My Last Innocent Year(74)
“My husband didn’t talk about it much,” she said, “but he liked being famous. The interviews, reviews, the fans. He liked seeing himself through other people’s eyes, what they projected onto him. Once that took over, the writing got harder. He used to go up to this cabin where he could be alone. The muse, he said. He was afraid of anything that might scare her away.”
My breath caught in my throat at the mention of the cabin. I wondered what had happened to it, if he still had it, if he’d been forced to sell it. I wondered how much Roxanne knew about what he had done, and what she thought about it. It was clear what Tom’s actions had cost his wife. Now I wondered what Connelly’s had cost his.
“But those long nights,” she went on. “The darkness and quiet. It weighed on him. I thought he’d found a way to balance the writing with his life in a way that felt healthy. But when he stopped writing, that need spilled out into other areas.”
She didn’t have to say it, but I knew she was talking about the girls. Daria, Elizabeth, me—how many had there been? In the years that followed my conversation with Roxanne, in the full glare of the #MeToo movement, I would find out about at least two more, including Whitney Shaw, who confessed to me at our twentieth college reunion, which took place a few weeks after Elizabeth McIntosh published an essay about her affair with an unnamed English professor and Wilder’s alleged cover-up. When I was young, I thought the sacrifices Roxanne had made for her marriage were unique and terrible, but now I knew the kinds of compromises you had to make as a wife, things you couldn’t ask about and things you didn’t want to know. I didn’t ask about the fire in her house the same way I never asked about the fire in my own.
“He always wanted to be famous,” she said, her voice breaking finally, “but when he died, no one cared.” I navigated the call to its end, then let her go. It was the least I could do.
After we hung up, I searched the internet for Connelly’s obituary. There hadn’t been one—hence, no Google alert—just a news item in the Daily Citizen: “Local Resident Crashes Car into Pond.” The article listed only the facts: the time of the accident, the weather that night, the names of the officers on duty. There was a brief mention of Connelly’s career as a writer, no mention at all of his teaching career or his connection to Wilder.
But Roxanne hadn’t told me the whole truth. She said that Connelly had crashed his car by Corness Pond when in fact he’d driven it into the pond. When the police pulled him out, he still had his seat belt on, leading them to conclude he was dead when he hit the water, but there had been no autopsy. I didn’t blame Roxanne for her omission: we tell ourselves what we need to to survive. This was what Roxanne needed. Who was I to say otherwise?
Sidney walked into the living room and started cleaning himself with a slow, raspy lick. I remembered the last time I’d seen Connelly. Graduation day. The rain had stopped—a miracle, everyone said—and the two hundred or so members of Wilder’s Class of 1998 walked together for the last time under a clear blue sky. Dean Hansen, wearing a Wilder-green bow tie decorated with gold keys, handed us our diplomas, and then it was over. Abe left after brunch. Debra went home with her parents. Kelsey and I would finish up packing before heading to New York in her parents’ minivan. When we got back to the dorm, we peeled off our graduation dresses and put on Tshirts and cutoff shorts, our bare feet black with dust. I felt giddy but strangely empty, unmoved by the ceremony that had marked our passage from student to graduate. Nothing had changed really, it was just time, which had run out on us at last, the escalator flattened to a line of metal teeth and there was nothing left to do now but step off.
We were carrying boxes down to the street when I saw him, standing under a tree in front of Fayerweather Hall. I placed the box I was carrying in the trunk and told Kelsey I’d be right back.
“Who’s that?” she asked, squinting into the sun.
“My professor,” I said. She nodded, and I walked away before she could say anything else.
Connelly was wearing blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt with a bleach stain by the heart. I realized as I walked toward him that I’d never looked at anyone as much as I’d looked at him. If I were an artist, I could have painted him from memory: each wave of hair, the contour of his knuckles, the way his cock curved slightly to the right. He was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
“Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?” he said.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me.”
“I wasn’t sure either.” He nodded at the minivan. “Is that your ride?”
I looked over to where Kelsey was standing, watching us. “Yeah. We’re leaving this afternoon. Are you okay?”
He kicked the ground with his sneaker, sending up a plume of dust. “I’m sure you heard.”
“I heard. I’m sorry about Tom.”
He gave a tight nod. “He was my friend. You don’t get that many in life.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He made a mistake,” Connelly said. “A big one. But we all make mistakes.”
Just then, a car drove by with the windows rolled down. “Isabel Rosen!” Ginny McDougall shouted, waving from the passenger seat. “You’re a fucking badass!” She pumped her fist at me as the car peeled off.