He immediately called Clarence's wife at their retirement home up in the Berkshires.
"Hello, Gwen," he said.
"Hi, dear. How are you?"
"I'm okay. How are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm doing all right. My kids came. I have a lot of company. And a lot of help. There are so many things I could tell you. In a sense, I was prepared, and in a way one never is. When I came home I found him dead on the floor, and that was a terrible shock. He had been dead for a couple of hours at that point. He seemed to have died at lunchtime. I had gone out for lunch, and so forth. You know, for him it was a good end. It was sudden, and he didn't have another stroke that would have debilitated him and put him in the hospital."
"Was it a stroke or was it a heart attack?" he asked her.
"It was a myocardial infarct."
"Had he been feeling ill?"
"Well, his blood pressure had been – well, he had a lot of trouble with his blood pressure. And then this past weekend he wasn't feeling so great. His blood pressure had gone up again."
"They couldn't control that with drugs?"
"They did. He took all kinds of drugs. But he probably had a lot of arterial damage. You know, bad old arteries, and there's a point at which the body wears out. And he was so weary at that point. He said to me just a couple of nights ago, 'I'm so weary.' He wanted to live, but there wasn't anything anybody could do to keep him alive any longer. Old age is a battle, dear, if not with this, then with that. It's an unrelenting battle, and just when you're at your weakest and least able to call up your old fight."
"That was a very nice tribute to him in the obituary today. They recognized that he was someone special. I wish I'd had a chance to tell them a few things about his wonderful ability to recognize the value of the people who worked with him. I saw his picture today," he said, "and I remembered a day years ago when a client had taken me to lunch at the Four Seasons, and we were heading down those stairs into the lobby there, and we bumped into Clarence. And my client was feeling expansive and he said, 'Clarence, how are you? Do you know this young art director?' And Clarence said, 'I do. Thank God I do. Thank God the agency does.' He did this again and again, and not just with me."
"He had the highest regard for you, dear. He meant every word of that. I remember," she said, "how he plucked you out of the bullpen when you weren't at the agency even a year. He came home and told me about you. Clarence had an eye for creative talent, and he plucked you out of the bullpen and made you into an art director before you'd even completed your penal servitude working on brochures."
"He was good to me. I always thought of him as the general."
"He'd only been a colonel under Eisenhower."
"He was a general to me. I could tell you dozens of things that are in my mind now." Clarence's suggestion that he fuck his secretary in her apartment rather than in his office wasn't among them.
"Please do. When you talk about him, it's as if he's still here," Gwen said.
"Well, there was the time when we worked and worked every night for two or three weeks until after midnight, sometimes until two or three in the morning, for the Mercedes-Benz pitch. This was really one of the big ones, and we worked like hell, and we didn't get it. But when it was over Clarence said to me, 'I want you and your wife to go to London for a long weekend. I want you to stay at the Savoy because it's my favorite hotel, and I want you and Phoebe to have dinner at the Connaught. And it's on me.' In those days, this was a huge gift, and he gave it even though we'd lost the account. I wish I could have told that to the papers, and all the stories like it."
"Well, the press has been superb," Gwen said. "Even up here. There was an article about him in today's Berkshire Eagle. It was long, with a wonderful picture, and very laudatory. They made much of what he'd done in the war and about his being the army's youngest full colonel. I think Clarence would have been amused and contented by the recognition he's gotten."
"Look, you sound, for the moment, okay."
"Well, of course, it's okay now – I'm busy and I've got lots of company. The hard part is going to be when I'm alone."
"What are you going to do? Are you going to stay on in Massachusetts?"
"Yes, I am, for now. I discussed it with Clarence. I said, 'If I'm the one who's left, I'm going to sell the house and go back to New York.' But the kids want me not to do that, because they think I ought to give myself a year."
"Probably they're right. People regret, sometimes, the actions they take right off."
"I think so," she said. "And how is Nancy?"
"She's fine."
"Whenever I think of Nancy as a child, a smile comes to my face. She was pure life. I remember the two of you singing 'Smile' together at our house. We were living in Turtle Bay. It was an afternoon so long ago. You'd taught it to her. She must have been all of six. 'Smile, tho' your heart is aching' – how does it go? – 'smile even tho' it's breaking-' You bought her the Nat 'King' Cole record. Remember? I do."
"I do too."
"Does she? Does Nancy?"
"I'm sure she does. Gwen, my heart and thoughts are with you."
"Thank you, dear. So many people have called. The phone has been going steadily for two days. So many people have wept, so many people have told me what he meant to them. If Clarence could only see all this. He knew his value to the company, but you know he also needed the same reassurances that everyone needs in this world."
"Well, he was awfully important to all of us. Look, we'll talk more," he said.
"Okay, dear. I so appreciate your calling."
It took him a while to go back to the phone with a voice he could trust. Brad Karr's wife told him the Manhattan hospital where Brad was a psychiatric patient. He was able to dial Brad's room directly, remembering as he did the time they'd done that slice-of-life commercial for Maxwell House coffee, when they were kids in their twenties, just starting out together, teamed up as a copywriter and an art director, and they broke the bank on the day-after recall score. They got a 34, the highest score in the history of Maxwell House. It was the day of the group Christmas party, and Brad, knowing Clarence would be coming, had his sidekick make cardboard buttons saying "34," and everybody wore them, and Clarence stopped by just to congratulate Brad and him and even put on a button, and they were on their way.
"Hello, Brad? Your old buddy calling from the Jersey Shore."
"Hi. Hello there."
"What's up, kid? I called your house a few minutes ago. I just had a yen to talk to you after all this time, and Mary told me you were in the hospital. That's how I've reached you. How are you doing?"
"Well, I'm doing all right. As such things go."
"How are you feeling?"
"Well, there are better places to be."
"Is it awful?"
"It could be worse. I mean, this happens to be a pretty good one. It's okay. I don't recommend it for a holiday, but it's been all right."
"How long have you been there?"
"Oh, about a week." Mary Karr had just told him that it had been a month at this point, and that it was his second stay in a year, and that things hadn't been so great in between. Brad's speech was very slow and faltering – probably from the medication – and heavy with hopelessness. "I expect I'll be out soon," he said.
"What do you do all day?"
"Oh, you cut out paper dolls. Things like that. I wander up and down the hallways. Try to keep my sanity."
"What else?"
"Take therapy. Take drugs. I feel like I'm a depository for every drug you can name."
"In addition to the antidepressant, there's other stuff?"