The Toynbee Convector (23 page)

“I thought I’d get rid of it.”

“Rid of it? Call the Goodwill. Don’t fob the dumb books off on strangers, meaning your former husband. Let’s make three stacks, one for you, one for me and one for the Salvation Army.”

“You take the Salvation Army stuff with you and call them.”

“Why can’t you call from here? God, I don’t want to lug the lamebrain stuff across town. Wouldn’t it be simpler—”

“All right, all right, natter, natter. But stop messing with the books. Look at my stacks and then yours and see if you don’t agree—”

“I see my copy of Thurber on your side, what’s that doing there?”

“You gave it to me for Christmas ten years ago, don’t you remember?”

“Oh,” he said, and stopped. “Sure. Well—what’s Willa Cather doing over there?’

“You gave me her for my birthday twelve years ago.”

“It seems to me I spoiled you a lot.”

“Damn right you did, a long time ago. I wish you were still spoiling me. Maybe we wouldn’t be dividing up the damned books.” He flushed and turned away to kick the stacks quietly, gently with the tip of his shoe.

“Karen Horney, okay, she was a bore, too. Jung, I like Jung better, always did, but
you
can keep him.”

“Thanks a billion.”

“You always were one for thinking too much and not feeling.”

“Anyone who carries his mattress around with him on his back shouldn’t talk about thinking or feeling. Anyone who has bite marks on his neck—”

“We’ve been over that and it’s past.” He knelt down again and began to run his hand over the titles. “Here’s Katherine Anne Porter’s
Ship of Fools
, how in hell did you ever get through that? It’s yours. John Collier’s short stories! You know I love his work! That goes over in my pile!”

“Wait!” she said.

“
My
pile.” He pulled the book out and tossed it along the floor.

“Don’t! You’ll hurt it.”

“It’s mine now.” He gave it another shove.

“I’m glad you’re not running the main library,” she said.

“Here’s Gogol, boring, Saul Bellow, boring, John Updike, nice style but no ideas. Boring, Frank O’Connor? Okay, but you can keep him. Henry James? Boring, Tolstoy, never could figure out the names, not boring, just confusing, keep him. Aldous Huxley? Hey, wait! You know I think his essays are better than his novels!”

“You can’t break the set!”

“Like heck I can’t. We split this baby down the middle. You get the novels, I get his ideas.”

He grabbed three of the books and shoved them, skittering across the carpet. She stepped over and began to examine the piles she had put aside for him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Just rethinking what I gave you. I think I’ll take back John Cheever.”

“Christ! What gives? I take
this
, you grab
that
? Put Cheever back. Here’s Pushkin. Boring, Robbe-Grillet, French boring. Knut Hamsun. Scandinavian boring.”

“Cut the critiques. You make me feel like I just foiled my lit. exam. You think you’re taking all the good books and leaving me the dimwits?”

“Could be. All those Connecticut writers picking lint out of each other’s navels, logrolling down Fifth Avenue, firing blanks all the way!”

“I don’t suppose you find Charlie Dickens a dud?”

“Dickens!? We haven’t had anyone like him in this
century
!”

“Thank God! You’ll notice I gave you all the Thomas Love Peacock novels. Asimov’s science fiction. Kafka? Banal.”

“
Now
who’s busy burning books?” He bent furiously to study first her stack, then his. “Peacock, by God, one of the great humorists of all time. Kafka? Deep. Crazy, brilliant. Asimov? A genius!”

“Ho-hum! Jesus.” She sat down and put her hands in her lap and leaned forward, nodding at the hills of literature. “I think I begin to see where everything fell apart. The books you read, flotsam to me. The books I read, jetsam to you. Junk. Why didn’t we realize that ten years back?”

“Lots of things you don’t notice when you’re—” he slowed—“in love.”

The word had been spoken. She moved back in her chair, uneasily, and folded her hands and put her feet primly together. She stared at him with a peculiar bright ness m her eyes.

He looked away and began to prowl the room. “Ah, hell,” he said, kicking one stack, and moved across to kick the other, quietly, easily. “I don’t give a damn what’s in this bunch or that, I don’t care, I just don’t—”

“Do you have room in your car for most of these?” she said, quietly, still looking at him.

“I think so.”

“Want me to help you carry them out?”

“No.” There was another long moment of silence.

“I can manage.” “You sure?”

“Sure.” With a great sigh he began to carry a few books over near the door.

“I’ve got some boxes in the car. I’ll bring them up.”

“Don’t you want to look over the rest of the books to be sure they’re ones you want?”

“Naw,” he said. You know my taste. Looks like you did it all right It’s like you just peeled two pieces of paper away from each other, and there they are, I can’t believe it.”

He stopped piling the books by the door and stood looking at first one fortress of volumes on one side and then the opposing castles and towers of literature, and then at his wife, seated stranded in the valley between. It seemed a long way down the valley, across the room to where she was.

At that moment, two cats, both black, one large, one small, bounded in from the kitchen, caromed off the furniture and ricocheted out of the room, with not a sound.

His hand twitched. His right foot half turned toward the door.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said, quickly. “No cat carriers in here. Leave it outside. I’m keeping Maude and Maudlin.”

“But—” he said.

“Nope,” she said.

There was a long silence. At last, his shoulders slumped.

“Hell,” he said, quietly. “I don’t want any of the damned books. You can keep them all.”

“You’ll change your mind in a few days and come after them.”

“I don’t want them,” he said. “I only want you.”

“That’s the terrible part of all this,” she said, not moving. “I know it, and it’s impossible.”

“Sure. I’ll be right back. I’ll bring the boxes up.” He opened the door and again stared at the new lock as if he couldn’t believe. He took the old key from his pocket and put it on a side table near the door. “Won’t need that anymore.”

“No more, no,” she said, so he could hardly hear her.

“I’ll knock when I come back.” He started out and turned, “You know all of this was just talking around the real subject we haven’t even discussed yet?”

“What’s that?” She looked up.

He hesitated, moved a step, and said, “Who gets the kids?”

Before she could answer, he went out and shut the door.

Come, and Bring Constance!

His wife opened the mail at Saturday breakfast. It was the usual landslide.

“We’re on every hit list in town, and beyond,” he said. “I can stand the bills. But the come-ons, the premieres you don’t want to attend, the benefits that benefit no one, the—”

“Who’s Constance?” asked his wife.

“Who’s who?” he said.

“Constance,” said his wife.

And the summer morning passed quickly into November shade.

She handed over a letter from an old familiar dip up at Lake Arrowhead who was inviting him to a series of lectures on Primal Whisper, Extra Sensory Transubstantiation, EST and Zen. The man’s name, scribbled below, seemed to be, “J’ujfl Kikrk.” As if someone in the dark had typed the wrong letters and never gone back to correct.

The P.S. read: “If you come, bring Constance.”

“Well?” said his wife, putting too much butter on her toast.

“I don’t
know
any Constance,” he said.

“No?”

“
THERE IS NO
Constance,” he said.

“Really?”

“Indian scout’s mother’s honor.”

“Indians are dirty, scouts are buggers, and your mother was an easy lady,” said his wife.

“There never was, never is, and never will be,” he threw the letter in the wastebasket, “a Constance.”

“Then,” said his wife, with a lawyer’s logic, leaning against the stand, “why,” she articulated, “is,” she went on, “her name,” she enunciated, and finished: “in the letter?”

“Where’s the fan?” he said.

“What fan?”

“There’s got to be one,” he said, “for something awful to hit.” Meanwhile he was thinking quickly. His wife watched him thinking and buttered her toast twice over again. Constance, he thought, in a panic.

I have known an Alicia and I have known a Margot and I have met a Louise and I once upon a time knew an Allison. But—

Constance?

Never. Not even at the opera. Not even at some tea.

He telephoned Lake Arrowhead five minutes later.

“Put that dumb stupid jerk on!” he said, not thinking.

“Oh, Mr. Junoff? Of course,” said a woman’s voice as if the description fit.

Junoff came on. “Yesss... ?” He was one to make two or three syllables out of an affirmative.

“My wife’s name is not Constance,” said the husband.

“Who ever said it was? Who is this?”

“Sorry.” The husband gave his name. “Look here, just because in a moment of tired blood four years ago I let you rack me on your couch and probe the gumball machine in my head, doesn’t give you the right to send me an invitation to your saps-and-boots literary get-together next month. Especially when, at the end you add, “bring Constance.’ That is not my wife’s name.”

There was a long silence. Then the psychologist sighed. “Are you
sure
?”

“Been married to her for twenty years. I should know.”

“Perhaps I inadvertently—”

“No, not even that. My mistress, when she was alive, which I some days doubt, was named Deborah.”

“Damn,” said Junoff.

“Yes. I am. And you did.”

The telephone was dropped and picked up again. The man sounded like he was pouring a stiff drink and giving an easy answer at the same moment.

“What if I wrote Constance a letter—”

“There is
no
Constance! Only my wife. Whose name is—” He hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

The husband shut his eyes. “Hold on. Annette. Yes. That’s it. Annette. No, that’s her mother. Anne. That’s better. Write to Anne.”

“What shall I say?”

“Apologize for making up Constance. You’ve got me in a real pickle. She actually thinks the woman was real.”

“
Constance
does?”

“Annette. Anne. Anne! I’ve already said—”

“There
is
no Constance, I get it. Hold on.”

He heard more liquid being poured at the far end.

“Are you pouring gin instead of listening to me?”

“How did you know it was gin?”

“Shaken, not stirred.”

“Oh. Well. Do I or do I not write the letter?”

“What good would it do? My wife would only think you were lying to save my skin.”

“Yes, but the truth—”

“Is absolutely worthless with wives!”

There was a long silence from the far end in the villa up by the edge of the lake.

“Well?” said the husband.

“I’m waiting.”

“For what, for God’s sake?”

“For you to tell me what to do.”

“You’re the psychologist, you’re the expert, you’re the adviser, you’re the guy who puts together mystical bathe-ins for unwashed minds, you’re the chap with gum or something on the bottom of his shoes,
you
think of something!”

“Hold on,” said the voice up at Lake Arrowhead.

There was a sound like the snapping of fingers or the adding of more ice.

“Holy Cow,” said the psychologist. “I think I’ve got it. Yes. I have! I have. My God, I’m brilliant! Keep your pants on.”

“They were never
off
, damn it!”

“Be prepared. I am raising the
Titantic
!”

Click
.

There was a sound like more fingers being snapped or more ice added or the phone being hung up.

“Junoff!”

But he was gone.

The husband and wife battled through the morning, yelled at lunch, shrieked over coffee, took the fight to the pool around two, napped briefly at four to waken fresh with vitriol and drinks at four thirty, and at five minutes to five, there was an imperious ring of the front doorbell. Both of them trapped their mouths, she on her righteous indignation, he on his now increasingly maddened denials.

They both stared from the bar to the front door.

The royal ring came again. Something mighty and majestic leaned against the bell not caring if it rang forever to call an entire peasant countryside to kneel. They had never heard such a discourteous ring before. Which meant it could be a lout messenger who knew nothing, or a person of such grandiosity as to be forever important.

Husband and wife marched toward the door.

“Where are you going?” cried the wife.

“To answer it, of course.”

“Oh, no you don’t! And cover up!”

“Cover
what
up?”

“Liar! Gangway!”

And she left him in her dust. He went back to the bar and drank heavily for thirty seconds.

Only to see her standing in the doorway at the end of thirty-one seconds. She seemed stunned or frozen or both. With her back to the door, she summoned one hand to gesture strangely toward the entranceway. He stared.

“It’s
Constance
,” she said.

“Who?” he shouted.

“Constance, of course!” a voice whooped.

And the tallest and most beautiful woman he had ever seen charged into the room, looked around as if evaluating everything, and loped at a good pace to squeeze his elbows, grab his shoulders, and plant a kiss in the middle of his brow, which grew an extra eye immediately.

She stood off and looked him up and down as if he were not a man but an athletic team and she was here to award medals.

He looked into her great bright face and whispered:

“Constance?”

“You’re damn
tootin’
!”