“I suppose if you thought about it you could remember the boots, how they laced up the side, the way they were tooled, the particular purchase they gave to her stance?”
“She stood,” George Mills said, “like someone poised on a diving board. Jenny Greener was plain.”
“Nora wouldn’t let her alone once she found out how smart she was. She kept inviting her over to the house. (She introduced them.) After a while Jenny couldn’t figure out how to turn her down anymore. She had this way of explaining things. Formulas, principles. Better than professors. So that for as long as she could keep Jenny talking even Nora believed she’d get the stuff. She could even give it back, work out the problems, solve them, get round the doglegs and sand traps of architecture, cracking all the difficult ciphers of the discipline Losey had chosen for her. That’s what they talked about. This was their dinner table conversation. Housing, the redevelopment of downtown, the drawbacks of solar.
“And her husband beaming, beaming, ready to bust his buttons. Proud as a pop with a kid on the dean’s list——on the arm at the ball park, management’s, the home team’s straight-A’d, honor-roll’d guest. (Listen, listen, I know how he’d feel! I don’t blame him, I don’t even apologize for him. This isn’t sublimation, reflected glory, suspect, vicarious motive. I’m not talking about pride of ownership, I’m not even talking about pride. Love. I’m talking about love, all simple honor’s good will and best wishes. So I know how he’d feel!)
“Losey may have been having second thoughts. He must have had them. Thinking—I don’t know—thinking, Gee, maybe I made a mistake, maybe there’s something harder than architecture, higher. (Not better paid, because, be fair, he didn’t give a damn whether his wife ever earned back from the profession even half what it had cost him to get her into it in the first place. What could he do with more money? Figure new ways to hide it? He was still busting his hump on the old ways, which, face it, be fair, were only his accountant’s ideas anyway, only the tried and true evasive actions of sheltering dough. Because he’s right. When he says ‘You know me, Cornell, it isn’t the money.’ He’s right, it isn’t. It’s just another way of having and doing what others in those brackets have and do.) Thinking: Gee, maybe I should have pushed her into astronomy, aeronautical engineering. Maybe I should have run her for governor.
“Till that damned letter came. It was addressed to Losey. It could have been an honest mistake. It could have been the chairman’s joke; I hope it was Nora’s. But it was actually very nice, very sympathetic and concerned. Like those letters company commanders write next of kin when the news is bad.
“It said that while Nora gave every indication she was trying, really trying, and was extremely cooperative and obviously bright, and, oh yes, especially gifted as a draftsman and quite clearly imaginative, there was this problem with her math, this basic flaw on the scientific side. He was sorry, he said, but he was afraid that if she couldn’t bring that part of it up, Dr. Losey, his daughter was in danger of going on academic probation.
“Losey was furious. ‘Does that son of a bitch actually think I’m old enough to be your father?’
“But be fair, give him credit. He would get her a tutor. She could bring up her statics and dynamics, she could bring up her knowledge of mechanical systems. She was extremely cooperative and obviously bright. Even that pompous prick of a chairman thought so. He’d get a licensed architect to help her, maybe a partner in one of the big firms downtown. He’d pay his fee, whatever those highway robbers charged when a house was commissioned. She wasn’t to worry. All she had to concentrate on was bringing up her axonometrics and isometric projections.
“ ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me earlier maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
“I’m not her confidant. I’m not even his. I mean he won’t talk about this stuff. I had no idea either. If I asked how Nora was doing in architecture school he’d mumble something vague and tell me all about some doctor’s wife he’d screwed in the islands.
“She told Judy. Judy told the Meals-on-Wheelers. The Meals-on-Wheelers told me. I tell you.
“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘spilled milk. I’ll ask around. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll speak to the head of the architectural firm that’s doing our hospital annex.’
“ ‘Jenny Greener,’ she said.
“ ‘Jenny Greener?’
“ ‘Only she’s already working for you.’
“ ‘Working for me?’
“ ‘I pay her to explain the stuff. I pay her to eat supper with us.’
“ ‘Jenny Greener? The mutt?’
“ ‘She’s the head of our class. She’s the one with the grade point average. She’s the one you want.’
“She was right of course. But he didn’t trust her now. How could he? She’d kept everything to herself. All he knew was what he’d heard at the dinner table, and now he thought all the bright chatter was just some scam.
“So he checked up on her. On Jenny Greener. He called the chairman and told him he was Dr. Losey.
“ ‘Who’s top of that class?’
“ ‘Our students’ records are confidential, Dr. Losey. I’m sure you can understand that.’
“ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’m so concerned about Nora. I thought maybe if I talked to him he could give her some tips. Maybe not. I guess you’re right. Maybe women just don’t have it in the thinking department, maybe they’re just not cut out to be architects. I guess you have to accept them. Some affirmative action thing.’
“ ‘We don’t have to accept anyone,’ the chairman said. ‘Women do quite as well as men.’
“ ‘Sure,’ Losey said. ‘I guess you were only kidding when you wrote that letter about Nora. I’ll tell her you said she’s a shoe-in. That you don’t put girls on academic probation.’
“ ‘As a matter of fact, Doctor,’ the chairman said, steamed, ‘it’s a “girl,” as you put it, who’s head of that class.’
“But he wouldn’t say which girl so Losey still didn’t know.
“He got the names of her teachers and saw them during their office hours. He’d mention Jenny Greener and their eyes would light up. ‘Jenny Greener,’ one prof said, ‘Jenny Greener’s a genius.’
“ ‘A genius? Really? A genius?’
“And another told him she was the most promising student he’d ever had. And one showed him sketches. They were plans for the hospital annex. Even Losey could see how beautiful they were.
“ ‘Beautiful?’ the man said. ‘This is an actual project you know. Many of the problems we set for our students are. This is being built. Oh, I don’t mean this, I don’t mean Jenny’s, but the building, the building’s already under construction.’ The professor laughed softly. ‘Though they would have done better to use Jenny’s plans. I told McTelligent.’ McTelligent was the name of the head of the firm of architects, the one Losey was going to speak to. ‘Not only more beautiful but more cost-effective too. Do you know anything about materials?’
“ ‘I’m a surgeon,’ Losey said.
“ ‘Then perhaps you’d be interested in these,’ and showed him sketches of the new operating theaters. ‘What’s your professional opinion?
“ ‘I’m sorry,’ the professor of architecture said, ‘I didn’t quite hear you.’
“Because he was swallowing so hard. Because his pulses were pounding. Because his heart rate had taken away his voice.
“ ‘I said they’re revolutionary,’ he said.
“He showed Jenny the chairman’s letter. And even made his proposal in front of Nora. Because he knew they were friends, and because he certainly knew a thing or two about the strategy of seduction and that’s what he was up to now. So he asked in front of Nora.
“ ‘You can see how it is,’ he told her. ‘My wife’s flunking out.’
“ ‘I understand, Mr. Losey. Some of these things are awfully difficult. I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to the basics. I should never have ag
reed to be her tutor. I’d like to return the money.’
“ ‘Are you saying Nora’s too stupid to learn? I thought you were friends.’
“ ‘We are friends,’ Jenny said. ‘We are friends. Nora knows that. She’s my best friend,’ she said. ‘I love Nora. I feel terrible about this.’
“Which was what he’d counted on of course.
“And slapped the side of his head. ‘Do you think I showed you that letter because we want to fire you? On the contrary, Miss Greener. What you say makes perfect sense. She does need more preparation in the basics. That’s what the fellow says in his letter. That’s what we’re asking of you. We don’t want to fire you. We want to hire you full time. It was silly of Nora to think you could do the job on an hourly basis.’
“ ‘Full time?’ she said. ‘I’m going to school myself.’
“She was a scholarship student, from Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He’d learned that at the university. But all he really had to do was look at her. Her frumpy clothes and hick hairdo. Her country girl’s astonishment in his gorgeous house.
“ ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘I’m gone much of the time. Nora gets lonely. She doesn’t complain much, but she does.’
“ ‘I know,’ Jenny said.
“ ‘Then you know she’d like you to move in with us. You’re the architect. You can see for yourself we’ve plenty of room. We’d still pay you, of course. I couldn’t think of it otherwise.’ He’d been prepared to name an outrageous sum, almost as much as the fee he said he’d pay that now not-so-hypothetical architect to design a house, but something in Jenny’s face told him she’d turn that down flat and walk out. So he actually lowered the hourly rate she’d already been getting. ‘And your own work comes first. That goes without saying. But if you could see Nora through …’
“Nora didn’t speak out because she figured it was her only chance. Thinking—I don’t know—thinking, The bastard, the bastard! Maybe he could make me a hairdresser, a hostess in restaurants, a girl at the checkout, a clerk in a store. Thinking, Maybe she can see me through. Maybe she’s the only one who will.
“He never so much as kissed her. (The family, the family comes first.) He never said anything out of the way. If he ever tried to get fresh I don’t think she knew it. At the time knew it.
“One night, after dinner, Nora was in the kitchen. Jenny was clearing the dessert dishes. She had leaned down to take Losey’s and he put his hand on her arm. Not even his hand. Some fingers. ‘I’ve seen your sketches of the operating rooms,’ he said in a low voice so his wife wouldn’t hear. ‘I think you may have some respect for my judgment as a surgeon. They’re wonderful. The best I’ve ever seen,’ he told her passionately.
“So that’s where it stands.
“She’s still on probation but her grades have improved. She’ll never make Dean’s List but she’s still hanging on. But she isn’t a dummy. She can read the handwriting on the wall. Both of them can. All three of them. She may even get her degree, but that’s not what it says.
“He’s in greater demand than ever but he doesn’t travel so much as he used to. He turns down invitations. He stays home more. He’s writing, publishing papers. He likes to sit in his study while the women are off in theirs. (He’s converted one of their six bedrooms into a study for Jenny.) He likes to sit there, thinking about the future, thinking about the time she graduates next spring and the divorce has gone through.
“Thinking, They can do wonders with hair. With exercise and cosmetics. With diet, haute couture. Under their tans, behind their high fashions and starved, high-relief cheekbones, those broads in Barbados I went down on and vice versa might have been frumpy as Jenny once. As inexperienced as she probably is in bed.
“Because he really is a surgeon. Anything can be excised. Anything put back. He can sew on your fingerprints, he can take out your germs. Everything is remediable. It better be. Everything is remediable or your patient dies. She’ll just need some coaching.
“It’s a griefhouse, George. It’s a goddamn griefhouse. I can almost hear them, make out the tripled, separated weepings of the house’s tripartite griefs. Grieving for status, grieving for lifestyle. Grieving for bastards, for fops of collusion, for paste assholes. Mourning best friends and all fall guys.”
Messenger paused. Then said what George expected him to say. “The horror, the horror, hey Mills?”
“Yes,” George Mills said. “Yes!”
Messenger, enhanced, was sitting in Mills’s living room weeping when George came in.
“Hey,” George Mills said, “hey now. Hey don’t.”
Cornell looked up, surprised. He wiped his eyes with his fingers, licked them. “You know that’s delicious?” he said.
“I know,” Mills said.
“You lick your tears, George?”
“I chew my nails. I nibble the hair on my arms.”
“Really?”
“Millses have always had pica.” (Because he was interested now. Because Messenger had him. As he’d had Louise the first time he opened his mouth. And whatever might become of his own battered case, he was interested in theirs. Enough to talk, to tell him of his.)
“In me under control, arrested, marked down. But, you know, still there. I still have a piece of this sweet tooth in my mouth.”
“This sweet tooth, George?”
“A loose appetite sort of.”
“Clay? You eat chalk?”
“The flavor’s okay. I don’t care for the texture.”
“You’re a connoisseur.”
“Certain flowers, the stems on fruit. Newsprint. Erasers.”
“I chewed erasers,” Cornell said.
“No no, from the blackboards. I’d lick dust from their fur.”
“Better than a connoisseur. You’re a gourmet.”
“I sucked on stones. When I could get it I put sand in my mouth.”
“When you could get it?”
“You know, still wet. After the tide had gone out. A sand bouillabaisse. When I was a kid. Most all of this when I was a kid. Not now not so much.”
“You don’t do this stuff now?”
“I watch what I eat. Sometimes I binge. You know, fall off the wagon.”
“You’re not kidding me now?”
“No. I’m not kidding.”
“Well, what do you eat?”
“I eat cigarette ash. I like to get the juice out of cotton.”
“Are you kidding me, George?”
“No,” he said, “I already said. Not now not so much.”
“A meat-and-potatoes man,” Messenger said.
“Only the gristle, only the peels.”
Messenger watched him through his still red, still puffy eyes.
“Rust,” George said wistfully, “I used to like the taste of rust. And rotten, discolored wood from trees fallen in forests.”
“That’s good?”
“Brown water in puddles. Autumn leaves like a breakfast cereal. Sweat like a summer drink.”
“Insects? Dead birds?”
George Mills made a face. “No, of course not,” he said. “Things only declined from the ordinary sweets and seasonings, things gone off, the collapsed cheeses, sour as laundry.”
“You’re pulling my leg,” Messenger said.
“This is how I used to be. It’s mostly all changed. I like stale bread. I don’t really mind it when the milk turns, the butter. A hint of the rancid like a touch of hors d’œuvre.” And then, already missing his own old straight man’s circumstances, “You were crying.”
“Me?” Messenger said, his nose and eyes still a little swollen. “Hell no.”
“You were. You were crying.”
“I was making lunch.”
“Is it Harve?” George Mills asked. “Were you crying about Harve?”
“Harve’s my kid,” Messenger said. “I don’t talk about my kid.”
“All right,” George Mills said.
“Fourteen his last birthday,” Messenger said
.
“Yes,” George Mills said, and sat back.
“He doesn’t get the point of knock-knock jokes.”
“No,” George Mills said, and felt stirrings of appetite, his pica curiosity making soft growls in his head.
“I’m no woodsman,” he said. “I can’t tie a fly, I don’t know my bait.”
“No,” George Mills said.
“I can’t build a fire or assemble a toy. I haven’t much, you know, lore. I was never much good at the father-son sports. We don’t go out camping. I don’t take him to circuses or watch the parades. We don’t tan shirtless in bleachers or root for the teams. He doesn’t sip from my beer. I can’t name the stars, I don’t show him the sky. We didn’t play catch. I never taught him to ride. We didn’t do float trips or go to the zoo.
“I like to wrestle, show him the Dutch rub, Indian burns, but the kid thinks I’m angry. His eyes fill with tears.
“I don’t, you know, I don’t set an example. I don’t teach him, well, morals. Whatever it is they say has to start in the home—respect, I don’t know, good manners, how you have to appreciate the value of a dollar, that sort of thing—never started in ours.”
Uncle Joe, Mills thought, he means Uncle Joe.
“Fourteen years old and he doesn’t get the point of damned knock-knock jokes!
“I thought we’d go on a trip. This was a couple of years ago. I thought I’d take him on a trip. Just the two of us. We’d just load up the old bus … I mean the car, we’d drive in the car. We’d stay in motels. We’d order from room service. I had to promise we’d stay in a place with a Holidome.”
Mills looked at him.
“You know. One of those places, they’re enclosed, like a penny arcade. It has a swimming pool, it has a whirlpool and sauna, it has indoor-outdoor carpeting, it has swings and seesaws, computer games.”
Mills nodded.
“I had to promise. Otherwise he wouldn’t come. I had to promise to give him money for the machines. I had to promise he could choose what we’d watch on TV.
“We wouldn’t wait for a weekend. We’d make it special, go during school.
“I woke him at six. ‘We’ll catch breakfast on the highway,’ I told him. He was very cranky. He went to sleep in the back.
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