Tony and Susan (20 page)

Susan Morrow returns to the book after a hard day’s work. Cleaning up, the vacuum cleaner, wrapping paper, gadgets and toys upstairs. An hour paying the bills and another on the phone talking to Maureen about everything except what’s on her mind.

Dorothy and Henry are skating with the Fowlers. The snow is falling, the roads could be dangerous coming back. Rosie watches television in the bedroom, keep the sound down, dear. Jeffrey on the couch: off, mutt, you know better than that. The nostalgia of pizza burns the corners of her lips.

Susan Morrow opens the box, pours the manuscript upside down on the coffee table looking for the red placemark. She puts the finished sheets face down in the box, the unread ones in a pile on the coffee table. The new pile is smaller than the used pile. Susan foresees the moment when there won’t be enough space for what should happen. She anticipates the disappointment of the end, waiting for her, already typed into that pile.

She sits with her lap pages, trying to remember. Tony Hastings lost his family to thugs in the night. Looking at the last page last night, she finds him smashing Ray Marcus’s tooth in the trailer. She remembers her righteous wrath. Before that, Tony and Bobby Andes picked up Ray in a baseball uniform and before that Tony identified Lou Bates after failing to identify Turk.

That all this was written by Edward makes her feel ashamed. She picks up the pages, prepares to go on.

There will be a trial for Ray Marcus and Lou Bates in Grant Center as soon as we get the case together. You’ll have to come back for that. Mr. Gorman, the district attorney, will be in charge. That’ll be another two months at least.

Firm at the magistrate’s hearing, answering Mr. Gorman’s questions, looking straight at Ray, who looked straight at him. Bruised face. Mister, you’re gonna be sued. No you’re not, holding firm with lawyers and juries, the American flag in the corner and the press.

He heard himself singing through the wind blasting the open windows as he drove home. Released. June on the highway, the bright young fields, rich dug earth, horses and cows plowed into the roots of what we eat with a thick shitty smell.

Sing sing sing, Christopher Columbus. I did it. His knuckles still hurt, he hadn’t noticed it at the time. There was a raw gash where the skin must have ripped on the snag end of a tooth. He enjoyed the pain for its reminding value.

Going home to a party, driving faster than ever before under the big June afternoon sky with its cool warmth bringing wind and fair weather clouds, zipping ahead of trucks and Cadillacs and Volkswagens. Without taking anything away from his love, it was time for Tony Hastings to resume his life, he sang. Having fixed what was troubling it. Touched the untouchable, knocked him cold. Released the unreleasable, smashed the bottle to let the boat out, exquisite Tony. Speedy Tony, clever
about speed traps, no cops caught him today. Made it to the house with plenty of time. Naked in the shower, noticing himself, filling with hope. Two parties, in fact, the faculty party at the Furmans and the graduate student party, with a personal note from Louise Germane, ‘Hope you can come.’ The parties were in conflict.

He put a bandaid on Ray’s last bite. Dressed for the Furman party, regretting the need to choose. The choice reduced his swelling hope, whatever that was, which he didn’t know. A desire to say something important to someone. What, to whom? He tried to adjust his expectation to the Furmans’ party. Francesca Hooton? He glanced about the house quickly before he left, smoothed the bedspread, put a clean second towel in the bathroom, then chided himself for a fool.

Malks, Arthurs, Washingtons, Garfields. Francesca Hooton was standing by the porch door, a glass in her hand, with her husband. He had forgotten she had a husband. All the guests stood around with glasses in their hands, on the screened back porch and outside on the lawn and garden in the nine o’clock June twilight. Exotic evening, light that won’t die, lights in house windows shining still, fireflies, that sort of thing. Everything reminded him of Laura. The lights and fireflies reminded him of her. Standing around with drinks.

He wished he had gone to the other party. He tried to remember what the important thing was he had wanted to tell Francesca before he discovered she had a husband. The only thing he could think of was the news they had caught Ray and he personally had slugged him. It seemed full of meaning, which all dribbled out like an untied balloon when he came out on the screened porch and saw these good friends whom he knew so well, and realized what talking would be like.

In the garden Eleanor Arthur talked about something, and as she talked she drifted slowly to the other end toward the edge of the dark ravine. He felt obliged to follow her drift. She was talking about teaching math as against teaching English, which was her job. She tried to make an argument about it. He had no wish to oppose her on this or any subject, but she was annoyed that he would not quarrel. So she tried to make an argument on why he wouldn’t take a stand on things. When he wouldn’t argue that either, she tried to make an argument, though full of sympathy, that he was still crippled by his bereavement, and when he wouldn’t oppose her on that either, though he had been telling himself all day it was no longer true, she talked about church groups, the Nature society, and sympathetic friends who were only waiting for him to ask. With his hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered thoughtfully, like a cow, or a bull, he tried grazing his way back to the door but still she remained planted like a stake to which he was tethered, until he got the idea of getting her another drink. He came back with Francesca, and then something got into him, and he told them about Ray.

‘I lost control of myself and knocked him down.’

Eleanor Arthur was delighted. ‘The murderer? Well bless you, I bet that made him think about what he had done.’

Not likely, he thought. He looked at Francesca, searching for a message across the maze of others. Her eyes were still bright, but he could not guess what they meant. He felt stupid, his powerful experience a shallow party boast. He felt ashamed, while Francesca looked at him with Laura’s eyes.

He decided to go to the student party. He waited for the buffet, so as not to be impolite, then said goodnight to Francesca Hooton and Gerald and Eleanor Arthur and Bill and Roxanne
Furman, and he stepped out into the balmy June evening a few minutes before midnight and hurried to his car under the fresh leafed maple tree, wondering if there was still time.

To the third floor apartment of an old house, a narrow street, he had to park three blocks away. He could hear the music as he approached. Suddenly anxious again, another foolish thing, what interest could he have in these young people with their loud music, what was there to prefer here? The answer was Louise Germane. Of whom he knew nothing. Did Louise Germane have a boyfriend? Lover? Nothing. Only the flattering things she used to say to him and the personal note she had added to the mimeographed party invitation.

He climbed up the narrow steps into a jungle of noise. The door at the top was open, the room loud and crowded. His colleague Gabe Dalton leaned against the doorjamb with his pipe, his beard, a plastic cup of beer in his hand, lecturing to a group of three, avid and respectful. Inside, members of his seminar: ‘Hey Mr. Hastings. Beer in the kitchen.’

Glad of Gabe Dalton, to make him feel less out of place. He was speaking with great pipe-wielding beard-fortified authority about first one thing and then another. Snowing the kids. He touched Tony on the arm, not to interrupt the monologue, with a lot of unspoken meaning, such as, Good to see you coming out of your cave, pal. Tony looked around, disappointed. He went into the kitchen and found Louise Germane.

She was leaning against the refrigerator, talking to Oscar Gametti and Myra Slue. She saw him and waved. How colorful she was, tall, a blue and red T-shirt, a blue scarf holding back her wheat hair. ‘Get you some beer.’

The beer barrel in the corner, she pumped it up and handed him a cup. The kitchen was quieter than the rest of the party. She was glad he had come, as if she believed it. Oscar Gametti
asked him a question, and he began to talk. The students stood around politely and just like Gabe Dalton he talked, with growing ease from the position of his greater age and knowledge, about national politics and mathematics and the Department of Mathematics. He thought how respectful they were, looking up to him with admiration.

He noticed what small bumps Louise Germane’s breasts made in her T-shirt. He wanted to talk to her in a different way, to say something different. She listened with interest, eagerly, he thought, her eyes seemed to glow at him. He wished he could detach her from the others. He wondered how. He wondered how she had come, how she planned to leave, whether he might, for example, take her home. If he could offer to, in a natural way without shocking her or attracting the attention of others.

He began telling his story, the whole thing starting in the night on the Interstate. He guessed they all knew it already, but he had never told it to students before. He heard himself doing it, he could hardly believe it, and he felt ashamed telling it, but he could not help it. He told it as plain as he could, with diffidence, but he left out no important facts. He told it like something everybody should know, like a lesson about the world. Their expressions became serious, they shook their heads and looked dismayed. He watched Louise Germane’s large awestruck eyes, looking as if she wanted to kiss him.

After the narrative, Myra Slue said, ‘It’s time for me to go home.’

Tony said, ‘Me too, probably. Soon.’ Then, not too loudly, ‘Can I give anybody a lift?’ Myra Slue did not hear, the others were turned and talking elsewhere. He looked directly at Louise Germane. Repeat, to her: ‘Can I give you a lift?’ The kinship eyes and face that wanted to kiss veiled its pleased surprise.
‘Why, thank you,’ she said, hesitating and adding, ‘I came with Nora Jensen.’

He allowed his disappointment to show. She said, ‘I’ll go ask her.’ Like an afterthought, ‘I’ll meet you downstairs.’ Like an intrigue, a scheme to conceal. His heart jumped. As she went off to find Nora, he noticed her suppressed little grin. His dignity reeled a little. He said goodnight to Gabe Dalton still holding forth at the door, and went downstairs by himself, where he waited for Louise Germane, wondering if she really would, while his heart leaped raggedly.

The space in the text is not a chapter, but Susan Morrow pauses, blocked by something. Anticipating the sex scene she sees coming. Not sure she wants it, unless she can keep Edward out of it. Nervous Edward, whose sexual imagination in real life was not great. She’s irritated with him. His snobbish picture of the faculty party. She likes faculty parties herself, thinking academic people more intelligent and cultivated than most. She’s irritated by Tony too, shocked when he tells the students his tragedy, irked by his male preference for young Louise over Eleanor. With a question about the ethics of faculty-student screwing, if he or Edward has thought of that.

What’s ailing her, obstructing her reading? Rosie hangs on the telephone, talking to Carol. If Arnold is trying to call from New York: Never mind, let her talk. Susan hopes he doesn’t call. The thought surprises her, why should she hope that? She’s afraid of his call for no good reason and suddenly realizes she’s afraid of his return too, tomorrow – tomorrow? – wishing she had another day to get ready. She imagines him bringing her some frightening gift. Some gift that is no gift, deadly. What would that be? She doesn’t know, it’s a lump of thought in her head, amorphous and opaque like coal.

She detects outside an alteration of city sound caused by falling snow. She hears it covering the car, which she will have to scrape clean tomorrow, and the sidewalk she will have to shovel – she or Henry. She’s caught by the strangeness of what
she’s doing, reading a made-up story. Putting herself into a special state, like a trance, while someone else (Edward) pretends certain imaginings are real. A question for another time: What am I really doing? Am I learning something? Is the world better, Edward, because of this cooperation between you and me?

Tony’s world resembles Susan’s except for the violence in its middle which makes it totally different. What, Susan wonders, do I get from being made to witness such bad luck? Does this novel magnify the difference between Tony’s life and mine, or does it bring us together? Does it threaten me or soothe me?

Such questions pass through her mind without answers in a pause in her reading.

He waited at the bottom of the steps, where two students stood smoking. Louise Germane was slow, she did not come. He imagined Nora Jensen saying Come on, I’ll take you, and wondered if Louise could reply, But I
want
Mr. Hastings to take me.

Meanwhile others came down. Gabriel Dalton, still talking to two guys who followed. Nora Jensen herself, with Myra Slue but not Louise. He wondered if Louise had slipped away, fire escape, back stairs. He began to despair, before he saw a thin legged person at the top coming down, talking to someone further up, the jeans and laced shoes, the red and blue T-shirt, yes, Louise Germane. She looked at him eagerly, he thought she was going to take his hand. ‘Complications,’ she said.

He walked with her to the car, the other students watching them, drawing conclusions. She walked fast with long strides.

‘What complications?’

‘Nothing important.’ She said, ‘I appreciate this.’

‘My pleasure.’ He noticed the pleased look on her face. He let her into the car and she leaned over to unlock his side. She sat with hands folded in her lap and sighed, a mock sigh, he thought. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Jack Billings wanted to take me home too. I had to tell him I was going with you.’

Tony Hastings was alarmed. ‘Would you rather have gone with him?’

‘It’s too late now.’

‘I didn’t mean to take you from your friends.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He wondered, is Jack Billings her lover? ‘I wanted to go with you.’ Adding quickly, ‘If you don’t mind.’

He thought, this is Louise Germane, a stranger, and I am driving her home. He tried to think what the ban was. She sat beside him like an intimate member of the family. Does she think she is Laura? There’s no law against giving her a lift, a politeness, a favor. But does
she
think I am merely giving her a lift? The students watching us leave will think we are lovers. But since we are not lovers. Unless Louise Germane herself thinks we are.

He wondered, what is this imperative thing I have been wanting to tell her? Do I know what I am doing? What if she invites me in? The ban again. He wondered, does it look as if he is trying to
seduce
Louise Germane? Would she think so? If so, she should be more wary, make excuses, evade. So perhaps she expects it of him. Is it possible she is trying to seduce
him
?

‘Here we are,’ she said. The question was desperate, that
is, What question? It was a long white house going back, six mailboxes on the front porch. ‘Would you like to come in?’

He groped for why he must not. ‘It’s not too late?’

Her face in shadow. ‘I’d be honored if you did.’

‘I’ll have to find a place to park.’

Probably she didn’t mean to seduce him, she merely meant to offer him coffee, in which case he need not worry about the ban. They parked a half block up the street, and walked together downhill to her apartment. The rough sidewalk, shoulders bumped. The windows in her house were dark, the hallway lit. She checked her mailbox: GERMANE. He followed her upstairs, stood beside her in front of the scratched piney door while she looked in her purse for the key, his raggedy heart wild.

It wasn’t the adultery, because Laura was dead. It wasn’t the mourning, because eleven months had passed, and life cruelly demanded to be lived. It wasn’t the child she was, because she was a grown woman of her generation, who at twenty-eight or thirty had probably had more lovers than he at forty-five. It wasn’t the crippling, because the wound the loveless singles lady could not heal had now been healed. It wasn’t the graduate student, because she had finished her courses and he had just tonight vowed never to have official authority over her again.

They went in. The living room was spare, a couch, a table. She turned on a light by the sofa, and put on a jazz piano record. She had a poster of Montmartre. He sat on the couch, broken down inside so that his bottom almost hit the floor.

‘Wine?’

She sat beside him on the couch. Their knees pointed up like peaks. Whatever he wanted to tell her, now was the time. Probably it had to do with the events in Grant Center, but
he had already told his story at the party, and still it was unsaid. As if the story had a secret commentary attached to it, reserved for her. So secret even he lacked the code. Other than that, all he could think to say was that he had been transformed from something into something else. The news was tremendous but vague.

If he could convey to her the emotional force, the prismatic meaning, that was gathered into the act of hitting Ray. ‘I really slugged him,’ he said.

‘You don’t know what it means to have you sitting here in my own place, Mr. Hastings.’ Eyes in the subdued light, the face that wants to kiss. Student infatuated with teacher, sure enough, a good thing she is no longer
his
student.

She took the blue kerchief off her head and shook her hair loose, wild all around.

‘I’ve often thought of inviting you here. Since your bereavement, I mean.’

He said, ‘You’re a good friend.’

‘I want to be your friend. I don’t want to be just a student. Does that annoy you?’

‘Not at all. I don’t think of you as a student, I think of you as –’ Fill in the blank, he thought, I can’t do this by myself.

‘As what, Tony?’

‘As friend.’ Which you already said. (She called you Tony.)

‘I thought you were going to say, woman.’

‘I was going to say it.’

She was looking at him solemnly, speaking slowly. He felt as if he was play-acting, she too, in spite of the tension. She stopped looking at him, then looked at him again and said, ‘Does that mean you want me to sleep with you?’

Catch your breath, man, this was faster than expected. ‘Is that what I mean?’

‘It’s not?’ Her eyes were big.

‘Perhaps it is.’

‘Perhaps?’

‘Well yes. I mean it is.’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘Yes.’

Quiet now: ‘Me too.’

She said, ‘There’s one problem.’

‘You don’t have any –?’

‘Not that. I’m not certain Jack Billings won’t come over in a little while. I’m not sure I’ve seen the last of him tonight.’

‘Would he want to sleep with you?’

She nodded.

‘You’re lovers?’

‘He thinks we are.’ She opened her hands, empty. ‘I’m sorry. I just never thought I’d have a chance with you.’

So that was the ban. ‘I shouldn’t intervene.’

‘I want you to intervene.’ She considered. ‘Let’s take a chance. If he comes I won’t let him in. I’ll tell him I’m sick.’

He had an idea. Why not? ‘Would you like to go to my house?’

‘Hey. Great idea.’

Quick, before Jack Billings comes. She ran to the bedroom, brought out a white robe, looked about hastily trying to decide what to take, couldn’t think of anything except a toothbrush. ‘Hurry,’ she said, as if Jack Billings were already at the door.

A car was going by slowly when they came out of the house. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘that’s him.’ The car went on.

‘Why didn’t he stop?’ she said.

He remembered the woods.

‘He looked right at me.’

‘I don’t want to make trouble for you.’

‘Please don’t worry. It’s not your problem.’

In the car she said, ‘I’ll explain to him tomorrow. I’ll think of something to say.’

He thought, Is there trouble in this? Do I want to be responsible for a break between Louise Germane and her lover? Do I know what public stance to take?

Louise Germane came into his house in the middle of the night. He turned on the lights. She looked around happily. ‘I’ve always wanted to come here. Even before your wife died.’

She stood in the middle of Laura’s living room, looking at Laura’s paintings, the piano, the bookcases, sofa, chair, coffee table. Violating Laura by not being her. She was not his wife, nor his daughter, he hardly knew her, yet he wanted to take hold of her like an intimate, a member of his family. The paradox made him dizzy.

She said, ‘I want you to show me everything.’

‘Now?’

She laughed, stepped up to him full front to front, and said, ‘Tomorrow will do.’ Then the kiss itself, the first one, already probing, this young person whom he once considered timid, but who knew all about this kind of kissing, better than he, probably. She pressed her middle and lower parts against him and leaned back to look at him, and said, ‘Where do we go for the festivities?’

‘Upstairs?’

‘Master bedroom? Great, let’s go.’

He felt a certain irritation. They went upstairs. At the door he turned on the light and stopped. Laura’s ghost. Tony was surprised, for he thought she had lifted the ban, but here she was, still not ready to leave the room. He looked into Helen’s room, also barred, and then the cool neutral guest room.

‘Let’s go here.’

The festivities. She crossed her arms and pulled off her T-shirt, then they undressed, looking at each other all the while, her triumphant smile no longer secret. She was thin, her hips cast a shadow over the hollow of her thighs. She touched his cock, this girl who had been his student.

Muffled laughs, murmurs, nuzzles, tickles. Her body was as familiar as if he had known her forever. Go there, it’s okay, I wish you would. I never dreamed I’d be doing this with you. Not to rush things, but the time began to swell, it filled and could not be delayed, and he leaned over Louise Germane, maneuvering to find her, and then he was there. He thought how good to be back.

In his own guest room, under the hairy bone while she clutched, he became aware of someone watching in the doorway. Jack Billings, ousted. The ceremony was moving into its wild stage, the gauge rising. It wasn’t Jack Billings, it was someone in the other bed, while the color changed, sunset blazed on the snow, the solitary skier released to fall raced downhill on the fiery snow and dropped below into the late gray shadow. In the other bed someone was being raped by a man with his back turned, whom Bobby Andes was hitting over the back with a stick. Then Tony Hastings, even as he drew the last rich gold from Louise Germane, felt himself dividing, rising like a spirit from his twitching body to tug at the raping man in the other bed but being a spirit unable to touch him.

It was as quiet in the room as the funeral had been. She was stroking the back of his head. The people were quiet, perhaps they were gone. He looked at the other bed and discovered there was no other bed. There was Louise Germane, sweet and vulnerable, smiling vaguely like a child just waked
up, and he relieved she was still alive felt tender toward her. He was confused by the violence they had just been through and the shock of seeing there was no other bed. It seemed to mean that the two beds were the same, in which case the man raping the woman was himself, which they were trying to stop, and the spirit of himself trying to intervene was only a spirit.

He was disappointed, for though he knew the time with Louise Germane had been good in itself, it was not a time in itself, for the case was not closed. He asked, ‘Will you spend the night?’

‘I thought that was already settled.’

In the middle of the night he wanted to wake her up and tell her, hey, remember when she seduced him in the blueberry field behind the house in Maine? When Helen was bike riding with her friend, he and Laura went out with a couple of blueberry baskets. She in shorts and a flimsy shirt, a warm sunny day, absolutely still, he heard her laugh behind him, turned around, saw her with her blouse open and her hands hooked in the waist of her shorts, pushing them down. ‘Hey man,’ she said, ‘what say?’ and afterwards a buzzing in the silence on the prickly ground. ‘Relax,’ she said in his ear, ‘no one ever comes here.’ Then the water, chasing her running down to the rocks where she dove in naked and he behind, the bitter cold, quick in and quick out, and, ‘Jesus, we forgot our towels,’ running up to the house with wild stinging skin. Laura the athlete, her arm-swinging walk. Skating in winter, he went with her sometimes to the rink to watch her pirouettes and figures, where she would teach him though his ankles were weak and he had no aptitude. Once she went on a skating trip with her friend Mira to the northern part of the state and was late coming back. He lay awake until five
in the morning and she still hadn’t come, and he thought the car had smashed on the highway ice. Not her fault, she had a good reason for not calling, now forgotten. Nights in the dark to tell Louise Germane about. Usually the worry was Helen, while Laura and Tony pretended to be asleep though each knew the other was awake, before Laura would sit up in bed and say, ‘Isn’t that child back yet?’ Marriage and worry, Louise. When the doctor discovered the abnormal tissue in a routine test, they had to wait through the step by step of elimination before they could celebrate with a Chinese dinner, their future free and clear at last again.