Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  “It has to be. I want to get as far away as I can. I have to strip away any and all temptations that might lure me back. That’s the only way for me. I want to find some place that’s purer than anything I’ve ever experienced. You know, I think I can finally understand the mentality of the ancient Essenes. There’s something to be said for going into the desert for a few years and eating nothing but locusts. This is my desert.”

  “It sounds as if you’re trying to punish yourself.”

  “No. Not punishment, just—realignment. Conor, there are some real attractions to what I’m doing. Ireland’s not the end of the world. From what I can gather, this whole situation is likely to be rather quaint. I suppose all I’m looking for is some time, and maybe a little space that’s all my own.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” he went on. “If I’m going to do this right, I have to get away from every influence to which I’ve become accustomed. Do you realize that each time you so much as walk down a city street, that you’re subjected to a thousand different assumptions? I imagine that because we’re the Great Melting Pot we’ve become fanatical about absorption, about conformity. We’ve built systems, and everyone’s supposed to have a place somewhere, and be happy with who they are and where they land. There’s little room for exploration, or for growth. We tolerate deviation very poorly.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Finnegan. “But can we ever escape that? There are assumptions no matter where we go or what we do. We’re always answerable to the thoughts or impressions or perspectives that other people craft for us.”

  “I’ll hold judgment on that. Look, I’m not implying that I’m about to devote myself to some radical scheme, and I’m not saying I’ve become misanthropic. All I want is a clean slate and some time to figure out what I want to draw on it. I can’t do that here.”

  “You’re running the risk of never coming back.”

  “There are worse fates. Yes, that’s a risk. But what would I be giving up? And if I find that the substance of what I am and what I want lie outside what’s come before, then why should I come back? I’m not bound by any overdeveloped sense of national identity. All I want to do is curl up with my books for a while, Conor, and not worry about where I’m going. Some course will become apparent. If not, I’ve lost nothing in the meantime. There’s nothing mystical in that.”

  “What comes afterward?”

  “Who the hell knows? I’m twenty-four years old and I don’t have a God damn clue what I want my life to be. That makes me an anomaly. You see, I’ve broken the program already. It’s that sense of obligation that I have to get away from. I don’t know what comes afterward. Something more logical than what’s come before is all. I’ll let the specifics make themselves known as they come along.”

  Finnegan thought a while, then said slowly, “And here Dan and I thought you were leaving because of Anne—the heartbroken lover running away from his grief. You impress the hell out of me, Tom, and after all these years we’ve spent together, I wish I knew you better.”

  McIlweath stared down at the snifter in his right hand. He sought an articulation of the indefinable sentiments Finnegan’s words evoked. Not finding it, not coming anywhere near it, he said nothing for several minutes. The room’s only sounds were the muffled ticking of a clock across the way and Dan Rosselli’s stertorous breathing from the bedroom.

  As with sympathy, as with passion, as with life itself, the frozen moment faded before memory could respond, leaving, years later, only an echo. Silence, and the conclusion behind it, weighed down upon them almost palpably until they could no longer stand the burden, even knowing that it would leave its imprint crushed into them so that in the private moments to come they could dig a finger into it and drag their hands over its ridges.

  Finnegan sighed, rose from his chair and went into the kitchen for the bottle of Grand Marnier. He returned and put it on the coffee table. “This has the makings of a long night,” he said. “We’ll keep this handy.”

  “No, Conor, it needn’t be long. Not on my account. I’ve said all I have the power to say.”

  “I remember in high school, Mac. You were one of the most nondescript people I’d ever known. Sometimes you were barely visible. And I think of those idiots who ignored you just because they couldn’t define you. You could condemn the whole lot of them now if you wanted. You’re stronger than they could ever hope to be.”

  “I’m acting from necessity, as I see it. Nothing more. Don’t romanticize it.”

  “It’s a Romantic notion. That whole concept of self-determination, and all the wasted years. I can see now how wasted they were on both sides. For you and for me. The difference is that you’ve got the strength to pull yourself out of it.”

  “Strength is an ambiguous quality, Conor. It comes in different forms. We do what compels us to survive. We can go about developing some grand meaning to what we do, but what’s the point? We put it onto order and slap labels on it. Very clinical, very scientific. I’m somewhere above ’survival’ and somewhat below ’profound.’ What you call strength might only be evolution.”

  “Perhaps then I’ve evolved poorly. Instead of becoming an intelligent, enlightened human being, I’ve become a subspecies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, really,” sighed Finnegan. “I suppose I just feel a little inadequate right now. I feel like some type of vapor, just taking the shape of whatever space I’m released into. After a while you don’t even know it’s there.”

  “You look tired, Conor. More than I’ve ever seen you. I noticed it as soon as I saw you. You’re worn down to a thread.”

  Finnegan said nothing. He turned his head to look away from his friend. To focus, he let his eyes rest on a crack in the far wall, a thin line like a pencil mark against the faded white. He stared at the crack and studied the way the wall had been disturbed—a slight fissure now but destined to widen should no repair be made. The bumpy texture of the white paint stopped abruptly where the plaster had split. Were he a microbe, Finnegan could stand at the edge of the rift and stare into a bottomless abyss.

  For Tom McIlweath, seeing Conor Finnegan dispirited—weak, timid, uncertain, his remarkably resilient confidence nowhere in evidence—was tantamount to a great natural cataclysm, like an earthquake or a flood. Something immensely powerful had been upset, as if the physical laws had been commuted, as if he had dropped a stone and it had flown up into the sky, as if he had gone to sleep one night and woken up the day before. As a friend, as a brother, McIlweath was rent himself. He felt the bleeding of Finnegan’s spirit in his own.

  “How’s Glynnis, Conor?” McIlweath asked gently.

  Finnegan continued staring at the crack. “I don’t know, Mac. I really don’t. I see her so seldom now. These past few months—I don’t know, she’s fading from me. She’s a snow sculpture in the sun, melting from under my eyes so gradually that I can’t see it. I only know that she’s less than she used to be.”

  “What’s happening, do you know?”

  “No. I don’t have a firm grasp of it at all. I’m not prepared for it, Mac, and I react to it so poorly. She has some fear, some phobia.” Finnegan stopped, then turned his eyes quickly to his friend. “You might have some empathy with that.”

  “It seems as if she’s afraid to let herself go,” replied McIlweath, then smiled softly. “You can be pretty intoxicating, you know. You’ve drawn her in all this time, into your orbit. She might think she’s caught there.”

  “You can empathize with that, can’t you? Christ, you might even take her side.”

  “Is this a battle?”

  “It’s a war of attrition. The first person to wear down the other can claim victory.”

  “Then what have you won? Only resentment. And resignation.”

  Finnegan took a deep breath. “I know. There’s no middle ground. If the battle’s engaged at all, then it’s already lost. The damage is too great. The battle itself is the defeat.”

/>   “You’ve lost her then, if you believe that.”

  “I’ve lost her, Tom. I’m losing her now and it’ll all be done in a little while. Yes, I know that.”

  “You love her, of course. And she loves you? Still, I mean, through what’s happening?”

  “She says she does. That’s not the motivation for any of this, the absence of love. It’s more complex than that. As I said, I’m not very good at this. I have a hard time understanding it. She wants security. She wants affection, but she can’t bring herself to offer her own security as collateral. She’s afraid that if she gives herself to me she’ll cease to be Glynnis Mear.

  “But,” he continued, “she can’t see that that’s going to happen one way or another, and there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it. She’s already ceased to be Glynnis Mear. She’s clinging to an illusion while the reality changes of its own accord.”

  “That happens to all of us,” said McIlweath. “We all grow along and leave behind what we used to be. But it’s easy to see ourselves as what we were, or at least as what we considered ourselves to be. All that changes, though.”

  “Exactly,” replied Finnegan. “We’re one part reality and nine parts illusion. Are we that same people we were five years ago, or ten? No, and we should be glad of it. I think that as we age, as we assume these complexities we can’t avoid, we become desperate for some type of guarantee, some evidence that the core is still in place and that it’s essentially the same as it’s always been, even though the outer trappings have been completely redone. Glynnis is afraid that if she gives over the trappings of her life, then her core goes with it. And with that core goes the security she craves. She’s not consoled by the new type of security that’s complementary to both of us. There’s a line in a song by Richard Thompson—“You might be lord of half the world, you’ll not own me as well.” I hear that in her distance. At least, that’s what I’ve been able to make of all this.”

  “I hope you can salvage this, Conor. I’ve never seen two people so thoroughly in love as you two. You and Glynnis—well, you were so clearly in step. To have anything happen to that would be a real tragedy.”

  Finnegan stared again at the crack. “You know what I can’t get out of my mind, Tom? If she leaves me, I won’t ever experience anything like her again. Do you know how depressing that is? What I’ve felt for her, and with her, will be dead forever. There’ll be no way to bring it back.”

  “There are other women, Conor.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not Glynnis. She’s been more than a lover. She’s an affirmation, Tom. She affirms that Conor Finnegan might be a little special. She’s part of youth, and strength, and innocence, and promise. When she goes, if she must, all that goes, too. I die a bit. We both do. I suppose that’s the natural course of things, but being natural or inevitable doesn’t make it any less depressing.”

  “Perhaps,” said McIlweath, “that affirmation has been false all along. Perhaps, in the end, you’re no different than any of the rest of us, and you’re destined to the same heartbreak and disenchantment we all have to face.”

  “Conor Everyman, shaped by the forces around him and helpless to resist,” Finnegan said with a slow shake of his head. “That’s hard to consider. The road has been pretty open until now, without a whole lot of bumps. Maybe that’s made me weak. And now I feel like I’m at the mouths of the wolves.”

  “It’s something to consider, Conor. Blessings, or talents, or strengths, or whatever you want to call them, do no good unless they take us down some hard pathways. Otherwise, they’re nothing more than amusements, or self-gratifications. It’s what we do with them that’s important.”

  “I don’t function as well as I thought I did, Mac. As bad as it is to lose Glynnis, it’s far worse to see it coming, step by step, and know that the process is irretrievable. It’s death by cancer.”

  “What will you do, Conor?”

  “Try to resurrect myself a bit. Perhaps in another form that’s harder. Someone not given to idealization. Not so wide-eyed and eager, or trusting. More deliberative and infinitely more careful. I’ll have no underbelly left to expose.”

  “I think I prefer the illusion of Conor Finnegan to the one that you just described.” McIlweath paused to sip his Grand Marnier. “You’ll stay in Washington, I assume? This is what you want to do with your life?”

  “Government, you mean?” Finnegan looked back at McIlweath, shifted in his chair and sipped his liqueur. “It’s all I know at this point. Do you remember my rather smug assumption that the course of my life would take care of itself? That if I did the right things for the right reasons, the right things would happen?”

  McIlweath nodded. “Not too much unlike what I just laid out about my own plans. Or lack of plans.”

  “I always thought that the right opportunities would make themselves known, and that all I had to do was be ready to see them. Just be alert enough to recognize what was out there, then let my natural abilities get it done for me. When that assumption proves false, though, you’re helpless. You have to go back to Square One and reevaluate.

  “In answer to your question, though,” he continued, “yes, I’ll stay in Washington for the time being. Probably for the foreseeable future. It’s all I can do. It’s all I’m prepared for. But it has no meaning anymore, if ever it actually did. I’ve been exiled by the powers that be. I’m fortunate to have a job at all.”

  “You wrote me that you left the senator. You never went into much detail. As I recall, you made it sound like a step up, although I couldn’t see it. I mean, the committee you’re with seems a bit obscure.”

  “As obscure as they come, Tom. The Siberia of Capitol Hill. I did inflate the importance of it, didn’t I? I apologize. In truth, it’s a trivial position with a powerless group on the far outskirts of government. I see no reason why it even exists.”

  “You had a falling out?”

  “Call it a philosophical disagreement. My naïveté again. The senator and his top aide schooled me in practical politics and how the system really works. I didn’t fit in, so they lanced me like a boil.”

  “I guessed as much, despite your letter.”

  “I suppose the circumstances were apparent, regardless of my smokescreen. They were kind enough to keep me employed on the Hill, but they made certain I’d be in a place where my ideals wouldn’t get in the way. As you said, it’s what we do with our gifts that’s important. It’s how we function that matters. So, I’m allowed to retain my illusions. I’m allowed to retain the glamor of working in government, walking through the corridors of power, even though the substance has been taken away from me. I’m not to be trusted with any of that, at least not until I prove myself more respectful of the ways of the world.”

  “Why do you stay with it, then? You sound bitter as hell. There are other things you could do.”

  “I am bitter, Tom, but I’m also much weaker than I thought. There’s an element of comfort in what I do. It’s not terribly taxing, the demands are reasonable, the pay is fairly good. Right now it’s all I know. Sometimes I think about leaving it. I’ve thought about trying to land a teaching job in a prep school, teaching history and coaching basketball, maybe. I think I’d enjoy that. I’ve thought about law school, too, but the prospect of three or four years of intense study makes me tired. I couldn’t take it. Finding a job in the private sector holds no appeal. It would be no different than what I’m doing now, just as pointless and narrow, so why should I leave for that? In a very real sense, Tom, I’ve lost my ambition. I’ve lost my hunger. I hope to Christ it’s only temporary, but I can’t tell.”

  “So you’ll just float along, doing what you’re doing and hating it until something else comes by? I’m surprised, Conor.”

  “And disappointed?”

  “Yes. And disappointed.”

  Finnegan smiled, more to himself. “You know, Tom, up until now all the influences in my life have been gentle, positive and affirming. There’s never been a ne
ed to stand up to them. Now that the need’s arisen, I find I’m too weak to do it. It’s too exhausting, and in the end we gain nothing from it anyway. So I’ll play along, like everyone else does: I’ve become the type of person I always used to feel superior to.”

  “Not everyone plays along, Conor. There are exceptions. There have to be.”

  “I know. And I envy them. I envy you. You’re better than I am, Tom. You’re stronger. You’ve always been stronger, but I never saw it.”

  “I never saw it either, but it’s been sweet to learn it. That strength was dearly won. It’ll come to you, too. I’m sure of it. You’ve got too much going for you to stay this way for long.”

  “You overestimate me, Tom. Maybe you’re still reacting to image, or maybe it’s important for you to believe that. We’ll see. Nonetheless, thank you for your confidence.”

  “I have to be confident in you. What you call an image has meant a great deal to me. In some ways, it’s sustained me. That’s a big part of what I’m doing now. A quiet inspiration, call it.”

  “My grandfather came from Ireland. When he was a young man. Nineteen, I think he was.”

  “Your dad’s father, right?”

  “Yeah. There was nothing for him there, or so he said. He was a farmer’s son, at a dead end. He wanted something different, so he made the jump. I haven’t seen him in, Jesus, ten years.”

  “He’s still alive then.”

  Finnegan smiled. “After a fashion. Age has robbed him blind. But he’s a wonderful old man and still pretty sharp.” Finnegan drained off the last of the Grand Marnier and noted that McIlweath’s snifter was also empty. “I hope I haven’t depressed you, Mac. This is the new Conor Finnegan. The chastened version. Another drink?”

  “No,” replied McIlweath. “In fact, I think I’m going to call it a day. I’m exhausted, with the drive and all.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Two days, if I can stay that long.”

  “You’re welcome to stay longer. As long as you want.”

  “No. My flight’s arranged. I shipped most of what I’ll need on ahead.”