by Robert Inman
“I’m just trying to be helpful here. You’re both my friends, have been for a long time. I dated Clarice before she met you. Remember? I’m in an awkward position, Will. Kinda caught in the middle. I want to do what’s right for both of you.”
“Did you know she was having the locks changed?”
“Well…”
“You sonofabitch.”
“If it helps you to take it out on me, go ahead,” Morris said. “But I’m hurt.”
“Good.”
Morris was helpful. Guilt, whatever. He arranged for a motel room for Will and retrieved his car and several changes of clothes from the house on LeGrand. He took Will to dinner at a nice restaurant. And then he took him back to the motel and advised him not to do anything stupid overnight.
He got Palmer’s answering machine, which kicked in on the first ring. Palmer’s mechanical voice said simply, “Leave a message.”
When the machine beeped he said, “Palmer, this is your father. If you’re there, pick up.” He waited for perhaps ten seconds, and just as he was about to hang up, Palmer answered. He didn’t say anything, just picked up the phone.
“Is that you?” Will asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think we need to talk?”
There was a long silence, and then Palmer started crying.
*****
Palmer lived in a two-bedroom brick bungalow a mile or so from the edge of the Chapel Hill campus. He had shared an apartment with several fraternity brothers during his undergraduate years at Duke, but when he started medical school he wanted his own place with quiet and privacy. Clarice found the house through a realtor friend in Chapel Hill and Sidney Palmer bought it with the understanding that Palmer would live there rent-free until he finished medical school. Sidney had also given him a new BMW 328i as a graduation present. The car was dark blue. Duke blue, not Carolina blue. The house, which Will had seen only once -- shortly after Palmer moved in the previous August -- was spiffed up and newly furnished throughout. There was leather furniture in the living room, the spare bedroom equipped as a study/office with a new computer and an antique oak rolltop desk.
Sidney, the consummate Duke man, complained good-naturedly about being a Chapel Hill property owner, but it was Chapel Hill’s medical school, not Duke’s, which had accepted his grandson. Palmer was properly appreciative, as he had always been whenever his grandfather opened his wallet. Throughout his Duke years, he had phoned Sidney at least once a week and driven to Greensboro at least once a month for lunch at the country club. Palmer spent as much time in Greensboro as he did in Raleigh.
Palmer’s education (or at least the paying for it) had been a sore subject between Will and Clarice. “We could handle Duke,” Will had said when Clarice told him that her parents wanted to foot the bill. But they both knew that it would have meant sizeable debt. Not for Sidney.
“Well, we’re not going to handle Duke,” Clarice said. “I don’t know why you have to be so defensive about my family.”
“I’m not being defensive.”
“Can’t you just accept the fact that they love Palmer and want to help him?”
“And I don’t?”
“I don’t see your family offering to help.”
There was no answer for that. Your crazy family.
And then there was the car.
Will had been on the verge of buying a car for Palmer a year before -- a sleek, low-mileage Pontiac that a young woman in the Channel Seven newsroom had for sale. The timing was perfect. She had put a note on the newsroom bulletin board on a Friday in early April. Will took the car for a test drive and offered the young woman a hundred dollars less than her asking price. She accepted. He would bring a check for the full amount on Monday, he said. But when he arrived home from work that midnight, the BMW was sitting in the driveway. It glowed like a dark pearl in the soft light from the nearby street lamp. Will stood for a long time looking at it, feeling resentful and then feeling guilty about his resentment. It was a joyous time in the Baggett houshold -- Palmer on the verge of getting his undergraduate degree with honors from a fine university, accepted already into medical school. It would be unfair, petty, tacky for Will to cast a cloud over the harmonious atmosphere. Clarice watched him carefully for reaction, but he made the proper exclamations of admiration when Palmer showed off the car the next morning.
*****
It was after ten when Will pulled into the gravel driveway behind Palmer’s BMW. The house was dark.
Will didn’t knock. He pushed open the door and peered inside and was assaulted by the unmistakable odor of marijuana. And mixed with it, the smell of staleness and stagnation -- drifting like toxic vapor from the abode of his son the medical student: he of the Ralph Lauren jackets and Calvin Klein slacks and Bass Weejun loafers, he of the carefully-cultivated air and manner of the Greensboro Palmers. Will recoiled from it, taking a step back, almost losing his balance at the edge of the stoop, a hand going up reflexively to ward off whatever was inside.
“Palmer,” he called after a moment. Maybe Palmer would come forth and they could parlay out here on the stoop or in the yard where there was light from the nearby street lamp and the air was cleaner. But there was no answer. Will took a deep breath and stepped into the living room, leaving the door open behind him. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he turned to a table next to the sofa and clicked the switch on a lamp. Nothing.
“The electricity’s off,” Palmer said, startling Will. He looked up to see Palmer’s dim form in the bedroom doorway.
“Why is the electricity off?” Will asked.
“I forgot to pay the bill.”
They stood there for a good while, not speaking. Will’s eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom and he could see that Palmer was wearing only boxer shorts.
“False alarm,” Palmer said finally, his voice flat and lifeless. “You can go back home now.”
“No,” Will said, “I think I’ll stay awhile.”
He turned to the window behind the sofa and raised the blinds, letting a little more of the light from the street lamp into the room. When he turned back, the bedroom door was empty. Palmer came back in a moment, wearing jeans and a tee shirt, but still barefoot.
“Is there…” Will hesitated “…someone else here with you?”
Palmer had a steady girlfriend -- Anna, a tiny brunette from Hickory, both doll-like and vibrant, a gymnast on the Duke women’s intercollegiate team. They had met during Palmer’s senior year. They would, Will assumed, someday marry. In the meantime…
“No,” Palmer said. “It’s just us guys.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“The place smells like a homeless shelter, you haven’t paid the electric bill, you’re stoned, and you’re crying on the phone. And there’s nothing to tell.” Will sat down on the sofa. “I think I’ll just sit here and give you time to reconsider that.”
Palmer stood there for perhaps another minute, then crossed to the sofa and sat down on the other end. Will leaned back with one elbow parked on an armrest, waiting. Palmer slumped forward with his chin in his hands. They sat there for a long time.
There was a sudden burst of noise from Palmer’s bedroom -- the answering machine. Palmer’s recorded message: Leave a message. BEEP. Then Clarice’s voice. Will was off the sofa and into the bedroom, his hand reaching for the receiver, freezing in mid-air as Clarice said, “Palmer, pick up the phone.” A long pause while she waited. Will could imagine her drumming her fingers on the kitchen counter, a habit she had picked up since she had gotten into real estate. Clarice was not the patient person she had once been. “Palmer, if you don’t call me back by eight in the morning, I’m going to get in the car and come over there. I need to talk to you. I know you’re busy with school, but you can take a few minutes to call me. I mean it. I’m not kidding.” Another long pause. Then she gave up. Click .
Will turned to see
Palmer in the doorway, framed by dim light. He looked thin, almost frail.
“Palmer, how long has it been since you’ve talked to your mother?”
“About a week, I guess. She’s been out of town.”
“How long has she been trying to call you?”
“Couple of days.”
“Where have you been the last few days?”
“Right here. Haven’t been outside in a week.”
“And no electricity.”
“No.”
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know any of it. And she doesn’t know. It is, indeed, just us guys here.
*****
“ I’ve screwed up,” Palmer said.
They sat at a table tucked into a corner of a coffee shop on Franklin Street across from the campus. Students drifted in and out. Some read or tapped on laptops at the other tables. Will sat with his back to the room, hoping to avoid being recognized. It wasn’t the best place in the world to talk, but Will couldn’t abide staying at Palmer’s house, dark and odorous. Palmer smelled faintly rank himself. The jeans and tee-shirt didn’t appear to have had a recent washing. They sipped coffee and stared into their cups for awhile.
“How did you…screw up?”
“I haven’t been to a single class in two months.”
“Well, you told us that some med students never go to class. They just get the notes…”
“I don’t have any notes. I haven’t opened a book.” Palmer looked up at Will now, his face bleak, defeated. Will was having a hard time getting past the sheer strangeness of it. He realized that he had not looked directly into his son’s face for a long time, and that seeing it now, bleak defeat was the last thing he would have imagined.
“I’ve lied and covered up until I’ve gotten myself trapped in a corner and I don’t know how to get out,” Palmer went on.
“Does your mother have even the faintest notion of what is going on?”
Of course Clarice didn’t know, and Will didn’t need Palmer’s silence to tell him that.
“Your grandparents?”
“God, no.”
“What happened?” Will asked.
“I guess I just sort of gave up. First semester of med school was the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”
“You’ve always been a good student,” Will said. “The best. You wouldn’t have gotten into med school in the first place if you weren’t smart and disciplined.”
Palmer shook his head. “But it’s always been easy before.” He waved his hands weakly. “I really never had to break a sweat.”
“And med school is so much different?”
“Yeah. Hard. And so goddamn much of it. You go to class, come in and start studying, and before you know it, it’s five o’clock in the morning and you’ve got another class at eight. So you get a little sleep and drag yourself back to class and do it all over again, and at the end of the week you’re farther behind than ever. It’s just…” his voice trailed off and he turned his face to Will with a look of utter bafflement.
“But you passed,” Will said hopefully. “Your first semester grades were okay.”
“Okay,” Palmer agreed, “but just barely. When the semester was over, I should have been glad that I survived. That’s how everybody else seemed to feel. But I just felt so…I don’t know, empty. Like I had been fucked over or something and couldn’t do anything about it. Scared.”
It was, Will thought, another measure of how odd, even bizarre, this conversation, this situation, was. He could never, ever remember Palmer using the phrase “fucked over” around him, or anything remotely resembling it. They had been excessively polite to each other these last few years. Wary. They took each other’s pulse from a safe distance. But here was Palmer feeling “fucked over” and admitting it to Will, saying it right out like that. He’s desperate. He has absolutely no other place to turn. If he did, I wouldn’t be here.
“What about Anna?” Will asked.
“She’s disgusted with me,” Palmer said flatly. “She told me to get the hell out of her life if I couldn’t straighten myself out. I heard she had a date with a Delta Chi last weekend.”
He remembered now how pointedly cheerful Palmer had been at home over Christmas break. He had slept a lot the first few days, but Will and Clarice had put that off to sheer exhaustion. After that, there had been a sort of frantic brittleness about him -- a nervous laugh, a distracted air. He had driven several times to Greensboro and then on to Hickory to spend time with Anna. Right after New Year’s, he had hastened back to Chapel Hill. He needed to get ahead of things, he said. Since then, he had remained almost incommunicado. He called, but he made excuses not to come home. It was two months since Will and Clarice had seen him. Two months since he had been to class.
“Well,” Will said, “I guess you’re right. You screwed up. Question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I feel…paralyzed.”
“In deep shit.”
“Yeah. Real deep.”
“What can I do for you?”
Palmer shrugged. “Look, just forget it. Get in your car and go back to Raleigh. I’m sorry I blubbered on the phone. I made the mess and I guess I’ll have to clean it up.”
“How?”
A look of exquisite pain crossed Palmer’s face. “Tell ’em. Isn’t that what I’ve got to do?”
Well, this is it. Draw a line under all the practicalities and the logic and the murky stuff and say, “Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do with his life and mine.” I’ve looked him in the eye and the bottom line is, he needs me. He’s hanging by the bloody tips of his fingers from a sheer cliff and I’m the only one who can do anything about it. We’ve never been here before, he and I. And I’ve only been here once before myself, a long time ago when I had a chance to defend the honor and memory of a man and a woman who flew off in an airplane. Had a chance, but didn’t.
“ No,” he said to his son. “Lie like a dog.”
Palmer squinted at him, brow furrowed. And then a look of sheer relief flooded his face.
“Someday you will have to own up to your sins,” Will said. “It’s the honorable thing to do. But for the time being, no. See what you can salvage before you go spilling the beans and letting people who love you think you’re a liar and a slacker and a pothead and that you lack grace and courage.”
Palmer flared. “If you’re gonna preach…” He started to rise, but Will clamped a firm grip on his arm and Palmer eased back into his seat.
Will released his arm and took the last of his coffee in a large gulp. “I’m not through. Here’s what I want you to do. In the morning, call your mother and tell her you love her and you’re sorry you’ve neglected her for the past week. Take a bath, put on a coat and tie, and go see the dean of the medical school. That is, unless you no longer want to be a doctor.”
Palmer thought about it. “Yeah. I do. It’s just…”
“Uh-huh. So, go to the dean and throw yourself on his mercy. Tell him you have had a momentary lapse of…”
“Judgment?”
“Don’t use the word ‘judgment.’ Doctors aren’t supposed to have lapses of judgment. Just tell him you’ve had a temporary crisis of spirit. Personal problems. Your father lost his job, etcetera, etcetera. Anyhow, you wish to be forgiven this semester’s disaster and allowed to resume your studies in the Fall.”
Palmer nodded. “What if he says no?”
“Take it one step at a time. I doubt you’re the first person in the history of American medical education who’s had a crisis of spirit. Surely there’s some mechanism, some process. If it’s a medical school worth its salt, it’s run by people with a sense of perspective and compassion. What you have to do is give the appearance of someone who, with a little grace and mercy, will make a dear and glorious physician.”
“I guess I could do that,” Palmer said. He ducked his head and gazed into his nearly-empty coffee cup.
“Want some more coffee?” Will asked.
Palmer didn’t answer.
Will looked around. The place was almost empty now. Behind the counter, a young woman was cleaning the cappuccino machine. Will glanced at his watch. They would be closing in ten minutes. He and Palmer would have to get up and leave. Go on to the next thing and the next.
Will rose. Palmer looked up at him, then got to his feet. They stood facing each other across the table. Palmer said, “I guess I owe you.”
“And you’re not talking about for the coffee.”
“No.”
“Well,” Will said, “you don’t know the half of it.”
*****
Morris deLesseps’ pencil hovered over the legal pad on his desk. He hesitated, then jotted down a single word. “Do you know what I just wrote here?”
“What?”
“‘Bullshit.’”
“I repeat, I’m guilty,” Will said firmly. “I appeared in court in possession of a controlled substance -- to wit, as you lawyers like to say, marijuana, a plastic bag of which fell from the pocket of my jacket and was promptly and correctly identified by the bailiff, whereupon the judge threw my ass in jail.” He paused for effect. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Morris tossed the pencil onto the pad, leaned back in his chair, and grunted with exasperation. “All right Will. You’re paying for every second of hogwash you’re dishing out here, so I’ll humor you and we’ll spend some more of your money. How did you come to be in possession of said…controlled substance?”
“I bought it?”
“From whom?”
“It was dark. I couldn’t tell.”
“Did you have any idea what it was when you bought it?”
“Of course. I specifically asked for marijuana. ‘Gimme some real good stuff,’ I said. I would so testify if the case came to trial. But it won’t come to that. I intend to plead guilty.”
Morris leaned forward and picked up the pencil again. “No you’re not. I’m going to put up a spirited defense for you, and you’re going to help me.”
Will sighed. “There’s nothing to defend, Morris. I intend to throw myself on the mercy of the court.”