“I didn’t think anything. Why? What should I think?”
“Did you notice anything special about Jenny?”
“Jenny?”
“Jenny Greener, yes.”
“I’m trying to remember.”
“That’s right. Do you?”
Mills tried to recall the polite, somewhat nervous young woman who’d come with the doctor’s wife that day. She was, he’d thought, ill at ease, and had given him the impression — stiff, unmoving, perched on the edge of their sofa, holding herself carefully, almost tenderly, as if she were sore, as if she held a saucer and teacup in her lap, a napkin, invisible cakes — of restrained fidgets. She hadn’t talked much. He couldn’t remember that she’d said anything. She hadn’t asked questions, as Nora had, about the house, the neighborhood. Louise had said afterward that Nora had taken Polaroids of the house, flashes, three or four rolls. That she’d gone around shooting one picture after another, of the cellar steps, the ceiling, the basement, their closets and doorways, their small backyard. “I tell you, George, she could have been from the insurance,” Louise said, “taking pictures of water damage, busted pipes.” He couldn’t remember Jenny Greener having a camera.
“I think she was embarrassed,” George told Cornell. “I don’t recall what she looked like.”
“Plain?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Nora Pat. Mrs. Losey. What did Mrs. Losey look like?”
“Oh, she was beautiful. Very well dressed. She had on this linen suit. Boots. She had beautiful boots. Sort of a blonde. I don’t know. I can’t describe people’s looks. She was very pretty. I remember she was very pretty.”
“A smasher?” Messenger said. “A knockout?”
“Yes,” George Mills said. “She was very beautiful.” He remembered that when they were introduced she’d taken his hand and held it in both her own.
“You were with Judy,” she said. “You’re the man with the back.” And she’d touched Mills there, where his back ached, and her touch had radiated comfort through his shirt, warming him.
“I suppose if you thought about it you could remember the boots, how they laced up the side, the way they were tooled, the particular purchase they gave to her stance?”
“She stood,” George Mills said, “like someone poised on a diving board. Jenny Greener was plain.”
“Nora wouldn’t let her alone once she found out how smart she was. She kept inviting her over to the house. (She introduced them.) After a while Jenny couldn’t figure out how to turn her down anymore. She had this way of explaining things. Formulas, principles. Better than professors. So that for as long as she could keep Jenny talking even Nora believed she’d get the stuff. She could even give it back, work out the problems, solve them, get round the doglegs and sand traps of architecture, cracking all the difficult ciphers of the discipline Losey had chosen for her. That’s what they talked about. This was their dinner table conversation. Housing, the redevelopment of downtown, the drawbacks of solar.
“And her husband beaming, beaming, ready to bust his buttons. Proud as a pop with a kid on the dean’s list — on the arm at the ball park, management’s, the home team’s straight-A’d, honor-roll’d guest. (Listen, listen, I know how he’d feel! I don’t blame him, I don’t even apologize for him. This isn’t sublimation, reflected glory, suspect, vicarious motive. I’m not talking about pride of ownership, I’m not even talking about pride. Love. I’m talking about love, all simple honor’s good will and best wishes. So I know how he’d feel!)
“Losey may have been having second thoughts. He must have had them. Thinking — I don’t know — thinking, Gee, maybe I made a mistake, maybe there’s something harder than architecture, higher. (Not better paid, because, be fair, he didn’t give a damn whether his wife ever earned back from the profession even half what it had cost him to get her into it in the first place. What could he do with more money? Figure new ways to hide it? He was still busting his hump on the old ways, which, face it, be fair, were only his accountant’s ideas anyway, only the tried and true evasive actions of sheltering dough. Because he’s right. When he says ‘You know me, Cornell, it isn’t the money.’ He’s right, it isn’t. It’s just another way of having and doing what others in those brackets have and do.) Thinking: Gee, maybe I should have pushed her into astronomy, aeronautical engineering. Maybe I should have run her for governor.
“Till that damned letter came. It was addressed to Losey. It could have been an honest mistake. It could have been the chairman’s joke; I hope it was Nora’s. But it was actually very nice, very sympathetic and concerned. Like those letters company commanders write next of kin when the news is bad.
“It said that while Nora gave every indication she was trying, really trying, and was extremely cooperative and obviously bright, and, oh yes, especially gifted as a draftsman and quite clearly imaginative, there was this problem with her math, this basic flaw on the scientific side. He was sorry, he said, but he was afraid that if she couldn’t bring that part of it up, Dr. Losey, his daughter was in danger of going on academic probation.
“Losey was furious. ‘Does that son of a bitch actually think I’m old enough to be your father?’
“But be fair, give him credit. He would get her a tutor. She could bring up her statics and dynamics, she could bring up her knowledge of mechanical systems. She was extremely cooperative and obviously bright. Even that pompous prick of a chairman thought so. He’d get a licensed architect to help her, maybe a partner in one of the big firms downtown. He’d pay his fee, whatever those highway robbers charged when a house was commissioned. She wasn’t to worry. All she had to concentrate on was bringing up her axonometrics and isometric projections.
“ ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me earlier maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
“I’m not her confidant. I’m not even his. I mean he won’t talk about this stuff. I had no idea either. If I asked how Nora was doing in architecture school he’d mumble something vague and tell me all about some doctor’s wife he’d screwed in the islands.
“She told Judy. Judy told the Meals-on-Wheelers. The Meals-on-Wheelers told me. I tell you.
“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘spilled milk. I’ll ask around. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll speak to the head of the architectural firm that’s doing our hospital annex.’
“ ‘Jenny Greener,’ she said.
“ ‘Jenny Greener?’
“ ‘Only she’s already working for you.’
“ ‘Working for me?’
“ ‘I pay her to explain the stuff. I pay her to eat supper with us.’
“ ‘Jenny Greener? The mutt?’
“ ‘She’s the head of our class. She’s the one with the grade point average. She’s the one you want.’
“She was right of course. But he didn’t trust her now. How could he? She’d kept everything to herself. All he knew was what he’d heard at the dinner table, and now he thought all the bright chatter was just some scam.
“So he checked up on her. On Jenny Greener. He called the chairman and told him he was Dr. Losey.
“ ‘Who’s top of that class?’