by Greg Fields
“I’m seeking something simpler, Anne. Something less cluttered. I want to know that I’m doing what I’m doing purely because that’s my preference and not because I feel I have no other alternative.”
He went on, “We see each other as types, and we so seldom look behind the façades. I want to study Classics, so professors look at me one way, students regard me another, and society in general places a price-tag on the end result. There’s no Tom McIlweath in any of that. And so I’ve felt alienated here, and I want to get away from it. Perhaps it’s no different elsewhere, but at least I have the capacity to wrench myself away from what I have here and build my own circumstances. If I don’t take advantage of that now, then the chances grow increasingly remote that I ever will. The entanglements will just be too great. Do you understand that? No matter if you don’t. I know that this is right for the moment. I’m only thankful I have the courage to follow it through.”
“I see nothing courageous in anything you’ve said,” replied Anne. “You’re running again, that’s all. Just a little farther afield this time. I imagine you’ll sour on this in due course as well, then move on to something else. I do confess that Ireland impresses me. I applaud your resourcefulness, really. I had no idea you were ever interested in going abroad, so you’ve shown me something there. But actually, it’s the same old story, isn’t it, Tom? I’ve grown tired of it, and of you, too, I’m afraid. It’s too much energy to bring myself along and drag you at the same time. I’m glad you’re going.”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to grasp much of this, Anne. I’m sorry, but even now you fall back on your smugness. It’s beyond you to acknowledge doubt. Where does that leave you? You’re bound to be successful, I’m sure of that, but at what cost? You have no sense of wonderment. And without that, success is hollow. I’m sure of that, too. It’ll be like punching a few buttons on a computer to find an answer instead of sweating through a thousand calculations and miscalculations until your mind is squeezed dry, but knowing that when you find it it’ll be truly yours and there’s positively no chance that it’ll be wrong.”
“At least I’m certain I’ll find it by pushing those buttons. I’ve been certain all my life.”
“I know. And that, I fear, is your curse.”
“It’s for you that I’m sorry, Tom. You won’t let yourself be happy. I’ve done all that’s in me for you. You’ve resisted me. You’ve resisted yourself. You’re a brilliant, sensitive soul, but you’re really no more than a child, self-pitying and indulgent. You’ll never be more than that.
“So run then,” she continued. “Run as far and as wide as you please. I have no desire to try to stop you. I’m not capable of it. And if you thought what you told me tonight would earn my respect, or make me wail and cry to get you to stay, you’ve deluded yourself. You’re throwing away ambition and comfort and the satisfaction of striving, but I suppose you couldn’t comprehend that no matter how clear it is. You’re throwing away more than most people will ever attain. But as I said, you exhaust me. I can’t take your grand, Romantic indecisions anymore. I can’t take your breast-beating and hand-wringing and constant second-guessing. It’s become as boring as it is tiring. Leave me if you must, or don’t. It really doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no remorse, there’s no nostalgia or gloom. There’s only exhaustion, nothing more.”
“Then there’s no point in continuing,” said McIlweath, the words a low exhalation barely audible. He, too, had been exhausted. But now his Protean exertions neared their end. It would shortly be all over.
“No, Tom. There’s no point. Just go.”
He rose with effort, the strain of this peculiar dismemberment having sapped his better parts. McIlweath felt as if this conversation had lasted several hours. In truth, it had been very short. It was neither bang nor whimper, and now that the end had come he felt vaguely cheated. It seemed as if there should be more points to be won, more flesh to be exacted. He had hoped there might be passion, the clashing and wrenching of joined souls. He had not expected fatigue, nor the overwhelming weariness that soaked his limbs, his lungs, his heart, his very spirit with a camphored numbness. The final salvo had been fired long ago, only he had been too deaf to hear it.
“I’m sorry, Anne. Perhaps more so than I’ve ever been in my life. Please try to understand what I’ve done, and what I’m doing.”
“Be assured, Tom, that my life will not change without you. You’ve always been welcome to be a part of it.”
“But always on your terms. I can’t do that anymore, Anne. I was a fool to do it at all.”
“You are a fool. Perhaps in time I’ll come to worry about you. But not yet. I’ve nothing left to give you.”
“I’d like to write you after I get settled. To let you know where I am.”
“Do as you wish. I suppose I should wish you luck, although I’m not certain what luck would bring you.”
“Merely some understanding, and some harmony. That’s the best I can do.” McIlweath opened the door. For some reason, a sentimental exaggeration of nostalgia, he paused to look around at the small apartment. “Goodbye, Anne.”
She stared at him, unsmiling as when he had come, her eyes set in blue stone. Tom McIlweath turned and walked down the hollow flight of steps. They parted as they had come together, and the bitter, sterile gulf washed in behind them.
***
For Conor Finnegan, the grand and glorious fabric of his life had begun to unravel. Once started it could not be stopped. It was as if he had snagged a sweater on the corner of a table and pulled at the loose string that ran out of his garment, leaving it so misshapen that he would wonder how he had ever been attracted to it at all.
After the hearings were cancelled, Finnegan found himself consigned to a series of tasks and responsibilities he considered essentially meaningless. Griffith Ross had told him to “put the elderly to rest for a while. We won’t be doing anything on that front for several months.” Finnegan once again had protested and, once again, he had been sternly rebuffed. He briefly considered pursuing the issue on his own and completing the studies on nutritional problems and cost overruns in federal medical programs he had begun weeks before, but he knew that Capitol Hill had no room for freelancers, and that any such effort would jeopardize what little credibility he still had with the powers that be. Ross ignored him for the most part, and when they did speak, the older man did little to hide his contempt. Their conversations became terse. Finnegan reacted in kind and kept his distance. His indifference for Ross turned rapidly to dislike.
With his pet issue taken from him, Finnegan was left to pursue what he considered to be mundane research on antiseptic topics. He wrote position papers that were filed and ignored. He was assigned to develop arguments on amendments to maritime laws, interstate freight rates imposed by railroads, the budget for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other issues equally boring to him. He wrote a bland speech for the senator to deliver before the California-Hawaii Elks Association. On two or three occasions he conducted tours of the office for groups of high school students. Some afternoons he was assigned to answering the phones and recording constituent comments, complaints and rants, the Siberia of staff responsibilities.
Finnegan worked fewer hours. When 5:00 came he was usually gone, the voracious appetite for doing what he did having disappeared. There was nothing to which that appetite could be directed, nothing meaty to bite. As the spring wore on, he came to the office increasingly late and left increasingly early. No one seemed to care. He wanted to get back to his apartment while it was still light so that he could make some use of the day.
The sour humor that clung to him intensified by contrast to the fortunes of his colleague Steve Krall, whose star had risen as Finnegan’s had sputtered. Finnegan had grown closer to Krall than to anyone else on staff. During his first summer in Washington, when Krall had arranged for him to occupy his aunt’s elegant townhouse, the two often spent evenings together after work sitting in the livi
ng room or on the narrow porch, drinking beer against the heat and swapping impressions of their co-workers, the nature of what they were doing, and the pervasive thrill of being young and free in such a city. When Finnegan came to Washington permanently, their friendship did not deepen, but neither did it wane. They remained close, eating lunch together when they could and occasionally going out for a night on the town. Finnegan considered Steve Krall something of a kindred spirit formed from a similar mold.
Krall was only four years older than Finnegan, still a very young man even by Washington standards. His background was parallel: an honor student at a fine university, a star athlete who had given up his sport for broader pursuits, an idealist who had come a great distance to be at the heart of a place where he might have an impact. Krall was a superb conversationalist who exuded a sincerity of conviction, a genuine appreciation of his fellow man. It was that appreciation which led him to take the wide-eyed Finnegan under his wing and show him what he should look for in a city that could be vastly confusing. Finnegan, too, was attracted to Krall’s quiet expectation that ultimately he could affect in some small way the evolution of a pluralistic society with its share of injustices and heartbreaks. While Krall’s Romantic tendencies were not nearly so rampant as Finnegan’s, they were apparent to all who knew him.
What modified that idealism was a pragmatic instinct at which Finnegan marveled. Krall, it seemed, knew what would work in any situation. His grasp of political sensitivities was such that he knew where and how hard to push, what direction to turn his arguments, and when to step away completely. Krall worked extensively in issues affecting low-income traditional minorities. He had been instrumental in developing a series of bills aimed at regulating fair employment practices in both the private and public sectors. Finnegan had been impressed with Krall’s thorough, meticulous substantiation of the conditions that kept people unemployed and locked in poverty. He had documented enforcement costs, administrative operations and logistical details to the smallest digit. The senator had been delighted with the effort but doubtful of the reception such legislation would receive, given the senate’s current composition. It was Krall who suggested scuttling three of the bills, deferring two to the next session after the mid-term elections, and introducing only the remaining two immediately, but only if sufficient co-sponsors could be enlisted.
Among those bills scuttled was the one of which Krall had been proudest, a reorganizational bill that would have affected Department of Defense standards of promotion. When Finnegan asked him why he had been willing to drop it, Krall went into a detailed analysis of how the bill would have been brutalized in committee, who would have proposed which amendments, and where it all would have come to rest. It was simply not the time for it, he said.
“But by sacrificing that bill I convinced the senator that the others, because they were less extreme, had a chance, and that if we introduced the safest of the bunch with other co-sponsors we’d at least have something to build on in future sessions. He was all for it. You can make any point you want through comparison.”
“You’re leaving the teeth out of your package, though,” Finnegan had countered. “You’re really not doing anything with this bill. Wouldn’t it have been better to introduce the entire series? Even if it were blown apart this session, you’d have planted the seed for next year. And you’d know who stood where and who you’d have to work on.”
“We know that already. Why force a confrontation if it isn’t necessary? And if the series had died in committee, anything we reintroduced would already have the stench of failure and could be ignored. The senator doesn’t believe in Pyrrhic victories. He’s against all bloodshed, especially his own. You should know that by now. We’ll build on the proposal gradually, by steps. It might take longer, but in the end it’ll be more complete than if we charge ahead full bore. You lose respect that way.”
Finnegan had not been convinced. If you have an issue to pursue, then you pursue it, directly and simply, without constructing some elaborate strategy to get it done. Even though he was impressed with Krall’s comprehensive understanding of the waters through which he had to navigate, Finnegan believed that any final product would be too compromised, that it would be flaccid and weak. ’Half of the problems we anticipate in this business never materialize anyway,’ he thought. ’More than half.’
And so it was with consternation that Conor Finnegan saw Steve Krall, whom he considered an equal, benefit from both a title and a salary upgrade while Finnegan spent his afternoons yapping with angry constituents. Krall was moved out of the noisy, boisterous central suite where eight of them were jammed together in heat and squalor, into a semi-private office shared with only one other and located two doors down the corridor from the senator himself. In spite of himself, Finnegan seethed with resentment. It did not matter that Steve Krall was older, had been on staff longer, and had performed with professional impeccability. Finnegan felt slighted and his bitterness grew. Conor Finnegan hated to be off the front lines, and he resented those who were there instead of him. He had been too accustomed to his successes. For a while, until he could reconcile his reactions with the logic that dictated their immaturity, he thought it best to keep his distance from his erstwhile peer. He might say something he really didn’t mean.
As his professional responsibilities became more menial and his quixotic aspirations more tarnished, Finnegan found little consolation in his private life. He still did not understand why Glynnis was distancing herself. It had been a gradual process, but there could be no mistaking it. Finnegan spent most of his free time trying to analyze this sadly peculiar momentum. There must be something he could do. But if he did not comprehend the source of the disease, how could he effect a cure?
Glynnis came to Washington most weekends, but she stayed only a day. She became more adamant about returning on Saturday afternoon. Finnegan’s frustrations grew, and they argued frequently. Trivial matters could set either of them off.
One weekend he bought theater tickets for Friday night. When he picked her up at Union Station, he showed her the tickets as they walked to the car.
“The Arena Stage, Glyn, and an August Wilson play. It’s gotten great reviews, and it’s sold out, but one of the interns had tickets she couldn’t use, so here we are.”
“Tonight? Jesus, Conor, couldn’t you have let me know?”
“How was I going to do that, Glynnis? I wasn’t even certain I’d get the tickets until just before I came to get you.”
Glynnis dropped Conor’s hand and turned her head away. When she turned back, she snapped, “Did you ever think that sitting in a dark theater for three hours after a long week might not be the way I want to spend my time? And so we go there straight from here, with no chance to freshen up or even stop for a drink? Great. Just great.”
Finnegan had been stunned, but disappointment fell back into familiar patterns of resentment. He made no attempt to soothe her. “Fine. Then we’ll forget the theater. No doubt for a very nice, relaxing evening at home, just like always. I’ll tell my friend that the play was outstanding, that we wished it would never have ended. How’s that?”
“I see your martyrdom reflex is especially sensitive tonight. Conor, I don’t want to have to consider anything deep tonight. I don’t want art, or literature, or poetry. I don’t want to have to think. About anything.”
“Okay, then we can sit silently on opposite ends of the room. No thought required.”
“You know, you can really be a bastard sometimes,” and they both fumed away the entire night.
The simplest things could bruise them. They sniped and jabbed, making remarks in the course of ordinary conversation that were meant to keep the other defensive or, if their moods were particularly foul, to elicit hurt. Even their quiet times became strained. The wild passions that swept over them subsided in a black mist of aborted expectations and muted resentments.
Conor viewed his time with Glynnis through a singular lens: Why is she not here
with me? For Glynnis, her resolve not to be consumed became indomitable. Their two characters were intractable—neither budged. His frustration smoldered constantly, and on those occasions when it flared, it was met with Glynnis’s cold assertions. She withdrew from him into deeper and deeper recesses, and Finnegan in turn grew more frustrated. The question ate at him always, an acid dripping slowly, continually and unstoppably. It ate away until the structure that supported the two of them together began to weaken with each movement. Cracks appeared where there had been no cracks before, and they split wider without remediation. And always Glynnis remained there, so desirable, the very marrow of his contentment, but always just out of reach. His grasping fingertips brushed her, and she backed away, stung by the touch.
***
On a morning in early June Conor Finnegan plodded through a Department of the Interior report on some unimportant aspect of a topic in which he had absolutely no interest. The monotonous insignificance of his current assignments were accentuated by the softly warm and dry luster of early summer, before July’s stifling humidity descended to choke off all needless motion and the enthusiasm that generated it. On such a morning the city exuded a crystalline vibrancy, so pungent that one could not help but breathe it in. The great marble monuments and museums reflected white, the rivers, creeks and pools sparkled in a rich, pure blue, the austere government buildings sharply etched in chiaroscuro line and shadow seemed almost majestic. In the intoxication of vernal clarity the city’s mood brightened. Noises of the street—the abrasive honks of car horns, the resonant belches of the buses, the sullen shuffling of the sidewalk traffic, even the plaintive wail of the occasional siren—all seemed less harsh, their brutal contours relaxed by the reaffirmation of lost innocence. People had ceased to shiver and they had not yet begun to perspire, and so there was an uncommon equilibrium, a delicate balance. A morning so rare, then, and so deftly sweet.