Quite reasonable.
No, you don’t understand. I kept a photo of Briony and our baby in my wallet. They are in the sun, in the park, Willa seated in Briony’s arms as on a throne, and they are facing me, mother and child, two blondes, laughing, rising out of the picture to fill my eyes—
Yes?
So I signed the confidentiality agreement and became the head of the Office of Neurological Research in the White House basement. I meant to step into history, to act. To make a statement that would finally be the end of me.
What are you saying, Andrew?
And that’s what I’d resolved the morning I stood on the corner with my coffee and paper waiting for the light to change.
VII
HELLO, DOC? I’m speaking to you from their old wall phone, the kind you crank up. Can you hear me?
Yes, Andrew, loud and clear.
No matter how old and broken-down things are, the life seems to work for them. It’s uncanny. The local phone company must be as old as this house. And that flatbed truck, four on the floor, with the bald tires and the paint all weathered away — a kind of art object. So they walk to town. I do it myself. And the town too, shabby dimly lit little stores that have been there forever, but you find what you need. The hardware store — the guy who runs it, he does roofing, I kept picking up shingles in the yard so I engaged him to come patch thing up. There’s a leak, all the old woman does is put a pail under it.
What about the screen door?
Oh, I fixed that. The mesh wasn’t the problem, it was one of the hinges, the top hinge where it pulled away from the frame. But I took the whole thing down and did a job, new hinges, new mesh. Then of course the door frame is soft, spongy, so the real problem is termites. In due time, in due time. I’ve got my work cut out for me. Where the windows stick, where the floor squeaks. You don’t know how good it is to concentrate on these things, the satisfaction of using your hands, figuring things out small-scale.
So you’re planning to be there for a while. I was wondering where you were.
Something about this place. You know how some places stick in your mind for no reason? I mean, this is not a schloss in the mountains. It’s not a finca under the palm trees. They’ve given me a room behind the kitchen with a mattress on the floor, and have otherwise ignored me. Totally incurious as to who I am, where I’ve come from. I can tell they don’t look at me even when my back is turned. So I have every reason to feel safe here. No reason not to — I mean, I can’t possibly bring harm to people with whom I have no relationship.
Do they ever thank you?
Listen, I’m calling to ask you something. She draws. I think I told you that.
What?
The kid, the little girl. She gets off the bus on the two-lane, comes running down the dirt road, flings her book bag on a kitchen chair, and sits down at the table with her colored pencils, her crayons, and her drawing pad, and she draws. It’s all she wants to do. The old lady brings her a glass of milk and she’s too busy drawing to drink it. Are you listening? Can you hear me?
Like we’re in the same room.
When she senses that I’m looking at her through the screen door she scribbles over her drawings that she’s worked on so carefully — puts the pencil in her fist and destroys what she’s done.
So maybe you shouldn’t watch her. Kids get shy about things that are meaningful to them. Do you say anything to her?
I’ve never said a thing. There’s very little conversation in this farmhouse. Theirs is a relationship of mimes, the old woman and the kid. They seem to understand each other and what has to be done in any given moment — when to leave for school, when to go to bed — without talking about it. I’ve gotten to be just like them. I know when to come in for morning coffee, I know when to work on a project, I know when we have dinner, I know to nod good night. It’s like a silent movie in this house.
You said you feel comfortable there.
Until now. Last night, after they had gone upstairs for the night, I went into the kitchen. They leave a light on. And I looked at the drawing she’d done that day on her pad of drawing paper. The kid. [thinking]
Andrew? You still there?
She draws well, far better than you’d think someone of that age could draw. She’s really good. It’s all circus stuff. Acrobats, trapeze artists, tumblers, human pyramids. Girls in tutus standing on horses going around the ring. Little tiny figures all, perfectly formed.
Andrew?
They’re coming. I’m hanging up now.
VIII
ALL RIGHT, if my life as an undergraduate is what interests you: I never expected to have him as a roommate. His family name, after all. And I, the financial aid student. But the college forbade preferential treatment — every freshman was no more than that. He laughed at my clumsiness. We would be in frequent trouble, a pair of misfits. [thinking] I guess it was just a matter of time and here we were again.
What was the incident of the bunsen burner you mentioned?
Our digs were a center of social life. People gathered around. It was mostly him, of course, but I too became known on campus — a second banana, as it were. I must have realized at some point that I had no identity without him. Because he was who he was, I was who I was. I did manage to keep up with my studies, which drove him mad. I’d be at my desk cramming for an exam and he couldn’t bear that, he’d drag me off to a bar. I’ll say this in his favor, hanging out with him I got braver with girls and by my junior year I was in a fairly serious relationship. But around him, the pressure was to be a clown, to find a way to make him laugh. Not just me but other guys too, that desire to fulfill his expectations. And every once in a while, after a few beers, what came to the fore was his mean streak, because he did have one. [thinking] His fooling around could segue into hurting people. Or humiliating them. His grades were dismal, he never cracked a book. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have done better by applying himself. He was a contrarian. He was making a stand.
And so what was that incident of the bunsen burner?
In the inorganic chem lab. I was standing right where it happened with a shard of beaker sticking in my cheek and blood running down my chin. Something had exploded, I didn’t know what, but the room was filled with smoke, people were coughing, shouting, the sprinkler system had turned on, in one instant the lab was a total disaster. It was funny, actually. The professor, running in and waving away the smoke, assumed I was the culprit. I didn’t argue.
Well, this doesn’t sound like something they would feel endangered by in an election thirty years later.
Well, it wasn’t the only thing. I tutored him on occasion.
So?
Onsite, as it were. Where we were taking the exam.
I see.
Yes. But why would I reveal something now that would make me look just as bad? Given an academic career to uphold. Such as it is.
I understand.
The incident of the bunsen burner got me a semester of probation. And an invitation to go home with him on the spring break.
A cold glance from the formidable mother, a limp distracted handshake from the father. That’s what I remember. Their son seemed to accept their rude offhand greetings as typical. I stood there with my backpack while staff ran by in some urgency. The household was busy preparing for dinner guests. I can tell you my roommate and I smoked dope in the upstairs of a huge floor-length duplex and not a book in sight.