The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

  At Alden College she was greeted by Joe’s coach, the college registrar, and, she realized only as he introduced himself, the college dean. The meeting was tense but photogenic, held in a room of wood-paneled walls and chairs upholstered in supple leather. The large leaded-glass windows offered a view of the grassy quad cut through with the silvery gray of paved walkways.

  The baseball coach began. As he spoke, Renee gazed just above his head, out the window. She watched a knot of tousled young people shouldering serious backpacks travel from one corner of the quad to the next. There were four of them, all deep in conversation, hands working as they spoke, debating, it seemed, some question of great significance. Each appeared so clean and shiny-haired, so focused and brilliantly backlit by the late-morning sun that Renee wondered if perhaps a photographer followed them, taking snaps for the college brochure.

  The students drifted beyond her field of vision, and Renee turned her attention back to the room. Joe had been showing up for practice drunk or high or not at all, the baseball coach was saying. He wasn’t bench-pressing enough, couldn’t run the nine-minute mile required of all players. He was barely passing three classes and flat-out failing a fourth. His teammates felt like they didn’t know him. Worse, they couldn’t trust him. Yes, he’d had a decent freshman season, their hopes had been high for his sophomore year, but Joe’s behavior now was intolerable. Beyond the pale.

  The registrar followed in a similar vein but focused on academics, reading comments from Joe’s professors and passing to Renee copies of Joe’s underwhelming schoolwork.

  Finally it was the dean’s turn. There were the team problems, the academic issues, yes, but the most serious incident had occurred two nights before at the frat party.

  “He was appointed the bongmaster?” the dean said, unsmiling. “Something like that. Neighbors complained about the noise, and let me tell you, neighbors of a frat house are accustomed to noise.” Still he didn’t smile, though he did raise one dark eyebrow and gazed at Renee with something that suggested a wryness, an ability to see humor in this situation. Or maybe he was just flirting with her; it was always difficult for Renee to tell.

  When the police arrived, they found a dozen fraternity brothers passed out in the common room, numerous others on the grounds of the frat house in various states of intoxication and undress. A dozen people were taken to the ER with alcohol poisoning; one girl was still hospitalized. Her stomach had been pumped, she’d briefly stopped breathing on her own, but she was now out of intensive care. Her parents were at her bedside.

  “She’s an eighteen-year-old freshman,” the Dean said, his cheeks coloring. “She could have died, Ms. Skinner. The university is facing possible legal— Well, let me just say that it’s a very troubling, very difficult situation all around.”

  When the police arrived at the party, three young men were seen running out of the building. One of these men had been Joe. He’d been carrying nearly a pound of marijuana on his person, the dean told her. One pound. Additional drugs and drug paraphernalia were confiscated from the fraternity house: cocaine, tabs of Ecstasy, PCP, various other pills that had yet to be identified.

  It was at this point in the meeting that Renee mentally left the room. She opened the heavy door and floated out over the polished oak floorboards and down the wide, curving staircase to that brilliant emerald quad where she’d seen the students. Wait! she yelled. Wait for me! Renee had never applied to Alden College; after receiving the scholarship from the University of Connecticut, a school located within driving distance of Bexley, it made no sense to apply anywhere else. Throughout those four years of college, Renee had continued to live at home, sharing a room with Caroline, eating Noni’s food, working part-time. She’d never had the occasion to walk across a quad like this quad. She wondered if such an experience would have changed her.

  Renee floated back into the meeting. The dean was still talking. The police had agreed to release the men into his custody. No charges had been filed. Yet.

  “But you must understand, Ms. Skinner, the seriousness of the situation.” The dean gazed at her without blinking.

  That year Renee was twenty-four and looked eighteen. The men in the room had cataloged Joe’s egregious errors as though this were primarily a subject of university concern. Today did not represent, for them, the dissolution of thirteen years of dreams and family sacrifice. It didn’t signify anything more troubling than the payment of legal fees and a rejig of Alden’s baseball team, the unexpected need for a new center fielder, maybe that kid from Gainesville, someone who might have more staying power than Joe Skinner, the disappointment from Bexley.

  “Under normal circumstances Joe would be a candidate for expulsion,” said the dean. “His academic record alone is grounds for that. The fraternity party only worsened his position. The other two young men caught with drugs in their possession, both with academic records similar to your brother’s, have already been asked to withdraw.”

  The baseball coach shifted in his chair. “But because Joe’s a scholarship athlete, we don’t want to go that route.”

  “We’re looking for some kind of assurance from you,” the registrar contributed. “From Joe’s family.” He raised a pair of remarkable gray eyebrows.

  All three men gazed at Renee. Waiting.

  “Well, you can’t expel him,” Renee said. She paused. Then, in a rush, “You know, our father died when we were young, and then our mother became clinically depressed and basically didn’t leave her bedroom for three years. It was really hard on Joe. He’s still recovering in a way.”

  Renee felt the tenor of the room change. A tentative relief settled over her, alongside a pure revulsion at what she’d done. To use their father’s death like that, to betray Noni. Joe would hate her for it. Though of course he would never know; she would make sure of that.

  The coach cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Apparently he was talking to the police about his father.”

  “To the police?” Renee asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Ask Joe about it,” the coach said, not meeting Renee’s gaze. “I think your brother may need some additional . . . assistance.”

  The coach’s demeanor put Renee on high alert. Why would the man not look her in the eye?

  Renee turned now to the dean. “Please. What about academic probation?” she said. “Something like that. He’ll do better. I’ll make sure that he does.”

  “He will have no other chances,” said the dean.

  In the end the panel agreed to a two-year academic probation, during which Joe would be required to maintain a B average and be the subject of no disciplinary hearings. The fraternity was prohibited from hosting parties for the remainder of the year and would require a school administrative chaperone at all parties the following year. Joe Skinner was off the baseball team, effective immediately.

  Renee shook all the hands, and then she left the wood-paneled room and vomited neatly into a tall trash can in the hall.

  “Don’t tell Noni,” was the first thing Joe said when he opened the door to his room at the frat house. A girl, elfin and blond, slipped from behind Joe and past Renee. Her eyes were red.

  “Bye, Joe,” she said tearfully, with a quick wave of a tiny hand.

  Renee ignored the girl. “Of course I won’t tell her,” Renee said. “Listen, we need to talk.”

  In the common room, they sat on a sticky leather couch. The only other furniture was a wide-screen television and three battered beer kegs.

  “Will they take away the scholarship?” asked Joe.

  “No,” said Renee. “They will not take away the scholarship. You played for the first half of the season. You’re lucky. They could have taken it away. They could have expelled you.”

  “Oh, that’s such a fucking relief,” Joe said, and he began to laugh.

  “But, Joe,” Renee said sternly, “you have to clean it up. Stop messing around.” She explained the probationary terms offered by the college.

  Joe
stretched his neck to the left and right. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t get in trouble like this again.”

  “You can’t get into any trouble.”

  “Promise.” He held up a hand like a Boy Scout and winked. Renee nearly slapped him.

  “And baseball is over,” she continued. “You’re off the team.” This part of the deal she felt in her stomach, an achy nausea left over from the meeting. She had no idea how Joe would react; he’d played baseball nearly every day of his life since their father’s death.

  But the look on Joe’s face was pure relief. Nearly joy. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I didn’t want to play anymore. Renee, I haven’t wanted to in years. My throwing arm isn’t what it used to be. I just didn’t want to tell you. Or Noni.”

  For a moment Renee watched her brother: the clear blue eyes, the dimples. For the first time, she noticed the faintest trace of sagging purple beneath his eyes, the swell of a belly beneath his T-shirt, a puffiness to his cheeks. His familiar features looked older, altered. She could almost see the kind of man he was becoming.

  “You can’t tell Noni you want to quit baseball,” said Renee. “I’ve already talked to Caroline. We’ll tell her you had a knee injury. That’s why you’re off the team. I don’t want Noni to know about the party or the drugs. None of it, okay?”

  Joe nodded and moved in to hug his sister. “Thank you,” he said into her hair.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  “Renee,” he said, still in the hug, “have you ever seen Dad?”

  “What?” She pulled away from him.

  “I mean, have you ever seen him? Like a ghost. Or spirit. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Dad? No, Joe. I haven’t.” Then Renee remembered the coach’s comment. “Have you? Seen him, I mean?”

  “I saw him the night of the party. ‘Joe, your throwing arm isn’t what it used to be.’ That’s what he said to me. Isn’t that wild? And he’s totally right.”

  Joe’s face shone with an innocent wonder. He believes this, Renee realized.

  “Joe, what were you on?” During Renee’s pharmacology class, she’d read about hallucinations induced by all sorts of drugs. Talking animals, aliens, dead people—all the result of chemically altered neurons firing in unexpected ways.

  But Joe shook his head. “It wasn’t the drugs. Really. It wasn’t. Dad was standing outside on the back lawn of the frat house, talking to me just like we’re talking now. Really, Renee. It was amazing. I had been hoping for it for so long. And finally it happened.” Joe smiled with such calm satisfaction, such a clear sense of relief, that Renee did not know how to respond.

  “Maybe you should talk to someone about this,” she said.

  “Someone? You mean like a counselor?”

  Renee nodded.

  “I don’t need a counselor, trust me. I’ll talk to you about it. You and Caroline and Fiona, but that’s it. You’re the only ones who would understand anyhow.” Joe smiled again: the same relief, same joy. “It’s a good thing, Renee. Don’t look so worried. Someday it’ll happen to you, too. I bet he visits all of us.” Joe yawned. “I better get some sleep,” he said, and hugged Renee again and then disappeared into his room.

  When Renee returned to Boston, her roommate told her the news about Caroline.

  “Your sister’s in labor,” Lydia said, not looking up from a textbook on the table.

  Renee called the number that Nathan had left. His sleepy voice confirmed that little Louis had arrived. Everyone was delirious, relieved, happy.

  “I’m so glad everything went well,” said Renee. “Noni will be thrilled. We all need some good news right about now. We all need a distraction.”

  Joe kept his promise to Renee. He graduated on time and in good standing from Alden College, certainly not an A student, but did it matter? A degree from Alden was a degree from Alden, whether you worked as hard as you could or you slacked off, drank beer, cycled through girlfriends as fast as you changed your jeans, climbed the roof of your frat house, and shouted Beastie Boys lyrics until the hazy dawn light hit the trees and the grass and made everything look like a mist-filled dream. Joe took his degree and accepted a job offer from Kyle Morgan, an Alden alum and former fraternity brother two years older than Joe. His family ran a boutique investment bank called Morgan Capital Ltd. The year was 1996.

  “We’re getting into tech,” Kyle explained at Joe’s first and only job interview. “There’s a lot happening in that sector. Lots of potential. You can start as an analyst. Go from there. Bonuses, baby.” Kyle smiled broadly, teeth white as a new baseball, and held out a hand for Joe to shake.

  * * *

  Normally Renee would not visit an ER patient once he or she had been admitted to the hospital. But the failed home birth stayed on Renee’s mind. Soon after the woman left the ER, a baby girl had been delivered. Everything had gone as well as it could go, Jaypa told Renee as she was packing up to leave. Even so, the mother remained in intensive care. She’d labored at home for over forty-eight hours and lost a large amount of blood. The baby, deprived of oxygen for an unknown length of time, was in the NICU. There was the possibility of cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, developmental delays, any number of disabilities.

  “What can you do?” Jaypa had said to Renee with a shrug, and then he returned to the ER for the remaining ten hours of his shift.

  After Renee scrubbed the blood from beneath her fingernails and changed into street clothes, she traveled via three separate elevators to the neonatal intensive care unit. There she found the baby splay-legged and purple inside an incubator that bristled with white tubes and black cords. baby girl dustin read the card on the incubator. Most of the infants here were preemies, some weighing no more than a pound or two. Baby Girl Dustin looked freakishly large in comparison, but the size differential only underlined the problem. At least you knew what you were looking at with the others. But this baby girl—it was impossible to say. Perhaps she would be fine. But perhaps she would not.

  Renee’s phone buzzed. A message from Fiona: where r u? Renee groaned. She did not reply. She was now an hour late for Joe’s party.

  The baby’s father, the man from the ER, was not in the room. Baby Girl Dustin sighed audibly into her respirator. She clenched and unclenched her toes. For a moment Renee considered pushing her hands into the built-in black rubber gloves the nurses used for feeding and changing and cleaning. The gloves that were also used by parents to hold and caress. But again came the insistent buzz of her phone. How would she explain to Joe and Noni, to Sandrine and Fiona and all of Joe’s friends, all of Sandrine’s family, why she was late? I could not step away from an infant without a name.

  This baby was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, that Renee would treat over the course of her career. Renee was not sentimental. Years ago she had decided never to have children. It was precisely these kinds of moments—when she hesitated about what was best to do, when she blanched at the possibility of creating connection—that showed her just how ill-suited she was for motherhood. When Renee had visited Caroline at the hospital after baby Louis was born, she had felt only inadequacy. Caroline’s face was exhausted, her hair a mess, the hospital gown slipping off her shoulders, but she shone—literally glimmered—in that hospital bed like some beautiful consumptive.

  “Isn’t he perfect?” Caroline had said, and Renee could only nod. She had leaned over her nephew’s small body and observed his beauty and newness, but she could not bring herself to touch him.

  Renee left the NICU without touching Baby Girl Dustin. She texted Fiona: be there soon.

  Outside, the dusk smelled like frost and chestnuts, and Renee breathed to clear the chemical stench of the hospital from her lungs. With her arm outstretched, she walked one block, two, but no cabs stopped. It was that busy early-evening hour when people had plans, places to be. Renee was considering how long it would take to walk all the way to Kyle’s apartment when her phone buzzed. She was expecting Fiona again, but
the number was unknown. Renee answered; it was Jonathan Frank, her patient with the cut hand.

  Renee explained that she was late, she couldn’t talk. She’d already overstayed her shift and would be late for her brother’s engagement party, and now she couldn’t find a cab and would probably have to walk or wait for a crosstown bus, which would take nearly as long.

  “Why didn’t you leave earlier?” Jonathan asked. “I thought I was your last patient.”

  “I had to check on someone in the NICU,” Renee answered. “A new baby.”

  “What happened?”

  Renee paused. What had happened? Why had she visited a baby who was not her patient, whom she had not treated, to whom she had no connection whatsoever? Renee told Jonathan about the parents’ entrance to the ER, the failed home birth, the preventability of certain situations. Why were people so stupid? she asked him. Why did they put themselves and the people they loved at risk? She was talking about the home birth, but more than that she was talking about Joe. She never mentioned his name, of course, and this man Jonathan Frank didn’t know anything about her, didn’t know about her father’s death, didn’t know she had a younger brother whom she felt sometimes she’d done more to raise than their mother had. That her kid brother had grown into a man who appeared in all material respects successful and happy and blessed and yet who carried around within himself a sense of absence and loss, and for whatever reasons—he refused therapy, he didn’t talk about it with friends, he liked to preserve the illusion of strength—this emptiness had become his core. Renee remembered Joe’s fury with the fireplace poker on the day of their father’s funeral. Part of Joe was still that boy, still raging through the yellow house, still destroying the image of the family that would never exist again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “About the baby.”

  “Thank you,” Renee replied.

  She wondered who he thought she was. The kind of woman who swooned over babies? Maybe she should tell him a story: Once, Renee had gone fishing with her father on the Long Island Sound. He’d rented a cruiser, a big boat, but he’d taken only Renee with him. Just you and me kid, she remembered him saying in a funny, scratchy voice that seemed an imitation of someone, though she didn’t know who. The voice had momentarily confused Renee, made her wonder if perhaps her father expected a certain kind of response. She didn’t want to disappoint him, not on such a momentous day, and so she’d bounded aboard and with concentration began to thread worms onto the hook. She sat in the sun with her father, who had packed salami sandwiches, her favorite, and cans of Coke, and she held that fishing pole until her arms ached, and she’d wished the day would never end. She was nine years old then, maybe ten.