In Milton Lumky Territory (1984) Read online

  “You’re ten years older than I am,” he said. “But that’s okay. But I want to tell you one thing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was one of your pupils. In the fifth grade, in 1945.”

  She said, “I don’t care whose pupil you were.” Her arms closed around him. “Isn’t that strange,” she said. That’s why I looked familiar to you. I never would have had any reason to be conscious of it.” She yawned, settled down until she was comfortable, and then, by degrees, her hands relaxed and released themselves from him. She had again fallen asleep. Her face, against his shoulder, joggled limply.

  That’s that, he said to himself, a little dazed.

  But what a weight it was off his mind

  ON THE FOURTH of the month, he and Susan flew down to Reno and were married. They spent three days there and then flew back. That night they told Tally at dinner. She did not seem surprised. In Reno he had bought her an electric bowling game, and the sight of that did surprise her.

  7

  HE FOUND SUSAN, during one of the first evenings of their marriage, off by herself in the living room with the big scrapbook on her lap.

  “Show me,” she said. “Are you sure? Or did you mean you went to Garret A. Hobart.” She surrendered the scrapbook to him, and, seated beside her, he turned the pages. Over his shoulder she watched raptly.

  “Here,” he said. He pointed to himself in the class picture. The round boy-face with its oblique eyes, the shapeless hair. Fat stomach bulging out over his belt. He experienced very little sense of relationship to the picture, but nevertheless it was of him.

  “Is that you?” she asked, hanging against him with her hand dangling past his throat, her fingers touching him in a series of nervous digs. Her breath sounded loud and rapid in his ear. “Now don’t play coy,” she said. She traced the legend under the picture. “Yes,” she said. “It does say ‘Bruce Stevens.’ But I don’t remember anybody in that class named Bruce; I’m sure of it.” She scrutinized the photograph and then she said in a triumphant, shrill voice, “Your name was Skip!”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Oh I see,” she said, excited. “You were Skip Stevens?” She eyed him minutely, comparing him with the picture. “It’s true,” she said. “I remember you. You were the boy the janitor caught downstairs at the nurse’s, trying to peep in and see the girls in their underwear.”

  Coloring, he said, “Yes, that’s right.”

  Her eyes grew large and then tiny. “Why didn’t you say?”

  He said, “Why should I have said?”

  “Skip Stevens,” she said. “You were a headache. You were Mrs. Jaffey’s special pet; she let you do anything you wanted. I soon put a stop to that. Why -” She gasped with indignation and drew away from him, growing more and more outraged. “You were running riot, all of you. You started a fire in the cloakroom; wasn’t that you?”

  He nodded.

  Her hand reached up toward his face. “I feel like grabbing you by the ear,” she said. “And just twisting. You were a bully! Weren’t you? Yes, you bullied the little boys; you were overweight.”

  With a certain amount of bitterness he said, “You can see why I didn’t tell you. I waited until I was sure enough of our relationship. I don’t see why any of this should be brought into it.”

  Her attention had returned to the class picture. Jabbing at it she said, “But you were very good in arithmetic. And you made a fine speech in assembly. I was so proud of you that day. But that business about peeping at the girls down at the nurse’s. Why did you do that? That was a disgrace. There you were, sneaking around trying to see through the keyhole.”

  He said, “And you never forgot it.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  “You made a lot out of it every time you were sore, after that.”

  “This is weird,” she said. Suddenly she closed the scrapbook. “I agree; we better forget about this. But I want to know one thing. You didn’t identify me when you first met me, did you? It was some time.”

  “Not until after I left Peg’s,” he said.

  “You weren’t attracted to me because -” She considered. “Your reaction wasn’t predicated on recognizing me. No, I know it wasn’t. At least not consciously.”

  “I don’t think subconsciously either,” he said.

  “Nobody knows what goes on in their subconscious.”

  He said, “Well, there’s no use debating that.”

  “You’re right,” she said. She put the scrapbook away. “Let’s think about something else. Did I tell you I got the key back from Zoe?”

  “No,” he said. She had been gone for an hour or so, and she hadn’t told him what she had been up to.

  “She won’t be in tomorrow. We won’t give her the money until the end of the month, but I explained to her that you and I were married and we would both be there, and she doesn’t really want to come in. So we’ve seen the last of her. She gets to draw until the end of the month, of course.”

  “She’s still legally part owner?”

  “I suppose so. Fancourt would know.”

  That was a name new to him. “Who’s he?” he said.

  “My attorney.”

  “You’ve had auditors go over the books and make sure of the actual worth of the business?”

  At once she became vague. “He had someone come in. They looked at everything. They made an inventory. And I believe they looked at the books and the accounts.”

  “Weren’t you there?” He wondered why he hadn’t seen it.

  “It was while we were in Reno,” she said. “Zoe was there, of course. He’s my attorney, not hers. So it’s all right. No, I wouldn’t let them audit the books while I wasn’t there unless it was my attorney doing it. He’s a good attorney. I met him when I was doing some political work back in ‘48. He’s a very astute man. As a matter of fact, I met Walt through him.”

  “What about Zoe? Didn’t she have a separate audit made?”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “I’m sure she must have.”

  He gave up. In one sense it was none of his concern. But in another it was very much his concern. “I hope you’re not overpaying her,” he said, “just to get rid of her.”

  “Oh no,” Susan said.

  “Let me ask you one thing,” he said. “The accounts receivable file. Did you buy it at the full tally?”

  “I believe so,” she said, hesitating.

  “Suppose some of those people never pay. You assume all the risk. Do you remember about how much it came to?” Those were the customers who were billed each month for past purchases or services that they had charged.

  “A couple hundred dollars, not much; not enough to worry about.”

  “How much of this was done since I met you?” he asked. He had an idea that a great deal had been arranged months ago.

  Susan, with a smile, said, “Remember, you met me years ago. When you were -” She calculated. “Eleven.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  She said, “We worked out most of it last March. We had a terrible scrap. We were going to split up then. But my marriage was breaking up, and frankly I just couldn’t endure having everything fall to pieces around me. I patched it up with Zoe, and at least it lasted for a little while. But I knew it couldn’t go on much longer. When I came back from Mexico I knew I wanted to buy her out; I told you that. Didn’t I? When you first asked me.”

  She had told him something along those lines; he could not recall the exact words.

  “Bruce,” she said. “Or should I call you ‘Skip’?”

  “Not Skip,” he said vehemently.

  “When you were a little boy in grammar school, in my class, did you have any sex fantasies about me? It’s common.”

  “No,” he said.

  “How did you feel about me?” She had gotten her dead-serious tone. “Old Mrs. Jaffey was so lenient on all of you … did it seem to you as if I was too strict?”

  The question could not easily
be answered. “Do you want me to say what I thought then?” he said. “Or how it seems to me now? It’s not the same.”

  She leaped up and paced about the room, her arms folded beneath her breasts, pushing them up and forward as if she were carefully carrying them. Lines of worry once more appeared on her forehead, and her lips pinched together. “How did you feel then?”

  He said, “I was scared of you.”

  “Did you feel guilty and you were afraid you’d be - discovered?”

  “No,” he said with firmness. “I was simply scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what you might do or say. You had complete power over us.”

  Snorting, she said, “Oh come now. You know that’s not true; what about the parents? They terrorize teachers. They get them fired every day - one angry parent in the principal’s office throws around more weight than all the teachers’ unions in the world. Do you know why I left teaching?” She stopped pacing and intently smoothed and straightened her blouse. “I was asked to quit. I had to. Because of my politics. It was in 1948. During the election. I joined the Progressive Party; I was extremely active for Henry Wallace. So the next time when my contract came up, they didn’t renew it. And they asked me to quietly leave and not make a fuss. I naturally asked why.” She gestured. “And they told me. So I didn’t make a fuss. It was my own fault. And I signed that damn Stockholm Peace Proposal petition, later on. Walt got me to do that. He was very active in the Progressive Party, too. Of course that’s all in the past.”

  “I never knew that,” he said.

  “Some parents complained because I was teaching what they called ‘one-worldism’ in the classroom. I had material from the U.N. And then when they did research into me they discovered I had joined the I.P.P. So that was that. It seems like another era, like talking about Hoover and the W.P.A. I was resentful for a while, but anyhow it’s over with. I suppose I could teach again. Maybe not in Idaho, but in some other state like California. Now that they’re crying for teachers. They destroyed the school system with their witch hunts … they made teachers so timid it’s no wonder nothing gets taught. A teacher who opened her mouth about sex education or birth control or atomic war got fired. So I didn’t have so much power,” she wound up, remembering what she had asked. “How do you feel about me now?” She dropped down beside him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I want you to give me an honest answer.”

  “I always do,” he said, with heat.

  “Don’t get hot under the collar. But you might imagine you should be polite. Not offend me. Remember, my period as a teacher is over with, so I don’t sink or swim according to how good I am as a teacher. I don’t conceive of myself in that role, and I haven’t in years. But I’ve always wondered what effect I had. Naturally I tend to think -especially when I’m despondent - that I had no effect. Children are subject to so many outside chaotic forces.”

  He listened to this set speech, knowing that she was fortifying herself against what he might say.

  “Listen,” she went on, “I honestly won’t be offended.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. Leaning forward he kissed her troubled, rigid mount. It did not respond in the slightest. “To me it’s much more important than it is to you; it’s not you I’m thinking about.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “You were grown-up. You were formed.” He did not want to come out and tell her that she had been one of the great factors affecting his life. “Suppose I had been the worst student you had; what real difference did that make? You had a lot of other students. And it was only a year!” That irked him. Just a year to her, less than that since she had not taught the entire term. But to him at that time - a reality that continued indefinitely. What fifth grader can imagine the end of the fifth grade? It will be with him forever. “Thirty pupils but only one teacher,” he pointed out.

  “Tell me,” she said, becoming upset, now.

  He said grudgingly, “You represented a major worry in my life.”

  “You mean that I made you unhappy several times. I suppose you were unhappy after we marched you down to Mr. Hillings’ office, that day we caught you peeping.”

  “No,” he said, “it carried on. Not just an incident. I mean I always was afraid of you. What’s so complicated about that? You mean you hadn’t even thought of that? Don’t you remember the day that Jack Koskoff refused to come to school because he was terrified of you?”

  She nodded slowly, trying to understand.

  “For years you scared me.”

  Angrily she said, “I only taught your class for a trifle over a semester!”

  “But I remembered you.”

  “I had no authority, absolutely none, over you, after you got out of Garret A. Hobart. Why, I never even saw you again.”

  “I delivered your goddamn newspaper,” he said, trembling with unhappiness, now that he realized that she did not remember that.

  “Did you?” Her face remained blank.

  He said, “When you had that big stone house with the other ladies. Don’t you remember when you tried to get me to collect just once every three months, and I patiently explained to you that I might not be on that route in three months, and in that case I’d lose the money, and the next carrier would get it for not doing anything?”

  “I dimly recall. Was that you?” She laughed nervously. “Did you tell me at the time?”

  Come to think of it, he did not know for certain if he ever had. She had said hello to him, at the time, as if she had known him, recognized him. But she might merely have realized that she had seen him before, perhaps had him as a student, without identifying him as an individual. Or thought of his name. Or placed him, beyond that general recognition.

  “Maybe I only thought you knew it was me,” he said. “But you said hello to me every time you saw me. Also, you asked me how my mother was.”

  “Did I ever call you Skip?”

  “No,” he said. Not that he could recall.

  “I didn’t live there long,” she said.

  He said, “Anyhow, I remembered you.”

  “That was natural,” she said, sighing.

  “This really upsets me,” he said. “Finding out that maybe you never recognized me, that time.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to -” He tried to explain it to her. “Get into the house.”

  She burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. Like you did at Peg’s … you mean through a window?”

  “I mean I wanted to be admitted and accepted; I used to walk along and see you all inside having tea or something.” It was hopeless to try to put across his former anguish to her.

  “Not tea,” she said. “Do you want to know what that was the four of us used to drink in the afternoon, around five, especially in summer when it was hot? We used to mix ourselves Old Fashioneds, and we drank them out of cups. So if anybody -” She waggled her finger at him. “For just that reason. So if the paperboy looked in he’d say, ‘They’re drinking tea. How British. How refined.’” She continued to laugh.

  At that, he could not help smiling himself.

  “Criminals,” she said. “We had to be careful. That was 1949, and I was having all that trouble with the Montario school board. You could have come in; in fact you did. I remember. One month I didn’t have any change, and I told you to come in. It was winter. And you came in and sat down in the living room while I went all over the damn house searching for change. Nobody was home but me. I finally found a dollar and a half in somebody’s drawer.”

  He remembered sitting there alone in the big empty living room with its piano and fireplace, while somewhere off upstairs Miss Reuben hunted for money. He had heard her cursing with exasperation, and he had felt himself to be nothing more than a nuisance. On the coffee table a book lay open … she had been reading. Interrupted by the paper boy, at seven-thirty in the evening. How can I get rid of him? Damn it, where’s some change? And, as he sat, he longed to summon up some bright co
nversation to use when she appeared again, some observation about the books in the bookcase. He examined them feverishly, but none of them were familiar. Just titles, seen through the perspiration and fright that kept him mute and stupid and unable to do anything when she returned but accept the money, mumble thanks and good night, and go out the door once again.

  “I remember what you wore,” he said, with accusation.

  “Do you? How interesting, because I don’t.”

  He said, “You had on black trousers.”

  “Toreador pants. Yes. Made of black velvet.”

  “I had never seen anything so exciting.”

  “That wasn’t exciting. I wore them around all the time. I even wore them gardening.”

  “I tried to think of some way to say something interesting.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask if you could sit around and talk? I would have been glad of company.” And then she said, “How old were you then?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Well,” she said, “we could have talked about old times. But I’ll bet what you actually wanted to do was tear those tight black exciting toreador pants from me and assault me. Isn’t that what fifteen-year-old paperboys secretly want to do all the time? That’s just about the age when they read those paperbound books from the drugstore.”

  He thought, My god. And now this woman is my wife.

  BEFORE GOING TO BED that night, Susan filled the tub and took a bath. He accompanied her into the bathroom and sat on the clothes hamper watching her; she did not mind, and he felt a very stong desire to do so. He did not try to explain it or justify it.

  The roar of water kept either of them from talking for some time. She had put bubble bath into the water, and it foamed up in massive pink layers as she waited for the tub to fill. At last there was enough water in the tub. He marveled at the amount of water she needed. And she did not want it as hot as it was; she carefully switched on the cold until a good deal of the suds had been damaged. The whole affair struck him as inefficient, but he said nothing. He sat out of her path, a spectator.

  In the tub, she lay back resting her head against the porcelain side. Suds covered her.