“Oh,” she said, “you poor man, I was going to call you.”
“You were?”
“Well, when I heard what your not-so-better-half had done to you … And on the eve of your party! Outrageous! People ought to know that some of the most significant damage one can do to others is to force them to change their plans at the last minute. Too too rude, I think. To treat other persons’ lives as though they were subject to alterations like something off-the-rack. Barbaric!”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I—?”
“Call me,” he asked her.
“I thought Dickerson would take care of it. Dickerson was supposed to take care of it. That’s what we arranged at any rate.”
“We? You and Dickerson? Arranged?
“We, the members of the Political Geographers Party Committee.”
“There is such a thing?”
“Well, now there is. The people in your seminar threw it together as soon as we heard.”
“Heard? Heard what?”
“Why, what Mrs. Professor S. did to Mr. Professor S., of course.”
“What’s none of your business is none of my business, I suppose, but I’d like to know—” Schiff said formally, and with as much dignity as the thought would allow, “this just happened — who put the word out? How did you know? Is it some jungle telegraph thing?” Then, risking the inside joke, “Or are you folks connected to Information, too?” Chilled to the bone when Miss or Mrs. Kohm gave her immense and raucous board member’s society laugh.
“We take care of our own, dear,” is what she said.
“The Political Geographers Party Committee,” Schiff said. “Is that like a fan club or something?”
“Would you like a fan club?”
“I’d like,” said Schiff, sorry as soon as he permitted the words to escape, “for my life to go into remission.”
“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing the seminar can do about that one, of course, but it can and will rally round its annual party.”
“The party,” Schiff said, “the party is off.”
“Of course the party’s not off. As far as the party’s concerned, well, damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead.”
“It’s off,” Schiff said.
“Why? Give me one good reason.”
“I’ve nothing to serve.”
“Eats,” she said, “the subcommittee on eats is taking care of that.”
“There’s a subcommittee on eats?”
“There’s a subcommittee on booze, there’s a subcommittee on party decorations.”
“Who organized all this? Did you?”
“Oh, that isn’t important,” Ms. Kohm — it was how he neutrally addressed her in class, too — dismissed. “You won’t have to lift a finger.”
“I can’t lift a finger.”
“You won’t have to.”
“Look,” Schiff said, “it’s late. There are other people in the seminar I still have to get in touch with.”
“But I told you, there’s nothing for you to do. Dickerson will take care of it.”
“Dickerson,” Schiff said. “Dickerson didn’t even call me.”
“Possibly he was nervous about catching you at a bad time, or that he was interrupting your dinner, or that he hates bothering you at home. In any event,” Ms. Kohm said, “there’s no reason for you to call the scholars. Everything really has been taken care of. The PGPC is on top of it.”
“The Political Geographers Party Committee,” Schiff said, exactly like a moderator of a news show identifying a reference for the audience.
“Exactly,” Ms. Kohm said, exactly like a panelist.
“Listen,” Schiff said, “what you and the others in the seminar have done is very kind. Really,” he said, “very kind. And I appreciate it, I do, but to tell the truth, I don’t believe I could even handle a party just now. Be a guest at one, I mean, never mind its host. I don’t much enjoy playing hearts and flowers, Ms. Kohm, but it’s been a pretty rough day, I’ve a lot on my mind, and the last thing in the world I’m up to right now is a celebration.”
“Jack, let me give you some advice: the worst thing someone like you can do at a time like this is to feel sorry for himself.”
Jack? Jack?
“Negative energy, particularly for someone in your condition, has devastating effects.”
In his condition? In his condition?
“Let me tell you something, Ms. Kohm,” Schiff said, “unless they’re referring to alternative fuels or to how they’re feeling, I’m always a little suspicious of, and embarrassed for, people who use terms like energy.”
“Jack,” she said, “I know you’re upset, that you’re just sick with worry about Claire, and, incidentally, I shouldn’t think she’s in Portland.”
Claire? Claire?
Where did this woman get off? (Or would she stop at nothing?) Was she drunk? She might be drunk. She looked like a drinker, had, he meant, a drinker’s dramatic, slightly hysterical expression, and her makeup, fixed in place like cosmetic surgery, might have been a drinker’s makeup, something planted on her face for emergency, like a name sewn into her clothing.
Still, he didn’t know which bothered him more, the dignity he’d leaked through his mean outburst about her use of language, or the dignity he lost through her (and he could only assume everyone’s) general knowledge of his business, how it was between him and Claire, how it was between him and his condition.
“I know,” she was saying, and Schiff, who’d tuned out for a couple of moments, once for his indignation and once again for the regret he felt for permitting himself to give in to it, knew he’d missed something, perhaps even something important (maybe she’d gone on to say what the thinking was in political geography regarding Claire’s whereabouts), “things are pretty much up in the air just now, but, you’ll see, they’ll come down, they’ll settle. It isn’t the end of the world. Oh, I grant you, when these things happen, one always thinks it’s the end of one’s world, and, occasionally, even frequently, one’s often right about that. After all, there’s no arguing with a judgment call, but I wouldn’t count myself out just yet. The consensus now is that three things may still happen, Your wife could come back. Two, time heals all wounds. And, three, you could make an adjustment, discover not only that you don’t really need her but that, if you make the adjustment, become more independent, you might even be better off without her.”
The consensus? The consensus?
“You’re right that she could come back,” he told her, “but it’s a long shot. Even about three — though it’s iffy, improbable, the odds are against it — that I might adjust. But that, two, time heals all wounds, is out of the question.”
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds?”
“Only if there’s time,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t underst—”
“Well,” Schiff said, stinging her, hoping to anyhow, hoping she’d take it back and pass it on to the consensus, “aren’t you forgetting my condition?”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “you bet.” Then, while he had her on the ropes, following through. “But my real objection to a party this year is that I couldn’t possibly clean up afterward. My ‘condition’ militates against it.” Forgetting about the PGPC and realizing his mistake at once. And — perhaps something to do with his hand eye coordination, his cripple’s slowed reaction times, just the merest piece of a beat off but a miss as good as a mile and except in horseshoes close didn’t count for diddly — Ms. Kohm, losing no time, all over him.