Summer at the Lake

by Andrew M. Greeley

  She looked at me intently. “I believe you, Leo. Promise me you won’t take any chances.”

  “This time I know there’s enemies out there. And I have even more to lose than the last time.”

  “Reinterpret the past and thus change it?”

  “More than that now, Jane my love. Eliminate the evil that has imprisoned both of us for so long. Then the past will be transparent and we can take an honest look at the future.”

  “Fair enough,” she glanced at her watch, “now I really have to get back to work. The rules of the game dictate that the yank be punctual even if the micks are not.”

  “I’ll get the bill.”

  “It’s on my account.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “This is my turf. On my turf I pay. On your turf, you pay. If you ever invite me out to that hightoned faculty club of yours, you can pay.”

  We rose to leave.

  “Count on it, Jane. And thanks for the lunch.”

  “Anyway, I make more money than you do.”

  “I doubt it. Your salary from your company might be more than mine from the University. However, when I came home from Korea, I put my back pay and my disability pension every year since into a commodities account. I don’t have to work a day for the rest of my life.”

  “Why do you work?”

  “I kind of like it.”

  “Being provost?”

  We left the Drake and walked into the solid wall of heat on Oak Street.

  “It’s not really work the way most working people would define work. I wanted to come back to Chicago and the offer was not to be a professor but to be a professor who was also provost. So I took it.”

  “You think you’re worth more than I am?”

  “Arguably. We can postpone that subject till a later encounter.

  “When you can see the perspective from inside me?”

  We both giggled. “You’re not going to let me forget that?”

  “Certainly not…Why did you want to come back to Chicago?”

  We waited for the traffic light on Michigan Avenue to change.

  “I had some unfinished business,” I said, knowing it for the first time. “A tall, striking, bossy woman whom I still wanted. I wasn’t about to break up a happy marriage. But I heard it wasn’t happy and was probably nearing an end…”

  “A certain witch from Philadelphia whispered in your ear?”

  “The Good Witch of the East…So I came back to claim the woman who was by rights mine anyway.”

  The light changed. I took her arm to guide her across the street because she was paying no attention to the traffic turning from Oak.

  “Red-haired buccaneer scheming to carry off the woman.”

  “That’s your erotic fantasy, Jane my love.”

  “Romantic.”

  “I’ll grow a beard if you want.”

  “That would be cute but you don’t have to.”

  In front of her shop, I kind of apologized. “I’m sorry if I’ve been offensive, Jane.”

  “You couldn’t possibly offend me, Lee.” She touched my cheek with her fingers. “I’m flattered by everything you say, even if I have to keep the banter up. I just need time, a lot of time.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But I still mean to have you by the end of the summer.”

  As I signaled for a cab, however, I watched her delicately shaped rear end disappear inside Clare Travel, and hungered for it and the rest of her; I thought that I wouldn’t wait more than a month.

  It was a pleasant intention with which to console myself as, my head buzzing from the two drinks, I drowsed on the ride back to the University and my confrontation with the biologist.

  Jane

  I walked unsteadily into their office. Nessa and Nulla, the intelligent young women with the appealing Irish lilt and the cute Irish boobs, I had hired to operate and decorate my office, did not even bother to hide their curiosity. Who is he? He is so cute. Sweet too. And funny. Damn matchmakers.

  They also knew that, for the first time since they had come to work for me, I was tipsy.

  No point in pretending.

  An old friend, girls. Nothing more elaborate than a friendly lunch.

  They snickered skeptically. They would watch me with probing eyes for weeks to come.

  I sank into my chair. Why with all the terrible things we had talked about did I feel so elated?

  I shouldn’t feel elated. The bastard had not offered the slightest apology for running out on me. He had apologized, quite intelligently, for being an asshole when he came back from Korea. But not for being an asshole before he left. Somehow he doesn’t see the problem. Blind shit!

  Why so much stuff about blame and guilt? I don’t know what his excuse is, but I know mine. I don’t want to run the risk of being inadequate like I was for Phil. Lee thinks I’m gorgeous now, but what if I’m a failure in bed? I’m not sure I can be anything else. Otherwise I’d have let him have me back in June.

  So despite all that, like a big wave at Oak Street Beach, Grace has hit me over the head, clobbered me, knocked me to my knees, and is threatening to drown me.

  I melt when he looks at me with that reverent hunger. Absolutely melt. If I’m not careful some day soon he’ll simply carry me off and I’ll go along with only the mildest of protests, none of which I will believe.

  It is a pleasant romantic fantasy after a lunch at which I drank too much. Erotic fantasy.

  I need time to think it out. I don’t want another man in my bed. He’s right though. I’ll probably have one eventually. I should say it might as well be him and let it go at that.

  I’ll never find a better one.

  I’m afraid I guess. Afraid of grace. Grace. Whatever.

  If he had suggested that we go to my apartment just around the corner I would have said yes. Some day—soon—he will suggest something like that and I will gladly agree.

  But then what if I’m a dud in bed? I couldn’t stand to fail a second man.

  I’m damaged goods and I know it. I don’t want to be damaged again.

  What will happen when he finally makes his move? Will I resist like I did that night he proposed to me? Will I lose my nerve again? Or will I be generous like I want to be?

  Why do I have to make up my mind at all?

  I can’t think too well when I’m drunk.

  I should concentrate on those terrible things that happened. Who killed our friends? Who sent him to Korea and ended our love?

  He thinks he ought to find out. Reinterpret the past to make the present better.

  Male bullshit. The only thing that really matters is whether he’s inside me like he said in that Freudian slip of his.

  Maybe that’s female bullshit. Maybe we have to find out so they can’t hurt us again. Maybe the record has to be set straight.

  I just thought of something. I can’t remember what it was. It was terrible. The worst thing yet. Truly awful.

  I have to remember what it was.

  I don’t know what to do. Yet I feel happier than I have been in years. Not much sign of the woman who was so close to suicide a few weeks ago, is there?

  Silly bitch.

  But I still don’t know what to do.

  I must remember that petrifying picture I saw in imagination for just a second or two.

  It’s important.

  And dangerous.

  Leo

  My tipsy condition was not a problem in my conversation with the biologist. There was only one subject about which he wished to talk—himself. I needed only listen and nod occasionally. In between nods I could give myself over to semi-inebriated fantasies about Jane—a pleasant enough exercise, God knows.

  When he had left, being somewhat more sober, I phoned the dean.

  “Your friend was just here.”

  “No friend of mine…What do you think, Leo?”

  “What do you think?”

  Iron rule of the provost game: buck questions back to lower levels wheneve
r you can.

  “I’m not sure he’s as good as he thinks he is or as his allies in the Department think he is. His sort of narcissism gets in the way unless you are a complete genius and I’m not sure he is quite that.”

  “The Department?”

  “Some of them are having second thoughts. Right now the sentiment is that they still want him but without the responsibility of making the decision.”

  “OK. I will tell you this: if you receive any sort of recommendation from the Department and transmit it to me, even without your endorsement, I’ll pass it on to the president with an annotation that I personally feel he’ll be disruptive but it’s the decision of the Department and we must honor it and put the responsibility on their shoulders.”

  Rule two for the day: don’t let them buck it back up to you.

  “I am to convey this reaction to them?”

  “Why else would I be giving it to you?”

  He chuckled. “I see the picture, Leo. Very clever. Very Irish.”

  “Naturally.”

  “They’ll have to live with their choice, huh?”

  “And they’ll not be likely to get a line for another distinguished appointment for a long time. So they’d better make up their minds carefully this time.”

  “Got you.”

  “What bothers me most,” I added, with less prudence than I usually display, “is that ten years ago he and his kind were proclaiming that they were the new breed of academics who were going to reform not only the academy but the whole country. Now all they care about is their own careers—and they’re still as self-righteous as ever.”

  “Isn’t that how most radical academics end up?”

  So we’d both been imprudent.

  In the end my strategy didn’t work. The “young guard” in the Department turned the offer to this man into a crusade for their own influence and power. The Department insisted even though it would be years before they got a shot at another potential Nobel Prize winner if he were appointed.

  It was, as my father would have said, their funeral.

  But a funny thing happened. The dean went on vacation. Then I was away for a while. Then the president had to attend a meeting in Brussels. By the time we had put together all the pieces of a complicated offer (and funny how complicated it became) Leeland Stanford Junior Memorial University had made him an even better offer, which he promptly accepted.

  There was some muttering among the “young guard” about the slowness of administrative processes at the University. But not much because even they were happy that he didn’t arrive in their china shop.

  Was this delay an accident?

  Is the Pope a Unitarian?

  Even a clever provost who was not Irish would have done the same thing. Maybe not so deviously perhaps.

  Right after my conversation with the Dean, while I was thinking of calling Megan, Mae, my matronly black administrative assistant walked in.

  “A Mr. Clare to see you, Doctor Kelly. Philip Clare.”

  Indeed. This was my day to strike it rich.

  I hesitated, not wanting to see the man.

  “All right, Mae,” I glanced at my watch, “but tell him I have only a few minutes.”

  “An appointment in a quarter hour. Phone call from Washington?”

  “Anything that sounds important. Make it the White House.”

  “Hi, Lee, good to see you again.” Phil Clare strode into my office as though he had seen me many times since Packy’s ordination in 1954.

  I accepted his outstretched hand.

  “Good afternoon, Phil. I’m happy to see you too.” I glanced at my watch. “I do have one of those annoying but critical phone calls coming in a few minutes. I’m sure you know what they’re like.”

  Smooth, huh?

  The years had not been gentle to him. He looked ten years older than I was instead of two—and a rough ten years at that. He’d lost some of his hair, put on weight, and gave the impression of being seedy, despite his expensive clothes. Too much drink. Too many women. Yet he somehow managed to radiate the same old genial affability. Even prepared for it, I was close to being drawn into his trap.

  “Do I ever? I won’t take more than a couple of minutes. Say, nice place you got here, expensive office.”

  The University provides the provost with the kind of office that would be appropriate for a mildly successful commodities broker who thought that solid and expensive dark furniture and deep colors meant elegance and who was content with secondhand materials left over from his predecessor’s term. Trouble was that all the stuff was new. I had held out for a house for the provost and had been assured by the trustees that they would keep the matter “under consideration.” It had been a mean and stubborn ploy on my part because I didn’t know what I’d do with a house of my own. But, mean and stubborn person that I am, I would keep pestering them about it—as a matter of principle (which is what we academics say when we’re being gratuitously nasty). So we had settled for a condo and a totally refurbished office.

  “You should see the president’s office,” I said to Phil.

  “I suppose you’ll be a university president some day, won’t you Lee?”

  “Possibly. If I want it and about that I’m not sure.”

  “Yeah, well we’re all really proud of you. Everyone knew that you’d be a great success at something.”

  So his wife—ex-wife—had said. I would not argue with him that being a university provost was not all that impressive an accomplishment.

  “Thank you.”

  “We sure did have a lot of fun in the old days at the Lake, didn’t we?”

  “Those were great times.”

  “Get back there much?”

  What the hell did he want, this miserable bastard, who could not remain faithful to one of the most beautiful women in the world, not even on his honeymoon?

  “Only a couple of weekends. Say hello to my old friends the Keenans.”

  “Great people, really great.”

  “I might buy a house up there,” I added for pure mischief. “My teenage daughter Laura loves the place.”

  Laura’s mother had rejected a home on the Cape because she didn’t want “sand all over your floors and stupid people visiting you on Sunday afternoons.” So it was. I might indeed eventually buy a house up there. Right now I intended to marry into one. Your house, Phil. Your bedroom, which you dishonored so often.

  “Yeah, I have a kid about that age. Lucy. Great kid.”

  Lucianne.

  “We sure were surprised when you came back from the dead,” he continued. “That was great news.”

  “I was surprised to know that I was dead. You can’t really enjoy resurrection unless you know that you are dead.”

  What hell was he up to? Was he stupid as I once thought or slick as I now believed possible? Or some weird combination of both? Had he lived a half century manipulating or trying to manipulate the world as he had beguiled his father?

  “I suppose so, I suppose so,” he laughed. “It must have been an interesting experience.”

  How much did he know about my erratic pursuit of his wife?

  “I see you’re wearing your ribbon.”

  People do notice it.

  “Yes, I don’t wear it all the time.”

  “I’d sooner wear this medal than be President of the United States,” he said wistfully.

  “That was him.” I nodded toward the picture of Harry Truman on the wall. “Ike didn’t say it when he presented it to me, but I figure they gave it to me when Truman was on the bridge.”

  “Well,” he shifted in his chair and crossed his legs, “I suppose the Keenans told you that Jane and I are having a few problems.”

  “They said you had sued for divorce.”

  “Well,” he shifted again, “that’s not altogether true.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean, you know what women are like.” He sighed in a tone of a man talking man-to-man, about a problem with wives that
all men understood. “She kept accusing me of playing around, and I thought I’d put a stop to it.”

  “Ah?”

  “Mind you, I haven’t been perfect, not by a long shot. But I still love her and always will.”

  He sounded so sincere that if I didn’t know better I would have almost believed him. Maybe he almost believed himself. But what was the point of it? He couldn’t be asking me to plead his case just as he had a couple of decades ago, could he?

  “I’m told the divorce is final.”

  “Yeah, that’s true I guess. But I think we could still get back together if she’d only talk to me for an hour or so. You see, I’ve got a little legal problem, nothing serious. Some guys I know got into a difficulty with some stock market stuff and implicated me. I didn’t know what the hell was going on and still don’t. I won’t have to do time or anything like that, but it’s kind of a mess, you know?”

  “I think I read something about it in the Journal.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read there.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Anyway, it’s sure hard to fight this kind of shit when you don’t have your woman at your side.”

  “I can imagine that.”

  He truly did want me to plead his case with Jane. Same damn thing. Moreover, while I knew that I wouldn’t do it, just at that moment I felt sympathetic towards him and even eager to help him.

  Damn clever.

  “These things cost a hell of a lot of money too. I mean I’ve got a lot of reserves but nothing liquid. Jane could be a big help to me in every way. After this is all over if she still wants to be free, well I won’t stand in her way.”

  He didn’t want Jane so much as he wanted her money to pay legal fees. He couldn’t get at the money in the divorce settlement so he wanted to get it by exploiting her sympathy. And mine.

  “As I understand it, she’s free now.”

  “Not in the eyes of God or the Catholic Church. She wants an annulment, I guess. They tell me that I can help her get that.”

  Ah, that was the trick. If Jane stood by him, especially with the money, he wouldn’t stand in the way of an annulment. Nor in my way either. Blackmail of a highly particular sort.

  He was neither naive nor dumb. This was a very clever if vicious ploy.