Chapter 1
October 1968
Towering elms line the wide pathways crisscrossing the University of Buffalo’s campus: autumnal reds, vibrant oranges, translucent yellows all set against a brilliant blue sky. The wind whips up, happily swirling the colorful leaves with each gust. Students hurry in every direction.
The commotion of the students arriving in their lecture halls is soon replaced by quiet as they blot out their preceding thoughts and prepare to get to work. For the lucky few this is much like the eager silence of a concert hall as the performer is set to begin. For others, quiet will soon become imprisonment. For the next hour they must not make a sound. Or drift so far away that they enter never-never land.
Like the other lecture rooms Mitchell Hall is overheated, its steam radiators hiss while water bleeds at the rusted knobs. Hoping to combat student torpor, an enormous central window has been swung open so that crisp October air blows in. That window frames a majestic maple tree which has turned a spectacular scarlet as it does every October. Today, at least, there is an even better reason for the students to stay alert. Twenty-eight-year-old teaching assistant Jeremy Slater is soon on a roll.
Every campus had one in the sixties—a teacher who could excite his students with his ideas and passion. Cynics have compared Jeremy to a rock star. So, have admirers.
Jeremy’s hazel eyes glimmer and glow whenever his discoveries hit their mark. When he gets going, ideas keep popping out of his head. One thought stimulates the next and then the next. Riff after riff in a rhythm.
Sitting off to the side, CC belongs to him. She’s gotten prettier and prettier, but now, in her senior year, she has blossomed into a beauty. Her ginger hair, streaked blond by the summer’s sun, frames her emerald eyes. They have a hint of sadness in them. But each time Jeremy hits a sweet spot they sparkle.
CC’s eyes dropped to the ground the first time they met Jeremy’s. In the worst way she wanted to hold his eyes with hers, but she panicked. She is hopeful she can overcome that. He wants the same thing. But he doesn’t dare. Carol, his wife, owns this part of him.
With the class full, and his mind crystal clear, this is the closest Jeremy has ever come to living out his dreams. Fantasies rarely become actual, but when they do, danger seems to disappear. He knows he is scoring again and again. Especially today. Everything has come together.
Pointing in CC’s direction, a classmate whispers to the student next to her, “Look at CC.”
She smiles. “I know, .”
“Look at Professor Slater!”
The two students have big, knowing, sarcastic grins on their faces as they watch CC and Jeremy. It doesn’t entirely erase their envy.
Jeremy writes “WITTGENSTEIN” on the board. Emphasizing the V pronunciation in Wittgenstein, he speaks dramatically.
“You have to understand. Ludwig Wittgenstein placed truth above any other human quality. To many people, how truth is valued isn’t important. Most decide to pursue it to whatever extent they choose. He didn’t have this freedom. Meaning, he’d be seized with doubt. An alarm would go off in his head whenever an idea seemed untrue.”
Imitating Wittgenstein, Jeremy shouts, “No!”
He looks around the room.
“No!” he repeats theatrically, as if on stage.
Jeremy continues. “A conclusion, agreed upon by everyone else, including himself three minutes before, suddenly has become dubious. Wittgenstein was particularly sensitive to the power that groups of people have, to capture other people’s agreement, the pressure they put on others to go along with them, not least because he was as likely as anyone else to do precisely that.”
Jeremy’s voice rises. “But suddenly Professor Wittgenstein would snap out of it, recognize that he’d been duped. What he had thought was true wasn’t true at all. He was seized by doubt.”
Jeremy faces the class. His eyes move from student to student as he speaks. Then, they rest on CC. Her shyness, which ordinarily protects her, is dissolving. Every word, even Jeremy’s hesitations, works its way through her, singing in a rhythm that is becoming rapturous. Having arrived, his eyes remain on her as he continues his lecture, gripping her with every syllable.
“He was a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University. He never wrote a book. The world eventually learned about him from his students’ notes which were published later on. But without acclaim from the usual places, his reputation was remarkable. Those who listened to his lectures knew he was the real thing. Other Cambridge philosophy professors would sit in at his classes, hoping to harvest his ideas. Bertrand Russell called him ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius.’”
Still carried away, Jeremy continues. “Who was this man?” Jeremy asks, walking around the room, pausing in front of the blazing maple which seems to smolder with his words. He hesitates, allowing his question to resonate. “Sometimes,” Jeremy says, dropping his voice so the students need to lean in to listen, “sometimes during a class, Wittgenstein suddenly dropped what he was talking about. He’d moan, ‘Idiot!’ This wasn’t theatrics. Wittgenstein felt like an idiot.”
Jeremy hesitates for the class to savor that thought.
“A monumental battle was taking place inside Wittgenstein. What he had intended to say no longer made sense to him. His doubts had gained the upper hand. The remarkable thing is that his misgivings didn’t issue from the challenge of a listener, but from his own doubts.”
Jeremy takes a deep breath before continuing.
“Ordinarily people don’t do this. Not in public. They don’t doubt themselves that way. It can be crippling. The mind is meant to function quietly. We are confident enough of our ideas that we don’t have to go over them a second and third time. We possess them. They possess us. When challenged, we can usually hold on to them, even if a bit of doubt creeps in. Perhaps it is stubbornness or laziness, or we may simply be unwilling to abandon such a nice comfortable place in our mind. We don’t seek the unknown. Man is not a rational creature. He is a rationalizing creature, and no one knew this better than Wittgenstein who refused to submit to the tidal pull of consonance at any cost. Challenges from others are the last thing we need. Perhaps that is why we join groups with basically the same ideas as ours.”
Jeremy again stops, letting his silence speak. Then he cries out: “Not Wittgenstein!”
He looks around the room. Once again, his eyes stop at CC.
“Being in a state of doubt can be fascinating. Hamlet, which many consider the greatest play ever written, is all about doubt. We empathize with Hamlet’s discomfort. We wait to see what he will do. But no one wants to be like Hamlet, a frenzied soul tortured by his confusion, on a pathway to self-destruction. We try to end doubt as soon as we experience it.”
“It isn’t just us. When we see doubt in others, it’s unpleasant. Like they are lost. Anguish is best kept private.”
Again, Jeremy gives a bit of time for his thoughts to be digested, then continues.
“So you would think Professor Wittgenstein would lose his audience when he would lose his way . . .,” Jeremy calls out happily. “But it was just the opposite!”
Jeremy stares at one student, then the next, energetically as if he is building to a crescendo.
“The students in Wittgenstein’s classroom were mesmerized by the process. He led them wherever he was going. He wondered how, until then, he had not seen his mistake. He had an unusual talent. He could cogently present the problem he was having. He could turn himself inside out and retain every trace of dignity. More than that. It was a kind of courage. He was proud of his uncertainty. He trumpeted it. He’d dissect what did and did not make sense, as if cognitions were a fascinating puzzle.”
Jeremy looks in CC’s direction, their eyes now quickly lock. Self-consciously, she breaks it off. He is still there when her eyes return.
“So, in the end, his public self-doubt was a kind of strength. It was part of what drew the professors. They knew all too well where he was. They, too, were often stymied. Most had run out of ideas long ago, not a good thing when you are in the idea business.
“It was the way Wittgenstein went about it. His students recollected his previous encounters with confusion. And because again and again the answer would materialize, not knowing could be relished, suspense that was about to be resolved. Out of thin air, like magic, Wittgenstein would come up with a new way of looking at a problem that just a moment before had stymied him. The cavalry arrived just in time.”
Swept up by his momentum, in his excitement, Jeremy is now staring almost exclusively at CC, as if he is speaking to her and her alone. The other students are aware of this, but they did not take Jeremy’s course to be given lessons in proper professorial behavior. He has a reputation.
Nor does it seem unusual that someone as beautiful as CC would pull a lecturer’s eyes. Everywhere she goes, eyes are drawn to her.
Jeremy continues. “Logical Positivism, when it was new, was able to answer a lot of questions that had long perplexed philosophers. The name had a ring to it, like existentialism, which had captivated the French and German philosophers. But logical positivism was quintessentially English. Good English words describing philosophers’ most noble virtues. The power of logic, of robust reasoning. Having the certainty of mathematics. Ever forward to the next challenge. No artsy-fartsy French poetry junking up the English mind.”
Jeremy walks back and forth in the front of the lecture hall. He’s teaching a course in literature, not philosophy, but he indulges himself with this lecture every year.
He continues. “Everyone was excited by Logical Positivism. They thought they had finally reached the ultimate answer, offering final proofs and the promise of more. With the power of this new tool one after another philosophical paradoxes were dissolving. Does God exist? If you followed logical positivism’s logic, the answer was clear. Asking questions where no proof is possible was a meaningless proposition. That was the magical word, meaningless, dismissing the unknowable as neither true nor false but as meaningless.”
Jeremy again hesitates for effect.
“It was great for a while. But then the party was over. They were back to square one. Logical positivism led to a serious contradiction. They had painted themselves into a corner. It is absurd to dismiss meaningful questions as meaningless by inventing rules. Somehow all of this was written about in a way that left everyone perplexed. The logic and complexity of philosophical treatises on the subject were enormous and practically incomprehensible. No one, not even those in the world-renowned Cambridge University Philosophy Department, could think his way out of the trap. Not even brilliant Dr. Wittgenstein.
“What was Wittgenstein’s solution? He quit philosophy. He became a hospital orderly, then a gardener. He never mentioned to his coworkers that he had been a professor at Cambridge. For ten years, no one heard a word about him, or from him.
“Then one day he reappeared. He had discovered a way out of the trap. He founded a branch of philosophy called ‘ordinary language philosophy.’ Basically, pleased by the irony, he said that philosophers should study how ordinary people communicate. That was the way out of their puzzlement.”
Smiling broadly, Jeremy continues. “In other words, the study of philosophy, all the years spent carefully defining, clarifying, refocusing – driven by a powerful need to get at the truth— was not the way to get there. The language of ordinary people—gardeners, hospital orderlies, his colleagues for the last decade—held the real answer. Cutting flowers or pushing a gurney undoes the paradox.
“The professors loved it.”
Jeremy windmills his arm as if he is swinging a scythe.
“It was a coup de grâce to the steel certainties that had been their bulwark against confusion, that had kept them focused, but which no longer functioned. They had been imprisoned by logic and precise language.”
As Jeremy continues there is a musical quality, imbued with conviction. He loves this part of his talk… “Among philosophers, a convincing new paradigm is as exciting as the discovery of the New World—fresh, beautiful, new thoughts, unhindered by doubt.”
“If it were a soccer match, they would have put him on their shoulders for scoring the winning goal. If he were. . . What’re the words to that song?” Jeremy’s face lights up. “Rudolph! The red-nosed reindeer.” He starts to sing it. “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. . .”
CC’s head spins appreciatively—a childhood song amalgamated with philosophy at the most profound level. Her delight brings the comfort of an epiphany. She still remembers when true was true, before becoming complicated by further elaboration.
“As Rudolph went down in history… That’s what happened to Wittgenstein.”
He repeats his name in her mind as if it were a magical word. “Wittgenstein!”
The bell rings. Some students file out. Others swarm around the lectern. Jeremy’s eyes have not stopped wandering to CC as she gets her things together. Books pressed against her breasts, CC attempts to seem businesslike as she approaches him, but her eagerness isn’t hard to discern as she joins Jeremy’s entourage at the front of the classroom. She waits patiently as, one by one, he answers the questions of the students. When he is finished and they have left, he turns to CC. Like her, he is not very successful at appearing calm and collected.
“You seemed interested in Wittgenstein,” he says as casually as he can.
“My brother Mark talks a lot about him.”
“Really. What did he tell you?”
“How he came from one of the richest families in Europe.”
“True.”
“How he gave away all his money. Every penny.”
“He was extremely intense and impulsive,” says Jeremy. “All of his brothers were, too. His father tried to educate the impulsivity away. He was a titan of the steel industry. He hoped to prepare at least one of his boys to step into his shoes. But he failed. They went in the opposite direction, totally uninterested in business. They did, however, absorb one quality from him.” Jeremy’s tone of voice changes. “He was incredibly exacting.”
He stops, letting what he is saying sink in. CC is excited; exchanging stolen looks was one thing, his exclusive attention another. She and her brother Mark have thrown ideas at each other quite a lot, even been excited as the ideas flew back and forth, but this was her professor, on a whole different level.
“Imagine this. Paul, Ludwig’s brother, was practicing on one of the seven grand pianos in the Wittgenstein’s mansion when he suddenly shouted at Ludwig in the next room, ‘I cannot play when you are in the house. I feel your skepticism seeping. . . from under the door!… Each of the brothers felt continually scrutinized. Ludwig was lucky. As a philosophy professor, he had found a good outlet. But that feeling, of being scrutinized, is a sickness, paranoia. Being alone with self-doubt is a plague. Three of his brothers committed suicide.”
“Jesus.”
“Not Jesus. Jewish. By other people’s standards, he was enormously successful, the star professor in the world’s finest philosophy department. Yet he continually felt like a failure, incapable of meeting his own standards.
“Geniuses frequently have that quality. Jascha Heifetz would practice his violin until his fingers felt like they were falling off. And then he would practice another two hours. What he heard coming from his violin again and again sounded wonderful, but there were always a few notes that weren’t wonderful enough. Perfect moments would not suffice. He wanted perfection throughout.
“Fortunately, despite his dissatisfaction, he liked to perform in front of audiences. He was a bit of a peacock. He bathed in his audience’s adulation, even if he believed he could do better.
“Vladimir Horowitz wasn’t so lucky. Despite ecstatic reviews, despite rapturous responses from his audiences, he repeatedly lost confidence that he could get where he felt he had to be. He couldn’t perform from 1953 to 1965. It’s happening again. He’s stopped playing in public.”
“You think that is Jewish?”
“Well—”
“My brother told me Wittgenstein wasn’t Jewish.”
“He was raised a strict Catholic by his mother. But his father was Jewish and his mother’s father was Jewish. That’s where the problem came from.”
“You really think it was being Jewish?”
Jeremy appreciates her challenge.
He smiles. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m probably over generalizing. I’m not just talking about an exclusively Jewish quality. People who know Akira Kurosawa, the Japanese film director, say that despite the masterpieces he keeps producing, he often talks about how he isn’t measuring up. Not one of his movies has come close to what he expects of himself. . . Partly it’s about being Japanese. Only the emperor is entitled to be godly, meaning perfect. . . But he doesn’t allow himself that expectation. He’s got a bad case of expecting it from himself, trying to get there. The glass may always be half empty. His job is to fill it. He doesn’t understand anything else. Did you see Woman in the Dunes? They had it here at the festival.”
“No.”
“It’s about this guy who is trapped in a large sand pit. He must get rid of the sand that has encroached on his house from the night before, or it will be engulfed. So, each day, while it is daylight, he digs the sand away.
“It returns as he sleeps. The cycle never ends. Eventually, he becomes resigned to his fate. For the existentialists, that acceptance is what matters.
“We’ll be reading The Myth of Sisyphus in two weeks. Sisyphus uses every ounce of his strength to push a boulder up a hill. If he stops, it will roll back and crush him. Each time he gets to the top of the hill, the boulder tumbles back to the bottom, and Sisyphus must start over. That is the human condition. The existentialists thought they had the answer. Choose to do what you must do. By making it a choice, you are in charge.”
Skeptical that existentialists have found the answer, Jeremy exhibits the smile of his tribe, the perennial doubting Jew.
“Eh?”
Without self-consciousness, appreciating his manner, from some ancient part of herself, CC smiles, touching Jeremy’s arm affectionately. He is so much like her brother Mark, she happily decides.
She imitates him. “Eh?”
He laughs.
Jeremy continues: “Existentialists think choosing to do what you gotta do puts you in charge. I don’t know how that’s a victory. It doesn’t change that you gotta do it.”
“My brother Jay does everything he’s expected to do. It never occurs to him not to do it. Yet he feels very much in charge of his life.”
“That’s one solution. . . It’s got to be boring. But . . .” He looks into her eyes. “Wittgenstein really fascinates you, doesn’t he?”
“He does.”
“Do you have a class now?”
CC glances at her watch. “Not until two-thirty.”
“Let’s go to my office.”
CC follows Jeremy out of the classroom, then through a series of corridors. Both she and he are aware of the possibilities of privacy… As they walk along, repeatedly they smile at each other expectantly. For CC this is with trepidation.
Jeremy’s office is a hole in the wall with books piled high on his desk. He clears books off a chair for CC to sit.
“So, what is it about Wittgenstein?” she asks.
“It isn’t that complicated. He was a genius. His thought went where no one else was going.”
“You’re into geniuses?”
“Everybody is into geniuses.”
“A genius?” she counters. “What is that? I never thought about it until college. My idea of a stupendous human being was John Lennon. My other brother, Mark, was into Tom Seaver. They’re no geniuses.”
“They’re stars. That’s what I meant.”
Mark told me last year, Seaver had a great year.”
“He did.” Jeremy adds.
“My brother is a big Mets fan. Before Seaver, it was Duke Snider and Bill Sharman.”
Once again agreement. “Sharman had a sweet jump shot. A perfect jump shot. It was magic.” Jeremy crumbles a piece of paper, leaps and shoots from over his head. It lands in the waste basket. “Swish,” he croons triumphantly.
“You’re just like him!” CC observes, pleased with her discovery “Until midway through high school, Mark was all about athletics. Then all of a sudden Mark’s hero became Ludwig Wittgenstein.”
“It is kind of amazing that we have the same heroes” Jeremy adds, pleased by the link up. Even the part about Duke Snider. “Did you ever see Duke Snider play?” he asks CC.
“I was too young.”
“Those somersault shoestring catches. Ballet. Not every time, but you see him do it once and it gets fixed in your memory. No one had ever done that before. No one since. You never saw him do it?”
“No.” Mark hadn’t mentioned shoestring catches. Their conversation is making her uneasy. “Does someone have to be a genius for you to be interested in them?”
“You want the truth or bullshit?”
“The truth.”
“The truth is, that’s what matters to me. The truth? I mostly ignore people unless they are very special. I can fake it. I do fake it, but—”
“So that eliminates nine tenths of the human race, all of us ordinary people.”
“Are you serious? Did you ever look in the mirror?”
She is pleased but uncomfortable. Looks are such a fragile commodity. When she was 16, she had bad acne for half the year. Her mother was helpful and sympathetic, but CC sensed the truth. Her mother hated her, hated to look at her, like she was a gruesome pathetic monster, as if it was her fault. CC is 98% sure there will be no recurrence of her acne but her uncertainty about how good she is looking will probably remain with her ‘til her dying day.
Jeremy is in quite a different place.
Enthusiastically he shouts at her. “There is a mirror on the wall. Take a look at yourself.” He loves the way she looks.
She barely glimpses. Her embarrassment has now fully taken over. Jeremy’s flirting this way seriously flusters her.
“It must be hard on your wife. You expect her to be perfect? Does that make her one of the nobodies that aren’t worth your interest?
“She says I’m a baby. I’m into heroes like a ten-year-old. She’s waiting for me to grow up.”
“Is she right?”
Jeremy shrugs. “I’m sure she is. But I am who I am. Even if I could change it, I wouldn’t. Doesn’t matter. I can’t.”
“Most people find a way to be satisfied.”
“Most people live a lie.”
She doesn’t know what to say. It may be true but so what. Besides they may not have to lie. Maybe they don’t have to be a somebody. CC says nothing.
He’s still on a roll. “By the way, this Sunday I’m having a barbecue. Several students are coming. You’re invited.”
Chapter 2
The Barbecue
It is Sunday afternoon in late October. With the long, gray Buffalo winter ahead, Jeremy and his wife, Carol, are thrilled that it is still warm enough outside for a barbecue. Their home is modest, but lit by the sunshine, the fall colors surrounding their yard are sparkling. It is a pallet of perfection. Both of them grew up indoors—apartment houses in Brooklyn—museums their only bits of beauty. A backyard in the country is as exciting to them as Prospect Park.
Jeremy is manning the charcoal, Carol’s setting up the table. Just under five-four, slightly chunky, but pretty. Not striking. Pretty. Carol has cider colored hair and wonderful delft blue eyes. Today she is full of fire. She brings out a pitcher of iced tea. Then she returns to the house and comes out with napkins and paper plates.
“I think I hear Alyosha crying,” she yells to Jeremy. “Lately, he’s only been napping half an hour.”
Jeremy frowns. “I was counting on two-hours.” Disappointments like this can sometimes turn into irritation but not today. Since Jeremy’s moment in the office with CC his life seems to be moving along wonderfully. It’s full steam ahead. He’s been waiting for today all week.
It is hard for Carol to ignore Jeremy’s excitement, but she has managed so far.
“He’s just fussing. I’ll be back,” Carol yells to Jeremy as she makes her way to Alyosha, her eighteen-month-old treasure. In his sleep, he’s whimpering. Every once in a while, he screams angrily into his blanket before returning to slumber. Tiptoeing, Carol moves forward, watching him without being seen. She moves quickly to the crib, gently takes his hand. Softly, she sings, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
She needs only one line. Singing the song to herself he hardly whimpers when she leaves,
“If you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it—”
Returning outside, her singing stops abruptly as her eyes are drawn to CC, who has arrived with three other students, two males and one other female. She is startled by CC’s beauty, frightened by its implications.
Each offers her a hand as their name is called.
“Carol, this is CC, Deborah, Gabriel. You know my cousin Jeff.”
Jeff has brought a football. Jeremy grabs it.
“Go long, Jeff.”
Jeffrey takes off. Perry, their Lab, runs alongside, barking. Jeremy throws a perfect spiral, which Jeff catches without breaking stride. As the catch is made, Jeremy glances quickly at CC. Carol notices.
“Now you, Gabriel.”
Once again, a perfect pass and once again Jeremy steals a look at CC, but this time he is aware that Carol is watching him. CC also notices. Her eyes drop to the ground.
When they are finished eating, sitting around on the patio, Jeremy takes out a joint. Carol isn’t happy that he’s brought out pot in front of the students, but she says nothing. He passes it around. Carol takes only one hit, refusing a second. “Someone’s got to function,” she says.
She cleans up while the others stare into space. As the afternoon winds down, CC approaches Carol shyly. “Can I help?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got it under control.”
CC nevertheless clears the dishes from the table and follows Carol inside.
“You took the bus, right? No one’s going to be driving stoned?”
“Right.”
“Okay.”
Carol forces a smile.
“Are you a junior?”
“Senior.”
She holds up her hand, shows her middle finger crossed over her index finger for good luck. “Hopefully, I’ll graduate in June.”
“Oh, come on. Jeremy tells me you’re smart.”
“He’s talked about me?”
“When he told me who was coming.” She hesitates. “You’re a senior—ready to take on the cold, cruel world?”
“Not yet. Going to school for social work after this, although my father tells me I should be a lawyer. Says I think like one.”
“Do you?”
“I can get like that sometimes,” she says shyly. “I was on the debating team in high school. But I’ve already been accepted at Columbia for social work.”
“That’s a good school. Are you going home? Did you grow up in the city?”
“When I was young, we lived in Queens.”
“Where in Queens?”
“Kew Gardens Hills. Actually, Simon and Garfunkel grew up there.”
“Did they?”
“Art Garfunkel always makes it seem like he is from Forest Hills. I think he was embarrassed. Kew Gardens Hills was on the wrong side of the tracks from Forest Hills. But all of their songs about home—that was Kew Gardens Hills.”
“Were your parents embarrassed?”
“Not really. They saw it as a step up from Brooklyn. On the way to Great Neck.”
“So what was Kew Gardens Hills like?”
“I was very young but I remember there were always a lot of kids outside. It beats Great Neck by a mile in that regard. Those garden apartments– my parents thought they were nicer than apartment houses.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Well, not really. Five of us lived in four rooms, and we couldn’t afford much of anything. My parents slept in the living room on a Castro convertible.”
“That’s no fun.”
“My father went to law school at night, and by the time I was four, my family made it to Great Neck. How about you?”
“I’m from Brooklyn all the way,” Carol says proudly, ignoring CC’s earlier put-down.
“I don’t really know Brooklyn. My mom and dad are both from there.” CC tells her.
“Did you ever see where they grew up?”
“My mom took me once to Fortunoff in Brownsville. It looked pretty dangerous. This one guy approached the car looking for money. My mom had us lock the doors. That’s about it.”
“I was in the good part of Brooklyn, Bay Ridge.” Carol tells her. “There were no muggings. Jeremy’s parents grew up somewhere nearby, Manhattan Beach, I think near Sheepshead Bay.”
“You don’t know?” CC asks.
“Jeremy’s origins can get confusing.”
“He’s never taken you to where he grew up?” CC asks.
“Not really.” Carol answers
“How come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s Sheepshead Bay? CC asks.
“You really don’t know?” Carol asks, surprised that people in the suburbs know so little of the city.
“What do you know about Long Island?” CC retorts
“Nothing. That’s a whole different world.”
“You weren’t curious about Brooklyn?” Carol asks.
“I guess not. Brownsville scared me.”
“So how are you going to be a social worker? You can’t just stay in your office.”
CC shrugs. “Maybe I will be a lawyer. I just don’t like the bad mood my father came home with after work. And I really do want to make the world a better place.”
“If you can do something like that it would be nice.”
Despite Carol’s suspicions about CC, a bond is forming between them. The marijuana has loosened their tongues, undermined their distrust.
“Jeremy’s mentioned you a few times. I was wondering what you would look like.”
“Am I what you expected?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Jeremy may seem like he is ruled by his brain, but he’s a typical guy. His hormones are in charge. He gets a certain look when he talks about particular students.”
CC is pleased she has been mentioned by Jeremy, less pleased that Carol sees her as a rival.
“We were both undergrads at Penn,” Carol tells CC. “It’s funny. Even when he was a student, he liked to lecture. He has so many ways of looking at things.”
“He gets so carried away by his ideas,” CC gushes, which Carol notices.
“When I met him, he wanted to be a rock star. He loves being on stage,” Carol says.
CC smiles happily. “Was he any good?”
Carol shrugs.
“He probably wasn’t good enough. His band went nowhere. But he needs to be center stage. I think he has found his thing.”
Carol continues. “When he gets going, he can be a real turn-on. Like his hero, Wittgenstein. I assume he’s spoken about Wittgenstein?”
“He has. He just gave that lecture.”
“He has that lecture perfected. . .. It’s very polished. He may have wanted to grow up to be Duke Snider, but now he wants to grow up to be Ludwig Wittgenstein. Certified Genius. Were you wowed?”
CC blushes.
“Don’t worry. I remember how irresistible he was when he got all excited about some big thought.” Carol grimaces. “But now—”
“He doesn’t do that to you anymore?”
“I’ve heard his shpiels a thousand times.”
“I can’t imagine it getting old.”
“Believe me, everything gets old. His thing with ideas is like an addiction. He has to have them. Like food. Happy when he’s got a new one, grouchy when there’s not enough. Fortunately, he has other qualities.”
“Like what?”
“He enjoys being Peck’s bad boy. He won’t win any awards for being a responsible adult, but he’s actually a nice guy.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s plenty. There is very little cruelty in him. Insensitivity, yes—there is a lot of that. He thinks about himself too much. But intentional cruelty—no. In a marriage, kindness is what counts. If he could just get his head on straight and finish his dissertation, we’d be in a good place.”
“His dissertation is a problem?”
Carol swallows hard. “Big problem. The fact that Wittgenstein hardly published anything has been a perfect excuse. Jeremy can’t just get it done and get his damn doctorate. Anything less than a masterpiece would be humiliating to him.” Carol laughs as she finishes.
CC smiles approvingly. “I like that he aims so high.”
“I know that sounds heroic, but the other side of it is that it leads to deep fears. The professors in the English department are nationally known. It’s an unusually creative department. I don’t know why they’re here, but right now U of B’s English department is hot. It’s attracted top talent—John Barth, Leslie Fiedler. That’s what drew Jeremy.
But the competition is ferocious. High expectations make daily life difficult. If he were training for the Olympics, that would be one thing. Everyone understands that kind of glory, the ups and downs of trying to be the best. But this is worse. Athletes know when they have won or lost. Jeremy can never tell where he stands. One minute, he believes he is a genius. . . .” Her voice rises. “The next, he’s a nobody. Do you know Dr. Miller?”
“The chairman?”
“He believes Jeremy is extremely gifted. Dr. Miller has said something to me.”
“That must be exciting.”
“Yes and no.”
“Why no?”
“Because several of the faculty members treat him like he’s a jerk. Don’t know if they are jealous, or think Jeremy is too full of himself. But when he has had contact with his supervisors, nine times out of ten he comes home deflated. Fortunately for him, soon enough, he begins to believe he’s the next Wittgenstein again. Round and round he goes, loop de loop.”
“Still, it’s exciting.”
“He needs to outgrow his grandiosity and just get his damn doctorate done.”
“I didn’t realize there’s so much pressure on him.”
“It galls him that he’s not there yet. Thinks he deserves in, on the basis of all the great ideas he has. Dr. Miller and a couple of other senior faculty members actually do find his ideas exciting, which is very nice, but everything hinges on his dissertation. And that’s not working so well. It’s not easy to knock off a masterpiece.”
“So, he’s given up?”
“Are you kidding? He has the energy of a madman. Over a week he’ll write twenty, sometimes fifty pages. Good pages. I’ve read them. Great pages. But by midweek, he’s doesn’t like them. He tears them up. He thinks that makes him Wittgenstein because he did the same thing. I remind him Wittgenstein didn’t have a wife and kid.”
“So, all that talk about geniuses—he thinks he’s one?”
“Half the time. The other half—don’t ask. He knows how stupid it sounds to others, how stupid it is to think that way, and when he believes it, he’s a handful. They used to tease him in high school. Called him ‘Pompose.’ For pomposity. And that’s when he wanted to make it with his band. He’s already figured out the perfect defense. If not in this life, then after he’s gone, someone will discover him.”
“He’s said all that?”
“No, but we were watching this movie about van Gogh, how he never sold a painting when he was alive.”
“Really?”
“Not a single one. Jeremy got all choked up. I asked him about it. He said it was nothing. The movie just made him sad. But the way he cried . . .” Carol wipes a tear. “Boy, I just had one puff of the marijuana.”
“So, he has delusions of grandeur?”
“Right after college, he had something published in the Yale Review but nothing since. I don’t really think it’s delusions of grandeur. He’s able to laugh about it with me. But whatever that genius thing is, Jeremy’s got a bad case of it. I swear. He thinks geniuses are the only people that truly belong on Earth. Everyone else is taking up space. That’s one side of it. Then, suddenly, he’ll hate every word he’s ever written. He fears he’s ordinary. Being average scares him. He thinks I wouldn’t love him. No one would. Which is so crazy.”
“You’re saying he’s really screwed up.”
“Yes, in his way. Mind you, everyone is nuts when you really get to know them. Jeremy is Jeremy. He’s just a guy. He talks up a storm, but I still see this college kid. Both of us were kids when we met. . .. You’re Jewish, right?”
“Yes,” CC answers
“A lot of Jewish men are like him. Very ambitious. Can’t imagine their life as not getting to the top. Nervous as hell that they’re not up to it, that they’re a nobody. That’s what Jeremey talks about a lot. Being a genius or being a nobody. Nothing in between.
“Still, I think it’s exciting.”
“Maybe, but it’s not easy to have irrational standards. You’re either gold or you’re gone. It’s hard to be around.”
“Must be.”
“I’m not complaining. Well, I guess I am. But it doesn’t matter. I love him.” Carol stops for a moment. “I guess it’s his vulnerability. There’s a look he gets. I can feel his pain. My mother thinks I’m crazy. But I can’t help it.”
“You’re saying having an ambitious husband is no fun.”
“This is way beyond ambition. The genius thing . . . I’ll admit it can lead to accomplishments, but over the last year—his time is running out to get his dissertation finally done. We’re not having a good time. If we can just get through this crisis, then I could put up with my genius husband.”
“Do you save the pages he throws away?”
“I should. If he ever gets to where he thinks he belongs, they will be worth something.” Carol stops, listens carefully. “I hear Alyosha. You want to meet him?”
CC smiles. “Absolutely.”
Carol takes CC to his room. Carol bends over and, sliding her hands beneath the baby’s armpits, gently lifts him from his crib. She sniffs his bottom in the no nonsense way of a mother at work, smooths back his bangs sweaty from sleep and then hands him to CC with such tenderness and trust that an ache CC never knew she had, steams straight up from CC’s heart. CC’s had practice with her brother Jay’s little boy, but she’s never reacted like this. CC moves the baby back and forth, curled in the crook of her arm. “Aly-o-sha.” Happily smiling, she half sings, half whispers in a melody, holding him, still singing in mostly a murmur. CC follows Carol into the kitchen, then outside, a rising moon is pierced to the side of the sky. She feels as if she has joined the family, then vaguely feels guilty for picturing herself in Carol’s place.
* * *
Early evening, CC is on the pay phone in a small alcove in the second-floor dorm lounge talking quietly, trying to keep her conversation private. Fortunately, there is only one other person in the lounge, CC’s friend Brittany, unlikely to gossip.
Mark, her brother, is in his Dwight Street apartment in Berkeley, phone in hand, spread out on the couch.
“Mark,” CC says, “come on.”
“The last three times we’ve talked, we’ve ended up talking about Jeremy.”
In his appearance, Mark has matured into the male version of CC, unusually handsome, almost pretty. His eyes are a beautiful green color like CC’s, a light in his gruffly unshaven face, the style in Berkeley. His gestures are robust, almost exaggeratedly so. He speaks with a deliberately aggressive edge that took him time to cultivate as he struggled to bury his childhood softness and emerge as his version of a man. It was automatic, as it is for many guys. At a certain point, junior high for most, being a sissy is not allowed in the company of the other boys. Despite his effort, he can’t altogether cancel out what is behind his bluff, a still-delicate soul rooted in a certain softness from childhood, when he was allowed to seek solace in the folds of a woman’s apron. Country Joe and the Fish can be heard playing in the background.
“Mark, he’s married. He has a one-year-old son.”
He teases, “I know you, CC.”
Almost swooning, she replies, “I’ll admit,” CC says slowly, “he’s the most brilliant man I’ve ever met.”
CC looks Brittany’s way, fearful that she has heard something. She hasn’t. She’s laughing away at the Jackie Gleason show on TV.
Mark’s picked up on CC’s swoon.
“CC, you’re in love,” Mark teases. “You’re in love. That’s what it is.”
She grits her teeth. “It’s not so simple. I like his wife a lot. Someone said she has lupus. I could never do that to her.”
“Strange coincidence. You’ve got myasthenia, and he’s flirting with you. Does he know?”
“I don’t know how he would.” Then, after thinking it over she adds, “Maybe.”
“Myasthenia is not a small thing.”
“No comparison. You can get really sick from lupus. You can die.”
“There’s a tiny chance, but so could you. Your Jeremy has a thing about rescuing sick gals.”
“I don’t think he even knows I have myasthenia.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know who knows, who doesn’t know. I don’t talk about it. Hardly ever.”
“Telling you—this guy loves to rescue damsels in distress.”
“Mark, let’s keep it simple. He’s married.”
“Big shit.”
“He talks a lot about Wittgenstein. Your hero.”
Mark’s very pleased, “What about him?”
“How Wittgenstein demanded so much of himself. Jeremy’s got the same problem. Everything has to be one-in-a-million good, or he can’t go with it. He’s like you.”
“I’m not like that.”
“Since when?”
“Give me a break.”
“Anyway. There are problems. He hasn’t even finished his dissertation and its overdue. According to his wife, several professors in the English department love him, but they can only extend the deadline for so long. Some hate him. They can’t stand his self-importance. His time is running out. Carol’s worried that—”
“Carol?”
“His wife. If he doesn’t get it done by this summer, they’re going to cut him loose. He’s feeling incredible pressure.”
“She told you all that?”
“More or less. We were stoned.”
“Oh.”
Mark is pleased that CC is still smoking dope, in his mind, happy that he turned her on to one of life’s treasures.
CC continues: “Jeremy worries a lot about the upcoming deadline for his dissertation. Practically every night he can’t sleep. Lately, nothing comforts him.”
In a boasting tone, Mark proclaims, “Me, Jeremy, and Wittgenstein.”
She teases him affectionately. “Yeah. You like to make things ten times harder than they have to be.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“What’s there to get? How to be crazy?”
“You think Jeremy and I are crazy?”
“And Wittgenstein!”
“You think we are crazy?”
CC doesn’t answer. She’s pleased that she has gotten under Mark’s skin. He’s pleased that she is in love with someone that is so much like himself.
Chapter 3
They Meet Again
A week later, after Jeremy’s class ends, CC helplessly follows Jeremy into his office without being asked.
“I liked Carol,” CC blurts out as soon as Jeremy swings the door shut behind them. CC notes that his office is a pathetic mess. And yet there is something glorious about the buildings of books, one piled so high on top of the other, threatening to topple at any second, a world incredibly fragile, undone by the simplest shove. He has hung over the bare light bulb that swings from a cord of black, a gorgeous fabric all shimmer and sheen, from India it seems, in teals and turquoises that cast colors everywhere. CC’s eyes, as if magnetically, are drawn to his crammed bookshelves where spines are printed with titles like Beyond God the Father and Logical Positivism and The Bloomsbury Group. Who, CC wonders, was The Bloomsbury Group. In her mind’s eye she sees hydrangea in shades of perfect pinks, their formed florets tilted towards the sap of the sun.
“Carol liked you.” Jeremy says. He reaches around CC and clicks the lock closed.
“Hopefully, we can get together again. Ever eat at Main Moon?” CC asks.
“The take-out place?”
“They have incredible dumplings. They have some tables. I go there a lot.” CC tells him.
“It’s not going to happen.” Jeremy answers, his voice suddenly switching to a dark tone. “Carol’s not happy about my friendship with you. When she heard you came to my office, she let me have it. She doesn’t want me seeing you here.”
“Something I did?”
“No. She likes you. It’s me. She doesn’t like the look I get when I mention you. Things heat up quickly if I even say your name.”
“She’s that jealous?”
“Not usually, but I think she has good reason.”
“What do you mean?”
Jeremy has a funny look on his face. He walks behind his desk, as if it might give him the stature or confidence he needs to do what he next does. He leans forward at the waist and gently brushes CC’’s bangs out of her eyes.
“You can’t figure that out?
He moves closer to her. CC doesn’t retreat. Jeremy tries to kiss her. CC turns her head away.
“Jeremy, no. Carol . . .”
But as he backs off, he can see the disappointment in her eyes. He tries to kiss her again. Her hand moves up quickly, covering her lips. He plants a kiss on her cheek, puts his arms around her in a fatherly way, but soon that becomes romantic, tensing her up. Nevertheless, he senses her resistance is losing its hold on her. Practically overcome with desire, he’s hoping her no will soon become yes. For a man beset with uncertainties, his confidence soon feels like a gush of gold. His persistence may be winning out. Although she’s afraid, her desire keeps interrupting her intention, which is to end it right here. Every time that happens, he senses it, as well as the opposite. At first her desire slipped through her armor. Now it’s taking over. She’s lost.
There’s a knock on the door. Sharp and short. They quickly disengage, straighten their clothes. Jeremy’s erection is poking into his pants. He sticks his hand in his crotch and directs his penis down to the floor. CC finds that funny. And exciting.
That night in bed, Jeremy tosses and turns, imagining the romance he has always yearned for. Carol notices his fervor but decides not to ask. Instead, she holds the baby close, brings him into bed.
That same night, CC lies in her bed, musing. The fantastic fabric. The pathetic piles of books in tentative towers on the verge of collapse. The titles, each one alluring. The press of them together, his signature scent, pine leaves and nervous sweat. In ten minutes, it will be midnight and her twenty-first birthday will begin. Her mother sent her the incredible sapphire stud earrings she always loved when her mother wore them. The studs had arrived in the afternoon. When CC opened the package, she was stunned, surprised her mother had noticed. CC had never said anything, but evidently her mother saw the way she looked at them.
Still, her mother loved those earrings. It’s not like her to be this generous. Too often her mother seems to ignore her about things like that. She’s not indifferent, CC’s relationship with her mother is of great importance to both of them. But her mother often lands up being on CC’s case, unhappy with one thing or another.
It’s not easy for her mother either. She doesn’t enjoy being a nudge. She didn’t enjoy the way her own mother use to bug her, but not all of that turned out harmful. Sometimes it is simply necessary. It is her job to make CC the best version of herself, to improve her enough to match her not unreasonable standards.
CC is not happy with this. Fair enough that what her mother does is in the service of her mother’s vision. Trying to get CC to where her mother considers a nice place. CC knows her mother’s intentions are good. Her mother is sure everything she wants CC to become is the fulfillment of her potential. Her mother comfortably believes this when all is going well, and CC seemingly goes along, but when they aren’t CC feels at the mercy of an incessant critic.
Trying the earrings on, CC gasps at their beauty, almost disbelieving what she is seeing. Then in the mirror she sees the rest of what is before her. Her face with the earrings. She looks lovely. CC likes what she sees, which is not the usual. With Jeremy now in the picture something has changed. The earrings are even more exciting than they had been when her mother wore them. She notices how blue they are in the lamplight, how bright. She turns to put one of them in the shade. She likes that color blue as well. She tries several other angles, turns off the light entirely. Enough light sneaks through from the dorm hallway light, to capture the depth of the sapphire’s blue, perhaps the most beautiful blue of all.
Her hand returns to fingering the one on her left ear. As she does so a wave of love for her mother settles within her. She doesn’t usually feel this way. It is a greater love than the one familiar to her on previous birthdays. Has she finally arrived, become the person her mother has all along longed for, the person she expects? Does this allow CC to love her mother back? For the moment the answer is yes.
Or is it that she really loves those earrings?
She keeps the earrings on in bed, to sleep with them. As soon as her covers have been pulled up and she has been able to be sucked into her pillow, her hands go to the sapphires, this time to both of them, touching them, squeezing them, rolling them, in part to confirm that they are truly hers. She enters the reverie before sleep that is hers almost every night. Her hand moves through her thick hair, buried in it, flowing back. Once, twice, a third time. Slowly… Then gathering it into her neck she puts a tiny soft pillow against it and presses. This usually puts her to sleep.
“Twenty-one” cries out in her thoughts. Thanks, Mom. She means it. But it is Jeremy’s kiss that now fills her mind and thrills her. The possibility of that ends a perfect day before her birthday.