by Ann Beattie
“We’ve been discussing his depression,” Sonja said. “The new medicine he’s been taking.”
“After your call, which was certainly within your rights, and I appreciate your attempt to help in this difficult situation, Marshall—after your call, though, Susan broke several items and ordered me out of the house, and since you seemed to think it was crucial to talk to me, and since I found myself with no place to spend the night, I thought I’d drop by.”
“What has he told you?” Marshall asked Sonja, hanging his coat on the coatrack, walking into the living room intent upon giving McCallum no more pleasant a greeting than McCallum had given him. McCallum had taken the chair closest to the fire. His feet, in black socks with gold toes, were splayed on the footstool. On the table next to him was a coffee mug. Sonja went to the sofa and sat down, picking up a pillow and clutching it to her stomach.
“I think it would be a little difficult to begin at the beginning,” she said.
He was sure it would. “How’s Evie?” he said. Let the intruder see that they had other things to think about in their lives besides him. If McCallum had told her about Livan Baker, had she told him anything about their own problems? He knew Sonja. He was sure she had not.
“I don’t feel you’re on my side,” McCallum said to Marshall.
“Then what made you decide to come to my house?”
“Because I thought if our unspoken suspicion of one another could be brought out in the open we might have a real exchange.”
Marshall sank down on the sofa next to Sonja. He said to her: “You know about Livan Baker? The trip to Boston?”
“He says she’s psychotic,” Sonja said.
“It never happened?” His eyes went to McCallum.
“It didn’t happen the way she says it happened. Nor did she ever state the—how should I say?—unexpurgated version to me, only to her roommate, Timothy, who tore into my office ready to murder me and left an hour later apologizing.”
“When did Timothy do that?” Marshall said. Almost the minute he spoke, he realized how ludicrous this was, his asking after somebody who had been at the library as if he knew him.
“Days ago,” McCallum said, picking up the mug and sipping. He replaced it on the coaster. He ran his hand over his forehead. “She’s had an eating disorder since puberty,” he said. “I have, in my wallet, several hysterical notes she’s written me, accusing me of progressively more horrendous crimes. When I show you, you’ll see they’re more than a little self-incriminating. On the now disastrously mythologized Boston trip, she didn’t have proper winter clothes, and I felt sorry for her and bought her a coat and a hat. It seems this is a ‘mistake’ her godfather once made, buying her a coat and then, according to her, spreading it underneath her and screwing her on top of it the same afternoon. In Chicago, when she was nine or ten. Why she doesn’t cut up her clothes instead of eating and vomiting, I’ll leave to the experts to decide. Why men feel they should buy shivering waifs proper clothes I understand completely. Also, whether the godfather, if that’s what he was, did anything more than I did, I must also leave for them to decide, though I hope whoever they are, they will factor in my own account of the day that has now grown so monstrous in her recollection.”
“She’s apparently quite crazy,” Sonja said.
“As is my own wife, at the moment,” McCallum said. “She feels that in not telling her I had a research assistant, I have somehow made a mockery of our marriage vows. She also feels that our son, who has attention deficit disorder, is a misunderstood genius whom I, and his teachers, in collusion with the doctors, are trying to destroy, in wanting to provide him with medication that will mitigate his behavioral problems so he might sit still, keep quiet, and follow a line of thought.” He looked at Marshall. “By the way,” he said, “I agree with you. I am incapable of talking like a normal human being. When I try not to be derisive, I am inevitably derisive. Though I’ve heard the students say the same of you, Marshall. I wonder whether it might not be a pitfall of the profession.”
“Leave me out of it.”
“You’re going to spend the night, is that right?” Sonja said to McCallum. Marshall could see that Sonja realized how unstable the man was; that she was prompting him, cueing a disturbed person about what he wanted to do.
“I could go to a motel,” McCallum said, staring into the distance between the two of them.
“McCallum, it’s fine if you want to stay,” Marshall said, “but right now I’ve had enough of being dragged into your problems, and I would like to go to bed myself. Without dinner, and having just driven all the way to Livan Baker’s apartment, only to find that she’s no longer hysterical. She has reunited with her boyfriend. He’s come to visit, and she’s having a pizza with him. In the morning, when we’ve all had some rest, we can discuss this further.”
“Just like that, you believe I didn’t do it?”
“I’m not sure what you did, but Livan Baker didn’t impress me, and if you have crazy letters from her, I’m willing to consider that we’ve both been had.”
“Can it be that I’m going to have an ally?”
“You’re going to have the guest bedroom,” Marshall said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You two won’t whisper behind my back?”
“McCallum, while we whisper, you can talk to yourself and have a running commentary mocking whatever you’ve just said.”
“I did kiss her,” McCallum said wearily, getting out of the chair.
“Keep it to yourself,” Marshall said.
“But apparently the girl is quite crazy,” Sonja said, to no one in particular. She was almost out of the room, tired enough, herself, not to bother saying goodnight to McCallum as she left.
“So she’s got a boyfriend,” McCallum said, standing with his hands in his pockets as Marshall silently probed the fire, turning over one glowing log, poking the hot ash tip off another.
“Not the friendly type, either,” Marshall said.
“Sweet on Cheryl?” McCallum asked quietly.
“No,” Marshall said.
“But you did go to a bar with her.”
Marshall looked up at McCallum, surprised. “How did you know that?” he said.
“Oh, it’s all over town,” McCallum said.
It was only when McCallum smiled wickedly that Marshall realized that about that, at least, he was kidding.
“I found out during a moment of male bonding with Timothy,” McCallum said.
“You try to make yourself unlikeable, don’t you?”
“Bad self-image.”
“But the thing is, I don’t have much invested in our getting along,” Marshall said. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not looking for friends.”
“Not the currently socially approved attitude for males,” McCallum said. “Supposed to be out bonding in the woods, beating the drums.”
“McCallum,” Marshall said, “I know what things you find absurd and ironic. Is it fair to assume there are also at least a few things you think of as serious?”
“Bad self-image,” McCallum said again. “Easier to negate than to accept.”
“You kissed her?” Marshall said. The large log glowed with a core of deep orange. It was not about to burn out, and it always made him nervous to turn in when a fire was untended. “Why the hell did you kiss her?”
“You continue to ask serious questions of a man you know habitually dodges them?” “Try,” Marshall said.
“Oh, because we were walking past Boston Common and there was a bag lady on the sidewalk, poking around in a shopping cart filled with all kinds of junk. As we walked nearer I started thinking, What if that were me? What if I were standing around presiding over a heap of rubble? What if Beckett were prescient and knew his characters in their ash cans were literally what our cities would become? What if he were a simple realist slightly ahead of his time? As we passed the bag lady, she looked up and said, ‘In the summer I’m a swan boat,’ pointing to
the pond. Livan started walking faster, but I’d just been struck by the amazing idea of reincarnation, not reincarnation after death, but being one thing in one season, and another thing in another. Isn’t that true? We’re one thing in winter and another in spring. But Livan had gotten ahead of me, and I rushed to catch up with her, catching hold of her so we’d be in step again—don’t you love it?—and when I touched her sleeve she stopped, instead of walking she stopped, and do you know what? I could see the bag lady was watching. She expected to see something romantic; she expected me to kiss the lady. Then something told me that for whatever reason, Livan wanted to be kissed for the bag lady’s benefit. Then do you know what I thought? That I was an old guy, compared to Livan, and if I kissed her, the bag lady might say something terrible, and Livan might be hurt, I might be humiliated. And then the kiss just happened. The bag lady seemed to be watching for a split second, and then she lost interest. I was thinking about Boston Common in the spring, the flowers, all that green grass, the swan boats out on the lake.”
Perhaps it was the heat of the fire and the cooling temperature of the room that made Marshall shiver. Perhaps, he thought, but not likely: more likely he had realized McCallum was someone he was going to have to take seriously. Talk to longer. “Do you have classes tomorrow?” Marshall heard himself asking.
McCallum hiccupped a dry laugh. “Don’t think I’d be my bright-eyed bushy-tailed best up there at the old lectern?” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t have classes on Wednesday,” he said.
“I’m glad,” Marshall said.
“Tell the truth,” McCallum said. “You came into the house and I was the last person in the world you wanted to see, right? In all the world, I was probably the most unwelcome. Your life was going along fine until you got involved in this. You went over there, and what? You thought you could race in like a bunch of soldiers at the end of a Shakespearean play, restore order. So where does this leave us? If you’d asked me I could have told you Livan was trouble and that the only thing I had to feel guilty about was the impurity of my thoughts, the irrationality of my desires. But Marshall: I didn’t have anything else. We’re talking about a day, part of a day, taking a walk in a city. We’re talking about enjoying walking down the street when for once I was with someone who’d talk to me, not just complain about what the kid did wrong that day, someone who’d ask my opinion, who liked me. We’re talking about a grown man who suddenly perceives of a bag lady as his guardian angel because he needed a guardian angel so goddamn much: exiled from my house because there was nowhere to goddamn sit, nothing but ladder-back chairs we inherited when my mother died, the sofa carted off, taken to the junkyard because the kid had broken the frame jumping on it, a man without a sofa, and then this random person who was assigned to me through financial aid, suddenly there the two of us were in Boston, and I was listening sympathetically, as is our goddamn job, correct me if I’m wrong there. I’m listening to her tales of woe, noticing she doesn’t have a winter coat, just a windbreaker, a flimsy nylon thing, and I’m thinking that at the very least I can take her to Filene’s Basement and buy her a coat, and then the two of us can get on with things, such as research at the library. At the moment, it seemed like an epiphany: coffee; sympathy; a seventy-buck coat; a hat picked up later in the day from a street vendor. This was not done with a stiff prick, Marshall. It was done with simple good intentions. And as I say this, I don’t want you to think that I haven’t registered what you said. I heard you loud and clear when you said you weren’t looking for friends. But try to see the awkwardness of my position: how can I apologize for driving over here, bending your wife’s ear, for not going home when I should, accepting your hospitality, me sitting here like a stalled snowplow that can’t roll through another foot of muck. I’m stuck, and you two act the way friends act, even though you’re not my friends and you don’t want to be. You nevertheless extend yourselves, and the pathetic truth is, I want your goodwill. I want you to believe me when I say that what Livan says happened in Boston did not happen.”
“Let me ask you,” Marshall said. “Where do you suggest we go from here? I’m not your audience, I’m your colleague.”
“Elavil,” McCallum said, taking a bottle out of his pants pocket and turning it around in his hand like someone holding a facetted stone, turning it to catch the light. “Connotes ‘elevator,’ as if you’re ascending through space.” He plunged the bottle back in his pocket, got up abruptly, and started to walk out of the living room, the afghan he’d pulled over his shoulders slipping to the floor, his unbelted pants so loose they were almost sliding off, his shirt crushed from his having sat slumped deeply in the chair. He was just an overgrown child, Marshall thought: somebody who’d gotten in too deep, who had too many responsibilities, a person who had one too many problems.
“Right here,” McCallum said, suddenly reversing direction, holding out a folded envelope. Inside was the note from Livan Baker: a young person’s handwriting, a little red-ink drawing of heart-shaped balloons floating away above the words:
I don’t ever want to have any secrets from you. I want you to see my secrets as clearly as the things you see looking in a mirror. My secrets surround us. I have a secret for you. It’s that there’s a way we can be so close, you can be me and I can be you. I’m going to be your secret.
Love, Livan
“That’s only the most recent,” McCallum said.
“She’s written you other things along these lines? You don’t know what she’s talking about? Can’t you take this to a shrink at student health, or to the police?”
“How is that going to help me?”
“If nothing else, you could go on record that she’s, you know, unbalanced. It’s unwanted attentions, or something. To tell you the truth, I already called a friend of Sonja’s at student health a few days ago. We’ll go there tomorrow and get her advice, get this put down on the record somewhere.”
“ ‘The record’?” McCallum said. “What is ‘the record’? Is it like ‘the Force’?”
“Maybe you should take a shower and go to bed. You look awful. You can borrow a clean shirt tomorrow. Try to …”
“Look the part,” McCallum finished. “Look like somebody who isn’t a rapist and a sadist. What do you think we’re going to do? Have somebody in some position of authority write down what—a complaint, or a—maybe it’s a misgiving. Maybe you and I are experiencing misgivings about the mental state of a student at the college. And we’re going off to have the grown-ups tell us what to do.”
“I sure as hell don’t know what to do.”
“No, I don’t either,” McCallum said. He sat in a kitchen chair, ducking his head into his hands, looking up again. “You don’t think our going to student health would fan the fire? If they get in touch with her, she’s going to tell the same lies to them she’s told everybody else.”
“She’s already been there. She’s already talked to somebody, but then she freaked out and didn’t go back.” As he spoke, he began to wonder whether Livan hadn’t gone back because her story hadn’t been believed. How could Cheryl be sure, and why had he been sure, that the counsellor’s words were what had been reported? Maybe she had picked up on Livan’s deceit; maybe that was the reason Livan hadn’t returned to press her point. Maybe someone had seen through her, called her bluff. This thought made him slightly optimistic, but it wasn’t anything to tell McCallum. It was best—wasn’t it best?—to speak to student health, let them contact the dean, get this thing out in the open. Since McCallum had done nothing but kiss her, what could be the harm? At worst, he’d be reprimanded, but if Livan spread the rumor and she was believed …
“You know that scene when Redford and Newman are high up on the cliff, and Newman wants them to jump? And Redford has to say he doesn’t know how to swim? Butch Cassidy. I loved that movie: an all-time great buddy film. So tomorrow we’re going off like two characters in a buddy film. Come spring, everything will be fine again, we’ll be splashing in
the old swimming hole, right? Safe. Doesn’t sound right, does it? I don’t know if that’s really going to happen. Listen to me: I must think this is a movie, not my life. I must think we’re both just a couple of characters.”
“Well?” Sonja said, looking up from the bed, where she sat, still fully clothed. Marshall, who had finally followed her into the bedroom, was momentarily startled: for a second it seemed she had read his mind, that she wanted him to sort through the possibilities that had been going through his head and give her a definitive answer about how and where this would end. Instead of answering, he sat beside her. It was ludicrous, the amount of time and thought that had gone into these students’ problems. Anyone who’d spent any time in the profession knew that being a teacher had more than a little in common with being a doctor, and that you needed to keep professional distance. So is that what he’d tried to do—keep professional distance—in the car, outside the big house in Dover?
What else could he have done? He was offering comfort.
Kissing Cheryl Lanier?
Never again.
Truly?
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“You must be surprised he came to the house.”
“I’m astonished. We don’t—” He almost said We don’t like each other, but instead said, “We don’t know the first thing about each other. How I got dragged into this, I’m not quite sure.”
“Happens,” Sonja said.
She had begun to pull off her clothes, tossing them piece by piece to the bedside chair, missing with the sweater, scoring a hit with the pants. He stood and undressed also, tossing his shirt in the hamper, draping his pants over the doorknob, stripping down to his underwear, which he did not remove. Then he edged close to her in the bed, thankful that he had a kind, sane wife, half wondering what McCallum had said to her but too tired to ask. If he thought about McCallum, down the hall, about his having to get up and deal with the old McCallum or even the new surprisingly forthcoming McCallum, it would create such anxiety he might not be able to sleep, and as much as he didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know, he was tired, tired.
