The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross (8 page)

Arrie had smiled at Kate’s question. “Tomorrow night?” she suggested. “Seven o’clock? I’ve written down the address and phone number. Jasper and I will be grateful.”

Kate nodded. What else was there to do? Not for the first time she thanked the gods–Kate, when not agnostic, was firmly polytheistic–that she had very little to do with children in this life.

AT LEAST ONE
of Kate’s trepidations about the dinner chez Witherspoon was allayed immediately upon her entrance: there were two men in addition to the Professor. At least that cause of Witherspoon’s pontification or spriteliness had been removed. Roxanna introduced a young man, almost as gorgeous in his way as she in hers, named Desmond Elliott: an actor. What possibly else? Kate thought, shaking hands; he was good enough to eat. Arrie she greeted with warmth and a wink; Jasper had been, it appeared, exiled for the duration. The other guest was an older man who, it became immediately clear, was allied with Witherspoon and against the others. Why, Kate wondered, was that so clear? Equally clear, somewhat less inexplicably, was the fact that Mr. Johnson was a lawyer who had joined them for dinner when Arrie’s invitation to Kate
superseded his planned dinner a deux with Witherspoon. The Professor had decided upon graciousness. He was the host, and while in his house Kate would be treated like a woman guest, neither more nor less. With relief, Kate sank into a chair, accepted a drink, and embarked upon a sea of meaningless chitchat. This torture was somewhat ameliorated by Desmond Elliott’s amusing account of the actor’s life, made up, it appeared, in equal parts, of being a waiter and performing in small, unprofitable companies of great artistic integrity so far “off” Broadway as to be in another state.

Roxanna was a pleasant hostess, keeping an eye on everyone’s comfort, but not buzzing about or insisting upon anything. When they moved in to dinner, she brought things gracefully to the table; she and Desmond were the mainstays of the conversation, although Witherspoon made some acidic comments to Kate about their department which Kate did her best to ignore. It is difficult, while eating your host’s meat, to convey to him that you disagree with everything he is saying and everything he is likely to say. They finally reached the blessed subject of the university’s administration, in disdain for which even sworn enemies could agree.

As the company returned to the living room for coffee, Arrie asked Kate if she would like to say hello to Jasper. Kate eagerly agreed, and followed Arrie down the hall to a closed door, behind which sharp barks of anticipation could be heard. “Quiet, Jasper,” Arrie said, revealing a history of complaints–from whom it was not hard to guess. “Up.” The dog danced on his short hind legs, and Arrie took from her pocket a chunk of chicken breast; she tossed it into the air and Jasper caught and swallowed it in one grateful gulp, then sat, hoping for more.

“You have a nice room,” Kate said.

“Yes. I used to have a tiny room off the kitchen, but Roxanna took that since she doesn’t really live here most of the time. There’s really just me and my father now.”

“And Jasper,” Kate said, it being the only cheerful fact that occurred to her. “Did your father buy him for you?” she added hopefully.

“No. Roxanna did. Dad said I couldn’t keep him. But then he changed his mind. Roxanna made him.”

“Desmond’s nice,” Kate observed. It
was
odd how conversation deserted her in the presence of the very young.

“Very nice. I’m glad he was here. I don’t care for Mr. Johnson.”

“Does he come often?”

“No, he’s never really been here before. I’ve just talked to him on the phone when he calls my father. Roxanna says he’s simultaneously illiterate and imperious.” Kate tried not to grin, and failed. They laughed together, and Jasper rose to his hind legs, joining in.

“I still need to know who took him,” Arrie said before they rejoined the others.

REED HAD PROMISED
that something would occur to Kate, but all that occurred to her was gossip. And for departmental gossip, the ultimate source was Richard Frankel. Dean Rosovsky, when he became semiretired from his high post at Harvard, reported in the Harvard magazine that the first duty of a dean was to listen to gossip. Kate, not to be outdone by any dean, took the advice to heart. Richard, reached by telephone, was graciously pleased to make an appointment the following day for lunch.

Kate contemplated his face across the luncheon table
with pleasure. Richard combined the best features of an imp and a youthfully aging and gay (in all senses of the word) uncle. He was, in fact, quite heterosexual and a confirmed bachelor, having convinced everyone of this except himself. He still hoped to meet the right woman in the next day or so, and launch himself on a satisfactory career of marriage and fatherhood. Like a number of people Kate had observed over the years, Richard, marvelously suited to his life and vigorously happy, was unaware that his deep satisfaction arose in part from the delusion that he was abjectly in need of passionate love, babies, and a deep and lasting relationship. Kate liked him enormously.

She did not immediately ask about Witherspoon. To have evinced that much interest would have started Richard’s investigative motors, and Kate did not wish to reveal her relationship with Arrie. But it was easy to work the conversation around to Witherspoon, whom Richard, together with the greater part of the department, despised with a vigor mitigated only by the pleasure they got in talking about how bloody awful he was. Witherspoon, Kate was forced to realize, had provided a good deal of pleasure in his curmudgeonly life, none of it intended.

Richard knew all about the wife, tucked away in a nearer version of Betty Ford’s detoxification facility. “Before my time of course, but the usual story. He pursued her with tales of his unsympathetic wife; now she’s the unsympathetic wife: they never learn, poor dears. One hopes the graduate students these days are too smart to marry him, if not quite smart enough to dodge him entirely. I met the wife once; he had me to dinner in the early days, before I turned out to be too modern altogether. Obviously a lady, and punishing him and herself for her stupid mistake. They have two daughters, an absolutely mouthwatering
creature called Roxanna, and an afterthought called Arabella. The names are enough to give you an idea of the marriage. It’s widely assumed that Arabella isn’t his child.”

Kate stared at him. “On what grounds?” she finally asked.

“I think it was the poor thing’s final attempt to bolt, before she drowned herself in alcohol reinforced by prescription drugs. Considering his record of fornication and adultery, you’d think he’d have turned a blind eye, but not our Witherspoon.”

“Why not?”

“Kate, my sweet, you don’t seem your usual quick-witted self, if you’ll forgive my observing it. Must you go on grunting monosyllabic questions?”

“I’m sorry, Richard. I’m always astonished at how much life is like prime-time soap operas.”

“Which I’m certain you never watch. They are unreal only in the way outrageous situations follow hard upon each other, if not occurring simultaneously, and in the luxury of the surroundings. Actually, they are, otherwise, just like life, if you’re a shit like Witherspoon, which of course most of the characters are. Have you some special interest in him? A renewed fascination with manuscripts?”

Kate laughed. “If I could take the smallest interest in manuscripts, it wouldn’t be renewed. It would be a new and sudden aberration. Actually, I had dinner there the other evening, and was overwhelmed with curiosity. Roxanna used to be a student of mine, and she asked me.” Richard would wonder why she hadn’t mentioned this in the first place; the reason was clear to Kate: it had entailed lying.

“Ah. I wondered why your interest was so suddenly
awakened. The rumor is that he now wants a divorce and most of what there is of her worldly goods. In exchange, he’ll pretend to relinquish with infinite sorrow custody of Arabella.”

“Do you mean he’ll get her to pay him alimony?”

“Don’t ask me the details, but that’s often how it works out these days. The woman gets the children and the man gets the property.”

“Surely the woman gets to keep what she brought into the marriage.”

“No doubt,” Richard dryly said. “But since all this wife brought in was her misguided affection for Witherspoon, that’s unlikely to serve her very well. Of course, she may have some family bonds stashed away, in which case he’ll do his best to get them. The men can always afford the better lawyers, alas.”

“No doubt the men look at it differently,” Kate said, her mind elsewhere.

“We certainly can guess how Witherspoon looks at it. And he’s got two daughters from the former marriage, both unlikely to have great sympathy with the poor alcoholic. Maybe Roxanna and Arabella will come to her defense. I had the most awful row with him, you know, not too long ago. That’s why it’s an additional pleasure to contemplate his absolute awfulness. He worked every angle to get tenure for one of his acolytes, a twerp with his nose in manuscripts and his brain in a sling. A born ass-licker and fool. Witherspoon got his way, of course, and I was marked down as an enemy, a mark not of distinction, since there are so many of us, but of honor. The only good part of the story is that the twerp left to devote himself wholly to some manuscript collection. Did Witherspoon behave himself at dinner?”

“Oh yes. The older daughter is very gracious, and I like
the younger one. I’m surprised the wife had the gumption to have a love affair.”

“Its end was no doubt the inevitable last straw. Witherspoon made no bones about the fact that if the child had been a boy he would have forgiven everything. He’s that kind of monster.”

“Do you think he’s really the father?”

“God knows. Roxanna is pretty definitely his, and she’s gorgeous, so who has an opinion about genes? Of course, the wife was pretty luscious in those days; he’d never have bothered otherwise, that being all women are good for.”

“Do you know anything about the lover? He sounds mysterious, like the tutor who might have been Edith Wharton’s father.”

“I know the scuttlebutt: he was thin, with glasses and buckteeth, and very sweet. He was an adjunct teacher in art history, which she dabbled in. I don’t know what became of him; gossip has it they used to walk around the campus holding hands. I feel sorry for her.”

Kate was amazed, not for the first time, at the extent of her colleagues’ interest in one another’s lives. Richard was, of course, unofficial keeper of the gossip; since his heart was always in the right place, she was willing to decide that his was a valuable function. What Witherspoon would have thought of it was another question. Did she care what Witherspoon thought about anything, or only what he did?

What had he done, apart from being a failure as a human being and a father? Kate decided to walk for a while, after bidding Richard a grateful farewell. She wandered around the city streets, noticing dogs (no Jack Russell terriers) and the general air of menace which by now everyone in New York, and probably elsewhere, took for granted: it seemed the mark of an age. Compared to which, Kate told herself, the momentary absence of a dog was hardly to be counted.
And yet, there had been, somewhere along the family chain, a failure of trust, which was how menace began. Was it Kant who had said that trust was the basis of civilization? Letting her attention wander unbidden over the cast of characters at that dinner, and in Richard’s account of the Witherspoons, Kate found herself eventually at Central Park at Seventy-second Street; she sat on a bench to observe the spot where Jasper had been tied when Arrie retrieved him. It was a well-chosen location, easily approached and abandoned from four directions, sufficiently crowded with people and dogs entering and leaving the park to make one more man and dog unnoticed. Man? A man had removed Jasper from the building, according to the doorman’s report. Dogs were not allowed in the playground, so a number of them were tied to the entrance, waiting, with accustomed patience or anxiety, for their people on the other side of the fence. By the time Kate had to leave to meet her class, she had made up her mind.

“
IT IS, OF
course, none of my business,” Kate said to Roxanna, as they had a drink before ordering their dinner. “That phrase is always a sign that someone thinks it is her business, or has determined to make it so. Do you mind?”

“Hardly,” Roxanna said. “I used to wonder what it would be like to have dinner with Professor Fansler. Thank you for the privilege: my business is your business.”

“Very graciously put. Perhaps you had better order another drink.”

“Oh dear,” Roxanna said.

“I intend nothing more sinister than blackmail,” Kate said reassuringly.

“I know: on behalf of Arrie. Blackmail will not be neces
sary. From you, that is; I’ve already employed it on her behalf. Is that what you guessed?”

“It would hardly be fair to get you to tell me what happened, and then claim to have guessed it all.”

“Okay,” Roxanna said. “You tell me. And I’ll take that second drink. May I correct you as you go along?”

“Please do,” Kate said. “My hope is that you will end up assuring me about poor Jasper’s safety.”

Roxanna nodded.

“Your father, the revered Professor Witherspoon, has been after what money he can get out of your mother. Doubtless he has another young lady in tow. I say ‘lady,’ because I don’t really think a
woman
would have anything to do with him. Did he try to retrieve from your mother something he had given her and now wanted to give to another? A ring, a brooch–it can’t have been too big, or Jasper wouldn’t have swallowed it, however imbedded in a piece of meat. Although the way he gulps, dancing around on his hind legs, anything is possible.”

“Not a ring,” Roxanna said. “An emerald. He had had it taken out of the ring. He said he was going to get it reset. It’s the most valuable thing my mother had. It was in her family for years; they may have pawned it, but they never sold it.”

“He pretended to her it needed to be reset?”

“Nothing so civilized. She would have been suspicious immediately at any kindly offer, I’m afraid. He talked her out of taking it to the detoxification place, said it might be stolen. She didn’t believe him, but when he set his mind on something, she didn’t have a chance. I heard them arguing about it one night. So did Desmond, the guy you met; he was there with me. He held me back from interfering; he was right.”