“I had an interesting conversation with him this morning,” Desmond said. “I was telling him I thought I needed a bit more time to solve my problems with the biography and he quoted something from Emily Dickinson. ‘Time is a test of trouble, not a remedy.’ I’m not sure I agree, but it made me realize I’ve been counting on time to fill in the gaps on the book. I have to be more aggressive in sorting it out.”
There was something grandiose about the way Thomas pulled quotations out of thin air, like a magician yanking a quarter from behind someone’s ear, knowing very well that it’s not the quarter or the quotation you’re supposed to applaud, but the magician’s ability to produce it. And yet, you could sometimes get the inside track on what was going through his mind if you listened to what he was reciting. “Time is a test of trouble.” What trouble had he been thinking about, other than Desmond’s? This morning he’d made that vague comment about jogging giving him more patience. Perhaps he was waiting out her season of discontent, hoping it wasn’t strong enough to survive more than a few months. Exactly what she was hoping.
The waiter came around bearing triple-tiered trays with delicate sandwiches and scones dotted with currants and little cakes coated in dense frosting. She wasn’t hungry, and she had no intention of eating, so she chose the three cakes that looked the most caloric. Leaving something that fattening on the plate would make her feel especially virtuous.
“You and Thomas are an interesting couple,” Desmond said. He was selecting sandwiches from the tray, thin, crustless items that cried out to be eaten in an affected way, pinkie in the air. She wondered how he’d manage with those.
“Interesting how?” she asked.
“Well, for one thing, Thomas is a bit academic. He’s very studied and careful.” Dull seemed to be the word he was trying to avoid. “And you’re much more spontaneous.”
“Not always,” she said. Even so, she appreciated hearing it. She wanted to think of herself as spontaneous and free-spirited, despite the fact that she spent vast amounts of time attempting to be organized and disciplined.
“And yet you seem to work together very well as a couple.”
She strained her tea into her cup and dropped in a couple of cubes of sugar. (She’d been hoping for coffee, but they probably would have sneered at her if she’d dared to ask for it.) She liked the picture Desmond had of their marriage—two distinctly different people with different tastes and personalities who still functioned well as a couple. That was the way she hoped people saw her marriage to Thomas. It was the way she’d seen it for the first couple of years they were together, before she felt swamped by petty annoyances, before Gerald became quite so verbal. “Thank you for saying that,” she said. “Sometimes I think about the marriage going through regular, predictable cycles, like the weather. Or like a washing machine. Some are smooth and quiet, some noisy, but in the end, they all work together and eventually get the clothes clean.”
“What cycle are you in now?”
The cakes were staring up at her, daring her to take a bite. She sliced off such a thin sliver of the chocolate cake, it crumpled into a heap on the plate, and she scooped it up with a spoon. “Probably the WASH cycle. Warm Affection mixed with Subtle Hostility. It’s a low-key mode. What about you and Russell?”
He pondered this for a moment. “The SPIN cycle: Separation Producing Increased Neediness. A lot of chugging and rattling. I was hoping it would be closer to RINSE—Recaptured Independence . . . Negating Symbiotic . . .”
“Entanglement?”
“Exactly.” He picked up one of the cucumber sandwiches and, making what looked like a noble attempt at being not too dainty, popped the whole thing into his mouth. “I miscalculated, it seems. But I guess I’m talking about my own feelings, not the cycle of the relationship.”
“What about Russell’s feelings?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out this weekend.”
“It’s trouble if you’re not both on the same cycle. The unbalanced light goes on and everything grinds to a halt. My brother and Joyce come to mind.”
He seemed to perk up at the mention of Brian, which probably meant he’d been charmed by his looks—good looks, if she could believe everyone’s opinion except her own. “Another interesting marriage,” he said.
“That’s one way of describing it. He’s been stuck in the raging narcissist cycle for years. I was married to one of those once.”
“Dale?”
She nodded. She looked down at her plate, astonished to realize she’d finished every last crumb of the chocolate cake. She’d been so intent on not eating it, she hadn’t even tasted it. “Are you worried that Russell isn’t missing you enough?”
“Probably. It’s what I deserve, so . . .”
“But people never get what they deserve, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. Anyway, all you have to do is wait for the happy-days-are-here-again cycle.”
She liked herself as he seemed to see her—strong, capable, independent. Not part of the undifferentiated mass of Janethomasgerald as she’d feared, but part of a loving, healthy family. Which wasn’t so far from the truth. She liked his belief in her, his faith that she could help see him through whatever block he was having with this book. She wanted to live up to his image of her.
Later, as they were making their way down the staircase to the lobby, he said to her, hesitantly, “So, Jane, was there a reason you wanted to get together? Something you wanted to tell me?”
She’d wanted forty-five minutes of companionship, wanted to be around someone with whom she had a relationship uncomplicated by fabrications and omissions. Someone who approved of her, even if, in truth, he didn’t know her all that well. She stopped on the staircase and let him get a few steps ahead of her. “Can you believe I almost forgot?” she said. “We’re going to get the money! I haven’t had the official word, but I’ve had the unofficial official word we’re getting a green light. And not only that, it seems nearly certain we’ll be getting more than the ten grand I thought we’d end up getting.”
He bounded up the stairs and put his arms around her. “You’re brilliant, Jane.”
This was what she’d come for, and standing on the stairs with the harpist above plucking out something silvery and melancholy—Debussy? The Beatles?—she believed him for almost a full minute.
Eleven
Home Alone
1.
Desmond was gazing out the window of his office at the still surface of the lake in the middle of Deerforth’s campus. It was the period of Pauline Anderton’s life after her husband died that he found so puzzling. All indications were that her husband had tolerated her singing career while belittling her talent with backhanded compliments. (“For people with talent,” he once wrote to her, “singing’s no big deal. For someone like you, it takes courage. To hell with the critics.”) Desmond didn’t understand why she’d abandoned her singing after his death. If she hadn’t turned down every offer to perform or record, she might have become a more confident and polished artist.
“Ahmthina turrin mamuth inna crag ed.”
Desmond turned away from the window. He’d almost forgotten the student was still in his office. Roger, Roger . . . Lovell, was that it? He was a desperately thin boy who seemed—was it possible, at age nineteen?—to be losing his hair. He wore baggy, sweaty T-shirts, and enormous eyeglasses that made him look a little like a bug or some prehistoric creature. Colleges ought to offer makeovers as part of the whole package, along with job placement and health care. Based on his prose, Roger was exceptionally bright and capable, but he spoke so rapidly, everything came out in a garbled wad, and it was almost impossible to tell what he was saying.
“I see,” Desmond said.
“Gugugugugugood. Gla yagree.”
Had he said he was thinking of turning his mother into a crack head? Maybe so. He was enrolled in the Creative Nonfiction class and the consensus among the other students was that his memoir lacked tension and dramatic coherence. Ma
ybe, one girl had suggested, he’d have a stronger story to tell if his father had cancer or his mother had a drinking problem.
“I’m not sure I do agree with you,” Desmond said. “You might want to continue writing as truthfully as possible about your childhood and see what story emerges from that naturally.”
Roger started to roll his hands over each other so quickly they became a blur. “Yabba gadda gedda sumthin inna . . .”
He should tape Roger and play it back at a lower speed to find out what he’d said. In the meantime, it was probably best to check out. Desmond turned back to the window. Based on the letters and postcards Anderton had sent, she and her husband had hardly had a loving marriage. It wasn’t likely she’d gone into such deep mourning after he died she couldn’t perform, so what was it that had caused her to drop the ball professionally? He was certain the answer to this would cast a long shadow over the rest of her life and fill in the missing pieces.
“Yathinga heron addis beda?”
Desmond looked at Roger again. The kid was leaning forward in his chair, eyes immense behind the glasses. “A hearing aid?” Desmond asked.
“Nanananana. Heron addis.”
He felt like suggesting he just do away with mom altogether. Dad, too, while he was at it, claim he grew up in an orphanage. There was dramatic tension for you. Everyone in the class had signed up for it because they wanted to write nonfiction, but they made so few distinctions between what had happened in their lives and what had happened in the scores of memoirs they’d read, it might as well be a course in science fiction. “A heroin addict? Claim that she’s a junkie?”
“Yayayayaya. Mayme ayes.”
“Maniac?”
“Nono. Mayme AIDS. GivarAIDS.”
Give his mother AIDS. One more suggestion along those lines and he’d feel duty bound to report Roger to the dean. “Let’s think about that, all right? In the meantime, maybe you should write something more detailed about your brother. I found some of the pages about him to be the most interesting you’ve got so far. Just follow the little details of your relationship with him. That business about him falling out of the tree was genuinely touching.”
Desmond stood and ushered Roger out before he had a chance to tell him he didn’t have a brother at all. He shut the door behind him and packed up the last of the papers and lecture notes he was taking with him on his New York trip.
Discounting the last ten minutes, it had been an exceptionally good week. If he were prone to Jane Cody-style hyperbole, he’d call it a triumph. On Monday, Jane had told him about the near certainty of getting the money. “It was you,” she’d said as they were standing on the staircase at the Ritz. “Your whole concept of what the series should be was brilliant. But what really clinched it was that inspired business about Liza Minnelli.”
This wasn’t the first time she’d praised him for that particular lie; despite her compliments about his ideas for the series, it was this fabrication that seemed to please her most. And, curiously enough, it was that moment of ruthless prevarication that he kept replaying in his own mind. Not his clarification of Jane’s ideas, not his succinct analysis of Anderton’s life and talent. “I’ve been in touch with Liza Minnelli.” It was exhilarating to discover something new about himself, to find that he had a hidden talent for on-the-spot mendacity. It made him think he was more creative and spontaneous than he’d guessed.
On Tuesday, he’d started making phone calls to arrange interviews with some key figures in Pauline Anderton’s life. First there was an older couple in Waugborn, the Boston suburb where Anderton had spent her final days. This pair of garrulous boozers had been friends of Anderton’s sister and drinking buddies of Pauline’s right up to the end. They loved to tell amusing anecdotes about the fun they’d had with her, anecdotes that usually started with a fond “Remember the time we went to . . .” and ended with a drunken mishap and some variation on the comment, “Yeah, she almost died that night,” delivered as if it were the surprising and hilarious punch line to a joke. With careful editing, their stories could provide dramatic, colorful testimony to Anderton’s decline.
He’d received a cooler reception from Anderton’s daughter, Lorna, a forty-something (going on sixty, he was sure) woman who had a collection of Anderton memorabilia on display in the sunporch of her house in Gulf City, Florida. Desmond had spent a few days with Lorna in the early stages of his research and had found her to be a suspicious person who acted as if he were trying to siphon money out of her bank account but who eventually had come around. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised or disappointed to hear that the book was still unfinished, and was wary of the new project. “A TV show?” she’d asked. “Well, we’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
It was only a little after noon, but already the Deerforth campus was emptying out and beginning to feel like a lush, shadowy park. College campuses, along with youth, are wasted on the young. From his office window high above the rolling lawns and colorful trees, Desmond could see students packing cars and lined up for the shuttle bus to Boston with their knapsacks and suitcases heaped up around their feet. The start of a long weekend. There was something about the whole indulgent concept of a “long weekend,” not to mention the very words themselves, that suggested romantic possibilities. He’d told Russell he was going to arrive on Saturday, but he’d woken up this morning so caught up in this autumnal urge for going and the predatory desire to make this long weekend as long as possible, that he’d decided to bring his schoolwork with him and leave today.
As he was about to call Russell’s store and tell him about the change in his plans, the phone rang.
“Is this Desmond?”
A recognizable voice, although one he didn’t recognize. “Yes?”
“You’re never in your office, Desmond. I’m surprised I caught you. It’s Brian Cody.”
Desmond glanced toward the door to make sure it was closed, and then to make sure it stayed closed, stretched out the phone cord and turned the deadbolt. “Brian, hello.” He lay down on Professor Crandersall’s puffy, bedspread-covered sofa and put his feet up on the armrest.
“You sound as if you’re in a rush.”
“No, not exactly.”
“Not too busy taking care of your students?” There was a faint suggestion of something lewd under this, as if he assumed Desmond spent the bulk of his time prowling the streets or luring students into his office so he could “take care of” them. Desmond had found that most of the closeted men he knew assumed that all openly gay men spent at least ten of their sixteen waking hours pursuing or engaging in sex. It was an insulting assumption that took profligate promiscuity for granted and discounted the possibility of professional pursuits and emotional fidelity; the actual number of hours was probably much closer to six.
Since the dinner at Jane’s, Desmond had thought about Brian from time to time, usually with bemused annoyance. In one brief fantasy, he and Brian had spent some quality time together, assuming sexually humiliating Brian in his own office could be considered quality time. Fantasy was one thing, but Desmond had never entertained any notions of actually calling him up. When he looked up Brian’s office address in the phone book, it hadn’t been with the intention of dropping by for coffee. One balmy Wednesday a couple of weeks after the dinner at Jane’s, Desmond had driven home from Deerforth via Cambridge and walked past Brian’s office. If you were going to cook up a harmless fantasy—and he’d read somewhere that all fantasies are harmless—it helped to have a few authentic details to use for set design. The building was on a noisy street and the front window was artfully covered with opaque shades, so there’d been no risk of being spotted by or spotting Brian.
“I’ve been fairly busy with your sister,” Desmond said. “We’ve started working on a project together.”
This didn’t impress him. “Mmm. So I’ve heard.” There was a rustling of paper, as if he was unrolling blueprints while cradling the phone against his neck. “Look, I’m just
calling to tell you that offer of a tour of the city is still on. You haven’t forgotten, have you, Desmond?”
Desmond hated the condescending tone in his voice when he said his name, and making an attempt at stabbing back, he said, “No, Brian, I haven’t forgotten.” But this, he realized, was seduction through sarcasm, probably the very thing Brian had been hoping to provoke.
“Then give me a call. I’ll give you my number. I’ve got some free time next week, so maybe we can work something out. Have you got a piece of paper there, Desmond?”
“I think so, Brian.”
Later, driving along the Merritt Parkway with a Pauline Anderton tape playing in the background and the Connecticut landscape passing by the windows, he realized he’d forgotten to call Russell and tell him about his change of plans. But stopping in Connecticut and finding his calling card and talking over the roar of passing traffic seemed too taxing. Unlike Desmond, Russell liked surprises.
2.
As soon as he walked into the apartment, he was overwhelmed by the reassuring exhaustion that always overtook him when he returned home from a long trip. The sounds of the New York traffic, so distinctly different in volume and tone from the traffic sounds in Boston; the dusty odor of the dirtier New York air; the familiar smells of carpets and houseplants and gas from the pilot light on the stove that always blew out on breezy afternoons. As he lowered his bag to the floor beside the red velvet sofa in the living room, he realized how cold and emotionally empty his life in Boston was, and, taking in all the clutter Russell had been collecting for five years, how colorless his life in this apartment had been before Russell had tricked Desmond into letting him move in here. What a fool he’d been for thinking he had to leave this behind, even temporarily, to get a hold on his life. This was his life. This was where he belonged, here in this apartment flooded with the burnished light of late afternoon, and the primitive portraits and embroidered pillows. He let his knapsack slide off his shoulders, and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.
True Enough Page 18
