by Greg Fields
***
The fortunate man drove directly to Anne Newbury’s apartment later that morning. He had considered calling first, but he knew matters had to be dealt with, face to face. If nothing else, it was the honorable thing to do.
McIlweath walked up her stairs slowly with a reluctance he had presumed he had mastered but which reared itself again now that the confrontation was a few feet before him. His legs dragged from step to step with ponderous thumps as his boots landed heavily on each stair. He recalled similar thumping up the rickety steps of the house in New Brunswick. The sound brought it back, but those thumps usually manifested the excitement of coming home, of hopping up the narrow stairs two or three at a time. These thumps presaged a death march. The door loomed above him as some mythical time-portal to transport him back to an older persona. It remained to be seen whether the conclusions that evolved during his brief release would sustain him as he passed through to the other side. McIlweath had rarely felt so tested.
He knocked three times on the white door and waited. After several seconds, Anne’s muffled voice seeped through the plasterboard. “Who is it?”
“It’s Tom, Anne,” and then silence. He presumed Anne was mulling over some new equation into which an unknown variable had been introduced, trying to find the proper formula to solve it.
“Anne, can I come in? We’ve got to talk.” McIlweath heard the door unlatch. His own voice reverberated around the stark hallway walls into a ringing echo. It mingled now with the metallic sliding of the chain, a peculiar chorus. The door swung open brusquely.
Anne stood, one hand on the doorknob, the other perched combatively on her hip. She never slept late, even when she had the opportunity, so she was fully dressed. Most likely she had been dressed for hours. When some incident occurred that she could not control, something which she had not predicted, she often had trouble sleeping at all. It may have been this restless agitation that accentuated the angularity of her features; it may have been anger left to seethe. Her face locked in a deep scowl, her brow furrowed, her lips grimly set into a straight line. She gestured with one hand for him to enter, and McIlweath obediently accepted her ungracious command. His initial supposition from the night before had been correct: Anne had not been worried about him.
“Have you come to make amends?” Her voice spat forth like a flat, hardened dart seeking soft flesh. This would not be pleasant, another supposition verified.
“In a way.” McIlweath’s own voice, to his chagrin, had assumed its nervous, too-high pitch. He would not be well served by what he regarded as a shaky avian squawk. Convictions should resonate. Anne would seize upon his tone as an admission of guilt. Well then, so be it. The substance of what he had to say would far outweigh its form.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, “for not showing last night. I really am sorry, Anne.”
“I waited up until almost 1:00, damn you, thinking you might still be coming. You must have been held up, I thought, or maybe you just lost track of time. Where the hell were you?”
“I was at a party. Someone I knew had a party last night. He asked me to stop by, and since I wasn’t meeting you until later, I did. I thought I would only stay for a bit.”
“And you forgot about the time and you forgot about seeing me. Damn you, Tom.”
“No, Anne, I didn’t forget.” They stood now, face to face, near the center of Anne’s small living room. McIlweath denied himself all exits. Let the battle begin, if it was to be so. “I didn’t forget,” he repeated. “I simply chose not to come.”
“You what?” Anne had genuine difficulty with this. Her mouth dropped slightly ajar in wonder.
“I chose to stay at the party. I was having a good time, a better time than I have had in weeks. Probably a better time than at any other point since I came to this godforsaken place. There were challenging, intelligent people there. They talked to me, really talked in words that were worth saying, instead of the narrow, dull, banal garbage I’ve had to put up with for so long. I can’t explain to you how fine it felt to be with such a diverse group.”
“You were drunk, weren’t you? You must have been.”
“I’d had a few beers and maybe I was a little drunk, but that changes nothing. If anything, the alcohol made me relax enough to enjoy myself. You can’t dismiss it all by saying I was drunk.”
“Couldn’t you have called to say you weren’t coming instead of leaving me hanging like that? I swear, sometimes you are so inconsiderate.”
“I could have called. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“You didn’t want to disturb your good time.” Anne turned to look out her window. She folded her arms across her chest. “What the hell was so special about this party that you couldn’t break away?”
“Anne, what have I done with myself since I got here? I’ve made no friends, I speak to no one but you. All I do is study and wait for you to spare some of your attention for me. I’ve lived like a hermit in some remote cave, and you’ve been the only light, the only sound to filter in. That party last night took me out of my cave for a while. It brought me together with new people who were animated and bright and alive. I left my cave, Anne. I just didn’t want to go back in, that’s all. For a while I didn’t even want to be reminded that it existed.”
“You self-pitying bastard,” Anne bit off the words beneath her breath. Her scowl darkened fiercely.
“You’re right, Anne. I am self-pitying. That was why I went to the party in the first place. But at least I did something against it. I turned over my situation for a little while. And you resent it, don’t you? It’s not so much that I stood you up, although that’s a handy pretense, and my fault entirely. It’s that I did something purely for myself, without your knowledge or consent. We would have had this conversation even if I had met you for dinner last night.”
“You’re talking nonsense. God damn you, Tom,” she was nearly shouting. “How dare you try to turn this back onto me. For once in your life take responsibility for your mistakes. You owe me at least that much.”
“That, my love, is exactly what I’m doing.” McIlweath spoke slowly, quietly, evenly, a contrast to Anne’s fury. All this was too long overdue. “The greatest mistake I made was letting myself become cloistered away in this unholy place. You’ve dictated the terms of my life as completely as if I had surrendered to you on a battlefield. Unfortunately, I was never aware that we were fighting a war. I had always thought our destinies, if that’s the proper word, were somewhat in harmony. I didn’t realize that I had been steadily, dumbly and mindlessly forfeiting mine to yours. That was my greatest mistake, Anne. That’s what I’m taking responsibility for.
“You see last night as more than rudeness,” he continued. “You see it as an act of rebellion. By going to that party with a crowd you didn’t know, I suddenly became less pliable. I might have formed new friendships or come to new conclusions uncensored by your peculiar insights. I might have become more my own man and less yours.”
Anne faced him from the window. Her chest rose and fell with angry breaths drawn sharply. McIlweath had never seen her so full of rage. Fitting, he thought, that it should be that way. Anne’s face twisted into a burning glare, her blue eyes almost electric with their razor-like fury. McIlweath judged that his words had hit a soft and tender target.
“You paranoid, self-absorbed fool,” she hissed. “Do you believe I devised such elaborate schemes to keep you prisoner? Do you believe I would waste my time that way?”
“In a way, yes. This morning, as I got ready to come here it, occurred to me that you’ve never shown any tolerance for the things closest to me. You had absolutely no use for my college roommates, who were like brothers to me. In fact, you made it clear that you didn’t like them in the least and you thought they were a poor influence on me. You wanted to spend as little time on my turf as possible. What were you afraid of, Anne?”
“Those three were unthinking, brutal, crude animals. You should have seen that for you
rself if you had any self-respect.”
“Those ’animals’ are all doing exactly what they want to be doing with their lives. They’re all making some sort of contribution to the world around them. And where am I?” McIlweath observed with a bitter smirk. “I’m the only one who’s lost, it would seem. I’m the only one who’s been unthinking. They’ve all gone the way of their own choosing. They defined what they wanted, and then they pursued it, with every ounce of their intelligence, creativity and passion. As I recall, at one point you told me quite plainly that you were better for me than they could ever be. Perhaps such well-defined personalities unnerve you, or was it that you thought they might set a dangerous example for me? Perhaps they’d pull me out of your orbit. And in the meantime, I’ve drifted along with my classics, not really sure what I wanted to do with it but purely incapable of making a decision and sticking to it, purely incapable of constructing my own course. So I relied on you, which is exactly what you urged me to do. No, Anne, you have it reversed. If I had any self-respect I’d consider myself unworthy of them.”
“You can hardly blame me for that. I’ve tried to help you find some direction, but you’ve resisted every suggestion I ever made. You were content to float along, ’trying to find yourself,’ or whatever they call it these days.”
“If I’ve resisted your suggestions, then why the hell am I here? Good God, can’t you see that you’re the sole reason I came to Boston? Are you that blind, or is it part of your selective memory to forget all you’ve meant to me? Anne, you brought me here. That’s how you’ve tried to help me find my direction. That’s all it amounts to, wanting me near you as an amusement when you get bored or lonely.”
He went on, his own rage starting to rear itself. “I have been your man, and not in the romantic sense. I have been your man because I did what you wanted me to, gone where you directed, colored my attitudes with your hue, thinned the roster of my friends to suit you, spent my time where you thought it best, dressed, talked and slept in your image of me. Anne, I have been your man totally. I’ve been your indentured servant. Last night I threw you off for a few hours. It was bound to happen, and you resent the hell out of me for it.”
“I resent your coming here today and trying to imply that it was my fault.”
“It was not your fault, Anne. I never said that. Letting you wait for me like that was wrong, and I’m sorry for it. But you’ve got to understand why it happened. I barely understand it myself, but the more I think about it the clearer it becomes. I’m trying to share that with you as gently as I can. I don’t want to get angry or see you upset. That’s not my purpose at all.”
“Oh Tom, God damn you, you’re talking nonsense. I don’t understand any of it, and I don’t want to. You were wrong, that’s all there is to it. You were callous and rude and base and stupid. Don’t you dare try to make me feel guilty for how I’ve helped you or what I’ve meant to you. That’s cruel. That’s the cruelest thing you’ve ever done.” She was on the verge of tears now, her rage enhanced by the frustration of this unpredicted turn of the discussion. If anything, she would have expected a penitent McIlweath, a runaway puppy returned to be spanked with a rolled-up newspaper.
“Anne, whether you know it or not, whether or not you recognize it, you’ve controlled me since we first met. And I let you. Our whole relationship has been on your terms, me coming to you. Let me ask you something: did you try to call me last night when I was late?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You were supposed to be here by 10:30. I don’t feel compelled to track you down when you’re late. You weren’t home anyway, so what good would it have done?”
“Do you recall that, as always, we agreed to get together at your convenience? I hadn’t seen you for several days. I hadn’t so much as spoken to you since early this week.”
“What can I do about that? What do you expect, Tom, would you tell me that? I’m in medical school. I’ve worked my entire life to be here, and I’m going to do the best I can. That takes time. It’s not like curling up with your dusty Latin books, you know. There’s so much to learn and it’s all crucial. Perhaps you don’t understand that, having spent your life on frivolous things. What I learn is not open to interpretation, like some Homeric ode or a Roman fresco. And if that takes time away from you, that’s too damn bad.” She turned back again toward the window. The ticking of the clock on her bookshelf beat a haunting and hollow rhythm, the only sound in the room for several minutes.
McIlweath at length broke the silent tension in a voice so laden with regret that it rose scarcely above a whisper. “Anne, I think we need some time apart.”
Anne’s voice, too, had lost its rage, faded now into a concern for changes so obviously taking place. “It sounds to me as if we need some time together.”
“No, I don’t think so. Perhaps we’ve taken each other for granted. We’ve been too ready to assume that we’re looking for the same things. I’ve been too accommodating, and you’ve been too presumptuous. We need some time apart to sort through what we want, and who we are. We need time to miss each other, if we will, and feel a need to be together rather than an obligation.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. Time enough to come to one conclusion or the other. Anne, we simply have too many expectations of each other. They started out as idealizations, and they were delightful once, but they’ve taken on a life of their own. Sometimes I think all we see are our expectations, and we’ve lost the reality behind them. We’ve lost ourselves. We fill a role for one another, that’s all. We’ve drawn each other as we want. But the pressure to sustain that is just too great. It’s worn us away.”
“You make it sound so grim.”
“You’ve never had to look at it. Perhaps for you it’s not a problem. But it’s been so difficult for me, Anne, and the odd part is that I never knew it. I had thought it normal, and I’ve been so afraid to lose you. You’re all I had, or so I believed. Even now I’m afraid, more than you can know, but I know it’s what we have to do if we’re ever going to have any chance. We might find that we mean too much to each other to be apart. Like it was at the beginning.”
“Or we might learn that the effort isn’t worth the reward,” said Anne bitterly. “But it’s been no effort for me, Tom. I wouldn’t do anything differently.”
“I wouldn’t have expected that I ever presented a challenge for you. You’ve never had to bend.”
“Don’t start again, please.”
“No. You know what I think now, and I’m sorry it’s been so hard.”
“I still don’t understand you, Tom. I am good for you, that I know. I really can’t see what brought this on. What happened to you at that party last night to make you so God damned self-pitying and so hateful?”
“Nothing happened that shouldn’t have been done long ago. Just that it was there, and I went, and I saw myself as such a contrast to everyone else. The party didn’t start anything. It just confirmed what I had been feeling for a long time.”
“Is that what your classics have taught you, the art of melodrama? There’ll be no chorus coming through the door to chant a lament of your cruel fate. The gods won’t take pity on you and turn your poor melancholy life around with a click of their fingers. I recall telling you once that you think too much. I was right then, and you’ve proven it to me beyond any doubt. You don’t know how good you’ve got it.”
“Only because I still have the freedom to change it. “
“You want some time apart,” Anne said, the boldness at once returning to her tone. She spun around again to face him. “Okay, take as much time as you want. Think to your heart’s content and let your veins burst with angst. Is that what you want, poor Tom? I’m willing to grant it.”
“By your good graces.”
“I’m willing to grant it,” Anne repeated. “Come to whatever conclusions you wish. Sort out your feelings toward me. Separate the wheat from the chaff and the
lambs from the goats. Consult Aeschylus and Socrates and Ovid. If, after all that, you don’t arrive back to where you are now, then you are a hopeless fool.”
“I suppose I should be envious of that typical Newburyian certainty. Don’t any doubts ever creep in to shake that secure little world?”
“But know this,” ignoring him, Anne continued. “For my part I’m not going to waste any time pondering either my faults or yours. I know what I want. I know what I’m doing with my life and I know the kind of person I am. And I won’t change any of it. I have no time to indulge myself in any of this ridiculous posturing.
“So take your time, with my blessing,” she went on. “But at the end of it, if you come to your senses and decide you want me as I am, you take the chance that I won’t be waiting for you. My life will go on as it is in the meantime. It will close itself up when you leave it and there may not be room for you to reenter.”
“What could be clearer than that?” said McIlweath, almost to himself. Anne’s words had run him through. She had again become impenetrable. A strange, nostalgic sadness overran him.
“I’ll call you in a couple of weeks,” he said. “Perhaps we can talk then.”
“You decide. Assuming you’re capable of making a decision.”
“I am sorry, Anne. I truly am.”
“You have a great deal to be sorry about. You can’t know what you’re doing. You can’t know what you’ve done.”
“I know so little, of that I have no doubt.”
Anne said nothing. She stood with her back against the window, her arms folded. McIlweath turned around and put his hand on the door. He opened his mouth slightly, but nothing he could say now would be right, not after this. Anne’s hurt had translated back to rage. She had a unique talent to use her offenses as she needed them; McIlweath did not wish to add to that perverse arsenal.
He opened the door and walked down the stairs into the cold. He had not removed his jacket during his time upstairs, which in retrospect had not taken as long as he would have expected. The cold winter air crept into his pores and took away the heat of the argument. Anne’s apartment had stifled him so that he might have suffocated without knowing it. He drew deep breaths as he walked to his car, and the fetid, hot vapors that weighted his lungs disappeared.