My Dearest Friend (16 page)

Jack watched, feeling ill. Alexandra had stopped drawing and was staring at her mother, fascinated. She turned to stroke her father’s face. “Prickles?” she asked hesitantly.

“And then what happened, honey?” Jack asked. Lexi turned back to her drawing.

“And then … and then,” Carey Ann said, crying so hard she could scarcely speak, “and then I left.”

Jack’s stomach ached. He was baffled. Was his sweet lovely little girl some kind of bad seed? He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to put his arms around his wife and pull her into his lap and hold her and soothe her, but Alexandra always got upset if her parents did that sort of thing, and he wasn’t certain just how much physical affection
parents were supposed to demonstrate in front of their offspring. But Carey Ann was truly more miserable than he’d ever seen her, and he’d seen her pretty miserable.

“You know,” he said, musing, as if the thought were just occurring to him, “I think that somehow you and I have been doing the wrong things, honey. I think we’ve just been letting her get away with too much. Maybe we
should
start spanking her when she does something wrong.”

“My parents never spanked me in my entire life!” Carey Ann said. “Never!”

“Well, my parents spanked me plenty, and I still know they love me,” Jack said. “I’m not saying we should beat her. I’m just saying … oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe we should go to the library and get a book on the subject.”

“Oh,
books,
” Carey Ann said, shooting him her you’re-the-scum-of-the-earth look. “That’s all you know about. That’s all you can come up with, is books.”

“Well, there are a lot of books on child rearing,” Jack said. “I see them advertised in the newspapers’ book sections. So there must be lots of parents like us who aren’t sure just what to do.
You
read plenty of books about dieting and your thighs and all,” he persisted. That was the wrong thing to say, he could tell. Carey Ann hated it if he mentioned her diets or her exercises to improve what she thought of as a terrible body (and what he thought of as heaven, the most beautiful thing on this planet). “Or we could go see a psychiatrist,” he suggested.

“Jesus Christ, what do you think, Alexandra’s
crazy
? Do you think
I’m
crazy?”

“No, no, no,” Jack said, trying to calm his wife. “I guess I didn’t mean a psychiatrist, I meant a counselor. Some expert who could give us advice on how to discipline Lexi.”

But Carey Ann was really crying now, insulted by every single thing Jack had had to say in the last few minutes.

He looked down at Alexandra. First he saw her beautiful curling opalescent hair; then he saw that while he had been talking, she had taken the felt-tip pen and drawn squiggles and great sweeping spirals all over his desk blotter.

He physically recoiled, as if from a blow in the stomach. His desk blotter was more than just a functional piece; it had great sentimental value. Last Christmas, when they knew they were going to move back east, Carey Ann had surprised him on Christmas night by bringing out a pile of red- and green-foil-wrapped boxes, presents for him, presents she had not brought to the family gathering around the giant tree in the
Skragses’ living room, but had hidden, to be opened when Alexandra was in bed and just the two of them were alone together.

“I want you to know that these presents are from
me,
” Carey Ann had said before she would let him open them, and she was blushing the entire time she gave them to him. “I mean, I didn’t buy them with your money and I didn’t buy them with my daddy’s money.”

“I’m not sure I understand, honey,” Jack said.

“I mean I got a job for four weeks just before Christmas,” Carey Ann said. “At Hall’s. And you know my father doesn’t own any of that store; he doesn’t even know anybody who owns any of it. I got the job all by myself. In the perfume department. They always need extra help before Christmas.”

“Carey Ann, that’s great,” Jack said, really touched, and touched even more by how serious Carey Ann was about this, and how intense.

He opened the first set of presents: it was a desk set consisting of blotter, leather pen cup, leather appointment book and address book with refill pages for the next few years, a little leather box full of loose-leaf notepaper, and a leather wastebasket. The leather was a wonderful chocolate brown, thick and fine, without any ornamentation, very masculine.

“That’s for your study at home,” Carey Ann told him. “Now open this set. It’s for your office.”

For just a moment Jack had felt a tingle of fear, for Carey Ann liked stationery with buttercups or elves or lambs on it, and she drew smiling faces on things and bought cards with rainbows and sunbeams on them for every imaginable occasion. What if the set she had bought for the office was in pale blue with gold trim or something?

But it wasn’t—it was just like the other set, except that the leather was all a dark green that was almost black. It was very handsome, and he could tell it was very expensive. Carey Ann had probably spent nearly four hundred dollars for the two desk sets.

Jack had come close to crying that night. He had felt as sentimental and mushy and in love and blessed as he had the night he proposed to Carey Ann and she accepted. He had come to treasure his desk sets. This one had certainly classed up his standard hole of an office.

But now there were these indelible dark blue squiggles and swirls all over his
desk blotter, on the thick felt and on the leather. The blotter was ruined.

Jack grabbed the pen from his daughter. “No!” he said. “I said to draw on the white paper, goddamnit!”

He didn’t hurt Alexandra, but he had seldom spoken to her so sharply before, and the little girl jerked her head around to stare at him in amazement. Then she burst into wails. It was absolutely amazing how a child’s face could be transformed in a flash like that, from something so innocent you could suddenly believe in angels, to something so crinkled up and red and blotchy and wide-mouthed and
loud
that you could suddenly—for sure—believe in devils.

For one pure moment that lifted itself up out of time and hung like a dewdrop above Jack’s head, he hated his little girl. Well, maybe “hate” wasn’t the right word. He thought he probably was losing his mind. Carey Ann was sobbing, Alexandra was screaming, his desk blotter looked like shit, and he didn’t have any idea what to do now.

There was a knock on his door. Of course there was, of course someone would knock on his door
right now.

“Here,” Jack said, handing his crying daughter to his crying wife. God, he hoped it wasn’t Hudson. It would be so embarrassing; it would look like Jack was being cruel and abusive to his wife or child. He had gotten a good look at Claire and would bet money she had never cried or made a scene in her life.

It wasn’t Hudson. It was a student, a girl in a baggy sweater. She stood outside Jack’s office, sort of wincing with indecision.

“Mr. Hamilton?” she asked timidly. “Could I sign up for your neoclassic lit course? I’m sorry to bother you now, but this is the last date for late registration,” she hurried to say.

“Sure, we’ve got room for one more,” Jack said. While he took the form from her and signed it and told her what text to buy, she was busy looking anywhere but into his office, where the two other females seemed to have calmed down a little and were only sniffling.

“Thanks so much!” the girl said as she turned to leave. “I really can’t wait to take your course!”

Jack nodded and smiled and then shut the door on her retreating figure. He turned to his wife. Carey Ann was now staring at him with a new look: suspicion? anger?

“Who was
that
?” she asked, her voice cold. Alexandra stared at her mother.

“Huh? That was just a student,” Jack said. “I didn’t get her name.”

“Do all your students look like that?” Carey Ann asked.

“Well, no,” Jack said, trying for some levity. “Some of them are men.”

“ ‘I just can’t wait to take your course,’ ” Carey Ann mimicked in a simpering high voice.

“What?” Jack asked.

“She probably wants to have an affair with you,” Carey Ann said accusingly.

“Oh, yeah, right!” Jack yelled, losing his temper at last, going berserk. “I mean, I am such a sex object on this campus that they almost didn’t hire me. I mean, no one wants to take my course because I’m a good teacher or anything, they just all want to get in my pants. The guys too—I mean, I’m such a hunk I turn straight guys gay at the sight of me.” He caught himself finally; he was leaning over Carey Ann, yelling right into her face. She had started crying again, quietly, pathetically, the martyred wife.

“I’m sorry, Carey Ann,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder. Alexandra, who had been shocked into silence by his shouting, reached up her fat little hand and pushed his hand off her mother’s shoulder.

“Go way,” Alexandra said.

Jack went over and slumped down in his chair. He looked at his blotter, now a ruin, like his life. “I’m sorry, Carey Ann.”

“You just don’t understand,” she said, digging in her purse for another handkerchief. “I used to be so popular and have a lot of friends and everybody liked me and thought I was pretty, and now here I am and I don’t have any friends and no one to think I’m pretty, and you have these beautiful girls just crawling out of the woodwork to get to you and I can’t even be in a little old play group and pretty soon you’ll stop loving me.”

“I’m not going to stop loving you.” Jack sighed, thinking as he spoke that he halfway wished he could. “And everyone thinks you’re pretty, you’re the prettiest woman on the East Coast. Now let’s settle down and talk about this sensibly,” he said.

He had meant to be soothing, but before he could say another word, Carey Ann bristled, tossed her hair, and shot him a look that could kill. “Don’t you patronize me!” she said. She was so mad now that she stood up and began to pace the tiny office, which was just barely big enough to pace in, especially since she still had Alexandra in her arms. “You want me to settle down and talk sensibly, which means you want me to just
go on and act like nothing’s wrong, and I won’t. You think I’m being frivolous or childish or something, the way I’ve been upset since I’ve been here. Well, I want you to understand I’m
not
being frivolous or childish; I’m having a major problem with my life! I really am. Now, I love you and I know you love me, and we both love each other a whole lot, the same amount, but I was the one who had to give up something in order to spend my life with you. Why is that? Why weren’t you the one to give up things? Who says that just because you have a Ph.D. in English you
have
to teach it? We could be living in Kansas City right now in a gorgeous house having a lot of fun. Or you wouldn’t even have to go to work for Daddy. You could have kept teaching at the university there. You had friends there, you had students you liked. And I could still have had my friends and family and all the places I know and feel comfortable with, even if we were poor. You are just like a man! You want everything your way and if I’m not fitting into your little plans just perfectly, you think I’m not being
sensible
!”

Alexandra burst into a grin because with the word “sensible” her mother inadvertently spat on her face, which surprised Alexandra. Also, it was an interesting ride for the little girl, for each time Carey Ann got to the end of the room she turned so fast she whipped around, and pretty soon Alexandra got into the rhythm of it and hung her body out away from her mother’s and grinned when the turn snapped her back against her mother. But Carey Ann’s face was deadly serious.

“You want me to make friends right away—I know you do, and you don’t even understand a thing about friendship. These women here are so stuck-up, they ask me where I’m from and I tell them I’m from Kansas and they get this kind of superior, very
amused
look on their faces like suddenly they know all about me and what they know is that I go around barefoot carrying slop to the hogs or feeding the chickens.”

All at once Carey Ann ran out of energy and slumped back down in her chair. “You tell me to be sensible,” she said in a softer voice. “What that means is that you want me to hurry up and make lots of friends and make the house look nice and be that mother out of
Leave It to Beaver.
I can’t do that. I’ve got to go at my own pace. I’ve got to make my own friends. Just ’cause you and I are married doesn’t mean we’re going to like the same people. Like that Daphne Miller that you like so much. I can understand that you would like her ’cause she’s been at the college for about a billion years and can tell you all about it. And she’s so serene and all, like someone who never has had any problems. She just sort of goes floating and smiling through the universe like the old Queen of
England, calmly talking to everyone, and I can see she’d be helpful for you to talk to. But if I’m going to have a friend it’s got to be someone like me with some problems. If Madeline Spencer had said to me today, ‘Carey Ann, you have the prettiest hair, I really envy you because I can’t seem to get mine to do anything,’ well, then it would have been easy for me to say to her, ‘Madeline, I know Alexandra needs some discipline, but to be honest, I just don’t know how to go about it.’ Do you understand that at all, Jack?”

Alexandra had curled up in her mother’s lap and was sucking her thumb. Jack wished he still sucked his. He had tried to pay attention to his wife and understand her, but sometimes her logic seemed unique to the point of nuttiness. It was the most he could do to say, “Look, Carey Ann, we’re both strung-out. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but we can’t solve everything right this instant. I’m starving. Let’s go over to the student union and have some lunch. Alexandra will love the french fries.” He held up his hand to forestall another scream. “I’m not trying to get out of discussing all this. I’m just hungry and I think I’ll be able to talk about it all better after I’ve eaten.”

“All right,” Carey Ann said. She stood up, wiping her eyes.

The history department was also in Peabody Hall. The history-faculty offices and secretarial cubicles were on the third floor, along the south side; the English department ran along the north. In between was the huge warm thrumming Xerox room with its massive compliant machines. Jack was on his way at four o’clock to find Daphne’s office, but as he passed by the Xerox room he caught sight of his friend bent over a machine.