Fallen Idols (10 page)

“This is so far out of left field, I don't know how to respond,” Clancy said. “I'm not a businessman, I'm a physical therapist. I mean, it's a cool dream and all, but I'm not there.”

She turned to him.
“I?
Or we?”

“You want to own a bar in Chicago?” he asked, surprised.

“I like Chicago. I'm not going to live in South Dakota, and neither are you—you like it here, most of your friends are here. They need more therapists in Chicago, it's a boomtown for them, all the sports teams. You could still have your career, we wouldn't have to work the place full-time. That's what you hire people to do. This is a chance to own our piece of the rock, Clancy. People our age usually don't get an opportunity like this.”

They relocated to Chicago and bought Jimmy out. They had to put in long hours, longer than they'd realized—you don't absentee-manage a bar, even if you have decent help that doesn't rob you blind. Callie began substitute-teaching junior high school phys. ed. part time in the Evanston public school system. When the school day was over she would go down to the bar, around three. She would look over the receipts from the night before, check on supplies and place orders, go to the bank down the street; the various and sundry details of running a daily business that dealt mostly in cash.

Clancy would join her after he had put in a full day at the clinic. They worked together until the happy-hour rush was over at seven and the students and older regulars hadn't yet come in, then they would go have dinner at one of the local restaurants. There were dozens of good, decently priced places to choose from, and it was their only quiet time together.

While they were on their dinner break, their bartenders would run things. They had three part-time bartenders— two male graduate students from nearby DePaul, and Pete, a middle-aged bachelor who was one of Jimmy's old crew and had stayed on. Pete wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he was honest. Having Pete backstopping him allowed Clancy the luxury of not having to be there seven nights a week; he customarily took Sunday and Monday nights off (except during football season, when the games were televised and all hands were needed on deck).

After dinner Callie would hang around for an hour or so, then she'd go home. She couldn't stay up as late as Clancy could—she needed her sleep. How her husband got by on four or five hours of sleep a night was a mystery to her.

The drive home took less than twenty minutes. At this time of night, there wasn't much traffic. They had a nice apartment in an old building near the Northwestern campus, a block from the lake.

Clancy parked under the building, rode the elevator up to the third floor, unlocked the front door to their apartment and let himself in, moving as quietly as possible so he wouldn't wake Callie. Tiptoeing through the dimly lit living room, he went into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator to see if there were any leftovers.

“Clancy?” Her voice didn't sound like she had just awakened.

“Yeah, honey.” He grabbed a carton of milk, a jar of spicy mustard, and a hunk of salami. “How come you're up?” he called to her.

“Couldn't sleep.” She came in the kitchen doorway in her robe and slippers, her eyes slits, adjusting to the light. “Didn't you eat?”

“I got busy and forgot to.” He grabbed a loaf of bread from the breadbox on the kitchen counter, started hacking at the salami. He smeared two slices of bread with mustard, laid the salami on top. After biting off a chunk, he held the sandwich out to her. She leaned over and ate a mouthful out of his hand, wiping the mustard off her lips with a dish towel.

“Tom and Will called,” she informed him. “They're both getting into Madison around noon. They'll share a cab from the airport and meet us at the cemetery.” She pressed a hand to her lower back. “That's why I couldn't sleep, thinking about it.”

Clancy nodded somberly. “I know. It was slow tonight in the bar, plenty of time to let your mind wander. I thought about her most of the evening.”

Today was the first-year anniversary of Jocelyn's death. Clancy, his brothers, and Callie were going to Madison to visit her gravesite.

“Is your father coming?” she asked. She tried to keep the anxiety from her voice. Walt's behavior was a touchy subject in the family these days. “Have you heard from him?”

“We exchanged e-mails last week, but we haven't talked on the phone in a pretty long time. He never picks up, and he doesn't return messages. It's the same with Will and Tom, he doesn't talk to any of us. He only stays in touch via e-mail, so he doesn't have to deal with us directly.” Clancy shook his head in frustration. “He isn't coming. He would've said so if he was.”

“Aren't you worried about him?” she asked, not for the first time.

“Of course I'm worried,” he answered. “You know that.” They'd had this discussion too many times already. He was sick of it. “We all are. We'd be crazy not to be. But we're not going to tell him what to do, or how to feel. We can't. He's the father, we're the sons.”

“He needs his family, now more than ever,” Callie said stoutly.

“I know that.” Clancy washed down a mouthful of sandwich with a swallow of milk. “But he's decided to keep his distance from us, and that's how it's going to be until he changes his mind. Nobody tells Walt Gaines what to do or how to act,” he said, both in irritation and sorrow. “No one ever has, and no one ever will. So let's drop it, okay? Talking about it isn't going to solve anything.”

She ran a placating hand along his forearm. “Okay.”

Clancy thought about what his father had gone through over the past year. He knew that Walt's life had been turned upside-down since his wife had been killed.

No, not just turned upside-down. His entire world had been ripped apart.

The troubles started with the filing of a complaint against the university. The parents of one of the students who had been on the ill-fated trip (the same spoiled, immature kid who had whined about being robbed, when his and everyone else's life was on the line) brought charges of negligence against the university for allowing their son to be put into a situation where he could have been killed. That their son and everyone else had signed releases specifically waiving any such claims, due to the potential for danger in the region, didn't matter to them. They held the university responsible, not only for educating their child, but for baby-sitting him, too.

The fear of being sued, and the bad publicity that would accompany it, put the school between a rock and a hard place. The trip hadn't been university-sanctioned— both Walt and the school had been clear about that in the prospectus. The onus was on Walt, not the university, so legally, they were blameless. But he was one of the most important members of their faculty, a figure of worldwide renown. And he had just lost his wife.

With some reluctance, the university hung tough. They stood behind Walt, and after a brief period of blustering and posturing, the family backed down. Their son hadn't suffered any real harm, after all, except to his fragile psyche. He wouldn't go on with a career in archaeology, but better to learn that was the wrong profession now than later on, after he'd spent years of his life and thousands of his parents’ dollars chasing the wrong vocation.

Walt was teaching his fall semester courses while all this hullabaloo was going on, but his heart wasn't in it.

He could feel a vague undercurrent of hostility toward him from certain elements of the faculty, the conservative members who had always resented his high-profile flamboyance, celebrity, and independence from the rules which those who had less prominence had to follow. He was no longer the golden boy—there was a cloud over him now. It was almost as if what had happened down there was his fault, even his own wife's killing.

No one spoke to Walt about this directly, but he could feel it. There were fewer invitations to school functions, fewer dinner invitations. A man who had been at the center of university life, he was now being frozen out of the social vortex. Even some members of his own department were keeping their distance.

Those snubs hurt, but they were peripheral; the people who were turning their backs on him were cowards, second-raters showing their true colors after years of kissing his rear end. He didn't give a damn about them, they were beneath his concern.

The primal change in his life—the death of his partner—was what he couldn't transcend. Without Jocelyn as his rudder, he felt lost.

In November, Walt went to the dean of the college and requested that he be permitted to take the next semester off. He wasn't going to return to La Chimenea, which had been his intention—too many bad memories. He needed a change of scenery, to live someplace where he wouldn't see daily reminders of Jocelyn. He had decided to go to Los Angeles. He planned to collaborate with some members of the UCLA archaeological department he had worked with over the years.

His request was expeditiously approved. He would go on sabbatical (with full pay and benefits) for eight months, after the fall term exams were over. Then he'd come back to Madison the following autumn, reinvigorated and ready to go again.

Unfortunately, those plans didn't pan out. Walt couldn't hook up with his UCLA colleagues; there was no way they could fit him into their schedules, he hadn't given them enough lead time to prepare—even a scholar of his stature doesn't just waltz into a department, find an empty office, and get working. There are protocols that have to be adhered to.

Walt was disappointed at this turn of events, but he understood the situation. Undeterred by this setback, and unwilling to return to the place that held too many bad memories, he decided to stay out west. He rented a bungalow in Santa Monica and began working on a book about his life's work. His publishers, of course, were interested. Once he submitted an outline, they'd pay him a nice advance.

He kept his sons apprised of what he was doing, and seemed to be fine with it. When they talked to him on the phone, he sounded upbeat. Somewhat distant, but getting along okay.

Then in March, two and a half months after he'd left Madison, Walt flew back and met with the president of the university. The meeting was a tightly kept secret— only the two of them and the dean of the college were present.

A day later, Professor Walter Gaines, chairman of the Archaeology Department at the University of Wisconsin, holder of the endowed Allenby Chair of Archaeology, one of the most celebrated archaeologists in the world, formally submitted his resignation from the university at which he had taught for over thirty years. He was retiring, with full benefits.

A stipulation of the agreement between the two parties was that neither side would announce Walt's leaving until the end of the spring semester. It was to everyone's advantage to keep this under wraps. Walt didn't want the hassle of having to explain why he was leaving, and the university didn't want the bad publicity they were certain would come up—it would be assumed they had forced Walt's resignation, because of the fallout from the deadly field trip. By the time the announcement was made, in May, the story would be old news.

The university wished him well, and that quickly, his career was over.

Once he severed that connection, Walt moved fast. He cleaned his office out that same night, discreetly put his house up for sale in a private listing, and in a week he'd sold it. He was packed and gone less than a week after that; what he didn't ship west, he sold or put in storage. It was as if he had never lived in Madison, never taught there, never raised a family there.

No one knew he had done any of this, including his sons.

At the end of May, a few days before the moratorium keeping Walt's retirement a secret was over, Walt sent each of the boys an identical letter.

Dear Clancy (Will, Tom),

What you are about to read may initially come as a surprise, but once you think about it, you'll understand the logic of what I've done, and why.

I've resigned from the university. It happened a couple of months ago, but I kept quiet about it for political reasons, which I'm sure you can appreciate, having grown up in an academic family. Now I can tell you.

Thirty-two years is a good run for anyone, and I've come to the end of mine with them. I would be less than candid if I sloughed off the unpleasantness surrounding this decision—you know what I'm talking about, the petty little minds and their two-bit jealousies and suspicions. There was a cloud hanging over my head, and no matter what I did, I couldn't shake it. This despite the fact that I am the only one in that sad affair to have suffered a loss. Academic life can be wonderful, but it can also be mean and myopic and even vindictive. There are other reasons as well, mostly having to do with knowing when it's time to say good-bye, which is to do it while you're still at the top of your game. So I'm out of there, and I'm better off for it.

I have sold the house in Wisconsin. Since I won't be living there, and none of you do, there was no reason to keep it. It was our house, your mother's and mine (and yours, until you grew up and moved out), and without her, it felt wrong to stay. I am in the process of buying a house not far from UCLA, where some of my friends teach. I should be settled in within the month. I'm using the profits from the old house as a down payment (don't worry, I haven't raided your inheritances). I'll send you my new address and phone number, once I have them. In the meantime, you can reach me through my cell phone or via e-mail.

For now I'm doing a bit of writing and consulting and sorting things out, my life primarily. At some point I may go back to teaching—I have offers from many universities in the area. Other than that, I'm taking it one day at a time.

The only thing I'm requesting of you is that you not visit me here, not yet. I need more time to decompress. Your mother's death was a mighty blow, and I'm still recovering as I'm sure you are.

I'll keep in close touch.

Love, Dad

The boys were surprised and upset upon getting this letter. They knew their dad was going through a miserable period, with their mother's death and the behind-the-back stabs at him stemming from the Central American fiasco; but to leave the university, which had been his home, his anchor, for over thirty years, was inconceivable to them. That he'd made this decision unilaterally, without even having a conversation with them about it, only worsened how they felt about it.