Everything I saw or heard caused my thoughts to turn to Olivia. I declined going to the fraternity house with Sonny and instead ate my first meal back on campus alone at the student cafeteria, hoping to find Olivia eating by herself at one of the smaller tables. To return to the infirmary, I took the long way around, passing the Owl, where I put my head inside to see if she might be eating by herself at the counter, even though I knew she disliked the place as much as I did. And all the while I went looking for an opportunity to run into her, and all the while I was discovering that everything, starting with the bathroom at the infirmary, reminded me of her, I was addressing her inside my head: “I miss you already. I’ll always miss you. There’ll never be anybody like you!” And intermittently, in response, came her melodic, lighthearted “I shot an arrow into the air / It fell to earth I knew not where.” “Oh, Olivia,” I thought, beginning to write her another letter, this too in my head, “you are so wonderful, so beautiful, so smart, so dignified, so lucid, so uniquely sexed-up. What if you did slit your wrist? It’s healed, isn’t it? And so are you! So you blew me — where’s the crime? So you blew Sonny Cottler — where’s …” But that thought, and the snapshot accompanying it, was not so easy to manage successfully and took more than one effort to erase. “I want to be with you. I want to be near you. You are a goddess — my mother was right. And who deserts a goddess because his mother tells him to? And my mother won’t divorce my father no matter what I do. There is no way that she would send him to live with the cats in back of the store. Her announcing that she was divorcing him and had engaged an attorney was merely the ploy by which she tricked me. But then it couldn’t be a ploy, since she’d already told me about divorcing him before she’d even known of you. Unless she’d already learned of you through Cottler’s relatives in Newark. But my mother would never deceive me like that. Nor could I deceive her. I’m caught — I’ve made her a promise I can never break, whose keeping is going to break me!”
Or perhaps, I thought, I could fail to keep the promise without her finding out … But when I got to history class on Tuesday, any possibility of betraying my mother’s trust disappeared, because Olivia wasn’t there. She was absent from class on Thursday as well. Nor did I see her seated anywhere at chapel when I attended on Wednesday. I checked every seat in every row, and she wasn’t there. And I had thought, We’ll sit side by side through chapel, and everything that drives me crazy will suddenly be a source of amusement with Olivia enchantingly laughing beside me.
But she’d left school entirely. I had known it the moment I saw she was absent from history class, and had then confirmed it by calling her dormitory and asking to speak to her. Whoever picked up said, “She’s gone home,” politely, but in such a way as to make me think something had happened beyond Olivia’s simply having “gone home”—something that none of them were supposed to talk about. When I did not call or contact her, she had tried again to kill herself — that had to be what had happened. After being called “Miss Hutton” a dozen times in twenty minutes by my mother, after waiting in vain for me to phone once I was back and settled into the infirmary, she had taken measures of just the kind my mother had warned me about. So I was lucky, was I not? Spared a suicidal girlfriend, was I not? Yes, and never before so devastated.
And what if she had not merely tried to kill herself — suppose she’d succeeded? What if she had slit both wrists this time, and bled to death in the dormitory — what if she had done it out at the cemetery where we had parked that night? Not only would the college do everything to keep it a secret, but so would her family. That way no one at Winesburg would ever know what happened, and no one but me would know why. Unless she’d left a note. Then everyone would blame her suicide on me — on my mother and on me.
I had to walk back to Jenkins and down to the basement, across from the post office, to find a pay phone with a folding door that I could tightly shut in order to make my call without anyone overhearing it. There was no note from her at the post office — that was what I’d checked first after Sonny had installed me in the infirmary. Before making my call, I checked again, and this time found there a college envelope containing a handwritten letter from Dean Caudwelclass="underline"
Dear Marcus:
We’re all glad to have you back on campus and to be assured by the doctor that you came through in top-notch shape. I hope now you’ll reconsider your decision not to go out for baseball when spring comes. This coming year’s team needs a rangy infielder, à la Marty Marion of the Cards, and you look to me as if you might well fill the bill. I suspect you’re fast on your feet, and as you know, there are ways to get on base and help score runs that don’t necessitate hitting the ball over the fence. A bunt dropped for a base hit can be one of the most beautiful things to behold in all of sports. I’ve already put in a word with Coach Portzline. He is eager to see you at tryouts when they’re held on March 1. Welcome back rejuvenated to the Winesburg community. I like to think of this moment as your return to the fold. I hope you’re thinking that way too. If I can be of any help to you, please do not hesitate to stop by the office.
Yours sincerely,
Hawes D. Caudwell,
Dean of Men
I changed a five-dollar bill into quarters at the post office window, and then, after pulling shut the heavy glass door, I settled into the phone booth, where I arranged the quarters in stacks of four on the curved shelf beneath the phone in which a “G.L.” had dared to carve his initials. Immediately I wondered how G.L. was disciplined when he was caught.
I was prepared for I didn’t know what, and already as drenched in sweat as I had been in Caudwell’s office. I dialed long-distance information and asked for Dr. Hutton in Hunting Valley. And there was such a one, a Dr. Tyler Hutton. I took down two numbers, for Dr. Hutton’s office and for his residence. It was still daytime, and, having already convinced myself that Olivia was dead, I decided on calling the office, figuring that her father wouldn’t be at work because of the death in the family, and that by speaking to a receptionist or a nurse I could get some idea of what had happened. I didn’t want to speak to either of her parents for fear of hearing one or the other of them say, “So you’re the one, you’re the boy — you’re the Marcus from her suicide note.” After the long-distance operator reached the office number, and I had deposited a stream of quarters into the appropriate slot, I said, “Hello, I’m a friend of Olivia’s,” but didn’t know what to say next. “This is Dr. Hutton’s office,” I was informed by the woman at the other end. “Yes, I want to find out about Olivia,” I said. “This is the office,” she said, and I hung up.
I walked directly down the Hill from the main quadrangle to the women’s residence halls and up the stairs to Dowland Hall, where Olivia had lived and where I’d picked her up in Elwyn’s LaSalle the night of the date that sealed her doom. I went inside, and at the desk blocking access to the first floor and the staircase was the student on duty. I showed her my ID and asked if she’d phone Olivia’s floor to tell her that I was waiting downstairs. I’d already called Dowland on Thursday, when for the second time Olivia had failed to attend history class, and asked to speak to her. That’s when I’d been told, “She’s gone home.” “When will she be back?” “She’s gone home.” So now I had asked for her again, this time in person, and again I was given the brushoff. “Has she gone for good?” I asked. The on-duty girl simply shrugged. “Is she all right, do you know?” She was a long time working up a response, only to decide in the end not to make one.