AT THE WORDS “Come in!” Grace pushed open the heavy oak door to Miss Everett’s office and stepped inside. “Here’s my paper,” she said, and watched the woman’s eyes dart to the clock on the wall, making sure it was in on time. Grace had an hour to spare before the paper was due.
Miss Everett glanced at the title before laying it with the stack of student papers on her desk. “‘Causes of Delinquency in Immigrant Boys,’” she said. “I look forward to reading your conclusions, Miss Collins.”
“Thank you, Miss Everett.” Grace turned to go.
“Miss Collins?”
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“I suppose you have selected your area of specialization for next year?”
“Yes, Miss Everett. Family work in the community.”
“Ah, of course.” Miss Everett nodded. She would already have known that Grace had not chosen Miss Everett’s own speciality, child development; she must have had her list of the second-year students she would be supervising some weeks ago. “And I suppose you will hope to do your placement at one of the settlement houses.”
“I hope to, yes.”
Miss Everett only nodded; you couldn’t read either approval or disapproval in her nod, but something compelled Grace to add, “I still believe very strongly in the settlement model, but I have learned a great deal from you about the scientific approach. I hope it needn’t always be…exclusive. One or the other, I mean.”
“I know what you mean, Miss Collins. I hope your tendency to idealism will not overwhelm your very fine scholarly mind. Good day, Miss Collins. Enjoy your summer holiday.”
Grace walked back from college rather than taking the subway. It was a warm afternoon and she let the sun drench her back and shoulders through the cambric of her blouse. The hem of her new spring skirt was two inches above the ankle: she fit in, fashion-wise, with the younger women in her class, though by comparison with many of the ladies she passed on the street, she still looked dowdy. She liked the feeling of the spring air circulating around her stocking-clad ankles. She thought about the red dress she’d tried on in Macy’s, wondering would she ever be daring enough to wear such a costume.
Soon college would end for the year and with it, the social work program. Next week Jack would write his final exams at McGill; he was coming down to visit her in New York for a week before they both returned to Newfoundland for the summer. After that—well, who could tell?
She wondered if he might propose—here, under the trees in Central Park. Jack had another year of medical school and one of residency after that, but that was fine by Grace, who was anxious to work for a while and use her new qualifications.
I want too many different things, she thought. She wanted to be walking through Central Park in New York and also to be back home, to be a working woman and also to be Jack’s wife. She wanted to be independent, here in New York, connected to no-one, and yet she also wanted Jack by her side. She wanted to be free of her family and yet she yearned to go home and have Lily welcome her with open arms, approve of the life Grace was building. She wanted everything, all at once. That was her problem.
What she did not want was what she found when she got to Mrs. Parker’s apartment: Jack’s suitcase in the hallway. Her heart leapt, at first. He was here early! But by the time she got to the parlour door, even before she saw him siting with elbows on his knees, face between his palms, she knew it was wrong. This was the first day of his examinations. Jack should not be here.
He stood slowly, crossed the room to her but did not take her in his arms. After a moment he reached out and took her hands instead.
“No one was home. The maid let me in,” he said. Not the explanation she was looking for.
“What—when did you arrive?” Not the question she wanted to ask.
“This morning. I took the night train down from Montreal. It took me awhile to find the place.”
He looked as if he hadn’t slept. “I’m sure Ida’s getting the guest room ready,” Grace said. “Do you want to lie down?”
“No, no, I want—” He looked around the room as if caged by its gentility, its expensive furniture and excellent taste. Words failed him. He could not tell her what he wanted.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
He must have walked all the way up from Grand Central Station, yet he said quickly. “Yes—please. I—we need to talk.”
She led him out of the building and back across to the park, the wide sunny paths she had walked just half an hour ago. She tried to imagine what kind of news he might be bringing that would have him here when he should still be at McGill. He said nothing at all until they were in the park, and then he asked whether her classes had finished yet for the year, whether she had written any examinations.
“You had one to write today, didn’t you?” Grace said. “Whatever you have to say must be important, if you’ve missed an exam for it. You’d better go ahead and tell me.”
“I didn’t miss an exam to come down and tell you anything,” Jack said. He walked looking straight ahead, his stride still long and military, his arms swinging, as though he were forever marching to some battlefield in Flanders. “It’s the other way around. I came down to tell you I’m not writing my exams. I can’t do it, Grace.”
She looked at him, but he would not return her gaze, so she had to search the lines of his face and body rather than his eyes for clues. She remembered how he had talked at Christmas about fear, about feeling overwhelmed. Then he had seemed like a man struggling to swim in deep waters. Now there was a calm without peace. It was the calm of a man who has been sucked under the waves and ceased to struggle.
“What happened?” she asked finally.
“I couldn’t do it. That’s all. I did try, even though I couldn’t study and I knew going in it was no go. Sat down in the examination hall and took the pen in my hand. Couldn’t write a word—just doodled on the page until it was time to leave. Today’s exam would have been a practical. I was supposed to stand there in front of a live patient—a human being!—and tell a supervising doctor what was wrong with him. God, how could anyone even think—” He held up his hands, out in front so she could see how they trembled. “I can’t do it, Grace. I’ve failed.”
“Failed—this year, this term of your program, that’s all.” She laid a hand on his arm.
He broke stride then, stumbled to a halt. “I’m not going back, Grace. Can’t finish medical school, can’t be a doctor. What kind of doctor breaks down in tears, has to rush from the room when he sees a wound? What kind of man, even—?”
She led him to a nearby bench. He sat in the same posture as when she had found him in the parlour, elbows on knees and head in hands. He ran his fingers through his hair, over and over ’til it stuck out in all directions, and started several different sentences but finished none of them.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I thought we had a future because I thought I had one. But now I see that won’t wash.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if you’re not a doctor,” Grace said.
Then, on those words, he finally looked up at her. “It doesn’t. At all?”
“Of course not. You know I was never—I mean, being the doctor’s wife didn’t matter to me like it would to some women. I’m not like my mother, or even yours.”
“My mother. Oh, she’ll—I can’t even imagine telling her, Grace. Or Dad, even worse. They were so proud, Grace. I thought I could make them—so proud…”
His voice broke the second time he said “proud.” Grace put a hand on his shoulder and as if that touch had made him collapse like a house of cards he leaned towards her. She gathered him into her arms, against her shoulder, and she felt him shake with sobs. She sat on a park bench in open sunlight, holding a man against her breast and letting him weep. She thought of Charley. She thought of Ivan Barry with his blind eye and the gaping mouth that was supposed to preach sermons one day. She thought of every dream shattered and broken, and after a while she cried too.