There was one item after another, until sometimes Linda wondered if she really wanted to be kept so well posted on Gretchen’s rise and fall. Peter’s own views on Gretchen (and Gretchen’s Problem) varied with whether the most recent item was good or bad. When it was good his optimism was heartwarming, if not precisely contagious; Linda doubted the woman would ever achieve anything approaching stability. When the item was on the minus side, Peter would turn moody and introspective, admitting that Gretchen and he and Robin in the bargain, were trapped in an up-and-down cycle that had no end to it.
While she sometimes found Gretchen less than fascinating as a primary topic of conversation, she never tried to change the subject at those times when Peter needed someone to talk to. He could talk to her, and evidently could talk as intimately to no one else. His confidences concerned the present, or at least were limited in time to the extent of his relationship with Gretchen. Her own, on the other hand, hardly ever concerned the present, or even the immediate past. When she felt the need to talk she was more likely to speak of something that had happened in childhood or adolescence or, on one occasion, of her marriage to Alan. At such times he was more than an interested listener. Without seeming to probe, he could draw her out so that she could say the things she wanted or needed to say.
They were friends, and yet they were more than friends because they performed a service for one other which transcended simple friendship. She thought it might be said that they played a mutually psychoanalytic role with one other, the part of therapist shuttling back and forth between them. Or was that a common function of friendship? She had never had that sort of friendship before, but then she wondered if any of her past associations had been a true friendship at all. She thought of Olive McIntyre as a friend, felt that she could turn to the woman if she ever had to, enjoyed her company immensely, and yet Olive’s conversation comprised little more than a compendium of the most scandalous Bucks County gossip of the past several decades. Linda enjoyed it well enough, found it increased her sense of belonging in and to the town, but she could not reply in kind and indeed barely replied at all. A conversation with Olive was essentially a monologue.
It did not fail to amuse her that her first genuine friend in twenty-seven years was a young former homosexual living with a thirty-seven-year-old emotional basket case.
She was at the shop on a midweek afternoon when a man walked in and began to browse the shelves. He looked faintly familiar, but after a second look she decided it was the type that was familiar and not the individual. He looked around forty-five and had a vaguely professorial aspect to him. He wore an Irish tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and a pair of faded chinos. He had glasses with heavy rims and a small beard confined to his chin and upper lip. He carried but was not smoking a large briar pipe with a curved stem.
She noticed that much about him and then ignored him, because she knew he was not going to buy anything. She could not automatically spot a buyer, that was impossible, but she could identify a non-buyer, and he was definitely one. He had time to kill and was killing it in the Lemon Tree. That was all right, and might lead to a sale sometime in the future, but it meant she could safely ignore him unless he happened to request her attention. She did so, returning to the novel she had been reading.
“Why waste your time on Markarian?”
She looked up at the interruption. It was the man with the patched elbows and he was pointing to her book.
“I realize he’s local talent in these parts,” he continued. “But that’s no reason to subject yourself to that garbage. Which one is that? Caleb’s House. I think I missed that one, praise be to God.”
Gratuitous conversation was one of the hazards of the job. Sometimes, if you ignored these people, they went away. She nodded pleasantly and said, “I see,” and turned her eyes back to the page. But he didn’t go away. She had rather thought he wouldn’t.
“You read much of his stuff?”
“I think I read one or two others.”
“Glutton for punishment. Enjoying that one?”
“It’s interesting.”
“Cardboard characters and predictable themes. A book a year out of his assembly line, and every year he writes more and more about less and less. What do you like about him?”
This was annoying. She kept her eyes on the page and said, “He takes my mind off things that bore me.”
“By boring you in black and white? That’s a small blessing. What do you like about his books?”
“The stories are interesting. In this one, anyway. I get interested in what happens to the people. I’m not an intellectual.”
“Whatever that means.”
“Whatever it means, I’m not one. I gather you are.”
He grinned. “I suppose I come closer to the category than Hugh Markarian, for whatever that’s worth. He did write one good book, though.”
“Did he.”
“You must have read it. One If by Land.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“His first novel, the war novel. Of course you read it.”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“The World War Two novel.”
“I’m not really interested in World War Two.” She looked up from the book and made her expression as unpleasant as she knew how. “It’s one of the things that bore me. There are other things.”
He seemed immune to insult. “In that case I’ll tell you a secret. One If by Land is even worse than the rest of his swill. The critics are just denser than the reading public, that’s all. You’re lucky you never read it. Have the sense to stay away from it”
And he left.
He returned the next day about the same time, wearing the same jacket and carrying what looked like the same pipe. She was within twenty pages of the end of Caleb’s House when he popped in.
“I see you’re still wasting your time with the same mind rot,” he said. “At least it’s a library copy, and you’re not contributing to his royalties.”
She raised her eyes and gazea benevolently at him. “I think you’re making a mistake,” she said.
“How so?”
“Confusing the author with his books.”
“Oh, I’m willing to concede he may be a decent enough fellow. That’s neither here—”
“No, it’s the other way around.”
“Oh?”
“I think so,” she said, thoughtfully. “After what you said yesterday I read the rest of the book more carefully. With the idea of trying to figure out the man who wrote it.”
“And what did you figure out?”
“That his books are a great deal better than he is. And that what might seem to be flaws or weaknesses in his writing are just the flaws of his own personality coming out.”
“How so?”
“Oh, I don’t know where to start. His whole concept of women, for example.”
“The standard Male Chauvinist Pig?”
“No, I’m not talking about that kind of crap. But this total inability to relate to women stands out on page. He needs women but he’s afraid of them. He believe they’re really people. Every female character his is either too good or too bad. They come alive anyway because of his craft as a writer but he puts impossible speeches in their mouths and impossible ideas in their heads. I’ll bet he’s never really loved a woman in his life. He may make a fool of himself over a woman now and then but never knows her enough to love her on an adult level.”