Light of Day (27 page)

“I can certainly help get a replacement for you for the ‘College Day,' but as for the rest, I'm afraid I can only give you my advice.”

“Which is?”

“Don't do any of it. Cancel them all, for ‘personal reasons,' don't go into much detail if you can help it, no more than necessary, then put it out of your mind.”

There was another volley of phone calls, which Stan shook off; and more of Stan's “administrative junk mail,” mostly committees Jack had agreed to sit on, one he'd agreed to chair, a speech he was supposed to
give at a luncheon at the end of the month.

Outside the window, students and faculty hurried to their appointments and meetings, their voices rising into the office. Stan leaned in their direction like a maestro pitching his ear while the orchestra tuned up, confident about the concert ahead. He seemed reluctant to turn away and waited a moment or two longer, then turned around slowly and said, “We can't pretend that this is just another semester. Nothing is the same for you and that means nothing is the same for me or any of your colleagues and friends, either. But I want you to know that one thing hasn't changed and won't ever change: you're still among friends. You
belong
here.”

Jack said he took comfort in knowing that.

“It's really about continuity, isn't it, Jack.” Stan stirred his tea meditatively.

“Continuity?”

“Like in film, about keeping the scene intact, only I'm talking about something else that keeps us intact. I'm not talking about just you and me, although the small traditions the two of us adhere to, our meeting every year before the start of the fall semester, having tea together, simply talking face-to-face, I'd say helps us maintain our centrifugal force, keeps us from spinning out of our orbits.” He lifted the cup to his mouth and took a few short sips. “It's something very human. Something everyone needs, don't you think? Isn't that why Susan Drake wants you to stop by and why, if she hasn't already called, the dean's going to want to know if you're still giving your talk to the incoming freshmen, and why she wants you to? I'm not going to make speeches at you about how we're all part of one big family here, because it's not true and it wouldn't be fair to say so. In fact, it would be cynical. But there are ripple effects when one of us is going through a bad time. Carol Brink, Susan Drake, all of us, in our way, need to know that the semester is moving along the way it always has, the way it's supposed to, and that you're still a part of it, that you're
involved
in it, and that you're going to be all right, most of all that. And you need it, too, Jack. I've always felt that your coming here with Danny was about continuity.” He said this flatly, without the look of expectation he might have had if all he
wanted was for Jack to agree with him, if he needed that, if that were the reason why he was talking, just so he could feel good about himself. But that wasn't why Stan was saying this, it wasn't why Stan ever said anything; and there wasn't the cautious tone of condolence or commiseration, either. Stan had not called Jack in to commiserate, to add to his mourning, which is what he said next, and then, “I don't know what you want from your friends right now, but I imagine it isn't that,” while they drank their tea, and the Bach partitas played in the background and all the department bookkeeping was finished and there was only their friendship to commemorate the moment, their time this September when it was anything but business as usual and the semester itself was still more in the future than in the present and the present extended no further than this moment, long enough for the two men to acknowledge, observe, this formality, just as they had in the past.

When it was appropriate—in spite of his statement to the contrary, Stan did know the appropriate thing to do and when to do it, after they'd finished their tea and talked a little while longer, when it wouldn't appear as though he were rushing Jack to the end of the meeting—Stan said, “I think we have enough time to enjoy each other's company for a few more minutes.” But the telephone rang and this time Stan had to take the call. Jack let himself out.

The hallway smelled like school. Of books and academic commerce. Of students' stress and teachers' woes. Of paper and ink and the warm smell of electricity that desktop computers make. Of Stan's Chinese tea and the acrid smell of cigarettes smoked behind closed doors. Of stale coffee from a hundred semesters past and the morning application of perfume. Sweet smells, old smells, woven into the faded paint, the grain in the wooden doorframes, the glass transoms—transoms smeared with dust and a million human exhalations. It was the way college hallways smell everywhere, blindfolded you'd still know where you were. It was something dreaded and longed for, accepted and overlooked. Where it smelled like the first day of school and of thousands of school days before it, and where this early afternoon Carl Ainsley stood talking with a pretty blond girl, his country club insouciance on full display, the beige chinos, the pink V-neck sweater deepening his al
ready deep tan, accentuating the smooth skin, taut across his cheekbones; the languid pose, leaning against the wall, one soft loafer crossed over the other at the ankle.

Ainsley had a rested, loose-nerved, sun-polished affect, as though he'd spent the summer at a spa, not in a cottage on a lake in Kentucky with his son lying banged up and broken in the local hospital. It was an accomplishment, frightening for its ease, its indulgence and control.

The girl was laughing at something Ainsley had said and he looked pleased with himself, but the laughter was cut short as Jack approached, and the girl walked quickly away. Ainsley watched her, ignoring Jack when he stopped and said, “I think I owe you an apology for what I did to you back in May.”

“You know, I forgot that you ever did that, Owens.”

“Then I will, too. I heard about C.J. How's he doing?”

“I wouldn't know.” Ainsley kept his eyes on the girl. “From what Mandy tells me he's recovering much too slowly and he's severely depressed.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Wish him a speedy recovery for me.”

Only after the girl walked down the stairs did Ainsley raise his eyes to Jack. “He'll recover. After he's tortured everyone sufficiently. I'm not so sure
we
will, however. He certainly has managed to suck the joy out of life.”

“He's a good kid. He made a mistake, that's all.”

“He's a fuckup,” Ainsley told him with more conviction than Jack expected. “But he's
my
fuckup and I've learned to put up with him.”

Jack could not resist the envy he felt. That Ainsley could be so detached—or, Jack wondered, was it the lack of panic, trusting that everything would work out because everything had always worked out?—so constricted and restrained.

“Tell him I said hello. Or tell Mandy to tell him I said hello and that I hope he's feeling better soon.” Jack was about to walk away, but he felt compelled to say something else, compelled to see past the pose and the posturing and tell Ainsley, “I know you must be feeling something, fear or anxiety or
something
.” But he didn't say that. It was Ainsley who spoke.

“I don't know what that kid's got against me, Owens.” He let out a sigh that sounded about as sad as he ever allowed himself to sound. “All I do is worry about him. How he'll look after they take out the stitches, how—you know, he'd be quite handsome if he just took care of himself. At night, I sit on the edge of his bed and try to talk to him, but he won't even look at me. When he's asleep, I touch his shoulder and try not to wake him just to be with him for a few minutes longer. That's about the extent of our relationship, can you believe it?” He stepped away from the wall and straightened up. “The twins, of course, act as if anyone over the age of
twelve
is diseased, which means Mandy and me. And Mandy's leaning so heavily on tranquilizers lately, Lilly's
and
Upjohn's stocks rise ten points every time she reaches for a glass of water. On top of it all, I can't find a suitable tutor so Carl won't fall behind in school,
and
they've stuck me with first-year advising.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I swear, Owens, can you imagine the kind of advice
I
could give to a freshman? What a life.”

Maybe Jack was drawn to someone else's sorrow, or maybe it was simply what one person says to another person when their kid is all banged up and hurt, even when the person is Carl Ainsley, torturing his face, working the muscles so he actually showed an emotion, scaring up a look of concern. Or maybe it was something less honorable than that, that seeing Carl Ainsley in pain was reassuring, of what, Jack dared not admit to himself at the moment. Whatever it was, he put a hand on Ainsley's shoulder and said, “I know it doesn't look too great right now, but C.J.'s going to be all right. You'll both be all right.”

Ainsley grinned, but there was no warmth in it. He took a step back as though he were leveraging his body to throw a punch or take one, but he did neither. “Of course we'll be all right.” He walked into his office and the door snapped closed.

M
arty was waiting downstairs, leaning against the side of the building and staring at the ground. “Let's not go to the diner again. I don't think I can stomach any more of their grease.” By the way he said this, Jack knew it was more than greasy food that Marty couldn't stomach. His jaw was clenched and he kept it clenched while he said, “Hopewell's made the arrest. The guy's name is Joseph Rich. The local news is all over it. They're calling him ‘the Cyberkiller.' And you know, once enough people say he's guilty, he's guilty.”

“So I guess Hopewell won't be
too
disappointed to know
Danny's
never received any e-mail from the guy. Or any other son of a bitch.”

There was a luncheonette, a salad and sandwich place, really, over on the north side of town, that Jack used to go to, maybe it was still there. He drove while Marty leaned back in the front seat and closed his eyes. Jack didn't want to bother him with any more conversation, so he just kept on driving, past the railroad tracks and the old junkyards with the rusting cars and towers of hubcaps and retreads, and beyond that to where there was nothing but farms and cows and hogs and fields of wheat ready for harvesting, and then not much of that.

Jack found the place, tucked away on the county road. He and Marty sat by the large picture window looking out at a narrow creek and an old covered bridge.

Marty said, “I hope your day at the office is going more pleasantly than mine.”

“We'll talk about it later. You've got enough on your mind.”

“Are you going to start that again?”

“I think you deserve to take the afternoon off, that's all.”

Marty laughed.

“I mean it. I wouldn't have been able to come back without your help, and your reward is not having to hear about another day in the life of Jack Owens.”

“I guess we both have a lot on our minds, at that.”

“I guess we do.”

After lunch, they walked out by the covered bridge where the weeds grew through the cracks and shafts of mottled sunlight cut through the seams in the roof.

Jack said, “I used to come here with Anne.” They walked a little further and he told Marty, “All I have is my past.”

“That's all right. It gives you something to feel attached to, like Danny's box of mementos.” He sounded like Stan saying, “It's really about continuity, isn't it.”

Jack told him about his conversation with Stan, and how foolish he felt after talking to Ainsley, and about his morning with Robbie. “I'll probably spend the rest of the semester trying to reassure
him
and everyone else that I'm safe.”

“Safe?”

“That they don't have to whisper to me, like a patient on life support.”

They came out into the sunlight and walked along the side of the road raising dust and kicking at small stones with the tips of their shoes.

Jack said, “What I'm afraid of is that every time people look at me all they see is what can go wrong.”

“My guess is, they look at you and admire you.”

“Who I
was,
Marty. And to tell you the truth, I'm having a hard time being that person.”

“I doubt it was
ever
easy. But I don't think you should look too closely at yourself or anything else for a while.”

A dog barked off in the distance, the air was warm and smelled like
the last days of summer.

Marty told Jack, “There are times when it's better to let some things go unexamined and cut yourself some slack. Leave Dr. Owens alone for the time being.”

When they turned around and started walking back to the car, Jack said, “How'd you like to play hooky this afternoon and go to the movies?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I've got two films to screen and I'd like your company.”

“What movies?”

Marty sounded just like Danny when he asked that, and Jack smiled.

“First, Godard's
One Plus One, Sympathy for the Devil.
”

“Subtitles?”

“Danny didn't like subtitles, either. But it stars the Rolling Stones, the
real
Rolling Stones, when they still had edge. And
A Hard Day's Night
, if we have the energy for a second feature.”

“Can I get a rain check? I've got a few things left to do and I doubt my captain will understand. What about tomorrow?”

“In the Heat of the Night.”

“Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier, right?

“That's right.”

“I'll try to sneak out for that one.”

Marty didn't do much talking when they drove back, as though the closer he got to town, the closer he was to having to do all those things he had no stomach for today. It wasn't until Jack dropped him at the station that Marty spoke. “I'm looking forward to going to the movies tomorrow.” He smiled quickly and walked inside.

It pleased Jack to know that Marty was going to see
In the Heat of the Night
tomorrow—Steiger's sad and sorry Bill Gillespie stuck inside Sparta, Mississippi, Poitier's urbane and cool Virgil Tibbs. Jack wanted to talk to Marty about buddy pictures and strangers who step off trains to save troubled southern towns from themselves—or strangers who appear at front doors to save grieving fathers…

 

When Jack got back to campus, he didn't go to his office, but walked in the opposite direction, to the Fine Arts building.

He could give himself no reason for going there, maybe it was what Marty meant about feeling attached to something. But no matter, it was the place where he wanted to be right now. To walk up the smooth granite steps, down the hall with the high ceilings and frosted globe lights, to room 415, where the sunlight seemed fixed on the walls, and motes of plaster dust floated in the air, rousted by the opening of the door; where the tables and stools were arranged in an expansive arc set before the models' platform. The room hadn't always been used for sculpture; it was the room where Anne had studied figure drawing and still life. He stood in the doorway for a moment, then walked around the corner to the twelve-by-twelve room that had been Anne's studio, where her style started to emerge in a mixture of paints and pigments, hard edges and soft tones. Where she had tacked on the wall color prints of Byzantine stained glass, the Pollaiuolos'
Saint Sebastian,
a poster of Duchamp's
Large Glass
. There had been an old chair, not much larger than a child's, with torn arms, but so very soft and comfortable, and a work bench, paint-smeared and battered, catty-cornered against the wall, and an old wooden easel that she'd brought with her from England. The windows were nearly half the width of the room and as high as the ceiling, and outside, northern light would rise beyond the curve of the railroad tracks at the edge of town, extend through the live oaks, the chestnut trees and sycamores, pass the green and gray rooftops, patched and kilted like a Cézanne landscape, cross the streets and sidewalks, touch the roofs of the college library and gymnasium, and come to rest on the floor, where it would remain, curled like a house cat, until the sunset consumed it.

Jack would come up from the dark of his basement editing room and see the sunlight slip inside this room while he watched Anne paint, her lean fingers moving the brush assuredly, without intimidation; a dab of yellow and light grew in the crease of a garment, a streak of burnt umber and the vision plane deepened…

He stood there now and looked at the bare easel, the floor swept in preparation for the new semester and the next student, a girl perhaps, who might, one afternoon, stand in a circle of young artists and happen to look up and smile the kind of smile that can determine an entire lifetime.

In the ten years since he'd returned to Gilbert, Jack had never stepped into this room, nor so much as walked past it—that was part of the deal. Today he wanted to be here, to breathe in the smells of chalk and paint, the spirits of turpentine and linseed oil. He wanted to walk the perimeter, feel the afternoon sun on his shoulders, and think about Anne, think about the times when he would lean against this very same wall and watch her, the way he'd watched her at the ruins, sketch pad on her knees, as though he were studying a sacred rite, trying to memorize the way she moved, the way she looked.

Jack wanted to remember the afternoons when he brought containers of coffee and sat in the old, soft chair. Anne raised her hand and whispered “Shh” without turning away from her canvas. She was working on an assignment: “If Rembrandt painted like van Gogh.” Her eyes moved from the slide of Rembrandt's potentate to van Gogh's
Le Père Tanguy
. She used her palette knife instead of a brush, distending one Dutch master's golden order with another Dutch master's splendorous dementia. Nursing his coffee, Jack watched the methodical application of color and texture—it was a sight he would see again in the loft on Crosby Street, when it wasn't cafeteria coffee that he brought her but cappuccino, and in Loubressac, and on Stanton Street, and this day in her studio in the Fine Arts building. “We're supposed to think this is highly conceptual, but all it is is what Duchamp called ‘retinal,'” she said with displeasure.

A few minutes later: “So there he was, Rembrandt, dressing himself in costumes, like Aristotle, like a sultan, like a potentate, propping the mirror just so, placing himself before his easel. And they say van Gogh was the mad man.” A few minutes after that: “Is it a self-portrait? The Metropolitan Museum doesn't acknowledge that it is: ‘Portrait of a man…' is all they'll tell you.” A few minutes more and: “You know, what you're seeing really doesn't look at all like this. It's all just dots and streaks of light, tracers of light moving through space in streams and waves. It all happens inside the brain. The brain resolves the light, the spectrum of colors into visual information. It makes sense of what's actually just visual chaos. It's sort of like film, the stream of light traveling out of the projector's lens, flickering at twenty-four frames a second, reflecting off the screen, resolving into images inside the brain. The brain makes sense of it all and turns it into a movie.” Anne lifted
her arms over her head and flexed her fingers and yawned loudly. She walked around the room yawning and stretching, stopping at the window, backlit with sunrays sprouting from her ears and hair. “I don't like going to school,” and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Take me away from all this. Take me to Chicago, or Brown County and we'll get stoned in the woods.” She took a deep breath. “Anywhere that isn't school.”

Jack started to laugh.

“No, really.”

“I know, I know.”

Jack remembered Anne when she leaned back from her canvas and listened to the thrill of the train whistle far down the track before the train reached town and the warning bells rang. He stood in the corner where the afternoon light seemed to soak into the floor and remembered the way Anne fought with her sleeves to keep them rolled up, the way she pushed her hair away from her face. The way she told him, “Picasso was once asked what artists talk about and he answered, ‘Turpentine.'” The way she asked, “Are you going to read to me, please?”

Jack read to her from the paper he'd written for a criticism class—he did a lot of writing about Bresson, Godard, and De Sica—looking up for her reaction, but she showed him nothing, only motioned with her hand for him to continue. It was only after he finished that she said, “Your language is sounding much more confident. Very grounded.” She walked over to him and sat facing him on his lap, her thighs straddling his hips. She leaned forward so he could feel her breasts against his face. She touched his ears with her lips and made a sound deep within her throat, soft and feral. “I find your writing very exciting,” her breath gentle against his face.

Jack remembered when it was dark outside and he was late again and came running up the stairs and into the studio, where Anne, in tight jeans, was stretched across the chair, her legs dangling over one of the arms, her bare feet wriggling, the languid pose of a young and lush Jeanne Moreau, peering over the top of a magazine and saying, “Like I might ever want to leave without you.” There were times early on when he would walk up the front steps of the Fine Arts building and stand outside on the off chance Anne might appear, and when she didn't, he
walked around back and found her window and just stared at it. There were times when he would stay away and take himself to the library and walk alone through the stacks or sit in the student union with his friends, working on a cup of coffee, talking student talk. There were times when he stood in the doorway of her studio and said with uncertainty, “I thought, maybe…”

Times when Anne stepped close to him, her skin smelling of chalk dust and the kind of soap grandmothers use, rested her chin on his shoulder, squeezed his hand and said, “Let's go somewhere and eat onion rings and share a Coke with two straws. Just like in the movies,” and smiled at him, the way she smiled when he first saw her talking with the boys and he stared in dumb amazement. Jack didn't want to leave the studio, not yet, not until he was satisfied that he'd remembered all that he wanted to remember. The times when Anne could not be disturbed and the times when she softly rubbed his cheek with the back of her hand and whispered, “Let's misbehave,” in early autumn and the foliage shimmered off the trees. Jack wanted to remember when Anne said, “Joe Soares really liked
Lady with Watering Can
. He's recommending me for the Benton Award.” When he said, “Dr. Garraty sent my piece on Resnais to
American Film
.” When gray winter lay flat across the sky like a lost glove and they looked at each other and if they hadn't already realized who they were becoming, they were starting to get a pretty good idea.