7

James Taylor Riddiford, Flint Professor of Drama at Blake University and chairman of the department, lived with his wife and two children two towns west of the college. Although he was forty-six, he was not yet graying noticeably, but the bulk of his body had come to occupy an anatomical middle ground staked out by his navel. Lately he had developed a habit of wiping his face with his hand, whether or not he was perspiring. It was a gesture of exhaustion and exasperation, and an unconscious revelation of his state of mind. Anything could make him do it, like the sight of his wife’s hair, which she was allowing to go gray without the slightest interference, in the typical indifference to appearance of an academic wife.

Ellen Riddiford had no idea that her hair reminded her husband of the fur on their dog’s belly, nor that he was tired of her, and of the whole world of the college, for that matter. James was sick of all academics, with their pinkies poking out from the stems of little sherry glasses. He was sick of faculty meetings. He was sick of his wife’s talk about her introductory Latin courses. And sick at heart when the coeds appeared on campus in the spring, in their tight little shorts.

After certain classes—the ones with a nymph in scant denim sitting in the front row—James would retreat to his office, close the door, and sit wild-eyed in his chair like an animal with its leg caught in a trap, which the Flint Chair in Drama had proven to be. It was the steeliest and most cruelly cunning of traps: permanent job security.

Every day at work James had moments when his hand went involuntarily to his face and drew the shade. It usually happened whenever Anderson, the would-be playwright in the department, came in with another excerpt from the libretto of that so-called opera he was collaborating on with some snippy little bald faggot from the music department.

“Listen to this,” Anderson would say with a scoutmaster’s enthusiasm, and James would respond by saying, “Hey, how about that,” or “Not bad.” While he churned inside. The mediocrity of his colleagues often turned his frustration into self-loathing: they were so cheerfully accepting of their limitations. How limited must he be to have to count himself among them?

Worse than Anderson’s intrusions were James’s encounters with Mr. Cherry. Cherry was one of those faggots who found everyone and everything that wasn’t faggoty distasteful if not untouchable. To keep the world at arm’s length Cherry used a cigarette holder so that he made James think of a lighthouse standing cold and slippery in the dark, the ember of his cigarette a warning, as well as a beacon for stray sailors.

“Ramps?” Cherry had said of James’s idea for the Lear set. “Just ramps? And painted gray? Why, I don’t know what I think of that. It would be like a fashion show, I suppose. A fashion show at…Stonehenge.”

James had wanted to snatch Cherry’s cigarette holder away from him and snap it in two. But instead he swept his hand over his face.

“If that’s the kind of set you want, the lighting will have to carry it,” Cherry had continued, looking past James’ shoulder. “I simply can’t imagine the number of cues… Well, Peggy can probably handle it, along with Kathy. It’s too bad there’s not a part for her in the play. She is talented. But she’s so short, and so plain. And some roles are so exacting.”

This observation had been accompanied by a look akin to that of a Saville Row tailor measuring an unworthy customer with his eyes. It was clear to James that Cherry thought he was not equal to the demands of the role of King Lear.

But what would he know about which way madness lies, when he’d gone only one way, down darkened streets in search of cocks to suck? That was the infuriating thing about people like Cherry. They went straight off the deep end early in life, and they couldn’t understand or appreciate the struggles of those who were rowing against the current, trying to keep back from the edge.

Now, as he sat struggling with himself in the attic bedroom that was his home office, trying to cast Lear, James felt that current tugging him. It was a strong current, a swelling in him that was like the ebb and flow of the black wind outside, which was making the neighbor’s garden gate bang.

Clutching the pencil in his hand, James tried to will shut the portal that had opened in his heart. He thought of the story his wife had told, of Ordway in the philosophy department, the fool who had told a coed that he’d seen someone who looked just like her—and then pulled out a magazine clipping of a model dressed in lingerie. These people knew no shame. Weber in mathematics had actually started an affair with a coed. She’d gone to graduate school in Ohio, but Weber had kept on seeing her, flying out there every month, and billing the research and development committee for his traveling expenses.

When James asked him how he could be running out to Ohio so often, why he bothered to keep it going, the answer—quite straight-faced—had been, “In order to touch the person I love.” And there was Bender in classics, who had tried and failed with his male students so often that when they were in his office, they always made sure they had a stack of books on their laps.

They were pathetic, all of them, pathetic and ridiculous. I’m not like them, James told himself.

He looked at the Fulbright application on his desk. If he played his cards right, he might be able to spend a year teaching in London. Of course Ellen and the kids would have to remain at home, because of school and all. They’d come over for Christmas, and maybe for a month over the summer, but that would be it. James was looking at a year of nearly perfect freedom.

Staring at his list of characters and actors, James wrote Mike Lange beside Edgar. The role of Edmund, the bastard son, he assigned to a tall, bearded hippie type who hung around the theater, because, he’d said, “Any field you can never make a living out of is cool ’cause it has to be noncompetitive.” And that was it. Except for Cordelia.

James looked at Kathy Lowenthal’s name, hard. The letters in it spun around and sizzled, like a word from the Ten Commandments being engraved before Charlton Heston’s eyes. Why shouldn’t Kathy play Cordelia? Wasn’t virtue usually homely? She ought to play Cordelia. She had every right, she was entitled to.

James felt bathed in his own sweat, even though the attic was chilly.

Kathy fairly shone with honesty and strength. She could dignify the part of Cordelia, which could easily be a mannequin of sentimentality.

Why not Kathy?

James moved to strike her name from the list of people who could be counted on for the tech crew.

But his hand stopped itself. And then, sitting there numbly, James wrote Lauren Holland beside Cordelia.

He was shaking. He stood up and walked over to the dark window. Across the yard, he saw Mrs. Johnson at her sink. Washing up after some late snack, no doubt. He thought of all the years his wife had spent washing dishes. He thought of the times back when they were first married when they’d eat popcorn and drink beer while watching the late movie. All that had to be worth something. It was worth at least this much: that he had to shut his eyes against the onrush of guilt.

He couldn’t have mistaken the looks that the girl had given him in his office, catching his eye and holding it deliberately, for two or three beats too many.

Silently he recited Lear’s lines. Howl, howl, howl, howl.

And he cried out silently, Oh, God. It’s my life, isn’t it?