The custodian has informed Miss Mandible that our desks are all the correct size for sixth-graders, as specified by the Board of Estimate and furnished the schools by the Nu-Art Educational Supply Corporation of Englewood, California. He has pointed out that if the desk size is correct, then the pupil size must be incorrect. Miss Mandible, who has already arrived at this conclusion, refuses to press the matter further. I think I know why. An appeal to the administration might result in my removal from the cla.s.s, in a transfer to some sort of setup for "exceptional children." This would be a disaster of the first magnitude. To sit in a room with child geniuses (or, more likely, children who are "r.e.t.a.r.ded") would shrivel me in a week. Let my experience here be that of the common run, I say, let me be, please G.o.d, typical.

20 NOVEMBER.

We read signs as promises. Miss Mandible understands by my great height, by my resonant vowels, that I will one day carry her off to bed. Sue Ann interprets these same signs to mean that I am unique among her male acquaintances, therefore most desirable, therefore her special property as is everything that is Most Desirable. If neither of these propositions works out then life has broken faith with them.

I myself, in my former existence, read the company motto ("Here to Help in Time of Need") as a description of the duty of the adjuster, drastically mislocating the company's deepest concerns. I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love. Brenda, reading the same signs that have now misled Miss Mandible and Sue Ann Brownly, felt she had been promised that she would never be bored again. All of us, Miss Mandible, Sue Ann, myself, Brenda, Mr. Goodykind, still believe that the American flag betokens a kind of general righteousness.

But I say, looking about me in this incubator of future citizens, that signs are signs, and some of them are lies.

23 NOVEMBER.

It may be that my experience as a child will save me after all. If only I can remain quietly in this cla.s.sroom, making my notes while Napoleon plods through Russia in the droning voice of Harry Broan, reading aloud from our History text. All of the mysteries that perplexed me as an adult have their origins here. But Miss Mandible will not permit me to remain ungrown. Her hands rest on my shoulders too warmly, and for too long.

7 DECEMBER.

It is the pledges that this place makes to me, pledges that cannot be redeemed, that will confuse me later and make me feel I am not getting anywhere. Everything is presented as the result of some knowable process; if I wish to arrive at four I get there by way of two and two. If I wish to burn Moscow the route I must travel has already been marked out by another visitor. If, like Bobby Vanderbilt, I yearn for the wheel of the Lancia 2.4-liter coupe, I have only to go through the appropriate process, that is, get the money. And if it is money itself that I desire, I have only to make it. All of these goals are equally beautiful in the sight of the Board of Estimate; the proof is all around us, in the no-nonsense ugliness of this steel and gla.s.s building, in the straightline matter-of-factness with which Miss Mandible handles some of our less reputable wars. Who points out that arrangements sometimes slip, that errors are made, that signs are misread? "They have confidence in their ability to take the right steps and to obtain correct answers."

8 DECEMBER.

My enlightenment is proceeding wonderfully.

9 DECEMBER.

Disaster once again. Tomorrow I am to be sent to a doctor, for observation. Sue Ann Brownly caught Miss Mandible and me in the cloakroom, during recess, Miss Mandible's naked legs in a scissors around my waist. For a moment I thought Sue Ann was going to choke. She ran out of the room weeping, straight for the princ.i.p.al's office, certain now which of us was Debbie, which Eddie, which Liz. I am sorry to be the cause of her disillusionment, but I know that she will recover. Miss Mandible is ruined but fulfilled. Although she will be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, she seems at peace; her promise has been kept. She knows now that everything she has been told about life, about America, is true.

I have tried to convince the school authorities that I am a minor only in a very special sense, that I am in fact mostly to blame-but it does no good. They are as dense as ever. My contemporaries are astounded that I present myself as anything other than an innocent victim. Like the Old Guard marching through the Russian drifts, the cla.s.s marches to the conclusion that truth is punishment.

Bobby Vanderbilt has given me his copy of Sounds of Sebring, in farewell.

Richard Bausch.

UNJUST.

One sunny morning in April, less than a week after he has been falsely accused of s.e.xual hara.s.sment, Coleman finds a yellow jacket lazily circling and colliding with the surfaces in the spare room down in his bas.e.m.e.nt. He kills it with a folded newspaper-striking it several times-then wads it in a paper towel and flushes it down the toilet, feeling a measure of disgust that surprises him. Just outside the door, he finds another walking up the wall, at eye level, and he kills that one, too, then checks the window that looks out on the uneven ground under the back porch, the sliding door to its right. No sign of entry. Back in the spare room, he parts the curtains over that window, and here are four others dead, lying on the sill. Looking down, he sees several on the carpet at the base of the wall. He disposes of them with another paper towel.

Upstairs in the kitchen his wife, Peg, sits drinking black coffee and gazing out at the sunny yard. When he enters she looks at him, then looks away. He says, "I think there's a yellow jackets' nest somewhere around the window in the spare room."

She doesn't respond for a beat, still staring off. Then: "I killed one in the downstairs hall yesterday."

"I hope they're not in the wall of that room."

She waves this away. "A few dead bees. They get in."

"If they are in the wall, it's better to know about it early rather than late. I don't want to find out by getting stung. Right?"

She says nothing.

"Right?" It's as if he's needling her, and he doesn't mean it that way. The gray in her hair has begun to show more lately, and it occurs to him that now they are no longer talking only about the bees. She's slightly stooped in the chair, her legs crossed at the knee, the cup of coffee on the saucer before her. A moment later, she lifts a hand to her face and rubs her eyes.

"Did you sleep at all?" he asks.

"Who can sleep? Maybe I dozed a little."

He did sleep, but kept waking in fright, unable to recall what he had dreamed. And for a long time, just before dawn, the two of them lay awake, aware of each other being awake and not speaking.

There isn't really much else to say.

The two women who lodged the charges against him are former employees of his in the sheriff's office. He had fired one of them for cause (the alcohol smell was all over her in the mornings, mingled with a too-heavy fragrance of peppermint), and the other, her close friend, quit in anger. After an interval of several weeks, the two of them retaliated: Coleman, they said, had consistently made threats, demanding s.e.xual favors. They've hired a lawyer and the charges are official. It's been in the newspapers. He's going to have to answer for it, this lie. There has never been anything but a little lighthearted kidding, and in fact the two women did most of that. Nothing of their carefully coordinated story contains a shred of truth, yet Coleman has lain awake in the slow hours of night with a feeling of having trespa.s.sed, of having gone over some line. He has repeatedly searched his memory for any small thing that might tend to incriminate him, and there's nothing, and he still feels like a criminal.

Now his wife gets up from the table and takes her coffee cup and saucer to the dishwasher. He stands here, faintly sick, while she moves toward the entrance to the living room. "I'm so tired," she says.

"If they're in the wall," he tells her, "there isn't going to be any way to use that room until we get them out."

"Well, I don't know."

He's in his pajamas, and she's dressed. She has already done some work in the yard. The effect of everything, at least until now, has been to create a wordless haphazardness in her; the whole house is portioned out in unfinished tasks, all of them now carrying the weight and significance of full-blown projects, and these are things she would normally have taken care of as a matter of her daily routine: she has intermittently been cleaning in the kitchen and living room; ironing clothes in the upstairs hallway, running the washing machine, polishing furniture, dusting surfaces, and making a very bad job of everything-a streaked, unformed, slapdash confusion. If he tries to help her, or asks that she give him something to do, she shrugs and says there's nothing, he will only get in the way. Until last night, she kept to herself what she's actually going through, and he feels this as a kind of tacit indictment, though he hasn't expressed the thought, even to himself. After his initial outraged denials and his show of horror and repulsion at the cruel audaciousness of the a.s.sault on his integrity, his manner with her has been tentative, almost sheepish, as though he fears harming her by reminding her too much.

Once a charge like that is made, his lawyer told him, once that kind of poison is let into the air-well, it's tough to live down. It's very difficult even to live down in your own mind. Coleman has tried to explain all this to Peg, and in doing so has begun to realize how much she herself doubts him.

Last night, at last, she gave forth the words of her grief, her anger; holding the newspaper up and saying, "Everybody on this street takes this, thing! Everett. Up and down this street. They all know."

"If they read that, then they don't know a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing," he said. "Do they?"

"They know more about us than we know about any of them. They know what I do and they know what you do."

He heard the emphasis, and reacted. "They don't know what I do, Peg. They have no idea what I do, the way you mean it-because I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything but fire a G.o.dd.a.m.n drunk with no morals and no conscience. And when all this comes down to the truth, you're going to be ashamed of yourself for believing her and that other b.i.t.c.h."

"Don't call them b.i.t.c.hes. Can't you hear what that does?"

"They are b.i.t.c.hes. They're worse than b.i.t.c.hes. They're s.l.u.ts. A couple of ruthless vindictive . . . Look. There's a word for women like that, and I haven't used it yet. They're trying to ruin me, Peg. They're trying to take away my livelihood."

"You won't prove anything by using that language."

"I should call them ladies?"

"Just don't use that language. That shows an att.i.tude."

"I have an att.i.tude. I've got a right to have an att.i.tude."

"Well, you can't afford it. We can't afford it. We have to show everyone you're innocent."

"How do we do that? We've been through this-it's their word against mine. I'm f.u.c.ked. Christ, Peg, even you believe them a little. After all these years. Even you."

"I didn't say I believed them," Peg said. But then, in the next moment, half turning from him, sniffling, she went on: "You were so thick, the three of you. Going out for beers after work-all that. I don't believe them. I'm trying to make you see why I might-just for a second-why anyone might-oh. Christ-I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know anything anymore."

"Yeah," he told her. "And that's you-imagine what it is for all these other people."

"That's what I'm saying," she sobbed.

There was still the rest of the long night to do.

Now, glancing out the sliding doorway to his left, he sees the lawn mower with a pair of her garden gloves draped over the handle. It was the sound of the mower that awakened him this morning. There are zigzags in the gra.s.s, wide places where she missed.

"I'll finish the gra.s.s," he says.

She pauses at the doorway and turns. "What?" Her voice is almost irritable. "I did the gra.s.s."

"You missed a few places."

She leans forward and gazes questioningly out the window. "It doesn't matter."

"I guess I ought to get dressed first," he says.

"What about the bees?"

"I'll check outside."

Normally, on nights when he can't sleep, he goes down to the spare room, where he can read without keeping her awake. He went down there this morning to change the sheets, in preparation for the arrival of their only daughter, who's due in this evening from Los Angeles. Janine wants to be in movies. She attended college out there, and stayed, and recently changed her name. She's calling herself Anya Drake, now. The name change hasn't brought her any discernible benefit. There've been one or two callbacks after auditions, and one small part for her hands in a soap commercial. You see her hands in a large bowl of soapy water, and then you see them applying oil to the palms, a gentle motion that the camera light makes more sensual than applying oil to one's hands ever is. Coleman is unreasonably embarra.s.sed by the thing, as if there's an element of shame about it all-she seems to be exhibiting something more private than her hands. He has been married twenty-six years and has never been unfaithful to his wife.

Janine, or Anya, as she now calls herself, intends this visit as a rest. She told her mother over the telephone that when she feels up to it, she wants to try getting stage work in New York. Her mother told her about the hara.s.sment charges, and Janine/Anya expressed nothing but indignation. But Coleman feels there is significance in the fact that her plans are fluid, now (they sounded anything but fluid before): traveling on to New York might come sooner rather than later.

Janine/Anya's old bedroom is crowded with Coleman's worktable and tools, and the unfinished cedar chest on which he has been working. Wood is an old pa.s.sion. The spare room is where they moved her bed, and where she stays whenever she visits, though it's been three years since the last time.

He tries hard to concentrate on the matter at hand: there's a yellow jackets nest somewhere around the spare-room window, a way in for them through the casing. He'll have to attend to it. He puts on jeans and a T-shirt, goes back downstairs, and slowly traces along the seal of the window frame. He has to displace a lot of dust, and thick tangles of cobweb. The window seems sealed. He stands in the room and listens, but the sounds of the house are too loud to hear anything in the wall. He gets down on his hands and knees and follows along the baseboard, and here are two more dead bees, a third struggling sluggishly along the carpet. He kills it with his shoe, shuddering.

"I'll call the pest control people," Peg says from the door.

Her voice has startled him. If she's noticed this, she chooses not to remark it. "You think we can get somebody out here this afternoon?" he asks.

"Not likely."

"What about the room, then?"

"Anya Drake can sleep on the sofa for a few days."

He stands, and faces her. "You sound great."

"Well?"

"She's got a right to make her own way, Peg."

"Exactly."

"That doesn't mean without help. Listen to you."

"Tell me what you'd like in the circ.u.mstance," she says.

"I'd like us not to talk about it," he tells her.

She almost smiles. "You'd like us not to talk about what?"

It's a soft, clear, dry April day, with breezes starting and stopping. The curtains over the windows in the upstairs bedroom billow with a soundless rush, then fall still. Sitting on the bed to tie his shoes, he hears her running the tap down in the kitchen. He finishes tying the shoes, then brushes his hair. It's almost completely white now, and while he liked the streaks of gray when they began, about a dozen years ago, he has been unhappy with it for some time now, disliking the way it makes his eyes look-colorless, flat under the white eyebrows. For a time, he's even considered using one of those gradual dyes, to darken it. But the idea contains its own contradiction: since the purpose of the dye is to hide the gray, the only logical step, if he decides to use it, would be to move to another city, and never again see anyone who knows him as he has always been.

As he has always been.

"My G.o.d," he says, low.

How can he think of his appearance now, or ever again? It's as if his mind goes on its own track, separate from him, and there's something insinuating about his very vanity. It makes him recoil. He can't even look at himself in a mirror.

Downstairs once more, he stands behind Peg as she spoons more coffee into the machine. He wants to put his hands on her, but feels awkward about it. He stands close, not touching. "You wonder why you can't sleep."

"I can't stay awake in the days."

"You're all turned around."

"We both are." She looks at him.

"Peg," he says. But they've already said everything. Or that's how it feels. "I'll take care of everything today. I'll go pick up Janine. I'll finish the gra.s.s. I'll handle the bees. You try and get some sleep."

"I don't want to sleep now. I'd like to sleep tonight."

"You have to take it where and when you can get it, honey."

"Don't you have to see Rudy today, too?"

"Rudy's got all I can give him right now."

Rudy's their lawyer. Rudy has expressed how bad the situation is: Coleman and the two women were seen together on numerous occasions in a bar near the sheriff's office, drinking together and talking-and flirting. Yes, there was some of that, the kind of talk that happens in bars, adults together in the haze and good feeling of drinks and music. He never touched either one of them except in friendship, and that was never anything more than a pat on the shoulder, or a kiss on the cheek. They kissed him on the cheek. There were times, driving home, when he stumbled on the pleasant fact that indeed, he felt no physical enticement concerning them at all. They were attractive, and funny, and he liked them. He's twenty years older than they are. He worried and fretted over Deirdre, like a father, when her drinking spilled over into work hours, and the humor and ease between the three of them dwindled and became pure tension.

"You're certain there was never any talk about-say, how either one of them likes to have s.e.x. That kind of thing?"

"Never."

"You're sure you never made a joke-even a joke-about sleeping with one of them?"

"Look, Rudy. Correct me if I'm wrong. Hara.s.sment is supposed to be I threaten them with their jobs if they don't screw me or blow me. Right?"

"You never made a joke about sleeping with one of them."

"I don't know-Jesus, I might've. Everybody jokes that way sometimes, right? I might've said something in response. In response. But I never had a serious thought about it and never went one step anywhere near it."

"You never made a pattern of jokes about sleeping with one of them."