JOYCE CAROL OATES
569
something to be gotten over with as quickly as possible. Do men
squeeze one another's fingers as they do ours, Cecilia has often won–
dered . Do they dare... ?
Though Philip Schoen avidly sought fame of a sort, as a young
scholar, by his own confession "fame" now depresses him. Perhaps it
is the mere sound of his name,
Schoen
having taken on qualities of an
impersonal nature in recent years, since he was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize , a Rockefeller grant, a position as Distinguished Senior Fellow
at the Peekskill Foundation . . . . He jokes nervously that his
rewards are "too much, too soon," while his wife would have it that
they are "too little , too late."
A tall, spare, self-conscious man who carries himself with an
almost military bearing, Philip Schoen is given to jokes of a brittle
nervous sort which Cecilia cannot always interpret. (Her own humor
tends to be warm, slanted, teasing-not the sort to make people
laugh loudly . She has always remembered her mother and grand–
mother murmuring together, in some semi-public place like the lobby
of a theater, about a fast-talking young woman close by who was
making a small gathering of men laugh uproariously at her wit:
vulgar,
to have that effect upon others .) Philip is impressed by what
he calls Cecilia's anachronistic qualities, her sweetness and patience
and intelligent good sense ; he really fell in love with her (or so he
claims- it makes a charming anecdote) when she wrote a formal
thank you note after a large dinner party given by the Schoens: the
first note of its kind they had ever received in Peekskill , he said . ("Do
you mean that nobody else here writes thank you notes?" Cecilia
asked, embarrassed. "Not even the
women .
.. ?")Half-reproachfully
Philip told her she was the most defined person of his acquaintance.
She made everyone else seem, by contrast, improvised.
Cecilia has known Philip Schoen only since the previous Sep–
tember but she has been a witness , in that brief period of time , to a
mysterious alteration in his personality and appearance. His man–
ner is melancholy, edgy, obsessive; his skin exudes an air of clam–
miness; the whites of his eyes are faintly discolored , like old ivory,
but the irises are dark, damply bright, with a hint of mirthful
despair. By degrees he has acquired a subtle ravaged look that rather
suits him; his sense of humor has become unexpected , abrasive, in–
spired .
If
asked by his colleagues what he is working on at the pres–
ent time he sometimes says, "You don't
really
want to know" : mean–
ing that doing professional work in the history of Europe , or, by
extension, in history of any sort, is a taxing enterprise . Also, he has
