The Short History of a Prince (50 page)

It was common knowledge that Francie had told Roger about her affair with the idea, according to cousin Celeste, that he’d let her continue her spree until she was used up and ready for a square meal. Roger had filed divorce papers immediately. The few relatives who had called him agreed that the soft-spoken man whose passion was hand-pollinating lady’s slippers no longer felt even-tempered or generous. Maxi whispered around that he fully intended to screw Francie royally.

On the other side of town, Jeannie had reputedly beseeched Sue Rawson to wait another few years before throwing the summer home to the wolves. The conversation had by most accounts taken place over the telephone, but it was said that Jeannie actually beat one of her breasts and moaned. Sue Rawson, everyone supposed, spoke to her sister right over the histrionics. “It is unfortunate for you,” she apparently said, “that your daughter had the poor taste to tell her husband about her transgression.” It was not ever clear how the exchange had been overheard, or by whom, but for Walter the important part of the story was the fact that Jeannie had been rendered speechless for an extended period, for the better part of an afternoon. “How sad,” Sue Rawson concluded, “that Roger is taking his revenge, but just as well that he showed his true colors, don’t you think, before the younger generation was under his sway?”

For some of the cousins the Lake Margaret issue was obscured by what seemed the bigger question: how was Jeannie going to retaliate, or was she done for, her fire extinguished by her witchy older sister? It was an interesting question, to be sure, but Walter tried to keep the focus on the place itself. His mother, he knew, had had a number of
conversations with Sue, but Joyce was not forthcoming about the sessions and Walter guessed that there was little or no progress. He assumed that on June 1, at dawn, Sue Rawson would call the family together, and in a neutral site in Oak Ridge, most likely the meeting room of the public library, she’d outline her plan for the dissolution of the family corporation. He tried not to think about the speech she’d give to the group, but her voice was often in his ear, her image before him as he stared at his ceiling in the night, trying to fall asleep. She’d walk around the room, rapping on the chair with a ruler, lecturing the cowering relatives. “You’ve all been living out of the pockets of your ancestors,” she’d say, “living a life that no longer has a place at the end of this century.” She would not be delicate in pointing out that even if they could afford to buy her shares they would be hard pressed to pay the taxes without her support.

In the last week of May, in the final days of school, Walter tried to keep his sense of impending doom at bay. He was grateful for work, for the diversion of his students. He knew that if he gave an inch they would overtake him with their jangly energy and their pop-culture lingo. He tightened his belt, sharpened his red pencil and banged his ruler on their desks as he walked around the room, in a way that would have done Sue Rawson proud. He ran the pupils in his American Literature classes like dogs in the parking lot, with a concept he called Emily Dickinson relays. It would have been helpful in some cases to have Mrs. Gamble’s whip to snap at them. With the promise of all the pizza they could eat, his sophomores went scrambling across the asphalt to their teammates, shouting as they tagged the waiting hand, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” Off the second tier runners went, presumably with the next line on their tongues, “Are you nobody, too?”

Inside, Walter had them dancing to waltz music in a Gatsby and Daisy contest, and they played charades using any first sentence in a work they’d studied in the year. He let them laugh, he assumed they were having fun, but he did not allow them to forget that he was their lord and master. He had the grade book open on his desk, and furthermore he had the strength of what he fancied was his imposing head-of-the-Gulag self. Never mind that Betsy Rutule had the gall to come right up to him, tickle him under his arm, that he collapsed into
his chair giggling like a girl at a pajama party. “Off with your head,” he shouted when he had regained his composure. He got through the teacher-appreciation dinner at the Red Oak Supper Club without a drink or a mishap. There were final exams and report cards and graduation, and when it was all over he cleaned out his desk, turned off the lights, locked his room and said good-bye to the janitor. He went home and lay down in the grass in his backyard. There was a colony of biting red ants in the peonies two feet away, and still he fell into a deep sleep. He felt as if his arms and legs had a gorgeous sinking weight, that they were holding him in place, and when he woke he knew he’d been productive, that with an hour’s rest he’d accomplished a full day’s work.

The summer opened before him with a few specific dates and a lot of spare time. He had to plan his courses for the coming year, and he was thinking about going to a workshop in Chicago on techniques for teaching Shakespeare. His chairman, Bob Kressler, had given him a junior honors section for September and the promise of a drama class in the second semester. They’d read some of the old standards:
Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, Waiting for Godot, The Glass Menagerie
, but Walter might slip in a few scenes from
Angels in America
, or go for broke, buy twenty-five copies with his own money and assign the whole thing. There was a fair chance that Mr. Kressler would not know enough about the prize-winning play to be alarmed. It would be good to have a comedy or two to balance the gloom and doom, an Oscar Wilde, a Woody Allen, an Elaine May routine. He might try to drum up some money to take the class to Louisville, Kentucky, for the annual Actors and Playwrights Showcase. Traveling out of state, and for the theater, was a bold idea for Otten, a revolutionary concept, but it was worth a try.

He might also think about someday beginning to create a ground-swell, a few students at first, gathering after school for an alternative sexual orientation club. For starters, the organization could figure out a snappy acronym, as well as lobby for same-sex couples at the dances, and in general work to catch up with more forward schools in cities and suburbs around the country. They could have a support group, nothing wrong with that, and go to films and concerts in Madison, and they could take trips to Washington to protest legislation. It was
hard to say how his life would have been different if Oak Ridge High had had a similar group. He had necessarily built his character around the need to conceal his true nature, and it was impossible to imagine himself without that dimension. There was no point in speculating at this late date, and Walter meant to concentrate on the coming generation of Otten High queers. As in all undertakings, timing was key. He would have to wait and watch for the issue to show itself. He would have to be alert. It was improbable that he’d get support from anyone besides Mrs. Denval, but he would do his best to behave like the Walter who moved so confidently through his favorite bedtime fantasy: Mr. McCloud, impeccably dressed, a few inches taller, the original hairline restored; but more important, certainly, Mr. McCloud, courageous, dignified, a man with the obstinate conviction that no matter the ridicule, no matter the danger and limited resources, all things are possible. Once he brought the idea of the club forward, and if he was not fired on the spot, at the very least it would be fascinating to listen to the Otten High board grapple with a topic that was not related to bus scheduling and delinquent football stars.

Aside from the course work, Walter was planning to take Mrs. Denval to Milwaukee on the fifteenth anniversary of her husband’s death in July, to see the Florentine Opera perform
L’Elisir d’Amove
. He had an invitation mid-June to watch Betsy Rutule receive her black belt in karate at the Dodgeville Academy of Karate, and he’d by all means go down to Schaumburg for Lucy’s birthday on the fifth. There were a few appointments set in stone. In August he might travel with Sue Rawson to Washington to see Susan dance in
Jewels
with a temporary company their beloved ballerina, Suzanne Farrell, was throwing together. So many amazing Susans in one auditorium. He probably should go to New York to visit the old crowd and to feel the city play on his nerves and to remember that in America there are people of color and various creeds. He was also thinking of buying a giant schnauzer. A litter had been born down the road, and if he was going to get one he needed to claim it. He liked the idea of walking a big animal out in the county park, through the backwoods, the dog woof-woofing when anyone came close. It would be nice to hear the noise of someone else eating in the kitchen, to hear the crunch of Purina Dog Chow. The dog might end up to be evil in the way Duke had been, but
he might have satisfying canine mannerisms too, wiggling his stub of a tail every night, and jumping up when Walter came in the door.

It was all very well to make plans, but Walter found he could not think about the summer or the coming year until he knew about Lake Margaret. It was clear, now that he’d come up to June, that everything, the rest of life, hinged on whether or not the house would become a stranger’s property. He had only gone so far as to imagine the shadow of a man standing with boxes and suitcases, waiting at the door to move in. But undoubtedly there would be a wife too, and children and cousins, parties, holidays, a ski boat, a sailboat, tackle boxes, storms coming up across the lake, sultry afternoons and down the hill—to run down the hill—the relief of the cool spangly green water three miles across. Oh, he hated that the ousters might not have any interest in the previous owners, and even more he hated that they might be intrigued, scraping around in closets, prying up floorboards for some clue about the past. Whoever they were and whatever they were going to do was wrongheaded, unpardonable.

June 1 came and Sue Rawson did not call a meeting as she had threatened back at Thanksgiving. Walter waited at home in Otten, inside, while the sun shone and warm air blew in the open windows. From across the way came the waft of black dirt that had recently had an application of manure. The field was ready to be seeded with corn. That’s what I should do while I wait, he thought, take up gardening, plant blue-ribbon beefsteak tomatoes and best-of-the-fair collard greens. He was sure that the phone would ring, certain that there’d be an announcement. Of course if he really wanted to know he could call his mother. Or he could wait, wait for the message to come to him.

June 2 also passed without a word. In Walter’s experience no news usually meant nothing more than delayed bad news. He wished Sue Rawson would stop menacing him and get on with it, plunge the knife in up to the hilt, draw it out, wipe the blade clean and be done. On June 3 he woke to the sound of rain, then hail for a minute, and heavy rain again, beating on the windows. Although lately he professed not to believe in signs and portents, he gave himself the warning: nothing good happens in foul weather. As soon as he was awake enough to navigate, he drove to the lake, as if being there he could somehow hold on to it, press his claim like a homesteader.

He wandered from room to room looking carefully at the furnishings, the drapes, the paintings, the driftwood, the lanterns, the candlesticks, the faucets, the marble of the sinks. My house, he whispered. They would have to take the place apart when the time came, strip it to the bone. It was remarkable that in the nomadic American culture of the late twentieth century one house had so defined a family and each of the individuals within that family. There was an antique, tribal aspect to the Rawson heritage. The furniture, the letters, the violet-soap smell of the stiff cotton sheets in the linen closet, the musty old books, the sketches in the composition tablets—all of it had made men and women who were long dead real, and they in turn, with their benevolent presence, had given the plaster and lath spirit. Great-aunt Lydia had featherstitched all the blankets, and there were scratches on the wooden benches in the cookhouse from generations of children, including a gouge his own mother had made with her pocketknife. The clamshells were on the mantel, along with the snail shells that had always been there, and the smooth stones and ungainly stones and flat stones, and the bristly bird’s nests falling to pieces. He picked up each thing and examined it. He studied the watermarks on the ceiling, the speckles on the linoleum, the train painted on the wall over the bed he’d slept in as a boy. He wanted to remember every detail; indeed he could not do with anything less than exact recall if he was going to spend the next thirty years constructing the property in miniature.

The yellow slickers hanging on the hooks in the hall were at the ready, as if firemen were upstairs sleeping on the edge of their narrow beds. Walter remembered his uncle Andy, years before, urging the cousins out into a dreary day, telling them that with the proper gear and sharp tools they could accomplish anything. They didn’t know if what he was saying was true, and they grumbled and went outside and climbed up a tree. They forgot all about Uncle Andy. Walter put on a black plastic hat and he chose a green-and-white-striped fashion raincoat because it came to his ankles. It was slippery down the wet steps to the pier, and he went carefully to his place in the Adirondack chair. He sat wrapped in the mangy quilt from the boathouse wishing he could somehow distill the sound of the water’s lapping and its live, fresh smell. He closed his eyes and felt the drizzle on his face, running
down his neck, past the dark green corduroy collar. Losing Lake Margaret, he knew, was an extension of losing Daniel. It seemed for a moment as if time had both compressed and extended, that childhood and the link from the past to the future were gone, that the death of his brother and this next loss were nearly one and the same. Walter remembered feeling at Daniel’s memorial service that what lay beyond, in all of his future, was unmapped territory, streets that had no names, rivers with no bridges, twisting paths that disappeared behind a person, gone, no way back. He had that sense again, and he wept, wondering what there was that could possibly take the place of his faith that was soon to be so permanently ruptured.