The New Yorker Stories (2 page)

Times ♦
December 26, 1983

In the White Night ♦
June 4, 1984

Summer People ♦
September 24, 1984

Janus ♦
May 27, 1985

Skeletons ♦
February 3, 1986

Where You’ll Find Me ♦
March 3, 1986

Home to Marie ♦
December 15, 1986

Horatio’s Trick ♦
December 28, 1987

Second Question ♦
June 10, 1991

Zalla ♦
October 19, 1992

The Women of This World ♦
November 20, 2000

That Last Odd Day in L.A. ♦
April 15, 2001

Find and Replace ♦
November 5, 2001

The Rabbit Hole as Likely Explanation ♦
April 12, 2004

Coping Stones ♦
September 12, 2005

The Confidence Decoy ♦
November 27, 2006

THE

NEW

YORKER

STORIES

A Platonic Relationship

W
hen Ellen was told that she would be hired as a music teacher at the high school, she decided that it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty. She would tuck her hair neatly behind her ears, instead of letting it fall free, schoolgirlishly. She had met some of the teachers when she went for her interview, and they all seemed to look like what she was trying to get away from—suburbanites at a shopping center. Casual and airy, the fashion magazines would call it. At least, that’s what they would have called it back when she still read them, when she lived in Chevy Chase and wore her hair long, falling free, the way it had fallen in her high-school graduation picture. “Your lovely face,” her mother used to say, “and all covered by hair.” Her graduation picture was still on display in her parents’ house, next to a picture of her on her first birthday.

It didn’t matter how Ellen looked now; the students laughed at her behind her back. They laughed behind all the teachers’ backs. They don’t like me, Ellen thought, and she didn’t want to go to school. She forced herself to go, because she needed the job. She had worked hard to get away from her lawyer husband and almost-paid-for house. She had doggedly taken night classes at Georgetown University for two years, leaving the dishes after dinner and always expecting a fight. Her husband loaded them into the dishwasher—no fight. Finally, when she was ready to leave, she had to start the fight herself. There is a better world, she told him. “Teaching at the high school?” he asked. In the end, though, he had helped her find a place to live—an older house, on a side street off Florida Avenue, with splintery floors that had to be covered with rugs, and walls that needed to be repapered but that she never repapered. He hadn’t made trouble for her. Instead, he made her look silly. He made her say that teaching high school was a better world. She saw the foolishness of her statement, however, and after she left him she began to read great numbers of newspapers and magazines, and then more and more radical newspapers and magazines. She had dinner with her husband several months after she had left him, at their old house. During dinner, she stated several ideas of importance, without citing her source. He listened carefully, crossing his knees and nodding attentively—the pose he always assumed with his clients. The only time during the evening she had thought he might start a fight was when she told him she was living with a man—a student, twelve years younger than she. An odd expression came across his face. In retrospect, she realized that he must have been truly puzzled. She quickly told him that the relationship was platonic.

What Ellen told him was the truth. The man, Sam, was a junior at George Washington University. He had been rooming with her sister and brother-in-law, but friction had developed between the two men. Her sister must have expected it. Her sister’s husband was very athletic, a pro-football fan who wore a Redskins T-shirt to bed instead of a pajama top, and who had a football autographed by Billy Kilmer on their mantel. Sam was not frail, but one sensed at once that he would always be gentle. He had long brown hair and brown eyes—nothing that would set him apart from a lot of other people. It was his calmness that did that. She invited him to move in after her sister explained the situation; he could help a bit with her rent. Also, although she did not want her husband to know it, she had discovered that she was a little afraid of being alone at night.

When Sam moved in in September, she almost sympathized with her brother-in-law. Sam wasn’t obnoxious, but he was strange. She had to pay attention to him, whether she wanted to or not. He was so quiet that she was always conscious of his presence; he never went out, so she felt obliged to offer him coffee or dinner, although he almost always refused. He was also eccentric. Her husband had been eccentric. Often in the evenings he had polished the brass snaps of his briefcase, rubbing them to a high shine, then triumphantly opening and closing them, and then rubbing a little more to remove his thumbprints. Then he would drop the filthy cloth on the sofa, which was upholstered with pale French linen that he himself had selected.

Sam’s strange ways were different. Once, he got up in the night to investigate a noise, and Ellen, lying in her room, suddenly realized that he was walking all over the house in the dark, without turning on any lights. It was just mice, he finally announced outside her door, saying it so matter-of-factly that she wasn’t even upset by the news. He kept cases of beer in his room. He bought more cases than he drank—more than most people would ever consider drinking over quite a long period. When he did have a beer, he would take one bottle from the case and put it in the refrigerator and wait for it to get cold, and then drink it. If he wanted more, he would go and get another bottle, put it in the refrigerator, wait another hour, and then drink that. One night, Sam asked her if she would like a beer. To be polite, she said yes. He went to his room and took out a bottle and put it in the refrigerator. “It will be cold in a while,” he said quietly. Then he sat in a chair across from her and drank his beer and read a magazine. She felt obliged to wait there in the living room until the beer was cold.

One night, her husband came to the house to talk about their divorce—or so he said. Sam was there and offered him a beer. “It will be cold in a while,” he said as he put it in the refrigerator. Sam made no move to leave the living room. Her husband seemed incapacitated by Sam’s silent presence. Sam acted as if they were his guests, as if he owned the house. He wasn’t authoritarian—in fact, he usually didn’t speak unless he was spoken to—but he was more comfortable than they were, and that night his offer of cigarettes and beer seemed calculated to put them at ease. As soon as her husband found out that Sam planned to become a lawyer, he seemed to take an interest in him. She liked Sam because she had convinced herself that his ways were more tolerable than her husband’s. It became a pleasant evening. Sam brought cashews from his room to go with the beer. They discussed politics. She and her husband told Sam that they were going to get divorced. Sam nodded. Her husband had her to dinner once more before the divorce was final, and he invited Sam, too. Sam came along. They had a pleasant evening.

Things began to go smoothly at her house because of Sam. By Christmas, they were good friends. Sometimes she thought back to the early days of her marriage and remembered how disillusioned she had felt. Her husband had thrown his socks on the bedroom floor at night, and left his pajamas on the bathroom floor in the morning. Sam was like that sometimes. She found clothes scattered on the floor when she cleaned his room—socks and shirts, usually. She noticed that he did not sleep in pajamas. Things bother you less as you get older, she thought.

Ellen cleaned Sam’s room because she knew he was studying hard to get into law school; he didn’t have time to be fussy. She hadn’t intended to pick up after a man again, but it was different this time. Sam was very appreciative when she cleaned. The first time she did it, he brought her flowers the next day, and he thanked her several times, saying that she didn’t have to do it. That was it—she knew she didn’t have to. But when he thanked her she became more enthusiastic about it, and after a while she began to wax his room as well as dust it; she Windexed the windows, and picked up the little pieces of lint the vacuum had missed. And, in spite of being so busy, Sam did nice things for her. On her birthday, he surprised her with a blue bathrobe. When she was depressed, he cheered her up by saying that any student would like a teacher as pretty as she. She was flattered that he thought her pretty. She began to lighten her hair a little.

He helped her organize her school programs. He had a good ear and he seemed to care about music. Before the Christmas concert for the parents, he suggested that the Hallelujah Chorus be followed by Dunstable’s “Sancta Maria.” The Christmas program was a triumph; Sam was there, third row center, and he applauded loudly. He believed she could do anything. After the concert, there was a picture in the newspaper of her conducting the singers. She was wearing a long dress that Sam had told her was particularly becoming to her. Sam cut out the picture and tucked it in his mirror. She carefully removed it whenever she cleaned the glass, and then replaced it in the same spot.

As time went on, Sam began to put a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator instead of a bottle at a time. They stayed up late at night on the weekends, talking. He wore the pajamas she had given him; she wore her blue bathrobe. He told her that her hair looked more becoming around her face; she should let it fall free. She protested; she was too old. “How old are you?” he asked, and she told him she was thirty-two. She rearranged her hair. She bought him a sweater-vest to keep him warm. But the colors were too wild, he said, laughing, when he opened the box. No, she insisted—he looked good in bright colors, and anyway the predominant color was navy blue. He wore the sweater-vest so long that finally she had to remind him that it needed to be dry-cleaned. She took it with her one morning when she dropped off her clothes.

Then they began talking almost every night, until very late. She got up in the mornings without enough rest, and rubbed one finger across the dark, puffy circles under her eyes. She asked him how his studies were coming; she was worried that he was not paying enough attention to his schoolwork. He told her everything was all right. “I’m way ahead of the game,” he said. But she knew something was wrong. She offered to have his professor to dinner—the one who would write him a recommendation to law school—but Sam refused. It wouldn’t be any trouble, she told him. No, he didn’t want to impose on her. When she said again that she wanted to do it, he told her to forget it; he didn’t care about law school anymore. That night, they stayed up even later. The next day, when she tried to lead the Junior Chorus, she could hardly get out more than a few phrases of “The Impossible Dream” without yawning. The class laughed, and because she hadn’t had enough sleep she became angry with them. That night, she told Sam how embarrassed she was about losing her temper, and he reassured her. They drank several beers. She expected Sam to go into his room and get another six-pack, but he didn’t rise. “I’m not happy,” Sam said to her. She said that he had been working too hard. He waved the thought away. Then perhaps the textbooks were at fault, or his professors weren’t communicating their enthusiasm to the class. He shook his head. He told her he hadn’t looked at a book for weeks. She became upset. Didn’t he want to become a lawyer? Didn’t he want to help people? He reminded her that most of the newspapers and magazines she subscribed to pointed out that the country was so messed up that no one could help. They were right, he said. It was useless. The important thing was to know when to give up.