Mrs. God by Peter Straub Page A

triangular wedge of toast. “There is one matter I must discuss with you. It’s of minor importance, I’m sure, but I didn’t want to bring it up last night.”
    â€œOh?” Standish held the jam spoon in one hand, the triangle of toast in the other.
    â€œThere seems to be some confusion about the circumstances under which you left your first teaching position. Popham College, was it?”
    Standish looked at him in an excellent imitation of genuine wonderment. “Confusion?” After a bit he looked down at the objects in his hands. Thoughtfully he applied jam to the toast.
    â€œCertainly nothing that should cause you concern, Mr. Standish, for if it were you would not be here today. But—well, I don’t think I am betraying confidences if I say that we had intimations of a conflict of some kind, though nothing ever seemed positively worrisome to us.”
    â€œPopham was a very small college,” Standish said. His underarms had become damp. “A small college is like a small town. Especially the English Department of a small college. There’s an unbelievable amount of gossip. In fact, when I arrived, people were still talking about something that had happened thirty years earlier between a student and an English professor named Chester—”
    â€œI see,” Wall said, smiling at him.
    â€œWhat happened was really very simple.” He closed his eyes and remembered how Jean had struggled on the steps to the ordinary little house in Iola, Popham’s larger neighbor, how she had given up on the doorstep when the nurse who was not a nurse had opened the door, how the purity of his hatred had moved him through days when sorrow or love would have killed him. “I saw things clearly,” he said, and cleared his throat. “A little more clearly than most of the other people on the faculty. It was obvious that most people in my department resented me. One man in particular, a false friend, behaved unspeakably. You could use the word betrayal. There was no unpleasantness, of course—”
    â€œNo,” said Wall.
    â€œâ€”but it just sort of became clearer and clearer that Popham and William Standish were not made for each other.”
    â€œThey were jealous of you?”
    â€œRight. After a while we all understood that I’d be happier elsewhere. I think I’m still trying to find the right place for me. Zenith is all right, but I can’t spend the rest of my life there.”
    Wall now looked embarrassed to have brought the matter up. “Yes, I see,” he said, deftly separating the smoked fish’s flesh from its picket-like bones. For a time the two men ate their separate meals in silence. When Standish glanced up and caught Wall staring at him, he instantly dropped his eyes.
    â€œYes,” Wall said. “Well, it’s of no real importance.”
    â€œI don’t see how it could be.” Standish felt a flash of hot impatience, another flash of memory too—of standing on a summery street swaddled in a Burberry and hat, looking up at a shaded window on the worst day of his life. “I could say a lot more, you know, but I don’t think—”
    â€œNor do I,” Wall said, and the two men finished their breakfasts in a silence Standish attributed to the other man’s tact.
    â€œSo today you begin,” Wall said as they pushed themselves away from the table.
    They walked side by side through the great rooms.
    Wall opened the library doors and for a moment both men stood mutely in the entrance. Like Standish’s bedroom, the library was filled with morning light. The brightness and splendor of the gold trim on the pillars and the furniture seemed utterly fresh in the sunlight, and the long carpet glowed. Standish heard himself sigh.
    â€œI know,” Wall said. “I feel that way every time I see it.”
    Through a window set between bookcases at the library’s far end,