Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  Once in the Senate, the man spoke a progressive line when called upon, but generally kept a low profile. He wished to offend no one. The prospect of alienating one senator, or even one voter, practically terrified him. He knew that the quickest way to make an enemy in a pragmatic world was to appear doctrinaire. As a result, he gave lip service to progressive positions, but made it clear to his fellow senators that he was not a fanatic about it. Deals could be made. Meanwhile, he continued to seduce his home state by going to all the right places with all the right people, remaining tan and fit, and taking major stands on minor issues.

  “Senator,” said Finnegan, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve admired your work for quite some time.”

  “Thank you. I wish more people shared your enthusiasm. I wouldn’t have to worry so much about reelection.” The senator smiled. He was indeed an attractive man, dark brown hair clipped short and hanging across his forehead, a thin face showing nothing rounded, all cheekbones, mouth and chin.

  Joyce returned with the coffee. She gave a mug to the senator, then handed a smaller cup to the visitor, turned quickly, and left. The door shut behind her.

  “So, tell me about yourself. You come highly recommended by my friend from Massachusetts. I’d like to hear more. How’d you come to Rutgers?”

  “I suppose I was looking for a new challenge. New worlds to conquer. I wanted the best education I could afford, and I wanted to try the East for a while. Rutgers fit the bill.”

  “It’s warmer out west.”

  “Especially now. But it’s more challenging for me here. I prefer that.”

  “What do you aspire to, Conor? What do you want to do with your life?”

  “Some good,” replied Finnegan, and immediately blanched at his flippant, naïve response.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I want to do some good.” He had to follow that up, but he would try now to steer it back to less juvenile terms. “I think that means a career in the law, possibly in government. But I want to think that I’ll spend my professional life in some manner of service. I don’t think I’d be satisfied with anything else.”

  “Indeed. You consider yourself an ethical man, then.”

  “Absolutely.” Finnegan paused, hoping the conversation would turn away from this uncomfortable, potentially volatile track. But the senator said nothing. He had to go on, to clarify notions of ethics, morality and personal worth in a formal conversation with a United States senator. He wanted to find a way off this path, but it seemed the die was cast.

  “I believe,” he continued at last, “that every man has an inherent human dignity. Whatever destroys or compromises that dignity, whether an individual or an institution, is wrong and should be corrected, and if correction is not possible, then opposed intelligently, compassionately, but definitively. That’s the basis of whatever ethics I have.”

  “I see. Let me ask you then, what do you think of our foreign involvements. The wars we fight.”

  This was a minefield, and Finnegan knew it. Perhaps the senator wanted to test his politics. More likely he wished to test his flexibility, his pragmatism. Finnegan decided at once to play the senator’s position.

  “I think on some issues we have to temper our moral stand with a faith in our system, and the leadership of that system. After all, that’s why leaders lead. I believe you said earlier this year that if we could remove our presence from the Middle East without sacrificing the social and economic gains we’ve put into place there, then you would support it, but that you weren’t certain it could be done immediately. You said that, in the end, the Middle East was responsible for solving its own conflicts, that Jewish and Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, and Afghans all had a greater stake in regional security than we did. But we need as a country to coerce their understanding of that responsibility. I think there are certain agreements that have to be honored before we leave altogether. It’s a question of identifying our allies and supporting them as painlessly as possible while building their capacity to support themselves. There’s a great deal of violence, a great deal of pain, and people don’t like it. I don’t like it either, but I don’t fully understand all the eddies and currents swirling the waters there. I’m not sure anyone does. But until our part becomes clear and our interests are made sustainable, we have a stake there that we have to honor.”

  The senator seemed satisfied. No dogmatic rebel here. “Tell me, Conor, do you play any sports?”

  For the remainder of their conversation, another twenty minutes or so, they talked of basketball, tennis and golf. Nothing even remotely political entered into it. Finnegan, realizing that his only political statement had been graphically compromised to the point of falsehood, felt relieved that matters had taken this more comfortable turn. At length, the senator moved to close the interview.

  “Conor,” he said, rising, “I’ve got a committee meeting in about half an hour. Something about fishing rights in the Gulf of Mexico. Boring stuff that I know nothing about, but I do have to be there. Thank you for coming down. I’ve enjoyed it.”

  Finnegan rose, too. “It’s been a pleasure, Senator. Thank you for taking the time.”

  “I think I’d be very pleased to have you intern with us.”

  “Senator, I’d be honored.”

  “I’m sure you’d do a good job for us. The problem is where to put you. As you can see, there’s not much room here, especially for temporary staff. We’re quite crowded.”

  “I can see that, Senator. But all things considered, I’d really prefer to work for you in Los Angeles, if that’s possible. That’s home.”

  “I was just about to suggest that. The Los Angeles office has more space. Of course, that’s where several million constituents are and it’s very important that we know what they’re thinking. I assure you you’d still have extensive legislative experience even on the other coast. There are a number of projects you could tackle out there, and I think you’d enjoy it.”

  “There’s no question I would.”

  “Then it’s done. My Los Angeles representative is Greeley Welsh. He’s a young fellow about thirty-five. I’ll give him a call this week and tell him to get in touch with you at Rutgers. He’ll give you all the details.”

  Finnegan remained externally composed, serious, businesslike. “Thank you, Senator. I’ll look forward to hearing from him. You can be sure of my best effort.”

  The senator shook Finnegan’s hand. “Good to have you aboard. You can start in late May?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent. I’ll tell Greeley.” They walked to the door. “Have a safe drive back, and thanks again for coming. I’ll see you this summer, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you, Senator. All the best to you. Good luck.”

  Finnegan walked back through the offices unescorted. No one noticed him except the receptionist, who gave him a smiling, “Goodbye, Mr. Finnegan.” He was caught by surprise so thoroughly that he could not respond. He merely smiled in return and walked out the door.

  Conor Finnegan fairly ran back down Capitol Hill to the Union Station parking lot. He did not want to drive around Washington as he had planned; he did not care if he saw the city now. There would apparently be other opportunities for that. Right now all he wanted to do was get back to school so that he could share this most amazing news.

  Few things in life are as compelling, or as fleeting, as a young man’s exultations.

  ***

  Reg Coleman knew what it was he had become, and in this, as in most matters, he blamed his father. He hated his father. He hated himself. Reg Coleman looked in a mirror and saw a malformed ogre staring back at him.

  The young man would have no more of it. Everyone has his limit, the point where he will no longer permit himself to be shaped without consent by environment, by natural forces, by temperament. Coleman had long since passed his limit, but he had not known it until well after the fact. By the time he finally lifted his tired head and looked around, seeing hims
elf as if for the first time, the latest dimensions of his character had solidified. He had not known it; he had merely been trying to meet expectations.

  It had begun early, very early in his young life. First evidences came subtly. He had not liked sports as a boy. They seemed so meaningless. Win or lose, what did it matter, what did it change? What was accomplished at play today would be forgotten tomorrow. Besides, there was something brutal about all that running and pushing and grunting. He would rather draw a picture or build a model airplane. That, at least, would be lasting.

  But there was his father, never missing an opportunity to drag his son into the back yard to throw or kick some odd-shaped ball, maybe to toss it through a hoop. And all the while his father kept exhorting him, telling him how good he was bound to be, just like the old man, and scolding him hard when his concentrations wandered far enough to make him appear as the awkward boy he really was. Young Reg grew to hate these afternoon workouts. But there was no escaping them.

  In school Reg would sit glassy-eyed and pursue the daydreams denied his afternoons. There he would think of all those things he would rather do at day’s end: fly a kite, or chase the ice cream truck, or perhaps just lie on the ground and watch the bugs go by. He wished he knew how to play an instrument. He wished he could play the trumpet. He would join a marching band, then, and lead the way, blowing as loudly as he could.

  Reg’s teachers, of course, took a dim view of his mental excursions. By the time he reached the fifth grade, he had lost interest in most of his schoolwork. He had never been particularly good with books, and, as concepts became more complex, he simply dismissed from his mind everything that loomed as too great a challenge to remember. His grades suffered. Reg was a pleasant young man. All his teachers said so. But a pleasant nature doesn’t pass algebra tests.

  He felt trapped by it all. How could he do well if he would rather be someplace else, doing things he was rarely allowed the time to do because other things were expected of him? And always there was his father, asking for more than he could give, pushing him harder and never, ever being satisfied. Where could he go to escape this?

  His father suffered no deviation from a narrow path he himself defined. He demanded in no uncertain terms that Reg be obedient, polite, hardworking and successful. He expected Reg to get high marks in the classroom, and it did not go well for the young man when he faltered. Reg remembered classic arguments, violent confrontations when his father would angrily toss him around the room while screaming his disappointments. But it was on the playing fields that the elder Coleman expected the most from his son. He would not be denied the proud pleasures that came with an All-American athlete in the family.

  By the time he reached high school, Reg had been bound to a habit of life he despised. The duty of obedience, of striving to meet his father’s demands, had grown into his very marrow. It could not be escaped now; it was part of him and all he knew. His father’s approval, paradoxically, had come to mean little to him on those rare occasions when it was actually bestowed. Reg accepted it resentfully and considered that the approval of some other force, far more distant, would be worth immeasurably more. He was a knight in search of the Holy Grail, consumed by an instilled passion for something he could never realistically hope to find.

  What did come to matter to him, very deeply, was the approval of his most special friend, his biology teacher. Clinton Davies had not taught long in the system. He was no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven, and still quite green. But from the start of Reg’s sophomore year, Davies had taken an interest in the young man. The teacher saw an underachieving student and sensed that something serious, perhaps profound, lay behind it. Day by day, Davies attempted to draw the young man out. Reg would be asked into the teacher’s office time and time again, just to talk, and never about biology. ’What do you like to do? What do you want to do? Want to be? Why?’

  Davies was compassionate, empathetic. Reg told him of his father, the pressures, the cage walls closing in hot and hard, burrowing into his sides until he couldn’t breathe. He told no one else. Even talking to this special man struck him as disobedient. It made him feel guilty to let his problems out like this, even though Davies could be thoroughly trusted, trusted more so than anyone Reg had ever known.

  His last two years at high school revolved around his relationship with the young biology teacher. Davies offered Reg a singular release from his father’s incessant demands. And beyond that, Clinton Davies suggested to Reg a new and entirely foreign portrait of an older man, a striking contrast to a rock-ribbed, uncompassionate, unloving father. That portrait stayed in Reg’s mind, a wondrous piece of art to be scrutinized breathlessly in every light. Reg wanted more of it. He wanted to prove that this unique concept of the compassionate male was no fluke. He cherished Davies’s friendship throughout high school. When he graduated, Reg Coleman wept at the prospect of not having access to his friend on a daily basis.

  Clinton Davies had sparked in Reg a flickering sense of self-worth. He could be more than the vessel of his frustrated father’s vicarious dreams. He could have dreams of his own, and be valuable in his own right. A man’s world could indeed approve of poor, underperforming Reg Coleman. He relished the warmth of that realization, and he sought desperately to keep the revelation alive. He sought the nod of a head, the open smile, the glint of an eye that confirmed acceptance. Clinton Davies had pointed Reg to a door he had never seen. Reg stuck his head through, saw a vista so strange as to be compelling, and ran through the door in a frantic effort to become part of it all.

  In time, a short time really, the vista became an obsession. He sought the haven of friends who would accept him without judgment, the strong handshakes, the deeply resonant voices. He became more animated among those with whom he felt comfortable. Yet as satisfying as his new realization might be, he sensed something slightly wrong with it. Things did not seem to be quite in order. In the harbor of his friendships he could withstand his father’s bluster. Nothing mattered beyond these relationships which proffered a confirmation he had lacked for so long. Perhaps that was it—the imbalance of it all. Fears started to creep into the back corridors of Reg’s fragile psyche. He noticed them from time to time, but reactively and without thought he chased them away.

  Meanwhile, his father upped his demands. Reg played football in high school, but not well. He had been cut from the basketball team. His grades, never great, had sunk to mediocrity. He had little in the way of an acceptable social life. Reg Coleman would have one last chance to redeem himself in his father’s eyes: he would go to Rutgers, his father’s school, and he would do well there. By sheer force of his father’s will, he would be a late bloomer.

  Thus, when Reg set foot on campus during the autumn of that first year, he was an extremely confused young man. In reality he had no base, and little surety. He played to his father’s demands at the same time he rejected them, and in the buried reaches of his subconscious he had serious questions about his very nature. He knew most certainly that he was unhappy. It took only a close and critical examination of the reasons to bring Reg Coleman to where he sat one evening in late March, alone and drunk at his desk.

  College had provided no therapy. He saw at once that he would not do well academically. He was not equipped for it, and no amount of hard work could bring him up to standard. So he simply stopped trying. His father, in seeing his son’s midterm grades, railed violently. For the first time, he had struck his son hard, throwing a fist into his face at Thanksgiving when Reg broke a commandment by telling his father that he didn’t care if he flunked every course he ever took.

  “You worthless son of a bitch. You can give me a good effort if nothing else. You don’t know what kind of an opportunity you’ve got there, one I set you up for, and now you’re pissing it away. God damn you. God damn you. You make me ashamed to call you my son. You’re worth nothing.”

  Reg stood up from the couch where he had fallen after taking his father’s punch. He drew himse
lf up to his full height, wiping the corner of his throbbing mouth. “I can’t be your son,” he said quietly. “I don’t care about your silly dreams. Dream them for yourself and let me be. You’ve never been my father.”

  There would be no reconciliation. Both men stood speechless, cowed by violence and shame. Ralph Coleman looked at his son, dropped his head and shook it quickly, clearing thought and memory. The swelling bruise on Reg’s lip startled the older man. His rage subsided immediately. Reg had had no rage, only resolve. He would take no more. There was no reconciliation, but for the remainder of the day at least there was peace.

  And then Christmas vacation, one lonely night with nothing to do. His father, silent and morose, sat brooding in his study. His mother sat there with him, reading a dime-store novel and trying, in her sheltered simplicity, to pretend that her family stood intact, together and loving. Reg was bored, and when he was bored he sought the ocean, the ancient Atlantic half an hour’s drive away. That bottomless, breathless expanse was anything but monotonous. He would watch it, sensing the life underneath and above it, seeing it change shape, color and texture—even at night. No one else, he thought, could see what he could see. No one else ever cared to look.

  Reg drove to the shore, parked the car and walked along the rotting old boardwalk with its closed, deserted shops and arcades. A melancholy place this, an old dowager attempting to play the coquette once again through cracked, pasty makeup, but failing sadly, and in so failing exuding an aura of death. It was near midnight. Reg’s lone footsteps caused the salt-soaked wood beneath him to creak. He walked slowly, looking out to sea, searching for the definition of forms he knew to be out there. To the north, up the coast, he saw the massive light in the skies that was New York City. The waves, washing in from Europe as he imagined them, whispered a steady backdrop.

  Reg walked for a mile or so, stopping occasionally to hang over the railing and stare outward. For the love of God, and for the love of Man.