Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Waiting for Beth, he wanders into the den. Conrad lounges on the couch in Levi’s and a T-shirt, hands in his pockets, legs stuck out in front of him, his boot heels digging into the carpet.
“Your basic teen-ager,” Cal observes.
Conrad eyes the gray slacks, black turtleneck, gray plaid sportcoat. “Your basic suburban lawyer.”
He sits down beside him on the couch. “What’re you watching?”
“Dunno. Just got here.”
From the television set comes the fervent announcement: “Watch the Pete Pepper Show! Share the joys of family living!”
“Who the hell is Pete Pepper?” he asks.
Conrad laughs. “You got me.”
“Where were you today? I needed a tennis partner.”
“Over in Skokie.”
“Oh? Doing what?”
“Seeing somebody I know.”
“Anybody I know?”
“No.”
Period. A long way to go for friendship. All the way to Skokie. What happened to the people closer to home?
“What’re you doing tonight?”
“Studying. Got a history mid-term on Tuesday.”
Mid-terms already. He hopes Con is not uptight about the tests. Should he tell him not to worry? No, he will think it means something. Will think he, Cal, is worried. “How’s Joe?” he asks. “You see much of him?”
“Every morning on the way to school. At practice. On the way home.”
Not an answer, really, but it is conversation. Cal wants to keep it flowing between them. How to do this? Sometimes it is so difficult, feeling his way with this mysterious stranger, his son. He asks, “Why don’t you call him and see what he’s doing tonight?”
“I think I ought to study.”
“Can’t you study tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m planning on it.” His eyes have not left the set. “It’s a mid-term, Dad.”
“Okay. I guess it takes time to get back in the swing of it again, huh?”
Conrad looks over at him and grins. “You been hanging around with Grandfather again?”
Cal laughs. He will be eighteen in January, but he looks younger than that, and vulnerable; yet older at the same time. Tired. His face is drawn. He has an urge to shield him, but how? There is no way. No way at all. He wants to give him a present of some kind, something to keep the currents of sound moving between them. He says, “Your mother and I were talking about going to London sometime.”
“Not for Christmas?” There is an odd look on his face that Cal cannot identify. Fear? Anger? It is gone before he can be sure.
“We haven’t decided when,” he says. “I thought maybe in the spring. No, this Christmas I thought we’d just stay around here.”
“Yeah, that’d be fine. Unless—if everybody else wants to go for Christmas, I’ll go, that’s okay. I don’t want to spoil things. I mean, if she wants to go, I’ll go.”
Beth is in the doorway. “I’m ready, Cal.”
“Okay. In a second.”
“We’re late.” She moves down the hallway to get her coat.
He is on his feet, but he doesn’t want to leave yet. Conrad is looking up at him. There is nothing to worry about; he knows that. He has to get over this feeling of panic every time he leaves him alone in the house. He’s a big boy. He will be eighteen years old in January. Remember it.
“We’ll be over at the Murrays’, did I tell you that?”
“No. Fine.”
“The number’s in the book. Philip Murray, on Anhinga Boulevard.”
“Okay.” And he knows what Conrad is thinking: What would I need to call you for?
In the car, she says to him, “I told you he’d go if you asked him.”
“He doesn’t want to, though.”
She shrugs. “Well, it’s too late now, anyway.”
She gave up on this, suddenly and simply. It was not like her. He hasn’t realized until this minute that it has been several weeks since the subject of London was mentioned. Now he feels at once relief and guilt.
“We’ll go in the spring,” he says. “I promise.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Who’s going to be there tonight?” Testing. Her tone when she answers will tell him if she is angry.
“Well, the Murrays. It’s their house.” She slides over next to him. Happily grateful, he squeezes her hand. Wonderful, unpredictable girl. “And Mac and Ann Kline. Ed and Marty Genthe. And us.”
“Why us? We hardly know the Murrays.”
“That’s why. That’s why you have people over, darling. To get to know them better.”
He does not want to know Phil Murray any better. He has played golf with him three times. He knows him well enough. The first time, he was told Phil’s reasons for joining the golf club. “I’m an insurance salesman, Cal. A damn good one, too.” He had laughed and said that he had all the insurance he needed. “That’s what you think.” Phil grinned at him. On discovering what Cal did for a living, he spent the rest of the round telling jokes about crooked lawyers. During the second round, Cal confirmed his earlier suspicion that he cheated on the golf course, saw his ball land with a thud in the trap; when they arrived at the shot, it hung, miraculously, on the lush green edge. Worse, Phil was fakily delighted. “Hey, what a break! That was close, huh?” Cal thought he was the only one who noticed, but afterward, in the locker room, Mac Kline shook his head, “Who does he think he’s kidding?” and at lunch someone cracked a joke about the best traps being the ones with the thickest lips.
He says, “Let’s go to the movies, instead.”
“Don’t be negative.” She squeezes his hand.
“Then, let’s not stay too late.”
She is looking at herself in the rear-view mirror. “Already ? You don’t usually say that until we pull in the driveway. Anyway, you’ve never even been to their house before. How do you know you won’t have fun?”
“I can read my mind. It says, Stay home tonight, read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, do something constructive with your life.”
“Everybody has to eat,” she says.
They live only blocks away, in a wide, square-pillared house at the top of a gentle slope known as Anhinga Hill. The contractor, a Floridian transplant, named the streets after a host of Everglades birds—Bittern, Egret, Cormorant, Anhinga. Their own, Heron Drive. Eight basic designs of houses; twenty-four elevations. Each one carefully, artfully different. The subdivision has won prizes. Neatness, originality, aptness-of-thought.
“Here they arel” Sara Murray sweeps them inside. “How’s that? Three blocks away, and the last ones to arrive! It’s positively insulting. Here are the coats, darling.” She ushers them into the large, elegantly furnished living room, done in shades of champagne and white. As is the hostess. A long, silky gown with a deep neckline. She is a tiny woman; nearly a head shorter than Beth. “Ed, move over, will you? Make room for Beth.”
“Come here, you gorgeous thing,” Ed Genthe says, reaching up to take Beth’s hand and pull her down beside him on the couch.
“Edward, Edward,” she says, laughing. “Control yourself!”
Gracious as always, but Cal knows she doesn’t like this. She is wearing a white-knit pantsuit, a long-sleeved black blouse, her hair tied back from her face with a black silk scarf. She does look gorgeous.
“Cal, what would you like?” Phil asks. “Scotch?”
“Yes, please. Just a short one.”
“Short on water?” Phil laughs. “Short on scotch?”
“Hey, c’mon, it’s a party,” Ed says. “Hey, somebody, how about a Dewar’s ad on this guy? What’s the latest book you’ve read, Cal?”
“How about The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the first hundred pages,” Beth says. “Four times. Will that do?”
Call says, “Not funny.”
“How about a quote?”
He thinks a minute. “ ‘The only way to deal with absurdity is to recognize it.’ How’s that?”
“Hell, no. You think anybody uses his own quotes in those things? Who talks like that?”
Sara comes in from the kitchen, a tray of cocktail snacks in her hands, all gracefully arranged in rows: sausages and mushrooms in tiny, fluted pastry shells; crusty little pillows bulging with some unidentified, gooey filling; hot puffs of cheese-flavored dough. She passes the tray around. “Come on, take lots.”
“Cal, you playing in the Lawyers’ Invitational next spring?” Mac Kline drifts over to where he is standing, beside the mantel.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I posted enough scores this year to qualify.”
“You ever won that thing?” Ed asks.
“Are you kidding? Too many lawyers play golf.”
“Too many lawyers play golf is right,” Phil says. “Try to get on that course on a Thursday afternoon. Hey, that reminds me—” and he is off on another crooked-lawyer joke.
Sara jockeys in between Cal and Mac with the tray. Her breasts swell provocatively from the V of the gown. He studies the tray in stern concentration. To raise his eyes a mere three inches would be to give her what she wants; she would like to catch him sneaking a look, he can feel it, and he would do it, too, if it were not for a frenetic-butterfly manner that she radiates. It grates on his nerves. She has an endless supply of nervous energy. Tiny women are often like this, he thinks. They never run down. They overwhelm him, make him feel lumpish and stupid. Too large. He glances at his wife, who is not that type at all. She is cool and quiet and relaxed at parties. He would prefer sitting next to her, talking to her. That is often the case with him. He likes women, but not nervous women. He has tried to like Sara and, at times, he has almost succeeded. So long as he doesn’t have to see her often. No, he would not like to be married to a damned butterfly.
“I saw Conrad the other day,” Marty Genthe says. “Uptown. It’s nice that someone that age still believes in courtesy. Most of Donald’s friends remember my face, but they can’t be bothered putting a name to it. It’s just, ‘Oh, hi there.’ ”
And suddenly, everyone is listening.
“How is he doing?” Ann asks. “I heard the boys say he’s swimming.”
“He’s fine,” Beth says. There is something final and forbidding about the answer, but Sara doesn’t hear it. They are still newcomers here, and she wants to be polite. Inquiring after people’s children is accepted form everywhere.
She asks, “Has he been sick?”
“He was sick for a while,” Beth says. “He’s fine, now.”
“Another drink, Cal?”
“Yes, sure. Is there time before dinner?” He crosses to the bar, the skin on the backs of his hands tightening, as if from an electric shock.
He sits between Ann Kline and Marty Genthe at the table, with Sara across from him.
“Sara, what a meall” Marty says. “This is a tough act to follow, dear.”
“Oh, no,” she protests, “it’s just plain food. I can’t cook fancy, honestly. No, Beth is the artist in that department. I don’t know how she does it!”
“The cheese sauce is great,” Ed says. “Marty, get that recipe, will you?”
After the main course comes strawberry mousse; it is flawless. Then the children are served up. They enter the living room on cue, to say their good nights. A command performance for all. The guests are politely impressed. Cal cannot help being touched at their grave good manners. All four of them are beautiful children, having surpassed their models. No mere reproductions, but stunning originals. Their handsome, dark-eyed fourteen-year-old daughter supervises her younger brother and sister, while the eldest boy stands, shy and solemn, in the background. He reminds Cal of Conrad at that age. So earnest, so polite. Adults and children beam awkwardly at one another until Sara’s motherly pride is satisfied, and they are dismissed.
“Good-looking children,” Cal says.
“Thank you.” She beams him a grateful smile.
In knots of two and three, they sit in the living room. Beth and Mac are in one corner, consulting earnestly about books, he is sure. Mac Kline is an English professor at Lake Forest College, who loves to talk about his subject. Beth would talk books to a deaf person, needing nothing more than an encouraging nod, now and then. He catches her eye and she smiles at him. Across the room, Ann and Phil and Ed are horsing around, Ed giving a lecture on the perfect tennis serve to Ann and Phil, the inept, giggling pupils. Cal sits on the couch between Sara and Marty, feeling pleasantly high, and full.
“Great dinner,” he tells Sara.
“Thank you.”
“When are we going to play some bridge, Cal?” Marty asks.
“Yeah, we ought to do that.”
He has an arm around each of them, and has to disengage one from Sara to sip his drink.
“I mean, now that you two are social, again,” Marty says. “How are things, really? Going all right?”
Marty is looking at him. A brittle, attractive redhead, she lost out on beauty through the accident of a razor-planed, imperious nose. One New Year’s Eve, he remembers kissing her. A long, warm embrace. He was drunk. No one said anything about it afterward, not Ed, or Beth. He was surprised. He had felt guilty and embarrassed, he would have said something, he was sure, if it had been Ed and Beth.
“Yes, pretty well,” he says. “Only I miss the kids who used to hang around. What’s Don doing these days? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Oh, the same old things. Girls. Swimming. You know how boys are, they don’t tell you anything unless you back them into a corner and bulldoze it out of them.” She laughs. “To tell you the truth, Donald says Conrad isn’t very—isn’t as friendly as he used to be. I suppose he feels a little, I don’t know, self-conscious—”
“About what?” Sara asks. “I’m sorry, maybe it’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Cal says. He is suddenly uncomfortable. The drinks have made him fuzzy. He shouldn’t have said that, about the boys not coming around. It sounded as if he were annoyed; put her on the defensive.
“Donald says he doesn’t come to practice on Tuesdays and Fridays.”
“No. There’s a doctor in Evanston. He sees him twice a week.”
“You mean he’s still having problems?”
“Not exactly. It’s somebody to talk to,” he says lamely. He looks down into his glass. This was not the direction he had intended the conversation to take. Sara is laughing loudly and elaborately at the antics of her husband, across the room, having decided not to get into this, after all. A wise decision. He wishes he had done the same.
“Cal, we’ve got to go,” Beth calls across to him. “It’s late.”
“Hey, what d’you mean? Party’s just getting off the ground!” Phil protests as they move toward the hall. “Okay, you’ll be sorry! We’ll talk about you!”
Somehow they are into their coats and out the door, and the night is cool and silent all around them, coolness against his cheeks, and silence as he opens the car door for her, closes it, walks around behind the car, gets in under the wheel.
“Do you want me to drive?” she asks.
He glances at her, surprised. “I’m not drunk,” he says. “Do you think I’m drunk?”
“I don’t know, are you?”
So she had heard it. “No,” he says. “No, I am not, I promise.” Seeking to lead her away from it, he laughs. “The thing you can’t forgive about Phil Murray is that he’s a goddamn, crashing bore. One more crooked-lawyer joke and I start in on my pesky-insurance-salesman routine—”
“I want to tell you something,” she says. “You drink too much at parties.”
“Okay.”
“She pumped you,” she says. “And you let her do it. You let her drag that stuff out of you, and in front of someone who doesn’t even know us.”
“My sentiments exactly.” He nods, hoping to head her off, hoping she is not really angry, because he doesn’t feel drunk tonight, just good a
“Why did you tell her he was seeing a psychiatrist?”
“Look, some people consider that a status symbol,” he says, “right up there with going to Europe.”
“I don’t. And I thought your blurting it out like that was in the worst possible taste.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not to mention a violation of privacy.”
“Whose privacy?” he asks. “Whose privacy did I violate?”
She does not answer.
The light is on in Conrad’s room. He is asleep, lying on his back, his mouth open and relaxed. He sweats heavily in his sleep. His hair is damp, clinging slickly to his forehead, curling against his neck. A book lies face-down and open on the bed. U.S. History: Constitution to Present Day. Cal picks up the book and closes it quietly. He sets it on the night stand. Reaching for the switch on the lamp, he looks at Conrad. His left arm is shoved underneath the pillow. His right is outstretched; the hand with its strong, square fingers curved protectively over the palm is motionless. Still biting his nails. A nervous habit. So what? Lots of people do it; he himself used to do it when he was that age.
He looks, really looks, this time at the thin, vertical scar that extends up the inside of the arm, above the palm. More than two inches long, ridged, a gray-pink line. “He meant business,” the intern told him in the ambulance. “Horizontal cuts, the blood clots. It takes a lot longer. You were damn lucky to catch him.”
High achievers, Dr. Crawford told him, set themselves impossible standards. They have this need to perform well, to look good; they suffer excessive guilt over failure. He had groped to understand. “But what has he failed at? He’s never failed at anything!”
Conrad’s head moves on the pillow, and Cal snaps off the light, not allowing himself to look again at the scar, not wanting to be guilty of any more violations of privacy. Listen, he prays, let the exams be easy. Don’t let him feel he is failing.
Beth is awake, waiting for him, her hair loose about her shoulders. She reaches up to put her arms around him, all tawny, smooth skin, those gray eyes with thick lashes, silent and insistent. She leads tonight, and he follows, moving swiftly down that dark river, everything floating, melting, perfect, and complete. Afterward, she slides away from him, and her hair, soft and furry against his shoulder, smells sweet and fresh, like wood fern. He buries his face in it, still hungry. “Let me hold you awhile.”