by Mad Dash
The campus usually bustled this time of night with noisy or sleepy students crisscrossing the quads, going home from the library or a party, a friend’s dorm. Tonight it was hushed, and every residence hall window was lit up. Nobody was having a party; students at the library weren’t leaving yet. Part of Andrew always felt sorry for them, their tension and worry palpable in the air, as if they were hiding out from the plague, and part of him always thought, Serves you right. If you’d studied all term, you wouldn’t be in a cold panic right now, would you?
Midway up the winding path, between Wilson Hall and the Science and Technology Center, he began, “It’s not that I don’t find y——”
“Shut. Up.”
He coughed into his hand and obeyed for a while. Elizabeth was no ambler; he had to stretch his stride to keep up with her. “Listen. I would very much like to be with you. I think you’re—spectacular.”
No response but a sneer.
He paused, trying to choose his words. One of his problems was that he didn’t understand himself. He’d never made a decision, so there was nothing to defend. How could you explain a reflex?
“Haven’t you ever done it before?” She strafed the words out so fast, it took a second to process the question. Cheated on Dash, he assumed she meant.
“No.”
“Never? Jesus. Should’ve known.”
He hung his head. For the first time he thought of how much male admiration and envy he could’ve bagged by going home with her. For doing something macho, too, not scholarly—imagine it. Tim would eat his heart out.
“Why the hell not?” She stopped walking to face him. A nearby lamp lighted one side of her long, narrow face, left the other in shadow. Under the disgust and irritation, she looked genuinely baffled.
Why the hell not. Excellent question. He used to be conscious of his fidelity, like a piano student playing a difficult piece note by note, or an athlete learning a complicated skill muscle by muscle, concentrating on every move. But he was a professional now, he didn’t have to look at the music, the goal line; faithfulness was in his bones and muscles, a learned memory.
He shrugged. “Habit” was all he could say.
Elizabeth looked revolted. “God, I need a drink.” She began to root around in her huge black handbag, and he was relieved when she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, not a flask. Mason-Dixon was officially smoke free, but it didn’t seem like the right time to point it out.
“Let’s sit,” he suggested. They had stopped in front of one of the uncomfortable wooden benches some wealthy alumnus had gifted the college with a few years back. Too bad he hadn’t donated the concrete slabs they had to be bolted to when students began to steal them or shift them around to inappropriate locations.
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Please. A minute.”
She swore, tossed her bag on the bench, plopped down.
He took a seat on the eight or so inches of edge she’d left him. “I’m going through a strange time.”
“Right. Who gives a shit. Not me, okay? Nothing about you is interesting to me, Bateman. Got that?”
“Quite. I’m pretty clear on that.” She make a sound of disgust and cursed him some more, but under her breath now; he only heard the sibilants distinctly, “asshole” and “shithead.”
“I’d like to tell you something. I’d like to be serious, and I want you to listen, even though you’re angry with me.”
“Make it quick, I’ve got things to do.”
He waited until a couple of fast-walking students passed out of earshot. Elizabeth tapped the sides of her shoes together, legs stretched out, half blocking the path. She looked like a disgruntled bird of prey in profile, chin tucked, lips sour, brows scowling. He liked her very much.
“I don’t know what you’re doing.” Not a graceful beginning, but there was no hope for eloquence here, or tact, or face-saving. “You have the makings of a superb historian. You’re young and brilliant, you have passion for your subject, you’re ambitious. And you’re screwing it up.”
“Bullshit. Anyway, you’re the one who’s screwing up. You’re nothing but a coward for not taking Richard’s job.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“I’m talking about you. You’re afraid Flynn will bury you in his book, so you won’t even take a chance.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Hell I don’t! You’ve got things to say, but you’re afraid of coming off sounding reactionary or racist. You pretend you’re above all the politics, but the truth is you’re in a bind and you’re paralyzed.”
That hit a nerve. It hit all his nerves. He opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out.
“Wow. Look how much better you are,” Elizabeth observed nastily, “at attacking me than defending yourself.”
“I’m not—I’m not attacking you.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
“No, I’m only saying…You must see what it is you do. The ways in which you undercut yourself.” She was right: He was on much firmer ground when the subject was her professional failings.
“Yeah? How do I undercut myself?”
Very well, he would tell her. “I have no idea what your relationship with Richard is, and under any other circumstances I can think of, I wouldn’t care.”
“What’s the word on the street?”
“You know.”
“Don’t you want to know if it’s true?”
“No.” He assumed it was. And not just Richard, either. “But if it is true, does that strike you as professional behavior?”
“Oh, get off it.” She leaped up. If she’d been angry before, now she was furious. “You pompous jerk. Clue, Professor—this isn’t Williamsburg. What are you, dead? Do you understand the sexual dynamics of this place at all?” Two book-laden coeds walked by, but she didn’t even lower her voice. “Listen to me: Everybody screws everybody. Nobody gets his shorts up his ass about it but you. It happens, we go on.”
“Sit.”
“Professional behavior,” she spat. “Please, don’t make me—”
He stood. “I’ve got things to do, too.”
“Okay!” She sat.
“I’m not having a lot of fun myself, you know. In fact, this sucks. The whole situation—it’s much harder on me than you. Believe me.”
She snorted, but he could see she appreciated that. “Finish the lecture.”
“It’s not a lecture. I want to say—all right, it sounds like a lecture. But we’re friends, aren’t we? Potentially? That’s what I’d like,” he said truthfully. Amazing, after all that had happened between them—not the least of which was her calling him a coward—friendship was a role he could still feel comfortable in. “So please, permit me to say, as a friend, I think it’s possible you might—have a problem with authority figures.”
“I do have a shrink already.”
“I might have the same problem, actually.”
“You.”
“With my father. It manifests itself in other ways.”
“Clearly.” She smiled thinly.
“Elizabeth…Richard tells me things. No, nothing personal, just that you are…a thorn in his side. You say he’s holding you back—he is. Because he thinks you’re hard to work with, unpredictable, and inconsistent.”
She made a rude noise. “Inconsistent. Meaning he can’t get it any time he wants it.”
“Maybe so. Love, hate. Father figure, married lover. Don’t you think it’s time to break out of that cycle?”
“What cycle?”
He put his hands on his knees. “As manly a man as everyone knows me to be, the thought did cross my mind that part of my irresistible charm for you could be the slim possibility—”
“No, don’t go there.”
“—that I’ll change my mind and decide to take Richard’s job.”
“That’s not true.”
“Thank you, but let’s say it is, for the sake of argument.”
“Jesus,” she murmured. “What you must think of me.”
“I think a great deal of you. And if I were chair, you and I would start with a clean slate. I’d do everything I could for you. I’d expect nothing in return but professionalism. In the context of our cordial friendship.”
“Right.”
“You wouldn’t be my girlfriend or my daughter. I wouldn’t be your lover or your father. We would like and respect each other. As we do now, but even more, I hope, because…it would be real.”
She put an elbow on her thigh, her chin in her hand. Tilted her head at him. Her sideways smile skewed cynically, but for once there was a hopeful light in her eyes. “Well, Professor. If even half of that’s true.” She stood up, hefting her bag onto her shoulder.
Half, he thought. Pretty good percentage. They began to walk back along the path the way they’d come. The first fireflies were out, sending hopeful signals in the trees and shrubbery, even the grass. The sound of crickets was louder than the traffic; he could imagine he and Elizabeth were strolling somewhere in the country, not a busy suburb northwest of the capital. “What?” he asked. “If even half of that’s true.”
“It’s obvious. Bateman, you have got to write that Jefferson chapter and become the new chair.”
“Well,” he allowed, looking up at the starless mauve sky. “I guess it’s something to think about.”
dash
twenty
“Marriage starts in the dream of the other,” Mo said to me once, before she developed her Zen mind. “If the dream matches for one, it’s a wonder. If it matches for both, it’s a goddamn miracle.” She said, “Marriage only makes sense when there’s money and children.” And she said, “It’s complete insanity to think two people can stay together happily for sixty or seventy years. So why do we get so upset when it fails? Why do we watch each other’s marriages flame out and feel so frightened? Can’t we learn? Don’t we see?”
I know and I don’t know why I’m thinking of that as I drive toward the river, toward Owen Roby’s house, on this perfect May afternoon. The same way I know and I don’t know why I just washed my hair, why I put on the black shorts that make me look skinny from the back. Owen called this morning and invited me to watch ducklings hatch. How wholesome is that? I also have on the silver earrings Greta said make me look like a gypsy.
I never told him, but I drove by Owen’s place once before. Out of curiosity. You can’t see much from the road; the house sits back a good ways, and a cluster of tall old trees obscures half of it. It’s white with a silver tin roof, two stories, and a railed second-floor balcony over the front porch. How nice to have access to the outdoors from your second floor, I thought the first time. I wondered if the balcony led from Owen’s bedroom.
I can hear a dog barking before I’m halfway down the dirt drive. Must be Rex, the vole eater; we’ve never met. So many outbuildings, some painted, some not, the roof shapes all different. This is a working farm; nothing’s for show.
Well, no, now I see metal tubs of geraniums on either side of every front porch step. And you could call the American flag a decoration; Owen’s got a small one jutting out from the upstairs balcony. Where to park? Behind his truck, I guess, beside a big fuel tank on stilts at the side of the house.
The front entrance is pretty because of the geraniums and a porch swing and some painted wicker furniture, but there’s no walkway to it, barely even a path through the grass. I guess he never goes in and out that way, and neither do his visitors. I start for a smaller door on the side, which I surmise leads to the kitchen. There’s a sound like “Whup,” like an army command, and Rex, who’s never stopped barking, instantly shuts up. I follow the command sound to the back of the house, and there’s Owen. Kneeling in the bright sun in one of the perfect rows of an enormous vegetable garden, patting soil around a plant.
“Thought that was you,” he says as I pick my way through the neat, lush lines of who-knows-what, taking care not to step on anything but dirt. As I go closer, I watch for that pleased, appreciative look I’m used to getting from him but never know what to do with. And there it is. He sits back, resting his palms on his thighs, and smiles while he looks me over head to toe. What does it mean? What? I’m tired of wondering.
“What are you putting in?”
“Okra. Second planting.”
Imagine planting okra twice. I squat down beside him, aware that my pink-painted toenails look rather fetching in my strappy sandals. I look him over, too. He has an actual red neck, damp from perspiration above the collar of his T-shirt; below the line, his skin looks as smooth and pale as mine.
“You smell good,” he says.
I look into his eyes, startled; I was just thinking the same about him. I smell like herbal shampoo, Owen smells like—earth. And sweat, and tomato plants, and hot cotton. The body part that most attracts me is his thighs. They’re so…
“Could you use some pansies?”
“Hm?”
His big, dirt-stained hands are delicate as they separate the roots at the bottom of the second-to-last okra plant. “I got too many pansies last year, and every one made it through the winter. You can have all you want, they’re around the side.” He tilts his head in the direction of Rex.
“Great, I know just where I’ll put them. Thank you.”
The sun is hot and in my face. I think of sunscreen, skin moisturizer, a straw hat. I bet Owen never thinks of those things. “What is everything?” I ask, gesturing to the garden.
He grunts, finishes planting the last plant, and stands up. My knee cracks embarrasingly when I join him, but then Owen puts both hands on the small of his back and groans briefly while he stretches—that makes me feel better. “Corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers over there. In there, broccoli, another kind of pepper, eggplant, kale, cabbage, collards, beets. There’s cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, butternut squash. Beans along the fence.”
“Wow.”
“Over there’s carrots, onions, horseradish, garlic. What’s left of the spinach. Little bit of lettuce.”
“Owen.”
He grins at my amazement. “Got a fruit tree orchard in back—apple, peach, plum, pear, and cherry. Asparagus all along that fence.” He points toward the driveway. “Pick some when you go, just snap ’em off. Little late in the year, but they’re still good.”
I shake my head.
“Mushrooms in the basement.”
“Really!”
“No. Kidding about that.”
I punch him on the arm. No give; all muscle. “What do you do with it all?”
“Eat it, give it away, put it up.”
“You mean, can? You can?” I picture him in a kitchen over a steaming pot of mason jars, wearing an apron.
He nods, picking up his trowels and things, leading the way out of the garden. “Got pretty good at it last fall when Miz Bender was outta commission.”
“Where are your cows?” I ask while he puts stuff away in one of the leaning sheds the backyard is full of.
“My what?”
“Your cows, all your cows.” There’s a half-stone barn over there in a muddy field, but no cows that I can see. For that matter, I can’t see any ducks, either.
“My cattle? They’re down the hill, grazing down in the floodplain. I don’t have any cows.”
“Why not?”
“Beef cattle.”
“Oh, bulls. Well, what’s the difference?”
“A cow’s a female. Them you milk.”
He’s smiling, as if he thinks I’m kidding and he’s going along with the joke. I should let him keep thinking that, but something compels me to say, “I thought cows were brown and bulls were black and they could be either sex.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
Now I know what compelled me—the chance to make him laugh. He roars. He keeps looking at me to see if it’s a joke, and each time he realizes it’s not he laughs harder. He has to lean against the side of the shed
. When he pulls himself together he stares at me through damp, smiling eyes. I think—I could be wrong—in some strange way I’ve gone up in his estimation. Whatever I was to him before, I have outdone myself.
“All righty, if you’re done,” I say, “where are the ducks?”
“This way.”
He keeps them by a thin, slow-moving creek about fifty yards in back of the house, almost invisible behind a tangle of willow trees and leaning sycamores. Ducks! I didn’t hear them before, they must’ve been taking siestas in the sun, but when they see us they all start quacking at once. They won’t let us go too close—me, rather; Owen knows better than to try—but they stop waddling away or hopping into the creek as soon as I stop moving. Wow, ducks. Some are white and some are brown. I try to count, get to about fifteen, and give up. “What are they, what kind?” I’m struck by how far back their legs start, how far apart their eyes are.
“The whites are Pekins. They grow fast, seven pounds by seven weeks if you manage them right. Lot of fat in their meat.”
“My God, they’re adorable.” Their tails stick up in little tufts, and they have bright orange bills and feet. Storybook ducks. “So those must be the Khaki Campbells,” I deduce, pointing to a brown one. Owen gave me Khaki eggs once—they were delicious, much better than regular eggs. “It’s so pretty here,” I tell him, although the natural beauty of the spot has been spoiled a bit by all the little utilitarian sheds and pens, the windbreaks and wire runs he’s built beside the creek. One of the sheds has a black cable, an electric line, running to it all the way from the house. We head toward it.
“Watch your head,” he says, holding the door open for me. I duck in, but there’s no need; he’s the one who has to bend his head or it’ll brush the low ceiling. The warm, close air smells like a nest, earthen and alive. Except for two small windows, the only light is coming from the box on a wooden table and a lamp inside a rubber swimming pool, a kiddie pool on the straw-strewn floor. I can hear soft, impossibly high peeping. Owen pulls a string, and a bare bulb in a corner of the shed comes on.