Gods of Aberdeen

by Micah Nathan

  “Art and I fought,” I said, fumbling for the glass of water on my nightstand. “At the wake at Dan’s mom’s house. In the bathroom. We fought over you. But you love Howie so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  Ellen drew back and started to say something but she stopped herself, and her expression suddenly changed.

  “Are you mad at me?” she said.

  I was going to ask her why she said that when I looked down at my hands and saw they were trembling.

  “Don’t you know,” I said, “how much I hate all of you?”

  “No,” she said matter-of-factly. “I don’t.”

  We sat there, silent, and then she left, closing the door behind her, leaving only a warm depression at the end of my bed and the lingering scent of sharp perfume.

  As expected, I didn’t sleep well. Muddied, murky dreams, and only one I remember:

  I was walking Nilus along the edge of the pond on a chilly fall night, the sky a yawning chasm without any stars or moon, and yet a cold glow lit my path. Nilus was unusually fickle, taking his time, sniffing along the ground, rooting through the wet grass and cattails. I wasn’t scared but I wasn’t comfortable either, an ominous feeling particular to dreams when you seem to know something bad is going to happen before it actually does.

  Nilus’s breathing was unnaturally loud; blades of grass scratching against his wet nose sounded like metal against sandpaper. The damp earth gave slightly beneath my feet, and I remember thinking I was going to have to wipe Nilus’s paws with a towel before letting him back inside. And then he stopped abruptly and raised his head, and looked out over the black water and everything fell silent. Something splashed in the pond.

  I didn’t want to look but I did. There was the canoe, skimming silently along, and seated in the center, paddling slowly, was Dan. I couldn’t see his face but I knew it was him. He was wearing his plaid flannel coat and his short, straight hair ruffled in the wind even though no wind blew.

  He floated past, looking straight ahead, off toward the forest behind Dr. Cade’s house. I froze, praying he wouldn’t see me, but Nilus barked and Dan suddenly stopped and turned. There was something wrong with his shadow-banded face…His skin was taut and bloated, and things moved in his hair, nasty, insectile shapes that scurried across his forehead, down his cheeks, dropping into the canoe with a hollow plunk.

  Dan looked at me and smiled sadly. The canoe continued to drift, water lapping against its side. He turned away and resumed paddling. Clunk-swish. Clunk-swish.

  I watched him dissolve into the darkness, past where the cold glow that lit my path stopped, and I lost sight of him as he made his way toward the middle of the pond. Nilus howled, suddenly, loud and mournful, and I woke up.

  Sunlight streaming in through the window. Blankets kicked off and hanging over the side of my bed. Silence.

  I stumbled over my crumpled shirts and scattered books, to my closet, where I had stored a “Welcome Pack” given to me the first day at school. In it were condoms and peanut butter crackers and various toiletries, and most importantly, two single foil packets of cold medicine. MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS read the warning label in the light of the bulb I’d clicked on. I ripped both packets open, dry-swallowed all four tablets, and staggered back to bed, hoping that whatever I’d just swallowed would do the job right and kill me.

  That afternoon I went to Dr. Cade’s office. I knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again, more firmly this time.

  A moment later the door opened a crack. Deep blue eyes, like the first day I’d gone to his office. They widened in recognition this time, however, and the door swung open.

  “Please, come in.” Dr. Cade motioned to the single chair across from his desk. He was dressed well, but looked tired, and was putting on a false smile, obviously bothered by the intrusion.

  The room was surprisingly large for a professor’s office. The windows were draped in thick curtains, and heavy Oriental rugs covered most of the floor in layers of dense folds, brown and leafy green and deep purple and magenta. His desk was like the one he had at home, made of a dark wood, Shaker style. It was covered in stacks of papers.

  “This is a rare visit,” he said, leafing through one of the stacks. “I don’t believe you’ve been in my office before.”

  I nodded, dumbly.

  “Congratulations are in order, by the way,” Professor Cade said. “Dr. Lang informed me this morning of your victory.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You haven’t heard? Oh, well then, let me be the first to tell you. The Chester Ellis Award. The finalists were announced last week. You, Eric, are this year’s recipient.”

  I tried to force a smile but couldn’t. Dr. Cade didn’t seem to notice.

  “Art and Howie both turned in their work this morning,” he said, marking one of the papers with a thick fountain pen. “I trust your section is almost completed…or are you having problems with it?” He looked up at me and stopped writing.

  “Goodness, Eric, is something the matter?”

  I took the envelope out of my pocket and placed it on his desk. Dan’s letter was inside, creased and crinkled from the weeks it spent under my mattress. I told him the whole story, and when I finished I lowered my head and I cried silently, so hard and long the tears stopped and all I could do was inhale and exhale in heavy, hitching gasps.

  Part III

  Aberdeen, Departed

  It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a “grand peut-être”—but still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it—the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.

  —LORD BYRON, RAVENNA JOURNAL

  One year later it would all seem so insubstantial, not in meaning but in memory, as if my recurring fantasy of it all having been a dream were actually true (for once, that maddening cheat of a literary device, the deux ex machina, would have been welcomed). Dan was gone, buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery on a sloping crest by an ancient black oak, near his father’s grave. He had died of a simple accident. Walking along the Quinnipiac on a blustery afternoon in January he tripped on a patch of ice, fell into the water, and cracked his head on a stone. Tragic, yes, but nothing more. Of course, this explanation obscured the real cause behind his death, whispered in the hallways and dorm rooms and eateries of Aberdeen. Dan had become yet another shadowy figure in Aberdeen lore, another young victim of suicide and a warning to all parents who pushed their children into succeeding beyond their capabilities. Dan had been so distraught he hadn’t even explained himself with a suicide note, instead leaving a poem by Jean Rimbaud on his bed, and years later when I found another quote by Rimbaud—When you are seventeen you aren’t really serious—I found it so darkly appropriate that I laughed until I wept, and it was the first good laugh I’d had since leaving Aberdeen.

  My leaving Aberdeen was necessary, I believed, not just for my own mental health, but for everyone around me. I felt like a reminder, like a film loop playing endlessly, a memorial for what had happened when it soon became clear the memories needed to be put away. A month after I confessed everything to Dr. Cade all traces of Dan were gone—the crisis service center quietly switched to giving alcohol abuse and safe-sex seminars, talk of the Daniel Higgins Scholarship Fund faded and eventually stopped altogether, and even Nicole, champion of tragic causes, grew disinterested and returned to her parties at the Cellar and Rebecca Malzone’s house, with Peter the Yogi and those other extras who sometimes haunt my dreams.

  Dr. Cade converted Dan’s old room into a library, and donated all the furniture to Goodwill, but Dan’s jacket stayed, his musty old woolen plaid, hanging on one of the coat hooks near the front door, underneath Art’s poofy ski jacket. I think everyone had forgotten about it; even when I moved out Dan’s coat remained. I imagine it may still be there, next to the blue cashmere scarf Dr. Cade had given me for Christmas.

  Only I seemed incapable of letting go, believing I’d find peace in confessi
on, but soon realizing that even confession does not always absolve guilt. I told Dr. Cade the truth not because I wanted to see justice done, but because I thought it would unchain me from the nightmares and panic attacks and mental anguish that had plagued me since the night I dragged Dan’s body into the canoe, paddled toward the back of the pond, and pushed him over the side. My confession, however, had the opposite effect. Dr. Cade’s stolid reaction left me reeling, his impassive expression like a sheer cliff wall that I couldn’t find purchase on. When I’m feeling particularly cynical I accuse Dr. Cade of sinful pride, of putting his own needs and convenience before anyone else, of letting an injustice go unpunished. But even so, a large part of me (remnants of my youth, perhaps?) believes Dr. Cade did nothing because he knew the real reason I confessed, and thought that torment enough. And if that was his rationale, he was right.

  Professor Cade had sat there for a long time, mouth slightly downturned, reading Dan’s letter as I told him the entire story. I told him everything—our trip to Prague, Malezel’s formula, Art’s experiments on cats, and his gradual descent into madness. My suspicions about how Dan had died, whether or not he knew he was taking the formula, and what we did the night I came downstairs and found Dan lying on the foyer floor, face up, his skin pale and his eyes half-open. I told Dr. Cade that Art had confessed to writing the suicide note. I told him I had known this for quite some time.

  Dr. Cade listened intently, his expression unchanging, and when I lost control and started to cry, he merely waited for me to finish. Five, maybe ten minutes passed, until I composed myself, and then he cleared his throat and set the letter down.

  “This is a serious matter,” he said, staring at me with hooded eyes. He looked down at the letter and pursed his lips.

  “Most serious,” he said. “Yes…yes, it is.”

  He folded the letter and put it into the top drawer of his desk.

  “I will give it my full consideration,” he said, and he uncapped his pen and smoothed his deep blue tie.

  “Now then, I expect your completed section by 5 P.M., at the latest. I will be staying at my office until 10 this evening, should you need any more time, which I’m hoping you will not. I still have an enormous amount of work ahead of me, so if there’s anything else…”

  He went back to work, marking sheets of paper with his silver Mont Blanc. I waited for him to say something. The only sounds were the raspy scratch of his pen and the ticking of the radiator. Five minutes passed into ten, and still I waited, seated across from him, while he slowly worked through the pile of papers.

  Finally I got up and walked out, not bothering to close the door.

  I don’t think Professor Cade believed in, or encouraged study of, the Philosopher’s Stone. I do think he understood mortality more than any of us, and as a consequence I think Dr. Cade did succeed, on some level—despite Cornelius’s insistence otherwise—at grasping the microscopic slice of immortality that’s offered to us all. He was so acutely aware of his place in time that he never missed an opportunity to be remembered, and he was devoutly selfish, but he never claimed to be anything else. I was the one who created his image as that of a moral father, when in fact his decision to continue the cover-up of Dan’s death was so in line with who he was—I have chosen to view the world rationally, he’d said, that one night during dinner, and to my delight the world has presented itself as such—that sometimes I feel a twinge of admiration for, if nothing else, his lack of hypocrisy. I know one can rationalize anything, but no matter what any of us did afterward, no matter how many lies we told or opportunities to choose differently we passed by, nothing changed the reality of Dan’s death. That is what Dr. Cade understood, and that’s the only consolation I’ve allowed myself.

  I fully expected Art to die that afternoon, poisoning himself accidentally in his lab and thereby recusing himself of any further guilt. But he was home when I called Dr. Cade’s for the last time, and when I told him I had confessed everything, that I’d sat in Dr. Cade’s office and admitted my role in covering up Dan’s death, he kept silent for about a minute, and said he’d see me at dinner. We’re having lamb, he said. If you could pick up some sweet peppers on the way home that’d be great. And maybe a good Cabernet. Call me from the store if they give you a hard time. In the background I heard Howie playing piano—his favorite Bach piece, The Air, from Suite in D Major—and Nilus whining to be let out. The illusions had been put back up, I remember thinking. Now I was the memento mori.

  My last work for Dr. Cade I left unfinished, the end of the Carolingian empire, written in Nicole’s dorm room while she was at class. I couldn’t spend much time alone in my room for obvious reasons.

  The idea of Charlemagne’s empire did not die with him; to the contrary it flourished, reaching its conceptual apex nearly a half century after his death. But the most brilliant expressions of his ideal came long after the opportunity to realize them had passed—by the time of the Carolingian Renaissance the Empire was collapsing. Besieged on all sides—Vikings from the north and west, Hungarians from the east, and Saracens from the south—the end came swift and complete. Towns were burned to the ground, abbeys and churches were sacked and left abandoned. One order, the monks of St. Maiolus, long held as the shining example of Charlemagne’s ideal, soon found themselves on the run from invaders. Vikings attacked their monastery on the island of Noirmoutier, and from there they fled to Deas, and then Cunauld, and after that to Messay, to St.-Pourcainsur-Sioule, and finally to Tournus on the Saône, where they started construction of a magnificent cathedral. After forty years and six hundred miles they seemed to have at last found a safe haven. But their respite was short-lived. Hungarians attacked, burned the cathedral to its foundation, and the monks who survived were scattered. Charlemagne’s ideal had taken its last breath.

  I ended up leaving my unfinished section for Dr. Cade outside his office door, and I walked away from it all, as best I could.

  That spring Cornelius Graves died in the library, at his desk, from a heart attack caused by the stress of radiation and chemotherapy treatments. His body was discovered by Josh Briggs, who, while returning an overdue book, found Cornelius slumped in his chair at the front desk, his cane lying on the floor beneath his dangling hand. I was the only person at Cornelius’s funeral—aside from the priest and grave digger—and the church buried him in Forest Stream Cemetery, right off of Route 9, in Stanton Valley. Cornelius, unbeknownst to everyone at school (and perhaps even to himself), had lived in Fairwich County his entire life. The old priest told me this—his father had worked with Cornelius in the Stanton Valley paper mills, nearly seventy years ago. I like to think the pigeons breathed a collective sigh of relief when news of Cornelius’s death reached them. I know I did. His death completed his mythology, and let the gods sear his constellation into the night sky.

  I floated through the rest of the semester, doing well in my classes, enjoying dorm life, going to parties and dating a few girls. Throwing up in the broom closet because I couldn’t make it back to my room in time, having sex with a freshman girl in Thorren’s third-floor bathroom—“living the normal college experience,” as Nicole said, puffing a joint while we sat together on the Paderborne fire escape on a warm April night.

  I tried to stay at Aberdeen but found my sleep still restless and my waking hours overcast with a dark veil, despite some moments of true happiness. I toughed it out until my junior year and then I applied and was accepted into Aberdeen’s Ivy League cousin, twenty miles south in New Haven. There were some parties thrown for me—another event at the Cellar, a small gathering at Jacob Blum’s—and the requisite tears, mostly from Nicole, who said this time I was a goner, for certain. Before, she said, I was living in a house full of snobby elitists; now I was going to an entire school of them.

  I saw both Ellen and Howie for the last time, on the same day. I was taking the bus to New Haven and had a few hours to kill so I decided to eat lunch at Edna’s, and just as I sat down, Howie and Ellen wa
lked in. Howie’s hair was cut shorter, and he wore a black fitted sweater—something I never expected to see him in. Ellen had let her hair grow, past her shoulders, a flaxen rush contrasted starkly against her deep red sweater. I hadn’t thought about her much in the previous year, not as much as I feared but more than I’d hoped, and seeing her—seeing them—brought back a sickening wave of nostalgia. It was that fork-speared caper, I thought, that made me fall in love with you.

  I didn’t want them to see me but they did, and to my surprise they asked me to join them, and again to my surprise, I accepted.

  We fell into our old ways more easily than any of us expected (Howie gave me a brief lecture on the importance of starting an early-retirement fund, Ellen told him to leave me alone), and we discussed Ellen’s new job opportunities in Chicago, how she was moving there within six months, and how Howie was going with her. Howie said he was sober, adding at least for now, and Ellen punched him in the arm. Also, he was proud to say, he’d summoned the courage to tell his dad he wasn’t getting a degree—“the old man thinks I’m an indolent bum, of course”—but Beauford had finally relented. Only because he’d had a heart attack six months earlier, Howie said, and was now “putting things in perspective.”

  We talked about my future at Yale and how important it would be to keep in touch (which didn’t happen, by the way—I wrote Howie a few times, care of Ellen’s address, during my first semester at Yale, and he wrote back a few times, and then one day my letter got returned, with NO FORWARDING ADDRESS stamped crookedly across the front). We chatted for another thirty minutes while the usual cast of characters shuffled in and out of Edna’s (including the heavy man who’d been so fond of Richard Chamberlain movies), and I waited as long as I could—through my BLT and my apple crumb pie—until finally asking them about Art. At the mention of Art’s name Howie stiffened, and his smile faded.