Warden shook the memory out of his head. It was Wednesday, December 15. Cynthia had been dead for nine days. It was time for him to get on with his own life. It was time to remember the rest of the world. Now it was time to remember his vocation.
He looked at the blank paper in front of him. He was trying to write, but there was nothing to write. His wife was dead and buried. He had thought that nothing could be worse than knowing she was ill, and he had been wrong. This absence was worse. Two days ago he had read that most wives stay with husbands who have multiple sclerosis while most men leave their sick wives. Such betrayal was inconceivable to him, as untenable as the abstract thoughts of euthanasia he had abandoned after the briefest of flirtations. He had chosen to stay with Cynthia for better or for worse. But she had left unexpectedly.
It was 10:15 in the morning. Boys walked to dormitories. A normal life occurred in the hallways and on the sidewalks around him. In half an hour he had a class to teach. And he was numb.
He heard a knock. It was Thomas Boatwright, his advisee. Warden had forgotten that he’d asked the boy to come by today. He seemed to be forgetting everything except his life with Cynthia, which he recalled constantly in agonizingly fresh detail.
For the moment, however, he turned his attention to the boy. Boatwright had been just as depressed as Warden himself for the past week. You could tell it in everything about him, from the way his head drooped to the way he dressed. Even today Warden noticed the grime on his jeans and the dirt on the old sweatshirt the boy had on. The kid’s hair was poorly washed and unkempt—unkempt for Boatwright, who was usually tidy—but his eyes still looked okay. No glaze, no hostility. This was a boy who wasn’t turning to drugs, Warden decided. He was a boy in some kind of spiritual pain, and it was Warden’s duty as Boatwright’s advisor to help if he could.
“Sit down, Thomas.” The boy took a chair beside the desk and sat with his blue hardback notebook and three thick textbooks in his lap. Warden caught a faint odor of funk. He decided not to ask about the last time the sweatshirt had been washed.
“I owe you an apology,” Warden said. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems that I haven’t paid any attention to yours. Is there anything bothering you? Anything you’d like to discuss with me?”
He saw the boy’s eyes brim with tears, saw the lashes blink them back before they could trickle onto his cheeks.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long,” said Boatwright. “But I thought it would be so unfair.”
“Why unfair?”
“Because of what happened to Mrs. Warden. It would be selfish of me to ask for your sympathy.”
Warden’s fingertips casually brushed the birthmark on the left side of his face.
“I can appreciate your thinking that way, Thomas,” said Warden. “But you’re doing me a favor right now. You’re giving me a chance to think about somebody besides myself.”
Boatwright managed a rueful grunt of recognition. “That’s all I’ve been thinking about, too.”
“What’s the trouble?”
The boy was hesitant at first, hard to get started in his narrative. But once he began, the whole story cascaded like effluvium out of his mouth. Warden could watch the weight depart from the boy’s shoulders as he talked, as the words tripped and fell and shoved one another for the chance finally to get out into the daylight.
“I didn’t know I was hurting her, you know?” he said. “I called her and then wrote her to apologize. She wrote back and it’s like she hates me. I always thought, you know, you could make up for your mistakes. But I can’t do anything. I keep calling, she won’t talk. I keep writing, she never answers. I feel like such an ass, and nobody around here seems to care. They act like I’m a wimp for even wanting to see her again. And all my dad can say is that there are plenty more fish in the sea.”
Warden wanted to tell him it would be all right, but it would have been the same, standard conventional wisdom Warden himself had found so unsatisfactory. They had both suffered a loss. They both needed time to recover.
“I’m sorry,” Warden said. “I know it hurts. And you know that I care.”
“Coach McPhee says the best thing to do is to pour myself into basketball. Physical exercise helps, he says.”
“That’s good advice. So does mental exercise. Schoolwork can be a fine distraction.”
“Yes sir.” He pulled out a cream-colored envelope from his notebook. “I got invited to tea at the Homestead tonight by the Somervilles,” he said. “Do you think it’s a mistake? I was just there two weeks ago.”
“I think the Somervilles are trying to look after us,” said Warden. “I got an invitation myself. Will you be there?”
“If practice is over in time, yes sir.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
Boatwright stood up to leave as though he had just been unshackled.
“Mr. Warden?”
“Yes?”
“Who’s going to be taking Mr. Farnham’s classes for good?”
Warden explained that they were looking for a qualified substitute, that if they could find none, the rest of the members of the department would divide the duties. “Or maybe Dean Kaufman and his wife,” he added.
“Could I make a request?”
