The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle

(“Duality in John Donne’s Love Poems”; “Malinowski’s Melanesia”), took a bus home to Michigan City for Christmas break and gave my mother a set of bath oils and scented soaps carved in the shape of fishes and mermaids. Some of my old high school friends came round—Tommy McAuliffe, in particular, who was now assistant manager at the grocery—and what a surprise that he’d thought to bring his kid sister Iris along, and did I know that she was a sophomore at IU now? There she was, standing on the doorstep beside him, and though I barely knew her I began to appreciate that here was the kind of girl who understood what she wanted and always got it—always, no matter what. I told Tommy I’d just seen her on campus—on the day of the snowfall, wasn’t it?—while she looked on with her big ever-widening sea-struck eyes as if she’d forgotten all about it. We ate pfefferneuse cookies in front of the fireplace and sneaked drinks of brandy every time my mother went back out to the kitchen to check on her pies. Just before New Year’s I thought of asking Iris to the pictures or maybe to go skating—on a date, that is—but I never got around to it. Then I was back at school and the days closed down on the bleak dark kernel of mid-January.
    One night I was at the library, reshelving books in the second-floor stacks, when I glanced up at the aisle directly across from me and there was Prok—Dr. Kinsey—down on one knee, scanning the titles on the bottom shelf. He was a tumult of motion, grasping the spine of one book or another and at the same time shoving it back in place, all the while scooting back and forth on the fulcrum of his knee. It was strange to see him there—or not strange so much as unexpected—and I froze up for a moment. I didn’t know what to do—should I say hello, ignore him, grab an armload of books and duck round the corner? Even if I didsay hello, would he remember me? He had hundreds of students, and though he’d conducted private interviews—like mine—with all of them, or practically all of them, how could he be expected to recall any one individual? I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to be muttering to himself—was it a call number he was repeating?—and then he found what he was looking for, slipped it from the shelf and sprang to his feet, all in one motion. That was when he brought his eyes forward and saw me there.
    It took a moment. I watched his neutral expression broaden into recognition, and then he came down the aisle and extended his hand. “Milk,” he said, “well, hello. Good to see you.”
    â€œHello, sir. I’m—I didn’t think you’d remember me, what with all your, well, students—”
    â€œDon’t be foolish. Of course I remember you. John Milk, out of Michigan City, born October two, nineteen eighteen.” He gave me a smile, one of his patented ones, pulling his lip back from his upper teeth and letting the two vertical laugh lines tug at his jowls so that his whole face opened up in a kind of riotous glee. “Five foot ten, one hundred eighty pounds. But you haven’t lost any weight, have you?”
    â€œHardly,” I said, my smile a weak imitation of his, and I was thinking of those other measurements, the ones I’d inscribed on a postcard and sent him in the mail. And beyond that, my secrets, and my shame, and all it implied. “My mother’s cooking, you know. Over the holidays.”
    â€œYes,” he said, “yes, yes, of course. Nothing like a mother’s cooking, eh?” He was still smiling, smiling even wider now, if that was possible. “Or a mother’s love, for that matter.”
    I had to agree. I nodded my head in affirmation, and then the moment detached itself and hung there, lit from above with the faint gilding of the electric lights. I became aware of the