His wife reminded him, it wasn’t as if they had nowhere to go. But he knew where that was; he nodded, and took his head out of his hands as if he were comforted, but when she was gone he rested his arms on his knees again, squeezing one fist inside the other.His children loved the beach. He loved the smell of their hair after they were spent and fell asleep in his lap under their umbrella, the seal-like sheen of their arms and legs. Everything seemed to fit together, the umbrella in the sand, him in the wooden folding chair, the daughter asleep in his lap, as if her life were meant only for ending up there.
And he could get them there again; he liked the school in Santa Rosa where he had lectured a couple of years ago. They liked him. They had hinted then at interest in employing him. But he told them he was devoted—he was called—to be where he was. At the time, the suggestion of this other job had warmed him, like a confession of love from a woman not his wife. He thought of it now, of how he could tell the kids, we’ll be able to go to the beach every Saturday.
They loved their cousins’ house in France, too. He thought of the long Sunday afternoons, lazy, half-sick from food and wine, watching the apricot haze deepen and fall into grey dusk at ten or eleven at night. Adeline was probably telling them, even now, and they would be happy. He put his head in his hands.
Commencement had been a job. At the faculty brunch, he drank mimosas one up another, ostensibly to celebrate. But Adeline knew. He saw her choose not to say anything about it. Of course she knew, he laughed bitterly—he hated sweet alcohol. He hadn’t tasted it.
As he passed the queues of robed students, he saw the bird-like redhead who had toasted him at the senior banquet. Following another drunken tribute to drunken friends, she had risen from her seat and taken the podium, lifted her glass and wished to thank the professors who were moving on to bestow their gift of knowledge to other students, who needed them badly in other places. Her speech was brief, and stilted, he might have called it prissy if he had not felt its direction toward him. Everyone dutifully raised their glasses and drank. It was a small thing.
But as he passed her in the commencement queue, he gave her a little tap with his fist, a gesture of the “go get ’em, tiger” kind. Ordinarily, he disdained bonhomie like that; but what else could he do?
She turned slightly from her group of friends, and looked at him with surprise.
-----
It was really better, he thought, that the other faculty didn’t address it with him. It was a small thing, that happened all the time. It happened to people with more personal investment in the college than he had. But he couldn’t think of an occasion that it happened to someone with a family to support. However, he reminded himself, that was not the college’s fault.
Then, he reminded himself, it was not a fault at all.
His children had reacted with slow-dawning comprehension and dread of the unknown, until Adeline wisely told them that not only would they be spending the summer in France, but also Christmas. Think of Christmas in France! With Tante Nadine and the cousins! Then, of course, they were ecstatic. Christmas in France! Sledding with the cousins! What kinds of cake would Tante Nadine make?
He drank more wine, shielded from Adeline’s attention by the children’s uproar of glee.
It ran through his head: “Opening bottles is what makes drunkards.” Where had he read that?
-----
The town slowed down in the summer, became completely torpid, in fact, except for the floods of tourists on the weekends. Adeline had started to pack and pushed him out of the house with the children. “Do anything,” she insisted. “Get ice cream. Feed the ducks.”
He longed for the summer to be over, for the recourse of the beach. By the dock, the air pressed heavily around. His children did not seem to notice the oppression. He thought of stopping into the pub, buying them French fries or ice cream…but they would tell Adeline if he had a beer. It would not occur to them that it was a sign of harm. And if it did occur to them, though they would say nothing, it would be no better.
He threw a bit of bread toward the ducks that had stopped over in the stagnant water. Surely they would be on their way soon.
-----
Adeline had gone out to pick up Chinese food. He lay on the sofa, trying not to think about an early glass of wine while she was gone, trying not to think about the faculty reappointment meeting that had decided his fate, trying to think impartially of the dean and the committee; failing that, trying not to think of any of them at all.
Marianne, the six year old, padded softly in from the front room. He looked at her.
“Don’t you like the movie?” he asked.
She nodded. “This is the scary part,” she said.
He pulled her onto the sofa beside him, against his stomach, and tucked his arm around her. It was not hard to stop thinking when he could listen to her deep, healthy, contented breaths.
-----
“I’m not going to hide the wine from you,” said Adeline to him, that night. “But I’m not going to buy any more.”
He nodded.
“It’s just another month.” Her palm pushed in deep circles over his hunched back.
He raised his head. “Until what?”
She smiled encouragingly. “Until France!”
He smiled back, his forehead pierced with the effort not to speak.
Her brow furrowed uncomprehendingly. “Why, what?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “It’s not so long. We’ll make it.”
-----
The children helped him carve out a path that they took every day, from the house to the playground, to the dock where the ducks sometimes met them—apparently having no sense of or trust in routine, to a bench in the little courtyard of the public elementary school, circling through the back garden of St. Mary’s toward the main road, then cutting off it to spend more time at the playground before they came home again. At Danny’s insistence, they stowed a basketball between the hedge and the firehouse. He was surprised to find how it improved his morale for that brief hour, watching the ball sink unexpectedly through the chain basket. It helped, too, to buy small things for the children—Popsicles, ice cream, yo-yos or paper dolls or sidewalk chalk. They asked him to draw on the sidewalk with them, and he tried manfully, sincerely, to comply. The only thing he truly enjoyed was the blind physical work of lifting them, catching them when they jumped, pushing them on the swings until they shrieked “Too high!”
-----
He knew he could sit for hours in that same space, if he wanted to. He smiled to think that, maybe, he would. He could drink all four bottles of wine that he had found in a box, hidden in the closet under the stairs—Adeline lied, or changed her mind—and still have time to sleep them off before she and the children came home from their weekend. She was with her girlfriends from the translation office, the children were farmed out among their friends from school or church. He had been assigned to go fishing with a group of men that he didn’t know—a sort-of friend from church had invited him through Adeline, or perhaps she had suggested it. He did not know. But the sort-of friend had called him the night before to say that he was ill and would not be going; he should still go, of course; of course he would, feel better soon. He said nothing to Adeline and he was alone on the couch, with one open bottle and three more to qualify him as an alcoholic, if he chose. Where had he read that before? The question was one of pacing. If he drank too slowly, he would not sleep soundly and would wake up too early the next day, and have to get through a good many hours before he could start drinking again. Say what they will about opening bottles being what makes drunkards, he was steadfastly against heavy drinking before the sun gave signs of setting. It might not be diagnostic but it was simply uncouth.
But if he drank too fast, there would be nothing to drink tomorrow. Anyway, it was his prerogative to decide. His space to decide to remain.
-----
He was not deeply religious, but was devout. That was how his students described him. They saw his sincerity, no matter what class they had him in. They saw his inner light, the ethical desire that drove his efforts beyond the response that seemed to reward them little. That was why he had not taken the Santa Rosa school’s offer, though drawn by its appeal. Life was not a matter of finding what you liked best to do, but what you were supposed to do. It is workers, not enthusiasts, who are rewarded. Enthusiasm is its own reward, a life of endless trivial joy. There was nothing wrong with that, but when you clearly knew you were supposed to be doing something else, when you clearly saw a challenge meant for you, it was only cowardice or laziness that would shy from a challenge to seek a life contented moment by moment.
-----
The basketball was safe in the hedge, where Danny had left it. Danny was short for his age, which made him well-coordinated but not very fast, little effective in school sports. He made no comparison between his own efforts and those of others, and none either between their efforts that failed and those that succeeded. If someone shot the basketball and it sank, he commended it as a good shot, never as lucky or improved, never at all qualified.
The chain jangled satisfactorily. He waited for the ball to return to him. At length, he realized it had flown under the hoop and rolled away from him, jangling the chain as it passed.
Danny’s face made people believe he was older than he was. Sometimes it worried Adeline. He had never worried, never questioned it. He loved his son’s gravity, present even in joy. He understood it. Life was grave, even joy was grave if you knew it was joy, and not just happiness or ecstasy. He looked at his son’s face and was gladdened by the knowledge that he would have a confidant sooner than any other men his age with sons.
When Danny shouted encouragement at him for shooting the basketball, he knew it was not childish adulation. When Danny took his hand as they walked back from the park, he knew it was decisive.
He hid the ball again in the hedge and walked back to the house, crossing from pool to pool of sallow streetlight.
He took the three unopened bottles of wine to the school, in a basket, with a ribbon round the handle, and laid it all in front of the dean’s door. He cooked a filet mignon in the empty kitchen and ate it with the last of the opened wine. To his great pleasure, there was an all-night marathon of Hitchcock movies on the TV. It was a small thing, but it was pleasing to him.
first published 6/28/07, 9.24am
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