Leaving the World

by Douglas Kennedy

  It was strange – almost impossible – at first to reconnect to that arena called physical intimacy. When Johann first made a move, my initial reaction was to flee. But fortunately that reaction was internalized and was supplanted by a far simpler thought: I wanted to have sex again.

  Johann was decent, tender, and a little distant . . . which, truth be told, suited me fine. I liked being held by him. I liked being taken by him, and I liked taking him. We rarely talked about things that mattered to us – though I did hear about his authoritarian semi-aristocratic father who wanted him to join the family law firm, but still half-subsidized his attempts to be an abstract painter. The fact was, he did have talent and the Ellsworth Kelly-style color studies he showed me demonstrated actual promise. But as he himself admitted, he had just enough of a trust fund to ruin him – and he preferred mooching in bars and cafés to getting down to the serious business of mastering his craft. He rarely asked me much about myself – and when he once commented, early on, that I seemed to be in the throes of an ongoing sadness, I just shrugged and said: ‘We all have our stuff.’

  And my stuff was something I simply didn’t want to discuss.

  Nor did I want to go near anything to do with the press – though a week after I landed in Berlin I passed a newspaper kiosk and saw that, on the front page of a particularly low-rent tabloid, there was a grainy photograph of Coursen with the headline: ‘Das Monstrum der Rockies!’ In the future, I averted my eyes whenever passing any news-stand.

  But between intensive German, and my nights with Johann, and the fact that I could always fill a free evening with a concert, a film, a play, the time in Berlin passed easily. There was a playground on one corner of Kollwitzplatz and that had to be avoided. So too did a dinner with some German friends of Johann’s. When he mentioned that it was at the home of a couple with a five-year-old daughter I begged off.

  ‘I’m not that keen on young children either,’ he said. ‘But do what you want.’

  That was the beginning of the end of things with Johann – not that it ever progressed beyond a pleasant enough convenience for both of us. He announced one day that he was returning to Stockholm in a week’s time. Jutta – the woman he’d been with for three years, a diplomat’s daughter, well-heeled – was missing him. And his father had offered to buy them an apartment if he would return to his long-abandoned law studies.

  ‘I suppose I’ll be a part-time painter now,’ he said, sounding a little sheepish.

  ‘I’m certain you’ll have a very good life.’

  ‘And what will you do now?’

  ‘Return to the States – and find a use for the dative case.’

  Beyond such facetiousness, I knew that I had to be doing something with my life. There was a part of me that couldn’t function without a sense of direction, of ambition, of some sort of purpose to the day. As I found out in those early months in Calgary, to drift meant to retreat deeper into myself. Even taking German classes now struck me as treading water. Maybe I just wasn’t good at playing the bohemian card. Or maybe, deep at heart, I was simply frightened of standing still for any longer. Whatever the reason, I knew that Dr Goodchild was right all those many months ago in Calgary: What choice did I have in life but to go back to work?

  So, around a week before I made the decision to head home (‘home’ – it was the first time I had used that word in years), I sent an email to my old contact, Margaret Noonan, at the Harvard Placement Office – explaining that, due to a ‘personal tragedy’, I had left the academic world for the last while, but was now thinking how much I missed standing up in front of a class and talking about literature. And I was just wondering if she might know of any teaching job that had opened up for the fall.

  A day later I had a reply – and one which began with Noonan saying she had, of course, learned about my ‘personal tragedy’ and could only express her ‘immense regret’ at my ‘terrible loss’, but was pleased to hear that I was ready to ‘re-enter the world’.

  Re-enter the world? Perhaps – but with everything changed. Changed utterly.

  She also said my luck was with me. Did I know Colby College in Maine? A top-twenty liberal-arts college, lovely rural location, smart students. A two-year post had just opened up there, a faculty member having just been offered a big job at Cornell. And though I’d be in competition with around eight other candidates, she was pretty certain they would like my credentials. Was I interested? I emailed back, saying yes indeed. Five days later I was told I had a job interview in a week’s time.

  So I threw away my fixed-date ticket back to Calgary and bought a one-way fare to Boston. I closed up my apartment and said goodbye to Johann. We had one valedictory night together in bed. In the morning, as he left, he simply said: ‘I enjoyed our time together.’ Then he kissed me on the head and was gone. En route to the airport my taxi was diverted around the Brandenburg Gate and I passed the Holocaust Memorial for one last time. Today – after days of early spring sleet – the sun had cracked the gloomy dome of the Berlin sky. It was actually balmy. So balmy that a trio of adolescents had decided to use three of the Memorial’s slabs as makeshift sun beds. I wasn’t offended by this. Rather I found it strangely affirming. What I see as a metaphor for all the granitic grief in the world you see as a tanning opportunity. Life – even at its most excruciating – is never more than a few steps away from all its inherent absurdity.

  Later that day, as the plane dipped and began its approach to Boston, I felt nothing but dread, wondering how, if, I could handle being there. I rented a car at the airport and drove straight up to Waterville, Maine. The college had arranged a hotel for the night. The chairman of the department – a young live wire named Tad Morrow – took me out to dinner. He’d liked my book. He liked my credentials. He liked the fact that I could talk a good game about recent novels and movies, and had even tried being a librarian for a while. And I actually found him good news – very convincing about the college’s attributes and the pleasures of living in Maine, while also explaining that, up here, you were cut off from big-league academia.

  ‘I can live with that,’ I told him – and the next day, despite fighting jet lag, I nailed the interview. So much so that, when I returned to Boston that night and checked into a hotel called the Onyx near North Station, there was a message awaiting me from Margaret Noonan. I had been the last candidate to be interviewed and I actually had the job, starting this September.

  ‘The chairman did indicate that the post could go tenure track, especially if you publish another book in the meantime. I have here in my notes that you were, at one time, working on a biography of Sinclair Lewis. Might you think about going back to it?’

  ‘I might.’

  So there it was: a job offer, a motivation to return to that world.

  I was still flagging from the flight – but the management of the hotel had put a complimentary bottle of wine in my room, and I celebrated with a few glasses of Australian red. Then, around midnight, too wired to go to sleep, I called a number I had so wanted to call for so many months, but just couldn’t.

  I could hear Christy’s sharp intake of breath as I said hello.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘Where are you? How are you?’

  ‘That’s a rather long story,’ I said. ‘But the short answer is: I’m in Boston and I’m . . . OK, I guess.’

  ‘I’ve only tried to make contact with you around six hundred times . . .’

  ‘I know, I know. And I hope you know why that was impossible for me.’

  ‘I did know about Montana and your flight north to Calgary. Half a dozen times I was ready to jump into my car, drive over and arrive unannounced . . . but Barry always advised me against it.’

  ‘Who’s Barry?’

  ‘Barry Edwards is a town planner here in Eugene. In fact, he is the town planner for Eugene, Oregon. And he also happens to have been my husband for the past six months.’

  ‘Now that’s news.’

  ‘Yes, it certainly came
as a surprise to me as well.’

  ‘Happy?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Like you I don’t do happy. But . . . well, it’s actually not bad. And I’ve got some other news as well – and I’d rather tell you straight out than later. I’m pregnant.’

  ‘That’s . . . wonderful,’ I said. ‘When are you due?’

  ‘In sixteen weeks. And I find it difficult telling you all this.’

  ‘But you just did. And I’m glad you did now, rather than when I come out to see you.’

  ‘Now that’s news. Do you have an ETA?’

  ‘That depends on your schedule.’

  ‘My schedule remains what it was. I teach on Tuesday and Thursdays. I lock myself away from three to six all other days to try to inch my craft forward a bit – my usual prolific output of a poem every ten months, if I’m lucky. But . . . you . . . I need to know more about you.’

  ‘I’ll tell all on Friday. I’m going to Calgary in two days to close down my life there. I’m pretty sure I can fly on to Portland.’

  ‘What brings you back to Boston?’

  ‘You’ll get the whole spiel on Friday.’

  ‘You’re not planning to see Theo while you’re around Cambridge?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, no. I haven’t been in contact since I had an incident with himself and his lover in a diner off Harvard Square.’

  ‘Yes, I did hear about that . . .’

  ‘I figured you probably did. The world is sometimes too damn small.’

  ‘Well, I know for a fact that Theo wants to talk to you.’

  ‘And how do you know this?’

  ‘Because he’s called me every couple of months, wondering if I had any further news of your whereabouts. On two occasions he was rather drunk and very teary. Talking about how Adrienne had dropped him, and how not an hour went by when he didn’t think about Emily and you, and how he wished—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. So . . . Friday then. Email me the flight details. I’ll be there.’

  ‘I’m really pleased with all your news, Christy. All of it.’

  ‘Who would have thought? Me who always said I’d run a mile from all this.’

  ‘Life does have this habit of upending all our dogmas.’

  ‘I am so glad you called.’

  ‘I’m glad too.’

  Afterwards I put my head in my hands. Theo. In all the months since Emily’s death I’d tried to suppress my rage against him. In one session after my botched suicide Dr Ireland told me that, at some point in the future, I would have to find a way of detaching myself from the hatred I felt for him.

  ‘I’m not saying you have to forgive him,’ she told me. ‘That might be impossible – and if it proves so, there it is. But what you will have to do is stop hating him. Because hate is ultimately toxic to yourself. You can’t win with hate. It goes nowhere, it solves nothing and, sadly, it can’t turn back time. One of these days – and it might be years from now – you’re going to have to drop it. But that might take a long time.’

  Too damn true – because all I could still feel was contempt and fury.

  I told Mr Alkan the same thing when I met him the next day. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me – and, in his own quiet, hesitant way, asked me how I was bearing up.

  ‘Some days are tolerable, some aren’t. The nature of the beast, I guess . . .’

  ‘Before we get on to other things I must tell you that your . . . “ex-partner” I suppose is the official term for him . . . Mr Theo Morgan . . . has been in touch with me on a regular basis, attempting to re-initiate contact with you. Naturally I followed your instructions to the word and never contacted you about this. But . . . how can I put this? . . . he fell apart on the phone and seemed disconsolate about his break-up with you and . . . uhm . . .’

  ‘The death of our child?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite. There are around half a dozen letters from him here for you, sent over the past year or so.’

  ‘I don’t want to read them.’

  ‘Then they will remain here until you’re ready . . .’

  ‘Burn them, throw them out.’

  ‘Perhaps you will think differently in time.’

  ‘No, I won’t. It’s exactly how I felt when I asked you to sell the apartment.’

  ‘Yes, you did ask me to sell the apartment, Ms Howard – just as you also directed me, quite clearly, to hand over the insurance settlement to a charity for bereaved parents. But apropos the apartment . . . when you signed over power of attorney to me, you simultaneously signed a document giving me free rein over what I could do with your estate. So, I’m afraid, I breached your directive – as your apartment in Somerville is being rented to a very nice visiting Professor of French at Tufts. He’s paying two thousand a month – and after tax and running costs, you’ve been netting around twelve hundred a month, all earning interest in an account I set up for you. Not a fortune, but . . .’

  I was going to say something whiny like: ‘I did tell you to sell the damn thing.’ But I knew it would sound . . . well, whiny. Something else struck me: All those months ago, when I was in the darkest wood I could imagine, my need to shed everything was, without question, colored by the fact that I could think of no other solution than to leave the world.

  But now . . . now . . . well, it’s somewhat graceless to admit this, but I was rather glad he had held on to the apartment for me.

  ‘Thank you for thinking clearly for me when I simply couldn’t.’

  ‘It’s what I’m paid to do. But yes, I did arrange the entire insurance payment to create a fund in Emily’s name with the Samaritans—’

  I held up my hand.

  ‘Some other time, OK?’ I said.

  ‘Fine. But there is one other thing that has to be discussed. The cemetery called around two months ago, asking if you were going to commission a headstone for Emily’s grave.’

  I knew this was coming – as I also knew that Mr Alkan would be sent a ‘reminder’ from the powers that be at this ‘place of rest’ (as they called it in their scuzzy brochures), wondering when I’d fork up the several thousand dollars for the requisite marble slab.

  We’re all selling something in this life . . .

  ‘Can you give me a pad and pen, please?’ I asked.

  He pushed both forward. I picked up the pen and wrote:

  Emily Howard Morgan

  July 24, 2003–January 18, 2007

  Beloved Daughter

  Then I pushed the pad back towards him.

  ‘Can you take care of this?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. And if you would like to go out and view the site . . . ?’

  ‘I just . . . can’t. It’s just too soon.’

  I felt immense guilt about this – the fact that I still couldn’t bring myself to visit my daughter’s grave. But as much as I tried to talk myself out of this decision, a voice inside my head uttered two words: Not yet. There will be a time, somewhere in the future, when, perhaps, I can stand above where she is buried and not fall apart. But that’s not possible right now.

  ‘No problem,’ Alkan said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’

  After this meeting I went to an internet café and booked myself on a flight to Portland, Oregon, with a two-day stopover in Calgary. I also wrote an email to Geraldine Woods, thanking her for all her decency and kindness towards me. Though part of me felt badly about not going in to see her and my other colleagues while in town, I also sensed it was better this way. I wanted to travel under the radar – to pay off what few bills I owed, ship my books back south to Maine, redirect my mail, call the realtor and ask her to terminate my tenancy of the apartment, close down my bank account: all that endgame-in-a-place stuff.

  Upon reaching Calgary at lunchtime the next day all this was achieved in a matter of hours. I even went to Caffé Beano for a valedictory cappuccino – and asked one of the baristas behind the counter if I could borrow the phone to make a
local call.

  I dialed the number for the Central Public Library. Just in case Ruth Fowler was answering the switchboard late this afternoon I put on a terrible English accent and asked to be put through to Vernon Byrne. He answered on the third ring, announcing his name in that hesitant, I-really-don’t-do-public-conversations manner of his.

  ‘Vern, it’s me.’

  A long silence. I broke it.

  ‘Are you still angry at me?’

  ‘I was never angry at you,’ he said.

  ‘If I were you, I would have been.’

  ‘Where are you right now?’

  ‘Calgary – but please, don’t tell anyone else that.’

  ‘Your secret is good with me. Anyway, you know I talk to nobody around here.’

  ‘Any chance of a drink tonight?’

  ‘I’m hearing András Schiff play Beethoven – and the concert’s long since sold out, otherwise I’d say come along. But I have the day off tomorrow. You free?’

  ‘I’m free.’

  The next morning he was outside my apartment building at ten. He was, as always, dressed in that brown car coat and flat corduroy cap (which he probably wore to the beach – if, that is, he ever went to the beach). He greeted me with his usual tentative nod of the head.

  ‘You have to be anywhere today?’ he asked as I closed the car door behind me.

  ‘Actually, no. My books are packed up, my suitcase ready. I’ve got a flight out tomorrow morning at eleven. Other than that . . .’