by Greg Fields
The ceremonies on that leaden gray day were long, made longer by the fact that both McIlweath and Finnegan had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and so had their honor bestowed at a breakfast several hours before commencement itself. The two young men had received notice of their election three weeks prior on the same day. Finnegan had stood motionless at his campus mailbox, reading and rereading the brief letter from the dean. As well as he had done during his time there, he had rarely considered this possibility. The reality of the honor made his lungs ache. He ran back to the apartment, an odd sight in slacks, a sweater and loafers, carrying several thick books, sprinting across campus, in front of the library and down the quiet residential street adjacent. His excitement and disbelief burst into a naked animalism, a primitive rush of mindless energy that compelled him to run and not stop until he was exhausted. He darted up the brick steps to the front door, then up the wooden staircase to find McIlweath standing in the center of the living room, flapping his arms wildly as Finnegan bolted through the door.
“Conor, I got Phi Beta Kappa!”
“Christ, Mac, you too?”
“You got it?”
“Hell, yeah,” he screamed, and then they rushed together to pump each other’s hands and pound one another on the back. Later that night they sat in the kitchen, too engaged by their own success to do any work and drinking an obligatory glass of wine in quiet celebration. In the course of their conversation, Conor said, “I never dreamed I’d do here what I’ve done. Mac, when we came here I was so brash, but I really didn’t know anything. I had no expectations beyond some nebulous concept of ’succeeding.’ Somehow. I was sure that whatever constituted success, I would find it. But in reality, Tom, it’s so much sweeter than what some arrogant kid could ever make it out to be.”
“Think back to what we’ve been through, Conor. We can both feel proud.”
“But not complacent, Tom. Never complacent. As a reminder of that, I offer a toast, to our late friend Reg Coleman.”
“Reg was hardly complacent, Conor.”
“No, but those of us who knew him were. Especially me. We all thought that we held a certain amount of control over who we were and what we did. Reg showed us what happens when we lose that control, when we cave in to what others expect of us. We were all too self-absorbed to see it. We never believed that that type of ugliness could ever visit us here. We were complacent.”
“Reg defined himself almost completely through what other people saw in him,” said McIlweath, “and not what he saw in himself. His own ambitions never surfaced. That wasn’t a living human being we knew, Conor; it was someone’s concept of what should occupy that space. Reg had no idea of himself, so neither could we.”
“I think about him often, Mac. I really do, especially at times like this, when it’s all going so well. He was the other half, the lost half of each one of us.”
“To Reg Coleman,” said McIlweath, and raised his glass again. “May he find in his passing the peace he never knew when he was among us.”
“And to us, my friend,” rejoined McIlweath. “God damn it, to us.”
After breakfast, the Finnegans and the McIlweaths returned to the apartment. The elders jammed into the living room while the four young men donned their robes. They stepped over and around the boxes and suitcases strewn across each bedroom. Their possessions were all arranged for quick departure. At the end of the day, nothing of value would be left behind. None of them had the urge to sit with the corpse of a body too soon dead.
The ceremony itself was a long, tedious affair on Queen’s Mall. Graduates and parents kept scanning the sky for the impending storm but the day’s speakers neither shortened nor sped up their addresses. Stertorous and dull, all of it. The graduates returned to their seats, each one of them, diploma in hand after having their names called to walk singly across a makeshift stage, a final instant of recognition before being swallowed by the anonymous swarm. Finnegan did not thrill to the tangibility of his diploma, as some did. It did not matter. What he had accomplished here could not be so easily symbolized or imprinted on any manner of document, so the document itself had little meaning, nor did the ceremony. It was all just ritual.
The rain held off. Afterward they all reassembled at the apartment and loaded their belongings into the appropriate vehicles. They would scatter from there—Rosselli back to the shore for one final carefree summer, O’Hanlon down to his newly rented flat outside Trenton, McIlweath back to California for two months before heading to Boston. He would leave his car and large possessions in Anne’s care, who had promised to find a suitable place for him to live in Boston, something inexpensive but safe and close to campus. She had spent the day with her parents, had gone through the ceremony alone, and Tom had not seen her except to wave across the rows of seated graduates. Finnegan, too, set to leave. He would stay with his parents for several days, traveling down to Washington where they would help him settle into his new apartment before they started the interminably lonely drive back across country.
They would go now, the four of them, benumbed to their inner sense of deep, deep loss by the demanding new mantles they each had claimed. They would go now, sealing an unspoken brotherhood but never again able to share in it as they had at its inception, and so a hollow, empty, aching sentiment. They would go now, striding with innocence into a society devoid of innocence, confident of acceptance in a society oddly indifferent. They would go now, quietly assured of eventually achieving wealth, power, justice and peace by virtue of their great, good characters, assured of the favor of a benevolent Providence whose blessings had always been as abundant as they were apparent.
What chapters end, what begin, there on a precipice, a razor’s edge between certainty and doubt, between love and abandonment, when past existence so clearly meets what lies ahead and swirls it around a single point? A black hole sucked them in there and left behind no sound, no smell, not the faintest trace of any of them. It drew them into darkness and the great mysteries, pulling them through a point no wider than a microbe or the sharpened prick of a needle. But therein lay the fiber of their youth, the heated energy of all hope and promise, compressed by the infinite, relentless power of time. They saw themselves there, victims as well as actors, inescapably linked to whatever seeds had been sown within them, timid in the face of their ultimate fruition.
Solitude impended, as did frustration and loss. They sensed it all without articulation, as a forest deer sniffs the air for a distant fire burning in her direction. They knew it by reputation even as they believed that it could not really touch them after all, this distant fire which so far had spared them, and so by nature in the days ahead they would continue unscathed. It is the arrogance of youth, tempered by a quietly lurking fear that all houses must one day fall, that all men and women, sadly, are mortal, subject to heartbreak, to anonymity, to death in life, to pacing dark and empty hallways in search of what has come to be lost. It is the fear that, despite all assurances to the contrary, man must suffer and bleed and claw at his face in the agony of despair, that he must cry in the night alone, that he must plead with himself to muster strength and pride in the maw of dejection, that he must convince himself anew of his own worth, that his life has value and purpose, that it makes more sense to plod hopelessly after a lost dream, or one unknown altogether, than to throw himself headlong off the highest cliff onto the jagged rocks below. It is the fear that he will soon be haunted by the brevity of his existence against the grand infinity of his desires. It is the fear that, in the end, life will prove to be grimly frustrating, sad and lonely, a crushing burden to a spirit once glorious and unfettered, a hateful and oppressive process that twists the soul into a grotesque, befouled, corpselike entity, the antithesis of joy, of peace, of life itself as he had always known it.
It was fitting, then, that after the final ceremony, after all cars were loaded and after all doors were locked behind them, the four young men left together for the last time. They excused themselves from th
eir parents, who shifted to the far side of the street so that they might be out of the way. There they waited in a group of eight, exchanging their own formalized farewells with those whom they had only recently met but with whom the implicit common ground was obvious.
Across the street, the four graduates stood together in front of the closed door and dark apartment. No one quite knew what to say or how to begin the inevitable. The day’s true ceremony hovered just before them.
“So,” Finnegan began at last. “Listen, I don’t want this to be awkward, but I also want you to know how hard it is to leave here. You guys have been more than family, and I’m grateful for the time we’ve had together. I’m grateful to all of you.”
“It’s been great, hasn’t it?” said McIlweath. “Like nothing I could have expected, and like nothing we’ll ever experience again.”
“Well, listen,” said O’Hanlon, subdued and strangely serious, “take care of yourselves. You won’t have your wise New England roommate to bail you out with money, women and wisdom. In fact, I might even be tempted to worry about you guys. Babes in the woods.”
“Conor, you and I will at least have each other,” said Rosselli. “And Tom’ll be with Anne, and Lanny has his ego. No one’ll be alone. We’ll be fine.”
“I have no doubt,” said Finnegan. They looked at each other, one at a time. First Finnegan, then the others, broke at last into a smile, and they shared their broad, boyish, unaffected grins.
Someone, maybe O’Hanlon, said, “Take care, gentlemen, and stay in touch.” They shook hands warmly, then in common realization that such was not enough, they hugged one another tight and hard in clutching unembarrassed embraces, feeling the solidity of bodies on the verge of stepping into new forms. They separated, exchanged pats on the back and final handshakes, and then with the eulogistic finality of car doors thumping shut, drove off into their singular existences.
***
The several-day drive westward that night took the McIlweaths through the rich green mountains of northwestern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, the Kittatinny range and the Poconos. Tom McIlweath sat cramped in the back seat. The sky which had hung dark all day at last opened up in a driving black rainstorm that pelted thick, bulletlike drops against the windshield. The swish-click of the wipers created a numbing monotony as the scenery washed away. Night came on within minutes and McIlweath found himself growing greatly depressed. Perhaps it was natural denouement of a day laden with such intense reactions. He closed his eyes and slept a jerky, uncomfortable slumber.
As the rain came, Conor sat on a bed in a motel room not far from campus. He sat alone. His parents had gone for something to eat and Conor, pleading a lack of appetite, stayed behind. He sat in darkness, with no lights, no radio, no television to break the gloom. He preferred it that way. When the rain began he took no notice. The heavy drops slammed against the room’s large window, hidden by drapes that shut out most of the dying day’s sparse light. Conor sat on the bed, head in his hands. He stared at the carpeted floor and breathed in a slow, ponderous rhythm whose contrived beat was marked in his imagination by the splash of the rain onto the unseen window.
CHAPTER XV
Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings.
—Homer, Iliad
“Generally, sir, we take our patients on referral from the VA. There’s no one here from off the street, as we say. I’m afraid there’d be nothing gained by your looking around.”
“But my grandfather is in the VA hospital in Richmond now. They’re going to move him in a month or so, as soon as they find someplace suitable. They mentioned your facility. I wanted to see for myself where he’s going to be.”
Conor Finnegan sat across the desk from the administrator, a slight, hawkish man whose entire face seemed hidden behind a massive pair of thick glasses perched atop the razor of his nose. His lips were so thin as to be transparent. Large ears stuck out beneath graying black hair slicked back and greased down. ’There is no blood in this man.’ thought Finnegan. The administrator leaned forward in his chair and nervously fingered his nameplate: Brandon Carrecker.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Finnegan? I ask only because I am interested in your family’s ability to cover the expenses that will come should your grandfather join us here. I assume he has adequate medical coverages but there are always costs that no plan will cover.”
“I’m an instructor at Georgetown University, Mr. Carrecker. And, yes, my grandfather has more than adequate coverage. Money will be no issue. He has a considerable sum he’s saved for retirement, more than half a million.” Finnegan mentioned the figure deliberately, and slowly. “It’s sad that he won’t be using it for what he intended, poor man.”
“Yes. But we never know quite when the ravages of age will strike us, do we? Stay here, Mr. Finnegan. I must check with our director of nursing services to see if a tour would be appropriate right now.”
Carrecker drew himself out of his chair and left the office. His suit hung on him, too large for his bladelike frame. As Carrecker walked past in a jerky gait, the image of a ferret passed through Finnegan’s mind.
In the administrator’s absence Finnegan studied his office. It struck him as unusually spartan. Carrecker’s desk held only a handful of scattered papers, a telephone and a lone in/out tray. In the corner stood a metal filing cabinet and on the fading yellow walls there hung two framed diplomas. Beyond that there was nothing. The small room was a narrow cell in a great honeycomb. Finnegan could find no evidence of human warmth here at all.
He sat alone for nearly fifteen minutes before Carrecker slithered back into his office. “Forgive the delay, Mr. Finnegan, but as I’m sure you can imagine, we are quite busy. An unplanned tour takes away from everyone’s time. However, we shall be glad to give you a quick peek at our facilities if you’ll follow me. I will conduct you myself.”
Finnegan rose and followed Carrecker out of the office. Some pungent indefinable smell flared his nostrils as soon as he set foot in the inner hallway. He had not noticed it upon entering, and he did not like it. This was not the harsh antiseptic odor of a hospital or of most other nursing homes. This was starkly bitter, a mixture, Finnegan guessed, of ammonia, urine and vomit. He fought to avoid showing his disgust.
“Thank you, Mr. Carrecker. I’m very grateful for your help.”
“Please bear in mind, Mr. Finnegan, that you will be seeing the facility as it truly is. We have not hidden anything or spirited away our most unruly residents. We have not had the chance to do so in your case, to be quite blunt.”
“You do so otherwise?”
“Everyone does. Everyone wants to put forward their best face, so for the families of prospective residents they take great care to see that everything is in order. Why agitate someone over an unattractive reality, however inevitable and natural it may be? It’s part of the game and, as I say, we’re very typical in that regard. Everyone does it. But I can assure you that your grandfather will get the optimum care here, certainly as good as he would receive anywhere else in Northern Virginia. You have my word on that.”
They walked down a long corridor that was as starkly faded as Carrecker’s office. Four or five other administrative offices opened onto this corridor, but there were no signs of activity. At the end they turned right through an open entryway into a large rectangular area. Several threadbare chairs were scattered around the room, and in a far corner one was overturned, its legs thrusting into the air hopelessly. Against one wall a television set alternately held then lost its picture. Actors and actresses of some daytime drama faded in, then were swept away in a maze of horizontal static. On the wall above the set were numerous pockmarks about the size of a man’s fist or a hard shoe. The floor was a dull linoleum some shade of gray. There were no rugs to interrupt its flat monotony. The wall oppo
site the television console had two square windows, without curtains or shades, that looked out onto a central courtyard.
What Finnegan saw as he turned in to this room made him stop short, and Carrecker took two quick steps ahead before he realized that his visitor was not beside him. “Come along. We won’t be disturbing anyone.”
’Indeed not,’ thought Finnegan, ’for the people in this room are purely incapable of being disturbed.’ Before him were arrayed a macabre collection of scarecrows and skeletons, or wraiths and ghosts, of the incoherent, the incontinent, the dispossessed, of every form of death in life his young mind could conceive. It was not a collection of humanity as he had ever known it, and it was this horrific sight, combined with the harsh smell that he had noticed in the hallway, that made him stop in his tracks. At Carrecker’s insistence, Finnegan stepped into the room.
As they walked through it, Carrecker made some type of explanation which Finnegan absorbed in only bits and pieces. “Common sense . . . come together during the day . . . some come and go as they please . . . meet with and talk to one another . . . the importance of contact . . .”