Once, winded, he lay back and said, ‘I’ll never equal you as a lover.’
‘If you keep lowballing yourself like that, you won’t be my lover for long. You’re okay, Wes.’
But he guessed he wasn’t. He guessed he was just sort of … mediocre.
It wasn’t his less-than-athletic sexual ability that ended their relationship, however. It wasn’t the fact that Ellen was a vegan who ate Tofurky for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t the fact that she would sometimes lie in bed after lovemaking, talking about pick-and-rolls, give-and-gos, and the inability of Shawna Deeson to learn something Ellen called ‘the old garden gate.’
In fact, these monologues sometimes put Wesley into his deepest, sweetest, and most refreshing sleeps. He thought it was the calmness of her voice, so different from the often profane shrieks of encouragement she let out while they were making love. Her love-shrieks were eerily similar to the ones she uttered during games, running up and down the sidelines like a hare, exhorting her girls to ‘Pass the ball!’ and ‘Drive the paint!’ Wesley had even heard one of her sideline screams, ‘Go for the hole,’ in the bedroom from time to time.
They were well matched, at least in the short term; she was fiery iron, straight from the forge, and he – in his apartment filled with books – was the water in which she cooled herself.
The books were the problem. That, and the fact that he had freaked out and called her an illiterate bitch. He had never called a woman such a thing in his life before, but she had surprised an anger out of him that he had never suspected. He might be a mediocre instructor, as Don Allman had suggested, and the novel he had in him might remain in him (like a wisdom tooth that never comes up, at least avoiding the possibility of rot, infection, and an expensive – not to mention painful – dental process), but he loved books. Books were his Achilles heel.
She had come in fuming, which was normal, but also fundamentally upset – a state he failed to recognize because he had never seen her in it before. Also, he was rereading James Dickey’s Deliverance, reveling again in how well Dickey had harnessed his poetic sensibility, at least that once, to narrative, and he had just gotten to the closing passages, where the unfortunate canoeists are trying to cover up both what they have done and what has been done to them. He had no idea that Ellen had just been forced to boot Shawna Deeson off the team, or that the two of them had had a screaming fight in the gym in front of the whole team – plus the boys’ basketball team, which was waiting their turn to practice their mediocre moves – or that Shawna Deeson had then gone outside and heaved a large rock at the windshield of Ellen’s Volvo, an act for which she would surely be suspended. He had no idea that Ellen was now blaming herself, and bitterly, because ‘she was supposed to be the adult.’
He heard that part – ‘I’m supposed to be the adult’ – and said Uh-huh for the fifth or sixth time, which was one time too many for Ellen Silverman. She plucked Deliverance from Wesley’s hands, threw it across the room, and said the words that would haunt him for the next lonely month:
‘Why can’t you just read off the computer, like the rest of us?’
‘She really said that?’ Don Allman asked, a remark that woke Wesley from a trancelike state. He realized he had just told the whole story to his officemate. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. There was no going back now.
‘She did. And I said, “That was a first edition I got from my father, you illiterate bitch.”’
Don Allman was speechless. He could only stare.
‘She walked out,’ Wesley said miserably. ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to her since.’
‘Haven’t even called to say you’re sorry?’
Wesley had tried to do this, and had gotten only her voicemail. He had considered going over to the house she rented from the college, but thought she might put a fork in his face … or some other part of his anatomy. Also, he didn’t consider what had happened to be entirely his fault. She hadn’t even given him a chance. Plus … she was illiterate, or close to it. Had told him once in bed that the only book she’d read for pleasure since coming to Moore was Reach for the Summit: The Definite Dozen System for Succeeding at Whatever You Do, by Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt. She watched TV (mostly sports), and when she wanted to dig deeper into some news story, she went to The Drudge Report. She certainly wasn’t computer illiterate. She praised the Moore College Wi-Fi network (which was superlative rather than mediocre), and never went anywhere without her laptop slung over her shoulder. On the front was a picture of Tamika Catchings with blood running down her face from a split eyebrow and the legend I PLAY LIKE A GIRL.
Don Allman sat in silence for a few moments, tapping his fingers on his narrow chest. Outside their window, November leaves rattled across Moore Quadrangle. Then he said: ‘Did Ellen walking out have anything to do with that?’ He nodded to Wesley’s new electronic sidekick. ‘It did, didn’t it? You decided to read off the computer, just like the rest of us. To … what? Woo her back?’
‘No,’ Wesley said, because he didn’t want to tell the truth: in a way he still didn’t completely understand, he had done it to get back at her. Or make fun of her. Or something. ‘Not at all. I’m merely experimenting with new technology.’
‘Right,’ said Don Allman. ‘And I’m Robert Frost, stopping by the woods on a snowy fucking evening.’
His car was in Parking Lot A, but Wesley elected to walk the two miles back to his apartment, a thing he often did when he wanted to think. He trudged down Moore Avenue, first past the fraternity houses, then past apartment houses blasting rock and rap from every window, then past the bars and takeout restaurants that serve as a life-support system for every small college in America. There was also a bookstore specializing in used texts and last year’s bestsellers offered at fifty percent off. It looked dusty and dispirited and was often empty.
Because people were home reading off the computer, Wesley assumed.
Brown leaves blew around his feet. His briefcase banged against one knee. Inside were his texts, the current book he was reading for pleasure (2666, by Roberto Bolanõ), and a bound notebook with beautiful marbleized boards. This had been a gift from Ellen on the occasion of his birthday.
‘For your book ideas,’ she had said.
In July, that was, when things between them had still been swell and they’d had the campus pretty much to themselves. The blank book had over two hundred pages, but only the first one had been marked by his large, flat scrawl.
At the top of the page (printed) was: IDEAS FOR THE NOVEL!
Below that was: A young boy discovers that his father and mother are both having affairs
And
A young boy, blind since birth, is kidnapped by his lunatic grandfather who
And
A teenager falls in love with his best friend’s mother and
Below this one was the final idea, written shortly after Ellen had thrown Deliverance across the room and stalked out of his life.
A shy but dedicated small college instructor and his athletic but largely illiterate girlfriend have a falling-out after
It was probably the best idea – write what you know, all the experts agreed on that – but he simply couldn’t go there. Talking to Don had been hard enough. And even then, complete honesty had escaped him. Like not having said how much he wanted her back.
As he approached the three-room flat he called home – what Don Allman sometimes called his ‘swinging bachelor pad’ – Wesley’s thoughts turned to the Henderson kid. Was his name Richard or Robert? Wesley had a block about that, not the same as the block he had about fleshing out any of the fragmentary mission-statements for his novel, but probably related. He had an idea all such blocks were basically hysterical in nature, as if the brain detected (or thought it detected) some nasty interior beast and had locked it in a cell with a steel door. You could hear it thumping and jumping in there like a rabid raccoon that would bite if approached, but you couldn’t see it.