George Mills (73 page)

“ ‘Country club country. I love being made over, wined and dined, fussed. I
never
get used to it. I don’t think I will.

“ ‘Lunch turns me on. Tennis-togged women, ladies in tank tops. I like to take off their sweat bands. I love those little bracelets of the untan, the wrist hair where it’s been pressed down under the elastic. I love the way it smells, sweat running with perfume and the better soaps. I like their jewelry, their diamond rings and great gold chains. I love the way their
jewelry
smells. You know what, Cornell? I can make out the karats, the troy grains in pearls. You believe me? It’s true. The expensive like a whiff of sachet. I can smell money in a purse, coins, even checkbooks, the stamps in their passports, plastic on charge cards, a Neiman-Marcus, a Saks.

“ ‘Christ I’m a bastard. I cheat on my wife. If I had a dollar …’ he tells me. (And I listen to this stuff, who got lucky maybe a dozen or so years ago, and that with a drunk, a woman under the influence, who may have been a little crazy
behind
the alcohol. But who celebrates the occasion—March 19—like some dear anniversary.) He tells me this shit.
Me.
So I tell you. You can’t cheat on your wife, you cheat on your friends.

“ ‘We’ll have left early,’ he says, ‘gone separate ways to the parking lot. She gets in my rental car or I get in hers, but I love when
they
drive, when they take me ’cross bridges and she grabs the toll. When she picks the place, where we can go. Listen, it’s Cairo, what do
I
know? It’s Cairo, it’s Russia, it’s somewhere South Seas. It isn’t the money, you know that, Cornell. I’m the one being fussed. I’ve published the paper, made the keynote address.

“ ‘And maybe they
are
nurses, or were before they married their husbands and became doctors’ wives. Hell, I suppose lots of them
were
nurses, most of them maybe. But up from the nursery and doctors’ wives now. So it’s all right, it’s okay.

“ ‘Because I’m this snob of betrayal, this rat of swank. Your fop of collusion, your paste asshole. And nothing against their husbands. On the contrary. They’re pals, I like them. Every professional courtesy. I second their opinions. We wave on the slopes.’ ”

So Messenger told Mills of Losey’s code.

“Code?” George said. “He’s got fuckall to do with the Hippocratic oath, he’s got a
code?
”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Messenger said. “He goes out of town. He makes love on the beaches, on cruises, off shore. Everything handled, you know, discreet. Shit, Mills,
I
don’t know. Maybe there are gentlemen’s agreements. Maybe they don’t go to each other’s papers. I don’t know how it’s done. A guy tells me he’s been with a groupie I don’t ask to see the matchbook from the restaurant. I’m an old-fashioned guy. People get laid it’s a wonder to me you don’t read about it in the paper. It’s amazing there’s no extra or the programs ain’t interrupted. Someone makes love … But that’s just the point.
That’s
Losey’s code. You can wing it like birdies, do anything, everything. Just don’t fall in love. Though that’s the part I don’t understand. I’d wonder who’s kissing them now.

“ ‘The family,’ Losey says. ‘The family comes first. The home.’

“It’s the long view, you see. The long view he takes. Marriage like principal. Not to be disturbed. He’s a doctor, a surgeon. He hates a complication. Side effects spook him, they give him the willies. Sure, that’s
got
to be it. The principles of science carried over into life. Well, why not? What the hell? I’m glad we had this chat, George. It’s clearer to me now.”

But not to Mills.

“Well,” Messenger said, “he has trucks.”

“Trucks.”

“And an interest in freight cars.”

“I don’t——”

“That he bought with some guys, that he leases back to the railroad.”

“I don’t——”

“Because a lot of this shit must have been in her name, joint tenancy, something sufficiently complicated so that even if he’s audited and they find against him it’s probably a judgment call. And, oh yes, meanwhile he gets the use on the money, the interest compounding against the penalty even if there is one. A divorce could … Well, you can see for yourself. And maybe that’s what he means by ‘home.’ Maybe it’s only his pet name for tax shelter. The horror, the horror, hey Mills?”

Who wanted names and dates, the places of these horrors, whose own interest was compounding now too, but in a different direction, so that when he again asked “Then what happened?” Messenger only looked at him. “What happened?” he repeated.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know, that it got out of hand.”

“It was his idea that Nora become a graduate student.”

“I see,” Mills said, but didn’t.

“He even picked the discipline. And picked it mercilessly, pitilessly. Architecture. She’d need math, she’d need mechanics. She’d need drawing skills. She’d need calculus and physics, statics and dynamics, and a knowledge of mechanical systems. She’d need to know stresses. She’d need acoustics and drafting, axonometrics and isometric projections. She’d need to know project financing. She’d need a knowledge of real estate and whose palm you greased to get round the zoning codes. So she’d need political science, and a little law too. You see?”

“But——”

“Medical school would have been a breeze, compared.”

“But why did——”

“Because he really
is
your paste asshole, your rat of swank. Only I didn’t know he was so clever. Christ, he must have studied the catalogue like a doting daddy. He must have
pored
over that fucker. He must have laughed his ass off when he had to look a term up.

“But I don’t know. I don’t
know
why he did it. Maybe it was only that same hierarchical predilection for profession that put nurses off limits but drove him into their arms once they were doctors’ wives. Maybe that’s why he married her in the first place, maybe it’s why he loved her. Maybe he was just showing off. Because once he got his license to practice he could, by the simple act of marrying her, take any girl off the street and turn her into a doctor’s wife.
Any
girl. A typist, a beautician, someone in trade school.

“Maybe excitement quits on you. Maybe it pales. Maybe pride is the least complacent of the qualities, and it’s true what the songs say——the thrill is gone, the blush off the rose. Passion like the seasons, like land that gives out.”

“Maybe he didn’t want her around at those doctor conventions,” George said.

“Symposiums, conferences,” Messenger said. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think he’s better than that. I take him at his word. I believe he really is this rat of swank, that he has this toney, back-of-the-book vision. The couple—she’s a brain surgeon, he sits on the Supreme Court; she skydives for relaxation, he’s into archeology; they swig tiptop scotch and lie around listening to old 78’s—that has it made. The best condo at the fanciest address, who weave great salads and whip up Jap foods which they eat off the carpet before great open fires. (He gets closed-circuit TV, pulls big Vegas bouts from his dish in the yard.) Because he really thinks like that. And what
I
think, what
I
think, is that he was honestly trying to make her over. Take this perfectly nice, ordinary girl whom he’d already turned into a doctor’s wife pretty as any he screws in Europe, well dressed as any, tricky as any in bed, well heeled and knowing as any, and go for it. That’s why he chose architecture to be her fate. Out of love and an honest pleasure and pride in just more gracious living. And that could explain Jenny Greener, too.” Mills looked at him. “Think about it.” Mills shrugged. “They’re classmates. They’re classmates, George. She came to your house. What did you think?”

“I didn’t think anything. Why? What should
I
think?”

“Did you notice anything special about Jenny?”

“Jenny?”

“Jenny Greener, yes.”

“I’m trying to remember.”

“That’s right. Do you?”

Mills tried to recall the polite, somewhat nervous young woman who’d come with the doctor’s wife that day. She was, he’d thought, ill at ease, and had given him the impression—stiff, unmoving, perched on the edge of their sofa, holding herself carefully, almost tenderly, as if she were sore, as if she held a saucer and teacup in her lap, a napkin, invisible cakes—of restrained fidgets. She hadn’t talked much. He couldn’t remember that she’d said anything. She hadn’t asked questions, as Nora had, about the house, the neighborhood. Louise had said afterward that Nora had taken Polaroids of the house, flashes, three or four rolls. That she’d gone around shooting one picture after another, of the cellar steps, the ceiling, the basement, their closets and doorways, their small backyard. “I tell you, George, she could have been from the insurance,” Louise said, “taking pictures of water damage, busted pipes.” He couldn’t remember Jenny Greener having a camera.

“I think she was embarrassed,” George told Cornell. “I don’t recall what she looked like.”

“Plain?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Nora Pat. Mrs. Losey. What did Mrs. Losey look like?”

“Oh, she was beautiful. Very well dressed. She had on this linen suit. Boots. She had beautiful boots. Sort of a blonde. I don’t know. I can’t describe people’s looks. She was very pretty. I remember she was very pretty.”

“A smasher?” Messenger said. “A knockout?”

“Yes,” George Mills said. “She was very beautiful.” He remembered that when they were introduced she’d taken his hand and held it in both her own.

“You were with Judy,” she said. “You’re the man with the back.” And she’d touched Mills there, where his back ached, and her touch had radiated comfort through his shirt, warming him.

“I suppose if you thought about it you could remember the boots, how they laced up the side, the way they were tooled, the particular purchase they gave to her stance?”

“She stood,” George Mills said, “like someone poised on a diving board. Jenny Greener was plain.”

“Nora wouldn’t let her alone once she found out how smart she was. She kept inviting her over to the house. (She introduced them.) After a while Jenny couldn’t figure out how to turn her down anymore. She had this way of explaining things. Formulas, principles. Better than professors. So that for as long as she could keep Jenny talking even Nora believed she’d get the stuff. She could even give it back, work out the problems, solve them, get round the doglegs and sand traps of architecture, cracking all the difficult ciphers of the discipline Losey had chosen for her. That’s what they talked about. This was their dinner table conversation. Housing, the redevelopment of downtown, the drawbacks of solar.

“And her husband beaming, beaming, ready to bust his buttons. Proud as a pop with a kid on the dean’s list——on the arm at the ball park, management’s, the home team’s straight-A’d, honor-roll’d guest. (Listen, listen, I know how he’d feel! I don’t blame him, I don’t even apologize for him. This isn’t sublimation, reflected glory, suspect, vicarious motive. I’m not talking about pride of ownership, I’m not even talking about pride. Love. I’m talking about love, all simple honor’s good will and best wishes. So I
know
how he’d feel!)

“Losey may have been having second thoughts. He must have had them. Thinking—I don’t know—thinking, Gee, maybe I made a mistake, maybe there’s something harder than architecture, higher. (Not better paid, because, be fair, he didn’t give a damn whether his wife ever earned back from the profession even half what it had cost him to get her into it in the first place. What could he do with more money? Figure new ways to hide it? He was still busting his hump on the old ways, which, face it, be fair, were only his accountant’s ideas anyway, only the tried and true evasive actions of sheltering dough. Because he’s right. When he says ‘You know me, Cornell, it isn’t the money.’ He’s right, it isn’t. It’s just another way of having and doing what others in those brackets have and do.) Thinking: Gee, maybe I should have pushed her into astronomy, aeronautical engineering. Maybe I should have run her for governor.

“Till that damned letter came. It was addressed to Losey. It could have been an honest mistake. It could have been the chairman’s joke; I hope it was Nora’s. But it was actually very nice, very sympathetic and concerned. Like those letters company commanders write next of kin when the news is bad.

“It said that while Nora gave every indication she was trying,
really
trying, and was extremely cooperative and obviously bright, and, oh yes, especially gifted as a draftsman and quite clearly imaginative, there was this problem with her math, this basic flaw on the scientific side. He was sorry, he said, but he was afraid that if she couldn’t bring that part of it up, Dr. Losey, his daughter was in danger of going on academic probation.

“Losey was furious. ‘Does that son of a bitch actually think I’m old enough to be your father?’

“But be fair, give him credit. He would get her a tutor. She could bring up her statics and dynamics, she could bring up her knowledge of mechanical systems. She was extremely cooperative and obviously bright. Even that pompous prick of a chairman thought so. He’d get a licensed architect to help her, maybe a partner in one of the big firms downtown. He’d pay his fee, whatever those highway robbers charged when a house was commissioned. She wasn’t to worry. All she had to concentrate on was bringing up her axonometrics and isometric projections.

“ ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me earlier maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

“I’m not her confidant. I’m not even his. I mean he won’t talk about this stuff. I had no idea either. If I asked how Nora was doing in architecture school he’d mumble something vague and tell me all about some doctor’s wife he’d screwed in the islands.

“She told Judy. Judy told the Meals-on-Wheelers. The Meals-on-Wheelers told me. I tell you.

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘spilled milk. I’ll ask around. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll speak to the head of the architectural firm that’s doing our hospital annex.’

“ ‘Jenny Greener,’ she said.

“ ‘Jenny Greener?’

“ ‘Only she’s already working for you.’