“Hey, watch, Mom,” Tommy was calling. “Watch this.” He loped across the raft (he was skinny, but on the tall side and filling out; at least he would never be a shrimp like his father), took three or four awkward bounds on the springboard, flung himself into the air and came down all arms and legs in a great splash.
“Wonderful, dear,” Janice called when his soaked head appeared again, and Wilder said “Pretty good one, Tom.
“… There’s been a change of management up there,” he went on, “and there’s a good chance they might drop McCabe-Derrickson and go with one of these new, small agencies – in which case they might very well drop the Scientist. The first week is just the distillers’ convention, and I’ll spend that just sort of glad-handing around as usual, but the second week’s the important one: that’s when I’ll have to do everything I can to persuade Northeast not to change agencies – or, if they do change, persuade them to keep on buying space in the Scientist.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following this. I’ve never really understood your business.”
“Well, to put it simply, if they drop the magazine it’ll mean a loss in personal income to me of something over six thousand a year.”
“Six thousand a year?”
She understood that, all right, and after a long and respectful silence she had only one admonition: he would be careful, wouldn’t he? Would he try to keep up with his meetings?
“Oh, hell, yes. They’ve probably got as much of an AA organization in Boston as here. Don’t worry about that.”
“As you see it doesn’t look much like a campus,” Pamela said. “It looks more like an old New England farming village or something, which is pretty funny when you consider it’s the single most expensive college in America. When my father asked why it looks so poor, they said it’s because most of the money goes into faculty – the faculty’s enormously well paid.”
“Oh.”
“These are some of the classroom buildings and the dorms,” she told him as he eased the car between two rows of white clapboard structures. “It gets prettier farther on, when we come to the Commons and the – wait! Stop! There’s Peter!” She sprang from the car and ran to embrace a scrawny boy wearing faded Levis and a new beard, which he fingered self-consciously as she made the introductions.
“… Peter’s the marvelous designer I told you about. This is John Wilder.”
Wilder expected the boy to hold out a loose hand and say “Hey, man,” or to squint past him at the car and murmur “Nice set of wheels” – he looked like that kind of kid – but instead he shook hands firmly and said “How do you do, sir,” just as the youth of Wilder’s own generation had been taught to do.
“Where are the others?” Pamela said. “Is everybody here? Are Jerry and Julian here?”
“They’re all over in P barn, Pammy; can I have a lift?”
“P barn is Peabody barn, you see,” she explained as the boy pressed shyly into the front seat, “and C barn is Carlton – that’s where you’ve built the set, isn’t it, Peter? – and L barn is—”
“They run the whole school in barns?”
“Don’t be silly; I’ve shown you the classroom buildings and the dorms. The barns are simply for – well, activities.”
Jerry and Julian sat in the big double door of P barn as if waiting to have their picture taken for the film section of a national magazine, but they got quickly to their feet as Wilder’s car pulled up.
“Come on inside,” Julian said, and they let Pamela and Wilder go first into what seemed like a primitive wooden cathedral. Most of its great space was in shadow, but there were mote-filled shafts of sun slanting down from high, small windows to make yellow rectangles on the floor. The scent of marijuana hung in the heavier, more solemn smell of ancient lumber, and Wilder had to wait until his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness before he made out clusters of men sitting on bedrolls and knapsacks against the walls. He recognized the actors from Julian’s loft, and he guessed the people he didn’t know were cameramen and technicians.
“Well,” said the big Negro who’d been hired to play Charlie. “Here’s the man.” And there were courteous little greetings from some of the others: “Hi, Mr. Wilder. Hi there, Miss Hendricks …”
Somebody handed Wilder a Styrofoam cup of red wine and he said “Thanks, that’s fine, but wait – we’ve got better stuff in the car.”
Out in the late afternoon sunshine again, under the deep rustle of lofty trees, he found he was trembling. He got the whiskey from the car, but on the way back he had to stop a few feet short of the barn door because he wanted to get his emotional bearings, to strengthen his soft knees and slow down the beating of his heart. He was totally free for the first time in more years than he could remember. He was standing on a lawn of the single most expensive college in America. He was about to return to the girl he loved and to a barnful of men for whom he was “the man.” It was a little too much for the mind and senses to absorb all at once.
“Great!” somebody said of the whiskey, and somebody else said “Trouble is we got no ice.”
“Who needs ice?”
“There’s ice in the snack bar at Commons,” Pamela said.
“Commons is locked up, Pam. Refectory’s locked too.”
“Where’re we going to eat, then?”
“Have to go down the road to Dirty Ed’s, I guess, or else blow a bundle and go to the Old Colonial.”
She looked crestfallen, but only for a second. “Well, never mind that now. Nobody’s hungry yet. Listen, Julian: you had your final rehearsal today, right? And you start shooting tomorrow?”
“Right.”
“Well then I think this might be the time for one last runthrough of the script,” she said, walking out into the middle of the floor to address them all, and Wilder noticed something aggressive in the fit of her tight white slacks. For a moment she seemed like a bossy little rich girl telling the other children how to play. He was in love with her, but he had discovered there were times when she wasn’t very likable. “Jerry can read the camera directions,” she was saying, “and the actors can read their parts. That way we can all—”
At least three of the men groaned, and the others showed by their faces that they thought it was a very poor idea.
“No,” Wilder said, “come on, Pamela; these guys’ve been working all day.”
She turned on him with bright eyes. “Well, can’t we at least have a meeting?”
“How do you mean, a ‘meeting’?”
“Get some chairs,” she said, “and sit everybody down, with Julian in charge, and have a discussion. That way, if anybody has any problems, we can get them settled now. I mean this is our last chance – we’re shooting tomorrow.”
And probably because she looked so helpless – or because she was the only woman there – they all complied. Lights were turned on, folding chairs were drawn from some recess in the barn and set up in a ragged half-circle, and a kind of “meeting” came to order.
“Okay,” Julian said. “Has anybody got any problems or anything?”
Nobody did, which caused embarrassed smiles around the group, until the man playing Charlie got to his feet. “Something’s been bugging me about my part all along,” he said, “and I’ve just now figured out what it is. Charlie’s the only Negro in the cast – with the exception of the little faggot kid – the only Negro in the cast who speaks what white people call Perfect English. All the others talk like stereotype down-home niggers, and I object to that. On racial grounds.”
Julian turned to Jerry for an answer, and Jerry looked confused. “Well, Clay,” he said, blinking and tucking his forelock behind one ear with nervous fingers, “it strikes me that Charlie speaks pretty much the same way you do.”
“Shee-it. Look, man, I’m an actor. That’s my trade. I had to go to school and study this Perfect English. I’ve played Othello with white kids who had to learn British accents for the same reason. That’s not the point. The point is, this cat Charl
ie’s a nurse. Where’d he study, and what for? What’s his excuse?”
“Well,” Jerry said, “maybe Mr. Wilder can help us there.”
And Wilder was scared. All the Negroes in the barn were looking at him. “First of all, Clay – I’m afraid I don’t remember your last name—”
“Oh, you’re afraid? Well, I’m afraid I don’t remember your first name, Mr. Wilder.”
“John.”
“Braddock.”
“First of all, Mr. Braddock, I don’t agree that Charlie speaks Perfect English. He speaks neutral English, or rather neutral American – the kind of accent telephone operators and radio announcers use. Sure he’s only a nurse, but he’s been in charge of all these lunatics every day for a good many years, and maybe he’s developed that manner of speech as the best way of – you know – maintaining authority. Does that make any sense?”
“Some,” Clay Braddock said. “Yeah, that makes some sense.”
And when the talk had moved on to other things Pamela hugged Wilder’s arm – a little too vigorously, he thought – and whispered “That was wonderful. You know what you did? You just saved practically the whole movie.”
“I don’t have a problem,” said the man playing Spivack – or “Klinger” as he was called in the script. “Far from it; I’m in love with my part. I just want to take this opportunity to thank you, Mr. Wilder. I never did get a chance to thank you properly in New York. It’s an absolutely exquisite part, and it’s perfect for me.” He was all in white, as if ready for tennis – white shirt and shorts, white socks and sneakers. “I don’t mean just professionally, though it’s certainly that too, but in a personal sense. I’ve been in analysis for three years, you see – deep analysis – and I can’t imagine a more cathartic experience. Klinger could be my breakthrough: this caustic, sarcastic, egomaniacal creature who loathes the very word ‘psychiatrist’ – oh, and by the way I think it’s marvelous that we never do find out what brought him to the ward in the first place – and the subtle suggestion of incestuous feelings for his sister; it’s all just perfect. Perfect.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Wilder said, not looking at him. “But I think it’s Jerry you ought to thank.”
“Oh, I have, I have – both for writing the part so beautifully and for hiring me. It’s just that I feel an enormous gratitude to you, too, because it was you who conceived the role. Oh, you look embarrassed. Have I embarrassed you?”
“I move the meeting be adjourned,” Julian said, and there was a great scraping of chairs.
Wilder found a place in the shadows where he and Pamela could sit and drink warm whiskey, but it wasn’t long before Julian came over, bringing Jerry and Peter behind him.
“You people want to see the set?” he asked. “Peter’s worked his ass off on it; thought you might at least want to look it over.”
All five of them, in two cars, rode out across the darkening campus to C barn, where Julian flicked on many lights. At first all Wilder could see was a maze of raw wallboard, but Julian was quick to guide them through the first opening. “If you’ll come this way you’ll see what we’ve done – tried to do anyway. We’re shooting in black and white, of course, so the colors don’t matter. Here’s your corridor. I know you’ll say it’s too short, but don’t worry. A camera can make thirty feet look like sixty if you use it right. Same goes for the bunks. We’ve only got eight bunks, but I can give an illusion of five or six times that many. Peter got the bunks from this home for retarded kids they’re tearing down upstate; then he put hinges on ’em and went to a scrap-metal yard for the chains and the grids. Look.” He slammed two bunks against the wall, clamped them, and drew the grid across them. “That look right? Sound right?”
“It’s fine; fine.”
“And here’s your padded cells. The padding was another of Peter’s inspirations; borrowed it from the gym here at school. Look all right?”
“Looks fine.” But Pamela and Peter weren’t there, and he had begun to wonder where they were.
“And here’s one of your windows. You stand here, I’ll go around and light it, then you tell me if the light’s right.”
It was; either an early grey morning or a late grey afternoon.
“… and as for your mess hall, if you’ll just come through here …”
“Fine,” he kept saying. “Where’d you get the benches?”
“Peter borrowed ’em from the library. And here’s your front door, with the cop’s stool, and here’s Charlie’s KEEP OUT door …”
It was all fine, but where was Pamela?
“… Oh, and here,” Julian said. “Come over this way. Here’s your Jerk-off City.”
It was a perfect replica of that loathsome alcove; and there they were, Pamela and Peter, sitting cross-legged on a single dirty mattress and sharing a joint.
“What’s the deal?” he asked her. “Don’t you want to see the set?”
“I’m too tired,” she said. “Besides, I don’t have to see it – I know Peter’s done everything beautifully.”
“Yeah, well, that’s true. He has.”
“And anyway I’m starving. Can’t we please go have dinner now?”
Wilder drove for what seemed many miles to a restaurant where tough, expensive steaks were served by waiters dressed in the tight knickerbockers and white stockings of Revolutionary times
“… Oh, hey, Pam,” Jerry said with his mouth full. “I forgot to tell you. Guess who’s on campus?”
“Who?”
“God.”
“No!”
“Yup. Old God the Father himself. Went to England for the summer, got bored and came home early. He’s holed up in his old study. I told him about the picture; he said he’d like to meet John and all that. Said he’d especially like to see you again.”
“Did he really? Oh, I’d love to see him. You think it’s too late?”
“I don’t think he’d mind. I’ll call him first.”
Wilder finally managed to swallow a stringy piece of meat that had threatened to gag him. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on? Who’s ‘God,’ for God’s sake?”
“Oh, he’s just the most wonderful, wonderful man,” Pamela explained. “He’s probably the most serene and learned and beautiful person I’ve ever known. He’s a philosophy professor. His name’s Nathan Epstein, and he’s a widower, and he’s about – I don’t know; sixty? We used to call him ‘God’ and ‘God the Father’ because we adored him so much. You’ll see why.”
“Did he know you called him ‘God’?”
“Oh, of course not; he’d have been terribly embarrassed. That was just a silly undergraduate thing of ours.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure of that, Pam,” Peter said. “It wasn’t only our class that called him that. I imagine the kids’ve been doing it ever since he first came here – ten, twelve years ago.”
And Jerry came back from the phone to announce that Mr. Epstein would be happy to see them in half an hour.
His house on the outskirts of the campus was very small, the picture of a lonely scholar’s retreat, and when he opened the door it turned out that he was small too – about Wilder’s size. His thick white hair was disheveled and he wore a sweater so old and raddled that it seemed ready to fall off his back, but his face did look wise – like some commercial artist’s vision of a Supreme Court justice.
“Pamela!” he said, opening his arms for an embrace in which she melted. “My little Nietzsche scholar. Have I ever told you,” he asked the others over her shoulder, “that this young lady wrote one of the best term papers on Nietzsche I’ve ever read? And Jerry; Julian; Peter—” he managed to shake hands without releasing his grip on Pamela – “How nice of you to come. And you’re Mr. Wilde, right? Or is it Wilder?”
“Wilder. Good to meet you, Mr. Epstein.”
Only then did he let Pamela out of his arms, and she seemed reluctant to leave. “I’ve heard so much about your film project, and I must say it sounds fascinating. Won’t you all co
me into the other room? We’ll have some coffee and a little brandy.”
The other room was his library, or study. All four walls were packed with books – more books even than Janice owned, and more impressive because only a few of them had bright jackets: the rest were old and dark. There was a desk, too, with piles of manuscript and a portable typewriter and a rack of well-used pipes (unlike Paul Borg, Mr. Epstein knew how to smoke a pipe), and there were enough chairs for everyone to sit down while he went about the business of the brandy bottle and the glasses. Rooms like this, and men like this, always gave Wilder a fresh sense of pain and loss at having flunked out of college.
“Well, Jerry,” Epstein was saying, “I’m sure screen-writing is a challenge, but I do hope you’ll get back to fiction before long. That Atlantic story was really striking. And Peter: I must say I’m a bit disappointed in you, designing a film set when you could be off somewhere painting. Joe Barrett told me – Well, never mind what he told me; surely you must know what a talented painter you are.”
“I’ll get back to it, Mr. Epstein; it won’t go away. I just got hooked on this movie. Julian talked me into it.”
“Yes, well, I imagine our friend Julian could talk anyone into anything. And you, sir,” he said, approaching Wilder with the brandy bottle. “Would you care to tell me something about your – your film? I understand it’s set in a public psychiatric ward. Bellevue, is it?”
“That’s right. I had all this material on my hands, you see, and I’ve always liked movies; this Bellevue stuff seemed right for a good experimental movie, that’s all.”
“Mm. Are you a psychologist, Mr. Wilder?”
Only then was it clear that Epstein didn’t know the truth. The kids hadn’t told him; and why should they? Why should anyone tell anyone? But almost before he knew what he was doing, he told the truth himself: “No. Actually, I was a patient in Bellevue.”
Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics) Page 12
