The Man of the House

by Stephen McCauley

  The Learning Place was one of two adult education centers within a one-mile radius of Harvard Square. It was the newer of the two, the less academic and the more elegant. The promotional material for the school made much of the fact that it was housed in an immense Greek Revival mansion on nearly an acre of meticulously landscaped grounds. As I made my way around the perimeter of the room, checking that all the windows were latched, I looked down on the expansive back lawn. It was a warm September evening, and the sky to the west was a sunburn shade of pink. A gentle breeze was rustling the leaves of the beech trees along the side of the house, filling the air with a wonderful chattering. There was a sunken garden below the window, in which a teacher was holding a class amid a profusion of dying purple flowers. Men and women were draped across the lawn chairs, most holding paper cups containing, in all likelihood, an alcoholic punch. There was something languorous and soothing about the scene, like an autumnal lawn party—albeit an especially dull one.

  The classroom itself was immense, with a bay of curved windows at the back. I conducted my lectures from behind a nineteenth-century walnut library table at one end of the room, while the students sat in front of me in an assortment of bow-back Windsor armchairs. The rest of the antiques—everything from a primitive pine chest to a thousand-pound French commode with ormolu plaques that was undoubtedly worth more than I made in a year—were pressed against the walls, giving the place the haphazard elegance of a museum storage room.

  Because I’d been teaching at the school for a while, my classes were frequently scheduled in that desirable room. It was dominated by a five-foot-high oil painting that hung from the front wall, one of those dark, slightly dreary turn-of-the-century portraits of a dour-looking woman in a black dress, with a huge white jabot spilling over her bosom. Her hands were folded primly on her lap, and time had faded her complexion and eyeballs to a shade of ocher that suggested jaundice. She sat there, territorial and grand, and from time to time I could hear her clucking her tongue in disapproval of something I’d said: “Mr. James wasn’t like that at all, certainly not when I met him.” No one knew who she was, but it was apparent to me her first name couldn’t have been anything other than Edwina. I sometimes turned to her for moral support when the conversation turned to the truly irrelevant: “It’s the nineties, Edwina, what can I tell you?”

  The Learning Place had opened its ornate doors six years earlier and immediately made a name for itself by offering courses that managed to sound both intellectually challenging and embarrassingly trendy. Everything from literature to exercise was offered up with a healthy, enrollment-boosting dose of pop psychology. “Haute Cuisine for the Hungry Heart,” “The Peter Pan Syndrome in the Novels of George Eliot and Gail Godwin,” “Kundalini Yoga for the Suddenly Single.” I was usually given a time slot and a course title and left to figure out the rest for myself.

  Not that I was about to start a campaign to raise academic standards. I was qualified to teach at The Learning Place because I was a generalist, or, to be honest about it, an expert in nothing. In my twenties, I’d begun graduate programs in everything from Art History to Education, and even though I hadn’t lasted past the first semester of any of them—or even past the first two weeks of a couple—I could legitimately say I’d “done graduate work” in an impressive number of fields and make myself look appealing to a school that cared a lot more about surface area than depth. I wasn’t getting rich on what I was paid, but I was paid more than I was worth, the one sure measure of success.

  Tonight’s class had been typical of my teaching experience at The Learning Place. I’d begun the evening by offering a fairly concise and insightful analysis of the ending of Wuthering Heights, a minilecture on the nature of passion and romantic love. Admittedly I’d culled most of my major points from the liner notes of an Edith Piaf album I’d taken out of the library, but it seemed to me it was coming off pretty well. I had the feeling, at one moment anyway, that the students were actually listening, leaning forward in their seats and listening. My big mistake had come in pausing to ask if there were any questions on what I’d said thus far. Tim, an aspiring actor and one of the few members of the class who was younger than me, asked if I knew anything about a remake of the movie Oliver Twist. Dorothea, a retired schoolteacher who appeared to have enrolled in the course for the sole purpose of finding fault with everything I said, corrected a comment I’d made the week before about the date of Branwell Brontë’s birth. In the ensuing silence, Eileen Ash had sighed loudly and commented, apropos of nothing in particular, “I wonder if it’s all so different today.”

  Discouraged but undeterred, I’d shuffled my notes and prepared to forge ahead. Mallory White, sitting in a far corner of the room, had cleared her throat and said, “Well, since we’re all being so wonderfully honest with each other in here, I think it’s only fair that I mention something. . . in case I seem a little off tonight.”

  There was a stir of curiosity, and the other eight students turned in their seats to get a better look at Mallory. From what I could remember, Mallory had attended only the very first class. She’d worn a pair of gaucho pants and sandals and a lot of noisy wooden jewelry. She’d sat in the back, said nothing, and left during the break. According to Eileen, who claimed to know something about almost everyone in the class, Mallory was in her late forties, a therapist. “I’ve heard she has a lovely office,” Eileen had said, “with lots of pillows and Kleenex.”

  “Please go ahead. It’s important to be honest in your opinions and observations about the books,” I said, knowing very well that the odds of whatever was coming being about Wuthering Heights were about one in a thousand.

  “Thank you, Clyde. It’s very kind of you to say that.” She paused, slid a couple of thick bracelets up to her elbow, and said, “Well, the fact is, I discovered last March that my husband has been having an affair, and I still haven’t been able to put it all in perspective. It’s been a difficult period for me, and these wonderful books just resonate.”

  There was a rumble of disapproval. Brian shook his head and said, “I know where you’re coming from on this one. The unfaithful spouse, the whole bit. Believe me, I’ve been there.”

  Brian was a dashing man, probably in his late fifties, who showed up midway through each class in a business suit, his hair slicked back matinee-idol style. When he spoke up, it was usually to announce, with a boastful expansion of his chest, that he hadn’t read the book because he’d been too busy at the Boston law firm where he was a senior partner. The question of why he’d bothered to take the class in the first place was answered by his constant references to the difficulties a busy, successful divorced man had in meeting women.

  I could accept that most of my students in most of my classes were recovering from marriages gone bust or relationships gone sour, but how was it statistically possible that they were all the wronged parties?

  I turned to the wall to see how Edwina was taking the subject of marital infidelity, but her expression was inscrutable.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your husband,” I said to Mallory. I was, too, even though Mallory, who was adjusting a necklace made of massive carved wooden beads, didn’t seem especially shook up. Taking courage from Edwina, I added, “Let’s go back to the point I was trying to make earlier.”

  Everyone who’d been eyeing Mallory sympathetically turned a hostile gaze in my direction, and I recoiled.

  A man whose name I’d never been able to remember announced that he’d taken both sections of “Processing,” the most popular course in the school (running neck-and-neck with “Processing Food,” a discussion group on eating disorders). “I think it might be helpful to Mallory,” he said, “if we did some role-playing. To help sort things out.”

  Mallory seemed delighted by the suggestion, and the remaining hour or so had been spent on “building trust,” deep breathing, and improvisational acting exercises.

  In the years I’d been teaching at The Learning Place, I’d discovered t
hat classes usually went this way sooner or later. Most students signed up to show off what they knew about subjects they’d already studied elsewhere, to discuss their personal problems, to make a romantic connection, or some confused combination of all of the above.

  The irony was that the further from the subject the classes veered, the more likely it was that I’d receive glowing reports from my students. I’d figured out that the best way to secure my job was to take a back seat whenever possible—a lesson I’d foolishly forgotten that night.

  IT WAS WELL AFTER SEVEN WHEN I FINALLY stepped outside and strolled down the brick walk to the street. My car was pulled up to the curb, and Marcus was sitting in the passenger seat, looking at himself in the rearview mirror and fiddling with his aviator sunglasses. He gave me a quick glance and then went back to the mirror.

  He looked astonishingly cool. Astonishing because Louise had arranged to meet with him that afternoon, ostensibly to tell him about Ben. I’d expected to see him slumped over the dashboard, riven by self-pity.

  “I figured you’d want to drive,” he said calmly.

  I slid behind the wheel and buckled on the seat belt. In fact, I wasn’t particularly fond of driving and took a great deal of pleasure in being a passenger, even when the driver was as inconsistent and distracted as Marcus. But some combative masculine pride prevented me from sitting in the passenger seat of my own car while another man took the wheel. Especially when I was headed to see my father. Especially when the other man was handsome and straight. And Marcus was looking particularly handsome and reedy tonight. He had on a green-and-white-striped dress shirt and a pair of rumpled khakis. With his aviator sunglasses and his long blond hair combed back, he looked like an aging British rock star making a stab at middle-class respectability. He’d obviously dressed for Louise.

  I was dying to know how things had gone, but since I was unsure how much Louise had told him, I figured it was best to wait in silence. As I drove through the crowded streets around Harvard Square, dodging the college students and the wobbly bicyclists, Marcus peered out the side window mournfully. “I’ve been in this town too long,” he said. “Kids on bicycles.”

  “Everyone who lives here feels they’ve been here too long,” I said. “Especially the kids on bicycles.”

  “Do you?”

  I considered this for a moment. “I suppose so. That’s why I’ll probably never leave.” There’s something relaxing about feeling you’ve been in a place too long and have exhausted its possibilities. You don’t have to rush around visiting museums, and you can set aside expectations of having your life transformed by new scenery.

  “I don’t see how that helps me,” Marcus said.

  Frankly, I didn’t, either. But clearly, help was not what he was looking for.

  When we got onto the highway and had reached cruising speed, he turned to me. “I assume you know all about my talk with Louise.”

  “Not all.”

  “But some?”

  “The basic outline.”

  “Christ,” he shouted, his voice filled with more emotion than I’d ever heard him express before. “What a thing to do! Not even tell me about my own kid!” He slammed his fist against the dashboard, and the glove compartment door burst open. A stack of road maps slid into his lap. He seemed confused for a moment, all his emotion derailed. He carefully arranged the maps in a neat pile and put them back in the glove compartment. “I mean, why would she do that, Clyde?” he asked quietly. “Why?”

  “She rationalized it somehow. She thought it was the only fair thing to do. I can’t remember the exact reasoning.”

  “I don’t think she can remember the reasoning, either. I don’t think there was much. The poor kid thinks his father is some Austrian vagabond.”

  “Australian.”

  “And she tells me now, the worst possible time. I get over that thing with Nancy and really start to settle into the dissertation, and this comes up.”

  Marcus’s talk about his dissertation was like any obsessive-compulsive behavior—unconscious, pointless, and slightly embarrassing. The kindest response was to ignore it.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

  “What can I do? I’m going to talk to him. I told Louise to give me a few weeks to get my head together about this and then I’d talk to him. He seems like a sensible kid, doesn’t he?”

  “He strikes me as pretty mature.”

  “Kids usually like me, don’t they?”

  If you included most of his girlfriends in that category, the answer was a resounding yes.

  I looked in the rearview mirror. Behind us, a driver was frantically flashing his high beams, signaling me to let him pass. In other circumstances, I might have given in, but I was going close to the speed limit and the driver was clearly working himself into a frenzy, so I decided to hold my ground out of spite.

  “Monica and I used to talk about having kids. Funny how things never work out as planned.”

  The driver behind started to blow his horn in the same frantic way he was flashing his lights. It occurred to me that this was exactly the kind of pointless traffic squabble that ends in gunfire these days, and I swerved into the middle lane. Marcus clutched the dash. “I wonder what Monica’s up to these days. Maybe she has a family of her own.”

  Monica was one of the few women his own age Marcus had been serious about. They’d met in graduate school as equals. She was one of those intellectually intense honey-blond beauties with insomnia and the forward momentum of an ocean liner. In less time than it generally took Marcus to get out of bed, Monica had researched, written, and found a publisher for her dissertation. It was a wild take on George Eliot, one of those academic books with a thesis so improbable and scandalous, it made Monica an overnight sensation in English departments across the country. When it became obvious to her that Marcus was terrified of testing his assumed brilliance by actually getting to work, she’d broken off their engagement and accepted a position at a prestigious school in Illinois. The last anyone had heard from her, she was in the middle of one of those juicy, gossip-driven tenure battles that seem to be the only topic of interest among academics past a certain point in their careers.

  In my bleaker moments, I wondered if Marcus’s attitude toward Monica wasn’t just a variation on my own attitude toward Gordon.

  “You’re probably in shock,” I said. “It’ll take a while for the reality to sink in.”

  “It better not take more than a couple of weeks. He’s bright, isn’t he? Benjamin?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Why’d she have to name him Benjamin? I had a math teacher in junior high named Mr. Benjamin. I hated him. He always made fun of my ears.”

  “He probably wanted to get in your pants,” I said.

  This seemed to perk him up some. “You think that was it?”

  When I looked in the rearview mirror again, I saw that whoever was now behind us was flashing his high beams in the same manner as the other driver. I pondered the likelihood of there being two psycho killers on the same road at roughly the same time, then decided not to risk it and pulled to the right once again.

  “Your driving’s a little rough tonight,” Marcus said.

  “Would you rather be gunned down by a lunatic?” I asked.

  Marcus took off his sunglasses and stuck them in his shirt pocket. “Are you nervous about having dinner with your father?” he asked.

  “Let’s not get psychiatric,” I said. The truth was, the thought of sitting across a narrow dinner table from my father for over an hour made me feel extremely vulnerable, especially since the table would be laden with sharp objects. I wasn’t sure who I was afraid would pick up a knife first. It had taken me over an hour to dress for class, because I knew where I was headed afterward. When visiting Dad, I always tried to dress in a way that made me look professional but not pretentious, masculine but true to myself, clean but not obsessively so. The whole quandary over wardrobe was a joke, because all my cloth
es were pretty much the same—jeans, T-shirts, and thrift-shop sports jackets with a few minor variations in color for seasonal adjustment. And no matter what I wore, my father always managed to find something to criticize in a particularly humiliating way that struck me as unjust but accurate and left me longing to heap my clothes in the backyard and burn them.

  For the past few days, I’d been scanning newspapers and magazines, trying to put together a portfolio of safe, uncontroversial topics to discuss over dinner. But the more scanning I did, the more hopeless I felt. Everything from international news to the pet column in the Living section of the Boston Globe looked like fertile ground for William to turn critical, me to turn self-righteous, Agnes to turn neurotically sentimental, and Barbara, her daughter, to turn. The only thing my father and I had in common was a loathing of the Red Sox, but unfortunately, they’d been on an uncharacteristic winning streak, so even that wasn’t without its difficulties. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps we could continue the discussion of Marcus’s problems through much of the meal, but that wouldn’t work, either. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, my father refused to believe that Marcus, or any other friend of mine, of either sex, wasn’t gay.

  “You know, you’ve got it lucky in a lot of ways, Clyde. You can go out and have meaningless, impersonal sex behind a tree whenever you want and then get on with your life. You don’t appreciate the perils of heterosexual sex.”

  “Whatever they are, I’ll take them over AIDS any day.”

  “All right, but you can have safe sex. For me, there’s no such thing. Someone either wants more from me or less from me or is having a kid. It’s a scary world out there. I envy you.”

  “Of all the insensitive things you’ve ever said, that ranks up there among the worst.” Secretly, though, I was flattered that he assumed I could have sex anytime I wanted, even if it was meaningless and impersonal. As far as I’m concerned, no sex is meaningless and impersonal—although I’ve been told that after ten years of marriage, it’s pretty close.