NOTHING IS SOMETHING: A SHORT STORY

By the time the last of the guests arrived, everyone was already well into their drinks. Old-fashioneds were whiskey, bitters, sugar, lemon peel, and a dash of water or soda, except at Professor Belnap’s house the water or soda was ice cubes, and along with the lemon peel was a piece of orange and a cherry. Excellent. The guests coming in the door now, the last of them, was Dr. Mc Kibby, the Dean of the School of Medicine, and his wife Brinny. Dr. Mc Kibby was wearing his black mohair topcoat, in contrast to the white one his wife had on. They looked like salt and pepper shakers.

Jack, the son of the host, relieved the dean and his wife of their wraps which he hauled into the master bedroom next door, where he laid them, along with all the others, on the big double bed. He had been living at home rather than at a dorm while attending the local college and while under his parents’ roof was obliged to do whatever they wanted him to, his part of the bargain, coat-duty included. But alas he had just graduated and in the morning was leaving, what this party was all about. Indeed his father was making an announcement about it at any minute.

His father was declaring it rather than Jack himself because Carl liked making announcements. It was what he did for a living. His lectures were one long announcement. He, meantime, was wearing a Nehru jacket, tan, which, with the gold sunburst on a chain at his neck made him look, well, he looked like what he was, an old college teacher trying to appear “with it,” with the times. These after all were the 1960s. On his homely chin clung a scraggly beard, Queen Elizabeth with a goatee, to see him.

This particular collection of people, of faculty, were long-time acquaintances of Carl and his wife Crystal; they all joined the college faculty at the same time roughly. They also all happened to have Jack as a student of theirs at one time or another, except, that is, for Dr. Mc Kibby; Jack was not a medical student. Mc Kibby, though, had been his doctor since childhood and in this way had a stake in him too.

Crystal drew open the drapes now on the west side of the house beyond which was a long wooden deck, gray enamel with a white railing around it, a nice contrast to the redwood siding. This deck faced the lagoon leading out to the river. On this lagoon were other homes, New England-style cottages most of them, even though this was West Virginia, but then also plain beach houses with open floor plans, like the Belnap’s, despite there being no beaches there. This was an island in the middle of the Ohio River.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Professor Belnap interrupted.

But now the parade had begun to the breakfast bar next to the living room, shrimp cocktail, rye crisps with cheddar cheese and anchovies, caviar on toast points, Roquefort cheese on pumpernickel, Swedish sausage with Dijon mustard, long bread sticks, celery and carrot spears, onion dip, to name a bit of it, and, oh, yes, the famous Carl Belnap antipasto salad with blue cheese and Chianti wine, everyone’s favorite, or so they insisted.

“Ladies and--“

The sweet scent of the rich foods, the whiskey, Dr. Mc Kibby’s pipe with the tobacco smelling like cedar, and then the chatter, the nonstop talking, it was reminiscent of the Ph.D. parties that the professor threw for his Ph.D. graduates, in his capacity as the chairman of the Chemical Engineering department. These he held on Homecoming weekends at the college when the football team played a team they could actually beat. The Matamoras Minutemen from over at Matamoras College in Ohio were usually it, a minute how long they played in a game typically. The Ph.D.’s went to the game first, coming then to the Belnap’s for the cocktail party. These were all cocktail parties.

But now the announcement. The professor dinged the side of his old fashioned glass with a fork at the same time that he motioned Jack over from the side. Jack had been standing with his tonic water listening to Mrs. Geronimo talk about genealogy and about how she had traced her family back to the birth of the planet.

The professor had his arm on Jack’s shoulder at this point, something he’d never done before, so that it startled both of them, signaling at any rate that this was a significant occasion indeed.

“Friends, thank you all for coming today. How is the antipasto salad?”

Thumbs up around the room. The Flunts from the speech department waved.

“Was there enough blue cheese in it? It’s a matter of taste, I know.”

Mutterings all around, agreement on the proportion.

“Now as you know, my son graduated last Sunday from our college, the only one doing so in the winter term, it so happened. You may have noticed.” Indeed, Jack was the sole student in old Mendenhall Hall for the commencement exercises, after having paraded by himself the winding walk down the mall, a one-man procession. On stage were all the deans of the colleges, along with Carlson Bodge, the university president, looking like Lyndon Johnson with his plump carved face. Seated next to him was the keynote speaker, Harlan Roundwood of the local historical preservation society who, it turned out, was the first graduate of Ohio Island University, O.I.U., or I.O.U. as some called it, all the student loans. This was back in 1904. His son, Rick Roundwood, no spring chicken himself, helped the old man on stage.

“The speech by Mr. Roundwood, you surely all agree, was riveting,” Professor Belnap looking around the room.

“Riveting” was not how the rest of them would describe it by their collective frowns. Numbing was more it. Then, the university’s finding a keynote speaker of any description for the winter commencement was a miracle at that. The word from the registrar’s office had been that no one would be graduating in the winter term, Jack Belnap, the Enlightenment Studies major, least among them, his attendance an issue. Coincidentally, Olney Pack, the chairman of the Enlightenment Studies department was to be at this send-off party for Jack except that he had a prior commitment, an enlightenment retreat up in the Adirondack Mountains in New York.

Which was when everyone laughed. Professor Belnap’s wink revealed that “riveting” was in jest after all and that he, like the rest of them, found the speech fatal. He followed his wink with a rolling of his eyes. This was not to say that he and Mrs. Belnap, as the only parents attending graduation, were not polite, respectful even, of Mr. Roundwood. They laughed at the one joke he offered at the very beginning, or at what they thought was, hoped was, a joke at the start, something about a squirrel wearing socks. For all they knew, Roundwood HAD a squirrel with socks, and then otherwise applauded at all the right places, at the end especially.

If the Belnap’s were self-conscious sitting in the parents section, conspicuously in the parents area all by themselves, it was countered by the professor also having to sit in the faculty row up front, and then, as the chairman of a department, in the first row to the left on stage, “musical chairs” to see him.

The commencement, in the meanwhile, in its entirety, was on automatic pilot, President Bodge and the deans aware once again how much they loved dressing up, their caps, gowns, and hoods in every color and shape, five of them especially, graduates of the Sorbonne, looking like popes. They remembered at the same time how much they liked to hear their own voices as one after the other of them stood and offered a word of inspiration, to whom they were not even sure, to themselves though certainly. Following each, Professor and Mrs. Belnap, along with Jack in his seat by himself in the middle of the auditorium, saluted.

Back at the party, “But now you are all interested to know, I’m sure,” Belnap brightly, “what exactly Jack’s plans are now, for the rest of his life that is, what he is going to do, be. I was keen to learn myself. It has been four years and a parent is never sure. If only he were in medicine.”

An amused cough from Dr. Mc Kibby, his pipe flaring. Crystal, though, standing across the breakfast bar in the kitchen stirring the ratatouille, jumped at Mc Kibby’s sparks only to look down again when the “tooey” as she called it, fell on the floor almost. Doing too many things at one time had long been her ruin.

“Well, now, Jack, if I may get right to it now, tells me that he intends to be, to quote him, if I remember it correctly, recall his exact words, or word, ‘nothing.’”

“Nothing?” Professor Bachenforth, his shrimp from his lips.

Professor Shreveport, his napkin down, “Nothing?”

All stared at Belnap waiting for his wink that this too was a joke.

“He is deadly serious, friends,” however. “But it’s ‘nothing’ in the philosophical sense he assures me.”

“Ah,” collectively.

All of this was news to Crystal who was staring at her son now as if trying to place him, recalling how he had told her only two weeks prior that he intended to be like his father, a scientist. He would be, though, unlike his father, an enlightenment scientist.

Professor Belnap’s brow was quite high now, enjoying the drama of this. The fact was, Jack had revealed his plans to him in an aside after commencement, after witnessing all the deans congratulating themselves for his graduation, President Bodge shaking his own hand, leaving Jack still all by himself to parade out of the hall, by himself.

“You want to be nothing?” Crystal, at last.

“He has nothing to say about nothing, dear,” Professor Belnap; “I assure you.”

“Then, saying nothing is saying something, isn’t it?” Bachenforth, the debate coach in the Speech department, irresistibly.

But Jack stood his ground and remained silent. He dared not even grin, his inclination, because this was saying something for sure, saying all kinds of things, an apology, arrogance, compassion, all of which he was feeling just then, but not one of which he wanted to reveal. And the last thing he wished was to get into an argument, the ratatouille, now on the kitchen floor, excitement enough.

Shreveport, glancing over, being friendly, moved it along, though. “So, Jack, when do you expect to be nothing?”

As if a ventriloquist to his son who had just opened his mouth to clear his throat, Professor Belnap, “At once.”

Yet as far as Jack was concerned he was nothing already, had been nothing all along, had been born nothing. How could he aspire to be what he was already, his argument? All he was doing, and HE wasn’t doing it so much as it was happening to him, was realizing it. He wasn’t starting something but stopping it, stopping standing in his own way.

Where, though, did he get this idea? Without doubt it was not from Olney Pack, the chairman of the Enlightenment Studies department who talked disparagingly all the time of the “enlightenment business,” or as he also put it, the “salvation business.” No, Jack had the idea on his own.

The next morning Jack waved goodbye to his parents even though they were not up yet, still in suspended animation from all the old-fashioneds at yesterday's party. But this was okay, his having said farewell to them all his life, and them to him. As he stood there on West Avenue, in front of 2120, he shivered a moment in the cold blow. West Avenue was a wide street, long and straight, with no traffic on it, unlike River Boulevard, the main drag, which it ran parallel to. West Avenue, in this way, was a best-kept secret. And now, for once, the local bus was on time. A grab of his carryall and he pulled himself on board. He was done.