Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  Later, when he was alone, his sterile apartment still lifeless but not as tomblike as he had seen it before, McIlweath sat in review of Anne. In the stark quiet loneliness of late afternoon, as the light faded and the shadows in his apartment deepened before the blackness swelled out of the far corners to envelop his rooms entirely, his analysis differed little from the thoughts he had drunkenly woven the night before. He had expected nostalgia, a sweet remembrance of the comforts they had shared, to stir his insecurities and make him remorseful. Yet, while he could indeed think softly of the fine times, the moments of elation, the silent communion of unspoken harmony and the subtle gelling of unfathomable emotion, he saw it all as belonging to a past existence, an earlier life that had been tragically extinguished and which his current incarnation could understand but not repeat.

  For Tom McIlweath it was all a process of annealing himself against his emotion, and it was that process, rather than the loss of tenderness itself, which saddened him. Was this, then, an inevitable part of growing older? Must moving forward always exact such a cost, and once lost, could the raw joy of discovering a new posture, a new partner, ever be regained? So modestly, so imperceptibly had his embryonic love for Anne passed that he could now regard it only as illusory. Time alone would determine whether he had suffered permanent damage, although he doubted it. He was extricating himself just in time.

  ’Why,’ asked McIlweath, more than once, ’why do I not feel the affection that so marked our early days together? When and how did I lose it?’ He saw the core of their relationship played out through his sense of duty combined with a desperate fear of loneliness. But loneliness, he saw, came in different forms, as did suffocation, and paralysis, and catatonia. The time he had spent welded to Anne had been the loneliest period of his young life.

  McIlweath sat at the window and rotated these thoughts over and over. He kept waiting for the sadness. He kept waiting for the remorse. He kept waiting for the lead to crawl down his throat and sink through him to his toes, dragging with it the light and the airy buoyancy of his youth and throwing him into a self-loathing depression. He kept waiting to miss Anne and to feel sorry for his immense stupidity. He kept waiting for a surge of pain to tell him that he truly cared about her and wanted to be with her for the way she had reinvigorated him, propped him up, fed him affection and restored a battered self-confidence. He kept waiting for some part of him to scream that his asserting himself meant he was denying her, couldn’t he see that? He kept waiting to replay the gentle moments and to see what would be lacking going forward. He kept waiting to conclude that he loved her. He kept waiting.

  All night he kept waiting, and all night the only sound that came to him was the muffled swishing of the traffic below. At 10:30, after a forgettable dinner and four hours of staring without comprehension at a television screen, he went to bed. There was still time to sort things out, and perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, it would be different.

  ***

  “How did it go?” The voice on the other end of the telephone was unmistakably Kathy’s, although she had not bothered to identify herself when McIlweath answered.

  “Kathy?”

  “Yeah. How did it go with Anne?”

  “Wait . . . How did you get my number? I never gave it to you, did I?”

  “I have my ways. Nobody’s anonymous around here. So talk to me, McIlweath. Did you finally become a man yesterday in more ways than the obvious?”

  “I didn’t realize you had such a burning interest in all this. Or are you just being catty?”

  “I’ve got a stake in you, my friend. You’re the first male I ever deflowered. I want to see you make an honest man out of yourself. I also want to see you happy, which you’re clearly not to any eye that bothers to look closely.”

  “Should these things be discussed over the phone? If you’re evaluating whether or not I’m a new man, shouldn’t you be looking me in the eye?”

  “You’re right. Fix me breakfast and tell me everything. Do you have enough food for two? And I mean things like eggs, toast, coffee and juice, not hot dogs and tortilla chips.”

  “I can make do. But you’re coming for conversation, not food.”

  “I’ll come for both. If the conversation is lousy, I can at least fill my stomach. Where do you live?”

  McIlweath told her, then began fixing breakfast. His food was ordinary but he tried to overcome it through a dash of enthusiasm: he grated cheese for the eggs, brewed the coffee instead of boiling water for instant, and spread the toast carefully with a thin layer of margarine, then put his sole jar of jelly on the table. Surprised by Kathy’s bright call, McIlweath went about tidying the apartment in the short time before her arrival. He straightened his desk, piled away the old newspapers in the closet, made his bed and arranged his clothes. Even so, the place still seemed dismal, austere and dark. Its heavy colors and tatty furnishings were somber, as was the neighborhood through which she would have to drive to get there. He wished he lived someplace else, someplace light, someplace that lifted him past the clinging muck of his daily routine as soon as he walked through the door. Where he lived now was part of that dank routine. It was too much Anne. He hoped that Kathy would not be too much put off by the sterility of this sorry place.

  McIlweath heard footsteps on the stairs and opened the door before it could be knocked. Kathy Keane sprang upon him before he said a word. She leapt into his arms to cover his face with her warm mouth. McIlweath caught her foraging lips with his own and they stood there on the landing for several minutes until Kathy at last said, “Aren’t you going to ask a lady in? It’s cold out here.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to break my rhythm.”

  She walked by him into the apartment pulling off her gloves and unzipping her jacket as she looked around. “I hope you don’t pay much rent for this.”

  “It’s rather simple, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a tomb. How do you get any light in here?”

  “You don’t. It’s the darkest place I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’d go mad here inside a week. Where’s breakfast?”

  “On the table, my lady, waiting to fall past your tender lips.”

  “Cut the bullshit, McIlweath, and feed me.”

  They sat down and began to consume what, to Tom McIlweath’s unadorned lifestyle, constituted a plentiful meal. The food warmed him and returned a rashy glow to his cheeks. He recounted his discussion with Anne. All the while Kathy sat rapt, staring hard at McIlweath as he spoke, studying him, studying his reactions to what he related. She said nothing until he had finished with the particulars—the coming, the going, the words themselves, the anger and the hurt.

  “What will you do now?” she asked.

  “I’ll wait to see how I feel in a few days. Eventually I’ll call her, and we’ll talk again. I’m not hopeful we can salvage anything.”

  “I wouldn’t think you’d want to. The woman has no soul, Tom.”

  “Kathy, however you perceive her now, you have to realize that there’s a thick cord of shared experiences that runs back years. That’s not easy to sever. I’d still like to remain her friend if I could.”

  “You shouldn’t. You should leave her completely. Any other way and you’ll risk being sucked in again. Your moods will change. They’ll flop back and forth like a loose gate in a windstorm. She can play on that if she wants, and the terms of any future surrender are likely to be fierce.”

  McIlweath shook his head sadly. He inspected the creases in the tablecloth. “You know,” he said, “the most tragic aspect of all this is what I feel toward her.”

  “Which is?”

  “Nothing. I can’t explain it, Kathy. It’s a numbness, as if I’d been beating the heel of my hand against a wall until I can’t feel anything anymore.”

  “Or like being left in the cold too long. Emotional frostbite.”

  “Maybe. There’s no anger, but there’s no real affection either. And there should be. Oh God, there should be
a deep well of emotion spilling over the top. But there’s nothing. I throw a pebble in and it rings off the walls.

  “I think of her,” he continued, “and there’s no regret. I mean, now, when there should be this huge sense of loss, there’s just the idea that I surmounted a hurdle. I passed a test. When I think of what we’ve done together and what she’s meant to me, I should be nostalgic at least, but whatever longing that’s running through me is not for her. If anything, it’s nostalgia for the condition of my life when we first met. I miss being excited by what I’m doing. I miss feeling as if my life is a mosaic and I all need to do is find the right pieces. And Lord knows I miss my friends, my old roommates. We carried confidence to the point of hubris, and it was all so very sweet. We would never get old, and we would never fail, and the four of us loved one another like brothers. Anne came into that, and lent a richness to it. She’s a bridge for me now, back to that simple and promising time. Sometimes I get morose thinking that that phase of my life is ended. That’s the form my nostalgia takes.”

  “She’s been a symbol for you. No wonder you idealized her for so long.”

  “Even so, she lingered over my life like a threat. She never let me feel secure. Maybe I was to blame for that. But I catered to her constantly. Do you know I used to call her every time I went to the store to see if I could pick up something for her? It made me feel useful, and that in itself was a compensation for what she made me lack. Sometimes I’d call her at night before I went to bed, to hear her voice but also to have her with me so I could feed my fantasies. She was like a cat, so arrogant and so intent upon going her own way. I’d chase after her and try to please her, all the while hoping she’d consent to have me as company.”

  “And of course you never slept with her. That strikes me as so odd. So cold. I assume that wasn’t your doing.”

  “No. Anne was never physical. For the longest time she’d pull away whenever I got close to her. Our physical relationship crept along like ice melting. For a while I’d strategize about how to get her to be more responsive. I’d think of what I could do to get her to want me to hold her. Once, when we were alone, I managed to spill some soda on the front of her blouse, then I insisted that I wipe it away before it stained, thinking that the presence of my hands near her breasts might arouse her. Pretty childish I know, but I wanted to cover every base. Nothing worked. After a few months I gave up trying. I thought that in due time she’s come around, but she never did. I was always the aggressor. I came to think that even my advances violated her, even though nothing ever became of them. A transgression against her idealized state, they were, and I felt terribly guilty.”

  “I suppose you took a few cold showers, you poor thing. I can’t imagine putting up with such frustration.”

  McIlweath went to the kitchen counter and returned with the coffee pot to refill their mugs. “It’s ironic, too, that she would have been so cold. We swam together nearly every day. You’ve seen racing suits. They leave nothing to the imagination. You’d think that might help her develop an appreciation of her body, and mine too.”

  “Do you honestly think the two of you have any future in any form? Why this delay in leaving her? Talking to her in a few days doesn’t seem to me as if it would serve any purpose.”

  “There’s no future, Kathy. That was apparent yesterday when I left her apartment. The extra time is to eliminate all conceivable doubt.”

  “You have no doubt.”

  “She might understand things better if she takes the time to think about them. It might make it easier for her. That chance is slim, but I feel like I owe her at least that.”

  “Tom, I doubt she cares.”

  “As I said, I wouldn’t mind remaining her friend.”

  “I can’t see it. If you leave her now, you’ve probably earned a foe for life. She’s not accustomed to seeing a part of her tidy little world rebel. She’ll resent it forever.”

  “She was angry when I left, even though she feigned indifference.”

  “It may not have been a feint, my friend. Don’t call her. If she cares to salvage anything, let her come to you.”

  “Then I’ve heard the last of her.”

  “In which case, as you told me yesterday morning, you are a most fortunate man. Now,” she stood and walked around behind McIlweath’s chair. She leaned over and ran her hands down his chest while she whispered in his ear, “Now that you’ve fed me . . .” Her blond hair fell against McIlweath’s cheek. Her hands ran lower, into his lap and beyond. “I want you to answer the rest of my needs.” Kathy’s voice rode on the tongue which probed the curves of the young man’s ear. McIlweath rose and, taking her hand, led her to his bedroom, too long in wait of this peculiar sacrament.

  ***

  The train north clacked a rolling, uneven beat like the sound of a swordfight in an old adventure movie. Yet in the distinctive twists of context that cast differing connotations to identical items, no thoughts of adventure unleashed themselves. There was only despair and isolation against a monotonous jostling that annihilated all peace of mind. Across the deserted open space of Maryland and Delaware few lights provided any perspective. The train rumbled through a hollow darkness devoid of all dimension. Hollow night, hollow land, hollow time.

  Glynnis Mear rode the train north from Washington, looked out her window and saw nothing. There was nothing to see. The interior lights reflected back and she saw her own image in the glass. Beyond it nothing emerged save a swampy blackness that reminded her of pulling a sheet over her head as a child when she lay awake at night. She breathed in bored sips, she wrestled about in her seat, and closed her eyes. She wanted the time to pass, the train to arrive, the cab to take her back to her small apartment. She wanted desperately to go to bed so that the limpid demise of this day could be put behind her forever.

  A stubborn will had brought her here when she so clearly would have preferred the bed of Conor Finnegan. She regretted her current circumstances, but she did not regret the sentiments that created them. She and Conor had not fought again after their first flurry, although the young man made it obvious that Glynnis’s resolve, which he hoped a night of impassioned lovemaking would shatter, displeased him no end. He had been quiet all day from the time that Glynnis averred that morning that she would be returning to Philadelphia on an evening train. Conor never addressed the point directly, but he radiated a pouting, sullen martyrdom that Glynnis was only too happy to leave. She could not stand that sort of childishness.

  Conor expected so much, and although she did truly love him with a power she had never believed herself to possess, she could not sacrifice the parameters of her own character. She loved him, she adored him completely, yet some tremendous subconscious caveat held her back. She could not fathom exactly what it was, but its pull was incredibly strong, a tendril around her ankles that held fast and dragged her inch by inch, patiently waiting for her own strength to ebb, as surely it must should she be unable to loosen the firm grip. The thought scared her so greatly that she tended to dismiss it as exaggeration. There was so much to lose on either side. For now, she would go about preserving the depths of Glynnis Mear and trust her lover’s constancy while she sorted out the right course.

  That night, after unpacking and a long, hot bath, Glynnis went to bed early. She dreamed that she received a telegram from her sister saying that their mother wanted to see her, that it was important to get home as quickly as possible. In the dream, Glynnis arrived home that same day to find all three of her siblings dressed in black and walking through the house in rigid half-steps.

  “She’s dying,” said Martha, said Bobby, said Peter. Just that, in lifeless, leaden voices, and nothing more. Glynnis felt no reaction to this, but went to the hospital alone. She had never before seen this building, though, and it was a massive, cavernous, sandstone structure. She could not tell what part of town she was in or how she had gotten there. The hospital had no name. When she went inside she found no one. The information desk sat empty,
the gift shop had closed, neither doctor nor nurse nor orderly walked the hallway tunnels. Glynnis set about finding her dying mother. At the ends of the corridors shadowy figures moved in a great hurry, but they were too far away to be addressed and as she neared the places where they had been she saw no one.

  Glynnis entered room after room, each empty. Discouraged, she began to cry. Her frustrations overwhelmed her; she sat on the floor to weep alone. Huge convulsive sobs swept over her so that she could scarcely breathe. In the midst of her sobbing, she heard her mother’s voice. “Glynnis.” She rose and walked into the room outside which she had been sitting.

  Her mother lay flat on a narrow bed. Nothing else furnished the gaunt room. There were no chairs, no windows, no charts. The walls, too, were bare, painted a hideous shade of gray.

  “Mother,” said Glynnis in a whisper. “I heard you were not well.”

  “I am dying, Glynnis. Someday you will die, too.”

  “Father is dead. We shall be with him together then, won’t we?”

  “He is gone, but I do not pity him. I pity you.”

  “Why, Mother?”

  “I pity you,” she repeated. Nothing reflected in her eyes. They were two flat black rings, dimensionless buttons.

  Glynnis noticed the tubes in her mother’s arms. Four of them, two in each arm, ran to a huge plastic bottle to the side of her bed.

  “What do they give you through these tubes, Mother?”

  “Nothing, Glynnis. They give me nothing.”

  “Then why are they there?”

  “To drain me. They are draining all the fluids out of me. When they are done, I shall be dead.”

  “Is it painful, Mother? Do you suffer?”

  “No, Glynnis. It is the most pleasant sensation. I do feel quite wonderful. I do not fear my death, if it comes like this.”