Disciples

by Austin Wright

  Uncomfortable in the overheated bus, unable to do anything but wait, he tried to remember Lena better. There was a stain on her memory if he could remember it. Two summers of love in Sherwood Forest between college years—one and a half actually because of the breakup. The rest of the year they lived at their respective colleges, writing love letters and being faithful. Her family was new in Sherwood Forest and she was new, they were new, the summers were new, full of aura. Full of electric sex that he called love and she passion, as yet unconsummated moving step by step on a certain inevitable course until she broke it off short for reasons old Harry could not remember. The stain was what he couldn’t remember, something about how she broke it off in a huff but no memory of what the huff was about. She left in the middle of the summer without warning, a trip to Europe with her mother on a week’s notice or something like that, which made him mad. To old Harry her trip seemed understandable (if her mother wanted to take her why shouldn’t she go?) making young Harry look petulant, though in fact it was the end, since afterwards she went straight back to college where she met this lab instructor who was really something. Clark. That was his name, Clark, disclosed in the apologetic letter she eventually wrote. When you say the word fickle, the person Harry thinks of is Lena.

  In the three weeks since her new letter his stale old memory twitched into life. Associations brought things back, like how she cried about having to go. They sat in her mother’s big old-fashioned parlor with the antique chairs, and she burst into tears. I have to go to Europe with my mother. I’ll never see you again. She can’t go without me. I have to go because it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, Lena said while she sobbed, because how can you pass up the opportunity to see Notre Dame de Paris and the Eiffel Tower with your mother when you’re only nineteen? She got huffy only when he complained. What, are you saying I should pass up this opportunity just to stay here with you? So what did she mean about never seeing him again? Irony, exaggeration, frustration, that’s all, except it turned out to be true, she never did see him again, because of Clark.

  The idea occurred to him even then that she was being whisked off to get away from him, because things were getting too hot. It seemed plausible then and fifty years later it still seemed plausible. In the bus the old narrative woke up like a sleepy tiger, remembering a promise she made. The night before her departure, parked in her car off a country road at the edge of woods in middle Westchester. Things got worked up and she said, If you go to the drugstore tomorrow I promise. Tomorrow night, she said. His memory was distinct, it’s the kind of thing you don’t forget, and it happened on the night before she went to Europe. Then she reneged. Now that’s odd. How could she make such a promise on their last night if there was not to be another night? So it was not the last night but the second to last. Then how did she renege? Apparently—yes—she canceled the last night, the promised one. She couldn’t go out with him that night, why? because she had to pack of course, what did you suppose? She had to pack, therefore no last date, only (remembering now) a short trip over to her house in the middle of the evening to interrupt her packing and say goodbye, which he remembered as awkward in the entrance hall of their big warm clock-filled house. Forgetting the promise made in the forgetting that before you go to Europe you’ve got to pack.

  That was the end of the love affair between Harry and Lena. Postcards from London and Paris, sometimes a letter. Back to college, and the letters grew scarce. A letter told why she wasn’t coming home for Christmas. Another told him about Clark. She stopped answering his letters, then wrote a long emotional one hoping Harry would find another woman with whom he could be as happy as he had been with her.

  Her mother and father, who had moved into Sherwood Forest two years before, moved away. He didn’t know where Lena went. If she had married Clark or somebody else or gone into an asylum or died. Fifty years later she found him accidentally in a magazine in the dentist’s office, pure luck. It was crazy to go to Anchor Island on the basis of so little.

  But the bus goes where it says it goes and there is no way to stop it. Kidnapped. Who’s kidnapping me? he thought. Hijacked by the choice he had made in a moment of impulse, by his own mind implemented by the bus driver. The driver chose what routes they took, how fast they went, which cars they passed, when to slow down, shuttling Harry across geography as he willed. Kidnapped by Lena, who had been kidnapped to Europe by her mother and hijacked by Clark. He had kidnapping on his mind. It occurred to him in everything that came up.

  A few minutes before nine Harry got off at a steamboat dock smelling of fish, with the lighted island steamer coming in to land. Making it impossible to change his mind now. Though there was a bus to New York waiting on the dock the impossibility was as strong as manacles and chain. The boat was coming fast. Ignoring the pain in his chest and arm, he went to the telephones, found the Anchor Island phone book. He hoped she was not listed but there she was, L F Armstrong, the same address as her letter. He paused to breathe deeply, if this was the heart attack scheduled for him. He put in his quarter. The wind blew the sound of automobiles and baggage wagons around the dock. He punched the buttons, heard the ringing of Lena’s phone, while the angina subsided.

  Somebody’s voice, Hello?

  This is Harry Field.

  Harry? Harry Field? My God, Harry Field. Where?

  At the ferry dock in New Dover.

  You came to see me?

  Well. He was passing by, just wanted to give you a call.

  Will you come over on the ferry? Will you stay here?

  Better to stay in a hotel if there is a hotel.

  The Anchor Inn, I’ll get you a room. I’ll meet your boat.

  The voice had a masculine edge he didn’t remember. Age. He couldn’t remember Lena’s voice.

  He boarded the ferry and went to the forward upper deck to look out. Black dark with lights allocated according to a code of some kind, he couldn’t figure out what he was seeing. In a few minutes the true Lena would replace a fifty-year old icon whose paint had peeled. Proximity ignited the still mostly moribund memory like the phoenix, he was surprised how it leaped up. The country road, the parked car tilted on the soft dirt shoulder towards the woods. His hand under her skirt, warm thigh and a hot spot, and her fingers finding him, all in the dark. I can’t stand it. Me neither. If you go to the drugstore tomorrow. Tomorrow? I promise. Forgetting that she had to pack.

  Remember now how they met, going to summer school in New York, the same class, a coincidence. A literature class taught by Professor Oblong, the name comes back. They commuted on the local train, changing to the elevated at a station called Marble Hill. He noticed her in class before he realized she was from Sherwood Forest. She sat in front, looking young and shy with soft brown hair and a white collar lapped over her sweater. He couldn’t remember where he had seen her before. Then when he saw her on the platform at Marble Hill he realized where. You’re in Professor Oblong’s class. And you live in Sherwood Forest too? My name is. Henceforth they went together on the train and subway every day. They talked about Professor Oblong. His analytical mind, his well-articulated insights, his kindness. Professor Oblong was the first bond between them.

  She looked clean and well tended, more short than tall, a thin face with a thoughtful look. She wore a gray flannel skirt and a sweater, changing to white shorts on afternoon outings. He would climb the hill to her house, big on the hillside under two oak trees, and they got in her car and went places. The beach. Bear Mountain. Hikes in the woods, she in her shorts. Her parents belonged to a country club, they threw parties. A new world for him. Summer dances with a band, trumpet and saxophone riffs in the dusky air over the parking lot around the pavilion. Her evening dress, black with a frill, the red corsage he gave her from the florist, and the act of dancing, her forehead on his chin. He wore white pants which his mother ironed and a navy blazer with gold buttons. The glamor dried up long ago but it came back now from thinking. The center from which it radiated was the upstai
rs playroom of her big house where they spent afternoons left to themselves. He lolled around reading magazines, listening to records. She played Chopin on the upstairs piano, the easier nocturnes and preludes with nostalgia for times before he was born and people never known, mourning the tragedy of life. Her playing was clunky and schoolgirlish, but who cares? The tragedy of life was full of the excitement of approaching sex, one careful step after another. The sex peeped out through their shared admiration for Professor Oblong. After Chopin, Harry lay on the floor of the upstairs playroom, she lay beside him and they talked about Professor Oblong. They signed up for another course from him the second summer. He was even more amazing than before, so amazing they temporarily vowed to make literary study their career.

  This devotion to Professor Oblong proved they were serious. It enabled them to do things to each other without feeling crass or wanton. Later, after Harry became Professor Field, it was hard to remember what was so great about Professor Oblong. He became obsolete, but originally he justified their curiosity about what was inside each other’s clothes. Their shared admiration of him made that curiosity respectable. They called it love, passion, as they found the things they were looking for bit by bit, not to rush anything. They didn’t go all the way, but they talked about it and meanwhile went part way. Then a little further. They went in outdoor places, or in her car, or in the woods or in the upstairs playroom. They went further until there was not much left though it was still not all the way. They talked about where they were going. Talk to me about what you want to do. But we better not. Later maybe. Then came that night in the middle of the second summer, beside the country road where I can’t stand it, and she said, Tomorrow, I promise.

  Someone was against them, that too came back in the memory surge, though he couldn’t remember who, only the vague remembered feeling that he had enemies struggling to possess the mind of Lena Fowler. Then her mother whisked her away to Europe before she could fulfill her promise, which either proved or did not prove he was right about enemies.

  The ferry trip was short. A cluster of people on the floodlit dock. A woman waved, greeted him at the gangplank, he didn’t recognize her. She had flaring dyed red hair and a long horse-like face, ravaged. Lena?

  Harry? You haven’t changed a bit.

  He was surprised he had never noticed the horsey potential when she was Lena. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a lion on it. She came up to be kissed. She smelled of onions and the kiss was brief.

  You came.

  Passing through.

  She took him to the Anchor Inn where he checked into a room light and plain like a room in the country. It had a view of the harbor lights, where the ferry in its dock blocked out the darkness. She took him to a seafood restaurant for a drink and late snack. He looked for the Lena he remembered in the Lena she had become. She laughed more than she used to. She wasn’t shy any more. She was full of opinions. She said how good his horoscope was for this meeting, which shocked and disappointed him thinking, That’s the end of you Lena, but he was ashamed of that thought and did not speak. How widely they had diverged. It made him uneasy to be looked at so admiringly. She murmured, I remember, I remember. He indicated that he was happily married. My wife, he said. Barbara. She’s in California helping her mother get used to her father’s death. I’ve just been to New Hampshire with my daughter and her baby. I’ll tell you about that.

  He had an odd feeling she wasn’t listening. I remember, I remember, she said.

  What do you remember? Lots of things.

  I’m a widow, she said. Homer died five years ago. I’ve developed an interest in everything. She took his hand across the table. Faithful to Barbara, he took it back. I remember, she said. You were my first lover. Boy, were you good. She looked old and wild. Guess what I’m remembering.

  What?

  Guess.

  I don’t know.

  I’m remembering how good you were.

  What do you mean, good?

  You were my best lover. Homer was nice, a good husband but he didn’t have your touch.

  Harry was amazed because it hadn’t occurred to him her memory could deceive her on this of all points. It was never consummated, Lena, he said. He tried to say it gently.

  What are you talking about?

  It never happened.

  What do you mean it didn’t happen? You were great. All my life I’ve remembered those nights.

  He didn’t know what to say. He saw her disappointment like the ferry going aground in the dark.

  You say it didn’t happen? He didn’t reply.

  We must rectify that, she muttered. Almost inaudible, is that what he heard? No, he thought violently thinking Barbara’s worst fears, but not sure what to say since she said it so low.

  She turned her face and smiled and said, Oh well, thereby turning into Lena exactly as remembered except for the bulldozing of her face. What happened to us? she said.

  Don’t you remember?

  I met somebody. Clark, that’s who. He was good too.

  You went off to Europe in the middle of the summer and that was that.

  So I did. Europe, I remember that, she said delighted like a child. You were furious.

  I got over it.

  She sat there looking at her past, and it made her laugh. Alice Trent, she said. I haven’t thought of her in years.

  What, Alice Trent? That was a name like an explosion out of a crypt bricked up by Edgar Allan Poe. Unpleasant associations, full of menace though nothing specific yet. Who was Alice Trent?

  She’s the reason I went to Europe. That was so funny.

  Funny, was it funny? He remembered Alice Trent, her mother’s musical friend. The short trim woman in her forties, with dark eyebrows, a rouged complexion, a cigarette, a knowing look, who played the piano. Who was always there. While they enjoyed each other in the upstairs playroom they would hear her music floating up from the downstairs piano. Sometimes the music would stop, which made them nervous. She appeared unexpectedly through doors and whenever she looked at Harry there was a bit of a smile not wholly friendly like I know what you’re up to. Once she discovered them more exposed than they should be. Button up kids, she said, the folks are on the way. This would make you think she was on their side, but she made him uncomfortable. He didn’t think she was on his side.

  Actually he hated Alice Trent, mainly because Lena thought she was so wonderful. She’s the model of what I want to be, Lena would say. He was ashamed of his dislike because he thought it came from his vanity, wishing she thought him as wonderful. But then she told him about the advice Alice Trent was giving her and it was mostly against him. She says we must not let ourselves get more steamed up than we already are, Lena said. Well for Christ sake how steamed up did you say we were? I told her the truth, Lena said. You told her we did this? Uh-huh. And Alice Trent advised us to stop? Well what else could she advise? We should exercise, ride bikes and go on hikes, outdoors, things with friends. She’s not a pill, she’s a sophisticated woman of the world, she knows a lot more about life than you do, and her advice was take my time before getting too entranced over any man including you. As for sex, according to Alice Trent, what young girls think is going to be so great, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It’s a crude exercise, Alice Trent told her. You’ll be happier if you postpone it. Some women never need it at all and it’s natural to feel disgusted and humiliated. Especially humiliated, Alice Trent told Lena (and Lena passed on to Harry). It’s different for a woman from what it is for a man.

  One day near the end Alice Trent got tough. You’re heading for trouble girl, she said. You’ve got to stop it. Curb his selfish appetite. More, worse. She told Lena that Harry didn’t love her. Never mind what he tells you, a young man that age is not capable of love. The sex urge is too strong, he can’t think of anything else. What he’s got is lust, what he wants is sex, that’s what you mean to him, and you mustn’t believe him when he calls it love.

  No wonder he thought
of her as his enemy. He tried his best but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t lust because it was. He fought for his self-respect, trying to find a way to fit lust into self-respect, and when Lena made her promise that very night after telling him of Alice’s warnings, he thought he had won, and when she reneged the next and final night, he was bitterly not surprised. All of which he remembered now that Lena herself admitted Alice Trent was the cause of their breakup fifty years ago. I knew it, he said. What’s funny about it?

  The futility, Lena said.

  What futility?

  Everybody trying to protect somebody from the malign influence of somebody else so they can exert their own malign influence. It’s a universal truth.

  What malign influence do you mean?

  Why I went to Europe. You knew why, didn’t you?

  Knew what? Why you went to Europe?

  You didn’t know that while Alice Trent was trying to protect me from sex, Daddy was trying to protect Mother from Alice Trent?

  What?

  This was exciting, the possibility of learning news fifty years old with Lena polishing the gleam of gossip that made her shine like the horsey old sun. And even though it was fifty years dead the narrative tension (or something else) made Harry’s weak old heart pound as he waited to hear like the news of the day. What are you talking about?

  My father sent my mother to Europe with me to rescue her from Alice Trent, Lena said. Alice Trent had my mother under a spell like Svengali, is that who I mean, Rasputin, is that the one, Diaghilev? Alice Trent was having an affair with my mother is what I mean. (Really?) When Daddy found out, he blew his stack. His gasket, whatever it is men blow.

  You never told me about that.

  I was embarrassed in those days. But that’s why we went to Europe if you didn’t know.