“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She stared at the snow and stalks of weed ahead of her. It was clear enough that he was making her angry; it wasn’t clear what he’d done wrong. “They care about people,” she said again.
“Sure. Like the Grand Inquisitor.”
“Peter, let’s drop it, OK? Let’s talk about something else.”
“Why?” He reached for her hand. She pointedly ignored him.
“Because I hate being bullied,” she said.
“But I’m on your side, Jessica!—against the Marxists.” He slammed the snowball from glove to glove.
“It’s not a war,” she said. “They’re my colleagues. I wish I’d never mentioned them.”
“All I’m saying is, they manipulate people—exactly like the capitalist managers they—”
She broke in, turning, squaring off at him. “Peter, for heaven’s sakes drop it!”
When he looked down at the snowball he’d been packing all this time he saw that it was as solid as a rock.
“Jesus, you really are far-right,” she said. “I’d been told that about you, but I must say, I’m shocked!”
“I hate the far right,” he said, thrusting his head forward in surprise. He forced a laugh, squeezing the snowball with his right glove. “I also hate the middle.” He looked up at the sky, raised his two arms, and shouted at a circling hawk with all his might, “ ‘I hate your feasts and celebrations! Show me righteousness flowing like a river!’ ”
She backed away from him, eyes wide with alarm. Furtively, she glanced at the snowball, packed into a deadly weapon.
He could think of no defense but a crazy laugh. “Prophet Amos,” he said, and let the snowball fall from his hand. Then, after a moment—she continued to stare at him—he said, voice quavering, “It’s funny. I was told that you were far-right—‘to the right of Adolf Hitler,’ I think was the phrase.”
She went on looking at him. Abruptly she looked down. “Let’s go back to the house,” she said.
He grinned stupidly and extended one hand toward her. “I’m not bad at all, if you’ll study the matter fairly. I never say ‘if and only if.’ ”
They endured another silence.
“It’s true,” she said at last. “You mean to be helping. You don’t mean to be making things harder.”
He waited on. The air smelled of spring, though it was nearly November. At last—for some reason it made him feel a wave of sorrow—she took his hand.
When five o’clock came, she decided—or perhaps, in some subtle way, they decided together—that she wouldn’t have him drive her in tonight after all. The meeting wasn’t really all that important. He would drive down to Susquehanna to pick up something for supper. She would stay, make a few phonecalls while he was gone.
He parked the Jeep beside a meter across from the Acme and got out, then stood a moment at the side of the street, lost in thought, something deep in his mind calling to him for attention. He came to himself with a jolt and stepped back toward his Jeep. Though there was still snow in the gutters and up along the buildings, the street to his right, in the direction of Lanesboro, was filled—or so it seemed to him at first—with motorcycles, their headlights bludgeoning the night, their opened-up tailpipes roaring. On closer inspection, it appeared that there were only six, in fact, and they were by no means the threatening monsters he’d first thought them. The lead cyclist waved as he passed, or raised his black-gauntleted fist in a way that seemed perhaps friendly; and though Mickelsson couldn’t see the face inside the helmet, it came to him that the rider was his friend Tim. Tim, he remembered, had said that his bike was blond, and so this one was. Too late for Tim to see, unless in his mirror, Mickelsson, smiling, raised his fist. Only now, as the rest of the cyclists rumbled past, did he realize that the car parked behind his Jeep was the town’s one police car, and that one of the town’s two policemen was sitting in it, the cowboy-style hat almost to his nose. Mickelsson had heard the man’s name from time to time, something odd, hard to remember—Tacky Tinklepaugh, it came to him. Stupidest name imaginable, for a policeman. No wonder the boys came down off the mountains and did pretty much what they pleased. Mickelsson, realizing he’d been staring—and that Tacky was staring back—bent slightly toward the windshield and gave a salute. The policeman, fiftyish, baggy-eyed and red-faced, maybe drunk, gave him a thumbs-up sign.
Mickelsson crossed the street.
He chose porkchops, canned applesauce, brussels sprouts and green peas, and a Sara Lee cheesecake, then pushed his cart up to the check-out counter. As the woman was ringing up his groceries, a soft voice said behind him, “Hi, Pete. You havin a party?” He hesitated an instant before turning.
“Donnie!” he said. “I never see you here!”
“Gotta eat,” she said, and shrugged. She smiled, looking in the direction of the check-out girl, as if uncomfortable talking with Mickelsson in front of strangers, or maybe friends, he would hardly know. In the store’s fluorescent lights, Donnie’s hair, skin, and clothes looked washed-out, and a pimple on her forehead called attention to itself. He looked at her hands, small and pretty but very white, hanging limply on the push-rail of her grocery cart. She leaned toward him a little—was it possible, he wondered, that she meant to be overheard, though she pretended otherwise? “When you comin up and see me?”
He couldn’t help glancing at the check-out girl. Sure enough, she was spying, expressionless.
“How much is it?” he asked, though the total showed on the register.
“Eight twenty-seven.” She smiled politely.
He thought, blushing, that that was surely too much, but he quickly got out his billfold and reached in for the ten, all he had, and gave it to her.
“You should come by,” Donnie said softly.
He could feel the blush deepening. He took his change from the check-out girl, lifted the grocery bag in his arm, and then—horribly, he knew, as if something had happened to his face—turned to Donnie and winked. She simply looked at him. He moved quickly to the door and pushed through it, not looking back.
Up at the house, as he was getting the groceries out of the sack, still blushing, unable to stop, Jessie said, “Pete, do you mind if I ask you something?”
Once again his heart lurched. Perhaps everything that had happened down at the Acme was right there in his face. “What?” he asked, and bent over the heavy paper bag to look in, as if some small treasure might have hidden itself at the bottom.
“What’s all that mail in your study? Some of it’s months old, and not even opened.”
He picked up the porkchops to carry them over to the counter beside the range. “It’s just junk,” he said.
“It sure doesn’t look like junk,” she said. She leaned far to one side, trying to get him to look at her directly. “There’s a stack of things from the I.R.S., and a ton of letters from collection agencies—”
He leaned on the counter and looked at the floor between them.
She said, holding out one hand, shaking it in his face, “Do you realize the I.R.S. can put people in prison? They love it when it’s somebody famous like you. Puts the fear of God into the common folk.”
“Alfred North Whitehead, one of the greatest philosophers of our time, refused for years to answer his mail from the I.R.S.”
“Good for him,” she said. “You can bet he got his name in the paper! Listen to me, Pete. You may think I’m just another Jewish neurotic, but believe me, you’ve gotta get your shit together.”
He shrugged wearily.
“You’re in real trouble, aren’t you.” She pouted, thoughtful, looking at him. “The divorce, I suppose … back taxes, obviously …” When he said nothing, looking down at the glossy, pink porkchops, she said, “That’s why you wanted to write a best-seller philosophy book.” She laughed, then stopped herself and came nearer, hesitated a moment as if wary of him, then came up and put one hand on his arm. “Look, why don’t we just tear into it? I’ll help
you. Let me help—not just with answering the mail, necessarily. I have quite a lot of money. I don’t mean I’m rich. …”
He drew back. “You know I can’t take your money.”
“Why not? Too proud?”
“Of course. But it’s more than that. I’d be a bad investment.”
She made a face, irritably dismissive, then watched him again. “I didn’t exactly make the offer in my role as brilliant businesswoman.”
“Forget it,” he said. “You can help me with the mail if you want to, yes. Help me write whining, stalling letters. But not till after supper.”
“It’s amazing that you can eat.”
“Are you telling me you’re too upset to?” he asked.
“It’s not my life.”
His smile was no doubt sour, a little miffed. She put her arms around him.
“We’ll fix you up,” she said. “Trust me.”
The words seemed to move through his head and chest, pursued by the shadow of Donnie Matthews.
He asked, “How do you like your porkchops?”
After supper they worked for hours, or rather Jessica worked, like the secretary she’d said she disliked being cast as, during her years with her husband. Mickelsson sorted through envelopes, staring blindly, managing to get rid of one from Donnie—he’d failed to notice it before and had no idea what it contained, certainly not a request for payment, since ever after that first mistake he’d paid cash. Jessie, sternly bent over the desk, wearing glasses now, made lists, depressing columns of figures, then drew the electric typewriter toward her and asked for typing paper. He opened a new pack, pilfered from the department, and set it on the desktop beside her.
“Dear Freddy’s Refuse,” she read aloud as she typed, “I’m terribly sorry my check to you, dated September third, failed to clear. There seems to have been some mix-up at the bank, which has not yet been straightened out. I thank you for your patience and can assure you that if you will be patient a little longer …”
“You know, it really is hopeless,” she said at one point, taking off her glasses. “All those debts from your old life. Can’t you just …” As she turned toward the chair by the window where he sat, he fixed his gaze on the sill, his ashtray filled with cigarette butts and dottle from his pipe. When he said nothing, she said, “Cancel that. Nothing’s hopeless, not even you. We’ll work it out.”
“You can see why I let it lie there,” he said.
“It didn’t lie there, it accrued,” she said.
He heard her crank another sheet of paper into the typewriter, then start typing. She made the thing sound like a machine-gun. Without a pause in her typing, she asked, “Is the stuff at the office as bad as this?”
“Better and worse,” he said. “Hardly any of it is bills, but most of it takes longer, more complicated answers. Requests for letters of recommendation from former students—some of ’em I’m not even sure ever were my students, but who knows? Requests to give lectures, usually for no money, usually to a hostile audience. Appeals from the Teachers’ Union, letters warning me that my subscriptions to tiresome magazines are running out—”
“If there’s no money in it,” Jessie said, cranking out the sheet, cranking in another, “throw away the letter and forget it.”
“It’s that bad.” He sighed.
She was silent a moment, not typing. Then she asked, taking off her glasses again, “Pete, are you aware that the I.R.S. has taken a lien on your house?”
He said nothing, staring out the window into blackness.
“Mickelsson, you need a lawyer.”
He smiled, thinking of Finney. “I know.”
The rat-a-tat-tat of the typewriter began again.
They sat on the couch, the room dark around them except for the flickering light from the woodstove, the stove doors open, the screen in place. He said, thinking now of Phil Bryant, who was forever quoting Shakespeare,
“That time of year thou dost in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang …”
She smiled. “What a whiner you are!”
He intoned nasally,
“Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Mournfully assailed the seasons,
Cursed the day that he was born …”
She raised a finger to his mouth. “It’ll all come out in the wash, you’ll see.” When he kissed the hand, she drew it away, then lowered it to his stomach. “I didn’t know you were a memorizer of poetry.”
“Only things I read as an undergraduate,” he said, “and only gloomy things, of course. I guess I knew all along I’d eventually spin out. No doubt that’s the reason for my interest in Dada, some years ago—though I misinterpreted my motives. I thought it was civilization that was falling apart. ‘Wheeling and wheeling in the widening gyre—’ ”
“I hate poetry,” Jessie said. “Did I ever mention that?”
He looked at her, forgetting himself and smiling. “Nobody hates poetry! That’s like hating air, or chamberpots.”
“I do,” she said. “The only poem I ever memorized in my life is ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November’—that’s as much as I ever did learn of the thing. Even that I hated, especially the word hath.”
He leaned away from her for a better look at her face. Though as a matter of fact he liked poetry, not that he’d ever been terrific at understanding it, at least by Anguish Department standards, her revelation delighted and baffled him. It was as if a door had suddenly appeared in a familiar room, opening onto rooms he would never have guessed the existence of. “You’re kidding,” he said. “All those paintings in your house, the fancy record player, all the culture and class—” He twisted the words toward irony. “Admit it, you really like some poetry.”
“Absolutely not.” She spoke with surprising vehemence.
“You’re kidding,” he said again; but he felt his smile fading and couldn’t bring it back.
She withdrew her hand from his stomach. “I shouldn’t brag about it,” she said. “I guess I was badly educated, or there’s something wrong with me.” She made her eyes large and batted the lashes. “I’m a whiz at math, and I adore the novels of Jane Austen.”
He laughed and kissed her cheek, but he was astonished.
“You’re disappointed,” she said. She interlaced her fingers and turned her hands palms down, looking at them sadly.
“No, I’m interested,” he protested. “I’ve known people who say they hate poetry, but then they lean close to the jukebox and listen to words like ‘My gal took my heart and she stomped that sucker flat’—and then we’re on to ’em. But to really hate poetry, knowing what you’re talking about … No doubt you had some traumatizing childhood experience—some maniac in the woods who hung down from a tree and told you ‘Little Miss Muffet.’ ”
“Funny, aren’t you. You should be in pitchers.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s probably true that it was poisoned for me,” she said. “All those earnest, terribly cultural rabbis’ daughters with the boyish haircuts and the pretty black eyes, beating time up in front of the room with a pointer and sing-songing Blake’s ‘The Tyger.’ And then the recitation on stage, on Parents’ Day—little girls folding their dimpled little hands. I never would do it. Shit. They could’ve killed me, I absolutely wouldn’t. OK, buster, why are you smiling?”
“Smiling at the Jessie you used to be,” he said. “I like her.”
“You wouldn’t have. She was a blood-drinker.”
“I wish I’d known her. I feel cheated.”
She relented a little and put her hand over his. After a while she said, “What were you like?”
“A monster.”
“You were big for your age?”
“Mammoth—but not fat. I was scared to death of girls—as I would’ve been of you. That’s why I played football. I thought it all out, very philosophical even then. If I played football, even if I wasn’t very good, they would come to me.” He pause
d, then corrected himself, “That wasn’t all of it. I had a best friend, Punk Atcheson, who played on the team. And I had a certain amount of hostility in me. I liked slamming into people.”
“Why, Peter?”
He moved his left hand back and forth over hers, closed on his right. If he waited a long while before he answered, it wasn’t that he minded telling her; it was simply that he hadn’t looked back at those feelings for years, and it was surprising to discover that, now that she’d reminded him, they were all still there, ready to spring back into his heart, both the joy in violence and the guilt. The glow on the walls was steadier now, the flames in the stove giving way to red embers. “Our family was considered somewhat queer,” he said, then lowered his eyebrows. Again he corrected himself: “Maybe the truth is I thought my family was considered queer, because that’s the way I considered it.” He thought of telling her how ever since that business with Miss Minton there had been people, both children and adults, who were afraid of him. Instead he told her, “My father was a dairy farmer—wonderful man, no problem there—though as a matter of fact the psychiatrist I used to go to back in Providence wouldn’t buy even that: thought the old man only showed me his best side, with the result that I was stuck with an impossibly noble model. But he was wrong, the psychiatrist. It happens that my father really was noble. He was the most universally beloved man I’ve ever known.” He paused.
“Go on.”
He took a deep breath. “Well, he was a very good man, and I’m grateful to him for it. I’ve had friends, Jesuits, and one black Protestant friend, really a friend of Ellen’s—Geoffrey Stewart, the one I told you about. … It’s good, having a model of perfection. If you don’t measure up, then you don’t; but at least it’s there, it exists. All the words in the world—all the rules and prescriptions—they’re not worth sour apples compared to … When my father was dying, the whole countryside was there in his hospital room. He was supposed to have only three visitors at a time, but the hospital gave up. His room was so filled with flowers and plants you could hardly move, and every night my mother would take some of the flowers to other people’s rooms. The hospital was like a greenhouse, from one end to the other. We caused an ant plague. No joke. I suppose if I minded anything about it it was that I, a mere kid … I couldn’t compete. He was a singer; voice like an angel. He was shy about his voice, but when he let it out, it was golden. I think I’ve never heard a better one, though I admit that may be blind love. Anyway, all his singing friends were there, and all his farm friends, and people from the stores in town—there was even this banker he used to go to for loans every spring. I used to be scared of him. …