But Janet was not
asleep. To the contrary; she practically grappled him before the
door was closed, and pulled him over to the pad before he could make
any protest. Once there, there were no words: she simply turned him
toward to the pad and let him read the contents.
His exhaustion was
instantly forgotten. “ All right! We’re in! We made it!”
He scrolled through
the letter again and again, hardly able to believe the words.
Graduate school! At last! Finally, he was one his way to a real
job. A real career. Hell, a real life.
It was the best
thing that had ever happened to him. And not just to him, of course:
he felt Janet’s hand on the back of his shoulders, her smile on
the back of his head, her warmth in his soul. Reaching back, he took
her hand and squeezed tightly, almost too tightly. “This makes it
all worth while,” he said, close to trembling. All the years of
hard work. They’ve finally paid off.”
“The hard years”
Janet reminded him with a return squeeze of equal intensity, “
are just beginning.”
He could only nod
his head at that. It was true of course; it was still a long
difficult road to where they wanted to be, one filled with more that
its share of potholes, icy roads, and dead ends. This might be the
most exciting moment of their lives, but Bill knew it was preceding
many very difficult ones. Bill had a feeling there would come a day
when his shifts at the Jiffy Mart would sound like a wonderful dream
he’d once had.
“But we’ll get
through them all right, “she said, reading his mind as usual.
“You’ll see.”
* * *
The first day of
school only reinforced the feeling. The classroom was filled with
people much like himself: ambitious, grimly-determined faces which
had gone though just as much as he had to get here, and were as
determined not to be among the two-thirds who didn’t make the cut.
Professor’s Esienhart’s first lecture didn’t help either: “The
first thing you’re going to get through your head is that this
isn’t Greenpeace or some other feel-goo club where you pay your
dues and pat yourself on the back. When I’m finished with you –
those of you whom are still left – you’re to know Mother Earth
and how she works better than a doctor knows her patient. And if
think you’re ecology-minded now, believe me: you’re the Marquis
de Sade fancying himself a lover of women. So if any of you doubting
your commitment … now is the time to step aside before you put in a
lot of time and hard word for nothing. There are no faint hearted
types in this field, believe me.
* * *
When he told Janet,
however, she didn’t flinch, or look the slightest bit concerned.
“Bill Malone, if there’s one thing nobody can doubt about you,
it’s your confidence: she told him in no uncertain terms. “You
have nothing to worry about.”
Bill grinned at her
confidence in him, not to mention the gigantic hug and kiss that
accompanied it. But that didn’t make his studies any easier. By
mid-term he was already beginning to wonder what so bad about being a
grunt at the Jiffy Mart anyway. At least it was a steady job with a
steady income, not to mention a minimum of headaches. A life like
that – but then he thought of the child they hoped to have one day:
that child deserved a better life, whether he wanted it or not.
Besides, giving in now would be an act he’d never live down. He
couldn’t do it, not after all he’d been through.
The decision turned
out to be the correct one. Amazingly, he not only passed that first
final, but – of the correctly predicted one-third of the original
class remaining – got the highest mark. Eisenhart gave him a win
as he passed out the scores: “I’ve told the rest of the faculty
not to cut you any slack, Malone,” he said. Janet, naturally, was
ecstatic, and the celebrated with a fillet of soy steak and the best
organic wine they could afford. “I told you,” she said
afterward, when the lights were low and the music soft. “I told
you you could do it.”
Things didn’t get
any easier after that, however. Bill learned more than he would have
thought possible to stuff into his head: chemistry, geology,
meteorology, climatology, hydrology, biology, zoology, botany,
toxicology, entomology, mycology … merely keeping all the names
straight was a strain, much less all he had to know about them. And
those, he discovered, were just the fundamental sciences he had to be
grounded in before he could hope to master the skills he would need.
But his professors were not (it seemed) sympathetic at all to his
groans: “We tried ignorance,” one finally made it plain, “and
it doesn’t work.”
Fortunately, Janet
was always there to keep his spirits up when it seemed like he could
hardly keep the world under his feet another moment. “You can make
it,” she would say while rubbing his shoulders and back, sore from
so many hours hunched over his pad. “You know you can make it.
All you have to do is stay at it and you’ll get there.”
“If I do, it’ll
be because of you,” he would thank her, and return to his studies
with a vengeance. She never said anything to that, of course: it
was too obviously true for her to deny. Without her, he would never
have made it even this far, and they both knew it.
* * *
The second year got
heavily into philosophy and environmental ethics. Again, it was
nothing like his undergraduate course, where he’d been required to
do little more than mouth the professor’s biases: he was expected
to do real thinking here. Animal rights, for example: while Bill
couldn’t agree with all of Dr. Heron’s postulates on the
metaphysical basis of rights, he discovered for himself why it was
criminal to regard any competing species as “pests”, and the
ruthlessly exterminate them, regardless of the effects on the human
population. Then there was the hypothesis, or philosophical concept
was perhaps the best term, of Gaia, the notion that the entire planet
was in fact a single living organism, with its body and mind, and
rights. They spent an entire semester on that, and the planetary
consequences of technological development. For the first time, Bill
wondered if it was getting to be too much even for Janet; she seemed
increasingly distracted when he got into those discussions. Finally,
she confessed that she simply couldn’t follow him anymore: “You’ve
graduated to a higher plane of consciousness, I’m afraid, one that
I can’t reach.”
The big tests came
in the third and fourth years. Both of them had been expecting to
start his field word for some time, of course. But Janet couldn’t
give up her job at the arboretum to join Bill in the rain forests of
New Guinea, or the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Or the deserts of
Mexico with his Native American spiritual guide. Those eighteen
months were the roughest in this life. But there was no doubting the
value of his experiences; you could learn an enormous amount about
the Earth in classrooms but until you lived with here, intimately and
continuously, you didn’t really have the kind of relationship you
need if you were to worked her with exploitation.
The same lack of
intimacy, however, pressed even Janet’s patience to its limit.
More and more Bill could send the frustration and resentment inside
her, and her loneliness. It was made worse by her growing inability
to understand what he was learning, however hard he tried explaining
it to her.
Still, he knew that
eventually the trials would be over, these hard moments behind them,
and the future happy and confident again. Or at least, he though he
knew. But when the time came that she burst out with the accusation
that loved Gaia more than he loved her – how could she not see that
both were one and the same, the each reinforced each other rather
than competed? – that was the first time he finally permitted
himself to wonder if they would one day do their separate ways,
It was also the last
time he ever though about quitting the program.
It was the
culmination of his studies, however, that finally strained their
marriage to the breaking point. “Don’ you realize how dangerous
that is?” Janet screamed at him he told her about the astronaut
training. “You could get killed! Why do you have to do this?
Why?
“It’s probably
the most important thing that I do,” was his answer. “Try to
comprehend you can’t really comprehend something until you step
away from it and study it as a whole; and you can’t grasp you
connectedness to it until you try to detach yourself from it.” He
started to say more, then sighed at the absurdity of even trying to
make her understand what was so obvious to him by now. He shook his
head: there was a time when they shared so much; now …
The simple fact was,
he was the not the same Bill Malone she’d married anymore. All of
a sudden that was clear in a way it had not been before; clear as an
unpolluted night sky blazing with stars. These last few years had
transformed him, in ways and to an extent he could even have imagined
in advance now. More important, that she could never imagine now.
The simple fact was she could no longer understand the way he
understood. They could not even communicate. She didn’t possess
the knowledge, or wisdom, to do so.
He could not being
himself to give up yet, however. “Do you want me to go back to the
Jiffy Mart?” he finally offered, wondering what he would do if she
said yes. But she did not say it: “I suppose not. Anyway,
it’s too late to start over.” Her eyes settled upon hi. “All
right, Mr. Malone: go to the moon and the stars if that’s what you
have to do. I’ll be here when you come back.”
Hearing that made
him feel better. It was good to know that she hadn’t given up on
yet either.
* * *
He didn’t go that
far. But sixth months in orbit, studying the global effects of
pollution on the ozone layer, while spending four hours in meditation
each day before the blue-green goddess of all life, transformed Bill
in a way that even contact with an alien civilization couldn’t
have. And in some very specific ways. “I’ve been thinking a
great deal,” he revealed one of them to Janet when he got back.
“I know the law allows us to have our one child, but … “
The divorce
proceeding were begun the next day. Bill exhaled the tensions of the
last couple of years; in retrospect, he’d seen it coming for so
long now that to finally have it happen was more denouement that
climax. He was even able to find some humor in the situation: at
least he wouldn’t have to worry about cheating on his spouse when
he became a big businessperson, or whatever he would turn out to be
eventually.
Assuming he ever had
time for that part of his life again. Or interest.
He went to see
Professor Eisenhard immediately after the graduation ceremonies. His
old prof still had the grimness, the same steel in his manners, but
he greeted Bill warmly. “I’ve been expecting you for some time,
my boy. How does it feel to be finally among the elite?”
“It’s hard to
believe I was ever anything else,” Bill admitted. “That I spent
so much of my life in ignorance – and worse, though I was
enlightened the whole time.”
“Now you
understand what I meant with that remark about the Marquis de Sade,”
Eisenhard laughed. They laughed together. He did indeed
understand.
“Now go out there,
Bill Malone, and don’t cut them any slack.”
Bill grinned. He
was ready and he knew it.
It was a few hours
later, while packing his stuff from his and Janet’s compartment,
that he came across the letter. His first reaction was surprise that
he’d never bothered to trash is, even after four years. Of course
he realized that it must have had special significance when he’d
first read it, but that was practically a lifetime ago …
The best the
thing that ever happened to you. And not just to you; Janet’s
hands are on your shoulders, her smile on the back of your head, her
warmth in your soul. Reaching back, you take her hand and squeeze it
tightly; almost too tightly.
He wasn’t sure
how the tears started, or how long he’d been crying. Or, once he
realized it, Janet had been standing behind him, watching his
convulsions. Perhaps hours.
“Where did we
screw up,” he finally asked, without turning. “How did it end
up like this? How?!”
How? Don’t ask
how. It just happened, that’s all. People go their paths;
sometimes they’re different paths, even if they start at the same
place. That’s life,
“Don’t be so
defeatist,” she said, reading his mind again. “Sometimes people
just get lost for a while. Or get left behind on the trail for a
while. But if you give them enough time … “
This time he did
turn. She sat down, and placed a hand on his arm. “Read the
letter again,” she pressed him, with a soft smile on her face.
“More carefully.”
“Wha -- ?” But
he did so, though how a four year old letter – he read it again,
this time as carefully as he could. Then again. And again. Then he
was scrolling through it, over and over, unable to believe its
contents, his hands and heart trembling. And something wild inside
him, fighting to break out.
This was the best
this to ever happen to him.
“It came for me
just this morning,” she explained. “I was going to tell you. I
– I’m going to need a lot of help to get through the next four
years. Especially if everything you told me about Professor
Eisenhart is true. But I’m sure I can make it. I know I can.”
He was crying again,
but this time it was from joy. “I know you can too. I’ve always
know it. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. We’ll get
through it all right, you’ll see.”
He made many other
confident statements as well. But it was the gigantic hug and kiss
that communicated his feelings better than anything else.
* * *
Getting his first
position proved easier than Bill had expected. Of course, he had a
wealth of assignments to pick from, but since they were all going to
be ground-floor opportunities it made sense to take the one he was
already most familiar with. It was pure serendipity that the
management opening at the Jiffy Mart developed at the same time he
received his degree.
The suit and tie
were not very comfortable, but Bill knew would get accustomed to them
soon enough. Nor did he ever complain, even inwardly, about the long
hours; running a business, even a small business, in an
environmentally sound manner was in itself tore than the reward for
that time and energy. As Janet was learning herself, to serve Gaia
was and honor, not a burden.
He did wish they had
more time to together. What precious little time they did have to
themselves was almost entirely devoted to her studies. Sometimes it
got so bad he found himself wishing she would go back to her job at
the arboretum and leave loving the Earth to him. But only half
wishing – she couldn’t give up now, not after they’d been
through. Besides, he knew that once Janet completed the path he’d
been down, their relationship would be that much more the richer for
it. Yes, it was well worth the struggle, however hard it became and
however long it lasted.
For after all, in
the end that was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? To learn how to
love all living things without sacrificing your own life or its
loves. To interconnect while still feeling your own heart beat. To
live life to its greatest and smallest.
If so, they he
passed the final with flying colors.
