The Theban Mysteries

by Amanda Cross

  But what am I doing here, Kate thought; groping through the clouds of human misery to reach two adolescents who have learned with reason, that little in life is what it purports to be? Yet I do feel that directness is our only hope, looking things in the face and not dropping our eyes. We would no doubt do much better at Esalen, naked before the setting sun or half immersed in sulphur baths—Kate, casting about for information among various acquaintances, had found sunsets and nude surphur baths figuring prominently in all accounts. A pillow, a mattress, an involved audience—well, one could scarcely fly to Esalen or arrange an encounter session every time an educational crisis reared its head these uncertain days. For a moment Kate tried to picture herself naked in a sulphur bath (tubs? mud? like a swimming pool?) and gave it up.

  “Angelica,” Kate began, “and her friends, both from Mrs. Banister’s drama group and, by extension, from the Antigone seminar, began in a mild sort of way holding what we will call encounter groups. These started, I believe, not as ways to work out personal problems, but as devices to encourage students to throw themselves into dramatic situations, and to undertake dramatic expression. Because of the seminar, I guess, these more or less informal groups began to act out the Antigone. It is, of course, a play remarkably relevant—if you will excuse the expression—to our life today, and, because of Patrick, it soon became particularly relevant to the situation of the Jablons.” Kate saw the two of them color; Patrick looked down and began picking at a dirty toe; Angelica bit her lip. Don’t cry, Kate silently prayed; not yet.

  “I don’t mean, of course, that there is any parallel between the characters in the Antigone and the members of the Jablon family, but certain resemblances do strike one with overwhelming force. Creon, for example, says so many things which seem to echo in the voice of your grandfather: ‘Nor would I ever dream the country’s foe a friend to myself.’ ‘If any makes a friend of more account than his fatherland, that man hath no place in my regard.’ ‘Disobedience is the worst of evils. This it is that ruins cities, that makes homes desolate.’ I could go on; we all could. But the question he seems to me to have been asking about you, Patrick, is also a question of Creon’s: ‘Men of my age—are we indeed to be schooled, then, by men of his?’ I think, slowly, painfully, he has begun to learn that the answer to that question may have to be yes. I think we have all begun to learn, even from Angelica, who has, like Antigone, ‘a hot heart for chilling deeds.’ ”

  She had their attention now. She felt, indeed, rather like Antigone herself, to whom Ismene wisely said: “A hopeless quest should not be made at all.” Was this quest hopeless? No, Ismene was not wise, for the only hopeless quests are those we fail to dare.

  “I think,” Kate went on, “that the encounter sessions slipped, imperceptibly at first, from dramatic renderings of the Antigone to actual dramatizations, with pillow and mattress, of Angelica’s difficult family situation. Perhaps others also had encounter sessions, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. What I feel certain of is that Mrs. Banister found herself in a soulrending dilemma, if you will allow my generation its unfortunate tendency to hyperbole. In a sense, the group had gone too far; certainly it had already long exceeded the expectations of the Theban in setting up a drama group. There was always danger, in such a situation, that some real emotional problem would come up, a problem which only the most experienced of group leaders (as I believe they call them at Esalen) would know how to handle. If she reproved the group for its activities and deserted it, she would certainly save her own skin, that is, her job and immediate sense of responsibility, but she would leave several adolescent girls, who she had every reason to think would continue their encounter groups without her, in real danger. She decided, and greatly to her credit, to remain with the group, even in its meetings outside the school, and to hope that she might dissipate the energy of the sessions, particularly with the coming of spring and the light turning of young fancies to love.

  “Unfortunately, her excellent plan was not allowed to wend its intelligent way. The other evening,” Kate sipped her tea, “I’m certain you know to which evening I refer …”

  “Is this all really supposed to be helping us?” Patrick asked. “Is that what you’re telling yourself, or are you just enjoying sitting there, holding forth?”

  Kate looked at him. “ ‘A youthful mind, when stung, is fierce.’ That’s another quote from the Antigone, though God knows it needs not Sophocles to tell us this. I like to hold forth, I’m an aging, long-winded, pontificating old bore, but if you think this is my idea of fun and games, think again. Frankly, I’d rather be smoking pot at Woodstock on an overcrowded field in the rain with everyone singing rock, which, in case you miss the allusion, is as near to hell as I can imagine. Still,” Kate was suddenly revolted at the way she was forcing herself on these two, “perhaps you’re right. If I have to tell the damn story to someone, and I’m afraid I do, I suppose it might as well be Miss Tyringham. I’ve always said that shifting problems is the first rule for a long and pleasant life, and anyway it is rightfully her problem. She’ll have to know it all before long. I’m sorry. We all do believe, and I more than most, that our inherent honesty and good intentions will somehow be perfectly clear to anyone we care for. It is the result in my case of being the youngest and most indulged child in the family.”

  With a sigh of relief (no one can say I didn’t try) Kate again lifted her feet from the ottoman and arose. She picked up coat and purse, deliberated whether or not to request to be led to a ladies’ room, and decided against it. Not quite rush hour, maybe a taxi, Reed, and a home whose doorstep, so help me God, she thought, no one under thirty will ever darken again. As to the seminar and the Theban, these would in time dwindle away from sight.

  “Thank you for the tea,” Kate said, “Forgive me. I have been suffering from hubris; the Greeks, as always, had a word for it. My whole generation,” she turned to Patrick, “thanks you for the Scotch.”

  Now it is one of the more appalling if unarguable aspects of human nature that we only become overwhelmingly attractive to certain people when we have learned to feel indifference for them, or even scorn. Your employer will always want to keep you if someone has offered you another job you very much want to take. A spouse is never so attractive as when desired by another. Furthermore, if we have just determined never to bother seeing someone again, it is unaccountably annoying to be told by him that he has no further use for our company. Kate had wanted to know the two young Jablons, but it was her sincere dismissal of them which now betrayed her unquestionably into their affairs.

  “Apologies,” Patrick said. “Heartfelt. I will get you more Scotch. I will wash my feet. I will put on a tie—no, I won’t put on a tie; I suppose you know all about that too. I will stand up because you are a lady.” He leapt gracefully, with the heartbreaking grace of young men, to his feet.

  “Naturally you’re sick of me,” Angelica said. “Everyone is. Patrick was the only one I even dreamed I could help, and he was attacked by dogs. ‘A corpse for dogs to eat.’ That’s a quotation too.” And Angelica began noisily to weep.

  “I was not attacked by dogs; I just thought I would be. And I am not a corpse. Miss Fansler, please stay. Think about commitment, have more tea.”

  “Oh, God,” Kate said. “Hell, sin, and corruption. Why do I always think the truth will be easy? And, if you tell me my generation always thinks that, I promise you I will spit.”

  “More ice?” Patrick asked. “Angelica, stop crying and get Miss Fansler some ice. I’ll take the tea tray back before it’s called for. What sign were you born under?” he asked Kate, hands on the tea table.

  “Keep Out,” Kate said, “and I still haven’t read it properly.”

  After a while, they reassembled themselves. Patrick had got rid of the tea tray and put on some sneakers, which, while not much cleaner than his feet, were not feet and therefore preferable. Kate had accepted another drink and, having decided on the ladies’ room after all, had been and
returned. Angelica had blown her nose in a final sort of way. Why is it, Kate thought, that human love breathes only where there is emotion? How much better to be the old men in Plato’s Republic. She sipped from her Scotch and continued, as though no interruption had been.

  “The other evening, the night your mother died, the group had decided to have an encounter session. Freemond Oliver had come here first to dinner with Angelica; you were to go later to Irene Rexton’s house for the session. The others all met there, though I am uncertain how many of you there were. When Freemond and Angelica left, Patrick remained at home with his mother, anyway for a time; Mr. Jablon had gone out earlier to play bridge.

  “I assumed, at first, that the session had taken place here, but I now see that that is unlikely. For one thing, Angelica would have been unlikely to want to risk being overheard by her mother and grandfather. However, I only realized that afterward, when I had been trying to discover a home with no adults likely to be around, with a lobby free of attendants.

  “What happened here after Angelica and Freemond left I am less certain of. Let me guess. Your mother became distressed about something and demanded from you,” Kate nodded at Patrick, “where Angelica had gone.”

  “ ‘Became distressed about something’ is good,” Patrick said. “She never knew anything as simple as distress; she started at the top of her lungs and then got shriller.”

  Kate could imagine it, and the weariness these youngsters felt for their mother. They must have passed through fear of upsetting her, through intermittent and even more intermittent affection, to impatience, a terrible pity, and, finally, indifference. Her being dead could not change that; she was more recently dead than their feeling for her.

  “I was in my room, listening to Dylan and the ball game and sort of looking at Catch-22, I’d already read it, when she stormed in. No knocking, nothing. I heard her over Dylan and Phil Rizzuto and the fans cheering in the background. They must have heard her in Battery Park.” Patrick paused a moment, as though remembering her again with an unhappy vividness. “I won’t try to repeat her words, or her tone, but the general purport was that everyone had gone out, no one considered her, Angelica had not asked her permission, did I know where she had gone, it would never occur to ‘your grandfather’ to play bridge with her, et cetera, and so on. I’m sure you know the sort of thing. She finally demanded if I knew where Angelica had gone, had a great deal to say about my knowing and her not knowing, and ended up by demanding to be taken there.”

  Patrick paused and looked about him for a cigarette. Kate offered him one of hers, which he took with a smile and a nod of thanks. It was clear that Patrick had immense possibilities for charm, given half a chance. He looked rather like his stern grandfather, though the grimness came from tensions much harder to bear than the necessity to earn one’s living and support one’s family, or so Kate, who had never had to do either, supposed.

  “You know all about it,” Patrick said, smiling. “You go on.”

  “She talked you into going up there, didn’t she? But demanded that you first put on a tie.”

  “I said you knew all about it. I got into a shirt finally, because it seemed easier than arguing with her—she never listened, anyway, and never heard or wanted to—but when I put on my most conservative tie, a white design on a sort of green, she objected violently that I looked like a hippie, her general word for anyone who isn’t dressed by Saks Fifth Avenue.”

  “Well,” Angelica interjected, “that tie does look like psychedelic spermatozoa on a background of …”

  “All right,” Patrick said, “we get the picture.” But he was clearly glad to see Angelica trying, at any rate, for lightness, and they all grinned pleasantly at one another. “Soooo, as Angie would say, she went into Granddad’s room and got me one of his ties, which of course he would have hated her doing, but it’s not often you can irritate two people with one small gesture. She insisted on tying it for me, which I loathe having her, or anyone, do and …”

  “The label came off as she tied it. She seems to have stuck it in her pocket and gone on.”

  “Yes, that’s like her. She was compulsively neat. I mean, you can’t imagine. She was forever picking things up off the floor, even things that weren’t there. And complaining about how terribly things were cleaned, how spoiled the servants were, and how no one wanted to work any more—she, of course, not having done any work in the last quarter century.”

  “I’m surprised the servants stayed,” Kate said.

  “Well, Granddad treats them very well, and gives them lavish presents and all; they adore him, of course; it seems to be part of the servant mentality or something. He claims that his definition of a liberal is a man who worries about everyone but his wife and servants, so you see it’s all part of the general picture. She did look around for a wastepaper basket which wasn’t there because I’d used it for shooting baskets into and the bottom came out, and she worried on about that for a while and must have finally stuck the thing in her pocket. Well, we got there, taking a taxi with her telling the driver not to go over ten miles an hour or something, God it was awful, and then clinging to me because the driver would stop and rape her if I took my eyes off him for a minute, and then, of course, Morningside Drive.”

  “Well, she wasn’t far wrong about Morningside Drive.”

  “Probably not, but we actually made it to the Rexton apartment without being attacked.”

  “I still don’t see,” Angelica said, “why you didn’t talk her out of it, or just refuse to come. Why bring her there, I mean what was the point?” Angelica began to sound weepy again, and Patrick answered her in loud tones, which he clearly hoped would pull her back from another bout.

  “For God’s sake, Angie, let’s be honest and cut out the crap. I went partly because she made such a hell of a thing about it, but also because I wanted to see what went on in those sessions of yours. O.K., I was curious …”

  “But to let her go there. You knew she wouldn’t have gone without you, she …”

  “Cool it, Angie, just cool it. I went, it’s over, cut the goddamn crap.” He got up and started walking around the room, stopping with his back to Kate, to glare at Angie. Apparently the look spoke more clearly than his words, for Angelica was silent.

  “That’s all there is to the story,” Patrick said, turning around. “It all goes bang like a burst balloon. She looked around the Rexton apartment, which was just a home, you know, chairs to sit on, lamps to read by, and not the smallest interest in taste or impressing anyone, I mean, not a status symbol in sight or the least likelihood of anybody saying, ‘Oh, what an interesting room, who is your decorator, you did it yourself, you ought to go into the decorating business, you’re thinking of it, well I’ll be your first customer.’ ” Patrick was a good mimic, and they all laughed. “It was just a home where people lived and were happy and she turned her nose up at it, naturally, or rather, she never did anything naturally, she just turned up her nose. Then she said, ‘Patrick, I want to see where you hid out in that school,’ so I took her over there, in another taxi, and she kind of mingled with the parents who were there having some sort of meeting, and I lost track of her, and I suppose I should have waited but I didn’t, I came home, and Angie was home, and I guess she just died from seeing those dogs. Believe me, it’s more than possible. I know, having seen them, and I like dogs.”

  “Taxi drivers can be traced, you know,” Kate said.

  “Sometimes, but it doesn’t prove a negative. I mean, if a driver says he took so-and-so from here to there, and has it on his sheet, he did, but if no driver can be found, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist, if you follow me.”

  Kate let it go for the moment.

  “Who was at the session when you arrived?” she asked.

  Patrick shrugged his shoulders. “Haven’t a clue,” he said. “You know, the usual bunch of Angie’s friends, a bunch of creeps, really.” He smiled at Angie.

  “One’s sister’s friends al
ways are, I assume. Who was there, Angelica?”

  Angelica stopped to consider. Poor kid, Kate thought. She is trying to fit her story in with Patrick’s, and to protect—whom?—and yet to tell as much of the truth as she safely can, since she is bright enough to know that the more you can stick to the truth, the easier it is to lie in a coherent and sustained way.

  “Irene,” she said, “and Freemond and me, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth worked rather well in those sessions, though we never thought she would. There were only the four of us.”

  “No one else from the drama group, or Betsy, or Alice Kirkland?”

  “No, it really was a kind of private session, about me—well, all of us,” she hastily added. “Alice is kind of, well …”

  “I know,” Kate said, “though I have hopes. Why not Betsy?”

  “Well, for one thing, her father carries on like a raving maniac if she goes out at night, so …”

  Kate nodded. She doubted that was the only reason. Betsy’s tongue was sharp, and, scorning tact, which she recognized as frequently more insulting than an insult, she also, like many sensitive people, had no concept of how cruel her own words could be. It was an irony Kate had noticed often. Still, all the girls had been present at most of the sessions, as the unwary revelations in the seminar indicated. It had been Alice, of course, who had given the show away.

  “Did you decide to work out something special that night?” Kate asked.

  “Well, yes,” Angelica said. “I was trying to express my feelings about my mother.…” Her voice trailed unhappily away.

  “Wasn’t Mrs. Banister there?”

  “No,” Angelica answered, with a forthrightness always recognizable in someone who has been lying and can at last tell the simple truth. “We didn’t tell her about it. For one thing, we’d been taking up an awful lot of her time, and then, it wasn’t a real session, you see, with only four of us.” She stopped talking, and her voice died away in the room.