Blue Angel

by Francine Prose

  “So when do we have lunch?” The jolliness of Magda’s invitation fails to mask the intensity of her desire to see him.

  “Maybe not for a while. Time’s been sort of tight. I don’t want to jinx things but…I’m working on my novel.”

  What demon made him say that? Now he will never write again.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Magda says.

  “I guess.” Swenson’s almost convinced himself. “In fact I may soon have a section to show Len Currie.” And now he knows why he’s lied. For practice, in case he recycles the lie when he calls Len and pretends to have work to give him—when the truth will be that he’s calling about Angela’s novel. And why not call Len, pitch Angela’s book, find out if it’s something he might want to look at? It’s fine to phone your editor and recommend a promising student. It’s generous, noble. Passing on the torch to the next generation. And it’s hardly a privilege Swenson has abused. He’s never suggested anything to Len before, and Angela’s novel is good enough so that his recommendation could hardly be seen as a consequence of his…involvement with its author.

  Magda says, “Listen, Ted, I mean…you can say no. But the next time you talk to Len, do you think you could just maybe…ask him about my new book of poems? I know they publish poetry.”

  This is really too much. Two women in twenty minutes cozying up to Swenson as a way of getting next to his editor.

  “I’d be happy to,” Swenson says. In fact, it’s unlikely that Len would do Magda’s second book, but there’s always a chance of catching him on a day when he’s feeling guilty about how little real literature he’s publishing. Still, Swenson can’t muddy the waters by asking him to look at two books. “But…I’m pretty sure I heard that Len isn’t taking on any new poets. I guess I could ask him, but it’s a long shot.”

  The wintry afternoon light has bleached the color from Magda’s face. She thinks Swenson hates her book. Why couldn’t he have lied? Weeks from now he could have reported that he’d broached the subject with Len, who’d said his poetry list was full—

  “If it were up to me I’d publish it,” Swenson says. “I love your work. You know that. But Len’s a businessman. He’s got other concerns besides literary merit….” None of this has anything to do with Magda’s book. But if he told Magda the truth, would she feel better, or worse?

  “I’ll call you. I’ve got to go,” he says, and hurries across the quad.

  He feels as if he’s being chased all the way to his office. He locks the door behind him and picks up the phone. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s dialed Ruby’s number. He’s been trying to reach her for days, since she called and left a message and he missed her—he’s still convinced—because he called Angela first.

  The phone rings. Ruby answers.

  “Ruby,” says Swenson, “it’s Dad.” He wants to weep with joy at the sound of her voice, and with the corny pleasure of being able to use the word Dad.

  “Hey, Dad,” she says. “How are you?” As if they were normal people. Maybe they are—at last. Maybe Ruby’s recovered from whatever has kept her so at odds with them for this long, terrible year.

  “How’s school?” he asks.

  “Fine. Excellent. Really good.” Ruby’s voice rings out as if she always talks in sprays of cheerful adjectives instead of curt monosyllables. “I’ve sort of decided that I might declare as a psychology major. I’m taking this course I really like on the abnormal personality.”

  Has someone put his daughter on Prozac? Wouldn’t they need his permission? Probably not. Ruby’s over eighteen. And anyway, it’s okay with him if some savvy college shrink has found a way to turn his child back into the bright spirit she once was.

  “Hey,” says Swenson, “having a dad like me must have given you plenty of experience with the abnormal personality.”

  There’s a silence. Then Ruby says, “Well, I’ve kind of been thinking about that. You know I haven’t been in the greatest shape….”

  Something in her tone of voice—a programmed, robotic echo—makes Swenson’s heart start to pound. Is she gearing up to report a recovered memory of his having molested her in early childhood? Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it’s occurred to Swenson that Ruby’s growing up—overnight, it seemed—mystified and hurt and embarrassed him. He’d felt himself holding back from her, stepping aside so they wouldn’t pass too near one another in the narrow hallway. Almost overnight, their easy kisses and hugs became perfunctory and self-conscious. How can he explain to her—or to himself—what happened? No wonder she’s furious at him for abandoning her when she needed him most.

  “I’ve been reading about all this research into hereditary patterns of illness—and you know that Grandpa was not exactly a healthy guy.”

  Swenson exhales sharply. But…whom is she calling Grandpa? Grandpa? She knows how his father died. When she was ten or eleven, she pressed for the information. Trying to be reassuring and calm, Swenson and Sherrie told her. More or less.

  Does Ruby think she inherited anything from Swenson’s crazy old man? Swenson’s never seen the vaguest family resemblance. But now he finds himself deeply touched by Ruby’s calling his father Grandpa. It’s time to really talk to her about her grandfather—with more compassion and at greater depth even than in his novel. It would matter to Ruby more than it matters to anyone else.

  “We can talk about that,” he says. “When are you coming home?”

  “Thanksgiving,” says Ruby. How obvious.

  “Do we have to wait till Thanksgiving? You’re only forty miles away. I could drive over. We could have lunch.”

  “Thanksgiving’s only two weeks away,” Ruby says. Okay. He can accept that. She needs to feel like a successful, independent college student who has gone away to school and can only come home on vacations. He hopes he hasn’t pushed too far—scared her off with his enthusiasm. That would make it three times in one day he’s struck out talking to women.

  He says, “I can hardly wait.” There’s another silence. Ruby’s message said she needed to ask him something. “What’s up?”

  “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  “Promise.”

  “I got a call from Matt McIlwaine? You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Of course I remember him. What does he want?” Swenson’s voice is steely with irony. He’s got to stop this. Now. How many times has he regretted the arrogance with which he broke up Ruby’s romance? How often has he said that letting her date Jack the Ripper would be better than turning her against them?

  “I don’t know,” says Ruby. “He left a message on my machine and told me to call him back. But his old number’s changed, and student information said his new number was unlisted.”

  Can students have unlisted numbers? Probably, if they’re being tracked by disgruntled drug connections and the fathers of virgins they’ve impregnated. Enough! This is the chance Swenson’s been praying for, the chance to do things over and finally get some of it right.

  “I see him on campus,” Swenson says. “Not often. Once in a while.”

  “Alone?” asks Ruby.

  “Desperately alone,” Swenson lies. “I’ll get his number for you. I’ll ask him to call you back.”

  “That would be great. Thanks. Love to Mom. Talk to you soon. See you at Thanksgiving.”

  “Love you!” Swenson says with such intensity he’s afraid she’ll change her mind.

  “All right, see you then.”

  “See you then,” Swenson says.

  When Swenson hangs up, he feels like a fairy-tale hero who’s just gotten through the enchanted forest by heeding a complex series of magic warnings and taboos. Everything seems conditional, as if he’s on trial, as if the promise of Ruby’s visit might be revoked in a heartbeat.

  And so, when he looks out the window and sees Matt McIlwaine walking across campus, his first thought is that he’s summoned him with some supernatural power. The sight of the movie-star handsome Matt—sickeningly entitl
ed—jolts Swenson with enough adrenaline to send him racing downstairs. He’s convinced that if he doesn’t go after him, Ruby will somehow know and decide not to come home for Thanksgiving. If he’s lucky he’ll get downstairs just as Matt’s passing by.

  But Matt’s already gone. Swenson takes off after him toward the edge of campus. His daughter’s happiness depends on his keeping the kid in sight. From across the street he sees Matt go into the MinuteMart and emerge with a pack of cigarettes. Pausing near—too near—the gas pumps, he lights up, then walks on. By now, Matt’s opposite Swenson on the far side of North Street. Swenson ducks into the drugstore and watches from inside the door.

  Matt gets as far as the ragged lawn officially known as North Street Common, reclaimed a few years ago from a bottle-strewn lot in a failed attempt at village gentrification. In the park are two benches and a sculpture, donated by Euston College as a gesture toward amicable town-gown relations, a two-ton steel tarantula made by Ari Linder, the very same Ari Linder who gave Angela a hard time for doing the Super Value Meal as her American icon. Well, it serves the humorless shit right if his work has found its true purpose as the newly traditional target for townie kids to egg on Halloween night.

  From the Rite-Aid doorway Swenson spies on Matt. Is he expecting someone? Why would you meet anyone here, when there are all those benches on campus, each with its own flower bed and plaque naming the alumnus who funded this or that irresistible place to park your butt? No reason—unless you were meeting someone you didn’t want to be seen with. Your drug connection. Your jail-bait sweetheart.

  Swenson pulls his collar up and strolls with phony nonchalance straight in Matt’s direction. When Matt sees him, he looks so alarmed that Swenson thinks: He did come here to buy drugs or pick up an underage girl. But of course he’s apprehensive. You don’t forget a conversation in which your girlfriend’s father threatened to get you kicked out of school if you didn’t stop seeing his daughter. Swenson can still see Matt’s smile dripping off his face as he slowly—it took him forever—understood what was being said.

  Swenson has a lot of acting to do, pretending to just now see Matt, miming surprise, confusion, and then the resolve to be friendly and forgiving.

  “Matt!” he says. “How have you been?”

  “Fine, thanks, sir,” says Matt. That sir enrages Swenson, as does Matt’s smile: part goofiness, part calculated charm, part menace, and part ice.

  “How’s school?”

  “Fine, sir. Very well, thank you. And how have you been?”

  “Excellent,” Swenson says.

  Just then, Matt’s attention is caught by something over Swenson’s shoulder. Swenson turns in time to see Angela walking toward them.

  “Hey, Angela, how’s it going?” says Matt. “How’s your semester been?”

  “Sucky,” Angela says. “My semester bites. Except for this guy’s class.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” says Matt. “I remember. You’re a writer.”

  Swenson can’t stop himself from saying, “Angela’s my prize student.”

  “Yeah, well,” says Angela. “I’m going to get my ass kicked this week.”

  “Uh oh,” says Matt. “Good luck.”

  “Oh, it won’t be so bad,” Swenson says. “I’ll bet it goes just fine.”

  “Right,” Angela says. “Well, I guess I’d better go. I’m on my way to the drugstore. To buy earplugs to wear to class.”

  Matt glances at Swenson, uneasily. “I told her to,” Swenson says.

  “Only kidding,” Angela says. “I’m going to buy Tampax. Plus I’ve got to return this.”

  She holds up a videotape case, which Swenson takes from her. The Blue Angel. His hands shake as he returns it. He and Angela exchange a searching glance, which must be even more puzzling to Matt than it is to them.

  “Good choice,” Swenson says.

  “It’s a cool movie,” Angela says. “But a little boring.”

  “I’m surprised the video store had it,” Swenson says.

  “Are you kidding?” says Angela. “That store’s the best thing about this crappy town. So…okay. Gotta run. See you guys later.”

  Together, they watch her go. Swenson turns to Matt. “Can I ask you something?”

  Matt tenses visibly. “Sure,” he says. “No problem.”

  “Why would you want to sit here?” Swenson says. “It’s the ugliest spot in the world.”

  Matt grins with a relief so genuine and boyish that Swenson catches a flash of the person Ruby must have liked.

  “I can think here,” Matt says. “Don’t ask me why.”

  “Well,” says Swenson, “thinking’s always a good idea.”

  “And I run into the nicest people. Like you and Angela.” Swenson wishes Matt hadn’t said that.

  “Well, I’d better be going,” Swenson says, taking off down North Street. Only now does it cross his mind that he forgot to mention Ruby.

  Swenson drives around aimlessly to work off the adrenaline rush for which he can thank his meeting with Matt and Angela. Finally, he’s calm enough to go home, where he finds Sherrie napping by the wood stove. There’s an open book in her lap, her head’s tipped back. He longs to kiss the smooth white arc of her neck. Standing in the doorway, he can almost convince himself that he’s the person he wishes he were, the one whose life is still in order, the one who hasn’t yet pulled the pin on the grenade that’s going to blow his happy home sky-high.

  He doesn’t move or make a sound, but Sherrie senses his presence and opens her eyes. She’s happy to see him and at the same time, he’s pained to note, annoyed at having had her nap disrupted. “Guess who I talked to today?” Swenson says brightly.

  “I give up,” murmurs Sherrie.

  “Guess.”

  “The Nobel Prize Committee. Hey, congratulations.”

  Swenson winces. “Ouch.” His marriage is in worse shape than he imagined.

  “Sorry,” says Sherrie. “You know I get crabby when someone wakes me up.”

  “Actually, it was better than the Nobel Prize Committee.” Swenson waits a beat. “Ruby.” Now let Sherrie be sorry that she made that nasty crack. “She’s coming home for Thanksgiving.”

  Sherrie says, “You’re kidding.”

  “I wouldn’t. You know that. Not about this. Anyway, that’s the good news. The bad news is she asked for Matt McIlwaine’s phone number.”

  “Fine,” says Sherrie. “Give it to her. It’s got to be a good sign.”

  “I guess,” says Swenson. “Unless she’s coming home to tell us that she’s just recovered a memory of our having abused her in some satanic ritual.”

  Sherrie says, “That’s not funny.”

  Swenson knows that. He’s only trying to dispel the heavy weather of grief and guilt that settles in whenever Ruby’s name is mentioned.

  “She was bound to come around,” Sherrie says. “She couldn’t stay mad forever.”

  Swenson sits and watches the fire. Sherrie glances down at her lap.

  “Page one hundred and sixty.” She shuts her book. “Remind me where I was.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Jane Eyre.”

  “Why that?” Swenson manages to say.

  “Arlene was reading it. Arlene who never reads anything but supermarket romance. I guess there’s some new movie or miniseries or whatever…. I found your old copy in the den. And you know, it’s amazing. What you remember is her marrying Mr. Rochester, you forget the stuff about her being so plain and poor and furious….”

  “I should reread it,” Swenson murmurs, then pauses, staving off paranoia. He was never one of those men who believed in a conspiracy of females. But now suspicion nags at him: Arlene and Angela somehow in league, and they’ve enlisted Sherrie. A coven of vengeful harpies, their anger and resentment fueled by periodic readings of Jane Eyre.

  As soon as Swenson walks into the classroom he senses something in the air. Something vile is about to occur. What maniac invented this tort
ure, this punishment for young writers? Imagine a group of established authors subjecting themselves to this! It’s not an academic discipline, it’s fraternity hazing. And the most appalling part is that it’s supposed to helpful. The bound and gagged sacrificial lamb is supposed be grateful.

  But why is Swenson experiencing this acutely heightened compassion? Because his feelings for this particular lamb are unusually strong and complex. Meanwhile he can’t help thinking that what’s in the air isn’t merely the normal, garden-variety, classroom blood lust and angst. This is something special. Just as Angela predicted, she’s going to get her ass kicked.

  “Whose head is on the chopping block today?” Swenson asks, rhetorically.

  Angela grins at Swenson and shrugs. The others melt from the edge of his peripheral vision. Can he risk saying her name out loud? Better not even attempt it.

  “Well then,” he says, “would you like to read us a paragraph?”

  Angela’s manuscript rattles in her hands. A spasm flutters one eyelid. The others are never this scared. Swenson longs to reach over and take her hand. She doesn’t have to put her heart and soul on the line to satisfy a spoiled college kid’s whiny demand for fairness. And it’s all his fault. His feelings for her have warped the entire class.

  Angela begins to read: “Every…after…I…out…sat with the eggs.”

  It’s a good thing they’ve read it before and that they’re reading along as Angela mumbles, swallowing every other word. She swigs from her water bottle.

  “Jesus, Angela,” Carlos says. “Pull it together, okay?”

  Scowling, Angela says, “Okay. I’m starting again.”

  “‘Every night, after dinner, I went out and sat with the eggs. This was after my mother and I washed the dishes and loaded the washer, after my father dozed off over his medical journals, it was then that I slipped out the kitchen door and crossed the chilly backyard, dank and loamy with the yeasty smell of leaves just beginning to change, noisy with the rustle of them turning colors in the dark.’”