The Dream of The Broken Horses

5

The Hayes School: Standing now before its gracious Georgian facade, I'm suffused with melancholy. It was here that I, like all children at their schools, learned some of the awful lessons of life: that human beings compete; that competition can be ruthless; that those we love best may turn upon us and betray us; that those we respect most may show themselves to be flawed.

It's summer now. School is out of session. But the campus is open for two summer programs, a day camp for soccer players, and a high school theater workshop. When I arrive, the soccer players are practicing on the school's lush green athletic fields, while the theater students are in the midst of a dress rehearsal. I stop by the school auditorium, watch a couple of scenes from Shakespeare's As You Like It, then wander off.

The smells here bring back memories: polished stone, freshly waxed wood floors, the lingering odor of bad school food. ‘Fish eyes and glue’ and ‘mystery meat’ were among our gleeful descriptions of Hayes specialties.

Off the main foyer, lined by glass cases filled with sports trophies, is the corridor that leads in one direction to the Headmaster's office, in the other to the school Common Room. I walk through, then enter the gym, immediately noticing several unfamiliar features – new Plexiglas basketball backboards and differently colored markings on the floor. Most of all, I'm impressed by the volume of the space. It used to seem so vast. Now it strikes me as small, almost intimate.

I've come to revisit the site of a boxing match I fought here under Athletic Department auspices. In fact, it was a mean, ferocious battle waged to settle a bitter personal feud.

Tom Jessup, acting that day as coach and referee, appeared to view it as simply another fair if particularly combative bout. Perhaps, as I and my opponent were being bloodied as we flailed away, he was daydreaming about his new socially prominent paramour. Or perhaps, as I believed at the time, he unfairly refereed the bout so I would lose, my opponent, after all, being Mark Fulraine, scion of a founder of the school.

I walk to the end of the gym where the boxing ring was set up. Mats, perhaps the very ones we trod upon that day, are piled neatly in a corner. The vaulting horses are in their niche; the climbing ropes are hoisted to the ceiling. Taking a seat on the bench in front of the radiators, I feel the grid against my back, the same grid I leaned so hard against that day while my friend, Jerry Glickman, laced up my gloves.

Funny how many things come back when you revisit the scene of a traumatic event, details I would not remember were I not now at the site. As the memories flood in, I set my sketchbook on my knees and begin to draw, working to recapture the awful drama of that day.

There'd been much anticipation surrounding our fight. People knew we hated one another, that Mark, president of the Lower School Student Council, had deeply offended me, calling me ‘Jewboy’ because he didn't like a caricature I'd drawn of him for the school paper. After he spat out the epithet, we stared at one another, me incredulous, he, perhaps, equally shocked that he'd uttered such a vicious affront. Then I swore I'd knock his fucking block off.

Just as we were about to come to blows, a teacher intervened, which led to our being called separately into the Head of Lower School's office. Mr. Leonard, who owned that kingly title, decided that since our rancor was high and we were approximately the same weight, we should settle our differences in the ring.

An idiotic solution. Had I been Head of Lower School, I'd have suspended Mark till he issued a public apology. But the Fulraine family was a major benefactor of Hayes, people felt sorry for Mark because his sister had been kidnapped, and, anyway, in those days, genteel anti-Semitic remarks were not uncommon in the homes of Calista's social and financial elite.

Since our feud erupted on a Monday morning, Mark and I had five full days to look forward to our bout, scheduled to follow regular optional boxing practice on Friday afternoon. In that time, we carefully kept our distance so as to avoid exchanging further words.

My friends, all two of them, Tim Hawthorn and Jerry Glickman, assured me I'd win if I kept my head.

"Make him fight your fight," Jerry coached me.

"Sucker punch the creep, then sock him," Tim advised, smacking his fist into his palm.

Both pieces of advice seemed valid enough, though I had no clear idea what they meant. All I knew was that I was facing the fight of my life, and, unlike other student fights, it was being sanctioned by the school. Though participation in a grudge match was a fearful prospect, at least I could count on it being fairly refereed. Mr. Jessup, who had boxed as an undergraduate at State, was, I knew, not only an honorable guy but was also a favorite teacher, and, I then believed, my friend.

Friday, 2 P.M., the day of the match: I enter the Lower School locker room. Mark's already there wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, one foot on the bench tying up his sneakers. We glare at one another as we suit up side by side.

"It's going to be fun whipping you ass," he taunts.

"There's an ambulance outside waiting for you," I respond.

Every student, upon admittance to Hayes, is assigned one of two teams, Eagles or Mustangs. Thereafter, no matter the sport, all intramural teams are demarcated this way. Mark Fulraine was a Mustang, thus the tanktop he pulled over his head was a vivid fighting scarlet. Since I was an Eagle, mine was but a muted blue.

Together we strode into the gym to receive our gloves, headguards, and mouthpieces. Another match was in progress with at least a hundred boys seated about the ring. Normally less than twenty spectators attended Friday practice, but that afternoon interest was high as word of our impending battle had spread through Lower School.

Mark was popular; I was not. He was a star athlete, a football player, graceful and handsome with manly features and a head of unruly golden locks. I, dark-haired, skinny, sometimes gawky, was not particularly good at sports. Moreover, I was disliked on account of my sarcastic manner and for being one of the smartest kids in sixth grade.

As we walked forward, I could sense the waves of approval washing over him and feel the disdain directed at me.

"Give it to him, Mark!"

"Beat the crap out of him!" yelled Mark's brother, Robin, who would be acting as Mark's second.

I think I might have choked out of sheer loneliness if Jerry Glickman hadn't come forward then to encourage me and help me with my gloves. Since psychology is half of any battle, choking up would have doomed me for sure. But thanks to Jerry, despite the favoritism of the crowd, I managed to keep my head.

"He's too cocky," Jerry whispered. "He's riding for a fall."

Filled with gratitude, I looked around for Tim, my other friend. Appalled to find him in Mark's corner whispering encouragement, I heard mumbling in the audience: "Hawthorn's turned. Hawthorn's rooting for Fulraine!"

You will be betrayed.

That was the first lesson I learned that Friday afternoon. But strangely instead of eroding my confidence, Tim's betrayal gave me strength. I'll show him! I remember thinking. And at that I focused my anger on my betrayer, glaring at him so hard I forced him to lower his eyes.

The Hayes School, now coed but in those days exclusively for boys, prided itself on its instruction in manly sporting arts and values. Hayes boys, we were taught, played fair and true. Hayes football players never shirked a tackle, Hayes basketball players always leapt for heaven, and, in the boxing ring, Hayes boys gave all with honor and heart.

Mr. Jessup came over to check my mouthpiece and gloves.

"Everything okay?" he asked. I nodded. "Best now you do like Mark, shadowbox a little to warm up," he advised.

I nodded again, then stood and joined Mark, flamboyantly shadowboxing around the ring. Then Mr. Jessup beckoned us to the center to instruct us in the rules.

"Three two-minute rounds. Compulsory ten-count on a knockdown. Break when I tell you. If either of you wants to stop, say so and it's over."

Mark and I nodded.

"Good! Now come out swinging. May the best man win!"

Mark and I briefly touch gloved hands, Jessup stood back, then Mark and I began to fight.

I don't remember much about the bout, have no memory of particular blows. But I do remember they came fast and hard, and that after a slow start, to my surprise, I began to give as good as I got. There was ebb and flow; at times I became the aggressor, pursuing Mark across the ring. Other times he backed me against the ropes with a flurry of hooks and jabs. I remember Jerry encouraging me while offering me water during the breaks. I also recall Robin Fulraine yelling taunts from the opposing corner. At one point, I remember connecting a right and feeling great satisfaction as Mark's eyes clouded and blood spurted from his nose. I wasn't aware of how bloodied up I was myself till the second rest period when I looked with shock at the red towel in Jerry's hand.

"You're a mess, but you're doing great," Jerry assured me.

Mr. Jessup came over.

"You okay?"

I nodded.

"Good! Terrific fight," he said, then moved away.

If I had managed to hold my own in the first two rounds, things fell apart for me in the third. Perhaps it was exhaustion, also Mark's superior athletic ability. Whatever the cause, I realized I was getting beaten. Then suddenly, I remember, I felt my legs give our from under me as I was rocked by a terrific blow to the chin. I fell to the mat. I remember Mr. Jessup giving me a ten count as I struggled to stand up, then shaking my gloves and staring deeply into my eyes while motioning Mark back. I remember standing there stunned, barely able to raise my gloves, as Mark attacked, hitting me in the stomach, then letting loose with a vicious blow to my lower belly that sent me down again.

I remember writhing on the mat in pain and blood, feeling I was going to throw up. It was so obviously an illegal blow, Mr. Jessup should have stopped the bout right there. Instead he methodically counted me out, yanked me up, then raised Mark's arm in victory. Then amidst cheers from the crowd, he instructed us to shake hands… which we did.

Later in the locker room, Jerry beside me while I bent over a sink trying to stanch a cut on my lip, several kids came up to say I'd gotten a rotten deal, that after the low blow Jessup should have stopped the fight and called a draw. Better still, Mark Fulraine came over to apologize.

"The low blow was an accident. I don't fight dirty," he said solemnly. "I still don't like that picture you drew," he added before going off with his friends.

Still later, showered and dressed, crossing the empty gym, I remember watching as a school janitor mopped our blood off the white rubber cover they used to protect the mats.

Contrary to schoolboy mythology, Mark Fulraine and I did not become friends. But after our fight he showed me decent respect, his way, I guess, of saying he was sorry for what he'd said. Suddenly more kids seemed to like me, too. On Graduation Day, there was an exhibition of my sketches in one of the hallways of Lower School. Several boys made a point of introducing me as ‘class artist’ to their parents.

I've been drawing here in the gym for nearly an hour. Now, hearing the sounds of kids returning from soccer practice, I put down my pencil and examine my work. I've got the fight down pretty well, I think. Rather than depicting myself as victim, a role I dislike, I've drawn Mark and me as equally fierce competitors. I also have Mr. Jessup as he appeared to me that day, aloof and out of touch; Jerry, my friend, rooting for me in my corner; and Tim, by betrayer, half turned away, treason in his eyes. But it's my depiction of the audience I like best, their intense interest in the outcome, enjoying too the suffering and debasement of the loser.

As for Mr. Jessup, though he never acknowledged that he'd refereed unfairly, in class he continued to praise my work. Still I soured on him. I assumed he'd favored Mark because of the Fulraine family connection to the school. It was only later that I found out that Mrs. Fulraine had hired him that spring to give private tennis and boxing lessons to Mark and Robin, and that, in the early days of their romance, those coaching sessions served as the pretext for Tom to visit the Fulraine estate, where, afterwards, while the boys frolicked in the family pool, he and Barbara Fulraine retreated to her bedroom to make frantic, illicit love.

Tom Jessup had a secret. I was convinced of it. There was something different about him that spring, the way he spoke and moved, which, perhaps because of my hurt over his betrayal, I was eager to understand. The sincere and boyish young schoolmaster, previously so generous and kind, seemed somehow to have changed.

Almost immediately upon his arrival the previous autumn, our new French teacher had become one of the most popular instructors at Hayes. Young, eager, not jaded like the older masters, he had that rare teacher's gift of making a foreign language come alive. Though a conscientious objector, he hadn't fled the country but had served heroically as an army medic in Vietnam. After discharge, he'd worked his way through State, majoring in romance languages. In short, a man I could admire.

But in the spring, his teaching went flat. It was clear that whatever was going on in his interior life was not concern over the education and coaching of pubescent boys. Until the Flamingo shootings the following August, I had no idea why he'd changed. Then it was all over the newspapers, his affair with Barbara Fulraine. The most surprising part of their story, at least to Jerry Glickman and me, was the news that they'd met at Hayes the preceding April on Parents Day.

In September following the shootings, when school resumed for the new term, that meeting became a subject of endless speculation. Jerry and I, then new seventh graders, spent hours going over the events of that day, trying to imagine how it had occurred. We remembered Mrs. Fulraine. Even if nothing dramatic had followed, it would have been impossible to forget her, she was so beautiful, gracious, and glamorously dressed.

Fortunately for Hayes it had been a beautiful spring day; the previous year Parents Day had been rained out. Flower beds were in full bloom; playing fields shimmered green beneath the afternoon sun. The cars – shiny station wagons, splendid Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs, a Rolls or two. Parents wandered the campus, fathers in tweed jackets, mothers in gaily colored frocks. Mrs. Fulraine, we recalled, wore a sleeveless off-white linen dress that glistened in the light.

The purpose of Parents Day was to give parents an opportunity to see the school in action, visit classes, view scheduled sporting events, and most particularly meet with those in whose tender care they had entrusted the education of their sons. Teachers were primed not only to discuss schoolwork but also their students' moral progress, the true and underlying purpose, our headmaster often proclaimed, of a Hayes education.

I recall standing to the side that day as my parents discussed me with my favorite teacher, Miss Hilda Tucker, who had guided and encouraged my interest in art throughout my Hayes career.

Mark's younger brother Robin was in fifth grade. His homeroom teacher was Mr. Jessup. Thus it was natural that Mrs. Fulraine seek an audience to find out how Robin was doing. Replaying the swirl of events that afternoon, Jerry Glickman and I recalled the two of them speaking quietly somewhat apart from the crowd of parents, teachers, and boys, with a greater intensity and for a longer span of time than normal between a mother and teacher.

As seventh graders, our fantasies about their conversation were naive.

"Maybe he told her she had great tits," Jerry offered.

My response: "Maybe she stared down at his crotch."

We agreed it couldn't have happened that way.

"Then how did it happen?" Jerry asked.

I scratched my head. "They talked about Robin and Mark, what great little guys they were. Maybe she told him she was worried how, with the divorce and all, they weren't getting the kind of fathering boys need."

"So then-?"

I improvised. "He told her they were doing great, but he was available if they needed extra help… like coaching, tutoring, and such."

"What about sex?"

"They didn't get to that. They were attracted, but they were smooth about it. By offering extra help, Mr. Jessup signaled he was interested in coming out to the house."

"Right. So if she took him up on it, he'd figure she was interested too."

"Yeah!"

Now standing where Tom and Barbara stood that day, by the fountain in the paved school courtyard bounded by the Common Room and classroom wings, I imagine the play of their eyes, their searching looks, the unspoken yearning each sensed and felt.

Perhaps Barbara, being a vibrant, sensual woman, felt a sudden, unaccountable animal hunger for this attractive young man standing so straight and attentive before her – fresh, lean, clean-cut, the very opposite of the stout, lined, jaded quasi-gangster with whom she'd had slimy sex earlier that afternoon.

Tom, I think, would have been shattered by her beauty and entranced by her sultry gaze. No other mother that day had looked at him like this. No other mother exuded such pure and forceful sexual energy. Since starting at Hayes, his life had been consumed by boys. He'd had no time to date, no opportunity to meet young women. Now, suddenly, here was a person in whose eyes he could read desire.

Whatever they said to one another – and it was probably fairly close to what Jerry and I imagined once we got over our first crude fantasies – it was the silent dance of their eyes that pierced those secret places in human hearts where attraction and love are suddenly born. This eye-ballet would have been further enhanced by their surroundings – spring air scented by flowers and freshly mowed grass, a special slant of golden afternoon light, most of all the warm air bath that raised an attractive gloss from their sun-washed skin while releasing those aromatic attractors Mr. Butterfield, our science teacher, told us were called pheromones.

I'd like to draw them as they stood together that day, two gorgeous, silent, poised about-to-become lovers facing one another just outside the jabbering crowd. But it's getting late, the light is failing, I may not have the skill… and also, I have an appointment I must keep.

Hilda Tucker taught art at Hayes for thirty years. She was already in her forties when I entered the school in the first grade, a patient, nurturing buxom woman, who, from the first day, recognizing a slim talent, took me under her gentle wing.

"Work hard on your drawing, David," she would tell me. "Drawing is the basis of art."

I believed her, worked hard on my drawing, ending up not the painter she'd hoped, but a glib draftsman specializing in eyewitness portraits and, my latest incarnation, rapidly drawn courtroom caricatures.

She still lives in the small tract house just two miles down the road from Hayes, from which she would bicycle to and from school every day, except during snowstorms when she walked. Driving up to the house, I distill an image of her from my schooldays, not crouched over the handlebars of her bike the way people ride today, but sitting upright in the traditional manner, pedaling proudly, cheerfully oblivious to passing cars.

"David…!" She embraces me at her door with the same warm, welcoming expression she always displayed when greeting me at school. "I've been looking forward to this all week!"

She ushers me into a small living room dominated by a baby grand piano covered with framed photographs of former students. The paintings clustered on the walls are not at all conventional – brilliant color-filled landscapes reminiscent of the French Fauves. I gaze at them and then at Miss Tucker and then at her canvasses again, executed on her annual summer trips to France where she'd set up her easel in a field or by the side of a road, then proceed, as she used to put it, to ‘paint the light."

"Your paintings still move me."

"So kind of you to say that, David."

"The large one over the mantle – didn't it used to hang in your classroom beside the door?" She nods. "Now seeing so many together, I understand what you were doing. Why, I wonder, didn't I see it before?"

"Simple, David. You were a child. Now you're an adult, an artist, too."

She leaves me with her pictures while she retreats to her backyard garden to fetch her companion, Helen Slater. Miss Slater, also retired, taught music for years at Ashley-Burnett, the private school for girls in Van Buren Heights attended by my sister, Rachel.

A couple minutes later Miss Tucker returns.

"Helen'll be in soon. Still got some weeding to do. I do miss our summers in France, but the garden's a great joy. Not quite so glorious as our bicycle trips through Provence…" she smiles, "but nearly so." She pauses. "You know, David, back when you were in school, people called our relationship, Helen's and mine, a ‘Boston marriage.’ Times have changed. Now we're just ‘those two old dykes across the road.’"

She skakes her head when I protest. "We really are old," she says. "But I don't regret a thing. Not even giving the better part of my life to the art education of little boys. Students like you, who took up art as a career, made it all worthwhile."

"I'm not really an artist," I remind her gently. "Just an illustrator."

"I wouldn't care if you drew comic books. You've chosen to live in the realm of art." Her gentle brown eyes settle upon me. "It pleases me to think I had something to do with that."

She had much to do with it. She also instilled in me standards according to which I came to understand, my second year at Pratt, that I was never going to be a serious painter. For one thing, I wasn't interested in conceptual art or in using artwork to explore theory. For another, I was fascinated with character as revealed in portraits. Yet the prospect of painting flattering commissioned portraits of social and corporate types filled me with despair. Better, I thought, to use whatever skill I had to explore the dark side, to draw kidnappers, murderers, and rapists.

"I've been recalling Tom Jessup ever since you phoned," Miss Tucker tells me. "It's been years since I've thought of him. I was probably his closest friend on the faculty. Those old Hayes teachers didn't take kindly to new blood. You had to put in ten years of drudgery before they'd accept you as a peer. Tom was sweet, innocent, almost naive. He didn't understand their coldness. ‘What's their problem, Hildy?’ He always called me that. ‘Why won't they help me out?’ Tom wanted to be a great teacher. He thought of teaching as a calling. He couldn't understand why those old farts wouldn't mentor him a bit."

"Was he really so innocent?" I ask. "After all, he went into that affair."

"Yes… of course… but for me that's the proof. A more sophisticated man would have had the good sense to stay away from a woman like that. She was too rich, too beautiful, much too high above his station, plus she was older and the mother of two of his students. You don't come new into a school like Hayes and start sleeping around with your students' parents. Barbara Fulraine, as we all later found out, had been around the block a few times. Just the sort of woman who could bring ruin upon a young man. Once she tired of Tom, and sooner or later she would, she'd have left him miserable if not destroyed. So, you see, I think it was innocent of him to get involved with her. I'm sure it was loneliness that drove him to it. And her guile."

Guile: You don't hear a word like that too often these days, but Hilda Tucker employs it straight-faced. It's clear she still feels distaste for Barbara Fulraine and blames her for everything that happened.

"No one hated Tom," she says. "No one wanted him dead. It was her they were after. And since he was with her, they killed him too."

I don't tell her that for a while I actually did hate Tom Jessup, that, even after he was dead, when I found out that he'd been privately coaching the Fulraine boys, I remained angry at him for his favoritism.

"You describe him as sweet and naive," I tell her, "but for me that's much too vague. What was he really like? What were his passions? Surely he'd had girlfriends before."

"That's true," she says. "There was a girl, Susan something – I can't remember her name. They met in college, lived together. He didn't talk much about her, just mentioned that it hadn't worked out. She moved to New York, became a stockbroker. They stayed friends, kept in touch by phone. I don't think you know, David, how lonely the man was. He lived in a rooming house on Ohio Street down near the university. Had virtually no social life, barely knew anybody in town. As Lower School French teacher and coach, he was surrounded all day by little boys. Every so often Helen and I would have him for dinner. He was an excellent guest – bright, charming, full of life. The three of us would speak French, his, of course, a lot better than ours. We loved those evenings. It was good practice for our summers. I remember too he'd always bring a bouquet and a bottle of wine."

I'm not buying it.

"Wasn't there anything wrong with this guy?"

She gazes at me.

"Actually, there was," she says finally. "Not wrong exactly. In fact not wrong at all. But he was so innocent he thought it was wrong. We talked about it. I was touched he chose me as his confidante. Later Helen, too. We both tried to help.

"What?"

"Seems there was a young woman in his rooming house, a high-strung grad student who occupied the room next door. Somehow she became smitten with him to the extent she'd wait by her door until she heard him leaving, then step into the hallway, acting as if these meetings were just amusing coincidences. When that didn't get her anywhere, she became more aggressive, once actually bursting in one him when he was showering in the shared bathroom down the hall. Tom took a kind tack with her but only increased her interest. Finally, to put an end to it, he fibbed and told her he was gay. Once it was clear there was no possibility of romance, she was content just to be his friend."

"Seems a good solution. I don't see why he was upset about it."

"Tom was so honest it pained him to tell a lie. And now the big lie he'd told her led to a whole series of little lies, which became a terrible burden on his conscience and his time."

"Why didn't he just move out?"

"That's what we advised. But he had the guilts over this girl, was afraid if he left suddenly she'd be hurt. They did a lot of things together – went to the movies, took hikes, stuff like that. His plan was to leave at the end of spring term, go off for the summer, maybe take a camp counseling job, then find a new place to live come fall. But I had my own theory."

"Which was-?"

"That because he was so lonely he became attached to her, and, more interesting, that there was a side of him that enjoyed the deceit. Tom's whole life had been devoted to virtue. At one point, he told us, he seriously considered attending divinity school. He'd been a Boy Scout as a kid, then an Eagle Scout, then a conscientious objector who'd volunteered to be a field medic, one of the most dangerous jobs in the Vietnam War. He'd always been a straight-shooter – kind, generous, the sort who'd always tried to do the right thing. Now he was deep into deception with this girl, and the thicker the web of lies the more rotten he felt about it. And yet in some weird way he didn't understand and to which he couldn't admit, I believe he reveled in his deception."

"That is weird!"

"It was all those lies, I think, that set him up for the affair with Mrs. Fulraine. We didn't know who she was, of course. Not at the time. All we knew was she was someone in society. That worried us. Helen and I talked about it that summer in France. Then when we heard what happened and who she was – well, we just felt awful, felt that we'd failed him, hadn't helped him understand where he was going with his life."

Miss Tucker shakes her head. "I think what happened to Tom is that his rectitude burned out. He'd come to a point where he needed to go down a different path, and that woman showed him just how to do it."

I stare at her, surprised at the revelation. That Tom Jessup, in his affair with Barbara, was exploring the dark side of his nature had never occurred to me. But now, thinking about it, a new set of ideas starts taking shape. All the passion of that summer, the obsessive lovemaking – was that but a means for Tom to discover the kind of person he really was?

"Do you think there was love between them?"

Miss Tucker scoffs. "He may have deluded himself. I'm sure she didn't. I'm certain that when he stopped satisfying and amusing her, she'd have dumped him, harshly too. As for Tom, all the sneaking around probably added to his excitement. Plus the novelty of being with such an experienced woman. Poor boy! He was blinded – by her position, money, beauty, and guile. My God! She was sleeping with a gangster! She wasn't the sort of person you could be tender with. She was exploiting him, using him to make the other man jealous."

Helen Slater enters the room. A handsome, gray-haired woman in tanktop and shorts, she greets me with a warm smile.

"I remember you well," she says. "Hildy spoke about you often. ‘There's this one kid over there who can really draw!’ I also remember teaching your sister at Ashley-Burnett. We've followed your career, David. All those killers! Who'd have thought you'd end up drawing people like that!"

We talk about the Foster trial. Because both victim and accused were musicians, Helen's fascinated and wants to hear all the gossip. While I fill her in, Miss Tucker retires to prepare tea. When she appears again, with a tray holding a teapot, cups, and a platter of sweets, I turn the conversation back to Tom Jessup.

Helen's view is similar to Helen's, but they differ in their appraisal.

"He was morally immature," Helen says. "I think he could have gone either way, stuck to virtue, become a professional do-gooder, or gone over the edge exploring his selfish side. But I think if he hadn't been killed and his affair with that woman had fizzled, he'd have fallen into a depression, then pulled himself out pretty quickly. Hildy, of course, thinks he would have been shattered." She puts her arm lovingly around her companion. "Anyhow, I like to think Tom found some happiness those last steamy months of his life."

At the door I remind Miss Tucker of something she whispered to me my last day at Hayes.

"‘Don't think you can snatch a leaf from the laurel tree of art without paying for it with your life.’"

"Yes, of course," she says, beaming. "From Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann. It's still one of my favorite quotes." She turns to Helen. "It's true too, don't you think?"

Helen nods. "Oh, so true," she agrees.