“Still, it can’t have been easy, right?”
Why was the man smiling in such a peculiar way? “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
Kurt shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much of a gay community here.”
Gus’s profound surprise slowed his reaction. “There isn’t,” he said finally. “But then I wouldn’t really know because I’m not gay.”
“Oh.” He shrugged again, without the slightest hint of apology. “I guess I just assumed.”
Why? Because he was unmarried? Because he’d just returned from San Francisco? Gus found the unwarranted assumption particularly galling, since when he’d first arrived here one or two of his new colleagues had leaped to the same conclusion, based on what, Gus couldn’t imagine, then or now. Were there still people at the college who doubted his sexual orientation? He felt himself flushing.
The man’s wife was still nowhere in evidence. “I hope Alice is okay,” he ventured. Yes, he was eager for a change of subject, but her continued absence was strange, wasn’t it? Had Kurt brought out only two wineglasses because he never intended for her to join them? Perhaps even instructed her not to?
“With her one never knows,” her husband said, the lack of concern in his voice sending a chill up Gus’s spine. “As you’ll discover, neighbor.”
Gus set his wine down. To whom it may concern, he thought. I cannot recommend my esteemed colleague Kurt Wright highly enough. The short time he’s spent at our college has been utterly transformative.
—
NOT LONG AFTER the Wrights appeared in Schuyler, the social fabric of Gus’s department began to fray. Longtime friends started falling out over misunderstandings that would eventually be traced back to something Kurt had said. Rumors began to circulate. The one about Gus being gay, for instance, suddenly seemed to attain new currency. Nor were such untruths the worst of it. Gus’s best friend on the faculty appeared in his office one day, her eyes nearly swollen shut from crying, wanting to know why he’d betrayed her confidence. A decade earlier she’d explained to him that she and her husband had a brain-damaged child they’d finally decided to institutionalize, a decision that had nearly destroyed them and their marriage. When Gus assured her that he’d never repeated this to a soul, she refused to believe him, claiming that he was the only person she had ever told. By Thanksgiving, everyone in the department seemed to know something horrible about everyone else, and Gus’s once-sociable colleagues had begun to teach their classes and go home, skipping committee meetings and begging off their usual Friday afternoon happy hour at a tavern near campus. “What’s going on over in poli-sci,” a friend in the history department asked him. “You guys used to be the life of the party.”
Kurt turned out to be a man of numerous interdisciplinary interests, and he quickly got to know faculty from several other departments, where he was surprisingly popular. Apparently he was a gifted mimic who did spot-on impressions of his colleagues in political science. “You’ve never heard him do you?” said an old friend of Gus’s from the English department. “You should get him to,” she enthused. “It’s truly hilarious.”
When he asked her why, she grew embarrassed. “Does he make me sound gay?” he said.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“But what?”
“That’s how you sound.”
“I sound gay.”
“Not lilting or anything, just, you know…”
Later that week he ran into Charlie, the guy from the dean’s office who handled campus housing. “I’ve been wondering,” he said, “how Kurt Wright managed to land the other half of the duplex I’m in. Wasn’t there a waiting list?”
He looked surprised. “Well, your taking up his case like that certainly didn’t hurt.”
“Me?”
“And of course Alice’s medical condition allowed us to do an end run around the waiting list.”
“Charlie,” Gus said. “I never wrote Wright any recommendation.”
“Like I told you at the time, there was no need. The phone conversation was good enough for me.”
“But we never spoke on the phone.”
The guy’s expression changed. “That’s not funny, Gus. I bent all kinds of rules for you. If you and Kurt had some kind of falling-out, I’m sorry, but I’m not booting him and his wife out of their home. I’m surprised you’d want me to.”
“I don’t,” Gus assured him. “I’m just saying. If you talked to someone claiming to be me—”
“It was you, Gus. Don’t you think I know your voice after thirty years?”
“Charlie—”
“Besides, think about it. You can’t do Kurt dirt without harming your sister.”
“My sister?” Gus repeated.
“Well,” Charlie conceded. “Okay, your half sister.”
That weekend Gus waited at the front window for Kurt to leave, then went next door and rang the bell. He had to ring it several times before Alice came to the door, dressed in a thin robe. As always, she didn’t seem to quite recognize him.
“I hate to bother you, Alice,” he told her, “but would it be okay if I came in?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Why was the woman always apologizing? “Kurt’s not here.”
“I know,” he said, and after an awkward moment she stepped back from the door.
It was dark inside, the shades drawn, only two small lamps turned on. Gus had heard she liked to paint, but how could you paint without light? He looked around for signs of artistic endeavor — sketch pads, colored pencils, an easel — but saw nothing. “I can only stay a minute,” he assured her, wondering why she always seemed so skittish. This visit was, he was starting to realize, a bad idea. He’d come over thinking she might be able to help him understand her husband, what was going on, why he was causing all this trouble and telling such outrageous lies. Did she know, for instance, that he was letting on that she and Gus were related? But all you had to do was look at Alice to know she’d be of little help.
“Is everything okay over here?” he asked, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to be so direct.
She thought about it. “Kurt says I sleep too much,” she admitted.
He nodded, trying to think of what to ask next. Finally, though he knew the question was out of line, given that he hardly knew her, he said, “Are you happy, Alice?”
“Happy?”
“The walls are thin,” he explained.
She blinked at this, as if she’d taken the statement metaphorically.
“When Kurt raises his voice,” he said, “I can hear. When you cry, well, I can hear that, too.”
Her hand went to her mouth. “I make him angry sometimes. I don’t mean to.”
Gus nodded. “He’s not a very nice man, is he?”
She thought about it. “I probably do sleep too much,” she said. “I just…can’t seem to stay awake.”
“Alice?” he said. “If you need a friend, I’m right next door.”
She turned to stare at the wall that separated her home from his, as if trying to imagine him there on the other side, his ear pressed against the wall.
“Well,” he said, “I should go. I hope I haven’t upset you.”
“No,” she said, without much conviction, and followed him to the door. When he opened it, she said, “Gus?”
He turned back to face her, surprised that she’d used his given name. “Yes, Alice?”
“Are you?”
What, gay? Had her husband told her that? “Am I what, Alice?”