by Micah Nathan
“Of course, the situation could be remedied by a mandatory course on critical thinking for every college freshman in every school, public or private,” he said, pushing his plate away. “Some of my colleagues have said such remedies are fascist…I think it’s the contrary. I would encourage freedom of thought, rather than force-feed impressionable young minds narrow doctrines and career-furthering dogma. Teach them how to think, and then let experience be their guide from then on.”
We had eaten light but well—a cheese tray, sliced fruit, bruschetta, and finger sandwiches made from baguettes and fresh cold cuts. The white tablecloth was dotted with wine stains.
Dr. Cade continued, raising his glass and tipping it to his lips. “Students are no longer taught concepts. Only facts and snippets of knowledge that reveal nothing because they are looked at too closely, like a Seurat painting a nose length away. You cannot appreciate its beauty until you step farther back.
“Arthur, do you remember what we covered in class last week? The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit?”
“Sapientia, intellectus, consilium, fortitudo, scientia, pietas…and timor,” Art said. He rested his chin on his hand.
Dr. Cade nodded. “Wisdom, understanding, good counsel, spiritual strength, rational knowledge, piety, and fear of God. Synergy,” said Professor Cade. “True knowledge—if we choose to define that as the path to seeking intellectual perfection—is more than the sum of its parts. It is an awesome responsibility, and should not be undertaken lightly.”
“But without knowledge,” Art said, “how can man possibly go forward to experience? Knowledge provides us with a map, of where to venture next. Shouldn’t knowledge and experience be gained simultaneously?”
Dr. Cade smiled. “But knowledge comes much faster than experience, and so the medieval mind would recommend rejection of such knowledge until what you currently know no longer helps you move farther along the path. Of course, by that point you may have already taken a wrong turn. And thus you have another example of the paradox in medieval thought.”
“Homo silvestris,” Howie said. “The concept of all experience and no knowledge. The wild man in the forest, a lustful, aggressive being who honors no god and is outcast from society. I remember that woodcutting you had on loan from Professor Sewart, of the wild man accompanying two royal courtiers through the forest.”
“Yes,” Dr. Cade said. “Another paradox. The ‘untamed man’ is conversely seen as a beast and yet superior to the average man due to his sylvan, uncorrupted ways. An early example of the ‘noble savage,’ unbound by ethics or spiritual awareness. Interesting though—if we had to choose who has done more evil, would anyone disagree it is the civilized man?”
“You can’t be advocating we return to primitive lifestyles,” Art said. “The pursuit of knowledge is inherent in mankind. We can’t go back.”
“We may eventually not have a choice,” said Dr. Cade. “This quest for truth has given rise to terrible things: subjugation of lesser peoples, environmental despoliation, the advent of nuclear weapons. Remember what the forbidden fruit represented—not evil, per se, but knowledge.”
“I would go on,” Art said, running his fork tines over his napkin. “I would keep searching for intellectual perfection even if it meant my downfall.”
Dr. Cade was poised to say something, I think, in response, but there was a knock on the door.
“That’s Ellen,” Art said. “I told her to bring a ‘welcome home’ gift for you.”
Dr. Cade smiled and quoted a Latin epigram about Eve bringing the apple to Adam, and how when a woman bears gifts it usually foreshadows ill fortune.
Art got the door while I downed the prunelle in one gulp. Dan cleared the table with Howie, who was whistling to himself and precariously balancing plates in one hand. Then suddenly they appeared, with Nilus following them both closely, begging at their heels. I waved my hand in front of my mouth, checking my breath and then chiding myself for doing so. My plan was simple: act completely normal around Ellen, maybe even a bit standoffish. Pay more attention to Art, flatter him whenever opportunity presents itself, listen intently to what he has to say, nod smile nod smile, and above all, no more alcohol.
She was radiant in a gray turtleneck and black pants. Blond hair cascading down her neck, curling upon itself at the tips. Small breasts cupped by her fitted shirt, the sheer wall of her torso sliding into her waist. She slipped her shoes off and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Art. Ah, yes. The arch of her white feet, skin creased at the bend between toes and instep, heels smooth and clean, Achilles tendon like a slender cord emerging from the shadows on either side. I knew how her feet would feel against mine, cool, dry skin rasping gently like a cat’s tongue.
Her smile terrified me. I felt I had never seen a smile until that moment. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman. Camus. How perfect for the moment, I remember thinking, a man who understood the horrors of futility. The product of our hopes are geometric in relation to their origins, and I held on to such scraps of hope, that Ellen’s smile would one day hold years of our memories within the arc of its perfect red crescent. I hoped it would become familiar instead of terrifying.
And suddenly she was walking closer, Art trailing behind. I panicked and reached for the bottle of prunelle.
“Hello Eric,” she said, and she reached down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled of plum. Or was it the prunelle. I didn’t know. I was very drunk.
“Brownies, for God’s sake,” Art said, holding up a brownie-mix box for me to see. “She brought brownies.”
Ellen grabbed the box from him. “I haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks. It’s all I had.” She looked to me and smiled. I smiled back.
“Then brownies it is,” Art said. “I’ll start a fire.” He shouted for Howie, who burst in through the kitchen door, ubiquitous drink in hand. “Let’s get some wood, old sport,” Art said, clapping his drunk friend on the back.
Did he just say “old sport”? I thought. Howie yawned and shook his head. “Too cold out there.”
“Poor baby,” Art said, “let’s go.”
Ellen grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the kitchen. “Have you ever baked anything? A young man like yourself, just look at these hands.” She turned my hand over and stared at it, eyes narrowed. Her index finger trailed along its lines. Her hair lingered dangerously close. “Baby soft. Not a day of manual labor.”
“I grew up on a farm,” I said. I thrust my other hand into my pocket in a desperate attempt to pull my sudden erection against my leg.
“I thought you grew up in Jersey. Stulton. Or was that just a fable? The boy genius clawing his way out of inner-city hell.” She laughed and squeezed my hand, clasping it warmly between hers. “Let’s crack some eggs.”
Behind us, Howie continued his protests, until there was a sudden silence in the conversation. Art laughed, loud and wild.
“You’re paying the fucking dry-cleaning bill,” Howie said, looking down at his winter coat. He had spilled his drink all over himself, to which Art had responded by pointing and laughing, doubled over, and Nilus completed the picture by taking after his master and lapping the small puddle of booze at Howie’s feet.
Outside, the pond was a lamina of glass under the half-moon. Reeds stood on the water’s edge like broken scarecrows.
The black granite countertop was covered with pans, mixing bowls, and dishes. Oil and cream dotted the stove. Clear shrimp husks lay at the bottom of the sink. I stared at them, transfixed, until Ellen nudged my ribs and placed three eggs in my hand.
“Break these and put them in this bowl.”
We worked in silence, and when the pan was in the oven, Ellen rested on the bench in the breakfast nook and rubbed her eyes. She crossed her legs and tossed her hair back, picking stray hairs off her forehead with one hand. I remained standing, trying to regain balance, leaning against the counter at an angle too severe even though I was trying my hardest to look suave. I couldn’t stop looking at her
.
Ellen laughed, “You’re not much of a drinker, are you?”
I shook my head. “I’m terrible at it.”
She laughed again. “You’ve picked a good thing to be terrible at.”
I nodded, trying to steady myself. We said nothing for a minute, and then words came to me, torturously slow:
“So how long have you and Art been together?”
Her lips were slightly parted. Hidden in the darkness of her mouth I could see a faint trace of the pink of her tongue. “A few years. I don’t know, ‘together’ is such a vague description of it. We enjoy each other’s company. We’re exclusive.” She let her mouth drop into a sarcastic smile. “As far as I know.”
“Oh,” I said. It was all I could think of. “Do you go to Aberdeen?”
“I graduated last year,” she said. “I’m an assistant to the VP of Fairwich Trust. Howie says I’m a glorified secretary. He may be right, but at least I’m financially independent, which is more than I can say for him.”
We switched places. I sat on the bench while she got up and started to clean the kitchen. I wanted to help her, but I was incredibly dizzy and slightly nauseous, so I stayed seated, hoping she didn’t think I was being chauvinistic. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and I listened to stories about her family out West, letting the heat from the oven warm my bare feet. Her voice was soft and relaxed, that tone unique to women when they are busy in the kitchen.
Her story sounded like something out of a movie: Her father was a hand surgeon, her mother a former Miss Tennessee. They lived on the ocean, a towering coastal home in San Francisco Bay, four children, Ellen the only daughter and the youngest. She told me about the first time she swam in the sea, and that a jellyfish stung her when she was seven. She attended Brook College part-time, in New Hampshire, but she had met Art at NYU during a lecture series on Italian archaeology, when they were both freshmen. Art had lived with her for a summer their second year dating, and her parents adored him, but he became depressed. He hated the ocean, and his job at the coffeehouse was eroding his idealistic love for the proletariat.
She told me about the first time she saw Dr. Cade—not at Aberdeen but at Brook College, during her first week at school. He had given a guest lecture on monastery life in the 12th century and Ellen said when she met him the second time, this time through Art, he remembered her name, even though she hadn’t asked a question and had only introduced herself and thanked him briefly at the end of the lecture. She told me Professor Cade was the most brilliant man she had ever met, and then she laughed and said that if Art was ever going to leave her, it was going to be for Dr. Cade.
Howie burst in through the swinging door, red hair falling over his forehead like he’d just awakened, copper eyes bloodshot, unfocused, and glassy. He looked at the two of us, letting his gaze shift from me to Ellen, and then he smiled slyly.
“Did I interrupt something?”
Ellen frowned. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said, walking to the oven and peering through the glass. “The brownies are almost done. Do you want any?”
He nodded and grabbed an open bottle of wine from the table and poured it into a flour-dusted measuring cup, letting the dark liquid splash out onto the counter. Flour surfaced, swirling in a white mass atop the wine, but Howie ignored it. I watched, incredulous, as he drank the cup dry, then, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he leaned back against the counter and stared at me.
“She’s fairly fucking gorgeous, wouldn’t you say?”
“All right, Howie.” Ellen stood up and rested her hand on her hip. “Cut it out.”
“So gorgeous she ties your tongue. You get all gnarled up inside.” Howie mimed twisting something with both his hands, in front of his stomach. “Can’t think straight.”
“Stop teasing him. Quit it. I’m serious.” Ellen marched right up to Howie and poked her finger into his chest. He towered over her.
“You ever hear of the De Secretis Mulierum?” Howie looked at me. “‘Women’s Secrets,’ written by Psuedo–Albertus Magnus in the 13th century. Said women’s bodies are naturally polluting and corrupting, and are a danger to men. He advocated three things—avoidance, persecution, and execution.”
Howie smiled and pointed to his temple. He was still staring at me. “I see what’s going on. She’s corrupting your impressionable young mind.”
“What’s going on is you’re too drunk to know any better.” Ellen’s tone softened.
“Maybe I am,” Howie admitted, and he rubbed his eyes.
“We’re going for a row,” he said.
“Tonight?” Ellen said. “I thought you said it was too cold.”
He flicked a crumb across the countertop. “I’m too numb to feel cold,” he said. “You want to go?” He looked at me.
“I’ve never rowed before.”
“So. It’s easy. You just grab a fucking paddle, and…row.”
“That does sound easy,” I said.
“Smart-ass.” He headed for the living room but stopped at the threshold, propping the kitchen door with his bare foot. “Come on, Eric, you’ll ride with me. You’re the first mate. Land ho.”
I looked to Ellen for help, but she was pulling the brownie tray out of the oven, and she paid me no attention. She’d made her point.
Chapter 6
Dan and Art took out the canoe, while Howie and I shared a “pram,” as he called it, a small, open boat with an oar attached by oarlocks on either side. Howie insisted he use one oar while I use the other; as a result we went mostly in broad circles, while Art and Dan jetted toward the opposite shoreline, toward the mouth of the Birchkill, hidden in darkness behind the overhanging trees. I could hear the soft splash of their oars and the low lilt of their conversation.
Our boat stunk of liquor. Howie had brought a flask of something and it spilled almost immediately, and the booze now ran along the bottom of the boat, sloshing back and forth. I thought he was going to pass out, and at one point he dropped the oar and kind of slouched backward, but he braced himself with one arm and trailed the other into the water, cupping a handful and splashing it onto his face.
“Sure is nice out here,” he said, barely intelligible.
The biting air had awakened me a little. I looked for Ellen in the lit windows of the house but couldn’t find her. The second-floor windows were all dark. There was a single window on the third story, and yellow light shone from it, like a staring eye.
“Is that the attic?” I asked. I remembered the attic being on the other side of the house, with only one window, facing the driveway.
Howie turned his head—no easy task in his condition—and then turned back to me. “No. That’s Cade’s room.”
I hadn’t, up to that point, even thought about where Professor Cade slept. For whatever reason I thought he slept in his study.
“The stairwell leading to the attic, remember?” Howie said, as if sensing my confusion. “At the top you hang a left instead of a right and Cade’s room is the only door on that side.”
“Have you been in there?”
He pulled his head back. “Where, the attic? Of course. And you haven’t? Wh—” He stopped himself and looked down. He sat there, silent.
“Howie?”
“Yeah,” he said, still staring at the bottom of the boat.
A loon screamed, echoing hollowly across the water. I heard Art call back, and his voice cracked. I couldn’t see them, but heard the splash of their paddles on the opposite side of the pond, hidden around the bend.
“What were you about to say?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Howie said, grabbing the oar again. “Where are those guys?”
“Way over there.” I waved in their general direction. I sensed my opportunity closing. “Is there something you were going to tell me?”
I can tell you now there was more to my alienation than the shyness of a sixteen-year-old trying to adjust to a new home. There was something else, something I felt I was missing, like trying to figure
out the dim outline of an object behind a curtain. I can’t quite put it into words; it was more of a sensation, an intuitive prescience of unexplained events and missing pieces of a puzzle so obscure that they stayed in my consciousness like remnants of a dream. But there was something. A week earlier Dan and Art had gotten into a big argument in the ornamental garden, and it ended with Dan storming off. A few days after that I’d found Art passed out on the living room couch in the middle of the day, with a baggie of mushrooms lying on the coffee table, and when I said his name he slowly opened his eyes and looked around the room, dazed. I asked him if he was okay, and he said he was fine, that the mushrooms were morels he’d picked in the woods, that he’d had insomnia for the past week and had finally fallen asleep and why the hell had I woken him up? I knew he was lying. I just didn’t know why.
There was more. Art was often in a bad mood. I’d hear someone sneaking around the house late at night. I heard footsteps in the attic and doors opening and closing long after we’d all gone to bed. One night while I sat in the darkened kitchen, stupefied with insomnia, I saw Art walking to the pond with a bag slung over his shoulder. I couldn’t see what he did with it but when he walked back the bag was gone. Taken separately these events were the odd rhythms of an admittedly eccentric household, but together it all started to resemble something ominous, a connect-the-dots picture with half the dots connected. I just couldn’t figure out the rest.
“Don’t worry about it,” Howie said. “They’ll tell you, if they want.”
“Tell me what?”
“I really can’t say. It’s not up to me.”
He grabbed both oars and pulled, propelling us forward, first sluggishly, then a bit faster, his shoulders churning. We headed toward the back of the pond, toward the darkness.