by Amanda Cross
“My dear Leo,” Kate said, “you are as incurably urban as the rest of us. Each of those boys has a family simply longing to devour any available morsel of gossip. Last week, Reed, five miserable adolescent boys cracked up in a particularly nasty accident down the road; they must have been going eighty miles an hour, and the car was literally cut in half. Do you know, for two days the locals came from miles around to view the scene of the wreckage. The man whose property it was had to put up ‘No Parking’ signs, and only the summer people saw anything unusual in this behavior.”
“I agree with you about the rifle all the same,” Emmet said. “One is always reading about people being shot by accident with innocent rifles. I categorically deny the innocence of rifles.”
“If a rifle has no bullets,” William, who seemed to take this as a personal challenge, replied, “you might be able to kill someone by hitting him over the head with it, but you certainly can’t shoot anyone. It’s an excellent outlet for Leo.”
“Shooting with an empty rifle?” Mr. Mulligan asked.
“It’s got a telescopic lens,” Leo hastened to explain, before William could grab the ball and run with it. “I sight through the lens and learn to hold it steady when I pull the trigger. William’s promised he will take me for rifle practice at the end of the summer. Of course, nothing happens when you pull the trigger, but sitting’s fun. There’s a man down at the farm who shoots woodchucks miles away, and never misses. Well, yards anyway,” he added, catching Kate’s eye.
“How can you be so certain there are no bullets about?” Reed asked.
“Oh, dear,” Kate said. “We just found the gun in the barn; the gardener made sure it was quite empty, and I think he oiled it up a bit. Leo has most solemnly sworn not to touch a bullet with as much as a fingernail if he finds one, and I have looked pretty thoroughly and there really aren’t any bullets around that I can see. Now you’ve immersed me in the midst of an awful qualm. But I don’t really know very much about boys, and it does seem one is being spinsterish and antimasculine to refuse guns altogether; I have insisted that no one can, while under my roof, shoot a living thing, and that’s probably ladylike enough.”
“Why practice with a gun if you can’t shoot anything, even in the distant future?” Mr. Mulligan asked.
“Well, Leo and William both assure me it will be rewarding to shoot at targets. I must say I don’t approve of shooting at Mary Bradford, all the same. Impossible she no doubt is, as I am the first to admit, but ought you really, Leo, be aiming to kill even with an empty rifle? It does seem a bit in defiance of the spirit of the ruling, if not the letter.”
“You’re probably right,” William said. “But I get up early with Leo” (“Damn early,” Reed muttered) “and he likes to practice aiming in the mornings, and there, right before our eyes, simply begging to be aimed at, so to speak, was Mary Bradford. There she is, you know, every morning, yelling her head off.”
“What on earth is she doing at five-thirty in the morning?” Reed asked. “Collecting dew-bespeckled toads?”
“Bringing in the cows to be milked.”
“I do hope she doesn’t see you aiming at her,” Kate said. “Whatever Mary Bradford may be, we should maintain certain standards of decorum, should we not?”
“But she can’t see us, Aunt Kate,” Leo assured him. “In the first place, we’re well hidden, what you might call ambushed. And then she doesn’t expect to see anyone up at that hour, because all city slickers sleep till all hours she always says. And she makes so much noise yelling at those cows, you’d never believe. And some of the things she calls them. One morning . . .”
“Leo!” William’s voice, together with a glance of the most ferocious aspect, caught Leo and transfixed him.
“My dear Leo,” Emmet said. “Should Miss Fansler care to know what Mary Bradford says in the morning, she has recourse to the simple expedient of arising at that hour and listening. Meanwhile, I’m sure you will agree that to report in detail would be neither enlightening nor decorous.”
“If she’s that fascinating,” Mr. Mulligan remarked, “I shall make a point of getting up to listen to her myself.”
“Perhaps,” Emmet said, “we ought to give a cow-catching party, coffee and vituperation, come in your nighties, and prepare to be shocked into a state of total wakefulness.”
“Mr. Artifoni says,” Leo remarked, “that shock is one of the most dangerous states following an accident. That’s why it is so important to be careful, when there’s been an accident, to . . .”
“Mr. Artifoni, I take it,” Mr. Mulligan said, “is the local oracle in charge of the camp up the road.”
“He is,” Kate answered, “and there are moments when the convenience of having the A.B.C., as it is called, for Leo’s sake, is distinctly overbalanced by the impact, not only of Mr. Artifoni’s remarks, which are of course intelligent and helpful, if likely to apply to rather special situations”—Kate smiled at Leo—“but by the impact of seventy boys. Whenever I see a group of boys together I fear for the future of humanity. That no doubt proves why I am an old maid, and doing nothing about the future of humanity personally. Shall we have coffee in the living room?”
Reed was surprised but pleased to see Leo, Emmet and William disappear in one direction, while Kate led Mr. Mulligan and Reed himself back into the living room.
“Black, please,” said Mr. Mulligan. “Say what you like about my orgies, Miss Fansler, and all you like about your own spinsterhood, I’m afraid if you continue to run so masculine and efficient a household, you are bound to be accused of having orgies yourself. Do you think,” he asked, sipping the coffee with pleasure and accepting brandy, “we might join households and have an orgy, just to say we’d done it? Isn’t one under some sort of obligation to offer grist to Mary Bradford’s mill?”
“Exactly what I was thinking this afternoon,” Reed said. “She positively bullies people into forcing her disdain. If I were her husband, which heaven forfend, I would shove my socks up her vacuum cleaner personally. What a nasty remark that sounds. Do you see what I mean?”
“Perfectly,” Kate said. “You must get Emmet and William to join you in some suitably diabolical plan. But do please leave Leo and me out of it. Frankly, the woman terrifies me and horrifies me in equal proportions, and I am responsible for Leo.”
“One doesn’t, of course, care to sound in the least like our nosy neighbor,” Mr. Mulligan remarked, “but might I ask, without appearing ghoulish, just who Emmet and William are? You do see, fair lady, that the very formation of the question anticipates an innocent and reasonable answer.”
“You feel quite certain I am not going to tell you they are my lovers, my illegitimate children or my gang?”
“Quite so. I take it their duties revolve around Leo, who is your nephew.”
“William’s do. And Leo really is my nephew, by the way. No doubt it has already been suggested that he is a small misstep I am passing off in this manner. Is there, by the way, a word for auntly, counterpart to avuncular?”
“I doubt it,” Mr. Mulligan said. “Perhaps we can invent one. I’ve always felt certain the major reason Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake was to have the fun of making up words. How about auntilary?”
“Not bad. Well, in my auntilary capacity I hired William as buddy-cum-tutor to Leo: a companion, one might say, for the young Telemachus. He, William, happens to be a graduate student in the university where I teach. One great difficulty in hiring male graduate students as summer companions for a nephew is that, as Evelyn Waugh said, they like small boys either too little or too much, but William is doing well with Leo. Since Leo attends the A.B.C., William’s duties are not onerous; he has the use of this excellent library, his keep and the stimulating companionship of Emmet.”
“As well as a well-run house and the services of your excellent Mrs. Monzoni.”
“You know Mrs. Monzoni, Mr.
Mulligan?”
“Not really. But I have heard tell, needless to say, of that outrageous young woman, Miss Fansler, who can’t do her own cooking, cleaning or housework, or even look after her own nephew. You are new to this life, Miss Fansler. I have been summering here now for nigh on a dozen summers, and I have learned that the reason rural people imagine so much obscene behavior is because they themselves, to a large extent, indulge in it. Do you, by any chance, know the commonest crime on the police blotters of Vermont, to pick a New England rural state?”
“Bootlegging?” Kate suggested.
“Perhaps,” Mr. Mulligan said, turning to Reed, “Mr. District Attorney can tell us.”
“Incest, I imagine,” Reed answered.
Mr. Mulligan nodded. “Father and daughter is the commonest, though there are other forms.”
“You horrify me.”
“Naturally I do, dear lady. But if you stop and think a minute, you’ll see why the rural character, however sanctimonious his background, can imagine situations which we urban types consider within the grasp only of geniuses like Faulkner; your rural citizen is, so to speak, to the manner born.”
“I’m certain Mary Bradford, whatever her iniquities, has never committed incest, nor had it committed in her family.”
“You may be right. But I make some claims to being a judge of character, and there aren’t all that many sins I would put past the ability of that lady, whose name I solemnly swear will not cross my lips again tonight, to perform. May I ask what Emmet is doing?”
“He’s looking over Sam Lingerwell’s papers and attempting to arrange them into some order which will make possible their ultimate disposal. Right now he’s getting together the stuff on Joyce, and rather to my surprise, because Jane Austen is his idea of the only novelist worth mentioning, he’s become very much interested, particularly in Dubliners. Emmet keeps muttering about Lingerwell’s appreciation of Joyce’s appreciation of the short-story form. Jane Austen, of course, did not write short stories. Did you know Mr. Lingerwell, since he was your publisher?”
“He had retired from active publishing before I came along. I heard he had bought this house, but I never saw him here.”
“Well, Emmet is doing very well, all things considered. It’s only this new excitement over Joyce’s Dubliners that keeps him here, because he loathes the country, is terrified of snakes, shivers literally from head to foot at the thought of walking across an open field, and goes to the nearby town where we shop, population three thousand, for the sheer pleasure of walking on pavement and seeing a pigeon. He’s very good for Leo too, even though Emmet’s the sort who, if he feels like exercising, lies down till the feeling passes. But he talks to Leo as though they had both recently been members of the Jet Set and given it up out of boredom. It’s a good experience for Leo, who has always been treated like a boy scout who had let down his troop.”
“William and Emmet appear to be quite delightful counterparts,” Reed said, “but do you think they are—perhaps ‘wholesome’ is the word I want—wholesome enough for Leo?”
“What wholesomeness they lack, Mr. Artifoni and his camp provide in ample doses; personally I find Emmet’s effeteness considerably more wholesome than the robustness of the camp, but perhaps I ought not to admit it. Leo may begin the day here aiming idle rifles with William and discussing Joyce with Emmet, but he is then transported to camp, where, following the pledge of allegiance to the flag, and the Lord’s Prayer, he learns the more abstruse aspects of the push shot, as developed by Bob Cousy.”
“Kate,” Reed said, “you are a remarkable woman. Bob Cousy indeed.”
“My respects, dear lady,” Mr. Mulligan said, rising, “and my farewells. This weekend I am having a cocktail party, and I would be delighted, Miss Fansler, if you and Mr. Amhearst, as well as Emmet and William, provided you can leave Leo with Mrs. Monzoni, will come by on Saturday afternoon. I hope I can promise you that nobody will so much as mention Mary Bradford.”
Kate accepted the invitation for herself and promised to extend it to Emmet and William. Reed’s response was a touch provisional. He did not know, he told Mulligan, from one moment to the next, whether he could stand the country any longer, not having, as Emmet did, the attractions of James Joyce. But should he be there . . .
“I am expecting two friends to arrive sometime tomorrow afternoon,” Kate said. “You will be relieved to know that they are both female. Perhaps our household will quite overweight your party, should we all appear; on the other hand, I can certainly promise you that Grace Knole will add to any gathering.”
“The Grace Knole. She is your colleague, isn’t she?”
“No longer, alas. She has retired. But she is still very much the Grace Knole. She is coming with a young colleague of mine who is also a friend of William’s.”
“I shall be delighted to see all of you on Saturday, dear lady,” Mr. Mulligan said, extending his hand with a ceremonious bow. “Until Saturday then, my special salutations to the illustrations Professor Knole. I am very pleased to have met you, Mr. Amhearst, and hope you choose to remain.”
“Who is the illustrious Professor Knole?” Reed asked when Mr. Mulligan had bowed himself from the room. “Is she that illustrious?”
“In the academic world,” Kate answered, “just about as illustrious as they come.”
Chapter Four
Grace
The illustrious Professor Grace Knole regarded, with a sense of loving desperation, the landscaped Taconic Parkway as it swept past her, or she along it, at seventy miles an hour. Eveline Chisana, who was driving the car, certainly knew her business; moreover, she, Grace Knole, was nearly seventy herself, like the miles per hour they were traveling, and ought not, rationally, to fear death. Eveline was not yet thirty and certainly demonstrated, so far, no suicidal tendencies. Old ladies should, if possible, not act like old ladies, particularly when they were outraged at being retired at the height of their powers. And damn good powers they were too, Grace thought, though I says it as shouldn’t. “I suppose the car is in absolutely tip-top condition?” she asked, lightly, she hoped.
Lina, as everyone called her, grinned and slowed down to a decorous fifty-five. “Sorry,” she said. “I expect I was thinking. Not a revolution over sixty miles an hour, I solemnly promise.”
Grace stared at the young woman with interest. How different, she thought, from the young women of my day, who had, of course, to choose. Most young ladies today chose a house complete with husband and babies in suburbia, but even those like Lina who got Ph.D.’s and did brilliant scholarship, seemed to find time to drive, dance, cook and make love, all with equal expertise.
Lina had not made love, not really, a fact of which she was thinking as the speedometer climbed high into the seventies; she had not really made love, nor, which was more to the point, had William. She planned to confront him, once and for all this weekend, across a constantly widening chasm of virginity. What a figure of speech! She could imagine her horror should it appear in a student paper. Chasms do not widen, she might write on such a student paper, at least not before one’s eyes, to pick only the most obvious infelicity. Damn William. Damn. Damn. Damn.
“As a matter of fact,” Grace said, “I shouldn’t in the least mind walking. I am sorry to be such a nuisance, but I once had a misadventure in a Stanley Steamer, and you were going eighty. Perhaps it only looked like eighty from here.”
Lina again slowed down, grinning her apologies. Dear Professor Knole. A frump, there was no other word for it, brilliant as she was. William said that the first time she entered the room to lecture, he thought the cleaning woman had taken leave of her senses and was about to make a speech. Until she opened her mouth, of course. A somewhat untidy, square person she was, with uneven hems dipping between calves and ankles, sensible walking shoes, hair which looked as though she had chopped it off herself with a paring knife. Yet at seventy she ha
d turned down an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars to conduct one seminar on Chaucer, turned it down because she had other fish to fry. The right kind of frump to be, Lina thought. How much of life has she missed?
“From Kate’s description,” Grace said, “I gather her household is a rather unstable emulsion of small boys and James Joyce. I understand neither, of course, but I feel one should hold oneself open to new experiences. I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover recently when it was legally reissued. It seemed to me that poor Constance simply didn’t have enough to occupy her time.”
“Should she have taken a course in medieval symbolism?” Lina mischievously asked.
“She might have done worse; in fact, in my opinion, she did.”
“There’s no real connection between Joyce and Lawrence,” Lina said, amused. “Quite the contrary, in fact. I understand they loathed each other’s work.” Professor Knole might be the greatest living medieval scholar, but to her all novels written since the industrial revolution were infantile distractions of which the children, given sufficient time, would tire. “From what William writes, Emmet has found some exciting letters about Dubliners. William, of course, is very circumspect; his letters are always written with one eye on the jury box.”
“Which is Dubliners? That hasn’t got Leopold Bloom in it, has it?”
“No. That’s just the point about Dubliners. The stories are about different people in Dublin, all in varying states of physical and spiritual paralysis.” Lina thought of the last story of Dubliners, “The Dead,” of Gabriel Conroy’s lust for his wife, and Michael Furey, dead from standing in the rain, dead for love. She thought of Bloom on Sandymount Beach in Ulysses, dreaming of love, and the crippled girl, dreaming of love. Oh, God.
“I expect it only looks like eighty from here,” Grace said.
“Professor Knole,” Lina asked. “Have you ever noticed how when you’ve something on your mind, you seem always to engage in conversations about it, and passages about it leap at you from books. It happens, I think, with hungry men in prison camps and people who’ve just given up smoking.”