The Body Of Jonah Boyd

Seven

EVEN TODAY I don’t like to think about Phil Perry. But he plays a role in this story, and so I suppose I don’t have any choice. What have I said so far? That he was one of Ernest’ Ph.D. students, that he was scrawny, that he ate a lot. To which I can add: He was prone to intense, one-sided crushes on girls whom he would persist in bothering long after they had told him to get lost. (In modern parlance, a stalker.) He liked to boast that his IQ was 180, and that he was a member of MENSA—mostly, he claimed, because it was a good place to meet girls. Glenn often made fun of him. Although in theory they were friends, and worked together under Ernest on a number of projects, I always suspected that in his heart Phil hated Glenn, and envied him, since Glenn had so much more success with women. Also academically, Glenn was the more successful of the pair. Phil was a kind of genius, possessed of a rare instinct and passion for his subject, but he lacked Glenn’ self-discipline and savoir-faire. He didn’t know how to dress or smile. Nor had he mastered the art, as Glenn had, of giving little Christmas gifts to the wife of the boss, or flirting with his secretary. His papers were inspired and chaotic and might have been great, had he been able to finish them. But he never could, and so his transcript was full of incompletes. We all liked Phil, and felt sorry for him. But we adored Glenn.
Glenn was handsome. He had curly auburn hair that bleached blond in the summer, and wide eyes that he set off by wearing tiny wire-rimmed glasses. No one knows this, but I had an affair with him in the months just after Daphne left him, when he had been turned down for tenure at Wellspring but had yet to find another job. As a lover he displayed the same qualities of flash and eagerness to please, as well as the slight whiff of pandering, that marked his academic career. Such an appeal, however, gets dull in a fairly short order. I think what galled Phil was the impression, personified in Glenn, that the slick and the mediocre will always win out over the clumsy and the brilliant. Glenn’ failure to get tenure was an intellectual vindication from which Phil might have taken comfort, had he only shown a little more patience.
Whenever Phil and Glenn were in the house together with Ernest, there was a palpable tension in the air. This was because Ernest played them off each other—for their own good, he insisted. I suppose he imagined that by flaunting his preference for Glenn, he might ignite in Phil some healthy competitive spirit, induce him to pull up his bootstraps and develop a manner to match his talents. But it never happened. Phil continued to stumble along, no doubt vexed by the favoritism that Ernest showed Glenn—for example, by confiding in him, that Thanksgiving, the fascinating episode of Jonah Boyd “misplacing” his notebooks. Ernest and Glenn worked together in interrogating Boyd, they made a spectacle of their alliance as mentor and disciple, which Phil was forced to witness, all the while trying to fill in the blanks for himself. Had I been more observant, I might have seen early signs of the envy that would erupt so many years later in violence—but at the time there was so much else to keep track of, I ended up more or less ignoring Phil. As I usually did. As everyone usually did.
Two hours after the readings ended—the kitchen cleaned, Glenn and Phil gone, and the Boyds put to bed—I climbed into my notoriously bad-tempered Dodge Dart, turned the key in the ignition, and found that it would not start.
Cursing, I returned to the kitchen. Nancy was sitting at the tulip table in her bathrobe, smoking a cigarette and thumbing rather listlessly through the recipe pages of Sunset.
She looked up. “What are you doing back here?” she asked.
“The car won’t start.”
“Oh, how annoying. Ernest!”
He too was in his bathrobe. Together, we went outside to look under the hood.
“Nothing wrong that I can see,” Ernest said, slipping his hand down the back of my skirt. “But then again, I’m no mechanic.”
“I’ll call a taxi.”
“No need for a taxi. I can drive you home.” He started to kiss me.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler if Denny just stayed the night here?” Nancy called from the kitchen door. “She can sleep with Daphne on the fold-out bed in the study. And that way she’ll be here in the morning when the tow truck comes.”
Ernest withdrew his hand. In the dark, had she seen?
“That’ probably a better plan,” he said, moving away from me into the moonlight.
Back indoors, Nancy led me to the study, the door to which she simultaneously rapped on and pushed open. “Daphne, Denny’ car’ broken down, so she’ going to bunk with you . . . Oh.” Daphne was not in bed; she was sitting at the table near the window, in jeans and a sweater set, putting on makeup.
“Can’t you wait for a person to say ‘Come in’?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Nancy said. “Listen, I’m exhausted. Be a sweetheart and show Denny where the extra towels are, will you?” As if in compensation for her earlier brusqueness, she patted Daphne’ head rather as she might have Little Hans’. “Well, good night, girls. And thanks again for all your help today.”
“Nancy—”
“What?”
“Are you happy how things turned out? I mean, seeing Anne?”
“Oh, delighted, delighted.” But her smile was weary. “Of course, I have to admit, the drinking worries me . . . Well, no need to think about that now. Try and get a good night’ sleep.”
She left, closing the door softly.
I sat on the daybed. “So,” I said to Daphne, “I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to have a roommate tonight, were you?”
Daphne had resumed her makeup. “I wasn’t, actually.”
I took off one shoe. “Going out?”
She turned to face me. “Can I trust you? You’re younger than my parents. I hope I can trust you.”
“Of course you can.”
She leaned closer. “The fact is, I do have plans tonight—only they’re ones I don’t want anyone to find out about. You see, for some time now—a few months—I’ve been involved with someone, and for all sorts of reasons, for the time being at least, we need to keep it quiet—”
“You mean Glenn.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You mean you knew?”
“Well, if you’ll pardon my saying so, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist—”
“Oh, but do you think that means my parents have guessed? Because if my dad found out, it could be awful for Glenn. Dad wouldn’t approve. The age difference and all, and the fact that Glenn’ his sort of, you know, protege.”
“I don’t think your father knows. You mother, on the other hand—well, you may have noticed that she didn’t even ask you why you were putting on makeup at eleven o’clock at night.”
“Dear mother. She can be so—well, you know, difficult sometimes, and then sometimes she can sense something, and be totally cool without even saying a word.” Suddenly Daphne jumped up and sat next to me on the daybed. “Oh, Denny, I had no idea you were so cool! Do you have a boyfriend? I hope you don’t mind my asking.”
“I’ve had several. At the moment . . . No, not at the moment.”
“That’ too bad. But here’ the thing. Your having to stay here tonight—it’ put me in sort of an awkward position.”
“Why? Is Glenn coming over?”
“God, no! I couldn’t ever—you know—right here in the house, with Mother and Father on the other side of the wall. Yuck! No, the plan is, he’ going to pick me up at midnight, across the street. And we’re going back to his apartment. And then at five, before anyone’ up, he’ll drop me off, and I’ll get into bed. Oh, you will help us out, won’t you, and not say anything?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The last thing I’d want to do is interrupt the course of young love.” I patted her hand. “Go. Have fun. I won’t say a word.”
Relief filled Daphne’ eyes. “Oh, Denny, you really are wonderful. I never would have thought you could be that cool!” She removed my hand from hers. “Listen, I’d better scoot. And when I get back, don’t scream or anything. I’ll be as quiet as I can.”
“No problem.”
She opened the door. “Oh, and you can borrow my nightgown if you want. It’ clean. Bye.”
She tiptoed out, shutting the door behind her so slowly that it groaned—a louder noise by far than the click of quick closure. From the kitchen where he was sleeping, Little Hans gave a yelp. There was a whispered curse. Another door opened, and shut again.
I took off my other shoe. I listened for—and thought I heard, very far off—the sound of a car turning the curve.
Then I was alone.
I looked around. Never before in the years I’d known them had I slept in the Wrights’ house. Now, rubbing my stocking feet into the carpet, I marveled at a certain quality of cushioned silence that it radiated, a warm, dozing purr, as if somewhere in the midst of that rich layering of rugs and books and paintings and mirrors a cat lay hidden, and was taking pleasure in cleaning itself. This was the sound—the protective, lulling melody—of affluence, and perhaps only those, like me, whom affluence admits only as visitors can name it. It was hard to believe that just a few feet away, just on the other side of a none-too-thick wall, Nancy and Ernest were going through their bedtime rituals. And what did those rituals consist of? Did Nancy wear curlers? Did Ernest stuff his ears with cotton? Did they make love? The last seemed unlikely. Even so, as I took off my clothes, I made a little striptease out of my disrobing, swinging my stockings in the air, imagining as my audience . . . who? Ernest? Nancy?
It didn’t matter. No sooner was I down to my underwear than shame overtook me, and I bundled myself into Daphne’ nightgown, which was flannel, patterned with teddy bears in nightcaps, and much too small. I opened the sofa bed, which was already made, switched off the lamp, and snuggled under the covers. But from outside moonlight penetrated through the windows, over which, as it happened, I had neglected to draw the curtains, and I could not sleep. Nor could I muster the energy to climb out of bed and make the room dark; or take the battery out of the wall clock, the persistent ticking of which I felt as a steady thud just beneath my diaphragm. And so I lay awake, listening for noises, and hearing some—several knocks, a not very loud crash, as of something being dropped. A toilet flushed. What time was it? One? Two? I had no idea.
The darkness settled. I thought about the first Thanksgiving I’d spent with the Wrights, the long night afterward during which I’d actually convinced myself that they’d invited me only to make me the subject of some strange social experiment. Now I understood that their motives for embracing me were not only more complex than I had suspected, but individual: Nancy needed me to be a failure, Ernest needed me as an alternative to Nancy . . . and now Daphne seemed to need me to be her confidante. She was a difficult girl to read, her expression as opaque as her flat, bland hair. I had no idea if she liked me. Come to think of it, I had no idea if she liked anybody. Most of the time she projected a facade of indifference to the rest of the world—and then there would be those occasional flashes of rebelliousness, or rage, or even tenderness. Also a certain hardness: The implacability to which Nancy could merely aspire, Daphne, at seventeen, had already mastered. There was no question as to who would win that war. Nor did it surprise me that Glenn loved her: The challenge was getting through the carapace, reaching the pearl of sweetness within—and to that quest, I have discovered, some men are more than willing to devote their lives.
Well, she was gone now—presumably off at Glenn’ apartment, which, as it happened, was in the complex next to mine: Springwell, locus of all fulfillments the necessity of which Florizona Avenue proscribed. As I lay on the sofa bed, the faces of the Wrights seemed to float above me, like the winged, disembodied heads of seraphim. Despite my wakefulness, I felt extraordinarily content; and indeed, at some point I must have dropped off, because when, just before dawn, Daphne came in, I did scream, despite my promise not to. No one woke, though—or at least, I heard no one wake. All night the walls and the window frames had been creaking, as if to protest the extra weight the house was being forced to bear, all these bodies shifting in sleep. Now Daphne stripped down to her bra and panties and climbed in next to me. Her hair smelled of smoke.
“Oh, Denny, what a night it’ been,” she said.
“Has it?”
Her lips were as close to mine as a lover’. “Glenn was furious that I told you about us. He’ terribly worried that you’ll tell my father. I tried to reassure him, but you know how men are. They won’t listen.”
“I know.”
“Oh, but after that . . . May I tell you? I’ve got to tell someone. You see, tonight Glenn asked me . . . Well, he didn’t exactly ask me, but he broached the subject... I mean, getting married.”
“Married! But you’re only seventeen!”
“Oh, not now! In the future, after I’ve graduated . . . because, you see, it looks very likely—don’t tell anyone this, because it isn’t official yet—it looks like the department’ going to offer Glenn a job. Dad doesn’t want word to get around because he’ afraid it will upset Phil—you know, that Glenn is getting an offer and he isn’t. And if Glenn gets the job, and he gets tenure—well, that means that down the road, we can have the house.”
“What house?”
“This house, of course! It’ always been Mother’ hope that one of us could keep it after she and Dad—you know—pass away. You know how she feels about the place, how important it is to her that it stay in the family. But this way—if Glenn gets the job—the problem’ solved.”
“But all that’ so far in the future! Twenty, thirty years. Are you really thinking that far ahead, at your age?”
“It’ not that far ahead! Besides, soon enough, Dad will want to retire. They’ll want a smaller place.” Daphne lay back, besotted by her own vision. “There’ so much I’d do if this house were ours! For a start, paint the kitchen. And fill in that stupid barbecue pit.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Oh, Denny, I don’t know how well you know Glenn, but he’ really the most wonderful... so smart and insightful. And an amazing lover. I mean, he really knows how to f*ck—oh, have I shocked you?”
“Of course not.”
“Good.” Daphne sounded disappointed. “Tonight was the most marvelous night. May I tell you about it?”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell me everything.”
“Okay,” she said.
And then, for almost an hour, until the sun coming through the windows roused Dora to yowl for her breakfast, she did.