by Greg Fields
Nearing midnight, Glynnis drew back and sat upright, her right hand cupping the curve of Conor’s cheek. “It’s time for bed, my young hero.”
She stood, Conor below her now, flecks of gold reflecting in the bottomless brown of her eyes. Her heart beat quickly in expectation, and a sensation spurted through her in an instant that reminded her of the cold, sharp winter mornings in late December when she was a girl.
Conor rose and took Glynnis’s hand without speaking. He led her up the stairs. At the top, Glynnis dropped his hand, kissed his cheek and spun into the bathroom. “Let me make myself ready for you, Conor. We have all night.”
Finnegan walked into the bedroom and undressed to his shorts. He glanced at his form in the mirror: strong, a solid waist, powerful arms. He feared every flaw, every tuck of loose skin, every disproportionate bulge or swerve. He feared disappointing the mystery that had unfolded the night before. He went to the bed and pulled the covers down.
Glynnis emerged in green. She wore a long nightgown made of something sheer, cut low and held up by two thin straps. A narrow elastic band created a high waist, accentuating her breasts. The sweet, rich scent of lilacs swept into the room with her. Light from the window, filtered through shadowy trees, softened her features to a gentle blur. Conor at once drank in every delicate section of her, and nothing at all. She became an illusion, a reflection of the suppressed aspirations of his youth, an embodiment of all hope, of all passion, of faith itself. She stood there, her face serious yet relaxed, and for the briefest of instants Conor became helpless, his very spirit unable to flinch in the merest response. The alpha and the omega . . . the first and the last, and everything that lay between. Conor grabbed her in his arms and drew her tightly to him.
What, then, of this most profound and most permanent rite of passage? What ageless mysteries, and mysteries not at all, lay in the twisting, the gropings and the thrustings of Conor’s and Glynnis’s passion?
It is at the root of mankind in all its forms to feel complete in its power, to know that, as a human being, he may dictate the variances of his physical experiences, his intellectual processes, his emotional sculptings. Passion is born of all these, and the body as conduit, the mind as interpreter, the emotions as provocateur. And as the parts of one’s soul work together in this ultimate act of humanity, one finds himself at once consumptively powerful, and shockingly vulnerable. For if our mind and body and emotions are working in concert, what is left to protect us? As we devour the feast in front of us, a feast which makes us resoundingly strong and firm and whole, what will we not do or say that otherwise, in our moments of greater restraint, would sit undisturbed, neatly catalogued in some forgotten corner of our psyches?
Conor Finnegan made love to Glynnis Mear, relentlessly, breathlessly, in rapt self-absorption and in a worrisome self-denial. He did not know what it was he was trying to crawl back into when he penetrated her; he did not know what personal depths he had opened and allowed to be probed. He knew only that his soul at last was acting in concert, all parts fulfilled together, and that Glynnis beneath him was the cause.
Their hips rose and fell slowly together, languidly, for there was no hurry. Conor’s mouth and tongue played across ear, neck, shoulder and Glynnis’s round breasts. He marveled at the warm moistness sucking in his base, alternately taking and giving back. Glynnis’s legs closed across his back; she ran her heels up the back of him and locked her legs around his buttocks. He returned each of her soft groans.
There was nothing out of the ordinary in this, for Conor and Glynnis were merely repeating an act rehearsed for millennia. Yet in their strength, in the fulfillment of all their power innately human, there lay a vulnerability. What we will not do or say—
Perhaps it was this naked state of abandoned defense that led Conor Finnegan, as he neared the moment of orgasm, to nestle his face into Glynnis’s neck and whisper deeply,
“I love you, lass.”
And afterwards, after Conor had sent himself well inside her and lay now stroking Glynnis’s hair, after the walls of Glynnis’s vagina had spasmodically contracted in her own answering orgasm, after they had collapsed together to pull themselves gently apart, Glynnis Mear turned her head to one side to let a single tear run out of the corner of her eye and down her cheek to dissolve into the blue fabric pillow.
***
Summer drew on with the fleeting quickness of a symphony that captures the heart as well as the ear, and in so doing suspends time itself so that, at its coda, one had little sense of beginning, middle or end. There is simply the music at hand, rapt, engrossing and transcendent. One passes through it as through a vapor.
Finnegan did not count the passage of time. The excitements of his current state did not come in a linear progression, from day to day, but rather created an atmosphere perpetually charged with elegance, purpose and romance. His elation never diminished. Finnegan held this new type of excitement up to the light; he turned it over and looked at it from top and bottom, felt the weighty substance of it in the palm of his hand, bit it, and found it real.
His work gratified him immensely. Within a handful of days he had established a camaraderie with his colleagues, most of whom were young, recent college or law school graduates. He saw the value of their work in general, and his work in particular. He continued to assimilate facts and figures regarding the elderly into readable reports, some of which were translated into legislation. He wrote speeches that were read on the Senate floor. He met with lobbyists from senior citizens’ organizations. The people he encountered met him with respect, despite his youth. And the senator in turn relied increasingly on Finnegan’s insights into this issue. Conor became, through both the quality of his work and the charming seriousness of his demeanor, the senator’s leading counsel on the problems of the elderly. The confident young man began to recognize the trappings of power without its responsibilities, and it pleased him very much.
Weekends, of course, were for Glynnis. She came down every Friday on the 7:40 train and left again each Sunday afternoon. They saw all parts of the city in due course, always returning in the evening to make love for most of the night. Any fleeting sentiments of guilt had been put well behind them. Both Conor and Glynnis looked forward to their nights together with a lusty honesty.
On some Saturdays, Conor would drive them to the Virginia hills. There they would have a picnic lunch and walk through the wooded paths, encountering other couples or single hikers. Finnegan liked to look for the most remote spot, and often he pulled Glynnis off the path to stumble and slash through shaggy, shaded undergrowth. Under the aegis of the silent trees, he would take off his shirt and hold Glynnis to him, not for any sexual purpose but to feel her cool fingertips on the warm flesh of his back. Glynnis would kiss his neck and the solid muscular bulges of his chest. They might stand that way for several minutes, each cognizant of the other’s resting form, taking deliberate account of their passive embrace.
One day Conor drove them all the way from Washington to the Shenandoah Valley, a two-hour drive. He had never been there. They found a creek in the backwoods, well off the footpath. There, in this ancient, haunted valley, they spent the afternoon, Conor shirtless and dangling his bare feet in the cool creek. Glynnis fell asleep with her head in his lap. He leaned back and slept as well.
They awoke much later with the sun low behind the tops of the high trees, and as they drove back to Washington a thunderstorm blew up from the bay. It rained in great wind-whipped sheets, slamming against the windshield more thickly than the wipers could disperse it. Pockets of water crept out from the side of the road. Finnegan drove through them and kicked up wing-like splashes that caused his car to plane. He drove tight-lipped, not speaking, concentrating fully on the road ahead and keeping his car in control against the suddenly violent elements. Glynnis, sensing Conor’s concern, did not disturb him. She turned up the radio to be heard against the storm and sang softly with the lyrics. She had complete trust in her situation. Conor, f
or his part, struggled to see the road, now just a faint band streaming into uncharted black.
Near Fairfax the storm abated. As Finnegan rolled down the window he felt a rush of cool air sweep across his face. He breathed it in slowly to let its fresh tendrils probe every channel of his lungs. Around one turn and beyond a slight rise, they saw the city spread out before them, its sleek white marble standing solidly between green trees. The Potomac formed a narrow blue moat.
As Conor looked at the city he clasped Glynnis’s hand and held it tightly. For at that moment he recognized all the grandeur, all the strength, all the limitless potential of youth in its prime, a time grasped once, and only once, a time against which all other later experiences will be measured. So rarely, so very rarely, does potential meet reality, does the full range of positive actions complement the breadth of intelligence and feeling. So rarely do all the tesserae of one’s existence—physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual—fit into so stunning a mosaic. So rarely do we comprehend the ability to fight any foe, to run any race, to shake hands with any man and call him ’brother.’
And when these rare, these ephemeral moments come, always there is in the back of our minds the troll under the bridge, the grim unspoken realization that it cannot last, that as humans we are destined to be swept back into a heartless, brutal maelstrom of suffering, loneliness and loss, of fatigue, of dreams made dust, of illness and of death; that, as humans, all our joys are terminal, all our triumphs are only illusions, for we cannot help but be dragged back into the muck that spawned us, that, as surely as red blood flows through us and sunlight warms our skins, we are destined from birth to be cut apart, to go through life as half-beings, or less, with the finest parts of us bludgeoned, bloodied, made insensate. We are too complex. We have known it since the epics of Homer and the Code of Hammurabi; we have known it since Vercingetorix and St. Augustine. We have known it in Carthage, in Tyre, in the realms of Ozymandias. We have always known it, and we cannot ignore it despite our best efforts. It stalks us, slowly, with great patience, waiting for us to relax, to become smug, to let our complacency grow up like vines, then it pounces, fangs bared, merciless, ripping apart our sweetest flesh and flaying us with the stark bleak character of our own humanity. We cannot avoid it; we merely stay ahead of it for a time until we can hide no longer.
Conor Finnegan, looking down at a city made cool by the rain and washed clean by the storm that brought it, felt noble, and strong, and ultimately worthy—an unconquerable spirit. Through the sheer radiance of his character, Glynnis Mear felt it, too. But, unlike Conor, she did not believe it. She knew it to be transitory, but that did not stop her from enjoying now this most glorious of moments while the beast lay far behind them. In time it would strike, because it had to. There could be no avoiding it. But for now, let this moment remain pure and uncluttered. There would be time enough later for the grim confirmation of their humanity, in whatever form that confirmation might take.
***
In the middle of July, Conor Finnegan picked up the phone one night after work and called Tom McIlweath. He had not spoken with his friend all summer although they had exchanged brief notes a few weeks earlier. But nothing can be read from such notes, so Finnegan, realizing all of a sudden that he had not thought of McIlweath in a great while, decided to call.
Knowing that McIlweath might well be working late at the club, Finnegan did not call until nearly 11:00. He dialed, then listened to the muffled electronic rings on the other end. Perhaps if Tom had gotten together with Anne after closing the pool . . . .
“Hello?”
“Mac, it’s Conor.”
“Well, how the hell are you, Senator? It’s good to hear from you.”
“Yeah, I just thought I’d give you a call, see what’s up. You work tonight?”
“Until 8:30. I just got home in fact. I stopped to get something to eat.”
“Haven’t you learned to cook yet?”
“Frozen dinners and boil-in-bags. The life of a bachelor.”
“You keeping busy, pal? What’re you up to?”
“Nothing much, Conor. Guarding most days, and I swim some, just to keep the muscles toned. I’ve been reading, too. I want to get a head start on my Henry Rutgers.”
“So you’re spending the summer with your head submerged in water and Latin books. Sounds great.”
“How’s the political system treating you?”
“Can’t complain,” said Finnegan nonchalantly. “I feel right at home here, doing what I’m doing.”
“What’s that? Still trying to wring votes out of gullible senior citizens?”
“More or less. The senator is attempting to develop a soft spot in his heart for our elderly progenitors. I’m in charge of making him appear lovable.”
“Any success?”
“Of course not. He’s as lovable as a chunk of marble. But I keep trying. I’m setting up some hearings for him in mid-August. I understand he’s thinking of arriving dressed in chain mail and riding a white charger. After this I may well be headed for a career in show business. Maybe choreographing clown acts.”
“You sound cynical.”
“Not really. All this is pretty glamorous—Capitol Hill, a townhouse in Georgetown, the corridors of power and all that. I can see myself being seduced.”
“I’m anxious to see this townhouse of yours. It sounds a touch elegant.”
“The door’s always open, friend. Why don’t you and Anne come down some weekend? I’ve got plenty of space.”
“Maybe, Conor, but not until after the nationals.”
“When are they? Are you in them?”
“Late this month, and no, but Anne is. She’s trying to peak for them.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Hard to say. She keeps to herself most days. She says she doesn’t want any distractions. If she does well enough she’ll earn a spot at the World University Games. She’d be off to Belgrade for two weeks.”
“Wonderful. She should be just in time for the peasant festivals. But how do you feel about that? I mean, if she makes the team she’ll get a certain amount of national attention, at least in swimming circles. Plus being away for two weeks, although I’d guess after a few days of Belgrade even you would start to look good.”
“Conor, she’s been away all summer. Her being out of the country won’t make any difference. Maybe it’ll get her over whatever it is that she’s going through.”
“Trouble in Paradise?”
“Temporary. I’ve found I don’t like being a lower priority. It’ll pass.”
“Her mood or your resentment?”
“We’ll have to see. You’re still seeing Glynnis, of course.”
“Yeah. She comes down every weekend. I’ll tell you, Mac, despite the job and the glamor and the house in Georgetown, her visits are the finest part of my life. Everything else comes in a distant second.”
“Conor, you sound like a man smitten. I’m surprised. Washington’s loaded with young lovelies. I thought you’d be sampling a full range of them.”
“Not this time, Mac. Those young lovelies aren’t Glynnis. You know, you’ve never met her. To be honest, that’s one reason why I’d like you and Anne to come down.”
“Unlikely. You’ll have to bring her to New Brunswick.”
“I run the risk of subjecting her to Rosselli and O’Hanlon, then. She may not be ready for the Lust Brothers. By the way, have you heard from those two derelicts?”
“Lanny’s in Trenton drinking the Governor’s bathwater.”
“Dan’s still working at the hospital, I assume.”
“Apparently.”
“You sound a bit lifeless, Mac. We may have to have a heart-to-heart. Get your ass down to Washington, damn it. Dr. Finnegan has all the right prescriptions. He always has before.”
“I don’t know, Conor. You’re right, though, I guess I am a little down.”
“Anne’s got you that upset?”
“Yeah, that’
s most of it. I’m just not sure what to make of her.”
’Make of her a memory, friend,’ thought Finnegan. ’Put her in your past and find someone with a soul. Don’t let her eat you up like this. Don’t let her rob you of what is essentially and ultimately yours. Because she will do just that if she has the opportunity. That, Mac, is her nature. She’ll fill her own voids with the best parts of you.’
“Well, hang in there,” he said. “You two obviously care about one another.”
“That’s all I can do, Conor. I’ve got to hang in there.”
’No, you don’t,’ Finnegan thought again to himself. ’You can still redeem yourself. You can throw off that rock-hard shell that’s wrapped around your form. You’re the pulp inside a mold now, but you haven’t set yet, praise be. Once you do, you’ll hold that grotesque shape for life. You were not born for that, Tom McIlweath. Other men, perhaps, but not you. I know you too well.’
Finnegan perceived the leaden melancholy that hung over his friend. Even in a brief conversation over a great many miles, his well-tuned ear could discern it. He sensed that the seeds of something grim and oppressive and ultimately lasting might be primed to mature. Finnegan, who knew McIlweath better than anyone, or so he thought, feared some irreparable damage to his friend’s delicately marvelous character. But there was nothing he could do.
At length, they brought their conversation to a close. Finnegan resolved to call again in a few days to see if he could read something a bit brighter. But Glynnis came down again that weekend and Finnegan abandoned all thoughts of Tom McIlweath for the time being. When they resurfaced again the following week they somehow did not seem as troublesome. Finnegan did not speak to his friend again until he returned to campus at the end of August.
For Tom McIlweath, the remainder of those summer months passed drippingly slowly, maple sap from a tapped tree. Each day hung on the spigot and dangled there, refusing to let go, refusing to fall so that another droplet, equally thick and viscous, might take its place. July seemed to last forever. August, with the impending prospect of classes resuming and a subsequent return to normality, loomed as a distant beacon.
