The Class

  A shiver chilled Ted to the core. “Is he—alive?” He looked at Wylie, his eyes pleading for an answer.

  “He’ll be all right. You’ve missed the worst of it. Fortunately, she had her father there.”

  “Where is he? Where’s my son?”

  “At the children’s hospital in Paddington Green.”

  Though Ted wanted to bolt from the room, something kept him frozen to the spot. “Does Sara have any idea where I’ve been?”

  “No,” answered the professor. “I hardly thought it appropriate.” He paused, then added, “I’ll leave that to you.”

  It was Sunday and the trains to London crept like pious snails. And all the way Ted thought, Suppose he dies before I get there.

  He who gave no thought to Christ from one Easter to the next, now started to converse with Him. To negotiate for little Ted’s survival. Please, Lord, I’ll pay the price. Take anything from me, but let him live.

  His morbid thoughts were not relieved as he rushed through the portals of the hospital. It was bare and ill-lit and, to Ted, seemed ominously empty.

  He found Sara and her father on the second floor outside the Lewis Carroll ward.

  “Is he all right?” Ted quickly asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Didn’t Wylie tell you everything?”

  “No,” he replied.

  Sara began to recount the story at breakneck speed. As if she had to get it out as quickly as she could. For her own catharsis.

  “He woke up last night with an incredibly high fever—”

  “Over a hundred and five,” her father added, as he too relived the painful moments. “Thank God when we got him here the doctor on duty knew exactly what it was. She put him—”

  “She?” Ted intruded with atavistic disapproval. And then immediately apologized. “Sorry I stopped you. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Viral pneumonia,” Philip Harrison announced. “Calm down, Ted. The big crisis is behind us.”

  Damn, he inwardly berated himself. And I wasn’t there.

  Just then Dr. Rama Chatterjee appeared in the distance.

  “Here she comes,” said Sara. “Maybe we can see Teddie now.”

  Ted’s confidence in female physicians was not enhanced by the discovery that this one was Indian.

  “He’s sleeping comfortably,” the doctor said with a smile as she approached, and then addressed the new arrival. “You must be Professor Lambros. He was asking for you.”

  “I want to see him now,” Ted demanded. “And after that I want to see the head of your department.”

  “You can do both at once,” said Dr. Chatterjee good-naturedly. “I’m the Chief of Pediatrics.”

  In the days that followed, Sara rarely left her son’s side. She even slept next to him on a folding bed the hospital provided.

  Ted also spent most of the daylight hours at the hospital. He and Sara would sit in the same glass cubicle and each in turn engage their son in conversation. But they rarely talked to each other.

  She seemed emotionless. But Ted assumed it was merely a way of hiding her anxiety about their sick child. He had already convinced himself that her preoccupation had made her oblivious to the difficulty she had had in reaching him the previous Sunday.

  When visiting hours ended, Ted and his father-in-law would have dinner and then stroll on the perimeter of Hyde Park.

  They quickly exhausted topics of mutual interest. So one evening Ted delivered a monologue about how he’d been knifed at Harvard, an incident that in his own imagination had acquired the mythic magnitude of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

  Mr. Harrison merely indicated interest by punctuating Ted’s harangues with “hmm’s” and “ah’s.”

  The moment they returned to Claridge’s, the Harvard Overseer said good night and hastened to his room.

  Early Friday morning a large Daimler arrived for Mr. Philip Harrison.

  It would be a long day for him. He and Ted would take Sara and his grandchild from Paddington Green to the John Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. He would then have to hurry back to Heathrow and catch the last plane to Geneva.

  He was, after all, on a mission for the government of the United States, and could put off his obligations no longer.

  Dr. Vivian Stone was waiting for them at the Radcliffe and saw to it that the young patient was installed as quickly as possible in a comfortable bed.

  Looking at Sara’s haggard face, the pediatrician remarked, “Rama Chatterjee told me you’ve been camping out with little Ted all week. I suggest you go home and get a proper night’s sleep, Mrs. Lambros. We don’t want two patients on our hands.”

  When they were back at Addison Crescent, it dawned on Ted that he and Sara had not really talked privately since the whole thing had begun. He had attributed her silence to fatigue and worry, but still he felt impelled to reestablish their lines of communication.

  “Thank God he’s all right,” he remarked, choosing the least abrasive comment to open conversation.

  Sara did not reply. She had her back to him and was unpacking.

  “It must have been deadly for you. I mean being on your own like that. It was lucky Dad was in London.”

  She whirled around, her face flushed with anger. “He’s not your father, dammit!” she snapped. “And I’m sick of having to be civil to you for his sake. I’m going to the hospital now. When I get back I want you out of here. And I don’t mean just you, I mean your clothes and every one of your academic books. Just be damn sure you don’t take any of mine.”

  “Sara, what’s all this?”

  “Listen,” she answered bitterly, “I’ve stood by you for twelve years. Caring for you. Doing half your research. Keeping together the pieces of your fragile confidence. I’ve listened, I’ve sympathized. I’ve practically turned myself into a human handkerchief for you to cry into—”

  “Sara—”

  “No, dammit, Lambros, let me finish. I didn’t mind any of it, I didn’t even mind having to be both parents to our son—as long as I thought I meant something to you. But then you had to choose Oxford—the biggest small town on earth—to slap me in the face. My God, everybody knows you were screwing that little tramp! And if that wasn’t humiliation enough, you had to flaunt it right in front of my father!”

  Ted had never heard her speak with such fury.

  “Sara, please don’t blow this out of proportion. Except for this one … indiscretion, I’ve always been completely faithful to you. I mean, that girl didn’t mean a damn thing to me. Look, I was wrong. I made a mistake. It could happen to almost anybody.”

  “Ted, I could’ve possibly accepted your ‘indiscretion,’ as you so fastidiously put it, if our marriage were really solid. But you simply don’t love me anymore. Let’s stop pretending. We haven’t had a real marriage for a long time.”

  “Are you saying that you want a divorce?”

  “Yes. The sooner the better.”

  “What about the little guy? We can’t do this to him. It isn’t fair.”

  “Look, Ted, he’s not so little anymore. And he can sense what’s happening to us. So don’t give me that old junk about staying together for the children’s sake.”

  “Sara,” he replied forcefully, “I refuse to allow you to do this.”

  “You refuse?” She looked at him with quiet outrage. “Whatever you may think, I’m neither your puppet nor your pet. So, to put it into the decent obscurity of a learned tongue, apage te, tuas res habeto!”

  She knew she had succeeded in bruising him. The crowning blow was her reciting the Roman formula for divorce, which, as they both knew, was what the man should say to the woman.

  It was just after teatime when Ted rang the bell on Gresham Road. Felicity was pleased to see him, but somewhat surprised by the suitcases he had brought along.

  “You look like you’re packed to leave town. Are you?”

  “No,” Ted replied self-consciously. “I’m afraid Sara’s kicked me out. Could you put me up
for the night?”

  “Yes,” she grinned, “I suppose we have room for you and your books.”

  But once he was inside, she quickly spelled out the limits of his tenure.

  “Listen, Ted, I’m happy to help you out with your little difficulty. But I hope you don’t plan to stay for any length of time.”

  “Do you think you can tolerate my presence for, say, a couple of weeks?” he asked, affecting his most charming smile.

  “Oh please, Ted,” she replied, “two or three days at the most.”

  “That’s fairly cold comfort. I mean, after all, your roommate Janie and her motorcyclist—”

  “Yes, but that’s different,” Felicity explained.

  “Why?”

  “Because I hate messy situations.”

  At the hospital the next morning they tried not to say anything that would worry their recuperating son.

  But when they left his room at lunchtime Sara said coolly, “Let’s go where we can talk in private.”

  Short-sighted despair made him believe that there was still a possibility for reconciliation. He was quickly disabused.

  She simply wanted to outline the terms of their divorce. It was only his emotional exhaustion—compounded by the fatigue of sleeping on Felicity’s couch—that kept him from protesting that she seemed to be talking at him rather than to him. For she was not negotiating or discussing. She was dictating the conditions.

  Sara did not want alimony. She felt that he should pay a fair share of child support. Even this would be reasonable, since there was no tuition to pay. She intended to keep Teddie in the same state school next year.

  “You want to stay in Oxford?”

  “Yes,” she replied coolly. “And anyway, that’s no longer your business.”

  “Excuse me, Sara,” he said resentfully. “I’m not going to let you keep my son an ocean away from me. Besides, what the hell are you going to do here?”

  “What do most people do at Oxford if they’re not working in the car factories?” she replied sarcastically. “As outrageous as it may seem, I’m going to start a degree. I do have a Radcliffe magna from the Dark Ages, you may recall. You can visit little Ted at Christmas and in the summer.”

  “Do you have any idea what a transatlantic ticket costs, Sara?”

  “Relax. I’ll be spending Christmas with my family in Connecticut. And before we say another word, let’s get one thing straight. I won’t allow him to become a psychological cripple because of this. I’ll never say a nasty word about you. You have my word of honor. And I’ll see to it that you spend as much time together as possible.”

  “And suppose I try to fight you in court?” he asked, trying a bit of poker playing.

  “Don’t waste the effort,” she replied unemotionally. “My father’s lawyers will grind you into moussaka meat.”

  Ted Lambros drank his way back across the Atlantic. The pretext for his inebriation was intellectually motivated. It was based on the famous line in Virgil, Varium et mutabile semper femina. Or, as he loosely translated it, “All women are unpredictable bitches.”

  ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY

  August 6, 1970

  Ted called me today with the incredible news that he and Sara are splitting.

  God, there’s no future for matrimony if those two can’t make it together. He didn’t offer any details on the phone, but I suppose I’ll hear the blow-by-blow when he comes up here next weekend. (I had to invite the poor guy. He sounded so lonely.)

  Ted has no idea what anguish he’s in for. Divorce is bad under any circumstances. Although they say it’s worst for the kids, I personally feel that it’s the fathers who suffer most.

  In addition to my weekend rights—which are pretty useless now that both of them are at boarding school—I only really get to spend time with my son and daughter during the summer months.

  And parenthood, I’ve discovered, is simply not a part-time job. It’s more like being a trapeze artist. Once you let go of the swing, you fall and there’s no way you can get back up.

  I spend the winter months trying to plan each summer day so it will be interesting for Andy and Lizzie. I map out excursions we can take—like trips to Canada—and contact other parents in the area whose kids we can have over. But at best I become a head counselor with the purely honorific title, “Dad.”

  Young as he is, Andy already says his generation’s disgusted with our involvement in Vietnam. And for some reason he seems to blame it on me. You’d think I was personally dropping napalm on innocent civilians.

  “The guys at school all say it’s Wall Street’s war,” he says. As if I were Wall Street, instead of just a minor bank official.

  I try to make him understand that I’m on his side. That I’d actually helped organize an important antiwar march. All he replies is, “That’s a lot of crap.”

  When I tell him not to use that sort of language, he retorts that since I do, I’m a hypocrite like my whole generation (now I’m a whole generation!).

  I think deep down he misses me and is just playing macho to pretend he doesn’t really need a father.

  I try my best to pierce the armor of his hostility, but one summer month in Maine is simply not enough. I can’t convince him that I care.

  Lizzie is also a problem. She mopes a lot, disappears for walks and won’t let me come along. Now and then I try to chat with her, but she resents me too. At least her reasons are more personal and less political than Andy’s.

  “If you really loved us, you and Mom wouldn’t have busted up. I hate my boarding school. It’s kind of like an orphanage with fancy uniforms. I don’t think more than five girls in my class still have both parents.”

  After several talks like this, I fought like hell to get Faith to allow me to have custody of Lizzie so she could have some semblance of a home and go to day school.

  But Faith being Faith she still won’t relent. I can’t see why she’s so hostile. After all, she’s engaged to marry some tycoon from San Francisco (good luck to the poor bastard).

  In my longing to get the kids back, I’ve thought of getting married again. But I haven’t met anyone who makes me confident enough to risk a second plunge.

  Ted told me on the phone that though it hurt, he imagined it was for the best. He doesn’t know how wrong he is.

  It’s not just that he’s lost a wife. And not just that he’s lost his son—which I can promise is for sure.

  He’s lost the only thing that gives some sense to all the other things we do in life.

  It was late January 1973. George Keller stood on the steps outside the Georgetown Law Center.

  At the stroke of noon, students began to pour out of the building. Among them was Catherine Fitzgerald, whom he diffidently approached.

  “Cathy—”

  “Goodbye, George,” she answered, turning away.

  “Wait, please. Can’t we just talk for a few minutes?”

  “I’m not in the mood for even sixty seconds of prevarication, Dr. Keller.”

  She started to walk off briskly.

  He hurried to catch up with her.

  “Please, Cathy,” he said urgently. “If America and North Vietnam can make peace, why can’t we?”

  She whirled and demanded, “George, now that you and Henry have your cease-fire, you’re international heroes. Why bother with the one person in the world who still thinks you’re a worm?”

  “Precisely because you’re the only person who matters to me.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that bullshit?”

  “I would hope you would at least give me a chance to convince you. I mean, you’re practically a lawyer. Even criminals are entitled to speak in their own defense. Will you have coffee with me?”

  She sighed. “All right, but just one cup.”

  “How did you know where to find me?” she asked. “Are you bugging my phone?”

  He shook his head in consternation. “Give me a break, Cathy. I asked one of your old friends at NS
C.”

  “If they were friends of mine they should also have told you I didn’t want to see you.”

  Like his diplomatic mentor, George was an indefatigable negotiator.

  “Look, Cathy.” He began a new tack. “I know I’ve been callous. Dishonest, even. But I’ve learned my lesson, really I have. All these lonely months I’ve done nothing but castigate myself for not trusting you.”

  “To be honest,” she replied, in a tone that was for the first time not hostile, “you barely even trust yourself. That’s your problem, George.”

  “Aren’t you willing to believe a person can change in three years?”

  “I’d have to see it to believe it,” she replied.

  “Will you at least let me try to show you?” he pleaded.

  She drained her coffee quickly and stood up. “Listen, I’ve got some important exams to study for. If you’re really serious, call me early next month and I can meet you without worrying about torts and contracts.”

  “Fair enough,” he replied. “Can I walk you to the library?”

  “I think it would be better if you didn’t. You and Henry are still pretty much persona non grata on campus.”

  • • •

  They began to see each other again. First at weekly intervals—both of them guarding their emotions. But gradually, Cathy had to acknowledge to herself that George was making a genuine effort to right the wrongs of their earlier relationship.

  For the first time, he spoke openly about his childhood. About what it meant to leave a country that he loved. About arriving in a strange new land without a relative or friend, barely able to say ten words in the language. About his desperate yearning to fit in. It was, however, a selective disclosure. For he only briefly mentioned that he had “a pretty poor” relationship with his father. And did not mention Aniko at all.

  To make her understand his instinctive caution when dealing with others, he told of his first, bewildering days in America. Of being in constant fear. And his still latent paranoia that there were spies everywhere.

  In short, he told the truth—if not the whole truth. And his partial candor enabled Cathy to let herself care once more.