to remember that dispensing with a convention, even a silly one, always involves the risk of being made to feel unreasonably guilty, simply because the conventions do happen to be conventions. Take drinking beer for breakfast, for instance, or going through red lights late at night, or committing adultery with your husband’s approval, or performing a euthanasia …”
“Are you making fun of me?” Rennie demanded mildly, as though asking purely for information.
“I am indeed!”
“You know, it seems to me that lots of times a person makes fun of another person because the other person’s opinions make him uncomfortable but he doesn’t really know how to refute them. He feels like he ought to know how, but he doesn’t, and instead of admitting that to himself and studying the problem and working out a real refutation, he just sneers at the other person’s argument. It’s too easy to sneer at an argument. I feel that way a lot about you, Jake.”
“Yes. Joe said the same thing.”
“Now you are making fun of me, aren’t you?”
I was resolved not to let Mrs. Rennie Morgan make me uncomfortable again. That was too easy.
“Listen, I’ll come eat your dinner tonight. I’ll come at six o’clock, after you’ve put your kids to bed, like you said.”
“We neither one want you to come if you don’t feel like it, Jake. You have to be—”
“Now wait a minute. Why don’t you want me to come even if I don’t feel like it?”
“What?”
“I said why don’t you want me to come even if I don’t feel like it? You see, the only grounds you’d have for breaking the custom of waiting a proper interval between visits would be if you took the position that social conventions might be necessary for stability in a social group, but that they aren’t absolutes and you can dispense with them in special situations where your end justifies it. In other words, you’re willing to have me to dinner tonight anyhow as long as that’s what we all want—social stability isn’t your end in this special situation. Well, then, suppose your end was to have another conversation and you had reason to believe that once I got there I’d talk to you whether I’d really wanted to come or not—most guests would—then it shouldn’t matter to you whether I wanted to come or not, since your ends would be reached anyway.”
“You’re still making fun of me.”
“Oh, now, that’s too easy an out. It’s beside the point whether I’m making fun of you or not. You’re begging the question.”
No answer.
“Now I’m coming to dinner at six o’clock, whether I want to or not, and if you aren’t ready to answer my argument by then, I’m going to tell Joe.”
“Six-thirty is when the kids go to bed,” Rennie said in a slightly injured voice, and hung up. I went back to my rocker and rocked for another forty-five minutes. From time to time I smiled inscrutably, but I cannot say that this honestly reflected any sincere feeling on my part. It was just a thing I found myself doing, as frequently when walking alone I would find myself repeating over and over again in a judicious, unmetrical voice, Pepsi-Cola hits the spot; twelve full ounces: that’s a lot - - accompanying the movement of my lips with a wrinkled brow, distracted twitches of the corner of my mouth, and an occasional quick gesture of my right hand. Passers-by often took me for a man lost in serious problems, and sometimes when I looked behind me after passing one, I’d see him, too, make a furtive movement with his right hand, trying it out.
At four-fifteen Dr. Schott telephoned and confirmed my appointment to the faculty of the Wicomico State Teachers College as a teacher of grammar and composition, at a starting salary of $3200 per year.
“You know,” he said, “we don’t pay what they pay at the big universities! Can’t afford it! But that doesn’t mean we’re not choosy about our teachers! We’re a pretty dedicated bunch, frankly, and we
Skeleton Key, Ali Winters