Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  For companionship he sought out Joel Pleasance and Kieran Mulrooney. They shared lunches and an occasional dinner. Joel’s cavalier attitude and the Australian’s simple quest to experience everything he could of a new society fascinated and pleased him. He knew, of course, that he could not hope to replicate the closeness he had shared with his undergraduate roommates, but the two young men answered an old need he had too long abandoned. He took tremendous comfort in knowing that, of all the swarming, faceless multitudes in this magnificent city, at least these two would welcome him warmly. They expected nothing of him but the promulgation of his wit and the presumption of his affections.

  Kathy Keane, too, reinvigorated him. McIlweath placed no demands upon her time. She had been serendipitous, and he did not want to risk abusing her by prevailing upon her independence as he went about reestablishing his own. They got together each weekend, usually at Kathy’s instigation. They explored the city as if it were an unclaimed province, and in so doing they explored each other. The two went to the theater when they could afford it, they walked through the Common and sought out the historical places, they browsed the shops on Newbury Street. McIlweath tried to see the early settlers lurking in the shadowy forms behind the buildings. He identified not with the blue-blooded Brahmins or the Italian or Irish workingmen, but with the distant images of the Puritans who had fled to this strange and untapped place to find something different, something they could create for themselves.

  When they returned from their explorations they talked over coffee or wine, and nibbled on whatever food they could find. They talked almost ceaselessly. McIlweath told her in detail of the disjointed journey from coast to coast, of severing himself from the stark isolation of the empty years. Kathy spoke freely of the men she had known, her passionate love of the written word and her disdain for pretense. Implicit in everything she told him was her spirit of independence, of distinctive pride in the ferocious protection of her own inviolable identity. She took nothing for granted. Kathy’s remarkable sureness bolstered McIlweath and reaffirmed his long-floundering confidence.

  For those most fortunate, chaos resolves itself into enlightenment. McIlweath knew that the contentment he enjoyed now was only temporary. His life in Boston was artificial, no more than a stopover on the way to something else. That he had reconciled himself to it through the happy circumstances of the past several months did not change that fact. The personalities themselves were transient, the satisfactions they brought with them accentuated by the profound depression he had experienced before. He had broken out of that depression by sheer luck, and he knew it. He had created nothing for himself. That remained to be done, and so he recognized that his current state could not last. These people and the attitudes they fostered would move on. He vowed not to let himself be seduced once again by a flimsy and contrived sense of belonging.

  Then, too, there was Anne Newbury. He had told her he would call her after a time, and she had feigned indifference. “I have no time to indulge in your Romanticism,” she had said. “My life will go on as it is. There may not be room for you to re-enter.” And, as the days passed and the turbulence she had engendered within him came to subside, McIlweath became more firmly convinced that he had no desire to re-enter her life, and certainly not as before.

  Yet, paradoxically, a rumbling of affection had also returned during their separation. His puzzlement at the lack of warmth for her at the leavetaking had been replaced by the nostalgia he had first expected. Anne had shared a large portion of his recent life, the most significant portion to date, and the richest. She was part of his landscape, even as she receded into the background of it. Their relationship would necessarily have to be restructured if it were to continue in any form at all. He could no longer be pulled along as her shadow. McIlweath did not believe for a second that Anne would consent to a relationship on his terms rather than hers, but he nonetheless came to hope that something might be salvaged. His time with Kathy eradicated his insecurities; he no longer would tolerate Anne’s distant, unyielding self-absorption. And he knew that it would be impossible to resurrect any romantic involvement, even if Anne should wish to do so, a fairly remote possibility in itself.

  But he might treasure her friendship, one forged on an equal footing, one mutually supportive, altruistic and charitable, based on years of shared experience and the occasional good time. It would be a rare thing, a friendship such as that. He did not know if he were capable of it, and he doubted Anne would retain much in the way of friendly sentiments. There would be a thousand implications to overcome. The old emotional formulas would have to be redrawn, and their proprietary claims on one another would have to be shelved. It would be difficult, to be sure, but McIlweath was intrigued by the possibility. They had been through so much together, it would be a shame to lose it all.

  He knew, in any event, that he would eventually have to see her again. The prospect cast a sinister shadow in the background; he drew the curtains to keep it away. McIlweath felt too revived to want to disturb his renascent spirit just yet. Anne would have to be addressed, of that he was certain. His rigid sense of honor made it unavoidable. But he was in no special hurry.

  At the moment he set himself to the task of determining his next move. McIlweath knew enough that his present intoxication would not last. As pleasant as it was, if he did not use it to some positive, less transitory end, it would have been a waste of time. In fact, it could prove to be a burden if he were to lapse once again into a lingering melancholy. The present, he knew, always suffered by contrast. So in reality McIlweath acknowledged that he had not achieved anything of substance. That was still to be done. He had been given another chance, though. What he had now was a salve for a badly beaten ego and its derivative self-confidence. Comforting, yes, but the remainder of his task lay ahead of him.

  ***

  Glynnis Mear reached for the glass of wine as it was offered. She had already had several and their effect worked through every part of her slender frame. Her back and arms unloosed themselves entirely. She marveled at how tight she had really been. For so long, endlessly it seemed now, she had been wound into a hard steel coil. It felt so good now to let the wine take over. It felt so good not to be tensed. Glass in hand, she eased herself back onto the sofa.

  “I have a theory about your lover,” Michael said as he resumed his place beside her. Glynnis had been speaking of Conor Finnegan, a subject she rarely broached in Michael’s increasingly frequent presence. She had explained Conor’s work in Washington, alluding only in the most general way to the pressure of his expectations, and then focusing that pressure more on him than on her.

  Glynnis did not know why she had turned their talk to Conor. Perhaps it was the wine. He was always on her mind of late, as much as ever. Where previously those thoughts had been loving and filled with great longing, he now obsessed her as the most challenging dilemma she had yet to face in her young life, a challenge as great as her father’s death, and just as sorrowful. She had thought it had to be the wine that made her mention Conor at all. She was relaxed; the subject usually inhibited by her companion broke free and ran assertively between them, a small puppy in a new house sniffing out all the corners. Glynnis had not spoken of her frustration and disillusion even though, as in almost all their conversations, she had done most of the talking.

  “What,” purred Glynnis, a vixen’s smile spreading across her elegant face, “is your theory, Michael? Tell me. But this isn’t at all like you, you know, forming ideas about people you’ve never met. And I’ve really told you so little.”

  “You’ve said enough for me to believe I might understand him. I’ve watched you, too. Sometimes I can read people quite well, when I have the motivation to do so. I can read him through you. It’s like judging the angle of the sun by the way it refracts off the surface of a lake.”

  “You think you’re so clever. What do you believe, then, about this man Conor Finnegan?”

  “I believe he is living in the wro
ng age. Today we cannot tolerate him as he, although he does not know that quite yet. Unfortunately, sooner or later it will be made clear to him. His is a Romantic soul, Glynnis. There’s no room for that now as he applies it to this complex, very un-Romantic age. He would have been much happier if he had been born two centuries earlier.”

  Glynnis narrowed her eyes in rapt attention. “Go on,” she said.

  “His problem, I think, is that he is trying to adapt that nineteenth-century Romantic idealism into modern forms. The two cannot be joined. We are not a Romantic society, not anymore if ever we were. Concepts of justice have become utilitarian, and the entire notion of perfectibility has been overshadowed completely by pragmatism. We seek only what works for us, and us alone. We’ve become too complex, too fragmented to worry about the cosmic questions with which your man concerns himself. When we divert our sight from the minutiae of making our lives comfortable, we’re immediately overwhelmed. We’re knocked back two or three steps, and we reel and stagger until we can collect ourselves again. We’re too big now, too fast, and too determined, and the course of what we have set in motion has created a centrifugal force that no modern man can escape. Redirecting it is absolutely beyond our powers.”

  “You take a rather fatalistic view, especially for an artist.”

  “Like the society in which I was raised, my own idealism has been censored by a strong need to survive as well as I can. Notions of service and justice are well and good, but I fear your lover takes them far too seriously. And, no doubt, he takes himself too seriously as well. The impersonality of what we are now demands that our first service is necessarily to ourselves. Your man has lost sight of that simple truth. I daresay he puts too much weight on his own individuality: he believes he can meet whatever personal responsibilities he assumes while entertaining those inflated notions. I contend that he cannot. He can’t assume the forms of this society while his temperament thrusts him so far outside it. There’s a tension there that he will never be able to overcome.”

  “He’s managed to be quite successful to this point,” said Glynnis. She sat on every word. Michael’s opinions, so rarely voiced, fascinated her in any case, carried to her ears by his sensual Spanish tongue. That he should attempt to analyze her lover’s very nature was a strange, wondrous thing.

  “Has he really been successful? His life until now has been a process of positioning. We’re given so much latitude when we are young. We’re allowed, then and only then, to be impractical, to be dreamers. And when we are, the common view is that we’ll grow out of it, we’ll grow up and become responsible, that dreams and ideals are for children. He has some natural talents, that’s apparent. He would not be where he is now if that were not the case. You have told me that he’s intelligent and strong and clever. And he’s been given those talents in enough measure to set him apart from his peers. That’s the root of his success, but it’s also his curse.”

  He continued, “He’s not done anything serious yet. He’s gone to school, he’s played his sports, he’s made his friends and won his lover, and he’s done exceedingly well at all of it. It’s easy to build such high ideals, and such high expectations, when you’re playing for such low stakes. But now the ante has been raised. In a practical society he has a practical role to fill. There’s little room for frivolous notions. Society will accelerate its expectations of him—to hold a job, to perform the demands of that position, whatever it is, to obey its laws, to pay his bills, and so on—but those expectations are not his. He becomes a round peg in a square hole. He is now expected to survive, pure and simple, and there’s no opportunity for anything beyond that. And if he is to survive well, then he has to play by the established rules. He cannot change them. The momentum is just too great.”

  “Must he seek change?” asked Glynnis. “Isn’t it enough to live one’s life according to principle, and make the best of what’s at hand?”

  “That’s the best we can do, I fear. But, really, there’s no interest in our principles. Our latitude disappears as we become more complex. The motivations behind what we do don’t matter as long as we’re meeting our responsibilities, and staying in line. If we fail in that relatively simple task, we’re targeted. We’re to be corrected. I believe your man sees things in reverse. Instead of acknowledging what society expects from him, he has his own expectations of the social order. He expects it to shape to his calling. There are harsh lessons he has yet to learn.”

  “When I first met him,” said Glynnis sadly, “I told him that his heart was bound to be broken. There was something about him, Michael. A quality of trust. And expectation. He trusted the world to be a good place, and that all he had to do was point to the right things, and all would be well. As if he believed his marvelous good fortune would be endless, as if he really saw himself as somehow favored. Oh, Michael, he demands so much from everything he does. He demands purity. And because he believes so firmly in what he does, he expects nothing to stand in his way, or to question what he’s about. It’s just so hard to be near that naiveté, that constant certainty.”

  “He’ll lose it in due course, Glynnis. You’re right. He’ll be terribly hurt. That will be the cost of his realization, although over time it will all be for the better. He’s put himself in an impossible position. The great Romantics have condemned the social order, and in one way or another, estranged themselves from it. Byron, Whitman, Thoreau. Even Wordsworth, with his innocuous ramblings. Yet your man is deeply linked with it. He tries to draw satisfaction from it, he tries to play by its rules even as he seeks to alter its very focus. With the ideals you say he’s embraced, he should be a renegade or a recluse. Maybe an artist. He should be living in a cabin in the Maritimes or a hut in the Pyrenees rather than an apartment in the heart of one of the world’s most complex cities. He’s a contradiction, Glynnis. He’s lost sight of his own limitations. It’s only inevitable that his contradictions will be resolved for him.”

  “And then,” said Glynnis, “he’ll have to reconstruct himself all over again.”

  “The cost of unrealistic principles in a rigidly pragmatic society. Most of us have more conservative expectations. We take whatever comes our way, and we’re grateful for it. All our best efforts only push the walls back for a little more room.”

  “Poor Conor.” She wished at that moment with all the power of her soul that she could go back to when they first met. She had been dazzled by him, stunned by his brilliant luminescence. Why, dear God, are we condemned to lose our innocence? Why can we not go forth forever in wide-eyed wonder at Your most precious gifts?

  “We clutter ourselves so badly, don’t we, Michael? It would be so much better if we could just know enough to take our pleasures where we find them and be content with that.”

  “It should be enough to create our own peace. All serenity, all order is internal. Our error comes in presuming order outside the self, where there is no order. And it’s compounded when we expect to find our personal order, one we construct within ourselves, assumed by others. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that that order, which does not exist, is proper and correct. We can do so little for only a few. There is nothing beyond that but hubris.”

  “You make us sound so hopeless. And I’m sorry to say that I agree with you. But God, how I hate it. Think of how it robs us, Michael. How pitiful we are, and how utterly alone.”

  “Only if you fail to see that our limitations are quite natural, a function of the species. We need not be alone. We need only view our pleasures and our pains personally. There’s no broad meaning to what we suffer and what we enjoy. Should we look for it, we only frustrate ourselves. There is no order, no meaning, no potential for anything beyond the immediate.”

  “Oh, Michael, you depress me. Sometimes I think I prefer Conor’s naïveté.”

  “Which crushes you. No, Glynnis, I don’t think you do. He may be charming, and I’m certain he is. He may be infectious, and charismatic, and inspiring, and all those vague qualities that compel
us to come close. But he’s a puppy, wide-eyed and panting, chasing his tail around and around, not knowing enough to see that he’s really pursuing nothing at all besides a useless extension of himself. He’s fortunate not to have been beaten or kicked by those passing by. He’s fortunate no one’s noticed him enough so far to care to hurt him.”

  “I wish you could meet him.”

  “I prefer to know him only through his lady. Do you mind speaking of Conor while you are away from him? If so, I apologize. I have perhaps said too much.”

  “It is rather unfair, but I confess I don’t mind. He fascinates me. I’ve never met anyone even remotely like him.”

  “But he weighs you down. Forgive me, but that’s so very apparent.”

  Glynnis sighed. “Yes. I can’t keep pace with his . . . ideals. I almost said ’illusions.’ They’re one and the same, though, aren’t they? Whatever we call them, they drag me along. I’ve lost perception of anything but through Conor. But we’re traveling down two different pathways now, and it’s ripping me apart. The sweet force of his personality is so strong that he seduces me over and over again. I go willingly when I’m with him. I let myself be taken.”

  “It’s a law of nature that the deadliest poison smells the sweetest. Look to yourself first, Glynnis. That’s all any of us can do. That’s the only expectation we are required to answer.”

  “Paradise Lost.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cast out by the failings of our own soul, and never to be fully regained. We’re a fated, sullied species, Michael.”