Straight Man

time?”
    In truth, I don’t. I remember being broke, but I don’t recall things being that tough.
    “She’s awfully hard on Russell.”
    “I know. We were hard on each other, too.”
    “When?”
    She doesn’t answer right away. “I hated being broke. It never bothered you as much. The only time it ever bothered you was when we had to ask your father for a loan.”
    “When did we do that?” I ask. I feel an uncomfortable tickle of memory, but I can’t place the circumstance.
    “When we moved here. The pub date money for
Off the Road
hadn’t arrived. We were afraid we’d get here and not be able to pay the movers. Your father wired us fifteen hundred dollars so we could get our stuff.”
    I begin to remember now. “But then the pub money came just before we left Indiana. We returned his check uncashed.”
    “And hurt his feelings.”
    “Whose?” I say, and when Lily doesn’t reply, “Why would his feelings have been hurt?”
    “You made pretty clear that you were desperate, or you wouldn’t have asked.”
    “We
were
desperate.”
    “Then you sent the check back Express Mail, as if you didn’t even want it in the house overnight. As if by returning it so quickly you could erase the fact that he’d sent it.”
    “I don’t think he took it that way,” I tell her, because I don’t. But it’s an odd thing. About the only time we ever argue is when we talk about our fathers. I persist in liking hers, she in liking mine. Such are the grounds for our ongoing dispute. “He’s always been far too self-absorbed to have his feelings hurt. If you don’t believe me, ask my mother.”
    “She called when you were gone. You should stop by and see her tomorrow before she leaves.”
    “I will,” I say.
    “Don’t tell me, tell her.”
    “Okay,” I give in. “By the way. Julie says I never notice when you’re unhappy. Are you? Unhappy?”
    “Not often.”
    “When?”
    She rises and comes over to where I’m sitting, kisses me on the forehead. When her robe gaps at the neck, I see that she is naked beneath, and it occurs to me that this kiss, this bewitching view, as well as the rich, beguiling scent of bath oil that I’m being afforded, just might be an invitation. When a man like William Henry Devereaux, Jr., asks his wife if she is ever unhappy, an invitation of this sort is all he wants by way of answer. Such things happen between husbands and wives, even when they’ve been married for almost thirty years. There is no reason I can think of that it shouldn’t happen between my wife and me tonight. “I’m unhappy to be in my period right now,” she says, supplying the reason, and then, more seriously, “and I’m unhappy to see you so lost, Hank,” she adds, running her fingers through what’s left of my thinning hair, stopping at the little scar that remains from my encounter with the garage rafter.
    “Ouch,” I say, pretending it’s more tender there than it is, pretending my wife has hurt me when she has not. Oddly, a split second before embarking on this pretense, I had planned to bury my face in the gap in her robe, inhale the fresh fragrance of her skin deeply into my lungs, tell her I wished she didn’t have to run off to Philadelphia this weekend of all weekends. Instead I choose to pretend that I am wounded by her touch, this woman whose touch has been so light and knowing through the years. And so she stands, looks down at me, disappointed, as if she knows full well the choice I’ve made and why I’ve made it. If she understands the why, she’s ahead of me.
    A moment later, when the door closes behind Lily, I am left alone with Occam, who, it now occurs to me, smells.

CHAPTER
5
    The next morning we pull into the Modern Languages lot next to my ancient, pale blue Lincoln, which looks, in the most remote corner of the lot, like the kind of car somebody might leave for dead. My own condition isn’t much better. I’m bug-eyed from lack of sleep, having stayed up late reading, and when I finally did fall asleep, I had a continuing dream of sliding backward in the Lincoln down snowy Pleasant Street Hill. Also, my cold is back, a fact I’m trying to conceal from Lily, who predicted that it would be, thanks to my run. I’ve taken an antihistamine, and it’s beginning to dry me up, but it’s also left me light-headed. Despite relieving myself before leaving the house, I already have to go again. There’s a lot I’d like to say to my wife at this moment of her leaving,