Envy (11 page)

Will remembers their parents as having been curiously insensitive about Mitch's disfigurement and can imagine the excuses they might have made about doing nothing in response to the stain, the wound, as he used to think of it, unable to see it as skin-deep. Treatments that existed in the sixties were imperfect. Without the ability to fine-tune or pulse the beam, as doctors can today, lasers were either ineffective or left burn scars. In any case, the cost of what an insurance company would consider an elective, cosmetic procedure was prohibitive; it wasn't as if Mitch were physically endangered by the birthmark.

Although he might have been. Port-wine stains such as Mitch's, which involve the eyelids and forehead, are associated with Sturge-Weber syndrome, which affects vascular tissue in the brain and causes seizures and learning disabilities. But Will doesn't believe their pediatrician entertained such a possibility, if he even knew of it. “Don't borrow trouble,” was Dr. Aldrich's favorite expression. He dismissed any fever below 104, interpreted all stomachaches as attempts at truancy, and, most infamously, misdiagnosed a case of appendicitis as stage fright precipitated by the 1965 Christmas pageant. Will and Mitch visited his cluttered office once each year, where they were weighed and measured and where Dr. Aldrich would take Mitch's face in his hands and look at it closely. “Doesn't hurt, does it, Mitchell?” he'd ask, and Mitch would shake his head.

“Not like he's a girl,” he'd say to their mother. “If he was, I'd send you to the skin man up in Albany.”

Mitch never complained. It was Will who removed the mirror from the back of the closet door in the room they shared, no longer able to stand the sight of his brother's circuitous passage around beds and behind chairs, his face averted from the sight of itself.

According to
Swimming World,
Mitch has participated in scientific studies of cold-water endurance, trials that require him to spend hours in tanks of frigid water, wearing only a swimsuit, his temperature monitored by a “rectal probe.” He maintains nearly normal core body temperatures in water that, after several hours, would render the average person hypothermic to the point of shivering incoherence, even cardiac arrest. He's swum in water just a few degrees above freezing and lost remarkably little body heat. So far, the doctors who have studied Mitch don't know what circulatory adaptation allows this, but one researcher's hypothesis is that whatever ontogenic glitch caused the vascular abnormality that resulted in his
Nevus flammeus
is linked somehow to his freakish ability to swim for many hours, even days, in cold water, protected by nothing more than a Speedo, goggles, his own body fat, and a layer of petroleum jelly. If this is true, then Mitch's tragic flaw—his heroic strength that is also a mortal weakness—is an accident not so much of character as of biology.

Twinship was a torment. Will can't remember a time when he wasn't aware of Mitch's discomfort, sometimes even misery, as well as his own. How could it have been otherwise? Mitch could always see how he might look if unmarked, and Will knew what it would be to have his face disfigured. To be de-faced. The birthmark denied them the fun of pranks based on mistaken identity, and saved them the insult of not being recognized as individuals. “War Paint,” they called Mitch at school, and “Gobbo,” and then, finally, the name that stuck—“Africa.”

Irresistible, because there was nothing fanciful about the similarity between the coastline of the continent and the outline of Mitch's port-wine stain. Certain borders, the Atlantic coast of Namibia and South Africa especially, seemed to have been traced onto his face. Cape Town marked the faint cleft in his chin; Angola blanketed his nose. His right eye was at sea, the left was the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His left temple was as pale as Will's, his right was Ethiopia. The purple stain covered 60 percent of his face, leaving only his left ear, eye, cheek, and the left half of his nose and chin untouched.

It was arresting, Mitch's face. A person of broad and sophisticated taste might even call it beautiful, in that beauty can terrify and accuse.

There was one teacher who didn't permit Mitch's classmates to tease him, but this didn't endear him to Will's brother. Any witness to his plight made Mitch that much less able to pretend nothing was happening. With his flushed face and ill-kempt black suits, Mr. Slaughter might have been a drunk, although none of his students understood this at the time. From U.S. History—the course he'd been hired to teach—Mr. Slaughter strayed east to Europe, Palestine, India, Asia, and beyond, circling the globe until he'd crossed the Pacific and landed back on native soil. He lectured on all topics with equal fervor, never referring to the stack of note cards he held in his hands. Every other Friday he handed out lined paper, and when all the class was sitting at attention, eyes on him, he bowed theatrically—sometimes he did a Shakespearean flourish, sweeping an imaginary hat through the air—and then wrote a date on the blackboard. 1862, 1884, 1918. The test was to summarize what was happening all over the globe during that particular year, old world and new: Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Americas, Australia, India, Russia, Greenland—everywhere.

Not surprisingly, no one succeeded at these tests. No one but Mitch. He earned the one A among all the other C's and D's. Once, to honor his achievement, Mr. Slaughter read Mitch's answer aloud, and what he read wasn't so much an essay as an associative string of facts, some connections apparent, some not, each detail astonishing for its accuracy, and the accretion of so many of them more surprising still. At home Mitch was in the habit of reading the
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
for entertainment; without trying he'd memorized names and dates that he recycled into his answer. When Mr. Slaughter came to the last line of Mitch's test, he held it up so that everyone could see the large letter
A
on the top of the first page.

At the ceremony marking the class of 1975's graduation from Ravena High, Mr. Slaughter presented Will's brother with a leather-bound book of his tests, arranged chronologically, about two hundred pages' worth of Mitch's hurried block printing, the pressure of his pen so intense that he could use only one side of a sheet of paper. The cover was embossed with gold letters. “The History of the Modern World” by Mitchell Moreland, it read.

“Can I have this?” Will asked his mother when he found it on a shelf in the bedroom he'd once shared with his brother. It was a guest room now; flowered wallpaper covered over the scuffs and grime of boyhood; the
Apollo 11
decals had been razored from the window panes long ago; but the bookshelf remained, and on it the books.

“What is it?” Will's mother asked, taking it from his hands. She sat at the breakfast table and paged through a few tests. “I suppose,” she said, closing the cover. “What for?”

Will shrugged, and she didn't press him for what he wouldn't have admitted—that he was going to read it for clues. Somewhere, embedded in the text, there must be some tiny something that Will's training would allow him to pick out and deconstruct, an answer to the riddle of Mitch that Mitch's own unconscious had hidden among references to war and revolution, the invention of the cotton gin, the birth of Mozart, Dr. Livingstone's discovery of Victoria Falls.

There was no such answer, but Will looked for it anyway, wondering if, in the end, his vocation was going to add up to anything more, really, than his ongoing attempt to understand his brother and the way an accident of biology might form—deform—character. 1830, 1843, 1878, 1902 . . . He combed through one year after another, and when he was done he put the book on the table by his side of the bed, not on top but at the bottom of the pile of things he never gets around to reading. Every so often he still pulls it out, but he's found he can't look at it for long without the risk of becoming ensnared in an hours-long spasm of searching through whatever documents he has of his past—snapshots, letters, his own juvenile diaries that embarrass and pain him, and a lot of other detritus packed in boxes but not put far enough away. All of it has the ability to leave him with one of those headachy hangovers peculiar to a nostalgic wallow, and—depending on how long it's been since he's suffered one of these—he usually replaces Mitch's tome within a few minutes of looking inside, sometimes before he's even opened the cover.

10

“Number thirty-eight,” says the girl with the bitten fingernails. “Very old-school, very houndstooth tweedy. Like, the leather patches on the elbows of his jacket appear to be genuine, as if it didn't come like that but his wife sewed them on for real after he wore holes in his sleeves. He's so central casting that it's actually cute in a kind of avuncular way. I mean, maybe less than sexy to most girls and even a little too Mr. Chipsy for me, but as we've established, I'm turned on by the musty, old, academic type. Even the slightly askew bow tie does it for me. Still, I'm worrying because he's onto his third glass of pinot noir and, well, you know . . .”

“The faculty club serves alcohol?” Will says, intentionally missing his cue.

“Faculty
house.
Yeah. In the fourth-floor dining room. Elsewhere, administration or whoever turns a blind eye on professors going to the bar and buying drinks to carry back to wherever. Besides, it's not as if I'm underage.”

“No, I was just—”

“
Anyway,
so I'm counting glasses of wine, and by the time he orders a third, I'm thinking erectile dysfunction, and I start teasing him a little. I say, I can't remember what exactly, something to the effect that so handsome and distinguished a scholar shouldn't be drinking alone. Or maybe I called him a gentleman and a scholar. Whatever I say, it's direct and it's also kinda generic, you know, not too personal, so that if I've, like, miscalculated—which hasn't ever happened, FYI—but if I did, and he's going to get all offended, I haven't compromised myself by saying something too sort of overt. But he's not offended. Not at all. The point is, I've put out minimal effort and already he's very friendly, very chatty, very ha-ha-ha. By now we're close to closing, and remember, this is the faculty house we're talking about, it's not exactly your happening venue. Anyone who has, like, a life is pursuing it elsewhere. Since he's the only diner left in the room, he says, why don't I sit down, I must be tired, no? Maybe I'd like a piece of cake. I can bring it along with his dessert. So I'm like, sure, that'd be nice, and he asks what's best on the dessert menu, and I say mud pie, and he says too rich, so I say apple brown Betty, and he says too sweet. Pear tarts are not his cup of tea. By now I'm wondering, did I go overboard this time? Maybe he's not just older but
old,
and has to watch his cholesterol or his gallbladder or whatever, because now that I'm thinking about it, he did order an inauspiciously Spartan entrée. Not that I'd imagined he was some sort of sybarite epicure, because anyone of, like, gustatory sophistication would sooner suck down a platter of Chicken McNuggets than a faculty house dinner, but I am hoping for a person of appetite because, you know, sex and food, people who like one usually like the other, and this guy's chosen a meal conceived by a, like, frigid nun—filet of sole without any sauce, meunière, tartar, whatever, only lemon. And on the side a dry, make that desiccated, baked potato, and he didn't touch the dish of creamed onions that automatically comes with everything; you can't get rid of them for some reason.

“So, how about sorbet, I ask, and he says too cold. Pecan pie? Too sweet. So, now that we've established that everything's too this too that, I say, very perceptive here, ‘Maybe you don't want dessert?' and he says yes, I'm right, just bring him a cappuccino—which, by the way, suck big-time at the faculty house, I don't know why; it's not exactly rocket science, making coffee. Starbucks should bring in a franchise, since there isn't one in a radius of, like, three feet. Anyway, I bring him one, and another for myself, and neither of us mention the fact that it tastes like shit. He drinks his; I pretend to drink mine.”

The girl pauses and, when Will doesn't speak, goes on with her story. “By now we've established that he's a professor of Italian Renaissance architecture, and we've tried to move beyond our own ‘disciplines, ' as he calls them, to an appreciation of each other's, and while he's asking have I seen the Brunelleschi chapel or the
baldacchino
or the—whatever it is, it begins with a
B
—while he's asking, I'm making my standard, hello-nice-to-meet-you gesture, surfing one stockinged foot up his inseam, and when I get there, guess what? He's not fifty, not downtown he isn't. Downtown he's maybe twenty, his hard-on is
hard.
So hard I'm thinking, like, whoa, what's this, a strap-on? You know, like a fake one? And my next thought is that it may be cliché but it might also be true that many professors are pedophiles. I mean, why else settle for all that work, plus the academic rat-fuck for tenure, and then there's the crummy salary? Intellectual passion? Maybe. But, come on, there have to be perks. Not that I'm exactly a child, or even underage, but institutionally speaking, we could call me the child whereas he's, um, what's it called, in loco parentis?

“The professor stops talking as my foot starts rubbing, and we have a bit of an uncomfortable moment, and guess what? Not a strap-on. A palpable retreat from high-impact, crash-dummy rubber to, say, Dr. Scholl's gel arch supports, but it's temporary, nothing so much as a setback. In a minute we're back to playing chicken, which apparently neither of us is. Mr. Crash Dummy is back in the game.”

Will opens the imaginary bag of ice he's been holding in his lap, turns it over and pours ten pounds of cubes directly onto his unsheathed and unsuspecting penis, willing it to freeze in midtumescence.

“‘Have you been keeping up with the film series at the Thalia?' he inquires, Professor Suave—he has to have said this line about a gazillion times—and I answer, quite on cue and even truthfully,
‘Berlin
Alexanderplatz
?
'
I nod, he nods, we say incisive things about Mr. Fassbinder and other of our favorite self-destructive artistic geniuses. It's a grim little game, the pathetic penny-ante one-upmanship of academe. They say dentists are more likely to commit suicide than people in any other profession, but I dunno, this whoever-commands-the-mostrarefied-cultural-references-wins audition makes me feel like sawing at my wrist with a steak knife. But finally it's over, he wins by two Japanese directors and a Maori poet no one's ever heard of—he could have made him up for all I know—and goes off to pay, while I head for the lockers to change out of my waitress costume. Which, by the way, is not so much Howard Johnson's as it is French Maid, a genuine asset as far as my motives are concerned, and I guess kind of unexpected in an institutional setting. I mean, we're not talking Hooters, but it does have that naughty, come-hither look. Still, off it goes, except for the tights. I've brought an alluring après-work outfit, a crotch duster, meaning microminiskirt, plus a sweater I've had since ninth grade, a little short so there's navel-ring disclosure, and a redder-than-red swing coat for the sake of high visibility plus modesty while walking in dark alleys.

“The too-brilliant-to-live Fassbinder is playing not far from the faculty house. The Thalia's maybe three quarters of a mile the safe way, a little less if you're late and willing to risk your life for culture. And, guess what, Mr. Crash Dummy is wild for culture, can't get enough stimulation, and the shortcut offers a perfect opportunity for the professor to coax Little Red off the primrose path and into the woods. We cross over the green in front of the library, and, big surprise, Professor Hard-on pushes me against what's holding up some giant dead bronze guy for some very eager and, I have to say, clumsy wet kissing before we move on to this sinister little breezeway near the bookstore. Then it's him leaning against a wall and me on my knees eye-to-eye with his trouser button. How I get there is one of those delicate, wordless negotiations, his hands on my shoulders exerting a faint but not ambiguous pressure, me responding with a gradual, is-this-where-we're-going descent.

“Once I'm where he wants me, everything accelerates. A little friendly attention, and Mr. Crash Dummy speeds through the intersection and whams into the back of my throat. A minor episode of gagging on my part, as, having expected a, like, five- or six-second so-nice-to-meet-you-won't-you-come-in prelude, I've been taken off guard by his impetuousness, but I ignore the fact that I can taste pizza dating back to dinner at six and regain my composure to deliver a perfectly calibrated act of fellatio, meaning great rather than good, great rather than pro forma, a few little touches that would imply erotic creativity plus generosity. Then I stand up, leaving Mr. Crash in the cold autumn wind. ‘How about shelter?' I ask, not having to feign eagerness. Forget breezeway, it's ‘a nipping and an eager air' tearing at my skirt—that's Shakespeare for arctic blast, if you didn't know. Not only am I just about frozen, with aching knees to boot, but I really want to fuck him, I'm no-kidding-around horny. But he can't take me to his place because—well, just because. Why waste time enumerating complications? But, as his office is on a newly refurbished floor of Barnard Hall, perhaps I'd like to see an etching or a Xerox machine or a box of paper clips?

“We scurry off through Low Plaza, me hoping to arrive before my snatch, like, grows stalactites. He fumbles the electronic key, the regular key, the light switch, the security code. Whatever he can get wrong, he does—testosterone impairing cognitive function, no doubt—and the department phone starts to ring. Good evening, sir, campus police. Would you be so kind as to give us the password? Which, of course, the professor has forgotten, if he ever knew it, that is—his mind was meant for better things—so now he's scrabbling around in the bottom of his briefcase for whatever matchbook or gum wrapper on which he's inscribed the code word or whatever, since the alarm did go off at the station and we wouldn't want to trouble an officer on a Friday night when countless degenerate undergrads are jitterbugging naked in adults-only clubs or topping off their iPods with stolen music or snorting their dead grannies' OxyContin or whatever it is they do for entertainment.

“When he finally finds it, the password is, get this, ‘Lily Bart.' Kind of a nice touch, I think at first. Later, lying in my own little bed and reviewing the evening's successes, I remember the plot of
House
of Mirth
and think, not so nice after all. I mean, is this how it goes: Barnard Hall faculty calls a meeting and decide that the open sesame for their building should be a reference to illicit and, by the way, fatal promiscuity?

“Anyway, too late for regrets. His office is”—the girl looks around at Will's walls and furniture—“I guess it's well appointed, sort of contemporary intellectual, like yours. Black and beige and chrome, and there's some framed Renaissance print thing on the wall.” Her tongue appears and explores her lower lip with seeming interest. Will says nothing, recrosses his legs to adjust his thawed erection.

“We don't undress, not all the way. I peel off my tights, he drops his tweedy trousers. And, I can't believe it, but he is actually, really and truly wearing sock garters. I mean, wow. They almost turn me on, that's how gross they are, black and stretchy and, well, anyway, once I get past the shock, we go at it, we do it three ways. One, standing at his desk, my ass on his blotter, legs around his waist. Seems it's inevitable whenever there's a desk around—you do end up taking cues from the office environment. Two, on the brand-new, itchy, Scotchgarded, stain-and-spooge-repellent, blue-gray institutional carpet. I'm the bottom and it's missionary, so his knees and my ass are getting, like, third-degree carpet burns. Three, I'm on top, standard, liberated, attuned-to-her-physical-self female taking advantage of her partner's still rock-hard cock. Altogether I get off about four times: once on the desk, once on my back, then twice astride before I let him have his.

“He's so close, it's one, two, three thrusts, and that's it. He moans, closes his eyes, I stand up and note with satisfaction that when we did it on the desk I left a big stain of squat juice on his blotter. I do not, do not over my dead body, let myself look at him naked and flaccid and wearing sock garters. This, I know, would make me feel worse than desperate; the whole world and all its nearly four billion human occupants would somehow be implicated by the sight of them. It would be one of those unfortunate moments when I have an unanticipated and very much unwanted awakening to how pathetic and ridiculous and indefensible it is to be an example of this disgusting species.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes,” Will says. “Why will seeing the sock garters of an Italian Renaissance architecture professor reveal the pathetic and indefensible ridiculousness of being human?”

“You can't be serious.”

“I am serious.”

“Do you wear sock garters? Tell me you don't. If you do, you're the one who should be having your head examined.”

Will says nothing. Within the parameters of this dialogue he wears whatever she thinks he does.

“Well, you've, like, seen them, right? You do know what they look like?”

He nods.

“So, picture these ultra-ultra-white legs with not so much as one hair because, well, I guess because it all gets, like, rubbed off by his pants or something—or maybe it's his age—and on his glabrous old shins are these pervy black socks that are kept up without a sag or wrinkle by sock garters.
Glabrous
is a good word, don't you think?” She looks at Will pointedly.

“Very descriptive.”

“Yeah. I looked it up in the
OED
to be sure it was the one I wanted.” She smiles at him.

“You looked up
glabrous
before you came here today?”

The girl nods, still smiling. “When I was rehearsing the story for you.”

Will folds his hands on his desk. “This is a story you rehearsed for today's session?”

“Story as in narrative, not make-believe. Swear to God.” She holds up her right hand, puts her left on an imaginary Bible.