The Gathering – Chapter 6 Owen Today, the first Saturday in spring, Owen was bringing his wife’s car to the dealership. Then he was going to stop on the way home to pick up her prescription and get hors d’oeuvres for tonight’s dinner party. “Oh, and don’t forget” – this Edith had said in an imperious voice from her upstairs study – “to buy two or three types of cheese. We want variety.” The one command she hadn’t given today was to get the ladder back from Steve. Edith had issued that command every day this week, ever since Sunday when she’d noticed the ladder was missing. (“Heaven knows why that man can’t have the decency to return what he borrowed! He doesn’t think about anyone but himself!”) Today, however, she was silent on the matter of the ladder. “That’s some reprieve,” Owen thought from behind the wheel of his wife’s convertible. As he sat at a red light, he had a mental image of a pick-up truck idling in front of his house. Steve had stood in Owen’s foyer months before, his designer eyeglasses fogging above his Burberry lapels as he’d explained that he needed a ladder to mount a ten-foot Santa on the roof of his garage. The display was going to be a surprise for Brandon, the younger of his two children. “I’ll get the ladder back to you by the end of the week,” Steve had added. Now it was the month of March and the ten-foot Santa was packed away in Steve’s attic, along with the artificial Christmas tree and the singing snowman. During the past few months Owen hadn’t needed the ladder, which lay propped on its side behind Steve’s garage. But that was going to change with spring here. Pretty soon Edith would have her husband outside clearing the gutters and cleaning the windows. Inevitably, he would have to attend to that leak in the roof. These things he would do without complaint, just as he had migrated without complaint to endure the bitter cold apprenticeship of his American spouse at a Midwestern university. He had made that sacrifice without a gripe, following her to her one-year appointment in the hope that the sabbatical replacement would become permanent. He’d cooked, washed dishes, and folded laundry while she had sat in the bedroom of their small apartment, pondering the complicated piety of Victorian heroines. Even when he’d pored over the electric bills for their drafty Minneapolis apartment, puzzling over how to afford groceries and heat, he had said nothing that would distract Edith from completing her final chapter. Instead, he had served her a plate of macaroni and cheese with parsley and had listened to her complain about the bane of MLA documentation guidelines. Owen drove his wife’s convertible – a late-model sports car that she’d recently bought for herself on her fortieth birthday – into the dealer’s parking lot. Back during that bitter, drafty Minneapolis winter, he would not have believed that they would be able to afford such a car so soon. But the sports car, along with their rambling two-story house, was one of the great transformations wrought by Edith’s job at Saint Christopher University. They were well off, even with his abysmal employment record since their move to the States. They weren’t as well off as they would have been had everything worked out in Britain, but they were certainly better off than they would have been had that sabbatical replacement evolved into a permanent slot. “Good news!” Edith had said the night she was officially hired by Saint Christopher University. “I got the job!” She had said this, Owen remembered, as she had walked out of the bedroom of that drafty apartment where she had taken the phone call. “I got the job!” she had repeated, prancing around the kitchen and hugging herself. He had gotten up from the table and had joined her, taking her in his arms. As they had pranced together, his heart had sunk at the prospect of small town life. He had remembered the view from his campus lab, a cubist vista of smokestacks and utility wires. “Congratulations, dear! All your hard work has paid off.” “And are you ready for this? The teaching load is two-two until my book is out. Not three-two, as they said.” “Wonderful!” “Plus I’ll be able to teach a graduate seminar in my field, even before I get tenure.” “They didn’t happen to mention any opening for a wayward scientist, did they?” Edith frowned. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?” “I am happy for you.” “No, you’re not.You’re already trying to make me feel guilty.” “I merely asked if they have an opening for a pretty competent, if aging, microbiologist. I do have a university background, too, you know, and spousal hires are not unheard of.” “Listen, it’s not my fault you were rousted from your moral high ground. Don’t guilt trip me if I’m finally succeeding in giving our lives a new direction.” “I was making a joke! Forget it.” Today, two years later, Owen had no sense of humor on the topic of his wife’s success in “giving their lives a new direction.” The more energetically she tidied the scene of his professional disintegration with her own advancement, the more humorless he became on the subject of her success and, inevitably, his own lack of it. Owen got out of the car and walked into the dealer’s service lounge. A woman with cropped hair greeted him with a frown reminiscent of the one Edith had worn when she had asked him why he couldn’t be happy for her. “Good morning,” the woman said, glancing at the clock. “Good morning,” he replied. “I’m here to have some bodywork done on my wife’s car.” A look of skepticism replaced the frown as the woman turned to her computer. “Oh? What’s your name?” “Owen. Owen Caley.” The woman scrolled through a list of names in the computer. A moment later she faced him, her skepticism hardening into certainty. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing in the computer for today. Are you sure it was today?” “Yes, yes. Check under my wife’s name.” “I’m sorry, but there’s no Caley listed here.” “Her last name is different than mine.” With a sigh, the woman spun around in her chair. “What is her name?” she asked. “Edith Jones.” A second later, the woman turned around again and faced Owen with a smug expression. “No...,” she said. “There must be some mix-up with the date. Besides, we don’t usually do a major work like bodywork on a Saturday. That’s an all-day project and we close at one on Saturdays.” “Oh,” said Owen. “Great.” “Would you like to schedule an appointment for next month? We can fit you in on the 14th.” “No, no,” answered Owen, waving his hand as though he were suddenly beset by flies. “I mean, maybe. Let me think about it.” Owen walked out the door, muttering to himself. Already he could hear Edith’s feet on the stairs, her tread conveying her sense of his incompetence more effectively than any rant. He decided, irrationally, to look for another garage, despite the odds of finding a mechanic who would agree on such short notice to fix that dent in the right fender. He got back in the car and started the engine. Before pulling out of the parking lot, he slid the sunroof open, letting in the warm morning air. As he drove, he slipped back into his retrospective mood, recalling, with more nostalgia than before, a scene similar to the one in the Minneapolis apartment. With the wind in his hair, he was transported back to the day he had been appointed to the government’s Advisory Council for Research, four years before Edith got her one-year position in the States. She had just completed her D. Phil. and was teaching part-time at Croydon on a temporary work visa. He had been paying the rent on their three-room flat, which he had taken after his now ex-wife found out about his American girlfriend. On top of that, he had been paying for the London home where his wife and teenage children and their mother had continued to live. So when he was offered the appointment, which was only slightly less lucrative than it was prestigious, his first thought had been that the extra income would supplement nicely his salary from Leeds. “Fabulous news, Edie,” he had said as he’d come through the door that evening. “Did they appoint – or should I say, anoint – you?” Edith had asked, looking up from a book. “They did. And get this. They want me to draft a report that will end up on the agricultural minister’s desk.” “My!” Edith had said, putting the book aside. “That sounds important.” “Rather technical and tedious, actually. Not to mention I’ll have to talk to a lot of stuffy politicians. But the Council does serve an important role and I’m honored to be on it.” Edith had stood up, her hand resting on the back of her chair. “Well! Congratulations.” She had met him halfway across the room. “This will make life a little easier for us,” he had said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Who knows? If things go well, we might be able to afford a bigger place. And you might be able to work full-time on that book of yours.” Her eyes had glistened. “I’d say this calls for a celebration,” he had continued. “Put your papers away and let’s dine out.” Behind the wheel of another sports car – his – he had taken Edith to one of London’s finest Indian restaurants. There they had greeted the advent of his dual career as professor of microbiology at the University of Leeds and junior appointee to the Advisory Council. This dual career, which had lasted but a few years, he was later to recall as an exercise in inefficiency, an advisory diffusion of his scientific training into committee-approved half measures and bungling reports, all culminating in the debacle of his refusal to issue false conclusions. That night of the celebration, however, long before he was sacked or ever heard of Reverend Bertram, he had sat with Edith over Tandoori shrimp and peas pulao, contemplating a future that had looked like a promising, remunerative division of his talents. Toward the end of the meal, when they’d been the only remaining diners in the restaurant, Owen had reached across the table and had held his lover’s hand. “Why don’t we really make this a night to remember?” he had ventured. “Give me another reason to celebrate.” Edith had taken a bite of pie. “Marry me,” he had said. Edith, her mouth full of pie, had said nothing. “Will you marry me?” Edith had swallowed, reaching for her glass of water. “You’re not even divorced yet,” she had said between gulps of water. “But I will be in a few months. I might even be able to hurry the process along.” Edith had set her glass on the table. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she had said after a pause, “but are you sure you want to rush into another marriage? I mean, if you’ve been as unhappy as you say….” “I’m not expecting a fairy tale.” “That’s wise.” “But I know we’ll be happy together.” Edith had taken another bite of the rhubarb pie, the only item on the menu that had been vaguely American. “And am I supposed to continue sitting at home after my book is finished?” Owen didn’t exactly remember how he’d answered Edith’s question. But he did recall that, three months later, she’d accepted a diamond ring from his trembling fingers. Now the divorced and remarried Owen drove past Saint Christopher University toward the edge of town. That awkward proposal seemed to be ages ago, he thought. So much had happened since then. The pendulum of his accomplishments had swung completely in the other direction, while the woman whose future happiness he envisioned as inseparable from his own had come into a middling but respectable, professional glory that was distinctly hers. Gradually, Owen accelerated as he moved beyond the sorority houses and coffee shops. The road widened to four lanes, carrying him through open stretches of harvested forest, logged for its fast-growing loblolly pines. He turned the radio on, unsure where he was headed and curiously oblivious to the improbability of finding a garage this far out of town. He played with the radio, looking for the classical station. Though her penchant for sports cars was new, Edith had always had a taste for hard rock. He found the station and recognized the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem. Following that evening at the Indian restaurant everything had been perfect. For a while. A year or so after his appointment he and Edith had moved into a large flat with a view of the Thames. She had dropped back from teaching three classes to one and had spent her afternoons at the library, researching her book. The days he hadn’t spend in his university laboratory he had spent in a bright, carpeted office far from the reeking abattoirs. When he had come home late there had never been any questions, for Edith had known he’d been paring briskly at his numbers, tailoring complex data to the short attention span of government bureaucrats. Once, a month or two after their wedding, Senior Minister Cashdollar had let them use his Cornwall cottage for a long weekend. Owen and Edith had spent that weekend naked and entwined in unlikely spots, on the bathroom vanity and the chopping block. Then had come Cashdollar’s Christmas dinner party, the event that had led to Owen’s difficulties. He still felt sick when he thought of it, the way the writer from the Dispatch had cornered him after sneaking in through the kitchen entrance. Owen had wandered away from the other guests to spit out a mouthful of marzipan he’d not been able to wash down with his eggnog. As he had leaned over the trashcan, the man who would become his muckraking nemesis had tapped him on the shoulder. Why hadn’t Owen just ignored his interrogator? Edith was to ask later. Or better yet, why hadn’t he had the writer escorted from Cashdollar’s townhouse? How much easier their lives could have been, had they only suffered the momentary spectacle of Kennedy’s expulsion. Verdi’s lyrics poured from the car radio with rising intensity. Dies irae, the chorus sang. This day, this day of wrath…. Owen struggled to translate from the Latin, drawing on the half-forgotten vocabulary he’d learned in boarding school. This day of wrath shall consume the world in ashes…. He saw himself sitting among rows of desks, reciting verbs. Then, through the arc of associations created by the music, which was a kind of arpeggiation of past events, he saw himself sitting at the bedside of the stricken priest who had been the one surviving subject of the reporter’s interviews. Latin words had flowed from the mouth of the stricken man whose feverish forehead, marked with an ashy smear, had been turned toward the lamp. Latin words, Greek words, English words. All strung together on a cord of troubled logic, like beads on a twisted rosary. With his hands draped across the steering wheel Owen saw little of the scenery. He was so focused on the image of the priest that he saw only the sweat on the ailing man’s upper lip – the sweat, the smeared cross, and the old man’s cringing horror at the shadows cast by the lamp. Only when he passed an abandoned sawmill did Owen notice how far he’d driven. He decided to turn back, conceding, finally, the futility of his search for a garage in such a remote place. He slowed and pulled to the side of the road. Greater efforts than this have proven futile, he thought. A distant vision of his past self loomed briefly like the shadows from Reverend Bertram’s lamp. Just as he was about to turn, Owen saw the sign. It was a small billboard with an arrow pointing to a narrow side road. Maud’s Garage. Owen sat with his foot on the brake, staring at the weathered letters. “Well,” he said after a minute. “It’s worth a try.” He maneuvered the car back onto the road, then steered in the direction of the arrow. He glanced at the gas gauge, then stepped on the accelerator. The winding road took him up a small hill and past some newly tilled fields. Through the open sunroof he smelled the fresh earth, which was browner and less clay-like than the earth in his backyard. “It is weird,” he thought, “for a garage to be so far off the beaten path.” With a shrug he nudged up the volume of the radio. “This day of wrath… this day of wrath… What trembling there shall be.”
Posted on: Sat, 21 Jun 2014 22:39:33 +0000
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