Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  Finnegan did not, could not, listen. His impressions and consequent memory would be refracted not through the ear but through the eye. In one chair to his left sat a bony, unshaven form in pajamas, his mouth agape and a thin flow of saliva dripping from it to his chin. His glassy eyes paid no heed to the two walking figures that passed him. They seemed instead to be fixed on some point on the far wall, or possibly beyond. Across from this lost soul another man rocked back and forth in his chair, his toothless mouth opening and closing. Some substance had dried into a brittle cake on the front of his pajama top. He raised a hand as the two men walked near him, not a wave but a salute. Next to him an old man sat strapped in his chair by broad leather thongs. He laughed hysterically, mindlessly, a high pitched squeal of a laugh, the sound made by blowing across a blade of grass. Below his chair a fetid puddle of excrement grew by drips from the cuff of his pajama leg.

  In the far corner, near the two windows, an emaciated figure leaned against the point where the walls met, his face burrowing into the concave molding. There was no meat on him at all. Near him, an old man bent over, his head hanging between his knees. He spat something onto the floor and let its remnants drool out of his mouth. Another patient sat with his back against a wall and uttered profanities to everyone, and to no one. Not a soul paid attention to him, so apparently he was considered part of the landscape. Other figures huddled in their chairs or walked aimlessly, silently about the room.

  One of the strolling figures walked up to Finnegan and Carrecker. He was a shadowed form, his face carved in angles and lines with the scruff of his unshaven chin and cheeks matching the short growth on his head. He moved painfully in a slow shuffle. Finnegan was surprised to see that he was barefoot. The old man approached them from the side and, reaching out a bony claw of a hand, grabbed Finnegan by the wrist. Finnegan looked into the vacant eyes that had filled with tears.

  “Jimmy,” the old man croaked. “Jimmy, take me home. I want to go home now, Jimmy,” and his voice broke over crusty cheeks.

  “Now, Mr. Crenshaw,” soothed Carrecker, “you can’t go home now. You know that. But maybe in a little while you could, when you’re feeling better. Why don’t you go sit with Mr. Ellison. He looks as if he could use some company.” Carrecker steered the old man to another shapeless figure strapped into his chair. Mr. Crenshaw reluctantly shuffled away, muttering, “Jimmy . . . Jimmy,” as he went.

  “A sad case, Mr. Finnegan, but no sadder, really, than many of our residents. As you can see, a fair number of them are mentally incapacitated. It’s a shame, but there’s little we can do for them.”

  “Do you even try?” muttered Finnegan under his breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. Please go on.”

  “We have to keep several of them constantly sedated. We’re heading now for the residential area. The residents you’ll see here are those who are physically handicapped. I want to show you what a typical room looks like. The type of room your grandfather would have, you see, provided he has no special needs.”

  They walked down a corridor of closed doors. From behind two or three of them Finnegan heard groans, or maybe loud sighs. Sounds of dissolution. Carrecker rapped briskly on one of the doors and opened it before he could get a response. Therein lay a grizzled form with one leg. He lay uncovered on his bed, an intravenous system attached to a spindly arm. He said nothing as the younger men entered the room.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Herbert. We won’t disturb you long. I just want to show this young man what type of accommodation we offer.”

  The room was a long rectangle made of plaster which cracked and peeled in several small spots. A single window no more than two feet square opposed the door. The bed sat against one wall and a small desk with a chair was situated in the corner beneath the window. A dresser abutted the desk. Finnegan did not notice whether there was a closet. The room was painted a drab olive green, as lifeless as the rest of the building and the people in it. Small, cramped, sterile, dead.

  “What do you think, Mr. Finnegan?”

  “I think it reminds me of my old college dormitory room, except without the charm.”

  “It’s all the space a retired gentleman needs. We’re fortunate to be able to offer a high degree of privacy. Most of our rooms are single. Many places can’t offer that.”

  They went forth to inspect the dining area and the recreation room. Both places were empty. Finnegan noted that the dining area had not been thoroughly cleaned. A good deal of food was strewn across the floor, and some was smeared onto the walls. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a tiny insect dart along a far wall. Perhaps it was that he expected to see it.

  The recreation room contained a ping-pong table, a rack of magazines and four or five card tables with decks of cards and poker chips. The room was nearly as large as the common room, or so it seemed in its empty state. ’Which of these skeletons is strong enough even to hold a ping-pong paddle?’ Finnegan thought, ’let alone swing it? This is ludicrous.’

  “We provide a full range of recreational outings,” said Carrecker, “To the zoo, a park, maybe even a high school football game. I’m surprised this room is not in use at the moment. Usually many of our residents pass some time playing cards.”

  “Maybe they just have other things to do today,” replied Finnegan.

  Carrecker let the sarcasm slide by. “Perhaps they do. I won’t show you our physical therapy room. That’s in use. But let me tell you that we do have a registered therapist, a P.T., on staff and that our therapy room is equipped with a whirlpool bath, a complete set of hand and leg weights, walkers, guide bars, and an adjustable treadmill. We run a complete therapy program for those who need it.”

  “I see. Tell me, how many people do you have on staff here? I’ve noticed very few. There was an orderly in the common room and a nurse’s aide in the residential wing, but I think that’s all I’ve seen.”

  “We have a staff of 26. That includes health care personnel, maintenance and kitchen. I assure you, we’re adequately staffed. We exceed state regulations in that regard.”

  They retraced their steps through the grim scenes in the grim rooms. Carrecker kept up a chatter of statistics and testimonials. “Finest care available . . . VA referrals . . . waiting list . . . complete program of rehabilitative care.” Finnegan paid no attention. His eyes darted quickly in all directions looking for further affronts, looking for scenes to memorize.

  They reached Carrecker’s office. “Do you have any questions, Mr. Finnegan?”

  “How many of your residents ever leave this facility?”

  “All of them leave, but very few walk out, I’m afraid. As you know, retirement facilities provide a level of care that cannot be attained in one’s home, and most of our residents have serious physical or mental conditions that cannot be reversed sufficiently for them to be on their own. That’s why most of them are here in the first place. It’s a sad fact, but there it is. You’re dealing with old men whose recuperative powers are either severely limited or nonexistent. But we do try to provide as comfortable a setting for them as we can.”

  “Do you allow unlimited visitation?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no. We couldn’t possibly do that. It would interfere with our social and therapeutic programs and be far too disruptive for the residents. Relatives and friends may visit Wednesday evenings, on weekends and by appointment.”

  “But isn’t visitation itself therapeutic? Your residents should have the opportunity to keep close family ties without feeling as if they’ve been shuffled off to some remote outpost to meet their maker.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Finnegan, visitation is more a nuisance to the staff than it’s worth. Most of our residents are beyond response to their family members. They just want to go about their existence. On visiting days, many sit and wait for visits that never come, and they go to bed at night more dispirited and depressed than when the day began.”

  “Mr. Crenshaw seemed to be waiting pretty
hard for Jimmy. Seemed like he wanted a change of scenery, too.”

  “Most of our residents, to be blunt, are here to get it over with.”

  “That seems a cold attitude for a nursing home administrator, if I may be equally blunt.”

  “It’s reality, Mr. Finnegan, and it stems from twenty-two years in the business. This is not an easy task, sir. One’s ideals occasionally become trampled by the sadness of the conditions with which one has to deal.”

  “Thank you for the tour, Mr. Carrecker,” said Finnegan abruptly. “You’ve been most helpful, and I know you’ve scrambled your day to accommodate me.”

  “Do you think your grandfather would be happy here? Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a simple old man, Mr. Carrecker, with all his wits intact. I’m sure the VA will give you a complete summary of his condition, should they refer him to you. I’ll request that they do.”

  Finnegan walked out of the building quickly, fleeing the pungent, vile odor that had followed him throughout the tour. Carrecker no doubt had grown accustomed to many things. It was exactly as Finnegan had heard. He filled his lungs with the clean warm air and climbed into his car. He drove back to the Hill with the tense excitement of a new battle about to be joined.

  ***

  Glynnis Mear had taken a small apartment near campus and furnished it with what her mother had sent down, mostly old pieces that had been stored in their attic. Most of it was both sturdy and stylish, reflective of her mother’s delicate senses. Over the years they had simply acquired too much of it, so some had to be put away. She hung her own paintings on the wall. The apartment, an upper flat on the fringes of Philadelphia’s Main Line, quickly assumed her personal mark. It acquired a special comfort fueled in part by her own independence.

  She had not wanted to commit herself to Washington. She had been reluctant to narrow further the already wafer-thin gap between her life and Conor’s. Every rational impulse she had during her deliberations had pointed to heading south and taking a place in the city, if not moving in with Conor altogether. She had been sorely, sorely tempted. Yet each time she considered that course, something held her back, something irrational, illogical and deeply rooted in some remote abyss of her psyche. She could not bring herself to accept Conor’s invitation, which, when he perceived her reluctance, became a plea. Nor, when pressed, could she explain herself. Conor surmounted his puzzlement with the conviction that Glynnis still felt strongly about him, still loved him in fact, but for reasons of her own would not move with him to Washington. The timing must be wrong, so he would have to be patient for now.

  Upon graduation Glynnis took up residence in her new apartment. Her mother had come down with a rental truckload of furnishings then, the day following the ceremony, returned up the turnpike to Boston, slightly uneasy about her daughter’s lack of definable direction. Glynnis had decided to pursue a master’s degree in art. She did not, however, know quite what she wanted to do with it. Florence Mear concluded, in light of Glynnis’s evasive, noncommittal actions, that her daughter was merely passing time.

  Perhaps, in fact, she was, but if so, she was content with the forms her amusements quickly assumed. She had been awarded a graduate assistantship so her expenses for the coming year would be fully covered in exchange for teaching line and composition to a new generation of eccentric aspiring aesthetes. Consequently she saw no need to work during the summer months. She lived off her small savings and spent her days reading, drawing and taking long, aimless walks through the sultry city. Her restlessness, which had been absent for several months, returned and there were times she felt a desperate, almost frantic need to get out, to move her body in any direction, to see new faces and to smell new scents, to discover at any cost something different, some vista or sound or idea apart from anything else she had ever known. She had felt this way nearly all her life, but never so strongly since she had met Conor.

  She took a cab sometimes to the middle of the city, and then, as the steamy days wound down, she would pick a street with an ancient, lyrical, inviting name and follow it. Broad, Walnut, Market, Arch and the numbered streets. She even headed down Spring Garden one night, supremely confident that even in that beaten, stark, hopeblown neighborhood she would not be menaced. At times she would spot a stranger sitting in a park and, because he looked pleasantly intelligent, start a conversation. To her dismay, most were reluctant to speak to her, but that did not stop her from trying to bring them out when the mood struck her. Most people, she was convinced, were inherently friendly.

  Weekends she spent with Conor in Washington repeating the scenes of the previous summer. Conor lived alone for now with Dan Rosselli still working in the hospital near his home on the Jersey shore, but it would not have mattered had he been present. Of all Conor’s friends, Rosselli made Glynnis feel most comfortable. He had not been pretentious; he carried absolutely no expectations of her. She did not dread the autumn when he would be moving in with her lover. His company, in fact, would be welcomed. It would provide a relaxing contrast to the intensity, the increasing seriousness and the growing demands of her relationship with Conor.

  And so Glynnis Mear passed the summer idly, as indolently as at any time of her life. The world had been constructed to her specifications. She had no complaints, then, as she waited for the coming of the autumn and the resumption of her casual studies.

  ***

  Griffith Ross was a large, burly man who had always enjoyed the animal pleasures. He had been something of a rake in college twenty years earlier, and by the time he left the ivied halls of his alma mater he had cultivated a broad reputation as a ladies’ man. Shortly after he received his degree and arranged to enter law school, one of the ladies upon whom his reputation had been crafted dropped by to say that the animal pleasures they had shared a few weeks previously had yielded a permanent reminder and that, consequently, some appropriate action must be taken. Ross knew his choices and opted for the decent route: by summer’s end he was married, and a good thing, too. His new bride had sufficient family money to relieve the enormous debt he had counted on incurring to go through law school.

  As a brightly ambitious law student, Ross concluded that, while criminal law carried a high degree of glamor and the greatest potential monetary rewards, it was also the riskiest of specializations. Too many criminal lawyers burned out, or became mediocre. Real estate law, Ross concluded, could be just as lucrative and was far less competitive. He would have room for both error and, when the mood struck him, indulgence. If he found the proper niche for himself, one in a prominent urban firm whose specialty might be closing transactions involving overpriced city land and the elaborate structures thereon, he might do quite nicely indeed. Before his graduation in the bottom third of his class, he made a favorable impression on a junior partner of a great Los Angeles firm who had come east to recruit among the ivies. The partner was looking for an ambitious young associate with an abiding interest in real estate law. Griffith Ross, his young wife and their three-year-old son headed west into the sunset.

  In relatively little time Ross worked himself into a partnership. It was, in his mind, only a matter of intent. He found a partnership desirable because it would broaden his rewards, and so it did. As partner with the least seniority, he became the spearhead for the firm’s community involvement. Within a few months he found himself on the boards of a local private college, two nonprofit health organizations and the Los Angeles County SPCA. He did not mind all this, even though he carried few convictions that did not change with his company. He realized that the firm would benefit from the community and that, as the newest partner and one who happened to be fairly personable, the task of community service fell to him. Ross carried out his volunteer duties with the minimum of effort and a complete lack of sensitivity.

  During this time as divisional chairman of a United Way drive, Ross struck up a friendship with an equally ambitious young attorney who had just been elected to the House of Representatives. Ross, who pai
d little attention to politics, had not heard of him but he was impressed by the young man’s outgoing personality and obvious aspirations. He sensed that there might well be bigger things ahead and that it could be worth his while to hang onto this new friendship.

  His solicitous attention to his new acquaintance carved a sure and steady road to a shared personal confidence. When the young congressman made his bid for the senate, Ross helped engineer the campaign, a slick, well-packaged effort which blithely deflected any serious discussion of issues to emphasize the candidate’s good looks and eloquent rhetoric. When the candidate returned to Washington as California’s junior senator, he took Griffith Ross with him as his administrative assistant.

  Ross’s relationship with the senator was a healthy symbiosis. The senator provided a glamorous justification for Ross’s special elitism, and a ready access to corridors of wealth and power. In return, Ross was the senator’s eyes and ears. He had an instinctive understanding of how the senator’s actions would play with his constituents. The senator had developed a blind faith in his assistant’s instincts and so turned to Ross for guidance on virtually every issue that would require a public position. Ross had successfully steered the senator down a safe middle course regarding the most explosive topics of his day. He had constructed the senator’s positions on foreign policy hotspots, ethnic conflicts in Africa and Europe, racial and economic inequalities in the United States, and every festering economic issue. He had demanded that his man avoid any mention of trigger terms. Each time the young senator took the floor to deliver an address to his bored, disinterested colleagues and their equally bored staff members, each time he drew up his long frame before an assembly of California voters, each time he faced a representative of the media, his words and ideas had been thoroughly edited, clipped, trimmed and washed by Ross, who kept his remarkable ear to the ground to hear the rumble of each senatorial footstep.

  The senator, then, for Griffith Ross became a cause in his own right. Ross lived to preserve an image he had meticulously shaped. Nothing else mattered but the man. He lived in dread that the senator might someday be caught off guard and make some statement without Griffith’s counsel that would undo that finely crafted image. Ross tried to imbue the staff with similar sentiments, to make them see that the continued political well-being of their man was not only a sufficient motivation for their work, it was the only one. Anything beyond that bordered on fanaticism.