do I fit? where do I go from here?
He had been in Albany, doing some press work for the Democratic Party, when Max Farrago had called. Out of the ether. Itâs basically a scissors-and-paste deal, Farrago had said, but keep in mind that itâs White House scissors and White House paste. It was a tough thing to decline: the only thing that mystified him now was why he had been singled out. His father, of courseâthe recommendation of some old family friend, some power broker, whom he had never been able to identify. Even the dead, he thought, donât necessarily lose their touch.
He sat behind his desk again and idly picked up the Post . He leafed through the inside pages.
And there it was.
There it was.
An inside page, lower left column, no more than a couple of dark inches of type.
He read it once, twice, a third time.
Then he picked up his telephone and called Marcia.
She answered yawning, still half asleep.
âDid you see the morning paper?â he asked. âMy old warrior apparently killed himself in a swimming pool at a motel.â
She was silent for a time. He could see her stretched across the bed, the telephone in her hand; he could feel her fumble for something to say. What do you say? he wondered. Suicide by drowning . By drowning, he thought. Major General Walter F. Burckhardt had had a long and distinguished career in the Air Force . He picked up his scissors in one hand and thought: Do people choose that as a way out?
âIâm sorry, John. Was there family?â
âIt mentions a wife somewhere,â Thorne said. Drowning: what kind of fucking sense did that make?
âIâm sorry,â she said again.
He mumbled something, hung up, snipped the item from the newspaper. Why? Jesus, why? Why did anybody want to kill himself? Loneliness, despair, the end of a long line of rejection, intolerable humiliation, dishonorâwere any of these applicable to Burckhardt? He saw a small middle-aged man at a funeral. A handshake on a rainy dying day. A clap on the shoulder, a touch. Gentle, solicitous, sincere. Of all things, sincere. Ben Thorne was a great man . It was misty, uncertain, the intangible web of a memory. You step to the edge of the pool, then what? Do you jump in? or do you walk the steps at the shallow end and just keep on strolling? What state of mind? Christ almighty, what state of mind?
And the wife, the wife he had never seen. Had she been with Burckhardt in the motel? Had she discovered him lying in the pool?
He shut his eyes: a man floating in the fake aquamarine of a pool, a corpse drifting through filtered chemicals, what condition of the heart, what poisoned state of mind, what emotional disintegration, spiritual decayâmadness?
Itâs vital I see you, John .
Vital, he thought.
Well: it couldnât be vital now, could it?
He fingered the clipping and looked at the photograph of his father that hung near the window. It was a stern portrait taken some months before the senatorâs death. The eyes were humorless, lifeless, the expression in them numb and at the same time vaguely inquisitorial, as if the man had spent his life asking questions to which he knew there were no answers. It wasnât the man Thorne remembered. He had been upright, moral, qualities that might have been tedious in themselves, but they had been offset by a sense of humor.
The only thing Ben Thorne had never been heard to joke about in his life was the Constitution of the United States. He knew the document backward, forward, sideways, by heart. Thorne remembered how, as a child, he had been obliged to listen again and again to the historic background of the document ⦠a memory burned into him like a cinder in his brain. The question-and-answer sessions. The quizzes. Who was the first postmaster of the United States? Who printed the Declaration of Independence? Why was Sam Adams not chosen to be a delegate to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention?
He had been in Albany, doing some press work for the Democratic Party, when Max Farrago had called. Out of the ether. Itâs basically a scissors-and-paste deal, Farrago had said, but keep in mind that itâs White House scissors and White House paste. It was a tough thing to decline: the only thing that mystified him now was why he had been singled out. His father, of courseâthe recommendation of some old family friend, some power broker, whom he had never been able to identify. Even the dead, he thought, donât necessarily lose their touch.
He sat behind his desk again and idly picked up the Post . He leafed through the inside pages.
And there it was.
There it was.
An inside page, lower left column, no more than a couple of dark inches of type.
He read it once, twice, a third time.
Then he picked up his telephone and called Marcia.
She answered yawning, still half asleep.
âDid you see the morning paper?â he asked. âMy old warrior apparently killed himself in a swimming pool at a motel.â
She was silent for a time. He could see her stretched across the bed, the telephone in her hand; he could feel her fumble for something to say. What do you say? he wondered. Suicide by drowning . By drowning, he thought. Major General Walter F. Burckhardt had had a long and distinguished career in the Air Force . He picked up his scissors in one hand and thought: Do people choose that as a way out?
âIâm sorry, John. Was there family?â
âIt mentions a wife somewhere,â Thorne said. Drowning: what kind of fucking sense did that make?
âIâm sorry,â she said again.
He mumbled something, hung up, snipped the item from the newspaper. Why? Jesus, why? Why did anybody want to kill himself? Loneliness, despair, the end of a long line of rejection, intolerable humiliation, dishonorâwere any of these applicable to Burckhardt? He saw a small middle-aged man at a funeral. A handshake on a rainy dying day. A clap on the shoulder, a touch. Gentle, solicitous, sincere. Of all things, sincere. Ben Thorne was a great man . It was misty, uncertain, the intangible web of a memory. You step to the edge of the pool, then what? Do you jump in? or do you walk the steps at the shallow end and just keep on strolling? What state of mind? Christ almighty, what state of mind?
And the wife, the wife he had never seen. Had she been with Burckhardt in the motel? Had she discovered him lying in the pool?
He shut his eyes: a man floating in the fake aquamarine of a pool, a corpse drifting through filtered chemicals, what condition of the heart, what poisoned state of mind, what emotional disintegration, spiritual decayâmadness?
Itâs vital I see you, John .
Vital, he thought.
Well: it couldnât be vital now, could it?
He fingered the clipping and looked at the photograph of his father that hung near the window. It was a stern portrait taken some months before the senatorâs death. The eyes were humorless, lifeless, the expression in them numb and at the same time vaguely inquisitorial, as if the man had spent his life asking questions to which he knew there were no answers. It wasnât the man Thorne remembered. He had been upright, moral, qualities that might have been tedious in themselves, but they had been offset by a sense of humor.
The only thing Ben Thorne had never been heard to joke about in his life was the Constitution of the United States. He knew the document backward, forward, sideways, by heart. Thorne remembered how, as a child, he had been obliged to listen again and again to the historic background of the document ⦠a memory burned into him like a cinder in his brain. The question-and-answer sessions. The quizzes. Who was the first postmaster of the United States? Who printed the Declaration of Independence? Why was Sam Adams not chosen to be a delegate to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention?
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