The Tutor (12 page)

“Go on.”

“I love that little beard thing under your lip.”

Julian smiled.

Her foot slipped off the edge of the bed in a way that could have been accidental, settled in his lap in a way that could not. He kept the smile on his face, altering it slightly as though it were meant for her. She moved her foot around a little, the red-tipped toes turning out to be prehensile.

“Why don’t you come up here,” she said, “and let me demonstrate my gratitude.”

“For what?”

“The bat.”

No gratitude necessary. He’d already been repaid in full.
Snap:
the sound. And he could think of lots of reasons to stay where he was, or simply leave. But he’d been so hard when he’d felt the poem coming, the stillbirth of which she’d caused with her phone call, so in fact she did owe him. Plus she was convenient. And then there were those feet.

First he drank the rest of the so-called cognac, drank it in one long swallow, but without hurry. Then he got up and took off his clothes, let her have a good look.

“My God,” she said, her face beyond pink now, on the way to strawberry red.

He got on top of her, spread her robe, her legs spreading on their own, and plunged inside without preliminaries.

“Oh, my God,” she said, a cry between pleasure and pain that was about right.

Snap-bone and strawberry jam: he was hard, igneous.

Plunge and plunge. The difference in their strengths was like the difference between species. She grunted and squealed like a pig. “Oh, my God,” she said, “this is going to be great. What am I saying? It is great already. Great, great, and that thing under your chin, oh, God, oh, just like that, just the way you’re—”

“Shut up.”

But too late. All the talking, all the inanity, all the mature woman’s guidance to better sex, had obliterated the image of the red-tipped feet.

“Huh?” She stopped moving, if that helpless flabby flopping around could be called moving. “I’m sorry, Julian, did I do something wrong?”

Soft, but totally. He slid out of her gaping thing like a wet worm.

“Julian? Did I hurt you?”

He barked his contempt for that idea. She took the worm in her hand, began ministrations, shifted clumsily around and tried her mouth. At least that gagged off the hideous babble, but it was too late. He looked down at her bobbing head, considered all the strawberry jam inside, and got up.

Gail shrank back up to the headboard, lipstick all smeared, gathered her robe around her. “What did I do?”

Julian dressed and left without a word.

H
e sat at his desk in the darkness. All the lights in the big house were out, except for one that lingered in the upstairs window. Finally it went out too. Julian lit the two candles and another cigarette, first of a new day. He sucked down that first smoke ball of calming heat, felt it spread through his body and his mind. He breathed it out with a deep sigh, almost a sob. No one knew him, knew his immensity. That was to say, no one who counted knew, none of the hundred thousand. He was trapped in secret grandeur, like Nietzsche. And what had Nietzsche done? He’d written.

negligent is to forsake as

mendacious is to deceive

The next word, so close before, was not even a whisper now. Torment. Those dark eyes had understood what he was capable of, had felt it coming. Snap-bone. Snap-bone and strawberry jam.

Strawberry jam: his mind poised itself on the edge of something. Strawberry jam was an image, a symbol. Poems required images and symbols. Perhaps this whole problem could be approached from another direction. What else did a poem need? A subject, of course. From that promising first word,
negligent,
he would work his way toward some vast subject. And what was his subject? He knew its sounds already: grunts and squeals.
On Two Species:
an epic poem. The hundred thousand and the rest. That was his subject, the smothering shallow ignobility of the 5,999,900,000.

An epic subject for an epic poem. But how to write about such a huge number? What had Homer done? He’d focused on a small number of characters, put them in conflict, launched them toward their fate. Julian needed some manageable cast to represent that number.

Gail? He almost shuddered at the thought of her name. But no need to dwell on her, not now. She didn’t fit in his poem. He needed characters who swam in present-day society, and she seemed somewhat disconnected.

Then:
snap.
A eureka moment. The Gardners of Robin Road. They were perfectly present-day, symmetrically representative right down to their 2.2 children, if you counted the specter of the firstborn.

Julian lowered his pen over the empty space. The next word still did not come. He had a strange physical feeling, as though he were falling down a shaft.

Julian took an enormous drag from his cigarette, sucking up almost half in one inhalation. In the resulting moment of calm, his fall broken, he realized that an epic poem couldn’t be dashed off just like that. It required preparation.

How to begin? With the characters? If so, what would be their situations, what their fate? Julian had no ideas.

No ideas, but his mind kept churning anyway, throwing out another question. Why not begin scientifically? Why not collect data? Perhaps the data would suggest the movement of the story, nature and art twisted together. He wriggled in his chair with excitement: was he actually in the process of inventing a new form, the living poem, nature and art blending in real time? Perhaps a living novel? Calm, calm. But he couldn’t stay calm, and his cigarette was all consumed. He lit another, second of the day, and still not dawn. Perhaps it was time to violate a rule or two.

Data. To begin he would compile character sketches of the main players. Once more Julian lowered the tip of the pen, and at last he wrote. He wrote headings at the top of four virginal sheets of paper:
Scott
,
Linda
,
Brandon
,
Ruby.
What about Zippy? The thought amused him. He smiled to himself in the night.

Julian stopped smiling, realized he’d almost made a serious mistake, right here at the beginning. He reached for a fifth sheet of paper and wrote one more heading:
Adam.

12

“W
hy do you make me do this? Get out of bed.”

Brandon clung to his pillow, clung to the darkness behind his closed eyelids and the remnants of a dream. A nice dream: that weird bedroom of Trish’s, but Whitney was the girl in the bed.

“When are you going to start acting your age?” Dad asked.

Brandon heard the
drip drip
falling from Dad’s razor onto his floor. Was he supposed to answer that question, or was it one of the other kind that were just for effect, the name not coming at the moment? Didn’t matter. He was too tired to speak. He’d never been this tired in his life, and he felt like shit on top of it. His throat was sore, he had a headache, his ears—

“Get up, get up, get up.”

Each repetition of the command louder than the last, like Dad was going to lose it again.
Go ahead and lose it
—Brandon couldn’t move a muscle. He could smell his own breath—stinking, foul. And his boxers felt a bit sticky in the front. What the hell? Details of the dream with Whitney in Trish’s bedroom flickered just out of sight.

Then came Mom’s voice from down the hall. “Isn’t he up yet?”

“I’m getting him up,” Dad yelled.

Silence. Maybe Dad had gone away, maybe he’d just decided,
oh what the hell, let the poor kid sleep
. Brandon felt his body starting to relax, deep sleep not far away.

“Hey,” Dad said, still in the room, alarmingly close. “What’s this?”

Brandon opened an eye, just one and not very wide, and peered out through a veil of gummy lashes. Dad was at the desk, sheets of paper in his hand.
Oh, fuck.
The
Macbeth
makeup test with the big red F on the front. Had he really left it out there in the open, really not thrown it away? He lowered his eyelid back to the fully shut position, unable to think of a better response.

“What’s that, Scott?”

Mom. Mom was in the room.

“It looks like that makeup test,” Dad told her.

Pause. Then Mom said, “Oh, my God.” Like someone had been seriously hurt. “What is the meaning of this, Brandon?”

He could feel her standing right over him. Brandon opened his eyes. She brandished the test at him, like a cop with the evidence. They were so fucking relentless, especially her.

“Get a life,” he said.

“Get a life? Is that what you said?”

“Get a goddamned life.”

“Did you hear him, Scott?”

“You can’t talk like that,” Dad said.

“F,” said Mom. “Where’s your pride? You won’t get into any college at all with grades like that, never mind an acceptable one.”

“So? What if I don’t even want to go to college?” There was an idea.

“Not go to college?” said Scott. “What would you do instead?”

“For God’s sake,” said Mom. “He doesn’t even mean it. Stop humoring him.”

No college. He’d be out of school forever in a year and a half, and the rest of high school would be easy, with no more CP courses, no more standardized tests, no more
Macbeth
, or
The Scarlet Letter
, coming next year, which everyone said was even worse.

“I do mean it,” Brandon said. “Think I’ll give college a pass.” He watched his parents through those gummy veils. Just look at them: Dad with a towel around his waist, Mom with one around her body, another wrapped around her head, their mouths open in shock. Then he had another good idea. “Think of all the money you’ll save.”
Fuck you good as new all we do then it’s through.

“Goddamn it,” Dad said. “Who said anything about money?”

Where the sun don’t shine, where the sun don’t shine.
Problem, in the background. He had a deep, rough voice, just as good as Unka Death’s.

“Why do you always get caught up in his games?” Mom said.

“But we never said a word about money.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Mom said. “The point is he’s going to college and he knows it.”

“You can’t make me,” Brandon said, realizing the truth of his words as he spoke them. They couldn’t make him. Did Problem have a record deal of his own? He’d have to ask Dewey.

“What kind of job do you think you’d get without a college degree?” Dad said.

“Bicycle messenger.”

“Bicycle messenger?”

“In New York. They make three hundred bucks a day.”

“That’s not a real job,” Dad said.

“Three hundred bucks a day isn’t a real job?” Brandon said. “Do you make that much, Mom?”

Two pale circles, the size of quarters, appeared on Mom’s cheeks. “There’s a lot of life after high school,” she said. “Do you really want to be a loser, Brandon?”

“If you don’t go to college, you’re a loser?” Brandon said.

“In this economy,” Dad said.

“You think Julian’s a loser?”

“What has Julian got to do with this?”

“He didn’t go to college.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mom said.

“Put some money on it.”

Those pale quarters turned pink. “You don’t know much about people,” Mom said. “All you have to do is listen to him talk for two seconds.”

“I’m telling you what he told me,” Brandon said.

“You must have misinterpreted,” Mom said.

“Ask him.”

I
n her cubicle—more of a corner office, really, bigger than what people normally considered a cubicle, only a cubicle in the sense that the walls didn’t extend to the ceiling—Linda divided her salary by the number of working days in the year, came up with a number far short of three hundred.
You guys went to UConn, you’re successful.
She liked her job, was good at it, but in New York she’d be making three or four times as much, maybe more. And instead of accounts like the Central Connecticut Realtors Association, Nutmeg Brewing Co., Skyway, she’d be handling Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany, some big museum.

She’d settled: settled for the small city instead of the big one, accepted other second choices as well. Did the very first one you took lead inevitably to the others, like one of the those trees they used to show the apes going one way and man the other? What was her very first second choice?

Her phone rang. Skyway. Skyway owned the Mall at West Mill, was also developing the site of the original mill, provided they got permission to cut an access road through the town forest. Her job was to provide visuals of the future development that the Skyway lawyers could use at their presentations to all the boards and commissions involved. There were problems: first, the Skyway architects had no drawings yet. Second, she didn’t like the name they’d chosen, Olde Mill Estates.
Estates
was only going to annoy the planning and conservation people—there were wetlands issues as well as the right of way—and the development was in West Mill, not Old Mill. Plus there was that ridiculous
e
. She’d sent them a list of possible names, which they’d rejected, and then tried another one.

“They still like Olde Mill Estates the best,” said the Skyway marketing woman.

“Better than Willowbend?”

“They didn’t get that one at all.”

“But there’s that grove of willow trees,” Linda said. She’d driven over one Sunday to check it out. “By the bend of the river, where the actual mill used to be.”

“Those trees won’t even be there after stage three.”

“What’s stage three?”

“The marina.”

“The mill’s gone too, for that matter,” Linda said.

“I don’t get you.”

She didn’t explain. “What about the
e
?”

“
E
?”

“On
Old
. I hope you’re dropping it.”

“Why?”

Linda didn’t explain that either, just asked for time to come up with new ideas.

“The printer’s waiting.”

L
inda started a new list: Riverbend, the Meadows at West Mill . . . She sat in her office, tapping her pen, thought: Willow Stump Mansions. Would she be doing this in New York? Or even Boston, the city she’d finally persuaded Scott to try first, a halfhearted attempt on his part that had ended up costing him his equal share of the family business—an inequality of inheritance that would be passed on and on.

Linda dialed the A-Plus Tutorial number, got Margie on the phone. “Is it true Julian didn’t go to college?”

“Would that be a problem for you?” Margie said.

“Apparently it’s what he told my son.”

“A lot of our people don’t have degrees,” Margie said, “since so many of them are college students themselves.”

“Julian’s a little older.”

“If someone older with a degree is what you want, I’ve got a retired English teacher from Loomis on the staff.”

“No,” Linda said. “We’re not unhappy with Julian.”

“That’s what I understood.”

“It’s just a bit of a surprise, if true.”

“Did someone in this office lead you to believe he had a degree?”

“No,” Linda said. “He seems highly educated, that’s all.”

“Julian is highly educated. He gave a lecture at a university several years ago—he showed me a reference from the master of Balliol. Unlike some of my competitors, who shall remain nameless, I get references from all my applicants.”

Linda couldn’t quite place Balliol. Was it in Wisconsin? “Beloit?” she said.

“Balliol,” said Margie. “One of the colleges at Oxford.”

“Julian gave a lecture at Oxford University?”

“I believe it led to several seminars as well.”

“On what subject?”

“Nothing to do with the SAT, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m just curious.”

“Hang on.”

Linda heard a drawer open, heard paper shuffling. The Meadows at West Mill—what was wrong with that? Margie came back on the line.

“ ‘Vipers in My Backpack: Zoological Fieldwork in Up-Country Gabon’ was the topic,” Margie said. “ ‘How pleasant to learn that the tradition of the bold amateur naturalist lives on,’ it says here.”

“My goodness.”

“But I wouldn’t bring this up with him,” Margie said.

“Why not?”

“He didn’t want me to spread it around.”

“Oh?”

“He’s afraid it might sound pretentious. Kind of refreshing, don’t you think?”

T
hree hundred bucks a day. Was it possible bicycle messengers in New York made that much? Scott could almost feel the freedom of it.

“You still there?” said a shaky old phone voice in his ear.

“Just looking that up for you. . . .” He left the client’s name unsaid because he couldn’t remember whether this was Mr. Insley or Mrs. Insley and they sounded the same. “It’s under your umbrella.”

“So we’re covered?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have to pay?”

“No.”

The Insleys squabbled for a moment in the background. “What about our premiums?”

“This won’t affect them.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Scott. Please mention us to your mother next time you’re talking to her.”

“Yup.”

The freedom of it. Scott could remember racing down stairs three or four at a time without a thought. When had he stopped doing that? If he hadn’t stopped, if he’d kept doing it every day, would he still be able to? He tensed one of his biceps and was squeezing it in an exploratory way when the door to his office opened and Sam burst in.

The truth was Sam just came in quietly; it was the energy suddenly in the room that made Scott have that bursting thought.

“Hey, Uncle Scott,” Sam said, a smile spreading across his face. He came forward, hand extended. Scott rose. Sam had grown again, was as tall as Scott, maybe the tiniest bit taller.

They shook hands. Sam had a strong grip, a direct look, his eyes smiling too. He wore a blazer and a loosely knotted tie with a tennis racquet pattern.

“How’re you doing?” Scott said, found that he was smiling too, couldn’t help it.

“Great,” said Sam.

“No school today?”

“I’m kind of playing hooky.”

“You are?”

“It’s a class trip, really. I got permission to meet the bus down here. Dad’s going to take me to lunch first. Want to come?”

“Sounds good. Where’s the trip to?”

“New York.”

“What’s on the schedule?”

“They’re taking us to a play.”

“Yeah? What one?”

“
Macbeth,
” said Sam. “Only instead of medieval Scotland they do it as gangsters in the thirties. Could be kind of funny, someone like Joe Pesci going on about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

An angry red F, with a big red circle around it. “So you’re studying
Macbeth
?” Scott said.

“Finished a few weeks ago,” Sam said. “We’re on
Twelfth Night
now. Hard to believe the same guy wrote both of them.”

Scott remembered studying
Macbeth
, knew nothing of
Twelfth Night
. “Because
Twelfth Night
’s not as good, you mean?”

“More like because they’re so different,” Sam said. “But I’m no judge—it takes me hours just to get through each act.”

Tom came in, gave Scott a quick nod, turned to his son. “All set?”

“Uncle Scott’s coming too,” said Sam.

“Fine,” said Tom. “Primo’s all right, Scott? The Andover bus is meeting Sam at the mall.”

“I just remembered something,” Scott said, and made up a sketchy little excuse. “Have fun in the big city, Sam.”

“Thanks,” said Sam. “How’s Brandon?”

“Great.”

“Say hi to him for me.”

“Sure thing.”

They went out the door, Sam a good two inches taller than his father and broader-shouldered, but the walk was the same. A confident walk. The energy level in Scott’s office went way down.

H
is phone buzzed. “Mrs. Insley again on line three.”

“I’ll call her back.”

Scott got up, put on his coat, left the office. It wasn’t airless, exactly, more like all the molecules were paralyzed. He got in the Triumph—he loved the car, a ‘76 TR6, the last year they were made, kept in perfect shape by Tony at European Motors—and drove to Briny’s, the opposite direction from Primo’s and the mall. The engine made a comforting sound, like something coming from deep in the throat of a formidable dog. He didn’t have a formidable dog, of course, didn’t have a lot of things.

Scott ate at the bar. He had chowder, a dozen Waquoits and a pint of ale, a good ale from a microbrewery they’d had a chance to invest in, an investment Tom had done some research into and ended up not liking. Goddamn good beer anyway. Scott ordered another. This wasn’t a bad way to eat sometimes, by himself, no questions, no problems. He glanced up at the nearest monitor, caught a no-look pass and a two-handed dunk.