Nocturnal Animals 15
Tony Hastings was in bad shape. Trying to figure out the telephone call last night at three. The voice said, “So this is Tony Hastings is it?”
“Who is this?”
“Nobody. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
People were avoiding him. He overheard. Jack Appleby in his office: “It’s gone on long enough.” In the coffee room, Myra Lopez, “He thinks he deserves special consideration.” His friends had discovered how much his acceptability in their houses had depended on his wife’s grace and charm. He knew what they were thinking. Without her he was a dark absence. The students mocked him behind his back. The girls avoided his eyes and watched his moves, ready to slap a suit on him. He looked up pariah: a low caste Indian with a turban chained next to the goat in the yard with the ragged castaway on the beach.
They were blaming him but wouldn’t say so to his face. How easily he has recovered. That charade party at the Malks. The way he hangs on, sullen and morose, as if singled out by God. Didn’t you wonder about his story, why he didn’t resist?
By now it was March. He shouted at the student in his office. “I told you at the beginning of the quarter. If you want to file a grievance, file a grievance.” The student was an athlete. He had a T-shirt with a 24 on it. He had large angry eyes and his head was bald except on the sides. He had a small chin. He strode out saying, “You’ll hear from me,” and Louise Germane came in to deliver papers she had graded for him. She must have heard something, or perhaps she had not. She said, “Mr. Hastings, are you all right?”
He said something, and she said, “I know what you’re going through. Are you getting any help?”
“You mean a shrink? No one knows what I’m going through, and I don’t need graduate students to advise me.”
Oh, she was sorry, but Tony Hastings, less angry than he sounded, sent her away. Then he was ashamed. Play actor. Poor Louise Germane, probably the only student left who liked him. He had fixed that, all right. He hurried out to look for her.
He found her in the coffee shop. “I want to apologize,” he said. “That was stupid of me.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Hastings.” The tall girl, her wheat colored hair, loose flowing, the relieved smile. She said, “I want you to know, if there’s anything I can do. We’re pulling for you.”
Her looking eyes, sea blue, yearning to be interpreted. He accepted a long idle coffee talk. Allowed himself to talk about Laura. He noticed the glaze coming over her face but kept on talking. She said, “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate it.”
He said, “Tell me about yourself.”
She spoke of brothers and sisters, he didn’t follow, his concentration not so good. He asked why she was in graduate school. She told him.
It occurred to him her plans were naive and silly, and he said, “What are you going to do when the world blows up?”
She looked at him in dismay. “You mean, the bomb?”
“The Bomb. It. The rain. The scorch.”
She was bewildered. “Maybe it won’t blow up.”
Ha! Tony Hastings shook his head and smacked his lips and leaned back in his chair and told her. He told about the white peacekeeping missiles with the future of the world in their skins, warheads with a city in each, and programmed retaliation for after the people are dead. He spoke of the sun-blast that shoots through human flesh like a grid. He said preemptive strike and lead time. He told how after the blast comes the fire and then the fallout for those beyond the fire, and then the heavy blackout clouds, and he said nuclear winter and blackened cinder. “You think it won’t happen?”
She said, “The cold war is over.”
He felt cold superior rage. “You think so, do you? The rest of the world is coming. Arabs, Pakistani. Third World. Everybody will have it. You think they have no grievance?”
She said, “I’m more worried about the greenhouse effect.”
But she wasn’t worried enough. He pointed at her: “The world is dying. The diseases are advanced, the death twitches have begun.”
She said: “Anyone might die in an accident tomorrow.”
He attacked: “The traditional knowledge that others will live on after you is not like the knowledge mankind is dying and everything anyone lived for is wiped out.”
Mild civilized Tony Hastings: crank, crotchet, curmudgeon. Easy to sizzle. Sometimes he sizzled all day. The morning paper at breakfast full of outrage, editorials, letters, stupidity, prejudice. On a particular April morning he saw a neighbor boy taking a shortcut through his yard behind Mr. Husserl’s house. Tony Hastings ran after him. “Hey you!”
The kid stopped. “I thought we could go through.”
“You’re supposed to ask permission. Ask for permission.”
“Can I have permission, mister?”
Wave him on. The garden was brown, new green poking up through sticks. The weeds were coming. They were on the march, and soon Mrs. Hapgood would be too, telephone calls and complaints. Someone forgot to put a notice of the faculty meeting in his box. To the secretary, calm: I’d just like to know who was responsible. It was Ruth who distributed the notices. Did I miss you? she said. You’re sure it’s not shuffled in with your other things? Control yourself back to the office.
The softball hit the windshield. His brakes screeched. He opened the door, ran out, grabbed the ball out of the gutter before the boys could get there.
“God damn it, you could kill someone.”
“Can we have our ball please?”
He slammed the door and locked it, remembering. Five boys gathered around, violently trying to hold him prisoner by standing in front of the car, while they banged on the hood pleading and bullying. “That’s our ball, mister.”
He started the car, tried to edge forward. What held him? If it was a question of violence, his car could run right over them. Their violence depended on his pacifism. He inched forward, pushing them back. What right had they to assume he was law-abiding, or to take advantage of it? They stepped aside, all but one, white faced, who pushed his hands against the front and retreated one backward step at a time as the car forced him on. His face as furious as Tony felt, lips pressed together, eyes hot. Then he too gave way, yelled, “Son of a bitch,” and banged the window as Tony roared by. Zipping into the next block, Tony watched in the mirror. Their ball. Expect more telephone calls tonight. He opened the window and flung it out. The boys in the mirror chased it among the parked cars.
Calm down Tony, take it easy. The house was church, where he prayed his ghosts to restore his soul. Worship service. He put his books on the table and went to the shelf in the living room where he kept the album. Prayer book. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Tableau. She sits on the couch, he in the chair, Helen on the floor leaning against the coffee table, saying “You did? No kidding?”
Bible lesson. “Then I began to wonder why I found myself talking to him every day as we came out of class and suddenly I realized he was waiting for me, and I was thrilled.”