The Human Stain

“It's all that's left of her.”

“There's the revolver. That's left of her. There's the bullets, Harry. She left that.”

“The way she lived,” he said, sounding suddenly at the edge of tears.

“The way she lived is the way she died. It's why she died.”

“You've got to give me the diary,” he said.

“No. It's bad enough we even came here.”

“Destroy it, destroy it, and I just don't know what.”

“I'm only doing what is best for you.”

“What does she say?”

“It doesn't bear repeating.”

“Oh, God,” he said.

“Eat. You have to eat something. Those pancakes look good.”

“My daughter,” he said.

“You did all you could.”

“I should have taken her away when she was six years old.”

“You didn't know. How could you know what was going to be?”

“I should never have left her with that woman.”

“And we should never have come up here,” his companion said. “All you have to do now is get sick up here. Then the thing will be complete.”

“I want the ashes.”

“They should have buried the ashes. In there. With her. I don't know why they didn't.”

“I want the ashes, Syl. Those are my grandkids. That's all I've got left to show for everything.”

“I've taken care of the ashes.”

“No!”

“You didn't need those ashes. You've been through enough. I will not have something happening to you. Those ashes are not coming on the plane.”

“What did you do?”

“I took care of them,” she said. “I was respectful. But they're gone.”

“Oh, my God.”

“That's over,” she told him. “It's all over. You did your duty. You did more than your duty. You don't need any more. Now let's you eat something. I packed the room up. I paid. Now there's just getting you home.”

“Oh, you are the best, Sylvia, the very best.”

“I don't want you hurt anymore. I will not let them hurt you.”

“You are the best.”

“Try and eat. Those look real good.”

“Want some?”

“No,” she said, “I want you to eat.”

“I can't eat it all.”

“Use the syrup. Here, I'll do it, I'll pour it.”

I waited for them outside, on the green, and then when I saw the wheelchair coming through the restaurant door, I crossed the street and, as she was wheeling him away from Pauline's Place, I introduced myself, walking alongside him as I spoke. “I live here. I knew your daughter. Only slightly, but I met her several times. I was at the funeral yesterday. I saw you there. I want to express my condolences.”

He was a large man with a large frame, much larger than he'd seemed slumped over in the chair at the funeral. He was probably well over six feet, but with the look on his stern, strongly boned face (Faunia's inexpressive face, hers exactly — the thin lips, the steep chin, the sharp aquiline nose, the same blue, deep-set eyes, and above them, framing the pale lashes, that same puff of flesh, that same fullness that had struck me out at the dairy farm as her one exotic marking, her face's only emblem of allure)—with the look of a man sentenced not just to imprisonment in that chair but condemned to some even greater anguish for the rest of his days. Big as he was, or once had been, there was nothing left of him but his fear. I saw that fear at the back of his gaze the instant he looked up to thank me. “You're very kind,” he said.

He was probably about my age, but there was evidence of a privileged New England childhood in his speech that dated back to long before either of us was born. I'd recognized it earlier in the restaurant — tethered, by that speech alone, by the patterns of moneyed, quasi-Anglified speech, to the decorous conventions of an entirely other America.

“Are you Faunia's stepmother?” That seemed as good a way as any to get her attention — and to get her perhaps to slow down. I assumed they were on their way back to the College Arms, around the corner from the green.

“This is Sylvia,” he said.

“I wonder if you could stop,” I said to Sylvia, “so I could talk to him.”

“We're catching a plane,” she told me.

Since she was so clearly determined to rid him of me then and there, I said — while still keeping pace with the wheelchair—“Coleman Silk was my friend. He did not drive his car off the road. He couldn't have. Not like that. His car was forced off the road. I know who is responsible for the death of your daughter. It wasn't Coleman Silk.”

“Stop pushing me. Sylvia, stop pushing a minute.”

“No,” she said. “This is insane. This is enough.”

“It was her ex-husband,” I said to him. “It was Farley.”

“No,” he said weakly, as though I'd shot him. “No — no.”

“Sir!” She had stopped, all right, but the hand that wasn't holding tight to the wheelchair had reached up to take me by the lapel. She was short and slight, a young Filipino woman with a small, implacable, pale brown face, and I could see from the dark determination of her fearless eyes that the disorder of human affairs was not allowed to intrude anywhere near what was hers to protect.

“Can't you stop for one moment?” I asked her. “Can't we go over to the green and sit there and talk?”

“The man is not well. You are taxing the strength of a man who is seriously ill.”

“But you have a diary belonging to Faunia.”

“We do not.”

“You have a revolver belonging to Faunia.”

“Sir, go away. Sir, leave him alone, I am warning you!” And here she pushed at me — with the hand that had been holding my jacket, she shoved me away.

“She got that gun,” I said, “to protect herself against Farley.”

Sharply, she replied, “The poor thing.”

I didn't know what to do then except to follow them around the corner until they reached the porch of the inn. Faunia's father was weeping openly now.

When she turned to find me still there, she said, “You have done enough damage. Go or I will call the police.” There was great ferocity in this tiny person. I understood it: keeping him alive appeared to require no less.

“Don't destroy that diary,” I said to her. “There is a record there—”

“Filth! There is a record there of filth!”

“Syl, Sylvia—”

“All of them, her, the brother, the mother, the stepfather — the whole bunch of them, trampling on this man his whole life. They have robbed him. They have deceived him. They have humiliated him. His daughter was a criminal. Got pregnant and had a child at sixteen — a child she abandoned to an orphan asylum. A child her father would have raised. She was a common whore. Guns and men and drugs and filth and sex. The money he gave her — what did she do with that money?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything about an orphan asylum. I don't know anything about any money.”

“Drugs! She stole it for drugs!”

“I don't know anything about that.”

“That whole family — filth! Have some pity, please!”

I turned to him. “I want the person responsible for these deaths to be held legally accountable. Coleman Silk