice a small fortune, as he had, to ensure that his child’s raw intellectual potential was developed early, unfettered by the indiscriminately common education provided by the Ohio public school system?
