Van Gogh's Room at Arles

by Stanley Elkin

  “Oh,” she said, “I forgot about your cordless. I’ll have to put an adapter in that, too.”

  He handed it over.

  “These,” said Miss Simmons, “are a son of a bitch.”

  “Oh, now,” Schiff said.

  She grinned. Schiff didn’t remember her but thought she must have been a good student.

  “Is everything hooked up yet?” he asked when she gave back his phone.

  “Almost. Maybe another half hour.”

  Because of course there were calls he had to make. (As a cripple, he lived like a bookie.) The listmaker had not forgotten his situation, the necessary stations of his crip’s paced cross. Had not forgotten the party for his students that had still to be called off. Had not forgotten the probable roasts and hams, turkeys and pâtés, and could easily imagine the possible meaty haunches—goats’, stags’, and rams’—ticking their timed shelf life in Claire’s party-stocked refrigerator even now; the spoiling berries, oxidizing melon balls, and splinters of crystallized ice creams forming even as he thought of them, as they went on his lists; the sweet, separating, stratified milks and creamy desserts turning, going off, the freezer-burned breads tanning cancerous in the kitchen. Because (now it occurred) it wasn’t the banks he’d needed to call, it was all the little food boutiques, awning’d purveyors of powerhouse cheeses, of tinned smoked delicacies, oysters and fruits de mer (squid and tiny, fetal octopi, lavender as varicose veins), as if fed-up Claire, working their only recently annual party like a serial killer, had taken it into her angry old head that even getting even wasn’t enough, that only vengeance and wrath would serve.

  “Jesus!” oathed Schiff, sniffing violently, taking rapid, shallow gusts of air into his hyperventilate nostrils, slapping his head, clipping it with the heel of his hand like a self- inflicted personal foul. “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

  “What,” Miss Simmons asked, “what is it? What’s wrong?”

  And, believe it or not, it was suddenly revealed to Schiff that it was no mere accident that Jenny Simmons had been a former student of his, that she’d been—yes, he knew how he sounded, he knew just how he sounded——like Creer, like Beverly Yeager, bowed beneath the weight of their mad, customized agendas—sent like the closing couplet in some fabulous poetic justice to save them. Jenny d’Arc. If all that “Oh, now” had been genuine nurturing and not just conventional courtesy, let her nurture him now or forever hold her peace.

  “I was thinking,” he said. “I haven’t had anything in my stomach all day. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

  “Really?” she said. “You haven’t eaten all day?”

  “It puts me off my feed,” Schiff said, “when my wife walks out on me.”

  “You’ve got to eat.”

  “I know,” Schiff said.

  “Shall I make you a sandwich?”

  “Jeez,” Schiff said, “that’d be putting you to a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it? I’m going to have to get connected up with one of those Meals-on-Wheels deals or something.”

  “Well, but I could make you a sandwich.”

  “I am hungry,” admitted Schiff.

  “I’ll just make you a sandwich. What would you like?”

  “Gosh, anything. I think Claire may have left some stuff in the refrigerator.”

  “Coming right up,” she said.

  “And if anything suits your fancy …” Schiff said, breaking off.

  She was back within minutes. There, on a plate on a tray, was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the bread perfectly toasted, its crusts almost surgically removed. There was a tall glass of innocent-seeming milk.

  “Peanut butter and jelly?” Schiff said.

  “Don’t you like peanut butter and jelly? I thought everyone did. You haven’t eaten all day and it’s easy to digest.”

  “No no,” Schiff said, “this is fine. It’s just I had this craving for some of that gourmet shit my wife left in the freezer for this party we’re giving. Were giving. She stocked up, I thought she left stuff in the refrigerator. I was going to cancel out anyway, I just didn’t want it all to go to waste.”

  “There’s nothing in the refrigerator.”

  “In the freezer part.”

  “I looked in the freezer part. There’s nothing in the refrigerator.”

  “That’s impossible,” Schiff said. “The party’s tomorrow night. We give it every year for my students.”

  “Well, maybe,” Miss Simmons said, “she planned to leave you. If she was planning to leave you, why would she take the trouble of going to specialty shops and charcuteries to stock up on exotic foods she knew were never going to be eaten in the first place? That stuff isn’t cheap. Why would she waste the money?”

  Planning to leave him, planning to leave him? Schiff couldn’t quite take it all in, but if she was planning to leave him—he’d announced the party to his class three weeks ago, Claire knew that—that somehow put everything into an altogether different light. A poorer light, a darker light. Could this have been up her sleeve for three weeks now? Had she been setting him up for three weeks? More? At the inside three weeks? Had she been setting him up all term? Longer? From the beginning of the school year? Boy oh boy, thought Schiff, who understood he was no prize, who for years now, even when he’d been on the cane, even when he’d still wielded it with some authority, when it had been simple ancillary to his balance, pure latency, say, like peroxide, analgesics, tapes, and bandages in a first-aid kit, had begun to notice something long in the tooth about himself in mirrors and photographs— particularly photographs—something faintly sour and beginning to go off in his posture and features like all those imaginary delicacies in his refrigerator, must she have had it in for me! So planning, planning to leave him? Planning, that is, to set him up, planning to wait until the day before their annual party before she stepped out on him. (Who knew how important these parties had become to him!) What did it mean, wondered the old geographer. Would she have already notified his students, the party called on account of divorce, or at least an upcoming separation down the road she knew of and let his students in on but that the old geographer himself hadn’t heard about yet? What did it mean? What did it mean, eh?

  On the principle that it takes a thief, et cetera, et cetera, these were the questions he put to that other old nurturer, his former student, Miss Simmons.

  “What do you mean do I think she called them up to tell them her plans?” she said. “What do you mean do I think she didn’t call anyone up and that she left that for you? What do you mean when they show up at the door she hopes you’ll be so humiliated you won’t know what to do?” “Yes,” he said. “That’s just what I mean.”

  “Well, I don’t know. How would I know?”

  “How did you know about the empty refrigerator? All right,” he said, “that’s a bad example. But you knew about her planning to leave me.”

  “I never said she planned to leave you. I suggested it was a possibility.”

  “You knew she left me. Bill must have told you in the van. You can’t deny that.”

  “I don’t deny it,” she said. “People gossip about people. It’s human nature.”

  “You knew to the penny what we have in the trust-fund account. When you were up in my room, when you were up in my room, you probably saw my urinal. You’re practically my confidante. You took pity on me and gave old Bill the high sign that enough was enough, that he needn’t pad the equipment, you told him my credit was good. If all that doesn’t make you my confidante, I don’t know what does.”

  “What’s more likely,” she said, “is that it makes me old Bill’s confidante.”

  “Oh,”said Schiff, “oh.”

  “Hey,” Miss Simmons said, “hey now.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You bet,” she said. “Because if that’s what you’re driving at, you can just forget it, you can just put it out of your mind.”

  “What,” asked the helpless cripple with the useless legs, “what?”


  “You know what,” she said. “I’m not standing in as your hostess. It’s been at least fifteen years since you were my professor, at least fifteen years.”

  “That’s right,” he said, astonished, amazed. “At least fifteen years. That’s right. So don’t tell me you’re not my confidante. Now that Claire’s gone that makes you one of maybe only half a dozen people in this town who knew me when.”

  “I’m here on a job,” she said, all business.

  “Of course.”

  “Another few minutes I’m through. I’m almost through now. Here,” she said, “I need you to put this on for me.”

  She handed him a sort of necklace with, for pendant, a button and light on a little plastic box like a switch on a heating pad or electric blanket. He recognized it from the S.O.S. commercial on TV. “Just put the chain over your head,” she said. “It should fit. If it doesn’t there’s a way of adjusting it.” Now the moment of truth had arrived Schiff felt some qualms about actually wearing such jewelry. It was another giant step toward his invalidism, like having the Stair-Glide put in or going into a wheelchair. Miss Simmons, misreading his reluctance for mechanical uncertainty as to how the equipment operated, took it back from him and fastened the collar about his neck like a kind of electronic bib. “There,” she said, “is that comfortable?”

  “Is it ever,” Schiff said miserably.

  “Why don’t we test it to see if it’s working?”

  And see, he thought, he was right, his identity already subsumed in plural baby talk.

  “Test it out,” she said again. “Press the button. That dials the service for you. Wait six or seven seconds, then just speak into the air. If everything’s been connected properly, they should be able to pick you up at the service.” Schiff pressed the button and spoke into the air. Miss Simmons took the little console out of his hand and hit the button a second time. The light went off. “You didn’t give it time to dial. You have to wait a few seconds before you start talking. By depressing the button a second time I aborted your call.”

  “Whoa,” Schiff said. “This thing’s a lot tougher than it seems.”

  “You’re not used to it yet, that’s all. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Shall I try again?”

  “Sure. Just give it a chance to dial the phone before you speak.”

  He pressed the button. He waited half a dozen seconds. He glanced up at Miss Simmons. She nodded. “Help,” Schiff said quietly into the air. “Help me, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” It was the message he’d heard the old woman deliver on television. The only difference was Schiff’s bloomers weren’t up around his ears.

  “What,” someone shouted back at him down at S.O.S, “what’s that? Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  “Is that you, Charley?” Miss Simmons called out. “Charley, it’s Jenny Simmons. I’m at 727-4312, 225 Westgate, in the Parkview area—— Jack Schiff’s residence. Dr.

  Schiff’s new on the service and I’m walking him through the procedures.”

  (Well, Schiff thought, walking.)

  “Hi, Jenny. Hi, Dr. Schiff.”

  “Hi, Charley,” Schiff said.

  “You’re coming in fine now, sir. You don’t have to shout, though. Just speak up, that’ll do it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Schiff shouted.

  “That’s all right, you’ll get used to it.”

  Everyone kept telling him he’d get used to it. A good sign and a bad sign both. He didn’t need all that accident in his life, but it was comforting to think S.O.S. would pick him up each time he fell down. This is what it comes to, he thought. If you just hung on and managed to live long enough you turn into a bowling pin.

  Now he knew he was expected to do a fair share of falling he was reluctant to be left alone. It was Schiff’s suggestion they go through the rest of the house, check out each of the base stations Miss Simmons had rigged. She had to push him in his wheelchair, help lift his feet onto the little platform of his Stair-Glide, help raise his pants up (he wore only pants with elastic waistbands these days, shirts whose buttons, except for the top button and the one beneath that, had been already buttoned so that all he had to do was slip it on over his head, his shoes were fastened with Velcro tabs, and he dressed not so much for comfort—when was the last time he’d been comfortable?—as for sitting down on toilet seats and getting up from them again, so he wore no underwear, and tended, the elastic waistband reconfiguring itself about his body each time he moved, casually to moon the world each time he stood) for him again as he got out of it and leaned into his walker. It took another forty minutes for them to do the rounds of the second floor and he was satisfied that all systems were go. Each area was a little different from the others and required, as if he were reciting from the stages of separate theaters, a slightly different projection of his voice. By the time they were finished, however, Charley was complimenting him on his levels. He sounded, Charley said, like someone who’d been doing pratfalls for years.

  There was nothing left for her to do. He could stall her no longer, he’d have to let her go.

  “Oh,” she said, “I forgot to get your key from you.”

  “My key?”

  “For the house. The service will need it if it has to get

  in.”

  “Gee,” Schiff said, “my key, I don’t know.”

  “We take an impression, we duplicate it on our premises and get it back to you.”

  “No,” Schiff said, “I mean I don’t know. Where it even is. I can’t remember the last time I used it.”

  “Maybe it’s in the tchtchk,” Jenny Simmons said.

  “Gosh,” he said, “you pronounced that perfectly.”

  She seemed to blush. Which would make it once for him and twice for her. Were the two of them falling in love?

  “I’ll look and see,” she said, and left him in his bedroom, sitting on his bed.

  “That’s just where it was,” she called up in a couple of minutes. “I’ve already checked to see if it’s the right one. This is it, all right. It unlocked your front door straight off.”

  “That’s terrific,” he called. “It was clever of you to think of the tchtchk.”

  “People have patterns,” she called back up the stairs. “It’s human nature.”

  “You’re right,” he said from where he sat on his bed, projecting perfectly now from all the practice he’d had on their dry run through the base stations, “it is human nature.”

  “Goodbye,” she called. “I’ll have this duplicated ASAP. I’ll see to it someone gets it back to you. Oh, and Profesor”

  “Yes?”

  “You mustn’t worry about any of this. It’s like health, or fire, or automobile insurance. It’s for your peace of mind. You hope you never have to use it. You just know it’s there for you if you ever do.” It was exactly what Bill would have said. He heard the front door close behind her.

  So much, Schiff thought, for love.

  Well, thought dignified old Schiff, that was a close one. Because for a few minutes there he’d begun to rethink his decision to call off the party. He was going to invite Miss Simmons. If she’d come upstairs to say goodbye properly he would have. It wasn’t crazy. He could have asked without embarrassing either of them. It was perfectly natural. She’d been his student, too, once. Of course, she seemed put off when he mentioned the party, but that was because she thought he was trying to get her to stand in for Claire. She’d seen there was nothing in the fridge, that the cupboard was bare. She may have thought he wanted her to do his shopping for him. She was a busy woman, he knew that. A dozen or so phone calls, he could have taken care of it himself. What did Miss Simmons know of his arrangements with Information?

  Well, he thought, there’s no fool like an old fool. Hold it right there, old fool, he told himself. Because where, really, was the foolishness in all this? Hadn’t she recognized him? It had been fifteen years. At least fifteen years. She could have been a sophomore when she’d taken
his class. Even, with permission of the instructor, a freshman. So at least fifteen years, probably sixteen, but possibly seventeen or eighteen. If she wanted to get her distribution requirement in political science out of the way.

  But say fifteen years. She knew him when, he’d said. She’d known him when. He didn’t kid himself. He knew well enough what he looked like these days, his frail, shot, worn-out, emeritus looks and cripple’s diminished, broken bearing. Yet she’d recognized him through all the schmutz of disability, through all the scaffolding of his wheelchairs, Stair-Glides and walkers, the heavy disguise of his ruined body. So where was the old foolishness? Where exactly? He was a geographer, show him on a map. And if it had been fifteen years since she’d graduated, that made her, what, thirty-seven? (At least thirty-seven.) Which would have made him about forty-four—she knew him when—when she knew him. Or, depending on those distribution requirements, that permission of the instructor, conceivably only forty-one. Looked at in this light, not so much sub specie aeternitatis as in the enchanted, almost charming relativity of love and other such matters, that made them practically contemporaries. So where, where was the foolishness? Where was there even such a big-deal age difference? Because didn’t young women often develop crushes—he used the lightest, most flattering term for such things —on their professors? Didn’t they fall in outright love with them? Develop grand passions for them that ended up not just in some motel room but frequently in actual officially sanctioned, ceremonially blessed marriage beds? He could name at least half a dozen such arrangements right here on this campus. Sure. Happens all the time. (And, frequently, with happier, longer-lasting outcomes than his and Claire’s.) Or maybe she didn’t care for him in that way (or it could be she knew all too well what was happening and had simply been too shy to come up), but how did no-fool-like-an-old-fool apply? He could have as easily said—this was love he was talking about, that grand enchantment, that charming relativity that smashed time’s tenses—that he’d been thinking like a high school kid, and what did he see in her, a woman at least thirty-seven?