Blue Angel (17 page)

H
ome early, Sherrie's cooking thin chicken cutlets, breaded,
fried in butter and olive oil, arranged with slices of lemon, scalloped potatoes with prosciutto, a salad with walnuts and Gorgonzola. Are they celebrating again? Swenson certainly is—a miracle cure, the unbidden grace of coming to his senses, his recovery from a fleeting, inappropriate interest in one of his students. The evidence that he's cured is that he has a reason to call Angela. But he doesn't want to. Nothing could interest him less.

He sits in the kitchen, admiring the easy competence with which Sherrie flips the cutlets, checks the potato casserole bubbling in the oven. The sight of her tossing the salad by hand, lightly stroking oil onto each lettuce leaf, fills him with such longing that it's all he can do not to put his arms around her and lead her off to bed. He watches her wipe her hands on her jeans, imagines covering her hands with his, feeling her fingers underneath his, and beneath that, her thighs. He remains quiet, so as not to distract her and because he feels that their silence, together with the heat from the stove, creates a humid greenhouse in which his desire can thrive.

Sherrie lights the votive candles, then hands him a bottle of cold white wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses. He pours half a glass and tastes it, drinks what's left in the glass. A flush of intense well-being makes him think that all history and civilization has been preparation for this blessed moment of sitting across from his wife, inhaling the perfumes of wine, chicken, lemon, and melted cheese, while a gentle steam rises from his plate.

They bring their food to the table. Leaning forward to eat, Sherrie rakes her hair back from her forehead. The skin between her brows forms a vertical crease dug by years of focused attention, hours listening to students describe pain more intense than anything they put in the stories they write for Swenson. How moved he is by her frown lines, by the loveliness of his wife, the beauty that's grown stronger and stormier with the passage of time.

He takes a bite of chicken, potatoes, smiles inanely while detaching the strings of cheese that connect his mouth to the fork. “So? How was your day?”

“Kind of great,” Sherrie says. “Nothing too awful went wrong. Arlene brought me a fabulous sandwich with cream cheese and some kind of spread she made from stewing red peppers practically down to nothing. She got the idea from a magazine. The sandwich was so delicious I didn't even mind her spending twenty minutes explaining the recipe and the changes she made in the recipe or thought of making in the recipe and how she never used olive oil before and how the smell took getting used to, and how long it took to reduce the peppers to this gummy paste, and how she knew I would like it because I like exotic foods…. How was
your
day?”

“Not bad,” says Swenson. “We did Makeesha's story. It could have been a bloodbath, but somehow we all dodged a bullet.”

Sherrie says, “Again. Well, that's a relief.”

“Is this how low we've sunk?” says Swenson. “No disasters in class and a sandwich from Arlene is enough to make a day ‘kind of great'?”

Sherrie laughs. “Well, also…Chris Dolan's echocardiogram report came in. The heart thing turns out to be nothing.”

“Heart thing? Chris Dolan?” Swenson knows he's supposed to know.

“Don't you listen to anything? He's that adorable freshman. His family doctor heard some abnormal sounds during his last physical and told him to deal with it when he got here. Dumped the thing in our laps. And the kid's really lovely, really sweet. We were all terribly worried. I know I told you about him—”

Wouldn't he remember if she'd told him about some
adorable
kid, some
really lovely, really sweet
kid? His ears would have perked right up. Does Sherrie have a crush on this guy? Swenson will
give
him a heart thing. But who's he to cast the first stone? A guy who spent last month with the hots for some punk girl writer. But all that's over now. Finished. So what does Sherrie think
she's
doing?

Sherrie says, “He told me about a pizza place where he worked last summer for this crazy Syrian boss who thinks that America's just waiting for him to invent a more American pizza, a hot dog and mustard pizza, a peanut butter and jelly pizza, and how the guy made his employees recycle the leftover cheese from the half-eaten slices—”

Swenson waits till Sherrie stops laughing. “I guess you had to have been there.”

“Oh, come on, Ted,” says Sherrie. “Don't be like that. He's a kid. He could have been in real trouble. He's not. How could I not be relieved?”

Swenson takes another mouthful. The chicken's salty coating rips, spurting oil onto his palate, releasing its layer of breading under the garlicky crispness. He feels expansive, large enough to see that his crush (or whatever) on Angela is not so different from Sherrie's fondness for this kid. It's all so understandable, touching, and tender, really, the two of them sinking into middle age, their own child not only grown and gone but hardly speaking to them, wrenching herself away from their grasp, beyond the reach of their love.

No wonder he and Sherrie might find themselves drawn to students. It's not as if they're perverts out of
Dangerous Liaisons
, two old vampires conspiring to suck the youth from the young. Their hearts are heat-seeking missiles drawn to whatever's still burning. They're like those old men in the Kawabata novel frequenting the brothel where they pay to curl up and sleep beside the warm bodies of young beautiful women. Christ! It's all so depressing Swenson thinks he might weep. Age and death—the unfairness of it, the daily humiliation of watching your power vanish just when you figure out how to use it.

“Is something wrong?” asks Sherrie.

“Nothing,” he answers glumly. Of course he can't tell the truth for fear of insulting Sherrie by including her among the aging and decrepit when, for all he knows, she may not be feeling that way at the moment. In theory, he and Sherrie are close. But now he sees that's a lie. Somehow it seems more honest to be around someone with whom there's no pretence of the intimacy that a shared history is supposed to confer. Sooner or later—sooner—he has to call Angela and tell her he's read her chapter. He can put it off as long as he wants, but it's his professional duty.

He smiles at Sherrie. “If I were forced to choose one meal to eat every night for the rest of my life, it would be chicken with lemon, and scalloped potatoes with prosciutto.”

“Why would you have to make a choice like that?” Sherrie asks.

“Why would I?” Swenson says.

 

In the middle of the night Swenson feels Sherrie rubbing against him. Lightly, experimentally, he kisses the back of her neck. They make love urgently, silently, hardly moving, the way they used to when Ruby slept in the next room.

Afterward, Swenson sleeps soundly and in the morning wakes up in such a rare good mood that, fortified with coffee, he decides to go to his study and take a peek at his novel.

The opening chapter isn't half bad. He hasn't touched the manuscript in so long that it seems like someone else's work, someone's ironic, ersatz-nineteenth-century description of the downtown neighborhood—Soho—where Julius Sorley arrives with dreams of fortune and reputation. But as soon as Julius starts reflecting on his past and present situation, everything pales, falters, stumbles, drops dead on the page. It's worse than Courtney Alcott's “First Kiss—Inner City Blues.” Swenson wills himself to stay calm. He'll get more coffee, shower. Then he'll decide if he can read the rest, assess the damage and the likelihood that he can fix it.

Showered and shaved, neatly dressed, he feels more in control. He returns to his desk, picks up his manuscript, puts it down, ransacks the house for his briefcase, finds it under his coat, gets Angela's manuscript, and goes back to his study. He needs to call her, she's waiting. It's cruel not to call.

A man—a young man—answers. “Hello?” Why does the groggy voice sound familiar?

Swenson hangs up. He takes some deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale. He counts to five.

The phone rings.

“I'm sorry for calling you at home,” Angela says.

Does Angela have caller ID? Can you get that in a college dorm? It horrifies Swenson to think of Angela and her boyfriend waching his number come up on a screen.

“I know I'm wrecking your morning,” she says. “But I couldn't stand it another minute. I know you read the chapter and hated it, that's why you didn't call—”

“Relax. I liked it fine. I've been busy, is all.”

“Can we talk about this?” Angela says. “I need to talk. I think I'm going insane.”

“Don't go insane,” says Swenson. “Meet me in my office in twenty minutes.”

 

Swenson's just wrestled off his scarf and coat when Angela falls through his office door. She's wearing her usual uniform: black leather jacket, pouchy black sweater, black boots. But today she's added a pair of striped men's boxer shorts rolled on top of her jeans and angled around her hips, like a bandolier. She drops into the chair and slumps forward, her elbows on her spread knees, her chin cupped in her hands.

“I was sure you hated the new chapter,” she said. “I was sure you read it and hated it, and that's why you didn't call.”

“I didn't hate it at all,” Swenson says. “I…admired it very much.”

“Know what?” she says. “You're a guy, after all. Not calling's a guy thing to do.”

Wait a minute! A guy
after all
? When
wasn't
he a guy? And isn't his guy-ness beside the point? He's a teacher. She's a student.

“Angela, I know you kids all secretly think your professors leave the classroom and go to their coffins like Dracula and don't wake up until it's time to teach the next class. I hate to tell you, we have lives. I read your manuscript, and, as I said, I admired it. But I had a few things to take care of before I could get to the phone. I was going to call you….”

“I'm sorry. What did you think of the chapter? Did you believe that part about her trying to hatch the eggs and all the eggs dying and—”

“I believed it. I was totally convinced.”

“Then what? What about the other part?”

Swenson leafs through the pages. “Let's face it. It's very…um…erotic. If that's what you intended.” What an idiotic comment! What else could she have meant? Angela's not a child. She worked at a telephone-sex line.

Angela writhes briefly in her chair. Finally she says, “All right, I'll tell you this one thing. Then we can act like I never said it. And you have to promise not to hate me, no matter what.”

“I promise,” Swenson says.

“For the past two days,” says Angela, “all I've thought about every second of every minute of every hour was you having those new pages, wondering if you were…I mean, I've been thinking about you going through your normal day, eating breakfast, driving to work, and I keep wondering if you're reading—” She stops and stares at him, wide-eyed with horror at what she's just said.

Swenson says, “I hardly ever eat breakfast.”

“Excuse me?” Angela says.

“You said you'd been thinking about me eating breakfast. And I said, ‘I don't eat breakfast.'”

Is there some way to take that back? Swenson doesn't think so. Angela stares at him, then jumps up and leaves, slamming the door behind her. Swenson shakes his head as if to keep the memory from implanting itself in his brain. All he knows is that he's ruined everything by being so tight-assed and nasty. Ruined what? What else should he have said? Hey, here's a bizarre coincidence. I've been thinking about you, too.

A moment later, the door swings open. Angela pops back in, smiling.

She says, “I forgot to give you this.”

She slides a thin orange envelope onto his desk, then takes off again.

Swenson counts: a page and a half. What did she mean when she told him she'd been thinking about him all week? He wishes she would come back. This time he'd have the nerve to ask, instead of making some dopey remark about breakfast. Well, at least he's got more pages to read, pages that may tell him more than their garbled exchanges.