Authors: Nancy Thayer
“So what?” Mr. Zabski said. “I reimbursed you guys. I gave the check to Mr. Bennett a month ago.”
Reynolds stared at Mr. Zabski.
“So?” Mr. Zabski said, taking the conversation into his own charge after several moments of silence. “So what do you want?”
“Nothing,” Reynolds said. “Thank you.”
Back home in Londonton, he sat in his study, doodling figures on a pad. He was torn. He wanted his suspicions disproved; but he did not want to prove himself a man who dealt in suspiciousness. He decided to sleep on it. Friday evening he dialed Gary Moyer’s number. Gary was a lawyer, a member of the committee, and one of Ron’s closest friends.
“Reynolds,” Reynolds said to himself as Gary’s phone rang, “you’re probably going to make an ass of yourself.”
But that was not what had happened. Gary was as appalled at Reynolds’s suspicions as Reynolds himself had been. He canceled a Saturday afternoon tennis match in order to join Reynolds in the town office. They went over the books together, and Gary called Mazani Window and Glass. When he had finished talking, he put the receiver down and bent his head to rest in his hands.
There seemed to be only one conclusion: Ron Bennett had been siphoning money from the committee by ordering twice as much material as he needed, returning half of it, and pocketing the refund himself.
They had no way of knowing exactly how much money Ron had appropriated for himself, because the merchants were bound by common courtesy to keep secret the exact amount they charged the contractor for each item. Usually they gave a discount ranging from two to twenty percent. Some of this was passed on to the buyer, and some of it went straight to the contractor; it was one customary way the contractors made money. But the merchants were able to give out information about the amount of materials bought and returned, and everywhere, Ron Bennett had returned almost half of everything that he had bought and the rec center committee had paid for. If Reynolds and Gary were anywhere close in their figures, Ron Bennett so far in the past six months had kept for himself refunds amounting to a little over a hundred thousand dollars.
“Well, you know,” Gary said quietly, raising his head to look sadly at Reynolds, “John just graduated from college, and Cynthia is only in her junior year at Smith. It takes a lot of money to put kids through college.”
“Still,” Reynolds began.
“Still,” Gary said, then sighed. “Listen, Reynolds. We have to discuss this with him first before we tell the rest of the committee. This is going to destroy him.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Reynolds said. “This is going to destroy him. He’s been stealing money from every family in Londonton as surely as if he were a thief entering their homes at night, taking money from their pockets. He’s a crook.”
“I know, I know. But maybe we’re wrong.”
“Do you think so?”
“No. I don’t see how we can be. In fact, I’m not all that surprised; I’ve almost been expecting something like this. Pam had mentioned to me that she thought the Bennetts were overextending themselves financially. But Reynolds, he’s a friend of mine. Do me a favor. Make an appointment to go see him tomorrow night, to tell him what we
suspect. I’ll go with you. I want to go with you. But I just don’t know if I can face him—” Gary’s eyes filled with tears. “If this is true, it’s just an awful damned shame. It just breaks my heart. Why should he ruin himself like this?”
“I’ll make the phone call,” Reynolds said. “I’ll call now.” But when he dialed, the number was busy, and although he tried off and on the rest of the evening, he wasn’t able to get through to the Bennetts until Sunday morning, just before church. Judy Bennett had answered cordially; when he said he wanted to drop in that evening to visit with Ron, she had sounded pleased.
Now Reynolds sat in church, looking out at Judy Bennett, who sat so serenely at her husband’s side. Poor woman, he thought; she would soon feel that when she let Reynolds in the door she was letting a viper into the house. Reynolds was glad he had thought to ask Peter Taylor to join them this evening; the minister’s presence would surely provide a sense of comfort to them all.
Reynolds could only guess at the outcome of the meeting. Perhaps Ron would return the money, perhaps he could prove they were wrong, or he would admit they were right. What would they do then? They would probably have to prosecute. They would certainly have to call in another contractor, and let the town know what Ron had done. They would have to raise even more money somehow, much more money, before the rec center could be completed.
Reynolds had over the years learned to control his emotions, and he was not a passionate man to begin with. But now in this consecrated building, he felt a holy anger rise within him. He felt like some kind of human volcano about to erupt. He hated Ron Bennett, and this was as intimate and powerful an emotion as he had ever felt for any living man or woman. He hated him not so much for the individual act of greed and corruption as for the repercussions this would have on the broader community. The money was almost beside the point—but not, of course, entirely. One hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money, especially when it had been raised from the personal donations of almost every single family, rich and poor, in the town. Ron had done worse than merely steal money; he had violated the trust of the town, and he had done it in a despicable manner, casually, taking the town’s trust in him for granted. He must have thought the committee was made of fools. He must have held—he must hold—his community in contempt. And he was not an outsider—he was one of them. People in such a close community judged themselves by each other, and if an adult or child
performed a noble act, each individual felt himself capable of just that much more nobility. In this democratic little society, the members of Londonton looked at one another to reflect the best in themselves. Ron Bennett would reveal to them all the selfishness which bred in every man’s heart. The center itself would lose its aura of communal dignity and unity; the atmosphere of the town would turn angry, vengeful, and grievous.
Reynolds had been wrong all along, a fool, to hope that humankind differed from the rest of the physical universe and could somehow shoot away from the deteriorating course that nature followed and aim at uniquely human heights. Now Reynolds knew that in spite of his hopes, mankind, represented in this instance by that fellow citizen Ron Bennett, was doomed to fail, one way or the other.
This sad knowledge Reynolds took personally, and it was the final blow in a summer of disappointments. Like a man hanging from the edge of a cliff, Reynolds felt he would now stop grappling and clawing for a fingerhold in the infirm ground of optimism and slide down into the metaphorical arms of the only faith that was trustworthy: despair.
It would be such a relief to despair at last.
All of his life, Reynolds had clambered up the treacherous and unassisting ground of hope, trying to believe that men were not bad and that life was not senseless. He had come at an early age to believe in the perfectibility of man: this seemed to him to be the
point
of all life. He also learned very quickly that as an individual, and one not given to theatrics or incendiarism, he had little chance of changing the course of humankind in general. He was an optimist, not a madman. So he set about to control what he could control: himself. He decided that he would try to be a perfect man.
It was easy to be perfect while he was young. His parents taught languages in a prep school just outside of Boston. They had little money, but lots of hauteur. Reynolds was their only child, born late in their lives, and he was delighted to find how effortlessly he could earn their approval. He had only to sit quietly with them in the damasked living room of their apartment with his head bent over a book. He learned to read at the age of four (he didn’t intend that, he was too young then to think about perfection, his precocity was pure accident). His parents made much ado about this, so he felt doubly blessed: what seemed to them to be compliance was to him a natural pleasure. He simply loved to read. This was fortunate for him, because his parents read so constantly that it seemed to
him as a watching infant that reading was actually another vital bodily function, like breathing or walking or eating. He learned to fit into his family almost immediately. His father would sit in a huge armchair, his mother would recline gracefully on the couch, with her stockinged feet on a pillow. Reynolds would lie on the floor between them, and they would all turn pages in silence together. In the winter there would be the accompanying crackle and warmth from the fireplace; in the summer breezes and birdsong would drift through the open window and over their bent heads and engrossed consciousnesses. In the winter, his mother would at some point in the evening serve sherry to her husband and herself and hot chocolate to her son. In the summer she served sherry and lemonade.
When Reynolds turned six, and his mother realized that he had grown too mature for Little Golden Books and the picture books she bought for him, she took him one Saturday afternoon in the fall to the great public library. Reynolds would always remember that day as the happiest day of his life.
Until then, the world had been divided for him into two categories: the Safe, which was man-made, familiar, limited, and comprehensible; and the Dangerous, which was natural, strange, and too huge to be understood or organized (because of this, the Dangerous was also often boring). Their own home represented the first, as did the little grocery store where his mother shopped, and the homes of friends and other human dwellings. Reynolds had been confronted with the Dangerous only twice before, once when his parents took him to the ocean, and once when they took him to the mountains. Those wild vistas shrank in his mind in comparison to what vaulted above him when he entered the library: a whole new category, the Amazing, this vast and beautiful space which had been shaped by human minds and hands. The ceiling rose open for floors above him, and he could see, behind iron balconies, rows of books with people moving quietly through those rows. The floor beneath his feet alternated as far as he could see in large black and white squares. Their pattern was broken by tall oak counters where people stood checking out or returning books. In one direction stood an enormous alcove with wooden boxes of drawers lined up and golden; Reynolds would soon learn that this was the card catalog. In another alcove rows of tables were occupied by people of all ages and sizes, bent over books. Everywhere he looked, he saw grown-ups walking slowly, reverently, speaking in whispers.
His mother led him through the aisles, softly explaining the library to him, and as
Reynolds saw row after row of books unfold before him, he was filled with utter joy. This was the most beautiful place in the world. This was what man was meant for. He understood in his own childish way that in this building man had come close to enclosing the infinite.
Before he was ten, Reynolds was so addicted to the written word that words had more meaning to him than the objects or people they represented. Of course he excelled in school, except in recess and gym, but he was such a large boy that he could avoid being bullied. He was not the sort of child who wears glasses and blows up the basement doing scientific experiments—he did not want to do experiments, but only to read about them. The fact that all of human history, experience, actions, and emotions could be listed, explained, cataloged, organized, and analyzed satisfied him immensely.
So it was that from his earliest childhood he developed a preference for life bound up in books to life as it was lived. He was tantalized by the idea of perfection, and irritated by real life, because it was so sloppy. Something, in real life, was always going wrong. He attempted a few personal relationships, but was always disappointed: people were so messy, so easily hurt. And life never did provide that tidy resolution that made the ending of even the wildest novel so gratifying. Reynolds isolated himself; he withdrew more and more each year into the world of the mind.
As he grew older, he developed the intelligence and insight to realize just how narrow his life was. He did not become a friendly person, but his philosophy of life became friendly. He felt more charitable to people in general, and was able to remain that way by staying aloof from most people. This made it possible for him to believe in the perfectibility of man, and to believe that the people he lived among were valuable and good.
While other men and women loved each other physically and emotionally, he loved the world and its inhabitants abstractly. He was pleased when he saw signs of heroism, kindness, or even intelligence in other people; he was depressed when he heard or read of people caught in demeaning acts. He disciplined himself, worked hard, and decided to devote himself to his fondest hope: the ultimate perfectibility of man. He became a professor; it was the only life he wanted to live, and he was very good at it.
Now and then someone drunk or foolish would ask Reynolds whether or not he was ever lonely; his honest answer was always no. Over the years he learned to treat himself to all sorts of pleasures that more than made up for whatever he might have
missed for lack of human interaction. He attended concerts, ballet, theater. He learned to cook with fastidious skill, and to know about wines. And finally he came to live his life in what was for him the almost perfect relationship with human beings: he taught at the private college in Londonton and became the dean of students there.
This was, of necessity, disciplined and careful work, and Reynolds excelled at it. In fact he helped the students much more than any sentimental gusher would have; although the students from time to time thought him a cold fish, they were later to write him letters telling him that he was the man who had done the crucial and perfect thing in their lives.
His college and his town became everything to him. He found here a source of solace and encouragement in the midst of an imperfect world.
He liked the gatherings of man at formal ceremonies such as convocations, graduations, trustees’ dinners, baptisms, weddings. It was the shape that pleased him, the form. He liked to look out over a hall full of long, rectangular tables spread with white linen; the tables radiated out from the central dais with the regular pattern of chemicals in a trusted formula. He liked the elongated slender shapes of silverware framing the round plates in a design that was repeated routinely and symmetrically down the length of the tables. Man needed definition and order; it said something about the achievements of man. When the hall filled with men and women of all ages, sizes, shapes, and cultures, Reynolds could look out at them from his raised table with approval: those professors and administrators were for this limited time putting aside their petty grievances in order to sit together in harmony at an academic banquet. Rivals passed each other the salt; regional enemies discussed national politics; competitors bent their heads toward each other in order better to hear tales or jokes. All these contestants in the academic strife dropped their metaphorical swords for the space of one evening, and applauded, as one, the guest speaker. No matter that they would all go muttering out to their cars afterward, disgruntled with the speaker’s words or even more incensed at an adversary’s subtle insults. Still, for the period of three hours, two hundred men and women could be seated together in harmony, and that was an achievement not to be derided.