Part 11 (1/2)
”Send flowers to a homeless man?”
Madison saw that by making ridiculous suggestions she wasn't going to steer the conversation, naturally, to the importance of the Let's Fix It meeting. ”Please just come. We need you there. We need your intelligence, Dad, and your experience with gatherings of a social and political nature.”
”Bah.”
”I'll give you fourteen dollars.”
”Madison, come on. Just leave me to mourn in peace.”
”I'm pregnant.”
David dropped the remote control on the hardwood floor, and the battery slot popped open. Two AAAs rolled under the coffee table. ”No, you aren't.”
”Yes, I am.”
”But you don't have a boyfriend.”
Madison took a deep breath. ”For about five minutes in the summertime I had a boyfriend in Jasper.”
”Who is this five-minute boyfriend?”
”His name might be Steve but I suspect it's Jean-something. He's from Quebec.”
”First the National Energy Program, then the special status nonsense, and now this. May they freeze in the dark!”
”Dad.” Madison opened her arms for a hug.
”What is with those people? Distinct society, my a.s.s.” David hugged his daughter and kissed her in the ear. ”Well, this is wonderful.” He took a step back, held her out before him, and wiped the burgeoning tear from his left eye. ”I mean, is it wonderful? You're happy? You're going to...?”
”Yes, I'm keeping it.”
”How far along are you?”
”Just entered my thirteenth week.”
David shook his head. ”What a dope I am. I thought you were just getting a little pudgy, not doing enough sit-ups.”
”And that's why you have to come to the meeting. Pregnant women shouldn't be subjected to stress and uncertainty. I need my daddy to protect me.”
For a moment, it seemed David was going to argue the point. Then he relaxed and walked down the hall toward his bedroom. ”Just let me put on some decent clothes.” While he changed, he mumbled about ”the d.a.m.n Pepsis” and called out, ”Hey, does your mom know?”
”Just you and Jonas so far, and my doctor.”
”So I know before your mother?”
”Yep.”
David came out of the bedroom in a pair of blue chinos, sandals, and a Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt. ”How sweet it is!”
When Madison and her father emerged from the house, s.h.i.+rley and Abby put their matching bowls of baba ghanouj and hummus on the sidewalk so they could clap. ”Hurry,” said Abby, ”we were supposed to meet everyone at the Sugarbowl five minutes ago.”
David took the pita and vegetables from Madison, as though the bag were burdening her. He put his arm around his wife. ”Where's Raymond?”
”I don't know. Maybe he got held up at the U.”
”He's coming though, right?”
s.h.i.+rley raised her eyebrows. ”This morning he was acting strangely, and I know he's deep into research on Victorian death rituals.”
”Whoa.” David kissed Abby on the cheek twice. ”I can't believe someone pays him to do that.”
They walked through the parking lot behind the theatre. Jonas was sitting on the Sugarbowl patio with a gla.s.s of red wine. When he saw them he said, ”Finally. I had to fight some sorority girls to save these seats. Seriously fist-fight them. Where's Raymond?”
Everyone shrugged in unison. As s.h.i.+rley, Abby, David, and Madison took their seats, Jonas snapped his fingers at the server.
”Mademoiselle. We're in something of a hurry.”
The server didn't react to Jonas. Instead she smiled, said h.e.l.lo, and took their orders. When Madison ordered a soda with a spot of cranberry juice in it, David squeezed her hand. ”That's my girl,” he said.
Jonas took the plastic wrap off the hummus and sniffed. ”So I was thinking maybe we should stop by the young Indian man's place and see if he wants to join us.”
”He doesn't talk,” said David. ”I've tried. He's either a deaf mute or he doesn't know English. It'll just be humiliating for him.”
Abby sat up straight. ”We should stop anyway. I bet he's lonely. That's a perfectly lovely idea, Jonas. This is his neighbourhood, too.”
”Whatever you think, hon,” said David. ”But he doesn't talk.”
”Remember when we tried the Welcome Wagon routine on him?” said s.h.i.+rley. ”He could barely say thanks for the fruit basket.”
Jonas finished his first gla.s.s of wine. ”He was just stunned by your beauty. Who could blame him?”
”You only say that because it's true.” s.h.i.+rley slapped Jonas on the arm.
Raymond Terletsky approached with a box in his hands.
”Oh, there's my professor.” s.h.i.+rley pushed her chair back and started out to meet her husband. She turned back to her neighbours and smiled. ”Looking cute and rumpled.”
32.
cute and rumpled In the past, whenever he had mused upon personal apocalypse, Raymond Terletsky imagined physical torment. Severe gastrointestinal problems in public, migraines, an invasion of c.o.c.kroaches and termites. Yet there had been an unexpected, dreamlike quality to the worst day of Raymond Terletsky's life. Neither his bowels nor his head was troubling him, and so far no insects had crawled out of his mouth or a.n.u.s. He hadn't even walked through a spider web.
That afternoon, after Claudia Santino and Dean Kesterman had sacked him, Raymond opened a bottle of champagne and sat in his office. It was Veuve Clicquot, a gift from one of his colleagues upon the ”Hierarchy of Funerals” publication in the Maltese Journal of non-Continental Philosophy. Since he didn't have a gla.s.s handy, Raymond sat in his office and drank the champagne straight from the bottle.
It is dispiriting to spend five hours drinking champagne and thinking up a good lie to tell your wife. It is especially dispiriting when, at the end of those five hours, you have nothing to tell her but the truth. s.h.i.+rley Wong was a wise and insightful woman. She knew it was extremely difficult to fire a tenured professor.