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I am home from the drugstore with the Sunday paper and a dozen ballpoint
pens, all of them red. I leave the paper in the living room for Donna, and I am
halfway up the stairs to my den when I suddenly realize that today is an
anniversary. I return to the kitchen and pour two glasses of sherry. On this
date ten years ago, my wife and I and eleven hundred others filed into the
University of Minnesota football stadium and were given, with a full measure of
blessings and addresses, our degrees. We both were twenty-two at the time. The
principal speaker was a bishop who said that life was short.
Carrying the two wineglasses, I step out the back door into the sunshine.
Robbie, eight, is golfing across the lawn with my putter, digging up grass as he
goes along. Donna is on her knees in the garden, loosening the soil around the
rosebushes.
"What? Ten years?" says Donna. "I can’t believe it."
She smiles and sits back on her heels and takes the glass in her large, dirty
garden glove. As we toast a number of things, including my ten years as a
high-school teacher, a warm June breeze stirs her red hair and uncovers at the
temples a trace of gray. Life is short, said the bishop. "We will go out to
dinner," I announce. "After I finish my schoolwork, you and Robbie and
I will go someplace for a festive dinner."
"Don’t tell me you’re planning to spend the day in the den,"
says Donna. "Sunday is no day for correcting papers." "Final
grades are due in the office tomorrow morning. My briefcase is full of the
scraps of the school year. Odds and ends."
We toast odds and ends; then Donna picks a blossom from the Flaming Peace
rosebush and hands it to me. It has a long, thorny stem. Robbie joins us and I
give him a sip of sherry, which he spits on the grass.
"Make reservations for three at some fancy place," I tell Donna.
"We’re stepping out when my work is done." Upstairs in my den, I set
the bottle of sherry on the windowsill and I hang the rose by its thorns in the
burlap draperies. It is a small blossom, unfurling from a tomato-colored bud. My
window overlooks the garden, and as I crank it open Donna calls up to me,
"Promise you won’t be up there for the rest of the day." I have never
known Donna to be jealous of another woman, but I have at times a great appetite
for solitude, and she is jealous of this room in which I find it. Once while
working on my thesis, I spent fourteen days and nights in here emerging only for
sandwiches and a bath or two, and she never got over it. She said life was
passing me by. And one day last winter, designing a new syllabus, I came in here
and worked for twenty-two straight hours, and she broke down and wept. She said
her mother had warned her about men who were consumed by their work.
I settle into my deep leather chair and open my briefcase. It is full of
quizzes, exams, themes, term papers, and office mail—everything I was too busy
to read when it first crossed my desk at school. Some of it goes back several
months. I reach in and pull out a paper at random. It is an essay by Becky Burke
titled "My Father."Becky writes with a backward slant and she
misspells all but the simplest words. She says here that she loves her father.
"He has old fashion ideas," she writes, "and he argues with the
length of my skirts but he is patient and he has a sense of humor." She
tells of how he used to take her every summer to a "rodio." But now
her father is not well. He has been in the hospital for six weeks. Becky fears
he will die.
I want to write something tender in the margin, but if I am to read
everything in my briefcase this afternoon, I must be off to a quick start. With
my red pen I write, "Proofread!" across the top of the paper, and I
give her a C. By English Department standards a C is too generous for spelling
like Becky’s, but I cannot give a girl with a dying father a D.A sudden cold
wind springs through the window, billowing the draperies. Clouds cover the sun
and the room darkens. Cranking the window shut, I see a flock of geese flying
south—the wrong direction for June. Next I read a letter from Dale Wood,
president of the teachers’ union. He wants me to serve for a year as union
griever. Although I pay my dues, I am not much of a union man. I lost my
enthusiasm years ago when the union went to court to defend a junior-high drama
coach who undressed on stage. (Academic freedom, claimed the union; but the
judge said nonsense and sent the drama coach somewhere for observation.) Yet
Dale Wood has been a friend of mine for a long time. When we golf together he
tells hilarious stories. In the margin of the letter I print, in red:
"Okay, one year only. "My red ink does not glisten as it should. I try
the other pens I bought this morning, but none is any fresher. I have been sold
a dozen dry pens. In my desk I have blue and black pens, but I will not use
them. In my ten years of teaching I have learned to understand the power of red
ink. Red is alarming, decisive. Red puts everything else in the background. When
I hand back a student’s paper my red ink leaps out at him, and everything he
wrote in blue ink has turned insignificant, powerless, faint. Red has the same
effect with letters and memos. When I print my response in red it looks, no
matter how innocuous the words, like a shout. If I leave my mark in this world,
it will be a red mark. Red has force. But today my lettering is pale. It seems
to fade before my eyes. The wind grows stronger. Donna calls to me from the
bottom of the stairs. She says she is going to take Robbie to his driving lesson
and they will return in an hour. For a moment I am puzzled. Robbie is eight; he
does not drive. She must mean she is taking him to the driving range. She must
be bored.
"It’s awfully windy for driving golf balls," I call to her, but
she is gone. I hear the car drive away. Another letter. This one too is from Dale
Wood. Is this his idea of a joke? He writes, "You have doubtless received a
letter of official thanks from the union office, but let me add my personal note
of gratitude for the way you handled your job as griever these past several
years. I know it’s never an easy job. . . ." My pen is poised but I can
think of nothing to print in the margin. Sometimes Dale tries too hard for a
joke. There is nothing harder to respond to than a poor joke. I set this letter
aside. Next in my brief case I find an ad from the publishers of my
American-literature text. It says that the new edition, soon to appear, will
contain nothing earlier than Leaves of Grass. Walden will be replaced by a
report from the National Ecology Council, and Huckleberry Finn by an assortment
of comic strips. The book is to be called Superlit. I write "Supertrash"
across the ad and drop it in the wastebasket. I pour myself another glass of
sherry. It is the color of a rosebud, and smooth.
Donna calls up the stairs: "I am not feeling well." Her voice is
husky.
"Are you back already?" I ask.
"I believe I’ll lie down." "Fine, Donna. Lie down. Where is
Robbie?"
"Rob is over at Angeline’s. I’m sure I’ll be all right if I lie
down." "Angeline’s? Who is Angeline?" There is a trace of steam
on the window. I wipe it off and look down at the garden. The Flaming Peace
petals are drifting to the ground. Well, it has never been a hardy bush. To get
it started, Donna nursed it through four summers without blossoms, and to this
day it is easily discouraged by a sudden cold snap or a sharp wind.
I resume reading. This is Alvin Turvig’s essay on "Memories." Who
is Alvin Turvig? I have never heard of Alvin Turvig. He writes, "My
earliest memory is of my family watching, on TV, American troops invading
Panama." I read no further. In red I print, "Yours must be the
shortest memory in Adams High School," and I move on.Here is a letter from
Cletus Hamsun, who sells insurance in St. Paul. Cletus is the only college
classmate I still correspond with. In this letter he seems to be straining, like
Dale Wood, to make a joke. He says that he is retiring from the insurance
business. He says that he and his wife from now on will spend their winters in
El Paso. "Why don’t you and Donna join us?" he writes. As I said
before, a poor joke leaves me with no reply. I put a red question mark in the
margin. I take a sip of sherry and feel hairs or threads on my lip. Holding the
glass up to the light, I pick from the rim the strands of a cobweb. There are
raindrops on the window. Outside, a robin with an ebony eye stands on an elm
twig, glancing nervously about him at the leaves shaken by the rain. The leaves
of the tree are yellow. Can my elm be dying?
Another paper, this one by Peter Turvig. Peter Turvig? Who are these Turvigs?
He writes, "My Uncle Alvin, who can remember all the way back to the early
‘70s, is home on vacation. Yesterday he taught me how to fix the brakes on my
bike. He goes back to work next week. He is on the staff of the U.S. Embassy in
the Republic of Antarctica." This is nonsense. This is fiction written by
an imposter. In red I write, "Who are you?"Rain streams down the
window. Here is another letter from Cletus Hamsun. It was mailed in Texas. It
has a black border, and it reads, "Sorry to hear about Donna. All the more
reason for you to join us in El Paso."
Daylight is fading. I open a letter from someone named Angeline. The envelope
is scented.
Dear Dad,
We are settled at last in a house of our own, with a guestroom ready for you
whenever you want to use it. I know how lonely you must be, all by yourself.
Rob has been given a nice raise, but I think he is working too hard. I tell
him if he isn’t careful, life will pass him by. He sends his love. My strength
drains suddenly away. With great effort I brush the perfumed letter off my lap,
and it falls to the floor and lies among a scattering of dusty rose petals as
the rain, turning to sleet, hits the window with a ping.
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