Beet (6 page)

Peace ate two brussels sprouts, chewing very slowly. Should he have paid more attention to money matters?

“Well,” said Livi, “if the CCR's dumb-ass report is supposed to save the place—something I must tell you I find hard to swallow—why don't you write it yourself? Let your committee yak away, you create the report out of your own good mind, then tell 'em they did it.”

“They're not stupid,” said Peace.

Livi said nothing.

Beth and Robert were approaching the end of a breath-holding
contest, and glowed like radishes. “Out!” said Livi, to the children's satisfaction.

“Besides,” said Peace, “it's not playing fair. The report is supposed to be a collective decision.”

“Ooo la la, M. Candide! I love collective decisions,” said Livi. “Love love love!”

She examined her husband's troubled face. “Have you ever heard of Dupuytren's contracture?” she asked. “It's a disorder of the palm. Thick tissues, like a scar, develop under the skin. It takes a while to grow and eventually it restricts the motion of the hand, causing one finger to drop involuntarily. The condition starts out invisible, with no pain, and winds up very serious.”

“This is a metaphor?” Peace asked.

“Could be.” She gave him her business smile. “There's only one way to get rid of Dupuytren's contracture.”

“And what is that, Doctor?”

“Surgery.”

THE OCCASION OF THE PORTERFIELDS' NIGHT OUT WAS THE
visit of B. F. Templeton, known as The Great, the most popular poet in America, there to give a reading in Lapham Auditorium. The hall was named for the funder, the inventor of the asparagus tongs, who was also a Gilded Age press lord and amateur cornet enthusiast lampooned by political cartoonists of the day, including Thomas Nast, for blowing his own horn. Lapham sat six hundred in the orchestra, and two hundred more in the loge—the necessary capacity for the throng expected for The Great Poet Templeton. That was how he was always billed, as The Great Poet Templeton. Friends and critics sometimes referred to him as Templeton and B. F., but fans knew him as The Great.

“I suppose we have to go,” said Livi when they finished their meal, hoping Peace would hear that as a question.

“You don't, honey, but if I didn't show up, that's all the committee would talk about at tomorrow's meeting.”

“Fascinatin' group,” she said, adopting her best Jean Harlow. “So cultchered, don't ye know? So refoined.”

Cindy the sitter appeared at six, as promised. Beth and Robert hooted and cheered.

“Don't let them get the best of you,” said Livi as she put on her parka.

“I came armed this time,” said the teenager. “A .38, a .45, and an Uzi.”

“You're sure that's enough?”—the parents in unison.

No one was more thrilled by The Great's appearance than Matha Polite, who had selected herself to introduce the reading. This was The Great's second visit to Beet, his first occurring over twenty years ago when he was just starting out, yet recognizable as a rising literary star. His poetry—even his detractors and competitors had to concede—was very good, a concatenation of colloquial Frost and mythological Seferis, with the mathematical precision of Empson and yet the boisterous lyricism of Dylan Thomas. He had much of Thomas in him, including a distant Welsh ancestry (though he had been born and reared in Point Pleasant, New Jersey). He drank as lustily as Thomas had, and lunged at as many undergraduate breasts as well, and as well. And he looked a bit like Thomas—shortish and fattish with a thick raddled nose and chirpy eyes that seemed to preemptively beseech everyone for forgiveness. His God's gift, though, was his voice. If anything, it was even more musical than Thomas's—so bell-like and equipped with its own echo, listeners would rotate their heads and sway to it in a demi-swoon, as they might sitting on a lawn at a Chopin piano concerto drifting over Tanglewood.

Because The Great's speaking fee was $20,000, Bollovate, upon learning of the event, attempted to have it canceled. That is, he got President Huey to try to call it off. But The Great's reading had been set in stone a year in advance, and his contract called for full payment, even if the college backed out.

“Twenty grand for poetry?” said Bollovate. “And what do we get out of it? I'll tell you what. Poetry!”

The students, especially those in English and American Literature, were delighted at the prospect of sitting at The Great's feet, which were usually covered in woolly bedroom slippers worn even in the snow, as he suffered from gout. And the faculty too wanted to gain as much reflected glory as the poet would radiate. Smythe
was the most enthusiastic, which is why, as soon as the date was nailed down, he'd volunteered to give a cocktail party to kick off the evening. When The Great stood on the threshold of Smythe's house just off campus, he was upright and sober, and at first few people recognized him.

“Sir! We welcome your return after a long and eventful journey as Penelope welcomed Odysseus,” said Smythe.

“Not in the same way, I hope.”

Smythe's house was a gingerbread job so laden with rounded shingles and frosted shutters that the place looked edible. The walls were decorated with little prints of English churches and photographs of famous authors—all staring lifelessly into the camera like gulag prisoners, with Smythe at their sides, wearing a satin smile. In the parlor, Ada Smythe, who understood very little of the literary life but knew how to throw a party, had set up a full bar including a life-size ice sculpture of the Lacoste crocodile to honor her family. She asked her husband how he liked it. He told her, “Boring.”

By the time of The Great's late arrival, most of the faculty were present, standing like flamingos in a swamp, holding glasses and making burbling sounds as student-waiters, among them Max Byrd, presented trays of midget asparagus and new potatoes stuffed with cheddar. Until Professor Porterfield got there—somewhat after The Great, as at the last minute Livi had to be driven to the hospital to extract a bullet from a kid who'd accidentally shot himself with his father's Glock—Max was the only person in the room who had read all the works of B. F. Templeton, excluding The Great himself.

On the way to the party the Porterfields were talking about what they'd been talking about, off and on, for a year, and more intently lately, with more pain than progress.

“It isn't that I don't want you to go back into practice. You know that,” said Peace. “But the timing is lousy, Liv. I need you here.”

“If something turns up in Boston, I'll be here. It's only a forty-minute drive. But it's been four years. I'm going to lose everything I've trained for.”

“What if it's New York?”

Her voice was soft, controlled. “Then it's New York. Look, darling, this place may not
exist
in a couple of months. And in any case, there's no sense in
both
of us doing the wrong job.”

“I'm not doing the wrong job.”

“Of course you are. These people don't deserve you.”

“They'll come around.”

“When pigs fly.”

Peace wasn't as confident of his high opinion of his colleagues as he sounded. But he did believe in the value of saying he was. As the Chinese put it, “If you want to keep a man honest, never call him a liar.” Peace would have substituted “make” for “keep.”

“The students deserve everything, Liv. And the faculty isn't what you see. Most of them are better than you think.”

“I sure hope so.” She looked out the car window at a clump of dead trees. “You were happiest in Sunset Park. You were doing something there.”

“I'm doing something here. And don't romanticize Sunset Park. That was no picnic either, babe, if you remember.”

“I won't romanticize Sunset Park if you don't romanticize Beet.” She touched his elbow. “The trouble with you is you're a hero.”

“I'm not. I just want the college to realize what it is.”

“To realize what it is! Oh, Jesus! You
are
a hero!” They rode in silence the rest of the way to the party.

In the atmosphere of Smythe's home, envy was as palpable as smog but, since it was also laced with longing, revealed itself in manic gaiety. All crowded around or edged toward The Great. Lipman clung to him like ivy, as did Jamie Lattice. “It must be wonderful,” he said to the poet, “to be part of the New York literati!”

“The New York literati? You mean journalists?” said Templeton, at once flinging the boy and Lipman into deep yet separate funks.

No one hovered as close as Smythe or expressed his admiration more lavishly. Among other social skills, he was the undisputed master of the standing ovation, a skill he'd perfected some years earlier when Steven Spielberg visited the campus. He knew
exactly how to begin the clapping, when to rise from his seat, how to extend his arms in an incomplete circle. He was certain this evening would afford the opportunity to strut his stuff.

For his part, The Great was in his element—“a pig in shit,” he shouted to no one in particular as he tossed down his first neat Bushmills of the evening, not realizing that porcine references came out as less hilarious at Beet than elsewhere. He was much more comfortable surrounded by professors and students of literature than he was among his fellow writers. Lost in their own orbits, writers would spin away from him, whereas he drew a college crowd to him with centripetal force. Because he produced the works they merely researched or criticized, he understood that most of the faculty wished him dead. But he also divined that he was indispensable to their health, that without an occasional visit from him or some other of his ilk, their bitterness would turn inward and gnaw on its own tail. Grandly would he accept their flattery. Grandly would they flatter. They laughed too loud, and so did he.

“So you're the one who's going to save the college by Christmas,” said Templeton, when Peace was introduced to him.

“We're going to try.”

“‘We' means a committee?”

Peace nodded.

“Ah well,” said The Great, in a rare lapse into sympathetic seriousness. He looked up. “You have an innocent face.”

“So I'm told,” said Peace, who was growing sick of his face.

So full of light and cheer was The Great on this occasion, one hardly noticed the surly brunette who seemingly was soldered to his side. She had bulbous black hair and the face of a Fascist but without the beliefs; and though half The Great's age (of who knows? Fifty?) she seemed to have been through more than one mill. A Leica dangled from her neck.

“This is Sandy, my photographer,” said The Great, at last recalling her presence, as if everyone had his own photographer. In any case, from that day forward at Beet, the definition of a photographer expanded considerably. Following her subject at three
or four paces, Sandy said not a word as The Great do-si-doed from fan to fan, pausing at only the choicest breasts on his trips to the bar.

“Bushmills, barkeep, if you please!” he cried, gulping his second drink, this time a double. “You can have your fuckin' Dewar's. And your malt shit too, as far as I'm concerned. It's Irish for me! And the only Irish worth a warm fart is Bushmills!” Everyone thought he was right, a few expressing their support by slapping him on his fleshy shoulders.

When Peace stood in the parlor with Livi on his arm, he looked disoriented, as if he had blundered into the wrong party. This was his society. They were his colleagues and their wives and husbands or partners or special friends, his people. Why then did he feel as if he had come upon some Russian bath or Turkish church, a place with strange customs, floral dishes piled with unrecognizable food, samovars, bejeweled troikas, people speaking a language that sounded like none he knew (and he knew several)? The men were spinning like dervishes; a wonder they did not dizzy themselves and crash to the floor. The women tilted from side to side, their faces gleaming under pellets of sweat. Every trail of sound, no matter how loud, seemed to conclude at the word “exactly.” All anyone seemed to be saying was “exactly,” which struck him as funny because he was feeling peculiarly inexact, out of focus.

“Professor Porterfield?” He looked down to his left upon a head of brilliantine.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Ferritt.”

“It's Lawrence. Ferritt Lawrence,” said the reporter darkly. Peace wasn't the only one to make that mistake, though he was the first to make it unintentionally. “I'm still hoping for an interview with you,” said the nineteen-year-old in a robotlike voice that he hoped sounded menacing.

“I'll be glad to talk with you,” said Peace, “and with everyone, when the committee is ready.”

“I should tell you,” Lawrence drawled, as if harboring a secret no one wanted to know, “I've had off-the-record conversations
with several committee members already. They say that you're not open to new ideas.”

Examining Lawrence as though he were an uninteresting virus, Livi said: “We'd love to stop and chat with you, Mr. Ferritt. But you know how it is—so much time, so little to do.” She guided her husband away by the forearm.

The Great, having progressed from two Bushmills to many, stuck his head playfully into the maw of the ice crocodile, while giving Matha the once-over for the third time, thus drawing a steady glower from his personal photographer. When Matha responded and ushered her breasts in his direction, Sandy swung an elbow like a bad-boy NBA forward, catching her opponent on the collarbone.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Sure,” said Matha, contemplating throwing a punch. The women squared off and sized each other up. Observing the play-let, Ada Smythe rushed over, stood between them like a ref, and offered both a Cosmopolitan.

Quoted lines of the poet were bouncing off the walls as though the room had turned into a squash court. It appeared everyone had a favorite line or phrase or couplet or quatrain, which required reciting at high volume. An oral Bartlett's was created on the spot, with The Great joining in and quoting his own lines, more and more of them, louder and louder, until he remained the only one speaking, and all were standing about him in numinous wonder. At one point he spoke for three minutes straight, then looked around with a bewildered expression. “Someone's boring me,” he said. “I think it's me!”

Much laughter followed, rising higher when he added that was the one line he did not write; it belonged to Dylan Thomas, his drunken muse. Max Byrd wondered why poets, even the better ones, had to play clichés. Peace watched his student watch The Great, knowing what the boy was thinking. Max and students like him were his reason for teaching, he reminded himself, discouraged that a reminder was necessary.

But everyone could not have been merrier, and in that state
they left Smythe's house at the appointed hour and gathered themselves into a street pageant, worming down the blustery, leaf-blown pathways into the college, their shoes clacking toward Lapham Auditorium. Smythe took one of The Great's arms, Matha the other. The photographer trailed the revelers, clicking her Leica ratatatat.

As Peace took in the parade of his colleagues from the rear, lagging back and increasing the distance between them and himself, a short story of John Updike's came to mind out of the blue. It was about an old man who keeps a piece of land deep in the sticks, principally so that his extended and unwieldy family will have a spot for their annual reunion picnics. The story involved the latest picnic, and Updike describes the scruffy crew in detail—the sneaky cousins, the dim-witted in-laws, the drug-snorting children, a coarse stewardess brought as a date by the married ne'er-do-well nephew, and so on. While the rest of them play softball on his little piece of land, the old man takes a walk to the top of a nearby hill, from which he looks back and surveys his family. A word comes to him: “Sell, sell.”