Straight Man

conviction, though it now appears he may get a suspended sentence if he agrees to sell his house and move out of the neighborhood, which the judge seems to have concluded directly impacts his ability to cope. He will pay LeBrother’s reasonable medical expenses.
    Julie moved in with us temporarily after their house rented, before joining Russell in Atlanta, and Russell visited twice during that period. Our daughter Karen also paid a visit, bringing with her a young music professor and the news that she will be having their child around Christmas. They hope to marry in the spring. (“
You
hope,” her father remarked.) On Memorial Day weekend it required two Weber kettles to barbecue for the crowd, which included my mother, my father, Mr. Purty, Angelo, Julie and Russell, Karen and her young music professor, Tony Coniglia and an ex-student now in her late thirties, Jacob and Gracie (who bickered), and Teddy and June (just back from their cruise). June got drunk, followed me out back to my stand beside the two Weber kettles, and confided she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do it, how much longer she could stay married to Teddy, how much longer she could allow all the brightness to leak out of her life. Her sordid affair with “that little turd” Orshee, she now understood, was nothing but a measure of her growing desperation. The good news was that their pussy research (my term, not hers) was beginning to pay dividends. The Emily Dickinson article had been accepted for publication by a good academic journal, and the Virginia Woolf had gone to its third reader at an even better one. If that got accepted as well, and if I would write her a letter of recommendation, she might go on the job market in the fall. The week after that I had a beer with Teddy to celebratehis winning by one vote a runoff election for a three-year term as department chair. Though he was clearly elated, he played down the election, reminding me that he was going to have it a lot tougher than I ever did. In Paul Rourke he’d be dealing with a hostile dean, and the election gave him a less clear mandate than I had enjoyed as chair (I’d won by three votes). The best news was that he felt his marriage was back on track. The cruise had cost a hell of a lot of money, he admitted, but the chair’s salary would make up for it. He also announced his intention to surrender his crush on Lily, which he’d begun to see as unhealthy, though he admitted he’d probably always be a little in love with her. There were tears in his eyes.
    But the summer’s nearly over now, and the crowds have pretty much departed. At night, when it’s too warm to sleep, Lily and I are often drawn out onto the deck. There we watch the night sky and listen to the distant sound of our neighbors’ nocturnal voices. Not words, just sounds. Old husbands and wives. Old husbands and new wives. Old wives and new husbands. By the time the sound of their lives reaches us, there is only tone and texture, no meaning, but at the end of a long summer day it’s mostly affection, though I have no idea what percentile.
    4. I have enough money.
    I don’t understand how this can be so, but Lily promises to explain it to me. Since there’s no reason to be circumspect about money, I’ll share what little I do know. First, the money Lily used to make Angelo’s bail was returned when her father went back to Philadelphia to stand trial. We have loaned Julie and Russell what Lily refers to as substantial sums but not, she maintains, dramatically more than she’s told me about, and certainly no more than we spent on Karen’s education. Our portfolio, I’m to understand, is intact. This is good news. That we have a portfolio, I mean.
    Nor have I severed all ties with the university as I originally intended. True, I tendered my resignation to Jacob Rose, but the letter got lost somehow, and now I find myself on some sort of half-year sabbatical, something I’d forgotten was owed me when I agreed to take on the position of temporary chair. I’ll be teaching in the fall, on leave in the spring. I have more advisees than anyone in the department, and this fall they will include Blair and Bobo, who came in together toannounce their decision to become English majors. I explained to Bobo, whose name is John and who had in his possession, incredibly, a García Márquez novel, the corner of a page turned down about halfway through, that “English Major” was not a military designation,