Richard Russo: That Old CapeMagic

Despite deep misgivings, Griffin had accepted the university’s invitation to attend his mother’s retirement dinner. (Joy had volunteered to go as well, but he insisted on sparing her.) There happened to be a bumper crop of retirees that year, and each was given the opportunity to reflect on his or her many years of service to the institution. He found it particularly disconcerting that his mother was the last speaker on the program. He supposed it was possible the planners were saving the best, most distinguished retirees for last, though more likely they shared his misgivings about what might transpire, and putting her last represented damage control. When it was finally her turn, his mother rose to a smattering of polite applause and went to the podium. That she was wearing an expensive, well-tailored suit only deepened apprehension. “Unlike my colleagues,” she said directly into the microphone, the only speaker of the evening to recognize that fundamental necessity, “I’ll be brief and honest. I wish I could think of something nice to say about you people and this university, I really do. But the truth we dare not utter is that ours is a distinctly second-rate institution, as are the vast majority of our students, as are we.” Then she returned to her seat and patted Griffin ’s hand, as if to say, There, now; that wasn’t so bad, was it? What she actually said in the stunned silence was, “Here’s something strange. For the first time in over a decade, I wish your father were here. He’d have enjoyed that.”

His father had fared even worse after the divorce. He, too, had attempted reinvention by attaching himself to the new American Studies major. He’d always been at least as interested in politics and history as literature, and the university had been willing to lend half of him to American Studies provided his colleagues in English had no objections (they certainly didn’t). His new office was one floor down in the Modern and Classical Languages Building, and Claudia, a big strapping graduate student, had offered to help him move his seventy or so boxes of books and periodicals. A lot of bending over was required and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Though he hadn’t really noticed her before, he did now, and his colleagues noticed him notice, remarking that it was clear which half of him was moving down to American Studies and which was remaining behind in English. Griffin was pretty sure his father had little desire to remarry and probably wouldn’t have but for the university ban on faculty-student fraternizing. Which was absurd. It wasn’t like Claudia was an undergraduate. She was twenty-nine, a grown-up (even by American university standards) who didn’t need any institutional protection, though several of her male professors wanted to know who would protect them from her . What Claudia did need, according to many in the department, was help, a lot of it, in completing her degree. She’d narrowly passed her doctoral prelims on the second and final attempt, one of her examiners abstaining, after which it took her a full academic year to come up with an acceptable dissertation topic, and like a prize heifer at a county fair, she had to be led (by his father) every step of the way. To Griffin, she indeed had a bovine quality. A full head taller than his father, she had wide hips and full breasts that always seemed to be in motion beneath the loose blouses she favored.

And so it was that this distinguished senior professor woke up one morning to the realization that while his wife had retooled herself as an adventurous gender specialist, he’d reinvented himself as a fool. Naked Lunch , Griffin ’s mother remarked, had finally won the day, showing poor Jeeves the door. Which may have been why, when an old graduate-school friend, who was now a dean at the University of Massachusetts, called to ask if he’d consider a one-year appointment replacing a professor who’d fallen ill, he eagerly accepted. Griffin ’s mother, of course, had been apoplectic with fury when she heard. Amherst, after all, was-what-two hours from the Cape? He and the fat cow would be able to spend weekends there, or even on the Vineyard or Nantucket, while she was stuck in the Mid-fucking-west with a mute for company. But there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, which she determined, according to Griffin ’s father, by trying really, really hard.

He and Claudia were gone a full year, returning to the university only at the last possible moment, on Labor Day weekend. Griffin, just then between scripts, had flown to Indiana for a couple days. He hadn’t seen his father once during his Amherst stint, and he looked as if he must’ve spent the whole time in a TB ward. He’d aged a good ten years. Always slender and concave chested, he was now rail thin, with shrunken cheeks, and his hair had receded. Apparently to compensate, he wore what strands remained long on the back and sides, making him look like a Dickensian gravedigger. By contrast, Claudia had become even more zaftig. During Griffin ’s brief visit, she found numerous opportunities to insinuate her lush body near his, pillowing her unfettered breast against his arm or, if he happened to be sitting, the back of his head, gestures his father appeared not to notice.

They’d returned with excellent news, his father said. Claudia had finished her dissertation, and to celebrate they’d gotten married. He smiled bravely in relating this, while Claudia’s bovine version was of a different sort altogether. Their marriage had to remain a secret for now, he explained, until she’d defended her dissertation and she had her degree in hand. Griffin wasn’t sure he followed the logic of all this, but it wasn’t any of his business, so he agreed not to breathe a word to anyone, especially his mother. Which was why he was surprised when he met her and Bart for lunch in the faculty dining room and the first words out of her mouth were: “So, did your father tell you he’s married?”

In fact, she was full of information. No, his father wasn’t ill, though she agreed he did look like death warmed over. What he was, she claimed, was exhausted, and why wouldn’t he be? During his year at UMass, he’d not only taught all his classes but also researched and-get this-actually written Claudia’s dissertation. When Griffin asked her how she could possibly know this, since neither his father nor Claudia was likely to have confided it to anyone, she just gave him a look. “And that’s not even the best part,” she continued. “She wasn’t even with your father.” When his mother dropped this bomb, Griffin glanced over at Bartleby Though he hadn’t yet gone completely mute, he shrugged, as if to say, Don’tlook at me; I just live here .

Claudia, his mother went on, had gone with his father to Amherst, that much was true. But she hadn’t stayed long. The tiny house they’d rented was almost twenty miles from the university, and since they only had one car, Claudia either had to go in to campus or else be stranded there in the boonies until he got home. “Work on your dissertation,” his father had suggested. Indeed, he may have rented this particular house in order to give her little alternative but to buckle down. Her response, apparently, delivered in her thick-as-molasses, blasé fashion, was “All day long?”

In mid-October there’d been a cold snap, and after several days of frigid drizzle she’d announced to Griffin ’s father one morning that she meant to go to Atlanta to visit a friend for a while. Even her pussy was frostbit, she claimed, to which he replied he’d have no way of knowing. Why didn’t they discuss things later that evening when he returned? But by then she was gone.

His mother admitted to being a bit vague about exactly when he discovered this “friend” wasn’t in fact a woman and also that he (and now Claudia) wasn’t in Atlanta but in Charleston. Apparently she’d been trying to throw him off track-and here Griffin’s mother chortled-as if he came from a long line of tough cops and private eyes and was the sort of guy who’d give immediate chase and never give up, whereas in actuality what he’d done was sigh deeply and say to himself, So… she’s gone, then .