But now it is noon, and Frances is in the hallway calling us out for lunch. It is something the editors and I do, we take lunch here together in the cafeteria. We most of us would go elsewhere if we could. The sanatorium’s food service is resolutely uninspired and, what is worse, they insist on feeding us in the basement.
This last part is not all the food service’s fault. When our building was still a sanatorium, it housed a large dining hall on the first floor, an elegant, sunlit place next to the building’s little theater. But now Continuing Nursing has taken over the hall and divided it into meeting rooms. The continuing nurses are fond of assembling, they have annexed the theater for it as well. And as a result, the sanatorium’s cafeteria has withdrawn to the basement floor.
It is a dark and moist space to dine. To get there from where the elevator lets off, we must walk through long halls with low ceilings and giant, exposed metal pipes. Where it is not just the visuals that affront. Although the food service tries to disguise it, the place has the smell of a laundry room, an odd mix of mildew and bleach. I am sure it is where in the old days they washed blood from tubercular sheets.
Or blood from the gurneys they ran through the steam tunnel below. Back in the day, Earnest says, they called that tunnel the death chute. Or so Earnest says. It is another one of his stories.
Since the sanatorium was built, that tunnel has served a purpose. Steam flows through big pipes there and heats the sanatorium all winter. But the tunnel is large, a tall man can stand up in most places, five people can fit across, and soon enough the sanatorium figured out steam is not all the tunnel is good for.
For instance, the cafeteria these days uses it as a kind of back door. The tunnel leads a long way underground and at the train tracks behind our building, there’s an entrance like two large cellar doors. It’s where trucks stop every week with deliveries, crates of eggs, sacks of flour for our meals, which kitchen workers haul back in through the tunnel on the sanatorium’s old hospital gurneys.
But then again, years ago, when people came to the sanatorium mostly just to die, “Wasn’t all eggs they wheeled through that tunnel,” Earnest says. “Used to be bodies, going the other way.”
Earnest explains: The directors who ran the sanatorium then didn’t much want all the dying to be known. Bad for business they said, bad for morale. They didn’t want other guests feeling downbeat, what with the hearse always out in the drive. So aides laid the dead bodies on gurneys instead and rolled them out through the tunnel, loaded them onto Pullmans, and sent them all home by rail.
Earnest’s stories, as I’ve said, run to the macabre, and as usual the editors and I ignore him. When we lunch together in the cafeteria here, we try not to think of our provenance. Rather, we make a point of being informative. That is to say, the series editors take every opportunity they can to talk at length about themselves. Or about their latest romance. The editors all are single, they are forever coming up with new men.
“So much the better for romance,” Lola says today as we take our places at table.
Lola, who has a generous heart but the underbite of a sea bass, could not actually be called good-looking. She is instead mostly large—over six feet of strong healthy bones, great aquiline nose, tree-trunk ankles and legs. Even Lola’s voice is ample, a booming West Texas drawl that stops conversations in crowds and seems to turn in particular the heads of short men. “Them li’l cowboys jes take to me,” Lola says. “Flies to manure,” she adds, throws back her head, and guffaws.
Frances studies Lola from across the table. She lights a cigarette, stares. Frances is a hard woman, we all think. Celeste says it’s because she is fat, well pretty much going on obese, there is no other way to put it. It’s what makes Frances generally ill-tempered, we believe, although oddly, ominously serene. When trolling our halls, she does not walk so much as she glides—well, a cross really between glide and lumber—a menacing half smile about her.
Her stillness is unsettling to us here. In meetings, for instance, she sits back from the rest, holding that cryptic smile, lights her cigarette, and waits. Then if someone on staff makes a mistake, says well, it just seemed like precipitous behavior to her, always Frances strikes. She sits forward, leans toward the speaker. “You mean precipitate, don’t you now, dear? Precipitate behavior,” she will say. “Precipitous is for cliffs, don’t you see?”
But now Frances considers Lola’s comment on romance. About the necessity always of new men. “Agreed,” she says, and leaves it at that.
We at the table are surprised. It is not like Frances to concede. But after she stands then to go back for seconds, Lola asks us so, did we know? Lately Frances has herself been collecting men. “She has taken up tennis,” Lola says, “for the exercise, she claims, for all that runnin’ around at the net.” But mostly, Lola thinks, it’s because of the lawyers. “So many lawyers, you know, like their tennis,” she says. “And some none too well hitched, neither.”
Lola stops here and gives us a look. “Married lawyers in this town play singles,” she says, and nods like she’s sure Frances knows one or two.
“I see,” Celeste says, looking uncomfortable.
Celeste likes to keep things positive. At forty-eight, she’s our oldest by a decade and also our most pampered and frothy. Of the editors, you might say she’s the pretty one. That is, if you had to choose one, it would probably be Celeste, she does at least try the hardest. She wears her hair down in long flaxen waves, she smells always of musk and patchouli, and thanks to a color consultant who said, “You, Celeste, are pre-Raphaelite,” she dresses in long flowing silks and gauze. It’s as though she were wearing drapes, Frances says.
Celeste generally ignores Frances. She thinks now a moment on what she can add to this topic of finding men. And steering away from the adultery option, Celeste offers a new example. “Or then there is Sally Ann,” she says. “I happen to know Sally Ann writes long letters to men she has never met, whose names she finds through community outreach. It must be how our Sally finds her new ones.”
As usual, Sally Ann has not joined us, Celeste is speaking for her in her absence. Sally Ann does not often come down to lunch and it happens we sometimes forget her. She is a small, slight young woman with one lazy eye and olive, acne-prone skin. She is also achingly, clinically shy. She keeps all day to her hospital suite, or, when it is absolutely necessary, scurries the halls, head down.
Sally Ann, like me, is not one of us, and when we are honest, we admit it’s a relief she does not come down to lunch. Although we hasten to add it is not only because of her appearance. Sally Ann has one habit particularly distracting, unnerving even to those who know her. That is, in the last year now going on two, Sally Ann has taken up with a puppet. She calls him Bones or Mr. T. Bones, and it’s as though they are going steady. Never mind that Bones is just an old sock with two cereal bowls sewn in for a mouth.
“Sally Ann,” Celeste says, still on the topic of men, “primarily writes to convicts. She has been pen pals with prisoners for years.” No doubt, she says, Sally Ann by now has won whole cell blocks of dark convict hearts.
Lola looks thoughtful and agrees that yes, it seems to work out for Sally Ann. And then, considering, she grins and says someday she may just try it herself. Lola has tried many things in her life, she is willing to try almost anything. She has for instance just signed up with a group called Match International, Inc. They put you in touch with immigrants, she tells us, all doctors and lawyers, professional men. Match Inc. is very particular.
In fact now, Lola says, she’s seeing a Zairian statesman. An elegant man but shorter even than her others, he stands only up to her sternum. But then alluding to new possibilities there, “Lordy, lordy,” she says laughing and slaps her thigh. “Ain’t nothin’ like a brand spankin’ new lover.”
Celeste looks at Lola, eyes big. She pretends to be taken aback. “Lola, how can you say such a thing?” As though she herself does not know about romance. How it necessitates always new lovers. But then giving it thought, “Or rather, I mean, Lola, how could you resort to a service?” Celeste herself has her standards.
And when we most of us look down at the table then and begin fooling with what’s left of our lunches, Celeste turns and addresses us all. “So very well then—tell. How really do you find your new loves?” Truly, Celeste wants to know.
His students wait in the studio at their worktables. It is their first day, they are excited, unsure. They look young to him, they grow younger each year. He counts. Only twelve. Good.
He has come to teach them painting. He is a teacher of painting, still life, life drawing. We are all artists here, he tells them. We are all, all of us, beginners. He looks into their faces. He knows they do not understand him.
He is visiting, on loan from a Western state. He is part of a university there too, Drawing and Painting, School of Art. He is faculty, tenured, he teaches. It is not enough. It has never been enough, he knows.
He has come for a year to teach color and line. To show students about light, about seeing. To help them work valiantly, honestly. To help them want to work more. And then he must leave end of spring.
He hasn’t much time. He starts class.
He sets his students before easels. Explains about canvas, how to mix paint, the correct way to hold their brush.
The students look at him, ready to begin.
No, he tells them. Not yet.
He asks them to wait. Be still, he says. Now watch for it.
What? they ask. Watch for what? They do not understand.
He cannot tell them. He says only they must learn first to look, truly see. They must know before they begin.
How do we find our new loves? I look down at the table with the others. I will not offer well here’s how it was with Ben. Because, as I’ve said, he and I have an understanding, we have our oath of silence. Besides which, considering that Ben is gone, there’s no point now in bringing him up, let alone explaining how I found him.
Still, head down as I am, I give it some thought, that night Ben and I first met. And then I am back to my daydreams.
I look up at him. “Coffee,” I say, “how about coffee?”
He looks surprised. I myself am surprised, I do not know why I offer that, “Coffee.” I do not actually feel like coffee. Nor should I be proposing it to this new man. Someone after all I have only just met and who could be, for all anyone knows, some well-mannered hatchet murderer drawn in by the lights and free food.
“Good,” he says. “Coffee.” Then “Ben Adams,” he adds, and extends me his hand.
“Margaret,” I say. And we shake on it.
He smiles very big, relieved. It is a wonderful smile, broad and true, and I think well we are going to be all right here. He cannot have a murderous heart, this Ben Adams. He is only as uncomfortable in this gallery as I, and it would do us both good now to leave. This loud room and its swarm of faux student artists are wearing on both of our nerves. We have had our fill of faux artists, I will say to Ben Adams over coffee.
We end up at the truck stop in town. Well actually outside of town, just off the highway that skirts our town limits. It’s the only place I know that serves coffee this late, although it will not be good coffee, I warn Ben. They leave the pot sitting on some warmer all night, probably since the truckers first stop for their dinners. Truckers are notorious for their early dinners.
The place is empty when we arrive, and we take the big corner booth. The waitress doesn’t mind, she tells us. It’s not like she’s expecting a big party to walk in and need to sit here or anything. She says she is not even sure why they put in a booth that sits eight if you squeeze in a little, considering most people, well truckers, usually come here alone. Unless maybe they’ve brought a buddy along to sit in the cab beside them. Or a wife, she has seen that too. But it’s not like they come here to socialize, those truckers, mostly no one sits in this booth.
“Except young couples like you two,” she says. Then she tells us now don’t mind her, she’ll just be in the back. We can help ourselves to a refill, it’s free. And she gives us a wink, like she has seen us before, she knows we want to be alone.
Ben thanks the waitress, he makes it sound like he means about the refills. And when she is gone he says, “Sorry,” as though it is somehow his fault the waitress thinks we’re together. Then he takes a big drink from the mug she has left him and smiles and tells me, “Good place,” as though I have chosen it especially for its coffee.
He is a kind man, this Ben Adams. He does not mock waitresses, there is that. I lift my mug in a little salute and give him a big smile back.
Ben sits, takes a look around. “Funny about truck stops,” he says. “You only go to one when everything else is closed. Which means you don’t normally go at all. But they’re OK, truck stops. Quiet.”
“Big improvement,” I say. What I mean is over that storefront. “What were those art students thinking?” Renting a one-room store for a show? And then inviting all of their friends. There was not even enough space for the paintings, let alone all their guests and dates. “Those artists need to be more selective,” I say. And then I tell Ben how before urban renewal, a man used to sell magazines in that shop. There was just enough room for a few newspaper racks, some postcards, and a back counter for wind-up toy dildos.
“The Dead Eye,” Ben says. “I remember the place.”
“You do?” I look at him. “Funny, I don’t think I have seen you around.”
“No, I mean I remember from before. When I was a student here.” Ben gives his coffee a stir. “A long time ago.”
“Oh,” I say. “Student.” And I look at him and try to think would I have known him then. But Ben is older than I am, I can see that. We could not have been here the same time.
“In art,” Ben says, and gives me a little smile. “When I was a graduate art student.”
“Oh,” I say again. And try to think what I have just said about graduate art students. How much I have already offended.
“You’re right, by the way, about too many paintings. We did it too, we all painted like madmen then too. Like somehow it mattered. Like people needed to see what we saw.”
“Well,” I say, just to make it clear, “that’s all right. Painting is OK.” I do not say how I once painted too. “I just do not care much for the shows,” I say. “Too hot, too crowded.” And without meaning to I give a grim little scowl.
He smiles again. “Your friend’s idea?” Like that’s why I came, like I have a boyfriend in the art department so I had to come too.
“His idea,” I agree. And then “Ford,” I say. “His name is Ford. He asked me to come because his date didn’t show.”
Again Ben looks surprised. I did not need to go into detail.
“So, what brought you out?” I say, adroitly changing the subject.
Ben smiles and says oh just a whim. He was downtown, he saw the poster, he thought he’d drop by. Maybe see someone from the old days. “But I didn’t know anyone. No one at all.”
He reaches for one of the packets of sugar the waitress has left for us. Spins it once on the table.
“No, I mean what brings you to town?” I say. I am now just making conversation. The sugar-packet spinning I have seen before and it is making me nervous. Men do this I’ve noticed on first dates. Not that this is a date. It is just something I have noticed.
Ben goes on spinning the sugar. Then he looks up and says well, that’s kind of a long story. “I’m teaching some art classes here. Painting, oil and acrylic. Normally, I teach somewhere else, but I swapped with a painter from here. It’s a program they have, lets you try out a new place for a year.” And then he tells me he’s renting a farmhouse a few miles out of town. That this summer he started a garden.
“OK,” I say. Like I agree with him.
OK? I am not making sense. But I have just now noticed something new, a major point I had previously missed. And I sit now staring, off balance.
The editors, I notice, have gone silent. They sit at the table all waiting for me. I look up, Lola gives me a quick nod to the side, and I snap back to attention. Frances has returned. She has something new now to discuss, it seems, something important and unrelated to romance. She is ready to get down to business.
Shifting forward, she catches us in her reptilian bead and clears her throat for our attention. “You know,” she says, striking a casual tone, “I heard from the Personality today.”
The Personality? We at the table give a collective gasp. Hearing from the Personality can never be good. We all of us lean in.
Frances, gratified, continues. “She called to say she had heard from Steinem that our catalog was out—that our new readers would soon be available. And she wondered if she could get a review copy or two.”
Lola, jaw jutting, looks concerned. “No,” she says. “She didn’t.”
“She did,” Frances says. “Calm as a cadaver, she asked for one of our books. That’s what she said, ‘Oh just something from your catalog.’ Steinem told her I’d help her out.”
“But—” Lola begins.
I shoot Lola a glance and nod in the direction of Celeste. And to distract us from going any further down this path of catalogs and upcoming readers, I join in and divert back to romance.
“The Personality,” I say. “Now there’s someone we haven’t heard from for a while. Isn’t she overdue for a visit?” Then I lower my voice and, although I know it’s not likely, say, “Oh my gosh, do you suppose she and Steinem are through?”
I whisper the Steinem part. He would not like us talking about him. Dr. Steinem is a private person, also annoyingly good-natured—a short, slight, bald man in his fifties, who, except for an overly large head that in some light makes him look extraterrestrial, appears to be entirely of no interest. He is not one, that is, to suspect of true romance. Which is why it’s not known at the sanatorium proper about Steinem and the Personality. Specifically, about their affair.
Or so we suppose that is what it is, given we have no real proof. Still, almost everyone at the Project believes it’s an affair that they’re up to, going on now for almost a year, ever since Steinem first contracted the Personality to make audio tapes for our series.
I should explain that we call her the Personality, or sometimes the TV Personality, only as our little code, in case Dr. Steinem is near. Actually the woman is Miss MaryBeth Malone. She’s a well-known figure in children’s TV and hosts a national show in L.A. She is also well-known for marrying a famous old crooner revered for his hits and a few feature films made during the Second World War. Most people would recognize the crooner and the name Miss MaryBeth Malone.
We have had visits at the Project from the Personality before, when she’s flown in for one of the tapings. First she records at a university studio in town, then arrives by midday at the Project. The Personality is a small, handsome woman, probably pushing forty-five. Steinem himself, as mentioned, is small, and there’s the matter of that large bald head. It is not clear what the Personality sees in him. But when he comes out to greet her in the fourth-floor foyer, and they stand there together, short and beaming, we all have to admit how much they appear the perfect little, if aging, wedding-cake couple.
Not that we then see much of them. Always they spend the rest of the day off in Steinem’s office, always with the door firmly closed. The editors and I cannot say, therefore, we have in any way got to know MaryBeth. This does not in the least, however, keep us from disliking the woman.
Lola in particular seems to hold a grudge. It is, we all think, because of the crooner, that the Personality is cuckolding him. Lola has a thing for the crooner, possibly even a crush. She is, and points it out often, probably the man’s number one fan. She has seen all his movies. She has each of his records, even the early hard-to-find Christmas ones. Long before the Personality came on the scene, Lola has been on the old crooner’s side.
“You can tell about a man by his work,” she says. “You watch a few of his films, you listen to any of his albums, you hear him sing ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’—it just breaks your heart,” she says. She cannot forgive the Personality for what she is doing to him.
Actually, Lola takes an interest in the crooner not just from his movies and albums. She tunes in as well every early December for his television Christmas special, with the crooner and MaryBeth and their grandchildren. Well, actually, Lola says, MaryBeth and his grandchildren by a previous marriage. He wed MaryBeth later in life, she is twenty years younger than he and also happens to look great on camera. Together, they put on a fine show every year. The crooner always dons a red wool knit sweater and sings a few songs by the fire, with cutaways to MaryBeth listening sweetly nearby, fulfilled in the season of joy. MaryBeth is good at looking fulfilled, and when the camera moves in for a close-up, she has a way of tilting her head and contentedly closing her eyes that makes you think she might really love the old crooner.
The show moves on then, Lola says, and when her husband has finished another carol or two, there’s usually one more cut to MaryBeth, this time with a book in her lap. The camera pulls back to show this, to show how she sits by the family’s tree, her full-length taffeta red-plaid skirt spread out strategically around her. And then smiling and dropping her eyes to the page, she begins reading a Christmas story, something short and generally moving. She looks at the camera, Lola says, and pauses after most of the sentences.
Frances interrupts. “Yes, of course,” she says. “We know all about that show, Lola. It was the Christmas show that sold Steinem on her.” And then Frances quickly runs through the rest. How Steinem liked the way MaryBeth read by that tree. “Good pacing,” he said. “The woman can certainly enunciate. Just the ticket for our new tapes.” And then he gave her a call at her studio, offered her grant money the next day. And within the week, MaryBeth arrived here at the Project to negotiate her contract with Steinem.
“Negotiate, right,” Lola says. And then says what all of us think, that most likely the affair began right then, MaryBeth’s first day at the office. “It does throw a new light on the Christmas special,” she adds, sadly shaking her head.
Frances coolly watches Lola. “Well, that may be,” she says. Then straightening herself and getting back to the point, “But now the Personality wants to read our readers, don’t you see?”
She turns, looks sharply at me. “Margaret, we must talk.” And when I stare back at her like I have no idea why and try for a bemused sort of smile, she adds, “About that little secret of ours.”
Secret? Good lord. I can’t believe Frances brought up our secret. And in front of Celeste at that. It is something we don’t speak of in public. Frances has got to know better. And I look at her now and I hold my smile dead hard on her.
The students grow restless. They rush to paint, they do not first try to see. He knows he must stop them, slow them down.
He points them to paintings he was taught to teach. He brings in museum slides, throws images large and grainy on the walls. Stand back here, he tells them. Soften your gaze. Do you see?
This one, he says. Cathedral in morning light. The cathedral, its great doors, yes, but it is the light that you see. It is that one early morning. Look, he says. Do you see? Even now it is there, rising from that wall, the ghost light of that one day just beginning.
Imagine, he says. To paint light.
They stare. They do not understand.
He walks to a window, opens it wide. Then here, he says. Look. Look here. He points to the line of oaks just outside, the great oaks that circle their building, shielding it from the river.
Look. What do you see?
Trees, they tell him. Oak trees. Branches. And leaves. Black branches, black-green leaves.
Look harder, he says. What more?
Sky? someone says. There’s sky.
He nods. And?
They stand, looking.
And light, he says. Do you see the light? There through the branches, through all the leaves, there. The trees are on fire with that light. It is the light that’s to see, not the trees.
They look. They do not see a fire. They do not even know what they are looking for.
One day, he tells them, you will. When you are thinking of nothing at all, you will look up and you will see the light in the trees.
But how? they say. How will they know when they see it?
He smiles, says only that they will know. It will possess them, it will make them want to begin. So that then they must paint with all that is in them. It will pretty much be their one chance.
They do not understand.
You must paint what you saw, as you saw it. Not a copy, but rather a moment, just that one instant you saw. And then you will understand painting.
He looks again at their faces.
The way in is the way out, he tells them.
They do not understand.
He closes the window. Turns up the lights. Asks them to return to their places.
I hold my hard smile for Frances. I’m still angry, it’s true, she has so casually brought up our secret, something on which our work lives depend. We do not any of us just go spilling the beans here. We’re a team, after all: Steinem Associates, Unified. The point here is unification. If one of us slips and our secret gets out, most likely the whole Project is through.
That’s how it is at the Project, Frances. Surely I don’t need to remind her.
But I look now again at Frances and realize it is not easy smiling so hard for so long. My mouth is beginning to ache. And I realize besides that Frances is taking no notice. It is fruitless with Frances, I should of course know. She understands only what she chooses. And so while she and the others move on with their talk, I feel my thoughts move on as well, or rather, I should say, back again. Back to that packet of sugar, that is, and the crucial point I noticed as Ben spun it.
Which I should have caught right away of course, first thing earlier in the evening. It is an unfortunate lack of awareness on my part when encountering a new man socially—a disability of sorts, actually—and I have been trying for keener perception.
So now that night with Ben it occurs to me at last to stop and take a look. And there on his hand, the one with the sugar packet, there on the left fourth finger, there, after all, it is—a gleaming and gold wedding band. Gold, fat, and rubbed smooth as a river. He is married, this Ben Adams. Long married. I am having late night coffee with a long-married man.
Which need not change anything at all, of course. That is what occurs to me next. We are only just having coffee. We have only just met. Still, it is a new point, this wedding band, and something I will have to think over.
“I have two geese,” Ben Adams says then. “A goose and a gander. On the farm where I rent.”
I look at him, nod. But I’m still not fully attending. I am wondering instead so do I mention the ring, or maybe Ben Adams’s wife? “Well now,” I could say. “Doesn’t your wife mind? About the geese, I mean. I would think they’re a responsibility.” It is the kind of thing women say, I believe, although I’m not really sure of the point. It may be only to acknowledge you’ve seen the ring, you know that this man is married. And that it’s all right with you, all right. You yourself are just having coffee. It makes no difference at all if the man you are with just now all alone and getting to know and possibly like is in fact actually married. It is not that you have designs. You are only just having coffee.
I nod at Ben. “Geese,” I say. “Yes. I’ve heard they are friendly birds.”
We both of us just look down at our mugs. Ben gives his another swirl, I take a sip from mine. The coffee is cold. Well, we are probably both thinking about leaving.
But just then, the truck stop front door opens wide and “Janice!” a large man calls. He makes a wild-eyed scan of the room. “Janice, I know you’re in here. Come back out to the car now, Janice.”
Ben shoots me a look. We are the only ones here in the truck stop, the man at the door must see this. “Oh-oh,” Ben says to me, low.
Our waitress appears from her back room. “Larry,” she says. “Now calm down there, Larry.”
“I’ve lost Janice,” the man says to our waitress. He lowers heavily onto the counter’s end stool, bows his head, and with no further notice, starts to sob.
“Larry, Larry,” the waitress says. She goes to him, rubs the top of his head.
The man’s back and shoulders are heaving. “Janice,” the man cries, “Janice. Where is Janice?”
“There, Larry,” the waitress says. “Shh. It’s all right.”
The large man lifts his head to look at her. From our booth we can see his face is swollen and red, soaked wet from the tears. And we can smell the alcohol on him.
Ben stands, walks over. “Need help?” he says. It’s not clear if he’s asking the waitress or Larry.
“It’s OK,” the waitress says. “It’s just Larry. He comes in a lot. When it gets bad, I just call the cops.”
Larry places both arms on the counter, leans forward, drops his head. He lies then, chest and face on the counter
“It’s his wife,” the waitress says. “He just misses his wife, that’s all.”
The waitress turns to check Larry, who has now gone into a moan. She turns back to Ben. “She left him. Gone almost a year now. Larry just can’t seem to get used to it.”
Ben nods, watches Larry. Then moving in, he stands and places a hand on his shoulder. The large man still moans. Ben does not move, he says nothing, he holds on. And after a while Larry quiets down. Leaning closer, Ben says something into his ear. And you can see then from the man’s back he relaxes.
Ben stands over him watching. The waitress watches too. And then, “Thanks,” she says, smiling, like she can take it from here. “I’ll let him stay. He’ll just sleep now, we’ll be fine.”
Ben comes back to our table. He offers to drive me home.
On the way I think to ask him, “So what did you say to that man just now?”
Ben keeps his eyes on the road. He gives a little shrug. “Nothing much.”
I watch Ben drive. He can feel it, I guess, because in a little while more, “I just told him I know.”
I look at Ben’s profile. You do? I am going to ask. But Ben is still watching the road and I can tell from the way he seems now, faraway, alone, that probably Ben does, he knows.
We drive on pretty much silent the rest of the way. The evening is definitely over here. And once in town, I just direct us to Mott Street and then quickly point out my house. Although it is not all that late, I will of course not be asking Ben in.
But at the curb, when I am out of his truck and thanking him for the ride, “Margaret,” Ben says, like he’s just had an idea. He leans over and looks up to where I’m standing. “Have dinner with me tomorrow? I cook.”
I am surprised. I hold the door open, I consider. The thought of Ben Adams’s smooth wedding band does naturally cross my mind. A fact we have not yet discussed. But then “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I would like that.”
Which is true. I have decided I like this Ben Adams. He is someone I would like to know better. So “Yes,” I say. “OK. I mean, thanks.” And I write down and hand him my number.
I sit thinking about this last part. How good and kind a man our Ben is. And I think again how Mrs. E is right. He has been missing for far too long. I really should find where he’s gone. Which is to say, I must be off. I must go now and save Ben Adams. It could, after all, be just the thing that will end up saving us both.
But I know first I need a plan. For any good search and rescue, always there is a plan. Nothing happens without a plan.
And I make a few notes in my head:
1. To begin, I will need to find Ben.
2. Which naturally implies a search.
3. Which begins with probabilities, of course, searching first where probably Ben is.
4. Which occurs to me now is his farm.
5. His farm, well of course, that’s where Ben is.
6. I will drive to Ben’s farm now and search.
7. Well, no, not now exactly.
8. But just as soon as I am able. Right after work, for instance. Right after I get home today.
9. A new thought: I may have to use stealth.
10. If Ben had wanted to be found, he would not have gone missing in the first place.
11. Unless of course it was not his choice and he actually is in trouble.
12. In which case I will still need to use stealth.
13. So then, I will drive to Ben’s farm unannounced.
14. I will look for him first at his house.
15. Then in all the outbuildings, the geese pen, the fields.
16. And should I at last discover him out in some furrow checking on crops, I will say oh Ben, oh Ben, so there you are.
17. So that’s where you have been keeping yourself.
18. Well, how lucky of me to have found you.
19. Or something along those lines.
20. I will sound jaunty, as though I’ve not noticed we’ve been out of touch now for months.
21. I will act as though it is neither here nor there, all that time.
22. Now that he clearly is here.
23. Or rather, that I am there.
I think over my notes. Yes, it is a good start to my plan. The part about searching for Ben. I will indeed find the missing Ben Adams.
And once then I do, I will go into the rescue part. Which, frankly, I have yet to work out. Rescue is hard and will take more thought, maybe an additional plan. Or then again, I may just have to wing it. Because, to the point, just now I am anxious to start.
The reason being, there is need to hurry. First, of course, in case Ben is really in trouble. But also because time in general for us is running out. Ben’s second semester is almost up. His year here is at a close, and I know Ben has plans not to stay. I must catch him now, before he leaves town. If for no other reason, I will tell him, so at least we can say good-bye.
Luckily enough now, before Frances can go any further, Lola holds up her watch. “Well lookee here,” she says. “Time we all light a shuck back to fourth floor.” Somehow we’ve talked ourselves well past one.
We all rise and near the elevator doors, while Celeste is off pressing for up, Frances mercifully moves on from the Personality. Instead, watching Celeste as she saunters ahead, gauzy skirt freshly laundered and billowing, Frances cannot resist. “Celeste is certainly well cared for,” she says to Lola, in a voice loud enough for all of us.
Celeste pretends not to hear, because now the elevator doors are opening. We all fit ourselves in and begin our slow ascent to fourth floor. We stand facing the front and we are all of us suddenly quiet. We remain like that for almost a floor, until from the back, when she can take the silence no longer, Celeste speaks up.
“So, Margaret,” she says. “We haven’t heard much from you today. Anything new with you?” It is of course just the quiet that’s making her ask, Celeste has no actual interest. The editors in general have no interest in me, rarely do they ask anything personal. They do not, for instance, want to know over lunch about any of my new boyfriends, the assumption being that I have none. Still, to fill this little void the elevator has brought on, Celeste is asking me something now. It’s a kind of last resort of the extroverts present when faced with communal silence.
I do not immediately answer, and as we near the next floor, “Well, so, Margaret,” Frances says at my shoulder. I can feel her looking at me. And to encourage me then, I suppose, “Margaret, dear, Celeste asked you a question. Anything new? Any big date for the weekend?”
I try to think quickly. There is so much to say and really so little I can. I cannot of course bring up Ben here. The terrible fact he is gone.
We continue in silence. Still I can’t think what to say. “Margaret?” Frances says. “Are you listening?”
From behind, I feel Lola give Frances a nudge. “Margaret don’t like to talk much, honey.” Then “Haven’t y’all noticed?” she says to the group and pats me helpfully between the scapulas. Which only makes me think harder. Surely there is something I can offer. Surely I won’t let myself need to.
I clear my throat. “Surely,” I start to say. But I am spared then as the doors jolt open at fourth. And “Oh my,” the editors all chime in at once. “Look! Chaise du Jour.”
I study the foyer. It is Chaise du Jour, all right. Again. The editors are correct about that one. Right there as usual in our foyer.
Which, before we move on, calls for a note here of interest, not about chaises but foyers: This sanatorium is full of foyers. On each of the floors, in every wing, the elevators all let out at them. Yawning, rib-vaulted foyers. Though, to be clear, there were foyers before there were elevators. In the beginning, when the sanatorium was first built, it had only stairs. Everyone used what we now call the back flight, the staircase with brass rails that Earnest complains of polishing. To reach our wing in those days, people climbed up four floors and were ready enough when arriving here to sit for a while, catch their breath. Foyers were, for the times, a good idea.
But there was more to these Gothic old foyers. They were also where visitors were kept when calling on the tubercular. Outsiders were not allowed down the halls, they could not chat with patients in their beds. Though no one knew then the source of white plague, the smart money did not sit in small rooms with it. The foyers with their high ceilings and open wide floors made for safer and more sociable reunions.
Frances says well that was true for back then but it’s now space that’s just basically wasted. Frances would have redecorated a good bit around here. But Dr. Steinem had his own plans for our foyer. He made it into our receptionist’s post, moved in a large desk, and stationed poor Marcie at it. Then, to make us look more important, we think, he brought in a dozen high straight-back chairs. As though we were expecting long lines of people, and they needed somewhere to sit down. But of course no one much ever comes up to fourth floor, our foyer is a waiting room in waiting. Or so it was until the first of last month.
Which brings me to Chaise du Jour. What the editors and I stand now facing.
Chaise du Jour started, I am pretty sure, by accident, it was not at first anyone’s fault. Unless possibly the weekend janitors are to blame, the weekend janitors who are students at the university and strong enough to lift a few chairs. Certainly it was not our Tuesday-night Earnest, who is too old for the labor involved. No, it was probably some work-study student.
I imagine this is how it began. One Sunday night while vacuuming the foyer on our floor, this janitor, probably somebody new, a serious boy, bent on vacuuming all the way under things, moved a few chairs out of his way. And then, called off to a crisis on some floor below, to some louvered shade or drain suddenly jammed, he forgot what he’d been doing on fourth and left the chairs where he had moved them. Five foyer chairs all in a straight row, directly across from the elevator.
After that there was no going back, not after those chairs aligned. The next morning they got our attention right off, when the elevator doors first opened. Well, now. Look at that. Something was up at the Project. Normally those chairs sat demure, indistinct, in a conversational U near the back wall. It made us all laugh, those prim straight-backed chairs advancing like that in brigade, holding the line at the elevator. We all talked about it then over lunch. Those five chairs looked so odd, so out of their place, so rigid and alert in that single straight row. They were like some column of high-back sentries on lookout for attack by hoist. And they became our main topic of conversation all lunch, eclipsing even Lola’s new squeeze who had us going the day before.
The chairs were still on our minds when we returned to fourth floor at one. Where to universal surprise we found the chairs had changed place once again. Though still in a row, now they were facing away from us, as if they had turned on their heels in one great group chair snit. Someone had moved them when no one else saw, it was even a better joke now. And each time then that day and the next, when one of us had reason to pass by them, the chairs had again rearranged. Marcie, who worked in clear sight of the chairs, hadn’t herself a clue how. She is, truth be told, a great taker of breaks and often not at her desk. Meanwhile, someone was toying with our foyer.
It was Emmaline again. Celeste said it first. But by the end of the day, the others were all certain too. It was Emmaline, all right. Although, as Celeste pointed out, Emmaline would never herself let on. Still the editors all knew about poor Emmaline, that she sometimes grew restless and bored with our floor, that she sometimes just needed a change. We were happy she had found a small outlet. We were happy about the foyer chairs.
Because they have become, it turns out, our running office joke. They are something for us to look forward to. And even now, a month on, Emmaline still comes through. She has long since moved on from chair rows. Some mornings we come in to six chairs stacked straight up. Some days four lie on their sides. And once ten chairs formed a pyramid in the middle of the room like trick elephants coaxed up onto each other’s shoulders.
“Chaise du Jour,” Frances named the chair sculptures. After which an easel appeared, with large placards written in red, in what suspiciously looked like blood. Someone, Emmaline again naturally, we assumed, began captioning our Chaise du Jour. On Monday, two chairs set down facing each other, mirror-image; the placard: “Chair and Chair Alike.” Replaced the next day by a single chair, a heart-shaped box of chocolates on its seat: “Mon Chair Amour.” Followed on Thursday by two chairs again, one propped up against the other: “Sonny and Chair,” which has remained pretty much our favorite.
But now today when the elevator doors open, we see Emmaline has taken a new, darker tack. The chairs line up grimly, all facing forward, and we give a collective little gasp. “Really,” Celeste whispers, “she’s outdone herself.” Before us are not one, but three Chaises du Jour.
On the left, two chairs placed side by side, the back of each painted with a large red D; in the center two more chairs, the first painted 2, the second a capital B; on the right, one lone chair, another large red 2. Then in front of each display, an easel with placard.
For our benefit, Celeste reads them aloud, left to right:
D-Seats
Seats 2-B
B No More
“Oh no!” we all say and pull back. And I think well, of course, more bad omens. The editors catch them as well. And we just stay in the elevator where we are.
Except for Celeste, who, feeling responsible, feeling in charge, launches herself into the foyer. She gives a quick angry look once around. Then staring straight up at the ceiling, “Emmaline,” she calls loudly. “That’s not funny.”
He closes the door to the studio and leans back against it, listening to the silence. He loves it here evenings alone.
He breathes in, smells the linseed and solvent. Looks up. High ceilinged and limestone, the cavernous old room is perfect. In this room you step back, it is centuries ago within these stone walls. By day, its old skylights let in ancient sun, and at night galaxies revolve at the panes.
He brings his own canvas, his paints. Sets up alone. He has come for the painting. He tells no one. But at night, alone, he paints. The way in is the way out, he murmurs.
He works by starlight, or by the full moon. He finds his way in the painting.
It’s been a long day at the Project. All these visits from Emmaline and her ilk take a toll. As do the series editors. Too much talk of ghosts for one day, I think. And besides I have now more pressing business. I have Ben Adams to find. So on this afternoon’s bus ride back into town, I’m anxious only to be off again to Ben.
And as soon as I’m home then, I climb into my car and head to his farm to find him. To find him and possibly save him. Or barring the need for the latter, at least have the chance to talk.
Ben rents a farmhouse ten miles out of town. You have to take back roads to get there, and if you do not have a good map your first trip, you will most certainly lose your way. But I myself know the route well, I have made many trips out to Ben’s. And always I am happy to make the drive. Ben’s farm is a splendid place once you’re there, peaceful and quiet, with low rolling fields and a sky as wide as it’s high.
Still, because it’s a long drive and there is time now to think, and because after all I’m going to see Ben, I find once again I am thinking about him—once more about him and me.
The simple fact is, after our coffee early last fall, Ben and I began seeing each other. There was, first of all, our first dinner, something that I will get to. Followed by still other dinners, the beginning of our seeing one another. After which we decided it would do no harm, just now and then, seeing each other otherwise. It was a lovely time really, just seeing each other this fall.
We began dividing the visits between country and town, spending time at first at my house where Ben stopped sometimes after class. Although soon he began stopping on weekends as well. He would ask if maybe I had something he could fix, or repaint, or possibly just move. Maybe an old carburetor he could clean. Ben is handy, he liked having something to do with his hands. And when he was done with whatever small task I came up with, if the day was still warm I would fix us iced tea and we would drink it out in my backyard. Or if it was cold and raining, or, later, snowing, I would make a pot of fresh coffee while Ben stoked the fireplace in the front room. Then we would sit in our woolly socks on the floor and drink our coffee from big china mugs.
That is mostly how it went on Ben’s trips into town. But the fact is I preferred visiting Ben at his farm. And not just for dinner, I liked seeing the farm in the day. I liked the long drive, I liked the back roads, the trees turning color, the heartening change of scenery. On the way, I’d open the car windows and sing.
And once arrived, I would spend a good part of my time just sitting out in his farmyard. The grass there this fall was spectacular, lush, and for a farmyard the air was clean. I would take little naps in that grass. I would lie back and sometimes, if there were breezes, if I happened just then to be lying in sun, things occurred to me that normally would not. Reveries, of sorts. I would think, for instance, how there should be great loads of laundry just now blowing in these magnificent breezes, the clothesline stretched from Ben’s door to his flag. Overalls and work shirts, large white boxers, all on the line out drying. Everywhere chambray should be flapping.
And sometimes I would say, “Oh Ben, this is perfect. This place is where you belong.”
Ben thought I romanticized things. “It’s just an old farm, an old farmhouse,” he said.
But I think there is more. Ben’s farm is solid and it suits him. And although I knew in the spring he’d be leaving, although I did not tell him this next part, I would sometimes sit in the grass of Ben’s farm and wish somehow he could stay.
So yes, you could say we were seeing each other, Ben and I. And the complication of course was that Ben is a married man. Something I’ve already touched on and something most people would not approve. But it was also not what most people would think. Ben and I at that point were just friends. I was seeing Ben Adams but we were just friends.
Well no, that isn’t it either. Ben and I were not only friends. We were more, or maybe just else. Well, I do not think there’s a term for what Ben and I were, especially in the beginning. The closest I came to were words just for Ben and even then I thought of him as hybrid. Part mentor, part swain, part ward.
It remains, however, that this man I was seeing, Ben Adams, was indeed a married man. A husband, a spouse, though thankfully nobody’s father. It is a fact I had to remember. His wife’s name, I learned, is Ellen, and until this past June, Ben lived with her in his Western state. That is all I learned about Ellen. She was the one topic that mattered that Ben and I did not discuss.
Which, I should add, did not stop me, at least in the beginning, from sometimes trying to see things from her point of view. I tried to think, for example, how I would feel if I were a wife in a Western state with a husband off mentoring and swaining. But I did not get far in my line of thought, as I had no idea who this Ellen was or if she had a point of view. Or even if she knew what was up. Then again, I was still not myself sure what exactly was up. Nor, I think, was Ben. So there you have it. We were all of us this fall confused.
Nevertheless, all this fall, Ben and I were happy to go on seeing each other, just stopping by now and then. To leave it at that. What could be wrong? What could possibly go wrong with that?
Well of course the answer is a great deal. And it could still all end terribly wrong. Although by wrong, to be clear, I do not mean wrong as in immoral. Not wrong as in sin. I am not much a holder with sin, which I realize does complicate a stance on wrongdoing, and what leads to irreparable harm.
No, what I mean here about wrong, about seeing a married man as wrong, is that it can be incredibly wrongheaded. Misguided, delusional, a bad idea. And it can indeed lead to harm, no matter the initial intention.
In the beginning, however, I did not think this applied to Ben and me. When I tried very hard to be honest, I did not think what we were doing was wrong. I was not out to take Ben away from his Ellen. Or make him change his old life for me. And except on the occasional breezy day on his farm, I did not particularly wish he would stay.
In fact, Ben’s marital state was an advantage, I thought. How safe, really, married men were, how unlikely to become hangers-on. How awfully convenient, really. With Ben, I believed, life could just carry on. By summer there was somewhere else he should be, he had a Western wife to return to. And because I was already where I should be, I could stay just as I was.
Which is right where the wrong part came in.
But just now, in record time, here I am already at Ben’s farm. And I drive up his long driveway to the front of his house and stop where I usually park.
“Ben, Ben,” I call from the car window. I am excited to see Ben at last. But I look at his house then and notice the shades at his windows are down and his truck is not there on the side. His truck is in fact not here at all, and I know then neither is Ben.
A low cloud moves in, leaving the farmyard in shadow, and I feel a shiver pass through me. Ben should be here. Something is wrong. Something—and I try hard to think. But then the breeze picks up, the light returns, and because I cannot just now put my finger on it, I give a little shake and snap to. Well but it is only that Ben is not home. It is only my own bad timing. I have driven all this way to tell Ben the news—that possibly he is in danger and for this reason I have come to save him—but now what do you know, Ben is not here.
I sit for a minute considering. Still, what does it mean, Ben’s not here? Could in fact this be what Mrs. E had in mind, that Ben is off now somewhere in danger? That someone or something has taken him away? It’s possible, as I’ve said, Mrs. E has it right.
Possible, that is, but not likely.
So I give it more thought, I stare at the dark house, I consider the time of day, and what is likely, I think, is that Ben Adams is still at school teaching. Or painting somewhere by himself. Or then again out running errands. Danger? Errands? Just now there is no way to tell. There is only the fact that Ben is not here. And I have come all this way for nothing.
I shift back into gear and turn around. And as I make my way down the drive, I think how my plan for Ben still needs work. Specifically, it needs a timeline.
Well then, tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow I will try again. I will find Ben Adams tomorrow.