(And if I was an interregnum, what was Phillip Asher? An interregnum within the interregnum? A mere echo of a previous love? Did Phillip and Samuel ever speak again? I do not know.)
In June, I will retire from Thrupp College, which is, unfortunately, more recognizable than it ought to be as the school it was in 1899 and 1915. During my tenure as Dean, I hired some thirty faculty members, increased the enrollment of the college from four hundred to six hundred students, changed the three terms to two, and instituted the teaching of the contemporary American novel, a radical move that surprised everyone.
Three years ago, I was informed, by way of legal telegram, that Etna had died as a result of influenza. She was fifty-six when she perished. Oddly, her sister Miriam went to great pains to bring Etna’s body back from England for burial in the family plot in Exeter; perhaps Miriam felt remorse for her condescending treatment of her sister those many years ago. More oddly still, I was invited to the funeral. I went with timid step, fearful that I might encounter either Phillip or Samuel Asher. I needn’t have worried, as neither was present, Samuel apparently having decided, for reasons known only to him, not to make the crossing with the body. The funeral itself was a wretched affair, poorly attended, as might have been expected: Etna had, after all, been out of the country for fifteen years. The preacher, who hadn’t known her, kept referring to the deceased as Edna, a distraction that tended to disrupt the strangely comforting wallow of grief.
For yes, I did grieve then. And I do so still.
I have mostly given up trying to imagine what Etna’s life with Samuel in England was like. Though they lived together until her death, they never married. Was this Etna’s choice? Or Samuel’s? Did she suffer from having lost her children? I believe that she must have. I believe my wife would have lived a life composed in equal parts of shared happiness and private misery.
To date, Nicodemus has been reluctant to investigate the matter of why his mother went away to live in London, abandoning him when he was only six, and why he was raised without his sister; but now that he is about to become a father himself, I suspect that these are questions he will shortly ask. On rereading this memoir, however, I see that I have revealed more than I intended, both to the reader and to myself, and that perhaps it is not a suitable thing to pass on to a child. It seems to me a melodramatic tale as well, the story of a faintly ridiculous man, of little interest to anyone; but then again, so much of life (the joy, the anguish, the words of recrimination, our strange fits of passion) is, sadly, melodramatic in nature, hardly artful.
We are nearing the station, for I can feel the slowing heartbeat of this overheated train, a tired beast wanting to end its day and rest. Soon I shall step onto the platform and search the crowd in vain for my daughter, whom I have not seen in almost two decades. It may be that there will be tears in my eyes as I alight, or perhaps it will be only that I am dazzled from the glare, befuddled by the heat, an old man in the early throes of Florida sunstroke.
But I shall go on. And will, when my head has cleared, summon a taxi to take me to the address of my sister, where I will greet my sisters and brothers and cousins, and hope for a word with my daughter. When the funeral is over, I will make the return journey, with perhaps a short stop in Charleston to visit Betty Hazzard. In Thrupp, I shall sit out my remaining days in a study in which I constantly arrange and rearrange my books, as if in ordering a library one could order a life. As to what I shall do with this untidy journal, I think I might slip it next to Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite, since neither is a volume I am apt to want any time soon.
What was my crime? I taught a child to lie, but my sins were graver far.
I have written quite enough for now, and, as a result, I am feeling rather hollowed out and in need of a cold drink. In this document, its prose chipped and flaking, I have evidence of a life once lived, proof that I once passed this way and thought to have love and understanding, passion and forgiveness, if not finally for my soul then for the condition of all things natural in the body and in the heart, which is always large and hungry and wanting.
Nicholaas Van Tassel
West Palm Beach, Florida
September 23, 1933
Acknowledgments
Thank you Michael, Ginger, Alan, Katherine, and John. (Thanks also to Betsy Uhrig.)
About the Author
Anita Shreve is the author of the acclaimed novels Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water, The Pilot’s Wife, Fortune’s Rocks, The Last Time They Met, and Sea Glass. She lives in Massachusetts.
Anita Shreve, All He Ever Wanted
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