Red Leaves

FIFTEEN

Dr. Mays lived in an old sea-captain's house only a few blocks from the home in which I'd grown up and which had seemed happy to me, at least until Jenny's death. After that my mother had sunk into a deep gloom, while my father's financial losses grew more and more severe, so that within the year the house itself had gone on the block. But none of that dreary history returned to me as we swept past the old house that evening. Instead, it was my father's dismissive outburst that played upon my mind—You have no idea.

He'd said it as an accusation but adamantly refused to clarify what he meant. Perhaps, I thought, my father was merely grasping for attention, his undefined charge against my mother was only his way of asserting himself when faced by her hallowed memory. If this were true, he'd chosen a crude method of gaining ground. But he'd always been reckless with his words, prone to vicious insult, and so it was perfectly in character for him to lift himself by bringing my mother down. And yet, for all that, I couldn't help wondering what he'd meant in saying that my mother hadn't been devoted to him. I'd seen nothing but devotion—patient and abiding. She had overlooked all his faults, stood by his side as his little empire shrank and finally disappeared. She had defended him no matter how outrageous his actions or negligent his fatherhood. How could it be that through all those years I'd had no idea of her?

"We'll just act normal," Meredith said as I pulled the car up in front of Dr. Mays's house.

I offered a quick smile. "We are normal," I reminded her. "We don't have to act."

She seemed hardly to hear me. Her gaze was fixed on the house, the guests she could see milling about inside, her expression intense and oddly searching, like a woman on a widow's walk, peering out into the empty sea, hoping for the first fluttering glimpse of her husband's returning ship.

"What is it, Meredith?" I asked.

She turned toward me abruptly, as if I'd caught her unawares. "I just hope he's here," she said. "Stuart." She seemed to catch something odd in my expression. "So we can talk to him about Keith," she explained. "We are going to do that, aren't we? That's what we decided."

"Yes."

Dr. Mays greeted us at the door. He was a short bald man, with wire spectacles.

"Ah, Meredith," he said as he pumped her hand, then looked at me. "Hello, Eric."

We shook hands, and he ushered us into a spacious living room where several professors stood with their wives and husbands, sipping wine and munching little squares of cheese. We all stood by the fireplace for a time, exchanging the usual pleasantries. Then Meredith excused herself and drifted away, leaving me alone with Dr. Mays.

"You have a terrific wife, Eric," he said, his eyes on Meredith as she approached a tall man in a tweed jacket who stood beside a thin woman with straight black hair.

"We feel very fortunate to have her with us," Dr. Mays added.

I nodded. "She loves teaching."

"That's good to hear," Dr. Mays said. He plucked a celery stalk from a plate of assorted cut vegetables and dipped it in the small bowl of onion dip that rested on the table beside him. "I hope she doesn't find me stodgy."

Across the room, Meredith laughed lightly and touched the man's arm.

"Not at all," I said. "She's always telling me some joke or story you've told."

Dr. Mays appeared surprised. "Really?"

I laughed. "She loved the one about Lenny Bruce."

He looked at me quizzically. "Lenny Bruce?"

"The one about the difference between men and women," I said.

Dr. Mays shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know that one."

"You know, the plateglass window."

Dr. Mays stared at me blankly. "She must have heard that from someone else," he said.

There was another burst of laughter from across the room. I looked over to see Meredith with her hand at her mouth, the way she always held it when she laughed, her eyes bright and strangely joyful, so different from the way she'd been only a few minutes before. The man in the tweed jacket laughed with her, but the woman beside him only smiled quietly, then took a quick sip from her glass.

"Who are they?" I asked. "The people with Meredith."

Dr. Mays looked over at them. "Oh, that's Dr. Rodenberry and his wife, Judith," he said. "He's our college counselor."

"Oh, yes," I said. "Meredith has mentioned him."

"Brilliant man," Dr. Mays said. "And very funny."

He gave me a few more details about Rodenberry, that he'd been at the college for five years, turned a moribund counseling service into a vibrant school function. After that, Dr. Mays said he had to mingle and stepped over to another group of teachers.

I took the opportunity to make my way across the room, where Meredith still stood, talking to the Rodenberrys.

She glanced over as I approached her.

"Hi," I said softly.

"Hi," Meredith said. She turned to Rodenberry and his wife. "Stuart, Judith, this is my husband, Eric."

I shook hands with the two of them, smiling as warmly as I knew how. Then there was a moment of awkward silence, eyes shifting about, Rodenberry's back and forth between me and Meredith, his wife's eyes darting toward me, then quickly away.

"I've mentioned this situation with Keith to Stuart," she said.

I looked at Rodenberry. "What do you think?" I asked.

He considered the question briefly. "Well, Keith's certainly under a lot of pressure."

That seemed hardly an answer, so I dug deeper.

"But do you think he needs professional help?" I asked.

Again Rodenberry appeared reluctant to answer directly. "Perhaps, but only if he's willing to accept it. Otherwise, counseling would just add to the pressure he's already under."

"So how can we tell?" I asked. "If he needs help, I mean."

Rodenberry glanced at Meredith in what appeared a signal for her to jump in.

"Stuart feels that we should raise the subject with Keith," she said. "Not present it to him as something we think he should do, but only raise it as a possibility."

"And see how he reacts," Rodenberry added quickly. "Whether he's immediately hostile, or if he seems amenable to the idea."

"And if he seems amenable?" I asked.

Again, Rodenberry's gaze slid over to Meredith. "Well, as I told Meredith," he said, now returning his attention to me, "I'd be more than happy to provide whatever help I can."

I started to add some final remark on the subject, but Rodenberry's wife suddenly withdrew from our circle, her head turned decidedly away, as if shielding her face from view.

"Judith has been ill," Rodenberry said quietly once his wife was out of earshot. Again he looked at Meredith, and in response she offered a smile that struck me as unexpectedly intimate, which Rodenberry immediately returned.

"Anyway," he said, now returning his gaze to me. "Let me know what you decide about Keith." He drew a card from his jacket pocket. "Meredith has my number at school," he said as he handed me the card, "but this is my private number. Call it anytime."

I thanked him, and after that Rodenberry walked across the room to join his wife beside a buffet table. Once there, he placed his arm on his wife's shoulder. She quickly stepped away, as if repulsed by his touch, so that Rodenberry's arm immediately fell free and dangled limply at his side.

"I think the Rodenberry's have problems," I said to Meredith.

She watched as Rodenberry poured himself a drink and stood alone beside the window, where Dr. Mays joined him a few minutes later.

"Dr. Mays didn't remember that Lenny Bruce remark," I said.

Meredith continued to stare straight ahead, which was odd for her, I realized, since her tendency was always to glance toward me when I spoke.

"The one about the plateglass window," I added.

Her eyes shot over to me. "What?"

"You didn't hear it from Dr. Mays," I repeated.

Meredith glanced back into the adjoining room. "Well, I heard it from somebody," she said absently.

"Maybe from Rodenberry," I suggested. "Dr. Mays says he's very funny."

"Yes, he is," Meredith said. Her eyes glittered briefly, then dimmed, as if a shadowy thought had skirted through her mind. "He'll be good with Keith" was all she said.

We left the party a couple of hours later, driving more or less silently back to our house. The light was on in Keith's room, but we didn't go up or call him or make any effort to find out if he was really there. Such surveillance would only have struck him as yet more proof that I thought him a criminal, and his mood had become far too volatile to incite any such added resentment.

And so we simply watched television for an hour, then went to bed. Meredith tried to read for a while, but before too long she slipped the book onto the floor beside the bed, then twisted away from me and promptly fell asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. I thought about Keith and Meredith, of course, but increasingly my thoughts returned me to my first family—Warren's story of the insurance man with the odd questions, the strange remark my father had made, his bitter assertion that I had no idea about my mother.

Could that be true? I wondered. Could it be true that I had never known my mother? Or my father? That Warren, for all our growing up together, remained essentially an enigma?

I got up, walked to the window, and peered out into the tangled, night-bound woods. In my mind, I saw the car that had brought Keith home that night, its phantom driver behind the wheel, a figure who suddenly seemed to me no less mysterious than my son, my wife, my father and mother and brother, mere shadows, dark and indefinable.

"Eric?"

It was Meredith's voice.

I turned toward the bed but couldn't see her there.

"Something wrong?"

"No, nothing," I told her, grateful that I hadn't turned on the light, since, had she seen me, she would have known it was a lie.