careerist. But it was not until she came up for tenure and Jack voted against her because everyone else on the committee had voted against her—and also, he had privately never thought her work was that strong—that she decided to file a lawsuit against Jack citing sexual harassment. And when Schroeder called him into his office that day, Schroeder told him she had recordings of Jack’s late-night drunken calls to her—calls Jack had made over the course of the last year as he felt her affections slipping—and she had emails from him as well, and Schroeder said to Jack, “Just take a research leave until we get this settled.”
A research leave.
And then Schroeder would not talk to him again. Three years later, Elaine Croft walked away with a settlement of three hundred thousand dollars. By that time Jack had left; he and Betsy had come up to live in Crosby, Maine.
Jack himself had been a careerist. But that had been many years before he met Elaine. By the time he met her, he was sick of being on that faculty; but she was young, and she was out to make it and she did.
Only not at Harvard.
He should never have mentioned Smith tonight. It gave away the fact that he had googled her—which he had a few years ago—and learned that she had gotten a tenured job at Smith and he had thought: Perfect.
* * *
Jack unlocked the car from a distance, holding up the key and pressing on it; the lights flickered once and the ping sound occurred, and then as he walked toward the car he saw in the streetlight that someone had run something against the car—most likely a key—and made a long, long scratch along the driver’s-side door. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe this.” Olive stood peering at it as well, and then she said “But who would do such a thing?” and walked around to her side of the car.
Jack said, “I’ll tell you who would do such a thing. Some young fellow who doesn’t like the look of a new Subaru.” He added, “Goddamn them to hell.” Inside the car now, he said, “Jesus.”
“Well, it seems a foolish thing for someone to do,” Olive said, strapping on her seatbelt. And then she said, “But it’s just a car.” And somehow this made Jack even more furious.
He said, “Well, it’s the last car I will ever buy,” which was a thought he had had when he had bought the car.
He pulled up to the stop sign at the end of the street and braked the car hard, then pulled ahead suddenly; he could see Olive being slightly thrown against the back of her seat. “Oh, my, my, my,” she said quietly, as though to playfully chastise him.
But as they headed out of town, onto the open road now, Olive was silent in the seat next to him. And Jack had nothing to say to her, he still felt the sense of the bicycle overturning. But as he drove along the river without seeing anything except the white line in the road, it returned to him, the fact that Olive was his wife, and that they had had a day together of happiness before seeing Elaine tonight. But it did not feel like happiness that he had experienced with Olive, it felt far away from him now.
* * *
—
And so the day they had had together folded over on itself, was done with, gone.
* * *
—
In the silence of the dark car Jack was aware of Olive—his wife—aware of her presence in a way that felt insurmountable. A pocket of air rose up his chest and he opened his mouth and belched; it was a long and loud sound. Olive said, “Good God, Jack, you might excuse yourself.” Jack kept staring straight ahead at the black road before him and the pale white line running down its middle.
Olive said, “I guess Gasoline knows what they’re talking about naming it that foolish name. Why don’t they just shorten it to Gas?”
Jack said, “At least I didn’t fart,” and he was aware that he had fired a salvo—really without meaning to—and Olive did not respond.
As they finally entered the dismal town of Bellfield Corners, Olive said quietly, “I know who she was, Jack.” He glanced over at her. He could just see her profile in the dim light, and she looked straight ahead.