Last Things (18 page)
They had just gotten out of their coats when the bell rang and Gloria went to the intercom. Andrew stopped as the nervous voice of Mabel Gorman crackled into the room. Gloria turned to him, her brows arched.
“One of my students.”
Gloria pressed the button that opened the front door and then went down the hall to her study. Professional courtesy.
Mabel came shivering into the room some minutes later when Andrew opened the door. She stood hugging herself and looked around.
“He's been following you.”
“Who?”
“Cassirer.”
Andrew wished she would stop shivering. On the other hand, it gave him an excuse for not asking her to take off her coat. He was very conscious of Gloria down the hallway, within earshot. He knew that Cassirer had been making a pest of himself with Raymond and Jessica. Andrew had tried to dismiss this, telling himself that even if worse came to worst and Cassirer decided to inform the world that Andrew Bernardo and Gloria Monday shared an apartment, no one would care. Except himself, of course. He did not want his parents to face more trouble than they already
had. He had already lost any moral superiority over Raymond. Jessica didn't really know Gloria, but she knew who she was from her student days. Mabel made a face, wrinkling her nose. What would Jessica make of Mabel Gorman?
had. He had already lost any moral superiority over Raymond. Jessica didn't really know Gloria, but she knew who she was from her student days. Mabel made a face, wrinkling her nose. What would Jessica make of Mabel Gorman?
Mabel had stopped shivering, but she still stood there hugging herself. She looked past Andrew and whispered, “Is she here?”
“Professor Monday answered your ring.”
“I could hardly hear her.”
Outside, voices over the intercom had to compete with all the street noises, the wind, whatever.
“How do you know Cassirer is following me?”
“I've been following him. The man's mad. He's capable of anything.”
“Andrew?”
It was Gloria, an admonitory call as she came down the hallway from her study. Her face lit up with a professorial smile when she saw Mabel. She strode toward her, hand outstretched. For a moment, it seemed that Mabel would go on hugging herself, but she warily put out a hand.
“What class are you in?”
“I am a junior.”
“I meant what class of Andrew's? Professor Bernardo's.”
“I came to warn him that Cassirer is following him around.”
Gloria's manner changed abruptly. “That's nonsense.”
“It may be, but it's true. He's crazy.”
Mabel looked a little crazy herself. A strand of hair emerged from her woolen cap and lay across the bony expanse of her forehead. Gloria became patronizing.
“Please sit down.”
A shake of the head, and the strand of hair moved like a windshield wiper over her glasses.
“I don't know what you know about academic procedures,” Gloria said soothingly. “Horst Cassirer is being considered for tenure, and these are tense moments for us all.”
“He should be fired. He's a disgrace.”
Gloria hesitated. Was this an abused woman crying out to an older woman for help? That would have changed her whole attitude toward Cassirer. “Has he been bothering you?” she asked delicately.
Mabel's laugh could have been her fortune on the soundtrack of animated cartoons. “Yes, he's been bothering me!”
“In what way?” Gloria moved toward the girl.
“He is quite simply the worst professor I have ever had. He shouldn't be allowed in the classroom. He mocks his students as well as the authors he teaches.”
Gloria moved back. “That's quite an accusation.”
“It's the truth.”
Gloria sat on the arm of the sofa, crossed her arms and looked wise. “These are judgments that will be made by his peers. There are procedures ⦔
“They don't have to sit in his classes.”
Gloria might have been remembering the irate letters that had appeared in the student paper. Light came. “What did you say your name was?”
“This is Mabel Gorman,” Andrew said. He had been content to let the two women deal with this. He had no idea what Mabel expected of him, now that she had delivered her warning.
As if in answer to this thought, she said, “You have to notify the police.”
“The police!” Gloria cried.
Mabel ignored her. She came to Andrew and put her hand on his arm. She might have been making a claim on him. My God, was that it? Students got crushes on professors and harmless platonic
exchanges went on in faculty offices with no harm done. But Andrew had never suspected this of Mabel. Her hand on his arm was warm and insistent.
exchanges went on in faculty offices with no harm done. But Andrew had never suspected this of Mabel. Her hand on his arm was warm and insistent.
“He would kill you if he could.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Gloria said, standing. Her eyes were riveted on that clinging hand on Andrew's arm. Andrew put his hand over Mabel's, then patted it.
“I am very grateful for your concern, Mabel. But perhaps you are making too much of this. Academic quarrels are mainly smoke and noise.”
“We're both grateful,” Gloria said icily and moved toward the door. Andrew escorted Mabel as if he were about to give her away. Gloria opened the door. Mabel looked at the door, at Andrew, at Gloria, then at Andrew again. She could not keep the pathetic affection from her eyes.
“Be careful,” she whispered. And then she was gone.
Gloria shut the door and turned. “Be careful indeed.”
“Oh for heaven's sake.”
“Do all your female students have a crush on you?”
He dropped a chin. “Gloria, please. We are not going to quarrel about that pathetic girl.”
And so they got over it. But in his heart of hearts Andrew was grateful to Mabel. Her heated imagination and absurd devotion had a kind of nobility. Gloria's hand came to rest on the arm where Mabel's had lately lain.
“Is everything all right in there?” Margaret asked, glancing toward Fulvio's home office.
“He was very neat about everything.”
“That's what Jessica said.”
“Jessica?”
“She had a look around too.”
“When?”
Margaret wasn't sure.
“Before I looked?”
“Perhaps. Yes, I think so.”
My God. Eleanor was flooded with the certainty that her niece had found those letters. Worse, Jessica's manner convinced her that she had removed the ones signed Eleanor. Anger rather than embarrassment came. She could hardly wait for late afternoon when Jessica would return to her apartment from work. After taking Margaret to the hospital, just dropping her off, she drove around, distractedly, just wasting time, and finally parked across the street. Eleanor waited in a fever of excitement, scenarios of the coming confrontation rocketing about in her mind. But Jessica did not come. Eleanor took a phone from her purse and called the hospital. She asked for Fulvio Bernardo's room.
A half minute went by. “He's in intensive care.”
“I know.”
“We don't put through calls to intensive care.”
“I am a relative. I know others are with him.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Is there a phone in the waiting room there?”
“You want the waiting room?”
“Please.”
A phone began to ring. Eleanor thought of the ugly little room where Margaret sat praying when she wasn't at Fulvio's bedside. Would no one ever answer? But someone did.
“This is the waiting room.”
“Is that you, Raymond? This is Eleanor. Is Jessica there?”
“She just left.”
Eleanor remembered to ask how Fulvio was and fidgeted through Raymond's report.
“I drove Margaret there,” she said.
“I appreciate that. I'll take her home.”
“You have the car?”
“I had some errands to run.”
He sounded as if she had wanted an explanation. “How odd everything must seem to you after all these years.” At the moment, she felt an extra kinship with Raymond, those letters establishing her own position as a family renegade.
“It gets more familiar all the time.”
“Have you gone out to ⦔
“St. Edmund's? Yes.”
“Now, that place has changed almost beyond recognition.”
“You'd be surprised.”
But Eleanor had all the surprise she could handle in her conviction that Jessica had found and removed her godawful letters to Fulvio. Of course she would have found them. Anyone making the most cursory inspection of that file cabinet would have found them. Her cheeks burned in memory of the identifying label for
the folder that held the letters of Fulvio's conquests.
Gatte.
She had looked it up. Female cats.
the folder that held the letters of Fulvio's conquests.
Gatte.
She had looked it up. Female cats.
Would Jessica never come? She should have asked Raymond if his sister were going home, but would he have known? She had no idea of how Jessica lived her life, other than writing silly novels. She banged her gloved hands impatiently on the steering wheel and accidentally hit the horn. Just then, Jessica drove up and waved. Eleanor beeped the horn again on purpose and got out of the car.
“I've been waiting for you.”
“Come on in.”
Eleanor followed Jessica to the door of the building, where her niece opened the door and then held it for Eleanor to precede her.
The apartment was small, simply furnished, books everywhere, and a computer very much in evidence, almost in the center of the room. Photographs of the Bernardo family stood on every available surface. Eleanor was touched to see herself well represented.
“What a lovely place.”
“I like it.”
“The bachelor girl.”
On the mantel of the little fireplace, occupying pride of place, was a Lladr6 porcelain of the Blessed Virgin. Eleanor went to it and moved an ungloved finger over the smooth surface.
“Your mother said you looked through your father's things.” She kept her back to Jessica as she spoke. There was no answer. She turned.
Jessica, coat off, shoes kicked free, said, “I am going to have a beer. Would you like one?”
“No, thank you. Yes, I will.”
Jessica pattered off to the kitchen and returned with the beer,
handing one to Eleanor, no glass. She tipped her own and drank thirstily.
handing one to Eleanor, no glass. She tipped her own and drank thirstily.
“Ah.”
“Is it true?”
Jessica did not pretend she had forgotten her remark. She collapsed into a chair, leather with matching leather footstool to which she lifted her stockinged feet.
“I wondered why you were so eager to see Dad's papers.”
“And you found out why.”
“Your letters? Yes.”
“What have you done with them?” There was a desk against the wall served by the same chair on which Jessica must sit when she used her computer, and just revolved from one to the other. The desk was littered with papers.
“They were quite a revelation.”
“Jessica, you must know about your father. There were other letters.”
“I couldn't figure out who they were from.”
“I suppose one could guess, with a little thought and hard remembering.”
“What's the point?”
“Exactly. I was going to suggest that they all be removed and destroyed. To spare your mother.”
“And the women?”
“Jessica, this is extremely embarrassing for me. I was a fool. It was all a long time ago.”
“Not all the letters are dated.”
“Are they here?”
“Yes.”
“I want them.”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? Jessica, you can't mean to use those letters in the novel you're writing.”
“If I did, only you and I would know the basis.”
“You are going to use them?” Eleanor tried to imitate the way Jessica drank out of the bottle and beer dribbled down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand.
“I haven't decided.”
“You're toying with me.”
And she was. Jessica pretended to resent the advice Eleanor had given when she had prattled about entering the convent. Was she taking her revenge?
“I suppose you want to destroy them.”
“Of course. It was awful of your father to keep them, but so like him.”
“Didn't you ever ask for them back?”
“Your father wouldn't even tell me if he had kept them.”
“So you wanted to search.”
“Not soon enough, obviously.”
“They are technically his property, of course.”
“Oh, Jessica, stop! Give me those letters. If you have read them I suppose I can't stop you from somehow using them in your story, but I won't rest until I know they've been destroyed.”
Jessica took another thirsty drink, then looked thoughtfully at Eleanor. “I have been trying to remember the times when that was going on, between you and Dad.”
“You were only a girl.”
“Was it going on when you advised me against the convent?”
“You were never serious about that.”
“You seemed to think so at the time.”
“Jessica, are you trying to get back at me or something?”
Jessica finished her beer and set the bottle on the floor beside her chair. “No.”
“Are you going to put me in your novel?”
Jessica laughed. “Real people can't be put into novels, Eleanor.”
“Just their letters?”
Eleanor would have given anything to be able to rummage through the papers on Jessica's desk, as she had gone through Fulvio's. It was insufferable to have to sit here bargaining about those letters. She imagined breaking in, while Jessica was at work. Oh, dear God, what a fool she had been.
When at last she left, mission unaccomplished, Eleanor did not start her car at once. She laid her forehead against the steering wheel and wept, thinking of Jessica reading what she had written to Fulvio. Eventually, she drove away, headed home, heartsick.
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