Fortunate Lives (23 page)

And Martin had felt much better. It was impossible not to be pleased to have fulfilled the eccentric precision of Ellen’s
expectations. Dinah had arrived with sandwiches and beer and a jug of wine, and the four of them had had one of the most pleasant
evenings of their long friendship, sitting on the floor in the near dark, eating sandwiches and drinking too much.

But Ellen had told him just the other day that she was seeing windows like hers all over town now, in the most unremarkable,
solely cosmetic, renovations. As a result she had literally turned her back on the window in her own study, rotating her desk
so that instead of looking out at the wooded mountains, she now worked with the light falling over her shoulders. He understood
that it was unbearable
to Ellen to think that anything in her life was not rare and superior—in that it was her own original invention—but he was
disappointed at her tactlessness in telling him of her disenchantment with something that, in its way, had partially been
a gift from him.

With Duchess close at his heels, Martin made his way along the slate path that meandered through a space of controlled woods;
he had helped Vic hack away the impassable underbrush the summer after Ellen’s window. There was a fine stand of towering
walnut trees and flowering wild honeysuckle bushes and then a slope of open meadow that Vic and Ellen had gently terraced
down to the pond, where Vic sat at a white wrought-iron table under the willow trees.

He put some papers aside when he saw Martin approaching, and Martin had the momentary sensation, as he came down the hill,
that the vivid colors of Vic’s blue shirt and aged yellow straw gardening hat under the heated light, the barely wavering
tendrils of the sweeping willows, and the quality of Vic’s stillness were permanent on the earth, were beyond the reality
of the progression of time. Then Vic called a greeting, and the image in Martin’s head shattered into the separate fragments
of the ongoing day.

“I’ve got Brenner’s manuscript,” Martin said as he settled in a chair across from Vic. “I was thinking that we might want
to devote an issue to it, but I wanted to talk to you first, and I decided to drive out. I was afraid it might be too early,
though.” Martin turned to watch the dog in case she was seized with one of her occasional fits of exuberance and headed off
for the trails in the far woods. But Duchess merely nosed around the edge of the pond and flung herself down in a muddy spot
along the bank.

When Martin turned back, Vic was standing looking across the pond with an irritated expression. Martin thought that perhaps
he
had
arrived too early. “At least one issue,” Vic said, clearly annoyed.

“You think we should take that much of the book?” Martin’s voice was pleasant; he had no idea why Vic was so exasperated.

“I think we should take the whole book. I attached a long memo when I gave the thing back to Owen. Netta brought him out to
swim one afternoon, and I thought it would save me a trip into town. But he said you hadn’t seemed excited. That you thought
Brenner’s agent sent it to us as a courtesy because we had published part of his last book when the magazines weren’t interested.
I don’t know. This new one’s a strange book. Hard to excerpt, really. I’m not sure he could place it that easily.” Vic sat
down again, squinting slightly into the distance. “But suppose we devoted all four issues to the entire book. It would get
some publicity for the book. And for
The Review
. You can’t think his
agent
sent it as a courtesy! Give me a break! But if you think Brenner insisted because he feels beholden… I mean, if this has
something to do with your idea of
honor
…” he said wryly, raising an eyebrow. “But, Christ, Martin, he can always turn down the offer.”

Martin slouched down in his chair and let his head fall forward while he massaged the back of his neck with one hand, his
eyes closed. He was remembering the memoless, slightly gritty, water-rumpled manuscript that Owen had left on his desk. Owen
must have put it down on the floor of his car and piled his and Netta’s wet towels on top of it. “Ah, God,” Martin said, not
loudly but with resignation. “Well, I fired Owen this morning.”

Vic perked up. “You did? You fired him? What did he say?”

“He said he has great love for you and me.”

“So? You mean he’s not going to
be
fired?”

“He avoided it, I think. And I can’t leave him fired, anyway. Penny will be back in four weeks, and if we fired him the whole
town would hear about it. I feel sorry for him.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Martin said, and continued massaging his neck, turning his head slowly from side to side to stretch the muscles. “But
he’s a
pathetic
asshole. Maybe he
won’t
come in tomorrow,” he said. “And I really don’t know how to get rid of him if he does come back. I feel terrible for Larry
and Judith.” Martin was filled with dread at the prospect of explaining the situation to Owen’s parents.

“You know, at his best he’s real good at being charming in a sort of bumbling way,” Vic said. “That’s how he was when he came
out to swim. He’s like a Doberman in a golden retriever’s body. Ellen thinks he might be manic depressive.”

“Do you think so, too?” Martin slid down in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him and closing his eyes as he rested
his head as comfortably as he could on the iron scrollwork. He was genuinely curious. He had always thought that Ellen was
overly severe in the conclusions she drew, but there was something elusive about Owen. Maybe she had it right.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s drugs. Maybe it’s just Owen.”

Martin was groggy and stunned from the heat and from lack of sleep, and he stayed just as he was in the white chair under
the trailing willows, mulling over the facets of Owen’s personality. Martin let various suppositions drift across the surface
of his mind, and he grew drowsier and more and more indifferent. He couldn’t even summon the energy to open his eyes when
he heard Ellen join them.

“I brought a pitcher of iced tea,” she said as she approached, “but the ice has already started to melt. I should have put
it in the Thermos. It’s sweltering in my study. I thought I’d take a swim,” she added, and Martin looked up and smiled at
her in greeting. Ellen smiled, too, and then turned away and walked down the gentle slope to the edge of the pond, where Duchess
only opened her eyes to see what she was doing. Ellen stepped into the water ankle-deep.
“The water’s not cool,” she called back to them, “but at least it’s wet.” She shrugged out of her terrycloth robe and tossed
it behind her on the bank, wading nude into the deepening water, spreading it outward with her arms as it reached her waist,
and launching herself gently forward so that her silvery-gray hair floated out behind her as she turned her face into the
water and began to swim toward the far end where there were no shallows.

Vic and Ellen always swam nude, and Martin never expected to be taken aback, although he was every time he joined them. Dinah
thought their whole posture of casual nudity was an affectation, but Martin could never decide what to think. Years ago, when
Ellen was slender and high-breasted, he had liked to believe that she wanted him to admire her. Now, however, that she had
aged and thickened, he realized that there couldn’t be much of vanity in her nakedness. But he liked to watch her all the
more, because there was something erotic about the pleasure she took from the contact of the water with her soft flesh, and
she was a voluptuous, pretty woman still. He wondered, though, what she could be thinking. She was his closest woman friend,
but did she imagine that he could sit there and not think of her sexually as she dawdled in the clear water, carrying on a
perfectly normal conversation while slowly scissoring her legs and stirring the surface of the pond gently with her arms to
hold herself in place and keep her head above water? Did it not occur to her or did it not matter?

“What did you think of Philip Brenner’s book, Martin?” she asked him from where she lounged in the deep water at the far end
of the pond.

“That’s why I came out,” he said, loudly enough that she could hear him over the distance and the soft splashing of her movements.
“Vic’s probably right that we should take the whole book if we can.”

She nodded in approval and then let herself sink under
the water, pushing off from the bottom of the pond so that as she broke the surface, with her head tilted back, the water
swept her straggling hair flat against her skull into a smooth cap. Martin thought fleetingly that he was relieved that the
Hofstatters hadn’t had children; Ellen wouldn’t have hesitated to nurse the baby wherever she might be, and he would have
had to pretend that he was entirely comfortable watching a child suckle Ellen’s breast.

“The water’s much cooler at this end where it’s been in the shade,” she called out to them as she turned to swim toward them,
and Martin let his head fall back again so he wasn’t looking directly at her. No one had ever explained the etiquette of this
situation to him. He let his eyes close again as he heard the steady splashing of her strong legs as she swam laps, and he
fell into a half-sleep in the muggy air. Ellen was sitting with them, wrapped in her robe and briskly toweling her hair dry,
when he came completely into consciousness again.

“… and I feel
deprived
having toast without butter, or even worse, just imagine eating a tomato sandwich without mayonnaise,” she was saying to
Vic. She bent forward and wrapped the towel turbanlike around her head, then settled back in her chair. “Martin, I baked bread
this morning because I couldn’t sleep. But I can’t touch it, because I’ve really got to lose some of this weight.” She patted
herself fondly on the thigh. “I’ll make the two of you some sandwiches for lunch, though. You’ll stay, won’t you? I’ll come
down and sit with you. It’s so much cooler down here than in the house.”

“Ellen’s dieting.” Vic ran his hand along the top of her leg where it emerged from beneath her robe, and she grinned, which
was always a surprise. Her features were delicate and secret and feline, and her smile was usually composed, seemingly considered.
When her whole face opened into a grin, it was so revealing of her pleasure that
it was very much like being exposed to another aspect of her nakedness.

“He can’t stand it,” she said to Martin, “because when we don’t have company I begrudge him every bite he takes.”

“I just don’t see the point,” Vic said. “Being hungry makes you so miserable.”

Ellen had lost interest in talking about food, however, and she looked at Martin with her face careful once more. “You think
the Brenner book is good enough to devote four issues to?” she asked.

“I’d love to do it, but I just got hold of the manuscript three days ago, and today is the deadline his agent gave us. I’m
sure he’d rather sell it for real money.”

Ellen frowned at him, and readjusted herself, crossing her legs and looking prim with disapproval, but Vic intervened.

“I sent it back with Owen,” he said. “You remember when he and Netta were out here to swim? It took the long way round back
to Martin.” Vic dropped his air of injury and laughed. “You know, Owen read the manuscript before he passed it on to me, and
he could hardly wait to tell me that he thought it was needlessly obscure. He said it was time someone put Brenner out of
his misery.” And Vic couldn’t contain his laughter, waving his hand to convey his helpless sense of the absurdity of what
he was trying to say in long gasps of breath. “God,” he continued, “Owen was in a state of
outrage
. Just plain beside himself. He said someone should deliver Brenner to a taxidermist. Preserve him as a national monument!”
Vic broke into laughter again, but Martin was overtaken by an unwelcome surge of pity for Owen, much like the misery he felt
for some vocal but wrongheaded student in any seminar he taught. “He told me it was a piece of shit,” Vic said, still amused,
but Ellen looked solemn.

“I guess it gives him some sort of feeling of power to do that,” she said.

“Well, Martin fired him this morning,” Vic told her.

“Oh, I’m so glad, Martin!” Ellen said. “I’m uneasy around Owen. I don’t quite know why. I would have thought you would have
noticed how he was with Netta, Vic. You and Martin are so protective of her, but you don’t seem to notice how Owen treats
her. I’d almost call it abusive, but it’s not quite that extreme. He
bullies
her, though, in some way. He does it by being… oh… sort of sullen and moody. Sulky.” Vic shook his head to signify that he
hadn’t noticed anything odd in Owen’s behavior toward Netta. “I’m so glad you let him go, Martin,” she said.

“My firing him and our being rid of him are probably going to turn out to be two different things,” Martin said, but Ellen’s
enthusiasm wasn’t dampened.

“Oh, that doesn’t even matter, you know. Penny Krautz will be back in a few weeks. But we’ve been so worried about you.” She
paused for a moment and glanced uneasily at Vic, whose face remained impassive. She went on, almost shyly. “For the past few
years it’s seemed to us… Well… It’s been too long a time that you’ve tried to forgive Owen, Martin.” Her voice was soft with
her sorrow for him, and he didn’t know what to say. He was taken aback and unprepared. The connection between Toby’s death
and Owen Croft had been far from his mind.

She got up, and no one said anything while she fussed with the sash of her robe and unwound the towel from around her head,
shaking her hair free in the sun. She crossed the few feet of grass to Martin and bent to embrace him in a fierce hug. “It’s
been awful for us to see you try so hard to be generous.” She released him and stood up, running her fingers through her hair
in an attempt to untangle it. “Martin, you shouldn’t ever doubt yourself, you know. I mean, in the very best sense of the
term, you aren’t
capable
of being anything other than an honorable man.”

So Martin knew that some long discussion about him had taken place between these two closest of his friends, and he felt defensive
and resentful. But he couldn’t speak to object; Ellen’s sorrowing on his behalf had brought him surprisingly near to tears.