Another You (10 page)

Evie had always loved him, but it was so clear whom she had come to love most, the light in her eyes sparkling when she looked from him to Sonja. He was at a disadvantage with Evie, of course, because when she became frail, it frightened him, and he backed off. And what did he know about women that age? Young women he did know something about, because he came in contact with them, but he never imagined his students old; it was not that he really thought of them as forever young, but that beyond a certain point, he knew whatever effect he had had on their lives would dissipate. There were not very many Darcy Barrowses. He would be mixed in with other memories, perhaps existing only as a person who provided a footnote to the fondly remembered campus. Or they might remember his name but not much else about him, as they remembered a line of a poem—time would erode the body of the poem and let linger, at best, a line or a phrase. He would no longer be as tall or as handsome, as original or funny, because they would have spent their adult lives inflating and deflating their husbands and lovers. Some would inevitably remember with embarrassment the silly gifts they had bestowed on him, the curlicued calligraphy written on cards with implied messages or, worse yet, cards that seemed humorous because they’d been young and had not yet heard all the jokes. Sometimes—a few times—students had tried to do it over again. The girl who had given him the dumb card of a pig flying over a rainbow writing a real note, years later, about how difficult her life had become and acknowledging what had once been her adolescent crush on him. The person who had given him a cute little plastic lion cub inside a geode now apologizing, in effect, by knitting and sending a conservative blue scarf. The strange cookies, studded with things no adult would want, like chopped Reese’s peanut-butter cups, or miniature marshmallows, replaced by a simple chocolate bar mailed from Paris. Though he got quite a few cards at Christmas—at least for a few years after they’d left, from those students who had particularly liked him—they usually thought of him not at holidays, but at odd times, such as when the line of a poem they’d studied with him was suddenly clarified by what they’d experienced, or when, in their travels, they finally saw a particular painting or sculpture that had been nothing but an allusion in a poem until the moment they stood in front of it and it shimmered. So many of his former students were out there, the ones who grew to
his height, but who still thought he was taller than he was, the ones who would always see him running an impatient hand through bushy hair, though his hair was thinning, those who against all evidence continued to believe that he had unique insights, and that he had been speaking to them, personally. And this one thing was always true: in the letters and postcards they sent, they never thought to ask if he remembered them. No doubt that would have been as absurd, considering what he represented, considering their projections onto him, as beginning a letter,
Dear Father: As you may remember, I am your son
. Well—it was probably true that he simplified their young lives the same way they romanticized his. Or at least he had, until recently, when—without his at first realizing it—his students had begun to seem strange; strangers who were not recognizable, very young people whose motivation he didn’t understand, or feel at all drawn into. The gap had widened. Still, those who cared about him cared about him, but now there were limits to his concern, or even to his infrequent, vague affections. They weren’t even his children; they were somebody else’s children, who would go off and do whatever they did, and after so many years of teaching, he might as well admit he wasn’t doing it because of them, but for personal reasons—personal reasons, plus his salary. He was passing time among them because he liked to read books. Also, the lecturing made for a little excitement; he gave himself credit for impassioned yet overstated appreciations of poets’ rather ordinary terrains, for his dense explanations of matters just slightly opaque. And then he would turn his attention to the students who took the bait, to those whose eyes widened with incredulity. Continuing, just as outrageously, he would then smile slyly at Cheryl Lanier, or anyone else who caught on, at once acknowledging his outrageousness, but also making clear that he had favorites in the classroom, to whom he was speaking directly.

He watched as Sonja’s car came slowly into the drive. It was not until he saw her car that his eyes filled with tears. The neighborhood boys had shovelled the drive early in the morning; otherwise, it would be impassable. They’d be around for their payment as soon as school was out: the big-eared boy the girls called Mickey Mouse and his younger, towheaded brother who was so diminutive they taunted him as Tinkerbell. They had their routine down, Mickey and Tink: Mickey shovelled first, followed by Tink, who widened the path by throwing
snow off to the left and right, having the more difficult job but working fast enough to keep up with his brother.

Sonja stepped out of the car, the wind lashing her hair across her face, her bare hand reaching up to pin it back.
I have been standing around the house, staring out one window or the other all morning
, Marshall thought.
Now I’ll have to stare into my wife’s face and tell her Evie has had a seizure
. He frowned as he thought of it. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe it was made up, invented for effect, as someone in his class had recently accused him of doing when he gave a Marxist interpretation of one of Robert Frost’s poems. Maybe Evie was fine. Maybe Sonja would tell him that.

“I think I got a sale,” Sonja said as he came down the stairs into the front hallway to greet her. “Cross your fingers and hope this one goes through. The housing inspector goes there tomorrow, and I don’t think these people are kidding about being able to pay cash.”

He embraced her, realizing as he did that she would misunderstand and think he was happy about the upcoming sale. He was stalling for time, though what help could a few seconds be? He pulled Sonja tightly to him and told her there was bad news: Evie had had a seizure. He could tell from her suddenly rigid body that Sonja believed this entirely. “But Marshall—I just saw her,” Sonja whispered.

“They’ve taken her to the morgue,” he said, the word out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. “To the hospital,” he said quickly.

“Which is it?” she said, looking at him as if he were mad.

He was so surprised at the stupidity his awkwardness produced that he didn’t dare speak again. He looked blankly back at her.

“You think I can’t handle it if she’s dead?” Sonja’s eyes had filled with tears.

“She isn’t dead, she’s fine,” he said.

“Fine?” Sonja echoed.

At that moment, all he could think to do was to throw himself into Sonja’s arms—this time he was not embracing her so much as he was pleading with her to embrace him. Which she did, standing there sniffling, her head against his chest. Finally, she said, “Why are we just standing here?”

*   *   *

It wasn’t until five-thirty that he realized he’d forgotten to call Jenny Oughton, and when he did call, from a pay phone in the hospital lounge, he left his message, his apology, on the answering machine. The clinic was closed for the weekend. He would have to ask Sonja for Jenny’s home number, call her there, and explain why he hadn’t shown up. As he stood talking to the answering machine, he realized that he was looking at what had by now become a very familiar face: the face of a coyote on the wildlife magazine that always seemed to be thrown somewhere in his bathroom, the magazine that was also thrown on a tabletop in the hospital lounge.

As a child, it had been his responsibility to keep the house tidy. Gordon was called upon for other services—the more difficult things, actually, such as fixing the toaster or planing the bottoms of humidity-swollen doors—but it had been expected of Marshall that he put things back in their places, replace burned-out lightbulbs, sweep. Evie had hated the sound of the vacuum, so most often they had swept, in unison, Evie accelerating the pace to see how long it would take him to catch on. And it had always taken too long: he had quickly fallen in step, and would have worked frantically if she had not eventually leaned on her broom handle and told him to relax, that they weren’t sweeping to win a race. A clean house had simply been expected: shelved books; straight hall runners; pots and pans in the proper place. He knew that now he had become disorganized. Most days he lost his keys, forgot to put money in his wallet, wrote notes about errands that needed doing that he then left behind. Sonja would shake her head in disbelief when he attempted to make the bed, the sheet hanging low on one side and the blanket hanging almost to the floor on the other, the bedspread with its design off-center, both pillows mashed together, half under the bedspread, half-exposed. He knew that Sonja and Evie laughed about his ineptitude, though now that he thought about it, that, too, might be rooted in an unconscious protest against having to straighten up the mess after a night’s chaotic tossing and turning, or—though it had become less frequent—lovemaking. What a thought: lovemaking. So very long ago: his father and Evie. The night sounds. The wordless activity he had drowned out, when necessary, by whispering made-up stories to frighten his brother. How anxious he had once been for silence, wanting both to hear them, and then to hear them become silent.

There was a
Time
magazine with Bill Clinton on the cover. A coloring book left behind by some child, called
Coloring China
. He opened the coloring book and saw a Chinese man in a straw hat, running along pulling a rickshaw in which was seated an American family: Dad’s face was blue; mother’s orange, beneath a pale-pink pillbox hat; the children’s faces were uncolored, except for a mustache and goatee that had been added to the little girl. The Chinese man had not been colored in, either, but whoever had been working on the picture had added a few Keith Haring-like bursts around his figure to indicate movement. Marshall stared at it, enjoying the brief, imaginary transport of this travesty depicting a visit to China. It was better than thinking about Evie, whose face was also blue—though such a pale blue it seemed frighteningly translucent.

Chère Martine
,

I write with bad news. At the end of a lovely evening dining with old friends from Boston days, Alice experienced dizziness and had to be taken to the emergency room at Lenox Hill. She is fine now. It was an ear infection that caused her no pain but that disturbed her sense of balance. After EKG’s and other tests, the unusual but rather simple problem was diagnosed, and we were able to return to our hotel with a prescription for antibiotics and a prescription for a sedative, as she was extremely upset—more from the embarrassment of not being able to sit upright in the restaurant and having to be supported on the way out than from any physical distress, I’m convinced. Back in the hotel we were both fine—she’d had a pill and seemed sleepy—when suddenly she began to pace the room, again holding her hand to her heart and trying to breathe steadily. At this point I must stop and assure you that everything is in fact perfectly fine now. Several times I led her to the chair or to the bed, though when it was clear that walking provided her some ease I simply walked with her. Eventually we opened the door and walked in the corridor, because there was no way to pace comfortably in the room. At one point I made a joke, stealing a rosebud from a vase on a room-service tray outside someone’s door, and I thought as she paused to laugh that she would momentarily be fine. Yet she held the rose to her side with the bud pointing downward like a dowsing rod. She said aloud, to a perfect stranger who passed us on his way to his room, that she was ill, and he stopped to see if he could be of assistance. To my chagrin, she told him about the tragedy, as if it had just happened, and he was of course at a loss for what to do, looking at me for some cue which I dared not give because she can become terribly angry if she thinks I’m giving any look behind her back. Fortunately the man was quite a nice fellow—he also had a suite that had been booked by his company, and he asked us to come in and sit for a minute. I was so astonished at her behavior that I was happy to think of sinking down into a chair myself. Inside the room she did seem calmer, but
I
found it odd that while in the restaurant she had been so embarrassed, with a total stranger she seemed to brighten. It ended with the three of us drinking port from a decanter on his desk. I must move on from this description and make a couple of points, lest I forget them. One is that as she became more composed, Alice mentioned that her dear friend Amelia was unhappy in New York and was looking for a way to move to San Francisco. Then she spoke glowingly of S.F. and told the man she and I had discussed a similar move, though I assure you we have not. There it seemed they had something in common, as both had stayed at the same hotel near Union Square, she on a shopping expedition many years ago, he on business. I felt uncomfortable, as she asked him rather personal questions: if he enjoyed practicing law, etc. All the while, she was clasping my hand or letting go of it to glance in the mirror and smooth her hair, which I’m afraid her friends and I had quite wrecked by dabbing her face with a wet napkin in the restaurant
.

Martine—only between the two of us: her demeanor changed so that she seemed to me almost flirtatious, so focused was she on the man’s every word. All of it was so curious, though—and after a bit I realized that I was completely exhausted, that the strain had gotten to me, and that if we did not leave the room at once, I might never be able to rise. By then, though, the two of them were firm friends. To my relief, Alice seemed willing to move along quite soon thereafter, so we stood and thanked him for his most generous hospitality
.

In our room, she insisted I call to find out how to reach this man in the future. I told her that if she found him so interesting, she should place the call herself, since she had not minded at all dragging him into our affairs in the first place, and we had something of a row. She said I was not receptive to new friendships and then—with a clarity I couldn’t deny—she said it would be far better if I called than she, because he would see that what we wanted in the future was a social interaction, whereas if she called it might seem improper. As it was, neither of us called. I thought I could be much more coherent about Alice’s strange behavior and our odd encounter, but details already slip my mind as I write. That night, I had a dream of trees being planted. In the dream, I realized they would not take root because concrete lay below the grass. The
whole house rested on concrete, which extended far beyond the house’s foundation, and what that meant was that we would never be able to dig but so deep, and then things would be impossible. (Clearly, your point about my visiting Dr. St. Vance myself, about which I was once so perturbed with you, is not a bad idea.)