In Pursuit of Spenser (30 page)

“I can’t change him,” Susan said. “I cannot make him cease to be who he is.”

“Would you want to?”

“I would prefer he didn’t risk his life,” Susan said. “In a sense he’s risking mine as well.”

“Because?” Amy said.

“I cannot imagine a life without him in it.”

“Do you try to change that?”

“No. It is part of what he is,” Susan said. “He would not be him if he didn’t do what he does. And it is the him he is that I cannot imagine life without.”

“Wow,” I said.

“The syntax is perhaps a little convoluted,” Susan said. “But, so are you Ducky.”

“You mean I’m not simple?” I said.

“You are and you aren’t,” Susan said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“I want to talk more about your relationship,” Amy said. “Since it’s come up. But I’m not sure I have yet gotten a solid handle on why you do what you do, which would be sort of the heart of my book, I think.”

“There are a lot of problems which need to be solved,” I said, “and their solution takes the kinds of skills I have. But because of my extreme pathology, I can’t solve those problems in a structured context: police work, military, Harvard College. So I do it this way.”

“And,” Susan said, “you do it because it allows you to state who and what you are.”

“So who and what is he?” Amy said.

Susan shook her head.

“It has something to do with honor,” Susan said.

They both looked at me. I looked at Susan.

“I could not love thee half as much?” I said. “Loved I not honor more?”

She smiled again.

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

“Which makes a nice segue,” Amy said, “back to your relationship. Why have you never married?”

Susan and I looked at each other.

“I don’t really like her that much,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” Amy said. “You have been together for years. You seem like the kind of people who would marry. Everyone says you are the two most connected people they’ve ever seen. Why not get married?”

I looked at Susan. She smiled and didn’t speak. I was, at least for the moment, on my own.

“What we have,” I said, “is a very . . . delicate . . . love affair. We are different at almost every level that doesn’t matter. We are very, ah, committed to our own point of view . . . and what we have is amazingly good. I guess we don’t want to mess with it.”

“Have you ever lived together?”

“We tried it once,” I said.

“And?”

“And all the differences that don’t really matter, mattered, when they were contained in one space.”

“You travel together?”

“Sure,” I said. “And we spend nights together. But we don’t live together.”

Amy frowned.

“Do I hear you saying,” she asked, “that what you have is too precious to risk compromising it by getting married?”

“Yes,” I said.

Amy looked at Susan. Susan smiled and nodded. Amy looked back at me. I smiled.

“Well,” Amy said. “Alrighty then. Let me ease onto simpler ground here. A little history.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You were born in Laramie, Wyoming.”

“I was.”

“And your mother bore you, as it were, posthumously.”

“Yes,” I said. “She died but they were able to save me.”

“So you never had a mother.”

“In any but a biological sense, no.”

“And your father brought you up?”

“My father and my two uncles.”

“Your father’s brothers?”

“No,” I said. “They were my mother’s brothers.”

“Really?”

“It’s how my father met my mother. He was friends with her brothers.”

“You all lived in the same house?”

“Yes.”

“How was that?”

“Fine,” I said. “It didn’t seem unusual. It was just the way my family was.”

“What did they do?”

“Carpenters, hunting guides, raised a few cattle, broke some horses, used to ride bucking horses in rodeos, used to box for prize money around Wyoming and Montana at carnivals and smokers.”

“They sound like tough guys,” Amy said.

“They were tough guys,” I said.

“Were they tough with you?”

“No,” I said.

“Did any of them marry?”

“They all went out with a lot of women,” I said. “My father never remarried. Both my uncles married, but not while I was living there.”

“So essentially you grew up in an all male household,” Amy said.

“Yes.”

“What was the effect of that do you think?”

“I suppose there must have been one,” I said. “But I haven’t got a glib answer for you. They made me feel valuable. They made me feel secure. They used to show up at every PTA meeting, all the time I was in school. All three of them, sitting in a row in the back. I’m told they made the teachers nervous.”

“Anything else about them?”

“They made me feel equal. I was expected to share the work of the household, probably, which included the work of raising me. If I didn’t want to do something they listened to me and sometimes I didn’t have to, and sometimes I did. But they never were dismissive. I was always a participant. And they never were unkind.”

I stopped and thought back about my family. It made me smile.

“Nobody much crossed them, though,” I said.

“Is Susan the fulfillment of a long deprivation?” Amy said. I drank some beer.

“Absolutely,” I said. “But that would be true if I’d had a mother. The time I spent before I met her seems aimless.”

“They teach you to box?” Amy said.

“Yes. My Uncle Nick, mostly. I fought some golden gloves and had some pro fights, and was looking like a comer. But I also got a football scholarship to Holy Cross, and so I went to play football for a couple of years.”

“I don’t know much about football, but what position were you?”

“Strong safety,” I said. “And I ran back punts.”

“Were you good?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t like being coached, and college was boring, so I went back to boxing.”

“Was it boring because it was Catholic?” Amy said.

“No,” I said. “It was boring because it was college.”

“You sound scornful of college,” Amy said.

“I am.”

“But you’ve read a lot of books, I’m told. You quote poetry.”

“Self-educated,” I said.

“Remember what I told you about him,” Susan said.

“Were you a good boxer?”

“Not good enough,” I said. “While I was still fighting, I took the police exam, and passed, and decided to do that.”

“Were you good at that?”

“No, too many rules.”

“So you quit,” Amy said.

“I did,” I said. “I may be unemployable.”

“And became a private detective.”

I nodded.

“You met Hawk while you were boxing?”

“You know about Hawk,” I said.

“Susan introduced us,” Amy said.

“Whaddya think?” I said.

“He terrified me, and . . . excited me, I guess.”

“Me too,” I said.

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Amy said. “Hawk said you bailed him out of a difficult racial situation.”

“We conspired on that,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about Hawk?” Amy said.

“No. You’ll need to talk with him direct. Hawk is what he is.”

“Including your friend.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you so close?”

“We know the same things,” I said.

“Like fighting?”

“Like . . . If I were black and Hawk were white then he’d be me, and I’d be him.”

“Race makes the difference?”

“I grew up white in a white culture. Hawk grew up black in a white culture. When you are marginalized, you become very practical.”

“Marginalized,” Susan said.

I shrugged modestly.

“I’m with Harvard grads,” I said. “I’m showing off a little.”

“Talk a little more about the effect of marginalization,” Amy said.

“You have less room to maneuver about what’s right or wrong,” I said. “Mostly what’s right is what works. Your view becomes pretty up-close.”

“It makes him immoral?”

“No, Hawk is moral,” I said. “His word is good. He does nothing gratuitously. It’s just that his morality is more result oriented. He does what needs to be done without agonizing over it before or after.”

“You agonize?”

“Too strong,” I said. “I probably think about it more than Hawk. And
right
may have a more abstract component for me.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Amy sat for a moment contemplating the slowly turning tape in her recorder.

“Do you trust him?” she said.

“Absolutely.”

Again Amy thought for awhile.

Finally she said, “I guess I don’t entirely understand.”

I shrugged.

“Best I can do,” I said.

“Susan?” Amy said.

“He admires people who can do things,” she smiled. “Hawk can do things.”

Amy nodded. It was moving on toward supper time. I looked around at the now crowded and lively courtyard. Even though we were right in the heart of Cambridge, there was a heartening absence of Birkenstocks.

“Okay,” Amy said. “Let’s talk about you and Susan again.”

“What is this?” I said. “Men and women who dare?” Amy smiled.

“I think maybe I can’t understand you without understanding you in her context,” Amy said.

“Probably,” I said.

“How did you meet?”

“I was working on a case, missing teenaged boy, up in Smithfield. She was the school guidance counselor. I questioned her about the boy, and she was immediately taken with me.”

Susan rolled her eyes.

“What’s your version?” Amy asked Susan.

“He was working on a case, missing teenaged boy, up in Smithfield,” Susan said. “I was the school guidance counselor. He questioned me about the boy, and was immediately taken with me.”

“There seems a disparity, here,” Amy said.

“Just say we were taken with each other,” Susan said.

“And you’ve been together ever since?”

“Except for when we weren’t,” I said.

“Can you talk about that?” Amy said.

“Nope.”

Amy looked at Susan. Susan shook her head.

“We aren’t who we were,” Susan said. “We’d be talking about people who no longer exist.”

I could see Amy thinking about how to go further with this. I could see her decide to give it up.

“You were married before,” she said to Susan.

“Yes.”

“And divorced.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?” Amy said to me.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Don’t feel anything about it?”

“Correct.”

“No jealousy, anything?” Amy said.

I shook my head.

“A famous shrink,” I said, “once remarked,
we aren’t who we were
.”

“You can put the past aside that easily?” Amy said. I think she disapproved.

“Not easily,” I said.

Susan said. “It is quite effortful.”

“But you do it?”

Susan and I said “yes” at the same time.

“Earlier,” Amy said to me, “you said something like
I don’t refuse to care; I refuse to let it control me
. Now you say with effort you can put the past behind you. You, actually both of you, seem to place a premium on, what, will?”

“Yes,” I said.

“First you need to understand why you do things that aren’t in your best interest,” Susan said. “Then, armed with that understanding, you have to stop doing them.”

“And that would be a matter of will,” Amy said.

“Yes. Given a reasonable level of acumen,” Susan said.

“Most people can be brought to understanding their behavior. The hard thing is getting them to change it.”

“But some people can change?” Amy said.

“Yes.”

“And you changed?”

“Both of us,” Susan said.

“Obviously,” Amy said. “Susan, you’ve had psychotherapy.”

“Of course,” Susan said.

Amy looked at me.

“Have you ever had psychotherapy?” she said.

I looked at Susan.