Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Yes,” George Mills said. “She was very beautiful.” He remembered that when they were introduced she’d taken his hand and held it in both her own.

“You were with Judy,” she said. “You’re the man with the back.” And she’d touched Mills there, where his back ached, and her touch had radiated comfort through his shirt, warming him.

“I suppose if you thought about it you could remember the boots, how they laced up the side, the way they were tooled, the particular purchase they gave to her stance?”

“She stood,” George Mills said, “like someone poised on a diving board. Jenny Greener was plain.”

“Nora wouldn’t let her alone once she found out how smart she was. She kept inviting her over to the house. (She introduced them.) After a while Jenny couldn’t figure out how to turn her down anymore. She had this way of explaining things. Formulas, principles. Better than professors. So that for as long as she could keep Jenny talking even Nora believed she’d get the stuff. She could even give it back, work out the problems, solve them, get round the doglegs and sand traps of architecture, cracking all the difficult ciphers of the discipline Losey had chosen for her. That’s what they talked about. This was their dinner table conversation. Housing, the redevelopment of downtown, the drawbacks of solar.

“And her husband beaming, beaming, ready to bust his buttons. Proud as a pop with a kid on the dean’s list — on the arm at the ball park, management’s, the home team’s straight-A’d, honor-roll’d guest. (Listen, listen, I know how he’d feel! I don’t blame him, I don’t even apologize for him. This isn’t sublimation, reflected glory, suspect, vicarious motive. I’m not talking about pride of ownership, I’m not even talking about pride. Love. I’m talking about love, all simple honor’s good will and best wishes. So I know how he’d feel!)

“Losey may have been having second thoughts. He must have had them. Thinking — I don’t know — thinking, Gee, maybe I made a mistake, maybe there’s something harder than architecture, higher. (Not better paid, because, be fair, he didn’t give a damn whether his wife ever earned back from the profession even half what it had cost him to get her into it in the first place. What could he do with more money? Figure new ways to hide it? He was still busting his hump on the old ways, which, face it, be fair, were only his accountant’s ideas anyway, only the tried and true evasive actions of sheltering dough. Because he’s right. When he says ‘You know me, Cornell, it isn’t the money.’ He’s right, it isn’t. It’s just another way of having and doing what others in those brackets have and do.) Thinking: Gee, maybe I should have pushed her into astronomy, aeronautical engineering. Maybe I should have run her for governor.

“Till that damned letter came. It was addressed to Losey. It could have been an honest mistake. It could have been the chairman’s joke; I hope it was Nora’s. But it was actually very nice, very sympathetic and concerned. Like those letters company commanders write next of kin when the news is bad.

“It said that while Nora gave every indication she was trying, really trying, and was extremely cooperative and obviously bright, and, oh yes, especially gifted as a draftsman and quite clearly imaginative, there was this problem with her math, this basic flaw on the scientific side. He was sorry, he said, but he was afraid that if she couldn’t bring that part of it up, Dr. Losey, his daughter was in danger of going on academic probation.

“Losey was furious. ‘Does that son of a bitch actually think I’m old enough to be your father?’

“But be fair, give him credit. He would get her a tutor. She could bring up her statics and dynamics, she could bring up her knowledge of mechanical systems. She was extremely cooperative and obviously bright. Even that pompous prick of a chairman thought so. He’d get a licensed architect to help her, maybe a partner in one of the big firms downtown. He’d pay his fee, whatever those highway robbers charged when a house was commissioned. She wasn’t to worry. All she had to concentrate on was bringing up her axonometrics and isometric projections.

“ ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me earlier maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

“I’m not her confidant. I’m not even his. I mean he won’t talk about this stuff. I had no idea either. If I asked how Nora was doing in architecture school he’d mumble something vague and tell me all about some doctor’s wife he’d screwed in the islands.

“She told Judy. Judy told the Meals-on-Wheelers. The Meals-on-Wheelers told me. I tell you.

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘spilled milk. I’ll ask around. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll speak to the head of the architectural firm that’s doing our hospital annex.’

“ ‘Jenny Greener,’ she said.

“ ‘Jenny Greener?’

“ ‘Only she’s already working for you.’

“ ‘Working for me?’

“ ‘I pay her to explain the stuff. I pay her to eat supper with us.’

“ ‘Jenny Greener? The mutt?’

“ ‘She’s the head of our class. She’s the one with the grade point average. She’s the one you want.’

“She was right of course. But he didn’t trust her now. How could he? She’d kept everything to herself. All he knew was what he’d heard at the dinner table, and now he thought all the bright chatter was just some scam.

“So he checked up on her. On Jenny Greener. He called the chairman and told him he was Dr. Losey.

“ ‘Who’s top of that class?’

“ ‘Our students’ records are confidential, Dr. Losey. I’m sure you can understand that.’

“ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’m so concerned about Nora. I thought maybe if I talked to him he could give her some tips. Maybe not. I guess you’re right. Maybe women just don’t have it in the thinking department, maybe they’re just not cut out to be architects. I guess you have to accept them. Some affirmative action thing.’

“ ‘We don’t have to accept anyone,’ the chairman said. ‘Women do quite as well as men.’

“ ‘Sure,’ Losey said. ‘I guess you were only kidding when you wrote that letter about Nora. I’ll tell her you said she’s a shoe-in. That you don’t put girls on academic probation.’

“ ‘As a matter of fact, Doctor,’ the chairman said, steamed, ‘it’s a “girl,” as you put it, who’s head of that class.’

“But he wouldn’t say which girl so Losey still didn’t know.

“He got the names of her teachers and saw them during their office hours. He’d mention Jenny Greener and their eyes would light up. ‘Jenny Greener,’ one prof said, ‘Jenny Greener’s a genius.’

“ ‘A genius? Really? A genius?’

“And another told him she was the most promising student he’d ever had. And one showed him sketches. They were plans for the hospital annex. Even Losey could see how beautiful they were.

“ ‘Beautiful?’ the man said. ‘This is an actual project you know. Many of the problems we set for our students are. This is being built. Oh, I don’t mean this, I don’t mean Jenny’s, but the building, the building’s already under construction.’ The professor laughed softly. ‘Though they would have done better to use Jenny’s plans. I told McTelligent.’ McTelligent was the name of the head of the firm of architects, the one Losey was going to speak to. ‘Not only more beautiful but more cost-effective too. Do you know anything about materials?’

“ ‘I’m a surgeon,’ Losey said.

“ ‘Then perhaps you’d be interested in these,’ and showed him sketches of the new operating theaters. ‘What’s your professional opinion?