Straight Man

to know, a frightened expression deepening the lines around the corners of his eyes.
    Apparently, to judge from the way he’s looking at me now, I have spoken my thought out loud, though I wasn’t aware of doing so. “Don’t you ever wish you could?”
    “Could what?” he says, his attention diverted. Having spied a break in the oncoming traffic, he takes his foot off the brake and leans forward, his foot poised over but not touching the gas pedal, only to conclude that the gap between the cars isn’t as big as he thought, settling back into his seat with a frustrated sigh.
    Something about this gesture causes me to wonder if a rumor I’ve been hearing about Teddy’s wife, June—that she’s involved with a junior faculty member in our department—just might be true. I haven’t given it much credence until now because Teddy and June have such a perfect symbiotic relationship. In the English department they are known as Fred and Ginger for the grace with which they move together, without a hint of passion, toward a single, shared destination. In an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion and retribution, two people working together represent a power base, and no one has understood this sad academic truth better than Teddy and June. It’s hard to imagine either of them risking it. On the other hand, it must be hard to be married to a man like Teddy, who’s always leaning forward in anticipation, foot poised above the gas pedal, but too cautious to stomp.
    We are on Church Street, which parallels the railyard that divides the city of Railton into two dingy, equally unattractive halves. This is the broadest section of the yard, some twenty sets of tracks wide, and most of those tracks are occupied by a rusty boxcar or two. A centuryago the entire yard would have been full, the city of Railton itself thriving, its citizens looking forward to a secure future. No longer. On Church Street, where we remain idling in the left-turn lane, there is no longer a single church, though there were once, I’m told, half a dozen. The last of them, a decrepit red brick affair, long condemned and boarded up, was razed last year after some kids broke in and fell through the floor. The large parcel of land it perched on now sits empty. It’s the fact that there are so many empty, littered spaces in Railton, like the windblown expanses between the boxcars in the railyard, that challenges hope. Within sight of where we sit waiting to turn onto Pleasant Street, a man named William Cherry, a lifelong Conrail employee, has recently taken his life by lying down on the track in the middle of the night. At first the speculation was that he was one of the men laid off the previous week, but the opposite turned out to be true. He had in fact just retired with his pension and full benefits. On television his less fortunate neighbors couldn’t understand it. He had it made, they said.
    When it’s safe, when all the oncoming traffic has passed, Teddy turns onto Pleasant, the most unpleasant of Railton streets. Lined on both sides with shabby one- and two-story office fronts, Pleasant Street is too steep to climb in winter when there’s snow. Now, in early April, I suspect it may be too steep for Teddy’s Civic, which is whirring heroically in its lower gears and going all of fifteen miles an hour. There’s a plateau and a traffic light halfway up, and when we stop, I say, “Should I get out and push?”
    “It’s just cold,” Teddy tells me. “Really. We’re fine.”
    No doubt he’s right. We will make it. Why this fact should be so discouraging is what I’d like to know. I can’t help wondering if William Cherry also feared things would work out if he didn’t do something drastic to prevent them.
    “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” I chant, as the light changes and Teddy urges forward the Little Civic That Could. A few months ago I foolishly tried to climb this same hill in a light snow. It was nearly midnight, and I was heading home from the campus and hadn’t wanted to go the long way, which added ten minutes. During the long Pennsylvania winters, curbside parking is not allowed at night, so the street had a deserted, ominous feel. Mine was the only caron the five-block incline, and I made it without incident to this very plateau where Teddy and I have now stopped. The office of my insurance agent was on the corner, and I remember wishing he was there to see me do something so reckless in a car he was