Cold Rain (2 page)

I bought them a round as I was heading out. It is the only way to leave folks without getting the worst of your stories told right off. Outside, the daylight was something of a surprise, as was my sobriety. A good feeling, I decided. Clean. Like being fully alive for the first time in years.

I was not to see either Walt Beery or Buddy Elder again for several months. I did hear a few stories about Walt though. I had my sources. Seems he had begun telling some tasteless homosexual monkey jokes at the faculty club. There was talk of it being the last straw, but talk was all it would ever be. Walt Beery had a good lawyer and pockets deep enough to pay the fees.

I don’t recall so much as a fleeting thought about Buddy Elder or his girlfriend. Buddy belonged to that other world I had inhabited in that other lifetime.

While my sabbatical continued I wrote each morning and spent my afternoons at Molly’s side turning the last rooms of an early nineteenth century plantation-style mansion into a showpiece. I fed and groomed my stepdaughter’s two racehorses. I baled hay twice and once a week or so mucked stalls solo like an old hand. I mowed the pasture a few times with a new John Deere tractor. I indulged in a midnight swim with Molly on one occasion with nothing but a full moon covering us, and even told a ghost story to Lucy and a gaggle of her girlfriends who were ‘camping out’ on our third floor one night in July. Well advanced into adolescence, they had imagined they were far too grown-up to get spooked by anything short of Stephen King, but I told the story as true with the indifference of a man relating an article from the newspaper. In the dark, far from the sounds they knew, I rose up devils those girls had never quite dreamed of. All in good fun, of course.

Lucy told me later they said I was cool, for an old man. I turned thirty-seven that summer, older than Dante when he toured Hell, but only by a couple of years.

WHEN I WAS STILL A YOUNG MAN an old dog in the academy, dead now, told me the secret to life.

No one, he said, forgets caviar. Rise early, work hard, speak no evil, use tax shelters: everyone’s got an angle.

But caviar made an impression on me. Maybe it’s because professors are so long on dignity and so damn short on cash, but serving caviar at parties is worth at least a dozen publications on one’s
curriculum vitae
.

That fall I was eligible for promotion. The last hurdle of an academic’s career: full professor. I was eight years in the business. Young for the honour, to be sure, but I had been quietly ambitious for a while and had lately come to be well-positioned to get the faculty’s nod.

Not that the vote was a sure thing. Not for anyone, really. Especially not for one of the younger associates. As a matter of policy, my department rather enjoyed turning people down. The last seven who asked, to be precise. I had tenure of course and was settled comfortably into the broad sea of middle management, which at a university is the rank of associate professor.

There were a couple of magazine hits I could drop into a conversation when it was necessary to impress the occasional visiting dignitary in the arts and now a novel. Born in the cold of winter and praised by friends coast-to-coast,
Jinx
wasn’t climbing the charts, but it was exactly what I needed for the vote of my peers.

Assuming they didn’t forget me.

Molly and I set the party for the first weekend before classes began that fall. I kept the list diverse enough that it didn’t look like a departmental meeting of the Olympians, but I made sure everyone with the power of a vote got a written
and
personal invitation. No talk, either, of my promotion. I hadn’t even applied for it, had carefully avoided even the most casual discussion of my prospects. That would come later, a few weeks before the actual application, several months after the party. This was just a get-together, black tie optional, to let people know I was glad to be back after a year and two summers of blessed solitude.

The final guest list ran to about eighty people. We started with a nice mix of gypsy scholars and old-line academic aristocrats from across campus, then salted with a smattering of university bureaucrats and our latest batch of teaching assistants, including Buddy Elder. We threw the west pasture open for parking, and set up a keg of beer outside. There were more refined choices within, including copious offerings of champagne and caviar.

After the thing was under way and politics took a backseat to just enjoying myself, I was standing in a circle of young men in the main hall at the bottom of our grand stairway. I was regaling them with one of the anecdotes that had not made the final cut of
Jinx
, when I noticed every eye shift toward the stairs. That could mean only one thing, and being a male, I had to turn and look too. Coming down the polished walnut stair-case was the most beautiful woman at the party, my wife Molly. She was not an especially tall woman, but she seemed so because of the confident way she carried herself. Her long hair was the colour of dark honey. Her skin was ruddy from long hours of working in the sun.

Her shoulders were high and beautifully developed. As she came off the last step, Molly’s blue eyes found me, and she cocked her finger playfully with a come-hither beckoning. I made my excuses affably, my story unfinished, and followed her toward our kitchen, marvelling at how her waist pinched down like a bowtie.

‘I need a hand in the pantry, David,’ Molly announced in a stage whisper. It was an old game we liked to play at other people’s parties, but I was up for it at our own.

We entered a large well-stocked pantry, and Molly shut the door behind us at once. Kissing me seriously, she put my hand under the hem of her black sequined gown, apparently just where she needed it. ‘You think anyone would notice if we just disappeared for half-an-hour?’

‘Molly,’ I said biting her lip playfully, ‘everyone notices when a beautiful woman disappears.’

She stroked me mischievously, knowing I would be trapped in the pantry until I calmed down. ‘Dean Lintz said he’s heard you’re a wonderful teacher, David.’

I moved her hand away but could not resist kissing her neck. ‘That’s shop talk for a lack of scholarship.’

‘Morgan read your book.’

Morgan was the vice president for academic affairs.

He had a habit of never quite looking my way even if we were the only two people in a room. ‘Unbelievable,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he could read.’

‘Everyone likes the house.’ Molly slipped her fingers under my cummerbund.

‘The house is beautiful. You’re a genius with wood.’

I kissed her again and, soft touch that I am, let her have her way with me. ‘I especially like the pantry.’

When she had me completely excited, she pulled away and began adjusting her dress. ‘I think we should put a daybed in here though… for parties.’

‘A daybed would be good,’ I said, struggling vainly to get things put back in order.

‘Randy Winston told me when I got tired of you he’d love to show me what I’m missing.’

I laughed. ‘What does he think you’re missing?’

‘You want me to ask him?’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘Get another case of champagne, David. We have to take something out.’

‘Afraid people will think we’re in love?’

‘David, we’ve been married for twelve years. If we’re in here fooling around after all that time, the natural assumption is we’ve been having problems.’

‘At the moment I’ve got a terrible problem.’

She smiled at her handiwork. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘Tonight we’re going to finish what we started. For now this ought to do it.’ I picked up one of the boxes of champagne and held it before me.

On tiptoes, Molly looked over. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me something awful.’

‘Did I ever tell you about the drunken carpenter who leaned a little too far over his table saw?’

‘Awful enough,’ I winced. ‘You know I hate table saws!’

Molly laughed and opened the door, telling me in a voice loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear, ‘That should do it for a while.’

I lugged the champagne to a barrel of ice water on our back porch and with the help of one of our servers began slipping new bottles underneath the cold ones.

As I was finishing up, Walt Beery came through the back door. Walt wore a smoking jacket and cummerbund as I had anticipated. To my astonishment he was sober.

‘Molly,’ he said, giving her a hug, then holding both her hands, ‘You look great! If this bum ever forgets how lucky he is—’

‘You’ll be the first, Walt,’ Molly answered, smiling and running her fingers over the ruffles of his shirt.

To me and not nearly as playful about it, she added, ‘...but definitely not the last.’

She went on, leaving us alone. ‘That’s my wife,’ I told Walt. ‘Pull your tongue in.’

He turned to me with all the sentiment of a great drunk, ‘You
are
a lucky bastard. You know that?’

‘I know it,’ I answered.

‘Do you?’ A bit too much passion in this.

‘I know it,’ I said cautiously.

Walt’s eyes tightened now, and something went slack in him. ‘You heard about Barbara and me, I guess?’

‘Heard what?’

‘She kicked me out, David.’

I groaned, struggling for some kind of appropriate answer. Walt’s fantasy of freedom had come at last, and I could see it terrified him.

‘I’m too old to start over,’ he muttered.

‘You need a drink.’ I said. ‘A few beers and things will look better. The TAs are going to show up pretty soon and put a little life in this funeral!’

‘I’m off the booze.’

‘How long?’

‘Three days,’ he said. ‘Three
long
days.’ His eyes watered suddenly, so that I had to turn to avoid seeing his tears. ‘I had the shakes so bad this morning I almost...well, you know how it is.’

I didn’t, but I nodded. ‘Are you doing this on your own?’ I asked.

‘I can beat it. I have to. I promised myself a week.

I make it a week and I go talk to Barbara. Tell her what I’m doing. See if we can get a fresh start.’

‘Sounds like it might work.’

‘A week doesn’t sound like much, does it?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s like crawling on broken glass. That’s the first day. It gets worse after that.’

‘It gets better eventually,’ I said. ‘It gets good, if you want to know the truth.’

‘When?’

I thought about one more lie since I was passing them out so glibly, but I didn’t have the heart. I simply excused myself.

ACADEMIC PARTIES HAVE A PACE one can only begin to understand after a dozen or so of them. Early there is always a bit of formality. Rank still matters.

Masks still fit snugly. Then come the first bits of laughter, nothing too raucous, of course, more like Jane Austen humour. At this point, the old guard wades in with stories from the Grand Old Days, well-worn lamentations for those of us who were not around when scholarship mattered! Then the associates and assistants take over. A careful crew, these. Paranoia as lifestyle, but with enough booze even the bureaucrats dance. A frosted look, a piece of crass laughter, a slipped confession. The physicist talking lit, the historian discussing the theory of point spreads. Circles and cliques breaking apart, new friendships tested, and finally the inevitable quarrel.

At our party it was the literary merit of the Brownings. Only an English prof could have seen this one coming. Only Walt Beery had the breadth of knowledge to break it apart before someone took a swing.

Five minutes later both profs were screaming at Walt.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Late at any such party there is usually a spouse scurrying around alone, too embarrassed to ask about the missing partner. For years I had observed such rituals without ever understanding that the abandoned spouse knows everyone is watching. I had always imagined such displays could only take place under the illusion of not being noticed. It had never dawned on me that such people simply couldn’t control themselves.

When Molly and Buddy Elder started talking I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the look in her eyes, and I definitely didn’t like the lazy way he looked at her. When they disappeared, I lost all sense of proportion and with it the last shred of decorum. Even while I scurried around, I had a new appreciation for such dramas, especially the attendant humiliation that comes with it. I knew people were watching me. I knew at least some of them could tell me exactly where my wife had gone and with whom, but I had to walk around like I had misplaced my glass. People pretended not to notice me. I kept a smile pasted to my face. Where did I put that glass anyway? I tried not to imagine the nudges they were giving one another the minute I was into the next room. It wasn’t possible. I knew what they were saying. David’s turn.

I found Molly at the barn after about ten minutes of running the gauntlet. She was standing a few feet from Buddy Elder in a pale light before one of the horse stalls. From outside the barn it wasn’t possible to see them, but once I stepped in, I could stand in a shadow and watch everything. At first it was just talk, then I saw him stepping toward her. I thought he was about to touch her, a finger to her chin maybe, possibly a kiss. Would she let him? I didn’t know, and I didn’t get to find out because he didn’t do what I expected.

He put both hands against the stall and looked in through the bars at Jezebel, my stepdaughter’s seven-year-old quarter horse mare. A flutter of jealousy and rage shot into my chest feeling like a two-penny nail driven down with a single blow. I thought about waiting them out to see what they were going to do next. It even dawned on me that I should leave, though I dismissed the idea as absurd. I ended up walking all the way into the barn like a man long familiar with a disappearing wife.

‘She’s not for sale,’ I said, and pointed at Lucy’s mare.

Buddy gave me a lazy smile that I found a bit arrogant under the circumstances. ‘And I was just getting ready to make an offer.’

Molly gave me a look I didn’t like, then pushed past me, brushing my shoulder as she went. ‘I’d better get back,’ she announced quietly. Then to Buddy, ‘If you want to come out for a ride sometime, just let me know. I’d love to show you the farm.’