“Of course you may leave. That’s how you cope with all your difficulties, Marcus — you leave. Has that never occurred to you before?” With another of those smiles whose insincerity was withering, he added, “I’m sorry if I wasted your time.”
He got up from behind his desk and so, with his seeming consent, I got up from my chair as well, this time to go. But not without a parting shot to set the record straight. “Leaving is not how I cope with my difficulties. Think back only to my trying to get you to open your mind to Bertrand Russell. I strongly object to your saying that, Dean Caudwell.”
“Well, at least we got over the ‘sir,’ finally … Oh, Marcus,” he said as he was seeing me to the door, “what about sports? It says here you played for your freshman baseball team. So at least, I take it, you believe in baseball. What position?”
“Second base.”
“And you’ll be going out for our baseball team?”
“I played freshman ball at a very tiny city college back home. Virtually anybody who went out for the team made it. There were guys on that team, like our catcher and our first baseman, who didn’t even play high school ball. I don’t think I’d be good enough to make the team here. The pitching will be faster than I’m used to, and I don’t think choking up on the bat, the way I did for the freshman team back home, is going to solve my hitting problem at this level of competition. Maybe I could hold my own in the field, but I doubt I’d be worth much at the plate.”
“So what I understand you to be saying is that you’re not going out for baseball because of the competition?”
“No, sir!” I exploded. “I’m not going out for the team because I’m realistic about my chances of making the team! And I don’t want to waste the time trying when I have all this studying to do! Sir, I’m going to vomit. I told you I would. It’s not my fault. Here it comes — sorry!”
I vomited then, though luckily not onto the dean or his desk. Head down, I robustly vomited onto the rug. Then, when I tried to avoid the rug, I vomited onto the chair in which I’d been sitting, and, when I spun away from the chair, vomited onto the glass of one of the framed photographs hanging on the dean’s wall, the one of the Winesburg undefeated championship football team of 1924.
I hadn’t the stomach to do battle with the dean of men any more than I had the stomach to do battle with my father or with my roommates. Yet battle I did, despite myself.
The dean had his secretary accompany me down the corridor to the door of the men’s room, where, once inside and alone, I washed my face and gargled with water that I cupped into my hands from beneath the spigot. I spat the water into the sink until I couldn’t taste a trace of vomit in my mouth or my throat, and then, using paper towels doused with hot water, I rubbed away as best I could at whatever had spattered onto my sweater, my trousers, and my shoes. Then I leaned on the sink and looked into the mirror at the mouth that I couldn’t shut. I clamped my teeth together so tightly that my bruised jawbone began throbbing with pain. Why did I have to mention chapel? Chapel is a discipline, I informed my eyes — eyes that, to my astonishment, looked unbelievably fearful. Treat their chapel as part of the job that you have to do to get through this place as valedictorian — treat it the way you treat eviscerating the chickens. Caudwell was right, wherever you go there will always be something driving you nuts — your father, your roommates, your having to attend chapel forty times — so stop thinking about transferring to yet another school and just graduate first in your class!
But when I was ready to leave the bathroom for my American government class, I got a whiff of vomit again and, looking down, saw the minutest specks of it clinging to the edges of the soles of both my shoes. I took off the shoes and with soap and water and paper towels stood at the sink in my stocking feet, washing away the last of the vomit and the last of the smell. I even took my socks off and held them up to my nose. Two students came in to use the urinals just as I was smelling my socks. I said nothing, explained nothing, put my socks back on, pushed my feet into my shoes, tied the laces, and left. That’s how you cope with all your difficulties, Marcus — you leave. Has that never occurred to you before?
I went outside and found myself on a beautiful midwestern college campus on a big, gorgeous, sunlit day, another grand fall day, everything around me blissfully proclaiming, “Delight yourselves in the geyser of life! You are young and exuberant and the rapture is yours!” Enviously I looked at the other students walking the brick paths that crisscrossed the green quadrangle. Why couldn’t I share the pleasure they took in the splendors of a little college that answered all their needs? Why instead am I in conflict with everyone? It began at home with my father, and from there it has doggedly followed me here. First there’s Flusser, then there’s Elwyn, then there’s Caudwell. And whose fault is it, theirs or mine? How had I gotten myself in trouble so fast, I who’d never before been in trouble in my life? And why was I looking for more trouble by writing fawning letters to a girl who only a year before had attempted suicide by slitting a wrist?
I sat on a bench and opened my three-ring binder and on a blank piece of lined paper I started in yet again. “Please answer me when I write to you. I can’t bear your silence.” Yet the weather was too beautiful and the campus too beautiful to find Olivia’s silence unbearable. Everything was too beautiful, and I was too young, and my only job was to become valedictorian! I continued writing: “I feel on the verge of picking up and leaving here because of the chapel requirement. I would like to talk to you about this. Am I being foolish? You ask how did I get here in the first place? Why did I choose Winesburg? I’m ashamed to tell you. And now I just had a terrible interview with the dean of men, who is sticking his nose into my business in a way that I’m convinced he has no right to do. No, it was nothing about you, or us. It was about my moving into Neil Hall.” Then I yanked the page out of the notebook as furiously as if I were my own father and tore it in pieces that I stuffed into my pants pocket. Us! There was no us!
I was wearing pleated gray flannel trousers and a check sport shirt and a maroon V-neck pullover and white buckskin shoes. It was the same outfit I’d seen on the boy pictured on the cover of the Winesburg catalogue that I’d sent away for and received in the mail, along with the college application forms. In the photo, he was walking beside a girl wearing a two-piece sweater set and a long, full dark skirt and turned-down white cotton socks and shiny loafers. She was smiling at him while they walked together as though he’d said to her something amusingly clever. Why had I chosen Winesburg? Because of that picture! There were big leafy trees on either side of the two happy students, and they were walking down a grassy hill with ivy-clad, brick buildings in the distance behind them, and the girl was smiling so appreciatively at the boy, and the boy looked so confident and carefree beside her, that I filled out the application and sent it off and within only weeks was accepted. Without telling anyone, I took from my savings account one hundred of the dollars that I’d diligently squirreled away of the wages I’d been paid as my father’s employee, and after my classes one day I walked over to Market Street and went into the city’s biggest department store and in their College Shop bought the pants and shirt and shoes and sweater that were worn by the boy in the photo. I had brought the Winesburg catalogue with me to the store; a hundred dollars was a small fortune, and I didn’t want to make a mistake. I also bought a College Shop herringbone tweed jacket. In the end I had just enough change left to take the bus home.