Family Matters (24 page)

“It's part of my outfit—part of my statement,” Karen confided. “Roger and I are in the midst of renegotiating our marriage.”. She knew such jargon had to appear ironic, and she smiled ruefully at Betsy. “What a load of crap—right?”

“I don't know,” Betsy said, with rue. of her own. “I've never even negotiated one, much less, renegotiated it.”

“Good! You're taking this in the right spirit!” cried Karen, drinking off her champagne. “Keep your sense of humor, Betsy, and you can survive anything.” She made a sweeping gesture with her glass that took in four children, a husband, and any number of parties, and then asked abruptly, “Do you ever see Judd?”

“Never.” Betsy buried her nose in her champagne glass. She had driven by his studio only that one time, when she had wept to see his bicycle chained in front of it.

“He's around, you know.”

“I assumed he was.”

“I've seen him with Joan Arietta once or twice.”

“Ah. Yes.” She and Judd had met Joan Arietta at a party once. Joan had played up to Judd, and Betsy had reveled in her rare triumph, that she was the woman other women envied, the one with the desirable man. And now Joan had him.

“I assume
la commedia è finita
with you two?” asked Karen.

Betsy shrugged, and Karen shrugged back. They exchanged an ironically anguished grimace: Men!

Betsy brought the pickles into the dining room and stood in the middle of the floor, thinking: He is truly gone, then. She hadn't known about that scrap of lingering hope until, with Karen's revelation, it left her. He had someone else. Oddly, she had never imagined it, had seen him as a loner, herself as an uncharacteristic interlude in the life of an eremite. But he had had plenty of women before her—she knew that well—and of course he would have women after her. Joan Arietta. He'd probably been seeing her all along; he was with her now, no doubt. Betsy tried to imagine his hands on another woman, but she only succeeded in imagining his hands on her, and his mouth—she remembered how he had turned to her in the dark.…

Betsy opened her eyes, still holding the dish of pickles, now precariously tipped. She set it down. The party had become very noisy. There was a strong background smell of marijuana, and there were sandwiches and a sinkful of champagne on ice. Betsy realized she was getting drunk. As guest of honor, she was not allowed to have an empty glass. She set her ham sandwich down somewhere and never found it again.

“Champagne is good for babies,” said a young man named Stephen, who was Rachel Grace's date. “Champagne and beer, nothing stronger. Especially when you're nursing. They stimulate the flow of milk.”

“Isn't anybody embarrassed by anything anymore?” Betsy asked with despair that was meant to look mock but was at least half real.

“Are you embarrassing this lady?” said Roger, taking her arm. “That is not the point of the evening.”

“Stephen is a medical student,” said Rachel, pulling him away. “Doctors can say anything.”

Stephen grinned and drifted with Rachel toward the dope corner. Roger surveyed the crowd in his living room and looked pleased. “All we need is Errol Flynn swinging from the chandeliers.” He moved closer to Betsy and said in her ear. “I've found out something interesting about Jonathan Simonson's poison pen letter.” He put his arm around her, letting his hand rest low on her hip, and murmured appreciatively, “Mm, there's nothing sexier than a woman with child.” He was an exceptionally handsome man, tall and muscular, with frizzy brown hair and devilish green eyes. Betsy had seen Paul Newman once, on a news program, lamenting the fact that he was nothing but a sex symbol to so many women. “It really bothers you?” the interviewer had asked. “God, yes!” Newman had replied, looking pleadingly into the camera, his blue eyes brilliant and sexy and distressed. Roger reminded Betsy of Paul Newman. She was aroused by his closeness. He knew it and smiled lazily at her—a practiced, movie-star leer. She wanted to say, “It's nothing personal, Roger. It's just that it's been a long time.” But she only gave a strained smile and drew away.

Roger sighed elaborately, with mock pain. “Well, I'll tell you my news, anyway, in spite of your superhuman powers of resistance. Your pal Simonson is great chums with John Alderman. John's got your Pope seminar next semester and it's gone to his head.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I suspect old John, who is a bit of a shit, wouldn't mind seeing you discredited. This department ain't big enough for two eighteenth-century specialists, says old cowboy John. It's her or me, one of us hombres has gotta go. And since cowboy John has only, to my knowledge, published one article in his lifetime—a lame little effusion on Dryden he probably cribbed from one of his graduate students—” Roger shrugged, waving his pipe. “I leave it to you to guess who'd be canned if any canning were to be done.”

“I don't know how my pregnancy could advance John's career. I really don't see the university firing me for it.”

“You don't see it, and I don't see it, especially since you have tenure and old John doesn't, but since when is everybody as rational as you and I? And I think that for John your getting caught with something in the oven is only the frosting on the cake—as it were. He's been a-wantin' to ride you out of town on a rail ever since your book came out.”

She refused to be ruffled. “My God, Roger, I've got an enemy,” she breathed with reverent sarcasm.

“A little one. A mosquito,” said Roger, sucking on his pipe.

Betsy wished she had a pipe for a prop. She finished her champagne instead and asked casually, “You don't really think I'm in any danger, do you? I mean it doesn't say in the contract anywhere, does it, that thou shalt not give birth to a bastard while on the job?”

“Be serious. No court in the country would let you be fired.”

“Roger, I don't want to go to court!”

“Don't sweat it. Really. These aren't the Dark Ages, even in Syracuse.”

“I thought it was Crawford behind the letter.”

“Crawford?” Roger removed his pipe to laugh. “Crawford Divine adores you! He'd be your little lap dog if you'd only let him. Your big, slobbering lap dog. Lucky you.”

He filled her glass again and excused himself. “I see my good wife signaling frantically to me for help. She probably can't get the dancing girls to pop out of the cake.”

He flashed his smile at her again and disappeared, but his place was taken by other friends. No longer uncertain as to what line to adopt, they treated Betsy with humorous regard. She felt like the erring daughter they were all fond of. It occurred to her that what she knew was termed behind her back “Betsy's escapade” had enlivened a dull department. It had, after all, been a year since Thisbe had electrocuted herself with a vacuum cleaner.

Everyone assembled for cake and coffee. Betsy's heart sank at the pile of presents, but Karen had organized the gift giving, and all the packages contained children's books. Betsy began opening them, ripping off pink-and-blue paper printed with ducks and puppies.
The Wind in the Willows. A Child's Garden of Verses. Mother West Wind. Winnie-the-Pooh. The Story of Doctor Dolittle
.

“All the favorite books of our childhood—I made everyone sign up, so there'd be no duplicates,” Karen explained, looking pleased, equally, with her organizational efforts and with Betsy's cries of recognition and delight.

“All the books we wish our own kids would read instead of watching
The Incredible Hulk
,” said Roger. He picked up
Doctor Dolittle
and began to read: “Once upon a time, many years ago—when our grandfathers were little children—there was a doctor, and his name was Dolittle.”

Betsy began, to her horror, to cry. “Stop, Roger!” She took the book from him and began leafing through it, head bent to hide the tears. “It was my favorite book when I was a kid,” she mumbled in apology. “It sounds so odd, somehow, to hear you read it now.” She couldn't have explained the effect those few lines from the book had had on her. It was partly that they brought it all back: the oppressed, long, solitary days of her childhood, and the books that had helped push back their boundaries as nothing, not even imagination, could do so well. But it was more than that—any recollection of her childhood brought with it, now, the melancholy shadow of her mother's dying, and the dread she felt of the darkness that shadow would cast her into.

“Quiet, everyone!” Roger said loudly. “Dr. Ruscoe will now reminisce about her childhood.”

Betsy tried to laugh, wiping her eyes on a paper napkin. “I just want to thank you all,” she said. She rested her hands on the stack of books on the table before her, and as she touched them a swift, portentous image came to her, of herself reading through them, late one of these nights, wallowing in morbid tears and despair. She rejected the image, she steeled herself against it. “You're all too kind,” she said further, when Roger insisted on a speech. “I'm overcome by it. I consider myself very lucky.”

There was a fusillade of applause, and Roger embraced her drunkenly, but she turned from him and hugged Karen. “It was all your doing, and I'm grateful,” she said.

“Better books than booties,” Karen replied. Roger, behind her, with his arms around one of his female graduate students, was reciting from
A Child's Garden of Verses
, and Karen was averting her eyes so determinedly from the spectacle that it was clear she was wounded—and scarred, too, from old hurts, inflicted perhaps during other futile renegotiations.

Crawford Divine came in while they were packing up the books in a carton. He had been letting his moustache grow all the autumn, so that he looked like a large, addled walrus. He swayed slightly and spilled half the champagne Karen poured for him, and Betsy saw that he was already drunk.

“Better late than never, Crawford,” Roger said, smirking at Betsy.

“You may not know that particular cliché is from the Bible,” Crawford said. “Matthew twenty-one—I forget the verse.”

“I'll look it up.”

“You won't, but you should.” Even tipsy, Crawford was adept at sailing over sarcasm. “It doesn't hurt to have a bit of fact at your fingertips.”

He handed Betsy a package—
Mary Poppins
in stork paper—and when she kissed him a peck on the cheek in thanks he pulled her to him and aimed for her lips. There was more applause. Betsy struggled away, spilling the rest of Crawford's champagne, and, to cover his discomfiture, announced that she was exhausted, she had to leave, it was hours past her bedtime. Crawford stood scowling at the rug.

“Here, Dr. Ruscoe.” Rachel stood at her side with a brimming glass. “Just one more so we can toast you.”

Betsy took it dutifully.

“Champagne is really an incredible high,” Rachel said. “I think it's fantastic when all these academic stuffed shirts let their hair down and really live.”

“Like Crawford here,” Roger said. “Here you go, Crawford.” Roger handed him a glass and Crawford began sipping, not waiting for the toast.

Roger raised his glass. “To Betsy and Betsy Junior,” he said in a furred voice. “May they both thrive.”

“Amen,” Crawford said.

Betsy drained her glass, feeling they expected her to. It was a mistake. When she set it down, she tottered. She looked around for the medical student. “Is it all right for the baby if I'm ever so slightly drunk?”

He smiled woozily. “It's good for the baby,” he assured her. “Best thing for babies.”

Crawford was at her elbow with a conversation stopper. “When Thisbe was pregnant both times, she gave up the sauce entirely. Of course, she resumed quickly enough afterwards.” He filled the pause with a little chuckle and went on, to Betsy, “If I apologize for grabbing you, can I walk you home? It's such a beautiful night—”

His pink, piggy face was amiable again, and Betsy disguised her dismay. She couldn't insult him twice. “Of course, Crawford.”

She saw Stephen and Rachel turn away, smiling to each other at the stuffed shirts letting their hair down, and was dimly conscious of the indignity of it all: herself months pregnant, Crawford Divine panting after her, both of them royally drunk.

Roger left his graduate student and went to get Betsy's cape. He draped it, with flourishes, over her shoulders while Karen stood by looking sober and aggrieved. “My wife thinks I have had too much champagne,” Roger said to Crawford in a stage whisper. “But the fact that I'm still aware of what she thinks means I haven't had enough.”

“I have to agree with Karen,” Crawford said in a prim voice.

“Well, fuck you, Crawford,” Roger replied genially, and there was uneasy laughter from the students gathered around.

With dignity, Crawford tied a muffler around his neck and took Karen's hand. “A very nifty party, Karen. Admirable. Elegant. First class.”

Karen smiled tremulously at his strange adjectives and wished him and Betsy good night. The expression in her large eyes was both weepy and defiant. Betsy wanted, suddenly, to leave. The house was cursed, first by her ill-starred meeting there with Judd, and now by this rotting marriage, and Karen's unhappiness, and the four small children asleep upstairs. It all seemed connected: we also would have come to this, she told herself, and gave Karen a last, impulsive hug.

Crawford insisted on carrying the carton of books. “No problem,” he said, brushing away protests. “No problem.” He held the carton to his chest and glowered over the top of it.

“Let me drive you,” said Roger at the door.

“No
problem
, Roger!”

Roger shrugged and stepped outside with them. “What can you do with these
macho
types?”

Crawford marched warily down the walk with the books. “It was a lovely party, Roger,” Betsy said. “Thank you.”