Leaving the World

by Douglas Kennedy

  This entire train of thought swirled in and out of my head in a matter of seconds. Even though I could see the ultimate denouement of this story, I felt powerless to articulate anything. To speak my mind would be to lose him. So instead I said: ‘David . . . as you predicted, it’s not my sort of novel. I’m pleased that Polly so rates it. And let’s face facts – I could be wrong about it.’

  That was the closest we ever came to a moment of real conflict – and, typical me, I defused it before it could blow up into something terrible and honest. He left that afternoon with the manuscript. Months passed. We continued to have our three afternoons a week. As the late-January publication date approached, David finally did start communicating his nervousness about the novel’s possible reception.

  ‘Well, one thing you must know already,’ I said, ‘is that high modernism has always divided people. So you will undoubtedly get wildly divisive reactions to it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.’

  As it turned out, my worst-case scenario came true. Because it was David Henry’s first novel after such a long period of silence – and because Pentameter Press was such a respected publisher – it received an extensive amount of critical attention. And with one or two exceptions, he was slaughtered. The Atlantic was the first review out – and their critic (who was a self-confessed David admirer) pronounced himself baffled as to why he had ‘slammed the door on his talent as a hip comic novelist with such shrewd compassion’ to write such ‘nonsensical contortions’. The New Yorker limited its appraisal to a paragraph on its ‘New and Noteworthy’ page: ‘A campus novelist decides he’s going to out-Finnegan Joyce – on a Canadian highway no less! The result is a novel that reads like a parody of the French nouveau roman . . . though it’s dubious whether any French nouveau roman had so many references to pudenda and maple-glazed doughnuts . . . which, we think, is something of a fictional first . . .’

  But it was the New York Times which really trashed him. Their critic – I won’t even mention her name, I am still so enraged by her thoroughgoing vindictiveness – wasn’t simply content to damn the novel for its obvious flaws. Instead she had to use it as a platform to trawl through David’s two previous novels and proclaim that his once-touted brilliance was merely a ‘shabby veneer which allowed him to con a willing public into believing that he was the pumped pectoral polymath of every Radcliffe girl’s dreams . . . whereas close scrutiny of his limited and limiting oeuvre show him to be a second-rate intellect who, in true American huckster style, has conned his way into the upper echelons of the academy . . . and now has the arrogance to think that he can play anti-narrative games and not get found out. If this absurd enterprise of a novel demonstrates anything, it’s that David Henry deserves to be finally found out.’

  There are moments when the cruelty of others is simply breathtaking. I read the review in a little café on Brattle Street. As I worked my way through it, I found it difficult to fathom its all-out sadism. All right, David had written a bad book. But to totally decimate his reputation; to call him a fraud in all departments . . .

  After putting the review down, I broke one of the long-standing rules I had with David – showing up at his office any time but the arranged hour for our weekly advisory meeting on my thesis. When I got there, the door was closed and there was a notice taped to the door in his own scrawly handwriting:

  I Will be Unavailable Today.

  He was due to come by my apartment that afternoon. It was the first time he missed a rendezvous – and he left no message on my answering machine. I couldn’t ring him at home, but I did leave a very neutral, correct message for him on his office voicemail: ‘Professor, it’s Jane Howard. I need to speak with you about a scheduling problem this week. If you could please call me . . .’ I got no reply.

  Two, three days went by. His office remained shuttered, the note – I Will be Unavailable Today – still undisturbed on his door. I was growing increasingly worried and frantic, especially as another hammer-blow had landed on David in the days after the Times review. A writer with New York working for their ‘Intelligencer’ sector, their upscale gossip pages, had been tracking the acidic reception of Forty-Nine Parallels and decided to see if there were any antecedents to David’s novel. Lo and behold, he discovered that one of the benchmark works of the French nouveau roman, Michel Butor’s La Modification, was a stream-of-consciousness account of a writer traveling between Paris and Rome on some trans-Europe express and musing at length about his wife and his mistress.

  ‘Yes, Professor Henry does make a passing reference to La Modification in his exceedingly obscurantist tome,’ wrote the uncredited New York journalist, ‘as his narrator does talk about writing a book that “would out-Butor Butor”. But this one buried reference does not really exempt Henry from the charge of essentially transposing the entire structural and thematic idea of someone else’s novel on to his own. Or perhaps the good Professor has a deconstructionist theory about this case of High Modernist Reappropriation . . . also known in plainer English as Plagiarism.’

  As soon as I read this, I rushed out to the Harvard Coop to buy an English translation of Butor’s novel. Like Forty-Nine Parallels, it was dense, elliptical and very much an ‘in-his-head’ form of narration. But beyond the basic premise, the two books couldn’t have been more disparate. So what if they had obvious similarities in terms of the man-on-a-journey-caught-between-two-women set-up. Every piece of literature is, in some form or another, a reinvention of someone else’s previous work. Only a vindictive hack journalist – out to debase and wound a talented man – would equate an evident homage with plagiarism.

  I tried ringing David again at his office. I even called the department secretary, Mrs Cathcart. Again using very neutral language I said that, if she was speaking to Professor Henry, would she please tell him that I felt the plagiarism charge was completely preposterous.

  Mrs Cathcart – who was around sixty and had been the department’s secretary since the early 1970s – cut me off.

  ‘I’m afraid the university doesn’t think it preposterous, as Professor Henry was suspended today while a faculty committee examines the charges against—’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous. I’ve read the other novel and there is no plagiarism charge to answer.’

  ‘That is your interpretation, Miss Howard,’ Mrs Cathcart said. ‘The Faculty Affairs Committee will—’

  ‘Crucify him, because he has so many enemies on that—’

  Again she cut me off. ‘If you want to help Professor Henry, I wouldn’t make such statements public. It might cause people to speculate.’

  ‘Speculate what?’ I asked.

  But she didn’t answer that, except to say: ‘I gather Professor Henry has gone to ground and left Cambridge. You could call his wife, if you so wish.’

  Was there an undercurrent of malice to that comment? Was she letting me know, ‘I’m on to you’? But we had been so damn careful, so completely circumspect. Surely she was just being her usual devious self – as she was notorious in the department for always making others feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Do you have his home number?’ Mrs Cathcart asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t know it, having worked so closely with the Professor for the past four years.’

  ‘I never call him at home.’

  ‘I see,’ she said with a hint of ice. And I ended the call.

  I immediately rang David’s home number. There was no reply and the answerphone wasn’t on. Had Polly gone with him to Maine? He had a little cottage there outside of Bath in which we never stayed, as it was in a very small village with ‘all-seeing, all-knowing neighbors’. If Polly had gone there with him and if I showed up . . .

  But if he was alone in Maine . . .

  Part of me wanted to rent a car and drive straight up there. But the cautious side of me counseled against such rash action – not just because Polly might be up there with him, but also because I sensed (or, at least, hoped) that
David would make contact with me when he needed me.

  But there was no contact, no sign from him of his whereabouts or his state of mind. A day went by, then two, then three. I called his home number three times a day. No answer. I checked in again with Mrs Cathcart. ‘No one knows his whereabouts,’ was all that she would say. I called Christy and met her for more than several drinks, a night out with Christy always being an excuse to get hammered. She had lots of inside departmental gossip, and told me that at least three of David’s colleagues (she had their names) had approached the Dean of the Faculty, demanding that David be dismissed for professional misconduct, and had been assured that, if the plagiarism charges were authenticated, the Dean would be backing them.

  ‘There is a group of very bitter shits in the department,’ Christy said, ‘who have always wanted to bring the guy down. This resentment goes back to the seventies when they were all starting out together and Professor Henry was perceived to be too flashy and celebrated by these already-gray assholes. And they’ve also always hated his popularity with just about every student he’s worked with. So now they’re having their schadenfreude moment and are just delighted to see him fighting for his professional life.’

  ‘I’m pretty certain he’s gone to his place in Maine.’

  ‘If that’s the case, he’s on his own up there.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I said, sounding just a little surprised.

  ‘Because Mrs Cathcart told me that, when the shit hit the fan, Henry’d had a big blow-up with his wife – accused her of talking him into writing such a drecky novel, told her she’d always been doing her best to sabotage his career.’

  Oh, Jesus.

  ‘How did Cathcart hear all this?’

  ‘Madame Henry told her. It seems that Crazy Polly frequently calls that crusty old bitch to vent about her wayward husband. And Cathcart encourages her – because, hey, information is power, right?’

  ‘Well, why did that “bitch” then tell me that I should call David’s wife to find his whereabouts?’

  ‘Because she likes to play head games, that’s why. And because – like everyone else in the department – she suspects that you and the Professor have been romantically involved for quite a long time.’

  The news made me flinch. They knew. Everyone knew.

  ‘That’s total nonsense,’ I said.

  ‘I figured that would be your response,’ replied Christy. ‘That’s why, as much as I like you, I can’t really call you a friend. And that’s not just the booze talking. But you know this—’

  ‘I know there’s a lot of stupid innuendo that simply isn’t true.’

  ‘And I know that I’m outta here,’ she said, throwing some money down on the table, ‘because I’m not going to sit here and be lied to.’

  ‘I am not lying,’ I slurred, all that vodka and beer elongating my words and emboldening me to trumpet my innocence.

  ‘This conversation is over,’ Christy said. ‘But do your man a favor. As soon as you wake up tomorrow, get a car and get up to him in Maine. He needs you.’

  I don’t remember giving the cab driver my address, or paying him or negotiating the stairs up to my apartment, or getting out of my clothes and collapsing onto the bed. What I do remember is waking with a start around eight and cursing myself for having gotten so smashed. I didn’t even want to get into the ramifications of what Christy said last night – not just about my untruthfulness with her (guilty as charged), but about the appalling realization that there had been much departmental speculation regarding my non-professional relationship with David.

  I got out of the arctic shower. I put on some clothes. I made a pot of coffee and called Avis and arranged to pick up a car at their Cambridge location in half an hour. I downed two Alka-Seltzer followed by two scalding mugs of coffee. I was about to start throwing some things in an overnight bag when the intercom began to buzz.

  David!

  I went running downstairs. But when I yanked open the door, Christy was standing there. From the way she looked at me – a mixture of distress and fear – I could tell immediately that something was terribly wrong.

  ‘Can we go upstairs?’ she asked.

  We climbed the stairs and entered my apartment. I switched off the coffee maker, then turned back to the doorway. Christy was standing there, five fingers wrapped around the door handle, as if she was preparing to make a break for it.

  That’s when I knew. From the moment her frightened face was revealed outside my front door . . . I knew.

  ‘David?’ I asked in a near-whisper.

  She nodded slowly. Then: ‘He was knocked down and killed by a car yesterday.’

  It took a moment or two to register. I found myself gripping the side of the stove. The world grew very quiet, very small. Christy continued talking, but I wasn’t aware of her anymore.

  ‘He was on a bicycle down by a beach near his house in Maine. It was late in the afternoon. A lot of glare and shadows. He was pedaling along this back road, a truck came by, and . . .’

  She paused. Then: ‘They think it was an accident.’

  Now I was very cognizant of her again.

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘The driver of the truck—’

  She broke off.

  ‘Tell me,’ I whispered.

  ‘According to Mrs Cathcart, the driver of the truck was on the opposite side of the road from David. He could see him cycling towards him. But then, suddenly, David seemed to swerve right into his path. And . . .’

  I let go of the stove. I sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. I put the palms of my hands against my eyes and pressed hard. But the world wouldn’t black out.

  Christy came over and put her arms around me. But I didn’t want to be consoled. I didn’t want someone to share my loss. In the moments of aftershock that accompanied the news, a little voice in my head cautioned me to be careful how I played all this. Get hysterical and they’ll realize the truth.

  I shrugged Christy off. I said to her: ‘I think I need to be by myself now.’

  ‘That’s the last thing you need,’ she said.

  I stood up and started heading for the bedroom.

  ‘Thank you for coming here and telling me.’

  ‘Jane, you don’t have to pretend.’

  ‘Pretend what? There’s nothing to pretend here.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, your lover just died.’

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Not if you can’t even bring yourself to—’

  I closed the bedroom door. I sat down on the bed. I half-expected Christy to barge in and confront me with all of my manifold shortcomings – especially the way I couldn’t even talk to her at the worst moment in my life.

  But there was no such dramatic confrontation. Instead I heard the front door open and close and the apartment go silent.

  What happened next surprised me. I felt as if I was operating on some sort of autopilot. I got up. I grabbed the overnight bag and threw some clothes into it. I called a cab. I went to Avis, I picked up the rental car I had reserved. I drove out of Cambridge, headed north to Route 1, branched onto Interstate 95 and sped up to Maine.

  Why was I doing this? I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to see where he died.

  I was in the town of Bath by one o’clock that afternoon. I stopped in a gas station and got directions to Popham Beach. The road east to the ocean passed through expansive New England terrain – green rolling fields, white clapboard houses, old red barns, a salty inlet from the ocean. I focused on every feature, every characteristic of that road which he biked down towards his death. I reached Popham around thirty minutes after leaving Bath. The parking lot was empty. I was the only beachcomber on this bleak May day, the sky the color of dirty chalk. I walked down a little pathway through some dunes and reached the water. Everything David had told me about Popham – and he often talked about it – was spot-on correct.

  ‘Three miles of unbroken sand, unspoiled, of
ten empty, with the best ocean vista in New England. Any time I’m up in Maine and out of sorts with the world, I take a walk on Popham and stare out at the sheer vastness of the Atlantic . . . and somehow, it always makes me feel that possibilities still exist beyond the confines of my little life, that there’s always a way out.’

  I stood on the beach and gazed out at the Atlantic and heard David’s voice telling me all that. And I couldn’t help but wonder if, two days ago, he was finding things so unbearable, so beyond consolation, that the sight of Popham tipped him over the edge. Not only was it just too beautiful to bear, but say it didn’t do its restorative magic? Say its raw epic grandeur didn’t console, but rather heightened his sense of having been trounced. Say he was at such a low point – so defeated by everything – that the beauty of the water was simply too hard to bear. Say he shut his eyes to its metronomic surf, its shimmering surface, and began to think: If I can’t bear this . . .

  Personally I couldn’t bear looking at the water and simultaneously thinking about what David might have been going through in the final hour of his life. So I returned to the car and drove out of the parking lot and turned right, following the road towards the direction of a signposted summer colony of houses. Halfway there, the road narrowed, owing to traffic cones with police tape stretched between them. I stopped the car and got out. The police cones and tape were shaped into an elongated rectangle – like a long coffin, perhaps fifteen feet by four. I swallowed hard and stared down at the blacktopped road. There were noticeable skid marks across it, the wide imprint of the tire tread indicating that it was a substantial vehicle which hit him. I walked over to the police tape and peered down. The side of the road here was marked by dirt and scruffy grass. I peered closer at its surface and could see the dried remnants of blood at that frontier between the blacktop and the earth. There was one significant stain – a large blotch that seemed to have oozed out in a long thin trickle.

  I shut my eyes, unable to look at it any longer. But you came here to look at it in the first place. I straightened myself up and stood in the middle of the road and noted the narrowness of the blacktop at this point. I checked its surface, walking forwards beyond the police cones, looking downwards, hoping to find . . .