Truth and Consequences

by Alison Lurie

  “I can’t do that.” Jane sighed. “My mom will expect me to go to church with her tomorrow morning, because it’s Sunday. And then there’s Sunday dinner. But maybe later.”

  “About four?”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “I’ll come then and wait.”

  “That’s good.” She gathered her coat around her and slid toward the door.

  As she opened it, Henry put out his hand and caught hold of hers. “Oh, Janey. I love you so much,” he said.

  “Really?” Jane knew that she was not looking her best: her hair was tangled and partly full of hay, her face streaked with the snail tracks of tears.

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “I love you too,” she whispered. Then she shut the door behind her and made her way through the fine icy wind toward her car.

  “Did you have a good talk with Reverend Bob?” Jane’s mother, Carrie, asked as Jane came from the cold dull November day into the warm, well-lit kitchen on Sunday afternoon.

  “Yes, very good,” Jane lied, glancing at the pink-flowered kitchen clock. In ten minutes Henry Hull would be in the lot behind the empty Farmers’ Market, waiting for her. Somehow, she must find an excuse to be there too.

  “He’s a very nice young man, isn’t he?” Carrie said, sifting flour into a mixing bowl. “Of course, nobody can ever replace Reverend Jack.” She sighed. “Would you like some coffee?” It was clear that she hoped for details of the consultation.

  “No thanks,” Jane said. “I have to go back to the house now. I forgot my hair dryer and all my makeup yesterday, and I’ll need them for work tomorrow.” This was actually true.

  “Oh, that’s all right.” Her mother smiled. “I can lend you—”

  “And my prescriptions,” Jane hastened to add, though this was a lie: she had already finished her only prescription, for an ear infection picked up at the University swimming pool. “But I’d better go now, before it starts to snow again. I just have to stop in the bathroom.”

  “Mm.” Carrie gave an understanding smile.

  Upstairs, Jane’s face in the mirror looked tired and pale. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have used some of her mother’s lipstick and blusher, but Carrie was sure to notice and think that Jane wanted to look attractive for Alan.

  With every word she said, every gesture she made, Jane thought, she was digging herself deeper into a pit of lies. The phrase was that of the Reverend Bob Smithers, and he had applied it to Alan, but it belonged equally to her. Reverend Bob was in fact a nice young man, but he had been easy to lie to, unlike the Reverend Jack, who would surely have looked directly into Jane’s eyes and seen the shadow of Henry Hull there. Reverend Bob sincerely wanted to bring Jane and Alan back together as soon as possible; he had spoken of patience and love and forgiveness. Reverend Bob also wanted Alan to come in for counseling, something that would never happen, since Alan would never agree to be counseled by someone like Bob

  But Jane had not told him this. She had pretended to listen and agree, and that too had been a lie. Her patience with Alan and her love for him were nearly exhausted, and she did not want to forgive him. She wanted him to vanish off the face of the earth, so she could be with Henry.

  Jane’s mother Carrie also hoped that Jane and Alan would get back together eventually, but she felt there was no reason for haste. Alan needed to be taught a lesson, she had said. A bad back was no excuse for bad behavior, and if Jane stayed away for a while he would realize how much he loved her and needed her. The reaction of Jane’s father had been different. He was a taciturn man, recently retired from the local post office, who usually offered few opinions on domestic matters. But last night, after his wife had explained the situation to him, he had broken his usual silence.

  “You and Alan have joint accounts at the Hopkins County Trust, right, Janey?” he had asked. “Checking and savings?”

  Jane had agreed that this was so.

  “Okay. Monday morning, you go down there first thing. You open up a new account in your own name, transfer half of both the old accounts into it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Janey needs to do that,” his wife had protested. “Alan isn’t going to cheat her out of anything.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s best to be safe. Fellow gets involved with a floozy, he might do anything.”

  “She’s not really a floozy,” Jane had said, speaking rather for the honor of the Unger Center than for that of Delia.

  But her father had shaken his head. “Saw her photo in the paper. A floozy.”

  Now Jane dragged a comb through her curly hair and ran downstairs. “I’ll be back soon,” she said, which was probably another lie, and hurried out.

  It was already past four when she reached the Farmers’ Market parking lot, but Henry was not there. Immediately a cold wave of fear and depression washed over her. She had to see him, not just because she loved him, but because he was the only person in the world she could talk to now without lying. Over the past couple of months she had gradually become distant from her three closest friends, all of whom often said how much they admired her devotion to Alan in his illness. After she had begun to fall in love with Henry, she didn’t want to confide in them, because they would have been surprised and shocked by her disloyalty.

  Now, of course, her friends would probably blame Alan for getting involved with Delia, but since Delia was a local and national celebrity, the news would be too good to keep quiet. Anyhow, if she told them about Delia and not about Henry she would be lying again, sinking deeper and deeper into the Reverend Bob’s pit of lies, which would probably resemble the construction site she had passed on the way to the Farmers’ Market: a big deep muddy hole with orange barriers around it and a pile of dirt at one side. The pit of lies was one of the gateways to hell, according to a sermon she had once heard.

  Dusk was falling now, the light thickening in the bony trees by the lake, and Henry still hadn’t come. Maybe something had prevented him? Or maybe he had just decided not to come, because seeing her was too risky or too much trouble. He was still safe in his life, Jane thought for the first time, because Delia didn’t know anything about her.

  Slowly, inexorably, the air darkened, and the slatted stalls of the Farmers’ Market began to look more and more like empty chicken coops. Don’t you want to be free? Henry had said last week. Well, now she was free, but he wasn’t, because he was still living with Delia. He hadn’t told Delia anything; maybe he wasn’t planning to tell her anything. Maybe he wanted to stay with her, even if they weren’t really married and she only allowed hanky-panky, because she was so much more rich and glamorous and famous and interesting than Jane. Maybe for him Jane was like what he’d said about Delia’s affairs, something he needed sometimes.

  Now night had fallen: only a sullen gray light shimmered on the lake beyond the trees. Jane would have to carry out her excuse now. She would have to drive to her house and collect her makeup and her hairbrush, which would mean seeing Alan again and trying not to get into another conversation full of lies, his lies of fact and her lies of omission. Then she would have to drive back to her parents’ house and lie some more to them.

  FOURTEEN

  Three days later, Alan was walking slowly and painfully across campus toward the building where the annual Unger Humanities Lecture would soon be given by a famous New York critic, L. D. Zimmern. It had snowed the night before, and the frozen lawn was glazed gray-white; the sky was covered with a foggy scrim of cloud, also gray-white, in which a small flaw indicated the presence of the distant sun. Alan’s mind was also covered with foggy cloud; the only small bright spot in it was the knowledge that he would soon see Delia again. His back hurt worse than it had for weeks.

  When Jane had returned to the house without notice late Sunday afternoon, Alan had just burnt both his dinner and his hand by punching in BAKED POTATO instead of WARM on the microwave. Jane had instantly expressed concern and filled a saucepan with cold water and ice cubes, he
r old standard remedy. As Alan sat at the kitchen table with his hand in the pan of ice water, he had felt a rush of gratitude, even of affection.

  “Thank you, that feels a lot better,” he told her. And then, after a pause, “Look, I really regret what happened Friday.”

  “Yes?” Jane’s stiff, neutral expression slowly began to soften.

  “I—” He opened his mouth to tell her that he was very sorry, but in fact he was involved with, maybe even in love with, Delia Delaney. The best thing you can do, always, is tell the truth and take the consequences , his father used to say. But Alan did not do this now, partly because Jane already looked so beaten-down and miserable. He also did not do it because it would cause Delia to regard him with scorn. “It was natural for you to get upset,” he said instead. “I know it looked suspicious, but honestly nothing was going on. Delia was having a migraine, and I was just trying to give her some comfort, some sympathy—You know I’m in no shape to—” He swallowed the half lie.

  Jane stared at him, her mouth trembling. “I don’t believe you,” she said finally. “Nobody could believe you. You don’t have to take off your clothes to sympathize with somebody. And nobody hides behind a curtain unless they’re involved in some hanky-panky,” she added, in her mother’s phrase and almost her mother’s intonation. “It’s all dirty lies, and I bet you didn’t even think of them yourself. That horrible woman put you up to it.”

  “Really, Jane,” Alan said, trying to speak in a cool and reasonable manner.

  “She’s using you, just like she uses everybody. She doesn’t care for you or anyone but herself, and you’ll find that out soon, unless you’re too stupid. Oh, the hell with it all.” Jane burst into tears; then she turned away and rushed upstairs. When she returned, dragging a carry-on suitcase, she would not even speak, only left, slamming the back door.

  “Jane’s staying with her parents downtown, and she won’t speak to me,” he had told Delia on Monday morning.

  “Acting out all the old clichés,” Delia had said with a slight, scornful laugh.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Giving you the silent treatment. Gone home to Mother.”

  “So where should she have gone?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know.” Delia sighed, almost yawned. “New York, Paris? But some people have no imagination.”

  That’s true, he thought. But it’s not their fault; and if Jane had really gone to New York or Paris there would be confusion and scandal.

  “And now you’re supposed to admit your guilt and beg forgiveness, isn’t that right?”

  “You think that’s what I should do?” asked Alan, who had again been considering this move.

  “Not if you want any respect at home from now on,” Delia told him. “If you wait a while, she’ll come around.”

  It was Wednesday now, and Jane had not come around in either sense of the phrase. She had been at the Center every afternoon, but had made no attempt to speak to him there, though every day a plate containing that evening’s supper, wrapped in transparent plastic, had appeared in his fridge. Meanwhile, incredibly rapidly, everything at home had begun to fall apart. The cleaning lady wouldn’t come until Friday, and the house was already a mess, littered with discarded papers and dirty dishes. The flowers had died in the vases, and Alan couldn’t find the can opener. Yesterday he had spilled a plate of creamed chicken and waffles into his recliner, and though he had done his best to mop it up, the leather was now sticky and smelly. When he went to the supermarket with his student driver he had forgotten to buy bread or milk for his morning cereal, and he was out of clean underwear and socks.

  As he reached the entrance to the lecture hall, Alan was surprised to see in the crowd his back-pain pal Bernie Kotelchuk, the retired professor of veterinary medicine, accompanied by his wife Danielle, a retired professor of French.

  “You going to the lecture?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Bernie grinned.

  “You’re interested in ‘William James and Religious Experience ?’ ” Traditionally, the annual Unger Lecture was coordinated with that year’s Unger Center theme.

  “Nah, not really. But Zimmern is Danielle’s ex-husband.”

  “Really.” Alan had been more or less unaware that Danielle had an ex-husband; she seemed so well suited to her current one.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” said Danielle. Like Bernie, she was ruddy, cheerful, and sturdy. She wore her thick gray hair in a ponytail tied with red and brown yarn, and was wrapped in several layers of hand-knit red and brown sweaters and scarves rather than a coat.

  “You know, most women would do anything to avoid having to listen to their ex,” Alan said.

  “Not me.” Danielle smiled. “I’m not angry at Lennie anymore, it’s been too long. Anyhow the kids will expect me to give them a report.” She moved ahead, toward the double doors.

  “So how are you doing?” Bernie asked as they followed.

  “Oh, okay,” Alan replied, and saw Bernie register the true meaning of this answer according to their unspoken code, perhaps that of all invalids: Not so good, actually. “How about you?”

  “Not too bad,” Bernie said, meaning, Better, actually. “I’m driving again, you know.”

  “Yeah? That’s great.”

  “It’s all because of this doohickey.” Bernie held up a large brown canvas carrying case. “Changed my life.”

  “A briefcase changed your life?”

  “Yep,” Bernie asserted. “Well, nah. It’s what’s inside. Feel it, see if you can guess.” Alan touched the briefcase and encountered a thick, flat, curved piece of hard material, probably wood. It was familiar somehow, but he could not identify it, and shook his head.

  “It’s a toilet seat,” Bernie confided. “This exercise guy at the Y—you know, the one with the red hair and the Star Trek T-shirt—he put me on to it last week. You go to Sears, he said, buy yourself one of these. Take it apart, throw away the lid. Get a bag for the bottom piece. This here, it looks like a briefcase, right? Hell, it is a briefcase. Nobody can tell what’s inside. I take it everywhere. All of a sudden, no extra pain when I sit. Danielle doesn’t have to drive me anywhere. I can go to the drugstore, work at my desk, drive to school to check on the dog project. Fly on planes, go to conferences, anything I want.” He laughed.

  In the past, before the lizard moved into his back, nothing on earth would have persuaded Alan to carry around a toilet seat in a canvas bag. But Jane had left him; he was eating scorched or soggy microwaved meals and depending on unreliable student drivers. “You think it would work for me?”

  “Could be. Wanna try it?”

  Together, Alan and the Kotelchuks moved toward the rear of the room. Bernie placed the briefcase on a seat, and Alan lowered himself onto it cautiously. Usually he could hardly bear to sit on a hard surface for more than a few minutes. But now the pain did not increase ; it even seemed to moderate slightly.

  “Yeah, that’s better,” he conceded, standing up out of the way so that Bernie could sit down. Over the past year or so, several people, including Jane, had suggested that he should obtain and carry about with him an inflatable rubber ring of the type used by sufferers from hemorrhoids, or women after a painful childbirth. Alan, whose horror of seeming ridiculous had not diminished, had always refused. But a briefcase—yes, that might be possible, as long as nobody knew what was inside it.

  Even before the lecture started, Alan had to get up and walk about at the back of the room. It was the same one in which, not long ago, Delia Delaney had read; but the scene today was very different. Delia, with her red-gold curls loose down her back, her violet eye shadow and trailing lacy scarves, had been a figure of beauty and glamour. Zimmern was an elderly professor of nondescript appearance with a lot of dark-gray hair and a dark-gray suit. Delia’s audience had been larger and younger and more than two-thirds female, and included many women whose appearance and getup was as unusual, though far from as alluring, as her own. Today it was the s
tandard mix of humanities students and faculty, with a scattering of older townspeople and retirees who had perhaps known Zimmern when he taught here a quarter century ago.

  While Delia spoke, Alan had leaned forward to absorb every word. He had been amazed by the brilliantly theatrical, emotional quality of her performance, and gloried in the secret knowledge that earlier in the day he been closer to her than anyone in the room. But though L. D. Zimmern spoke with wit and erudition, Alan lost much of his discourse. Instead, his attention oscillated between the increasingly intolerable pain in his back, his own oppressive domestic situation, and his desire to see Delia again as soon as possible. She should have been there now, but her husband had called the Center that morning to say that she had a migraine and wouldn’t be able to make the lecture, though she hoped to be at the official dinner.

  In order to see Delia, Alan had planned to go to the reception and skip the dinner, since he was unable to eat unless he was standing up or lying down. Now, as soon as the lecture was over, he met the graduate student who had been hired to drive him home, and arranged for a detour to the local mall, where he purchased a white plastic toilet seat and a black nylon briefcase. At home he separated the sections of the toilet seat with some difficulty, threw the top half in the trash can, concealed the bottom half in the briefcase, and went into the garage. He had not driven his Volvo for over a year, but until recently Jane had exercised it once a week, and it started readily.

  There was still some pain, but it was manageable, Alan decided. With a sense of freedom and power that he had not had in a long time, he canceled the taxi he had ordered and drove to the Unger Center.

  His luck held: Delia was there. Unfortunately, though, the reception was over, and she was already sitting at the other end of the long dining table, not far from Jane, who clearly saw him but did not speak or wave. Meanwhile, he, as the senior Unger Fellow, had been placed at the left of Lily Unger, with L. D. Zimmern, the guest of honor, on her right. It was soon clear that Zimmern and Mrs. Unger were already acquainted, though they had apparently not met for some time.