Alison Lurie - Truth and Consequences

You are a bad influence on me, he thought now, looking at Delia as she lay flushed and disheveled on a black leather sofa on Central Park West. And I am a bad influence on you. And I don’t care.

ELEVEN

A few days later, on a misty October afternoon, Jane sat brooding in her office at the Unger Center. The Copy Monster was giving trouble again, the kitchen was full of noise and dust and confusion caused by the men from Buildings and Grounds who had finally come to replace the fallen ceiling, and Susie and the cleaning crew had done no typing or cleaning because they had spent the entire morning moving Delia Delaney into Alan’s office and Alan into Delia’s, without consulting Jane. “She told me it was all right; she said he’d agreed,” Susie had explained.

At first Jane had suspected that Delia had made this up, but Alan (who was at home recovering from a semi-sleepless night) had confirmed it. No, he didn’t really mind, he said in a flat, neutral voice, after informing Jane that she had woken him up and that he was in severe pain. But Jane minded: though she tried not to show it, she was furious. Yet again Delia was grabbing whatever she wanted without considering anyone else—without considering the schedule of the Center or Alan’s need for peace and northern light.

You are a hopeless ninny, she thought as she looked across the desk at Susie, and Delia is a greedy, selfish egotist. As an administrator it was Jane’s job to maintain a cool but friendly attitude toward all the Fellows; but over the past two months she had come to dislike and resent Delia thoroughly. Why should a woman like that not only get more than Jane’s yearly salary for sitting in an office for nine months and giving two lectures, but also be married to Henry Hull?

Jane sighed and rested her head against the screen of her computer. She knew that these thoughts were deeply unprofessional; they were also morally wrong, because they were partly based on jealousy. Somehow over the last two months, in spite of all her efforts, she had not only become a resentful unloving wife but was on the edge of becoming an unfaithful one. Already the hot stains of Henry Hull’s kisses under the maple tree were on her face and neck, and one, the worst one, just above her left breast, over the heart. And last night, while she lay silently awake after a dream full of flying tropical birds, listening to Alan groan and shift about and pull the covers off her and toward him, she had faced the fact that she was in love with Henry Hull. It wasn’t just frustrated desire she felt: it was awe and wonder and a bright dizzy feeling of flying and floating whenever she thought of him.

But what she felt was wrong and awful and disloyal. “I brought you the acorn squash, like I promised, but I can’t see you again,” she had told him at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday, as they stood in front of a display of misshapen organic pumpkins, like huge orange lopsided hearts. “Not like this.”

“But you want to,” Henry had suggested.

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not right.”

A wheeze of cool, foggy air from the hall announced that someone had entered the building. Jane sat up abruptly and composed her expression into one of helpful neutrality. Then she saw that the visitor was Henry, in the same tan duffle coat he had worn two days ago, a coat she now knew the warm, rough texture of intimately. She rose and hurried out into the hall to intercept him.

“Please, I asked you not to come here,” she said in a lowered, trembling voice. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“This is an official visit,” Henry replied. “Delia sent me. She’s concerned about the room she’ll be speaking in next week. She doesn’t think it will be big enough.”

“I don’t see why,” Jane told him. “There’s over a hundred and fifty seats in Shaw Hall. It’s much larger than the room here where the other Fellows have spoken.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Henry ran one hand through his untidy brown curls in an untidy manner. “But you know, Delia has a lot of fans. It won’t be just students. Whenever she reads anywhere lately, these mobs of intense-looking women appear. I think you’d better count on at least three hundred.”

“Really,” Jane said. Already this reading had become an annoyance to her. The photo that Delia had given her for the publicity release and the poster was, in Jane’s opinion, on the edge of unsuitable. Delia’s abundant loose hair, low-cut lace blouse, and dreamy, sex-stunned expression suggested the cover of a paperback romance rather than a University lecture. To make matters worse, Selma Schmidt had taken it upon herself to make an extra hundred copies of the poster on hot-pink paper and tack them up all over town. Maybe this would attract a few more listeners; but it seemed very unlikely to Jane that there were three hundred people in Hopkins County who would want to hear Delia’s arty, self-conscious poems and tales.

“I promised her you’d fix it.” Henry moved nearer to Jane; he touched her hand. She pulled it away, but the place still burnt. “Let’s keep her happy, it’s so much less trouble.”

“I don’t know,” Jane temporized, reluctant to give Delia anything in addition to what she already had that she didn’t deserve. “It’s pretty late to find another room, but I’ll try.” Only not too hard, she thought.

“And I’ll see you this Saturday at the Farmers’ Market? About ten?”

“All right,” she repeated weakly, aware that in fact it was all wrong.

“So how’s it going?” Henry asked, sitting down next to Jane in a noisy, crowded coffee shop. Outside it was steadily and heavily raining: the bench by the lake where they usually sat was soaked and dark with water.

“Oh, all right.” As Jane lifted her cup she was aware that her hand was shaking. All week she had been dreading and desiring this meeting, dreading and desiring what Henry might do or say.

“How’s Alan?”

“So-so.” She tried to gather her thoughts. “He’s been very involved with making drawings for that show in New York. But then yesterday . . .”

“Yeah?”

Jane stared at Henry. How could he be so calm? she thought. It was as if he had taken a six-week step back in time, to a place where nobody felt anything much and all they did was complain politely about their spouses. Of course that was right; it was what they should do. With effort, she tried to take a similar step back. “Well, yesterday he was telling me how he hadn’t been able to finish his exercises because of the pain. And I made a mistake, I suggested he might try going for walks instead. Because his doctor said that he should lose some weight, to put less strain on his back. And he got irritated.”

“Ah.”

“He told me I ought to realize it wasn’t as easy as I thought to walk when you were in constant pain and every step you took hurt.” Jane spoke almost in a whisper, aware that the people at the tables on either side of them could hear every word.

“Um.”

“I said I was sorry, but he’s been difficult ever since, he—” Jane realized that Henry wasn’t looking at her or even listening to her, only staring out the plate-glass window, where rain streaked down in gray sheets. She felt something like despair. Always before he had sympathized, met her complaints with his own. “So how’s Delia?” she asked forlornly.

“All right.” He swallowed visibly. “I don’t want to talk about her. I want to talk about us. But not here. Isn’t there somewhere quieter we can go?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“What about the Center? Don’t you have a key?”

“Yes, but so do all the Fellows. Charlie Amir often comes in on Saturday, and so does Selma Schmidt.”

Henry laughed shortly. “So what? They aren’t going to report us.”