Truth and Consequences (27 page)

 

 

Twenty minutes later, as he left the store, his mood had darkened to match the weather. He drove to the Center—exceeding the speed limit—and, without stopping to hang his coat under the stairs or wait for the elevator, ascended directly and painfully to Delia's office. For the first time in months the door was wide open. Delia, in a long pale-gray suede vest and embroidered gray silk skirt, stood gazing out the tall window into the pale-gray sky.

In an uneven, angry voice, he spoke her name.

“Oh, hello,” she murmured, turning.

Alan did not bother with a greeting. “I just saw Lily Unger in the drugstore. She says you're leaving town forever this weekend.”

“Mm. Yes,” Delia admitted.

“You never told me.” His tone was harsh, accusing.

“I couldn't.” She looked at him, smiling softly and regretfully. ‘I promised.”

“Promised whom?” Alan raised his voice.

She did not answer, only continued to smile.

“Promised what?” Now he was almost shouting.

“Not to make waves.” Delia made the gesture of waves with one hand. “Just to slip away, without causing anyone any trouble. I wanted so much to call you, but I was afraid.” She took a swaying step toward him.

“Afraid of what?”

“Everything. Everyone.” She came closer. How frail she looks today, almost ill, he thought suddenly. How wide and silver-pale her eyes are, how thick and dark her lashes. “Lily said, if I told anyone, they'd argue and threaten and try to stop me.”

“I wouldn't—” Alan began, and fell silent, aware that this was what he had been about to do, in any way possible—that he would try even now.

“You don't really have to leave,” he said, trying to speak calmly, convincingly.

“But I do.” She had reached his side, and gazed up at him, her rosy mouth half open as if for a passionate kiss. “You know how awful it's been here for me, ever since my reading. I knew what was coming. I asked Henry to explain that there would probably be two or three hundred people. But they wouldn't listen. Sometimes I think it was deliberate.”

“Yeah,” Alan agreed, realizing that “they” in this context meant Jane.

“Lots of people were turned away, and that made them angry and frantic. They felt they had a right to call me on the phone, and come here to get their books signed and ask the questions they didn't get to ask.”

“Yes, you told me,” he said impatiently.

“I haven't been able to work since then, not really, you know. Even when I lock the door and don't answer the phone, I know they're out there, on their way. Soon they'll be here and then they'll call, and pound on the door and leave messages and notes. They push them under the door sometimes; I can see them sliding into the room like slimy flat white fish. They all want me to read their manuscripts and recommend agents and editors and publishers and be their best friend. You know how it's been, you've seen them.”

“Yeah,” Alan admitted, remembering some of the strange-looking fans who, unable to reach Delia, had thrust their way into his office and asked for his help in “getting hold” of her, which he naturally did not give.

“And then, next Tuesday, Selma Schmidt is giving a lecture on me, with the most awful, embarrassing title—have you seen the poster?”

“I saw it. ‘The Erotic Goddess: Destruction and Reconstruction in Delaney.' ”

“And I'm supposed to just sit there and listen, and tell her afterwards how much I enjoyed it.” Delia half laughed, half shuddered. “You know I came to Corinth mostly for the privacy. I thought no one could find me here, so far away in the north. And I wouldn't have to teach. The last time I tried that, it was so frightful. The students wouldn't let me alone, they stayed after class and crowded around, and followed me out to the car. Sometimes they even got into the car and sat there, talking and talking and patting my arm and trying to hold my hand. It was like being in a swarm of mosquitoes, all these little itchy bites.”

“But you don't have students here,” Alan protested.

“No. It was all right for a while. And there was you.” She smiled enchantingly. “But since my lecture it's been horrible, really. I feel as if everyone is snatching at me, wanting to tear me apart. I can't work here. Everything I write is false, fouled. I'm having more and more migraines all the time. I feel so besieged, so invaded.” Delia shuddered and pushed a tangle of hair away from her pale, damp forehead.

“I'm very sorry.” Alan took her in his arms, and she subsided softly against him, yielding to his kiss.

“The thing is,” she whispered, catching her breath in a near-sob, “if I can't write, I'm nobody, I'm nothing. No, worse than that. I'm like those demons in Scandinavian legend that look like beautiful women, but they're all hollow behind.”

“Oh, Delia. Of course you're not.”

“No, I am, sometimes. When I haven't been working and I go onstage to read, that's how I feel, that I mustn't stop or turn around, or they'll all know.” She shuddered. “Sometimes I think I'll never write anything real again.”

“Hell, no. Of course you will.”

“But not here—I can't do it here. I have to go back to North Carolina, where it's not so cold and dark and ugly. I have to cut myself off from everything, and be absolutely alone in the woods and listen for my voices.”

She's really leaving, Alan thought, confused, as if Delia were simultaneously there in his arms and gone.

“Maybe you could work in the house,” he told her desperately.

“I couldn't—I hate that place,” Delia said, pulling away. “It's full of dead birds. You've seen them.”

“Yeah.” Alan recalled the cases in the hall and dining room.

“Darling, you've got to understand. You've got to help me.” She gazed at him, her huge gray eyes brimming with tears. “You'll help, won't you?”

Alan did not reply. He felt confused, angry, bereft. Then a stunning idea came to him. “Maybe I should leave too,” he said. “Maybe we could go together.” His head whirled as he tried to think how this could be arranged, how he could fly to North Carolina without terrible pain, how he could rent a studio and get supplies and work there; what he could say to the Council and his department and Jane.

“Not now, dearest. I need to be alone now, to lure my voices back.”

“But I—I need—” Alan stuttered and fell silent, unwilling to imitate all the other people who were crowding and pulling at Delia.

“And we'll still be together, really. We're too close now ever to be apart.” As if to demonstrate this closeness, Delia moved back toward Alan and placed one soft white hand on his shirt, over his heart. “Part of me will always be with you, wherever I go, and part of you will be with me. You know that.”

“Yes, I know—” Alan, moved, put his hand over Delia's, then started back as her office door banged open. What looked at first like a stack of cardboard packing boxes entered the room, followed closely by Selma Schmidt. She was wearing farmer's striped overalls and a melancholy expression, and her frizzy dark hair seemed to take up even more room than usual.

“I got them,” she declared. “Exactly the kind you wanted.” She set the stack of boxes on the carpet and gave Alan an unfriendly look. Clearly she wished he were not there.

“Oh, that's wonderful,” Delia said, gazing at the boxes as if they were birthday presents. “Thank you so much.”

“It's so awful that you're leaving, even before my lecture.” Selma's voice trembled with what appeared to Alan as an exaggerated parody of his own feelings. “I can't stand it here without you. You don't really have to go, not yet.”

“I do, though.” Delia treated Selma to one of her wonderful half smiles. “If I'm going to work again, I have to be alone for a while.”

“You could be alone here.”

“No, not anymore. You know that.” She smiled fully now, but sadly; it was the same full, sad smile she had just given Alan. Selma already knew Delia was leaving, he realized with a stab of pain. Delia must have told her, though she didn't tell me.

“If you'll show me the books you want packed, I'll start now,” Selma said, casting another hostile, impatient look at Alan.
Why don't you get lost?
this look said clearly. “Then I can take them to the post office today before it closes.”

“That's not necessary, dear,” Delia said. “Tomorrow will be plenty of time.”

If he had been in good shape physically, Alan might have tried to ease Selma aside and packed the books himself; but this was impossible now. Suddenly he had no reason to be in this room. If he stayed there, he could only appear as an observer, a physically incompetent cripple.

“I'll see you later,” he uttered, with what he hoped was significant meaning.

“Oh yes.” Delia did not smile, but she opened her huge gray eyes and gave him a brief look of profound warmth and meaning.
You understand, my darling,
this look seemed to promise, or to lie.
One day soon we will be together again.

NINETEEN

At noon that same day, Jane was having lunch on campus with Susie Burdett's mother, Linda, whom she had known since childhood, when Linda had been one of Jane's sister's best friends. She was now a secretary in a doctor's office, still a pretty pale blonde like her daughter and, like her, usually cheerful. Today, however, she was depressed and anxious, because Susie had just told her parents that she and Charlie Amir were in love and planning to get married.

“She wants to ruin her life,” Linda wailed, shoving her half-eaten sandwich aside. “She won't listen to us, maybe she'll listen to you. I know she admires you a lot.”

“I don't understand,” Jane said. “I mean, why shouldn't Susie marry Charlie? He's a nice man, very successful in his career, and I think he loves her.”

“Oh yeah. You can tell he's stuck on Susie. And he looks like a friendly, ordinary guy, I admit that. I liked him fine at first. But that's not the point. The point is, what we just found out yesterday, he's a Muslim.”

“Yes. And?” Jane sighed under her breath.

“Those are the people that blew up the World Trade Center. And they're awful to women. They each have four wives at once, and they shut them up in the house and make them wear these kind of black tent things when they go out.”

“I'm sure Charlie isn't that kind of Muslim,” Jane said, hoping this was true. “He's an educated man, a professor of economics. I'm sure he won't have four wives and want Susie to wear a tent.”

“Well. Maybe not. But you never can tell. And if she marries him she'll be far away and cut off from her family.”

“She'll only be in Columbus, Ohio.”

“Yeah, but still . . .” Linda frowned. “You know, I didn't much like that boy she was going with before, with his loud voice and his low-life friends, but if Susie had married him she would at least have stayed in town and we could have seen her all the time. You've got to talk to her. Please. You can convince her to break it off.”

“I can't do that, Linda,” Jane said. “And I wouldn't, anyhow. Susie and Charlie are in love, and people who are in love deserve to be happy together.” As she uttered these words, a desperate sinking feeling came over Jane. “I'm really sorry,” she told Linda, her voice weighted down by all the things she was sorry for.

 

 

Crossing the campus ten minutes later, Jane reached the Center and found it in disorder. Since Susie had phoned that morning with the news that Delia Delaney was resigning her fellowship and leaving town the next day, she did not have to pretend to be surprised, but she still had to pretend to be dismayed.

From a practical point of view Jane was slightly dismayed, because of the official hassle that would immediately follow. From the impractical point of view she was worse than dismayed. Delia was going away, a good thing; but Henry Hull was presumably going too. She had not called him, so she would probably never see him again in her whole life. It was a bright early winter day outside, but at this thought the rooms of the Center, especially the office, seemed to be full of dark smoke.

“It's so sad,” Susie said, raising a gloomy face from her computer. “It just won't be the same around here without Delia.”

“No, it won't,” Jane agreed. “But we can't brood about that; we have a lot to do today. I'll call Bill and Lily now, and write the e-mails to the other council members and the dean. When you get back from lunch you can send them out, along with hard copies by campus mail. And then you'll need to get in touch with the payroll and insurance people in Knight Hall.”

“Oh, but I can't!” Susie wailed. “Delia's just given me her latest revisions, and I promised I'd type them up and print everything out today so she can take it with her to North Carolina.”

“Really,” Jane sighed. Lately, much of Susie's time had been spent on Delia's letters and manuscripts, to the neglect of her actual job. The filing, for instance, hadn't been done for a week.

“I'm sorry, but that will just have to wait,” she said. “We've got to send the official announcements of Delia's resignation to the Humanities Council today, before it's all over the campus as a rumor.”

“Oh—but—” Susie wailed. “You know, I don't have to go out for lunch. If I stay here, maybe I can finish up Delia's work. She really needs it now, and she's done so much for me.”

What Delia had done for Susie, Jane thought, was to tell her that Charlie Amir was in love with her, not giving a thought to the possible consequences. “Well. If you want to miss lunch, naturally that's up to you,” she said.