Crying Wolf Read online

  “Comes to four twenty-five.”

  But Nat didn’t have $4.25 on him, had no money at all, and the shoe in his closet was empty. He’d used up all his money getting to the airport and back, would have no more until his next check from the Alumni Office, due the next day.

  “Can I owe you?”

  “Owe me?”

  “I’ll pay tomorrow.”

  “The machine don’t allow that.”

  All at once he was very hungry. “I could leave a note, and my student ID.”

  “Won’t work.” She put a hand on his tray.

  Nat abandoned it, walked away. As he went out the door he glanced back, saw the cashier chewing on a piece of his bacon. That put him in a good mood, a mood that lasted all the way home through the snow. He even took off his gloves, made a snowball, and threw it at Emerson, hitting his oxidized copper head from fifty feet.

  He sat at his desk, opened Beyond Good and Evil to where he’d left off, part two, “The Free Spirit,” section 30. His mind felt sharp, much sharper than usual, so sharp he noticed the change. Our supreme insights, he read, must-and should! — sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes- Nat’s gaze left the page as he remembered Professor Uzig referring to this same passage on Aubrey’s Cay, and, as it left the page, happened on the blinking phone light, indicating a message in voice mail.

  He checked, found one.

  His mom. “Nat? Please call as soon as you-when you can. Okay? It’s me. Mom.”

  Eight twenty-five, 6:25 at home. Too early to call. But something was wrong; he could hear that much. Then it hit him: Patti. Something’s gone wrong with Patti. She would never do anything to hurt herself, never-say it right-commit suicide, not Patti; but then he recalled a girl at Clear Creek a few years ahead of him who had committed suicide, and how everyone in the halls had said they couldn’t believe it, not someone like her.

  He phoned home.

  His mom answered in the middle of the first ring; probably the phone on her bedside table, but there was no sleep in her voice. “Nat?” she said. “Nat.”

  “Hi, Mom. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Oh, no, I’ve been up all-no, you didn’t wake me.”

  “What’s wrong, Mom? Is it Patti?”

  There was a pause. He knew she was doing that long slow blink. “Patti? I haven’t heard from Patti.”

  “Then what?”

  “Oh, Nat.”

  “What, Mom?”

  “I’ve let you down.”

  “That couldn’t happen, Mom.”

  She started crying. “I’m so sorry.”

  Nat just waited. He didn’t have a clue.

  She got herself under control. “I lost my job.”

  That made no sense. She’d worked for Mr. Beaman for fifteen years. “Did Mr. Beaman retire?” Stupid question: Mr. Beaman was much too young to retire.

  “He… he let me go.”

  Mr. Beaman fired his mom?

  “I was getting stale. That’s what he said. He hired someone much fresher. Barely older than you, Nat.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “I begged him.”

  “Mom.”

  “The day after Christmas. That’s when he… he did it. I’ve been looking for work ever since, but there’s nothing. And meanwhile the bank found out-why wouldn’t they, he does all their closings-and they called in the home equity loan.”

  Nat found himself doing something he’d never done in his life: the long slow blink. When his eyes opened, he saw that it had stopped snowing.

  “This was Monday, the day before I was going to mail the check for the second semester.”

  Card’s blocked.

  “How can they do that?”

  “The bank? Change in financial status-it’s all in the fine print, all legal.” She started crying again. He’d hardly ever heard her cry, not since he was a kid, couldn’t stand it. “I’ve let you down so bad.”

  “No you haven’t, Mom. Stop saying that.”

  “You don’t understand. I can’t keep you there, Nattie. You have to come home.”

  21

  “A living thing desires above all to vent its strength.” Identify the quotation; what does it imply about the creation of moral values?

  — Essay assignment, Philosophy 322

  A problem, maybe not like any other; still, a problem, and he was good at solving problems, wasn’t he?

  He was hungry. There was only the granola bar untouched by Patti, still lying on the bedside crate. He didn’t want it; a granola bar, yes, even three or four, with a tall glass of cold milk to wash them down, but not this particular granola bar.

  Nat dressed in warm clothes, went for a walk. A long walk-temperature cold and dropping, the sky brilliant now, its blue almost glaring-through pockets of the campus he hadn’t yet seen. After some time, he wandered down the north, sunless side of College Hill, across some railroad tracks, and into what they called the flats. A dismal place, he saw, bringing to mind the town he’d come from, although his town couldn’t be called dismal, could it? He thought about the yellow legal pad in the kitchen at home, on which he and his mom had done the figures; he thought about the figures themselves, still clear in his memory. He thought about the home equity loan. He shifted numbers around in his head, began to feel the cold.

  His mind kept returning to that home equity loan. He was forgetting something, but what? He walked back up to the campus, trod every path, the wind picking up now from the west, lifting some of the new snow, blowing it around; trod every path and fought the impulse to commit it all to memory. He walked until the western sky turned orange and the tree branches went black, but didn’t solve the home equity loan problem.

  The answer didn’t come until he was back on the quad, almost at the main Plessey door. The problem wasn’t with the home equity loan itself, he finally realized, but the original mortgage on the house. How would they make the payments now? Specifically, how would they make the payments without him going back and finding a job? That meant that even coming up with money to pay the bills at Inverness wouldn’t be good enough. Thinking had only made the problem worse.

  Back in his room, he took off his boots, warm boots but a little tight, which was why his feet were blue. He rested them on the radiator, gazed out the window as shadows fell over the campus, the golden dome on Goodrich Hall holding the last of the light. Later the moon rose. He ate the granola bar.

  Nat was at the financial office the next morning, 8:00 A.M. He told the story of his mom’s job and the home equity loan.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman said.

  Nat could tell she meant it. “That’s all right,” he said.

  “I feel so bad,” she went on, “whenever something like this happens. The good news is that as a student in good standing, you’re welcome back at any time, any time, that is, after the resolution of these financial difficulties.”

  And the bad news?

  “I wish there was something we could do,” she said.

  What about making up the difference, he thought, just till the end of the semester? I’ll work two jobs this summer, maybe three, and… But he didn’t say any of that, was already on his feet. They’d been generous with him; wouldn’t they do it if they could? He couldn’t make himself ask for more; and pointless, too, when the answer had already been given.

  Nat picked up his check in the Alumni Office, cashed it at the Student Union, filled a tray: bacon and eggs, French toast, cornflakes, juice, milk, coffee; paid cash. He sat at a table by the window. Someone had left the campus newspaper, the Insider, behind. He started reading automatically: he’d eaten many meals alone growing up, liked to read at the same time. The lead story was about a survey of the current activities of last year’s graduates. They were impressive.

  Creme de la creme.

  Nat stopped reading. He heard talk all around him, student talk rising from other tables. There was only one other solitary eater, a middle-aged man in heavy olive-green
work clothes, warming himself over a bowl of something steaming. Nat’s appetite vanished. He left the rest of his food untouched despite all his mom had taught him about waste, despite how hungry he thought he’d been.

  Monday: bio, English, econ. He cut them all. Hadn’t paid for them was the fact of the matter.

  Nat knocked on the door of Professor Uzig’s office in Goodrich Hall.

  “Yes?”

  He opened the door.

  “Ah, Nat.” Blue blazer, blue fountain pen; white shirt, white paper. “How nice to see you. Do we have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “Something’s come up.”

  “You intend to drop the course.”

  “Drop the course?”

  “Your friend-Ferg, is it? — has preceded you.”

  “He dropped the course?”

  “Within the hour, but still, well before the deadline, and therefore no harm done.”

  “I’m not dropping the course,” Nat said. “Not intentionally.”

  Professor Uzig looked interested.

  “I love the course.” He’d meant to say like. “Nietzsche…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d barely heard of Nietzsche before I came here. Do you realize that?” That just came bursting out. And more: “Izzie’s right. He was a sweet man.” What was this? He was suddenly close to tears; hadn’t cried since he was a little boy.

  Professor Uzig watched him. Nat could sense the power of his mind. He made his face a mask, watched him back.

  “Sweet,” said the professor. “A remarkable observation. Izzie’s a remarkable young woman.”

  Professor Uzig paused. Nat said nothing.

  “Grace is remarkable too,” Professor Uzig went on. “Both remarkable, as one might expect, each in her own way, as one might not.” The professor smiled, as though just happening upon something witty. Nat didn’t: it was the plain truth.

  “A sweet man-perhaps true, to some extent,” said Professor Uzig. “But of no use to him in the end. Sweetness is a self-defeating characteristic in combination with genius of that order.”

  Nat understood perfectly: Because ambition should be made of sterner stuff. He kept that to himself.

  “But you’re not here to bat around peripheral ideas. You came to deliver your unintentional rationale for dropping the course.”

  Nat told him. Professor Uzig had a way of listening that Nat had felt before, as though some powerful device, like a radio telescope, was at work. He’d felt it at Aubrey’s Cay, in the classroom under the dome, in Professor Uzig’s dining room on College Hill. He didn’t feel it now.

  “That’s the story, then?” said Professor Uzig.

  Did he no longer look interested? Was he disappointed, as though the account lacked drama, originality, or something else he valued? A weird idea, even paranoid, Nat decided: his imagination was out of control.

  “That’s the story.”

  “Very considerate of you to tell me in person,” said Professor Uzig.

  Nat didn’t quite get that, wondered where it was leading. When it led nowhere, he said: “I thought you might have some ideas.”

  “Ideas? Of what sort?”

  “Some way I could stay.”

  “This seems to be a purely financial matter.”

  He paused as though expecting a reply, so Nat said, “Yes.”

  “Those I avoid,” said Professor Uzig.

  There was nothing wrong with Nat’s imagination.

  He went back to his room in Plessey Hall. Almost immediately he thought of a modification for his bio experiment, a new test run conducted at a higher temperature that might Forget it.

  Nat began packing his stuff, first actually folding the odd thing, but soon packing only in his head, staring out the window. Snow lay deep on the quad. Some students were building a huge mound, or ramp, as he realized after a while, a ramp leading up to a tall window over one of the entry pediments of Lanark. He heard laughter and shouting; condensation clouds rose from their mouths; the sunshine was dazzling.

  The tall window over the pediment opened and someone emerged; flew out, really, surfing down the ramp on a cafeteria tray. A girl: her hands outspread, body poised, balanced-actually in some control of the tray. It was Izzie. She hit the soft snow at the end of the ramp, went airborne, dove like a surfer bailing out. A male student, two male students hurried to help her, but she was up on her own, laughing and covered with snow, before they reached her.

  Nat turned away.

  He was good at solving problems. What about calling Mrs. Smith? What about calling Mr. Beaman? What about calling his mom again, to be sure he’d heard right? Could he put her through that? No.

  That left winning the lottery. He didn’t have a ticket, had never bought one.

  “I don’t get it,” Grace said.

  They were down in the cave, the three of them, that night.

  “It’s pretty simple,” Nat said.

  “You have to go home?” Izzie said. “I don’t understand that part at all.”

  “Tomorrow?” said Grace.

  “Or the next day. I still have to change my ticket.” His return ticket, to have been used at the end of the semester.

  “Home equity loan?” Izzie said. “What is that, exactly?”

  Nat explained again.

  “But what’s it got to do with Inverness?” Grace said. “It should be none of their business.”

  He went over that too.

  “And I thought you were on scholarship anyway,” Izzie said.

  “Partial. This is about the rest of it.”

  “The rest of what?” Izzie said.

  “Tuition. Fees. Room and board.”

  “Partial?” said Grace. “Can’t they make it complete?”

  Nat shook his head. “But I can come back under the old terms whenever we get this straightened out.”

  “Like next week?” Izzie said.

  “It’s a technicality, then,” Grace said.

  Nat smiled. “Next year at the earliest.”

  “Next year?” said Izzie.

  “You’re leaving Inverness,” Grace said, “just like that?”

  “You talk like I’m doing something whimsical.”

  “Aren’t you?” Grace said. “This is silly. How much money are we talking about?”

  Izzie nodded, as though a shrewd point had been raised. “Good question,” she said. “How much?”

  “Over seven thousand dollars.”

  They turned to him, each doing that raised-eyebrow thing, Grace the left, Izzie the right.

  “This is about seven thousand dollars?” Grace said.

  “Closer to eight.”

  Grace and Izzie laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You,” they said together.

  “I don’t get it,” Nat said.

  “He doesn’t get it,” said Grace. “What’s in the account, Izzie?”

  “What account?”

  “Our bank account, here at school.”

  “Do we have one? I’ve just been using the ATM in Baxter.”

  “There must be a bank account,” Grace said. “What does it say on the checkbook?”

  “Checkbook?” said Izzie.

  Nat held up his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t take anything from you.”

  “You couldn’t?” Grace said, her glance going quickly to Izzie.

  “No.”

  “You don’t really want to be here,” Izzie said. “Is that it?”

  Didn’t she know better than that? And how it would be without her? “That’s not it.”

  “Then what?”

  “What I said. I couldn’t take money.” They looked blank. His gaze went to the big oil painting: at that moment Grace and Izzie were almost as unreal to him as the nudes, the fauns, the centaur behind the tree.

  “You wouldn’t be taking it,” Grace said.

  “We’d be giving it,” said Izzie.

 
; “That’s what can’t happen.”

  Silence. They stared at him.

  Izzie cocked her ear. “What was that?”

  “What?” said Nat.

  “That sound.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Grace said.

  They listened, heard nothing.

  “I have an idea,” Grace said. “What if it was in the form of a loan?”

  “A loan!” said Izzie. “You could pay it back later, down the road, whenever.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s no different.”

  “Sure it is,” said Izzie. “Completely different. This would be like the home equity thing.”

  “A Nat equity loan,” said Grace.

  That was why. “No,” Nat said. “And there are other complications.” He told them about the mortgage payments that had to be made, the utility bills, the food, the car expenses, all of it out of his mom’s pay, now cut off.

  They made identical flapping motions with their hands, as though shooing flies.

  “This is-” Izzie began.

  “-ridiculous,” said Grace.

  “What about talking to Leo?” Izzie said.

  “Forget it,” said Grace.

  “Why do you say that?” Nat asked.

  “I talked to my-our father,” Grace said. “He knows all about Helen Uzig, Brooklyn, the whole thing. He checked Leo out when discussions about this faculty chair endowment started getting serious. Leo grew up in Brooklyn, family owned a dry-cleaning business-or was it a candy store? — went to City College of New York, Ph. D. Columbia, got a job at Inverness, where Helen, not Uzig at the time, was head of the phil department. Head of the phil department, and had some money, too. Made him shave off that ludicrous walrus mustache. It’s her house, of course.”

  “Does this mean that Ferg guy’s right?” said Izzie. “He’s some kind of fake?”

  “Fake?” Nat said. “He’s a brilliant teacher. Anyone can see that. Besides, he’s famous, in philosophical circles. I’ve looked him up.”

  “Then go see him,” Grace said.

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  Nat didn’t answer.

  “See?” said Grace.

  “See what? It has nothing to do with his qualities as a teacher.”