HE WENT UPSTAIRS TO the master bedroom and got out of his suit. Then, thinking about the conference, he put it back on. The bed was made, the floor had been scrubbed and waxed, the furniture dusted and polished. The odor of the polish stung his nostrils and made him aware of his bronchial tubes. There wasn’t a place to sit down and be comfortable, and anyway, he was still wearing the suit. Then it occurred to him that he might change suits. This one was rumpled from the day’s work. He opened the closet door and chose a blue one, and another tie. He would keep the same shirt. As he was putting on the pants, his wife entered the room and took off her jeans and blouse. He said, “Is this okay?”
She looked at him. “Fine.”
“As I recall, back in the early Pleistocene period when you were still happy with me, you liked me in this one.”
“You look good in it,” she said simply.
He smiled. “Thanks.”
She went into the bathroom and closed the door. The shower ran. He finished dressing, then went downstairs, where he found his stepson making a peanut butter sandwich. The boy looked guilty for a second, then seemed to recover himself.
“Hey,” Gehringer said.
Jason only smirked. His mother had said nothing to him, and yet he seemed to know there was trouble between his parents, and he was behaving rather badly about it.
“What’s the story with math?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have to make up some tests.”
“Tell me what Mrs. Brill has against you in English.”
“If I knew that, I could handle it myself,” the boy said.
“Well, how does she show it?”
Again, he shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on,” Gehringer said. “There must be something.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, son, you can’t make an accusation and then just let it stand without anything to back it up. What is it that she does that tells you she has something against you?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. He seemed irritated.
Gehringer walked away from him into the living room, with its freshly laundered curtains and its ironed and starched doilies, its look of a place waiting for close inspection, a display rather than a room where people might be comfortable. There were newly cut rose blossoms in a glass vase in the middle of the coffee table, and the fireplace looked as though it hadn’t ever been used. Sun poured in the windows onto the oriental rug. He sat on the couch and then, worried about wrinkling the suit, stood again.
“She makes me wait to go to the lavatory,” Jason said from the entrance to the room.
Gehringer stared at him.
“She knows I have to go, and she makes me wait.”
“Anything else?”
“There’s other things,” the boy said.
“Well, like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ever hear of the Salem witch trials?” Gehringer asked.
“No.”
“Interesting situation. They hanged some people as witches. And a lot of it was just these—these kids making loose accusations. Standing around saying things. Without anything to back it up.”
“I guess they listened to them back then.”
“Oh, yeah—they hanged several innocent people as witches,” Gehringer said through his teeth.
“Well,” the boy said, “I’m not making loose accusations.”
“I didn’t say you were, particularly, did I?”
“I’m not stupid,” the boy said with certainty, moving out of the doorway. Apparently he felt vindicated, and believed the conversation had been a success.
Gehringer let him go. There was no use pursuing a discussion with him in his victorious mood. He heard the front door open and close, and then the house was quiet. Stepping to the window again, he looked out at what he could see of the mountains and the surrounding fields. Part of the highway was visible through a cut in the trees at the end of the property. Over there was town, the Mountain Lodge Motel. A woman who could so systematically do away with herself had to be thinking about it for a long, long time.
HE AND MAIZIE HAD been friends at work, allies. They had laughed together about the foibles and vanities of others in the office, and they had enjoyed the times when work brought them into proximity with each other. Somehow the laughs had led to a feeling of heightened expectation. Without having to decide upon it or think about it, they had entered a zone of mutual concern that made for exchanged glances and a thrill whenever she spoke his name. Or he said hers: Maizie. Maizie. The whole thing was absurd, of course, since she was devoted to her husband, and since she also happened to be fifteen years younger than Gehringer. But the result of the few moments of awkwardness between them had been a strange unease, a nervousness, almost as though lines had been crossed.
Abigail, coming to pick him up one afternoon, noticed the difference.
Understandably enough, given her nature, she assumed the worst. And for all his efforts to explain the whole thing away, in her mind something had been acceded to in his heart. Abigail had once described herself as the sort of person who found it difficult to believe anyone could remain interested in her. Her confidence was too easily undermined. In consequence of this, he had sworn that he would have nothing else to do with Maizie, and he had been trying to make his way back from it when Maizie’s mother committed suicide. And if he was certain that it was only the solace of an old friend that Maizie sought now, the new situation was still quite confusing and worrisome: for she was indeed beautiful in her grief, and Abigail grew daily more difficult to live with, clenched as she was on the suspicions she still held about him.
Each day felt more discouraging than the last. Abigail’s face had taken on a new harsh, pinched look—the look of bitter religious anger. There had been times over the last few days when he couldn’t bear to look at her.
“READY?” SHE SAID FROM the kitchen. Her heels sounded on the tile floor. He went through the hall to the front entrance and she started toward him, pausing to put an earring on.
“You look nice,” he said.
She frowned.
“You do,” he told her, resisting the urge to look away.
“I don’t feel nice.”
“Isn’t Jason coming?”
“He’s waiting outside.”
“I asked him about it,” Gehringer said. “He’s pretty vague.”
She went past him, out onto the porch. Jason had started the car and was sitting in the middle of the front seat.
“Maybe we ought not to go into this with an attitude,” Gehringer said.
“Nobody has an attitude.”
“It’s just possible that this teacher is right, you know. She doesn’t have anything to gain from lying about it, and Jason does.”
They had come to the edge of the porch. Gehringer was troubled to find that his wife was trying to hold back tears. “Are you going to take this tack when we get there?” she said.
“Well, good God,” he said. “What tack are you going to take? Don’t you think we ought to go into this without having our minds made up? For Jason’s sake.”
“I’m going to try and do what is best for my son. And that means I’m going to try trusting him.”
“Just blindly?” Gehringer said. “No matter what you learn about it or what anyone says?”
She stared at him. Her expression was almost satisfied.
“No,” he said. “I’m not accepting that look, either. Don’t give me that look. I have not violated your trust. In no way have I violated your trust.”
“This is not the place to discuss it,” she said, going on.
“Jesus Christ,” said Gehringer. “Unbelievable.”
She stopped. “Are you finished?” Again, she seemed near crying.
“Do you know how ridiculous all this is?” he said. “I love you.”
“You use that like a club,” she told him. “It’s a weapon when you say it.”
“Just trying to be
heard above the roar of condemnations,” he said. “Christ.”
She went on to the car, and she was irritable with Jason, telling him to quit sitting there staring and to get himself in the back seat and buckled.
THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS built out of the side of a hill, surrounded by fields of grass and dark wooden fences. A stream ran along the front—clear water running over stones—and you crossed a small walking bridge to get to the entrance. Basketball courts flanked the building, and beyond these, the metal bleachers of the football field reflected the sun. Jason led the way inside and along the hallway to his English classroom. Mrs. Brill was not there. He sat at one of the desks in the front of the room, and his parents stood by the door. They had not exchanged a word since driving away from the house.
“What do we do now?” Jason said.
“Be quiet,” said his mother.
“Well, she said she’d be here.”
The three of them waited. From somewhere else in the building, the sound of a brass band came to them. It seemed to originate in the walls.
“Straighten your tie,” Gehringer’s wife said.
Gehringer walked to the window and did so, peering at the faint reflection of himself. Then he turned and faced her. After a moment, he said, “Maybe we got the wrong day.”
“It’s today.”
Perhaps ten minutes went by. Gehringer watched school buses roll out of the lot across the way, and there were boys in the farm field on the other side of the highway, playing a game of touch football. He watched and grew interested. Then, remembering himself, he turned from the window. No one spoke. Jason leaned back in his seat, biting the cuticles of his fingers, his feet stretched out into the middle of the aisle. Abigail stood just inside the door, like someone afraid to be thought snooping. She looked tired and beset. Gehringer took his eyes from her.
And now the music in the walls gave way to something else: an agitation, a shuffling mixed with female laughter. The music started again, seemed to punctuate the laughter, which was coming closer. Gehringer’s wife turned to face the door as a young woman appeared there, a dark-haired girl of heart-stopping beauty, bracing herself in the door frame. She’d been running and had just been caught. She looked at Gehringer, at Jason. “Oh,” she said, laughing. A young man was behind her, and his hands were around her middle. Gehringer saw that their eyes shone with an unnatural light.
“Come on,” the young man said. Then, peering in at Gehringer, “Oh, forgive me, folks. We were just leaving.”
“Stop it, Ridley. This is the room.”
“But there’s nobody here—she’s not here. Come on. Let’s go find her.”
“Ridley.” She held on to the frame of the door, looking behind her at the young man, then she wrenched free and stood unsteadily in the doorway, her hands going through her astonishingly soft hair. With forced dignity, she said to Gehringer, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Mrs. Brill.”
“Nobody here,” the young man was saying. “Anybody can see that.”
“My mother-figure,” the young woman said. She laughed, turning. “Well, I guess I can’t introduce you, Ridley.”
“Come on,” he was saying. “Please. Les’ go the office. Huh?”
“Shhhh,” she said, laughing again. “Drunk in the middle the afternoon.”
They went out into the hallway, and for a few minutes their voices carried back into the room. “Should’ve known not to bring you here—”
“I do have hon’rable intentions—”
“—won’t want to see me for that matter—”
“—marry you and—”
“—won’t like you anyway—”
“You unnerstan’? I’m in love—all truthful hon’rable up an’ up.”
When it was quiet again, with only the faint sound of the brass band in some far room, Gehringer said, “Poor Mrs. Brill.”
His wife went to the doorway and looked up and down the hall. “Gone,” she said.
They waited.
Finally Gehringer said, “I don’t think Mrs. Brill is coming.”
“Maybe she forgot,” said Jason.
Again, they were quiet. The sound of the band stopped. Gehringer stood at the window and watched the slow progress of the light trailing toward the horizon. The undersides of clouds looked like guttering coals. It came to him that these two people waiting here with him were the ones he had sworn his life to, and that in the moments they had all stood under the baldly sardonic leer of the beautiful drunken girl he had felt this acutely, like a jagged pain in his abdomen. He turned and looked at them—Abigail with her frown of concern and her nervous hands, folding and unfolding a handkerchief, and Jason staring at his own knotted fingers on the desk. Abruptly he wanted to reassure them. “Let’s go somewhere tonight,” he said.
They looked at him blankly.
“No matter what happens,” he said, meaning it with all his heart. “Just us.”
“If you want to,” his wife said.
“Sure,” said Jason in a tone that barely missed sullenness.
“It’s settled, then,” Gehringer said, understanding that nothing had been settled at all, but that he could muster the patience to wait for it. “I’m glad you asked me to come along to this conference.”
“Well, how could I know she wouldn’t show up,” Abigail said.
“No,” he told her. “I am glad.”
“The woman sets a time and says she’ll be here and then doesn’t show up.”
“I said I meant it, Gail. I am glad.”
“Well, I don’t see why.”
Now he was rankled. He paced across the room to look at some pictures along the back wall—eighteenth-century men, poets and novelists. Pope, was it? Swift. The names went through his mind, and he wondered if they belonged to the staid, staring faces. Behind him, Jason stirred, and then there were heels clicking on the hard floors of the hall. Gehringer turned in time to see Mrs. Brill enter the room and hurry to her desk, apologizing for the delay, talking about a meeting she hadn’t been able to avoid.
“People have schedules,” Abigail said.
“Yes, I am sorry.”
Gehringer moved to stand with them. Mrs. Brill offered them desks, and in a moment they were seated before her like students. “Now,” she said, rifling through pages on her desk. “Jason, Jason. Here we are.”
“Do you want Jason here for this?” Abigail asked.
The other woman hesitated. “Yes, I think that’s fine.”
“I mean, if there’s something you think we should hear, alone,” Abigail said.
“Well, Jason knows he’s not doing well,” said Mrs. Brill.
Gehringer spoke up. “Jason says you don’t like him personally.”
Mrs. Brill stared at him. “He does?”
“That’s what he says. He says you make him wait to go to the bathroom.”
Now she looked at Jason. “And how is it that I do that?”
“He says you know he has to go, and you make him wait.”
“I see. And how do I know he has to go?” Mrs. Brill rested her left elbow on the desk and put her chin on the folded fist of that hand.
“Jason?” Gehringer said.
Jason shrugged.
“Son?”
“My son doesn’t feel comfortable in the class,” Abigail said. “I think that’s the point.”
“No one feels comfortable in the class,” said Mrs. Brill, “because Jason keeps trying to disrupt it.”
“Now wait a minute,” Abigail said.
“Listen to her side of it,” Gehringer said to his wife.
“You can just stay out of it,” said Abigail.
“Let’s all please calm down,” Mrs. Brill said.
Jason sat staring at his hands.
“Would you like to say something, Jason?” said Mrs. Brill.
“Jason?” Abigail said.
Gehringer stood. “I think we’re wasting time here. It’s obvious, Mrs. Brill, that you’re not ready to deal with my wi
fe, who’s been inclined to jump to conclusions—”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Brill, having apparently jumped to some conclusions of her own. “I have been under some strain lately, yes. But I’m fully ready to talk about Jason.”
Abigail stood. “Come on, Jason.”
“Well,” Gehringer said to Mrs. Brill, “you see? They just won’t listen.” He could hear the anger rising in his voice, moving in his chest. “They take it into themselves and decide, and that’s the end of that.”
“Mr. Gehringer, I have documentation,” Mrs. Brill said. “Please sit down and we’ll discuss this calmly. Mrs. Gehringer, will you please come back and sit down.”
Abigail had moved to the door.
“Can we please discuss this in an adult fashion,” Mrs. Brill said.
“You don’t understand,” Gehringer shouted. “I’m agreeing with you. I’m telling you, you can’t win. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, you can’t win. They’ve stacked the cards on you, and that’s the end of that.”
Now they were all staring at him. Abigail held a handkerchief to her face. Jason had come to his feet.
“Perhaps if you would all like to be alone for a few minutes,” Mrs. Brill said, rising.
“No,” Abigail said, moving to her chair again.
“Aw, Christ,” Gehringer said. “I didn’t mean for this—look. I’m sorry.”
“Please tell me what my boy has done to disrupt your class.”
Mrs. Brill cleared her throat, eyeing Gehringer. “Actually, I thought I’d have Jason tell you himself.”
Abigail had begun to cry. She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief. Gehringer sat down, turned so that he could look from Jason to Mrs. Brill and back again.
“I’ll pay attention better,” Jason said, watching his own nervous fingers. “And I won’t talk out of turn.”
Mrs. Brill nodded, and she made a notation with her pencil on Jason’s folder.
“There have been some tensions at home,” Abigail said, sniffling.
“I understand,” said Mrs. Brill.
Gehringer knew he was the subject of this exchange. “If I’m not needed anymore,” he said, “I’ll wait outside.”
Mrs. Brill was writing on the folder, and Abigail was watching her.
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