Chapter 25
Joyce
looked across the small table at Brad. They
were sitting in one of her favorite restaurants on
She said, “I’ve never really liked Robert Frost that much.”
“It’s funny, neither have I. But when Dr. Orenstein put marriage in those terms, it suddenly struck me very differently. It was a kind of epiphany I guess.”
She took a drink from her glass of Chardonnay. “Sometimes you amaze me, Bill. You’ve done so many things already in your life but you still see everything through the filter of books.” When they were children Joyce called him Bill or Billy but in high school she usually called him Brad like everyone else. Her middle name was Jeanne and Brad and her friends had called her JJ when she was a girl.
“Hey JJ. Books are like people to me. Your uncle is a wonderful man and I love him dearly but his philosophy is so bogged down with the archetypes of Carl Jung... well, if I couldn’t extricate myself from the Jungian influence using books, I would have to turn my back on Dr. O completely, just to protect myself. I don’t have the intelligence or time to rediscover the thought of Plato or Nietzsche or Freud.” She smiled and reached out her hand. He took it. He suddenly remembered what happened at Raney’s party he laughed.
Joyce asked, “What are you laughing about?”
“The idiocy of men and women together.”
She arched her dark eyebrows, and wrinkled her smooth brow, “And?”
“I was thinking of how Lewis went for Cheryl at Raney’s own party. The party she threw just for him. You never met Raney. I wanted you to meet her, to tell me what you thought of her.”
“It’s not too late.”
He squeezed her hand.
She thought, “I never dreamed that Bill and I would think again of marrying each other. He’s afraid he wont be faithful to me but why isn’t he worried about me? Especially if he chases other women, why am I so certain about my own ability to be faithful to him? I might as well find a rich man if we’re going to lead a promiscuous life.”
He said, “I was reading Plato this morning. The Gorgias. I don’t know why. Maybe as an antidote to the account of the Pilgrims I was reading last night. Plato says everything is rhetoric, just like an advertisement on television.”
She laughed. “I thought you hated Plato!”
“I don’t hate Plato, I just think he is obtuse sometimes. Some people think the Gorgias is his nihilistic dialog.”
She said, “You’re not a nihilist; Hamlet maybe but not a nihilist.”
“Don’t you ever have any doubts?”
Joyce laughed. “What do you think?”
“You’re always so sunny about everything.”
She said, “I’m remembering those times we had together, the summer before I went back east to boarding school, when we were still in high school.”
“When
Jeanette’s mother moved to
“Yes. It was before you met your Jewish girlfriend, Jane. The summer of 1959. ”
“Jeanette
and I had already talked about marriage, even as sophomores. I suppose I used
her move to
“Excuse! You were fifteen years old. She moved almost a hundred miles away!”
“
“You told me you loved me.”
“JJ, you went back east and I met Jane.”
“You seemed very selfish during those years Bill. I hated you.”
“I was selfish. I was so absorbed with mathematics and football, and Jane, that I couldn’t think of anything else. Nothing else existed for me. I’m sorry.”
“I suffered for awhile when you didn’t answer my letters. Girl’s schools aren’t a good place to meet boys.”
“I assumed Jane and I would get married. Then my mother interfered and we broke up. I barely had time to get over that and the Fields Medal came. Then Gramps died and everything fell apart. I think I had a kind nervous breakdown. Without your uncle, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“Your mother!” She looked at him with sympathetic eyes. “I don’t know how you survived her, not to speak of everything else.”
He said, “I regret all those years of chasing women around. I feel guilty about Jeanette too. She taught me how to love and be loved. I guess I threw it all away. I let her down.”
“Don’t feel guilty and don’t regret anything. You’ve got to live your life forward not backward.”
“I’m glad you’re here JJ. I feel like looking up Collin and thanking him for dumping you.”
She smiled.
He asked, “What about your life with the Super Rich? Can you forget them?”
“The Super Rich are the super boring and the super self-centered.”
He said, “Good. We agree on that. You know that party I was going to go to last night?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t go. But I heard that Rolf Lewis dumped Raney and went off with Cheryl. I’ll bet Raney would have jumped into to bed with me just to get even with the bastard if I’d shown up.”
She said, “Not if I’d been there.”
He said, “How could you spend the rest of your life with an idiot like me?”
Joyce said, dryly, “It won’t be easy.”
Brad said, “I gave up football because I felt like I owed my grandfather something for giving me the Fields Medal. It was a purely idealistic act but it amounted to giving up a happy life, a successful life.”
“You’re not a failure.”
“I
guess I feel that trying to live a life dedicated to principles in
“You were the darling of Piedmont high school. They even forgave you that your mother is Ronda Bradford. They always welcome sports heroes, until they fall, and then they don’t even have the courtesy to despise them, they simply act out an elaborate pretense that they don’t know them anymore until the day arrives when the pretense becomes reality.”
Brad said, “Even when I played, all I had to do was step outside of it for an instant to see the absurdity of it all. Sure, throwing a football 40 yards and threading the needle of your star receiver who runs for a touchdown, and the yelling adulation of 500 people, make you feel good. But then you see it as a kind of pageant, a ridiculous morality play where the big guys show off their skills and the pretty cheerleaders cheer them on and the smaller boys carry them on their shoulders.”
She said, “It was the same at the parties of the rich and famous. They were like choreographed plays. Everyone had to be somebody. Once you were accepted into the inner circle you were judged by the cost of your clothes, shoes and jewelry. And there were always the obligatory stars standing around. It was almost funny! The old rich, especially, looked down on the stars as if they were mascots or pet animals. And everyone knew who the outsiders were. Mostly women trying to catch a rich man and a lot of men trying to catch a rich woman too.”
Brad
said, “Maybe we are just a couple of frustrated aristocrats.
We long for a true elite of talent like
She laughed. “We’re gonna have to walk into a world that is corrupt and try to maintain our integrity and do something heroic. At least that’s what you used to tell me when we were kids.” She paused, “But I have to admit, living in a commune seems, well... not very heroic.”
Brad said, “I’m an idiot, paralyzed with paradox. Zeno’s arrow never moves.”
“Bullshit.” It was uncharacteristic for Joyce to talk like that but when she was exasperated with Brad she often threw his expressions back at him. She said, “You’re a realist but you can’t stand all of the pain and suffering in the world so you allow yourself to be taken in by misfits and weaklings. Do you remember how you used to rail against William James for doing the same thing in his Varieties of Religious Experience, which you hated so much? Well, you’re worse than he was. Now you’re going along with the idealistic illusions of this absurd guy, this… what’s his name?”
“Derrin. I’m not going along with his illusions. I’m not going along with anything. Believe me.”
“You
worked as a baggage man at the
Brad
said, “George Santayana wrote a beautiful book called
The Last Puritan. But he was wrong
to call Oliver Alden the last Puritan: Puritanism is perennial in
“You’re not a Puritan but you’re searching for some kind of moral economy and measure in your life and you are appalled by the disorder and lack of discipline around you.”
They were silent for a moment thinking of the events of the past few years, which were among the most tumultuous of the twentieth century.
He said, “Well, that’s why I’ve always loved and admired you. You love what is good for you and you hate what is bad for you. It sounds very simple but it isn’t. You’re the opposite of a decadent.”
Joyce smiled, “I’m surprised you would say that after my blindness about Collin and his family.”
“Well. I suppose we’re all struggling with decadence
but at least some of us have a slight hope for victory.” He laughed.
“That reminds me of something I read last night about the Pilgrims
in
“You’re not going to regale me with a nearly photographic recall of a tale from your reading are you?”
“You know me too well.”
“It had better be good.”
“It
is. It’s about a teenage servant called Thomas Granger
who was in
“Bill!”
“A mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.”
“I hope this is leading to something edifying.”
“It is. The Pilgrims were bound by the Old Testament law, which says that the perpetrator of bestiality and all the animals involved have to be killed. The problem for the Pilgrims was that they couldn’t identify the guilty turkey or the goats or the sheep. So they had a kind of seventeenth century police lineup and Granger nodded at the guilty animals which were killed, one by one, and pushed into a ditch while he watched.”
“Bill, are you putting me on?”
“That’s how it was described. The story goes that after all the animals were killed, Granger himself was killed and thrown into the ditch and then they were all buried together.”
“Maybe you ought to call your novel The Last Pilgrim.”
“What
novel? I’m afraid a truthful novel about those people
could never be published! They all
believe they’re a part of the Revolution and that
She poured wine into his glass and said, “Will you have another glass of Chardonnay and calm down?”
He
laughed. “I went to the commune last night and got my
stuff and my cat Zeta. They’re in
“I thought your mother was allergic to cats.”
“She is.”
She said, “Why don’t you stay with me. I’m not allergic to cats.”