Light of Day (26 page)

“No trouble at all. I'll dig them out of the basement first thing.”

This got Arthur talking about book revisions again and the money to be made from them, until Celeste told him, “
Enough
already,” and asked Jack, “How are you holding up? Are you okay?” His answer was perfunctory and Celeste probably knew it, but before she said anything more, Jack wanted to know how Rick was doing, and had they heard what happened to C.J. and had Rick spoken to him?

Arthur and Celeste exchanged looks. “We heard, but Rick hasn't been up to calling C.J. He's had a very rough time of it,” Arthur said. “Danny's—He was very upset about Danny.”

Celeste said, “He can't sleep. He's lost a lot of weight. He's with
drawn into him—”

“And now,” Arthur broke in, “he refuses to go back to school. He says he can't stand being here. He came home for two days and made us take him right back to my brother's farm.”

Celeste took a slow sip of her martini. “Arthur managed to pull a few strings and Rick's going to spend his sophomore year in St. Louis, at Andrews Academy. We're also going to find a good therapist for him.”

Jack said, “I imagine Brian's had a tough time, too.”

“He's had a few bad moments.”

Arthur grunted, “A few bad moments? They ran him out of Outward Bound.”

Celeste frowned at Arthur. “According to Sally Richards, the Outward Bound leader thought Brian was behaving a little too aggressively.”

“Too aggressive for Outward Bound.” Arthur looked at Jack. “Isn't that redundant?” It wasn't clear if he was trying to be funny.

“It sounded pretty bad to me,” Celeste said. “Brian was belligerent and threatening. Disruptive. It was very troubling to everyone up there.”

“Brian's got that in him,” Arthur said, and Jack remembered that Arthur didn't like the way Rick always followed Brian's lead. “I overheard some of the things he said to Rick when he told him he was going to Andrews. He was less than sympathetic. He can be a narcissistic little bastard when he wants to.”

“It all starts with Hal and Vicki,” Celeste said. “They've managed to coddle and neglect him at the same time. They treat him like he's precious cargo while putting the worst kind of pressure on him. He can't step into a room without having to be the smartest or the handsomest or the best athlete. Brian has some issues.”

“Sometimes I'd like to give him a good kick in the issues,” Arthur said.

Celeste glared at her husband. She asked Jack, “Is this more than you want to know?”

Jack said, “They're sensitive kids. Danny's death couldn't have been easy for them to deal with. Apparently he wasn't the only victim of his suicide.” He took a sip of his drink. “I hate to think that you and Hal
and Vicki blame him—”

“Nothing of the sort. Nothing like that. Not for a
second,
” and Celeste changed the subject.

It was after ten when they said their good-byes outside the restaurant.

Arthur assured Jack, “The important thing is, you got through the summer and you're staying on to teach.”

“We're around whenever you need us,” Celeste reminded him.

 

In his dreams, Jack cried, head thrown back, mouth wide open, like the faces in
Guernica
.

He cried for Anne, who said she was being pulled in two directions and followed the direction that took her back to England.

He cried for his mother, who died a slow death.

He cried for Danny.

When the crying woke him and he couldn't go back to sleep, Jack sat with Mutt on the back porch and looked out at the urban glow that interrupted the night sky.

He thought about Danny, who would have been a sophomore in high school, and how they'd always gone shopping for clothes and shoes before the start of a new term and that Danny would have wanted to do all of that with his friends this year.

He thought about Danny's friends who couldn't sleep and eat, who acted out and acted up.

He looked out at the horizon, where September would begin four days hence and the semester a day after that and where autumn progressed toward the equinox. He had dreaded the coming of summer and felt no great sadness seeing it leave. He did not look forward to the fall. He did not look forward to anything. He could only look back. He was nothing but the past, which appeared richer than anything the present possessed or the future might promise. Where Danny was still the living Danny getting ready for school, or learning to talk, or standing covered in paint in the big room in the house in Loubressac. Where Anne lived in the loft on Crosby Street.

It was something Jack could only admit to himself at three o'clock in the morning on a sleepless night and never have confessed to anyone, not to Lois or Marty. Not to his father while he listened for telltale signs in the old voice, while he said, “You're sounding good today, Dad.” Even when Jack was talking to his father about the new semester, when he promised not to wait until Christmas to come out and visit, he was merely talking from within the past, where Danny was alive and where Anne loved him. That was all he had, all he was.

T
he office door was open and there was movement inside. Robbie Stein, Jack's new student assistant, sat at the desk, phone tucked under his chin, sleeves rolled up, dutifully taking down a message with one hand and holding a container of coffee with the other. At his elbow was the list of instructions Eileen had left for him. He was hanging up the phone when he saw Jack and quickly put down the coffee, stood up, grinned meekly and gave quick, nervous tugs at his shirt collar and sleeves.

The expression on Jack's face must have shown more than simple surprise, although that's all it was, but Robbie rushed to explain, “I'm your student assistant this year, Dr. Owens. Remember?” He stepped away from the desk.

“Of course I remember,” Jack answered, in no way remonstratively, “but you're a day early.”

“No way.”

“Page two of Eileen's notes. Right before she says that if she managed to graduate, there's hope for you, too.”

Robbie tugged on his collar again. “Well, so much for impressing you with my quick and agile mind.”

“You'll have plenty of chances to do that. In the meantime, I can always use your help and you can get a jump start on how to run things
around here. How's that?” Jack picked the messages off his desk and stuffed them in his pocket without looking at them.

Robbie smiled and nodded his head. He started to say something, stopped and called out, “Oh dammit,” at the same time looking past Jack to the open door. “Lauren Bellmore. Third time this morning.”

“I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” Lauren shoved Robbie aside and placed herself directly in front of Jack. She was tall, buxom, with curly red hair that looked absolutely Medusan at the moment and a voice pitched several decibels louder than Jack thought physically possible. “Some
idiot
in the registrar's office screwed up and I'm not
reg
istered for your ‘sixties' class. I spent two entire
hours
begging and pleading and I'm
still
not—and classes start
Mon
day.” As if Jack needed to be reminded. “How can this be happening to me? I
hate
this school.”

Not quite kicking and screaming, but less than willingly, Jack was pulled into the first crisis of the new semester, and into the “Kafkaesque-world-of-Gilbert-College's-preregistration-
tor
ture. And
he
”—Lauren glared at Robbie—“can't find your student list. I'm just
so
freaked.”

Jack had to smile. It was Danny when his world was nearing collapse because he tore his costume on Halloween morning. Or he needed sheet music that day and Steiner's wouldn't have it for two weeks. Or Mutt had vanished. “He's gone, Daddy. I looked everywhere and he's
gone
.” The tears welling up and Danny looking scared and queasy, his legs shaking, his eyes wide. “I let him out real early this morning and I went back to sleep and when I woke up he never came home. I'm scared something bad happened to him.”

Even when there seemed to be no solution, a solution was found. Lois had one of her theater students fashion a costume for Danny. Jack asked Nelson Fried to give him the sheet music. Mutt wasn't lost after all, he had simply done what dogs do when front doors are locked and no one lets you in: he crawled through a basement window and, being home, fell asleep in the warm corner next to one of Jack's filing cabinets. Ever since, Danny would go down to the basement on damp and dreary afternoons, curl up in that same corner, with or without Mutt, read a book or play or daydream.

Lauren wasn't Danny and Jack wasn't her father, but this certainly had the feel of a parental moment and it wasn't at all awful playing the surrogate, even if it called for nothing more than applying an administrative Band-Aid, which was the yellow Additional Student card in the top desk drawer, which Jack signed and which he told Lauren to fill out and take to the registrar's office.

“That's
it
?”

“That's it.”

“You're the best, Dr. Owens.” She took a step toward the door, said, “Oh. I'm really sorry about…” Her eyes turned briefly toward Danny's picture and then back to Jack. Jack nodded his head once but said nothing. Lauren rushed out, leaving the door open behind her.

Robbie hissed, “I don't be
lieve
her.”

“That's pretty tame stuff, wait until class starts.”

“Not
that
. How she said that to you. I mean it was really cold.”

“That's the way I prefer it these days,” and speaking to the look on Robbie's face, Jack said, “and if you don't learn to relax around me, it's going to be a long year for both of us. Okay?”

“Okay, but Dr. Owens, I'm
really
sorry about, well, about everything, and especially for screwing up.”

“I'm not sure I know how you screwed up.” Jack sat down and leaned back in the chair.

“Not finding the list.”

“First of all, the list isn't here, so you couldn't have found it. Second, whenever you get ambushed like that, and it's going to happen again, remember you're not responsible for fixing their world. Just tell them to come back during my office hours and I'll see what I can do. And third, my student assistant calls me Jack. Any questions?”

“I don't think so.”

“Feeling better?”

Robbie nodded his head. “A lot better.”

Jack was feeling better, too. He could still fill out the forms, he could still solve student problems. He still knew all the words; and even if it wasn't the smoothest beginning and breaking in a new student assistant was a more formidable proposition than it seemed back in May,
he had managed to reassure Robbie that it was still Dr. Owens at work here and he was glad to see Robbie's face relax and, while he sat on the sofa, papers spread across the table, talk to Jack about the courses he was taking, his roommates and his new girlfriend. Jack said nothing, he only listened, pleased that he'd reassured Robbie, pleased that he'd done a little reassuring of himself.

He realized that among the things he'd missed these past months, being around students was one of them. It may not have ranked near the top, but he'd missed the company of a student assistant, the sudden and harmless student crises. He'd missed the small preparations for the new semester, and even if he was working from memory, wondering if this was how he used to do it, was this the way he used to sound, it was the familiarity that did not breed contempt, the familiarity that he'd needed these past ten years, that he needed this morning while he sat at his desk rereading his notes, his critiques, working from memory, wondering if this was how he'd always done it.

Carol Brink from the dean's office called to ask if he was going to address the incoming freshman class next week as planned. The slight hesitation, the soft, cautious voice. “Of course, if you aren't feeling…”

“I'll be there,” Jack promised, hoping he hadn't betrayed himself, wondering if that was how he used to sound.

Drinking his coffee, doing his job, the reflection of the reflection, the memory of the memory, listening to the noon bells chime, talking on the phone to Stan Miller—“Do you have a minute, Jack, to come to my office so I can officially welcome you back?”—Jack could only think that he was nothing but the past.

 

One of Bach's violin partitas played softly on the old stereo and there was the slight aroma of Chinese tea in the air when Jack walked into the office. Stan stood up and came around to the front of his desk. “Just a little department bookkeeping,” he said, nodding at the papers on the windowsill. His shirt was open at the collar, his blue seersucker suit was wrinkled and hung off his body as though on wire hangers. He straightened his jacket and tucked his shirttail into his pants, at the same time saying, “We could have taken care of all this on the phone, but I wanted
to have a look at you and see how you're making out.” Which is what he'd told Jack last year and the year before that and five years before that, when he was appointed department chair.

“I don't know. I don't know how I'm making out, really.” Which was not what Jack had answered last year and the years before.

Stan did not appear surprised to hear this. “I appreciate what you're doing, staying on like this. I'm very proud of you.” He spoke slowly and unhurriedly, with understated courtesy. “That's a very impressive class you're teaching,” while he walked over to the credenza and the brass tray with the tea service. “I'm tempted to duck in to see a few of the films myself.” He filled two cups, put milk in both and handed one to Jack.

“You're welcome anytime.”

Stan laughed softly. “I doubt most people in the department share that sentiment.” He tipped his chin toward the large unmatched chairs across the room—the sort of chairs they had in gentlemen's clubs in Edwardian England and which Stan had found at the Goodwill shop on Woodbine Street. “I'm afraid we've got to go through what amounts to nothing more than administrative junk mail,” he said pleasantly, and sat in the chair next to Jack. “Susan Drake, in the registrar's office, asked if you'd stop by and go over your grades from last semester. She assures me it's just a matter of dotting some i's. Today, if at all possible, or tomorrow.”

Jack said that wouldn't be a problem. “However, the registrar doesn't usually go through the department chair for something like that.”

“I'm afraid some people around here are going to be taking your pulse for a while. And using me to do it.”

“That can be annoying.”

Stan agreed. “I'll see what I can do to minimize it.”

“I mean for
you
. There's no reason for you to get in the middle of it. You don't have to run interference for me.”

“There are plenty of reasons why I
should
be in the middle of it, and I wouldn't exactly call it running interference.” Stan took a sip of tea, then another, and put the cup back in the saucer. “We've been friends for a long time and we've never stood on ceremony when things
were going smoothly and I'm not going to stand on ceremony now. When I have the opportunity to make your work, or your life, a little easier I intend to do it.” His voice was hardly louder than a whisper. “And I'd be insulted if you expected me to turn away from helping you. If someone from the administration needs something from you and thinks she has to go through me to get it, then that's the way I'm going to handle it.”

Jack said he hadn't intended to insult Stan. “I don't know what I'm talking about. Handle it any way you see fit.” He said this apologetically and without contrition. “You of all people know the appropriate thing to do.”

Stan leaned forward in his chair and looked at Jack straight on. “I'm not so sure of that, but I do know that I don't want the administration to sic its bureaucrats on you every time there's a blip on their computer screen.” He still hadn't raised his voice. “Listen, Jack, you're coming back to work for all the right reasons. I also think it happens to be the right decision, and it takes a lot of strength. You don't need a bunch of kibitzers yapping at you and getting in your way.”

Before Jack got out his “Thank you,” the telephone rang. Stan's assistant cracked the door open and said Dr. Skowron was calling. Stan asked her to take a message. She bowed slightly, modestly, from the waist and closed the door.

Stan got up and took the papers off the windowsill, picked through the stack until he found what he was looking for and told Jack the Tuesday morning meeting had been pushed up to Monday afternoon, looked at the papers again and said, “I have to start thinking about next year's spring film festival. I don't mean to rush things, but I need to know if you're still going to be in charge. And your Midnight Movies. I need to sign off on your list. It's more budgetary than anything else. However, if you'd rather take it off the curriculum—”

“I'll get the list to you by the end of the day.”

“Are you sure you want to schedule them?”

“To tell the truth, no. But I don't think I can cancel them, either.”

Stan offered a cautious “Okay…”

“I'll manage it.”

“I've also got you on the honors committee this year.”

“I think I can manage that one, too.”

“You know what? I'm going to have Celeste Harrison take over the spring film festival. With your input, of course.”

Jack thought that over for a moment and said he didn't have a problem with it.

“And there's the ‘Gilbert College 2000' committee, which I see no reason for you to be weighted down with.” There was another phone call, which Stan did not take, and then he told Jack, “I'm afraid I'm going to sound a bit insensitive with this next bit of business. There's the President's Dinner, Friday night, to welcome everyone back. You can take a pass on it if you want. And Christine wanted me to invite you over for supper next Wednesday. If you're in the mood.”

“You're not being insensitive. I'll be at the President's Dinner. And I'd like to have supper with you and Christine.”

“Good. She's been quite concerned about you.”

“Tell her I appreciate that.” Jack pulled his phone messages out of his pocket. “Now I need your help with something. Apparently, in a moment of weakness last spring, I signed up to speak at Vigo County High School's ‘College Day' in November, about the importance of a liberal arts education. Neil Weston at IU expects me to be a judge, again, for their October film competition. Carrie Mannheim's invited me to be a guest speaker at Colby, she's teaching my books this semester. And Mel Keller, at NYU, wants me to sit on a panel in March. They don't know anything about what happened, of course. But I did make a commitment to them.”