My Dearest Friend (39 page)

Jack waited. He took another drink of bourbon, which was beginning to taste pretty good. Mr. Skrags had such relentless eyes.

“Why, Carey Ann told me she was getting pretty happy up there,” Mr. Skrags said. “Told me things were working out. Said she’d made some good friends and was enjoying her courses.”

“Well, yes, that’s true enough,” Jack replied. “But I know she’d be happier here. She’s said any number of times she feels more at home here, and she’s always talking about how much she misses Christie and Jelly Roll—and you and Mrs. Skrags.”

“And what about you, son? How do you like it there, at that school? That was the important thing—the
crucial
thing, as I recall—that you had a fire in you to teach at that school.”

Jesus, the old man was hard, Jack thought. He wasn’t going to give Jack an inch. “I like it a lot,” he answered, frantically reassuring himself that Mr. Skrags, all-powerful as he was, couldn’t possibly know what had happened between Jack and Daphne. Was Mr. Skrags trying to turn Jack’s generous change of mind into a sign of failure? “Things are going very well for me there. I’ve had a large enrollment in all my classes.”

Mr. Skrags shook his head. “I think it’s a big mistake to make a career change of such magnitude just because of an unhappy wife.” He looked dour.

Well, fuck it, then. We’ll just stay back east and you can never see your precious daughter again!
Jack remained silent, helpless.

“I thought you were hankering to write a novel,” Mr. Skrags went on. “I thought Carey Ann told me the two things you wanted were to teach at Westhampton College and write a novel.”

“That’s right,” Jack said. “That’s correct. But—”

“But you’ve got a family to support. I know. Well, son, I’ve told you, I’d be more than willing to support you and your family for two or three years while you wrote your novel. You know I’ve got more than enough money for all of us.”

Why did he have to make such a generous offer with such an ugly, mean look? Frustrated, Jack said nothing.

“Seems to me,” Mr. Skrags went on, “if you were living in Kansas City, working on a novel, you’d be happy, and Carey Ann’d be happy, and everyone would have what he wanted.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Jack said. “I mean, there’s the matter of respect. I’d hate for Carey Ann or you to not respect me because I was living off your money.”

“Maybe it’s more a matter of confidence,” Mr. Skrags said.

“What?”

“Maybe you’re not so sure you could write a really good novel. If I thought I could write a decent novel, why, then, I’d know I was deserving of respect, never mind
whose money I took to write it.”

“I know I could write a good novel,” Jack said indignantly.

“Then you should reconsider my offer to help you and Carey Ann out a little bit for the next few years while you work on it. That’s the only way all this moving-around stuff makes any sense to me.”

Jack’s head was full, as if his thoughts were swaying back and forth, bumping into each other. The bourbon, of course, but also Mr. Skrags, who was pinning Jack down like a worm on a hook with his piercing, steely blue-eyed stare so that everything in Jack was trying to wiggle free.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “It’s very kind of you to make the offer, sir, and I’ll think about it.”

“Good. You do that,” Mr. Skrags said. “Now, let’s go find the girls.”

That night was New Year’s Eve and at nine Jack and Carey Ann and her parents left a sleeping Lexi with Beulah and went to the country club for dinner and the party. Two live bands set up, one at each wing of the club; one played jazz and nothing newer than Sinatra; the other played the latest rock. Jack hadn’t danced for a long time, and he loved moving to the music, feeling the music move in him until something stirred, then boiled, then burst free. The women wore glittering jewelry with evening gowns and exposed more skin in one night than Jack would see in a year back east. Carey Ann was wearing a strapless pink satin thing that flew out around her legs as she danced, and her hair, which she had had done in a formalized coiffure for the evening, had come undone and down, and streaked and flashed out around her head like a wild woman’s. What would the college faculty think of Carey Ann now as she hammed it up, flicking her body to “Sledgehammer”? What would they think of him as he slid backward, trying to do the moonwalk? Waiters passed through the crowd distributing flutes of champagne. It was almost midnight. Now both bands played “Auld Lang Syne,” and then the bells and noisemakers razzed through the air, and Carey Ann grabbed Jack and kissed him hotly, while a marvelous thing happened. From above, someone released a net of what Jack at first thought was confetti, and some of it was colored paper, but there were flower petals in the mixture, and soon, while everyone stood yelling and clapping and kissing and toasting, their shoulders and hair and the floor they stood on were sprinkled with the fragrant, vivid leaves of poinsettias and roses and carnations. “Ooooh!” the crowd called
out. “Aaaah!” The lights dimmed then, and the band played a slow song, and Jack took his wife in his arms. Now, he thought, now it should come to me with a lightning bolt of clarity, the decision about my life, whether to take the old fart’s offer and write, or to stay in Westhampton and teach, or move here and teach and
not
write—
now
the answer should strike me. But the answer did not strike him, and he entered the new year undecided.

The Hamiltons didn’t return to Westhampton until the middle of January, the day before Jack had to start teaching. Jack planned to call Daphne from his office at the college to see if she was all right, but as soon as he arrived at home, before he’d had time to unpack his suitcase, Shelby Currier phoned them with the news: Hudson Jennings had left his wife and was now living with Daphne in her cottage, and rumor had it that they were looking at houses together and planning to get married as soon as Hudson’s divorce came through.

“Jesus,” Jack said, whistling through his teeth.

“It’s a real shocker, isn’t it?” Carey Ann said. “Who’d ever think those two old dried-up sticks could be capable of passion? I guess it shows that you just never know.”

“Jesus,” Jack said again. He couldn’t seem to assimilate the information. It was stuck—he could feel it—a prickly mass at the top of his brain. When Carey Ann hung up, he went to the front window and stared out, as if he could see all the way down the road and into Daphne’s house and mind.

At the end of February, Daphne and Hudson moved into their new home. They weren’t married yet, and wouldn’t be for a few more months, when Hudson’s divorce was final, but Daphne’s cottage was too cramped for them both, and Hudson needed to be down in Westhampton, close to the college. The odd old Victorian they bought was empty, so they moved into it, and Hudson went about his administrative and teaching duties, and Daphne set up the house for their new life together. She unpacked her grandmother’s crystal into Hudson’s grandmother’s china cupboard. She filled the refrigerator with fresh fruit and vegetables so she could keep Hudson alive forever. Everywhere she went, Dickens went with her, keeping so close he often tripped her. He was confused by so many moves in such a short time … but not too confused, for when Hudson came home from the university, Dickens shadowed him too, and at night, when Daphne and Hudson sat talking, Dickens curled up on Hudson’s feet, as if to keep him where he belonged. So Dickens, in his doggy way, understood.

Daphne had decided that in the fall, once she and Hudson were settled into their routine, she would start work once again toward her Ph.D. One of the new pleasures in her life was talking over with Hudson just which period of English literature she should specialize in.

But there were many new pleasures in her life. Having Hudson, warm and solid, sleeping next to her, was heaven. She had insisted on a queen-size bed. Daphne wanted to share all the intimacies of sleep with Hudson. He had told Daphne that he and Claire had always had twin beds because of Claire’s bad back, and Daphne feared that Hudson, used to years of that, would out of habit cling to his side of the bed and his privacy. He did go to sleep that way, settling on his half of the bed, flat as a saint, on his back, hands crossed over his chest, always in pajamas, never nude, but every morning Daphne awoke to find him curled around her somehow, a leg over hers, or an arm around her waist, or his entire body molding hers in one long embrace. So the bed worked its charm.

Daphne had been afraid that any man after twenty-five years in Claire’s chaste and repressive presence would have become impotent, but Hudson hadn’t. He was not wildly imaginative and innovative, but that wasn’t what Daphne wanted. Well, she hadn’t
even thought what she wanted with Hudson—just as she had never dreamed of how she might grow a garden on the moon: it had always been beyond the possible. But
if
she had thought, then this would have been what she wished for: the way he slowly explored her body, running his hands over her arms and legs and hips and breasts as if he’d never seen such things before, then surrendering himself to Daphne’s touch and kisses, giving himself over to her love, giving himself up to feelings he had forgotten he had. They couldn’t be in bed with each other enough. At night, by candlelight or in the dark, they talked and touched and took their time, making up for lost years.

The days were different. Hudson had lived for all his adult life in the center of a sphere of serenity that moved with him as he moved; it was as if he were a planet ringed by stillness. He was not spontaneously affectionate, and although he loved Daphne and the access he now had to her body, he was more often than not jarred rather than pleased by her impetuous embraces. When he sat down for his breakfast and coffee and morning papers, he was unprepared for Daphne swooping down upon him in a flowing negligee, hugging him so hard his coffee slopped into the saucer.

“Ouch,” he would respond. “You mashed my earlobe.”

“Hudson, you wimp,” Daphne would reply. She was determined not to be put off by his stiffness. She was a toucher, and with Cynthia gone, she needed someone to touch, so now, with Hudson in her life, and happiness all around her, she felt like touching and kissing and hugging him all the time. And it was not that Hudson didn’t like the affection. He was just always so startled by it. Daphne finally agreed to stop kissing him on the ear or rubbing his thigh when he was driving; Hudson was afraid he’d have an accident. In turn, Hudson promised to try to relax and stop wincing when Daphne crushed him in one of her hugs.

It was perplexing for Hudson, all this change; Daphne could see that. It was as if his love for her were a geyser that had finally burst free but still had to force itself through layers of restraining rock. Old habits were not easily broken. Hudson was not used to excess, and what he felt for Daphne was excessive, and what he often showed her, at night, was, at least for Hudson, extravagant—and then he had to go back to the college in the daytime, back to his former, tame self.

It was important that he remain as he had been, reasonable, available, tactful, clever, attentive. He still had a department to run, and students, and colleagues. And now all this was complicated for the first time by unpopularity. More than a few of the older
professors and their wives looked upon Hudson’s desertion of Claire as scandalous, cruel, dastardly, and they made this clear to Hudson in various ways. Some took it upon themselves to speak to Hudson. Others were less obvious and merely snubbed Daphne and Hudson, not inviting them to parties, only nodding to them at social functions. This did not particularly hurt Daphne, for these people had never included or recognized her in the first place, but she was hurt for Hudson. At least the Whites remained loyal friends and even champions of Daphne-and-Hudson.

Claire behaved as only Claire would, with stoic dignity. As soon as she could, she planned to move to England to live with relatives.

Hudson told Daphne that before he had come to Daphne that winter’s night to tell her he loved her, he first told Claire what he was planning to do. He told Claire that he loved Daphne, and wanted to divorce Claire in order to marry her.

Claire had said, “Hudson, I know that in many ways I haven’t been a good wife to you. One can’t help certain deficiencies of body or instinct or disposition, and if you have suffered from lack, I also have suffered from guilt.”

“She really said that?” Daphne asked. “In just those words?”

“In just those words,” Hudson replied.

“What a marvel she is,” Daphne said.

And Claire
was
a marvel, behaving in a much more civilized way toward Hudson than Daphne had toward Joe. Claire met Hudson for lunch to discuss the division of their property and the legal procedures for their divorce. She did not call him names or curse him. She did not seem to hate him. If Daphne answered the phone when she called, she always said politely, “Hello, Daphne. May I speak to Hudson?”

Still, Daphne felt awkward because of the commotion she and Hudson had caused. She had never wanted to be the center of a scandal. She had always wanted to be liked. She kept away from college functions as much as possible, but at the end of February the president held a formal cocktail party in Peabody Hall in honor of a visiting humanities lecturer. At the last moment, Hudson called Daphne to tell her to go without him; he was tied up in a budget meeting and couldn’t get away.

“Well, I just won’t go either. I don’t need to go, darling,” Daphne said sweetly, feeling cowardly.

“Please go, Daphne. You have to represent me. You must give my regards to Mr. Scalas,” Hudson replied, and Daphne acquiesced.

So she entered Peabody Hall that cold winter evening, feeling nervous and insecure. A slightly hysterical phrase was running through her head: Hello, Mr. Scalas, I am Daphne Miller, an almost-Ph.D. student in English, an ex-wife of an English professor, an ex-secretary of the history department here, and an almost-wife of an English professor. An almost-and-ex, an ex-and-almost, she thought, slipping into the ladies’ room to scrutinize her hair. How had she ever before managed to enter social occasions on her own? She looked fine, appropriate, in a plain gray dress with white cuffs and pearls. An almost-and-ex, and ex-and-almost; she’d find the Whites and she’d be all right. Her mind was going.