The Groves of Academe: A Novel (Transaction Large Print Books) (21 page)

Obediently, he got out and hurried round the car to help her, but his lips, in their solicitous smile, stiffened with mistrust and umbrage. What, he would like to be told, had transpired from the interview that made her so anxious now to be rid of him, to hurry off into the house and avert further questions and discussion? He had guessed, straight off, as soon as he saw her, that she had learned something that discredited him slightly in her judgment, but not too much, apparently—else she would not be here. Obviously—he felt satisfied on this point—it had nothing to do with his “confession,” for how could she have discovered anything to impugn that, when the topic had never been broached? Yet there was something, he thought, tightening his guiding fingers on her elbow, and congratulating himself on his acute sensibility, that made her draw away from him a little, even while she smiled and deferred to him—some little thing, perhaps, that failed to jibe with Maynard’s account of things and on which, naturally, without hesitation, like a true friend, she had taken Maynard’s word. Why all this sudden concern lest Cathy “wonder”? Was it simply a feint to get away from him or was there a rebuke to his carelessness behind it?

Watching the two women kiss in the kitchen doorway, he frowned and shook his head, as a warning, over Domna’s shoulder. Cathy, in his critical view, was going much too far in trying mutely to convey to Domna her gratitude and happiness over this morning’s interview. Woman-like, in fact, she had been picking at him all day, ever since Domna’s telephone call, for not treating his supporters properly, not showing sufficient gratitude, and so on; she had even been at him to “tell” Domna, with the usual wifely implication that she understood the girl better than he did. The love of taking needless risks was something in the feminine temperament that he did not pretend to explicate.

He helped Domna off with her rubbers and hurried her into the living room, leaving Cathy in the kitchen to put the dumplings into the pot. On the table by the davenport was a doily and a plate of involuted pink-and-white sandwiches in the shape of pinwheels that Cathy had got out of some fancy cookbook or other. He eyed them with disfavor and sampled one. In the back bedroom, baby Stephen was crying, which told the whole story of the day. Red-haired Eileen, wearing her best dress, with her dirty underpants hanging down, approached, made a curtsey to Domna, and snatched a sandwich from the plate; Mary Margaret, the eldest, in middy and skirt, followed and, without taking any notice of Domna, marched up and gave her sister a slap. The children, he supposed, had been fed while he was absent on scraps of bread and colored cheese; they were accustomed to eating with their parents and wore looks of sullen suspicion as they watched their father and Miss Rejnev raise their old-fashioned glasses to each other. When Miss Rejnev set her glass down, Eileen’s fingers darted into it and came up with the cherry. In the girls’ bedroom, Nora, the three-year-old, who had been put to bed by her sisters, set up a howl to go to the bathroom; he flew down the corridor and whisked her out of bed too late. The ammonia-smell of urine in the back rooms, owing to the pads drying out on the radiators, was pungently noticeable to him, for the first time in many weeks—no vacuum-cleaner or furniture wax had penetrated this area. He twitched his nose and searched in the bureau for a clean pad; finding none, he settled for a dry one, which he arranged under the child, who put her soft face up to him for a kiss. “Daddy’s girl,” he murmured, stroking the silky head. Pity for himself and his children became, as he stood there in the darkness, hearing the women’s voices, a sort of pride and militancy. He felt gravely offended with Cathy for her betrayal of their anti-bourgeois ethic—had all their years together at the kitchen-table with the teapot between them on the oilcloth been a sham and a sacrifice to her that she could so readily turn her back on them and follow the Pied Piper down the road of least resistance?

He knew the signs all too well, having catalogued them, together with Cathy, in a dozen faculty-wives of their acquaintance: first, cocktails, cocktail napkins, inedible fancy sandwiches, the children shoved into the background, the dinner hour receding farther and farther into the night, then pressure-cookers, dish-washers, deep-freezers, an unending procession of sitters groping their way into the upstairs region as into some segregated ghetto, and downstairs, answering the door, a neighboring farm-girl in cap and uniform with tin buckles on her shoes—“May I take your wraps?”—fraternization with the local gentry, the Episcopal lawn fete, the deadly round of entertaining, domestic hatred, hangovers, name-spending, literary revivals, fawning on imported celebrities, the publisher’s contract at last for an anthology of the literature of the Crisis, the invitation to lecture to a book group, traveling expenses, padded, the bottle in the suitcase, the professor’s wife from Pennsy, “Jesus, what a head!” He closed the door softly and went in to see Stephen, who had lost his pacifier, an old teething-ring that had served the little girls before him. Finding it where it had fallen on the rag rug, he wiped it off with his handkerchief and tucked it in the fat clenched fist. Stephen’s cries halted; he gurgled—a series of luscious primal sounds. He was waiting for the Irish air that his mother was wont to croon to him, and Mulcahy, whose voice was tuneless, struck up instead with “Mulligan’s Ball.” There was sorrow in the jig for Mulcahy; he was minded of Joyce’s household and the gloomy fate of the children—did Nora Joyce, like Cathy, look back in her splendid years of exile to the lost Sodom of infantile satisfactions, the “toy fair” of material civilization that her husband had wrenched her away from? The child, however, laughed contentedly. Mulcahy went out.

In the kitchen, he found Cathy, red-faced, drinking her second cocktail; wisps of hair protruded from the brown bun at the nape of her neck; there was a rich smell of burning from the oven, where the chocolate bread-pudding had bubbled over. In the living room, Domna was reading to the two children; the plate of sandwiches was nearly empty. He sent them off to bed rather sharply and refilled Domna’s glass. The single drink, he discovered, had loosened his tongue a little and removed the inhibitions he put on his curiosity. “You know, Domna,” he said to her, pulling up a chair to her and taking the picture-book from her lap, “I’ve the feeling you’re keeping something back from me. What did Maynard tell you this morning that you’re afraid to tell me?” Domna’s brilliant eyes slid away from him; she reached into her pocketbook for her cigarettes and her lighter. “Do you know,” he said, as if idly, “whenever you’re uncomfortable you reach for a cigarette?” She smiled uncertainly, “Do I?” and then added, swiftly, with an air of taking a plunge, “It’s you, Henry, who make me uncomfortable. You demand so many particulars. I’ve given you the gist, I promise you.” A queer hesitant light flickered in her eyes. “Since you wish to know, I’ll admit to you: certain things in the past, Maynard recalls differently. He doesn’t remember that you told him of the state of Cathy’s health.” Henry shrugged. “Naturally not,” he remarked. “You’ve got it balled up yourself. I didn’t tell him; I told Esther.” “So I said,” blurted Domna, with an after-look of guilty consternation. “He says he doesn’t recall this. He says he received the impression that Cathy had been ill but was better.” She raised her eyes and confronted him and then looked quickly away. Was she “giving him his chance” to contradict this or bring his own story into line? He was not such a fool, he could assure her, as to rake up all that old business which lay too far in the past for anybody to swear positively to what had been said and what hadn’t. “A convenient memory,” he said lightly. “It’s possible that Maynard persuaded himself, even then, to hear what he wished to hear. I don’t hold it against him; we all tell lies to ourselves.”
“Sans doute,”
agreed Domna, with a sly face. “But now that he’s been told, Henry, he’ll do the right thing, I’m sure of it.” Henry made an irritable grimace; he flexed a muscle in his cheek.
“Please,”
he begged. “I’m older than you. I’ve seen more of the world and its administrators. The leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

“Domna may be right.” The loud words came out a little furrily. Cathy, without their hearing it, had slipped out of the kitchen behind them and was standing in the doorway arch with an eggbeater in her hand. They wheeled around to look at her; Henry winged a prayer to God. “You weren’t there, Hen,” insisted Cathy. “How can you be so sure?” There was a fearful pause; the eggbeater dripped cream onto the carpet. As she digested Domna’s expression of horror, Cathy began to laugh. “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said gaily. “I must be a little tiddly. Didn’t I hear you say something about Maynard? I thought Domna went to see him this morning about a salary raise.” “She did, darling,” said Henry. “You’re quite right. We were discussing it. I told Cathy all about it, Domna; you don’t mind, do you, if I let out our little secret?” His wife’s eyes grew drunken again. “I think you’ve been wonderful, Domna, just wonderful,” she said with feeling. “We all need that raise so badly.” “I’ve done nothing,” said Domna, rather shortly. Henry bit his lip. “Dinner’s in just a minute,” said Cathy. She turned and slowly exited toward the kitchen. Henry followed her. “Why did you do it?” he whispered in a fury. He took her cocktail glass from the kitchen table and threw the contents into the sink. “She knows,” he despairingly exulted and struck the table a blow. “She doesn’t know,” replied Cathy, airily. “I carried it off very well, I thought.” Henry came closer to her. “She has good manners,” he said in her ear, vindictively. “She won’t call you a liar to your face. She’ll ignore it till she gets out of here and then, excuse her dust! I watched her. She was vibrating all over like a plucked string.” His eyes swept over the table set in the dinette off the kitchen with Cathy’s wedding silver and an old lace tablecloth. “Why did you do it?” he repeated. “I’ve warned you again and again to be careful. How many drinks did you have?” “Two,” retorted Cathy, determined to brazen it out. “I’m not drunk. I was just playing drunk to cover myself. Listening to you laying down the law. I simply lost my head and forgot that I wasn’t supposed to know. It could happen to anybody. It’s all your fault anyway, Hen,” she continued, with a sharpening and sobering of her features, as she spooned the dumplings out, one by one, efficiently, and set them out on the big platter. “I
told
you you ought to tell her. You’re too conspiratorial in your methods.” “Do you still think so?” he said with breathless sarcasm. “
I
’ll tell you why you did it. You hate to be left out of anything. You couldn’t stand the idea that these discussions were going on every day and you were supposed to be kept in the dark. You resented the implication that you were stupid and didn’t have the mother-wit to guess your husband’s troubles. And you’re jealous of my relation with Domna. You want to have her all cosy to yourself with your lace tablecloths and your confidences. You’re dying for an aristocratic friendship. Everything has changed here since you met her; the children are neglected; you have to be driven into York to the hairdresser; you’re dieting and yet you want to have wine with your meals. You lie in the bathtub and feel your breasts in the mirror; you use French expressions. You’re a beautiful natural woman and all of a sudden you want to be a
femme du monde,
a vulgar
femme de trente ans
in the style of Maupassant.”

Cathy’s eyes sparkled; she tilted her angular chin complacently—these sudden and secret quarrels between them she took for a manifestation of worship. She picked up the loaded platter, strewed it with parsley, balanced it on a pile of plates and proceeded grandly with it into the dinette. A vapor of steam followed her, tantalizing him, like one of the veils of Salome. “Dinner is served,” she announced, sliding the plates onto the table. “Go and get her, you fool.” She readjusted a hairpin and sat coolly down at her place; next to her, stood her old tea-wagon, recently exhumed from the basement, stacked with dessert-plates and a coffee-service. Henry hurried back into the living room. “Cathy’s not quite herself,” he apologized. “I was afraid for the moment she’d heard something disturbing. But it’s all right; I’ve been talking to her. She has no conception of what she seemed to be saying. It’s a lucky thing I gave her that salary-raise story as a blind. Whew!” He made a half-laughing motion of wiping the sweat from his brow, and when she did not smile back, he grew serious. “Alcohol isn’t good for her. That’s why we seldom serve it. There’s a little history of that kind in her family—the curse of the Irish.” He held out his hands. “Come! She’ll be better when she’s had something to eat.” Domna put down the quarterly she had been gripping. “Would you rather I didn’t stay?” she said abruptly. She appeared exceedingly tense and disturbed. Henry shook his head with decision. “What a scare you must have had,” he said warmly. “I could see it. You turned a sort of yellow—your Tartar blood, I’ll warrant. You still look a little queer. Can I get you something more to drink?” Domna gave a quick, strained smile. She rose. “No. I’m all right.” He led her into the dinette. “What a wonderful dinner, Cathy,” she murmured, looking at the table, but the tribute escaped her mechanically; she seemed to fix her eyes on the flatware and napery with the same hypnotized effort that dragged her fork to her lips and back again. She ate, observed Henry, like a stupefied goose of Périgord subjected to forced feeding; indeed, her whole demeanor was that of a creature in a vise.

Cathy, however, had recovered her poise; she led the conversation and they discussed theories of love. “What you love in a person, Domna,” she explained to her, “is his essence, not the dross of appearance. Love is the discovery of essence.” Domna looked up from her bread-pudding. “I think you are too dualistic,” she said, brusquely. “Even in Plato, essence is perceived through existence. There is no gross contradiction, no belying. Shadow is a partial aspect of substance. Appearances intimate to us; they do not flatly deceive.” She put down her spoon. Henry affably nodded. “You’re a handsome girl, Domna,” he reminded. “All handsome people are monists. For the rest of us, there is always the temptation to gnosticism. What we are is not what we see in the mirror, and we know therefore that appearances are fickle. We look to somebody else to discover our imperishable essence.” He smiled uxoriously at Cathy and wiped his lips with his damask napkin. “She,” he signified, “has been good enough to do me this service. Could you love a leper, Domna?” he continued, musingly. “I wonder whether you could. I think, if you did, you would love the leper in him, from defiance, and not seek to discover what there is in him that the loathsome disease hides. That is, you would love in defiance what the world sees and hates, and your love would be simply an affirmation of repugnance overcome.” That he repelled Domna physically he had known for some time, without rancor and even with a kind of objective, scientific interest, and he observed once again, with detachment, seeing her drop her eyes in embarrassment, that this repugnance he now calmly alluded to was still the strongest hold he had on her: was it feasible, he asked himself, to try to exercise the same attraction-repulsion in the moral sphere? He saw that she understood very well the drift of the conversation, which, he had to concede, had been splendidly maneuvered by Cathy to come athwart the subject at hand. Domna’s fine nostrils indented; she raised her brows in distaste. “Why are you R.C.’s so fascinated by leprosy, like children? It is all simply a bogey of legend and crude mass superstition. But in answer to your question: if you mean a moral leper, no. Fair without and foul within has no charm for me. Nor the reverse, for that matter. One must love in depth. I cannot be interested in people whose inside contradicts their outside. Such people have neither essence nor existence.” She folded her napkin. “I must work tonight,” she declared.