I had never met Rochelle, though of course I knew of her existence, had listened to Hamilton talk about her for years, and had seen pictures of her, first her grade school photographs, then junior high school, and most recently, four years ago, her high school yearbook photograph. So, in a manner of speaking, I knew what to expect. I had seen her image change, gradually, year by year: from that of a bright-faced, wide-eyed, mischievous three-year-old (taken at nursery school), in which she wore a kelly green daysuit that contrasted beautifully with her then flame red hair; to the image of a gap-toothed seven-year-old grinning proudly into the camera, her now deeper red hair in braids tied around her head, her green eyes flashing with innocent affection; to the image of a sober-faced, sexually serious adolescent, an intense face already full of intellectual grace and sensual force, with a touch of the bewilderment that such rare presences in such inordinate quantities must have caused her; and on to the most recent image, the tall, almost statuesque, even though delicate and slender, young woman, her deep red hair now tumbling roughly, densely, over her shoulders, her eyes warm, intelligent, disciplined, her mouth in a slight smile as if about to speak, full and promising, her neck long, proud, elegant. And of course, because these photographs were all inscribed to her absent, never seen nor even directly remembered daddy, I was able to trace the development of her character over the years by studying the changes in her handwriting and the language she used to inscribe her photographs. From her nursery school photograph (precociously, I thought):
And then, sadly asserting her relation to him, a six-year-old who could no longer even recall the presence of the man, who knew him only as a name and burning need:
Here she is at ten, obviously after having read a bit of Shakespeare (one wonders what her mother made of the little girl’s reading habits: a fifth-grade child poring over Lear?):
And here, in her own, mature, self-aware hand, at the age of seventeen, describing the true nature of her relationship with the man while at the same time offering him its positive denial, which was, of course, the nature of her daily experience of the man:
It was never clear to me why Rochelle was graduating from college in Ausable Chasm, a small tourist town, once a mill town, located in upstate New York a few miles from Lake Champlain. I could not imagine anyone sending his child to such a college for academic reasons (unless the child were unable to matriculate anywhere else), and so far as I knew, Rochelle’s mother still resided in Lakeland, Florida, as had Rochelle, at least through her senior year of high school. It didn’t make sense to me that she should attend a small, non-descript college fifteen hundred miles from home, especially when there were so many right around home to choose from. I asked Hamilton about it during the drive west and north from his home in Barnstead. He had called me the week before to ask if I would accompany him to his daughter’s graduation, mentioning, as if it would help me decide to come, that the featured speaker would be Ezra Taft Benson. He did not mention, of course, that his own daughter would give the valedictory speech, or that it would be in Latin (of her own choosing—the first time in the history of Ausable Chasm College of Arts and Science that the graduation speech had been given in Latin!). He told me about that, offhandedly, in Burlington, Vermont.
“Why,” I asked him as he drove his car onto the ferry at Burlington and we began the crossing of Lake Champlain, “why does your daughter happen to be graduating from a small, obscure college in upstate New York, when all along I thought she was living in central Florida with her mother and presumably would have gone to either a well-known, prestigious college in the New England states or else one near her home? Did they move north while she was in high school?” I prodded. I suspected there was a story here to be told me by someone.
It was a beautiful, sunshiny, mid-June day stuffed with bright yellows and jade greens. The mountains, the broad valleys, the almost giddy blue of the lake—it made me want to be either a farmer in this valley or a tourist. I could not decide which role would give me more of the place. It’s an ancient dilemma: We can never choose between the experience itself and our memory of it.
Hamilton’s answer didn’t make much sense to me. Not then, anyhow, except to let me know that he didn’t wish to discuss it. He simply told me that the girl was obviously trying to get closer to her father now that she was no longer wholly dependent on her mother, but that Ausable Chasm was as close as she dared come to where he happened to be. So I let the subject drop and tried to enjoy the day, the smooth lake, the immense sky above it.
At the campus, a complex of half a dozen small, square, brick buildings that from the outside resembled a munitions plant, we met Hamilton’s daughter, Rochelle, he for the first time since she was an infant, me for the first time ever. As we got out of his car—he was driving an air-conditioned, dark brown Cadillac Coupe de Ville at that time, quite luxurious—I asked him if Rochelle knew he was coming. He grunted that in response to her invitation he had sent her a post card so indicating.
“Is this the first time you will have seen her since she was an infant?” I asked him.
Again he grunted his answer, which was yes. I could tell from his grunts that he was somewhat tense and possibly even a bit frightened of the occasion. One could hardly blame him. I’m sure that, although he never mentioned it, her acceptance of him was fully as important to him as his acceptance of her was to Rochelle. What if she saw him and, flooded with memories of her mother’s angry descriptions of the man, said to him, “No, I have changed my mind, I don’t want you here, I don’t want you to come to my graduation!” Would he try to comfort her, try to convince her that he truly wanted to be there, reassuring her with his kind, soft and urgent words? Or would he simply spin on his heels and walk away, back to his car, and go home?
Luckily, when Rochelle came up to him and introduced herself, saying that she recognized him from snapshots her mother had shown her, he smiled graciously—one of the few times, perhaps the only time, I’ve seen Hamilton Stark smile graciously—and he took her hand in his and thanked her for inviting him. Rochelle was already six feet tall, a young woman with electrifying beauty, and as she stood there in the parking lot outside the auditorium in her royal blue gown and mortarboard, her hand in her father’s hand, her green eyes staring directly, searchingly, into his brown eyes, which were squinting from the bright sunlight, I felt tears running over and down my cheeks.
Though she and I barely spoke, except for the moment when Hamilton introduced us to one another, it seemed to me then, and was later confirmed by her own testimony, that we both felt a deep bond between us. Years later, six, to be exact, I was able to ask her about that first meeting at Ausable Chasm, to ask her how she had perceived me then. We were lying in bed together, drifting languidly from passionate peaks through hazy valleys all the way to the gray light of dawn, the time of night and first intimacy when lovers ask one another how they were seen before, when they were not lovers. It’s an ancient form of talk, one of the few reliable ways of finding out how one actually is in the world.
I lit a cigarette for her and, naked except for my socks and garters, walked across the room to the dresser—we were at my home, in my own bedroom, this the conclusion to an evening that had begun as a literary discussion on the subject of the modern novel—and fixed her a drink, cognac and soda. “Tell me,” I said to her, returning to the bed with her drink, “on that day we first met, your college graduation day, the day you told me about your father’s wanting to go to college and how he had failed to satisfy that desire and how that was all tied up with your desire to attend Ausable Chasm—on that first day, how did you see me? How did I seem to you? Can you remember?” I asked, handing her the glass. “You don’t mind telling me this, do you?” I asked, suddenly worried that I might have embarrassed her with my question. I still did not know how to anticipate her reactions to anything I might say or do, nor do I even today. She is more intelligent than I, but her thought sequences are linked in patterns and systems that are not as l
ogical as mine, and consequently she is unpredictable to me. Excitingly so, however! I find myself enlarged, enriched, and challenged by her unpredictability. She accomplishes it, expresses it, in our relationship in such a way that it never makes me feel arrogant or humiliated (the two most conventional responses in a male to a female’s unpredictability).
“No,” she said in her low, early morning voice, “I don’t mind.” She was tired, I knew, as was I, but we were both nonetheless stimulated by the occasion. It produced in her a kind of languid animation that, whenever it appeared, made me want to make love to her again. But I resisted the impulse and attended her words.
“I saw you immediately as an ally,” she told me. “I looked into your face and watched how you watched my father. I knew then that you were probably the only other person on earth who was obsessed with him in a way that corresponded to my own obsession with him.” Then she stopped a second. “But you don’t want to hear about my use for you, do you? I mean, after all, as an ally you were useful to me. You were going to become a way for me both to justify and satisfy my obsession with my father. I did have other perceptions of you, perceptions that had nothing to do with any possible use I might make of you. Wouldn’t you rather hear those?” she gently asked me.
Indeed. I had an erection to cope with now. The milky light of dawn was entering the room like a thief, stealing the nighttime and our disembodied, anonymous voices, thrusting us back into our particular, constraining bodies, those vessels, those jugs, those ridiculous, pajama-shaped symbols of our true identities. (I believe this, I have always believed it. I have never regarded myself as anything more than my disembodied voice and have never thought of myself as more clearly seen, known, than when I am heard. This, of course, lies behind my need to pursue and understand Hamilton Stark—at least it’s what presents me with a rationale for my pursuit—for he is the only human being I have known who did not seem to exist solely through his disembodied voice.)
That day at Ausable Chasm College of Arts and Science, though, I almost gave up on Hamilton. I came closest then to believing that the entire view I held of him was nothing more than an objectification of my own psychological and philosophical needs. For the first time, and, I hope, the last, I seriously entertained the notion that I had, in essence, made up Hamilton Stark, had invented him, had taken an ordinary man with an unusual personality disorder and had structured his numerous symptoms into an image that satisfied a set of secret, shameful needs in me.
My true weaknesses always seem to derive from my sympathies. Hamilton has told me this, and it’s true. You will recall my sympathy for his second wife, the one he called “the actress,” and how my sympathy for her made me question his very authenticity. Well, the same thing happened, only in a more extreme fashion, that day when I first met Rochelle, discovered that she was giving the valedictory speech, saw her reaching out for her father’s love and part of his life, and saw him yank both back. I was horrified. This was going too far, I thought. Surely, cruelty has its metaphysical use and meaning, but there must be a point where it is simply and purely cruelty and has no use or meaning except for the perpetrator.
“I’m glad you came,” she said to him in a voice that, to me, seemed remarkably calm.
He squinted into the sun and, expressionless, said that he had come to hear Ezra Taft Benson speak, a privilege that heretofore he had been denied.
Rochelle asked him if he understood Latin.
He shook his head no and asked, surprised, if Benson were going to speak in Latin.
“No, not that I know of,” she said, smiling easily. “But I am. Would you like a translation of my speech?” she asked him coyly. “I’ve copied it out for you.”
Again he shook his head no.
The half-hour that followed was extremely strained: The three of us strolled around the parking lot, Hamilton in the middle, Rochelle on one side, and me on the other. We looked at the automobiles, commented on the makes and the number plates, and asked one another questions that could not be answered. At least not by any of us.
Rochelle: “Are you happy to know that your daughter is graduating from college?”
Hamilton: “Seems like a good idea.”
Me: “What are your plans, now that you’re graduating from college?”
Rochelle: “Everything depends on one thing.”
Me: “And what is that?”
Rochelle: “I’m not sure yet, and I can’t tell what I think it is.”
Hamilton: “What kind of a car is that, the little convertible sports job with the raggedy roof?”
Rochelle and Me: “I don’t know. Custom made, maybe?”
Hamilton: “Don’t you hate custom-made cars?”
Rochelle: “I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
Me: “Why?”
Hamilton: “Who knows? Maybe I’m just trying to make conversation.”
Me: “Oh.”
Rochelle: “Have you been friends with my father for a long time?”
Me: “Relative to what?”
Hamilton: “Yeah, relative to what?”
Rochelle: “I don’t know. Forget it. I was just trying to make conversation.”
Me: “Oh.”
Hamilton: “Where are we supposed to sit?”
Rochelle: “I don’t know. Anywhere in the auditorium, I guess. Wherever you want to sit.”
Hamilton: “All right if we go and sit now?”
Rochelle: “If that’s what you want.”
Hamilton: “That’s what we want. Right?”
Me: “I guess so, you’re the host today. Or are you the host, Rochelle? I mean the hostess.”
Rochelle: “I’ll show you where the auditorium is. Then I’ll have to leave you and join my classmates for the march. I’ll be sitting on the platform.”
Hamilton: “With Benson?”
Rochelle: “I don’t know. I presume so.”
Me: “Well, should we wish you luck, Rochelle? Or are you the overconfident type?”
Rochelle: “Who knows? Relative to what, eh?”
Me (laughing): “Right.”
Hamilton: “Let’s go find a seat.”
Me: “Okay.”
Rochelle: “The auditorium’s right through those doors, straight ahead and to the right. Think you can find it all right?”
Hamilton: “Sound simple enough.”
Me: “No problem. Right, Hamilton?”
Hamilton: “No problem. Right, Rochelle?”
Rochelle: “No problem. Right?”
Me (laughing again): “Are you making fun of me?”
Rochelle: “I don’t know. See you after the speeches.”
I realize that I’m not explaining many things that the reader doubtless would like explained. Please believe me, I’m not leaving these questions unanswered merely because I have a perverse love of mystery. Quite the opposite; in fact, I despise mystery. Mystery is the last resort of the hysteric. It’s a frantic, final attempt to organize chaos, or rather, to give the appearance of having organized chaos. None of that for me. It’s too easy and too cheap a way out for a man who feels, as I do, morally compelled to abide with chaos all the way to the end, until either he has succeeded in answering all the questions at hand, unraveling all the tangles, explaining all the puzzles, solving all the riddles, or else he has succumbed to the snarl of chaos altogether. For such a man, for me, the mid-die, where “mystery” lies, is definitely excluded. I am an emotional man, yes, but I am not a romantic man. And though I may never ascend quite to those airy levels of pure reason where, for example, my friend C. strolls about so comfortably, at least I am clear about the nature of my goal and can measure with accuracy the distance I remain from it. This particular clarity and the measuring that results therefrom comprise, for me, the only possibilities for a moral life. All else is either fantasy or determinism.
For this reason, that day at Ausable Chasm I persisted in trying to find out why Rochelle was graduating from college here in the North. O
rdinarily, if Hamilton indicated that he didn’t wish to discuss a subject, I deferred to him and changed the subject, never bringing it up again unless and until he indicated readiness. But my fascination with Rochelle, then, at the actual sight of her, drove me to push in ways I would have otherwise found rude, if not downright boorish, in myself as well as in anyone else.
“What’s the story?” I asked him. “What’s the explanation? How come?”
All of which he answered with a shrug, a downturned mouth with pouting lower lip, like a carp’s, a helpless flop of open hands at his sides. And after a while it occurred to me that he didn’t know the answer either, that it was likely, when he had learned that his daughter was graduating from Ausable Chasm College of Arts and Science, that he had been as surprised and puzzled as I.
I therefore ceased asking the man about it and promised myself to ask Rochelle instead. Unfortunately, whenever I was with her, I became so addled by her physical and spiritual presence that I forgot my promise altogether, and now, six years after making that promise, I still have not kept it, and thus I do not know why Rochelle graduated from an obscure college in upstate New York rather than one in central Florida. This distresses me. For now it is too late to keep that promise. Rochelle is gone from me except in memory and imagination. I will never know the answer to my question, and the reader will never know either.
Hamilton Stark Page 17