Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll make you some tea?”

“I ought to unpack first. I always unpack first thing when I get home.”

“I’ll help you unpack later. You just sit and have some tea. Are you hungry?”

“I ate dinner during the stopover in Dallas. What about you? Have you eaten?”

“I guess I haven’t. I didn’t have time after the debate.”

“Hungry?”

“Not at all. We can both have some tea and some McVities Original Digestive Biscuits. Heath and Heather Night Time or Rather Jolly Earl Grey?”

“I’ll have the Rather Jolly Passionfruit.” She smiles and angles her head coyly.

“My girl,” he says, his voice a little hoarse with emotion.

He puts the kettle on, and then gets her suitcase and trots it up to their bedroom. He knows how disciplined she is, so that the sight of it sitting there, unattended to, will spoil her fun. He comes back down, and she’s settled onto the couch, her shoes thrown off, and her long legs curled beneath her.

“I feel quite decadent not unpacking straightaway, but I guess I can be a bad girl sometimes.”

“Of course you can. Life’s a thrill!”

She’s wearing one of her short skirts, this one tight and black with pinstripes, and a pearl-gray sweater, and her languor is luscious, and he wonders whether he should put off telling her his news, but he can’t wait any longer.

He has the Harvard letter out on their dining-room table, and he walks over and picks it up and hands it to her without a word.

She places it on her lap and tilts slightly downward to read it, the fluffy halo of her pale hair falling away to reveal the lotus stem of the back of her neck, and Cass, standing there above her, gazes lovingly down on it. He would bend and softly kiss it, but she hates to be disturbed while she reads, even if it’s just the ingredient list on a food product, and he restrains himself from placing his lips on the tender exposure of her sweet neck. She straightens her back and stands and hands the letter back to Cass.

“How nice for you,” she says. Her voice sounds as if it has turned blue with cold, and the coldness has hardened her thin upper lip, and the sight of it, the transformation it casts over her face, brings an ungainly unreality into the room.

She turns away, and as soon as she does, and he doesn’t see her face, he’s sure that he hasn’t seen what he thought he had seen. She’s heading toward the stairs to their second floor, and there’s a howling sound, a long thin note as if of pain, and he realizes it’s the teakettle boiling.

“Wait a sec,” he says, and runs to the kitchen to take the kettle off and runs back to the living room, and she isn’t there. He starts heading up the stairs, but she hears his footsteps and calls down, “I’ll be down jolly soon,” so he turns around and heads back into the kitchen, and mechanically starts to make their tea.

He figures that her obsessional discipline has overpowered her, her sense of order asserting its tyranny. She’s unpacking, and then she’ll be down.

He arranges the biscuits on a plate and sets them out on the table with folded napkins, and he has strawberries, too, which he washes and hulls, and he scoops some of Lucinda’s Double Devon Cream into a bowl, and she still hasn’t come down from the bedroom.

She’s put out, he understands that. Her voice gets British when she’s annoyed, and that “jolly soon” was, to use her word, ominous. He had made a terrible mistake in not telling her immediately about Harvard’s offer. His wiser self has known it all week long and made him feel guilty. She read the date on the letter, and she can see that it was posted a week ago, and it’s jarring to learn that your lover is capable of such expert dissembling. If he can hide this particular thing so well, who knows what else he can hide? Of course she’s upset, she has every right to be. But he’ll make it clear to her that he’s not the kind to keep secrets from her, and that he never will again, never. And he shouldn’t have told anyone else either, certainly not Roz, and he’ll confess to Lucinda that he did, and he’ll hope that she will forgive him.

He wonders whether he ought to go up to her now. He knows that she’s hurt, and the longer she dwells on it without their talking, the more firmly the hurt will take hold. He knows this as a psychologist, and he knows this as a man. He moves toward the stairs and begins to climb them, heavily, so as to give her fair warning, and again she calls that she’ll be down soon and just to wait.

The tea has gone cold, and he empties out the two cups in the sink. Lucinda likes her tea just short of scalding, and he puts the kettle up again, and steps out from the kitchen, and Lucinda is standing there in the living room. She’s holding the green leather suitcase in one hand, her briefcase and purse in another.

“I thought you were unpacking,” he says stupidly.

She takes a big breath and puts her things down and then says, “We have to talk,” and in those four words he knows it all.

“This isn’t going to work,” she says.

“Because of the way that I told you about the Harvard offer.”

“That’s part of it. The insensitivity with which you just flung the offer in my face, not even waiting for me to unpack, with that terrible gloating on your face-well, it’s hard to take. I hadn’t realized how competitive you are.”

Her intonation is so British that it’s hard to believe she grew up near Philadelphia.

“Surely you can’t believe that. I’m not capable of feeling competitive with you.”

“Well, if it wasn’t competitiveness, it was still insensitivity of monstrous proportions. Did you never stop to consider how it might make me feel, given my professional situation at the moment?”

Her face has assumed a look of frigid hauteur that he’s never seen before, no matter how much contempt she’s displayed toward members of their department.

“I had thought of the offer from Harvard as being something good for both of us.”

“Well, that is, to put it generously, bizarre beyond belief. How could your professional success possibly be interpreted as benefiting me ? Ah, wait. I think I see. I hadn’t pegged you as yet another man who just doesn’t get it, but I am incurably naïve that way. You can’t possibly appreciate what it is like for me, how hard I have had to struggle to be taken seriously. It’s never enough, no matter how much I do. And now you think I shall be content to bask in your reflected glory.”

“That’s preposterous, your basking in my reflected glory. I would never dream of thinking that my work could even be compared to yours.”

“And it can’t. I don’t mean to be hurtful, I’m not that kind of person, but you and I both know that this boon you’re enjoying has nothing to do with science. I know that the psychology of religion is topical, but it’s soft, and it’s shoddy, and if the world hadn’t suddenly gone mad on religion, no one would be lauding you like this. It’s deplorable that academia should prostitute itself, but there it is. Not even Harvard is above it. In fact, Harvard least of all, with that ludicrous delusion of self-importance that makes every Harvard professor feel he’s a public intellectual, qualified to comment on issues far beyond his expertise. You’ll do very well there.”

Lucinda, holding herself ramrod-straight, walks over to the bay window overlooking the street and peers out, and then comes back to Cass.

“I’m just watching for the cab. I’m spending the night at the Charles Hotel. I’ll get in touch with you about collecting my things.”

“You don’t think there’s anything for us to talk over? Your mind is completely made up?”