Love Among the Ruins

by Robert Clark

  As William drove his Raleigh towards downtown about an hour after Emily had been riding the number three in the selfsame direction he was, however, a tsunami of intention. He had hit on the idea (or, more accurately, the idea had hit upon him) that since Emily had a job, he ought to have a job; that it was a good way to pass the day, and would yield funds for further visits to the Scholar and the like. His mother had a friend who worked at Brower’s downtown, and he had determined to see if they could do anything for him in the line of being a stockboy or whatever.

  Once an intention had discovered William, it propelled him forward like a ball from a cannon, and this is why although others might see him as vague, it was not his experience of himself. Admittedly, the time William spent in this mode was small in relation to that he spent waiting to be seized by whatever the thing would be that would launch him into it.

  It should be understood that, for all this, William was not especially malleable or susceptible to either passion or reason. Things might strike him and take him over entirely, but they had to do so at the right time, from the right angle. So if Emily imagined that since William seemed vague, she might remake him according to her own lights, she was mistaken. Moreover, when in the grip of one of his intentions, William could be quite persuasive. He was possessed of a bit of what people then called “charisma,” although in truth the word is perhaps a bit strong to describe the angular boy, somehow not quite at home in, not quite fully composed in, his body, who ambled into Brower’s at about ten-thirty that morning. He had the luck to be greeted by his mother’s friend and would-be suitor Louis Campion, who, rebuffed but not yet discouraged, was just now gathering his forces with a view to making another play for her.

  “Hey, Billy,” said Louis. “How’s tricks? How’s your mom?”

  “Oh, fine. She’s fine. Busy.”

  “Not too busy, I hope.”

  “Just on account of the DFL convention coming up, I think.”

  “And you? What can we do for you?” William noticed that Louis’s questions were, in the manner of many grown-ups trying to befriend young people, really declarations and even demands. “Going to camp? Need some gear?”

  “Well . . .”

  “We stock the good stuff. Gear that’s stood the test of time. Voyageurs. Trappers. Expeditions. Leather and canvas, not nylon and plastic. Lasts a lifetime.”

  “Actually, I was wondering about a job.” William tossed this out, just as bald as that.

  Louis was caught off guard. “Well, I don’t know what we’ve got going. Of course, it’s our busy season. Camping, canoeing, hunting season coming up, lots of weddings.” Brower’s was an emporium whose main line of hunting gear, outdoor clothing, and sporting goods was supplemented by domestic objects—tableware, lamps, wastebaskets, and prints emblazoned with traditional icons and fetishes such as mallards and spaniels—that might tastefully furnish a new home.

  Louis paused thoughtfully, as though making a decision that was his alone to reach and merely needed to be affirmed by others as a matter of courtesy. “Let me see what I can do,” he said at last. “Why don’t you stop back after lunch?”

  “Okay,” William said with an assurance that suggested he thought this follow-up visit was only a formality, which indeed it was, for Louis’s boss had mentioned only two days before his intention to look for a stockboy. Thus by the fortunate happenstance of this boy (somehow simultaneously both diffident and cocky in his bearing, Louis thought) wandering in at the optimum moment, Louis would score points with his boss and be positioned for a further attempt upon Jane Lowry. By twelve-thirty, at which time William was perched at the counter of the White Castle, consuming the third of five hamburgers in the wake of an intense session in the library periodical room, Louis had indeed secured William a position, to commence Monday, eight to three, five days a week, at the wage of $1.65 per hour.

  After he had returned to Brower’s, been briefed on his duties (vacuuming the store before it opened and thereafter doing as instructed in the stockroom and basement and on the loading dock), and been told to return on Monday morning, William could not but reflect that, against what he felt was his usual grain, he had scarcely put a foot wrong in the last twenty-four hours. He briefly considered dropping into Dayton’s to steal a glance at Emily, but thought better of it. As things stood, he had only to wait a few hours to call her (tonight? No, better tomorrow morning), and by merely standing aside and letting events already ordained follow their course, he would see her again soon.

  Oddly, it was Emily who felt a flutter of misgiving rise in her chest as the day wore on. She wondered if it had been a good idea to kiss him. It was only a kiss on the cheek, but somehow she had found herself putting her hands on his shoulders and exerting a certain downward pressure on them, and that—that, and the length of what she had intended to be a peck—had, she feared, changed things. That and perhaps seeming a little too eager to see him again. Plus mentioning “The Chariot,” a poem she had just selected at random as being by Dickinson, but which she now remembered was kind of serious, even sad. As the afternoon wore on, as business in the New Wave department came to a virtual standstill around three o’clock and she had time to think, it seemed to her that she might well have managed to incorporate the worst of two apparently contradictory worlds, coming off as being both fast and gloomy.

  Emily had not called Monica last night. It had not even occurred to her; the experience of the evening had not required Monica’s explication to make it comprehensible and complete. It was wholly itself, and wholly Emily’s to hold on her own, as her own. But now Emily would have liked Monica to tell her what to make of it, even though she had a pretty good idea what Monica would say, having absorbed the entirety of Monica’s wisdom on the subject of boys.

  What Monica would have said was this: that if a boy had indeed formed the impression of Emily that Emily feared—the slutty and bookish spinster, the man-eater of Amherst—he would either bolt or stick around to see how far he could get. And with that conclusion drawn, Emily felt utterly at sea, lost if not quite despairing. Monica seemed very small to her, certainly no bigger or smarter than herself; and Emily found herself wanting the counsel of her mother, of her father. Should she not have let her lips linger on William’s cheek? Should she have said that her favorite poem was “The Cremation of Sam McGee”? But there was no one she could query about these matters who would have an answer. Except, she supposed, William himself.

  It says somewhere that love seeks only itself, which may or may not be true. For Emily, at any rate, her dilemma forced her deeper into her dilemma, deeper into the matter of her and William, which could only be resolved within itself, on its own self-enclosing terms. Sensing this, folding cotton tops and checking sizes against their labels, Emily had little choice but to go forward. What was left for her to decide was in what spirit she would proceed, in dread or in hope, in doubt or in faith, which is to say, in fear or in love. She recollected the way he looks, and in particular the way he looks as he looks at her, and she decides. She believes.

  That evening, William went riding with Jim Donnelly. That was what he usually did on Friday nights, and, indeed, on most nights when there was nothing else to do, which tended to be almost all nights during the summer. You might say they were really listening to music, since the radio was always on and often regarded with great attention. You might also say they were sightseeing, except that they rarely went anywhere they had not driven before. You might even say they were socializing, promenading, for several times they joined the procession of cars that made a circuit between Seventh and Ninth Streets downtown, many of whose drivers and passengers were familiar to them.

  But it was truly none of those things. Rather, they were treading water, holding themselves aloft as the current of the night swept under and around them.

  “So how’d it go?” Jim asked, broaching the question after thirty minutes of guiding the sullen and brooding Pontiac between the river and downtown.

&nb
sp; “How’d what go?” William was not going to be easily drawn. He, to whom nothing ever happened, wanted to pay this story out slowly and with care.

  “Emily Byrne.”

  “Fine.”

  Jim waited for more, realized it was not going to be forthcoming, and harrumphed (as much as any seventeen-year-old can harrumph). “That’s all?” he said.

  “We had a good time,” William offered.

  “How good?”

  “Heard some good twelve-string. Drank some good coffee.”

  “Anything else? Good, I mean?” Jim was narrowing down his inquiry. William knew where he was going, but feigned ignorance.

  “Did you get . . .” said Jim, trailing off, reduced to a desperation he now felt it was unbecoming for a friend to let him flail about in. “You know,” he added, almost pleadingly.

  “I’m not saying,” William said, knowing full well that such a reply not only created the impression of success but was ethically impeccable. In truth, he felt, and the impression had only grown as the day went on, that Emily Byrne had given herself over to him, not in the dirty way Jim was imagining, but in some other manner that took the form of a promise, a pledge.

  “Okay, so do you like her? Better than Sarah?”

  “I never liked Sarah.”

  Jim sensed a chance to get a little of his own back. “Oh, you liked her. She just didn’t like you.”

  “Suit yourself,” said William.

  Jim was feeling his oats again. “So, do you? Come on.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “And her? Do you think she likes you back?”

  “Yeah,” William said, almost wearily. “I think she does.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Jim, letting his voice trail off into a whistle.

  William seized the opportunity to change the subject. “I got a job today. At Brower’s.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Walked in. Asked.”

  “Just like that?” Jim wasn’t buying this as presented, and William sensed he had better provide a little more, lest Jim return to the subject of Emily.

  “Well, my mom has a friend there. Mr. Campion. He kind of arranged it. But they were looking for somebody anyhow.”

  “Hey, that’s Louie Campion, right? I heard he’s a ’mo. I heard he tried to ’mo Rich Banner in the University Club locker room. Better be careful. Better wear a nut cup.” Jim laughed deeply, and the Pontiac burped, seeming to join him.

  “He went out with my mom once. He’s always asking about her. I don’t get how he’d be a ’mo.”

  “Maybe he’s confused. Or ambidextrous.” Jim decided to stick his neck out. “I mean, your mom’s . . . not like other moms. So maybe they were just being friends,” Jim added quickly.

  William indeed took umbrage, but recast it as riposte.

  “Yeah, she’s got a little more on her mind than sunbathing and tennis.” From June to September, Jim’s mother was to be found mostly on the court or slathered with Coppertone in their yard. “And if you want to talk about being a ’mo, what was that you did a couple of years ago?”

  Jim was now firmly back in his place. “You did it too,” he said weakly. “And it wasn’t really ’moing. Not like a couple of fags, cornholing and everything. Everybody does it. At least when they’re kids.”

  “How do you know? Nobody ever says they do.”

  “Everybody jacks off, and nobody says so.”

  “I suppose.” This was indisputable yet troubling because it stubbornly resisted confirmation from anybody, rather like the question of sexual intercourse between parents; like what nuns looked like out of their habits; like the dark side of the moon. And he had always wondered if people like Jim (and maybe, now, Mr. Campion) just said that everybody jacked off as a way of talking people into jacking off with them, and in fact nobody did, except the sorry few who had been suckered into it and were now themselves for all intents and purposes ’mo initiates. William had done nothing else with other guys since those times with Jim two summers earlier, but he had to admit that as for jacking off, he was pretty much beyond cure.

  For his part, Jim sensed that while he had restored the equilibrium between William and himself, he had gone a little too far and that now the forward momentum of the evening had stalled. He pulled himself up straight on the seat. “Want to get something to eat? Drive out University, go to Porky’s?”

  They were all of eight blocks from William’s house. William said, he hoped without any trace of sadness, “No. I think I’d better just go home.”

  Although she had already established there was nothing of use that Monica could tell her, Emily called Monica that evening, because it was owed to Monica under the rules of their friendship. Moreover, Emily did indeed want to put what had happened into words for another person so as to make it real for herself; to set the previous evening before the two of them and examine it together objectively.

  After Emily had done this—saying she had “kissed him good night” but leaving out the fact of her hands bearing down on him, which was the troubling part, the part that would have set off alarms—she let Monica summarize for both of them.

  “So, that sounds pretty good. And he was nice. And he didn’t do or say anything weird.” This last was a little more inflected towards the interrogative.

  “No, he was fine.”

  “So are you going to see him again?”

  “Oh, yeah. Maybe this weekend.”

  “That’s kind of soon.”

  “Well, it’s not a date or anything. We might just get together.”

  “For what?”

  “Just to hang out.” Emily was not sure how precise she ought to be.

  “Like at the park?”

  “Maybe.” Emily couldn’t stop herself. “Actually, there’s some stuff I want to show him. Some things . . . I’ve been reading. Some poems.”

  “Some poems. That’s kind of . . . heavy.”

  “He really likes poetry.”

  “He really does? Or he says he does?” Monica, who was not much for poetry, sounded skeptical.

  “He really does.”

  “Because guys will say things like that. To get in your . . .”

  “It’s not like that,” Emily put in quickly, and Monica felt her swerve the line of conversation.

  “I s’pose not. He’s pretty serious,” Monica said, and exhaled. “So where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. He’s supposed to call about it. Maybe I’ll go to his house.”

  “Emily, you can’t go to his house.” This, Emily realized, was true.

  “So maybe I’ll invite him over here. During the day.”

  “That’s better. It’s kind of fast, but it’s better.”

  “Fast?”

  “Well, not fast fast. Just kind of soon fast.”

  “It could be like he was coming over to do homework,” Emily proposed.

  “Yeah, I guess it could. That would be okay. Even though it’s summer.”

  After Emily was finished with Monica, after Monica was finished with Emily, after the situation with William had been put through the mill of casuistry and protocol, Emily went to her mother.

  Virginia was sitting on her bed—the double bed that she and Edward had occupied for nineteen years—reading a magazine, and when Emily came in she looked up, smiled at her, and said, “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Emily, and swung her hands around behind her back and locked them together there. “You know, Bill Lowry. The boy I . . .”

  Virginia jumped in, to save Emily from describing the exact nature of the relation. “Yes?”

  “We thought we might get together to look at some books, kind of like summer enrichment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe over here. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday.”

  “What time of day?”

  “Say, in the afternoon?”

  “And what kind of books?”

  “Well, you remember how I told you he likes poetry.
. . .”

  “Oh, yes. You did.”

  “Well, that kind of thing. Is what we’d be doing. Reading. Together.”

  “Well, that seems perfectly fine,” and Virginia seemed to be sincere in this assessment. She continued, “So when exactly is he planning to come?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure. Probably this weekend. He’s supposed to call.”

  “Well, when he does, you just fill us in, okay?”

  “Sure,” Emily said, and her body at last relaxed. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” her mother said, and returned her eyes to the magazine that still lay on her lap.

  10

  WILLIAM AND EMILY SAT ON THE GRASS IN THE Byrnes’ backyard, Emily’s book open before her. William had called at nine-thirty and come by a little before noon. Emily’s mother made them lunch. William sat at the kitchen table, sculling dutifully in his tomato soup and nibbling at the grilled cheese sandwich as he answered Mrs. Byrne’s questions with brief but polite replies, feeling as though his feet did not quite reach the floor, but it was less of an ordeal than he imagined. The room did not reek of fish, although he supposed they had been eating it just the night before, it having been Friday.

  Emily was wearing cutoff jeans and a sleeveless striped cotton top with her hair tied back. This was how girls of that time and place generally dressed themselves on hot weekend days. She was not for this less beautiful than she had been two nights before, for it seemed to William that the casualness of her appearance granted him an intimacy with that beauty that was deeper, if less outwardly glorious; a kind of nakedness, the beauty beneath the beauty.

  Emily was reading as William was thinking this, or forming the impression that amounted to it, and he wondered if he was getting an erection. Then she finished and said, “That’s the one I told you about at the Scholar.” She looked at him and said, “I guess it’s kind of gloomy. You don’t mind, I hope? That kind of thing?”