happened very suddenly, and I guess you could say I’m in shock. In shock. Probably will be for a while, huh? You don’t have to tell me right away, but let me know if you want to come here for the viewing on Friday and the funeral and all that on Saturday afternoon.
Philip might as well have been speaking to an answering machine.
I don’t suppose you’ll want to stay here, will you? When did you ever want to stay here?
Tim’s heart trembled at the thought of what Mark must be going through.
He found that he was holding his hands clamped down over the top of his head, as if to keep this new information from bouncing around the hotel room, spattering blood as it went. Feeling like Philip, he lowered his hands and for a moment concentrated on his breathing. What could he say to his brother?
With this question came a great, dirty tide of misery and despair, at its center a piercing bolt of pain for Nancy Underhill, for how she must have felt in the weeks and days before. That was monstrous, obscene. Tim made up his mind on the spot: he would not leave Millhaven without knowing why Nancy had killed herself. It was as though she herself had given him the charge.
From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 12 June 2003
I’m checked into the Pforzheimer, and just to make sure I realize that I am once again back in my hometown, Millhaven voices are rolling through my head. My nephew Mark’s sweet e-mail voice; Philip’s dour rumble. Even Pop’s smoky rasp. In the midst of all these voices, why not listen to Nancy’s, too?
Nancy’s voice was soft, tennis-ball fuzzy. She once asked me,
How do you write a book, anyhow?
Heart in mouth, I said. She gave me a lovely laugh, her eyes half-closed. Nancy handled customer complaints for the Millhaven Gas Company. Philip, the vice principal of John Quincy Adams Junior High and High School (“Quincy”), wanted her to quit. He thought that having people yell at his wife all day was beneath him, though when you came down to it, the nuts and bolts of his job weren’t all that different. That Nancy could be funny about her job annoyed Philip. If she was going to insist on going to that office every day, at least she could have the decency to show its cost; that was Philip’s point of view.
All day long, these ignorant black dumbbells are calling her “motherfucker,”
Philip had once stage-whispered to him.
Tell me you could take that every day.
Philip,
she had said,
they’re not ignorant, they’re not dumb, and they’re certainly not all black. They’re just afraid they’ll freeze to death if they lose their gas. We work out a little deal, that’s all.
Do white people ever get that deal?
Philip wanted to know.
That gas company job must have been difficult more often than not, but she kept showing up. At night, she cooked for Philip and Mark. Obviously, she did all the housework. A woman with two jobs then, and I bet she seldom complained. To a girl from Pigtown, Philip had seemed a good enough catch. A budding educator, he already wore a jacket and tie every day. Probably, Philip had opened up to her back then, probably showed her a little flash, a little soul, enough to convince her it would still be there in the years to come. Think of the long marriage afterward, think of how she endured the person he became. I remember the light in her eye as she hurried down the hall toward me, a glow I could see right through the screen door. A great capacity for feeling, then, starved, unused, except for her son.
I want to know why you killed yourself.
A fatal disease? Philip would have told me. A love affair gone wrong? Nancy was not so romantic, not so foolish. Some overwhelming shame? If not shame, then a deep guilt? Guilt for what? For something undone, some action unperformed—that felt like Nancy’s brand of guilt.
Brave, steadfast, resigned, disappointed, true of heart, Nancy was all of these things. Poisoned by an old guilt—when she could have intervened, when
Philip might as well have been speaking to an answering machine.
I don’t suppose you’ll want to stay here, will you? When did you ever want to stay here?
Tim’s heart trembled at the thought of what Mark must be going through.
He found that he was holding his hands clamped down over the top of his head, as if to keep this new information from bouncing around the hotel room, spattering blood as it went. Feeling like Philip, he lowered his hands and for a moment concentrated on his breathing. What could he say to his brother?
With this question came a great, dirty tide of misery and despair, at its center a piercing bolt of pain for Nancy Underhill, for how she must have felt in the weeks and days before. That was monstrous, obscene. Tim made up his mind on the spot: he would not leave Millhaven without knowing why Nancy had killed herself. It was as though she herself had given him the charge.
From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 12 June 2003
I’m checked into the Pforzheimer, and just to make sure I realize that I am once again back in my hometown, Millhaven voices are rolling through my head. My nephew Mark’s sweet e-mail voice; Philip’s dour rumble. Even Pop’s smoky rasp. In the midst of all these voices, why not listen to Nancy’s, too?
Nancy’s voice was soft, tennis-ball fuzzy. She once asked me,
How do you write a book, anyhow?
Heart in mouth, I said. She gave me a lovely laugh, her eyes half-closed. Nancy handled customer complaints for the Millhaven Gas Company. Philip, the vice principal of John Quincy Adams Junior High and High School (“Quincy”), wanted her to quit. He thought that having people yell at his wife all day was beneath him, though when you came down to it, the nuts and bolts of his job weren’t all that different. That Nancy could be funny about her job annoyed Philip. If she was going to insist on going to that office every day, at least she could have the decency to show its cost; that was Philip’s point of view.
All day long, these ignorant black dumbbells are calling her “motherfucker,”
Philip had once stage-whispered to him.
Tell me you could take that every day.
Philip,
she had said,
they’re not ignorant, they’re not dumb, and they’re certainly not all black. They’re just afraid they’ll freeze to death if they lose their gas. We work out a little deal, that’s all.
Do white people ever get that deal?
Philip wanted to know.
That gas company job must have been difficult more often than not, but she kept showing up. At night, she cooked for Philip and Mark. Obviously, she did all the housework. A woman with two jobs then, and I bet she seldom complained. To a girl from Pigtown, Philip had seemed a good enough catch. A budding educator, he already wore a jacket and tie every day. Probably, Philip had opened up to her back then, probably showed her a little flash, a little soul, enough to convince her it would still be there in the years to come. Think of the long marriage afterward, think of how she endured the person he became. I remember the light in her eye as she hurried down the hall toward me, a glow I could see right through the screen door. A great capacity for feeling, then, starved, unused, except for her son.
I want to know why you killed yourself.
A fatal disease? Philip would have told me. A love affair gone wrong? Nancy was not so romantic, not so foolish. Some overwhelming shame? If not shame, then a deep guilt? Guilt for what? For something undone, some action unperformed—that felt like Nancy’s brand of guilt.
Brave, steadfast, resigned, disappointed, true of heart, Nancy was all of these things. Poisoned by an old guilt—when she could have intervened, when
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