Van Gogh's Room at Arles by Stanley Elkin Page A

freezer for this party we’re giving. Were giving. She stocked up, I thought she left stuff in the refrigerator. I was going to cancel out anyway, I just didn’t want it all to go to waste.”
    “There’s nothing in the refrigerator.”
    “In the freezer part.”
    “I looked in the freezer part. There’s nothing in the refrigerator.”
    “That’s impossible,” Schiff said. “The party’s tomorrow night. We give it every year for my students.”
    “Well, maybe,” Miss Simmons said, “she planned to leave you. If she was planning to leave you, why would she take the trouble of going to specialty shops and charcuteries to stock up on exotic foods she knew were never going to be eaten in the first place? That stuff isn’t cheap. Why would she waste the money?”
    Planning to leave him, planning to leave him? Schiff couldn’t quite take it all in, but if she was planning to leave him—he’d announced the party to his class three weeks ago, Claire knew that—that somehow put everything into an altogether different light. A poorer light, a darker light. Could this have been up her sleeve for three weeks now? Had she been setting him up for three weeks? More? At the inside three weeks? Had she been setting him up all term? Longer? From the beginning of the school year? Boy oh boy, thought Schiff, who understood he was no prize, who for years now, even when he’d been on the cane, even when he’d still wielded it with some authority, when it had been simple ancillary to his balance, pure latency, say, like peroxide, analgesics, tapes, and bandages in a first-aid kit, had begun to notice something long in the tooth about himself in mirrors and photographs— particularly photographs—something faintly sour and beginning to go off in his posture and features like all those imaginary delicacies in his refrigerator, must she have had it in for me! So planning, planning to leave him? Planning, that is, to set him up, planning to wait until the day before their annual party before she stepped out on him. (Who knew how important these parties had become to him!) What did it mean, wondered the old geographer. Would she have already notified his students, the party called on account of divorce, or at least an upcoming separation down the road she knew of and let his students in on but that the old geographer himself hadn’t heard about yet? What did it mean? What did it mean, eh?
    On the principle that it takes a thief, et cetera, et cetera, these were the questions he put to that other old nurturer, his former student, Miss Simmons.
    “What do you mean do I think she called them up to tell them her plans?” she said. “What do you mean do I think she didn’t call anyone up and that she left that for you? What do you mean when they show up at the door she hopes you’ll be so humiliated you won’t know what to do?” “Yes,” he said. “That’s just what I mean.”
    “Well, I don’t know. How would I know?”
    “How did you know about the empty refrigerator? All right,” he said, “that’s a bad example. But you knew about her planning to leave me.”
    “I never said she planned to leave you. I suggested it was a possibility.”
    “You knew she left me. Bill must have told you in the van. You can’t deny that.”
    “I don’t deny it,” she said. “People gossip about people. It’s human nature.”
    “You knew to the penny what we have in the trust-fund account. When you were up in my room, when you were up in my room, you probably saw my urinal. You’re practically my confidante. You took pity on me and gave old Bill the high sign that enough was enough, that he needn’t pad the equipment, you told him my credit was good. If all that doesn’t make you my confidante, I don’t know what does.”
    “What’s more likely,” she said, “is that it makes me old Bill’s confidante.”
    “Oh,”said Schiff, “oh.”
    “Hey,” Miss Simmons said, “hey now.”
    “That’s all right.”
    “You