Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  “You want to tell me your conclusions, Reg?”

  “I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this at all. I can’t tell you any conclusions.” Reg Coleman fought his desperation to make himself vulnerable. He perceived in Tom McIlweath a warmth, an honesty, a simplicity, a humanity that inspired trust, that might permit vulnerability even though he did not know him well or long. McIlweath was not as harsh as the others on the floor. Not so cavalier as O’Hanlon, nor as smug as Finnegan, nor as callous as Rosselli, nor as self-absorbed as any of a hundred others. It was not by accident that Reg Coleman sat in this room tonight.

  Yet now that he was here, he could not go on. Instinctively, protectively, he fought a mammoth battle to regain the control he had so quickly let slip. He was a thief who no longer felt compelled to steal, who does not need the goods he takes but who continues to do so in the hope of being caught. Tom McIlweath, he hoped, might apprehend him, and, in so doing, might compel the help he so frantically and quietly sought.

  But it would not come that way, not tonight and not here. He would steal again. Reg Coleman’s control returned, his nerve evaporated. Better to face things alone.

  “I can’t be doing this,” he said slowly.

  “Reg, if you want to talk, I’ll listen. It’ll stay in this room.”

  Coleman shook his head. “No. Thanks, Mac, but there’s no need. It’s just that every now and then I feel things ganging up on me, you know?”

  “I know. That’s why I’m glad I swim. It helps to drown yourself for a couple of hours every day.”

  “Too bad I don’t swim. Dad wouldn’t like it anyway. For him there’s no sport but football. Anything else is for fairies.” Coleman rose off the bed. “Listen, Mac, thanks for your time. I hope I didn’t disturb too much of your evening.” He put his half-empty mug on the shelf.

  “Any time, Reg. But you know you don’t have to go. Everybody’s got problems.”

  “None worth wasting your time over. Maybe the rain just brought out my grim side. See you later.”

  Reg Coleman left the room quickly, as if some evil presence had suddenly appeared to him over McIlweath’s shoulder. He did not look back at his friend, still sitting at his desk, still calm, still a bit bewildered. The urgency in Coleman’s speech had disappeared although it remained in his movements. He left the room hurriedly, shut the door behind him with a solid thump and went next door to his own room. McIlweath did not hear him through the walls. Whatever road Coleman had been about to follow, whatever he had been close to ready to explore, remained within him, walled away again behind bricks thicker than before.

  I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

  I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

  And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat

  and snicker,

  And in short I was afraid.

  CHAPTER VII

  When from a long distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised for a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, and the ruins of all the rest.

  —Marcel Proust, Remembrace of Things Past

  Perhaps it had been true, in one form or another, that every journey, every exploration, conjures both wonderment and longing. It is so easy to stay put, to cultivate the deepest comforts through familiarity. A desire for security, to feel secure, pulses most basically through man’s veins. It is an urging as old as time and shared by every living creature who must have his home, his lair, his nest, his den.

  And when man in his moments of sharpest consideration realizes that an adherence to the familiar boundaries of his homeland is acceptance of the boundaries of his soul, he knows he must find what to him is unknown. It is an ancient force, primitive, uncontrollable and irresistible. It is what drove the Phoenicians westward and the Venetians eastward. It is what sent man to the moon.

  Imagine LaSalle first viewing the great falls of the Niagara, the morning crisp and dewy, quiet save for the thunder of the mysterious waters. Or Hudson sailing the silent river to view the deep, cliffy greenery on both sides, steam rising from the flat surface. Or Caesar parting the forests of Gaul and Germania, thick and plush. What oddities the people there must have held for him, there in their rough beards and Teutonic hides. What is it that drove Peary to the crackling void of the frozen North Pole, or Jacques Cartier up the great Canadian river? Whose map did Francisco de Orellana follow up the Amazon, and what guided Pedro Menendez and Jean Nicollet? It has never ceased; it will never cease, and let man be praised for it. We are a restless species.

  Yet when at last we give in to our curious urges and at last step outside the familiar into something new, do we not become nostalgic for what we were once so anxious to leave? There, on the banks of the Niagara, after viewing the majesty of the falls, could not LaSalle have thought of the calmer Seine? Wordsworth wrote,

  I traveled among unknown men,

  In lands beyond the sea;

  Nor, England! Did I know till then

  What love I bore to thee.

  And Cartier, weary of the rigors of his new lands, wrote in his journal, “I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain.” It is the course of man to hunger for wider vistas, then, getting there, to look fondly behind him.

  By late November, Conor Finnegan, too, had grown weary of his new lands. For the first time in all his existence, he did not merit special notice. He did not stand out there as the unique, gifted, distinctly talented individual he knew himself to be. The college routine, so stimulating in September, had faded into a predictability that wore him down. When the weather turned in October and the gray, rainy, murky days that dominate late autumn settled in, melancholy came with it. Finnegan’s self-pitying despondency that soggy night in early November never completely left him, although he was able to control his frustrations outwardly and store them in the back of his mind, trotting them out again when appropriate, usually on weekend evenings when he found nothing to do and no one around.

  He would rally himself by cultivating a nostalgic view of that he had left to come east. In California he had been appreciated for the versatile, accomplished creature he truly was—California, where he had grown up, its sandy beaches hugging a warm sunset, its mountains backdropping the endlessly exciting city where lived a thousand friends and a million pleasures—California, where it did not snow, ever, and where it did not rain this coldly penetrating rain so common to a Jersey autumn— California, where his parents thought of him proudly, kept his trophies dusted and waited for his letters with traditional parental anxiety. In California he would not be obscure or anonymous or, worst of all, indistinct; he would be respected, his friendship would be coveted. Not so here. At least, not yet.

  Throughout the term Finnegan found himself wishing he could share his discoveries with his parents. At first this was because he wanted them to have a taste of the excitement his life had assumed. He remembered sitting in the football stadium on a beautifully clear early autumn Saturday, the green ridges tucked around the sunken field, the sharp scarlet of the Rutgers uniforms below running against the pristine white of the visitors. Around him the students cheered a traditional cheer, contrived the century before and handed down through generations of new students. He saw the color guard in Revolutionary War regalia. He saw it all, heard it all, felt the sun warm his shoulders through the cool afternoon, and wished with all his heart that his father might be there to watch it with him. His father, who loved sports, would revel in the tradition, in the color, in the tight press of vibrant young students acting out their meaningless drama.

  Other times, too, he found his thoughts working this way. He wanted his mother to meet his new friends, for he knew she would be entertained by their loose wit. He wanted his father to see the campus with its stone an
d ivy so that he could be as impressed as Conor was when he first saw it himself. He wanted both of them to come to class with him, to see him at dinner with his friends, to go up the turnpike to New York City. He wanted to show them that he was alive, that he could take care of himself in the deep, unexplored lands. In short, he wanted his two lives to merge, the love and security of his home wedded to the stimulation of a new kind of living.

  Later, though, as the term wore on and Finnegan wore down, he found himself wishing he could share these times not from excitement but from a need for justification. If the immediate course of his life left a bruise—from a class, a basketball game, a vacant social life—his parents could be counted upon to put matters into a more fitting perspective. And so by late autumn, he wanted his father to see him beaten on the basketball court and note the subtle, silent humiliation. He wanted his mother to watch him study hard for grades that were less than perfect. Frustration is more acute when faced alone.

  As winter vacation loomed and his courses wound down, his excitement returned, focused in large measure on the fact that he would soon be going home. A few weeks in the sun, sleeping late, eating well and visiting with longstanding friends would revive him. His melancholy faded as December dawned. Despite his frustrations (which were, he was forced to admit to himself, relatively inconsequential), he appeared to have survived his first term. From here on, it was bound to be easier. Yes, to be home again for a little while would certainly stand him back up. He would refresh himself, the returning hero, and come back east in January to try it again, wiser and a bit more confident because he had at last been slightly humbled.

  Finnegan’s anticipation grew. On December 16, the day after the first accumulation of snowfall whitened the ground, he booked his flight home. A week later he was sitting in a 747 at Newark Airport, waiting to fly home as a prodigal son, bruised and shaken, but unbloodied.

  ***

  The train ride from Philadelphia north passes first through some of the most grotesque, fetid scenery man has created for himself: Central Philadelphia to North Philadelphia, a squalor of neglect, where once the train stations were civic jewels in the cities’ hearts. They stood now rundown, decrepit, passed over by newer and quicker technology moving travelers ever more in a hurry. It is true of Philadelphia, and Trenton, and New Brunswick, and Newark, and all the small or medium cities between Philadelphia and New York (excepting Princeton, of course, where all rules of suburban development have been suspended indefinitely), cities that once boasted of the Pennsylvania Line stopping there and built stations suitable for the honor. The grimy cities, the flat, murky lands, slums, oil refineries, smokestack industries, the bouncing side-to-side jostling of a ride on the old tracks, the acrid smell of grease and fuel—that is the way north now.

  Then through the tunnels into New York City and Penn Station, where the crush of people and metal culminates in an intensity that makes breathing itself difficult. Newsstands and cheap snackeries line the platforms near the tracks, and the lights dim, and the smells draw closer, always, it seems, punctuated by the odor of perspiration. This station, too, is old and neglected, but it is too large, too populated to be truly rundown. It is not at all like the lonely ghosts standing in the smaller cities, abandoned by disinterest. The plaster here is cracked as well, the colors on the walls, drab to begin, has faded. But there are people in Penn Station—oceans of them, scattering askew like spokes on a whirling wheel—and so the station here in New York is not dead. Far from it. To remain calm and poised while people press and swirl and push about—that is the challenge here. It comes with practice. Breathe deeply, breathe the pungent, nauseating, oily odors, until the train at last pulls away. The pounding hum of the station, its separate noises indistinguishable from one another, lessens in the background, overrun by the rush of metal wheels on metal tracks, picking up speed.

  “Tickets, please. Show me your tickets.”

  The voice is as metallic as the sound of the rushing train, the click-click of the ticket puncher, the shuffle of heavy shoes on the hard floor. Through the tunnels again, into a womblike blackness where the reflection of the train’s interior on the window is sharp and well defined, then out and outward, away from New York City.

  Into New England then, and at last a change of mood. The land seems greener, calmer. It all seems cleaner in the tight, trim Connecticut suburbs. The stations in the small towns are not as large, not as desolate, although they still lie in the poorer sections. The rush of the train settles into a purring whirr, the rhythms of movement gentler. Mixed with the oil and grease is the faintest hint of salt air only a few miles away. Few factories here; just a wider, greener, more pristine space, old and rocky but quieter, calmer. The train itself runs through as an aberration, a dartlike intruder upsetting momentarily a long-cultivated tranquility. But not an intruder, really, for no one pays it any mind. It is not important enough for anyone to object to it.

  And so it passes through Connecticut—New Haven, New London, Groton, small towns all in the scale of things—then into the wink of an eye that is Rhode Island, encountering Providence, its first real city on this leg of the trip. For a few moments it is a throwback to the southern part of the ride, for Providence may as well be Trenton. But there are hills here, a few on the northern outskirts of the city. The land starts to break. Providence fades. So does the day. The whirr of the train resumes, the rhythm settles back in. The train enters its last homeward sprint, and finally it is good. The day has been long.

  Through the last few villages and towns, northeastward to Boston, the train makes its closing run. The land sinks slightly, becomes lower, becomes flatter. The villages pass into cities and become denser, become suburbs, become Boston. Into the train yards, the trip is now ended, the changes along the way now boring. All that matters is standing up, stretching a set of compacted muscles and ultimately throwing oneself into the swarm to find, somewhere, sanctuary.

  The sounds return, the press of flesh, the station dotted with the same newsstands and snackeries. The greasy smell still hangs low in the air. It could be anywhere along the journey. Only by fortune is this the last of it.

  And, at the end, one asks himself, What have I seen? What did I just pass? Am I anywhere else than where I began, than when I first settled into my seat? A city with a different name, but the mask of humanity is the same. My life is the same. All the same, everywhere.

  ***

  Glynnis Mear propped her elbow on the lining of the window and rested her head on her hand. She stared out at the passing scenery but took no notice. She had traveled this same route by plane a month earlier, equally as reluctant as she was now. The view was not likely to be different from what she had seen from the air; being closer made no difference. She stared at it merely to occupy her eyes while cleansing her mind. She aspired to numbness.

  New York City was two hours behind her. She was somewhere in Connecticut although she didn’t know where, precisely. Nor did she care. She considered only that she had another three hours on this train before she arrived. The train bored her, but she wished she could make the trip last longer, make it five hours more, or seven, or a whole day. Or several days. Then they could just turn the train around and head back south. It would all be over, and she could return to where she was becoming increasingly comfortable.

  As Glynnis blindly stared through the window, a young man sat down beside her. He was in his early twenties, no older than twenty-two or twenty-three. His hair fell well below his ears but did not quite touch his shoulders. Above a flannel shirt his face carried an expression of self-confidence bordering on arrogance. His smile was a smirk. The young man was not unattractive, and he knew it. As he fell into the seat, Glynnis Mear did not turn around, nor give even the slightest indication that she had noticed him at all.

  “Hey,” he said, but Glynnis did not respond, nor even turn her head. She remained staring out the window.

  He leaned in closer to her. “You look like you could use some compa
ny. So could I.” Again Glynnis did not respond, did not move. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”

  Glynnis spoke at last. “Fuck off,” she said. Still she did not look away from the window.

  The young man recoiled, burned with a verbal poker. He rose from his seat and shook his head, hesitating just a second as a similar answer leapt to the tip of his tongue. He swallowed it, though, and walked down the aisle to the front of the car, opened the door there and went into the car ahead. Glynnis at last turned away from the window to watch him go.

  He would not have been so friendly if I were eighty-two, or if I weighed 200 pounds, or, more to the point, if I were male. Hardly. There’s no need for subtlety.

  For what is the order of things? A man may set his life on whichever course strikes his imagination, and his woman goes along, a can on a string tied to a bicycle fender. The energy is man’s, man the creator, and he must be strong enough to pull a woman. Or so it can be. Then a man builds his life in his own pattern and time, and his lover comes along. She draws from him, derives who she is from him until she cannot make out what is his, what is hers and what is theirs. What dreams she holds for herself merge away. In trying to make him strong, she can make herself weak. If his is the energy, her role must be to feed it. That’s the rule. And even is she surrounds herself with children, if she secures every luxury imaginable and attains as much comfort as any person can stand, she owns none of it. Man the creator. She is merely along for the ride. If it is a pleasant one, she can feel blessed; if not, then her sacrifice is a complete waste. That is too often the order of things, and has been for generation after generation. That, so much of the world would tell me, is my condemnation.

  Then, after tying her dreams to his and doing all she can to make him strong and good, in drinking in the reflected comfort of a well-constructed life, what if he dies? What then, Mother? What if he dies?