Valediction Part 1

Valediction.

by Robert B. Parker.

For Joan,

like gold to airy thinness beat Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

CHAPTER 1.

There were at least three kinds of cops in Harvard Yard: a scattering of Cambridge cops, gray-haired mostly, with faces out of County Mayo; portly old men in brown uniforms and no sidearms who guarded the gates; and squadrons of Harvard University police who wore tailored blue uniforms and expensive black gun belts, and looked like graduates of the Los Angeles Police Academy. It was Harvard commencement, and if the WASPs began to run amok, Harvard was ready. I was ready too. I had a Smith & Wesson Chief's Special clipped onto my belt just back of my right pants pocket where the b.u.t.t caused only a modest break in the line of my silk tweed jacket. The jacket was off-white with a faint blue weave and came from Brooks Brothers. It wasn't my favorite, but the choices are not wide in off-the-rack size 48's.

On a folding chair among many many folding chairs set up on the broad lawn between Widener Library and Memorial Church, Susan Silverman sat in a black gown and a funny-looking mortarboard and waited for the formal award of her Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I was there to watch and although I had a seating ticket I found myself getting restless very early and began to wander around the yard and look at the preparations for postcammencement festivities when graduates are congratulated and cla.s.ses are reunited and funds are raised.

All about me the subdued and confident honk of affluent Yankee voices, male and female, murmured a steady counterpoint to the Latin dissertation being delivered from the commencement platform and redelivered over speakers throughout the area. It had been the excitement of the Latin address that had initially got me up and walking around and eyeing the barrels of free beer hooked to the taps, ready to be broached when the graduates were official.

The Latin address gave way to an English disquisition on the Legacy of Confusion, which in turn gave way to an English address on the Moral Life. On the steps of Boylston Hall a bunch of men in top hats and tails were having their pictures taken with a bunch of women in white dresses and red sashes. I went into the bas.e.m.e.nt of Boylston Hall to use the men's room. No one else was there. Maybe one didn't do that at a Harvard commencement. Maybe Harvard people didn't do that at all.

Finally it was over and Susan met me by the beer table, pushing her way past a procession from Quincy House that was being led out by u guy blowing bagpipes.

"How do you like it so far," she said.

I kissed her on the mouth. "I don't know that I've ever screwed a doctor," I said.

She nodded. "Yes, I knew you'd have just the right thing ready to say."

Even in her cap and gown Susan looked like a sunrise, extravagant and full of promise. Wherever she went things seemed, as they always did, to organize around her.

She smiled at me. "Shall we have some of the revolting chicken salad?"

"Your graduation," I said.

We had the chicken salad and a couple of free beers and watched everything and spoke very little. Susan was excited. I could see it in her face. She was looking at everything and barely eating. I looked mostly at her, as I always did, trying somehow to encompa.s.s the density and elegance of her. Never enough Never enough, I thought. It's like air, you never tire of breathing it. It's like air, you never tire of breathing it.

"Did you like the ceremony?" Susan said.

I nodded. "The Latin dissertation made my blood race."

"But it really was wonderful, don't you think?"

I shrugged.

"I know it's silly, but it's very exciting. It's full of tradition and it makes me feel like a real part of something. It's what a graduation ought to be."

"And you are now a doctor. Dr. Silverman. You like that?"

She nodded.

Around the yard, hanging from old brick buildings, were signs designating cla.s.s years -1957, 1976-and old grads were gathering under those banners to talk about how fast they could run when they were young, and get zonkered on b.l.o.o.d.y Marys and vodka martinis in clear plastic cups.

"You going back to D.C.?" I asked it casually, glancing around at the Radcliffe graduates. But my stomach wasn't casual when I said it. My stomach was clenched tight and full of dread.

Susan shook her head a little vaguely, one of those little head gestures she made that meant neither yes nor no.

"Chicken salad really isn't very good, is it?" she said.

"No, it's awful," I said. "But the servings are small."

CHAPTER 2.

At six o'clock we were sitting at the counter in my kitchen sharing a victory bottle of Cuvee Dom Perignon, 1971.

"Veritas, " I said to Susan. She smiled and we drank. My kitchen window was open and the breeze that blew off the Charles River basin moved a few of the outer curls on Susan's dark hair. It had been sunny all day, but now it was ominous-looking outside with dark clouds, and the breeze was chilly.

Between us on a large plate there was French bread and wheat crackers and goat cheese, milk-white with a dark outer coating, and some nectarines and a bunch of pale green seedless grapes.

Susan said, "I've taken a job in San Francisco."

I put the gla.s.s down on the counter. I could feel myself begin to shrink inward.

"I'm leaving tonight," she said. "I had planned to stay the night with you and tell you in the morning, but I can't. I can't not tell you."

"How long," I said.

"I don't know. I've thought about it for a long time. All the last year in Washington when I was doing my internship."

It began to rain outside my kitchen window. The rain coming straight down from the darkened sky, quietly, with a soft hiss.

"I have to be alone," Susan said.

"For how long?"

"I don't know. You can't ask me, because I really don't."

"I'll visit you."

"Not right away. I have to be by myself. For a while anyway, I don't want you to know my address."

Bubbles continued to drift up from the bottom of the champagne gla.s.s, s.p.a.ced more as the champagne flattened, coming spa.r.s.ely and with leisure. Neither of us drank.

"You have a place to stay out there?"

"Yes. I've arranged that already."

Her hair stirred again. The wind was cold now, and damp from the rain that moved steadily downward through it. One lightning flash flared a moment at the window and then, an appreciable time later, the thunder rolled in behind it.

"I called Paul," Susan said. "He'll be here in the morning. I didn't want you to be alone." I nodded. The curtains at the kitchen window moved in the cold breeze. Susan stood up. I stood with her.

"I'm going to go now," she said. I nodded.

She put her arms around me and said, "I do love you."

"I love you."

She squeezed me and put her cheek against mine. Then she stepped away and turned and walked toward the door.

"I'll call you," she said, "when I get to San Francisco."

"Yes."

She opened the door and looked back at me.

"Are you all right," she said. I shook my head.

"Paul will come tomorrow," she said. "I'll call you soon."

Then she went out and closed the door and I was alone with my soul dwindled to icy stillness at the densely compacted center of myself.

CHAPTER 3.

When Paul Giacomin arrived I was still sitting at the counter. The champagne bottle was full of flat champagne and the two gla.s.ses, half drunk, were beside it. I was drinking coffee. Outside, the rain fell with undeviating purpose.

Paul put his suitcase down and came over. "How are you," he said.

I shook my head. "Susan gone?" he said.

I nodded. "Last night," I said.

He started the burner under the hot water. "You sleep?" he said.

"No."

"You understand this?" Paul said. The water heated quickly because I had just used some. He poured the boiling water into a cup and added a spoonful of coffee, and stirred. He always made coffee that way.

"Yes," I said. I stood and went and looked out the window in the living room. It was raining out there too.

"I'm willing to listen if you want to talk about it," Paul said. "Or I'm willing to shut up if you want to do that."

"Talking may be overrated," I said.

"Maybe," Paul said. "But you'll think about it. Whether or not you talk is just whether or not you share what you're thinking."

"Smarta.s.s college kid," I said.

The morning was a dark background on Marlborough Street, people going to work carried colorful striped umbrellas, students going to summer school wore blue and green and yellow slickers, the flowers in the small yards glistened in the rain and the street itself gleamed wetly. The traffic was mostly cabs and the cabs were mostly yellow.

"When she went to Washington," I said, "and did her predoctoral internship she got a taste of being a full person, n.o.body's wife, n.o.body's girlfriend, n.o.body's employee, but a full professional person whose worth was in her knowledge and her insight and her compa.s.sion."

Paul sipped his coffee. I leaned my head against the window and watched the street glisten.

"She couldn't be that with you?" Paul said.

"I think she's trying to find out what she can be," I said. "I have . . . I have a view of the world that is pretty fully formed . . . and I cling to that view pretty hard. It doesn't leave Susan too much room. Or you."

"I don't think Susan disagrees with too much of what you hold to be self-evident," Paul said.

I shrugged.

"On the other hand, perhaps she'd like to arrive at those truths herself."

"Yes," I said. "Or maybe think her own thoughts and not have to compare them with mine."

Paul came and stood beside me and looked down at Marlborough Street with me.

"You wondering if maybe you've been a little too rigid?" Paul said.

"I'm considering the possibility that there are ways to be a good person that I hadn't thought of," I said.

"Might help loosen things up for you," Paul said. "It must always have been hard being you."

"Not as hard as this," I said.