The Inner Circle (44 page)

I went off on my own then, trailing a flurry of admonitions from
Prok (
Don't be late, don't get lost, look both ways and watch out for sharps and con men and keep a firm grip on your wallet
), who strode up Broadway with Corcoran to look into the peep shows and the more circumspect establishments that specialized in erotica, thinking to add to the library's collection. I didn't know the city very well at all—we rarely saw anything of it but Times Square, the four walls of the hotel room and the railway stations—and I don't mind admitting that the whole time I was afraid of getting lost and missing my train. Was I a bit of a rube? I suppose I was, a Hoosier at large in the big polymorphous city, looking for the one article among ten million that would make his wife happy on Christmas Day.

I don't remember much of the trip back, except that Prok sat up late interviewing strangers on the train while I fell into my berth as if I'd been gang-tackled and slept without waking until Prok fetched me for breakfast. What I do remember, though, is what I got Iris for Christmas that year. I found it in an out-of-the-way shop that advertised ANTIQUES & ARTIFACTS behind a dirty pane of glass illuminated by a single fitfully winking strand of red and green bulbs. There were two other customers in the place, both of whom managed to look as if they'd always been there, poised and silent, heads down, hands behind their backs, bending ruefully to inspect the merchandise. Though it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun still palely shining beyond the windows, inside it was crepuscular and nearly as cold as it was out on the street. But everybody has been to this place, or a place just like it: the proprietor a stick figure in a yarmulke, worn carpets of the oriental variety, tortuous paths through walls of heavy carved furniture piled high with the hoarded bric-a-brac of old Europe, a smell of silver polish and death. What I fixed on, finally, with the help of the proprietor, who assured me it was worth twice what I paid, was an ashtray fashioned from a conch shell with a six-inch bronze figurine of a naked Aphrodite, her hair marcelled and her breasts taut, rising from its mouth. I had him gift-wrap it and hurried off to find the train.

We were to go out again just after the New Year—more lectures, more histories, the pace ever more frenetic—but Christmas was a real
occasion, replete with a surprise overnight snowfall and a festive dinner at the house on First Street for all the team and the children too. Mac was her usual gracious self, Iris, Violet and Hilda prepared the entremets at home and brought them in covered dishes, and Prok concocted a hot rum punch and carved a twenty-pound turkey with all the flair of a master chef. The team had chipped in to buy him a gift—a pair of gold cuff links which he proclaimed too lavish—and then Prok handed out gifts to each of us in return.

I should say here that while Prok was regarded in some circles as a bit of a penny-pincher (and he
was
excessively frugal, even miserly at times, because every cent he ever made had to be pumped back into the project), he was never so generous and expansive as he was at Christmas. All his staff—the clerical help, the janitor, even the undergraduate girls he used to employ in cataloguing his gall wasp collection—received holiday bonuses, and I was no exception. In fact, as the first member of the team, as his confidant and aide-de-camp, I was often the recipient of his largesse, but that Christmas was even more extraordinary than I could have hoped for.

After dinner and a mini-musicale, after we'd gone back to the table to feast on mince and pumpkin pies and allow the general conversation to stretch for whole minutes at a time beyond the subject of sex research, Prok motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen. My first thought was that he needed help with the tray of liqueurs or with some further treat for the children, but that wasn't it at all. As soon as the door had shut behind us, he spun round on his heels, took me in his arms and pulled me to him for an embrace. It was awkward, but I held to him, the stiff fabric of his bow tie stabbing at my collar, his cheek a rough bristle against my own. I could feel the electricity of him through his clothes as he patted me across the shoulders with both hands and murmured, “I'm proud of you, John, very proud.” Then he released me and turned on his smile. “Fatherhood, eh?” he said. “No problems, I take it? Everything normal?”

I nodded. Gave him back his smile. Inside, I was glowing.

“Well, you're going to need a bit more space now, don't you think? Something permanent, as befits your position?” The smile opened into a grin. “A house, John. I'm talking about a house.”

“But I can't, we can't afford—”

He folded his arms across his chest, watching me, grinning wide. “I'm increasing your salary as of today by ten dollars a week, and I'm prepared to make you a personal loan—out of my own pocket and at a fraction of the interest rate you'd expect to pay at any of the banks downtown—in the amount of two thousand dollars. How does that sound?”

For a moment, I was unable to muster a response. I was stunned. Moved. Deeply moved. To think that he was looking out for me still, me, John Milk, nobody really, a former student, the least of his employees, and willing to sacrifice his own finances into the bargain—it was just too much. My father was dead, my mother remote. But Prok, Prok was there for me, anticipating my needs—our needs, Iris's and mine—as if I were his own flesh and blood. I was so overwhelmed I thought I might break down right there in front of him. “That's, well, that's grand,” I said, all my emotion caught in the back of my throat, “but you don't have to … what about the grants, the NRC? How will we, the project, I mean—?”

He moved toward the sideboard and the enameled tray that was already laden with the little glasses and the varicolored bottles. “The grants are in for the year, have been in for some time now, so don't you worry.” (In fact, as I was later to learn, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation, had ratified the significance of our work with a $40,000 grant for each of the next three years, nearly doubling their previous commitment.) I listened a moment to the music of the little glasses as he rearranged them on the tray. “And there's more on the way, you can be sure of it. So come here, come to me here and say thank you in a proper way—”

I embraced him again, and we kissed, but just for a moment—the quickest brushing of the lips—before I pulled away. I wanted to find Iris, tell her the news, ring up every real-estate agent in the county. “Can I tell Iris?” I said. “Can I give her the good news?”

“Go,” he said, and I couldn't read his face. I was halfway to the door when he called me back. “But wait, wait, I didn't tell you the best part,”
and he'd recovered himself now, all smiles. “I found the prettiest little place, not six blocks from here.”

“I've got to tell Iris,” I said, so excited I could barely breathe. I was at the door now, no thought of holding it open for him and his liqueurs, only to push through, to find my wife before I burst with the news. “But thank you,” I called over my shoulder, “thank you a thousand times over,” and then the door swung open and the noise of the party hit me and I heard him cry out, “And it's got a big yard for the boy!”

Next morning, early, there was a knock at the door. I was sitting at the kitchen table, reading about the upcoming Bowl games in the newspaper and spooning up cornflakes and milk, heavily sugared. It was seven-fifteen by the clock on the stove. Iris was still asleep. I couldn't imagine who it could be—it was the day after Christmas, the world snowbound, nothing moving, no sound anywhere—and I pushed myself up from the table and went to the door. Prok was standing there on the doorstep, blowing steam through his nostrils. He was in his belted winter coat, galoshes, knit gloves and the old drooping southwester he favored in inclement weather. “Glad to see you're up, Milk,” he said, “but it's cold, isn't it? The thermometer read minus three Fahrenheit when I left the house.” Behind him, at the curb, the Buick sent up discontinuous plumes of blue smoke.

I was in my robe and pajamas still, a pair of new felt-lined slippers—a Christmas present from Iris—on my feet. I don't mind admitting I was a bit befuddled, my head still thick with the residue of all that Christmas cheer. I tried to read his expression. Had I forgotten something? Were we scheduled to leave on a field trip? Was that it? “Yes,” I said, “well, yes, very cold, but please come in, because, well—”

“You're going to have to get dressed,” he said, pausing to kick the snow off his galoshes before striding through the door. “We've got an eight o'clock appointment. And Iris—where's Iris?”

I don't think Prok had been inside the apartment more than once or twice before, and then only briefly. He glanced round him as if he were entering one of our lusterless hotel rooms, his eyes appraising and keen.
And then he was pacing the undersized front room in his brisk, long-legged way, snatching off his hat and gloves in two quick jerks and pushing through the bead curtains to cast a suspicious glance round the kitchen as if he were a building inspector come to assess the quality of the plumbing. I felt a surge of shame. The place was small, though as I've said Iris had a real knack for interior decoration, and it was—or had been—sufficient to our needs, but with Prok there, looming over the furniture, everything seemed shabby suddenly, and I felt I'd somehow failed him, as if I should have risen to something grander at this stage of my life.

“Interesting piece on the coffee table there—the Aphrodite,” he said. “Is that the thing you picked up for Iris in New York?”

“Yes. At that shop I was telling you about.”

“Mother of Eros, sexuality unfettered. Nobody could call the Greeks sex shy, now could they?”

“No,” I said, “I guess not.”

“Very nice. I'd say your taste is improving, Milk, definitely improving.”

I was just standing there in my robe, three feet from him, in the confines of the kitchen that might have been cleaner, brighter, grander, and I didn't know what to say or do. I thought of offering him coffee, of settling him down in the armchair for a moment, of waking Iris and getting dressed, but then I found myself numbly echoing what he'd said a moment earlier, as if it had just managed to sink in: “Appointment? What appointment?”

He was frowning at the cupboard, pulling open each door in succession till he found himself a cup, and then he lifted the coffeepot from the stove, giving it an experimental shake. “With the realtor,” he said, pouring, “or actually the owner. I spoke with him myself, at half past six this morning. Iris
is
up, isn't she?”

The house was conveniently located, as advertised, two blocks closer to campus than Prok's own, but in a neighborhood that was struggling to keep up appearances while the grander homes spread in a formal
march to the south and east. Which was fine with me. I didn't expect a palace, and if there was a heavy concentration of boardinghouses and student rentals there, that was testimony to the desirability of the location. Iris wasn't so sure. Prok and I had sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and nibbling at a fruit cake Hilda Rutledge had given us the day before while we listened to the muted call and response of Iris's gagging and the cascade of the toilet, Prok tapping his foot impatiently and checking his watch every two minutes, but she'd emerged from the bedroom at ten of eight, in her best dress and with the hair brushed back from her brow in a black silken wave. She was pale, though, and didn't have much to say as I eased her into the backseat of the Buick while Prok and I climbed in up front.

The first thing she did say, beyond the usual pleasantries, was when we pulled up at the curb in front of the place. “It looks odd somehow,” she said, and I could tell already that she wasn't going to like it. “Out of balance. Too narrow across the front.”

Prok shut down the ignition and turned to look over his shoulder. “Built to fit a narrow lot,” he said. “But it goes quite a bit deeper, as you'll see, to make up for it.”

“And the color,” she said, her breath steaming the window, her face drawn down to nothing round the critical oval of her mouth. “Who would ever paint a house mauve—that is mauve, isn't it?”

“Looks more brown to me,” Prok put in.

“Or blue,” I said.

“I don't know, I was hoping for something older,” she said, even as Prok was sliding out of the car to pull open the rear door for her. “Made of stone or brick maybe, and with more of a porch.”

“Older? This was built in '24,” Prok said, “and that's plenty old enough. Believe me, you do want the modern conveniences. Some of these antique houses, while they may look charming from the street, are nothing but a headache for the homeowner, substandard plumbing, antiquated electric, all sorts of structural problems, buckled floors and the like. No, what you want is something newer, like this. Take my word for it.”

But Iris wouldn't take his word for it. She was as strong-willed as he was, and while she'd come to feel a real kinship for Mac she never really warmed to Prok, though she was always, or almost always, polite enough, out of her own innate civility and an awareness of the awkwardness of my position, but deep down I think she resented the influence he had over me. Over us. And, of course, there was Corcoran, the whole sad humiliating affair that lay between them like an open wound, Corcoran, always Corcoran.

The owner was an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department who'd been offered a promotion at DePauw and was pulling up his roots. He met us at the door, along with his wife, exchanged a cryptic look with Prok, and invited us in. I saw a gleaming oak staircase and handsome wallpaper in a floral pattern; Iris saw a cramped vestibule and a house aching in its ribs, with rooms like freight cars and windows that opened up on the place next door like a claustrophobe's nightmare. She wore her disapproving face (eyes sunk back in her head, brow locked in a rigid
V,
teeth and lips poised as if to spit out some bit of refuse) through the entire circuit of the place, including the lecture in the basement during which Prok and the chemistry professor took turns extolling the virtues of the furnace, and the culinary tête-à-tête with the lady of the house at the narrow table in the tunnel of the kitchen. Prok, the professor and I came back from a tour of the yard and potting shed to find her drinking tea and staring blankly at a platter of gingerbread cookies while the professor's wife (late twenties, styleless, childless, her face a scroll of anxiety) nattered on about Iris's condition and what a blessing children were. Or must be.