T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

The light had faded from the sky and the streets were pretty well deserted. I had the bourbon to fuel me, and, as I say, I kept myself in tiptop shape, so I was able to make the ten blocks to campus in what must have been record time, though I wasn’t running or even jogging, but moving along expeditiously for all that. I climbed the familiar steps of Biology Hall, went in through the unlocked door and mounted the stairs. I found the office dark, the building silent. Perhaps I rattled the knob of the office door a time or two — I could have used my key, but what was the sense? — and then turned and went back down the stairs. I thought about another drink, about stopping somewhere, but I didn’t.

All the way back, I kept thinking how odd this was, how unlike Iris. She was taking classes still, of course — this was her last semester — and that involved research papers, library work and such, but she’d always taken care of that sort of thing during the day so we could be together at night. I set a brisk pace on the way back, because I was concerned now, frustrated in the way I got on the rare occasions when I misplaced something and wound up endlessly retracing my steps, running round in circles till I either found it or gave up on it altogether. My pen, for instance. I had a sleek silver Parker pen Iris had given me for my birthday, and one afternoon after lunch I couldn’t seem to find it. Up and down from my desk I went, back and forth to the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the anteroom, till Prok lifted his head from his work and asked in an irritated voice what exactly I thought I was doing. I told him, and he gave me a long wondering frown before going back to his papers, but I was up and down all afternoon until finally, on my sixth or seventh trip, I found the pen in the men’s washroom, on the metal tray above the sink, where I’d scrawled a note to myself after washing up. It was a bit neurotic, I suppose, but when I felt that things were out of my control, that something was wrong, that I’d fouled up somehow, I had difficulty breathing and I’m sure my blood pressure shot up. Jittery. I felt jittery, as if I’d consumed one too many cups of coffee. That was how I felt now, coming up the final block in the dark, when I should have been home with my wife and a casserole.

A car door slammed up ahead, I saw the red flash of the taillights like cigarette burns in the dark garment of the night, and the car — it was light-colored — passed under the streetlight and disappeared at the far end of the block. Was there a figure there, a shade against the shade, moving up the walk of one of the houses on our side of the street? It was dark. I couldn’t be sure. Two minutes later, I came through the door and Iris was there, bent over the oven.

“Jesus, Iris,” I said, “where’ve you been? I was, well, I was here and I turned off the casserole—”

She looked flushed, as if she’d been running laps or springing up off the trampoline at the gymnasium, an exercise she loved, incidentally, and I’d watched her at it, the tight focus of her concentration, her arms flapping as if she were about to take wing and her hair rising straight up off her head in defiance of gravity. The casserole was in her two hands, the red pot holders climbing up over the handles. She set it down on the counter and gave me a smile that faded as soon as it bloomed. “That was the right thing to do,” she said. “Because it would have burned.”

I was in the kitchen now, the bead curtains rattling behind me like a swarm of angry insects. “But where were you? I was worried. I, well, I went all the way back to the office, just to see if, you, well, if you were there.”

“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t expect you so early.” She was opening a can of peas, her back to me so I couldn’t read her face, brisk movements, the pot, the flame, and then to the table to set out the plates and cutlery. “Do you want milk with this tonight — or will water do? Or juice?”

“What was it?” I said. “Studying? Didn’t you just have an exam last week?”

She was in motion, brushing by me, the beads rattling, to the table and back. She wasn’t looking at me, her eyes fixed on anything but me — the table, the icebox, the floor. “Studying,” she said, “that’s right. I was studying.”

“Where? At the library? Because I was in the bio library all afternoon, and you should’ve — but you needed the main, right? For what, for Huntley’s class?”

The casserole had gone to the trivet in the center of the table and she’d poured me a glass of milk, staunch and white, the glass standing beside the plate in a still-life representation of the ordinary. She looked harried. Looked unhappy.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

She held herself right there, the peas in a slotted spoon, the hot pan balanced at the edge of the table. “Oh, John, I’m not good at this. I’m just not.”

This was the fever, this was it, the moment that had my heart pounding. I didn’t say a word.

Two scoops of peas, one on each plate. “You might as well know — I was with Purvis. I–I went to the office, looking for you, to surprise you, and he was just locking up …”

“That was his car? Just now, when I came up the street?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said. “And so? Did he give you a lift home, did you go out with him for a drink or what?”

“No,” she said, her eyes dodging mine. “Or, yes, he gave me a lift home.”

I shrugged. He’d given her a lift. Case closed.

She was still holding the pot of peas, still hovering over the table. “But I’m not going to lie to you, John, neither one of us is. I’m not that sort of person, and I think you know that.” There was a pause then, and I suppose somewhere in the world ships were passing in the night, freighters foundering, the ice narrowing in the narrow passages. “We — we had a relationship.”

I just stared at her.

“In the office. On the desk.”

“In the office,” I repeated.

“Purvis and I.” Her eyes went cold a moment. “It’s nothing to worry over,” she said, and the pot found its way to the table even as she wiped her trembling hands on the apron at her hips. “You know, John,” she said. “The human animal.”

It was around this time that we began to conduct our first interviews with children, which, as most people will know, served not only to break a long-standing taboo but to lay the foundation for the many studies into childhood sexuality that were to follow. In fact, in trying to reconstruct events, I’m almost certain that our initial foray into the field must have come just after that unnerving scene with Iris — the very next morning — because I remember distinctly how unsettled I was, turning the situation over and over again in my mind as if it were a sharp-edged object I could worry until it was as smooth as fired clay. It was odd. As I sat beside Prok in the front seat of the Buick on our way to the Fillmore School in Indianapolis, listening to him chatter on about infantile sexuality and the preadolescent awakening of desire, I couldn’t help feel that my emotions were on a collision course with my objectivity. I kept telling myself that I was a researcher and that sentiment had no place in the scientific ledger, no quantifiable value at all. It was a negative, a disqualifier, a weakness that had to be conquered. Prok had indoctrinated me well, and I was getting there, almost over the hump, but I kept slipping back. I couldn’t help myself.

“Are you all right?” Prok asked, giving me one of his hooded, searching looks.

I must have been twisting in my seat, jittering a knee, lifting my chin to the flicker of roadside light as if I were on my way to martyrdom, but at least I didn’t have to face Corcoran, not yet anyway — Prok had given him three days off to see to his affairs and attend his daughters’ Easter pageant back in South Bend.