It was amazing what she could do with the simple word yes. It hissed from between her lips, insinuated itself over the wires, emerged from the receiver as an amazing blend of doubt, suspicion, and outright accusation.
“So what about it?” I said.
“I applied to the school, yes,” Susan said.
“To this Simms Academy—”
“Yes.”
“—in Massachusetts.”
“Yes.”
Yes, yes, yes. Soft, gentle, patient. Like nuclear fallout.
“What is it?” I said. “A military school for girls?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew.”
“Any place calling itself a goddamn academy—”
“It happens to be one of the finest all-girl schools in New England.”
“She’s already going to a fine school in Florida.”
“St. Mark’s is coeducational,” Susan said.
“What’s wrong with coeducational all of a sudden?”
“I don’t choose to go into that with you,” Susan said.
“You were coeducating with Oscar the Bald tonight, weren’t you?”
“If You’re referring to Oscar Untermeyer—”
“I believe that’s the gentleman’s—”
“—what he and I share together is none of your fucking business.”
“Ah,” I said. “Nice talk on the lady.”
“I believe it was you, Matthew, who not so long ago told me to keep my various and sordid affairs to myself, if I’m quoting correctly—”
“You’re not.”
“—so I’d appreciate it if you followed your own advice.”
“Susan,” I said, “Joanna is not going to school in Massachusetts or anywhere else outside the state of Florida.”
“I have every reason to believe she’ll be accepted,” Susan said.
“If you send her out of the state, You’ll be violating our separation agreement”
“Oh?”
Susan was marvelous with the word oh, too. She could wring wonderful nuances of meaning out of any monosyllabic word in the language.
“How?” she said.
“The agreement calls for visitation.”
“No one’s abrogating your visitation rights.”
she’d already talked to a lawyer. Abrogate was not a word she normally used, not when there were so many simpler words around.
“How can she spend every other weekend with me if she’s in Massachusetts?” I asked.
“Neither would she be spending every other weekend with me,” Susan said.
“Are you trying to get rid of her, is that it?”
“I am trying to make sure she gets the education to which she’s entitled. At a school that isn’t being overrun by—”
She suddenly stopped talking.
“By what, Susan?”
“Inferior students,” she said.
“By ‘inferior,’ do you mean ‘C’ students? ‘D’ students? ‘F’ students?”
“I mean—”
“Black students?”
Silence.
“I wonder how a judge would react to that, Susan.”
“To what, Matthew?”
“To the fact that you want to take Joanna out of St. Mark’s because two black kids have been admitted. I just wonder what his reaction to that will be.”
“we’re in Florida,” Susan said. “Not that I’m in any way prejudiced.”
“I’m writing to this academy in the morning,” I said. “To tell them Joanna’s father objects to her admission there.”
“The school knows I have custody of the child,” Susan said.
“Damn it, Joanna doesn’t want to go there!”
“Children don’t always know What’s best for them.”
“Why are you doing this?” I said.
Silence again.
“You really are trying to keep me away from her, aren’t you?”
“I’m very sleepy, Matthew. Would you mind if we ended this?”
“I won’t let you do it,” I said.
“Good night, Matthew,” she said, and hung up.
I put the receiver back on the cradle.
“Wow,” Terry said.
I sighed heavily.
“Your ex, huh?”
I nodded.
“They can be real pains in the asses, can’t they?” she said.
I nodded again.
“Do you want me to go home?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“’Cause there’s a game we could play, if you think you’d like to. What it does, it makes the second time around a little more interesting. And maybe it’ll take your mind off your wife, your ex-wife. If you’d like to.”
“You know something?” I said.
“What?”
I wanted to tell her that honesty was a tough thing to stumble across these days, and to find it in anyone was nothing short of a miracle. I wanted to tell her that the time we’d spent together tonight had been as valuable to me as diamonds and gold. I wanted to tell her that she was the most refreshing thing that had happened to me in as long as I could remember.
“You’re a very nice person,” I said.
And perhaps that was enough.
She smiled and said, “Yeah, you, too. Now here’s how this game goes, if You’re interested. What you do is you tease me, I’ll show you how in a minute, until you think I’m right on the brink — That’s what the game’s called, Brink — and then you stop, you just take your hand away or whatever, and then I start teasing you, and then I stop, and it goes on like that forever until we’re so crazy we can’t stand it anymore and we just have to do it or die. Brink. Do you think you’d like to play it?”
“I think You’re wonderful,” I said, and kissed her.
“Do you really?” she said.
Her voice was suddenly very soft, childlike. She looked up at me expectantly.
“I do,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
I kissed her again.
She smiled up at me.
“So do you think you’d like to try it?” she asked.
4
“You’re the one who’s crazy,” my partner Frank said.
We were standing in what — by the end of May, or so we’d been promised by the contractor — would be one of the new corner offices at Summerville and Hope. The firm was expanding. We were doing good business, knock wood. We were making a lot of money.
“You can’t make money taking on lunatics as clients,” Frank said.
Carpenters were hammering on the wall behind him. The wall was open to the bright April sunshine. The carpenters were trying to “close up,” as the contractor had put it, before we had rain. No one expected rain in Calusa in April, but the contractor was a cautious man. His name was Percival Banks. Maybe anyone named Percival had to be cautious.
“What do those papers you’re waving in my face tell you, Matthew?”
I was not, in fact, waving anything in his face. Frank often tends to exaggerate. He is a transplanted New Yorker, and perhaps exaggeration is a trait peculiar to natives of that city.
There are people who say that Frank and I look alike. I cannot see any resemblance. I’m an even six feet tall and weigh 170 pounds. Frank’s a half-inch under six feet, and he weighs 160, which he watches like a hawk. We both have dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank’s face is rounder than mine. Frank says there are only two types of faces in the world: “pig faces” and “fox faces.” He classifies himself as a pig face and me as a fox face. There is nothing derogatory about either label; they are only intended to be descriptive. Frank first told me about his designation system several years ago. Ever since, I’ve been unable to look at anyone without automatically categorizing him or her as either pig or fox.