House of Windows Page 4

  Much too quickly and easily, Ted went from being the apple of his father's eye to the worm in the apple. There was no big confrontation—not then. His heart hardened, and he did nothing to stop it. Sometimes, they watched baseball; one of their oldest activities together. The week of the World Series was a time for détente, if not out-and-out peace, and there were moments when Roger, hearing Ted rave about a double play, his disaffection momentarily shaken by some amazing feat, would feel his heart start to soften, feel the stone cracking and something green and alive struggling to reach the surface. But then Ted would catch himself actually talking to his father like a human being, duck his head and say, "Or whatever," and slouch back in front of the TV. Maybe Roger could've said something—who knows what? maybe he could've praised Ted, told him that was a good point—maybe he could've made an effort to build on the foundation Ted had laid—but he didn't. It was too much; Roger let it be too much. His heart crusted over again, the green was smothered, and that was that.

  Roger always was a bit of a fatalist. His parents died while he was young: his father of lung cancer when Roger was sixteen, his mother four years later of breast cancer, during his third year at Vanderbilt. They were both heavy smokers. His younger brother became an alcoholic young and didn't dry out for the next twenty-five years. His sister made an early, bad marriage that only ended when her husband drove into a tree and put himself into a coma that lasted a year. There was more stuff, too, more to do with his parents—his dad, especially—but I'll get to that later. Suffice it to say, his father was not the most supportive of men. Roger denied his family having any effect on him whatsoever, but obviously, watching everyone he loved relentlessly ground down affected him at the very deepest level. It was why he responded so strongly to Dickens, all those children in danger, all those families in jeopardy. You know it lay behind his drive to succeed, this overpowering desire to be different from the rest of his family. It also left him with a lasting certainty that the worst not only could happen, it would, and, more often than not, it would come out of your own actions. Why else did he stay with Joanne for so long? I'm sure that, from the second Roger first held Ted, he was bracing himself for the moment everything he was feeling—all the love, joy, pride—would sour. When it did—or, when he panicked and thought it did—Roger jumped the gun, decided to write the end to what he'd already decided was the latest chapter in the history of his life's defeats.

  Ted never knew any of this at the time. I doubt Roger himself was fully aware of it—not that it was unconscious, just that he was always good at not thinking about things he didn't want to think about, especially if they made him look bad to himself. In all fairness to him, I'm not sure it would have made much of any difference to Ted if Roger had told him how he was feeling. Most likely, he would have snickered and walked away.

  Probably the last major event in their relationship—before I came along—was Ted's joining the Army. Both Roger and Joanne were surprised—shocked. Ted hadn't given the slightest indication he was thinking about the military to either of them. He wasn't exactly what sprang to mind when you thought of soldier material, you know? Joanne took his decision hard, worse than Roger. She had thought that she and Ted had a special relationship, that she was the parent he talked to. Right. She was just the parent he came to when he needed money. Roger wasn't happy—he always said the military was for those who couldn't stand the burden of thinking for themselves—but he was satisfied, in a grudging way, to see Ted doing something, making a choice, however misguided. He didn't argue with Ted. Joanne was more than happy to spend hours doing that. He did, however, think that his son was even more different than he'd known. Within the week, Ted shipped out for basic training, and that was that.

  By the time Roger was telling me about him, Ted had been in the Army for ten years. He'd been part of the Gulf War; although his unit had missed the major combat. He'd advanced rapidly through the ranks. I think he made sergeant within about three years. His superiors wanted him to train to be an officer, but he turned them down, said he was happy being a sergeant. What he did was move from Infantry to Special Forces. Roger and Joanne visited a couple of the bases where he was stationed. Those trips never went well. Joanne couldn't get used to the drabness of it all, while Roger couldn't stop himself from arguing with anyone who spoke two words to him. Someone would say, "Nice day," and he'd say, "Not really." You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to know he was displacing a whole heap of unresolved anger onto whoever was unfortunate enough to talk to him. After their second trip, during which Roger's continuing and unrestrained displacement almost earned him a beating from a pair of MPs, the three of them agreed that, in the future, it would be better if Ted came to see them.

  From what Roger said, it sounds like the Army was the right place for Ted. I've never been a big fan of the military, either, but it works for some people, and Ted was one of them. Roger couldn't handle that. He said he wanted his son to live his own life, but what he meant was that, if Ted had wanted to get his Ph.D. in Melville instead of Dickens, he could have lived with it. His expectations for his son circled a fixed point, which was academia, and the military was light years away from that. If Ted had decided to move up to being an officer, it wouldn't have mattered. Roger would have taken that as further proof that Ted was wasting his abilities.

  I rolled over and consulted the clock. Four-thirty, and while my body felt the hour, as far as my mind was concerned, it might as well be noon. Maybe some warm milk would help. I threw back the covers, hauled myself out of bed, found my robe, and padded out to the kitchen. On the way, I shut the living room windows, which had helped dissipate the pepper spray; although faint traces of it stung my nose. I took down a large mug from the kitchen cabinets and opened the fridge for the milk, thinking that Roger's bad memories helped explain why he and Ted would end up beating each other senseless on my living room floor, but that they weren't all. I had said so, that second night, said I couldn't believe things had always been so bad. The very fact that they had deteriorated so dramatically was proof that, once upon a time, they must have been very good, because isn't that the way these things work? You don't go from apathy to anger; if you want to find hate, the surest route's love. "What about before Ted became the teenager from hell?" I had said. "What about when he was a baby?"

  Ah, Roger had said, that was different. His eyes had lost their focus—

  —and in an instant, he was back in the delivery room at Penrose. Joanne screamed, the doctor said, "Here he is!" and Roger beheld his son, naked, wet, and crying. He and Joanne had been trying to have a baby for a long time—they were married almost ten years when she found out she was finally pregnant—and for that child to be a boy—well, you know what an old patriarch Roger was. Here was his son and heir, and all that. Not to say that Joanne didn't love him too—in her own, distant, icy way—but from the instant Roger first held Ted and looked down into his eyes, newly opened to the world, he fell in love, you know? You must have felt the same thing with your son.

  For the first years of Ted's life, he and Roger were inseparable. They went everywhere together, did everything. From the time Ted was old enough to watch TV and understand what was going on, he loved baseball. Roger couldn't explain it, since he'd always preferred basketball, and as for Joanne—you can't imagine her family's got the genes for anything besides polo. Roger would turn on the TV, and Ted would crack himself up watching this game. Once Ted could stand and throw, Roger bought him his own glove and ball, a bat, the whole works—and he bought himself a glove, too. You've seen the lawn around Belvedere House. It's practically big enough for a baseball diamond. For about ten years, as soon as the weather was warm enough, the two of them went out there and threw the ball to one another. When they were tired of that, Roger pitched and Ted batted; then Ted pitched and Roger batted. And when they'd had enough of that, they went back to throwing the ball back and forth. They were a neighborhood fixture, the short guy wearing the dress shirt and slacks he taught in,
the long, lanky kid in his t-shirt and jeans. Roger had never been what you'd call an athlete, and he was amazed at how much enjoyment he got from something as simple as sending the ball through the air to Ted. Ted played little league, and Roger was there for every game. By then, he had enough clout to insure a teaching schedule that wouldn't interfere with his watching Ted play. He even tried out as assistant coach for a season, but that was a disaster. Enthusiasm, he told me, is a nice supplement to ability, but it's no substitute for it. I gather he tried to inspire a team of nine-year-olds with quotations from Tennyson: "Into the valley of death rode the six hundred," and all that. He went back to cheering on the bleachers, which made everyone happier.

  There was more to their relationship than baseball—a lot more. Roger read to Ted. Every night he spent at least an hour sitting at Ted's bedside, taking him through Treasure Island, The Hobbit, Ivanhoe: boys' books. Joanne was the one who was supposed to help Ted with his homework, since that's what she'd majored in in college, primary education, but can you imagine her with a class of first-graders? There's a horror story for you. She wasn't much good at explaining things—surprise, surprise—she could show Ted how to do a math problem, but he was the kind of kid who wants to know why, and that was too much for Joanne. So although Joanne insists she was responsible for Ted's education, that's not true. Roger was the one who had to leave the papers he was grading in his office on the third floor to come down to the kitchen to explain why Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase. He sat with Ted watching his favorite cartoons; he took Ted to see the latest movies. He hadn't been prepared, he told me—he'd been completely taken by surprise by how completely besotted he was with this little boy.

  There were the usual ups and downs. Ted broke his arm when he tried to play Spider-Man and climb the walls of the house. He had the typical assortment of childhood diseases, including, Roger said, the single worst case of chicken pox he had ever witnessed. He spent most of fourth grade in an on-again, off-again fight with the class bully. There were more serious problems, too. Ted wasn't a great reader. He'd sit and listen to Roger read to him for as long as Roger wanted to, but he showed little interest in opening a book on his own. Roger bought him all kinds of books on all kinds of subjects. If Ted wouldn't look at a history of the Yankees, though, there wasn't much chance of him rushing through Oliver Twist. His report cards reflected his lack of interest in reading: good grades in math and science, poor and sometimes failing grades in English and social studies. Ted tried. He spent hours at that kitchen table, laboring over his reading and writing assignments well into the night, sometimes. Roger sat up with him, doing his best to explain what to Ted seemed an increasingly complex and confusing system. He continued reading to Ted, though he prefaced each night's selection by asking Ted if he wouldn't rather read it himself. Ted always refused, and Roger made less and less pretense of hiding his disappointment, thinking he could guilt Ted into reading. He instituted a daily reading period for Ted, an hour that Ted had to spend wrestling with something Roger had selected for him. Before Ted could go outside, go to his friends' houses, even do his actual homework, he had to sit in the living room where Roger would watch him struggle through David Copperfield—which, over the course of two years, Roger made him read cover to cover. Once Ted was done, Roger would quiz him, ask him about trivial details to be sure Ted hadn't been daydreaming. It was the kind of tactic Roger employed with his students. If Ted couldn't answer the question to Roger's satisfaction, he'd be sent back to the couch for another hour. Joanne intervened when Roger's regime interfered with little league, but all that did was make him switch the time to after dinner.

  It was years before one of Ted's teachers suggested that Roger and Joanne might want to have Ted tested for dyslexia, which I can't believe. I think he was in the seventh grade at that point, twelve years old. Doesn't say much for the teachers in grades one through six, does it? Doesn't say much for Joanne, either. I'm sure she must have had some training in recognizing learning disabilities. If she spent as much time with Ted on his homework as she says she did, how could she not have picked up on his? Once the diagnosis was made, Roger and Joanne spent all kinds of money on tutors for Ted, and his reading skills rapidly improved. But no matter how much his ability improved, his interest didn't. Ted was not a reader, and you can imagine how Roger—who liked to describe himself as a reader first, last, and in-between—took this. They played baseball together, watched TV and movies together, and Roger hoped there would be a time they'd sit in the library reading quietly together. He hoped too much, if you know what I mean, spent too much time brooding over this small but to him crucial difference between them. And then Ted hit fifteen, and any and all reading schedules flew out the window.

  My hot milk was gone, and I was as awake as ever. I rose from the same kitchen table at which Roger had narrated his history with his son to me, deposited my mug in the sink, and returned to the bedroom. It was just past five; the sky was paling. In a little while, the sun would be up, and this weird night would be over. I sat on the bed. Roger and Ted's fractious relationship was one half of what brought Ted to my front door. As for the other—I don't know how much you know about Roger and me. Your wife's a faculty member; so are you, I guess. You know the scandal. You know how Roger and I got together; although, like I said, it wasn't as sordid as everyone pretended.

  His and Joanne's marriage was over, had been for years, ever since she'd slept with a professor in the Anthropology department. I bet you didn't know that, did you? No one did, because she swore to Roger it was a mistake and he forgave her, brushed the whole thing under the carpet. None of you knew how much he put up with. You all saw him almost-drunk at one of their parties while Joanne stood there looking as cool and composed as a mannequin and you thought, "Oh, poor Joanne; look what she has to deal with." Please. Tell me the last time you saw a smile cross her face. With all the face-lifts she'd had, I'm not sure she could smile: that much pressure and the whole façade would've come tumbling down.

  When everything between Roger and me began—the first time he stayed at my place—I know how lame it sounds to say it was an accident. I mean, we were together all the time, hanging out in Roger's office, drinking coffee at the diner, going to the movies—but I honestly didn't think it was anything more than—I don't know—a friendship. I'd met his wife, for God's sake, and seen the condescending smirk she gave me. She obviously didn't view me as a threat.

  I had heard about Roger Croydon while I was at Penrose. Our Victorianist had a minor obsession with disproving everything Roger had written, and in the privacy of her office was quite happy to talk about Roger's "young honeys." "You just know he's sleeping with them," she'd say. "God! I thought this kind of behavior went out with the stone age." When Roger and I argued, I used some of her points against him. They didn't work; they weren't very good, really. Anyway, when I decided I was going to pursue the MA at Huguenot, I knew I was going to have to take a class with this guy. After all I'd heard, how could I not? I'd read a few of his articles, and what he had to say wasn't all bad.

  What I wasn't prepared for was him, his presence. The class was his Studies in Dickens, and it was held in one of the basement classrooms in the Humanities Building—you know, no windows, low ceiling, a claustrophobe's nightmare. Not to mention the décor: molded plastic seats, folding tables, cheap walls—what I think of as civic bland. And then Roger strode in. He walked right to the front of the classroom, this short guy built more like a prize fighter than an English professor, threw his briefcase on the table, and went right into his lecture. In an instant, everything changed. The uncomfortable seats, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the guy to my left coughing every two seconds, all of that vanished, or might as well have. There was only this man in tan chinos, a white dress shirt, and a fawn blazer, his hair gray but still thick and in need of a cut, his face creased and worn but animated, full of what he had to tell us about Charles Dickens.

  For a while, I could recite large ch
unks of that first lecture; I still remember most of it. "Dickens melodramatic?" Roger asked, one eyebrow raised. "Yes, of course! What else are we to call the murder of Nancy Sykes, the death of Little Nell, the pursuit of Lady Dedlock? If melodrama abounds in Dickens's work, it is because he saw melodrama abounding in his life, in the world around him. From the beginning of his life, when he was yanked out of his routine and sent to work at a blacking factory, to its end, when he survived a train accident in France, Dickens was stalked by melodrama. So are we all, though much that passes for literature and literary criticism would like to close its eyes to it." Towards the end of the lecture, he quoted Graham Greene. "This is why, as Greene says, a novel like Great Expectations gives us the sense of eavesdropping on the narrator, listening to the conversation he is having with himself. Dickens's narrators create themselves through the stories they tell us; as, indeed, did their author."

  Well. How could I not be impressed? Yes, I knew Roger was full of himself, but so what? He obviously knew what he was talking about. It didn't hurt that, from the start, I was his favorite. The first night, he stayed after class to talk to me; I showed up at his office hours the next day to continue the discussion. We met for coffee at the Plaza Diner the day after that. I went into what I suspected might be developing with my eyes open. While I attributed my Penrose professor's gossip to professional jealousy, that didn't mean there was nothing to it. Roger introduced me to Joanne the second week I knew him, however, which didn't seem like the kind of thing you'd do to someone you were planning to sleep with. The moment I met Joanne, I disliked her, and I'm sure the feeling was mutual. She was wearing this navy blue pantsuit with a blue and white striped scarf that was supposed to suggest she was ready to take the wheel of her yacht. All she needed was a captain's hat. She was so skinny, that semi-emaciated look some women embrace in middle-age as a way of convincing themselves they are, in fact, entering the prime of their lives. She was civil enough, but underneath her pleasantries, I could feel her sizing me up, turning me over the way she'd inspect a figurine she came across antiquing. It didn't take her long to decide I was a mass-produced knockoff, not worth worrying over. After that, I saw her a couple more times, and each one, she looked right through me.