Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series) (53 page)

“Mommy, you were crying,” Amy said.

“Not really.”

“Yes, you were.”

“I got something in my eye.”

“Did you two like the ride?” asked Ian.

“Yes.”

“Say thank you,” Jeanne instructed them.

“Thank you.”

Kathryn shook his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Sherbrooke.”

“Ian. You’re welcome,” he said.

“We have to go now.”

“Do you? There’s a lumberjack who was the world champion. He’s putting on a show in twenty minutes.”

“We have to,” Jeanne repeated. “It was excellent to see you. Good-bye.”

She adjusted her handbag and turned. She walked between the twins and guided them toward the exit gate. He watched them till they disappeared, then made his own way to the lumberjack. A tree had been stripped of its bark. A fat man in a red shirt sliced a piece of paper with his ax. “People often ask me,” the man announced, “if I can shave with this ax. Well, you can’t see me shaving, so I just want to show you all how fine this ax can cut.”

When
The Green Mantle
was finished, he sent it to New York. Apollonius Banos, the theatrical impresario, had been his roommate at Harvard, and they had kept in touch. Apollonius would claim to be in Ian’s debt. “I owe you, buddy,” he had said the last time they met. He lowered his head and raised his eyes and gave his upward-staring glare, his chest hair curled out of his shirt.

Banos used to say he had the dirtiest act in Adams House; it got the little ladies where they lived. He had majored in Social Relations, and he had a theory that Harvard was a whorehouse purporting to be something else. “Put ten thousand young adults in the same place, and what do you have?” he would ask, going falsetto on “young adults.” “Faggotry, careerism, and the biggest gang bang in Boston.”

He quoted Miller and Donleavy and
The Story of O
; he doused himself with musk oil and wore a jockstrap over his pants. It was his ambition, Lon said, to make it with more Radcliffe girls than any previous Soc. Rel. student in the major’s history; he kept statistics on the wall above his bed. It was more than just an ambition, he said, it was a mission and jihad; it was Cabrini Boulevard’s revenge on Central Park West.

Molly Benson came from Ipswich and was shocked at Lon’s insistence. “It’s not that I mind the idea,” she would confide to Ian. “Don’t get me wrong. But all that leather and garlic . . .” She tossed her yellow mane at Lon and told him to get lost; she said he never gave himself wholly, but was a dog marking trees. They had raucous arguments, and Ian as the witness would be implored to judge.

Apollonius came from a family of furriers. “That means,” he confessed, “it’s cut and stitch, it’s warehouse time in Washington Heights,” He worked holidays and summers in a pizza parlor, and attended Harvard on full scholarship; he was determined, he told Ian one evening—when Molly was in Widener, preparing for her orals—to marry rich. “It’s the sexual revolution, right, so why not get paid for the pleasure?” He did his Tambo imitation. “I’se
tired
of licking hind tit.”

Lon was magnetic, Molly said; he was an evil flower in the cultivated garden. But his problem was he didn’t know, for instance, she’d just cited Baudelaire and Voltaire. He knew Kluckhohn and Erikson, perhaps, but did not know French. “Evil Flower” derived from
Fleurs du Mal,
and “cultivate your garden” was a phrase out of
Candide
; she knew more about Homer and Apollonius of Rhodes than his Greek family had ever known; she hated feta cheese. She despised retsina wine and that ridiculous deposed king so proud of his karate and Scandinavian wife; the language was boring to study, boring to listen to, boring to read. “Worry beads and olive oil and fascism,” she’d say. “That’s what you offer, and it just isn’t enough.”

They married, however, over her family’s objections and two days after Commencement. Ian served as the best man. Her father took Ian aside and said, “I don’t mind telling you. I wish it wasn’t happening. But we’ll make the best of a bad business, and what I want from you is a phone call if anything goes wrong. Her own inheritance,” he said. “That’s what’s the trouble, right? My Molly.” Mr. Benson shook his head and drove north to Ipswich, refusing champagne. Ian stood on the steps of Memorial Church, surveying Harvard Yard and all he would relinquish, not envying Lon’s cupidity but envying the sweet sad look that Molly gave as she raised her veil and let him kiss her; when Ian left Cambridge, thereafter, he left no forwarding address.

In Rome he got a postcard, at American Express. “Wish you wuz here, fella. You and me and baby making three. I’m working for her old man now and on my way. C. U. Soon.” In Kabul he got a letter from Molly, saying how much they both missed him, how very little laughter there seemed to be these days; in Delhi he received a telegram from Mr. Benson, saying they sought an annulment—and would he make a deposition at the Embassy?

The grounds were nonconsummation, Mr. Benson said. Apollonius was impotent—or would be once the lawyers had got through with him. Molly was hysterical, sitting by her father’s side, and when she spoke to Ian all she could manage to say was, “I don’t want to see you. Don’t come.” Ian waited by the phone in Delhi, trying to distinguish the sound of her breathing from static, trying to determine if she needed him or needed him gone.

He drove to visit her in Ipswich as soon as he returned. The Benson house was set back from a feeder road for Crane’s Beach; he and Molly walked there, in a November rain. Her mother had not wanted them to go. “You’ll catch a cold,” she said. “On top of everything else.”

“Please, Mom,” said Molly. “It’s all right.”

“All right. But come back quickly, hear? And do please bundle up.”

They left the house in silence. Her hair was cropped; her speech—they discussed the weather, his whereabouts since last they’d met, and college friends—was slow. Her body had thickened; she leaned on his arm. “It was awful,” Molly said.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Oh, but we do.”

He kicked a stone; his shoes were wet.

“We have to,” Molly said. “It was awful. What he did. What he was doing . . .”

“Who? Lon?”

“My father says”—she said, as if reciting—“that he was lucky to stay out of jail. Nobody else will hire him, if they know what’s good for them. He’s gone to Hollywood. It’s oil and water, father says, our kind and his don’t mix.”

He turned to her, shocked. “Molly . . .”

“We’re divorced,” she said. “I should have married you. Oh, Ian—my parents don’t know that, of course.”

She leaned on him more heavily but focused on the ground. She moved inside her slicker like an animal at feeding time; her eyes avoided his. The rain increased. He had indeed imagined this blockish, glazed girl as his own lover once but shrank from Molly now. Whimpering, she stepped away. What shocked him most was not such shrinking but that he was also aroused—Ian felt drawn to this woman as he had not, earlier, to the golden senior on his roommate’s bed.

“It was awful, awful, awful,” Molly said.

“I wish you could tell me what happened.”

“My father knows,” she said. “I’ve gone bananas.” She wriggled. “This is my banana boat.”

“But Lon . . .”

“Ss-ssh!” She put her hand on his mouth. Then something curious happened. She rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue, made a “cuckoo” sign at him, and winked. Her face settled into sane calm. It was as if she’d mimicked madness; he shared her secret, she seemed to be saying, they both could take a joke. A woman like herself would not lose equilibrium because of a husband like Lon.

Returning, they drank sherry. Mrs. Benson offered cheese. She hovered near them, then withdrew. “Your father will be home at six,” she said to Molly. “He can stay for dinner, if he wants.”

Ian thanked her and said no. There was a fire in the living room. Molly put on “Pages from the Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach.” “Do you still play?” she asked. He shook his head. “No pianos in the Hindu Kush, is that it?” Molly asked. She adjusted the volume, and paused. “You could have written,” she said. The room felt like a cage; she stared at him, unseeing. An automatic light clicked on—he stepped toward her, stopped.

Then her uncertainty passed. She reminded Ian of the sherry served at Apthorp House, and how the first time that the three of them went to a football game together, Apollonius got falling-down drunk on port wine. She laughed with unaffected ease and kissed his cheek, departing, with what seemed like cool affection. He wanted to sleep with her then. She said, “If you see Banos-baby, tell him things are fine. Tell him I hope he makes millions, and everything’s under control.” She shut the door behind him, and watched him through the mullioned windows while he walked away. He left with this sense of shut doors: a chance missed, road not taken. Whatever message she was sending was one he would fail to convey.

For weeks that final winter, Jeanne avoided him. When he met her in the street, her smile seemed forced, voice loud. Her children had the German measles, and though better now than later it was still a worry—they never took turns being sick. It was simpler, she supposed, to nurse them both at once, but they took a lot of nursing and she, Jeanne, was out on her feet. The January blizzard hadn’t helped. Miles needed the jeep just to get to the office, and her own car wouldn’t start. She hoped he’d understand; she had lists of places to go and people to see and phone calls to return and groceries to buy, and it had just been the busiest month, she couldn’t seem to find the time to do what needed doing with her friends.

Ian heard her out. He focused on her lips. When she faltered into silence, he kissed her. She withdrew—a startled sudden motion—and backed against the plate-glass window of the Automotive Accessory Shop. There was a sign that read: SNO-TIRE SALE 4 FOR 3! There were radial tires and snow tires forming a black igloo on the bench behind the window; there were tire irons and sets of wrenches and wreaths and leftover Christmas lights. He said, “Just being friendly. The holiday spirit. Good-bye.”

Jeanne called him the next day. “I can’t see you,” she said. “But the girls are getting better, and I did want to talk.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine. Terrific.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“No. You’re not glad to hear it, and I’m not terrific. I’m frightened, Ian, it’s falling apart.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Jane came into the room, carrying her Sesame Street puzzle set.

“You did. You do. I don’t know the rules of your game.”

“I’ll help you,” Ian mouthed at Jane. She sat on the floor and upended the box, then turned the yellow cardboard shapes face up. “I don’t know them either,” he said to the phone. “It isn’t a game.”

“Not for me.”

“I know that. I wanted to kiss you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Jeanne said. Her voice was flat, constricted, as if she had determined to erase all modulation. Jane sighed and, with a gesture copied from Maggie, scratched her hair above the ear. “Strangers kiss me all the time on Main Street, in full view.”

“Ian?” Jane asked. She held up a corner piece, pointing. “Is this a square?”

He shook his head.

“Rectangle? A edge?”

“Look, can I call you back?”

“No.”

“Happy New Year,” he said. “There was mistletoe still hanging from the power line. You were standing under it.”

“I wanted you to do it. I want to be able to, Ian. I can’t.”

“I know that,” he answered and, saying it, knew it. “It isn’t your fault. We did try.”
So this is how it ends,
he thought,
this trouble with timing: good-bye.

“All right,” said Jeanne. “I’ll stop.”

“Yes. I’m glad the twins are better. Give them both my love.”

“Thank you, I will. Give our best to your mother.”

“I will.”

An odd formality possessed him then, as if their reluctance to speak face-to-face was mannerly and apt. Had she stood in front of him, he would have kissed her hand. He kissed the receiver instead. “I have to go now,” Ian said. “Big Bird requires fixing. Jane is working at it, but she’s got his tail on backward.”

“Good-bye.”

“I lied about that mistletoe. Just one goddamn peck on the cheek. Just one kiss in public,” he said. But Jeanne was hanging up, was telling him she loved him; he listened to the silence, then the hum. Jane had managed Bert, but Ernie was eluding her. She held up a piece of the puzzle, its shape a soft-edged star. He bent and touched her hair. “Is this a edge piece?” she asked.

When Apollonius wrote, it was to say he’d call. He was working on a series now about a shipwrecked boat with twenty chorus girls who’d been heading for a tryout at the Folies-Bergère. If Ian felt like coming down for consultation, sending in a script about the complications caused when, after their fourth month on the island, Suzy announces she’s pregnant and needs a balanced diet and gets so dizzy in the morning she can hardly keep her halter on, why Ian was welcome to try. Lon himself was in the islands checking out locations and the local scene; his girl could do the limbo on a mattress all night long.
The Green Mantle
was at present with a pal of his who was very well connected with the Shubert Organization and the Public Theater; they’d be in touch with him soon. The problem was talent, Lon wrote; there’s little enough in this town. You got a shred of talent and they call you Emperor; you shake it hard and fast enough and they call you Queen for a Day. The salutation—dictated but not signed—was their old college slogan: “Arse Gratia Artis. Go for it.”