Ghost Story (26 page)

She continued to project us into our future, but after Still Valley I began to invent excuses for avoiding her. I thought that I loved her, but the love was overshadowed by dread. Tasker, Greg Benton, the zombies of the X.X.X.—how could I marry all
that?

And then I felt a physical as well as a moral revulsion. Over the two months following Still Valley, we had generally ceased making love, though I sometimes spent the night in her bed. When I kissed her, when I held or touched her, I overheard my own thinking:
not much longer.

My teaching, except for rare flashes in the writing classes, had become remote and dull; I had stopped my own writing altogether. One day Lieberman asked me to see him in his office and when I arrived he said, "One of your colleagues described your Stephen Crane lecture to me. Did you actually say that
The Red Badge
was a ghost story without a ghost?" When I nodded, he asked, "Would you mind telling me what that means?"

"I don't know what it means. My mind was wandering. My rhetoric got out of hand."

He looked at me in disgust. "I thought you made a good start," he said, and I knew there was no longer any question of my staying on another year.

She did not call that night. I dreamed of her sitting in the prow of a small boat, drifting away down a canal and smiling enigmatically, as if giving me a day and a night of freedom was the last act of the charade.

By morning I had begun to worry. I telephoned her several times during the day, but either she was out or not answering the phone. (This evoked a clear picture. A dozen times while I had been in her apartment, she had let the phone ring until it stopped.) By evening, I had begun to imagine that I was really free of her, and I knew that I would do anything to avoid seeing her again. I telephoned twice more during the night, and was happy to get no answer. Finally I stayed up until two writing a letter breaking it off.

Before my first class I went over to her building. My heart was beating fast: I was afraid I'd see her by accident and have to mouth the phrases which were so much more convincing on paper. I went up the steps of her building and saw that the drapes were drawn over her windows. I pushed at the locked door. I almost pushed the bell. Instead I slid the letter between the window and the frame, where she would see it and the inscription
Alma
as soon as she came up the stairs. Then I—no other word for it—fled.

Of course she knew my teaching schedule, and I half-expected to see her loitering outside a classroom or lecture theater, my smug letter in her hand and a provoking expression on her face. But I went through my teaching day without seeing her.

The following day was a repetition of the last. I worried that she might have killed herself; I dismissed the worry; I went off to my classes; in the afternoon I rang and got no reply. Dinner at a bar; then I walked to her street and saw the white oblong of my treachery still in her window. At home I debated taking my phone off the hook but left it on, by now almost ready to admit that I was hoping she would call.

The next day I had a section of the American literature class at two o'clock. To get to the building where it met I had to cross a wide brick plaza. This plaza was always crowded. Students set up desks where you could sign petitions for legalizing marijuana or declare yourself in favor of homosexuality and the protection of whales; students thronged by. In their midst I saw Helen Kayon, for the first time since the evening in the library. Rex Leslie was walking beside her, holding her hand. They looked very happy—animal contentment encased them as in a bubble. I turned away from that sight, feeling like a Skid Row derelict. I realized that I had not shaved in two days, had not looked at myself in the mirror nor changed my clothes.

And when I turned away from Helen and Rex, I saw a tall pale man with a shaven head and dark glasses staring at me from beside a fountain. The vacant-faced boy, barefoot and in ragged dungarees, sat at his feet Greg Benton seemed even more frightening than he had outside The Last Reef; standing in the sun beside a fountain, he and his brother were extraordinary apparitions—a pair of tarantulas. Even the Berkeley students, who had seen a great deal in the way of human oddity, visibly skirted them. Now that he knew I had noticed him, Benton did not speak or gesture to me, but his whole attitude, the tilt of the shaven head, the way he held his body, was a gesture. It all expressed anger—as though I'd enraged him by getting away with something. He was like an angry blot of darkness on the sunny plaza: like cancer.

Then I realized that for some reason he was helpless. He was glaring at me because that was all he
could
do. I immediately blessed the protection of the thousands of students: and then I thought that Alma was in trouble. In danger. Or dead.

I turned away from Benton and his brother and sprinted toward the gate at the bottom of the plaza. When I had crossed the street I turned around to look back at Benton: I'd felt him watching me run—felt his cold satisfaction. But he and his brother had vanished. The fountain splashed, students milled. I even had a glimpse of Helen and Rex Leslie going into Sproul Hall, but the cancer had melted away.

By the time I reached Alma's street my fear seemed absurd. I knew that I was reacting to my own guilt. But had she not marked our final separation by standing me up at the restaurant? That I should have been in a sweat for her safety seemed a final manipulation. I caught my breath. Then I noticed that the drapes in Alma's windows were parted and the envelope was gone.

I ran down the block and up the stairs. Leaning sideways, I could see in her windows. Everything was gone. The room had been stripped bare. On the floorboards which had been covered by Alma's rugs I saw my envelope. It was unopened.

And if I had been so eager to be rid of her, why did I now feel that I was shuffling through a less significant world? Alma gone, I was left with the bare world of cause and effect, the arithmetic world—if without the odd dread she had aroused in me, without the mystery too. The only mystery I had left was that of where she had gone; and the larger mystery of who she had been.

I drank a good deal and cut my classes: I slept most of the day. It was as though I had some generalized disease that took my energy and left me with no occupation but sleeping and thinking about Alma. When after a week I began to feel healthier, I remembered seeing Benton in the plaza and imagined that he'd been angry because he had known that what I had gotten away with was my life.

After I started to meet my classes again I saw Leiberman in the halls after a lecture and at first he ducked his head and intended to snub me, but he thought better of it and flicked his eyes at mine and said, "Step into my office for a second, will you, Wanderley?" He too was angry, but it was anger I could deal with; I want to say it was only human anger: but what anger is not? A werewolf's?

"I know I've disappointed you," I said. "But my life got out of hand. I got sick. I'll finish out the term as honorably as I can."

"Disappointed? That's a mild word for it." He leaned back in his leather chair, his eyes blazing. "I don't think we've ever been let down so much by one of our temporary appointments. After I entrusted you with an important lecture, you apparently threw together the worst mishmash—the worst
garbage
—" He collected himself. "And you've missed more classes than anyone in our history since we had an alcoholic poet who tried to burn down the recruitments office. In short, you've been lax, slipshod, lazy—you've been disgraceful. I just wanted you to know what I thought of you. Single-handedly, you've endangered our entire program of bringing in writers. This program is supervised, you know. We have a board to answer to. I'll have to defend you to them, as much as I detest the thought."

"I can't blame you for feeling as you do," I said. "I just got into an odd situation—I think I've sort of been cracking up."

"I wonder when you so-called creative people are going to realize that you can't get away with murder." The outburst made him feel better. He steepled his fingers and looked at me over them. "I hope you don't expect me to give you a glowing recommendation."

"Of course not," I said. Then I thought of something. "I wonder if I can ask you a question."

He nodded.

"Have you ever heard of an English professor at the University of Chicago named Alan McKechnie?" His eyes widened; he folded his hands. "I don't really know what I'm asking. I wondered if you knew anything about him?"

"What the hell are you saying?"

"I'm curious about him. That's all."

"Well, for what it's worth," he said, and stood up. He marched over to his window, which gave a splendid view of the plaza. "I dislike gossip, you know."

What I knew was that he loved gossip, like most academics. "I knew Alan slightly. We were on a Robert Frost symposium five years ago—sound man. A bit too much the Thomist, but that's Chicago, isn't it? Still, a good mind. Had a lovely family too, I gather."

"He had children? A wife?"

Lieberman looked at me suspiciously. "Of course. That's what made it so tragic. Apart from the loss of his contributions to the field, of course."

"Of course. I forgot."

"Look? What do you know? I'm not going to slander a colleague for the sake of—the sake of—"

"There was a girl," I said.

He nodded, satisfied. "Yes. Apparently. I heard about it at the last MLA convention. One of the fellows from his department told me about it He was
vamped.
This girl simply pursued him. Dogged him. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, in a word—I gather he finally did become enchanted by her. She was a graduate student of his. These things happen of course, they happen all the time. A girl falls for her professor, manages to seduce him, sometimes she makes him leave his wife, most times not. Most of us have more sense." He coughed. I thought: you really are a turd. "Well. He did not. Instead he went to pieces. The girl ruined him. In the end he killed himself. The girl, I gather, did a midnight flit—as our English friends have it Though what this has to do with you, I can't imagine."

She had falsified nearly everything in the McKechnie story. I wondered what else might have been a lie. When I got home, I rang de Peyser, F. A woman answered the phone.

"Mrs. de Peyser?"

It was.

"Please excuse me for calling you on what may be a case of mistaken identity, Mrs. de Peyser, but this is Richard Williams at the First National of California. We have a loan application from a Miss Mobley who lists you as a reference. I'm just running the usual routine information check. You're named as her aunt.

"As her what? What's her name?"

"Alma Mobley. The problem is that she forgot to give your address and phone number, and there are several other Mrs. de Peysers in the Bay area, and I need the correct information for our files."

"Well it's not me! I've never heard of anybody named Alma Mobley, I can assure you of that."

"You do not have a niece named Alma Mobley who is a graduate student at Berkeley?"

"Certainly not. I suggest you get back to this Miss Mobley and ask her for her aunt's address so you don't go wasting your time."

"I'll do that right now, Mrs. de Peyser."

David telephoned me in April. He sounded excited, happy, more youthful than he'd been in years. "I have amazing news," he said. "Astounding news. I don't know how to tell you."

"Robert Redford bought your life story for the movies."

"What? Oh, come off it. No, really, this is hard for me to tell you."

"Why don't you just start at the beginning?"

"Okay. Okay, that's what I'll do, wiseass. Two months ago, on February third" —this was really the lawyer at work—"I was up on Columbus Circle, seeing a client. The weather was terrible, and I had to share a cab back to Wall Street Bad news, right? But I found myself sitting next to the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, she was so good-looking my mouth went dry. I don't know where I got the guts, but by the time we got to the Park, I asked her out to dinner. I don't usually do things like that!"

"No, you don't." David was too lawyerly to ask strange girls for dates. He'd never been in a singles bar in his life.

"Well, this girl and I really hit it off. I saw her every night that week. And I've gone on seeing her ever since. In fact, we're going to get married. That's half of the news."

"Congratulations," I said. "I wish you better luck than I had."

"Now we come to the difficult part. The name of this astounding girl is Alma Mobley."

"It can't be," I said.

"Wait. Just wait. Don, I know this is a shock. But she told me all about what happened between you, and I think it's essential that you know how sorry she is for everything that happened. We've talked about this a long time. She knows she hurt your feelings, but she knew that she just wasn't the right girl for you. And
you
weren't right for
her.
Also, she was in a bad patch in California. She wasn't herself, she says. She's afraid you have absolutely the wrong idea of her."

"That's just what I do have," I said. "Everything about her is wrong. She's some kind of witch. She's destructive."

"Hold on. I
am
going to marry this girl, Don. She's not the person you think she is. God, how we've talked about this. Obviously you and I have to talk about it a hell of a lot ourselves. In fact I was hoping you could hop a plane to New York this weekend so we could have a good long talk and really work through it. I'd be glad to pay your fare."

"That's ridiculous. Ask her about Alan McKechnie. See what she tells you. Then I'll tell you the truth."

"No, wait, buddy, we've already been through all that I know she gave you a garbled version of the McKechnie affair. Can't you imagine how shattered she was? Please come out here, Don. All three of us have to have a long session."

"Not on your life," I said. "Alma's a kind of Circe."

"Look, I'm at the office, but I'll call you later in the week, okay? We have to get things straight. I don't want my brother having bad feelings about my wife."

Bad feelings? I felt horror.

That night David rang again. I asked him if he'd met Tasker yet. Or if he knew about Alma and the Xala Xalior Xlati.

"See, that's where you got the wrong idea. She just made all that stuff up, Don. She was a little unsteady out there on the Coast. Besides who can take all that stuff seriously anyhow? Nobody here in New York ever heard of the XXX. In California, people get all cranked up about trivia."

And Mrs. de Peyser? She had told him that I was terribly possessive; Mrs. de Peyser was a tool to get time by herself.

"Let me ask you this, David," I said. "Sometimes, maybe only once, haven't you looked at her or touched her and just felt—something funny? Like that, no matter how strongly attracted you are to her, you're squeamish about touching her?"

"You've got to be kidding."

David would not permit me to creep away from the whole issue of Alma Mobley, as I wanted to do. He would not let it go. He telephoned me from New York two or three times a week, increasingly disturbed by my refusal to see reason.

"Don, we have to talk this thing out I feel terrible about you."

"Don't."

"I mean, I just don't understand your attitude about this thing. I know you must feel terrible resentment. Jesus, if things had worked out the other way around and Alma had walked out of my life and decided to marry you, I'd be tied in knots. But unless you admit your resentment, we can never get to the point of doing something about it."

"I don't resent anything, David."

"Come off it, kid brother. We have to talk about it sometime. Alma and I both feel that way."

One of my problems was that I didn't know to what extent David's assumptions were correct. It was true that I resented both David and Alma: but was it merely resentment that made me recoil from the thought of them marrying?

A month or so after that, many seesawing conversations later, David called to say that I was "going to have a break from being hounded by your brother. I've got a little business in Amsterdam, so I'm flying there tomorrow for five days. Alma hasn't seen Amsterdam since she was a child, and she'll be coming with me. I'll send you a postcard. But do me a favor and really think about our situation, will you?"

"I'll do my best," I said. "But you care too much about what I think."

"What you think is important to me."

"All right," I said. "Be careful."

Now what did I mean by
that?

At times I thought that both David and myself had underestimated her calculation. Suppose, I thought, that Alma had engineered her meeting with David. Suppose that she had deliberately sought him out. When I thought about this, Gregory Benton and the stories of Tasker Martin seemed more sinister—as if they, like Alma, were stalking David.