Chapter 34
Zoe was having trouble sitting as they drove down to Rahway. Ron was smiling. That afternoon, between their repeated sessions of frenzied love-making, he told her that Robin has been back for a visit. She became frightened. “Did she take you to bed with her?”
“No.”
“Did she ask you to?”
“No,” said Ron. “She’s seeing someone.”
“Would you have fucked her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I would have understood,” said Zoe. “I know how much you love her.”
“How do you know that?” Ron was more than amazed at her reaction. He was expecting tears and recriminations. He was almost unable to believe her reaction.
“Ron, I knew that she was coming. That’s why I ran away.”
Ron wanted to ask how she knew, but something inside of him said that he was better off to just let it go and for the first time that he could remember, he did. Zoe was squirming on the seat next to him but he could tell that she was happy. She had her sketch pad and her pastels with her. She told him that she was looking forward to a chance to do some drawings of Rahway.
The house was brightly lit. Cars filled the gravel driveway and Ron had to back out again and park on the street, so that he didn’t block anyone in. They went up the drive and to the back door. The bells over the door jingled as they entered. Neil Diamond’s Longfellow Serenade was playing on the stereo. They walked into the kitchen and there was Kelly, a very pretty girl with impossibly long red hair. It hung straight and meticulously manicured down to her waist. Ron knew her well. They had been Warren’s students together. Kelly hadn’t liked him since he had dumped one of her girlfriends and the girl, despondent over Ron being the first man to fuck her, had tried to kill herself. Ron always felt tense around Kelly but he smiled and said, “Hi Kelly. I’d like you to meet Zoe.”
Zoe stood there in her jeans holding her pad and pastels and Kelly looked over at her without really acknowledging Ron and said, “Hi. I’m just trying to figure out how this over works. I’ve never seen one this old before.”
Zoe put her things down on the counter and said, “Let me help.”
And then the two of them were kneeling down and looking inside and turning knobs. Ron stared for an instant at the way that Kelly’s hair and Zoe’s hair intertwined and then he walked down the single step into the living room.
The white washed fireplace was blazing and pine branches had been laid across the top of the split flue mantle. There were six people seated on cushions drawn up close to the flames in a semi-circle, all turned in and facing the burning wood. All of their heads seemed to swivel at the same time.
Warren called out, “Hey Ron, how are you?” in his unmistakable drawl.
Laureen’s eyes flashed dark in the flames when she saw him. “Hi Ron, happy holidays.”
Julian T. Willy said with his unmistakable sarcasm. “Well, now the evening will surely get more interesting.”
April’s smile was soft and radiant and she stood when she saw Ron and came to him and hugged him to her. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. It’s really good to see you.”
Ron embraced her with delight and surprise. He held her at arm’s length and said. “You look great April. It’s good to see you as well.”
“Come sit by the fire,” said Warren. “We have just been talking about the year gone by.”
“Did you bring Chris, or is someone else marching in your bimbo parade these days?” said Julian, who was now openly gay and never passed up a chance to make some sexual reference to Ron and Chris’s friendship.
Laureen laughed and said, “Julian, make some attempt to be civil.”
Julian, with a flourish threw his scarf around his neck and over his shoulder, “What? I can’t have fun with the entertainment? Please tell me that it is why you invited him, Warren and that it was not some misplaced notion of a contribution to the conversation other than that of comic relief.”
Laureen laughed again and said, “Julian you are so funny when you are drunk.”
“Zoe is in the kitchen with Kelly,” he said.
“The boardwalk portrait painter?” said Julian.
Laureen slapped him playfully and stood up to go and greet Zoe in the kitchen.
Ron sat down cross-legged opposite Warren and Julian. April curled in next to him. “No,” said Ron. “I didn’t bring Chris, but I have his number if you want to give him a call and see if he still loves you, Julian.”
“Be nice,” said Warren. “Now, you were about to tell us what you thought was the most important thing that happened this year, Julian”
“The most intriguing event of the year has been the death of Nadezhda Kashina” said Julian.
Ron had no idea who he was talking about. Warren and April seemed to know. “Who is that?”
“Someone far beyond your ability to comprehend,” said Julian.
Warren drawled, “And what event has your imagination Ron?”
Ron thought that Warren had no idea who he was anymore but played the I’m current on Events of the Day game “I’d say that it was what Sadat has done,” said Ron.
Warren smiled. “I thought that you would have said Carter’s pardon.”
“I think it’s been a dull year,” said April.
Kelly and Zoe and Laureen walked into the living room and announced that the oven was hopeless, but that they had things under control. Warren asked if they wanted him to take a look at it, but Kelly assured him that it was fine and sat between his legs and kissed him. Zoe put her hands on Ron’s shoulders and then knelt alongside of him to avoid sitting on the wooden floor. Everyone said hello to Zoe. Ron was tense and thought that if Julian made one insulting crack about her that he could easily strangle him in his scarf.
“For me,” said Warren, “the death of Gary Gilmore is symbolic. It displays an entirely new level of marketing death that is dangerous for our culture.”
“As if we weren’t already marketing death,” said Ron.
“The work of Vicente Aleixandre,” said Laureen.
“You really do like him, don’t you?” said Warren.
“He’s amazing,” said Laureen.
Again, Ron did not know who they were talking about. He would ask Laureen about him later, outside of Julian’s earshot.
“What do you think is the most significant event this year, Kelly?”
Kelly moved her head from side to side to make her incredible long hair shimmer and then she said smiling, “Being with you.”
Everyone laughed and Kelly blushed. Warren reached over her shoulder and squeezed her right breast. “That’s deflecting the question.”
“Warren, you fool, the woman just said that she loved you. Take it with a simple smile and treat her well,” said Laureen.
Everyone laughed again and Kelly slid down to rest her head on Warren’s lap. Then Warren turned his gaze on Zoe. “And what would be your answer?”
“The light reflecting off of a lake that I saw in New York State. The way that the colors blended into the water and made it seem like a large diamond.”
“Costume jewelry,” said Julian.
“What was it really for you Julian, the bath houses?” asked Ron.
Julian stiffened. “I go to the bath houses as a political statement.”
Laureen laughed. “Not at all for all the naked bodies, I know.”
Ron stared at the fire. He hadn’t done it when he had first walked into the room. The immediacy and emotional reaction to the people there had held his attention. But now the fire was reaching for him again and he was giving himself to it. The flames waved to him like another old friend. The fire smiled at him. In a wicked kind of way, the fire laughed at him. Ron held the gaze of the flames. The sounds of the people’s voices faded. The fire wanted to talk to him, to tell him something, but he had to blot out the distractions first. He was being pulled closer to the flames; he felt the heat on his face. The fire was chanting. “Mine, mine.”
He felt Zoe take his hand and squeeze it but he didn’t respond. He wanted to dance with the fire. He wanted to help the fire claim what she owned. And then there was Zoe’s voice in his ear. “Ron, are you alright?”
He looked away from the flames and into her face. She was staring at him and brushing his hair with her fingers. The rest of the people in the room were looking at him. He looked back into Zoe’s face and the fire was dancing on her glasses waving to him and laughing. Ron tried to laugh but it came out like a grunt. “I guess I just zoned out there for a little while.”
Julian’s eyes were filled with glee. Kelly was staring at him with a distant curiosity. April hadn’t looked at him since Zoe had come into the room. Warren drew in on his pipe and Ron saw the embers glow.
Laureen laughed and said, “I asked you if you had seen Robin.”
“Oh,” said Ron. “Yes, I saw her. She’s doing well. She’s learning to make paper.”
At dinner, Warren returned to the earlier topics. He wanted his guests to think about what they had chosen as significant events from the perspective of whether those events were going to change the lives of the people seated around the oval shaped, oak table. He looked at each one of them. In his opinion, only Kelly and Zoe had brought up events that were truly significant. Of course he did not mention his references to Gary Gilmore, but he was getting to it. “What I’m working at here,” said Warren, “is to come to an understanding of why this avant garde painter or this Nobel Prize winning author are important to you personally. What significance will the Sadat visit really have? I can understand why someone would think that a relationship is important. Or why someone would think that a particular experience was important.” He gave Zoe a smile of acknowledgement. “But why these other things?”
Laureen giggled again. “Of course Warren is conveniently leaving out his personal interest in Gary Gilmore.”
“Not at all,” said Lashly pointedly. “My interest is in the way that the culture responded to the execution. I’m trying to discover why this is a culture that has found itself distracted by the macabre. And that is of some importance to me, both personally and as a member of the culture.”
Julian T. Willy stood. “Well on that happy note, I do think that I will be going.” The announcement startled the table. They were in the middle of the meal.
Laureen and Kelly both said, “Julian stay,” in a harmony that if no one knew better would have sounded rehearsed and almost like the chorus of a song. But Julian was on his feet. He kissed Laureen and Kelly on the cheek. Thanked Warren for inviting him over.
But Lashly wasn’t ready to see him go. “I can understand you feeling uncomfortable with this conversation, Julian. But it’s not going where you think that it is.”
Julian smiled and brought his heels together with an audible click. He looked down at Warren and said, “What I think is that I graduated from college some time ago.”
“I don’t think that you really want to leave,” said Warren.
Julian walked in long, stiff legged strides to the door with his arms held straight down and immobile. Putting on his jacket and saying, “Ho, ho, ho,” he was gone. The bells over the door jingled as an after-effect.
Ron watched and thought there was something admirable about Julian’s actions. He had always been a fan of fast exits.
Warren clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the table. “He was not ready to have this conversation. My guess is that he felt too exposed.”
“Maybe it was us, Warren. Julian hasn’t been around for a long time and I’m sure that it wasn’t easy for him to come here tonight,” said Laureen. “He doesn’t love this place the way that we do. It holds some bad memories for him.”
Ron spoke up. “We all have some bad memories to deal with Laureen. It’s how we handle them that makes the difference.”
“Not everyone is as hard as you are Ron,” said Warren. “Laureen is right. I pushed him too hard. “
Ron wondered what the hell that they were talking about. No one had pushed Julian at all from what he could see. It seemed to Ron that he just didn’t want to spend another evening as Warren’s student. Then Ron wondered what he was doing there. He had his own students now and he was certain that he wasn’t going to ever sleep with any of them or pry into their personal lives for his own satisfaction the way that Warren did. But maybe they all wanted him to pry into their lives. Maybe they all thought that he had some of the answers about themselves that they were yet to discover. Maybe Warren saw them all as lab rats. Maybe he saw himself as giving everything that he had in his life to his students. He was surely not shy about taking some things back. The truth was that every one of them around the table, with the possible exception of Zoe, knew exactly what the story was with this guy, especially Ron.
“What happened to you a while back in there?” said Warren looking at Ron. “You looked like you were in some kind of a trance? Have you been smoking or taking something?”
“No, I just caught up staring at the fire,” said Ron.
“You’re sure that was it?”
“Yeah, it’s the first time that I have been around an open fire since the apartment burned up.”
Laureen said, “I think that Ron has a whole lot on his mind these days.”
The dinner table was lit by candles after Kelly and Zoe cleared the dishes. April and Laureen watched them but Ron got up and helped. They carried dishes down the galley style kitchen to the sink and then returned for more. Zoe managed to brush against Ron each time that they passed each other. Kelly never looked at him and seemed a bit annoyed by his nearness.
Then they all settled back to the table and Ron lit a cigarette.
Warren said, “So how’s the teaching going?”
“I never expected to love it this much, Warren. I didn’t understand how I would feel responsible for them.”
“You have to let that go,” said Warren. “You aren’t responsible for them and you can’t teach them anything that they aren’t ready to learn.”
“They need to learn to read and write. They are ready for that and that’s what I’m concentrating on. It’s interesting to see their language skills develop. And I do believe that it will help them immensely in their lives to be able to read and write well.”
“Only if they want it to help them,” said Warren.
Laureen said, “And how are the nuns?” She giggled after asking the question.
April’s eyes got bigger in the light. “You are working at a Catholic school? With nuns?”
“I know, “said Ron. “ I know. But they’re just people, ya know. Mostly they are very good people.”
“And what do they think of you?” said April.
“I don’t know,” said Ron.
“They are going to put him in charge of discipline,” said Zoe.
Laureen was in mid swallow of a glass of diet pepsi and began to choke and laugh at the same time. The soda went up her nose and she held a napkin to her face and choked while she turned red and laughed. Ron laughed too and Warren smiled.
April said, “I just can’t picture you around nuns.”
Zoe said, “Ron is the most sexual person that I ever met. Do you think that they pick up on that?”
Before they left, April said, “Will you call me? I really have missed talking with you.” Ron said that he would.
As they drove home, Zoe snuggled into him and said, “It’s exciting to be there.”
Ron smiled. “Why did you find it exciting?”
“I don’t know. It made me feel like I was at the center of things. And when Warren asked me questions at the table, it was embarrassing but at the same time it made me feel important. Like I was speaking and what I had to say mattered.”
“I know what you mean,” said Ron.
“You and Warren are a lot alike.”
Ron felt himself tense when she said that. “Why do you think that?”
“You’re both very strong and very smart. And you both know how to get what you want. Why doesn’t Kelly like you?”
“It’s a long story. I used to date one of her friends”
“She told me to be careful of you.”
“That was nice of her.”
“I didn’t care what she said. I told her that I thought you and Warren are alike and she agreed but then said ‘not in a good way though.’”
Ron felt himself getting angry. Julian had been right.