Halcyon, p.2
Halcyon, page 2
I glanced at the fire. Had I already taken a match to yesterday’s paper? I then recalled that I’d left the story on my desk before heading to bed. When I went to the attic to retrieve it, Mrs. Ableson followed.
“It’s here…somewhere,” I muttered, ransacking my things.
Mrs. Ableson seemed in no rush. She leaned against the window frame, gazing out at her property, her eyes following the tracks of her journey here. I was prepared for her to comment on my books, my notes, on the clutter that I would—if asked—assure her passed for serious academic work. But she proved incurious. Spread face down on my desk was the first volume of Foote’s three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative, subtitled Fort Sumter to Perryville. When I picked it up, I found the article about the mice beneath.
“Here we are.” I spread the crumpled sheet of newsprint flat on my desk, as though Mary and I might read the story together. She had no such plans and plucked it up by the corner like a tissue from its box. She returned downstairs, seemingly unconcerned whether I might follow, which of course I did. She stood by the edge of the fire and, leaning against the mantel, silently mouthed the words of the article as she read. I sat on the sofa, watching her. Then she sighed, saying, “Remarkable, isn’t it?” and crumpled up the story, pitching it into the flames. “I guess now it’s only a matter of time.”
I offered my uninformed opinion that resurrecting lab mice from the dead was one thing but performing a similar feat on a more complex organism—like a human—was a task of a different magnitude, one that if ever plausible would be decades away and fraught with unforeseen complexities. However, while I was speaking, Mary had reached into her pocket and removed another article. It was preserved in a plastic sheath and the paper had yellowed with age. This was also from the Times-Dispatch, an obituary: Beloved husband, father, veteran of the Second World War and renowned litigator Robert Ableson passed away in his sleep last night. The cause of death was complications from pneumonia. He is survived by his wife, Mary, as well as their daughter and two stepsons. In lieu of flowers please send…
“I don’t understand…but he’s not…?”
Arms crossed, chin slightly elevated, Mary interjected, “He’s not what?…dead?” She offered a look of slight disappointment, as though inviting me to be more intrepid with what I imagined possible. She continued, “These scientists and the government agencies that fund them can’t simply announce what they’ve discovered. They can’t hold a press conference and say they’ve conquered death. They need a rollout plan, a media strategy. The public has to get comfortable with this breakthrough, has to evolve into it, so it feels more like an inevitability. Hence the first article about the mice. The rest will follow.”
I struggled to comprehend what she was telling me, muttering only “But Mr. Ableson is alive…I saw him last night.”
She inhaled deeply and then, very slowly, with special emphasis on each word, said: “They’ve—brought—people—back. They’ve already done it. Robert was one of their…” and she fished for the phrase to describe what he was to them “…was one of their test cases. My husband has spent the last year under social quarantine until news of the discovery becomes public. I suppose he couldn’t take being cooped up with me anymore, that’s why he sought you out.”
Whatever minor hostility I felt from Mary wasn’t specific to me. Her husband had hurt her by breaking the rules of his quarantine. He had needed someone that wasn’t his wife to talk to, a confidant of sorts, and this idea wounded her. I interrupted: “Mrs. Ableson, so you know, when your husband visits it’s only because he wants to chat. My work, stories of his old court cases, his time in the war, even your renovation of Halcyon. Stuff like that.”
She nodded appreciatively, saying, “Last night, after you showed him the article about the mice, he thought we needed to tell you the rest before someone else did. Since his”—and she stumbled in choosing her word—“since his return, the isolation has been hard on him. There is, however, one other person we’ve both been able to confide in.” She crossed the room, to where she’d placed her coat over the chair. From its pocket, she removed a business card: Dr. Charles Shields MD, with a listing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center. “I’d like you to pay him a visit. It’s important you hear his take on our situation.”
I was behind in my writing, having already blown past several self-imposed deadlines. I did, however, have a trip to Gettysburg planned for later in the month. I could visit Dr. Shields then.
“Or perhaps you could move up your trip?” She wasn’t asking but telling me this was what I should do. Although I needed the time at my desk, I was paying a very reasonable rent for her guesthouse and felt I shouldn’t disappoint. I’d visited the battlefield many times before so wasn’t in search of any new facts. I simply enjoyed making the pilgrimage. The ground there hummed. The Peach Orchard. The Devil’s Den. The Bloody Angle. Each was like an instrument’s string pulled long ago that continued to emit a note.
Mrs. Ableson had begun to gather her things. My audience with her was at its end. As we walked to the door, I assured her that I’d make the detour to Philadelphia to meet with Dr. Shields. She thanked me as she finished buttoning her coat. Before she stepped into the snow-covered meadow to pick her way back to Halcyon, I noticed that she’d left the copy of her husband’s obituary inside. When I offered to retrieve it, she said, “Don’t bother. Do me one last favor, will you? Pitch that thing in the fire.”
* * *
—
The snow didn’t let up for the next week. I considered postponing my trip north but couldn’t stand the thought of Mrs. Ableson discovering me hunkered down in the cottage after I’d assured her I’d pay Dr. Shields a visit. My Volvo station wagon was a reliable all-wheel drive, so the next afternoon I loaded it with everything I’d need for the excursion and dug it out of the snow. The Volvo was one of the few items of value I’d fought for and won in my divorce. The apartment, the dog, the savings account, these were all battles lost. Perhaps this is why I took such pride in the Volvo’s performance, the way it handled on the ice, the way it got me anywhere that I needed.
Amid the darkening fields, down the freshly shoveled road, I drove past the Ablesons’ house. A light in the top corner was softly burning. I had only ever spent time with the Ablesons individually. I wondered what they were like together. I also wondered about the other rooms in the house, the unlit rooms where he and Mary had raised their children. Over our martinis, Mr. Ableson had mentioned stepsons. There was Doug, a Manhattan-based financier who “likes to be very helpful to his mother,” as Ableson put it with a trace of judgment. There was also Bobby, a Boston-based lawyer who “always has plenty of sound advice.” Ableson told a story about a day spent sipping Cokes by the swimming pool when they were little boys, how Bobby (the future lawyer) compulsively got out of the water to use the bathroom and how Doug (the future financier) never once got out, only interrupting his fun to give Ableson an occasional, guilty look from the shallow end.
Youngest of all was his daughter, Elizabeth. His only biological child was born more than a decade after her two half brothers. Ableson called her “Caboose” or simply “Boose” for short. Of the children, she was the only one he’d shown me a photograph of. “That’s about six years ago,” he’d said with some pride of this girl in her cap and gown. The recessed brown eyes, which you could read and then reread for a different meaning, the high cheekbones that mimicked her mother’s, and her hair—a reddish brown—like those hints that remained in Ableson’s hair, despite his ninety years. “Who’s that man she’s with?” I asked. Beside her in the photo, clutching Elizabeth’s hand like a cane, was an ancient and sickly looking fellow with prune-dark eyes, their lids pouched and houndlike, and white hair that was merely a suggestion blown across his pockmarked scalp. “That’s me,” said Ableson defensively. He made a second, examining glance at the photo and added, “I wasn’t well back then,” before tucking it away. “And what does she do?” I asked, changing the subject. “Boose?” Ableson had said fondly, as if his daughter’s occupation infrequently occurred to him. “She’s still figuring it out.”
As I passed by Halcyon, I wondered whose room was whose. I also got another look at the scope of the renovation, which seemed a stop-and-start effort. The backhoe parked on the front yard hadn’t moved since weeks before when I’d last driven past; neither had the pallets of roofing materials, the stacks of plywood, or the sacks of cement. If what Mary had told me was true, and her husband had quarantined all this time, that meant “helpful” Doug and Bobby with the “sound advice” likely didn’t know about the renovation of their childhood home. Neither did Boose. To say nothing of what they didn’t know about Ableson. As far as they knew, their father was still dead.
I reached I-81, that six-lane monstrosity which runs up the Shenandoah Valley, the onetime breadbasket of the Confederacy. This is some of the most beautiful country. It is also some of the most haunted. Although both blue- and gray-clad ghosts certainly stalk the valley, what it is really haunted by are alternate histories. Take for example May 2, 1863. It is the end of the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville, which Southerners will come to refer to as the Miracle of Chancellorsville. Stonewall Jackson, the architect of that “miracle,” has repelled a Union army twice the size of his own. He is now considering a night counterattack. After making a reconnaissance of the Union lines, he is reentering his when a Confederate sentry fires on him, knocking Jackson from his saddle. Eight days later, after having his left arm amputated, pneumonia sets in and kills Jackson. But what if that sentry hadn’t fired? Jackson then would’ve been at Gettysburg the following July. Jackson, aggressive as he was, would have known to seize the high ground on Culp’s Hill on the battle’s first day. With Culp’s Hill in Confederate hands, Gettysburg might have ended very differently, a conclusion acknowledged by both Foote and his contemporary, the historian James McPherson, a century later. And if Gettysburg had ended differently, if the Confederates had successfully invaded Pennsylvania, European powers like Britain would have likely intervened. Lincoln’s government wouldn’t have survived the debacle. George McClellan, Lincoln’s old rival and the Democratic nominee of 1864, would have swept into office with promises to end the war. This would have involved recognizing the Confederacy. The nineteenth century would have been transformed. As would the twentieth. And the twenty-first, even now only at its inception. All because of an accidental gunshot. What’s more remarkable is that you can stand where that shot was fired. This pivot point in the history of mankind is situated right after a rest stop with both a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Subway franchise. Exit 130B off the interstate.
I drove by exit 130B lost in these strange imaginings. What, I wondered, were the minor events of today that would forever change the trajectory of the future? Was some other sentry firing an equivalent gunshot at this moment as I drove north? Likely so. Twenty-first-century life far outpaced that of others, and so it followed that events like the gunshot that killed Jackson occurred today with greater frequency. Identifying those moments usually required the maturation of time and the work of historians. However, certain recent events needed no such distance. This was where my thoughts now turned.
Specifically, I was thinking of Bill Clinton. What if he hadn’t installed a recording device in the Oval Office like Nixon did? Then the tapes of him with Ms. Lewinsky never would’ve surfaced. How did Clinton think he’d be able to control those tapes when Nixon couldn’t? How did he expect a different outcome? Those tapes, his heavy breathing as he told Ms. Lewinsky what he wanted, her halting consent—it’s what assured his conviction in the Senate. Clinton’s resignation, which jubilant Republicans believed assured them the next election, allowed Gore to fill his presidential shoes for a year before his own candidacy. It’s difficult to imagine how Gore would’ve narrowed out Bush in Florida had he not possessed the advantages of an incumbent. It seemed the dust on the recount had hardly settled when September 11th hit. Our response was swift and decisive, bin Laden dead by Christmas and our troops home by Easter. Would Bush have possessed Gore’s forbearance in the Middle East? I’ve often wondered.
At last my headlights crossed the exit for Gettysburg. Outside of town, I passed the sprawling campus of Gettysburg College. Inside of town, snow clogged the unplowed roads. I crept past the redbrick David Wills House where Lincoln had crafted his famous address. I parked my Volvo in a backlot of the historic six-story, forty-eight-dollars-per-night Gettysburg Inn. I grabbed my duffel and headed into the hotel. The lobby’s tasseled draperies, paisley upholstered wing chairs, and polished oak tables were a paean to the Civil War era’s Victorian aesthetic. Historical accuracy aside, the décor was kitsch—in much the same way battlefield reenactments are kitsch and selling cap guns and blue and gray uniforms to kids is kitsch; however, when I searched for last-minute reservations, the Gettysburg Inn posted the best rate.
The off-hours receptionist—a kid with acne scars in the hollows of his cheeks and greasy black hair—offered to upgrade me to a corner king-sized room on the sixth floor with a view of Lincoln Square. He needed a moment to modify my reservation but assured me the upgrade was well worth it. While he clacked on his keyboard, he asked what I’d come to town for. Exhausted from my drive, and still without a room key, I had an inclination to reply sarcastically but could think of nothing to say. I noticed an open textbook spread next to the receptionist’s computer, its title: Principles of Business Management. That combined with the dark circles beneath his eyes, and I could easily imagine this kid working the hotel night shift, making do with two or three hours’ sleep, before trudging off to his first morning class at the college; and so I answered, “To visit the battlefield.”
“Have you got a tour planned?”
“I know my way around,” I said, and was about to add—obnoxiously—I’m a historian, when the receptionist pointed to a framed notice on the counter. The National Park Service, it seemed, had closed the battlefield because of the heavy snow. “Unless you have a guide registered with the NPS, they won’t let you in,” and then he asked, “Will you need one or two room keys?”
* * *
—
I sat on the edge of the bed. Through the sheer drapes I could make out the vague lamplight of Lincoln Square. This was one of the nicest rooms in the hotel, which must have been empty, or next to empty. The digital clock on my bedside table read 10:04 p.m. I needed to place a phone call if I was going to be able to tour the battlefield the next day. It was already late and the longer I waited the more impolite that call would be. I half hoped my old friend Lucas Harlow wouldn’t answer, then my decision would be made for me and I could drive on to Philadelphia and this curious appointment with Dr. Shields. Instead, Lucas Harlow answered on the first ring.
“Wait, you’re here?” he asked after an exchange of hellos.
“It’s last minute, I know, but I wondered if you wanted to tour the battlefield tomorrow. I thought we could catch up.”
“You’re asking because you need a certified guide.”
I said nothing.
Then he laughed. “That’s okay. I’ll take whatever time we can get. I’m teaching an eleven o’clock class. Could we meet at your hotel at seven? How’s your car handle in snow?”
“I’ve got the Volvo.”
“Still? How haven’t you scrapped that thing?” He kept laughing, and behind him I could hear his wife, Annette, ask who he was talking to. “Tomorrow at seven then,” he said and hung up. No goodbye.
* * *
—
My trip to Gettysburg had not only given me a reason to visit Dr. Shields but it had also given me a reason to spend a morning with Lucas. Although I had never heard of the National Parks Service restricting access to the battlefield, a part of me that I didn’t want to acknowledge—something in my subconscious, perhaps—must have known that coming here in the aftermath of a blizzard would force me to call Lucas, who I hadn’t spoken to in years, not since my divorce.
His wife, Annette, and my ex-wife, Virginia—or Ginny as everyone called her—were cousins. And so, when my divorce went through, Lucas’s loyalty to his wife and her family eclipsed our friendship. There were no hard feelings on my part, but this explained why he’d hung up so abruptly; his wife likely wouldn’t have approved of us rekindling that friendship. Lucas and I had met nearly two decades before as graduate students at Tufts, in a snobbish history department that was keenly aware it wasn’t Harvard (a fifteen-minute drive south on Massachusetts Avenue). Among the doctoral candidates in the department, Lucas was perhaps the most promising and the only Southerner. Broad-shouldered, auburn-haired, he had been a nose tackle of some distinction as an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi, where in a team photo he stands a head taller than the other players with two lines of eye black concealing a smatter of boyhood freckles across his cheeks; the reputation that followed him to Tufts was that he was the biggest nerd who ever played Ole Miss football and the coolest guy to ever step into its undergraduate history department. His graduate work, which was a thoroughly investigated study of former Confederate soldiers who’d gone on to prominent postwar careers in the Union, was well received by the coterie of professors at Tufts who—guided by their prejudices against Southern scholars of the Civil War—had first underestimated him. When his dissertation was published, it won him a departmental medal, a book deal with an academic press, and eventually a tenured position at Gettysburg College. Despite these accolades, his intelligence at times made him insufferable, like a man who sits beside you on the morning train and looks over your shoulder to solve your crossword puzzle.
The morning after checking into the hotel, I was down in the lobby with minutes to spare. Seven o’clock came and went. It was nearly half past the hour when Lucas finally barreled through the double doors. As we loaded my Volvo, he was tripping over himself with apologies. He could’ve easily blamed his late arrival on the snow-clogged roads, or on any one of his three small children. But he was honest with me, as he was with most everyone. “Annette asked where I was going so early and I told her to meet you and we had a fight.”
