Straight Man

opposite, to me. Until now it hasn’t occurred to me to imagine what it felt like to her.
    “I left you a message yesterday.”
    “I got it,” I tell my daughter. It’s not easy, but I meet her eyes. “You left it for the wrong person, though. Russell’s ready to shoulder most of the blame, you know. Why not talk to him?”
    “Because I’m too much like you. I have a public posture to preserve. I changed the locks. Now
I’m
the one who can’t get
out
. Funny how that works, huh?”
    “Maybe if somebody explained that to him?”
    “Will you see him?”
    “I might.” I still have the number he gave me, though for some reason I don’t tell her this.
    “So how come you need to shower over here?” it finally occurs to her to ask, and I can’t help smiling at her. Even as a child, Julie was essentially uncurious. You could walk in the door with an aardvark on a leash and she wouldn’t ask why, and I suspect this lack of curiosity was, more than anything else, the reason Julie was never much of a student. Ninety percent of answering questions is anticipating which ones will be asked, having a sense of what’s important, being interested enough in something to pose the questions for yourself in advance. Julie, I would guess, has never guessed a test question in her life.
    And I know what Lily would say if she were here. She would remind me that Julie is a product of her experience. In the world weprovided her, she felt safe and protected. She knew we wouldn’t ask her any trick questions or make unreasonable demands. She didn’t have to peer nervously around corners, or check constantly over her shoulder. If her mother or I came in with an aardvark on a leash, she could rest assured there was a reason, and this certainty made the explanation unnecessary. Julie, my wife would insist, is living evidence of our skill in parenting, that rare adult who doesn’t see the world as a dangerous, treacherous place. She expects to be loved, to be rewarded for her efforts, to be treated generously. She had tenure as a child and now expects it as an adult. Until this thing with Russell, she’s been optimistic. Her optimism has been tested of late, by their not having enough money and probably by other things too, but it hasn’t occurred to her until recently that things might not work out.
    “Julie,” I say. To this little girl. To this novice adult.
    When I’ve showered, I locate a pair of Russell’s undershorts and some socks. I also swipe his one blue, button-down oxford dress shirt. It’s a bit big in the torso, short in the sleeve, but it will look fine beneath my tweed coat. I also find a new disposable razor, forgotten in the back of the medicine cabinet, and a bottle of Christmas gift aftershave. I have always liked Russell and sometimes even felt more instinctive understanding of him than of my own daughter. We’re a lot alike, is what I’m thinking, dressed as I am in his clothes.
    Using the telephone in his kitchen, I dial the number he left me in case I needed to reach him. It’s a woman who answers, and when I recognize her voice I hang up without even saying hello. It’s only then that I remember the telephone call she made from my office, the intimacy in her voice, reporting my whereabouts, to Russell, who was waiting for me in the parking lot. I look up her number in the phone book, compare it with the one Russell gave me. Why shouldn’t Meg Quigley answer? It’s her number I just dialed.
    I make a note of the address. It’s in the student ghetto, a neighborhood full of big, old houses that have been subdivided into seedy flats. This late in the spring term, the sidewalks, even on weekday mornings, are strewn with beer cans, and every third sloping porch sports a dented silver tub large enough to hold a full keg of beer. Student life isno different, my Ivy League colleagues tell me, at Dartmouth and Princeton.
    I pull into the driveway next to the house Meg’s living in and just sit there for a few minutes, hoping one or the other of them will look out the window, see me there, and come down so I won’t have to go up. But the windows are shaded and still, and I know this plan is doomed. When the screen door of the house next to Meg’s swings open, a young man dressed in jeans and a baseball cap and no shirt emerges, scratching his stomach and yawning. I recognize him as Bobo from my comp class. It’s probably not a good thing that I can’t remember Bobo’s real name. It suggests