Sue Myers always thought that instead of loving his parents as he claimed, Bill Bradfield hated them. It gave her night sweats because it seemed to relate to the real danger of financial ruin for both of them. On top of all this were recurring fantasies that at this very moment as she lay suffering, he might be in the bed of Susan Reinert. Yet he swore that he couldn’t bear the woman, and in that he seemed truthful. She was sure that he actually despised Susan Reinert no matter what he did with her.
Before Sue had started growing numb trying to understand and anticipate the moves of Bill Bradfield she used to wonder about his feelings toward women in general. He had once told her a strange story about his friend Tom, a drama critic who’d lived with him and his first common-law wife, Fran.
Bill Bradfield had decided that his common-law affair with Fran should come to an end and so he persuaded Tom to attempt a seduction of Fran. If Tom could manage to get Fran in bed, Bill Bradfield was going to take some pictures with a hidden camera and force Fran to leave the relationship quietly. It was a strange and disturbing story, particularly since Tom the seducer was homosexual.
Bill Bradfield’s most extravagant need was for that oceangoing sailboat, but Sue had long since believed that to be just another symptom of the child in him that had originally attracted her and was making her crazy. As she now had to face impending middle age without an economic safety net, she started tallying up the emotional debits and credits. His inconsistency revealed itself in every facet of life.
One of their ears was a Volkswagen. He had decided that he was going to take care of the VW to save money. He couldn’t replace a light bulb yet he bought a full set of expensive metric tools. He never turned a bolt.
There was the world’s most expensive tennis racquet that never played a single match. And a set of Latin grammars he had to buy because he thought their friend and neighbor Vince Valaitis should learn Latin. They were never opened.
He had five thousand books in that apartment, and more stored away in the attic. Most had never been opened.
“I seldom saw him read,” remembered Sue Myers. “And I mean during our entire time together.”
Then there was the piano. Sue Myers was able to trace that one to his childhood. It seemed that his family had sent his sister to the Peabody Conservatory to study music. Young Bill Bradfield got jealous and decided that he too had musical talents. He was positive that his parents would buy him a piano for his birthday. What did he get? A toy truck.
Now a $3,000 Stieff piano was sitting in the living room of their apartment. Bill Bradfield called it proudly a “Southern Steinway,” and said it had antique quality. He had lessons for a while. He said it took him back to the good old days in the Haverford College glee club. He was determined to learn to play.
One day the music stopped and he never touched the piano again. That’s the way it was for Sue Myers with Bill Bradfield: either symphony or silence and nothing in between.
As she lay alone in her bed and thought about all this and faced the prospect of financial ruin, it suddenly occurred to her: That old piano in the living room had cost more than her car! She had to cough up three thousand bucks because when he was a little boy his old man had bought him a goddamn toy truck!
And while Sue Myers was facing a bleak economic future and a worse emotional future, Susan Reinert was doing her own sort of tallying. Bill Bradfield had never told a single person that he had so much as dated Susan Reinert.
And so Susan Reinert began engaging in a curious exercise. In addition to diary entries to herself, she began writing letters to him, most of which were never mailed.
The references in the letters made it clear that they were meant to be read, and were read, but it seems that most were read during his visits to her home. It was a curious rituaclass="underline" writing ones thoughts as they occur, as one waits, unable to meet or talk on the telephone. Then when they did meet, to have him read and discuss the letters. It was curious but consistent with the obsessions of the man who needed documentation of everything.
There were letters filled with her frustration over his inability to appreciate her as a professional, and of being deliberately misunderstood, letters full of self-pity.
To accuse me of judging your religious search as palaver ranks as one of your cruelest remarks. And regarding the department chairman, you have always undervalued me as a professional. You would, I presume, turn down my name immediately, firmly and finally, not letting it get to the stage of nomination.
You never praise me except for my body and cooking. I’m not as simple as you might think. If I were, I might be content to let one day a month, or one day a summer be enough. It’s not. Being with you only makes me want to be with you more-to have our separations be the natural ones required for our separate selves, not the lonely ones imposed by you. I can’t turn myself off for five years. I’m not apologizing for that. I wish the intensity of the hurt didn’t match the intensity of the passion, but I accept that next to God, Karen and Michael, you are the center of my life. Somewhere I became deluded into believing I was that important to you.
I can’t make you love me. I guess you’re used to being loved by women. No man except my father has ever loved me for very long. I’ll stop trying. If you ever decide that spending time with me is worth making some changes, let me know. I’ll try to keep from drying up.
She frequently threatened to break off their relationship, and would, but after a short while she’d relent.
The literary allusions for his mind were always coupled with appeals to his belly.
Visions of Prufrock, your hair, my dark private place, Andrew Marvell, nuns, come drifting in. Saturday I felt an integral part of you! Treat yourself to a nice dinner, please. Plan on roast lamb ratatouille when you return here. You can help me pay the phone bill later.
Meanwhile back in the principality, the old prince of darkness was letting the school go to hell. An “open class” policy was unofficially instituted at Upper Merion, hence student absences often went unreported.
When a guidance counselor complained to Jay Smith that this didn’t seem to be the way to run a school, Dr. Jay replied, “You should consider getting out of education. There’re other ways to make money, you know.”
When the surprised guidance counselor asked to what ways Dr. Smith was referring, the principal arched those brows and showed him a grin like an eel and said that he knew a guy who made some nice pocket change by running ads in the local newspaper offering to silence guns. Then he laughed and left the guidance counselor gaping.
Jay Smith was more entrepreneurial than Henry Ford. To another dissatisfied staff member he said, “You don’t need this job anyway. You live on a farm, don’t you? You should raise dogs. Men can never sexually satisfy a woman. If animals can help the blind they can be surrogate sex partners.”
Jay Smith’s “open mike” monologues to the students were becoming more frequent, less coherent. The kids loved to bait Dr. Jay by sending questions to the principal’s office. Sometimes he could ramble on through two periods.
And by now, the principal’s secretary was getting to know more about his family than she ever wanted to know. Ida Micucci knew that his eldest daughter Stephanie was a strung-out junkie, living at various times with other addicts in the area. The young woman was in and out of rehabilitation programs. She would often call her father, but end up telling Ida how much she needed money.
Sometimes she’d come into the office to get money from her father, money she said was to be spent at fashionable beauty salons in Valley Forge, but which probably went up her nose or into her arm. And if her father wasn’t there, the young woman would sit and complain to Ida that while her husband Edward Hunsberger was locked up for his own narcotics addiction, Jay Smith was trying to push her into a relationship with someone else. She asked if Ida had any influence with her father.