Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel

by De Vries, Peter

  The main objective was of course to get on the right road to Fairmount as fast as possible, but before that outcome could be brought within reach we had to figure out a way of even retracing the wrong track. We were in a dead end that seemingly allowed of no convenient swing around the lumber piles and then back out onto Edgeworth Court, because we were so many that the first car (mine of course) would have come around and met one of the last before they were off the lumber yard drive, which was too narrow for two cars to pass. So that the procession would have been like a snake encountering its own tail. The yard itself was a cul-de-sac which admitted of no turning around at any point, car for car, so as to reverse the procession.

  As we were analyzing matters in that light, the back door of the yard office opened and a man in a mackinaw emerged, donning a bright plaid cap as he did so. He thought we were customers come to buy lumber, or perhaps cordwood, which was also copiously on sale here. When he learned we were a funeral procession that had lost its way he became sympathetic and then, immediately, very helpful.

  His theory was that it would be best by far if we backed out one by one from Edgeworth Court onto Ashland Avenue again, beginning, of course, with our last car. We could then re-form on that thoroughfare—which, though busy, was broad—with the entire expedition about-faced.

  This plan was instantly put into effect. Two of the mourners ran out onto Ashland Avenue to supervise the maneuvers, one directing traffic, the other guiding each motorist as his turn came to back around.

  While this was being done, I tried to keep President Bagley, whose face was still suffused a dangerous shade of purple, engaged in as relaxing a conversation as possible.

  “That was a splendid eulogy you gave,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said, looking away.

  I hitched a foot up onto my bumper as we watched the operations going forward. It would be a few minutes before they got to his car, which was the second behind mine.

  “I see you have Mrs. Bagley out with you again.” She had been ailing for some few months. “Tell me, how is she?”

  “Oh, my God,” he said, threatening to become agitated again. “We’d best get back into our cars.”

  A fresh element in our problem had by now occurred to me. I was by no means sure that we would know what we were doing after our procession had become reorganized on the lines agreed on—that is to say, that we knew the quickest way to Fairmount from here. I would now bring up the rear (for which I was thankful) but the question of whether our new leader could guide us to our destination did not seem to me to have been sufficiently aired. So I strolled over to the lumberman and said, “Can you tell us the best way to Fairmount from here?”

  Fortunately this anxiety turned out to be needless. Someone with even more presence of mind than myself had used the office telephone to call the police for an escort, and before we were ready to resume a squad car had been summoned by shortwave radio from an adjacent neighborhood and posted itself in our van. We were led away in a steadily flowing train of which, as I say, I now gratefully formed the rear. In the circumstances I was completely free to detach myself from the retinue at any time, but I had decided that in view of all that had happened it might be best if I went along to the graveyard after all, if only for appearances’ sake.

  The burial party were waiting for us when we arrived at last, about fifteen or twenty minutes late. The ceremony was brief and to the point, and conducted without further incident (though when the cleric stepped forward to deposit the traditional clod of earth on the remains his foot slipped on a crumbling mound of soil and very nearly pitched him forward into the opening, giving us all a bad turn). He was known as rather a bumbler.

  Marion was not there, but she learned within hours what had happened, and was quick to express her sympathies. Others came forward as well with assurances that they considered it rottener luck than any man deserved. Among these was Angela Ravage, now filled in on the cycle of misfortunes up to that point. I must say up to that point because it appeared still not to have run its course, as the evening was to disclose.

  We made rather a cheerless foursome again at the Green Lantern. Openly unhappy about the course of events to which she was now privy, Angela kept saying she felt it somehow “all her fault.” “Please don’t blame yourself,” I said. “You didn’t mean it.” Quincy was glummest of all. His cause was now well-nigh hopeless with Angela, whose constant company, nevertheless, stoked his futile ardor anew. I did not feel too sorry for him, imagining he probably did well enough on other romantic fronts. I thought he cut quite a figure, taken all in all. He was decently enough groomed, danced suitably, and talked well in the presence of women (giving no evidence that he considered anyone a moocow now, though that would return in doubled force when his rejection was final). None of this seemed to cut any ice, at least here. Both women were too busy showering their attentions on me to respond to his. They seemed to vie with one another in consoling one whose contretemps were piling up at a rate faster than could be humanly absorbed. Huck Shenstone, the athletic coach, was destined to be narrator of the latest installment. He was dining with a party in the same restaurant, and he came over to our table when we were drinking brandies to say, “I suppose you’ve heard?”

  “No, what?”

  “President Bagley’s had a heart attack.”

  Again I anticipate the story to give an accurate account of events totally garbled in the telling, and related with considerable prejudice to myself, as most neutral observers will admit—even insist. The facts are briefly these.

  I hurried to Dr. Bagley’s side the very first instant I could—the moment he was permitted visitors in the hospital—and congratulated him on having had his coronary at such an early age (he was only forty-five). The sooner one has it the better one’s chances of a quick and complete recovery, apparently; in some cases the heart is the stronger for the rehabilitation. “It’s only a torn muscle,” I told him. “Remember that.”

  I explained what I had been unable to explain at sufficient length at the time, that I had attempted to leave the funeral cortege only to attend to the press of administrative work lately devolved upon me, and then passed quickly on to more cheerful matters relative to that. I was able to report some considerable success in pulling the department together. Two new instructors had been engaged, and I had signed my own contract for next year as well, he would be glad to know. Things were looking up. I now offered my services for any expansion of the chores recently laid upon me, anything in which I might help him out in his own work, even. Dean Shaftoe was for the time being serving as acting president.

  “If you mean you think you’re executive timber and might want to run the college one day, Waltz,” Dr. Bagley said, regarding me ironically from the hill of pillows on which he lay propped, “you could get your wish. At the rate you’re killing us off there’ll soon be only you left.”

  I could not think of an adequate reply to this, and remained silently sitting in my chair near the foot of his bed. He scrutinized me a moment with his small, bright blue eyes.

  “There are people who don’t like you, Waltz. No, I shouldn’t say that. Who don’t think much of you, even though they may like you. Put it that way. They say you’re adolescent. But I differ with that judgment.”

  “You do, sir?”

  “Yes. I don’t think you’re adolescent at all. I think you’re infantile. You’ve got a long way to go to be adolescent. That doesn’t mean you’re to be dismissed out of hand. Completely written off. In fact you fascinate me. I don’t see how anybody can get to be twenty-three and still remain two years old.”

  “That cheers me enormously.”

  “I’m interested enough in your case to have you around for a bit out of sheer curiosity, before I die, and at the same time give you more work in hopes of helping you develop a little responsibility. How does that strike you, Waltz?”

  “Why, sir—”

  “So since Dean Shaftoe has to get a paper read
y for an important upcoming conference of college deans,” he went on, his color deepening and his voice taking on a dangerous ring again, “I think I’ll appoint you acting president of the college.” His tone was now definitely sardonic, even abusive. He laughed oddly. “Don’t be misled by the title. Because what I’m going to dump on you is dirty work—mountains and mountains of it that have piled up thanks to you. It means that now you’ll really have to buckle down. It means that you’ll be stuck here all summer—for the summer session. I believe you chaps call it Siberia?”

  Heartening as all this advancement was, it seemed to me not all as flattering as on the surface it appeared, but contained some ulterior and even perverse elements. First, the honorary title was only honorary, and hollowly so at that. A mass of drudgery indeed awaited me. I knew that. Second, I am now reasonably certain that Bagley rather malevolently wanted somebody filling in for him who would be less than sensational, as a means of making himself look good by contrast—even indispensable. This kind of thing is true of many egotists. It is undoubtedly the sort of vanity behind the business tycoon’s familiar “I haven’t had a vacation in fourteen years.” Such men fear, not that things will go to hell at the office in their absence, but that they will run as smoothly as ever without them. I did not think Bagley would have been cheered by any such outcome; it might have retarded his recovery, while rumors of ineptitude would speed it. Thirdly, it had come to light that Mr. Hill, our chief donor, had taken rather a shine to me after seeing me around at divine worship. He was a very devout man, whose moneys the school was having increasing difficulty luring away from the pious causes uppermost in his heart. My religious side appealed to him—a factor not to be underestimated in the school’s constant need of funds. In fact, Bagley might deliberately be trying to give the impression that I was being groomed for his successor, or at least for a position of eminence in the school. I would not put it past him. Nevertheless, all this arrière-pensée on Bagley’s part aside, it was enormously gratifying to think that one would walk into the office of the president one morning and sit down at his desk.

  But Dr. Bagley was not yet through with me.

  “One administrative decision that must be made soon is this. What’s your opinion of these handwriting analyses the new guidance counselor, Miss Holroyd, is recommending for all students and for all applicants for jobs. She’s rather keen on that sort of thing as one way of getting a slant on people’s personality. Not hipped on it, but she regards it as useful in supplementing other tests. Limited but valid. What’s your opinion?”

  “Why, I’d go along with that moderate approval. It can do no harm, and may be useful. Obviously any handwriting is a kind of graph of the individual’s nervous system, much as a cardiogram of his vascular. Of course the problem is to read it back. How can you go about that in a way you’re sure is scientifically accurate? That’s the question. Still, it may give us some clues to the person’s makeup, some leads, at least in the case of extreme disturbances.”

  “I’m glad to hear you put in a good word for it. I think it’s snake oil, but I may be wrong. It so happens a specimen of yours was turned over to Miss Holroyd—anonymously, of course, like all the rest—and it’s come back with a report.”

  “Oh? Do you mind telling me what they found?”

  “Not at all. It showed latent criminal sexual tendencies.”

  “Penmanship was never one of my strong subjects. ‘Hen tracks!’ my teachers used to say, laughing like anything. I can still remember Miss Weems. I was her despair. But I’m working constantly to improve my script—ironing out things that are wrong with it, and in general trying to develop a much more legible hand.”

  “The analysis only says ‘latent,’ so perhaps these potentialities will never come to flower.” At intervals Bagley would pause and make a growling sound in his throat. He was only clearing it, but the way he did it was rather disturbing, and often accompanied by a habit of wringing his hands in his lap in a repressed manner, as though he was impatient to be off and attend to all the matters in the world in need of rectifying. But in this instance he emitted also again the sudden odd laugh, while the unhealthy glitter in his eyes deepened as he took me in. It was as though for the moment he contemplated with secret relish the prospect of an associate running amok and giving vent to fiendish impulses. Perhaps he was himself at bottom slightly warped? His conduct in this interview certainly suggested a personality not in all respects stable. He now rapidly concluded, “I think all this sort of stuff ranks with phrenology, so perhaps we will all be feeling the bumps in one another’s heads around here one day. Mmbahaha!”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that, because I happen to think it’s a lot of malarkey myself. Snake oil! Well, I’m glad to see you on the mend, sir, and I hope we’ll have you back with us in jigtime. I know what it is to be laid up.” I hurried out.

  The other important element in my life, the romantic, gave similar promise of expanding without stabilizing. Marion’s first fascination with my family had worn off as a source of interest in myself, but we still remained “more than friends.” A good deal more. The affair had its familiar ups and downs, its ebbs and flows. Not the least of the complications was the fact that my acquaintance with Angela blossomed into something rather more than friendship too. She returned to the Coast to make a picture, the last scheduled on her contract. There was a general air of gloom about it at the studio, quite prescient, as it turned out, for it failed both financially and artistically. Well before that happened, however, Angela was confirmed in her decision to quit acting, at least for the time being, and resume her interrupted education. The stage to which we had brought our relationship was a factor in making her consider Polycarp, and so on a trip East in her own car she swung off at Chicago to see me. This was toward the end of the summer, when the press of administrative duties made it impossible for me to pop off to Chicago to see her. We had dinner at the Green Lantern, then drove back and parked by the river. I drew back at last from a long, searching kiss, and said: “I mustn’t get involved with you, Angela.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s the problem of outlooks, always more important than people seem to realize in courtship. Approaches to life, the fundamental problems. You consider Christianity a fairy tale for grownups. Those are your exact words. In that case, you have to dismiss all the art the Christian Church has inspired. All the glories of Bach, El Greco, the poetry of John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins. All nothing. I suppose you’re prepared to do this?”

  “But pagan religions have given rise to great art too. Do you embrace them for that reason? Do the glories of Homer make you believe in Zeus?”

  This reply is so uncannily like mine to Marion when the reverse positions in this question were taken that a kind of affinity seems to me to be shown as existing between Angela and me, against which it behooves us both to be on guard. The need to keep her at arm’s length intensifies with each embrace, so to speak, in order that a rash mistake not be made, something rushed into we would later regret. “The fact remains you’re a skeptic, an unbeliever, even a scoffer, judging from some things I’ve heard you say, and your ideas would clash with something deeply ingrained within me. You’ve heard Catholics say they can never get it out of their system, try as they might to overlay things with an intellectual approach and give reason its day in court. It’s just as intense with me. No, there would always be this gulf between us, Angela.”

  This exchange came to the ears of Marion, veteran of many another herself, of course. Now she seemed more determined than ever that I get to the bottom of my problems, and try for some satisfactory resolution of them.

  “It’s that same old business of these two backgrounds you’re in revolt against. Don’t you think you ought to see somebody?”

  “I don’t know what good it would do. Psychiatrists can’t even straighten people around with one childhood, let alone two.”

  “Miss Holroyd doesn’t have much training as a psychiatri
st, actually. Maybe she can all the better talk your problem over in a human, informal way.”

  “The guidance counselor!” My first reaction was one of vehement protest, modifying itself quickly into one of quiet amusement. “I’m not a student any more, you know.”

  “What difference does that make? It isn’t as if you were very long out of school anyway. The point is a mere quibble. Besides, teachers do sometimes come to her. And we’ve no one else around. She’s intelligent, and quite a pleasant person. Besides, I’m now getting to be genuinely worried about you. Oh, don’t think I don’t know that’s what you want. Like all men. You feed yourself on the compassion and solicitude we’re always there to give. Even Don Juan admits it in Shaw. He goes to woman for comfort. And indeed we want you to. Any wife is always half mother. It’s in the nature of things. I suppose it’s part of sex.”

  “I love you,” I say not unkindly, angling tenderly in her blouse. “Come lean your breast upon this head …”

  “Only if you promise to see Miss Holroyd.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  What could I lose? And one was naturally curious to inspect at closer range someone who had detected in oneself latent criminal sexual tendencies. One could imagine the type she was!

  eighteen

  “I HAVE these two childhoods.”

  Miss Holroyd draws her skirt down over her knees, at the same time pressing her lips inward till they are fleshless, in an expression indicating extreme concentration. She says she has heard a lot about me, and has been dying to meet me. I do not like the sound of this at all. She is, at thirty-eight or forty, not unattractive. A slender woman in a tailored suit, and one likes slender women in tailored suits, does one not, just as one does rounded ones in flowing skirts, and short ones in neat silk scarves. She is brunette—just one’s type, like blondes and those with auburn hair and red as well, they are all one’s type. She has those small hard breasts one so greatly prefers to the large dramatic ones, and vice versa. Has she ever been possessed? She reminds me, in a flash of isolated memory, of a woman seen at a church bazaar when I was a boy, years ago, not thought of since. The woman was piling her purchases on her chauffeur’s arm with such style that several of us watched in awe. She’s the mistress of Hollingworth they told me, and I says who’s he, and dey says it’s not a he, it’s a estate jist outside a town. So she’s a mistress but of a house, some hacks.