The Art of Fielding: A Novel (25 page)

The Westish Chapel bells were tolling eight o’clock. “Every hour?” Affenlight said.

“Just about.” Owen laid his hands on the gentle swell of his belly and closed his eyes. “I did feel worse once, I suppose. When Jason broke up with me.”

Jason.
The name broke over Affenlight like a wave. “Jason?” he asked.

“Jason Gomes. Do you remember him?”

It took Affenlight a moment to place the name. “Ah, yes. Jason was one of our best students.”

Owen nodded. “And your best-looking.”

“I don’t remember that part.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Owen said coyly. “He was much better-looking than I am. He might even have been better-looking than you.” Owen scratched his chin, his tone evaluative and probably slightly teasing. Affenlight blanched. If Owen thought Jason was slightly better-looking than Affenlight but much better-looking than Owen, then Owen thought that Affenlight was better-looking than Owen. Which was a compliment. But to be compared unfavorably to an ex-boyfriend: that was a slight. But the conditional had been used:
might even have been.
It was like an SAT for gay flirting. Not that gay flirting differed from straight flirting. But if it didn’t differ, why was Affenlight so bad at it? Genevieve had returned and was perusing Affenlight’s bookshelves, her back turned, sipping her wine.

“It hurt that much?” Affenlight asked quietly, meaning the breakup.

“I was so distressed I refused to eat. Henry had to force-feed me.” Owen opened his eyes and looked at Affenlight. “I don’t like getting my heart broken.”

Before Affenlight could digest this, Genevieve arranged herself beside him on the couch, crossing those dynamite legs in his direction. “Guert, this is quite a place.”

“Do you like it?”

She looked around, her chin lifted thoughtfully. “I do,” she decided. “But it’s certainly very…”

“Academic?” Affenlight suggested.

“I was going to say
undergraduate.
Or
masculine.
But I suppose your daughter can help with the latter, at least. Where is she, by the way?”

“She went out to forage for some snacks for us.”

“She’d better not be going to any trouble.” Genevieve waggled a finger at Affenlight. “The whole point of this evening was for
me
to thank
you
for taking such good care of Owen.”

“Nonsense. You two are the guests of honor. You’ve traveled all this way, and Owen has done Westish proud. News of the Trowell goes out worldwide—it’s the sort of thing that makes a school president look good.”

“The school president looks pretty good already.” Genevieve smiled. Affenlight smiled back. Was he straight flirting? The legs seemed to demand it. Or maybe it wasn’t the legs but the fact that he had no other way to relate to women. What could you do if you couldn’t flirt, charm, and flatter? You could keep the conversation lofty and erudite, but in Affenlight’s experience this was usually perceived as flirting too. Luckily Owen seemed to have dozed off. Though maybe he was just pretending.

For a split second Affenlight thought that Genevieve’s hand was tickling his thigh; despite himself he flinched, kicking the coffee table and sloshing wine out of his glass. It turned out to be his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. Genevieve, by way of response, patted him on the thigh. “Easy,” she said, plucking at the crease in his light-wool slacks. “You okay?”

“Ha-ha. Yes, of course. Sorry about that,” Affenlight said. “My phone.” He slipped the infernal device partway from his pocket and checked the caller ID. A 415 area code—Pella, he thought, but Pella had left her phone in San Francisco. David, then, returned from wherever he’d been, returned to find his wife’s phone on the kitchen table, the call log stuffed with his own unrequited calls. Bewildered now; apoplectic soon enough. Affenlight let it ring.

27

A
ny doubts Pella might have had about the provenance of her father’s strange behavior dissolved when she entered the study to find a beautiful black yoga-sculpted woman nestling—or maybe not quite nestling but sitting pretty close for a near–total stranger—against him on the couch. Her skin was youthful, her hair cropped short, her legs and eyelashes insanely long. The legs, as she uncrossed them and rose from the couch to greet Pella, flashed in sensual arcs like polished Brancusi birds.

“Pella! So nice to meet you.” Genevieve squeezed Pella’s elbow and smoothly took the bag of groceries from her, as if they’d accomplished this exchange hundreds of times. Pella, in the presence of this sleek being, felt frumpy and floury again. She crossed her arms to protect the pasty sag of her breasts and biceps, vowed to hit the pool with new vigor tomorrow.

“Pella, this is Owen,” Affenlight said. “Owen, Pella.”

Owen smiled with half his face and lifted a palm in greeting.

“Congratulations on your fellowship,” Pella said.

“Thank you.” The unsmiling half of his face was hugely swollen, covered in purple bruises, and he was wearing a bizarre getup of white undershirt and red pajama pants dotted with black-and-white yin-yang symbols. But what struck her most was how slender and gentle he looked: she knew he played baseball and was expecting an enormous jock like Mike.

“Pella and I will be in the kitchen.” Genevieve carried the food that way as if the apartment were her own. “You men try to entertain yourselves.”

Pella trotted behind obediently. Genevieve opened all the right cabinets, finding serving dishes Pella didn’t know existed, and busily began transferring Chef Spirodocus’s concoctions—falafel, hummus, vegetables, something wrapped in grape leaves, something that smelled of fennel—from their plastic cartons. Pella tried to think of some way to help. Finally she spotted the cinnamon-currant loaf sitting on the counter, where Genevieve had set it, and stuck it in the oven.

“Now,” Genevieve said, pouring herself another glass of wine, “as long as we’re women in the kitchen, can we indulge in a bit of women-in-the-kitchen gossip?”

“Sure.” Pella squinted at the oven display. Three hundred degrees? Four hundred? She decided to split the difference.

“You should probably preheat that.” Genevieve touched Pella’s elbow to lessen the force of the order.

“Of course.” She punched the button that said
PREHEAT
.

“Maybe without the loaf in there?”

“Ah.” Pella withdrew the pan and set it on a burner. Back home in Buena Vista she had a restaurant-quality six-burner self-cleaning stainless-steel range, yet she didn’t even know how not to char food that someone else had made. That seemed like some kind of metaphor for her life, or modernity, or something.

“Perfect,” said Genevieve. “So. Your dad’s not married anymore?”

“He never was,” Pella said, more eagerly than she intended. It’d been a long time since she’d talked about boys; it was fun, even if the boy was her dad.

Genevieve nodded. “He has that perpetual-bachelor thing going. Responsible without being mature. And this apartment—it’s like an English major’s dorm room but with first editions instead of paperbacks. Where does he spend the summer?”

“Here.”

“The poor man.” Genevieve’s hair was shorter than Mike’s, but she had an analogous way of passing her hand over it when nonplussed. Though maybe it wasn’t analogous at all—Genevieve’s was a breezy feminine grooming motion, whereas Mike’s was always accompanied by a sad exhalation. In which case, thought Pella, I’m looking for excuses to think about Mike. Which would mean that I like him. But maybe I don’t want to like him. She poured some wine into her empty whiskey tumbler and tabled the question—she’d come to Westish to try her hand at being
un
attached.

Genevieve was looking at her intently.

“Pardon?” said Pella.

“I’m sorry. Did that question offend you?”

“Which question?”

“It would never have crossed my mind,” Genevieve said quickly, sounding apologetic, “except that when O was in high school he read your dad’s book—I forget the title—and was so enamored of it. I think that’s how he first heard of Westish, by Googling Guert Affenlight.”

“Ah,” said Pella. “Is my dad gay.”

Genevieve was watching her anxiously, as if awaiting forgiveness.

“Actually,” Pella said, “the book has very little to do with homosexuality per se. It’s more about the cult of male friendship in nineteenth-century America. Boys’ clubs, whale boats, baseball teams. Emotional nourishment before the modern era of gender equality.”

“Pseudo-equality, you mean.”

Pella smiled. “Pseudo-equality. I think my dad’s lonely,” she added. “When we lived in Cambridge he always had a girlfriend, two girlfriends, however many. But none of them stuck around very long. I think it was too soon after my mom died.” Pella paused. In fact she had little idea how her dad felt about her mom’s death, and this simple sentence she’d always, as a child, believed—
It was too soon—
now came out sounding like a lie.

“Anyway,” she concluded with overt cheer, because Genevieve was looking at her with oh-no-your-mom-died sympathy, “he could use a girlfriend.”

Genevieve tipped the bottle’s dregs into her glass. “I’ll take that as a blessing.”

Pella, happy to play along, drew a sign of the cross in the air between her and Genevieve. She retrieved the champagne that her father had jammed into the freezer, and they carried the food and champagne into the study.

“To Owen,” her dad said, raising his glass aloft. “May he prosper in the Land of the Rising Sun, as he has in the Land of the Falling Snow.”

“How sweet,” Genevieve said. “Hear! Hear!”

“We’ll miss him”—Affenlight’s voice fell to a forlorn note—“but we’ll soldier on.” Pella thought this a bit much; her dad must be pretty keen to get between Genevieve’s legs. Not that he could really be blamed. Few women made it into their forties with legs like that.

They clinked glasses. “Only a sip for you, kiddo,” Genevieve said, leaning forward to squeeze her son’s toes. “You’re on all that medication.” She turned to Pella. “I never asked what you do in San Francisco.”

“Do? Um, well, you know…”

“Wait, don’t tell me. You’re a graduate student. In”—Genevieve pressed her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes—“something stylish. Something artistic. Something like…
architecture.
” She opened her eyes. “How did I do?”

Had David left that deep an imprint on her? Pella reached across her body to scratch a nervous itch along the flukes of her tattoo. “You’re close,” she said.

“I knew it! How close?”

“Genevieve, you’re being gauche.” Owen yawned, opening his mouth cautiously because of the swelling, and rubbed his belly. “It’s only Americans who insist on asking everyone what they do.”

“Well, we
are
Americans, dear.”

Pella distributed the remaining champagne, filling Owen’s flute to the brim as thanks for his intervention. He winked at her, took a long slow sip, and let his eyelids flutter closed. He had beautiful eyelashes, like his mother. Pella wondered at the blithe comfort that allowed him to doze off like that, in the company of the president of his college, in his pajamas. She was developing an admiration for him.

“Let the punishment fit the crime,” her dad said. “Genevieve, what do
you
do?”

“I’m an anchorperson,” Genevieve said. “On the San Jose evening news.”

“Ah!” said Affenlight. “A celebrity in our midst.”

“It’s really not very glamorous. Sit around all day staring at the internet, then spend an eternity in hair and makeup—that’s why I shaved my head, so I could skip a step.”

Genevieve paused to give Affenlight an opportunity to tell her how good her hair looked, but Affenlight barely noticed. Was Owen really asleep? he wondered. Or was he just
pretending
to be asleep, in order to monitor Affenlight’s behavior toward Genevieve? That would be like Owen—to control the room with his torpor.

“Your hair looks lovely,” he said several beats too late.

Genevieve beamed, ran a hand breezily over her scalp. “Tell my producer. I thought he was going to fire me. But I’m black and I’ve been there forever.”

“Indeed,” Affenlight said.

Owen’s good eye popped open. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“Outside. Listen.”

Affenlight leaned forward. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Probably the wind,” Genevieve said, but then it came again, a patter that rattled the windowpane, like a handful of tossed pebbles. Affenlight went to the window and peered down into the dark quad. Unable to make out whoever or whatever was below, he pushed open the hinged windows and, half a moment later, staggered backward, spilling champagne as his hand shot up to clutch his jaw. A round object, more rock than pebble, dropped to the study’s floor. “Who’s there?” he yelled.

“Hi, President Affenlight. It’s Mike Schwartz. I was, uh, aiming for the weather vane.”

Affenlight rubbed his jaw. “You missed.”

The gray form three stories below—he was standing in what, tomorrow morning, would be the shadow of the Melville statue—lifted his arms in a cruciform gesture of apology. “I guess I’m a little tired. We played two games today.”