Light of Day (28 page)

Jack stood in the room that once had been Anne's studio, where there had been an old, soft chair and a work bench with paper and colored pencils and a can of paintbrushes. Where he used to find Anne any time he wanted to. He walked the perimeter of the room and stared out the large windows where the view had not changed. But the outlook certainly had.

 

Downstairs, in the rotunda with the brown granite walls and the smooth floor, Jack could hear the sound of a piano being tuned in one of the music rooms, in another room someone was practicing scales. Footsteps clacked around corners, scuttled into doorways and up the stairs. There came the quickening of voices from places unseen, the hurried dialogues that pass in the hall. A female voice was singing in a distant room, strong and confident, a sweet voice, a trained voice still in train
ing, spiraling up to the huge murals:
The Triumph of Justice, The Defeat of Prejudice,
painted by WPA artists more than sixty years ago.

Outside on the quad, a groundsman was mowing the grass, perched on his tractor, driving slow, tight circles like a suburban dad on a Saturday morning. Another man was clipping hedges around the wood benches, gifts from the class of '56. Senior boys and girls, wearing bright shorts and souvenir T-shirts, sipped sodas and ate French fries out of paper bags, pedaled bicycles, walked the campus proprietarily like landed gentry, offered each other expanded greetings. Unshaven kids, looking younger every year, with their journals and notepads, lying on their hips and elbows languid beneath the trees, smoking cigarettes, lifting tempered smiles to Jack as he passed by. “Hello, Dr. Owens,” “Good to see you, Dr. Owens.” “Hi, Dr. Owens.” “Hello.” “Hello.” “Hello, Dr. Owens.”

On the east side of the quad, Glenn Morrow and Aaron Reed, from the Language Department, Gladys Montgomery, from American Studies, Penelope Chen, from Theater, were carrying cartons up to their offices, pushing uneasily against the front door, waddling gracelessly up the stairs with their accordion folders, their diskettes, their pens and coffee machines and ceramic vases, their toothbrushes and combs; the things they took with them at the end of the old semester and brought back for the new, the things they liked to have around them, the framed prints and photographs, the coffee mug with the black and white Westie. Mementos informing them of who they are and why they came here and why they remain. It happened every year, a performance, a devotion, without which there could be no academic year.

From open windows came the halting sounds of academic industry playing softly like a motif, riding on the air. Work in preparation, work already done. The constancy of routine flowing uncontested.

Jack could see the window of his own office, where Robbie was working, where phone messages were duly recorded and another student crisis was surely lined up. Where Jack's industry waited for him, his contribution to the academic machine. He looked at the students and the men from the physical plant, the returning faculty, and could
feel himself attached to the college—feeding the awakening organism—one of its parts, fulfilling its set of expectations and promises, obeying its rules; who appeared in front of the classroom and taught his course three times a week—without facing the expanse of time which was summer. He felt a sense of mooring, of being tethered to a piece of solid ground with offices and buildings, schedules and committees, students and teachers. Where the normalcy of days like this was no small miracle.

He thought that this was what Stan meant. He hadn't been talking about the neurotic tic, about the ritual to hold the world together, at least Jack's particular piece of it, anyway. He was talking about being part of the college and the routine of this community—before Jack had joined the Community of Parents of Dead Children and Sad Detectives. It was why Jack had to go to Anne's studio. Because Anne, who had been an art student and once had a studio in the Fine Arts building, was part of that continuity, just as teaching at Gilbert was. Just as being Dr. Owens was.

Jack could lean into that for now. He could rely on the routine—on all the works and days of hands—that filled the blank calendar squares, that occupied his time.

He sat, for a moment, on the wooden bench with the brass plaque from the class of '56 and wondered if maybe he'd gotten it wrong. Maybe it was possible for more than one incarnation of Dr. Owens, or whoever Dr. Owens had become. Someone other than the Dr. Owens of memory, but who lived in memory, nonetheless. Who had been the young film student and could be found, like Anne's tracers, streaming through the air, through Time, running up the stairs of the Fine Arts building, sitting on the quad or in a classroom. Someone other than the grieving father. Someone who was—hell, he didn't know—but someone students still seemed to recognize; someone his friends weren't afraid to talk to; who could show up for faculty lunches—it might be possible to still be their Jack. Even if that Jack was nothing but the past. Maybe that's where his friends would agree to find him. He thought it might be possible, even as he felt the twinge of disloyalty to Danny. Even as
Danny, the living Danny, receded a little further away from him. He thought this was who he was now. This was where he belonged. He thought Danny would understand.

He started to walk across the lawn to the registrar's office but decided that the i's could be dotted and t's crossed tomorrow, and instead went to his screening room. The prospect of sitting alone in the dark was not at all uninviting.

 

Just last semester, he'd said, “Hey, pal, feel like going to the movies?”

Danny asked, “What movie?” He asked, “Can I bring someone along?”

“Someone? One of your friends?” Jack smiled because he knew it wasn't just one of Danny's friends.

“Rachael Tate.”

“Sure you can.” And a moment later, “It sounds like this might be serious.”

“We're just friends.”

Danny brought Rachael. Irwin got a kick out of it. He said, “You two ain't about to run off and elope or nothin'?” Which made Rachael blush and Danny give Irwin a punch in the arm.

Jack liked that Danny brought Rachael along. He watched Danny propped in his seat, his face a soft shadow in the flickering light. Sometimes he looked worried, sometimes confused. But it didn't matter, as long as he was there…

 

When
One Plus One
ended and only pale white light glowed on the empty screen, while Irwin kept to himself in the projection booth, Jack sat thinking that this was where he belonged. He didn't understand what that meant, except that he would forever be Danny's father and Danny would forever have committed suicide and this town, this college, seemed to be the two places where those two facts could best be lived with. He would always be Danny's father, someone called Dr. Owens, someone called Jack. It was the trapdoor that led, not out, but in, in to his schedule and his office hours and to something that he was incapable at the moment of articulating to himself. Perhaps it had no
name, or perhaps he simply didn't know what to call it, because he could not identify what was happening inside of himself, but he wanted to believe that it was something he was capable of being, who he was now and where he belonged.

He would have liked to talk this over with Marty, who would look at him, the way he'd been looking at him all summer, nod his head and say, “It sounds like you're coming to terms with all this.” Or meet Lois at her house and tell her, “It isn't much, but I think it's enough.” Lois would consider this for a moment, then tell him, “Sometimes enough is all that you really need.” But when Jack walked back to his office and called Marty, he'd already left. Lois was meeting Tim and two other couples at the country club. She invited Jack to come along, but that was a crowd he was never comfortable with, so he sat at his desk, looking at the photograph of Danny, the face sun-bright and excited, smiling a full vacation smile. Jack wanted to talk to that face. To sit with him one more time, in the morning before the school bus came—“Which is more important, Dad, honesty or loyalty?” To meet him after work and drive out to Mickey's for steaks and salads, like they used to when he told Danny, “I thought we'd spend spring break in California. We'll get to see Henry and Suzette. Drive out to the beach.”

Danny took a sip of his Coke, gave it some thought. “Can I sleep in the tent with Charlie and Oliver?”

“What kind of vacation would it be otherwise?”

“Cool.”

Or tonight, Jack would say, “I think I've figured out a way to get through this without you. Do you understand? Is it all right with you?”

Danny would look at him and smile shyly, making Jack hold him so tight he could feel the beating of his heart.

Jack thought about the nights when he used to go home and lie on the grass in the backyard and look forward to the next day and the day after that. He would rise up on his elbows and see Danny running with Mutt through the field, the two of them cutting and twisting through the deep green rows, just making it back to the house before Mutt fell panting on the ground and Danny lay in the grass breathing too hard to speak.

All of that was impossible now, but at least he was able to remember what it felt like, and that was enough to take home with him, enough to bring back to his office in the morning where there was a job to do and idleness was gone; where he could rely on the schedule and the routine to occupy his time for another day, fill the space on the calendar and cross it off.

There was a sense of revelation to be had from this. He could sit in this room and look at his lecture notes, or the office hours posted on the door, or leave instructions for Robbie and know there was work to be done in the days ahead, time filled. He felt reassured by this, emboldened by it. It was all there in black and white; and he wasn't in a hurry to leave.

He called Marty at home, but only the answering machine picked up and he left a perfunctory message. He arranged the memos and papers on his desk, leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He thought this was who he was now. This was where he belonged.

The breeze outside smelled of leaves that were getting ready to turn and the summer was losing its grip on the night. Jack walked down the old brick sidewalks, past the boys and girls coming and going outside the dormitories on the old campus, walking in and out of the pale gaslights, slipping into the shadows.

There was music playing through the windows and telephones ringing, voices calling to each other inside the yellow rooms, and laughter. It made Jack think of the barbecue shack where he and Marty went last July, where they played jazz after dark and served illegal liquor; which made him think of the sound that pushes through a roomful of people and over the music, the ambient mixture of smoke and bodies and voices, the rhythm and cadence of song and conversation bearing its own intimacy and secrets.

Two girls sat under the lights reading tarot cards and looking very serious. Four skateboarders scooted by. Two other girls came hurrying around the corner giggling and chanting: “Laaa…ree…Haas…kel…Laree…Haas…kel…” at a boy who kept walking away from them, shaking his head, hands over his ears. “Laaa…ree…Laaa…ree…Laaa…ree…”

Jack walked along the old brick sidewalks while the half-moon leaned against the roof of the dormitory, lifted itself gently, followed him to his car and rode above his shoulder as he drove down Third Street, where the ruins were a black silhouette against the trees and stars.

The half-moon rode with him as he drove through the streets, where the flicker of televisions was visible and children were coming from front lawns and backyards, while he drove past the old houses with the tired roofs and the screens all had holes in them but they kept the windows open all night, anyway. The moon followed him into the neighborhoods of matchbox houses on cookie-cutter lawns with ceramic gnomes and pink flamingos, and the streets with the large Tudor houses set back from the sidewalk and the live oaks that muted the streetlights, where no one seemed to ever raise a voice.

The half-moon rode with him while he drove through streets where he was a stranger and streets where he could pick out the houses of his friends.

Through streets that narrowed into circular drives, and streets that opened into boulevards where a man walked his dog, and a little girl tagged behind her parents, and a couple strolled aimlessly around the corner.

The half-moon rode over Jack's shoulder, stayed with him, silently, all the way home, leaving him at the front door, where not very long ago he would have heard Danny at the piano, and Jack would have stopped, just as he reached the porch, and sat on the bottom step listening, careful not to interrupt, careful not to intrude, listening to the swell and sweep of the music, the certainty of each note, and now there was only the mail and the newspaper. Where it was the end of his first day back from the summer.

Mutt barked, ran the length of the porch and into the house while Jack walked to the kitchen, dropped the newspaper and mail on the table, filled the dog dish with food and went out to the backyard. He wanted to sit in the grass, where he used to see Danny running through the field.

Tiny winged insects were rising around him, buzzing and cricking
their awakening. Fireflies flashed and vanished and appeared again. One, then three, then dozens darting and dotting. Jack felt the dark, cool ground against his bare feet. He could hear the stream running fast against the rocks, the frogs and tree toads croaking and clicking, the night birds whistling, the quick scudding sounds brushing the undergrowth—raccoons most likely, or possums—breaking through the silence. He leaned back on his elbows and looked at the stars thickening in the sky. The air held the scent of a fey dampness.

Jack could not deny his loneliness, but neither could he deny the night, which was not, he realized, a time of rest. It was not something dormant, but a rising, a calling to life; not the end of the day but its extension. Not an absence of daylight but the presence of a persistent vitality, offering its own light, its own sounds and fragrances, its own welkin company.