The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [200]
“Of course,” she said with great gravity, “all this has been exceptionally hard on Owen.”
Dean Melkin looked more perplexed and tortured than ever. But not in a who’s-Owen-and-why-did-you-utter-this-strange-non-sequitur kind of way. No, it was more the perplexity of a person trying hard to craft a reaction to news he already knew. “Of course,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “I can see how it must be very difficult.”
He knows, Pella thought. He knows about Owen. The dean of students knows about Owen. He knows about Owen and he’s wondering whether my dad committed suicide. And now she was wondering whether her dad committed suicide. Because the dean of students knew. And if he knew, he wasn’t the only one. Which meant that her dad had gotten strung up, or had been about to get strung up, or something.
Could he have killed himself? Was there a way to kill yourself that looked enough like a heart attack to fool people who expected you to have died of a heart attack? Well, yes, there had to be. But it just wasn’t possible. Her dad didn’t have a morbid bone in his body, had always been a terrible fraidy-cat where death was concerned. He didn’t like doctors, her mom at least partly excluded, and he didn’t like the pills that, paradoxically, reminded him he would someday die. No, he couldn’t have killed himself, though he had been smoking too much—she regretted not realizing that earlier, not harping on it more. When Mrs. McCallister found him his right hand was on his chest, gripped around his pack of Parliaments, which were thoroughly crushed.
“Within the administration,” she said, “I suppose that pretty much everyone knew about him and Owen.”
“No no no.” Dean Melkin straightened in his chair, tugged at the collar of his white oxford. “No no. It was only me and Bruce Gibbs, and I believe Mr. Gibbs consulted one or two other trustees, in a highly confidential way, just to gauge what the options were. Whether there were any options.”
There it was, then. He’d been caught. He’d been caught, and he’d been banished. Those bastards. And her father, what an idiot. He hadn’t told her. Had he told anyone? Had he told Owen? No—he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. If Owen had known, if she had known, they might have been able to calm him, console him, buck him up somehow. Instead he’d kept it all on that heart of his.
She had to get out of there. Not just out of Dean Melkin’s office—out of Westish, away from Westish. Like forever.
Dean Melkin was still worrying the buttons on his cuffs. Clearly he’d been waiting for this moment, had been living all summer with a weird guilt upon him.
“Pella,” he said, “I’m so very sorry. I wish there was something that could have been done differently. Of course your father was my superior, I had no real say in the matter, but the idea that there may have been some sort of connection between his resignation and his passing, well, it’s terrible, it’s just terrible…”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said sharply, a promising beginning to a rant, but she felt too miserable to make a scene. Somehow she managed to get to her feet and swim out of the room, out of Glendinning Hall, leaving her stack of catalogs and carbon copies on the edge of Dean Melkin’s desk.
She had to get so far away from here. Mike was working at Bartleby’s tonight, was probably there already—when she calmed down she would walk over there and drink whiskey, and tell him why she had to leave. Would he come with her? Surely he would. She was willing to go anywhere he wanted, as long as it wasn’t here. Even Chicago would be far enough.
She was outside, sweating in the hazy afternoon sun, and she swung wildly around the campus in helpless, hopeless circles for a long while, down to the beach and back, out to the football stadium and back, here there and everywhere. She thought about her dad and how to avenge him. How to shun Westish in the most profound way possible. How to make the entire college and everyone involved with it know and understand that she and her father were shunning it in the most profound and everlasting way possible.