“Have you talked to Hesta lately?” he asked her.
“Thomas, that’s bad,” said Barbara. He felt himself going weaker and colder with shame. “She hasn’t said anything to me at all since Saturday. What happened?”
“I guess I was stupid,” he said. “Could you talk to her for me?”
“Did you do something wrong?”
“I guess so.”
“I could tell her you’re sorry,” said Barbara. “That’s not much.”
“That’s why I’m calling you,” said Thomas. “What else can I do?”
“Wait and see,” said Barbara. “She may never forgive you. You might just have to learn a lesson the hard way.”
Thomas was tired of learning lessons.
Barbara had to go to gymnastics. Thomas hung up and went immediately to basketball practice, where he hit eight out of nine shots from the floor and got called for seven fouls during the intrasquad scrimmage.
“There’s a new fire in Boatwright,” said Coach McPhee. “I wish we could just turn down the thermostat a little.”
After practice, Thomas stayed and shot free throws. He hit thirty-eight out of fifty, and he and Coach McPhee talked about women.
“You remember how you told me about that girl in the other apartment?” said Thomas. “The one you used to watch when you were my age?”
“I knew I’d regret mentioning her,” said Coach McPhee. He was joking.
“I was just wondering,” said Thomas, “if you ever knew her name.”
Coach McPhee was surprised by the question. “I don’t think so,” he said. “She went to a girls’ school. What brought this up?”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “It just seems easier to like girls in general than to like one in particular.” It was hard to explain. “If you’d known her name, somehow that would have made it less funny. To be watching her in private like that. To be using her. I don’t know what I mean.”
Coach McPhee didn’t answer. He took a couple of shots himself before he threw the ball back to Thomas.
“So you’re still bothered by some girl trouble,” said Coach McPhee.
“Yes sir.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“It’s embarrassing,” said Thomas. He wanted to talk, but he didn’t know where to start.
Coach McPhee said it didn’t matter. “I’ve heard the story many times before,” he said. “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wants girl back but she won’t come.”
“That’s it,” said Thomas.
“Exercise and abstinence are the best cures,” said Coach McPhee. “Take my word for it.” He dribbled the length of the court and shot a lay-up, leaving Thomas to rebound his own shots.
Thomas felt like a freak. All the guys just moved from girl to girl without a qualm. Coach McPhee lost his wife and didn’t even blink. Nobody at Montpelier seemed to understand how much he was hurting. Maybe if he’d been at home he could have talked about it with Dad, but not over the telephone, not on the dorm with people walking by. The guy he really wanted to see was Mr. Warden, his advisor, who was away to prepare for his wife’s funeral. Mr. Warden seemed to be the only one who could understand what it meant to grieve.
Coach McPhee dribbled back up the court.
“You’re better off without them,” he said. “Trust me.”
“You’re right,” said Thomas. “I’m never going to fool with girls again.” He shot the basketball. Coach McPhee rebounded and shot one himself.
“Do you think I’ll be able to keep that promise?” Thomas asked him.
“No way,” said Coach McPhee. They both laughed.
“That’s the spirit,” said the coach.
But Thomas felt like an actor who was only providing his audience what it wanted. He couldn’t stand thinking that she hated him so much, and he couldn’t find anybody who could sympathize.
The Final Act
SCENE 1
Warden sat in his office and looked out the window at the crusting snow. He knew he would be looking at the same snow in March, even with the inevitable January thaw that would give everyone a false hope of spring before the arctic wind currents shifted and again forced everyone into hats and gloves and scarves.
It was Wednesday, December 15. Cynthia had been dead for nine days. It was over. Lawrence and Margaret had come up from Atlanta for the funeral. Joseph Moore, his literary agent, had flown in from New York. There had been many friends—editors, other writers, people from the university, women Cynthia had known in school. For a week his apartment had been jammed with casseroles and cakes and hams and congealed salads and coffee and beer and wine. He had been surprised at how much publicity there was; Time magazine even ran a short piece. People he had never met had written him notes of sympathy. Television crews had come out for interviews.
Warden had received a kind word from every person he knew in the world during the past week, it seemed, except for one.
Harold Cunningham.
His father-in-law had attended the funeral. It was held by the graveside at the Warden family’s plot in Charlottesville. Harold had come, had rebuffed Warden’s invitation to sit with the rest of his family, had left after delivering only one brutal line to Warden.
“She would still be alive today,” Harold had said, “if she had not married you.”
Warden had been convicting himself on the same charge for days. Why had he been so selfish as to bring her to Montpelier? Why had he not remained in the theater with her that afternoon? But the result of Harold’s accusation was to show Warden the absurdity of such thinking. Harold had accomplished the opposite of his mission; he had helped Warden start to forgive himself.
That was the past. It was Wednesday, December 15. Cynthia had been dead for nine days. It was over.
It was over, he
