She sat down primly, her hands clasped in her lap, and stared at the floor.
“Oh, Jake, what happened to it all?” she said, without looking up. “Why did it shrivel up and die like
that? Why were we betrayed so? You, Teddy, Chief, all the things that had meaning for me were
ripped out of my life.”
“We all took a beating,” I said. “Poor old Teddy got the worst of it.”
“Teddy,” she said. “Dear, sweet Teddy. He didn?t give a damn for the Findley tradition. In one of his
letters from Vietnam he said that when you two got back, he was going to buy a piece of land out on
Oceanby and the two of you were going to become beach bums. He said he was tired of being a
Findley. It was all just a big joke to him.”
“We talked about that a lot,” I said. “Sometimes I think he was halfway serious.”
“He was serious,” she said, sitting up for a moment. “Can?t you just see it? The three of us out there
telling the world to drop dead?” She looked up at me and tried to bend the corners of her mouth into a
smile. “You see, I always knew you?d come back here, Jake. Sooner or later Teddy would get you
back for me. Only what I thought was, it was a glorious fantasy, not a nightmare. Then Teddy died
and the nightmare started and it never ended and it keeps getting worse.”
She picked at a speck of dust for a moment and then said, “The gods are perverse. They give lollipops
to children and take them away after the first lick.”
I wanted to disagree with her; but I couldn?t. What she said was true. It?s called growing up. In her
own way, Doe had resisted that. Now it was all catching up to her at once and I felt suddenly
burdened by her sadness. Not because of Raines? death—there was nothing to be done about that—
hut because of what they didn?t have when he was alive; because the bright promises of youth had
become elusive; because the promises of the heart had been broken. I remembered Mufalatta „s story
about the two violins. She was playing a sad tune and my violin was answering.
“Harry knew from the start that he was second choice,” she went on. “I never deceived him about that.
But I tried. In the beginning we both tried real hard. Then Chief got more and more demanding and
Titan started talking politics and Harry started changing, day by day by day, and pretty soon I was just
part of the territory to him. Just another plaque on the wall. I wanted the commitment, Jake. Oh God,
how I wanted that. And now I want him back. I want to tell him I?m sorry that it was all a. . . a.
She shook her head, trying to find a way to end the sentence, so I ended it for her.
“An error in judgment?” I suggested.
She looked up at me and said, “Au error in judgment? What a cheap way to sum tip a life.”
I was trying to think of a way to tell her about Sam Donleavy, but I didn?t have a chance to get around
to it.
