by Greg Fields
“So, sweetie, how’ve you been?” asked Glynnis. “Really now.”
“Busy, Glynnis. But you know Conor’s right. I never worked this hard as an undergrad, yet I don’t mind it in the least. It’s not like work at all. Sometimes I think I could spend all my time at the med school—sleep there, eat there, everything. That’s maturity, I suppose.”
“Forgive me, Dan, but that sounds almost gruesome. And lonely. No women in your life?”
“Only my cadaver, but she doesn’t put out. Good listener, though. A little like Anne Newbury.”
Glynnis laughed. “You should have gotten to know my friend Lynda. She’d have been perfect for your underworked hormones. You two share a mutual interest in anatomy.”
Conor returned and distributed the drinks. The mention of Lynda’s name froze him; he clutched, perceived the context, then sat down wordlessly.
“She was friendly then, huh? Where is she now? Somewhere near D.C., I hope.”
“No such luck, tiger. She’s in upstate New York wasting away with some corporate insurance firm. She’s horribly misplaced. Lynda’s not the corporate type, wouldn’t you agree, Conor?”
Finnegan swallowed some scotch. “I suppose it’s her stab at respectability. Something we all have to face at some point, unless we’re incredibly fortunate. We’re all doing it. We’re all facing The Big Chill.”
“Still,” Glynnis resumed, “Lynda never leaned toward practicality. She always indulged herself, physically and otherwise. She liked to seize the moment, as she put it. The girl had little regard for long-term consequences, and she never questioned anything she did. At least not to me.”
“That’s rather dangerous, isn’t it?” said Finnegan. “Particularly when she’s not acting alone, and that’s most of the time. Her impulses might satisfy her for the moment, but if they involve other people then they might well have consequences, even if they’re not hers.”
“How do you mean?” asked Glynnis.
“We just don’t act in a vacuum, that’s all. Where other people share our actions, they share the results, good or bad. Whether we act out of rebellion or lust or charity or revenge, or just a love of pleasure, everything we do reflects off someone else. Whether you see it or not, Lynda’s impulsiveness is dangerous. You just can’t know who you’re going to hurt.”
“A rather grim view, roommate,” said Rosselli.
“Conor, you’re always so careful. Sometimes you even border on being stuffy. I think you could use some of Lynda’s impulsiveness. Everything isn’t laden with some deep meaning.”
“But Glynnis, everything is. And I hardly think I’m ’stuffy,’ God damn it.”
“Face it, Mick. I’ve known you like a brother for almost six years. You’re too straight, and you’re far too serious. Not everything is a life-and-death matter. I confess I’d prefer Lynda’s approach. She sounds like she has more fun.”
“I have fun enough, Dan. But I never want to lose sight of what I’m about. I can’t see myself without a purpose that’s right in front of me all the time. I can’t imagine living my life with no set plan.”
“Plans should be flexible, my love. And you can always put your purpose on hold for a time. It’s important not to take yourself too seriously.”
“I do believe I’ve heard that before,” sighed Finnegan.
“It’s true,” insisted Glynnis. “I think you’d benefit no end from a little mindless hedonism. Your ethics are too confining. They restrain you, babe. They make you see everything you do as part of some great, grand process. It’s not that way at all.”
“But by definition, every act has to be part of a process. Nothing stands alone.”
“Oh, Conor, not everything. You have to relax sometimes. You have to let yourself cool, if only to regain strength.”
“No, Glyn. It’s all related, everything we do. Our ethics define us completely. Every act, every thought, without exception. The more fundamental among us would refer to that as morality, but I tend to steer clear of that word. Call it whatever you think fits—ethics, morality, standards, conscience—but whatever it is, it defines us. There’s no possible way to step around it. It’s in everything we do.”
“You leave no room for flexibility,” said Rosselli.
“Hey, come on. My ethics allow flexibility. They allow me to relax that seriousness you make fun of, even though you think I never do. They permit me to follow the impulse of the moment. But what they don’t allow me to do is throw away, even for a second, the basis of what I believe, and where I think I fit in all this. You absolutely have to keep your principles intact if they’re to have any meaning at all. Not that you have to be mindful of working for world peace, say, or feeding starving children every time you go to a movie or spend a day at the beach. But your basic ideals you carry with you. In one form or another they’re part of each action you take. They construct your very identity.”
“So it’s a matter of degree then,” said Rosselli, “of how many layers you’re willing to strip away from the core.”
“You could look at it that way. Superficial actions are essentially meaningless. We complete them without a second thought. Going to the supermarket, for example. But if we’re going to the store and we see a car hit a child, then try to speed away, we’re faced with a serious test. Do we ignore it, or do we speed after the driver to get a license number, even at the risk of our own safety? How we respond is based on what we believe, on who we are. That stays with us always.”
“Alas,” said Rosselli, “I cannot. I have to be getting along.”
“Oh Dan,” cried Glynnis, grabbing his elbow, “you haven’t even finished your drink!”
“No time, love. I have to meet my friend.”
“Couldn’t you call him and tell him you’ll be late? Better yet, call him and cancel. Stay and have dinner with us.” Glynnis’s voice became a plaintive, silky whirr. Finnegan said nothing, miffed that his philosophical eloquence had been brushed aside.
“I couldn’t, Glynnis. You two want to be alone.”
“But I never see you, Dan. Stay with us. Please. Conor, you don’t mind. There’s plenty of food, isn’t there? Tell him to stay.”
“The lady wants you to stay, Danny boy. But of course it’s up to you.” Finnegan assumed Rosselli could read his tone.
Glynnis now had both hands wrapped around Rosselli’s arm, and she looked up at him with pleading eyes. Finnegan caught the scent of lilacs. He knew his friend could smell it, too. Glynnis had made herself thoroughly appealing.
“Really, Glynnis,” said Rosselli, his conviction now apparently fading. “I shouldn’t intrude on you two.”
“Nonsense. You live here, too. I think it’s unfair for you to be turned out every time I come down. You’re staying for dinner, Dan. I won’t have it any other way. Are we agreed?”
Rosselli smiled sheepishly, caught between impulse and duty, their philosophical discussion come to life. “Well, if you two really don’t mind. I can call Carl and tell him something came up.”
Finnegan’s house of cards caved in and became a random deck, disheveled, on the table.
“Oh Dan, I’m so glad,” Glynnis bounced on the couch in her excitement.
’At what?’ thought Finnegan. ’At Dan staying, or at yet another victory?’
“This will be wonderful. We can talk the whole night. Conor, get me another drink, won’t you, love?”
Finnegan rose without a word and tried to engineer a pleasant expression. He took his time in the kitchen and, after rejoining Glynnis and Dan, said little. He continued that way throughout dinner. Resentment seethed through him like a fire. He had planned on steaks, wine and candlelight, now adaptable for three. Rosselli, increasingly aware of Finnegan’s ill humor, avoided his friend’s gaze as much as he could. Despite the veil of tension, Rosselli found himself entertained and enchanted by Glynnis, who spent most of her energy on her lover’s friend.
After dinner they returned to the living room. Finnegan brok
e away to clear the dishes, then decided to wash them as well while Glynnis and Dan talked together. At an early hour, shortly after 11:00, Dan Rosselli stretched, yawned and, aware fully of Finnegan’s resentment which lent an awkward air to the entire situation, went to bed. Conor and Glynnis bade him good night, alone at last several hours after Finnegan had anticipated.
He began immediately. “Why did you insist he stay?” he hissed between lips barely moving.
Glynnis’s calm smile and tender gaze disappeared at once. She had found the evening delightful. She had, of course, sensed Conor’s attitude, but she had not calculated the depth of his mood. It was one of the few times her normally impeccable instincts came up short. “What do you mean?” she asked through the ominous thunder of an approaching argument.
“Come off it, Glyn. You know damn well why I should be upset. Why the hell didn’t you leave well enough alone? We could have had at least one evening to ourselves. Instead you chose to spend our normal pitiful allotment on my roommate.”
“And it was time well spent, Conor. I enjoyed myself completely.”
“Well, then, perhaps we should include Dan in all our plans. We can become a happy threesome, like Tom, Huck and Becky Thatcher. Shall we ask him to join us now, too? I could sleep at the foot of the bed and you two could chatter the night away.”
“Conor, I hate you when you’re like this. It’s ugly. I consider Dan my friend, too. I rarely see him. Every time I come down he runs off somewhere because he’s so certain we want to be alone. I feel guilty chasing him out of his own home. He’s a friend, can’t you understand that? I enjoy spending time with him. There’s no rule between us that says every moment together has to be alone.”
“It seems as if there are no rules between us at all anymore.”
“Stop pitying yourself.”
“It’s true, Glynnis. We spend so little time together as it is. I want the time we do have to be just us. I swear I still don’t understand how we got this way.”
“I’ve told you time and time again, Conor. You just don’t want to hear it. I know you resent the fact that I have a life of my own away from you. You expect me to focus my entire existence on what you want.”
“I don’t want to get into this again. But you know I love you and want you with me. I presume the feeling is mutual. You say it is, although I’m beginning to wonder. It makes sense to be together, not to pencil each other in as a one-day diversion.”
“No, Conor, you want me to be a permanent diversion. You have a place for me, fit to your specifications, and you expect me to fill it. You want me to be one piece in your grand Romantic mosaic: the fawning damsel.”
“You exaggerate, Glynnis. I’ve never given you cause to think that.”
“The hell you haven’t. It’s in everything you do and say. It’s one of those principles you argued were always with us, and that’s always with you. You live by your ideals, Conor, and you’ve got an idealized view of me, too. You picture your entire life as an allegory. Everybody has a role, and up until now I’ve been just what I should be.”
“So you’re keeping me off-balance to make me more appreciative of you, is that it? I hate playing games like this.”
“God, I could scream when you say things like that,” and she turned away from him violently, only to turn back a second later. “Not everything revolves around your thoughts and feelings, you egocentric bastard. I’m not trying to make you more appreciative of me. I’m trying to figure out where I belong. And it’s no game. I just don’t feel like making myself into a stereotype just yet, and I won’t be hitched to your orbit while you go about saving the world.”
“Glynnis, you know damn well you’d never be just a satellite. Haven’t I made it clear that you’re at the center? You don’t want to see that, it seems.”
“Prove it, then. If I mean that much to you, if you truly want to be with me and if I’m the central purpose of your life, I want you to prove it.”
“How can I do that beyond what I’ve already done?”
“Give up your job and move to Philadelphia. You can move in with me there, and we’ll be together as you want.”
“And surrender everything I’m building for myself here? That’s crazy, Glynnis, not to mention unfair, and you know it. I have a career here that’s just beginning to . . . ”
“Then it’s not too late to change things. You’re not set yet.”
“It’s what I want to do with my life, damn it. I’m not going to drop it because you want to put me to some arbitrary test. I have more at stake here than you do where you are.”
“Conor, you can’t see what’s at stake. You’ve proven nothing to me. You’re only making matters more difficult.”
“By not forfeiting my career!? Jesus Christ, Glynnis, it should be obvious that there’s room in both our lives for any career we want and for each other at the same time.”
“I’m not convinced, Conor. You expect me to fall into line with your other expectations. I won’t do that, especially if I have to surrender what I’ve created for myself.”
“And what the hell is that, Glynnis? You’ve created nothing yet. You’re wasting your time up there.”
“You arrogant bastard. You fucking arrogant bastard. You refuse to see anything except through your own narrow little prism. Any colors you don’t recognize don’t really exist, do they? I’m perfectly content doing what I’m doing. I’m as content as I’ve ever hoped to be.”
“But what you’re doing is so much more flexible than what I’m at. I have to be in Washington, there’s no other place for it. There are graduate schools here, too, you know. You could come down and sacrifice nothing.”
“You have no idea what I’d sacrifice. You can’t see it, and no matter how hard I try to explain it, you don’t want to understand. You always have an answer for everything. Christ, Conor, when did you become so demanding?”
“I’ve never changed, Glynnis. I can’t say the same for you. You’ve grown more stubborn, if nothing else.”
“And more rebellious. You can’t deal with that. It’s so unplanned, and it doesn’t fit.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I know only too well. Sharing our time with Dan didn’t fit, either, so you’re angry. He invaded what you had structured for yourself. You blame me because I asserted my friendship with him at the wrong time. Blame yourself, Conor. Blame yourself for being too inflexible. Sometimes you don’t even let me breathe.”
Conor sat quietly, then sighed with resignation. “Glynnis, we’ve too little time together to be spending it this way. Let’s go to bed. For now we just have to be satisfied with not understanding each other the way we’d like. The way we should. We can’t doubt our affection, though, can we?”
Glynnis rose from the couch without responding. She walked into Finnegan’s bedroom and shut the door behind her. Finnegan followed, where he found Glynnis already undressing, not in the slow, languid movements of one preparing to receive her lover, but in the businesslike manner of a woman shivering on a cold winter night. She looked at Finnegan as he entered. Her eyes held his gaze flatly, her mouth sat without expression, a locked clamp frozen shut.
He approached her and tried to encircle her waist to draw her to him. The muscles in Glynnis’s back did not yield. Her whole frame tensed against him and still her eyes showed no sign of softening.
“Let’s not argue, Glynnis,” Conor said. He had had enough of all of it.
“I agree. Let’s not argue. It does no good.” Her voice carried none of her usual lilt. She spoke as if reading a newspaper article on some bank merger or the visit of a foreign head of state. “I want to go to bed, and I want to sleep. I’m tired from all this.”
Finnegan moved to kiss her to hasten this overly tardy thaw. She turned her head, and his lips found only the gentle grace of her cheek.
“No, Conor. We destroyed tonight altogether. We shattered it. I want to sleep.”
Fin
negan looked at her still hard face and saw she meant it. Anything he might do now would only seem desperate, which of course it would have been. He had been thoroughly robbed tonight. Not a shred of his expectations remained. The anger that had ebbed in resignation returned, stung into resurrection by the evaporation of the evening.
“God damn it to hell,” he said with a bite, and spun away. He, too, began to undress with quick, short, asexual motions. Cold air pulsed against his naked chest and raised bumps on his arms like emery paper. He threw his shirt into the corner, then stomped into the bathroom. When he returned, Glynnis lay on her side under the covers. She faced the wall. Her long hair followed the contours of her shoulder and ribs. Finnegan climbed into bed beside her. Neither spoke. He accentuated his gestures, jostling the bed with the weight behind his sharp movements. He hoped to disturb her into some reaction. That was the only communication he allowed himself; words would be too destructive.
In a peculiarity of mood, a curious amalgam of anger, resentment, fear and remorse, Conor Finnegan abandoned a lost day that he knew prefaced only another of the same sort. There was no hope of redemption.
CHAPTER XXII
But all your strength is weakness itself
against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were and shall be
Forever, beyond man utterly.
—Sophocles, Antigone
Divorced from Anne Newbury’s unspoken intractable yoke, Tom McIlweath reinfused his existence with an enthusiasm his memory could scarcely recall. All predetermined constraints had been stripped away at once. The resulting freedom blew through him like a Chinook wind crossing the Canadian plains. It rose with a chilling persistence and swept forward with nothing to block its path, blowing in new air from a distant, unknown territory. The young man began to sculpt the contours of his maturity with a meticulous delicacy.
McIlweath resumed his studies with a fresh intensity. He rediscovered the stability of the ancient writers, their precocious grasp of mankind’s most essential truths, the mystical lyricism of Greek and Latin. He read without heed of time, of place, of external demands. During the week his mornings dissolved under the fixed brown pages, his afternoon vanished through the musty texts. The critical papers he had postponed he now pursued with a dogged tenacity that showed itself in refined insights that excited him no end. The poems and sagas of a dead age sang to him again; he understood them with flashes of sophisticated brilliance, and expounded upon them in crisp scholarly prose.