by Alison Lurie
Jane scowled, ashamed of her own thoughts. She realized that she was becoming a really terrible person, a person who was imagining how she might commit adultery while her invalid husband was lying at home in pain.
In fact, Alan had not complained quite as much lately about his pain, but this had not made him more pleasant. He was still, or even more, preoccupied, self-centered, demanding, and distant. He had begun to treat Jane as if she were hired help: he no longer always thanked her for anything she did, or apologized for his requests. His mind was fixed more and more on the coming exhibition of his art in New York, and the new job he had taken on of designing a ruined tower for the estate of a foolish Connecticut millionaire. (Jane had not met this millionaire, but in her opinion anybody who would pay thirty thousand dollars plus costs for a pre-ruined tower was a fool.)
In the past, however difficult or distant Alan had been all day, when they got into bed at night he had always turned to her and rested his head in the hollow below her shoulder and told her where and how bad his pain was; often he also asked how she was doing (“Fine,” Jane always said) and/or told her he loved her (“Same here,” Jane always said). Now he either went to bed at nine or ten, saying that he was exhausted, or stayed up past midnight, saying that he had napped that afternoon and was not sleepy. Often he slept in his study, but if he was in the bedroom he tossed and turned and groaned in his sleep, and sometimes he got up and went downstairs to read and to eat. In the morning Jane would find dirty cups and glasses in the sink and crumpled empty bags of chips or cookies on the kitchen counter.
Clearly, he was not fine, and Jane was not fine, and Henry was not fine. The only person for whom everything was going well was Delia. Her reading had been a huge success: the slightly larger lecture room Jane had found, and hoped would hold over a hundred empty seats, had been full to overflowing. Because of her job Jane had had to be there and listen, and even seem to applaud. Liar, cheat, she had thought as she padded her palms together silently, while Delia, in a long silvery lamé dress and silver sandals, her loosened hair a metallic gold (of course she dyes it, Jane realized), acknowledged the tributes of the audience with a graceful bow and blown kisses.
Jane was familiar with, and even reconciled to, the fact that bad things sometimes happened to good people. This truth had often been mentioned in church during her childhood and youth. It was something that we could not understand but had to accept, their minister, the Reverend Jack, had explained, knowing that God, who loved us, understood it. What we could do was to love and sympathize and offer our help and support to those upon whom affliction had fallen. From these efforts, more love and sympathy and support would come.
In the past, Jane had discovered this to be true. She found it much harder to accept the fact that good things sometimes happened to bad people. In cases like that, there was nothing you could do but smile politely when Delia came into the Center glowing and laughing and preening, and try not to listen when people gushed over her reading or how beautiful she had looked that afternoon or the next day at the trustees’ luncheon, at which she had been a featured guest.
As Jane stood brooding with a stapler in one hand, the front doorbell of the Center rang: an unusual occurrence, since most people just walked right in. Since Susie had left, she set the stapler down and descended the stairs. Outside, she found a deliveryman from a local flower shop, with a heavy sheaf of plant material wrapped in shiny paper. Of course, it was for Delia Delaney. There was nothing unusual about this: even before her reading Delia had begun receiving notes and flowers and gifts, and since then it had only become worse. On the other hand, nobody had sent flowers to Jane since she was in the hospital with food poisoning five years ago.
Jane went back into the office and phoned Delia, but there was no answer from upstairs. Probably, while Jane was working in the supply room, she had gone home. Next she tried the office of Selma Schmidt, who would no doubt be delighted to take in Delia’s flowers, and indeed would probably welcome the chance to drive them to Delia’s house. But again there was no answer.
Jane’s impulse was to leave the flowers on the table in the front hall. By the time Delia came in on Monday they would be dead, which would serve her right. She might guess that Jane or someone had just abandoned them, but so what? Nobody had seen her take them in, and it might have been the deliveryman who had left them on the table, where they would lie all weekend, withering slowly and gasping for water.
No. The flowers were innocent in themselves, and it went against all Jane’s instincts as a gardener to damage any plant, even by passive neglect. They would have to be saved. Jane unwrapped the shiny white paper in the pantry, exposing a sheaf of almost vulgarly huge gold-fringed chrysanthemums and white autumn lilies nestled in fern, with two packets of plant preservative attached: the gift of someone either besotted or rich or both. She chose a tall pressed-glass antique vase from the cupboard and cut the stems back two inches so that they could take up water. It made a nice display, but Jane wanted it out of her sight.
She carried the flowers upstairs and knocked on Delia’s door, then called her name, but there was no answer—clearly, she’d gone home. She opened the door and saw an empty room with light streaming in and Alan’s drafting table covered with papers—of course, Alan had changed offices with Delia, she remembered with annoyance—and he, no doubt, was in the library.
The door of Delia’s new office across the hall was locked, and she did not answer a knock or call; but Jane had a master key.
Inside, the velvet curtains were drawn, the room full of heavy shadows. The first thing Jane could make out after she pushed the door open was that Delia was still there, lying on the big green sofa. She was in a state of disarray: her hair disheveled, her clothes rumpled. She’s having another migraine, Jane thought.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I—I thought you’d gone home,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, but these flowers came. I didn’t want them to die over the weekend, so I put them in water—”
“Yes. Thank you so much,” Delia said in a kind of exhausted whisper.
Jane looked around for a place to set the vase down, and saw something strange: the heavy dark-green velvet curtain to the right of the bay window was bulging out oddly, and a pair of large feet, in black socks, protruded from below it. A man was hiding there, she realized. Delia wasn’t ill, she was cheating on Henry with somebody. It could be one of the other Fellows, Davi Gakar or Charlie Amir, both of whom had crushes on her. Or it could be somebody else, some stranger who had sneaked into the Center while Jane was in the supply room. In any case it would be best if she did not actually see him or acknowledge that he was there.
“I’ll put these on the desk,” she said in a strained, artificial voice.
“That’s fine,” Delia whispered.
But as Jane crossed the room, averting her eyes from the bulging curtain and the feet, she saw a man’s jacket lying on the desk chair. It was a jacket that she had seen before: gray tweed with woven leather buttons and a light-gray silky lining like the one she herself had mended only a week ago, with a material that did not quite match. Yes. There was the patch, exactly like on Alan’s tweed jacket. Was that possible?
Without stopping to think, wanting only to understand, she turned and pulled back the velvet curtain. There stood her husband, with his shoes off and his denim shirt hanging out.
“Jane, listen, it’s not what you think,” he croaked.
Jane could not answer: her head was suddenly full of smoke and steam. She had not felt this sort of betrayal since junior high school—and it was the language of junior high school that now rose to her lips.
“You creep!” she cried. “You sneaky, disgusting little creep!” She might have gone on, but was distracted by a sound from across the room: the sound of laughter. She looked around, dizzy and furious, and saw Delia lying in an untidy crush of pale, lacy clothes, convulsed with mirth.
“Don’t you laugh at me, you nasty witch!” Jane sho
uted, enraged, and raised the big vase of flowers, which had now become a convenient weapon. But at the last moment a half-conscious sense of her responsibility as an administrator caused her to pull the flowers and ferns out of their antique cut-glass container (Property of the Unger Center for the Humanities) before she threw them hard at Delia.
Then, stifling a sob of rage and pain, she left the room. In a kind of daze she descended the stairs. She rinsed out the vase and put it back into the cupboard, found her coat and scarf and handbag, left the building, and drove home.
TWELVE
After the door of Delia’s office had slammed behind Jane, Alan stepped out from the heavy curtain. “Oh, fuck,” he said, as a spasm of pain gripped his lower back.
Delia still lay on the moss-green plush sofa in her rumpled lace skirt and half-open blouse—now covered, as was she, with wet ferns and flowers. She was still laughing, in bursts of amused hiccups.
“So now what?” he asked; but she only released another bubble of hilarity. Was she having hysterics? “Are you all right?”
Delia shrugged, nodded, giggled. Sprawled there among the flowers, she resembled a Pre-Raphaelite painting—Hunt’s Ophelia, or a Waterhouse water nymph.
Or maybe she’s in shock, he thought, beginning to shove his shirt back into his slacks. “You’d better pull yourself together, honey,” he told her. “Jane could come back anytime.”
“No, she won’t. She was much too embarrassed.” Delia sat up, causing foliage to scatter. “Oh, look, here’s the card that came with the flowers.” She tore it open. Best wishes from your greatest fan,Wally Hersh. “Everyone’s so unoriginal these days.” She sighed and stood up. Then she selected one of the scattered white lilies, tucked it behind her ear, and turned to her reflection in the big mirror over the mantelpiece.
“I don’t get it,” Alan said, uneasy at this crazy indifference. “You’re not bothered by what just happened?”
“Not really.” Delia did not glance around. “If Jane was to come back with a shotgun, I’d be bothered. But that’s not her style.”
“No,” he agreed. “She’d never do that. But still—” He heard the sound of a familiar motor and turned to the window, pulling aside the velvet curtain. Below, Jane’s Honda wagon was descending the driveway. “You’re right; she’s leaving. Jesus, my back is killing me.”
Delia did not comment. She was now trying the lily tucked into the bosom of her blouse. The effect was striking, but Alan didn’t appreciate it fully.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he said. “Why are you taking this so lightly?”
“Because it’s not important.” Delia smiled and shook out her hair. She looked beautiful, undeniably, but also somewhat crazy.
“Maybe not for you,” he muttered, glancing around for his loafers. As he shoved his feet into them, another spasm of pain sliced through his back. “But what am I supposed to say to Jane when I get home?”
“Just remember that the best defense is a good offense,” she replied, not glancing away from the mirror.
“A good offense?”
“You know. Say we’re both very hurt and angry. Tell her how rude and intrusive she was, pushing her way into my room without even knocking.”
“But she did knock,” Alan protested.
“Well, she didn’t give me time to answer. Remind her how unprofessional that was. She probably regrets it already. And going into a rage and throwing all these flowers, without stopping to find out what the real situation was. Why, she almost threw that heavy glass vase too. I could have been seriously injured.”
“What was the real situation?” Alan asked, amazed.
“Well, obviously—I was having a migraine, and you came in to see if you could do anything for me.”
“And why was my shirt hanging out and my shoes off?”
Delia sighed. “Because it was so warm in here. And you took your shoes off because your feet hurt. Use your imagination.”
“I don’t think she’ll believe that,” Alan said. “But maybe it’s worth a try.”
“Of course it is.” Delia laughed again. “It’s lucky we switched offices; at least you had time to get your pants back on.”
Alan did not laugh. “But why was I hiding behind the curtain?”
“Yes, that was a mistake.” She smiled. “Well, okay. You knew she’d be surprised to see you. You wanted to protect her, you knew she might not understand. But whatever you do, don’t apologize. Make her apologize to you.”
Alan looked at Delia with something between admiration and dismay. “You’re talking as if we’re in the right.”
“But we are in the right.” She turned away from the mirror. “I was ill, and you were performing an act of mercy.”
“Nobody will believe that, not if Jane tells them what she saw. There’ll be a scandal.”
“So what?” She shrugged.
“You don’t care?”
“Why should I? It’s right what they say: in the long run, all publicity is good publicity. Scandal is what everyone wants and expects from us: melodrama and farce and comedy and tragedy. Writers and artists who lead conventional, blameless lives, they don’t last. Everyone’s bored by them.” Delia gave a little catlike yawn. “You know, they’re rather pretty, Wally Hersh’s lilies,” she remarked. “Pity to let them die.” She began to gather the flowers that lay on the sofa. “They stand for purity and innocence, you know.”
“Really.” Thinking how inappropriate they were in this case, Alan handed her two long-stemmed lilies that had fallen near him. Close up, they seemed to be made of thick white suede.
“Thank you.” She smiled.
“Here’s some more.” With another twinge of pain, he collected two saucer-sized golden chrysanthemums, but Delia pushed them away.
“No, leave those. Yellow mums mean slighted love.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Of course I do.” She sighed. “Nobody understands the Language of Flowers anymore. And they don’t understand that it has power, even if you don’t know it.”
“Yeah, it looks like you’re already slighting Wally Hersh’s love,” he said, dropping the mums in the wastebasket.
“No; not completely.” Delia giggled and stooped to gather more lilies and pose with them. In spite of what had recently happened, she seemed quite calm, and fully absorbed in this task.
“Well,” Alan said, after watching for a few moments, baffled. “It doesn’t look like Jane’s going to give me a ride home. I’d better go call a taxi. Do you want a lift?”
“No thanks. Henry will pick me up.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell him what happened.”
For the first time since Jane had left, Delia looked at Alan directly. “Are you mad?” she asked. “Anyhow it’s none of his business, what you and I do, what we have together.” She smiled warmly, almost seductively. “It’s on another plane entirely. Come on, don’t look so sad.” She moved nearer and gave him a quick, wet kiss. “Everything’s going to be all right. Only if I were you I wouldn’t go home just yet.”
At two a.m. that night, Alan lay awake and in pain in a confusion of blankets and sheets and a sense of having behaved both stupidly and badly. Whether he opened his eyes or shut them, he kept seeing Jane’s face white against the darkness, with its expression of shock, hurt, and anger.
Following Delia’s advice, he had delayed his return and gone to the faculty club for supper. In his confused state of mind, he had forgotten that sitting in a straight chair for more than a few minutes at a time always aroused the lizard in his back—whom he now sometimes thought of as Old Clootie, the familiar name of the Devil among his Scottish ancestors. At home and in the office he usually stood up or lay down on the sofa to eat.
Last night, even before his food came, he had to stand up and walk about, causing the waiter and the other diners to look at him oddly. Fortunately, no one he knew was in the faculty club, but even so, agony and embarrassment had mad
e it impossible for him to finish the meal, though he managed to drink a Scotch on the rocks and half a bottle of wine. Afterward he stumbled dizzily and painfully out into the lobby and called a taxi. As he did so, inside his spine, Old Clootie flexed his claws and smiled.
For the first few minutes of the ride Alan tried to sit up like a normal person, but was unable to manage it. When Jane drove him to campus he always lay down in the back seat, to minimize the pain.
“Hey, you all right back there?” the taxi driver had inquired.
“Fine, just a little tired,” Alan had replied in blurred tones that, he realized, sounded like those of a drunk.
He had arrived home in agony, but still resolved to deny everything. When Jane asked, in a voice that combined fear and rage, where the hell he had been, he had said, as planned, that he had wanted to give her time to cool off.
“Listen, my back is in spasm,” he had told her. “I have to take a pill.”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said almost automatically, in a flat, neutral voice. She followed him into the kitchen and stood waiting while he gulped water and painkillers. “I’m very sorry it hurts, but I need an explanation.”
“Maybe it’s you who owe me an explanation,” Alan said, his words blurred by pain and alcohol. Then, though it felt unreal, he took the offensive and rebuked her for her rude unprofessional behavior and leap to false conclusions. He insisted that his presence in Delia’s office had been an act of concern and friendship—telling himself meanwhile that if he was stretching the truth, it was also out of concern and friendship. He was sparing Jane information that would hurt her unnecessarily.
As he spoke in imitation of a firm, reasonable manner, he felt a rush of pity and affection for his wife: this small brown-haired woman with her neat shirtwaist dress, her fading prettiness and wide blue eyes, reddened as if with weeping. She was a good person who loved him and had been unfailingly kind to him over the long months of his pain. It wasn’t her fault that her kindness had begun to feel more and more like a burden.
