Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  “I must leave you now, Mother. I must go home.”

  “With the others?”

  “No. By myself.”

  The dying woman frowned. “You will not see me again, then. I shall be gone before you return.”

  Glynnis felt suddenly serene. She did not kiss her mother goodbye. She only turned and walked to the door of the gray cubicle. “I must go. Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Goodbye, Glynnis. It’s an easy thing to do after all, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Mother. It is all so easy.” But her mother had closed her eyes before Glynnis finished her words. Lying there, she began to shrink, her head growing smaller and sinking under the sheet pulled to where her neck had been.

  Glynnis woke the next morning with the dream before her in vivid detail. She lay in bed trying to erase it, but could not. She took a long shower to steam away the uneasiness that had been seeded by the restless night at the end of a restless day. Glynnis walked off campus to a coffee shop that students frequented, hoping she might see someone she knew, but there were no familiar faces. Over breakfast she read the Sunday paper, all thoughts of shrinkage, death and dying blown for the moment off her shoulder at last, like the unwelcome specks of dust they were.

  All afternoon Glynnis worked in the sculpture studio in the fine arts building. Normally an active, crowded place jammed with tools, materials and the mediocre talents that wielded them, the studio on Sundays was completely empty. She enjoyed the solitude. She tried to plan most of her sculpting for the late night when few people were apt to be around, or for the weekends. Glynnis did her best work when she was alone here. She could not see how anyone could be creative during the loud, hurried weekday hours.

  She knew little of sculpting and her confidence lagged terribly. Consequently she worked slowly, meticulously studying each facet of whatever she was about, running her long fingers over its evolving shape and reestablishing her image of the outcome before making the next cut or gouging the next cavern. She worked mostly with clay. Stone, in all its solid permanency, intimidated her. She was reluctant to capture her mistakes in something so indelible. Clay allowed her to retreat, and she loved the slippery, spongy feel in her hands. She prodded, poked, pulled and smoothed with the greatest deliberation. In the quiet Sunday afternoon studio, she aspired to the ideal and unwound the tightly spun tension of her day with Conor Finnegan.

  That was it, she admitted to herself. There was a tension now between them, new, subtle, yet so demanding. She realized that a part of her had to remain on guard whenever she was with him. She could never totally relax, or she might be taken away altogether.

  ’He expects so much. He expects me to listen to his stories and to share his frustrations. He expects me to smile at the proper time, to squeeze his hand when he needs reassurance. I’m to trust him as he sets our time together. I’m expected to be interested in what he reads and whom he knows. He expects our thoughts on every topic to be compatible. I’m expected to bring my mood into harmony with his: to be down when he’s down, to be dreamily idealistic when he is so, to be loving and tender when he wants to hold me. And at night, I’m expected to give my body to him as he gives his to me. He expects to fill each corner of my mind and soul, to infuse me with new and Romantic perspectives, to eliminate the mundane, to elevate my very being through the magnificent, graceful power of his character.

  ’And I can do all these things. I love to do them for him, for can there be any doubt how thoroughly he reciprocates? But I have always done so by choice. I will not yield that option of choice, even though emotion’s dictates are too overwhelming to be ignored. Conor doesn’t understand this. He has come to expect what cannot, should never, be expected, but which can only given by choice.

  “I do love him. His web is so kindly woven, so warm and gentle, so seductive. But it’s still a web. He cannot absorb me; I will not let myself be drained away. There is far too much at stake.

  ’Poor Conor,’ she continued her thought. ’I am not the obedient child; I have never been. I pray that I do not lose him through this confusion. And I pray most of all that I do not scar forever the tender flesh of his delicate, Romantic nature. He is too rare to be hardened like other men. But he cannot have me on the terms he sets.’

  Shortly before the time when Glynnis would have left the studio to prepare her dinner, the door opened at the far end of the large room. She did not hear it, had not heard the footsteps in the hallway as they approached. Glynnis did not hear the intruder until he had walked nearly to where she stood smoothing the bad lines of her rudimentary creation, a dancer en point. She heard him at last, and turned with a startled drop of her scraper. When she saw who it was she relaxed at once and lifted a hand to her chest to quell her alarm.

  “Oh, Michael,” she said, smiling warmly now, “You startled me. I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten. Let me get cleaned up a bit, and we’ll be off.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery.

  because we have . . . the need to fool ourselves

  continuously by the spontaneous creation

  of a reality (one for each and never the same for

  everyone) which, from time to time, reveals itself

  to be vain and illusory.

  —Luigi Pirandello, “Autobiographical Sketch” in Le Lettere

  Conor Finnegan charged into the preparation of the hearings as a starving man devours a steak. The task nourished him; it made him strong. And as the hungry man turns over the bone to inspect closely all nooks of it in order to find the sweetest meat after wolfing down the obvious, so Conor studied all aspects of his topic to find scarcely known nuances to complement the more apparent facts that constituted what the senator had laid out as the core of these hearings.

  He read everything he could grab on the housing conditions of the elderly. He sought out books—scholarly gerontological studies and less authoritative anecdotal compilations—and scoured periodicals of the last several years. He spent hours at the Library of Congress, sometimes staying throughout the day and checking in with the office for his messages. He would take with him the better studies and read them when he got home until his eyes and mind grew too weary to absorb anything more. He took voluminous notes on everything he read.

  Armed with his newly won knowledge, Finnegan searched with the fervor of Diogenes to substantiate what he had learned. He knew the lobbyists, of course: well-dressed gentlemen and gentlewomen who represented the major federal groups, pensioners, health care associations and public membership advocacy groups such as the American Association of Retired Persons. Although they seemed pleased to learn of the senator’s call for hearings, they remained skeptical that any practical good would come of it. Without exception, they suggested their association presidents as ideal witnesses.

  Finnegan concluded that, while one or two well-fed and handsomely dressed association presidents might contribute something of value, he could not construct two days around just them. For one thing, the senator would be bored to tears. For another and more important reason, though, these people had, at best, limited empathy. They were no more than poorly reflective mirrors that gave a general outline of an image without defining its contours. Finnegan wanted these hearings without those blurry lines.

  And so on most days he spent some time invading the neighborhoods. He spoke with the leaders of community organizations he had come to know and trust. They in turn pointed him to the saddest of the sad. Finnegan went to see them, the human faces that constituted the numbers he had learned, and touched the flesh that lived the reality of the studies he had read and the stories he had heard.

  He found them as they were: inarticulate, frightened at first that a man in a suit should be coming to see them, gracious when they were convinced he meant no harm. Finnegan did his best to show that he was innocuous, that he was in fact on their side of things. He indulged their tendencies to ramble on about personal topics he could not understand, he smiled as much
as he could, he kept his wide eyes fixed on theirs. He did everything he could to appear young, to appear eager and charming, to prove himself an ally. Most of those with whom he spoke abandoned their initial distrust simply for the unexpected joy of having another body in their homes. Most had not heard of Finnegan’s boss, nor were they overly impressed that he represented a United States senator. They were gratified solely because he was company. He interrupted their all-too-finite procession of useless days.

  Finnegan, somewhat timid at first in thrusting himself into the homes of feeble, fearful strangers, rapidly came to relish talking with them. They in turn regaled him with stories of their families, old pictures of places their younger days had taken them and opinions on the decline of modern society. Finnegan’s understanding of the simple pleasure his companionship provided filled him with satisfaction. He vowed to keep in touch with many of them after the hearings concluded.

  What he found, though, very nearly broke his heart. Everyone with whom he met, man and woman, black and white and Hispanic, lived in abject squalor that even the best efforts at dignifying could not hide. These are good, decent people, his brain screamed as he lay at night in his comfortably warm bed. They deserve to live humanely. They deserve to be free from worry, and spend their days in peace. My God, what have we done?

  His explorations took him into the city’s worst neighborhoods. He spoke to one old gentleman who claimed to be ninety-two and lived in a one-room apartment on the southeast side. Great gaping holes pocked each wall where the drywall had fallen completely away. In some spots the plumbing was visible. The old man had tried to cover them once with sheets, he explained, but he had come to need them for himself as his other linens deteriorated. The tenant fixed him some tea, which was served in his only uncracked cup, and they talked at length there, in that single desolate room. Finnegan sat in a tatty mildewed chair, and noticed that there were no windows to distract his view.

  “Been here twenny-fi’ years,” said the old man, whose name was Moses, “and I ain’t never once seed the man who owns it. He sen’ his boy aroun’ ever’ month to collect the rent. I pay on time ever’ month.”

  “Do you like it here?” asked Finnegan, and wished at once he could retract such a foolish question. “Do you feel safe?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I’m used to it. Where the hell else am I s’pose to go? I’m old, and I’ll end up dyin’ here, boy. You can count on that.”

  “Do you have enough money to get by, Moses? With rent and groceries and all?”

  The old man chuckled. “Nobody got enough, son. We can always use some more now, can’t we? I get my pension and Social Security.”

  “What’s the rent here?”

  Moses told him. It was almost as much as what he and Dan Rosselli paid for their own much larger, much cleaner, well-maintained apartment in a fine neighborhood. “Do you know you’re being overcharged, Moses? You can find a much better place for the same money.”

  “An’ how I’m gonna get there? Who’s gonna move me? What place is gonna take in an old man who’s gonna drop dead on ’em some day? I can’t live no place but here.”

  “Has your rent been raised lately?”

  “Ever’ year it goes up some. The man charges me more ever’ year, maybe ten dollars a month, maybe a little bit more than that. His boy say he got to do it to make ends meet.”

  Finnegan saw the pattern again and again. Landlord raised rents regularly. There were no contracts, at least none that fixed rents beyond the short term. The old people, who like Moses had nowhere else to go, had to pay it. Most landlords would not hesitate to pitch them out if they became delinquent. And the waiting list for limited public housing alternatives usually ran longer than their life expectancies.

  “What do you eat, Moses? It seems to me that if your rent keeps going up, eventually you’re going to run out of money for food.”

  The old man chuckled again. “Ain’t gonna be no need for food in a while. I eat a hot dog, and maybe some cereal. Corn flakes and such. I eat bread during the day, and I drink my tea. It’s all the same when you get right down to it, ain’t it?”

  “Have you ever eaten pet food, Moses? Really now, tell me the truth.”

  The smile grew faintly sorrowful, a light burning dimmer. “Like I say, it’s all the same. You get so ya don’ notice no taste. You just look for whatever’s gonna fill your belly and don’t cost you too much.”

  “If your rent were lower you could eat better.”

  “So could you, boy.”

  When they finished their conversation, Finnegan made a point of returning the teacups to the kitchen area. As he put them into the sink he glanced upward at the pantry, which had no doors. Cans of dog food, cans of cat food, lined the bottom shelf. The first time he had seen this it startled him; now he had grown accustomed to it.

  Finnegan found a lady a few blocks over. She seemed more fearful than the others he had met. Her name was Agnes, and in contrast to the surrounding neighborhood she was white. Despite Finnegan’s assurances that he had been vetted and sent by her social worker whom he named and whose identification number he cited, she let him in only with the greatest reluctance. Her narrow, bony face displayed an underlying sentiment of terror.

  Noting several pictures of young children scattered around the single-room flat that was in only slightly better repair than Moses’s place, Finnegan kept the conversation on her family until she relaxed a bit. There were her grandchildren, she explained, who lived in California, Texas and Minnesota. She did not know them except through their pictures, but they were all lovely, weren’t they? Her family had all moved away, so she related a synopsis of each of them and what they were doing. She alone had remained in Washington, and now it had come to this. They wrote her, and sometimes they sent her money, but there was nothing she could do about seeing them. This place was all she could afford. There was nothing leftover for either travel or entertaining out-of-town guests. She was living off Social Security and the money she got from selling her house, a large place in suburban Oxon Hill. That was several years ago. Trying to conserve her resources for what she had hoped would be a long retirement, she had taken this place in the city.

  “But it’s gotten much worse since I moved here,” she said. “The neighborhood has gone downhill so quickly. And there’s no way I can get anything repaired here. The landlord won’t come around to fix anything without charging me for it, and I just can’t afford to spend any money.”

  “Isn’t he required by your lease to provide routine maintenance?”

  “No. I checked it thoroughly, too, you know. He has the right to charge extra fees for fixing things. I didn’t suspect that when I signed, and of course you never read the whole document when it’s that long. It was only afterward, when the flooring beside the bathtub cracked and sank, that I looked for that clause, but then I was stuck. I suppose he believes he can let everything go until I die, then repair the whole place at once for the next tenant. It’s cheaper that way, and he can market a freshly renovated apartment.”

  Finnegan looked upward at a series of weblike cracks splaying across the ceiling. One ran to the far wall and, a finger tracing in the sand, slid down the wall to the floor. Dusty shards of plaster lay in spots on the ragged carpet.

  Agnes turned in her chair looking away from Finnegan. She ran a jagged clawlike hand along the side of her face and stared at something the younger man had no way of seeing. Finnegan noticed Agnes’s eyes shone a stinging blue. They had not aged nearly as much as the remainder of her spare form. The stark setting made them incongruous, two blades of bright light in dim shadows. What was it that she kept alive, burning there where no one could see?

  “You now, young man—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. And so soon.”

  “It’s Conor, ma’am.”

  “Yes, of course. Conor. Such a lovely poetic name, I think. You hear that name so seldom these days. Conor, you are the first person quite so young to speak to me pleasa
ntly in weeks. It seems like years. I’m very grateful.”

  “Don’t you go out at all, Agnes? You must know some neighbors, and they certainly have children.”

  “You’ve seen the neighborhood. A frightful place, it truly is. Sometimes I fear we’re condemned, all of us, because we’re so eager to relapse into the worst forms of barbarism. There must be some flaw in our blood that makes us so easily brutal.” Agnes’s scratchy voice broken but she kept in, speaking slowly and searching her wall as she cradled her face in her hand.

  “My neighbors have children, yes, and I do know them. About a year or two ago—God, even longer than that, I fear—five young men who live near here . . . well, I was walking down the street. It was afternoon, late, and they came out of nowhere, these five. They stood around me, in broad daylight with people everywhere, they were so sure of themselves. They were so sure no one would stand up to them. They had me in the middle and pushed me back and forth to one another, calling me such foul names. I was sport to them. Every time I thought I’d fall they catch me and throw me to someone else. They didn’t want to break me because that would end their game. Finally they grew bored with me and pitched me to the sidewalk like an old rag. I feared I broke my hip, it hurt so much to move, but it was only a bruise. Two days later I still hadn’t gone out again, and one of them came to my door and forced his way in. He slapped me twice and demanded money.”

  Agnes wept silent tears. They fell down her cheeks, the silky trails streaking softly downward from her blue eyes. “I gave him what I had, and then he said he’d be back for more every week. As long as I paid him each week, I’d be safe. If I didn’t, he and his friends would come by and resume their game.”

  “Protection money,” whispered Finnegan.

  “Yes. I’m sure I’m not the only one they’ve targeted.”

  “So, for more than a year you’ve been paying these thugs every week. How much, Agnes?”