John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Yeah,” the boy whispered. “And I do believe in omens.”

Will Hodge inhaled. The night was hot. The sky god was misanthropic, his brother had said, and the underworld god was totally indifferent to man.

He saw their two white bodies in the moonlight, slowly dancing, reaching toward each other as if in sorrow. “Omens,” he said. His voice broke. Suddenly, boldly, seizing the word with all his force, he said: “Bosh!”

Then, trembling, Hodge left the church.

1

3 p.m. Louise Hodge stands at the window in her husband’s study, once the sunporch, looking out, unseeing, at the street. Danny is asleep upstairs, Madeline still at school. Louise holds the Pride in one hand, the dust-paper in the other. It is useless to try to clean up in here — folders, files, manilla envelopes everywhere, even the papers on the floor sacrosanct, the wastebaskets not to be dumped except by Will himself. Yet she comes, from time to time, full of high resolve, partly because standing here in Will’s cluttered study (the old pipes he has not smoked in years clumsily lined up in the crudely homemade piperack which stands on the windowsill, pipe-cleaners sticking out from the pipestems) she can sometimes feel her life is not, after all, completely senseless.

He’ll drive himself crazy, she thinks. He works night and day and hates it, or anyway no longer has any faith that the work he does makes sense, yet likes nothing else either — except singing in the choir, which he no longer has time for, or playing the cello, except that the longer he goes without playing the more frustrated he is when he gets to it again. Once we used to go to movies; not now.

She shares his indifference. Every time they go there’s some tiresome picture about sex — the hilarious adventures (as the posters say) of some girl who bats her eyelashes or some would-be gallant who cannot erect, or some fool who has too many fiancées (each and all indescribably dull) — or they go to some art film, some profound and daring psychological analysis (the posters claim) of a nymphomaniac or frigid woman or a rapist or molester of children. Is there nothing else left to talk about? What is worse, one cannot even admit to one’s boredom. The parties — the few they go to — are worse than the movies.

“What’s the matter with them all?” Louise Hodge asks the street. Their party friends, she means. It was better at home, in her childhood, when all people talked about was neighbors or accidents or the shortest route to Cincinnati, or they quoted long conversations that had no point, or told of their kidney stones.

But she knows well enough what the trouble is. They don’t know the same people, living, as they do, in twenty different suburbs — all identical but having nothing in common, nothing human anyway: not Mrs. Wartz, ninety-two, who just fell down the cellar stairs, or Charley Parish who married that girl from Rome, Italy, and her not half-grown. They could talk, if they talked of such things at all, only in wearisome abstractions, not of neighbors but of what neighbors in general are like — the coffee klatches, the crabgrass business, the children in the yard. Not of particular places but of the abstract idea of a shopping center, and then sometimes a spurt of excitement when you mention some huge, dull store where everybody’s been. And to complicate matters, one is — their circle is — polite. Too much comparison of neighbors or shopping centers can turn into rivalry. Undemocratic. What the women want to talk about the men find disgusting; what the men would say bores the women to tears; and for the men to leave the women would be unchivalrous. Or worse, would reveal that what all conversation turns on, sex, is fit only for the dark.

We were going to visit India, she thinks. Why India she has no idea. Neither does Will, probably. But for some reason they talked about it, and she can recall the excitement it stirred in them once — how long ago now? — eight years?

She thinks: What would the men talk about, if they talked? But she knows. Law.

Nevertheless, he devotes himself to it as though it were much the most interesting thing in the world. He scoffs at it at the dinner table, talks pipe-dreams of going into teaching, dropping the rat-race, yet after dessert goes into his study (on the days he comes home for supper) and opens fat books and fills one long yellow tablet after another, and won’t go to bed. We two have no more to talk about than the people at our parties, she thinks.

Abruptly, with a stubborn, determined look, she crosses to his desk and picks up the sheaf of papers on top of the pile, in the middle of the mess. She reads. After a minute she sits down, alarmed, concentrating.

MEMORANDUM TO TAX DEPARTMENT Sept. 2, 1966 RE: WILLIAM B. HODGE, JR., IRS Claim for Penalty Tax (re. Flemming)

The following is a summary of my activities with respect to Flemming Construction, Inc. Everything is included which seemed at all relevant to the question of the capacity in which I acted with respect to the company from time to time. In connection with the preparation of this memorandum, I have read all of the files (our closed files 31471 through 31477), the minute book of the corporation and the time slips. References to the particular documents in the files are made as “[1-101]”, referring to the closed file involved and the number of the document in the file as set forth on a list I have prepared. References to information in the minute book are indicated as “[MB-date]” and to time slips as “[TS-date]”.

For convenience, this memorandum is divided into the following parts:

I The period expiring 12/31/63

II The period January 1, 1964 through September 21, 1964

III September 30, 1964 to date

IV Summary

Par. 1 Date 5/2/61 Certificate of Incorporation filed. Standard By-Laws subsequently adopted [MB with Article IV, Section 5, specifying duty of Secretary and Assistant Secretary]:

PART I — The period expiring December 31, 1963

The Secretary shall issue notices of all members of stockholders and directors where notices of such meetings are required by law or these By-Laws. He shall attend all meetings of stock-holders and of the Board of Directors and keep the minutes thereof. He shall affix the corporate seal to and sign his signature and shall perform such other duties as usually pertain to his office or as are properly required of him by the board of directors.”

Empty language, insanity, she thinks, but she reads on. There are twenty-one pages, typed, single-spaced, and she knows — though she doesn’t know what it’s for — he’s spent months on it. He has a keen mind she knows for sure, because sometimes Will has turned it against her; nevertheless, the idea continues to molest her thought, destroying her concentration: It’s all empty, insane.

57 9/30/64 At about 5:00, Finsker asked me to come with him so we could talk a moment. We went to Mr. Evans’ office. Finsker advised me that he did not believe that Caulke could carry out the agreement he was making with Sand because of the severe financial position of the company and advised me then, for the first time, that the company had not paid its Federal taxes for a month. He said the balance was about $30,000. I advised him, strongly, of the consequences of this and asked him to say nothing until we could talk to Caulke later. We rejoined Caulke as the meeting at Porter’s office was breaking up and went to supper with him at the Hotel Buffalo. I advised them then of the situation as I understood it and the possible civil and criminal consequences. I said that from this point on, no money remaining in the company could be paid for any purpose other than taxes and that they would have to issue a check for the balance available payable to IRS. …