Summer at the Lake Read online

  Until it gets to the Provost.

  There was a lot of screaming in my office that afternoon. I figured that I was escaping from some time in purgatory.

  If I thought that the candidate for tenure had a chance of producing important work in the future I might have compromised by arranging for a five year non-tenure promotion, an easy way out if you’re not sure. But this young woman clearly had just barely finished her dissertation; teaching and activism were an excuse for her temperamental inability to be a scholar.

  The arguments hurled at me were a) teaching is as important if not more important than research and b) denial of promotion was discrimination against her because she was a Marxist and a woman.

  “I quite agree,” I began slowly, as Provosts must (you don’t want to play the smart mouth Irish Catholic in such a situation), “that teaching is at the heart of this University’s mission. It has been so from the beginning. It must be a prime concern when we consider a lifetime appointment (lie, but only a small one). I personally would want to see it become a matter of even greater concern (absolute truth unless the person looks like a future Nobel winner). However, by itself it has not been and can never be the only criterion. I would be more sympathetic to Ms. Lewellyn if there was more evidence of scholarly research in her record. Candidly, I’m afraid I don’t see that.”

  More outcry, including the suggestion that I had engaged in sexual intercourse with my mother.

  I let them finish, noting in my head the names of the obscenity shouters for future discreet retribution.

  “Ms. Lewellyn knew the rules of the game at this University when she accepted an appointment as an assistant professor. She did not play by the rules. I’m very sorry, but I am not authorized to bend those rules for anyone, no matter how admirable they may be in other’respects.”

  “The Department recommended her.”

  “A very weak recommendation I’m afraid, not the sort that persuades us that a lifetime appointment would be appropriate.”

  More obscenities. Then they straggled out of the office.

  “She’ll sue,” said our legal counsel.

  “Naturally. A radical lawyer will take the case on contingency.”

  “She doesn’t have a chance in hell.”

  “It will keep her happy and you busy.”

  “You realize you’ll have to face that radical lawyer in a deposition?”

  “It goes with the territory.”

  And it would go into my record book with the radicals, to be used against me if I was ever considered for a University presidency.

  So what.

  “So long as you understand,” said our law man.

  “One of the advantages of having an Irish Catholic provost,” I said with my patented leprechaun grin, “is that his sort rather enjoys an argument, especially with a lawyer, and most especially with one who thinks rage is a substitute for disciplined intelligence.”

  “May the tribe increase.”

  The confrontation meant nothing of course. It was a ceremony, not unlike the kind our anthropologists observe in some tribes in which conflicts are acted out in dance rather than in actual combat. The protesters knew that I would not overrule the Dean and his committee. They understood the cowardly trick the psychology department had played on the young woman. They knew that she didn’t have the credentials for promotion. They knew they were fighting a lost cause. They probably knew that I knew that they knew. The whole affair was a ritual that made them feel good because they could tell themselves they were revolutionaries fighting “the system” and “the establishment.” Moreover their protests freed them from the responsibility of doing their own work, which was probably less interesting and certainly less satisfying than “radical protest.” They also had the erotic oedipal pleasure of attacking one of the father figures in the University—me.

  What better way to spend an afternoon in early summer?

  Thus had the intense radicalism of a decade ago deteriorated into bourgeoisie rituals, not unlike churchgoing among Trollope’s Victorians or praying over yam gardens on the South Pacific islands.

  Sometimes I think it would be a tremendous improvement in the life of a university if the faculty had to work for a living.

  Before I could pick up the Journal Laura called from Santa Fe asking if it was alright if she flew in for the Fourth.

  “At the Lake?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Will you be there?”

  “Now I have a reason.”

  “Only one?”

  “Don’t be fresh, young woman.”

  She responded with impish giggles.

  The Journal story made me want to join the radicals who had just left my office. Did we live in Nazi Germany after all?

  Philip Clare, socially prominent Chicago investment broker, had been a member of a weekly poker club of eight prominent businessmen—other brokers and corporate executives, including two local CEOs—which met in various loop offices and played for high stakes. At these poker sessions, illegal under the laws of the State of Illinois, broad hints were exchanged about future corporate actions that would have a strong impact on the stock market. These hints were enough for several of the participants to make millions of dollars. Mr. Clare had purchased stock in his name and the names of members of his family repeatedly just before the corporate actions. The patterns of his success—which did not cancel out his failures in other investments—attracted the attention of Internal Revenue Service agents who were investigating Mr. Clare’s tax returns and had also begun to wonder about the poker club. Further investigation of the investment patterns of other club members revealed that they too seemed to know beforehand of major corporate actions, though they had covered their tracks much better than Mr. Clare had.

  The investigators had discovered that Mr. Clare had made more than twenty purchases in the name of his now estranged wife Jane Devlin Clare. Both the Clares are under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury, although government attorneys deny that Ms. Clare is a “target” of the investigation. Ms. Clare’s attorney denies that his client had ever purchased or sold stock through her husband’s office or that she knew anything about either the poker club or her husband’s deals in her name. He also protested an early morning visit of federal agents to Ms. Clare’s home in Kenilworth to obtain samples of her handwriting.

  I was well aware such was the strategy of the Feds these days: they woke you up at three in the morning, threatened to arrest members of your family, and questioned you like you were already a convicted criminal. They hoped that under such conditions you would not think of calling your lawyer and might make damaging admissions that they could use against you in court.

  How like the Gestapo!

  Surely Jane was smart enough to hire good lawyers. Dickie had said that she was in no danger of indictment. The Feds had assured the Journal that she wasn’t a target. There was nothing much I could do to help her even if she was.

  Nonetheless, there was no longer any question about it. I would spend the Fourth of July holiday with the Keenans.

  Leo

  “It was terrible, Maggie.” Jane leaned across the table on the terrace of the Club, overlooking the incredibly almost intolerably blue lake, where we were eating lunch. “Lucy answered the door in her sleep T-shirt and these big brutes pushed their way into the house and demanded to see me. For some reason she said I wasn’t home and they arrested her for perjury—giving a false answer to a federal agent. Lucy went hysterical and her screams woke me up. They made me sign my name about thirty times on a bunch of index cards and then told us to put on our clothes, they were taking us down to the Dirksen Federal Building for more questioning. I asked them if I were under arrest and they said no but my daughter was.”

  “Bastards,” Maggie muttered. As in our other summer she had needed only a half minute to recoup her good spirits after a close loss on the tennis courts, but she had yet to settle into her pr
ofessional psychologist mode.

  “My colleagues on the Seventh Circuit who let them get away with it are the ones to blame,” her husband added.

  “Well, we know they are all bastards!” She stirred her iced tea like a witch mixing up a brew.

  Jerry Keenan, Packy’s “crazy” fighter pilot brother was now a model of serenity, albeit disciplined serenity. Not as tall as Packy but with the family silver hair and wide, solid face and broader shoulders than the family priest, he towered over his diminutive wife whom he clearly adored now as much as he had when they were newlyweds thirty years ago.

  “On the way downtown,” Jane poked listlessly at her fruit salad, “I realized that I had the right to call a lawyer, which they hadn’t reminded us of…”

  “They probably shouted it at Lucy,” the Judge said, “and knew she didn’t hear what they said.”

  “And I also realized that my son was a lawyer at a very important firm. So I insisted on calling him. He and Melinda were there in fifteen minutes. My Yuppie son and his Yuppie wife became screaming meanies and made me proud of them. The Feds backed off about questioning us. Then a senior litigator from their firm showed up. He told them that if they intended to use evidence obtained in a pre-morning raid, he’d have all charges thrown out of court. He also asked whether they seriously intended to arraign Lucy on their ridiculous perjury charges, which they knew wouldn’t stand up, especially against a juvenile who had been rousted out of bed. They said they only wanted to ask a few questions. He suggested certain…” she grinned wanly, “anatomically improbably sexual actions and we stalked out.”

  “Serves them right,” Jerry Keenan nodded in approval. “Then when they found out that poor Phil’s imitation of your signatures were clumsy forgeries and that you had never given him any of your investments, they would drop all charges against you if you testified against him before the Grand Jury.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I murmured. “Maybe my radical friends at the University are right.”

  “The point, Lee,” Jerry said solemnly, “is that they didn’t get away with it.”

  “They sure tried to.”

  “So poor Phil comes running to me,” Jane rushed on, impatient to finish telling her story, “and begs me to delay the final divorce decree so I can’t be compelled to testify against him.”

  “That wouldn’t matter, would it?” I asked, dumping a large glob of ketchup on my hamburger.

  “Of course not,” Jane said, “but poor dumb Phil doesn’t know that. He tries to explain that he made the investments in my name and intended to give all the money to me when things got straightened out. He probably did too, only things never get straightened out in his life.”

  Fourth of July sounds—whining whistles and exploding firecrackers were increasing. I winced every time I heard a loud explosion. There was no snow and I wasn’t cold, but I was back at the reservoir, killing Chinese by the scores, perhaps by the hundreds.

  “I’m getting a little tired,” Maggie cut in, “of hearing Phil called poor. He’s in the mess he’s in now because no one has ever put any reality restraints in his life.”

  “I am as guilty of that as anyone,” Jane said sadly.

  “He’s marvelously skilled,” Maggie drummed her clenched little fist on the table, “at manipulating people to feel sorry for him.”

  My friends were too upset by Jane’s story to do much with their lunches. Typically, anger made me furiously hungry. I dug into my second hamburger.

  “So what happened?” I demanded.

  Jane was running out of steam, a badly frayed woman whose life-long mask of charm and good humor was fading away.

  “So I went back a couple of days later with the litigator—my kids are in estate work, which kind of fits them, doesn’t it?—and answered a few specific questions about my own investment practices…”

  “Which have not been unsuccessful, I gather?”

  “Don’t talk,” she grinned for the first time in our conversation, “with food in your mouth, Lunkhead…I’ve done all right. Anyway they’ve pretty much forgotten about me, although they won’t absolutely guarantee I’m off the hook.”

  “Typical,” the judge murmured.

  “Then Lucy goes out and gets drunk the next weekend, which makes the whole thing worse…Maggie, is this in the genes? I mean, Herbie died of cirrhosis of the liver and poor Iris’s death was at least related to drinking too much. My brothers quit but they were near alcoholics and I think Phil is too. Does Lucy have a chance?”

  Only Tino Nicola (and of course both the Keenans) of the parents of our crowd were still alive. They had all died in their late fifties or early sixties, all before their time, all more or less tragically. Lizabetta in an explosion. The Murrays, both drunk, ironically in a traffic accident driving to the Lake. Iris Clare and Ita Devlin of cirrhosis of the liver in their late fifties. Joe Devlin of a heart attack. Four of the six deaths attributable to the drink taken, as the Irish used to say.

  What a curse it is. Yet we continue to drink.

  “Neither heredity nor environment,” Maggie’s answer was guarded and professional, “determine completely what we do. Lucy is under somewhat higher risk because so many people in her family have coped with their pain by drinking too much but she’s not fated to take the same road they did…is she doing well with her therapist?”

  “She won’t talk to me about it. She’s still going and she doesn’t miss appointments any more.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “I’ve had one addicted child, I don’t know that I could take another.”

  Maggie patted her hand. “You’ll do all right, Jane. It’s good that you’re able to talk about these things finally.”

  Maggie caught my faint wink over my hamburger at her clinical cliché response, and, imp that she is beneath it all, she winked back.

  As we talked and ate, I had glanced around the Club and considered it again in the broad light of day and of thirty years of life. It was not the forbidden castle of my early teens nor the magic pavilion of my fanciful Kiplingesque India, nor even a place into which Gatsby might have wanted to intrude. It was merely a summer resort golf course—of middling challenge I suspected—with worn-out tennis courts, a pool that needed repairs, a clubhouse and a terrace where one could eat middling meals and find an occasional glass of Jameson’s and a hell of a lot of Irish who were, unlike my companions, drinking too much even at midday.

  Had it ever been anything else? Back in those days when Catholics were a tiny minority like the Keenans and their friends and long before they had taken it and the whole resort over almost totally?

  Had it once really been the preserve of the super rich as it had seemed to me then? Or once everyone you know has the money necessary to buy a house at the Lake and join the Club, does it by definition stop being magical? Or had they all been just comfortably rich like the natives today and not super rich at all?

  Anyway the really rich were now somewhere else and they still had servants.

  When the Irish move in and the Italians with them, first thing you know the whole neighborhood changes.

  After she had spilled her story, Jane recovered her good humor and dug into her fruit salad. She could put her mask on easily because it was only partially a mask. Much of the Jane persona was also the real Jane. The mask however, was, not quite able to cope with a life in which tragedy had loomed so large.

  “See you tonight,” she waved at me as she rushed off for another round of tennis. “I’m buying the popcorn!”

  “I’ll buy the ice cream,” I shouted after her.

  This complex Jane with a tragic dimension in her personality was even more appealing to me. I realized as I walked back down the road to the Keenan house that my physical desire for her body, so attractive in tennis whites, which now permitted form fitting white knit blouses, was almost unbearably intense. Had I wanted her that badly in the forties? Or does age and experience sharpen passion for the desired other eve
n if the hormone count is lower?

  Mine didn’t seem any lower.

  I have said that I can live with celibacy if necessary and have done so for long periods in my life. But now I was free and so, for all practical purposes, was someone I had wanted very much in years past. There was no longer any reason to be celibate, was there?

  I put on my swim trunks and joined Maggie and Jerry and their various young people and Laura on the pier. I dove in the water at once and swam what must have been a half mile.

  “Firecrackers still bug you, huh, Leo?” Maggie, hanging on the side of the pier with her fingertips asked me as I joined her.

  “Only the loud ones. Do they bother Jerry?”

  “Not much. But no bullets ever came near his plane. Charmed life.”

  “He was lucky.”

  “Walk didn’t get her out of your system?”

  “Neither the walk nor the swim did much for my bloodstream,” I admitted.

  She chuckled. “Tread carefully, Lee, my friend, but tread!”

  “It looks like I don’t have much choice…tell me, Mag, is your house haunted?”

  “By the poor Murrays, God be good to all of them?”

  “Yeah.”

  She lifted her trim little shoulders. “Every house is haunted, Lee, by the psychic memories that linger there. This place,” she nodded towards the beloved Gothic monstrosity on top of the hill, “has more memories lurking around than most but they don’t really bother us much, not even me, and if there is a vibration anywhere within a mile I usually pick it up.”