Fortunate Lives (21 page)

Dinah reached over and touched his hand, although she didn’t grasp it, she simply made contact, and they looked across the
expanse of white sheet between them and gazed dumbly at each other. Her hair was matted and spiked around her face; she had
thrashed from side to side during the night, turning her head against the pillow, while her hair was damp from sweat. She
ran her hand through it with a grimace.

“My God! That damned bird. I can’t get up now,” she said. “Can you?”

“He’s not going to stop.”

“I know. It’s not even five o’clock, though. I believe I’ll just lie here and languish and suffer.” It was a phrase caught
up from a long-ago telephone conversation with Martin’s mother when she was asked how all the relations in Sheridan were faring
during yet another parched summer. “Oh, we’re all just fine,” she had said to Dinah, “except, of course, we’re just languishing
and suffering in all this heat.” Even David and Sarah used the phrase, although they probably didn’t know its origin. It was
part of the family’s shorthand, conveying a determination to endure cheerfully.

Martin offered Dinah a weak smile, and then he closed his eyes briefly, contemplating the possibilities of the day as the
woodpecker began another barrage above their heads. He thought about breakfast and the wonderful, piercingly bitter smell
of the only two cups of real coffee he could drink during a day without becoming shaky and nauseated; when he was in his twenties
he could drink coffee all day, even ten minutes before he fell sound asleep. On the other hand, given that he was heading
downhill, what difference would it make if he had some bacon after a night like this? The idea of sitting in the relatively
cool kitchen with the
aroma of coffee brewing and bacon cooking was comforting. He glanced over at Dinah, but he couldn’t see her face; she had
withdrawn her hand from his and was sheltering her eyes from the light with her forearm.

“What if I fix bacon and eggs? You want some? Or pancakes?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I really can’t get up now. I’ll feel tired all day.”

“I can’t get back to sleep,” he said. “I think I’ll go over to the office and get some things cleared up.”

Dinah had turned on her side, away from the windows, and she only murmured, but he came around the bed and kissed her lightly
on the temple before he pulled on a seersucker robe and padded barefoot downstairs and into the kitchen.

In cycles during all the years of the Howellses’ marriage, there was never a subtraction from the deep core of genuine affection
each held for the other, even when they were irritated at each other, even when they were desperately angry at each other.
But after the first several years of the giddiness of unrestrained sensuality, and with the birth of children, their lust
had generally become more companionable than romantic, friendly, and accommodating more often than it was frantic or demanding.
And it had become a habit since the children were small that the mornings were the time Dinah and Martin most enjoyed making
love. While the children were still asleep, but past any nighttime crisis of midnight fevers, dreaming terrors, croup, or
alarmingly severe nocturnal stomachaches, Martin and Dinah could indulge in the drowsy luxury of sex.

As the children grew up, Martin and Dinah were less physically but more emotionally exhausted by evening, and the habit of
lovemaking in the early morning had persisted. But this was not their climate, and they both were awake in the early dawn
with the exhausted, fuzzy sensation of never having slept at all. When Martin left the room, Dinah slowly
fell back into a sticky sleep and unfolded her long arms and legs across the whole breadth of the bed in an attempt to be
cooled by the sluggishly churned air.

The first week of August had settled heavily over West Bradford with temperatures and humidity in the nineties. It was the
kind of weather that made Martin the most unhappy. He fought an intellectual battle against the visceral panic that overtook
him in hot weather, because at some basic level he did not believe that the duration of such heat would be relatively short.
His body remembered the claustrophobic and seemingly endless summer days of Mississippi, which dulled the spirits of all but
small, school-free children. It was weather that was bearable to people like most of his neighbors, who only experience such
blatant heat a few weeks out of the year. And it was these infuriating native New Englanders who most irritated Martin with
their exuberant embracement of this enervating weather. It was the only time of the year that Martin could not shake pessimism.

After breakfast he showered and pulled on nylon running shorts and a short-sleeved gray T-shirt emblazoned with a red and
white logo that read
BEER NUTS
. He had gotten the shirt for only two dollars and two proofs-of-purchase labels from bags of peanuts he had picked up at
the store when he was in the check-out line. To have ordered the shirt was the sort of thrift scorned by his whole family,
but the shirt had held up for three years, and both his children had tried to take possession of it. Even so lightly dressed,
by the time Martin got to
The Review
office, with Duchess ambling slowly behind him, her head drooping like an old horse, he was already sweaty and discouraged.
His bare arms and legs were plastered with fluffs of fur that the poor dog was shedding for her life. But he was sure that
at six-thirty on a Monday morning, he would have the office to himself and could clear away a lot of work that should have
been done already.

This morning, though, as had been the case whenever Martin arrived at his office, Owen was already settled into his own little
cubicle. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his feet braced against the uppermost interior edge of the knee-hole
panel of his desk, and he leaned backward from the waist to the full extension of his flexible office chair so that he was
almost horizontal. He was absolutely still, except for a slight flick of the sheaf of papers he was holding before him and
peering at intently, although he could scarcely have been unaware that Martin and Duchess had arrived. Martin allowed himself
a glimmer of an image of Owen grabbing up those papers and assuming his careful pose the moment he had heard the heavy door
of the building squeal open two flights above him.

“God, Owen! What are you doing here at this hour?” Martin heard his own false note of hearty good humor and wondered if he
could ever in his life be comfortable in Owen’s presence. When Owen lowered the papers he was reading, ostensibly taking a
moment to refocus his attention and absorb the fact of Martin’s being there, Martin had a terrible urge to reach across the
desk and shake him out of his stupid pretension.

“When we get this great summer weather I always get up about four-thirty to go for a run. I decided to come on in and get
these letters out. But, now, Martin, I need to talk to you about these letters of Vic’s….”

Martin held up his hand for Owen to stop, and he felt—as he always did—rising anger as well as a sense of prevailing and mysterious
shame whenever he confronted Owen. “First let me get some things on my desk cleared away, Owen. This is the deadline if we
want to take an excerpt of Brenner’s new book, and I haven’t had a chance to finish reading it yet.” Owen was blond and lanky
and unruffled by the weather. Just to get past what Martin had come to think of as the daily hurdle of overcoming Owen’s ghastly
bonhomie and his jovial assumption of shared authority
made Martin feel gray and tired. He was beginning to think that Owen’s insistent chumminess bordered on aggression.

As Martin attempted to bypass Owen’s desk with no more than a greeting, Owen was on his feet in an instant, leaning forward
and smiling triumphantly, full of urgency, and gesturing at Martin with the papers he’d been working on, which were exuberantly
covered with green pencil markings.

Owen’s initial suggestion for using a system of varicolored markings that would hasten Martin’s or Vic’s understanding of
what was required had impressed Martin, but he flinched this morning when he glanced at the four or five pages liberally marked
in the color that designated the need for a consultation.

“Give me an hour, Owen. I want to finish Brenner’s manuscript.”

“Right, right,” Owen said, falling back into his chair and swiveling back and forth restlessly. “But I was looking through
these letters that Vic left for Helen to type. I’ll tell you, you know, Vic really should go over these himself. I mean, this
prose… these are
rejection
letters, right?”

“One hour, Owen. An hour and I’ll take a look.” He was unusually disheartened at the prospect of going over this correspondence,
because Vic had decamped and was answering many of the letters that Owen had been hired to handle, and Owen made it clear
at every opportunity that he thought he could do a better job. Martin was unhappy about the whole situation. Several weeks
ago Vic had entered Martin’s office stiff and angry, restrained even in the way he moved.

“You know, Martin,” Vic began mildly as he settled in across the desk, “I finally asked Ellen to read these poems”—he waved
a sheaf of papers in the air—“and she agrees with me that they’re really good. I don’t think I
am
reading more into them than there is. I think they’re extraordinary.”
He had grown more adamant and defensive by the moment, and Martin had been baffled.

“Whose poems are you talking about? I don’t remember that we disagreed about any poems.”

“Elizabeth Melrose’s. I think they’re some of the best things we’ve seen.” Vic was shuffling through his papers looking for
them.

“You know,” Vic said, as he came up with the pages he wanted, “you’re always saying that I see more in a piece of writing
than there is to find. I don’t understand how you can miss these… terrible
laments
! What is it you think I’m reading into them?”

Martin had reached for the poems without answering, and Vic had handed them across the desk and waited for Martin to reply.
Martin read a page quickly and looked up at Vic. “I haven’t even seen this, Vic. I’d like to take some time….”

“Shit, Martin!” Vic had leaped up from his chair. “Owen put these back on my desk. When I asked him about them, he said you
didn’t think they were very interesting. This is just crazy. Every time I have to give him some sort of directions it turns
into a marathon session. You’ve got to fire him!”

“You fire him!” Martin said. “You were right there when we explained the job to him. You seemed perfectly happy about it then.
You fire him!”

“Oh no,” Vic had said. “I won’t do it. Owen’s your problem.”

And Martin had tried various subtle ways of firing Owen. When he had suggested to Owen that they simply didn’t have enough
correspondence to justify the position, Owen had volunteered to stay on for free. When Martin had asked Owen pointedly if
he really thought he was suited to this job, Owen’s face had twisted alarmingly into an agonized expression. “I’m trying
everything
! Every day! I’m trying to get this right!”

So Vic had set up office in the living room of his old farmhouse while Ellen worked in her study upstairs. It was where Martin
and Vic had often worked in the summers in the early years of
The Review
, and Martin was suddenly filled with yearning for the fledgling enterprise, for the long afternoons by the pond.

Vic and Martin had an administrative assistant, complex financing, budgets, and even a little clout; but Martin could barely
remember what it felt like to be ambitious, and clout didn’t interest him at all anymore. In the beginning he must have possessed
a kind of naïve hopefulness that was the fuel of ambition. He supposed he had thought that there was some sort of anonymous
admiration to be earned that would please him, a limited but high brow sort of fame. It was a quest that approached or replaced
religiousness, and the striving for it had been an easy way to live his life. But it still surprised him to meet so many people
his own age or older who could sustain aspirations of eminence in the face of the real lives they led.

He unclipped Duchess from her leash, and she sank down to the cool floor exactly where she was, resting her chin mournfully
on her front paws. Martin thumbed through the book manuscript to find a section that would be effective as an excerpt. He
tried to concentrate, but even through his closed door he could hear Owen drumming his fingers along the stem of his arched
desk lamp. Martin knew exactly what the sound was, because he had seen Owen swiveling restlessly in his chair and tapping
his fingers along the flex of the lamp in the rhythm of the drums of a marching band:

da-da-da-da… dum… dum

da-da-da-da… dum… dum

Other times Martin would hear a soft, muted thrumming that he had eventually identified as the reverberation
of the frantically tapping heel of one of Owen’s rubber-soled deck shoes. And Martin had often passed by Owen’s desk and seen
him propped forward in thought, with his elbows resting on the desk top, sitting eerily still and unblinking except for his
hands, which were pressed palms hard together, while his fingers moved in a rapid fluttering of silent applause.

Martin put down the manuscript and lowered his head into his hands in frustration. He could feel his blood pressure rise,
and he told himself that Owen was as unwittingly irritating as the mindless woodpecker that attacked the gutter each morning
at dawn. Martin also remembered that he would gladly have taken a gun and blown the woodpecker to bits if only he had a gun
and had known how to do it.

Upstairs the huge door to the entry of Jesse Hall swung open, and Martin heard feet on the stairway. He went back to his manuscript,
relieved that the day of the building was beginning. In the outer office Owen stopped his drumming and presumably went back
to the exercise of his green pencil. Martin read in peace, absorbed and excited. At least an issue of
The Review
should be devoted to a long excerpt of this book, and he glanced at his watch to see if it was too early to call Vic. He
decided to wait those few minutes until nine o’clock, just to be sure not to wake either of the Hofstatters; he and they were
so tentative with one another these days. Meanwhile, he would go over the rest of the correspondence with Owen.