Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Do you have children?”

“I have horses.” Smiling, lips together, showing no teeth. Her horses were special, delicious. She blushed, an emotional phenomenon long vanished from this world. It embarrassed me. She said she loved to ride in the hills after dinner. She’d once seen a bobcat. Her voice lifted. The memory excited her. I smiled consciously, trying to seem pleased.

“In Palo Alto?”

She giggled. “We live far from any town.”

She didn’t scratch at her neck, but occasionally pushed her knuckles at her nose. She had long, tapering, spiritual fingers. Her skirt, tightfitting, showed the line of her thigh, good athletic legs. I guessed that she played tennis in Palo Alto.

“I should tell you that I’ll be missing some classes. I have to go to doctors’ appointments.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“I might have a tropical parasite. Nigerian fluke. We lived in Africa for a year while Stanton worked for an oil company” She smiled again in the prissy way. The smile was self-mocking and embarrassed. Telling about the fluke presumed too much.“It’s probably an allergy. All the new grasses and flowers. The Bay Area is a hotbed of allergies. Stanton loved Africa. He doesn’t blame me for ruining things. I had a persistent fever. Poor Stanton quit the job because of me. He’s so good. Very healthy. He lifts weights.” She grinned, shrugged. “I go on too much.”

“Not at all. I’m interested.”

At the south gate, we said goodbye. I went to my office. There was a knock, then Henry peeked in. “Busy?” He carried an unlit cigarette. I waved him inside. He sat; lit his cigarette. His head, fixed high on a skinny neck, was eagle-like; critical. “What’s new?” he said.

“I have a student who tears at her neck while I lecture. What should I do?”

“I never thought of you as squeamish.”

“I’m not squeamish.”

“I would like to tell you about an extremely offensive student, but you won’t believe me.”

“Yes, I will.”

“If you repeat it, I’ll say it’s a lie. There’s a gentleman in my class — a a Mr. Woo — who has a mandarin fingernail.”

“No shit.”

“On the little finger of his left hand, the nail is ten inches long. It’s a symbol of his leisurely life.”

“You find his fingernail extremely offensive?”

“Why should I care about his fingernail?”

“I didn’t say you cared.”

“His face is a mass of pus pimples and he grins at me throughout the hour, as if everything I say is intended for him.”

“He’s in love with you.”

“I want to throw a knife through his face.”

“You do?”

“There’s a pilot in my class who is an alcoholic. All pilots, surgeons, and judges are drunks. You know this is true?”

“Everyone knows.”

Henry stood, turned to the door. “Let’s have lunch next week,” he said.

“O.K. Tuesday”

“Impossible.”

“Thursday.”

“No.”

“You tell me what day”

“I will.” He left.

After the next class, Toiler waited outside the room, leaning against a wall, pretending to read her notes. She wore the same suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie. She looked boyish, ascetic, pretty.

“Would you like to have coffee? I’ll buy it this time.”

I couldn’t remember saying yes.

As we talked, she didn’t touch her face or neck. Had I cured her by seeming flirtatious? Sexual juices have healing power. I’d intended nothing, but the human face, with its probing looks and receptive smiles, is a sexual organ. I wondered if Toiler, scratching at her neck, yearned only to be touched.

She said,“I won’t be able to meet you after class next time. I go to my doctor.”

I hadn’t asked her to meet me.

She missed the next class and the next and the next.

Maybe I was glad not to see her, but I didn’t wonder. I simply forgot her. Over the years whole classes go from memory, as if you’d been lecturing to nobody, hallucinating in the flow of academic seasons. Thales, the first philosopher, said everything is water. I remembered Thales as I stared out my office window at the black-green trees of the Berkeley hills and the glaring blue of a cloudless sky. A hawk circled. There was some bird or mouse, generating flirtatious signals, calling to the hawk.

The term was half over when I found Toiler waiting outside my office. “I must talk about dropping the class,” she said.

I ushered her inside, gesturing toward the chair. She wore a new suit, summery cotton, lavender with a dull sheen. Its vitality suggested compromise with California. The dark green silk of her blouse had the lush solemnity of a rain forest. It lay open negligently, not casually, revealing a bra strap and scratches on her neck, like spears of thin red grass slanted this way and that by an uncertain wind. She wasn’t cured.

“I thought you’d dropped the class.”

“It’s the doctors’ appointments. They can’t tell me anything. All they do is give me different drugs. Can I take the class independently? I’ll make up the work, do the reading on my own, and write a paper.”

A breeze, from the slightly open window behind her, pressed the back of her neck. She shivered.

“Are you uncomfortable? Move away from the window”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Independent study means conferences. Driving back and forth. Hours on the highway.”

“I want to do it.” She was resigned to the highway, resigned to sit shivering. I felt irrationally annoyed. She’d asked for only a small privilege, a chance to do the classwork.

The spasms became stronger. Her torn neck demanded attention. Was it a plea for help? Students in my office sometimes cried over disaffected boyfriends, alcoholic parents, suicidal roommates. I stood up and said, “I’ll shut the window.” I stepped to the window, knowing I wanted only to shut her blouse. The window was built in an old, luxurious style, plenty of oak and glass. I pulled. It moved a little, then stuck, fused in its runners.

“Please don’t bother,” she said.

Her face, close to my right hip, looked dismayed and apologetic, with sweet pre-Raphaelite melancholy, otherworldly, faintly morbid. Her husband didn’t blame her for ruining things. I could see why. Dreamy hair, eyes of a snow leopard, lacerated neck. I felt pity, not blame; frustration more than pity. The window wouldn’t move. Then her fingers slid beneath the sash. To pull from the bottom. Ethereal fingers vanished as sixty pounds of wood and glass rushed down. Smashed them. She gasped. I lunged, shoving the window back up, the strength of gorillas suddenly in my arms. “I’m so sorry,” I said, backing away. She whispered, “My fault, my fault,” her eyes lit by weird, apologetic glee. “I did it. It’s my own fault.”

Her hands lay palms up in her lap, fingers greenish-blue. They looked dead, a memory of hands. I sat, waiting for it to end. Turgid feeling, like the walls of a tomb, enclosed us. I said,“Drop the course. Take it independently. Do it any way you like.”

She whispered, “Don’t you care what I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know”

“I do?”

“You started this.”

“This?”

“Yes, this.”

“What? You sit there shivering in front of me. I go to the window. You stick your hands under it …”

She leaned forward and kicked me in the shin. Her green blouse, with its open collar, looked more dissolute than negligent; the torn neck fierce. Her posture stiffened, as if she carried a bowl of indignation within. Abruptly she reached to her purse, snapping it open. She removed a pearly comb and pulled it through her hair swiftly. Her hands were all right. She stopped, glanced at me, startled, remembering where she was.