Truth and Consequences

by Alison Lurie

  Though it was still densely dark outside, Alan did not return to bed. Instead he pulled his navy blue wool bathrobe over his pajamas, went into the study, and located a pad and drawing pencils. In too much of a hurry to retrieve his briefcase/toilet seat from downstairs, he stood in front of a file cabinet and made notes and sketches for well over an hour without stopping. Sometimes he paused for a few moments, overcome with awe and gratitude for the revelation that had come to him. Delia was right, he thought: this gift he had received was a by-product of pain and illness.

  At dawn, stiff and chilled, he set the sheets of paper he had covered aside, took more codeine, and collapsed into bed, where he slept until noon. Waking, he feared at first that he had dreamed the whole thing. But the drawings were there, and in the light of day they still looked good: better than good. He dressed, made himself tea and toast, and, ignoring the pain in his back as much as possible, got out some paper and old paints, and began to convert his first sketch into a colored drawing. Delia will like this, he thought. She always has a special feeling for birds.

  He was halfway through a second—the attic of his parents’ house this time, with its little round window, the upper left-hand pane cracked in a partial star, the old brass-hinged and brass-hasped trunk underneath, and the discarded dressmaker’s dummy (terrifying at five, still sinister and melancholy when he left for college) leaning toward the light at an angle—when he heard the kitchen door open.

  “Hello, it’s me,” Jane’s voice called.

  She’s brought some even more inedible, poisonous supper, Alan thought. He put down his brush, vexed at the interruption. Then, to prevent his wife from coming upstairs and seeing his new drawings, which she would probably like as little as the earlier ones, he descended to the kitchen. Jane was standing by the sink in front of a brown paper bag of groceries, wearing baggy jeans and a Gore-Tex windbreaker For years he had thought of his wife as amazingly pretty: now she seemed ill-dressed, commonplace, and undersized, and her curly brown hair was much too short. Had she deliberately made herself unattractive, or was it that since he’d known Delia his idea of beauty had shifted?

  “Oh, hello there,” he said. “Look, you don’t have to bring me supper anymore. I can drive now, I can manage on my own.”

  “That’s all right,” Jane told him. “I mean, you don’t have to. I’ve decided it’s time for me to come home, anyhow.” She indicated her suitcase by the back door.

  “Oh yes?” Alan smiled only briefly. “That’s good,” he heard himself say rather flatly. He was surprised at his lack of relief—because this was what he had wanted, wasn’t it?

  “But we have to talk seriously.”

  “Mh,” he agreed, though what he had to do now was get back to his drawing. The light beige he had chosen for the dressmaker’s dummy was wrong: it needed to be darker, or no, better, freckled with pinholes and stains.

  “I just have to put these groceries away,” Jane said.

  “Yeah, okay,” Alan said. Delia had been right again, he thought. Jane had come around. But why did she have to come around now, breaking into his work?

  His wife closed the door of the fridge and sat on a kitchen stool. “We haven’t either of us behaved perfectly,” she said in the tone of someone trying to be more than fair.

  “Uh, no,” Alan agreed. Delia wouldn’t think much of this admission, but the last thing he wanted now was a serious talk, and this might save time. He would add a section of the attic ceiling to the piece, he decided: the beams, the raw insulation and the nails coming through from the shingles. Yes, yes!

  “But that isn’t what’s important. I mean, I don’t want to let something that only happened once, and I’m sure you regret now, destroy our marriage.” Jane unzipped her windbreaker and pulled it off. Underneath she had on a heavy, faded green cotton sweater from L. L. Bean that Delia would probably have died rather than wear.

  “No,” Alan said weakly, realizing that he was admitting guilt, and also not telling the truth. It happened a lot more than once, it’s still happening, and I don’t regret it, he thought.

  “So I decided we should just never mention it again.”

  “Mh.” He frowned. You won’t mention it, he thought, and I won’t mention it, but we’ll both think of it, and I will be forever in the wrong.

  “All I want is, I want you to promise not to see Delia again, ever.”

  “But Jane, that’s not possible,” Alan exclaimed, stunned out of his preoccupation. “We’re both Fellows at the Center, after all.”

  “I realize that. I know you’ll have to be in the same room sometimes, at the lectures and lunches. You’ll have to say hello and be polite if people are watching. But you don’t have to be alone with her.”

  “Uh, no,” Alan said. I do have to be alone with her, he thought. She’s important to me. You don’t understand, and I don’t want you to understand. He looked at the conventionally pretty, badly dressed youngish woman who was sitting at the kitchen table. At the moment she seemed like a complete stranger.

  For years he had felt love for this woman, and sometimes passionate desire, Alan remembered with surprise. He had been deeply grateful for her love and care in the worst moments of his illness: before, during, and after his operation. But slowly the duty of continuing to feel this gratitude had become oppressive. If Jane moved back, as she seemed determined to do, he would always have this duty. He might be more comfortable physically—meals would be better and the house cleaner—but he would always be one down. Also, it would be more difficult to see or speak to Delia.

  “We have to make our marriage work. It’s our job, after all, the one we signed up for.”

  “I guess so.” Alan was struck by the conventionality of her rhetoric, as if Jane were quoting the minister of her parents’ church, as was possibly the case. It occurred to him that something was lacking from this conversation. Jane had not said that she loved him or had missed him, and he had not said it either.

  “We have to try, that’s all.” She did not look at him, but at the oiled butcher-block surface of the kitchen table, and her tone wavered, almost as if she were about to start crying. Moved by a combination of affection, pity, and good manners, Alan crossed the kitchen floor and awkwardly put his arm around her.

  “Mm, hm,” he said. Over Jane’s shoulder he saw her suitcase slumped against the fridge by the back door. That could be a construction too, he thought. The fridge, the broom and dustpan hanging on the wall, the open door, the wheeled carry-on suitcase with its rectangular handle echoing the shape of the door. Someone is going, someone is coming. Everything in pale blue shades, only the suitcase dark, ink-black, like a hole in the scene. Or maybe everything else dark, and the suitcase ghostly white?

  “Mom will be happy. She really wants you to be there for Thanksgiving.” For the first time Jane spoke in a somewhat normal voice.

  “But I can’t do that,” Alan said, letting go of his wife and standing back.

  Thanksgiving had never been one of his favorite holidays, and he had given no thought to its approach this year. Though he had once found domestic gratitude easy and natural, he had always resented being expected and forced to be grateful in a public manner. He had also never looked forward to holidays with Jane’s parents, who always, right from the beginning, had seemed to be judging him and finding him wanting. He wasn’t interested in local events, and didn’t feel or wish to show enthusiasm for televised sports. He did not like the food Jane’s mother made: the creamed overcooked vegetables, the heavy, oversugared pies and cakes. He detested the wine they served on special occasions, cheap sweetened brands called Blue Nun and Grenache Rosé. He did not want to go to church on Thanksgiving with Jane and her overextended family—new aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws were always turning up. Whenever he went he was bored, with a boredom that sometimes approached actual pain. But if he declined to go, waves of disapproval would wash over him, as they had last year, even though the ache in his back had pre
vented him from sitting in a pew or at the dinner table for more than ten minutes at a time.

  And now it would be worse, because Jane always told her mother everything. Her parents and probably a lot of other relatives would have heard about what she had seen in Delia’s office. They would look at him and see a sinner, a lost sheep. Some would condemn him as an adulterer, while others, like the red-faced uncle who ran a construction company, would condemn him for being stupid enough to get caught. He would never be forgiven. So why should he give up anything?

  “I have to go to New York,” he told Jane. It was hardly a lie, because he would make it true as soon as possible.

  Jane gave him a disappointed look, which rapidly moderated into a suspicious one. “Delia Delaney is going to New York for Thanksgiving,” she said.

  “So?”

  “You’re going to see her there.”

  “I hadn’t planned to.” Since Alan hadn’t planned to go to New York, this was strictly true, but might, he realized, soon become false. “I’m going to see my dealer,” he said, realizing that this too could become true. “He’s sold another picture, and there’s some new work I need to show him.” A surge of excitement at this idea caused him to smile at Jane, but she did not smile back. Instead, her expression was one of distrust and despondency.

  “That’s nice,” she said without enthusiasm. “Well, I guess I’ll go unpack.” While Alan watched, unable to stop her, she pulled her carry-on suitcase across the kitchen floor and into the hall. Presently he could hear it bumping up the stairs, one step at a time, each bump the sound of boredom, duty, and depression to come.

  SEVENTEEN

  On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Jane Mackenzie stood in the upstairs hall of the Unger Center in a state of frustrated suspicion. The doors to Alan’s and Delia’s offices were both shut, and from behind the latter she seemed to hear shuffling and mumbling. Alan was in there, she was almost sure of it—anyhow, he wasn’t answering his phone, and neither was Delia. But she couldn’t know for sure, even if she had the nerve to use her master key again. Yesterday, while Jane was at lunch, Delia had gotten Susie to send for a locksmith to install a bolt on the inside of her door.

  “It’s so there won’t be people barging in when she’s working,” Susie had explained. “She has to protect her privacy.”

  Alan, when Jane had complained of this breach of authority and proper process, had not been sympathetic. In his opinion, Delia was right to have summoned someone out of the yellow pages. “You know how long she would have had to wait if you’d put in a requisition to B and G,” he had told her. “It took them over a month to fix the kitchen ceiling. And this isn’t an emergency.” When Jane suggested that what Delia wanted to lock out was not fans and students, but people who might catch her doing something shameful, Alan told her that she was being ridiculous. It was the same phrase he had used before, when denying that there was anything wrong about his friendship with Delia.

  Of course, if she waited long enough, Jane thought, she would or would not see Alan come out of Delia’s office. But that would prove nothing, at least in his opinion. Also she had work to attend to, and no respectable reason to be hanging around the upstairs hall of the Center. If anyone saw her now, they would wonder what on earth she was doing there.

  She was acting irrationally, Jane knew that. Because it wasn’t so much that she cared about Alan, it was that her mind was so full of confusion and doubt. Probably, though she couldn’t be sure, he and Delia had been laughing at her and lying to her for weeks, or months maybe. And what was much worse, Henry had probably been lying to her too, saying he loved her but not doing anything about it, not leaving Delia even after he knew he wasn’t really married to her and she was cheating on him. Yes, maybe he did sort of love me, Jane thought. But he wasn’t going to change his life for that. So it was right that she had stopped seeing him or speaking to him, that she was trying to forget him and put her marriage back together.

  The trouble was that she kept thinking about Henry anyhow, remembering places and words and gestures: the barn full of stacked hay, the way he said “Janey,” a slow touch on the back of her knee—She couldn’t stop thinking about Henry; she couldn’t even stop loving him. Meanwhile, her marriage was not back together, it was lying around in disordered ugly metallic bits, like the pasta machine she had once thrown not exactly at Alan.

  Gritting her teeth, Jane went back downstairs. She knew what her mother and Reverend Bob would say: they would say that she must not dwell on doubts and suspicions or immoral desires, but must go about her daily life cheerfully and prayerfully, trusting that her love for Alan and his for her would bring them back together in the end. Only she doubted more and more often now that she would ever love Alan again and that he would ever love her.

  With a sigh that made Susie look up anxiously, she opened the file of this month’s expenses on her computer.

  “Jane? Are you all right?” Susie asked.

  “Fine,” Jane lied. “It’s just the bill from the caterers again. I’ve told them before not to bring milk or sugar, because we have our own, but they keep charging for them—” She allowed herself another sigh, almost a groan.

  “Should I make us some tea?”

  “No—yes, that would be nice,” Jane admitted. “Thank you.”

  “Red Singer or Early Grey?”

  “Red Singer, please.” Jane had given up correcting Susie’s cute names for her two favorite brands of tea after realizing that they had been invented by Charlie Amir. Susie had forgiven him for the lunge he had made at her earlier in the term, and lately they often had lunch together on campus. “He’s really awfully nice,” she had said last week, “and really smart and funny. His wife has left him, but he’s such a good sport about it.”

  A few moments later a gust of fresh, cold air entered the hall, followed immediately by Henry Hull, whom Jane had not seen since their meeting by the lake over a week ago, and hardly expected to see alone again, though in spite of herself she kept imagining how this might happen. A hot pulse began to beat in her forehead, and she felt faint. He’s here, she thought. He’s not as tall as Alan, but there’s so much of him somehow, even more than I remembered.

  “Oh, hello,” she said nervously. “I think Delia’s upstairs—” But don’t go there, she started to say, then thought: No, go. Maybe you’ll find out what’s happening in that room, if anything’s happening.

  “I’m not looking for her,” Henry said. “Is Susie around?”

  “Yes, she’s in the kitchen making tea.”

  “Let’s go into the other room, then. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Jane gave a gasp and trembled slightly, but did not move.

  “About Delia and the Center,” he added.

  “All right.” She followed him out of the office and then into the big reception room at the right of the front door. “What is it? I can’t stay long.”

  “Delia’s leaving.”

  “Leaving? Leaving what?”

  “Well, everything. You name it. The Center, Corinth University, Hopkins County. Me, probably.” Henry leaned against the carved mahogany molding of the doorway and began to unfasten his duffle coat. An awful impulse came over Jane to rest her head against it, as she had so often done before.

  “But why?”

  “She’s decided that Corinth is making her ill. You know she’s had two very bad migraines in the last week. She thinks it’s the cold and the humidity: she’s used to a Southern climate, mild sunny winters. Here it’s so dark and damp and cloudy all the time now: like living in an industrial freezer, she says.”

  “But Delia’s signed a contract with the Center till the end of next term. How can she leave now?”

  “Easy.” He smiled slightly. “She packs her bags, gets on a plane, and flies away. Then afterwards I make excuses for her and close up the house.”

  “But that’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to—”

  Henry shrugged. “I’ve done
it before. Last time was worse. Delia was teaching a writing seminar at Converse College; it nearly drove her crazy. And when she left in the middle of the fall term, it nearly drove the department crazy.” He laughed.

  I’ll bet, Jane thought, not laughing.

  “I thought for a while this gig was going to work out, because she didn’t have to teach. And she did stick it out a lot longer. It’s better in a way: she’s not walking out on a class or anything. The Humanities Council won’t be so enraged.”

  “They’ll be enraged,” Jane said. “Some of them will, anyhow.” She paused, thinking. “You know, Bill Laird predicted something like this months ago. He said Delia wouldn’t be able to take the weather.”

  “It’s not only that, though. She can’t really work here, she’s interrupted all the time. Ever since her lecture people are after her to read manuscripts and recommend agents and publishers and write blurbs.”

  “When is she leaving?”

  “I don’t know. End of this week, probably.” Henry stared out the window at the icy overcast landscape. “She’s been saying for a while how much she longs to be in her house in North Carolina, where she can see the snow fall through the sunlight onto green grass, the way it does there sometimes in December.”

  Jane disregarded this, struck by the administrative repercussions of Delia’s departure. “You know, if Delia leaves, we’ll stop paying her.”

  “Yeah. That bothers her. Maybe it’s even kept her here a while longer.”

  “But that can’t matter so much. I mean, she must make a lot from her books.”

  “Sure, she does. But not as much as she needs to feel safe. See, Delia’s been poor much of her life, in ways people like you and me know nothing about. She worries about money a lot. And then, writing is chancy. The creek could dry up, like it did with me. Most writers, if they can’t live on their royalties, they get a teaching job, but Delia can’t stand teaching.”

  “So how will she manage?”