Read All He Ever Wanted Page 19


  I was besieged with questions. What was Etna doing there? To whom did the cottage belong? Was this a dressmaker’s cottage? Had Etna taken on a bit of sewing to make extra money?

  I turned back to the window, aware now of a certain stealth on my part. I watched her at her sewing. I saw her put a pin between her lips. She lifted up the material she was working on, rearranged it, and laid it back down in her lap. Her driving hat and her foxtrimmed coat were on the davenport, as if tossed in a rush. The furled umbrella was making a puddle in a corner.

  I studied my wife in this manner for perhaps half an hour, occasionally glancing at the road lest someone passing by wonder why a man was peering into the window of a cottage. As I stood there, I took in more of the details of the room — a tiny porcelain sink, a cookstove, a hassock on which rested a plate of golden pears — but my eyes were constantly drawn back to the white chandelier, its image melting and re-forming in the rain-washed windowpanes. I remembered the bill for a white chandelier that I had inadvertently opened and which Etna had explained away by insisting that she had sent the fixture back. White iron with six sconces. Etna stood and turned in my direction, as if she had caught me. But she only shook out a piece of silk from an untied parcel on a shelf. She sat back down in her chair.

  With each passing moment, the idea of knocking on a window or at the door became more and more difficult to imagine. And if I am to be truthful here, there was some excitement in watching my wife through a glass pane. It was as though I were a disinterested spectator viewing a play, the meaning of which was crucial to my existence. My wife seemed not my wife, but rather a thing apart from me. I could not reach her or touch her or call out to her. She existed in a separate universe from the one which I inhabited.

  Etna knelt on the wooden floor and spread the cloth out in front of her, the edges of the silk running in the windowpane. She pinned a paper pattern to the silk and began to cut around the edges. She stood then and took the garment she had already been sewing to the davenport and smoothed it out. She gazed at it for a few moments (I think it was a nightgown), her fingers folded beneath her chin. She tilted her head and frowned a bit and then put her hands on her hips and looked around her. She collected the bits of silk from the floor and put them in a sewing basket.

  I watched as she walked to the stove, put a kettle on, and took a teapot, cup, and saucer from a cabinet. She stood for a time, staring out a small window over the sink (fortunately not in my direction), until even I could hear the kettle’s whistle. She spooned tea into a pot and walked to another cupboard. She removed a writing case and set it on a table. She waited for the tea to steep. When it had, she poured herself a cup and put it on the table next to the writing case. I had the distinct impression that the table had a wobble. She removed a pen and bottle of ink and a sheet of paper from the case. She began to write, occasionally taking a sip of tea as she did this.

  These were perfectly ordinary actions that I should have paid no attention to had I seen Etna performing them in our home. But watching her through the window was altogether different. There was a sort of fascination in it as well as the insistent hammering of the central riddle: What was my wife doing in that cottage?

  How long I stood at that window with the rain running down my neck and soaking the backs of my trousers I cannot now recall. I did not move or make a sound. After a time, Etna laid down her pen and put the writing case away. She washed her cup and saucer and teapot in the sink. She shook the water off the cup and then dried it with a cloth and set it back in the cupboard. She shook her hands as well and then wiped them off with the damp cloth. She surveyed the room and walked to the davenport. When she began to slip her arms into her coat, I moved around the corner to the wooded side of the house so that she would not see me. I heard her leave the cottage by the front door, pulling it shut twice, as if it had not properly closed the first time. A few minutes later, I heard the start of a motor.

  I slid down the clapboards to the ground, having for the moment lost the strength of my legs. I was as perplexed as I had ever been. Why would my wife, Etna Bliss Van Tassel, drive to Drury, New Hampshire, to sit in a foreign cottage to sew, when she could sew perfectly well — and had done so nearly every night of our married life — at home?

  I drove erratically and made several wrong turnings. Worse, I ran out of fuel and had to wait for a passing motorist to lend me a cupful to get home. When I arrived at the house, I saw that Etna’s coupe was parked in our driveway. Disheveled and soaked through to the skin, I went inside the house and walked directly upstairs to Etna’s dressing room, where she stood in her corset covering, holding a dress she planned to put on for dinner.

  “Nicholas,” she said, clutching the dress to her breast.

  “Where were you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where were you?” I shouted. I had not even taken off my wet coat and hat, which were creating a sort of rain on the rug. I knew that I was frightening my wife, but I didn’t care.

  “I was at the settlement house,” she said. “I have just got home.”

  “I went to the settlement house,” I said. “You were not there.”

  “I must already have left,” she said. “Nicholas, what is this all about?” She pretended to be both surprised and annoyed by my queries, but her manner was not quite as self-assured and innocent as she might have wished.

  “I was there at half past one o’clock,” I said.

  “Were you?” She pretended to think. “Well, I don’t know what time I left, but I had some errands to do.”

  “Where? What errands?”

  “I had fabric I had to buy in Drury,” she said. “Really, Nicholas, stop shouting at me. This inquisition is offensive. I must ask you to leave my dressing room.”

  I stood, poised on the brink of accusation, one that would have been reflected four times in the mirrors that lined the dressing room. Perhaps I opened my mouth. For a long moment, we were husband and wife, across a gulf of silence. Was she about to confess her visit to the cottage? Was I about to tell her I had watched her for nearly an hour through a window but had not announced my presence? Was I afraid to introduce a topic that once mentioned could never be retrieved? I do not know. I know only that the silence between us was so profound that neither of us at first understood the meaning of Mary’s shouts from below.

  “Mary is shouting,” Etna said.

  “What?”

  “Mary is shouting.”

  I went to the head of the stairs. “What is it, Mary?” I called, annoyed.

  “The machine, sir, the machine!” Mary cried, flapping her hands about her face. “It is reversing itself down the driveway!”

  I moved to the window, through which I could see that, indeed, the Stevens-Duryea was gathering speed as it rolled down the pebbled drive. Worse, I now saw the reason for Mary’s hysteria: Clara sat in the driver’s seat, clutching the wooden steering wheel in a kind of paralysis.

  I ran down the stairs and out of the house, shouting my daughter’s name. In my haste to confront Etna, I realized, I had left the motor running. My wet clothes hampered my speed, and though I am, as the reader will doubtless have realized, among the least athletic of persons, I think it is true to say that when his child is in danger, a father may perform miracles of physical prowess. I pursued the errant motorcar the length of the driveway, screaming at Clara to press the brake pedal — Clara, who did not know a brake pedal from a gearshift. When I reached the vehicle, I leapt onto the running board. I clutched the door frame, my sudden momentum causing the motorcar to lurch. I now feared the wheels would catch in the trench at the side of the drive and turn the motorcar over. I shouted at Clara to move to one side. In her fear, she lay down on the floor. With a contortionist’s skill, I opened the driver’s-side door and threw myself inside. After several stabbings at the floor with my foot, I finally stopped the Stevens-Duryea just inches from a stone wall that bordered the property opposite us.

  Heaving for
air, I glanced up to see that Nicky and Abigail and Mary had come out of the house to see the chase. Etna, her hands to her mouth, was watching from an upstairs window. I picked up the trembling Clara from the floor and held her to my breast. I trust we comforted each other.

  That night neither Etna nor Clara came down to dinner. Clara I could well understand, but not my wife. Abigail reported that Etna had gone to bed without a meal in the guest room, since she did not want to bother me.

  Bother me? I thought but didn’t say, since I shared the table with Nicky, who was still trembling from the earlier incident. Bother me about what? I wanted to know. (Quite possibly Nicky was trembling from excitement; for a six-year-old boy, the wild descent of the motorcar would have been thrilling.) I thought my wife a coward and determined to wake her up after the meal and tell her so; and I might have done so but for a phone call I received during the tomato bisque.

  Ferald’s tone was businesslike. He wanted to speak with me at his home first thing in the morning. Could I come at nine o’clock? Yes, I said, I would be only too happy to do so.

  I hung up the telephone and half fell into the hallway chair. What did Ferald want? His tone had been chilly, but, then again, Edward Ferald was not known for his warmth. Was he calling to tell me I was being dismissed from consideration for the post? No, no, I did not think so, for why would he bother, when the vote was only a few days away? It was then I had another, more pleasant, thought. Was it possible that word of Asher’s Jewishness had reached Ferald via some other route? And, if so, could it be that Ferald, speaking on behalf of the board, was about to offer Nicholas Van Tassel the post of Dean of Faculty of Thrupp College?

  I did not sleep at all well that night. How could any man have done so? When I wasn’t wondering why my wife had lied to me about being in a foreign cottage (had she lied to me, though? I tried to recall the precise series of questions and answers), I was thinking about the dialogue that would shortly take place between Edward Ferald and myself. I imagined the conversation, my grateful modesty (modest gratitude), and the solemnity with which I would accept the post. It seemed likely, based on past experience, that Ferald would not be able to refrain from conveying to me that I was not his first choice. But would he not, after all this time, bury the hatchet and congratulate me in the manner of a patron to an academic? No matter. Even if he could not rise to a moment of graciousness, the outcome would still be the same. I would leave his home in time for my ten o’clock class as the new Dean of Faculty of Thrupp College.

  I dressed with care, donning my best worsted suit and striped silk tie. I wore a diamond tiepin, a gift from Etna, an ornament I wore only on the most important of occasions. I tried as best I could to groom myself. As I may have mentioned, my hair was beginning to thin, leaving a bald semi-circle at the top of my head, as if someone had taken a bite. I shaved carefully and sprinkled cold water on my face repeatedly in an attempt to reduce the puffiness around my eyes, a result of my excitable condition.

  I was glad of the Stevens-Duryea, for I thought I should make a better impression arriving in Moxon’s touring car than on foot. I tried to drive steadily and keep my thoughts even, warding off images of Etna in the cottage. I did not want to be preoccupied or distracted on this most important of occasions. I pulled up to the front door of Ferald’s house, my opinions about his manse softening as I did so. Perhaps the English limestone and the Greek columns were not as pretentious as I had thought. Why shouldn’t a man design a house to suit his fanciful whims?

  I stepped smartly from the automobile, and I trust I appeared confident and composed as I knocked on Ferald’s door. A butler answered (yes, a full-fledged butler in Thrupp, New Hampshire, but never mind), took my coat and hat and gloves, and said that Mr. Ferald was expecting me.

  I followed the man a fair distance to a set of massive double doors that I had not remembered from my previous visit to that house; the porcelain handles were near chin height. The butler ushered me into a large, well-lit room, in the center of which was a highly polished oval table. He suggested I take a seat near the center of the table, which I did.

  I folded my hands and was told that Mr. Ferald would be with me shortly. All around the table were shelves of books reaching to an upper gallery that held even more volumes (but the man did not even read! I protested silently). The windows’ deep sills and the thick carpet rendered the room so silent that I could hear my watch ticking in my pocket. I waited for what seemed an age, glancing at said watch at intervals. Ten past nine o’clock. Twenty past nine o’clock. If Ferald didn’t come soon, I thought, I would be late for my class. No matter, I told myself; by then I would be Dean, and it would not be long before I was excused from teaching any classes at all — a delightful prospect, to say the least.

  The latch of the massive doors clicked at precisely nine thirty. Edward Ferald, in moss green jacket, his beard shaved to a point, entered the room. Under his arm, he carried an old and worn folder of the sort that we had once used at the college years ago. I stood, but he waved me down. He sat opposite me at the table.

  “I have summoned you here today,” Ferald began (no greeting at all; the man’s manners were deplorable), “because there is a small matter which has come to my attention.”

  “What small matter?” I asked, uttering my first words of our encounter.

  Ferald consulted his folder. “Noah Fitch kept files on all of the men directly under him when he was Hitchcock Professor,” Ferald said. “I thought it prudent to go into the college archives and find yours, as we are considering you for the post of Dean of Thrupp College. You were at that time an associate professor.”

  “Was that necessary?” I asked, suddenly aware of a ribbon of perspiration on my upper lip. Why did Ferald keep the room so warm? I needed my handkerchief, but I would be damned if I would take it out in Ferald’s presence.

  “And upon reading your file,” Ferald began, “I find that there is…how shall I put this…a disturbing notation.”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “It seems,” he said, “that there was once a question of plagiarism.”

  Ferald said the word with evident distaste. “A monograph on the early novels of Sir Walter Scott?” he asked. “Does that sound familiar to you?”

  The perspiration which had begun on my upper lip now seemed to have blossomed from every pore of my body, even from my balding pate. “Scarcely,” I said.

  I had no choice now but to take out my handkerchief and wipe my head and face and neck. Ferald smiled patiently, waiting until I had put the sodden linen away before he resumed speaking.

  “You did have a chat with Noah Fitch regarding your paper, did you not?”

  “We may well have done,” I said. “I should hardly be expected to remember a chat that took place… when did you say?”

  “In March of 1900.”

  “Fourteen years ago.”

  “Nevertheless.” Ferald paused. “This is a charge of plagiarism, a most serious crime.”

  “I believe Noah Fitch apologized to me for bringing the matter to my attention,” I said. “Yes, I am certain that he did.”

  “Then you do recall the conversation,” Ferald said.

  “I may,” I said, waving my hand as if to shoo the matter away.

  Edward Ferald took a long sip of water from a carafe on the table. He had thin lips and a pointed tongue that curled into the glass. “Water?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Apparently,” Ferald continued, his thirst satisfied, “Fitch did not think this a minor matter at all. Not if we are to believe his notes.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “To be precise,” Ferald began, “the notation here, in Fitch’s handwriting — and I am afraid there can be no question as to its authenticity — reads, in part …” Ferald cleared his throat. “‘VT denies the accusation of plagiarism regarding his monograph on Scott and its uncanny resemblance to that of Alan Dudley Severance of Amherst College. I’ve let this go
with a severe warning, as VT is a valuable, if uninspired, teacher of rhetoric, and I doubt we should find another on such short notice for the remainder of the term. Nevertheless, VT’s scholarship will be examined with utmost care in future. Perhaps a formal review is warranted?’”

  “I… There was no such review,” I said, the word uninspired having pricked my ears.

  “No. Quite,” Ferald said, taking another sip of water. “To this document is appended a series of phrases, also in Fitch’s hand, which seem remarkably similar to phrases contained within Severance’s monograph, which was published a good number of years before your own paper and which, by the way, I have read.” Ferald looked up at me and smiled. “Would you like to see these addenda?”

  “No,” I said, “I would not. I denied the accusation vigorously at the time,” I added, “and do so now.”

  “Yes, yes. No doubt.”

  “It is a very old matter,” I said. “Of no significance.”

  Ferald leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands and tucked them under his chin. “Ah, but there, you see, Van Tassel, I must disagree with you.” I noted that his shirtfront, as ever, was so white as to appear new. Did he have shirts made by the dozens and wear them only once? “It is, in fact, why I have summoned you here today. You see, any man we elect to the post of Dean must be above reproach,” Ferald added. “No blots on the record.”

  “There are no blots.”

  “There is, shall we say, a faint stain.”

  “I…”

  “And if I may say so, Van Tassel, it seems to me that Fitch let the matter go for pragmatic reasons, not because he didn’t think it was true.”

  “Pragmatic reasons?” I asked. “That is an outrageous misinterpretation of the incident.”