Straight Man

then, I guess.”
    But she’s not finished. Her voice feels nearer now, more intimate, than when she was talking about Mr. Purty. “There’s something you should know about Russell, Daddy,” she says. “This isn’t all his fault. He didn’t … shove me, exactly. You probably already know that. Like, who am I kidding, right? There’s something not … right with me … I’ve known it forever. I just get so …”
    I’m standing at the counter now with my hand on the phone. I don’t remember getting up or crossing the room, but I must have, because here I am.
    “I thought it was a secret, but I guess it’s not …”
    “Julie,” I say, my throat so constricted I can barely choke out the word. I still have not picked up the receiver, and I know I won’t.
    “Anyhow, don’t blame Russell, okay?”
    Again the machine hangs up, and while it whirs and clicks, I stand, hand still on the receiver, staring out the kitchen window. Occam has slunk off somewhere, as if listening to Julie’s voice was more than he could bear. Besides, it’s spring and there are new gardens to root in. Over the weekend, the trees have come into full leaf, insulating us once again. From where I stand, it’s no longer possible to see Allegheny Estates II on the other side of the road, not even Paul Rourke’s satellite dish. In fact, even Finny’s ex-wife, our closest neighbor, has all but disappeared into the lush green foliage. Still, this feels, right now, like the blighted side of the road.

CHAPTER
26
    For twenty-five years I’ve driven through the university’s main gate and parked in the faculty lot nearest Modern Languages, but apparently I’m becoming a sneak, because for the fourth time in as many trips, I head over the mountain to campus, so that I may slip in unobserved through the rear gate. Judas Peckerwood, Back Door Man. Earlier today, if only for a fleeting moment, I entertained the idea of becoming dean via a back door phone call to Dickie Pope. What next? As I approach the campus’s rear gate, it begins raining gently, and the surface of the road becomes slippery. Just how slippery I realize only when some lunatic woman in a car with a Century 21 logo on its side panel, parked facing the wrong way, opens the passenger side door without warning and steps out into the street in front of me.
    This is, however, no ordinary lunatic, it turns out when I get a good look. It’s my mother, and I slide to a stop a foot in front of her. The look of horror on the face of the realtor, her companion, testifies that she would hate like hell to lose this client. My mother, unimpressedby my screeching tires, remains unimpressed when she looks up and sees who made them screech. She’s waited forty years for William Henry Devereaux, Sr.’s return, and she knows that God lacks the temerity to claim her in the very midst of her triumph. He’s just toying with her, through me, and she’s having no part of it. She slams the car door shut and opens her umbrella with a defiant flourish. Then she points at the two-story, gabled Victorian she’s about to enter.
    By the time I park farther down the block, both women have disappeared into the house in question. I’d know which one they went in even if my mother hadn’t pointed it out to me, even if it didn’t have a For Sale sign angled crazily on the front lawn. I’d know because it’s a dead ringer for every house I lived in with my parents when I was a child. I don’t even have to go in to know what it will look like inside, or to know that it will smell damp and feel clammy.
    My mother and her realtor are waiting in the foyer next to their dripping umbrellas. The realtor still looks shaken by my mother’s near miss, evidence that she’s only just met my mother if she thinks Mrs. William Henry Devereaux can be killed when she’s on a mission. In fact, Mrs. W.H.D. observes my slow, limping approach critically. “You might have helped poor Charles with all those boxes,” she observes. “Especially since he’s such a favorite of yours.”
    “The abuse of Mr. Purty is not a subject I should think you’d want to open, Mother,” I warn her, introducing myself to the Century 21 lady, whose name tag identifies her as Marge.
    “I hope you aren’t going to blame me for that poor man’s deluded affections,” my mother says abstractedly, attempting to peer through the inner door’s ornamental stained glass. “I may be their object, but I’m certainly not