by Amy Lapwing
He brought home a stack of compositions and added them to the pile on the piano, never giving a thought to playing them. His mind ran back over all the times with Justina, trying to understand how he was wrong for her, trying to remember the uncomfortable moments, and how they might have seemed to her deadly to their relationship. Was he too old? Only he had thought so, she never had. Was he too paternal, too much taking the lead? After the disaster in the orchard, he had left it to her to initiate any love-making. Had he overreacted when he had objected to her calling him disgusting names? Had he been too insistent when he had suggested making love? He could not find anything that in retrospect could have killed it for her. Was it a combination of things, then? He told himself he would be satisfied just to know what the hell had happened, nevermind getting back together.
He thought of calling her several times on Saturday and Sunday, but decided to spare himself being lied to or hung up on. It was a non-Charles Sunday, so he ordered a pizza and watched the Spanish channel from Mexico City. The ridiculous game show with audience members judging what contestant had the best legs would normally have made him giggle. The tentative way that the shy audience men chose their favorite, not wanting to offend the others; the women’s bold posing, as though they were movie stars for a day; and the buffoonish host trying to find innuendo in anything anyone said all made him intensely homesick for his good-natured countrymen. He decided he would go to see her at her office on Monday.
The deep disappointment she had caused herself planted a crying feeling under Justina’s throat. She had hoped she would begin to feel calm returning once she removed herself from the source of giddiness she had felt since the president’s party. In the brilliant morning the trees waved their orange and red flags outside her window, heralding fall fairs with caramel apple stands and endless stalls of dead flowers cleverly arranged to suggest death was prettier than life, women passing over bills to own them, their husbands lingering behind, keeping an indifferent eye on the red-cheeked children racing up and down the grassy aisles, looking forward to the afternoon’s game. She sat down with her usual English muffin and tea, so much cardboard and dishwater, and tried to read the Sunday paper from Boston with its predictable, simple-minded liberal slant on everything.
She could not suppress the feeling that she had behaved badly. Her brain whispered, “Cocktease,” and painted Rourke’s sneer behind her eyes. When the phone rang, the machine recorded that Michael only asked that she please call him, he had something important to tell her. She wanted to tell him it was all right, she was just overwrought last night, but she was all right now, just forget about it. But she knew she had to be unwelcoming, if she did talk to him, to discourage him from pursuing her. She needed to be very cold, perhaps even insult him, to get him to go away. She did not think she could do that. She did not respond to his call.
Justina made it through her French One and her French Two next day by giving quizzes and then having the students pair off and practice drills. She could not think of any stories from her year in France that did not seem jejune and pointless. She went to her office and took out her stack of quizzes and stared at them. She put them aside and took out her Perceval. Reading the Old French verse that looked like a child’s version of French made her feel competent and a little wise. The story was so basic, the language so simple. She felt there was nothing she could not understand. She read gratefully for the next hour. A silhouette in her door drew her eyes away from the book.
He knocked on the doorframe. “Professor Trimble?” A young man, tall, skinny but not slight, knob-shouldered and straight-standing, was at her door. He wore jeans and a loose-fitting gray cardigan sweater over a white shirt, brown oxfords instead of the ubiquitous pretentious sneakers. He looked at her apprehensively, his blue eyes large like a child’s beneath the dark blond curls.
“Yes?”
“I’m James Benn. Your T.A.?”
“Oh. Hi.” She sat up and put aside the romance. “Come in.”
He made a step into the room.
“So, James, I guess you can handle French One? Sit down.”
“I guess so.” He took the chair opposite her, sitting upright as though about to get up at any instant. “I’m sure I can.”
“Okay.” She showed him the stack of quizzes, showed him how she graded them, circling the errors, not correcting them, that was for the student to do, and her grading formula.
He tucked the stack under his arm. “I’ll have them done tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good. I can hand them back Wednesday then.”
“Yeah. Thanks. For the job.”
“Thanks for the help.”
His lips smiled beneath his frightened eyes and he went quietly out.
What a nervous kid, she thought. She looked at her Perceval lying spine up on her desk, the jousting knights on the cover, and was struck with the thoughts she had had when first studying that work; its mystery had seemed simple, something to think about at one’s leisure, when the mood struck. It was only two years ago, she marveled. Then she remembered the last time Michael had visited her here and had asked her what the book was about. She had told him it was the original Holy Grail story. “What is a ‘grail,’ really?” he had asked.
“Nobody knows for sure.”
“An ancient mystery?” He had been sitting on the edge of her desk, the book face down by his thigh.
“One of many.” They had looked at each other, then at the open door. He had gestured did she want him to close it, she had nodded yes.
She looked again at the book’s cover and the scene no longer seemed simple, the terror and blood thirst clearly drawn despite the helmet-obscured faces. She wished he was there, that he would ask her to pour out everything she was thinking about that story, and maybe when she had articulated the last idea she had about it everything would be simple again.
Pascale was in the Romance Languages department office when the rose arrived for her colleague. When Justina would not read the note, Pascale asked if she could, and Justina shrugged. Pascale read the message, “I think of you. Michael,” expecting to see a little smile. Justina said, “Shit,” and pushed Pascale out of her office and closed the door. A moment later she came out and went to the athletic center to change into shorts and go jogging on the orchard trails. As she ran, her mind replayed a short film of three scenes: sitting in the car when he first told her he liked her, when he first kissed her and asked if he should go, when she came so close to making love to him. Just when she thought her brain would burst, the more calming scene of him directing his chorus interjected itself, along with the captivated looks of the students, and then his quiet thoughtfulness when she spoke, and the way he looked when he teased her about their first “argument,” reminding her of a twelve-year-old boy she had once had a crush on. In the breezy sunset, the rustling apple leaves turning gray, she finally stopped, lightheaded from the exertion. She had run five miles for the first time ever.
Chapter Thirteen
Simple Romance
It felt wrong, walking down the Romance Languages hall. If she wanted to see him, she would have let him know by now. His need to see her face when she saw him kept him on this path and he arrived, his chest pounding, at her office door. The door was open, but Justina was not there. He looked up and down the hall and wondered if he should wait.
Justina stood at the white board in Pascale’s office, hefting a marker, as though guessing its weight. Pascale sat behind her desk, Richelieu sat in the other chair, one leg propped up on his knee, repeatedly wiping the instep of his shoe with his index finger.
“How about ‘value meal?’” said Justina.
“‘Repas à prix réduit?’” guessed Richelieu.
“Non, non, ‘prix fixe,’ tout simplement,” said Pascale and she crossed her arms.
“Where’s your Argot Moderne?” said Justina, looking on Pascale’s bookshelf.
“It’s not slang, it’s an Americanism.” Pascale looked to Richelieu to
back her up. “It’s ‘prix fixe.’ That’s all.”
“What about ‘extra value meal?’” said Justina.
“‘Prix fixe spécial?’” suggested Richelieu, looking to Pascale.
“Voilà!”
“Okay, then how about ‘Super-size it, please?’”
“Go out of town! We don’t have that one, we are not such fat pigs as Americans.”
“‘Super size, s’il vous plaît?’” offered Richelieu.
“Exactement,” seconded Pascale. “There’s no French equivalent, it’s too bizarre.”
“That’s no fun,” said Justina. “Ask Denis, he probably remembers. I got to go.” She went out.
Richelieu uncrossed his legs. “She doing a paper on fast-food in France now? I thought she was doing one on the meaning of colors in modern French architecture?”
Pascale shrugged.
Justina turned the corner and saw Michael standing at her door, his back to her. Her brain sent her a tactile impression of his shoulders, and she wanted to touch them. She drew back out of sight, watched him go into her office, come out again a minute later and go away down the hall, striding smoothly, a swan in chinos. She found his note on her desk, asking if he could talk to her, telling her he would be back at four o’clock. She knew if he was here right now, she would be glad. She left early for the day.
He returned at four and knocked softly on the closed door with the Chantecler rooster picture taped on it. He waited, irritated for putting himself through this. She cares nothing for me. I’m bothering her. She was pretending, before. She just liked that she could get an old guy to follow her around like a puppy. Why was I taken in so easily?
The Debussy song was shelved for the semester, Michael angrily accusing his students of laziness. In fact, he knew he could not bear to spend the time required to get it right; he was not even sure he could stand to hear it had the chorus performed it well. In the quiet of the evenings he began to consider forgetting her. It would be easier to stop trying, he thought. She did not want him, he should forget her. This was reasonable, he told Charles. Very reasonable, agreed Charles, doubting Michael could do it. He would forget her, Michael concluded, and he brought up all the mental images he had of her: when she had teased him about only having an M.A. at Updoc’s party; reciting the love song in the language lab; transformed into performer, putting Lawson in his place in his chorus class; sitting in his car screaming in her plum dress; her female desire dressed in evening wear as she undid his tie. These impressions he recreated and lined up before his mind’s eye and commanded himself to forget them. The unexplained rejection settled into a place next to Teresa’s spurning of so many years before. He had to know what was so horrible about him. He feared he was becoming stultified from disappointment, and would soon be a walking dead man like that odd little astronomy guy whose name no one knew, but whose strangeness was legendary on campus.
During that week Michael never ran into Justina: it was as though she was not on campus at all. He held himself back from seeking her at her office again, or at the library or the language lab. He felt close to tears, of grief or frustration, he did not know which, when he imagined accosting her, unwanted, at one of those places, to demand an explanation. He was feeling sorry for himself, and he had been brought up to never inflict personal woes on others. He thought of his distress as his alone now, having nothing to do with Justina’s feelings, which he could not imagine. Their two weeks together were a sealed crate whose surface details he had memorized. He was afraid to open it.
He spent his spare time in his office, listening to music, trying Mozart to clear his mind, falling back in weakness on Rachmaninoff and the other romantics. He neglected his colleagues; he kept forgetting to get a vocal score of La Bohème to Papageorge. He gave his students scant attention; Minnie reworked a remarkable composition over and over on the assumption that his parsimonious critique meant it needed work. He clung to the biweekly dinner ritual with Charles. It was his turn to cook that Sunday, so he carried himself to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon, along with the rest of Kennemac.
The people passing by him as he walked from a far space toward the store entrance seemed unaccountably cheerful in the gray drizzle, their babies smiling at nothing, the fathers packing in the goods while the mothers loaded the kids. He dreaded the long hour it would take to get a week’s groceries. Had it not been for the prospect of Charles that evening, he would not bother.
The mother in front of him was having a time getting her toddler to sit, keeping Michael waiting for a carriage. He proceeded in fits and starts, stopping when the person in front stopped, the aisles too narrow for passing. He halted in the noodles aisle for something to go with the stroganoff.
He put back the shells and picked wide egg and started forward. Justina turned the corner into his aisle, her carriage head-to-head with his. He stood still as a deer in the hunter’s sights. She saw him and looked away, but she did not move. The lock on the crate of Justina images crumbled like clay and the lid burst open. He moved forward.
“Justina!”
She stood still, a mouse waiting for the danger to pass overhead. He left his carriage and came up to her. To her he looked like one of her dimmest students who knew he was slow and wanted to prove he had other assets.
The “forget her” contingent of his mind told him to play it cool, but the keeper of the crate yelled louder. “How are you?” he said, to say something.
She looked in his eyes; the stabbing was sheathed for once. “I’ve been better.”
A carriage was poised at his back, waiting for him to advance; he stepped out of the way. “Have you been ill?” he said softly.
“I missed you.”
His glad face shone among the decision-absorbed aspects crowding the aisle. A mother and her carriageful of children watched him as they passed, expecting him to erupt into a performance of some kind, like the obligatory zany character in a T.V. sitcom. “I’ve been crazy for missing you.”
“Excuse me!” A glamorous, emaciated woman darted her hand between their legs and snatched a box of bowties, a sparrow at the birdfeeder. Michael and Justina moved down the aisle.
“Why didn’t you— doesn’t matter,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”
She stepped closer to him. “It was too hard. It was taking too much from me.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know. It’s just me, the way I am. With you.”
“I took it too fast.”
“No, I did. I couldn’t help it.”
He did not dare touch her, but kept his eyes on her. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I can do it, I swear. Only don’t tell me to go away. Please, Justina.”
She kept her eyes on the “POULTRY” sign at the end of the aisle as she spoke. “I need time, to do my work. I can’t get my career started, from nothing, Michael, nothing, do you remember what that was like? All the time building a new course, the notes, the tests, what readings to assign. And dealing with students and all their problems. ‘I can’t take the quiz, I had to work last night.’ ‘I won’t be here for the test, can I have a make-up?’ And grading, deciding who’s going to get a ‘C’ on their record, and maybe lose their scholarship. Then there’s committee work, and we can’t forget research, having to put that off for all this other stuff, but I sure as hell better bring in the grant money.” She paused to breathe. “It takes all my energy, all my time, everything I got. I can’t do it and be in love with you at the same time.”
She looked at him in terror, staring at either despair or joy, awaiting his response.
His mind tore her out of her storage locker next to the ignominious Teresa and elevated her to the exalted place of maximum influence and unconditional adoration. He lifted the self-imposed injunction and dared to take her hands. “Oh! I love you!”
The patrons coming and going glanced at the couple and smiled to each other as they passed. A bow-legged elderly gent in a motorcycle club windbrea
ker tried to pry a box of spaghetti from behind Michael’s shoulder, muttering, “She loves you too, Romeo, you want to move?”
“Let’s go, somewhere,” said Michael, and he followed her out of the store, their kissing carriages left to themselves. They sat outside on a bench with an old woman who warily kept a foot and a hand on her carriage full of bagged groceries, staring at it like a T.V. set.
“Michael—” She just wanted to look at him.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you and I’ll help you. I remember how difficult it was. I can help you.”
“That’s why you have to leave me alone.” His expression darkened. “For a while. I need to know that every day is under my control, that I can plan my work and carry it out, without—” She was about to say ‘distraction.’ “Without complications.” “Being with you is complicating for me, Music Man.”
“You love me?”
“I love you.”
He kissed her hands and looked about him, at the carriages trickling out of the store, the screaming child whose father would not give her a ride on the mechanical horse, he didn’t have a quarter, so stop it! “How long is ‘a while?’ Till Christmas?” he suggested, hoping she would say till Thanksgiving.
She shook her head. “I need the whole year.”
“Till May?” he said. “I cannot see you till May?” He tried to imagine being so near to the woman he loved and not seeing her for the next seven months. Then he remembered she loved him. “All right. I’ll leave you alone to be brilliant for a year.”
A taxi stopped in front of them and honked. The old woman heaved herself up and haltingly started to direct her carriage to the cab.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to Justina. “Stay right here.” He loaded the woman’s groceries into the trunk as she clambered into the front seat. He closed the trunk lid, the woman closed her door and the cab pulled away, Michael’s gallantry unacknowledged. He rushed back to Justina.