Souvenir of Cold Springs (4 page)

He was English. His wife had recently left him. He was at Harvard just for the year. He drank too much. He was forty-two. All this was common knowledge.

First semester, Margaret took his Age of Pope course; second semester she and Felicity signed up for Eighteenth-Century Prose. He used to invite his students to his apartment on Linnaean Street and serve them tea, with crumpets that were sent to him by his sister in London. They toasted them in the fireplace on long forks. It was like being in a novel by E. M. Forster or Evelyn Waugh. It was like being in the Bloomsbury group.

The day came when Margaret stopped by, alone, to drop off a paper, found him drunk, stayed to make tea and talk, and ended up in his bed. He had said, “Oh you lovely young thing, I should take you back to London with me.” She remembered that perfectly: oh you lovely young thing.

Some days when she could think of no better Daily Suffering, she forced herself to relive it. First the good part, the afternoon of lovemaking: what he had done to her, what he had said, the light coming yellow through the drawn shades, the way he had murmured and held her, didn't want her to leave.
Oh you lovely young thing
in his beautiful accent. His funny cotton undershorts, his old-fashioned watch on the bedside table, his salt-and-pepper pubic hair. She had laughed at him, lovingly, and he had laughed at her, played with the tips of her nipples, used his tongue, and afterward there had been true peace, a state she had never experienced, and knowledge she had never had. Lying in that yellow room with Matthew, there was nothing she didn't understand. She was one of the enlightened, one of the elect.

She would go to England with him, become his mistress, and live in a state of continually renewed knowledge and pleasure and feeling. Her life had begun. Her life was a garden, like Twickenham—ordered and beautiful in a way she had always, before, assumed was closed to her.

She walked home in the misty dark. It was late March, and the trees in the Yard were coming into leaf. The streets were full of people who looked happy. There was a foggy new moon like a chalk mark on a blackboard. She had gone back to Adams House, told Felicity she had been at the library, and shut herself in her room so she could say it over to herself until she had it memorized, every move, every word, every touch of his hand on her skin.

And then nothing. He didn't answer her notes or return her phone calls. She went to his office during office hours and found he had canceled them. She rang the bell at his building on Linnaean Street and got no reply. He dashed out after class as if pursued by Furies. It took her a couple of weeks to realize he was embarrassed by their encounter. He regretted it. He had been drunk. Sober, he realized he had screwed a student—like Abelard. She cried herself to sleep every night but tried to be philosophical: she had had her heart broken. She wanted to be a writer, and she knew tragedy was necessary. Eventually she'd be able to make use of it.

Then she missed a period and panicked—but her panic contained a kind of elation. This he couldn't deny. She knew it was his. Roddie: She hadn't seen Roddie in ages. She had been avoiding Roddie for—how long? Long enough. Roddie was no one. It was not possible that sex with Roddie could produce a baby. Sex with Roddie was like a frozen dinner: barely nutritious and certainly not creative. If she was pregnant, it was Matthew's baby. She pictured a little English child, a boy in a sweater and short pants, climbing over a stile.

She told no one. She missed another period. She had mild nausea in the mornings, which she hid from Felicity. She went out with Roddie sometimes but she wouldn't sleep with him. She reread
Middlemarch
. She cut classes and owed papers to everyone, including Matthew. Her other professors hounded her for them; Matthew never said a word. She lay awake crying, trying to make a plan. The end of the semester was approaching. She knew he would be leaving for England soon.
I don't want to miss a day of the English summer
, he had said.
Oh you lovely young thing, I should take you with me
.

She finally confronted him in the hall before class because she didn't know what else to do. She clutched his arm, hung on to the rough tweed of his jacket, told him she was pregnant, asked him why he didn't want to see her. She had wept and been noisy. There had been students all over the place, shock and awkward laughter, Felicity and Alan and Jessie Henley and Peter Green and everyone else staring in amazement. He had said—she remembered this even better than
Oh you lovely young thing
—he had said, “My dear young woman, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,” and looked over her head at the collected crowd as if he expected them to save him. She had seen that look: fear was in it, and bewilderment, and incredulity not untouched with amusement. It was so convincing that she wondered if she was going crazy. She certainly felt crazy. Had she dreamed it all? Had she read it in a novel? His long kisses, the funny English undershorts with buttons, the ice melting in the whiskey glass beside his old-fashioned watch?

They took her to University Health Services, and a psychiatrist talked to her. Then she was examined by a physician. They did a pregnancy test. She was talked to by an abortion counselor. Then by the head of a women's group that wondered if it had a sexual harassment case. Then by the psychiatrist again, who explained that Professor Nicholson had had a vasectomy years ago, he had offered to call London and get the documents that would verify it—not that that was necessary, of course. Professor Nicholson was very concerned about her. He had been fond of her, she was one of his best students.

Her mother came, tight-lipped and red-eyed, elaborately kind at first but moving quickly to words like
disaster, disgrace
. Then Felicity, who said, “I keep trying to understand you, Margaret. I keep trying to have sympathy for you. But I can't figure out how you could act like that toward someone you supposedly liked and respected.” Then Roddie, who put his head in his hands and said, “Oh Christ, this is going to wreck my whole life.”

They took her from UHS to Cambridge Hospital, where Dr. O'Whatever performed the abortion. She quit talking to Felicity, and she told Roddie she couldn't see him for a while. She met with a counselor who arranged for her to take a leave. It turned out that on top of everything else she had a very mild case of mono. Her father picked her up at the hospital and drove her home to Brookline, a ride across the river that was perfectly silent except for a Mozart horn concerto on the tape deck.

Roddie called and
asked her to meet him at Lulu's. “For what?” she asked.

“I just want to see you.”

“For what?”

“Not for anything, Margaret. Just for the hell of it. Just to get together.”

“I'm not sure I see the point.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, then forget it,” he said, and hung up.

She called him back and said, “All right. I'm sorry. I'll meet you at Lulu's.”

“For what?” he asked.

“I've got something to tell you.”

“Good or bad?”

“Neutral.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “I've been missing you.”

“I've had a cold,” she said, as if that explained why she hadn't been missing him.

They met at Lulu's the next afternoon. Since she had left Harvard, they always met at Lulu's, a lunch place near the Museum of Fine Arts. The nearest school was Northeastern. The chances of her seeing anyone she knew at Lulu's were very small.

She wore her black jacket and black jeans: mourning costume of the first rank. She was late. When she arrived, Roddie was eating a hamburger at a table near the back. He half-rose when he saw her, then sat down again awkwardly. She took off her jacket and sat across from him. They exchanged half-smiles.

“Sorry about the hamburger,” he said. He had never stopped feeling guilty because she was a vegetarian and he wasn't. She didn't say anything, just sat and watched him eat. A waitress came over and asked her if she wanted anything, and she ordered a cup of tea.

“Make it two,” Roddie said. He finished his hamburger, wiped his mouth prissily with a napkin, and pushed his plate away. There were dribbles of blood and fat and ketchup on the plate. He dropped the napkin over it and said, “So what's your news?”

Now that she was with him, she didn't want to tell him. There was something about Roddie that made her feel as if she had died. It was hard for her to speak. Even to move seemed more trouble than it was worth. Every time she sat with him in Lulu's she felt she would sit there forever because she'd never have the energy to get up.

“It's not really much,” she said finally. “I'm moving to California.”

The waitress set two cups of tea on the table, scribbled out a check, and tucked it between the napkin holder and the sugar bowl. When she left, Roddie said, “Sometimes I wonder about you, Margaret. What do you mean,
not really much
? You're moving to California and that's no big deal? What do you mean, you're moving to California? To do what?”

She couldn't stand, the way he got excited about things. Not the fact that he got excited, but the way he did. He always started out calmly—he knew he had a problem—but then his eyes popped, he spit saliva, he gestured wildly, his voice got loud and wobbly.

She sat silently, watching him. He waited for her answer, gave up, and went on. “I wish you would approach things like a normal person, Margaret. I wish you would just be honest and open and not be putting on this act all the time.” He reached across the table and wound his fingers around her wrist. “You don't have to be supercool with me, you know. You can admit that moving to California is a very big deal. I don't understand this. Why are you moving to California all of a sudden, anyway?”

She looked down at his skinny, black-haired fingers. Her hand in his grasp looked pink and frail, a small, trapped animal. She wiggled it but he held on tight, and she sighed. “I'm not even sure I'm going,” she said. “It depends on whether my great-aunt sends me the money. She probably won't. I'll probably be stuck in that house with my parents for the rest of my stinking life. Forget California. Forget I said it.”

He let go her wrist and put sugar in his tea, stirring it violently, and took a slurp off the top. “Do you want my advice?”

“No.”

“Think it over. I'm a smart guy.”

“No, thanks.”

He looked at her in squinty-eyed silence, nodding his head as if she were some rare species he was on the road to figuring out. He was a double-concentrator in biology and computer science. He was doing his thesis on the comparative radar systems of
Myotis lucifigus
, otherwise known as the little brown bat, and its larger cousin,
Eptesicus fuscus
. One of his many minor interests was vintage rock-and-roll. He had recently sent an article to
Popular Culture Review
about the influence on the Beatles of old rock-and-roll songs—of “La Bamba” on “Twist and Shout,” “He's So Fine” on “My Sweet Lord,” “My Boyfriend's Back” on “Sgt. Pepper.” A thousand and one nights listening to the Shirelles in Roddie's room at Lowell House.

He drank more tea, spilling it. “You know what's your real problem?”

“Yes. My real problem is how to get out of this city before winter.”

“No,” he said. “That is not your real problem.”

They sat staring at each other. She didn't want to stare at Roddie—she hated the way he looked, couldn't believe she used to think he was cute—but she would have lost points if she had looked away. It occurred to her that she wanted to know what he would say. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Okay, Roddie,” she said. “What's my real problem?”

“Guilt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it. You're reeking with guilt over the whole mess, the abortion, everything.”

“We agreed not to discuss it, Roddie.”

“We agreed on that last April, for Christ's sake, Margaret. It is now October, in case you haven't noticed, and you haven't progressed one tiny bit. For six months you've done absolutely nothing.”

“Not true,” she said. “I've done plenty of things.”

“Name one.”

She thought. “I had a cold.” He started to speak again, but she said, “Forget it, Roddie. I don't want to hear it.”

“Well, you ought to hear it. You ought to face things a little better. Okay, you screwed up, you acted like a jerk, and you and I were stupid, and you had an abortion, and you dropped out of school. Let's face it. You've had a lot of problems.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let's consider it faced. Now can I go?”

“Margaret.” He ran his fingers back through his hair. He needed a haircut. She had cut it for him months ago, and it looked like it hadn't been touched since then. She fingered her own hair, the stubbly strips shaved around her ears.

She said, “I think you should wear one dramatic rhinestone stud in your left nostril.”

“Just shut up and listen to me. Let me finish.” He slurped his tea again and banged the cup in the saucer. “I'm being serious, Margaret. You can laugh all you want, but I'm giving you good advice. You ought to go back next semester. You could take your usual course load and finish up your incompletes and you'd only be a semester behind.”

He was doing it again, the staring eyes, the jabbing finger, his hair standing on end. Oh God: Roddie. She was supposed to be fond of him.
My boyfriend's back
. Right. How could she not be fond of him? He was her first, her only serious boyfriend. She had lost her virginity with him. She had gone to bed with him a million boring times. He had impregnated her, hard though it was to believe. He was brilliant, he was having an article come out in
Popular Culture Review
, she used to find him attractive, and, worst of all, he was in love with her.