“Why was he right?” he asked. He could hear his voice becoming accusatory. He didn’t care.
Eleanor looked out the window, then back at him. She couldn’t tell if she was more astonished or annoyed by his suit. She weighed her answer. The conversation had gone on too long. “Rupert would never have given me up.”
Jim flinched, as if he’d been slapped. He felt double-crossed, swindled.
“He was the right man for another woman too.” He spoke without thinking. He had seen the Post article.
Eleanor stood up. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Don’t make yourself pitiful.” She turned and walked out of the shop.
Jim kept his seat, staring out the window, hating himself. It’s over, finally, he thought. His relief was as great as his humiliation. His mouth was dry, sticky, sour. This is what gall tastes like. He got up heavily. He felt he’d aged five years in five minutes. A stranger meeting him for the first time would think he was at least seventy. He had an air of collapse about him. He glimpsed his reflection in the window. I look drowned, he thought. He could smell his sweat. I have the stink of defeat. Out on the street, he walked up Columbus until he found a bar. He bought a pack of cigarettes and ordered gin on the rocks. He sat for two hours smoking and drinking. After his sixth gin, he lurched out of the bar. The M11 bus was lumbering down the avenue. He thought about throwing himself in front of it and ruining the driver’s life. He stepped off the curb, then stepped back again. What if I don’t die? What if I become a quadriplegic? He caught a cab home. Anne was out, at the Y, building muscle. He drank half a bottle of bourbon and passed out.
The next morning he slept in until noon. Feeling hungover, he called his office to cancel appointments. At dinnertime Anne asked him if he wanted anything. He didn’t. She saw an empty bottle of bourbon by his bed. The next day he slept in again. It was ten thirty a.m. when he went into the kitchen. Anne was there. He had hoped she would be gone. He wasn’t ready to face her. He was visibly hungover, less from bourbon than from a Halcion-Xanax-Oxycontin cocktail.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked. “How can Fischbach manage without you?” He reached for a playful note, but his unhappiness choked it. Anne had left research fifteen years ago and had gone to work for the dean of the medical school, first as an assistant dean, then an associate dean, then vice dean. She knew how to make herself useful. She was on her third dean. They all loved her.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. She looked at his drawn face and wondered if she should pick another time. There’s no good time, she thought.
“That sounds serious,” he said, wrenching his mouth into a smile.
“Yes,” she said. “Please sit down.” Jim took the chair at the corner of the table, so he wouldn’t have to look directly at her.
“I want a separation,” Anne said.
He looked at her, then away, afraid that he might cry. “I don’t,” he said, turning back to her, “but I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I’ll move out,” she said. “It’s a trial. For now. We’ll see.”
“I should be the one to move out,” he said.
“No, I need to clear my head. I need a change. I’ll borrow or sublet something.” She nodded at him, grateful that he hadn’t made a scene. She couldn’t have taken another lie. “My brother has a pied-à-terre. I can probably stay there. It isn’t too hideous.”
“I hope you decide to stick with me,” Jim said. “When are you going?”
“This weekend. I’ll talk to Nathan first.”
Jim nodded. “I think I’ll go back to bed,” he said. “I’m not feeling well.” Passing her chair, he wanted to touch her hair; he resisted, not wanting to anger her. He stopped at the doorway.
“You’ve been wonderful,” he said. “I wasn’t.”
Rupert was a virgin when he met Vera. He had survived his English schools with mostly trifling abuse, including the self-inflicted variety. The one violent exception exacted violent revenge.
An orphanage is a first-rate training ground for fending off assaults. Rupert preferred to ward off attackers with words, but he was willing to use fists and knees and even makeshift weapons if they were needed. He made his reputation his first week at Longleat, spewing vicious insults that boys who grew up in respectable homes blanched at. He thought nothing of calling a sixth-former a cunt, leaving the older boy reeling in shock, feeling the insult without understanding it. He told Dominic that he had introduced the word into the Leater’s lexicon, along with Firsters and Publicans. His advantage was his fearlessness and his inventiveness. When his insults fell short, he resorted to threats of dismemberment and disemboweling. He seemed capable of it. The second month he was there, he threatened to eviscerate a fifth-former who tried to suck him off one night in his bed. “I’ll knife you in the stomach, I’ll make mince of your intestines,” he said. “You’ll pass out from the pain.” A month later, he resorted to physical force, against a more pressing suitor, a sixth-form rugby player who kept groping him, thinking it a great joke. The third time he did it, Rupert kicked him in the balls, rocketing him to his knees. The rugby player took the battering ill, working himself into a rage. “No pissant new boy gets away with that,” he told a pal. “Are you in?” The next day, as afternoon services let out, the player and his pal cornered Rupert in the chapel stairwell; securing the door, they took turns buggering him until they got bored.