by Sandra Brown
“Envy” Ch. 4
1985
That Tuesday morning two days before Thanksgiving dawned cloudy and cold. As though on cue, as though roasted turkey and pumpkin pie would be incompatible with mild weather, a cold front lowered the temperature just in time for the holiday.
Roark’s alarm clock was set for seven-thirty. By seven-forty-five, he was shaved, showered, and dressed. By ten minutes to eight, he was downstairs in the residence dining hall, drinking coffee, glancing through his manuscript, and wondering how much abuse Professor Hadley was going to inflict on this creative effort into which he had poured his heart and soul.
The quality of his Thanksgiving holiday depended upon the outcome of the conference. He would either spend the long weekend relaxed and comfortable in the knowledge that his work had met with his professor’s approval or foundering in the lake of misery called self-doubt.
Either way, he didn’t have much longer to wait. The verdict would be read soon. Whether Hadley’s remarks were good, bad, or ugly, hearing them would be a relief. This anticipation was hell.
“Sweet roll, Roark?”
He glanced up to see the house mom standing beside his chair. “Sure, Mom, thanks.”
Soon after pledging, Roark had ordained the fraternity house mother the most long-suffering woman alive. Mrs. Brenda Thompson had given up a peaceful widowhood to voluntarily move into a three-story house with eighty-two men who behaved like miscreants sent away to a nine-month summer camp.
They respected nothing, neither persons nor property. Nothing was sacred—not God or country, one’s hometown, one’s pet, one’s sister, or one’s mother. It was open season on anything an individual held near and dear. Everything was subject to ribald ridicule.
They had the decorum of swine. As male Homo sapiens tend to do when gathered in groups of two or more, these eighty-two had regressed to the level of cavemen not nearly as refined as Neanderthals. Everything their mothers had forbidden them to do at home, they did in the fraternity house. Zealously and with relish, they celebrated rude behavior.
Mrs. Thompson, a soft-spoken and dignified lady, tolerated their language, which was foul, and their personal habits, which were fouler. Her maternal nature invited their confidences and earned their affection. But, unlike a parent, she exercised no discipline over them.
She turned a blind eye to the drinking, cussing, and fornicating, in which they participated with wild abandon. Without a complaint from her they could play their sound systems as loudly as they wished. They could sleep on their sheets for a semester or longer before laundering them. When they shaved the fraternity letters into the fur of a cat belonging to a girl who had jilted one of their members, Mom’s only comment was on how nicely they had lined up the letters.
In her presence, particularly on Wednesday evenings during their one formal meal of the week, where jackets and ties and some semblance of civilization was required, they apologized for their expletives, belches, and farts with an obligatory and questionably sincere, “Excuse me, Mom.” With a patient little smile, she always pardoned the offender, even though a similar offense would be forthcoming seconds later.
In her they had the Dream Mom.
Roark suspected that she favored him over some of the others, although he couldn’t imagine why she did. He’d been as crude and badly behaved as any. After a toga party his sophomore year, he had passed out under the baby grand piano in the downstairs parlor and woke himself up choking on Jack Daniel’s-flavored vomit.
Mrs. Thompson appeared in a long flannel robe and slippers, patting his shoulder and asking him if he was all right. “I’m fine,” he mumbled, although clearly he wasn’t.
Without censure and with the dignity of a nun, she removed the blanket that someone had tossed over an inflatable doll, the anatomically obscene, unofficial house mascot, and carried it back to Roark. She covered him with it where he lay, miserably cold, sick as a dog, and stinking to high heaven.
From that night forward, Mom seemed to have a special fondness for him. Maybe because when he had sobered up, he thanked her for the kindness and apologized for disturbing her sleep. Maybe because he’d had the rug beneath the piano cleaned at his own expense. No one else in the house had noticed—either that he had soiled the rug or that he’d had it cleaned. But Mrs. Thompson had noticed. He supposed these nods toward common decency demonstrated to her that he was redeemable, that he had at least some breeding.
“You’re up earlier than usual, aren’t you?” she asked now as she placed a jelly doughnut on a paper plate beside his coffee mug.
Ordinarily she didn’t serve the boys food. They served themselves from a cafeteria-style line, taking what they wanted from the fare a surly cook put out for them in the manner of a farmer filling the feed trough for his herd.
“I’m meeting with my senior advisor this morning,” he explained. In deference to her, he remembered to use a napkin instead of licking the doughnut’s sugar glaze off his fingers.
She motioned to his manuscript. “Is that the book you’re writing for your capstone?”
“Yes, ma’am. What I’ve got so far.”
“I’m sure it’ll be very good.”
“Thanks, Mom. I hope so.”
She wished him good luck with his meeting, then went over to say good morning to another boy who had just straggled in. He was the most handsome member in the house and attracted girls like moths to flame. His brothers wanted to hate him for his unearned good fortune, but he was too nice a guy to hate. Rather than exploit his movie-star looks, he downplayed them, seemed almost embarrassed by them. He glanced over at Roark and raised his cleft chin in greeting. “What’s up, Shakespeare?”
“What’s up, RB?”
Everyone had a nickname, and the accepted house greeting was, “What’s up?” To which no one ever replied. That’s just what they said.
Roark’s nickname—to everyone except Todd—was Shakespeare. His fraternity brothers knew he liked to write, and William Shakespeare was the one writer that most of them could possibly call to mind if a gun were held to their heads. He had never tried to explain that Shakespeare wrote plays in blank verse, while he wrote stories in prose. Some concepts were just too complex to grasp, especially for individuals like the fraternity brother who, upon being asked by his English lit teacher to identify the bard by his portrait, had responded, “How the fuck you expect me to know all the presidents?”
Roark was flattered by the nickname, but this morning it seemed particularly presumptuous. Checking his wristwatch, he saw that he had fifteen minutes to reach Hadley’s office. More than enough time. Nevertheless, he drained his coffee, stuffed his manuscript back into its worn folder, put the folder into his backpack, and left the dining hall.
Not until he got outside did he realize the drastic change in the weather that had occurred overnight. The wind chill put the temperature down around the freezing point, not cold enough to freeze the pond in the center of campus, but enough to make him wish he had grabbed a heavier coat before setting out.
The Language Arts Building, like most on campus, was basically Georgian in design. Older and statelier than the newer halls, it had a wide portico with six white columns. The aged red brick on the north wall was completely covered in Boston ivy that had turned from green to orange in a matter of days.
As soon as Roark was in sight of the building, he picked up his pace, more for warmth than for fear of being late. Despite his conservative upbringing, which had included church on Sundays, he was ambiguous about the existence, nature, and disposition of a Supreme Being. He wasn’t certain that an entity with the omniscience attributed to God would give a flip about Roark Slade’s daily trials. But today wasn’t the day to reject any possible advantage, so he offered up an obscure little prayer as he crossed the portico and entered the building.
He was assailed by the burning-dust smell of old furnaces. Apparently they’d been cranked up to full capacity this morning, because the building was uncom
fortably warm. He shrugged off his backpack and jacket as he jogged up the stairs to the second floor.
He was greeted by several students with whom he shared his major. One, a rail-thin hippy with pink-tinted John Lennon glasses and stringy hair, loped up to him. “Yo, Slade.”
Only girls called him Roark. Except for Todd, he wasn’t sure there was a male on campus who even knew his first name.
“Coffee later? We’re getting together a study group for finals. Ten o’clock in the Union.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be free. I’m on my way to see Hadley.”
“You mean like now?”
“As we speak.”
“Fuck, man, that sucks. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Later.”
“Later.”
Roark continued down the hallway. The jelly doughnut hadn’t been such a good idea. It felt like a bowling ball in his stomach. The coffee had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he admonished himself for not having a breath mint. When he arrived at office number 207 he paused to draw a deep breath. The door was standing slightly ajar. He wiped his damp palm on the leg of his jeans and knocked softly.
“Come in.”
Professor Hadley was seated behind his desk. His feet, laced into a pair of brown suede Hush Puppies, were propped on the open top drawer. A stack of reading matter was in his lap, which was only one of myriad surfaces in the room that was stacked with reading matter. An inestimable number of trees had sacrificed their lives to provide the paper that filled Hadley’s office. Per square inch, it was probably the largest consumer of paper globally.
“Good morning, Professor.”
“Mr. Slade.”
Was it just his imagination, or did Hadley’s greeting sound peremptory?
The advisor’s manner could never be described as friendly. Unlike some instructors, he didn’t get chummy with his students. In fact, it was customary for him to treat them with barely concealed contempt. Even a respectable grade on a writing assignment didn’t inoculate one against his scorn.
His teaching style was to make a student feel like an ignoramus. Only after the student had been knocked off the pedestal of his self-esteem, and the pedestal itself reduced to rubble, did Hadley drive home his point and teach him something. He seemed to believe that abject humility sharpened one’s ability to learn.
As he stepped into the cramped office, Roark reassured himself that the curtness was a habit with Hadley and that he shouldn’t take it personally.
“No, don’t close the door,” Hadley told him.
“Oh. Sorry.” Roark reached back to catch the door, which he had been about to close.
“You should be.”
“Sir?”
“Is there something wrong with your hearing, Mr. Slade?”
“My hearing? No, sir.”
“Then you heard me correctly when I said that you should be sorry. You are now…” He glanced at something beyond Roark’s left shoulder. “Fifty-six and one-half minutes late.”
Roark turned. On the wall behind him was a clock. White face. Stark black numerals. A dash marking each of the sixty minutes. The short hand was already on the nine. The minute hand was three dashes away from the twelve.
The old man’s lost it, Roark thought. Something’s pickled his brain. Paper fumes, maybe. Is there such a thing?
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m right on time. Our meeting was scheduled for nine.”
“Eight.”
“Originally, yes. But don’t you remember calling and changing it to nine? You left a message with my roommate.”
“I assure you that my memory is in perfect working order, Mr. Slade. I made no such call.” Hadley glared up at him from beneath dense eyebrows. “Our meeting was at eight.”
Chapter 10
He was an old man.
Not until recently had Daniel Matherly thought of himself as aged. He had refused to acknowledge his elderly status far past the reasonable time to do so. Unsolicited literature mailed to him by the AARP was discarded unopened, and he declined to take advantage of senior citizen discounts.
Lately, however, the reflection in his mirror was tough to dispute, and his joints made an even better argument that he was definitely a… graduating senior.
Today, as he sat behind his desk in his home study, Daniel was amused by his own thoughts. If reflecting on one’s life wasn’t proof of advancing age, what was? His preoccupation with his degenerating body was a firm indication that it was degenerating. Who else but the very old dwelled on such things?
Young people didn’t have the time. They didn’t ponder death because they were too busy living. Getting an education. Pursuing their chosen profession. Entering or exiting marriages. Rearing children. They couldn’t be bothered with thoughts of death. “Mortality” was just a word that they kept shelved to think about in the distant future. Occasionally they might glance at it and grow uneasy, but their attention was hastily diverted to matters related to living, not dying.
But the distant future inexorably drew closer until the day arrived when one could no longer save the topic of his own mortality for later contemplation, when one must take it from the shelf and examine it closely. Daniel wasn’t morbidly fixated on the inevitable, but he knew that the time had come for him to address it and consider all its implications.
The faithful Maxine thought that he slumbered peacefully every night, but he didn’t. When he told Maris that he slept like a baby, she had no reason to doubt him. As a young man, he had never required more than four or five hours of sleep per night. Those required hours had decreased in proportion to his aging. Now, if he was lucky, on any given night he would sleep for two or three hours.
The others he spent lying in bed reading his beloved books—classics he had devoured as a boy, bestsellers that other houses had been lucky enough to publish and profit from, books he himself had edited and published.
When he wasn’t reading, he reflected on his life—his proud moments and, in fairness, those he wasn’t proud of. He thought frequently about the prep school friend who had died of leukemia. If he’d been born several decades later, he probably would have been treated and cured to live a long and fulfilling life. To this day, Daniel missed him and longed for the years of friendship they had been denied.
He remembered the pain of losing his first love to another man. Looking back, he acknowledged that the young lady’s choice had been right for both of them, but at the time, he had believed he would die of a broken heart. He never saw her after her wedding day. He heard that she and her husband had moved to California. He wondered if her life there had been happy. He wondered if she was still living.
His first wife had been a lovely woman, and he’d been devastated when she died. But then he’d met Rosemary, Maris’s mother, and she had been, without question, the love of his life. Beautiful, charming, gracious, artistic, intelligent, a perfect companion and ardent lover. She had been supportive of a husband who put in long hours at the office and was too often distracted by the pressures of managing a business. He had appreciated her patience and devotion to him and their marriage but was certain he had failed to let her know the extent of his appreciation.
In hindsight, he regretted all the times his responsibilities at Matherly Press had kept him from Rosemary. He wished he had those days back. His choices would be different. He would rearrange his priorities, appropriate more time and energy to his family.
Or, in all honesty, he would probably make the same bad choices, commit the same mistakes all over again.
Thankfully, his regrets were few and minor, although there were a couple of major ones. Once he had fired an editor out of pique, over a silly difference of opinion. Slyly, he had leaked the secret that the man was homosexual, this at a time when it wasn’t accepted or even tolerated. He hinted that the man’s personal life had begun affecting his work—which was an outright lie. The man was an excellent editor and his work ethic was impeccable.
Despit
e his qualifications, no one would hire him because of Daniel’s rumor. He became a pariah in the industry he loved and ultimately moved away from the city. Daniel’s spite had ruined the man’s promising career and had cost publishing a talented contributor. He would carry the guilt over that to his grave.
Several years following Rosemary’s death, he had engaged in an affair he wasn’t proud of. It had been difficult for a middle-age bachelor to conduct a romance while living with a teenage daughter. It required finesse and a constant juggling of schedules. The woman had been jealous of his relationship with Maris. She became demanding, continually forcing him to choose between her and Maris. Daniel finally let his head overrule his desire. He realized that he could never love anyone who didn’t love and accept his daughter wholly, completely, and without reservation. He ended the affair.
Through decades he had managed to maintain his reputation as an excellent publisher. He seemed to have been blessed with a sixth sense for which manuscripts to grab and which to decline. During his tenure, he had increased the company’s worth a hundredfold. He had earned more money than he could possibly spend, more than Maris could spend in her lifetime, and probably more than her children could spend.
Money was a nice by-product of his success, but it wasn’t what motivated him. His drive came from wanting to preserve what his ancestors had worked so painstakingly to create. Before he turned thirty, he had inherited the stewardship of the family business. It had fallen to him to protect and improve it for the next generation.
Which was Maris, his crowning achievement. She was a thousand times more precious to him than Matherly Press, and he was more dedicated to protecting her than he was to protecting his publishing house from the wolves that got bigger and hungrier each year.
He couldn’t shelter her completely, of course. No parent could spare his child life’s knocks, and even if he could, it would be unfair. Maris had to live her own life, and integral to living were mishaps and mistakes.
He only hoped that her disappointments wouldn’t be too severe, that her triumphs and joys would outnumber them, and that when she reached his age, if she was fortunate to live that long, she would look back on her life with at least the same degree of satisfaction as he had been graced to do.