The first week of August had settled heavily over West Bradford with temperatures and humidity in the nineties. It was the kind of weather that made Martin the most unhappy. He fought an intellectual battle against the visceral panic that overtook him in hot weather, because at some basic level he did not believe that the duration of such heat would be relatively short. His body remembered the claustrophobic and seemingly endless summer days of Mississippi, which dulled the spirits of all but small, school-free children. It was weather that was bearable to people like most of his neighbors, who only experience such blatant heat a few weeks out of the year. And it was these infuriating native New Englanders who most irritated Martin with their exuberant embracement of this enervating weather. It was the only time of the year that Martin could not shake pessimism.
After breakfast he showered and pulled on nylon running shorts and a short-sleeved gray T-shirt emblazoned with a red and white logo that read BEER NUTS. He had gotten the shirt for only two dollars and two proofs-of-purchase labels from bags of peanuts he had picked up at the store when he was in the check-out line. To have ordered the shirt was the sort of thrift scorned by his whole family, but the shirt had held up for three years, and both his children had tried to take possession of it. Even so lightly dressed, by the time Martin got to The Review office, with Duchess ambling slowly behind him, her head drooping like an old horse, he was already sweaty and discouraged. His bare arms and legs were plastered with fluffs of fur that the poor dog was shedding for her life. But he was sure that at six-thirty on a Monday morning, he would have the office to himself and could clear away a lot of work that should have been done already.
This morning, though, as had been the case whenever Martin arrived at his office, Owen was already settled into his own little cubicle. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his feet braced against the uppermost interior edge of the knee-hole panel of his desk, and he leaned backward from the waist to the full extension of his flexible office chair so that he was almost horizontal. He was absolutely still, except for a slight flick of the sheaf of papers he was holding before him and peering at intently, although he could scarcely have been unaware that Martin and Duchess had arrived. Martin allowed himself a glimmer of an image of Owen grabbing up those papers and assuming his careful pose the moment he had heard the heavy door of the building squeal open two flights above him.
“God, Owen! What are you doing here at this hour?” Martin heard his own false note of hearty good humor and wondered if he could ever in his life be comfortable in Owen’s presence. When Owen lowered the papers he was reading, ostensibly taking a moment to refocus his attention and absorb the fact of Martin’s being there, Martin had a terrible urge to reach across the desk and shake him out of his stupid pretension.
“When we get this great summer weather I always get up about four-thirty to go for a run. I decided to come on in and get these letters out. But, now, Martin, I need to talk to you about these letters of Vic’s….”
Martin held up his hand for Owen to stop, and he felt—as he always did—rising anger as well as a sense of prevailing and mysterious shame whenever he confronted Owen. “First let me get some things on my desk cleared away, Owen. This is the deadline if we want to take an excerpt of Brenner’s new book, and I haven’t had a chance to finish reading it yet.” Owen was blond and lanky and unruffled by the weather. Just to get past what Martin had come to think of as the daily hurdle of overcoming Owen’s ghastly bonhomie and his jovial assumption of shared authority made Martin feel gray and tired. He was beginning to think that Owen’s insistent chumminess bordered on aggression.
As Martin attempted to bypass Owen’s desk with no more than a greeting, Owen was on his feet in an instant, leaning forward and smiling triumphantly, full of urgency, and gesturing at Martin with the papers he’d been working on, which were exuberantly covered with green pencil markings.
Owen’s initial suggestion for using a system of varicolored markings that would hasten Martin’s or Vic’s understanding of what was required had impressed Martin, but he flinched this morning when he glanced at the four or five pages liberally marked in the color that designated the need for a consultation.
“Give me an hour, Owen. I want to finish Brenner’s manuscript.”
“Right, right,” Owen said, falling back into his chair and swiveling back and forth restlessly. “But I was looking through these letters that Vic left for Helen to type. I’ll tell you, you know, Vic really should go over these himself. I mean, this prose… these are rejection letters, right?”
“One hour, Owen. An hour and I’ll take a look.” He was unusually disheartened at the prospect of going over this correspondence, because Vic had decamped and was answering many of the letters that Owen had been hired to handle, and Owen made it clear at every opportunity that he thought he could do a better job. Martin was unhappy about the whole situation. Several weeks ago Vic had entered Martin’s office stiff and angry, restrained even in the way he moved.
“You know, Martin,” Vic began mildly as he settled in across the desk, “I finally asked Ellen to read these poems”—he waved a sheaf of papers in the air—“and she agrees with me that they’re really good. I don’t think I am reading more into them than there is. I think they’re extraordinary.” He had grown more adamant and defensive by the moment, and Martin had been baffled.
“Whose poems are you talking about? I don’t remember that we disagreed about any poems.”
“Elizabeth Melrose’s. I think they’re some of the best things we’ve seen.” Vic was shuffling through his papers looking for them.
“You know,” Vic said, as he came up with the pages he wanted, “you’re always saying that I see more in a piece of writing than there is to find. I don’t understand how you can miss these… terrible laments! What is it you think I’m reading into them?”
Martin had reached for the poems without answering, and Vic had handed them across the desk and waited for Martin to reply. Martin read a page quickly and looked up at Vic. “I haven’t even seen this, Vic. I’d like to take some time….”
“Shit, Martin!” Vic had leaped up from his chair. “Owen put these back on my desk. When I asked him about them, he said you didn’t think they were very interesting. This is just crazy. Every time I have to give him some sort of directions it turns into a marathon session. You’ve got to fire him!”
“You fire him!” Martin said. “You were right there when we explained the job to him. You seemed perfectly happy about it then. You fire him!”
“Oh no,” Vic had said. “I won’t do it. Owen’s your problem.”
And Martin had tried various subtle ways of firing Owen. When he had suggested to Owen that they simply didn’t have enough correspondence to justify the position, Owen had volunteered to stay on for free. When Martin had asked Owen pointedly if he really thought he was suited to this job, Owen’s face had twisted alarmingly into an agonized expression. “I’m trying everything! Every day! I’m trying to get this right!”
So Vic had set up office in the living room of his old farmhouse while Ellen worked in her study upstairs. It was where Martin and Vic had often worked in the summers in the early years of The Review, and Martin was suddenly filled with yearning for the fledgling enterprise, for the long afternoons by the pond.
Vic and Martin had an administrative assistant, complex financing, budgets, and even a little clout; but Martin could barely remember what it felt like to be ambitious, and clout didn’t interest him at all anymore. In the beginning he must have possessed a kind of naïve hopefulness that was the fuel of ambition. He supposed he had thought that there was some sort of anonymous admiration to be earned that would please him, a limited but high brow sort of fame. It was a quest that approached or replaced religiousness, and the striving for it had been an easy way to live his life. But it still surprised him to meet so many people his own age or older who could sustain aspirations of eminence in the face of the real lives
they led.
He unclipped Duchess from her leash, and she sank down to the cool floor exactly where she was, resting her chin mournfully on her front paws. Martin thumbed through the book manuscript to find a section that would be effective as an excerpt. He tried to concentrate, but even through his closed door he could hear Owen drumming his fingers along the stem of his arched desk lamp. Martin knew exactly what the sound was, because he had seen Owen swiveling restlessly in his chair and tapping his fingers along the flex of the lamp in the rhythm of the drums of a marching band:
da-da-da-da… dum… dum
da-da-da-da… dum… dum
Other times Martin would hear a soft, muted thrumming that he had eventually identified as the reverberation of the frantically tapping heel of one of Owen’s rubber-soled deck shoes. And Martin had often passed by Owen’s desk and seen him propped forward in thought, with his elbows resting on the desk top, sitting eerily still and unblinking except for his hands, which were pressed palms hard together, while his fingers moved in a rapid fluttering of silent applause.
Martin put down the manuscript and lowered his head into his hands in frustration. He could feel his blood pressure rise, and he told himself that Owen was as unwittingly irritating as the mindless woodpecker that attacked the gutter each morning at dawn. Martin also remembered that he would gladly have taken a gun and blown the woodpecker to bits if only he had a gun and had known how to do it.
Upstairs the huge door to the entry of Jesse Hall swung open, and Martin heard feet on the stairway. He went back to his manuscript, relieved that the day of the building was beginning. In the outer office Owen stopped his drumming and presumably went back to the exercise of his green pencil. Martin read in peace, absorbed and excited. At least an issue of The Review should be devoted to a long excerpt of this book, and he glanced at his watch to see if it was too early to call Vic. He decided to wait those few minutes until nine o’clock, just to be sure not to wake either of the Hofstatters; he and they were so tentative with one another these days. Meanwhile, he would go over the rest of the correspondence with Owen.
Owen folded himself into one of the chairs across from Martin’s desk, his elbows resting on the wooden arms and his hands clasped loosely.
“You might want to make some notes,” Martin said, passing a legal pad and a pencil across the desk.
“Oh, okay. Right.” Owen seemed surprised and a little amused, as if Martin were taking some game too seriously, but Martin pressed on.
“There’s a bunch of straightforward rejections and then this one acceptance to Peter Hosley.” He held up the paper-clipped essay to show Owen and set it apart from the material being rejected. “But ask if he’s willing to wait, because we want to use his piece in our summer issue. He might want to send it somewhere that will publish it before then.” Owen didn’t make a single notation. Martin scribbled hastily across the margin of the Hosley manuscript, writing down exactly what he had just said. “Now these four only need responses to suggestions, but be sure to check the letterheads and get the titles exactly right. People are touchy about that.” Martin paused, feeling better as Owen bent over the yellow pad. “Okay, there are three points you need to be sure to include in each of these letters,” and once again he paused. He could not help but see Owen numbering the lines down the margin of the page:
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
“Just three points. And in whatever way seems most appropriate in each case,” Martin said. Owen glanced up expectantly. “Well. And they’re not so… rigid… that you need to number them.” Owen nodded indulgently, his pencil poised over the pad. “I mean, Owen, you can phrase these yourself. I want to make sure that we don’t lose contributions from these people.” And Owen wrote something on the line he had numbered “1.”
“That’s not part of the letter,” Martin said. “If you want to, you can mention something about it, but don’t put it quite that way. ‘We’ve always appreciated your generosity, etc.’” And as Owen hastily moved on to line 2, Martin hurried on, despairingly. “Just tell them that we’re glad of their continuing interest, that we try to be unbiased about every political issue, and that we welcome their further thoughts about… whatever.”
Seeing that Owen had strung out brief notations all the way down to number 7, Martin was apprehensive. He considered how he could find out what Owen intended to write, because Martin had learned from experience that to ask Owen directly would get them nowhere. He was slithery under specific questions; one had to approach him sideways. His blond, open expression concealed a passion for secrecy. Owen would leave for lunch and offer to bring back something for Martin from the deli on Carriage Street, and Martin would work along at his desk with the pleasurable anticipation of a thickly layered corned beef sandwich. But Owen would return an hour and a half later with a cold hamburger and fries from the McDonald’s on the other side of Bradford—a twenty-mile drive. Once Owen had offered to get Martin tickets through a friend for one of the Theater Festival’s productions that was sold out, but several days later he had shown up with two tickets to a Sunday afternoon reading by Blythe Danner of the poetry of Marianne Moore in the auditorium of the Freund Museum. If Martin pressed him, Owen became belligerently sulky.
“This is great, Owen,” Martin had said, when he studied the tickets, “but what happened to Suddenly, Last Summer?”
“Were you serious about that? Bad Tennessee Williams?”
“It’s not so bad. And the cast…”
“Right! It’s all the cast! They’re fabulous,” Owen agreed. “So I got you Blythe Danner. Her performance is incredible.”
This morning Martin was worried about the message Owen was going to send, and he flexed back in his chair and stretched his arms up behind his head to relieve the tension in his shoulders. Just as he had reached as high as he could, the door opened a crack and Netta peered in, looking flustered and anxious.
“Oh, Owen.” Her words were light and whispery as usual, exhaled in relief, and she paused for a moment, smiling. “Hi, Martin. I won’t bother you. I wanted to say hello while I was here.” Her hair had tightened almost into ringlets in the humidity, and she looked even more childishly vulnerable than usual. Martin brought his arms back to his desk and his chair snapped forward.
“How are you, Netta? Have you got your apartment settled? Everything unpacked?” She had filled the entire van and the whole of his own car with boxes and plants in Cambridge. Martin had driven back to her apartment in West Bradford, and he and Vic had taken David up on his offer to help her move all her things upstairs. They had unloaded the car in the parking lot, and left David to unload the van.
“Oh…” She paused and lapsed into serious consideration. “I’ve left a lot of things in boxes, you know? I start to unpack them and then I end up just sort of walking around the box. Don’t you think that unpacking takes real concentration?” She had stepped farther into the room and was leaning against the open edge of the door, looking at him inquiringly. “I mean, it’s sort of an increase in the momentum….”
Martin had only meant to inquire politely, but Netta was pensive and endearingly trusting in giving away strange little intimacies of her life in the innocent assumption that people wanted to know these things.
Martin felt callous in the face of her ingenuousness. “I do think so,” he said, trying to think about it seriously. Netta was so earnest that he wanted to protect her from the discovery that most of the questions people asked her, or many of the comments they made in passing, were merely social niceties. “I know what you mean. Taking on possessions is a kind of responsibility… making room for their emotional weight. Well, remember when I told you about how desperate Dinah felt when my grandmother’s…�
��
“No, no, Martin.” Netta, suddenly severe, brushed her hand through the air to dismiss the idea. “I’m not talking about owning things!” Her gaze had turned almost fierce, and Martin was baffled but at the same time not especially interested.
“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t understand that.”
Netta remained in the doorway for a moment, then smiled at him forgivingly and turned away. “I’ve got to get Anna Tyson to day care. She’s waiting in the car.” And Martin didn’t have to reply, because she had already left the room and Owen followed her.
Martin heard her say something to Owen, her feathery voice too light to catch, but he heard Owen’s reply. “I left a message on your machine. Maybe the tape was full.”
“Owen.” Netta’s voice was strained as she drew his name out into a sort of sigh. “I told you you could stop by. You don’t have to call. You did know that, didn’t you?” Martin didn’t hear Owen’s reply, but there was a long silence, then Netta spoke. “Do you want to meet me for lunch at the Union? David Howells said he would come over tonight to help me with all this unpacking, but we could use your help, too. Or you could come over later.”
Owen didn’t answer her, and the two of them moved away from the door. Netta’s words were indistinct, but they formed the sound of a short, soft plea. A moment later Owen’s chair creaked as he sat down, and there was a long pause before Netta spoke. Her voice was unusually clarified and flat. “I’ve got to go. I left Anna Tyson in the car.” And Martin heard the office door close behind her.
Even though The Review office was in the basement, it wasn’t cool, it was only marginally less hot, and Martin decided not to phone but to drive out to the Hofstatters’ to talk over the excerpt from the manuscript he was reading. He gathered the chapters together and left his office, and Duchess climbed wearily to her feet, raising herself leg by leg, and ambled after him, but he was intercepted on his way out by Owen, who stopped him with an agitated flutter of the green marked pages.
Fortunate Lives Page 16