“Because you do not interfere between a husband and a -wife.”
“Exactly,” Gregor said. “And that was what I was thinking about with Howard. Because he got big, you know, as big as he is now, as big as his father was. And one day he was sixteen or so and not only just as big as Mikhel but twenty years younger, and he was playing football, so he was in shape. We were coming home from school together one afternoon in early May, a beautiful afternoon, even places like Cavanaugh Street was then looked good, and when we camearound the corner into the neighborhood, Mikhel and Howard’s mother were standing out in front of our building. I have no idea what happened or what started the fight. With men like that there isn’t much need to start one. I don’t know that Howard knew what started it either. We came around the corner, and just as we did Mikhel grabbed Howard’s mother by the front of her dress and hit her in the side of the head with his fist. It was insane. There had to be a dozen people on the street. Nobody did anything. Mikhel had a grip on her dress and he was pulling her toward him and then hitting her away over and over again, and there was blood coming out of her ear and her head was whipping back and forth—”
“Tcha,” Tibor said again.
“And Howard didn’t run. He didn’t shout. He just walked up to them, dropped his books on the ground, picked his father up from behind, by his belt and his shirt, just lifted him up into the air and threw him across the street—all the way across the street. Mikhel landed on somebody’s stoop. It might have been the building where Lida’s family lived. He slid down the stoop stairs to the sidewalk, and Howard walked over to him, picked him up, put him back on his feet, and said, ‘Enough.’ That was it. ‘Enough.’ We never heard Mikhel beat that woman up again, and we never saw her hurt again, ever.”
“That is the first creditable thing I have ever heard about Howard Kashinian,” Tibor said.
“There are lots of creditable things about Howard,” Gregor said. “You just don’t want to let him near your stock trades. He’s a crook. But the thing is, that’s what Windsor reminded me of, the town of Windsor and what I’ve heard so far about the school. It reminded me of the day Howard Kashinian took on his father.”
“And this is supposed to make me feel better, as if you were making sense?”
“I think so,” Gregor said. “I think it’s the key to what’s wrong with Mark DeAvecca and what’s wrong with this place and what’s wrong with the country. How’s that for megalomania?”
“I think you should get Bennis to talk to you again, Krekor; you are becoming a crank.”
“Maybe. But I do know that I’ve decided what I think I’m supposed to be doing up here. I’ve got a mission.”
“Which is?”
“Which is to get Mark DeAvecca to drop out of school. He can drop back in next fall. He needs to get away from here.”
“And do you think his mother will agree with you about this?”
“She will when she sees him,” Gregor said. “Celebrating diversity. That’s the problem.”
“You are once again making no sense, Krekor.”
“Never mind. I’m glad you were in. It helped to talk to you.”
“It would help you more if you could talk to Bennis, Krekor. She would even understand the things you are saying.”
“She might, but she wouldn’t talk back.”
Tibor said something that sounded like tcha once again, except that his tone was even more negative. Gregor hung up and stared at the phone for a moment. He should call Bennis. He knew he should. He should call precisely because she wasn’t talking to him, and he didn’t know why. There was something deeply dangerous about letting this go. He tried, one more time, to consider the possibility that Bennis would leave Cavanaugh Street, put all her things into boxes, call for a moving company, buy a train ticket to Bryn Mawr or a plane ticket to Paris. He thought of the other side of the bed empty and the apartment under his feet with nobody but Tibor in it, ever, or a stranger to replace Tibor when the church and its rectory apartment were rebuilt. He got a pain in his stomach again but no answers. He wished he knew what Bennis wanted of him. He couldn’t make himself ask.
He put his hand on the phone, picked up the receiver, listened to the dial tone in his ear. He put the phone back and stared at it. It was a green phone, “avocado” in decorating terms. It matched the wallpaper and the quilt spread out on the bed. It did not match the pen holder, which was made outof wood and not plastic, as it would have been in any ordinary hotel. He got up and walked over to the window.