Leaving the World by Douglas Kennedy

ambiguity.
    I’m sorry.
    With the door slammed on the outside world, I broke down again, crying like an idiot. But this time my tears weren’t just a response to my sense of loss – a loss I couldn’t share with anyone. Rather, they were also bound up with real anger. I was furious with David – not just for dying, but also for trying to salve his conscience with that fucking postcard and a message which simply added another enigmatic wrinkle to an already ambiguous situation.
    I’m sorry.
    In the days that followed, my anger ebbed a bit, replaced by a sadness that was hard to shake. I received a call from Mrs Cathcart – all quiet and conciliatory, telling me how everyone in the department was so distressed by Professor Henry’s death (a lie); how there was now a general backlash against the New York journalist who penned the accusations of plagiarism (another lie); and how she was thinking about me during this difficult time because ‘I know how close you were to the Professor’.
    ‘That’s right,’ I said, trying to sound controlled. ‘He was a brilliant thesis advisor and a good friend.’
    But before I added ‘Nothing more’, I stopped myself. When you protest too much you incriminate yourself.
    ‘You should know that the Maine police ruled the whole thing an accident,’ she said. ‘Just in case you were wondering.’
    ‘I wasn’t wondering anything,’ I said, while simultaneously wondering: Did they decide not to believe the testimony of Gus the Driver? Or maybe Gus was talked into a narrative explanation – ‘The bike hit the pothole and the next thing I knew he was thrown directly in front of my vehicle’ – as a way of simplifying matters, ending ambiguity and quashing all difficult questions. As I later heard on the departmental grapevine, the very fact that David’s death was ruled an accident meant that his wife would receive his life-insurance payout. Maybe the cops – wanting to minimize the pain suffered by the driver and by David’s family – stuck with the accident scenario.
    But I knew the truth. And the truth was: There is no truth here . It’s like that line of Eliot’s from ‘The Hollow Men’: ‘ Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow .’
    I’m sorry.
    I’m sure you were, David. But it doesn’t lessen the questions, doesn’t diminish the shadows.
    His funeral was private. He was cremated and his ashes sprinkled on the water fronting his cottage. When I learned of this – from Mrs Cathcart, naturally – I couldn’t help but think of something David once said to me about the transient nature of everything.
    ‘We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we’re all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we’re gone, it’s simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they’re gone . . .
    ‘That’s why – when I go – I’m asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because everything ends up floating away.’
    Everyone in the department was very solicitous towards me. The chairman, Professor Hawthorden, rang me personally and asked if I would drop by his office for a chat. I steeled myself for the third degree. As it turned out, he was the very model of tact. He talked about the ‘accidental tragedy’ of David’s death, and how the plagiarism charges were nothing more than ‘trial by hack journalism’. He also wanted me to know that David always spoke very highly of me as a student, and that he himself would like to take charge of my dissertation, if I was ‘comfortable’ with this offer.
    Why did the department head want to be my advisor – especially as his specialty was Early American Literature? Was he trying to silence any gossip about my relationship with David? Was he keeping me ‘on side’? I had no idea. If Professor Hawthorden preferred to keep things nice and ambiguous, I was not going to argue. As I had