Testimony and Demeanor (26 page)

“Lately I’ve been considering law as magic. It’s not so far off—it’s all done with words, the proper spells. Think of an argument on appeal: two wizards hurling incantations at each other, until finally one of them finds the properly binding words, and—
e presto!
—the material world is rearranged in accordance with them. And lawyers are possessed by their clients’ problems even more thoroughly than shamans were by their patients’ evil spirits. Until the case is decided, at least.

“Perhaps we’re not sorcerers so much as earthworms. The compost of the nation passes through our digestive tubes and emerges rich with nitrates. Our briefs and counselings are almost pure nitrogen. Very little is created anymore, and nothing is destroyed. Isn’t that basic physics? But disposition is still a
possibility, and enrichment. Of course, this is the most optimistic view.”

I wonder if she planned it that way—that I would be so confused by her letter that I would have to go to Mr. Pelham to find out what was really going on. And there I’d be with Mr. Pelham, who would fill me in gradually, making sure I wouldn’t choke on it. Save herself a lot of worry.

Q: “Did she know all along that this guy in France wanted to marry her?”

A: “Yes, for some time, in fact. But that is not to say she knew she wanted to marry him. Even after she’d left.”

Q: “But he’s old.”

A: “He is one year younger than I am.”

Q: “Rich and all that.”

A: “Rich? Oh, surely not rich. No more than Ann—”

Q: “I don’t know about Ann; I never asked.”

A: “She had a settlement in lieu of alimony that was well invested over the years, and she lived a comparatively simple life, which is to say—”

Q: “That they won’t be in the old folks’ home.”

A: “No. They’ll live half the year in Paris and half the year in the country. I’m sorry I can’t indulge you in the momentary satisfaction of discovering flawed motives—some venality, some despicable calculation. But I’m sure that in the long run you would prefer—”

Q: “In the long run she would have been way too old.”

A: “I’m equally sure that you never held your feelings to that calculation.”

That was a week ago. I’ve begun to care some that I made a fool of myself. Not so much that I care what Mr. Pelham thinks or even what he knows. I shouldn’t have tried to find out anything.
Bits of information stick in my mind, no matter what. I’ll never know enough, so I’d just as soon know nothing at all.

I don’t know how to take it; I can’t satisfy myself by reducing it to any formal proposition. The only hypothesis that I came up with that showed me anything worthwhile was this: If I had left her, I would have felt worse.

I also suppose that she would have left out of pride within five years, in any case—even though she must have had ample grounds for believing I was fairly attracted to her beyond the original impulse, for reasons that were not only self-renewing but increasingly forceful.

I think that although she felt the imbalance between my future (far off and largely deferrable; I could stay with her for five years and still marry a girl in college) and her future (imminent and brief; if she stayed with me for five years we would have gone to more funerals than weddings)—although she felt that imbalance more keenly than I did at the time, nevertheless I think that she also sensed that the longer we went on, the more I would be the one to suffer, having no accumulation of any comparable experience to offset it with. It would have been more and more all there was to my life.

Still, all these arguments are not enough to move me very far one way or another. There really isn’t anything to decide. I just run arguments through to cool off. There is some calm in just going if click then clack, click clack, click clack.

No better. I have been noting a number of unfamiliar gestures—e.g., I hold my head in my hands as though it were a separable globe, I stare at my open palm. I do find myself resisting, however. I’m perfectly capable of functioning. But it takes a certain determination to function exactly as I did before.

I have noted a good point of resistance, which is Mr. Pelham. Taking his disappointments gently and reflectively must have done a lot to make him the way he is. Of course, he was
more disposed to it in the first place. Not just by education. And he’s good at it. I myself would make a lousy Mr. Pelham.

I will not let myself be like Mr. Pelham.

When I use the term “Mr. Pelham,” I’m not sure I really know the definition. Has he made sure that nothing has its hooks in him? Or do a lot of things have their hooks in him? So that he’s strung up in involuntary equilibrium?

Either way, functionally speaking, it works out that he has given up whatever drive and traction he once may have had. I haven’t, even if I may be temporarily without traction.

Today Mr. Pelham offered to borrow me from Mr. Leland and to take me to Japan on one of his trips. I said no, since I’m getting back to work with some solidity, but I was grateful.

I’ve got back into a routine of work and exercise. It is a great help just to do everything by numbers—swim fifty laps, brush my hair a hundred strokes—and work regularly but never beyond the set time. No hanging around, no getting run down. Mere routine is very helpful. Just to keep in motion, to give some structure to what I think during the slack in my schedule.

I thought: I am like an astronaut. They might as well have shot me to the moon. I handled it, I came back the same.

Q: What was it like?

A: It was nice.

Q: Nice?

A: If you wanted to hear more details you should have sent someone like Mr. Pelham. I didn’t hire out for that part of the job.

Q: We had to send someone like you. We hoped the rest would just come.

Maybe it did. Maybe it just came for the astronauts too, and we’ve never heard about it. I imagine they are something like me—small-town boys with B minds, who learned how.
And owe it all to learning how. Are they any different now? Are their thoughts any different? Maybe we should send someone to ask them if their thoughts are any different. Maybe we should send Mr. Pelham to ask them.

Maybe the change comes later. Maybe the time to ask them is not when they’ve just got back but much, much later. When they’re old and making it up.

Mr. Pelham got up his nerve the other day. He said, “Have you heard anything more from Ann?”

I could have turned him down with a hard no, but something stopped me. I said, “No, have you?” and he looked a lot easier about the whole thing.

He said, “No. I wonder how she is.”

I said, “I’m sure she’s doing fine.”

He said, “Well, I assume the best.”

It came to me very strongly that I was more or less myself again but that he misses her terribly.

And so he wants to pore over everything. O.K. I don’t mind. More than that—there is something about the way he looks, the way the loose skin of his throat is tucked inside his collar, the way he’s slowed up.

It’s not pity on my part. He is the first old man I’ve known who is interested in what I feel. I suppose in a way I produce for him just the same way I produce for Mr. Leland. But if there’s a mutual benefit in his questions and my answers, that’s only a small part of it. If it’s a bargain, it’s certainly not one necessary to any enterprise of mine. When he comes I feel I should take care of him, although he may not need any concern of mine—he could easily find solace in the bosom of the senior part of the firm. No, I suppose it is the closest thing I have to a moral concern. In the sense of unfounded belief. I
should
deal with this man, help keep him from something—growing coldness, slowing down. He needs to be in use, to talk
about something more than old coarse light on empty buildings, than his trips to Japan, and it seems right in some overreaching scheme of things that he should. But he is a commentator, and appreciator, not an initiator, and so for the moment he will use me to tell him things.

I told him about the first time Ann’s maid brought her breakfast on a tray into the bedroom and I pulled the bed covers over my head. He thought that was funny, and he wanted to know if Ann laughed and when she laughed—while the maid was still there? He was interested. He said, “Another Lord Chesterfield letter—‘What to do in my lady’s chamber when the maid comes in.’ Once one didn’t have to notice, I suppose. But now no one can avoid being somewhat democratically aware. It would be inhuman. I think I recommend a pleasant smile. Not that I fault you. I mean, I understand your solid urge for privacy, even if it’s carried out with ostrich-like futility. But the completely admirable solution is a smile. And as for the maid—also a delicate part. What did she do?”

“She brought another tray.”

He said, “Exactly. And people say there’s a servant problem. Of course, she wouldn’t ever work on Sunday.”

I could do without his finicky lines on servants and etiquette, and some of his other old-nob talk, but I suppose that’s the least of the things it’s too late for him to change at this stage. What I do get along with in him is this: I think he has always tried just as hard as I do.

In fact, I think he probably even submitted himself to the process of being a lawyer the same way I did. For all his talk about dream careers, he chose the one he’s had. And it’s held him together pretty well, even though I suspect his life has been lonelier than mine will be. All that’s wrong now is that there are a few loose ends. I’m sure he’ll work out a few essays on the subject. Not directly on the subject, but close enough so that I’ll be able to listen for the flaw in his well-being. Like a doctor
listening to a patient’s breathing while the patient talks on about his other symptoms.

I remembered today the first time I talked back to my father. I was thirteen; he was still farming then—in his fifties. We were clearing rocks out of a field so he could mow it without losing half the teeth out of the sickle bar. My mother came down with lunch just as he picked up a big rock and swung it into the back of the truck.

She said, “You’ll throw your back out worse than last year.”

He was in a good mood. He said, “No; I always get some strong spells in the summer. Comes right out of here.” He toed the ground.

I said, “I don’t see how. It’s only dirt.”

My mother laughed. My father said, “Maybe so.” He kept me working past sunset—himself too—and the next day his back was out.

I once regarded that kind of memory as an encumbrance, or a luxury. But my most recent process isn’t as simple as the one that got me to New York in the first place; it has more to do with luxuries and encumbrances. What amazes me is that there seems to be some system in all this accumulation: a year ago I couldn’t have been bothered, I couldn’t have refined anything out of the uneasiness, and I probably wouldn’t have understood any of what has come or gone or stayed.

SPARTINA

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THE HALF
-
LIFE OF HAPPINESS

On a spring afternoon in Virginia, progressive attorney Mike Reardon strolls downtown Charlottesville feeling terrific. He surveys the elements in his appealing life: filmmaker wife Joss, his clever and canny daughters, the bohemian characters that share his seven-acre haven on the Rivanna River. But his blissful certainty is to be short-lived. A friend’s suicide and Joss’s affair with a mercurial woman turn Mike’s world upside down. Then he discovers the erotic quicksilver of the political campaign and begins a farcical run for office that consumes all their lives. Superbly plotted, buoyed with humor and hope,
The Half-life of Happiness
embraces the accidents and choices that shape our lives and the lives of those we love.

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VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES

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A novel

BY

LINDA FERRI

“A novel full of happiness, but with the sharp premonition of great sorrow; a novel full of pain but somehow tasting like honey.” —
Diario