Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  He would go to Rutgers.

  ***

  Tom McIlweath knew they were approaching Portsmouth, a town of some size that would offer an opportunity to rest. A road sign dimly seen through the headlights told him that Portsmouth was only thirty-three miles away. Less than an hour. He thought he could make it, although the prospect of keeping himself awake that much longer promised a struggle.

  But to McIlweath’s delighted surprise that would not be necessary. As the road turned one of the wide bends, a sign appeared announcing a rest area in half a mile. Half a mile—less than a minute! McIlweath pushed his weary legs against the floorboard as far as they would go. He yawned again and blinked his eyes to sharpen their focus. His foot lightened on the accelerator.

  There it was, nothing more than a parking lot, but that was all they needed. The area was empty. As McIlweath turned the car off the road the headlights scanned only vacant asphalt, two conical trash barrels, and, in the background, the omnipresent dark trees. Here was rest, such as it was.

  As the car slowed, Finnegan shook back to life. He sat up unsteadily and looked around himself to discern time, place and mission.

  “What time is it?” he croaked, his voice dry and bristly. “Where are we?”

  “It’s nearly three, Conor. We’re in Virginia somewhere. I can’t stay awake anymore.”

  “Virginia, huh? What are we close to?”

  “Exhaustion. Shut up and go back to sleep.”

  “You want me to drive? I could drive for a while.”

  McIlweath groaned. “Jesus, no. You can drive tomorrow all you want.”

  He nosed the car to the curbing and turned off the tired motor, which shuddered to a stop and then gave a gaseous wheeze. As he killed the headlights McIlweath plunged the entire area—Virginia, the South, the world itself—into a hushed darkness. Only the chirping of the night bugs punctuated the smothering black, alive amidst death.

  McIlweath could barely make out Finnegan’s contours in the seat next to him. Finnegan rustled a bit, shifted so that he faced the door and sagged again into his seat.

  “Jesus, Mac, it’s dark as hell!”

  “It’ll be daybreak in a couple of hours. Make sure your door is locked.”

  McIlweath sighed, stretched again as far as he could, and let the barren Virginia night cave in around him to claim whatever parts of him it could find.

  CHAPTER II

  There are two gates of sleep. One is of horn, easy of passage for the shades of truth; the other, of gleaming white ivory, permits false dreams to ascend to the upper air.

  —Virgil, Aeneid

  Glynnis Mear was eighteen when her father died. She would spend the rest of her life trying to patch the hole of his leaving.

  Dr. Robert Mear had been a surgeon, one of the very best in a highly competitive field. Twenty-two years at Massachusetts General, nearly three dozen scholarly articles and more lecture appearances than he could remember had earned a hoary reputation for him and a great deal of money for his family. That was the key, the bedrock of his satisfaction, for he was, above all else, a family man. Professional success had meaning primarily for its impact on his family’s well-being. He had no sense of greed in the usual context, seeking only security and comfort without undue luxury. For these traits his colleagues regarded him as somewhat odd.

  Until he was thirty, Robert Mear equated his very existence with medicine. Nine years earlier he had entered medical school timidly, fully gratified by his acceptance, which he thought proved his innate capabilities, yet fearful of the intellectual and physical demands that loomed ahead. But his studies had been his revelation. A staunch Catholic, he came to believe, passionately, that the highest expression of adherence to God’s abiding laws lay in the healing arts. There lay agape love, and acceptance, and mercy. The more he studied, the more he saw medicine as an instrument of regeneration with which he could perform God’s most sacred intentions. Buoyed by this conviction that his professional life could be an extension of his Creator’s Divine Will, Robert Mear threw himself into his studies with all the enthusiastic single-mindedness of a convert. Unlike many converts, though, his exuberance never waned, nor did skepticism creep into his faith. He came to define himself, along with his entire view of a divine system, through his study of medicine. Imbued with saving grace, Robert Mear exuded a quiet, soft-spoken dignity. He took himself very seriously.

  One afternoon he noticed a young nurse eating alone in the hospital cafeteria. He boldly took a place at her table, passed his meal with standard innocuous hospital conversation, and, taken with the black depth of her eyes (which, he thought, could well hide a multitude of sins), asked her to join him for dinner later that week.

  So began his courtship of Florence Parlovecchio, whose middle name was Melpomene. Twenty-three years earlier she had been born in Boston’s North End, and there she had remained all her life. Florence was not at all what Robert Mear had imagined he would be attracted to, but then, he had had very little time considering the opposite sex outside of their anatomical curiosities. While his colleagues would have never allowed themselves to become serious about a young nurse from an Italian family of modest means, Robert Mear had little concern for ethnic or class distinctions. Florence was a healer, and so passed his only real prejudice.

  Florence was a simple girl, and the Parlovecchios were thrilled when she informed them that she was seeing a young surgeon. As a matter of course, they jumped to conclusions far in advance of the circumstances that might have warranted them.

  She had become a nurse out of a fundamental desire to work some good with her life. Florence had been a bright girl but upon completing high school had found college out of the question. Mama and Papa Parlovecchio had created a brood of eight, of which she was the eldest. There would be no college. The nursing program at Mass General, evening division, rose as a suitable compromise between Florence’s ambitions and her father’s means. Nurses made good money and worked regularly, in her father’s view. In the meantime she could secure a day job, study at night, and help the family as much as she could.

  As a result of such planning, Florence still lived at home when she met Robert Mear. She did not consider herself unique; the ambitions of nearly all her neighborhood friends had been subjugated to financial necessity, and, in most instances, destroyed altogether. She typified the condition of Boston’s North End Italians, or so she thought, and so she never grew bitter. She carried on with her spirits intact.

  Robert Mear, for his part, had never experienced the attentions of a woman since early in his undergraduate days. Florence in her simplicity showed him a gentility he had not encountered, a way forward that was less compulsive, less kinetic. She refreshed him. Florence never hurried, and when she left the hospital physically she left it emotionally and intellectually as well. Her instincts told her that this was a man who viewed the world in a single dimension. Her calm reserve could soften his edges.

  The young surgeon found in Florence’s placidity a resilient fiber that surprised him. And when, and the end of an evening they would bring themselves back to his apartment so that they could lie together, she stroking his neck rhythmically with the barest of motions, Robert Mear’s innate tension then subsided and the healer himself was healed.

  They wed fourteen months after they met. The groom reached thirty-one, the bride twenty-four. The wedding was an ornate affair and well attended, for the Parlovecchios had spread numerously as well as widely. Branches extended in twists and turns throughout New England and into New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and all converged to watch the union of young Florence with her doctor. The father of the bride marveled that his little girl had done so well.

  Through marriage, Robert Mear procured for himself another outlet for his intense disposition. No longer could he afford the luxury of tunnel vision. He had been forced to display another facet of an evolving character—more comforting but no less demanding than his surgical career: Robert Mear, the domestic man.
In this new role the young doctor was as attentive and considerate as his professional demands permitted. That Florence continued her own career helped her understanding of those demands. For the times apart there was disappointment, but never resentment. Their comfort with one another grew by the day to become immense, and immeasurable. They belonged together in this life.

  In a relatively short time the Mears proved themselves as fertile as the wife’s forbears: two years after marriage Florence gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Glynnis, a lyrical, floating name they both loved. Their procreative efforts did not cease there, nor did they want them to. Perhaps their constant mingling with illness, suffering and death led them to seek the creation of as much healthy life as their bodies could produce. Within five years three more children followed.

  Glynnis Mear grew up amid children smaller than she, under the steady and loving guidance of parents increasingly devoted to what they had made. She came of age amid the squawking, the fighting, the support and the euphoria that a family of that size invariably produces. She came of age under the eyes of a mother who herself had grown up in a large clan and expected no less, and a father who, like Narcissus kneeling at the pond, had found a fascinating new reflection which transfixed him.

  And so it continued until Glynnis’s eighteenth year, when her father, plagued by a series of headaches increasingly stronger, turned his medical expertise upon himself. At first he dismissed his pain as the reaction of an aging body to the stress of his profession. He had, after all, known several surgeons who had had to retire early because the intensely delicate balance of human life beneath their fingertips had in time exacted a huge toll on their mortal souls. They developed twitches, tics, sallow complexions, and other signs of degenerative exhaustion. They often lapsed into long, unbroken depressions or withdrew behind hollow stares to wrestle with the horrific skeletons of failure. Many took to drink, and others found uses for pharmaceuticals beyond mere healing. They were athletes at the end of glorious careers who still tried to respond to the demands of their sport, even as their bodies broke apart.

  But after several weeks of regular attacks Robert Mear feared that his case might be something beyond fatigue. He decided to investigate his condition in some detail as soon as he could muster the strength to do so. The attacks continued with heightened ferocity. One morning, his head afire, he submitted to a colleague’s PET scan. The result jolted him to the core: a melanoma tucked into the corner of his brain under the hippocampus, necessarily malignant and completely unreachable.

  Together, Robert and Florence Mear told the children several nights later, after more tests, consultations and analyses, after they had had time to consider the facts of mortality. There was no way of knowing how rapidly the malignancy would progress, they said. There were things that could be done—surgeries and chemotherapy—but they offered no hope for a cure, and would only compromise Robert’s remaining time and make it less livable. Father might still be with us for months yet. Years, if our prayers are heard. And the children believed this through their tears. They had no choice but faith.

  Ever the logical man, Robert set about preparing for his death with the same calculated precision with which he had approached his life. These children and their mother must be well provided. He liquidated his investments, annuitized them for his wife and established trust funds for each of his children. Within a week he had dictated a long, detailed will to his attorney, taking care that assets accrued through his medical career, including residuals and intellectual property claims, were equitably divided between each son and daughter so that each would have a sizeable college fund. Once in college, he reasoned, they should be able to do well enough for themselves.

  Details in place, Robert Mear sought then to live his life as he had before this terrible news had been learned. He continued to work as he could, appreciating that his time was limited. There would be too few miracles allotted him, and none in his own behalf; he could not afford to turn his back on a single one. If his life was to manifest an affirmation of the dignity inherent in every body, in every soul, he had only a finite number of days to reavow that testament. Concurrently he sought to savor his time with his family without abandoning himself to moroseness. Christ, we all have to die. He had the advantage, he told himself, of preparation. There would be time enough for mourning later. Thank God, he would not have to see it.

  The time he spent with his family grew richer—less frivolous but not morose. It was, he thought, simply a greater appreciation of each other and where they were, even among the children. The younger Mears put away the vicious edges that children sometimes possess. They became more considerate, almost to the point of tenderness, almost serene in their sadness. They collected themselves gently, bracing singularly and collectively against the great darkness whose smothering depth they could not imagine in any particular but which they knew to be just beyond the next horizon.

  The Mears had always vacationed in the autumn, usually in October shortly after the last traces of New England summer disappeared. Robert Mear loved the sharp crispness of the season, the barren quality that followed so closely upon the boisterous summertime. For years he had taken his family to the Maine coast, to Ellsworth near Bar Harbor. There they would hike through Acadia, rent canoes and paddle inland, crawl along the shoreline rocks, boil lobsters. The crowds of summer dispersed, few people intruded upon their pace and time. Cottages were plentiful, and the rates cheap. The children relished the special week when their parents took them out of school years just begun to steal away from friends, neighborhood and homework. In time, each of the Mears came to savor the contrast between the pressing throb of Boston and the pensive, crisp solitude of their week in Maine. Robert insisted that this year the family would head northward in October.

  Nothing in the routine of their vacation changed, save the solicitous behavior of the children. Two months had passed since the pronouncement of their father’s illness. They had grown accustomed to their grief, had grown into it and absorbed it, but the initial effect it had had upon their deportment toward one another became indelible.

  This year, the year of her father’s approaching death, Glynnis Mear looked forward to this time away more than she had in years past. Despite being the eldest, she had never been particularly assertive. She had grown up a quiet girl, treasuring time to herself. She did not enjoy taking responsibility for her brothers and sister, even though she loved them dearly. Until she was sixteen she shared a room with her sister, three years younger. Martha, it seemed, was a constant presence, and knew Glynnis’s every move and every thought. Adolescence was a difficult enough time; she should at least have the opportunity to go through it by herself. The annual week in Maine had always provided the space she craved. There was enough room up there for everyone.

  Glynnis did not try to shrink from her father’s condition. She did not pretend. More so than the others, she accepted the fact that he was terribly, terribly ill, that he would die soon, and that, once that happened, her world would never be as secure as it was now in spite of any trust funds or annuities. While sadness governed the mood of her siblings, Glynnis tried matter-of-factly to come to grips with the practicality of what lay ahead. Always a pensive girl, she withdrew more and more frequently in the days following her father’s disclosure.

  And in her introspection, all thoughts were derivatives of her father. To Glynnis, he was gracious, gentle, omnipotent, omniscient, and ever the quiet hero. If the eyes were truly the windows to the soul, then she knew her father’s to be bright, warm and eminently placid. How long she had envied his serenity. Since she was a little girl she had taken heart in that quality alone. Nothing seemed to ruffle him—not crayons on the wall, not a scratching fight between brother and sister, not a cold dinner after a sixteen-hour stint at the hospital, not even the death of a patient. Faith, however that nebulous, amorphous quality defined itself in his magnificent soul, reaffirmed that he, Robert Mear, had a purpose and that everything tha
t touched his complex existence had a purpose, too. Glynnis could not imagine a kinder man. He loved humanity with an unspoken, generalized appreciation for the diversities of the human character. She could not remember her father ever uttering a disparaging remark toward colleague, friend, relative or total stranger. How she had prayed as a child that she would inherit that wondrous serenity.

  Yet she knew, too, that her father could be hard. Because he based his life in an inviolable faith in man’s inherent dignity, he reacted quickly when that faith was breached by a careless word or action. He could reprimand sternly, his words probing to the heart of the alleged transgression, the reason behind it, and how that lone sin, whatever it might have been, soiled its perpetrator. Glynnis blushed at recollections of some of her father’s more intense lashings. Afterward, though, her father’s face would always soften, and he would ask her if she had learned anything, if she were sorry. Often, a few hours or even a few minutes after the severest reprimand, her father would grab her in a great hug and press his face against her neck. She would glow then in her readmittance to his glorious heart, certain even then that she had never really left it and recommitted to avoiding the things that would disappoint him.

  Her father constituted the core of her life. He united all the disparate ends into a single body, infusing it with a worth underscored by his loving example of what the human spirit could attain. He loomed larger than life, a hero, a demigod, the finest, most complete expression of man’s compassionate nature. Glynnis loved all her family, but she revered her father.