The Body Of Jonah Boyd (10 page)

It was now 1997. Ben was no longer living in Milwaukee. He had divorced Molly, and taken a job teaching in the Creative Writing
program at the University of Maryland. He had remarried—Amy, also a writer. Another book appeared, not a novel this time,
but a memoir of his California childhood,
The
Eucalyptus,
which of course I read with avidity, since it was also, in some sense, the story of my life. I must admit, Ben’ descriptive
prowess impressed me. He captured vividly the flavor of that house on Florizona Avenue, devoting particular attention to the
Thanksgivings, and interweaving into his story that of Phil, the least noticeable of the strays, who one spring afternoon,
his Ph.D. thesis having just been rejected for the fourth time, knocked on the door of Ernest’ office, and when Ernest opened
it, shot him in the face. He would have shot Glenn, too, but Glenn happened to be in the bathroom. Ernest died before he could
say a word. In the memoir, Ben writes at length of the yellow tape sealing off the crime scene, not to mention the phalanx
of news reporters and squad cars that surrounded his parents’ house, and that seemed so out of place on Florizona Avenue.
All of this I, too, remembered. I was there, in the office, when Ernest died. I held him as he died. And then afterward, without
saying anything of my own grief, I held Nancy while she wept in disbelief at the idea that for so many Thanksgivings she had
nursed a viper at her table. And all that time Phil had seemed so benign—so boring, even—that skinny boy with his big appetite!
Curiously, this discordance between appearance and reality seemed to preoccupy her much more than the fact that her husband
had been murdered. Might there have been warning signs? A picture of Daphne had disappeared one Thanksgiving from the mantel;
someone had left some poisoned meat in the backyard that Little Hans had eaten. (He’d survived.) Now she wondered if Jonah
Boyd’ notebooks had really been lost, or if perhaps Phil, for mysterious reasons of his own, had stolen them. “If only we’d
seen,” Nancy lamented. “If only we’d noticed.”

I tried to remind her that Ernest himself had liked and trusted Phil. Given that
he
had harbored no suspicions, there was no reason for Nancy to beat herself up now. “I just wonder,” she answered. But soon
enough the brain tumor put an end even to wondering.

Both the local and the national media pounced on the story of Ernest’ murder. Glenn was interviewed by Dan Rather—not just
because he was Ernest’ protege and Phil’ nemesis but as an authority on psychosis. His diagnosis was that under the pressure
of seeing his career about to collapse, and after so many years of watching his contemporaries move ahead of him, Phil had
just snapped. “There is in all of us,” Glenn told Dan Rather, “the potential to do something unspeakable. What fascinates
psychologists is the question of what restrains some, while others are suddenly propelled to make fateful decisions.”

All of this is in Ben’ memoir, and much more—the “real” story behind Mark’ flight to Canada (as opposed to Ben’ fictional
account), and the struggle to keep the house, and Daphne’ divorce, and Nancy’ death—and yet, curiously, there is not a single
mention of Jonah or Anne Boyd, and less curiously, no mention of me. I do not appear even once. I am left out wholesale. Later
I asked him why this was. “Oh, Denny,” he said, “writers always have to make choices. You can’t put everything in a book.
Besides, you were never really
involved
in any of it, were you? You were just—I don’t know—there. On the sidelines.”

The memoir, for Ben, was the biggest success of all. He went on talk shows. To promote the book, which had been translated
into something like twenty languages, he made a European tour. Back in College Park, he threatened to quit his job at the
university, and in exchange for a promise to stay on, he got a reduction of his teaching load along with a substantial pay
raise. Amy, unhappy that her career was not matching his, left him for a heart surgeon. Seeing no reason to stay in Maryland,
now that his ex-wife was living down the street in a much grander style than he could afford, Ben put out the word that he
would entertain offers from other schools, on the condition that they be willing to pay him twice what he was earning at Maryland
in exchange for only one semester of teaching a year. And he could get away with that. He had become famous enough that he
could write his own ticket.

It was then, to his own amazement, that he got the letter from the provost at Wellspring—the same provost to whom Nancy had
made her appeal, not so long before, to keep the house, and who had rebuffed her. It seemed that a rich alumnus, a dabbler
in fiction himself, had of late given the university a substantial sum of money for the purpose of endowing a chair for a
writer-in-residence: For this position, Ben was now quietly encouraged to apply. He did so eagerly. A few weeks later, in
Wellspring to be interviewed, he telephoned me. As it happened, I had taken early retirement a year earlier. I now owned my
own house—a two-bedroom, concrete-block affair in a modest neighborhood of Springwell. The last thing I expected in those
unbusy days was for Ben Wright to call, and not only to call, but to invite me to dinner.

We met at the faculty club. Amazingly, even though I had worked at the university for more than thirty years, and knew its
ins and outs better than anyone alive, until that evening I had never once been to the faculty club, the scene of Nancy’ raging
at poor Bess Dalrymple. Ernest had disdained the place as stuffy, and after he had been killed . . . well, who else but her
boss would invite a secretary to eat dinner in a gloomy, formal room where the food was expensive and bad? For my retirement
party, I’d had the choice of the faculty club or a restaurant, and had opted for a rather festive Mexican place, with sangria
and flirty waiters. La Pifiata was more my speed, just as a nice, comfortable denim skirt with an elastic waist band was more
my style . . . And now here I sat, waiting for Ben in a dining room hushed by heavy draperies that smelled of boiled cabbage,
while around me faculty widows I recognized from Nancy’ long-ago tea parties sipped white wine and gossiped in low voices.
The suit I wore was as uncomfortable as the one I’d put on decades before, that first Thanksgiving I’d spent with the Wrights.

After a while Ben came in. He now had the belly that comes after forty, and a heavy beard, white speckling the brown. Still,
I had no trouble recognizing him. “Denny, what a pleasure,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.

“You look so much like your father I almost fell out of my chair,” I said.

“So I’ve been told about fifty times today.”

He sat down. A waiter approached, a man older than me, whom I recognized from the staff parking lot. Ben demanded wine, and
the waiter withdrew. “Listen, I have some news,” he said. “It’ not official yet, so you’ll have to keep this to yourself for
the time being. They’ve offered me the job. Writer-in-residence in the English department, one semester a year.”

“Wow,” I said. “Congratulations.”

The waiter brought the wine, as well as menus. “Kind of incredible, isn’t it, when you consider that back in the dark ages,
the damn place didn’t even see fit to admit me? But that’ neither here nor there. The point is, now that I’ve got the job,
I can buy it back.”

“Buy what back?”

He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “The house, of course.”

“Oh, the house,” I said; and then, as my train of thought caught up with his: “You mean your parents’ house?”

“What other house would I be talking about?” he asked, laughing. And he was right to laugh: Clearly I
was
an idiot to have imagined that just because, over the years, I had more or less stopped thinking about the house, he would
have also.

“But is it even on the market? I remember Nancy sold it to a couple of law professors.”

“Yes, Travis and Eleanor Ault. But then they split up and sold it to a Dr. Clark from the medical school. He kept it a few
years, made some horrible quote-unquote
improvements
in the garden—they tore out the old fish pond, can you believe it?—and then
he
sold it to the people who own it now. Their name is Shoemaker. She’ in zoology and he’ some sort of higher-up on the development
council. Anyway, it’ not for sale, at least officially, but when I went in for my interview with the provost, he basically
said, ‘What can we do to get you to come?’ So I mentioned the house, and he made a few phone calls, and the long and the short
of it is, they’re willing to sell if the price is right. They’re asking a lot—close to two million—much more than the appraised
value, so I’ll probably have to do a deal on my new book before I write it, just to have the cash for the down payment. And
to think that my father paid thirty thousand dollars for that place, and now it’ worth . . . But there’ no point in going
into the numbers. Wellspring owes this to me, after what they did to my mother. Of course I’ll have to take out a huge mortgage.
Luckily I can manage it. Barely. Thank God I don’t have kids!”

“Congratulations,” I repeated—rather weakly, for the figure of two million dollars had left me dumbfounded.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Ben said, even though I had said nothing to suggest that I was. “You see, I was thinking it all over
this afternoon, in my room over at the Ritz-Carlton, and I realized that you were the only person around who would understand
why this mattered so much to me. I haven’t told my sister yet. I’ve been putting it off. I suppose I’m frightened how she’ll
react.”

“Why?”

“Well, we never talked about it then—it was too important to present a united front—but when we were trying to persuade the
provost to let us keep the place, in the back of both our minds, and my mother’, too, I suppose, there was always this lingering
question: In the event that we won, which of us would actually live there? We could hardly have shared the house. We would
have driven each other crazy. And of course Mark would have insisted that we buy him out of his share, and then would the
one who did stay have to buy out the other one? At that stage, neither of us could have afforded to. I know Daphne would have
tried to trump me with her kids—you know, I have children, and you don’t, and therefore I need the house more than you do,
so the kids can trample the flowers and clog up the pool with their toys.”

“But why should any of it matter now? Daphne doesn’t even live in Wellspring anymore. She lives in Portland. She has a house
of her own.”

“My feelings exactly. Nor should we allow ourselves to forget that
she’
not the one who’ just been offered a plum position thanks to a reputation she worked very hard and many years to attain. She
tried to get a job herself here, remember, and failed. Still, I’d be foolish to assume she’ll react rationally. These things
are so personal. And anyway, she never understood my mother’ spiritual attachment to that house. For her it was just plain
greed. She wanted all the space. She wanted the pool.”

“Well, maybe if you approach her in the right way, she’ll come around,” I said—lame, but as a response, it seemed close to
the probable truth.

Ben lifted his glass. “Let’ have a toast. To 302 Florizona Avenue.”

“Cin-cin,”
I said.

“That’ funny.
Cin-cin
was how my father always toasted. I wonder what he’d think of all this—how things have turned out. He never had much faith
in me.”

“That’ not true.”

“Oh come on, Denny, you know it as well as I do. He pretty much wrote me off as a loser from the get-go. Wouldn’t he be surprised
to see where I’ve landed? A higher salary than
he
ever pulled in.” He was gazing at his wine as he said this, his expression more introspective than gloating. “You know, I
don’t usually think of myself as a religious person, or even a particularly spiritual person, but when you look at how things
have turned out—well, how can you help but wonder if it wasn’t all meant to be?”

“In what sense?”

“I mean, consider the coincidences. The very year I decide to look for a new job, Wellspring endows a position for a writer-in-residence.
Fifty people must have applied, yet they choose me. I ask about the house, figuring there isn’t a chance in hell it’ll be
on the market, and the Shoemakers say they’ll sell. So now, by getting the house back, I’ve fulfilled my mother’ fondest wish.
By getting the job, I’ve fulfilled my own. When things work out like that, it’ hard not to think that there’ a pattern, or
a purpose, or that you’ve got a guardian angel. Although God knows if I do, he fell down on the job. For years.”

“Well, but you’re discounting your own books. They’re what got you the job. Oh, and by the way, I’m afraid I haven’t read
the novels, only the memoir, which I liked very much.”

“Don’t even bother with the first one. The first one is pathetic. Since my stuff started selling, my publishers have been
trying to convince me to let them bring it out in paperback, but I won’t allow it.”

Our food arrived—a depressing vignette of salmon filets and heartless little vegetables, two carrots, three potato balls,
a sprig of parsley: the sort of meal after which you have to go out and get yourself a cheeseburger. I took an unencouraging
bite (the salmon was dry); thought suddenly of Jonah Boyd, that last dinner I’d eaten with him and Anne and Ben at the Pie
‘n Burger. Odd that in all the years since, Ben and I had never talked about that Thanksgiving. And now, as if he were reading
my mind, he suddenly said, “Remember the Thanksgiving when the Boyds came?”

“Funny, I just was.”

“Very strange, what happened.”

“It still surprises me that the notebooks never turned up. You’d think that eventually someone would have—”

“Well, but Denny, you don’t really believe they were lost, do you? You know what my mother thought.”

“What—that Phil stole them?”

“It would make sense. He did a lot of creepy things—hounding girls in the psych department, stealing things. He hated my father,
he hated Glenn. I wouldn’t put it past him.”