Part 3

The Good Husband
by Gail Godwin

(Page 3 of 6)

"A trend whose time has come none too soon, wouldn't you say?" responded the smiling Magda, with a flash of that mocking insolence that many people, including President Gresham P. Harris, found disconcerting.

He rose, plucking at his trousers again to adjust their fall. "Well, you must rest. Keep up your strength for ... for ... " It was a rare occasion when he found himself at a loss for words.

"For my Final Exam," Magda helped him out. She reached up for his hand with one of her waxy, yellow ones. The grip was weak but sure. The hand was dry, and hotter than he would have expected. "Thank you, Gresh. You've made me very happy about the chair." She sounded like a mischievous little girl who'd gotten exactly what she wanted and was trying to be demure. But she closed her eyes again before he could attempt to read them.

Though he had semicommitments elsewhere, President Harris let himself be talked into having tea downstairs with Francis Lake because the poor guy looked exhausted and lonely and had obviously gone to trouble preparing it. They sat facing each other at a small table in a cozy corner of the living room where the afternoon sun played attractively on the fronds of healthy hanging plants in the deep-set windows and brought out the various patinas in the woods of some rather good Early American furniture. Boy, wouldn't his wife Leora like to get her hands on that secretary.

Francis served him with attentive diffidence, making a little ceremony with all his paraphernalia: the strainer and the sugar tongs, the little silver pitcher of hot water. A soft-spoken, tranquil fellow, Magda Danver's husband. Twelve years younger than she. The scuttlebutt was that, back in the sixties, Magda had stolen him out of a Catholic seminary somewhere up in the north of Michigan where she'd gone to lecture. He still had somewhat of the look of an aging choirboy. Now, that must have been an unusual courtship. But they seemed very contented in their domestic arrangement. Enviably so, his wife Leora believed. Once, at a faculty dinner party hosted by the president and his wife, Magda had made pointed innuendoes concerning their successful bed life.

"The forsythia will be out any day now," said Francis Lake, slicing a cake with fruit on top and transferring a generous wedge to the president's plate. "I saw some buds this morning that were about to pop." He helped himself to a slice. "I hope she makes it to the lilac. Magda's favorite is that deep purple lilac." He motioned through the window at a very old lilac, whose convoluted branches were outlined in the liquid-yellow light of early spring.

"Let's hope she does," concurred the president. After a suitable pause, he added, "It's going to be a big loss for all of us."

"Yes," replied Francis equably, still gazing out at the old lilac. What on earth will he do with himself when she's gone? wondered the president. Ray Johnson said that Francis Lake had never even held a job. He'd been Magda's house husband, just as some women (though that model was getting phased out rapidly now) were never anything but housewives. Francis would have her pension, of course. Which would have been considerably more if she'd died at sixty-five rather than fifty-eight. Whereas we will save, thought the president. But, damn it, whom could he get for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Cruise? Had to be someone of star quality. Of course there was Hugo Henry, Aurelia's current novelist-in-residence, much more widely known than Magda, though not nearly as warm and engaging a speaker, his trusty spy Ray Johnson reported. Hugo was truculent; short men often were. Nevertheless, he could do the job. His reputation would carry him. And people like novelists, their creative aura. For the requisite bit of scholarly heft the president could get Stanforth from Columbia. Stanforth owed him several favors. But Hugo and his wife had had the disaster with their baby back in January and Alice hadn't been seen outside the house since. It was probably still too soon to decently ask Hugo to do the cruise.

But the publicity over Magda's endowed chair would be coming at a good time, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first graduating class.

"I wonder, Francis, would you happen to have a recent photo of Magda in profile? We've got plans under way to raise some big bucks for a Magda Danvers chair, and I want to have her tintype on the letterhead we send out."

"I was looking at some snapshots today. Does it have to be a profile?"

"Preferable. Profiles come out better on a tintype."

Already Francis had sprung up from his chair and was rustling through a drawer of the secretary. He returned with a bulging envelope of snapshots, which he emptied out on the windowsill and began to sort through energetically, passing his selections across the table with accompanying commentaries. "That was in Paris, the summer Magda was doing her symbols of apotheosis research. It's not very recent, but I think it's still extremely like her, don't you? Oh, no, here's one. This is more recent, just before we came to Aurelia. Magda and I were accompanying the junior girls at Merrivale College on their semester abroad. I took this myself in Florence. You get a really good profile of Magda, though it's slightly blurred, because she moved just as I clicked the shutter. She was pointing out to the girls where Dante lived ... "

At this rate, I'll be here all night, thought the president. But he took another sip of tea, surreptitiously glanced at his wristwatch, and let Francis go on a bit longer. The poor man's face was animated with excitement and happiness. In his trip down memory lane (that old photo "still extremely like her"!), he had briefly forgotten the true state of affairs on the floor above.

Copyright © 1995 by Gail Godwin.