Finally you would not return.
A little later there would be a tasteful memorial service, with flowers and music and speeches and a printed program. After that, to judge from Wilkie’s visits to Skytop, you would be forgotten quite soon. In a few months nobody would even mention you; new prisoners would have arrived to fill the luxurious cells.
Anything but that, he thought; anything. His accidental drowning would be hard for Jenny and the children, but the shock and pain would pass, and they would remember him always as strong, vigorous, productive, and competent—not as a weak, whiny, damaged invalid. And for this memory to be intact, he must swim out to sea for the last time soon. He would have no trouble doing this: his hip hardly bothered him at all here, no doubt due to the warm weather. But more and more often the sudden sharp pains in his lower bowel came at night, and twice since they’d been in Key West he had seen splashes of fresh blood on the flowered “bathroom tissue”—a horrifying watery red.
He must not swim too far out, since it would be best that his body should be found, to end all speculation that he had vanished on purpose or been murdered. And, irrational as that might be, he did not want to lie on the ocean floor, nibbled disgustingly by fishes. He wanted to be buried in the plot he had bought in the Convers graveyard, under a granite stone and a towering fir, not far from the grave of his old friend Howard Hopkins.
Possibly, before this, there would be an autopsy. If so, the coroner might find the cancer Wilkie knew was there; but of course no one would realize that he had been aware of it. The most that might happen would be that someone—the Episcopal minister in Convers, for instance, at the memorial service—might speak of God’s providence in sparing Professor Walker a drawn-out, painful death.
It must be soon. Already, Wilkie realized bitterly, he had ceased to be reliably competent in one important area; soon, no doubt, he would lose his sexual drive completely. In his mind he heard a voice that had been silent in the world for nearly sixty years: the voice of his Scottish immigrant grandfather, Matthew Wilkie, after whom he had been named. The words were ones he had heard many times in his childhood, whenever—always reluctantly—he had to leave his grandparents’ farm and take the bus back to the city. But now they had a darker reverberation. “Willie-Boy,” his grandfather’s voice said, “it’s time to go.”
If no appropriate friend turned up by the end of January, he decided, Jenny would just have to depend on the children. Neither of them was ideal for this role, but together they might approximate the ideal: Ellen would be competent, and Billy would be sympathetic and kind.
And of course back in Convers there would be many friends to step in and support Jenny. They would help her to go on with what was left of her life, and gradually to take on the many responsibilities and duties she would have as Wilkie Walker’s widow and literary executor. With the help of his lawyer and literary agent, she would manage. She had an orderly mind: she knew where everything was filed and which articles he would want reprinted. She would say the right things to the right newspapers and fend off predatory journalists. She would refuse all access to that illiterate, bossy woman from Indiana who wanted to write his “inspiring life’s story”; she would work closely and efficiently with the professor in Maine whom Wilkie had already chosen as his official biographer. She would know instinctively which papers this young man should see and which should be held back.
About Jenny’s grasp of their personal finances he was less certain. Some years ago, when he first began to plan for retirement, Wilkie had tried to speak to her about their future. Since she was a woman, and twenty-four years younger than he, he had explained, the statistical odds were that he would predecease her by
A little later there would be a tasteful memorial service, with flowers and music and speeches and a printed program. After that, to judge from Wilkie’s visits to Skytop, you would be forgotten quite soon. In a few months nobody would even mention you; new prisoners would have arrived to fill the luxurious cells.
Anything but that, he thought; anything. His accidental drowning would be hard for Jenny and the children, but the shock and pain would pass, and they would remember him always as strong, vigorous, productive, and competent—not as a weak, whiny, damaged invalid. And for this memory to be intact, he must swim out to sea for the last time soon. He would have no trouble doing this: his hip hardly bothered him at all here, no doubt due to the warm weather. But more and more often the sudden sharp pains in his lower bowel came at night, and twice since they’d been in Key West he had seen splashes of fresh blood on the flowered “bathroom tissue”—a horrifying watery red.
He must not swim too far out, since it would be best that his body should be found, to end all speculation that he had vanished on purpose or been murdered. And, irrational as that might be, he did not want to lie on the ocean floor, nibbled disgustingly by fishes. He wanted to be buried in the plot he had bought in the Convers graveyard, under a granite stone and a towering fir, not far from the grave of his old friend Howard Hopkins.
Possibly, before this, there would be an autopsy. If so, the coroner might find the cancer Wilkie knew was there; but of course no one would realize that he had been aware of it. The most that might happen would be that someone—the Episcopal minister in Convers, for instance, at the memorial service—might speak of God’s providence in sparing Professor Walker a drawn-out, painful death.
It must be soon. Already, Wilkie realized bitterly, he had ceased to be reliably competent in one important area; soon, no doubt, he would lose his sexual drive completely. In his mind he heard a voice that had been silent in the world for nearly sixty years: the voice of his Scottish immigrant grandfather, Matthew Wilkie, after whom he had been named. The words were ones he had heard many times in his childhood, whenever—always reluctantly—he had to leave his grandparents’ farm and take the bus back to the city. But now they had a darker reverberation. “Willie-Boy,” his grandfather’s voice said, “it’s time to go.”
If no appropriate friend turned up by the end of January, he decided, Jenny would just have to depend on the children. Neither of them was ideal for this role, but together they might approximate the ideal: Ellen would be competent, and Billy would be sympathetic and kind.
And of course back in Convers there would be many friends to step in and support Jenny. They would help her to go on with what was left of her life, and gradually to take on the many responsibilities and duties she would have as Wilkie Walker’s widow and literary executor. With the help of his lawyer and literary agent, she would manage. She had an orderly mind: she knew where everything was filed and which articles he would want reprinted. She would say the right things to the right newspapers and fend off predatory journalists. She would refuse all access to that illiterate, bossy woman from Indiana who wanted to write his “inspiring life’s story”; she would work closely and efficiently with the professor in Maine whom Wilkie had already chosen as his official biographer. She would know instinctively which papers this young man should see and which should be held back.
About Jenny’s grasp of their personal finances he was less certain. Some years ago, when he first began to plan for retirement, Wilkie had tried to speak to her about their future. Since she was a woman, and twenty-four years younger than he, he had explained, the statistical odds were that he would predecease her by
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