The Body Of Jonah Boyd (7 page)

“Oh, I’m so glad! That’ a real compliment. Thank you.” Boyd sat down. Then there was a moment of uneasy silence, during which
it seemed that something had been forgotten. And of course, what had been forgotten was Ben, who now coughed to remind the
assembled of his place in the program. It did the trick. “Well, shall we hear from our young poet now?” Boyd asked.

“Here, here,” Phil Perry seconded.

Ben stepped up to the lectern. There was in his eyes a mixture of vitality and anxiety the likes of which I’d never before
seen him exhibit. Little did I know how much that moment meant to him!

As for Nancy, from the instant Ben ascended, her back went rigid, and all pleasure drained from her face. She arranged her
hands carefully in her lap. “He looks so handsome,” Anne whispered too loudly. “But he needs to work on his posture! Tennis
would help.”

In imitation of Boyd, Ben cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m now going to read to you a poem called ‘Vancouver.’
It is dedicated to my brother, Mark Allen Wright.”

Nancy blanched. I could almost hear the words “Oh no” escape her lips.

Today I have the poem in front of me. Ben gave me a copy a few months before he died, at my request. It is a long poem, loosely
based on “The Waste Land,” which at the time he was in the process of memorizing. It begins (and Ben began, that Thanksgiving):

April is not the cruellest month.

The cruellest month is July—

There was a sound, I thought, of stifled laughter, though I couldn’t tell where it came from. Ben glanced up. Then he returned
his attention to the page. It seemed he had lost his place, so he started again.

April is not the cruellest month.

The cruellest month is July,

Bringer of drought or deluge,

Gray rainy afternoons when brothers leave.

A startled look crossed Ernest’ face. I don’t think it had ever occurred to him that during all those weeks, the long drama
of Mark’ exile, his younger son might actually have been listening; taking in every word.

Ben read on. The poem is very long, and divided into four sections, the first concerning (mostly) Southern California summer,
and rainlessness, and “my father’ hose nosing soil / The thirst of which is never slaked.” Much metaphorical fuss is made,
in the second section, over the Datsun’ lack of a reverse gear:

As if in kidnapping him

It was promising a one-way journey

From which he would never come back.

In another line, Ben writes that “Assuming there were no delays / They would arrive in Vancouver on time.” (That sort of redundancy,
I am sorry to say, was typical of his poetry.) Part three brings the travelers to San Francisco, where they stop for the night,
and encounter some rather ill-tempered mermen off of Aquatic Park. It turns out that they are suicides who jumped off the
Golden Gate Bridge:

We are the dead, we are the lost,

We are the mer-people of San Francisco Bay!

Entwined by seaweed, scales climb up our arms.

We watch for the next body to fall, always eager

To add another to our tribe!

At last, in part four, the travelers arrive in Vancouver. That Ben had at this point never visited the city, and knew nothing
of its geography, seems not to have been any kind of deterrent to him in describing a rather fantastic landscape of hills
and lakes and bridges, the sole occupants of which, apparently, are draft dodgers who spend their days staring through telescopes
across the border at an America going about its business without regard to the suffering of its exiled sons:

In the supermarket, the housewives

Load their carts with canned cranberry sauce,

Canned pumpkin, canned gravy, frozen turkeys,

At school the children cut turkeys

Out of construction paper,

Make turkeys from clay,

Turkeys from papier-mache . . .

The poem concludes with a scene of such bathos that even the memory of its being read makes me grimace: In a bizarre ceremony
that defies all laws of realism, brothers shake hands across a national frontier as clearly demarcated as a child’ drawing
of the Berlin wall:

Ignoring the frowning guards,

He holds out his arm

And I take his hand, and in that squeeze there is Defiance of unjust laws, and a refusal to weaken.

I wish I could pull him across to me, but I know

That if I did, he would be shot.

And so I stay where I am,

Until he lets go, and walks

Sadly back into Vancouver.

Behind me Mother weeps.

We stay until he is out of sight,

And then we go home.

Ben stepped back. “Thank you,” he said. I looked around myself. To my amazement, Jonah Boyd began to applaud. And then Nancy
applauded too, furiously, and Ernest, and Daphne, and then everyone else. I don’t know whether they were simply following
Boyd’ lead, or responding to some imaginative vigor that the poem revealed, a vigor of which, curiously enough, its imprecision
and ragged sentimentality and obliviousness to all rules of structure and concerns about accuracy might have been the ultimate
proof. For there is this to be said about “Vancouver": Bombastic though it is, there is life in the thing. Alas Ben’ refusal,
as always, to accept (much less contend with) the interfering laws imposed by logic, form, and the real world in the end shipwrecks
him, rendering the poem, like all his poems, unpublishable and probably unreadable. But that didn’t matter to his audience
on Thanksgiving eve 1969. After all, he was only fifteen. What they saw was an unsuspected promise, albeit one which it would
take him many long years to fulfill.

The applause died out—and then, to my surprise, Anne was the first to stand. “Ben, that was wonderful, just wonderful,” she
said, stumbling up to him and taking him in an embrace that opened Nancy’ mouth, as there was in it more than a touch of salaciousness.
Anne’ breasts were squashed flat against his chest; she might have been grinding her hips. I wasn’t sure. In any case, Boyd
saved the day. “Yes, wasn’t it?” he echoed, taking his wife’ hand and leading her back to the daybed, away from Ben. “Very
exciting. Have you sent it to your brother?”

“No.”

“I think you should,” Nancy said. “Mark will be thrilled.

Moved.”

“I don’t want him to read it until it’ published,” Ben said. “I’ve sent it to
The New Yorker.”

“Oh,
The New Yorkerl
If there’ one thing I admire in a young writer, it’ gumption. I myself stopped sending stories to
The New Yorker
fifteen years ago. I figured, after Bill Maxwell had turned down thirty-five of them, what was the point in wasting any more
postage?”

“Oh, Jonah, don’t worry, Ben doesn’t
really
expect
The
New Yorker
to publish his poem,” Nancy said.

“Yes, I do.”

“No matter . . . If they do, it’ll be wonderful, and if they don’t, it’ll be even more wonderful.” She clapped her hands together,
apparently unfazed by the utter pointlessness of this remark. “Well, hasn’t this been a wonderful evening? And now who’ ready
for more pie?”

“I thought maybe I could read a second poem,” Ben said.

“Now, Ben, one’ enough. We don’t want to tire Mr. Boyd. After all, he and Anne have had a very long day. They had to get up
very early in the morning on the East Coast, which is the middle of the night here.”

“But I only want to read one more!”

Unfortunately for Ben the crowd was already dispersing, moving back toward the kitchen. “Sorry, honey,” Nancy said, and rested
her hand on her son’ head.

He flinched it away. “It’ not fair,” he said.

“What’ not? You had your chance.”

“But I only read half as long as he did.”

“Well, Mr. Boyd’ a famous novelist. When you’re a famous poet, you can read twice as long, how about that?”

“I’ll tell you what, Ben,” Boyd interjected. “How about if we go off somewhere and
I
listen to some more of your poems?”

“Oh, Jonah, you don’t have to do that . . .”

“But I want to. Really, I think it’ my duty, as an old gorgon of a writer, to impart what wisdom I possess to this young acolyte.”

“But you must be tired . . .”

“I’m not.”

“Let them,” Anne said.

Ben looked pleadingly into Nancy’ eyes. She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

Boyd rested a hand on Ben’ shoulder. “I’m absolutely sure.”

“Okay . . . But Ben, you have to promise not to keep Mr. Boyd longer than he feels like listening.”

“Let’ go to your room.”

“What about your room?”

“Ben, you have to promise.”

“I promise, okay?” And he led Boyd off. Chin cupped in hand, Nancy watched them recede, until Anne touched her on the shoulder.
She turned. Anne smiled at her friend, for the first time that evening, with what looked like affection.

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said.

“Have you? I’m so glad!”

Anne leaned in closer, so close that Nancy must have been able to smell the gin on her breath. “Listen, I know it’ late .
. . but what would you say to a little Mozart?”

Nancy’ eyes brightened. “Really?”

“Really.”

“May we listen?” asked Phil Perry.

“You will hear in any case,” Anne said. “Whether you choose to listen is up to you.”

Phil took the cue, and followed them into the living room, where he sat down on the sofa. I sat next to him. And so the reading
was followed by a recital the decided mediocrity and unmusicality of which, I was gratified to hear, was not to be explained
away by mere lack of practice. Magical harmonies indeed! Another small, if private, victory for me, on that night that was
to be marked by so many losses.

85

Seven

E
VEN TODAY I don’t like to think about Phil Perry. But he plays a role in this story, and so I suppose I don’t have any choice.
What have I said so far? That he was one of Ernest’ Ph.D. students, that he was scrawny, that he ate a lot. To which I can
add: He was prone to intense, one-sided crushes on girls whom he would persist in bothering long after they had told him to
get lost. (In modern parlance, a stalker.) He liked to boast that his IQ was 180, and that he was a member of MENSA—mostly,
he claimed, because it was a good place to meet girls. Glenn often made fun of him. Although in theory they were friends,
and worked together under Ernest on a number of projects, I always suspected that in his heart Phil hated Glenn, and envied
him, since Glenn had so much more success with women. Also academically, Glenn was the more successful of the pair. Phil was
a kind of genius, possessed of a rare instinct and passion for his subject, but he lacked Glenn’ self-discipline and savoir-faire.
He didn’t know how to dress or smile. Nor had he mastered the art, as Glenn had, of giving little Christmas gifts to the wife
of the boss, or flirting with his secretary. His papers were inspired and chaotic and might have been great, had he been able
to finish them. But he never could, and so his transcript was full of incompletes. We all liked Phil, and felt sorry for him.
But we adored Glenn.

Glenn was handsome. He had curly auburn hair that bleached blond in the summer, and wide eyes that he set off by wearing tiny
wire-rimmed glasses. No one knows this, but I had an affair with him in the months just after Daphne left him, when he had
been turned down for tenure at Wellspring but had yet to find another job. As a lover he displayed the same qualities of flash
and eagerness to please, as well as the slight whiff of pandering, that marked his academic career. Such an appeal, however,
gets dull in a fairly short order. I think what galled Phil was the impression, personified in Glenn, that the slick and the
mediocre will always win out over the clumsy and the brilliant. Glenn’ failure to get tenure was an intellectual vindication
from which Phil might have taken comfort, had he only shown a little more patience.

Whenever Phil and Glenn were in the house together with Ernest, there was a palpable tension in the air. This was because
Ernest played them off each other—for their own good, he insisted. I suppose he imagined that by flaunting his preference
for Glenn, he might ignite in Phil some healthy competitive spirit, induce him to pull up his bootstraps and develop a manner
to match his talents. But it never happened. Phil continued to stumble along, no doubt vexed by the favoritism that Ernest
showed Glenn—for example, by confiding in him, that Thanksgiving, the fascinating episode of Jonah Boyd “misplacing” his notebooks.
Ernest and Glenn worked together in interrogating Boyd, they made a spectacle of their alliance as mentor and disciple, which
Phil was forced to witness, all the while trying to fill in the blanks for himself. Had I been more observant, I might have
seen early signs of the envy that would erupt so many years later in violence—but at the time there was so much else to keep
track of, I ended up more or less ignoring Phil. As I usually did. As everyone usually did.

Two hours after the readings ended—the kitchen cleaned, Glenn and Phil gone, and the Boyds put to bed—I climbed into my notoriously
bad-tempered Dodge Dart, turned the key in the ignition, and found that it would not start.

Cursing, I returned to the kitchen. Nancy was sitting at the tulip table in her bathrobe, smoking a cigarette and thumbing
rather listlessly through the recipe pages of
Sunset.

She looked up. “What are you doing back here?” she asked.

“The car won’t start.”

“Oh, how annoying. Ernest!”

He too was in his bathrobe. Together, we went outside to look under the hood.

“Nothing wrong that I can see,” Ernest said, slipping his hand down the back of my skirt. “But then again, I’m no mechanic.”

“I’ll call a taxi.”

“No need for a taxi. I can drive you home.” He started to kiss me.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if Denny just stayed the night here?” Nancy called from the kitchen door. “She can sleep with Daphne
on the fold-out bed in the study. And that way she’ll be here in the morning when the tow truck comes.”

Ernest withdrew his hand. In the dark, had she seen?

“That’ probably a better plan,” he said, moving away from me into the moonlight.

Back indoors, Nancy led me to the study, the door to which she simultaneously rapped on and pushed open. “Daphne, Denny’ car’
broken down, so she’ going to bunk with you . . . Oh.” Daphne was not in bed; she was sitting at the table near the window,
in jeans and a sweater set, putting on makeup.

“Can’t you wait for a person to say ‘Come in’?” she asked.

“Sorry,” Nancy said. “Listen, I’m exhausted. Be a sweetheart and show Denny where the extra towels are, will you?” As if in
compensation for her earlier brusqueness, she patted Daphne’ head rather as she might have Little Hans’. “Well, good night,
girls. And thanks again for all your help today.”

“Nancy—”

“What?”

“Are you happy how things turned out? I mean, seeing Anne?”

“Oh, delighted, delighted.” But her smile was weary. “Of course, I have to admit, the drinking worries me . . . Well, no need
to think about that now. Try and get a good night’ sleep.”

She left, closing the door softly.

I sat on the daybed. “So,” I said to Daphne, “I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to have a roommate tonight, were you?”

Daphne had resumed her makeup. “I wasn’t, actually.”

I took off one shoe. “Going out?”

She turned to face me. “Can I trust you? You’re younger than my parents. I hope I can trust you.”

“Of course you can.”

She leaned closer. “The fact is, I do have plans tonight—only they’re ones I don’t want anyone to find out about. You see,
for some time now—a few months—I’ve been involved with someone, and for all sorts of reasons, for the time being at least,
we need to keep it quiet—”

“You mean Glenn.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You mean you knew?”

“Well, if you’ll pardon my saying so, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist—”

“Oh, but do you think that means my parents have guessed? Because if my dad found out, it could be awful for Glenn. Dad wouldn’t
approve. The age difference and all, and the fact that Glenn’ his sort of, you know, protege.”

“I don’t think your father knows. You mother, on the other hand—well, you may have noticed that she didn’t even ask you why
you were putting on makeup at eleven o’clock at night.”

“Dear mother. She can be so—well, you know,
difficult
sometimes, and then sometimes she can sense something, and be totally cool without even saying a word.” Suddenly Daphne jumped
up and sat next to me on the daybed. “Oh, Denny, I had no idea you were so cool! Do you have a boyfriend? I hope you don’t
mind my asking.”

“I’ve had several. At the moment . . . No, not at the moment.”

“That’ too bad. But here’ the thing. Your having to stay here tonight—it’ put me in sort of an awkward position.”

“Why? Is Glenn coming over?”

“God, no! I couldn’t ever—you know—right here in the house, with Mother and Father on the other side of the wall. Yuck! No,
the plan is, he’ going to pick me up at midnight, across the street. And we’re going back to his apartment. And then at five,
before anyone’ up, he’ll drop me off, and I’ll get into bed. Oh, you will help us out, won’t you, and not say anything?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The last thing I’d want to do is interrupt the course of young love.” I patted her hand. “Go. Have
fun. I won’t say a word.”

Relief filled Daphne’ eyes. “Oh, Denny, you really are wonderful. I never would have thought you could be that cool!” She
removed my hand from hers. “Listen, I’d better scoot. And when I get back, don’t scream or anything. I’ll be as quiet as I
can.”

“No problem.”

She opened the door. “Oh, and you can borrow my nightgown if you want. It’ clean. Bye.”

She tiptoed out, shutting the door behind her so slowly that it groaned—a louder noise by far than the click of quick closure.
From the kitchen where he was sleeping, Little Hans gave a yelp. There was a whispered curse. Another door opened, and shut
again.

I took off my other shoe. I listened for—and thought I heard, very far off—the sound of a car turning the curve.

Then I was alone.

I looked around. Never before in the years I’d known them had I slept in the Wrights’ house. Now, rubbing my stocking feet
into the carpet, I marveled at a certain quality of cushioned silence that it radiated, a warm, dozing purr, as if somewhere
in the midst of that rich layering of rugs and books and paintings and mirrors a cat lay hidden, and was taking pleasure in
cleaning itself. This was the sound—the protective, lulling melody—of affluence, and perhaps only those, like me, whom affluence
admits only as visitors can name it. It was hard to believe that just a few feet away, just on the other side of a none-too-thick
wall, Nancy and Ernest were going through their bedtime rituals. And what did those rituals consist of? Did Nancy wear curlers?
Did Ernest stuff his ears with cotton? Did they make love? The last seemed unlikely. Even so, as I took off my clothes, I
made a little striptease out of my disrobing, swinging my stockings in the air, imagining as my audience . . . who? Ernest?
Nancy?

It didn’t matter. No sooner was I down to my underwear than shame overtook me, and I bundled myself into Daphne’ nightgown,
which was flannel, patterned with teddy bears in nightcaps, and much too small. I opened the sofa bed, which was already made,
switched off the lamp, and snuggled under the covers. But from outside moonlight penetrated through the windows, over which,
as it happened, I had neglected to draw the curtains, and I could not sleep. Nor could I muster the energy to climb out of
bed and make the room dark; or take the battery out of the wall clock, the persistent ticking of which I felt as a steady
thud just beneath my diaphragm. And so I lay awake, listening for noises, and hearing some—several knocks, a not very loud
crash, as of something being dropped. A toilet flushed. What time was it? One? Two? I had no idea.

The darkness settled. I thought about the first Thanksgiving I’d spent with the Wrights, the long night afterward during which
I’d actually convinced myself that they’d invited me only to make me the subject of some strange social experiment. Now I
understood that their motives for embracing me were not only more complex than I had suspected, but individual: Nancy needed
me to be a failure, Ernest needed me as an alternative to Nancy . . . and now Daphne seemed to need me to be her confidante.
She was a difficult girl to read, her expression as opaque as her flat, bland hair. I had no idea if she liked me. Come to
think of it, I had no idea if she liked anybody. Most of the time she projected a facade of indifference to the rest of the
world—and then there would be those occasional flashes of rebelliousness, or rage, or even tenderness. Also a certain hardness:
The implacability to which Nancy could merely aspire, Daphne, at seventeen, had already mastered. There was no question as
to who would win
that
war. Nor did it surprise me that Glenn loved her: The challenge was getting through the carapace, reaching the pearl of sweetness
within—and to that quest, I have discovered, some men are more than willing to devote their lives.

Well, she was gone now—presumably off at Glenn’ apartment, which, as it happened, was in the complex next to mine: Springwell,
locus of all fulfillments the necessity of which Florizona Avenue proscribed. As I lay on the sofa bed, the faces of the Wrights
seemed to float above me, like the winged, disembodied heads of seraphim. Despite my wakefulness, I felt extraordinarily content;
and indeed, at some point I must have dropped off, because when, just before dawn, Daphne came in, I did scream, despite my
promise not to. No one woke, though—or at least, I heard no one wake. All night the walls and the window frames had been creaking,
as if to protest the extra weight the house was being forced to bear, all these bodies shifting in sleep. Now Daphne stripped
down to her bra and panties and climbed in next to me. Her hair smelled of smoke.

“Oh, Denny, what a night it’ been,” she said.

“Has it?”

Her lips were as close to mine as a lover’. “Glenn was furious that I told you about us. He’ terribly worried that you’ll
tell my father. I tried to reassure him, but you know how men are. They won’t listen.”

“I know.”

“Oh, but after that . . . May I tell you? I’ve got to tell someone. You see, tonight Glenn asked me . . . Well, he didn’t
exactly ask me, but he broached the subject... I mean, getting married.”

“Married! But you’re only seventeen!”

“Oh, not now! In the future, after I’ve graduated . . . because, you see, it looks very likely—don’t tell anyone this, because
it isn’t official yet—it looks like the department’ going to offer Glenn a job. Dad doesn’t want word to get around because
he’ afraid it will upset Phil—you know, that Glenn is getting an offer and he isn’t. And if Glenn gets the job, and he gets
tenure—well, that means that down the road, we can have the house.”

“What house?”

“This house, of course! It’ always been Mother’ hope that one of us could keep it after she and Dad—you know—pass away. You
know how she feels about the place, how important it is to her that it stay in the family. But this way—if Glenn gets the
job—the problem’ solved.”

“But all that’ so far in the future! Twenty, thirty years. Are you really thinking that far ahead, at your age?”

“It’ not
that
far ahead! Besides, soon enough, Dad will want to retire. They’ll want a smaller place.” Daphne lay back, besotted by her
own vision. “There’ so much I’d do if this house were ours! For a start, paint the kitchen. And fill in that stupid barbecue
pit.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Oh, Denny, I don’t know how well you know Glenn, but he’ really the most wonderful...
so smart and insightful. And an amazing lover. I mean, he really knows how to fuck—oh, have I shocked you?”