Truth and Consequences

by Alison Lurie

  It was the first, but not the only intimation Alan had had in the last week that the public and larger disaster had somehow made his private one seem petty and egocentric. It was as if it were willfully selfish of him to have a bad back at a time like this, and he ought to shape up and forget about it. No one had said this directly, but Alan imagined he could see it in people’s faces, for example in the face of Delia Delaney.

  It had been stupid of him to think that Delia was as interested in him as he was in her. In the past he had been her equal: and at the party on Labor Day she had seemed to see him this way still, to recognize that they were two of a kind, both of them unique and superior beings. Afterward he had been inspired to take out his drawings of architectural follies and work on them, and also to restart his exercise program.

  But in fact Delia’s warmth and encouragement had probably been merely charm and good manners. Even before the disaster he had seen almost nothing more of her. Her door at the Center was usually shut, with a DO NOT DISTURB sign, presumably stolen from some hotel, on the doorknob. Once the door had been open and he had paused in it to say hello, but Delia was on the phone and merely smiled and fanned the air with one smooth white arm, in the gesture of someone waving away distraction. If he had been her equal, she would not have done that. But he was not her equal anymore: he was a semi-invalid has-been, while she was still beautiful and famous and well. Since then, his impulse to work had gradually faded. When he had looked at his drawings this morning they seemed mere piles of scribbled irrelevant paper, and his mind was empty and dark.

  Next week Alan would have to give his useless postponed lecture, to which probably almost no one would come. If he could have canceled it he would have done so. Religious architecture no longer interested him, and he was sure it would interest his students and colleagues even less. Jane had tried to convince him that this was not true, but her effort, though no doubt well-intentioned, had ended yesterday in one of the most unpleasant conversations they had ever had.

  In fact, things had been bad between them from the afternoon of September 11, when Jane was unbearably late picking him up, because she was consoling a campus acquaintance whose brother-in-law worked in the World Trade Center. She had let Alan stand there for half an hour in front of the building, in increasingly severe pain, so that finally he had to lie down on the dusty grass next to the driveway. When he asked why she hadn’t at least called him, Jane replied that she had tried, twice, but nobody had answered the phone. (She was probably telling the truth, he admitted now. The Fellows had been asked to answer after four rings, in case Susie was away from her desk, but Alan suspected that they did not always do so, and in fact he himself never did so. For a while Selma Schmidt had taken on this task, but then she had rebelled. “I am not a switchboard operator,” she had protested, “but because I am a female the rest of you assume that is my job.”)

  “Even so,” Alan had told Jane, “you could have driven around to the Center and told me you’d be late. You know it just about kills me to stand up for more than fifteen minutes at a time.”

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Jane had said, with an unusually cool smile. “But you know, darling, you aren’t dead, and Becca’s sister’s husband probably is.”

  Well, the way I feel now, I wish I were dead instead of him, Alan had thought, but did not say.

  At supper the night before last, when he spoke again of canceling his lecture or at least postponing it further, Jane had pointed out that the posters had already gone up, and said she agreed with Bill Laird that the lecture should be given as soon as possible, and that it would help to raise morale at the Center and on campus. Alan had said that was ridiculous; that essentially his topic, and he, were irrelevant in the present situation. She was treating him as if he were a small child, he said, she was fibbing to make him feel better.

  Jane, setting down her mug of Sunburst C herb tea, had wearily and indignantly denied this, and in turn suggested that in the present situation it was important not to give in to defeatism and self-pity. Alan had then, against his better judgment, suggested that considering recent world events, people who thought like her were either fools or hypocrites. He had accused these theoretical people of a blinkered optimism, and cast doubt on their ability to see the world as it really was. Jane had choked up with tears, shoved her half-eaten slice of apple pie away, and run out of the house into the vegetable garden, where for the next half hour she vindictively pulled up carrots in the gathering dusk. Later that evening they had exchanged formal apologies, but the phrases “defeatism and self-pity” and “fools or hypocrites” continued to reverberate through the house like the distant echoes of an ugly gong, and communication between them had remained tense ever since.

  Over the past year Alan had in fact sometimes found Jane’s optimism foolish or hypocritical, though at times comforting. Now it seemed almost disgusting. He also found himself and his continued existence disgusting. Thousands of strong, healthy, productive people had died in the disaster, while he, an aging unproductive invalid, survived. He suspected that rules had been bent and letters written to get him this fellowship, to provide him with a generous income and a beautiful place to work, but the beauty meant nothing to him and he was not working. Also, every day when he entered or left the Center he was reminded of the irony involved. Five years ago, when he had been consulted about the remodeling of the Unger mansion, he had been impatient at learning of the handicap access requirements for all new university construction. He had grumbled about the need to install a ramp to the back door and an elevator that spoiled the classically Victorian lines of the hall. The jealous gods, who were clearly on the side of the handicapped (after all, Hephaestus, patron of architects, was lame himself), had heard him, and now Alan used this authorized equipment every day.

  As, gazing out the window of his office and groaning from time to time with pain, he revolved these unpleasant thoughts and memories, there was a knock on his half-closed door.

  “Yes?” He turned. Delia Delaney stood there in a gauzy lavender dress and sandals, with her hair in a long braid. “Oh, hello.”

  “Please, you’ve got to help me,” she said in a tremulous half whisper. “I need to hide somewhere.”

  “You need to hide?” Alan repeated. “From what?”

  “It’s this awful reporter from the local newspaper. He’s pursuing me for a statement about the World Trade Center.” She put a soft white trembling hand on his arm. “Please, can I stay here, just for a little while?”

  “Well—yes, all right.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Delia came into the room and shut the door behind her, letting out a deep soft sigh that smelled of oranges. “He’s downstairs right now. I can’t bear to see him. Besides, he’s brought a photographer, and I look frightful today.”

  This last statement was, if not a lie, a delusion. With her thick golden braid, from which gilt tendrils like sparks escaped in every direction, her flushed face, and her wide, pale gray eyes, Delia looked like a frightened but beautiful schoolgirl.

  “That’s them now,” she whispered, gesturing toward the hall, from which steps and loud voices could be heard, followed by knocking and shouts:

  “Ms. Delaney? Ms. Delaney? Are you in there?”

  “Please, could you lock your door?” Delia whispered.

  “Okay.” As quietly as he could manage, Alan crossed the room and turned the key.

  “Oh, thank you.” She gave a warm, breathy sigh.

  “You know, you could have locked your own door,” he whispered.

  “No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t have borne it to be in there while they were yelling and pounding.”

  Out in the hall, there was more loud, half-audible conversation, and then the sound of steps receding. “They’re going away,” Alan whispered.

  “Maybe. Or maybe they think I’m in the washroom, and they’re going to wait downstairs for me to come out. Please don’t make me leave now.” She looked up at Alan, her silver eyes swimmin
g with unshed silver tears. Why, she’s terrified, he thought.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “He’s hateful, that reporter. You haven’t seen him, he’s a great big ugly young man like a rhinoceros, with heavy legs and feet, he frightens me so.”

  “I think I have seen him,” Alan said. “Isn’t he called Tom something?”

  “How should I know? But it’s not fair, this is the second time he’s come after me.” She gazed up at Alan with a blurry, frightened smile. “Yesterday he tramped right into my room with his big rhinoceros feet, when my mind was full of all those people falling through the air, the size of flies, with the smoke pouring out above them and around them, the air full of flies that were human beings. I almost told him that, but thank God I stopped myself. Instead I said I was too upset to talk. So then he asked if he could come back today. I didn’t say no, I was afraid to make him angry. But I’m not going to speak to him. There’s nothing I can say that won’t either sound stupid or get me into trouble.”

  “How could it get you into trouble?”

  “You can always get into trouble if you give an original answer to a journalist.” Delia sighed, and subsided onto the upholstered window seat with a flutter of lavender gauze. “They’re looking for that; they want shock and scandal. It’s especially dangerous to have an aesthetic take on any disaster. Even if you’re as horrified as everyone else, they’ll make you sound callous.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alan said. “When I talked to the guy from the paper he kept asking me what I thought of the World Trade Center as an architect. The truth is I didn’t think much. It was a boring design, you know, architecturally uninteresting and out of proportion with its environment. But I definitely didn’t say that. The architecture is not the point, I said. The point is that over three thousand people are dead. I could tell it wasn’t what he wanted.”

  “No,” Delia agreed. “I expect he wanted you to say that the World Trade Center was a tragic loss to American architecture.”

  “Maybe. Anyhow he kept after me and kept after me, and finally I told him that it was a significant structure, one that could only have appeared at this time in history and in this country.”

  “Perfect.” Delia laughed lightly. “I wish I had your presence of mind.”

  Across the hall, a ringing began. “That’s your phone, I think,” Alan said.

  “I’m not going to answer it. It will be the rhinoceros again, or some other awful animal.”

  The ringing stopped; then it commenced again in Alan’s office.

  “If they’re asking for me, don’t say I’m here. Please.” She gave him a frightened smile.

  “All right,” Alan agreed. “Hello. . . . What? . . . Just a moment, let me go and look. . . . No, she’s not in her office.” Again, he realized, he had somehow become involved in a conspiracy with Delia Delaney.

  “Thank you,” Delia said. “That was very convincing. And the absolute truth, too. Very neat.” She gave a silvery laugh.

  “Shh, he’s probably still downstairs.”

  “But maybe he’ll go away now.” Delia stood up and moved toward the window, swaying slightly toward Alan, so close that he felt the warmth of her bare arm against his. Together they looked down through the golden, windblown leaves of the big maple. “Yep, there he goes.”

  “It’s the same guy that came to see me,” Alan said as two heavy figures crossed the lawn. “Very persistent, he was.”

  “Yes. Awful. I hate journalists, but you have to be polite to them, or they’ll destroy you. Well.” Her voice changed as she moved away, and it was as if a cold wind were blowing on him.

  She’s used me, now she’s going to leave, Alan thought. He felt an irrational disappointment and loss; and became aware again of the clawing pain in his back.

  Delia crossed the room, paused by the door, and then turned. “You’re speaking next week,” she said. “I’m going to come and hear you.”

  “Why?” Alan asked coldly.

  “Why not?”

  “Are you interested in religious architecture?”

  “I could be interested,” Delia said, smiling.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure I am anymore, since last Tuesday. Who can care about religious architecture, or any architecture, after what happened to those towers?”

  “They always reminded me of the sign for Gemini,” Delia said. “Communication, speed, restlessness, short journeys. You’re not a Gemini, are you?”

  “No.” Alan, who despised astrology, volunteered no further information. The idea came to him that Delia was spacey as well as beautiful. “You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?”

  “Oh, but I do.” Delia laughed lightly. “I believe it every Friday from two to three p.m.”

  “Really.”

  “It’s always fun trying on different faiths. Expands the mind. If you were a Gemini, for instance, you would have liked the World Trade Center better. You’d think of it as a kind of temple of commerce and communication.” She laughed again.

  “A form of religious architecture.” Alan smiled, reassured as to her basic good sense. “You know, I have thought something like that. That you could see skyscrapers as the capitalist equivalent of church steeples. The visible connection of business to its god.”

  “In that case, the World Trade Center must have been the temple to a twin god,” Delia said.

  “Castor and Pollux, then, probably. They were violent gods, in charge of the city of Rome and thunder and storms.”

  “I thought they were supposed to protect travelers. But I guess they didn’t always.”

  “Apparently not this time,” Alan said. “Too bad I can’t say that in my lecture.”

  “You can’t say it right out.” Delia gave him a sideways look. “But you could suggest it.”

  “Yes. Maybe I could.” He smiled, realizing the possibilities.

  “So I’ll look forward to your talk.” She turned the knob, but the door, being locked, did not open.

  “Sorry, I’ll get that.” He crossed the room. Again he stood so close to Delia that he could see all the separate sparkling gilt tendrils that escaped from her braid, and breathe her scent of orange peel.

  “Thank you for taking me in,” she half whispered, putting her soft white hand on his arm. Then suddenly she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. The sensation was light but very hot, as if a burning butterfly had brushed his cheek. Before Alan could react, Delia was gone.

  He did not try to go after her. Instead he turned back toward the drafting table he now used as a stand-up desk, and the draft of his lecture. This morning it had lain there dead, but now the sheets of paper seemed to glow gently, and new sentences had begun to appear in his mind.

  SEVEN

  The automatic door of the supermarket shut behind her with its rubbery swish, and Jane was surrounded by a blast of clammy air, at least twenty degrees colder than the golden autumn outside. In her sleeveless flowered cotton dress she felt chilled almost at once, and also angry. Not only at the store, but at her husband Alan, whose pathetic request, as usual disguised as a question, had separated her from what might be one of the last warm Saturdays in her garden.

  “Are you going to the grocery this morning?” he had asked as she headed for the back door, carrying her garden basket and a trowel. “Because if you are, I need a bag of prunes and a couple bottles of prune juice. And if you have the time, I’d like a box of Fleet Enemas from the drugstore.” Yes, he had admitted, he was constipated again, in fact very constipated, and yes, he was very uncomfortable.

  Naturally Jane had said that she was going to the grocery and would have time to stop at the drugstore. She had put down her basket and taken off her gardening hat and gloves, and hastened to make this statement true.

  When Alan was in pain, which was still almost always, his needs took precedence over hers. That was natural and inevitable, but it was also annoying. But it was useless and also mean to give in to her annoyance, to let it ruin her
day and also Alan’s if she wasn’t careful. I must try to be a good person, even if I’m really not, she reminded herself, as she often did now. He is in constant and awful pain, and I am not in pain.

  Anyhow the current annoyance was nearly over. She’d already been to the drugstore and in twenty minutes she’d be back in her garden, picking ripe tomatoes and cutting some of her basil for pesto and covering the rest in case there was an early frost tonight. But making pesto was selfish, since Alan now wouldn’t eat anything that obviously contained garlic. Since his illness began he had also declared a distaste for cucumbers, cabbage, spinach, artichokes, and zucchini (this last was a special nuisance since at this time of year Jane’s garden, like that of everyone she knew, was oversupplied with that vegetable). Once Alan had been happy to eat all these things, and also the wild dandelion greens, sorrel, purslane, and chives that she loved to gather and add to salads and soup. Now he would not even touch the splendid watercress that grew in the stream near their house. He had also recently asked Jane not to bake or buy any cookies, cakes, or ice cream, because he wanted to lose some weight. She had complied, though she sometimes concealed a chocolate bar in the drawer of her desk. Meanwhile,Alan, as if reverting to childhood, had begun to crave high-calorie snacks. When he couldn’t sleep at night he would go down to the pantry and graze; next morning a whole bag of potato chips or peanuts or dried coconut would be gone.

  What made all this worse was that it was so out of character. In the past Alan had never done anything of the sort, no more than he had ever hung around the house most of the day or constantly called for her help or wanted to know where she was going to be at every moment. Often now when she looked at the man lying on her sofa or bed or in her bathtub she almost did not recognize him. That isn’t Alan Mackenzie, she would involuntarily think: it’s some pale, fat, weak, greedy, demanding person—someone like the shabby, threatening stranger she thought she’d seen coming down the drive on that bad morning in August.