The Italian Teacher(34)

The next afternoon, Pinch delivers a hot mug of coffee to Marsden in bed, needing to denounce everything about yesterday night. “How,” Pinch asks, “did you not fall over laughing at that horseshit?”

Marsden sits up. “You didn’t like anything?”

“You can’t tell me, Mars, that it was good.”

“Who’s defining ‘good’?”

“You, usually.”

“I still need to understand Temple’s work better.”

“Understand what? That’s such a cop-out.”

“It was an amazing crowd. And those weren’t dumb people.”

He’s right: It was a cultured group. “It makes me lose hope in mankind,” Pinch says. “But you have to admit, Marsden: That was not art.”

“There’s no doubt it was art. Like there’s no doubt this is coffee. But is it good coffee?”

“How’s the coffee, by the way?”

“Dreadful. But still coffee.”

“No way Temple’s work actually moved you.”

“It made me laugh.”

“Since when is that a criterion? And why would anyone laugh? It’s for morons.”

“Thanks.”

Pinch withdraws the charge but not his overall claim. To proclaim Piss Shit Fuck as art? It pisses on the dedication of his parents, shits on the art Pinch venerates, and fucks everything he ever studied. “Or am I the idiot here? Am I that guy who, a hundred years ago, was saying modern art isn’t art?” Pinch asks, trying to see the other side—yet only growing more incensed. “No, it’s not like those days. This is different. There has never been a period like ours. Because yesterday was a hoax. Obviously so. My only explanation is you’re so in love with that jerk that you can’t see.”

“Barrows thought he was juicy too.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Barrows saw him as a sociological study.”

“Finding him cute was sociology?”

Pinch lights his pipe, puffing in anger, needing to cloud over his housemate’s claims. He stirs up a growing recent contempt for Marsden, comparing him with Barrows: that she came from nothing and is hurtling toward accomplishment, whereas he—raised in luxury, ski trips to Aspen, vacation home in Muskoka, museum visits across Europe—passes his afternoons watching $3 double features at the Coronet. I can’t respect Mars anymore.

Pinch’s indignation, he decides, is not envy of Temple Butterfield, whom nobody will even remember in a few years. It’s that Marsden isn’t the same. Ever since Pinch got together with Barrows, Marsden has seemed sillier. To be flighty is charming when you’re young. But eventually, you must attain something. Barrows and I are going to. He never will.

Marsden must have perceived the shift in Pinch’s manner, for he repeats a pledge made only as courtesy in the past: that he wouldn’t want to outstay his welcome in this house. After all, he’s not even a student anymore! “Maybe I shouldn’t be hanging around. If I’ve become a drag.”

“I never said that.” Pinch steps into the hallway. “I never told you to leave.”

“No, no. I see that; thank you.”

Pinch makes his exit—and Marsden decides to do the same, soon scouting for new lodgings. Around the house, they avoid each other. Pinch, gnawed by guilt, assures himself that success requires hard breaks sometimes. This isn’t coldness. It’s maturity. Marsden fell too far back. He’s part of my past now.

On his last day, Marsden goes upstairs to offer farewell thanks. Pinch avoids eye contact, mentioning regrets about Marsden’s departure—and suddenly he means it. Yet he neglects to ask for a forwarding address, and Marsden fails to offer it.





31


Barrows rips open a thick NYU envelope full of registration forms. “And so it begins!” They celebrate at the Blue Cellar Room, then march victoriously home, talking too loudly on his street, shushed by a neighbor peeping from a darkened window. Barrows is unable to sleep, eyes wide to the ceiling, chattering about next year. Pinch endorses every idea, exerting himself to appear normal. But days more pass before he can tell her. Actually, he can’t. He just shows her his NYU envelope, which is small, containing a single page: “Thank you for your interest, but we regret . . .” He rushes through the ways that this isn’t a disaster—there might be a waiting list.

“What about other colleges?” she says.

“I thought we were going there.”

“But where else did you apply?”

He can’t look at her.

“What? Nowhere else, Charles? Why?”

He takes a furtive glance at her and witnesses something dreadful: She is pulling away, watching him recede in the rearview. Her preparations must go ahead. She sends forms and references to the Institute of Fine Arts, confers with future professors. Pinch sits by the phone in his room, needing help. He has no idea what to tell Bear, but now believes NYU was correct to turn him away—it confirms what Barrows hinted—that his doctoral interest (Caravaggio) lacked inspiration, that he is out of step.

When he calls, Natalie is overjoyed to hear his voice yet senses something amiss. “I know you.”

“You used to, yes.”

“That’s a painful thing to hear.”