All He Ever Wanted (18 page)

Etna bent to touch the water, which sparkled from the electric lights overhead. She trilled her fingers along its surface,
lost for some moments in a reverie of her own. Perhaps she was remembering a pleasant excursion of ours to the seashore. Contentedly,
I watched her.

“You are having a happy memory,” I said after a time.

She glanced up at me.

“You,” I said. “Just now. You seemed to be remembering something pleasant.”

“I have many happy memories, Nicholas,” she said.

“I hope some of them are with me,” I said.

She stood and shook the water from her fingers. “I have happy family memories, certainly,” she said carefully.

She moved around the tiled edge of the pool and sat in a wicker chair near its edge. The act of sitting caused her skirt to
rise. Drawn by the sight of her copper ankles, I joined her in an adjacent chair. Along the opposite wall, there were many
plants, which seemed to thrive in the room’s humidity. Etna’s hair had begun to curl at her temples. I reached over and took
her hand in mine.

“Is it so very important to you?” she asked.

“Your happiness?”

“No, I meant the post. Of Dean.”

“Yes, I think it is,” I answered. “I am ambitious.”

“Not overly so.”

“It is something I have wanted for some years now.”

“Your workload will increase.”

“I regard it as a challenge.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, smiling at me.

“What is so amusing?” I asked.

“I was remembering that first time we had tea in town on Kimball Street. You said you were willing to wait years to gain Noah
Fitch’s position. I was struck by your patience.”

“That seems so long ago,” I said, thinking of that pleasant outing. “I remember you spoke of Newman.”

“You were surprised I had ever heard of the man,” Etna said.

“Well, yes, I was. I know I shouldn’t have been, I can see that now. You spoke of freedom.”

“Did I?”

She withdrew her hand. “Perhaps we should go back. We shall be missed.”

“Linger a bit,” I said, unwilling just yet to relinquish her to the party.

There was something I wanted to say to my wife. Now, after all these years. The ripples on the water combined with an element
of risk were making me bold. And though I was aware of a sterner, more sensible voice screaming
no
within my head, I was sorely tempted toward adventure.

“I wish …” I said.

Etna turned to face me. She waited. “What do you wish for, Nicholas?” she asked after a time.

I tried to form the question I so very much wanted my wife to answer. I opened my mouth and then closed it. How should I put
this, exactly? What would be the most delicate way of phrasing it? Should I begin with an apology? Should I start by saying
that I knew such a question might be offensive, but that I had waited so long for an answer? I had shown patience, had I not?
Was this not an answer to which a man, a husband, was entitled?

I opened my mouth again. I may have leaned forward. Etna may have leaned forward as well. It seemed there was a long silence
between us.

“I wish I could erase the memory of our wedding trip!” I blurted in frustration.

Etna recoiled slightly — stunned, I think, by the ferocity of my statement. She sat in an attitude of stillness, as I had
so often seen her do in moments of fear or confusion. This was the closest we had ever come to discussing the events of our
wedding night, and I was now quite horrified that I had lost control of my tongue.

“It is just that …” I said, seeking to soften and explain. “It seems to have …” I realized that of course I could not utter
aloud my anxieties about that night. I could not ask her if she had had other lovers before me. Sense had won out over boldness.
“I really cannot say,” I said helplessly.

Etna shook her head. “Whatever is the matter, Nicholas?” she asked. “You are behaving very strangely tonight.”

“There is nothing the matter,” I said. “It is just that …” But I was unable to continue. She understood, I am sure of it.
For she laid her hand over mine with a tender gesture and a kindness that nearly takes my breath away when I recall it now.

“Nicholas, sometimes you make me laugh. You are so earnest and you try so hard,” she said.

“We all try hard in our own small ways,” I replied.

“I’m told there is a conservatory,” she said, standing.

“A conservatory,” I repeated, rising with her. “Another English affectation. If Ferald is so enamored of England, perhaps
he should simply move there.”

“And would that make you happy?” Etna asked.

I shrugged down my vest, which had risen over my considerable stomach. “I already
am
happy,” I insisted.

We left the natatorium. Moving from room to room, I could hear the murmur of voices from the public rooms of the house. In
time, we found the glass conservatory, through which one could view the stars. We also discovered a remarkably modern kitchen,
fitted out with all the latest conveniences: a toaster, a refrigerator, an electric hot plate. Etna and I made a breathless
run through a butler’s pantry that seemed nearly as long as the southern border of our own decently sized house. We returned
to the gathering like children who imagine they have gotten away with something grand.

A waiter produced a tray of champagne in flutes. Etna and I each took one and clinked glasses. The sharp rap of a silver knife
upon a wineglass cut short our sense of conspiracy. Heads turned in search of the source of the summons.

Edward Ferald, when he had everyone’s attention, put aside the glass and the knife. “Welcome, colleagues and lovely wives,”
he began, the compliment causing a polite titter to ripple through the crowd. One could not help but note, however, that Ferald
himself was not standing with his own lovely wife, but rather with Phillip Asher, lately of Yale.

“Thank you for coming to my home on this beautiful October evening,” Ferald continued. “I will let you get to your suppers
in just a moment, but I wanted to introduce to those of you who have not met him my very special guest, Phillip Asher, Professor
of Philosophy at Yale. Professor Asher has graciously agreed to deliver the Kitchner Lectures at our college.”

There were some murmurs, even a bit of applause here.

“Professor Asher, who has a degree from Harvard College, was born in London, immigrated to this country when he was six, and
was raised in our own New Hampshire. In addition to being an ethicist and a poet, Professor Asher is something of an explorer,
having recently returned from an expedition to New Guinea,” Ferald went on. “He is currently on sabbatical for the term. Unless
of course …” (and here Ferald winked, a particularly smarmy sight, and snaked his arm possessively around Asher’s shoulder)
“…we can persuade the man to stay on a bit longer.”

Asher, looking for a place to cast his embarrassed gaze, caught my eye, and it was in that moment that the obvious occurred
to me.

Asher was a candidate. It was only too clear.

Appalled by this new and certain knowledge, I studied the man. He was everything I was not. An authentic New Englander next
to my stolid Dutch-American. (No,
better
than that, an authentic Englishman–turned–New Englander.) An apparently brilliant scholar next to my dull schoolmaster. A
poet to my pedant. I thought of the college corporators who might find Asher appealing — the Reverend Mr. Frederick Stimson,
currently the college pastor (a man who would almost certainly be intrigued by the thought of an ethicist as Dean); Howard
Yates, a banker from an old New England family; Clark Price, a confessed Anglophile; not to mention the ever-present Ferald,
who I knew despised me. Could dutiful administration and dogged scholarship compete with a wide-ranging intellect and an artistic
temperament from Yale?

Asher’s eyes did not leave mine, and I knew only too well what he was seeing: a man grown stouter through the years, formed
by his sedentary profession; a hairline receding with the same velocity as the stomach advanced. Would he know I was a candidate
as well? Had Ferald apprised him of this fact, or could he sense ambition in another?

In the moment I had first seen Etna Bliss on the night of the fire, I had felt the keenest desire. It was a moment that had
altered my life forever. Indeed, I had long grown accustomed to dividing my life into halves:
before
Etna and
after
Etna. So it was as I watched Ferald take Asher under his wing. Jealousy uncoiled itself and stretched its serpentine length,
and I realized I had not yet known the depths of its passion, not even in my imaginings as I lay beside Etna in our marriage
bed. That had been, in comparison, a cerebral sort of envy that dissipated easily enough in the sunlight of the breakfast
room. But this… this was something else: the under-belly of admiration, the darker side of love.

(It occurs to me now, some twenty years after the events I describe, that great passion or jealousy may be reduced to an understanding
of chemicals in the brain, chemicals that are triggered and retriggered each time the memory of the initial event is retrieved.
If so, what a riot of chemicals must be in my brain as I have been writing this memoir — a kind of chemical soup!)

(Are there chemicals in the brain? I shall have to query the Chemistry Professor on this matter when I return to Thrupp.)

That night, I slept fitfully, scarcely at all, and from time to time I sensed in Etna next to me an alertness of which I was
normally not aware. I ascribed her restlessness to having caused a bit of unwanted attention at the party. Etna had been apologetic
to her host, attributing a dropped champagne glass — which, unfortunately, had fallen during the momentary lull after Ferald’s
introduction of Asher and was thus all the more noticeable in that crowded room of academics and their spouses — to wet fingers
due to the condensation on the flute. As for my own agitation, each time I opened my eyes, I could see only too clearly the
patrician features of Phillip Asher, lately of Yale. Thus Etna and I, we two small boats, bobbed along the tempestuous waves
of insomnia, one visible and then lost, the other rising from a trough and then sinking again, until such time as we were
roused from our bed by our maid, Abigail. My wife, as if she had been anticipating the summons for hours, rose from the sheets
so quickly that I did not have a moment to speak to her.

We met, as always after our respective toilets, in the breakfast room. I noted that the relief I normally felt, the relief
from the nightly marital tension between us, was not present that morning. We greeted each other not as warm friends will
do (no kiss that morning, as I recall), but rather as exhausted or preoccupied colleagues, each engaged in silent dialogues
with other persons. Since I cannot know Etna’s thoughts (at the time I imagined she was composing a further apology to Millicent
Ferald), I can only record mine, which were both exceedingly anxious and highly political.

I sifted through all that had been said the day before — in the hallway of Chandler as well as at Ferald’s reception — and,
as most of us will do after the fact, I composed replies that were sensible or sharp or even witty, replies that taunted me
with their cleverness as they could never be uttered in reality. How I wished I could retrieve time so that I might appear
the confident and generous professor who, instead of collapsing at the thought of a serious challenge to his candidacy, rather
welcomed, even encouraged, the rival, as men of sport will do. But as I have never been a sporting man, and as I had been
blindsided by Ferald’s remarks, I felt my mind to be a jumble of confused thoughts, none of which I should have liked to utter
in Etna’s presence.

Appetite, as well as peace of mind, seemed to have been stolen from me, and I poked the viscous and vile-looking yolk of my
egg much as a child will do. I should have to seek Asher out, I determined. I should have to speak to him to ascertain just
how much of a threat the man really was. I knew that Eliphalet Stone (the man who detested bottom-feeders) would not be well-disposed
to an outsider for the post. He believed, and rightly so, that only a man drawn from within the ranks of the college could
understand the particular provincial needs of Thrupp. More to the point, Stone was not in favor of expansion. If Latin and
Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation had been adequate for their own educations, their argument went, such a curriculum was
good enough for successive generations as well. I was not as conservative as they, though I favored the direction of funds
to the library rather than to further schools of science — with apologies to the ailing William Bliss, who was, in fact, no
more interested in this debate than was Mary, who cleared away my nearly untouched plate with a disapproving look.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Etna reaching for the sugar bowl. I was reminded of my boorishness and sought immediately
to make amends.

“That was a pleasant reception last night,” I said, puncturing the silence that lay between us.

“It was,” she said.

“You are perhaps too worried this morning about the broken champagne glass,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The one you dropped.”

“Yes,” she said, taking two spoonfuls of sugar (she normally took only the one).

“You were suitably apologetic,” I said. “I think you should not give it another thought.”

I glanced at her face, which was decidedly pale, causing me to inquire after her health. “Are you unwell?” I asked. “I noticed
that you took two sugars.”

“Did I?”

She made an effort then to eat a bite of toast, which must have been what was needed, for she smiled at me.

“I’ll be at Baker House this afternoon and may not be back until five,” she said.

“Is that so?” I asked. “You’re not dressed for it.”

Indeed, Etna had on a pink silk blouse, not at all suited, I thought, to physical encounters with the poor.

“I hadn’t planned to go today, but I feel I need to this morning,” she said, which made me further curious. It was the expression
of need, as well as the speed with which she had uttered it, that piqued my interest. It was not often that I saw desire of
any sort in my wife, and I began to reflect that charity, though generous, was not entirely selfless, serving as it did the
donor as well as the indigent.