Family Matters

by Kitty Burns Florey

  Roger sighed elaborately, with mock pain. “Well, I’ll tell you my news, anyway, in spite of your superhuman powers of resistance. Your pal Simonson is great chums with John Alderman. John’s got your Pope seminar next semester and it’s gone to his head.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I suspect old John, who is a bit of a shit, wouldn’t mind seeing you discredited. This department ain’t big enough for two eighteenth-century specialists, says old cowboy John. It’s her or me, one of us hombres has gotta go. And since cowboy John has only, to my knowledge, published one article in his lifetime—a lame little effusion on Dryden he probably cribbed from one of his graduate students—” Roger shrugged, waving his pipe. “I leave it to you to guess who’d be canned if any canning were to be done.”

  “I don’t know how my pregnancy could advance John’s career. I really don’t see the university firing me for it.”

  “You don’t see it, and I don’t see it, especially since you have tenure and old John doesn’t, but since when is everybody as rational as you and I? And I think that for John your getting caught with something in the oven is only the frosting on the cake—as it were. He’s been a-wantin’ to ride you out of town on a rail ever since your book came out.”

  She refused to be ruffled. “My God, Roger, I’ve got an enemy,” she breathed with reverent sarcasm.

  “A little one. A mosquito,” said Roger, sucking on his pipe.

  Betsy wished she had a pipe for a prop. She finished her champagne instead and asked casually, “You don’t really think I’m in any danger, do you? I mean it doesn’t say in the contract anywhere, does it, that thou shalt not give birth to a bastard while on the job?”

  “Be serious. No court in the country would let you be fired.”

  “Roger, I don’t want to go to court!”

  “Don’t sweat it. Really. These aren’t the Dark Ages, even in Syracuse.”

  “I thought it was Crawford behind the letter.”

  “Crawford?” Roger removed his pipe to laugh. “Crawford Divine adores you! He’d be your little lap dog if you’d only let him. Your big, slobbering lap dog. Lucky you.”

  He filled her glass again and excused himself. “I see my good wife signaling frantically to me for help. She probably can’t get the dancing girls to pop out of the cake.”

  He flashed his smile at her again and disappeared, but his place was taken by other friends. No longer uncertain as to what line to adopt, they treated Betsy with humorous regard. She felt like the erring daughter they were all fond of. It occurred to her that what she knew was termed behind her back “Betsy’s escapade” had enlivened a dull department. It had, after all, been a year since Thisbe had electrocuted herself with a vacuum cleaner.

  Everyone assembled for cake and coffee. Betsy’s heart sank at the pile of presents, but Karen had organized the gift giving, and all the packages contained children’s books. Betsy began opening them, ripping off pink-and-blue paper printed with ducks and puppies. The Wind in the Willows. A Child’s Garden of Verses. Mother West Wind. Winnie-the-Pooh. The Story of Doctor Dolittle.

  “All the favorite books of our childhood—I made everyone sign up, so there’d be no duplicates,” Karen explained, looking pleased, equally, with her organizational efforts and with Betsy’s cries of recognition and delight.

  “All the books we wish our own kids would read instead of watching The Incredible Hulk,” said Roger. He picked up Doctor Dolittle and began to read: “Once upon a time, many years ago—when our grandfathers were little children—there was a doctor, and his name was Dolittle.”

  Betsy began, to her horror, to cry. “Stop, Roger!” She took the book from him and began leafing through it, head bent to hide the tears. “It was my favorite book when I was a kid,” she mumbled in apology. “It sounds so odd, somehow, to hear you read it now.” She couldn’t have explained the effect those few lines from the book had had on her. It was partly that they brought it all back: the oppressed, long, solitary days of her childhood, and the books that had helped push back their boundaries as nothing, not even imagination, could do so well. But it was more than that—any recollection of her childhood brought with it, now, the melancholy shadow of her mother’s dying, and the dread she felt of the darkness that shadow would cast her into.

  “Quiet, everyone!” Roger said loudly. “Dr. Ruscoe will now reminisce about her childhood.”

  Betsy tried to laugh, wiping her eyes on a paper napkin. “I just want to thank you all,” she said. She rested her hands on the stack of books on the table before her, and as she touched them a swift, portentous image came to her, of herself reading through them, late one of these nights, wallowing in morbid tears and despair. She rejected the image, she steeled herself against it. “You’re all too kind,” she said further, when Roger insisted on a speech. “I’m overcome by it. I consider myself very lucky.”

  There was a fusillade of applause, and Roger embraced her drunkenly, but she turned from him and hugged Karen. “It was all your doing, and I’m grateful,” she said.

  “Better books than booties,” Karen replied. Roger, behind her, with his arms around one of his female graduate students, was reciting from A Child’s Garden of Verses, and Karen was averting her eyes so determinedly from the spectacle that it was clear she was wounded—and scarred, too, from old hurts, inflicted perhaps during other futile renegotiations.

  Crawford Divine came in while they were packing up the books in a carton. He had been letting his moustache grow all the autumn, so that he looked like a large, addled walrus. He swayed slightly and spilled half the champagne Karen poured for him, and Betsy saw that he was already drunk.

  “Better late than never, Crawford,” Roger said, smirking at Betsy.

  “You may not know that particular cliché is from the Bible,” Crawford said. “Matthew twenty-one—I forget the verse.”

  “I’ll look it up.”

  “You won’t, but you should.” Even tipsy, Crawford was adept at sailing over sarcasm. “It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of fact at your fingertips.”

  He handed Betsy a package—Mary Poppins in stork paper—and when she kissed him a peck on the cheek in thanks he pulled her to him and aimed for her lips. There was more applause. Betsy struggled away, spilling the rest of Crawford’s champagne, and, to cover his discomfiture, announced that she was exhausted, she had to leave, it was hours past her bedtime. Crawford stood scowling at the rug.

  “Here, Dr. Ruscoe.” Rachel stood at her side with a brimming glass. “Just one more so we can toast you.”

  Betsy took it dutifully.

  “Champagne is really an incredible high,” Rachel said. “I think it’s fantastic when all these academic stuffed shirts let their hair down and really live.”

  “Like Crawford here,” Roger said. “Here you go, Crawford.” Roger handed him a glass and Crawford began sipping, not waiting for the toast.

  Roger raised his glass. “To Betsy and Betsy Junior,” he said in a furred voice. “May they both thrive.”

  “Amen,” Crawford said.

  Betsy drained her glass, feeling they expected her to. It was a mistake. When she set it down, she tottered. She looked around for the medical student. “Is it all right for the baby if I’m ever so slightly drunk?”

  He smiled woozily. “It’s good for the baby,” he assured her. “Best thing for babies.”

  Crawford was at her elbow with a conversation stopper. “When Thisbe was pregnant both times, she gave up the sauce entirely. Of course, she resumed quickly enough afterwards.” He filled the pause with a little chuckle and went on, to Betsy, “If I apologize for grabbing you, can I walk you home? It’s such a beautiful night—”

  His pink, piggy face was amiable again, and Betsy disguised her dismay. She couldn’t insult him twice. “Of course, Crawford.”

  She saw Stephen and Rachel turn away, smiling to each other at the stuffed shirts letting their hair down, and was dimly conscious of the indi
gnity of it all: herself months pregnant, Crawford Divine panting after her, both of them royally drunk.

  Roger left his graduate student and went to get Betsy’s cape. He draped it, with flourishes, over her shoulders while Karen stood by looking sober and aggrieved. “My wife thinks I have had too much champagne,” Roger said to Crawford in a stage whisper. “But the fact that I’m still aware of what she thinks means I haven’t had enough.”

  “I have to agree with Karen,” Crawford said in a prim voice.

  “Well, fuck you, Crawford,” Roger replied genially, and there was uneasy laughter from the students gathered around.

  With dignity, Crawford tied a muffler around his neck and took Karen’s hand. “A very nifty party, Karen. Admirable. Elegant. First class.”

  Karen smiled tremulously at his strange adjectives and wished him and Betsy good night. The expression in her large eyes was both weepy and defiant. Betsy wanted, suddenly, to leave. The house was cursed, first by her ill-starred meeting there with Judd, and now by this rotting marriage, and Karen’s unhappiness, and the four small children asleep upstairs. It all seemed connected: we also would have come to this, she told herself, and gave Karen a last, impulsive hug.

  Crawford insisted on carrying the carton of books. “No problem,” he said, brushing away protests. “No problem.” He held the carton to his chest and glowered over the top of it.

  “Let me drive you,” said Roger at the door.

  “No problem, Roger!”

  Roger shrugged and stepped outside with them. “What can you do with these macho types?”

  Crawford marched warily down the walk with the books. “It was a lovely party, Roger,” Betsy said. “Thank you.”

  Roger kissed her on the lips. Crawford didn’t look back; he stood at the end of the walk, stonily waiting.

  “Betsy?” he called finally.

  She broke away, breathless. “I’m coming, Crawford.” She made a face at Roger—wry, deprecating, chagrined—but it was doubtful he saw it in the dark. She went unsteadily down the path.

  “Take my arm,” Crawford instructed.

  Obediently, she did so, looking back at Roger, but he was just going in, outlined in the light from inside and then cutting it off as the door shut.

  She took several deep breaths and said to Crawford, “It’s cold out.”

  “I suppose it is.” His voice implied that small talk was beneath him. They didn’t say anything else until they got to Betsy’s front porch. Crawford was breathing heavily, and he leaned the carton of books on the porch railing while she fumbled with her key, her breath visible in the light and her nose numb. Through the Brodskys’ front window the television was a pastel square. Betsy wondered if they had waited up for her.

  “It was awfully nice of you to carry those for me, Crawford,” she said, hoping he would dump the carton and leave.

  “I don’t mind.” He climbed the stairs behind her, grunting, and deposited the carton on the floor of the living room. Relieved of his load, he looked pleased, as if he hadn’t known he could do it. “A cup of coffee would be most welcome, however,” he said, gazing around the room with interest.

  “I was just about to offer you one,” Betsy said belatedly. All she could think of was Judd under the same circumstances. She could feel his hands on her still. She shouldn’t have kissed Roger. The nippy air had sobered her, and she knew, with a kind of advance disgust, that she’d feel terrible about it in the morning.

  Crawford looked through her bookcases while she made coffee in the kitchen. When she came in with two mugs, he turned to her and said, “Why do people always do this? Inspect each other’s books?”

  “I suppose they tell us a lot about each other.”

  “It always amazes me”—he sat down on the sofa beside her—“when I catch myself doing something everyone else does. It’s reassuring.”

  Betsy didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk about Crawford and what amazed and reassured him. She wanted him to drink his coffee and go so she could fall into bed.

  “I’m very drunk, Betsy,” he said after he had taken a sip.

  “So am I, Crawford.” The heat of the apartment had, in fact, restored the champagne’s effects. Muzzy, she thought: it was one of her mother’s words. Violet never got tipsy—only a little muzzy.

  “But that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m going to say. Drunk or sober, it wouldn’t make any difference.” Crawford spoke slowly, emphasizing each word, the way he did at department meetings when he was making an announcement. “It’s not the booze talking.” He paused portentously. Betsy didn’t know what to do. She was sure of one thing. Whatever it was he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it.

  “You and I could get married, if you wanted to.”

  It was worse than she’d expected. It was unimaginably bad.

  “I need a wife,” he said. “My kids need a mother. And you—” He smiled sidewise at her. “You could use a husband.”

  “Crawford—”

  “Wait.” He set his mug down carefully and took her hand. “I know I’m considered a figure of fun by some people. I honestly don’t know why. I am, after all, chairman of the English department at a large and respected university. I think of myself as an intelligent, ordinary, hardworking man. That’s all I want to be. I don’t understand why people think I’m pompous or silly. I hope you don’t think it.”

  “I don’t, Crawford,” Betsy said, ashamed of herself because she did. She had never heard him speak so simply. It seemed to be from the heart. But she felt hysterical laughter gather in her.

  “We could be happy, Betsy. I’ve put on a little weight, but I think I could get rid of it if I were happier. I’m a good father. Of course, a father can’t do everything. Children need a mother. And I think you and I, together—”

  She released it, but it wasn’t laughter. It was the torrent of tears she had anticipated when she put her hand on the pile of children’s books, but it was Crawford who released it, not Winnie-the-Pooh or Doctor Dolittle. She put her hands over her face and wept, rocking forward and back.

  Crawford patted her awkwardly and then put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Betsy, it was just a thought.” He cradled her, and she leaned her head on his chest and sobbed harder. She thought she might sit there forever, sobbing, until he started kissing her neck. Then she sat up with a start and moved away from him, but she continued to cry, pressing her two hands to her mouth.

  Crawford sat facing her, looking drunk and sorrowful. “I’m really sorry, Betsy. I’m not doing anything right. Maybe I should have said that I’m very, very fond of you, and have been for some time.”

  She let him hold her again, she felt so sorry for him, but she couldn’t stop the tears, and they streamed down her face onto his sweater. He patted her back, but he didn’t attempt to kiss her again. She tried to set her mind on something neutral, but every aspect of her life struck her as tragic. She reflected that not long ago she had thought herself happy, and she was appalled. Her mother dying, the gossip about her pregnancy spread all over campus, her bastard baby due in a couple of months, her job in jeopardy, her lover gone off with another woman, and now Crawford wanted to make her Betsy Divine, mother of his children and supervisor of his diets. Everything that came into her mind brought fresh tears. Life held no comforts.

  Eventually, she managed to give Crawford his coat and maneuver him toward the door. “I’m sorry, Betsy,” he said again. “I still think it might work out.”

  The tears slipped down her cheeks, and she shook her head back and forth until he turned and went down the stairs. Then she closed the door behind him and sank down on the rug, crying softly. It wasn’t fair, she thought to herself, fully conscious of the childish irrationality of the words: Its not far, its not fair! As if, in the years beyond childhood, fairness ever had anything to do with it. But it’s not, she thought stubbornly (her tears subsiding, and only the sound of crying left), it’s not fair—that the man she wanted
languished in the arms of another woman, while the man she didn’t want carried her books and proposed marriage.

  She would have liked to call Emily and ask her where she’d gotten her strength, but—drunk though she was—she couldn’t bring herself to drag an old woman out of a sound sleep at midnight to listen to her angry woes. She took them to bed with her instead and hugged her pillow for comfort—as, back in her Doctor Dolittle days, she used to hug her doll.

  The semester ended two weeks later—two weeks in which Betsy scurried in and out of the Hall of Languages as if escaping from snipers, arriving as her classes began and disappearing immediately after, avoiding her own office, where Roger could waylay her, and the English department offices, where Crawford lurked. She tried to make herself stop doing it, to face up to life instead of hiding from it, to open herself up to experience for her baby’s sake. “You’ll smother it!” she told herself in her grandfather’s words, but she continued to sneak around, and, at the end of her last exam, she drove to her grandfather’s house to curl up in the chair in Violet’s room and mark papers while her mother dozed.

  As the winter days went by, as the sad Christmas came and went, as the snow piled up like cement along the streets, Betsy spent more and more time in the quiet, dim-lit sickroom. Though Violet’s coming death and Frank’s hostility lodged there with her, it was the place where she felt safe. “It’s ridiculous to drive over here every day on these roads,” her grandfather said one January afternoon, and eventually she brought a suitcase and lived there for days at a stretch, sleeping in her old room with the grieving Virgin and the broken rocker, and spending the days with her mother. She worked on her Boswell article, or she read, or she talked to Terry—or she simply sat, watching her mother sleep. Her grandfather often sat there, too, but across the room, and they seldom spoke. She was very pregnant, and very large. In his presence, her big belly embarrassed her, and she could see that the signs of her pregnancy irritated him. If she, on standing, pressed her hand to the pain in the small of her back, if she kicked off her shoes to ease her swollen feet, if she pushed away her dinner uneaten, he would turn away from her with thinly disguised disgust. His protest against her daily drive in the snow hadn’t, she suspected, been an invitation to move in, but she had willfully interpreted it as such, and she defied him (sitting across the room, watching him across the sleeping form of Violet) to cast her out But she sat with the afghan tucked around her, to hide the evidence of her rebellion against his wishes. “Your great-grandchild!” she pleaded silently, and in vain. “Your own flesh and blood!” He kept his eyes turned from her, and Betsy thought she began to see what Emily had been up against.