In the case of Herb Wallagher I write: Possibilities Limited.
I think for a moment, then, about the first trip I ever made to New York. It was 1967. The fall. Mindy Levinson and I drove all night from Ann Arbor in one of my fraternity brother’s cars so I could attend a law school interview at NYU. (There was a brief period when I got out of the Marines, when I wanted more than anything to be a lawyer and work for the FBI.) Mindy and I stayed — as man and wife — in the old Albert Pick on Lexington Avenue, rode the IRT to Greenwich Village, bought a brass wedding ring to make things look legal and spent the rest of our time in bed woogling around in each other’s businesses and watching sports on TV. Early the very next morning I took a taxi to Washington Square and attended my interview. I sat and talked amiably with a studious-looking fellow I’m now sure was only a senior work-study student, but who impressed me as a young and eccentric Constitutional genius. I didn’t know the answers to any of the questions he asked me, nor, in fact, had I ever even thought of anything like the questions he had in mind. Later that day Mindy and I checked out of the hotel, drove across the George Washington Bridge, down the Turnpike and back to Ann Arbor, with me feeling I’d done a better than fair job answering the questions that should’ve been important but weren’t even asked, and that I would end up editing the law review.
Naturally I wasn’t even admitted to NYU, nor to any other of the law schools I applied to. And today I can’t walk through Washington Square without thinking of that time with minor regret and longing. What might’ve happened, is what I usually think. How would life be different? And my feeling is, given the swarming, unforeseeable nature of the world, things could’ve turned out exactly as they have, give or take a couple of small matters: Divorce. Children. Changes in careers. Life in a town like Haddam. In this there is something consoling, though I don’t mind saying there is also something eerie.
I go back again to Herb and write: Herb Wallagher doesn’t play ball anymore.
I think, then, of the people I might possibly call at this hour. 10:45 P.M. I could call Providence again. Possibly X, though activities at her house made me think she is already on her way to the Poconos or elsewhere. I could call Mindy Levinson in New Hampshire. I could call Vicki at her parents’. I could call my mother-in-law in Mission Viejo, where it’s only a quarter till eight, with the sun barely behind Catalina on an Easter ocean. I could call Clarice Wallagher, since it’s possible she’s up late most nights, wondering what’s happened to her life. All of these people would talk to me, I know for a fact. But I am almost certain none of them would particularly want to.
I return to Herb once more; The way Herb Wallagher sees it, real life’s staring at you everyday. It’s not something you need to go looking for.
“Hi,” a voice with an almost nautical lilt to it says behind me.
I swivel around, and framed there in the aluminum rectangle is a face to save a drowning man. A big self-assured smile. A swag of honey hair with two plaited strips pulled back on each side in a complex private-school style. Skin the clarity of a tulip. Long fingers. Pale blond skim of hair on her arm, which at the moment she is rubbing lightly with her palm. Khaki culottes. A white cotton blouse concealing a pair of considerable grapefruits.
“Hi.” I smile back.
She rests a hip against the door frame. Below the culottes’ hems her legs are taut and shiny as a cavalry saddle. I don’t exactly know where to look, though the big smile says: Look square at what you like, Jack. That’s what God made it for. “You’re Frank Bascombe, aren’t you?” She’s still smiling as if she knows something, A secret.
“Yes. I am.” My face grows pleasantly warm.
Eyes twinkle and brows arch. A look of admiration with nothing shady necessarily implied — a punctilio taught in the best New England boarding schools and mastered in adulthood — the simple but provoking wish to make oneself completely understood. “I’m sorry to butt in. I’ve just wanted to meet you ever since I’ve been here.”
“Do you work here,” I ask disingenuously, since I know with absolute certainty that she works here. I saw her down a corridor a month ago — not to mention ten minutes ago at the Pigskin Preview — and have looked up her employment files to see if she had the right background for some research. She is an intern down from Dartmouth, a Melissa or a Kate. Though at the moment I can’t remember, since her kind of beauty is usually zealously overseen by some thick-necked Dartmouth Dan, with whom she is sharing an efficiency on the Upper East Side, taking their “term off” together to decide if a marriage is the wise decision at this point in time. I remember, however, her family is from Milton, Mass., her father a small-scale politician with a name I vaguely recognize as lustrous in Harvard athletics (he is a chum of some higher-up at the magazine). I can even picture him — small, chunky, shoulder-swinging, a scrappy in-fighter who got in Harvard on grades then lettered in two sports though no one in his family had ever made it out of the potato patch. A fellow I would usually like. And here is his sunny-faced daughter down to season her résumé with interesting extras for med school, or for when she enters local politics in Vermont/New Hampshire midway through her divorce from Dartmouth Dan. None of it is a bad idea.
But the sight of her in my doorway, healthy as a kayaker, Boston brogue, “experienced” already in ways you can only dream about, is a sight for mean eyes. Maybe Dartmouth Dan is off crewing dad’s 12-metre, or still up in Hanover cramming for the business boards. Maybe he doesn’t even find this big suavely beautiful girl “interesting” anymore (a decision he’ll regret), or finds her wrong for his career (which demands someone shorter or a little less bossy), or needing better family ties or French. These mistakes still happen. If they didn’t, how could any of us face a new day?
“I was just sitting in on the football meeting,” Melissa/Kate says. She leans back to glance down the corridor. Voices trail away toward elevators. Forecasting work is over. Her hair is cut bluntly toward her sweet little helical ears so she can flick it as she just did. “My name’s Catherine Flaherty,” she says. “I’m interning here this spring. From Dartmouth. I don’t want to intrude. You’re probably real busy.” A shy, secretive smile and another hair flick.
“I wasn’t having much luck staying busy, to tell you the truth.” I push back in my swivel chair and lace my hands behind my skull. “I don’t mind a little company.”
Another smile, the slightest bit permissive. There’s something kinda neat about you, it says, but don’t get me wrong. I give her my own firm, promise-not-to grin.
“I really just wanted to tell you I’ve read your stories in the magazine and really admire them a lot.”
“That’s kind of you, thanks.” I nod as harmless as old Uncle Gus. “I try to take the job here pretty seriously.”
“I’m not being kind.” Her eyes flash. She is a woman who can be both chatty and challenging. I’m sure she can turn on the irony, too, when the situation asks for it.
“No. I don’t believe you’d be kind for a minute. It’s just nice of you to say so, even if you’re not being nice.” I rest my jaw, right where Vicki has slugged it, in the soft palm of my hand.
“Fair ’nuff.” Her smile says I’m a pretty good guy after all. All is computed in smiles.