“For fun?”
“Of course.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Oh, Min!”
She said, “Now I feel backward. Let’s see. Lois and I have a lot of flowers in the garden. They’re all perennials, though. We ponder them and discuss them. And we smell them — jonquils, lilies of the valley. Your mother’s lilacs are amazing. I guess you never come out during lilac season, but it’s like a canopy. You can smell them at our house. I clean things. Take stuff to the church and the Salvation Army. I listen to kids talk. Kids are funny. These days, my student teachers are like kids to me, so they’re funny, too. I read books. Joe and your mom watch TV, but Lois doesn’t have time, and I’m not that interested.” Her eyebrows lifted. She said, “Listen to me. I do nothing for fun!”
And then he kissed her again. This time he kissed for real, because he suddenly, after all these years — was it forty-five now? — appreciated her. And she felt it. She didn’t slip away. There was no alarm. It was a nice kiss, an appreciative kiss. When it was over, she put her arm around his waist and laid her head briefly on his shoulder; then she kissed him on the cheek and went into her room.
—
FRANK SAT UP and looked at the clock. It was almost three. He had dropped off once, and dreamt of, not the real Lydia, but a short woman in heels whom he identified as Lydia. She was walking down the street — a street in London, not New York. That was all he could remember. He was hot. He threw off the covers, then got up to take a piss.
Wide awake. There was something disquieting about having Minnie, Andy, and Lydia in the same house. He reached for a Kleenex from the box on the lower shelf of his bedside table and blew his nose.
Frank sensed a presence when he pushed on the swinging door, but whoever was sitting at the kitchen table hadn’t even turned on the light above the range. Frank paused. It was Arthur. His chair pushed back from the table, Arthur was resting his forearms on his thighs and looking straight ahead, neither up nor down. His head didn’t turn when Frank came in. Frank assumed he was on some sort of drug. He said, “Arthur.” Frank’s eyes now adjusted completely to the darkness. He said, “Can I do something for you?”
“Not that I know of,” murmured Arthur.
“Are you all right? Is Lillian all right?”
Arthur didn’t answer. Frank pulled out a chair and sat down. The fact was, he almost never came into his own kitchen; Nedra served every meal, in either the dining room or the breakfast room. If Arthur were to ask him for something, he would be hard put to find it. Frank cleared his throat, then said, “You’ll like what I did all last week. I watched a couple of guys shoot projectiles of various shapes into tanks of water. They were testing their calculations of how quickly the projectiles slowed and stopped. I enjoyed it. They asked me to estimate, and I was always wrong. Water is a brick wall, if you’re a projectile.”
Arthur said nothing.
Frank got comfortable, and said, “Theoretically, they told me that you could shape the tip of the projectile so that it created a vacuum just in front of it as it moved. Theoretically, it could get faster and faster.” He didn’t ask whether Arthur already knew this. The rumor was that the Soviets were quite advanced on this very project; he half expected Arthur to nod, or to let his gaze flicker some acknowledgment, but again there was nothing. He said, “Supersonic.”
Finally, Arthur yawned and looked at Frank. In the day he looked fine, but right now, in this light, he looked cadaverous. How old was he? thought Frank. Frank said, “Arthur, you’re making me think about dead people.”
And Arthur laughed.
As always, his laugh was contagious, and so Frank laughed, too.
“Sorry,” said Arthur. “I was half asleep. I know it didn’t look like it. It never does, but I cultivated that skill in boarding school. It’s been a valuable trick.”
“Spoken like a bureaucrat,” said Frank, “but why did you get up?”
“Why did you get up?”
“Too many women in the house. Makes me nervous.”
“Six women under one roof is fine with me,” said Arthur. “By the way, I like what you’ve done with the entry. The slate floor. It’s appropriate to the style of the house. The chandelier is interesting.”
“Eighteen bulbs,” said Frank.
“Who changes them? It must be twelve feet off the floor.”
“It’s on a pulley. It lowers.”
“I like that,” said Arthur.
For years, Frank had cultivated indifference to personal concerns. If someone had a complaint, Frank thought, it was that person’s job to express it, but, maybe because of the influence of Minnie, he now said, “How are you? Are you all right?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Arthur. “I’m probably better than I’ve ever been.”
“What have they got you doing?”
“Divulging top-secret information.”
“Pardon me?” said Frank.
“Well, I was so secretive for so long that now, when I talk to news reporters, they think I’ve actually told them something, because, of course, we only do it in long walks in Rock Creek Park, or in garages, where whatever we say is broken up by the sound of revving engines.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No. Even the KGB does PR. You can only say ‘no comment’ so many times, because ‘no comment’ means ‘yes.’ ”
Frank leaned forward. “But why you?”
Arthur shrugged. “What do I know?”
“You’ve been there since the beginning. You knew about everything.”
“I thought I knew a few things,” said Arthur. “But I don’t know them anymore.”
Shock treatments. A chill ran up Frank’s spine.
—
HENRY OPENED the door of his office on the second knock. In his first office hours of the fall, he expected kids either wanting in or wanting out of one of the three classes he was teaching. Instead, there was a pleasant-looking young man carrying a briefcase, smiling and holding out an envelope. The envelope had Henry’s name on it in Gothic letters. He took it, and opened it.
My dear boy,
Please note the bearer of this missive. He is a brilliant student of mine named Philip Cross who has taken it into his head, now that your poofters have decided to riot and make their presence felt, to try his luck in the U.S. He is about to enroll in that monument to capitalism, the University of Chicago, in literary criticism. Please do not discuss any work of literature with him, as you will not understand a word he says, and it will lower your estimation of our educational system. He is, however, a young man of exceptional grace and intelligence, and I told him that you will introduce him to the mid-continental wilderness, as you so ably introduced me. I have cultivated him assiduously and I defy you to uncover his dialect roots. In addition, he is an excellent chef. Suet is his middle name.
I am, as always, your devoted,
Basil
Henry said, “Philip. Do come in.” He stepped back, and this young man (Henry thought, no more than twenty-one, no taller than five nine, but neatly made) stepped across the threshold. Henry said, “U of Chicago. Good Lord. It’s a jungle down there.”
Philip smiled, opened his mouth, and came out with the most beautiful speaking voice Henry had ever heard, as vibrant, deep, and rounded as a human voice could be. Henry said, “I’m sorry. What did you say?” Philip said, “It does seem a different world than this campus, which is very open.”
“Northwestern is a little bit of Iowa right beside Lake Michigan. It came first, you know, before the town. We take an Iowa approach in many things — for example, we approach student unrest by wondering why the students are unhappy. Down there, they just expel you.”
“Is that a warning?” said Philip.