Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

“Let’s look at the article itself,” he said. “Let’s try to see how it moves from describing the success of Love Story to more general assumptions about the society.”

The class went blank and silent for a moment, all heads downturned toward the magazine. Pages riffled. Someone blew his nose. Potter found himself making an almost audible grunt, as if pulling oars, trying to psychically pull some specific responses from them.

“Now listen to this,” Potter said, “ carefully. Time quotes this NYU professor who says, “The mood today, particularly on campus, is toward personal relationships rather than politics, love rather than action. Not by accident does this mood coincide with the Nixon era.’”

A roomful of faces stared at Potter, blank or quizzical.

“Well,” he said, a note of desperation beginning to creep into his voice, “do you agree with that? You’re students. He’s talking about your mood. Is he right? Do you feel that way?”

“What does he mean, ‘love rather than action’?” Miss Korsky asked.

“Good point!” said Potter, pouncing gratefully on anything specific.

“What do you think he means?” Potter asked, proud of his Socratic technique.

“I don’t know.”

“Try,” Potter pleaded.

Miss Korsky, responding to Potter’s need, tried. “Well,” she said, “I’m not sure what he means, but I don’t agree. I mean, it sounds like you have to choose between love and action, like you can’t have both. A lot of actions are done out of love. Aren’t they?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Potter said beaming. “I think the statement is a contradiction. You see, I want you to be aware of what these articles say—don’t just take them in but question them, decide for yourself how valid the statements are.”

Potter made a kind of game out of looking for other contradictions in the article and the class got into the spirit of it, actually interested, actually—Potter hoped—learning something.

Toward the end of the hour, Mr. Halligan even found what he felt was a contradiction in the caption of one of the color photos that accompanied the article. The photo was of the actress Sarah Miles, demurely dressed and posed in a pastoral scene. Miss Miles was quoted as saying, “I’m a romantic to the end. I think people are sick and tired of all the sex stuff. They want a story. Life is so hard to live anyway.”

“I don’t think it follows,” Halligan said. “I mean to say that people are tired of sex and life is hard anyway. Wouldn’t it be harder if they didn’t have sex?”

The class giggled, and Potter smiled.

“I guess so,” Potter said, and, surprising himself, added, “I’m not really sure anymore.”

Potter counted the class a success; it had even made the teacher think.

Gafferty had something on his mind, something he wanted to discuss in private. When Potter returned from his afternoon seminar Gafferty was waiting in his office, twiddling his fingers behind his back and examining the shelves of textbooks with feigned interest, as if he hadn’t seen them a thousand times. He suggested they take a stroll over to Jake Wirth’s. It wouldn’t be crowded now, they could doubtless have a booth to themselves.

On the way out of the building they ran into Ed Shell, who asked if he could join them for a beer. Gafferty made an animated apology, saying right now he had a little business to discuss with Potter, but by all means, without fail, the three of them had to go together for a real drinking session sometime, sometime soon . Shell, obviously miffed, said “Sure, sure,” and went off brooding down the hall.

Potter and Gafferty walked across the Commons purposefully, not speaking, the weight of whatever was Gafferty’s private business holding them silent. It was brutally cold, and the sky had a dark, purplish cast. The aura of the afternoon was Icelandic.

They entered Jake Wirth’s puffing and stomping and rubbing their hands, and Gafferty headed for a booth. There was an old man eating knockwurst, and a couple of others sipping shells of pale gold beer, but otherwise the place was deserted. An ancient waiter in a frayed tux took their orders for steins of dark, and Gafferty shifted his bulk around in the booth, as if trying to burrow into a solid position.

Potter waited.

“The thing of it is,” Gafferty said, “I’d like to use your apartment sometime.”

“My apartment?”

“Sometime, that is, when you wouldn’t ordinarily be there. I mean, I don’t want you to have to go out and sit in some bar just on my account, but if there’s some particular time, an hour or so, when you wouldn’t be being there anyway and it wouldn’t be inconveniencing anything for me to—uh, have the use of it, at such a time.”

“Hell, man, you can use my apartment any time you want. You know, it isn’t any luxury pad or anything, it’s just an ordinary apartment. It’s a mess most of the time, but Christ, yes, of course you can use it.”

“No luxury?” Gafferty laughed. “Ah, man, it’ll be luxury indeed compared to the little office I have at Gilpen, with the door locked but people passing by it down the hall and occasionally someone pounding and pressing their face against the frosted glass, trying to squint through it. Luxury? Ah, I presume you’ve some kind of bed, and even a pallet on the floor is luxury compared with the cold steel desk.”

“Desk?” Potter asked, not getting the picture, “you sleep on your desk?”

He imagined poor Gafferty, exhausted from staying up till all hours doing battle with his thesis, maybe from waking in the night to the bawling of little kids, rising at dawn to drive in to Boston, teaching his classes, counselling his students, preparing lectures, grading tests, and finally, sapped of all strength and lightheaded from lack of sleep, sprawling over the hard, unyielding surface of his long grey desk, dozing off fitfully, only to be jolted awake by the pounding fists of impatient students.

“Not sleep, exactly,” Gafferty said. “Ah, Phil, you see, the matter is—damnit, man, I’ve a girl.”

Potter sat for a moment with his mouth dumbly open, and then started laughing, not at Gafferty or the news that he had a girlfriend, but at his own obtuseness. A grown man asks to use his apartment and he thinks the poor bastard wants to take a nap.

“Sure, I know, it’s a comical thing, a man in my circumstances, mind you I don’t want to change my circumstances, but—”

“No, no, I’m not laughing at you. It’s me. I’m a fool.”

“Nothing of it, you only assumed that I was happy with my wife and family, and mind you, that is a correct assumption, I love them all, wife and kids, but after a time—”

“Jesus, man. You don’t have to explain. Or least of all, apologize. Listen, you can use my place whenever you want.”

“Oh, it’s a hell of a thing to ask, I know, but I can’t afford the price of a proper hotel room, and my girl—well, she lives with her parents. More’s the shame. A student, of course. The old, old story. Me the dirty old man, you know, the leering professor, and a young girl—”

“Cut it out,” said Potter. “If you want to confess, see a Priest. Jesus. You’re only human.”

“There’s those that would think otherwise,” Gafferty said, scratching madly at his head in a kind of anguish.

“Fuck them. Listen. You can use my place whenever you want. Just let me know in advance. Sometimes I spend the night at Marilyn’s, and you could stay all night at my place. Or even—hey!”

“What?”

“Marilyn’s going away for the weekend. She’ll probably leave me the key, and I can stay at her place. You could have my apartment for the weekend.”