Gods of Aberdeen Read online

  “I got it. Go back to bed.”

  Howie walked in and plunked down beside me. He smelled of alcohol. Up close he was more solid than I remembered, possessing a denseness that seemed dangerous, like a truck with poor brakes. His body showed signs of booze and torpidity—the beginnings of fat rolls hung over the waistband of his boxers—but there was still muscle beneath it all. His shoulders and chest were thickly built. He had been a football player in high school, I guessed, the kind who drank all night with his buddies and then racked up stats the next day through the red haze of a hangover. His dad was probably at every game, shouting above the din of the crowd, proud of his son who is secretly the kind of son every dad wants: distracted by women and sports, oblivious to teenage angst, lacking just enough ambition to ensure his place in the family business. I’ve always admired such father-son relationships. They are marked by war stories and conquests, goals become linear, purpose and intent are clear. You are what you are, and the only thing that can ruin such arrangements is when the son is unwilling to cleave to his own birthright and instead does something unacceptable, like become an artist or announce he’s gay. If there’s any proof of predestination, it can be found within the biographies of the sons of fathers who own Midwest shipping firms.

  Howie covered his eyes with his arm and yawned. “Any women in your life?”

  If Art hadn’t remembered my Ellen comment before, I thought, he remembers it now.

  “Yeah…a girl in my dorm.”

  “Is it serious?” Howie pressed on.

  Art remained standing, arms crossed, his expression betraying nothing.

  “Not really,” I said. My head was clearing, the drug haze burning off. “We just fool around.”

  Howie pulled at his boxers, unbunching the leg, his other arm still lying over his eyes. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said. “I keep my options wide open. I don’t like to worry about returning calls, or buying cards for Valentine’s Day, or that other bullshit holiday…what’s it called…Sweetest Day. Just another way to keep us in line. Remember this: the things you own end up owning you.” He nodded to himself and then repeated his last line slowly: The things you own end up owning you. “That’s right,” he said, obviously pleased.

  Howie seemed completely unaware of the awkward silence that followed. He remained on his back, one arm behind his head, the other over his face. Art gave me a little shrug of his shoulders, as if to say He’s your problem, now. I nudged Howie with my elbow.

  “Get to your own bed,” I said. “I’m going to sleep.”

  Howie stood up and yawned. “Welcome to the house,” he said, and he walked out, brushing past Art. The belligerent smell of liquor lingered, rising off the mattress.

  Art stared at the floor, mouth set in a tight, hard line, and then he left. Radiators clinked and the windowpane tremored under a gust of wind. I closed my eyes and quickly fell into nothingness.

  Chapter 5

  I officially moved into Dr. Cade’s house during the following week, packing everything I owned into two bags and loading them into Art’s station wagon. I decided to keep my mailing address at Paderborne Hall, since I saw no reason to inform housing I had left, seeing how I wasn’t paying for it anyway. Nicole said she was heartbroken, and she batted her eyelashes and held her hands to her chest in mock sorrow. I told her it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, that I’d be making more money than I had ever made in my life, and that the morning sun in my new room was spectacular. “It shoots right through the treetops,” I said.

  Dr. Cade was out of town for two weeks at some conference in Chicago, and I felt that if he were home my initiation would be going much smoother; as it was my entrance wasn’t as celebrated as I thought it would be. I felt like an intruder. My housemates’ patterns were already well established—they ate together, worked together, and shared rides to and from school. They talked about people and places I didn’t know. I hadn’t been told anything about the project—when I asked Art what my assignments were, he said it was up to Dr. Cade, and left it at that.

  Because of my isolation I spent more time on campus. I stayed after work at the library, put in extra hours at Dr. Lang’s office, spent a few days a week reading at Campus Bean over a cup of tea. I felt stuck between two worlds: The world I had abandoned seemed forever lost—my friends in Paderborne gave me passing smiles and then walked on—and the new reality I was trying to birth myself into seemed unwilling to accept me.

  Nights were the worst. My identity seemed dwarfed by the house. After dinner I would hang out in the living room and wait for someone to start up a conversation, but nothing ever came, and I’d end up petting Nilus until he fell asleep and then I’d hole myself up in my room. After waiting for everyone else to go to sleep, I’d emerge and wander through the house like a specter, haunting the hallways.

  My only lengthy interaction during those two weeks was a strange one. I had actually managed to fall asleep before midnight, and was awakened by someone on my bed. At first I thought I was back in my dorm room, and Nicole had slipped in, unannounced. But when I opened my eyes into the darkness there sat Art, on the edge of the bed, his body outlined in moonlight. He wore a sweatshirt and shorts.

  He remained still for a moment after I sat up. Then his voice, raspy and urgent:

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. The clock read 3 A.M. “What’s going on?”

  “I think I’m sick,” he said, and then he reached over to my desk and clicked the lamp on. His face was drawn, and his eyes looked sunken. There was a thin layer of stubble across his cheeks and chin.

  My eyes ached from the light and I squinted and motioned for him to shut the lamp off.

  “We can talk in the dark,” I said. “That light—”

  “I need you to look at something,” he said, and before I could answer he turned his back to me and pulled his sweatshirt off. I immediately thought of Peter, and for a moment I thought I was going to throw up. Art’s back glared harsh white, dotted with a few freckles.

  “Near my left shoulder blade…see that freckle there?”

  A small brown dot lay inconspicuously under the shadow of his scapula.

  “Do you see it?” His voice grew impatient.

  I swallowed against the nausea. “Yes,” I said.

  “How does it look,” Art said, reaching back and scratching at it with his index finger. “It itches. It’s been itching me all night.”

  “I don’t see anything strange. It’s just a freckle.”

  He sighed. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “The freckle under my left shoulder blade.”

  “Yes.”

  “What color is it?”

  What could I do? There was no denying him. “It’s reddish-brown,” I said, “like nutmeg.”

  “I’ve been up all goddamn night,” he said. He clicked off the lamp, stood up, and put his sweatshirt back on. “But sometimes it’s necessary. Cancer is number four on the list of leading deaths for our age bracket. You know what one and two are?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t particularly interested, especially since I foresaw nightmares as the only product of this late-night meeting.

  “Accidents and homicide,” Art continued.

  “Everyone has to die of something,” I said, trying to find some end to the conversation. “My mom died of ovarian cancer.”

  “That’s right, I remember you said that.” He shook his head, looking genuinely saddened. “My grandfather had brain tumors that drove him crazy. It’s whispered that by the end he was eating his own shit and having conversations with King Richard about the rising cost of gasoline. Stomach cancer killed my grandmother, and both her sisters.”

  “Death happens,” I said. All my pain and that was the extent of my coping philosophy. Death happens. Like a bumper sticker for the Nihilism Society.

  Art walked to the door and stopped in the threshold. “It doesn’t have to,” he said, his bod
y a shadowy outline standing in my doorway. After a pause in which neither of us said anything, he gently closed the door, leaving me to face my nightmares alone.

  I spent many cold nights walking along Dr. Cade’s pond, Nilus sniffing the ground and lapping black water from its banks. Professor Cade’s property was huge—under the cover of night it loomed even larger, deep woods impenetrable like a wall of thorns, and the pond was its heart, murky even in daylight. Just a black sheet, sometimes creasing in the wind, sometimes holding floating leaves and twigs, but ultimately its face was unchanging. It was here first, I wrote in my journal. It’s like the last remaining drop of an ancient sea. There could be primordial fish down there, or the petrified remains of a ship’s hull…I imagine it goes miles down…

  I was becoming dangerously accustomed to solitude, and I found myself ducking into doorways whenever I heard the footsteps of an approaching housemate, or dreading the sound of a car engine, which meant someone had arrived home. Despite all of this I still didn’t consider my decision to move in to be a mistake. I saw ostracism as self-imposed asceticism, necessary for my growth as a scholar. And at least in that area I was thriving; straight A’s in the classroom, but also an insatiable curiosity outside of my immediate studies. I became obsessed with categorizing, walking in the woods surrounding the house. Hemlocks and mountain ashes, towering blue spruces and leggy maples, and an enormous willow leaning over the pond, its spindly branches swaying in the wind. I learned all their names: Tsuga canadensis, cinnamon-brown bark, thick, deeply furrowed into broad, scaly ridges. Sorbus aucuparia, the Scandinavian refugee with pinnate leaves and orange-red berries. Picea pungens, silvery-needled, its outline like a monk swaddled in robes raising his hands to the sky. Acer saccharum, dropping seeds like whirring helicopter blades. Salix babylonica, grizzled old man, long, green beard trailing lazily over the pond.

  I tried to memorize every title on the shelves of the H. F. Mores, row by row, by author and call number. To show off, I’d name each book Cornelius touched as he shambled down the aisles, pointing with his cane and cackling at every correct answer I gave. Knowing everything around me gave some semblance of control, and I was determined to discover what my limits were—did thought have substance? Was there a limit to the amount of stuff my brain could hold? At what point would the facts and figures burst from their cells and leak out of my ears?

  My second Friday at the house found me sitting in the first-floor study, Nilus sleeping at my feet. The house was empty—Art mentioned he was going out with Ellen (whom I hadn’t seen since moving in, and once again my paranoia convinced me it was due to my stupid comment the night of Rebecca’s party), and Dan and Howie were on a double date that Howie had arranged with two girls he’d met the weekend before.

  The study was cool and smelled of old leather, and someone had left a book open on a side table. Collectanea Chemica. I turned to the first page.

  Because many have written of the Philosopher’s Stone without any knowledge of the art; and the few books extant, written by our learned predecessors and true masters hereupon, are either lost or concealed…

  I looked out the second set of French doors, leading to the ornamental garden. The cement bench held a couple of leaves. I saw pines and the gently sloping lawn leading up to the forest edge. It was nearing dusk and I could see the sunset through the trees.

  Nilus lifted his head, pricked up his ears, and whined. I walked into the living room and looked out the window toward the driveway. A taxi was pulling away, and carrying two bags up the brick path was Dr. Cade.

  He handed me his bags as soon as I greeted him at the door, while Nilus jumped around excitedly, bashing his tail into the walls, licking Dr. Cade’s hand, looking up at both of us as if we were about to take him outside for a game of fetch.

  “Leave those at the foot of the stairs,” Dr. Cade said, pointing to his luggage that he’d given me. “We can bring them up later. Come with me into the kitchen and tell me how everything has been.”

  I’d been, in my mind, a ghost the past few weeks, and I had forgotten how intense Dr. Cade’s focus was. His eyes swallowed me with a quick glance.

  “Join me for a glass of wine?”

  I accepted, seated at the breakfast nook while Dr. Cade uncorked a bottle of Chardonnay. “Arthur tells me you’ve been eager to get started with the book.” He handed me my glass and poured his own. “I apologize for the poor timing. I’d been planning to attend this conference for months. I figured it would be best for you to become acclimated to Art’s management style, without my interfering. Arthur hasn’t yet given me the revised chapter outlines, but I’m certain I know what sections he’s going to assign you. Has Arthur explained the importance of making our deadlines?”

  “He did say we’re on a tight schedule.”

  “To put it mildly. We must have the initial manuscript completed by the end of next semester, which would mean the galley release occurs prior to June, which in turn qualifies us for the Pendleton.”

  I’d read an article about Professor Cade’s upcoming book series in one of the academic journals in Dr. Lang’s office, which detailed the simmering enmity between Professor Cade and his one-time collaborator, Stanford professor Dr. Linwood Thayers. Dr. Thayers had won a Pendleton ten years ago for his biography on Pope Gregory VII, a project that began as a joint venture with Dr. Cade, but there had been a falling-out before completion of the first draft and Dr. Cade had resigned.

  Dr. Thayers was also in the process of writing a book series on the Middle Ages, but, according to his agent, his books cover “the High Middle Ages, as opposed to Professor Cade’s more broad-based, mainstream approach in treating the Medieval Era as one historical epoch.” This, of course, had been taken as a direct insult by Dr. Cade.

  “The end of next semester,” Dr. Cade narrowed his eyes, “will arrive sooner than you think. My publishers can be put off, but the Pendleton board cannot. This is why your work is so valuable. I’d suggest you start some reading on St. Benedict of Nursia. You may find Gasquet’s translation in my study, or if you prefer the original, I’ll leave it out for you later this evening. You may use either one for your commentary—obviously I’d rather you worked strictly from source material.”

  “When do you need it?”

  “Last month,” Dr. Cade said. He didn’t sound like he was joking. “But tomorrow night will have to do.”

  Nilus barked from the other room and the front door banged open. Howie’s voice boomed like a loudspeaker. Dr. Cade put his glass down and left the kitchen. St. Benedict of Nursia awaited.

  An hour later I heard Art’s voice, Howie’s, and then Dan’s coming from downstairs. I was at my desk, my clock ticking past 7 P.M. and I had written two things that evening. A half-finished, overwrought letter to Ellen sat folded at my elbow, which I had no intention of sending, but writing it had been cathartic:

  I’m in love with you, Ellen. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you walking out of the kitchen with that wet rag in your hand. If it were a matter of will I’d rather fall for someone my age who isn’t dating my best friend, but this is beyond my control.

  The work for Dr. Cade lay by itself in the corner of the desk, one edge curled up:

  …St. Benedict insisted his school was designed for the ordinary man who desired a pure Christian life—in his own words, St. Benedict wrote that “nothing harsh nor burdensome will be ordained,” this being a direct refutation of earlier monastic orders, who showed their love for God by performing feats of endurance and asceticism. And yet St. Benedict’s rules demanded a different sort of endurance, that of obedience and utter humility, insisting that the Benedictine monk “must know he has no power, even over his own body.” A monk was not allowed to disobey either abbot or prior, even if he thought what he was being ordered to do was wrong. This applied in extremis: even if a monk were ordered to perform something impossible, he was only allowed to state the reason why he found his task impossible. If his superior still insi
sted, the monk had no option but to obey, and put his faith in God’s infinite wisdom…

  I folded the letter to Ellen, put it in my pocket, and slipped the page for Dr. Cade under the door of his study.

  I sat for dinner at 8, and by 9 P.M. Howie and I had shared a bottle of champagne and were now moving to postprandial glasses of pousse-café. With each sip of the liquored strata I felt my own brain undergoing excavation, digging past the sandy, shifting layers of my consciousness into the more stable bedrock below. There was a flippancy to Howie that I began to appreciate, a masculine roughness I have always found unattainable and eminently fascinating. He filled my glass, refilled it, and slapped me on the back every time I drained another cup. It was peer pressure in its finest form, unabashed, and it was, as it turned out, exactly what I needed to tear myself free of the shroud of seriousness that had recently enveloped my life. From behind the invisible wall of our drunkenness I watched Art and Dan, and they too looked relaxed, even inclusive, engaging me in the kind of mundane conversation I so deeply craved. I told them about my schoolwork, about Professor Schoelkopf in my English literature seminar, a man famed for coming to class high on coke, sweat beading on his forehead and his nose red and raw like he had a cold. The specter of Ellen hovered on the edges of my consciousness, and at times the note in my pocket grew heavy like a chunk of lead, but I sensed nothing awkward from Art, and as the evening continued I wondered if I’d been the source of all the tension. Maybe Art was as I had seen him in my Gatsby fantasy weeks earlier, the kind of man who doesn’t mind sharing. Or maybe he saw me as no threat, and found my feelings for his girlfriend flattering in a roundabout way.

  Dr. Cade talked about his conference in Chicago, how his state-of-the-union address on the current condition of small, liberal arts universities was well received, albeit begrudgingly, by his fellow patricians of academia. Dr. Cade felt funding should be focused on keeping such schools as “liberal and artistic and non-career-oriented as possible,” so as to avoid what he saw as the trap of uniformity that state schools were falling into.