Truth and Consequences (20 page)

Jane could not answer: her head was suddenly full of smoke and steam. She had not felt this sort of betrayal since junior high school—and it was the language of junior high school that now rose to her lips.

“You creep!” she cried. “You sneaky, disgusting little creep!” She might have gone on, but was distracted by a sound from across the room: the sound of laughter. She looked around, dizzy and furious, and saw Delia lying in an untidy crush of pale, lacy clothes, convulsed with mirth.

“Don't you laugh at me, you nasty witch!” Jane shouted, enraged, and raised the big vase of flowers, which had now become a convenient weapon. But at the last moment a half-conscious sense of her responsibility as an administrator caused her to pull the flowers and ferns out of their antique cut-glass container (Property of the Unger Center for the Humanities) before she threw them hard at Delia.

Then, stifling a sob of rage and pain, she left the room. In a kind of daze she descended the stairs. She rinsed out the vase and put it back into the cupboard, found her coat and scarf and handbag, left the building, and drove home.

TWELVE

After the door of Delia's office had slammed behind Jane, Alan stepped out from the heavy curtain. “Oh, fuck,” he said, as a spasm of pain gripped his lower back.

Delia still lay on the moss-green plush sofa in her rumpled lace skirt and half-open blouse—now covered, as was she, with wet ferns and flowers. She was still laughing, in bursts of amused hiccups.

“So now what?” he asked; but she only released another bubble of hilarity. Was she having hysterics? “Are you all right?”

Delia shrugged, nodded, giggled. Sprawled there among the flowers, she resembled a Pre-Raphaelite painting—Hunt's Ophelia, or a Waterhouse water nymph.

Or maybe she's in shock, he thought, beginning to shove his shirt back into his slacks. “You'd better pull yourself together, honey,” he told her. “Jane could come back anytime.”

“No, she won't. She was much too embarrassed.” Delia sat up, causing foliage to scatter. “Oh, look, here's the card that came with the flowers.” She tore it open.
Best wishes from your greatest fan,Wally Hersh.
“Everyone's so unoriginal these days.” She sighed and stood up. Then she selected one of the scattered white lilies, tucked it behind her ear, and turned to her reflection in the big mirror over the mantelpiece.

“I don't get it,” Alan said, uneasy at this crazy indifference. “You're not bothered by what just happened?”

“Not really.” Delia did not glance around. “If Jane was to come back with a shotgun, I'd be bothered. But that's not her style.”

“No,” he agreed. “She'd never do that. But still—” He heard the sound of a familiar motor and turned to the window, pulling aside the velvet curtain. Below, Jane's Honda wagon was descending the driveway. “You're right; she's leaving. Jesus, my back is killing me.”

Delia did not comment. She was now trying the lily tucked into the bosom of her blouse. The effect was striking, but Alan didn't appreciate it fully.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he said. “Why are you taking this so lightly?”

“Because it's not important.” Delia smiled and shook out her hair. She looked beautiful, undeniably, but also somewhat crazy.

“Maybe not for you,” he muttered, glancing around for his loafers. As he shoved his feet into them, another spasm of pain sliced through his back. “But what am I supposed to say to Jane when I get home?”

“Just remember that the best defense is a good offense,” she replied, not glancing away from the mirror.

“A good offense?”

“You know. Say we're both very hurt and angry. Tell her how rude and intrusive she was, pushing her way into my room without even knocking.”

“But she did knock,” Alan protested.

“Well, she didn't give me time to answer. Remind her how unprofessional that was. She probably regrets it already. And going into a rage and throwing all these flowers, without stopping to find out what the real situation was. Why, she almost threw that heavy glass vase too. I could have been seriously injured.”

“What was the real situation?” Alan asked, amazed.

“Well, obviously—I was having a migraine, and you came in to see if you could do anything for me.”

“And why was my shirt hanging out and my shoes off?”

Delia sighed. “Because it was so warm in here. And you took your shoes off because your feet hurt. Use your imagination.”

“I don't think she'll believe that,” Alan said. “But maybe it's worth a try.”

“Of course it is.” Delia laughed again. “It's lucky we switched offices; at least you had time to get your pants back on.”

Alan did not laugh. “But why was I hiding behind the curtain?”

“Yes, that was a mistake.” She smiled. “Well, okay. You knew she'd be surprised to see you. You wanted to protect her, you knew she might not understand. But whatever you do, don't apologize. Make her apologize to you.”

Alan looked at Delia with something between admiration and dismay. “You're talking as if we're in the right.”

“But we are in the right.” She turned away from the mirror. “I was ill, and you were performing an act of mercy.”

“Nobody will believe that, not if Jane tells them what she saw. There'll be a scandal.”

“So what?” She shrugged.

“You don't care?”

“Why should I? It's right what they say: in the long run, all publicity is good publicity. Scandal is what everyone wants and expects from us: melodrama and farce and comedy and tragedy. Writers and artists who lead conventional, blameless lives, they don't last. Everyone's bored by them.” Delia gave a little catlike yawn. “You know, they're rather pretty, Wally Hersh's lilies,” she remarked. “Pity to let them die.” She began to gather the flowers that lay on the sofa. “They stand for purity and innocence, you know.”

“Really.” Thinking how inappropriate they were in this case, Alan handed her two long-stemmed lilies that had fallen near him. Close up, they seemed to be made of thick white suede.

“Thank you.” She smiled.

“Here's some more.” With another twinge of pain, he collected two saucer-sized golden chrysanthemums, but Delia pushed them away.

“No, leave those. Yellow mums mean slighted love.”

“You don't believe that.”

“Of course I do.” She sighed. “Nobody understands the Language of Flowers anymore. And they don't understand that it has power, even if you don't know it.”

“Yeah, it looks like you're already slighting Wally Hersh's love,” he said, dropping the mums in the wastebasket.

“No; not completely.” Delia giggled and stooped to gather more lilies and pose with them. In spite of what had recently happened, she seemed quite calm, and fully absorbed in this task.

“Well,” Alan said, after watching for a few moments, baffled. “It doesn't look like Jane's going to give me a ride home. I'd better go call a taxi. Do you want a lift?”

“No thanks. Henry will pick me up.”

“I don't suppose you're going to tell him what happened.”

For the first time since Jane had left, Delia looked at Alan directly. “Are you mad?” she asked. “Anyhow it's none of his business, what you and I do, what we have together.” She smiled warmly, almost seductively. “It's on another plane entirely. Come on, don't look so sad.” She moved nearer and gave him a quick, wet kiss. “Everything's going to be all right. Only if I were you I wouldn't go home just yet.”

 

 

At two a.m. that night, Alan lay awake and in pain in a confusion of blankets and sheets and a sense of having behaved both stupidly and badly. Whether he opened his eyes or shut them, he kept seeing Jane's face white against the darkness, with its expression of shock, hurt, and anger.

Following Delia's advice, he had delayed his return and gone to the faculty club for supper. In his confused state of mind, he had forgotten that sitting in a straight chair for more than a few minutes at a time always aroused the lizard in his back—whom he now sometimes thought of as Old Clootie, the familiar name of the Devil among his Scottish ancestors. At home and in the office he usually stood up or lay down on the sofa to eat.

Last night, even before his food came, he had to stand up and walk about, causing the waiter and the other diners to look at him oddly. Fortunately, no one he knew was in the faculty club, but even so, agony and embarrassment had made it impossible for him to finish the meal, though he managed to drink a Scotch on the rocks and half a bottle of wine. Afterward he stumbled dizzily and painfully out into the lobby and called a taxi. As he did so, inside his spine, Old Clootie flexed his claws and smiled.

For the first few minutes of the ride Alan tried to sit up like a normal person, but was unable to manage it. When Jane drove him to campus he always lay down in the back seat, to minimize the pain.

“Hey, you all right back there?” the taxi driver had inquired.

“Fine, just a little tired,” Alan had replied in blurred tones that, he realized, sounded like those of a drunk.

He had arrived home in agony, but still resolved to deny everything. When Jane asked, in a voice that combined fear and rage, where the hell he had been, he had said, as planned, that he had wanted to give her time to cool off.

“Listen, my back is in spasm,” he had told her. “I have to take a pill.”

“I'm sorry,” Jane said almost automatically, in a flat, neutral voice. She followed him into the kitchen and stood waiting while he gulped water and painkillers. “I'm very sorry it hurts, but I need an explanation.”

“Maybe it's you who owe me an explanation,” Alan said, his words blurred by pain and alcohol. Then, though it felt unreal, he took the offensive and rebuked her for her rude unprofessional behavior and leap to false conclusions. He insisted that his presence in Delia's office had been an act of concern and friendship—telling himself meanwhile that if he was stretching the truth, it was also out of concern and friendship. He was sparing Jane information that would hurt her unnecessarily.

As he spoke in imitation of a firm, reasonable manner, he felt a rush of pity and affection for his wife: this small brown-haired woman with her neat shirtwaist dress, her fading prettiness and wide blue eyes, reddened as if with weeping. She was a good person who loved him and had been unfailingly kind to him over the long months of his pain. It wasn't her fault that her kindness had begun to feel more and more like a burden.

“I don't believe you,” Jane said when he finished, her voice trembling. She sagged against the electric stove as if for warmth and support. “I think you're just saying what Delia told you to say.”

“That's ridiculous,” Alan replied weakly, alarmed by her guess. “You're really prejudiced against her,” he added, regaining control. “You have been from the start.”

“No, that's not so—” Jane's voice wobbled.

“You've always been determined to think the worst of her.”

“I haven't, I've tried—”

“That first week, you told me she was a complete egotist.”

“Well, she is. She never thinks of anyone except herself.”

“That's just not true,” Alan said. “Delia's actually a very wonderful and generous person.”

Jane turned to stare at him. “You're in love with her too,” she stated in the tone of someone who has just turned over a rock and found a dead toad under it. “Just like everyone else.”

“I—” Alan opened his mouth to deny this, but was unable to do so. “Don't be stupid,” he said. “She's been a very good friend to me. To us,” he amended. “She's found me a gallery that's already sold over fifteen thousand dollars' worth of my work. She's why we have that pasta-making machine you've wanted for so long.”

“I don't care. I hate her, if you want to know the truth,” Jane had cried, “and I hate that pasta machine. It's more trouble than it's worth. I can't tell the least difference between what it makes and normal pasta, and I don't believe anyone else can either.”

In spite of himself, Alan (who believed he could tell the difference) must have allowed an ambiguous smile to appear on his face at this. Jane may have taken it as a smile of epicurean superiority, for a sudden spasm of rage convulsed her small neat features, and she snatched up the pasta machine and threw it, not exactly at Alan but at the floor next to his right foot, where it landed with a noisy, unpleasant jangle and thud.

“Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, jerking aside in a way that wrenched his back. “For shit's sake, Jane, get ahold of yourself.” But already she had turned away from him and was hanging on to the back of a kitchen chair, weeping violently.

“I'm sorry—I shouldn't have—” She stooped to retrieve the broken pasta machine. “But it's because you're lying to me, lying and lying,” she sobbed. “If you would just tell the truth, it wouldn't be so awful.”

For a moment, Alan had had the impulse to do this, but he stopped himself as he realized that the kitchen was full of other appliances and cookware that might be thrown, that might not miss. If he had been well, he wouldn't have cared, but in his present condition any further injury could make his pain unbearable. Jane is a violent woman, he thought. I've been married to her for sixteen years and I never knew this.

“I am telling the truth,” he insisted, beginning to feel like a complete louse.

Jane did not reply, only stood and stared at him, her arms full of wrecked metal parts.