Authors: David Gilbert
From Job 19 on to Psalm 121. And from I-95 to I-91 to I-84 to I-90. Trees and farmland grew more prevalent, the sense of space near bursting, as if these roads were rope holding together an overstuffed suitcase. Past Worcester. Past Lowell. As a longtime trustee my father did this same drive four times a year for twenty-four years, alone and probably listening to his cherished Bach cantatas. He loved to drive though we his children considered our mother the far superior driver, the three of us nervous in the backseat whenever he slipped behind the wheel, only because he was so careful and exact, unlike Mom, whose roadster moves we took as confident rather than reckless. She measured success by time whereas he graded himself on every turn, every press of the brake, apologizing for every unanticipated action. We never noticed his driving, only the other cars passing by. But on those quarterly excursions to Exeter no one judged him. I signaled for every lane change, even when there was no one behind me, in honor of him. I always hated these returns to school. And my mother drove so fast, desperate to break her record of four hours and two minutes. But if there wasn’t a chance of notching a new best, and if I struck her as particularly despondent, after turning onto 125 she would stop at Eggies Diner and I would order a bacon burger deluxe and a vanilla shake—my last meal, she always teased, her eyes wanting to wipe the unwipable grease from my chin.
“Do you love Dad?” I once asked her on one of these occasions, my
tone leading the question toward an obvious No, perhaps feeling the sting of our imminent parting and sensing in our closeness something that must’ve trounced any love she had for my father.
She squinted, which at my cynically earnest age I took as politics, and said, “I do love him. He’s a very sweet man. The secret is you have to adjust your expectations, Philip. Don’t get trapped in other people’s opinions and how they view things. You are in charge of your own happiness, even in high school.”
“Well, I’m not happy,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. Was she sick by then, even if in the early stages? So many of my memories have her undiagnosed and leave me wanting to tell her to please go to the doctor and insist on a CT scan of your abdomen. “Just do your best,” she told me while applying lip gloss. “Shower every morning and every night. Keep your sheets and towels clean. Remove all clutter from the floor. Control what you can control and try to take pleasure in it. Make one decent friend. Avoid wearing too much brown. Always keep in mind that there is life after this, Philip, you just have to die a bit to get there.” Her compact snapped shut and she smiled. “And so ends the lesson. Thanks be to Mom.” How do we survive being so loved once?
But today Eggies was closed, forever, it appeared, and I would have to press on. My father’s ashes were in a duffel bag in the backseat. Almost two hundred pounds had been rendered down into an intimate five, though I still imagined a complete man inside the box, like a genie who would appear in a furl of smoke, a captive to other people’s desires. To my brother’s and sister’s relief I had taken charge of the New Hampshire half of the scattering, and later this summer, early August, we would gather at the beach and as a family would conclude the rest into the ocean. It had been more than twenty-five years since my graduation from Exeter. The number boggled. Those intervening years, if a person, would be old enough to get married and have a family while my legal separation from Ashley was a colicky two-month-old and Bea was a few weeks away from giving birth to straight-up extortion. In death my father and Andy could share the same crib, with my mother babysitting as a high school senior. Time is a form of propagation. It
takes from us its cuttings and strikes the stem into the earth. Here! When we look back the shape bears a resemblance but is possessed by a different spirit, as if a third person has grown between the then and the now, memory’s holy ghost.
When Exeter appeared, it looked the same, if quainter and more idyllic, a well-crafted old-fashioned New England boarding school rather than a stockade in Federal brick. The students walking along Front Street came across as both younger and older than the boys and girls in my day, almost parading like they were performing their daily accomplishment. The natural striving unnerved me. I tried to warn them against me, this cautionary tale rolling by in a Land Cruiser. I imagined Andy here, the vision chilling me, like a cold drip from the back of my mind. “I got hit by a fucking bus.” Sometimes I continued the story for him. In college. At cocktail parties. On a first date. I got hit by a bus once. Yep. Like a bus bus. Like a big bus. On Fifth Avenue. Slammed right into me and sent me flying. Swear to God. Shoes off and everything. Standing on the curb, tired and hungover, and I guess I leaned forward, or stepped forward, probably just lost my balance and
bam!
this bus, this fucking bus, hits me. No question the story would evolve over the years, versions where Andy would stretch the truth for the sake of a cute girl’s smile, where he would blame his forgetfulness on the whole being-hit-by-a-bus thing, where he would tell people that every day since was a gift, maybe over dinner and too much wine, claiming that it had changed him, that something in him had been jostled clear and he became, well, lighter and heavier, if that made sense. And then Andy would go mum, seized by a thought no longer within reach. Amazing how a whole life, a thousand complicated emotions and regrets, can boil down into a single ache. The GPS cheered my arrival, her voice revealing a hint of surprise, like she had doubted me all the way.
I parked in front of Jeremiah Smith Hall. The headmaster wanted me to say a quick hello, and walking up those stairs and into that building, my old insecurities returned stronger than ever but now with the added pleasure of being chained around the ankle of a middle-aged man. Awkward past, meet disappointing future. By the time I lugged myself up to his office, I was apologetic with sweat.
“Philip Topping,” he said, as though instilling truth into my name. He was a year into the job and younger than me and already had the bearing of a man who represented the beloved George Stone era. He absorbed my humidity with an unflappable smile. “How was the drive?”
“Fine.”
He crossed his arms. “Too many sad occasions lately.”
I nodded.
“First your father, and then Andy Dyer. Just terrible. How is Mr. Dyer doing?”
“Okay, I suppose,” though I had no idea. The only contact I had from A. N. Dyer after the funeral was a short letter asking if Andy had said anything right before he died, and since I had already misled him once with my father, I didn’t quite trust myself again. That’s not true. Maybe I wanted A. N. Dyer to suffer over the unknown facts, to turn his imagination against himself. Either way, not a word had passed between us.
“The whole school is in shock,” George Stone said. “We had our own memorial service, and Richard and Jamie Dyer came up, which was nice, to have them here as part of the Exeter family, and they stayed on for the A. N. Dyer Award, what with it being the fiftieth anniversary of
Ampersand
, and we decided to have no Veck, just Richard and Jamie announcing the winner. It was very moving. And I think it helped. There’s going to be a scholarship in Andy’s name.”
Did he expect a contribution?
“Tough, tough times,” he continued. “You know your father co-headed the search committee that hired me. I got to know him before his health turned. We had lunch in New York, the two of us. Such a wonderful, dedicated trustee. His kind is always missed.”
When was the last time I had lunch with my father? The early nineties maybe. “I appreciate you letting us do this, with the ashes. I imagine it’s out of the ordinary but I’ll be discreet, I promise. It’s more of a gesture than anything else.”
“Are other family members coming?”
“No, just me—well, Bertram McIntyre will be there.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” George Stone grinned despite himself, like
he had trained over the years to be a sober and all-encompassing citizen, a good, solid man, when in reality he was still stuck in high school. “I’ll be thinking of your father—what time?”
“Sunset.”
“Perfect.”
We shook hands and I left, relieved to be rid of his young authority. It was only four o’clock, so I drove to the Exeter Inn and tried to have a nap and failing that tried to call my children. I had taken on twice-a-week responsibilities. But Rufus and Eloise’s innocence only made my guilt seem more pronounced and I stumbled near tears whenever in their company. Who needs a father like that? So after almost dialing, I put the phone down. Around 6:15
P.M
.—I was very focused on that digital clock—after thirty minutes of five-minute deadlines, I got up and showered, stirred only by the last second.
Bertram McIntyre was waiting outside the main entrance of the church. In blazer and tie, he was schoolboy immemorial, though with a stylish accent of blue scarf. He appeared older but essentially unchanged since my days, more pinched around the shoulders perhaps, as if plucked from the earth by a giant. But when he saw me he let loose with a smile that flicked his age into the nearby bushes, like growing old was a nasty habit. Not only did he take my hand but he squeezed my arm. For a moment I thought I was his favorite student. “Philip Topping,” he squeaked.
“Hello, Mr. McIntyre.”
“Bertie now, please. So good to see you, Philip, so good.” His enthusiasm was notched with an emotion that students only heard when he read certain passages aloud, like the living wall of whales in
Moby-Dick
with their endless circling during the slaughter—Mr. McIntyre, Bertie, would choke up and we students would jab our tongues in unison. “You look well,” he told me.
“I wish I felt better,” I answered, my honesty unexpected.
He pointed to the box. “Is that him?”
“Yes.” I made a show of weighing its heft.
Mr. McIntyre nodded, his mouth trying to maintain an unbiased grin. He placed his right hand on top of the box and proclaimed, “The
words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo,” and then turned toward the church entrance and said, “Shall we?”
Among all the surrounding brick, Phillips Church stood its neo-Gothic ground, a piece of humble geometric granite: rectangle, triangle, square. It seemed the sole survivor of an apocryphal past. The church’s squat tower was defensive in nature and I could imagine archers firing into Exeter’s civilizing horde, every arrow espousing an equation from below. Inside, the vaulted ceiling ribbed with wood and the lung-like organ pipes gave the impression of being swallowed whole by a living creature and you were satisfied to be its bait, a different feeling from St. James, which had me fighting all the way. During communion at Andy’s funeral, I remember shuffling down from those last rows and Jeanie Spokes sidling up to me. “Hi,” she whispered like she was uncrumpling a note.
I frowned hello.
“I’ve been wanting to talk,” she said.
I continued frowning.
“You were there, when it happened.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m sorry, but did he seem upset?”
I tried to shush her with my eyes.
“I just, I need to know,” she said, her eyes red-rimmed, as if she had exhausted her supply of tears and had now moved on to blood.
It was taking forever to get to the front. Reverend Rushton must have been thrilled with the turnout.
“Before it happened,” she went on, “did he seem upset?”
“I’m not sure,” I responded. “But this isn’t the place.”
“Like do you think it was totally an accident?”
Was there an accusation in her tone? I turned to gauge her expression, but she was busy matching her pace to the shamble on the floor. Did she recognize my scuffed wingtips? They were three sizes too big, my feet almost embarrassingly small, and with every step my heel lifted and chafed, lifted and chafed. “I’m not sure what really happened,” I said.
“But do you think he could have stepped out on purpose?”
The people in front of us approached the altar and kneeled.
“The body of Christ.”
“The blood of Christ.”
“Do you think he could have …”
On my left the Dyer boys clutched their father like brackets, trying to hold him close without taking complete ownership, while in the pew behind, Isabel seemed to study them as though diagramming a simple yet complicated sentence.
These men are my boys
. Space opened up and I went ahead and kneeled, my ankles popping free. Jeanie soon joined me. It was obvious this was her first communion. She cribbed my pose and loudly chewed the wafer, her eyes expressing only the wonder at not being struck down by lightning. And maybe this gave her the boldness to pause in front of A. N. Dyer’s pew and say, “I loved your son,” in the tone of a blameworthy bride. But she was innocent and later I told her so. Repeatedly. I probably told her too much. But we all told Jeanie Spokes too much, even Andrew, who in exchange wanted to know everything about Andy. Eventually she disregarded our basic comfort and insisted on greater guilt, crafting her memoir
Ellipsis
around the biography of A. N. Dyer. It was something she called memeography, a term that thank goodness never took. Walking back to her pew, did she even notice Emmett staring at her?
In Phillips Church Bertram McIntyre gripped my arm with a sweet senior touch and led me to a heavy wooden door. “I have my own key,” he said proudly. “Not that I can climb those stairs anymore. But in my more devout days I had a regular habit of going up for a drink and a cigar. My own secret clubhouse. And when your father visited, he would join me. It’s a humble yet lovely view.” Mr. McIntyre flicked on the lights and peered up a narrow stone stairwell. “At the top is a trapdoor. You’ll need this key”—he specified which one—“to unlock it.” The keys were ringed around a pocketknife, its weight and smoothness instantly enviable.
“Up there?” I asked.
“There’s no nun waiting, I promise,” he said.
“Let’s hope not.”
“I’ll go and watch from the street.”
“Okay.”
“And maybe afterward we can get a drink.”
“I’d like that.”