Act III, Scene II
The lights rise on Thomas McGrew
III, alone on the slide. He sits
motionless, bible open on his lap, staring left past the proscenium. His face
is very thin, and his back is stooped unevenly. He is so still that the
audience might think he is a statue.
Very slowly, so gradually that
it is barely perceptible at first, the slide begin to buckle under him. The spot where he is sitting sags low, then
even lower under his weight. He continues to stare offstage, towards the spot
where Thomas McGrew IV disappeared. After five minutes, there is a giant creak,
then a snapping noise. The slide cracks
in two. An avalanche of rubble crashes downwards. The bible flies high into the
air. It lands on the right half of the
slide, slides down a few feet, stops. Thomas McGrew, still on his stool, hovers
in mid-air for a moment, then drops straight down into the abyss below.
For five minutes, lights shine
on the ragged halves of the broken slide, the abandoned bible.
Then lights fade to black. The show is over.
* * *
“These body fluids, this
defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on
the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being.
My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop
so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire
body falls beyond the limit.”
—Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror.
* * *
Really nice to see you.
Yes, sad circumstances.
Important that we can
come together at times like this.
He would be so happy
you’re here.
It
felt weird for sure, being back in New Buffalo, in that giant room on the top
floor where they held all the big English department events like job talks and
yearly welcome receptions for new graduate students. But that’s how it was
supposed to feel, right? Weird, surreal,
you know, given the circumstances. He
hadn’t gotten around to visiting since he moved away three years ago, and now
he really wished he had, at least once.
It was only an eleven-hour drive, or a two-hundred dollar flight, but he
was really, really busy, and anyway, who was there to visit?
Well,
nobody now. He should have come back
sooner. The email from Marjorie
Mendelssohn showed up in his inbox last week.
I am truly sorry to report
the passing of our colleague, Dr. Jeremy Frick.
The University of New Buffalo English department invites you to a memorial
service celebrating his life and work .
We hope you are able to attend.
So
that was that. Couldn’t put it off any
longer. Time to get in the car and drive
to Indiana.
The
service was pretty nice, even though Marjorie led it. Lots of professors gushing
and holding back tears and listing accomplishments. Of course every speaker
started and/or ended with the requisite Funeral
of Giants reference. We find
ourselves at the funeral of a true giant in Irish literary studies, stuff
like that.
There
was a reception after, with wine and crackers and cheese and strawberries. It felt kind of weird to have to eat, but he hadn’t
had any lunch, and the department had actually sprung for some decent cheese
for a change, not that rubbery brie from the supermarket. He couldn’t really get a bite in though, with
everyone hugging him and patting him on the back and talking about how sad it
all was. He steered to a quiet corner
where he could gulp down his wine and shove a couple crackers in his
mouth. He felt better there, by himself.
Someone
touched his shoulder. Marjorie
Mendelssohn, in an olive green suit with flowy pants. Her arms were open, her
hand on his elbow now. He couldn’t
figure out what she was doing at first, but then he realized she wanted a hug.
Okay. He stuck his arms around her without really
touching her, cup of wine in one hand, plate of cheese in the other, trying not
to spill anything on her back.
“Oh
Gavin.” Her voice was watery. “It’s so good to see you.”
It is?
“I’ve
been meaning to get in touch.” Her hand
was still on his arm like they were old friends. “To congratulate you on your article in New Irish Modernism Studies. Your career really seems to be taking
off. We’d like to do a spread on your upcoming
book in the next department newsletter, if you wouldn’t mind. I was going to write and ask you, but then,
you know, all this.”
She
waved towards the center of the room, at professors in brown outfits, hands
crossed over their chests as they talked in little groups, graduate students
drinking wine and looking all exhausted. Kat was there, tottering on black
heels, being consoled by some guy from the history department.
“You
must be terribly upset,” Marjorie said.
Was
he? He wasn’t sure. The situation
was sad, definitely. Like, Jeremy Frick has
finally officially dropped dead of a heart attack, how sad. But he didn’t exactly feel sad. The whole thing
seemed weirdly redundant, like some dead part of his past had risen and re-died.
“I’ll
be okay.” He managed to get the last chunk
of cheese—something blue, maybe Roquefort--off his plate and into his mouth
without putting the cup of wine down.
“Of
course you will.” She squeezed his arm a
little harder. “You’re resilient.”
He
smiled a little, sort of bravely, and headed back to the food table for more
cheese. Randy Ledbetter was there,
filling up his plate with a couple of everything.
“Gavin!
You look good,” Randy said. Which was a lie. Since moving to Kansas, he had put
on thirty pounds, grown one of those fat-guy necks that puffed out under his
chin. The only gym was on campus, and he hated running into his students all
sweaty and flushed. And all the food
wherever you went was cooked in butter. It was fine. Once his book was out and he had a better
job in a better place, he could focus on getting in shape.
“Sad
news,” Randy said. He looked pretty much the same, round face, white beard. Short-sleeve
button-down with a fleece vest over it. He popped a giant strawberry into his mouth.
“Very
sad,” Gavin said.
“Though
hardly unexpected.” Randy leaned in
towards him but didn’t lower his voice. “Of
course, you knew he had a problem. All
those pills.”
“Uh
huh.” Gavin looked around to see if anyone could hear. It’s not like he was Miss Manners or
anything, but it seemed a little rude to be talking shit about a guy at his
memorial. The only other people at the
food table were some grad students refilling their wine cups, and they looked
too tired to notice.
“It
wasn’t Kat who found him,” Randy said. Gavin could see the wiry beard hairs poking out of his pores, the strawberry juice clinging to his lips. “It was some other girl, an undergrad. This
girl just showed up in the afternoon, opened the door and found him all blue
and cold. No one knows what she was
doing at his house.” He shook his head,
kind of smirked. “Poor guy.”
Gavin
wasn’t sure what to say, so he took a tiny bite of his own strawberry. It was big and juicy and red, like a
strawberry was supposed to be, but it didn’t taste like much of anything.
“You
in touch with Sinder?” Randy asked.
“A
little.” As in, they had chatted online
a handful of times. Last Gavin had
heard, Sinder and Rona had broken up again.
Actually, that’s always when Sinder messaged him, right after a breakup
with Rona. Whether they were together or broken up, they still shared the same
apartment in Brooklyn, along with four other roommates even though the lease said
three-occupant maximum.
Rona’s performance
piece about the trees had just been staged for the first time. Everyone fucking loves it, Sinder said. He was working in a coffee shop. Gavin still had his philosophy dictionary. He took it off the shelf once in a while, those days when he felt especially lost out on the prarie. He would lie on his couch and thumb through entries on Descartes and Foucault, daydreaming about Sinder and porn and wandering through the forest.
“Well,
send him my regards,” Randy said. “I always thought it was too bad he left. Talented guy. He could have been one of us.”
“Okay, yeah,” Gavin said. “I'll tell him you said hi.”
After
that it didn’t seem like there was anyone else he needed to talk to. He took
the stairs down, stopped at the third floor, graduate student offices. The halls here were like a maze, a couple quick
turns to get to his old office. He
turned the knob in case someone had forgotten to lock it, but no, it was
locked. He leaned his forehead against
the window and stared in. It was still
pretty much empty, the same handful of dusty journals on the bookshelf. Somebody had left a photocopied article on
the desk with the computer, scrawled all over with blue pen.
Remember. What it felt like to be a student. It washed over him, that fuzzy pleasure of
uncertainty, of not being the expert yet, of being unfinished. A child. Sitting in that office, scrawling all over some article by Grover Maloney, dreaming of the day he'd be a real professor. He hadn’t expected that it would be so much like becoming an adult. You didn't get wiser, just more responsible, heavier. Deeper in. More lonely. More stuck.
Finally,
for the first time since he had learned about Frick’s death, he started to
cry. It erupted out of his mouth,
unexpected, loud wailing sobs. He put his arm up over his head, cried into the cold
glass of the window until it was foggy and smeared.
“I’m
okay,” he said. He stood up straight,
wiped his face with his sleeve. He kind of laughed. Funny to be standing alone in the English
building on a Saturday, crying into the silence of the empty hallway.
Then
he began to cry so hard he had to sit down, but there weren’t any chairs. So he did what the undergrads did when they
were waiting for office hours and sat on the stained carpet, his back against
the wall. He held his head in his hands
and cried and cried, loud womanly wails like somebody had died. Somebody besides Jeremy Frick.
After
probably twenty minutes, he was done.
He got up off the floor, went to the bathroom with the
graffiti scratched into the mirror to rinse his face. There it was: puffy, flushed, red-eyed. His cheeks were fuller than the last time he had looked into this mirror, his jawline meaty in a way that made him think of his father, or Randy Ledbetter. Serious, responsible. A man.
“This is what you wanted,” he said. And now you're here. No point complaining about it. He splashed some water over his forehead and eyes, dried off with a brown paper towel that smelled like elementary school. Better. A little blotchy still, but generally composed.
He walked the rest of the way down the stairs,
out into the quad, the warm air of late spring in Indiana. From here, he could see the University Marriott,
where he was staying. It was right at the edge of campus, towering above the
college’s mismatched architecture.
“Gavin.”
Crap. He really didn’t want
to talk to anybody. He patted his face
to see if it felt puffy. A little. It’s
okay to look upset, he reminded himself.
Memorial service.
He
turned around. Kat. Pretty much the last person he wanted to talk
to. But it’s not like you could be an
asshole to a woman whose partner or whatever had just died.
She
couldn’t walk too fast with how high her heels were, so he stopped and let her
catch up to him.
“I’m
so glad you could come,” she said. “It
would mean a lot to Jeremy.”
“Yeah,
I’m really sorry,” Gavin said. “Um, for
your loss.”
Her
lips curved into a smile, deep red on pale cream.
“I
appreciate that.” She walked a little
closer to him, right next to him. When
he looked over, he could see the tops of her boobs jiggling with the rise and
fall of her heels. Maybe that’s why women
wear them, he thought.
“I
loved your article in Irish Modernism
Studies,” she said.
“You
read it?”
“Of
course.” She linked her arm into his,
like they were lovers strolling down a boulevard in Paris. The black dress was
made of something crêpey that crinkled gently over his skin. He shivered, but
then relaxed into it. Her partner’s memorial. She probably
just wanted some comfort from an old friend. Right?
“That
whole point about Maddy’s baby was just amazing,” she said.
“Oh
yeah, that.” Of course it was that. That was everyone’s favorite part of his
argument. Nobody seemed to notice the
subtle analysis of abjection and time, how Stump’s use of silence conveyed the
horror of death and the unknown. It was
always Maddy’s baby, Maddy’s baby.
They
had reached the front of the hotel now.
“Well,
this is where I’m staying.” He pulled his arm out of hers, crossed both arms
over his chest, waited for her to leave.
But she wasn’t leaving.
“It’s a nice hotel, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ve never actually been inside.”
She was just standing there, hands behind her back, shoulders curved a little forward to make sure he could see down the front of her dress. He could. The there was burgundy lace on the top of her bra.
He uncrossed his arms, scratched his head, crossed them again.
Wow.
She must be distraught. He was pretty sure this was the kind of thing distraught women did.
He
studied the roundness of her hips, her breasts swelling above the pin-up waist. Was she wearing
a girdle? Whatever it was, she looked pretty decent, if you didn’t think too
much about it. And let’s face it, because living in west Kansas it was the
undeniable truth: there was no way he would encounter another moderately fuckable
woman for the next six months at least. Maybe a
year.
“Want
to come in?” His voice kind of croaked, probably from all that crying, but he
cleared his throat and pulled it together. “For some coffee or whatever?”
She
smiled, flushed and triumphant.
“I
thought you’d never ask.”
