Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

Here’s the mystery: Why does it take two years of prison for a man to be able to sit still, listen, notice his children, watch the sunlight on the ceiling?

8. DIXIE MAGAZINE IS on the coffee table next to the fireplace, which bristles with wrought-iron hooks and pots.

Van Dorn is on the cover.

I pick it up and hold it in the sunlight. Under Van Dorn’s picture is a list of captions:

RENAISSANCE MAN

NEW OWNER AND RESTORER OF BELLE AME

NUCLEAR WIZARD

MITSY’S TROUBLESHOOTER

INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE CHAMPION

OLYMPIC SOCCER COACH AND EDUCATOR

Van Dorn is wearing a yellow safety helmet and holding rolled-up blueprints in one hand and socking the end of the roll with the other. He’s standing in front of the house at Belle Ame and gazing at the great cooling tower of Mitsy. He’s a bit thick in the neck, but quite handsome, handsomer in the picture than in fact he is. His expression as he looks at the cooling tower is condescending, if not contemptuous. In his helmet he reminds me of a German officer standing in the open hatch of a tank and looking down at the Maginot Line.

There’s a noise above me, a breath of air? I look up.

Ellen comes whirling down the staircase. She’s wearing her Trinidad outfit, a bright orange-and-black print wound around her like a sari. It flares as she descends, showing her strong bare brown legs. She’s gained weight. The muscle on her shin curves out like a dancer’s. In her hair she’s woven a bit of the same cloth in a bright corona of color.

She’s effusive, gives me a hug and a kiss, as if she hadn’t seen me since Trinidad. Maybe she was too sleepy to remember me last night.

“Good God,” she says, frowning and backing off, eyeing me up and down in her old canny Presbyterian style. “Where did you get that suit? Throw it away. Burn it.”

Her skin is as clear as ever, almost translucent, transmitting a peach glow of health, her skin faintly crimsoned, like flesh over light. She’s put on weight but not too much. Her tightly wrapped Trinidad sari becomes her.

An idea occurs to me.

“You’re looking extremely well.”

“Well, thank you.”

“The tan is very becoming. Moreover—”

“It ought to be. I worked on it. I usually peel.”

“Do you remember how nice it used to be in the afternoon?”

“What? Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“What do you say if we go in there for a while?” I nod to the downstairs bedroom.

“That’s the best proposal I’ve had all week!” she says, too heartily.

“Well?”

“Dummy, we’ve got to go to the awards dinner in thirty minutes.”

“This will only take fifteen.”

“Oh, for—! That’s Chandra’s bedroom now.”

“Chandra won’t mind. Do you remember the Sears Best?” Sears Best was a king-size mattress on a big brass bedstead.

“What? Oh, I certainly do. And it certainly was!”

I look at her. She is both hearty and preoccupied. She taps her tooth.

“Do you remember standing at the sink and being approached from behind?”

“What? Oh.” She blushes. For half a second I could swear she remembered love in the afternoon and was on the very point of heading for Sears Best. But she frowns, looks at her watch, makes her clucking sound. “Oh, God, I forgot. I have to call Sheri Comeaux about tonight. What — a — pain!”

“I don’t think I can make it.”

“Why the hell not?” Her fists are on her hips.

“I’m not much for school functions—” I begin.

“Well, hear this. You damn well better be. This happens to be important to Tommy and for his future. It just so happens that Tommy is getting an award for summer soccer, the award, and that he is Olympic material. It also just so happens that if Tommy and Margaret are going to Belle Ame Academy, an honor in itself, you had damn well better show some interest, because Van is already breaking the rules taking them this late.”

And so on. Instead of letting me lay her properly on a kingsize bed, she picks a king-size argument. Van Dorn, it seems, has started up a private school at Belle Ame on the English model, with tutors, proctors, forms, and suchlike. Ellen has yanked Tommy and Margaret out of St. Michael’s — it’s possible because school has just started. It’s all right with me, I’ve already agreed, but for some reason she wants to pick a religious argument. This is, in a sense, funny. It is as if I were still a Catholic and she a Presbyterian, when in fact I am only a Catholic in the remotest sense of the word — I haven’t given religion two thoughts or been to Mass for years, except when Rinaldo said Mass on the Gulf Coast, and then I went because it was a chance to get out of the clink — and Ellen is now an Episcopalian. She’s become one of those Southern Anglicans who dislike Catholics — Romans, she calls them — and love all things English.

I won’t argue. She can send them to Eton if she likes. Mainly I’m glad to have her back. Very well, I’ll go to the awards dinner. There’s something else on my mind. But my acquiescence only makes her angrier.

“And not only that,” she says, fists still on hips.

“Yes?” I say, thinking how nice it would be, what with all this anger, flushed face, flashing eyes, if — and in fact say as much. “It certainly would be nice if we could fight it out in there.”

“And not only that,” she repeats.

“Yes?”

“For Tommy’s sake, you better remember you promised to take Van fishing.”

“I remember,” I say gloomily.

“All right.” Again she looks me up and down, me in my Bruno Hauptmann suit. “And get dressed, for heaven’s sake. And keep in mind about Van.”

What I keep in mind is her voluptuousness and distractedness. It is odd. At the height of her anger she’s both voluptuous and distracted, preoccupied by something. Her eyes do not quite focus on me.

9. THE AWARDS BANQUET is shorter and less painful than I had feared. I manage not to drink. What is surprising is that Ellen does — does drink — something she seldom did, and not merely drink but in the end gets so drunk I have to take her home. Sheri Comeaux explains why. Van Dorn let her down, did not invite her to the North Americans at Fresno.

John Van Dorn is doing a very graceful job emceeing the banquet and passing out trophies. He is talking about the summer soccer camp and plans for the soccer “program” during the academic year at Belle Ame. Afterward he passes out trophies. When he hands Tommy his trophy, a gold-colored statuette, he doesn’t let go, so there are the two of them holding the trophy while Van Dorn speaks. Tommy is embarrassed. He doesn’t know whether to keep holding on to the trophy or what to do with his eyes.

“I have one little suggestion for you moms and dads,” says Van Dorn, who is not embarrassed. “What would you say to giving up your sons and daughters to this program for four years? That’s all I ask. And what do I promise in return?” He pauses, looks at the moms and dads, looks at Tommy, speaks in a soft voice. “What I promise is a good shot at the Junior Olympic gold for this team four years from now in Olympia, Greece, where the original Olympics were held.”

Applause, cheering. From Tommy only relief when Van Dorn lets go of the trophy and he can sit down.

Ellen, surprisingly, is already drinking a lot. Ordinarily she’d be the proud mom, but she polishes off her third Absolut, smiles and applauds, and goes to the ladies’ room.

“Listen, Tom,” says Sheri Comeaux, pulling me close. We’re sitting at a table for four in the rear of the Camellia Room of the Holiday Inn. Bob Comeaux is silent and distant, as if we had had no dealings this morning. Their son Ricky also got a trophy, but a smaller, silver-colored one. “I have to talk fast. Ellen just found out Van’s not going to the North Americans and she’s taking it hard. She had her heart set on it. They’d have won for sure.”