T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

As for the Institute, though we wouldn’t incorporate for three years yet, we were growing in prestige and autonomy both, and along with our full-time secretary — the formidable Mrs. Bella Matthews — we’d taken on part-time clerical help as well, and this necessitated shifting things around to fit another desk in the offices, Mrs. Matthews going into the anteroom and the part-timers finding space alongside Corcoran. The library, all of it acquired at Prok’s personal expense and already running to some five thousand items — books in the field, photographs, artwork, sex diaries and the like — had taken over every available inch of space in the inner office and a locked, windowless spare room down the hall that once had been used to store lab equipment. To say that we were cramped for space would be an understatement. Even more pressing was the need for “more hands,” as Prok put it — that is, another researcher to assist in collecting the new and astonishing figure of one hundred thousand histories he was now determined to record.

To that end, we had begun to send out feelers to various academic institutions — and Prok tirelessly canvassed his colleagues around the country in an attempt to attract a candidate who would reflect well on our research. At that point, I had only a baccalaureate to my name, and Corcoran his Master’s, and so Prok had his sights set on an older man — in his thirties, that is — with a Ph.D. in the social sciences or psychology, and from a prestigious university. He himself, of course, was a Harvard man, and though he never said as much in an effort to spare our feelings, he was looking for someone whose credentials and affiliation could balance out our rather pedestrian state university degrees. As I recall, we did conduct some interviews through the fall and into the spring of the following year—1945—but the response wasn’t what we’d hoped for. The war was still in progress, after all, and the vast majority of the workforce still employed by Uncle Sam.

On the home front — the personal home front, that is, in the kitchen, living room and bedroom of the apartment Iris and I shared at 619 Elm Street — things began to even out as well. Every marriage experiences growing pains, and certainly we’d had ours, but now I was home, or home more frequently than I had been, and I was determined to make up for past mistakes. I made a real effort to be there on time for dinner each night, even if it meant getting to the office earlier in the morning in order to accommodate the workload; I tried to talk more about literature, art, current events, and less about Prok and sex; I gave up going to the tavern after work and attempted to help around the house as much as I could, though I have to admit I was no paragon here — but I was trying, at least I was trying. Over time, I even began to tolerate the cat. And if I balked initially over the issue of having a child (the usual excuses: we were too young, we couldn’t afford it, a cat was one thing and a baby another), I recalled my moment of clarity at the Fillmore School, children, children everywhere, and it wasn’t long before I began to come round to Iris’s way of thinking.

That first night was a trial, though, and I don’t mind admitting it. We didn’t seem to be communicating, not at all, and I should have been more sympathetic, but I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and I wasn’t at my best. Far from it. Just as she was softening, at the very moment I was about to dig the bracelet out of my suitcase and make everything right again, the cat came between us and somehow the cat managed to metamorphose into a hypothetical child. “I want a baby, John,” she said, and I didn’t even think, didn’t hesitate or bother with the emotional calculus, just said no. And Iris, with the pot rattling on the stove and I don’t know how much gin in her, not to mention the residue of an afternoon’s gossip with Violet Corcoran, threw it back at me. “Fine,” she said, “if that’s how you feel you can sleep right here on the couch then, because you’re not coming near me, not even for a touch, a kiss, nothing. You hear me?”

And that was it, the end of our joyful reunion. She took the cat into the bedroom and slammed the door and I went out to the nearest bar and drank bourbon in a corner all by myself while people crowded around the radio and listened to news of the war and I seethed and ached and went faint with lust for her, for my own wife, five weeks away from home and no sex, no affection, nothing but rancor and a cat. I was furious. Heartbroken. Disgusted with myself and with her too — with marriage, the whole corrupt and coercive institution. Prok was right: man was pansexual, and it was only convention — law, custom, the church — that kept him from expressing himself with any partner that came along, of whatever sex or species. Marriage was a ball and chain. It was slavery. And it sanctioned nothing but acrimony. I walked home in the rain, haunted by lust, slept on the couch and woke with a hangover. I was gone before she got up.

At work, I tried to solicit Prok’s advice, but he was moving at light speed, flying from his desk to mine and Corcoran’s and Mrs. Matthews’s and back again, five weeks of accumulated correspondence and metastasizing problems to conquer and all in a single day, because with Prok nothing could wait till tomorrow. It was late in the afternoon before I was finally able to corner him. He’d gone to the lavatory — with a file of papers in one hand and his fountain pen in the other — and I waited at the door for him. When he emerged five minutes later, chin down, shoulders squared, in his usual headlong rush, I made as if I were on the way to the lavatory myself and just happened to run into him. “Oh,” I said, “Prok, hello. But do you have a minute? I wanted to, well, have a word with you, if that’s all right, if you have time, that is—”

As I’ve said, of all the individuals I’ve ever known, Prok was the most rigorously attuned to the subconscious signals people give out when they’re distressed or angry or simply trying to cover up their feelings. He would have made a master detective. Now he just gave me a look — the sudden blue fastening of the eyes, the flash of the spectacles — and said, “Problems at home?”

“No,” I said. “Or, yes, in a way.”

A pair of biology professors — a zoologist in a lab coat and a botanist in shirtsleeves — stepped round us on their way to the lavatory and we both paused a moment to greet them. Once the door had closed, Prok turned back to me, his expression mild and receptive. “Yes,” he said, “go on.”

“Iris wants a baby.”

He lifted his eyebrows. The grin — the famous grin — sprang to his lips. “That’s marvelous news,” he said. “Simply marvelous. Is she pregnant?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, no. She just — last night, I mean.”

“I understand,” he said, taking me by the hand. “It’s a big step. But it’s all part of the natural progression, John, nothing to worry over. Children are a joy, you’ll see. And if it’s money you’re worried about, I’m sure we can make some sort of arrangement when the time comes.”

“It’s not that. It’s more the principle. I slept on the couch last night.”

He said nothing to this, just held my eyes, awaiting the sequel, as if I were one of his interviewees.

“It was because of our trip, that we extended it, that is. She got a cat — for company, she claims — and now she brings up this other issue.”

“Of a child.”

“Yes. But I resent it. I’m not ready to take on the responsibility, Prok, and even if I was, she’s making it a demand, and she says she won’t, well, she won’t sleep with me until I give in. That’s what she said.”