The Folded Leaf (30 page)

Between nine and nine-thirty, Colter and then Howard passed through Lymie’s room without stopping. At twenty minutes of ten, Freeman came in and ransacked Lymie’s closet for a sport coat which he had wanted to wear to the concert.
He had gone through every other closet on the second floor without any luck, and so he thought he might as well try Lymie’s. Lymie turned around and watched him. The sport coat wasn’t there.

At ten o’clock Lymie undressed and went upstairs to bed. He was going to see Spud later. Beyond that he had no plan and yet he acted as if he had one, and as if it were essential to this plan that the other boys who lived at the rooming house should be in bed and asleep before he carried it out. The door swung open and closed, time after time. He thought he kept track of the boys who came in and got into their beds, but he miscounted. Reinhart and Pownell went out together, shortly after ten, and neither of them had come in when Lymie got up at midnight and slipped downstairs again.

Instead of getting dressed he put on a clean pair of pajamas and took his winter overcoat out of the closet. When he had combed his hair in front of the mirror he put the coat on, buttoned it, and left the house. It was a soft spring night and the moon, no longer full, was on its way down the sky. The houses Lymie passed were nearly all dark. Now and then a single harsh light burned in an upstairs room. In any other town a light in an upstairs window at that hour would have meant that someone was sleepless or sick. Here it was because a head was still bent over a book, a hand writing slowly. The campus was deserted. The massive familiar buildings were enjoying the peace and the silence in the corridors never allowed them in the daytime. The front door of Spud’s fraternity house was unlocked, the brothers had no fear of being robbed by outsiders. There was a light in the front hall. Both the living room and the dining room were dark. The brothers had either gone out or up to bed, leaving the odor of stale cigarette smoke behind them.

Lymie went up four flights of stairs, with his right hand moving against the plaster wall, guiding him. The door which led to the dormitory had a pane of frosted glass in it, and groaned when Lymie pushed it open. He stood still, with his heart pounding, but no voice challenged him from the dark, no springs creaked suspiciously. Spud had shown him months before where he slept, and as soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Lymie made his way through the forest of double-deckers and found Spud asleep in his single lower, near the open window.

Lymie, who was always watching the others, who slipped into the water when it was his turn but never took part in the shouting and splashing, now for the first time watched himself. He was in the center of the stage at last, with an important part to play: he was the devoted friend, to whom a grave injury has been done.

S
pud raised himself on one elbow and looked at Lymie without speaking. There was a second when Lymie was sure that he was about to fall back on the bed without ever knowing that anybody had awakened him. Instead he got up noiselessly and followed Lymie downstairs. At the door of Spud’s room Lymie stepped aside. The door was padlocked and he didn’t know the combination.

When they got inside Spud closed the door and went to his closet for a bathrobe; he had been sleeping naked. As Lymie
took his coat off it occurred to him for the first time that Reinhart might have been mistaken. The whole thing could have been something that Reinhart had imagined, and the expression in Spud’s eyes, the clouded look, might be due to the fact that his sleep had been broken. Lymie stared at the gray iris, the dark pupil, and then at the curve of the eyelids. There was no doubt about it, the expression was hate.

“There is something I have to tell you,” he said.

Spud nodded.

“I went to the band concert with Dick Reinhart. He said you were jealous of me on account of Sally.”

Spud’s expression did not change.

“What I came over to tell you, you have to believe,” Lymie said. “I’m not in love with Sally and she isn’t in love with me. She doesn’t love anyone but you and never has.”

Spud nodded again, but it was not the kind of nod that means agreement.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Lymie asked. “You have to believe me because what I’m saying is the truth.”

To his horror he saw that Spud was smiling.

In the scene that Lymie had imagined, lying awake in bed on the other side of town, Spud had said to him, I
don’t hate you, Lymie old socks. I couldn’t hate you.
But there is so often a discrepancy between real life and the life of the imagination, and people tend not to allow for it, or at least not sufficiently. It hadn’t occurred to Lymie that Spud would turn away, instead of speaking, and find a chair, and sit down with one leg crossed over the other and one fleece-lined slipper dangling in space. Spud was thoroughly awake now and his eyes were thoughtful, but the thought, whatever it was, remained locked inside of him.

Lymie saw that words were not enough. It would take some
action, as yet unplanned but rising like a shadow behind him. On a sudden impulse he went toward Spud and knelt down and clasped Spud’s knees. The movement came naturally to Lymie but it was also one of the oldest human gestures.

“Please listen to me,” Lymie said. “Because if you don’t, you’ll be very sorry.”

Spud had never read the
Iliad
and he was not moved by the pressure of Lymie’s hands or the bright tears in his eyes. He had seen tears before and he himself never shed them.

When Spud lowered his eyes to his hands, Lymie looked at them too—at the tight bandage and the two splints on Spud’s right hand, and the five fingers coming out of the gauze. When he is able to box again, Lymie thought, someone else will tie his gloves on for him. I no longer have access to any part of him.

There was a strange but not very long silence between them, and then Lymie got up from the floor, put his coat on, and turned the collar up around his throat. As he started for the door, Spud stood up too and followed him out into the hall. They went down the hall side by side, as if they were still on good terms with each other.

A door opened and Armstrong came out in his pajamas and bathrobe. His hair was rumpled. He had been studying late and he looked tired and sleepy. He glanced at Spud and then at Lymie, with interest. There had been a time when, if Armstrong had shown any knowledge of his existence, Lymie would have been pleased. Now when Armstrong said, “What are you doing up at this hour of the night?” Lymie didn’t even bother to answer.

Spud followed him down the stairs and out onto the porch. The moon was going down behind the brick fraternity house across the street. Spud’s face had relaxed and he looked almost
kind. With this almost kindness Lymie would have no part. It seemed so unnatural, and so sad, to be separating for the last time. At the foot of the steps he turned and said, “I forgive you everything!” but that didn’t work either, perhaps because when you really forgive someone, wholly and completely, your heart feels very much lighter and nothing like this happened to him.

M
r. Peters sat waiting in the outer office of the Dean of Men. His topcoat, neatly folded, lay on the chair beside him, and his gray fedora was on top of the coat. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked as if he hadn’t slept well. Though he made no effort to attract attention to himself, the secretary to whom he had given his name managed to whisper it to the girl who was standing by the filing cabinet, and she in turn told the assistant dean, when he came out of his office to use the files. All three of them looked at Mr. Peters out of the corners of their eyes. They might as well have stared at him openly. He knew what they were whispering about.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, which said quarter after three, and compared it with his own gold watch. The clock was a minute fast. At twenty minutes of ten that morning he walked into his cubbyhole of an office, sat down with his hat on, reached into the top drawer of his desk, where he kept some aspirin, and took two, without any water. He lit a cigarette to take the taste out of his mouth, and as he put it down on the edge of the desk, the phone rang. He picked it up
without having the slightest premonition of what was in store for him. “Mr. Lymon Peters?” the operator asked, and he said, “Yes, this is Lymon Peters speaking.” “One moment please,” the operator said, and then he heard a different voice. “Mr. Peters? Calkins speaking. George S. Calkins, Dean of Men at the University of… Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Mr. Peters said into the mouthpiece, and felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. Lymie must have got into some kind of a scrape…. Mr. Peters hoped fervently that it wasn’t a girl. If Lymie had got some nice girl in a family way….

“Hardly hear you,” the voice said. “Must be a bad connection … Operator?” The phone went dead for about thirty seconds and when Mr. Peters heard the voice again it was much louder. “Mr. Peters, I have something pretty upsetting to tell you. It’s about your son.”

“Lymon?” Mr. Peters asked, as if he had several. “What’s he done?”

“Tried to commit suicide,” the voice said. “Can you hear me now?”

Mr. Peters tried to answer but his throat seemed frozen and no sound came out of it.

“He’s in the hospital,” the voice said. “They took him there shortly after daylight this morning. And I’ve taken the liberty of hiring both a day and a night nurse. I hope that meets with your approval. Not that the floor nurse wouldn’t do everything that’s necessary, probably. But with cases of this kind, there is always a chance that they’ll try again. So it’s not safe to—”

“No,” Mr. Peters said thickly. “I’m sure that’s right, what you’ve done.”

“I’ve looked up the train schedules for you,” the voice said, “and I find there’s one that leaves at…”

From the train Mr. Peters went to the hotel, registered, fortified himself with a shot of whisky, and then took a cab out to the university hospital. The dean had neglected to prepare him for the bandages around Lymie’s throat and wrists, and at the sight of them the young man in Mr. Peters took his derby hat and departed.

Lymie was asleep. The doctor had given him a hypo and he had not even moved for nearly eight hours. Mr. Peters went over and stood beside the bed and looked down at Lymie’s face. It was a dreadful waxy white, the thin skin drawn tight over the bones by exhaustion and revealing the secret shape of the skull All the strength went out of Mr. Peters’ legs, and he put his hand against the foot of the bed. There’s only one thing to be thankful for, he thought, swaying slightly. And that is that the boy’s mother isn’t alive. It would have been too much for her. She couldn’t have stood it…. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose quietly. Then he turned to the nurse and said, “I don’t suppose there is any use of my staying here. I have a room at the hotel, in case you need to get in touch with me. And I’ll be back in the morning.”

He had never been on the university campus before and what he saw, going from the hospital to the dean’s office, wasn’t very real to him. The sunshine and the big trees hanging far out over the street, and the sidewalks crowded with boys and girls Lymie’s age, walking along with books under their arms, and all of them unconcerned, acting as if nothing were wrong anywhere in the world. But then the whole day was unreal to him.

The dean kept Mr. Peters waiting a full ten minutes before he was shown into the inner office, where the dean sat, at a heavy walnut desk, under a portrait of himself by a distinguished American painter. The money for this portrait had been raised partly by undergraduate subscription, partly by
well-to-do alumni. The dean rose, walked around the desk, and offered his hand. His handshake, like that of most public men, was limp and impersonal, but the expression on his face seemed to Mr. Peters to be genuine sympathy.

“I’m very happy to meet you,” the dean said, “though I regret the—er—circumstances under which we—Won’t you sit down?” He regretted even more the alcohol which he detected on Mr. Peters’ breath…. The dean was a teetotaler.

Mr. Peters settled himself in a chair beside the desk and waited for the dean to produce a letter addressed to him in Lymie’s handwriting.

“It’s not the first case of this kind we’ve had to contend with,” the dean said. “At nineteen, you know, life often seems unbearable. I could show you statistics that prove—but you’re not interested in statistics, I feel sure. Your son is in excellent hands, Mr. Peters. We have reason to be proud of our medical men. Dr. Hart is not my own doctor but I know him well and wouldn’t hesitate to use him, if I were taken sick. He’s both conscientious and thorough. I’m sure when you talk to him—”

“What did he do it with?” Mr. Peters interrupted.

“With a straight-edged razor,” the dean said. There was a slight pause and then he added, “This must be very hard on you. I know how I’d feel in your place.”

Mr. Peters looked at him and saw that the dean hadn’t the faintest idea how he felt; that if anything, the dean was enjoying it, like the people in the outer office.

“I’ve talked to several of the boys in the rooming house where your son has been living, and to several of his teachers, and his two best friends—a boy named Charles Latham and a boy named Geraghty. You know both of them, probably?”

Mr. Peters nodded. He knew that Lymie had spent a good
deal of time with a boy named Latham, when he was in high school, and that they had roomed together for a while when Lymie first came down here. “I’ve met Latham but not the other boy,” he said.

“There is also a girl in the case,” the dean said. “Her father is one of the prominent men here in the university. I couldn’t get much out of the Latham boy. I found him sullen and distrustful. But Geraghty told me a good deal and so did the girl, without knowing it. She’s a very open honest youngster. I’ve known her all her life. She says she didn’t realize the situation, but it’s obvious that your son was in love with her and tried to kill himself when he found out that she was in love with this Latham boy. I’ve been dealing with young people for thirty-five years now, and I’ve gradually come around to the belief that although they seem like children to us—to their parents especially—their problems, their emotional disturbances are not essentially different from the emotional disturbances of older people. The girl was rather distressed by our conversation this morning. She was crying when she left here, and she went to the hospital and tried to force her way in. We have a rule against mixed visiting at the university hospital, for reasons that I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you. And in any case, the doctor doesn’t want Lymie to have visitors for a day or so—that doesn’t mean you, naturally. There are a couple of people that I have to talk to still—the president of Charles Latham’s fraternity, a boy named Armstrong; and also the man who keeps the rooming house where your son has been living. I don’t expect to find out anything from them that we don’t know already.”