City Boy

by Thompson, Jean

“Na. Probably out with some new lucky girl. It must be hard for somebody like Chloe, you know, Miss America, when things don’t work out. She’s not used to it. I mean if you’re beautiful and smart and you always brush your teeth and do your homework, why shouldn’t you live happily ever after?”

  Jack asked if Dex was likely to see or speak to Chloe and Dex said he guessed so. Would Dex tell her that her friend from the poetry class was sorry to hear she was having troubles? He made Dex repeat it. He didn’t feel any confidence that Chloe would remember his name, just as Dex had not, or even if she’d known it to begin with. One more reason having sex that night wouldn’t have been up at the top of the good ideas list. He walked away in a fog of dread and guilt and sweat. Even though what had happened to Chloe had not actually been his fault, he felt at least complicit as a witness. There was nothing he could do for her now, besides hoping she had friends other than Dex.

  That was all Jack heard of her for some time. She did not reappear on campus, or at least he didn’t see her, nor Dex. The semester ground to a halt in May and he went back to California for the summer. He got a job umpiring kids’ park-district softball, just to get out of the house and away from his parents’ increasing fretfulness about his future. Four years of tuition at Northwestern was a lot of money, even for the doctor. Jack was going to be a bum. He could have stayed home and been a bum, it would have been a lot cheaper. Jack said he’d pay back the money, if it was so damned important. (Ha, his father remarked.) Jack said he didn’t care about money, he just wanted to do what made him happy. Well Christ, his father said, terrific, son, but you don’t really seem happy, and Jack had no answer to this.

  It was a relief to go to work and arbitrate disputes among eight-year-olds. (The adults involved were another story.) He was soothed by the green and manicured playing fields, and the moment when the sunset crossed over to twilight and the lights came on, and the simplicity of the game itself. He liked the kids and their kid-sized sorrows and problems, which, now that he was older, seemed easily solvable. He wished he was a kid again just so he could go back and do it right. In the same way, softball, which he’d been largely indifferent to as a child, now appealed to him as a great way to avoid anything more complicated. His life seemed to be taking place in slow motion, like the arc of a ball thrown high for an easy catch.

  He drove home from the games with the radio turned up loud. Sometimes he stopped at a friend’s house and watched movies, or they might head down to Santa Monica or Venice and hang out on the beach. They met girls there and on occasion the girls knew about parties or somewhere else to go, and they’d spend the night together. But even this felt like killing time. He didn’t tell anyone about Chloe, though he and his friends traded war stories about sex. There was no way he could turn her into a joke or something to brag about or even an episode with a definite conclusion. California, his life there now and in the past, seemed much the same way, something left hanging, a ball that never landed, a place where there were no real events, only beautiful surfaces refracted through the glass of car windows. Whatever else happened, he decided, he wouldn’t be coming back here.

  In August he returned to school. Although it was a relief to be in Chicago again, he had no enthusiasm for classes. He was only practicing things he already knew, papers and tests and sitting in chairs. He was simply waiting until he got his degree and would be expected to enter what was archly called the real world. He had used up all the available poetry classes and started in on writing fiction. It was the only part of school he enjoyed. And you could at least pretend fiction would make you money someday, although he didn’t announce it to his father as a career move.

  He might never have seen Chloe Chase again, he wasn’t one to believe in fate or destiny or anything more grandiose than good or bad timing, if he hadn’t agreed to go to a campus lecture with a friend. It was a women’s studies lecture, not the kind of thing he usually went in for, but the girl who wanted him to go—the woman, come on, Jack—told him not to be a total pig, it wouldn’t kill him, he might even learn something. Besides, he never went anywhere anymore, just stayed home wearing a hole in the couch, which Jack had to admit was true. But, he argued, he’d probably be the only male there, he’d feel stupid. “Jack, it’s not lingerie shopping,” his friend said, and he gave in.

  In fact there were a number of men there, looking not at all uncomfortable, but earnest and engaged, like the devout at church. Jack gave up being apprehensive and settled in to be bored. The speaker had a lot of severe things to say about gender roles and acculturization. Her tone was not accusatory, but still Jack felt accused. He listened glumly. There were words like modality and praxis and polysemous, as if to pile enough weight on the subject of sex to immobilize it. Maybe things were better back in the good old pig days, when the war between men and women must have been jollier, or maybe he only felt that way because men got away with more then. The speaker reminded the audience that male dominance was an insidious and pervasive thing, established and protected by powerful economic and social forces. Jack couldn’t decide if he preferred being a mindless pawn or an insensitive boor. It was a relief when the speaker switched to talking about the plight of women in India, in Africa, in Guatemala, places he could hardly be held responsible for.

  After the lecture there was a question and answer session. Jack was amused to note that two of the questions came from men, who were either anxious to demonstrate how enlightened they were, or because, being men, they couldn’t keep themselves from trying to run things. One of them asked if conventional linguistic systems privileged the penis. “Can we go now?” Jack groaned.

  The speaker took a question from the back of the room. The question was scholarly, involved, hedged, and buttressed with serious terms. The voice was Chloe Chase’s.

  Jack edged around in his seat to make sure. The room was an auditorium with seats that rose toward the back so that he was able to see her face in profile, like a cameo. It was her, although she was too far away for him to tell much else about her. His face felt muddy, stiff, as if the blood had congealed in it. His heart flopped around in his chest.

  There was another question, and then a sense of stirring from the audience that marked the end of things. “I have to go talk to somebody,” Jack told his friend, who said, Please don’t tell me you came along just to pick up chicks.

  He was worried that Chloe would get out the door before he could reach her, but she had hung back to talk to a group of people. Jack waited at the entrance and when she finally turned his way and saw him her face was, he imagined, the mirror of his own: blank, frozen, braced as if to absorb a blow.

  She had to pass by him. Her mouth tightened and her eyes skittered away. Jack opened the door for her and bent down so that his voice wouldn’t carry. “Look, I know I’m probably the last person in the world you want to see—”

  She tried to brush past him. “Please,” she said. “Just pretend you don’t know me.”

  “I want to make sure you’re all right.”

  “If I say yes, will you leave me alone?”

  “Yes. No, not unless I believe you.”

  The crowd behind them was pushing them both out into the hall.Chloe walked ahead but allowed him to catch up. Her voice was low as well. “Why do you care how I am?”

  “Come on.”

  “I was horrible to you.”

  “You were having a tough time.”

  “I was a lunatic. I try not to think about it.”

  “You don’t think I feel bad too? Hey, you want to go back inside and get a discussion group going? ‘When gender games go wrong.’”

  She bent her head to root around in her purse, as if there was something in there that could render her invisible. Her hair was pulled tightly back from her face with a clip. She wore a long black sweater, big and shapeless, the cuffs unraveling. She gave the impression of trying to hide inside it. She was still beautiful, she would never be anything else, but her new, subdued aspect hung over her li
ke a veil. He hated that she had been unhappy, hated that he’d had any part in it. She murmured, “I’m sorry about what happened. I said it then, I’ll say it now.”

  “I’d like to get beyond sorry. There’s gotta be a way.”

  One of Chloe’s friends approached, then veered away, sensing trouble. She was on the verge of flight, he knew he had only one chance to find the right thing to say. “I know you’re sorry, let’s, you know, stipulate that. I’m sorry I didn’t behave better myself. But you know what, ever since, it’s like my whole damned life’s been in suspended animation. I can’t even say what’s supposed to happen next with you and me. But if I’d never seen you again, I’d spend the rest of my life wanting to. So kick me in the head or whatever you need to do so I can just get over it.”

  He waited, as he had once before, for her to make up her mind. What he’d said was true, although he hadn’t known it until he’d heard himself speak. His life had stopped, she’d stopped it, he was waiting to see if she would start it up again, give it back to him. He felt almost serene, balanced there between one possibility and the other. My heart was in my mouth, people said, but his heart had come out of his mouth and floated free.

  Chloe said, “You don’t even know me. You don’t know me at all.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “If I started acting like a normal human being, you probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

  Jack smiled and shook his head. She sighed. “All right, so what do you want to do? Is there some kind of plan?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Jack admitted.

  “Well …”

  “We could have ground rules,” he suggested, and when she looked alarmed, he added, “No poetry.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I don’t write like a theorist. You’d have to accept that.”

  “I’m not really attached to that stuff anyway,” she admitted.

  “All disputes to be arbitrated by a panel of prominent feminist scholars.”

  She giggled. Oh lovely sound. “Coffee,” he suggested.

  “It would have to be some other time. I really have to get home.”

  This was slightly disappointing, but Jack told himself it was a part of normal courtship. Normal, that was the ticket. He wasn’t even going to hold her hand without informed consent. “Uh, phone number?”

  “Hold on a minute.” Again she dove into her purse, came up with a pen and a scrap of paper. “Here. Let your fingers do the walking.”

  They both looked away, perhaps remembering where his fingers had been walking the last time they met. Then they laughed, covering it up. “All right then,” Jack said briskly. “I’m gonna go for the clean exit here. Good night, nice to see you again.”

  Chloe said good night also. She seemed relieved. He was too, he had to admit, he didn’t think he could have talked another thirty seconds without catastrophe. He was already walking away when he stopped and turned around. A milling crowd of women took up the space between them, and he had to shout. “Chloe? Do you remember my name?”

  “Why, did you forget it?”

  The crowd goggled at him. He saluted Chloe. Good one. “You’re Jack,” she said. Smiled sideways and waved good-bye.

  Jack’s friend had been watching from a distance. “All right, who is she?” she asked, once they were outside.

  He told her everything. From shame or discretion or both, he hadn’t told anyone before, but now he felt as if a curse had been lifted, as if he’d grabbed hold of the world and beat it in a fair fight. “Go ahead, tell me I’m nuts,” he concluded.

  “You’re nuts. She sounds like a real piece of work.”

  He was annoyed, he hadn’t really meant her to agree with him. “Hey, she was in crisis.”

  “You are already so whipped.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You know one reason I wish I was really really good looking? People are so much more willing to make excuses for you.”

  “And to you I say, phooey.” He felt dangerously happy. He wanted to drive a car too fast or swim for miles in a cold ocean or at the very least stay up all night thinking about her, which was the only real available option. Nothing had happened between them yet and nothing might, he knew that. It was almost beside the point. He was in that exalted, engulfing phase of love and possibility, where hope was just as good as actuality.

  Jack called her the next day. The hell with playing it cool. Her voice on the phone was cautious and a little amused. “So you’re not going away until I go out with you?”

  “Stalker, that’s me.”

  They agreed that they should do something low-key and nonalcoholic. They met at Lake Front Park and walked among the joggers and promenading golden retrievers and Taiwanese soccer players and anyone else lucky enough to have free time on this blazing-warm October day. The air was hazy and the high-rises that lined the shoreline to the south receded into the shimmering distance, resembling some science fiction cityscape on another, less complicated planet. The lake was flat and calm and as they walked they occupied themselves with gazing at it, relieved to have something to look at besides each other. But perhaps because of their history so far, they soon began talking in a way that was nearly intimate.

  Chloe said, “You should have just gone ahead and done it to me. What a miserable girly trick.”

  “‘Done it to you,’ what kind of talk is that? Not to mention all the effort of having to make bail.”

  “I wouldn’t have told anyone. I would have felt too stupid.”

  Jack squawked out a laugh, too surprised to be hurt, but she said quickly, “No, God, I didn’t mean you were somebody … I meant I was the idiot.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Of course I liked you, or I wouldn’t have … Look, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  They both sighed, as if they’d gotten past some important point. Jack turned to look at the blurred horizon of the lake. If you squinted at it hard enough, it resolved itself into separate bands of color, shades of gray, azure, steel blue, black. He tried to comprehend the enormity of it, three hundred miles of water that led you into still other waters. He said, “This is the first time I’ve known I was going to see you. Every other time was a surprise.”

  “Maybe you’d like it better that way. I could just sort of materialize, pitch a fit, then disappear.”

  “No,” said Jack. “I like it like this. Knowing just how long I’ll have to wait.”

  She gave him a blue and startled glance. For a moment he thought he’d gone too far. Then she tilted her head, as if he might make more sense viewed sideways. “Just who are you really, Mister Stranger?”

  He began to tell her. Some of it he’d just figured out himself. He was a man willing to dive in over his head. It didn’t matter where the current led him. And perhaps this was what Chloe sensed about him, that willingness. He talked, she talked. They tested the waters. In the days and weeks and months to come, they could be forgiven for believing the hardest part was behind them.

  Three

  Mrs. Lacagnina had a married daughter who lived in Berwyn. Every Sunday she arrived to take her mother to church and then out to dinner at a cafeteria. The daughter was stout and fiftyish, with black hair polished to a hard shine, and a wardrobe of pastel trouser suits. Jack had seen the two of them negotiating the stairs, the daughter coaxing, overhelpful, Mrs. Lacagnina still bundled in her rug of a coat and head scarf, still wary and silently mumbling. They seemed a perfect representation of the Old World and the New, or how within one generation the antique and wizened might be transformed, might gain flesh and bloom with color. Jack had said hello to the daughter a couple of times but nothing more, hadn’t given her much thought aside from feeling relieved that Mrs. Lacagnina had someone to take care of her, until the daughter arrived at Jack’s door to introduce herself.

  Jack had been having a difficult day. It was a Friday, and Chloe was at the office, and there was nothing but his own contrary self to
blame if he didn’t get any writing done. He’d sat down at eight o’clock with his coffee and the newspaper for the half hour he allowed himself. There was still something fresh and promising about the morning before the clock reached nine and sent the whole world to work. After the paper, he indulged in another of the stay-at-home’s guilty pleasures, checking CNN for Breaking News. Assured (and faintly disappointed) that there were no hostage situations or terrorist attacks in progress, he looked out the front window. Nothing he saw gave him any excuses to procrastinate. Across the street was an apartment building nearly as old as their own but less well maintained, showing signs of slatternly neglect about the awnings and tuck-pointing. Next to that, a yellow brick four flat with a tiny yard fenced in wrought iron and twin urns of geraniums on each side of the front walk. So it went on down the length of four blocks, modest blight next to modest gentrification, until you reached Clark Street and its commercial traffic. It was June, and Jack guessed it was going to be a fine warm day, although the sky was the familiar Chicago no-color. Particulates. You had to wonder just how much you shoveled into your lungs in an average day.

  Finally he picked up his manuscript and began to read. He had thirty pages of a novel, a bare start. The novel was about childhood, childhood being the one stage of life that Jack felt he might have sufficient credentials to write about. Sometimes this seemed like a good idea, other times, like today, it seemed, well, juvenile. Or at least unambi-tious. He’d heard an artist on a television program say that design was more important than execution. If a bad orchestra played Mozart, it was still Mozart. This was what worried him about his novel, that no matter how he shined up the writing itself, no matter how elegant insightful vivid, etc., it would still be in the service of a mediocre idea.

  It was after lunch, he’d written only a few crabbed sentences, he was trying to decide if he should put the work sadly aside for the day or allow himself a tantrum. The problem with computers was that they were too expensive, too much of an investment, to simply pitch them out the window in a fit of pique.