Right to Die

the church merged into ours, and I was startled. I recognized Del Wonsley for sure, but that wasn’t what startled me.
    The stooped, older man next to Wonsley was Alec Bacall. There was a hollowness in the pouches above and below his cheekbones, as though someone had let the air out of his face. It had been only three weeks since I’d driven Bacall to South Boston after the library debate.
    Wonsley said, “Oh. John, right?” The brown eyes were soft but a little unsure of what to say next.
    I introduced Nancy while Bacall bundled up, a heavy scarf over his throat and mouth like a Berber tribesman.
    Bacall said, “Got a bit of a cold, I’m afraid.”
    I nodded, and Nancy preempted an awkward silence by taking Bacall’s arm and leading him into the foyer, leaving me with Wonsley several steps, and intervening people, behind.
    I said, “Is Alec all right?”
    Wonsley’s expression didn’t change. “He’s having problems with his insulin dosage. It’s not working right sometimes. In fact, this is the first time since before Christmas we’ve been out. Alec wanted to... we met, sort of, on First Night, last year.”
    “Has he been to see a doctor?”
    “Yes. At the... a clinic. He recommended Alec have some tests.”
    Wonsley’s expression still didn’t change, but the eyes got softer. He didn’t say what the tests would be for, and I didn’t ask.
    We said good-bye briskly on the sidewalk. As Wonsley and Bacall moved away, I asked Nancy if she’d mind cutting our celebration a little short.

= 22 =

    It was a mild morning several weeks into the new year, temperature in the mid-fifties, Boston nearly basking in the January thaw. I chanced wearing just a sweatshirt and shorts.
    I spotted him from the Fairfield footbridge to the river. Sitting on his bench, legs crossed, left arm draped over the backrest, right hand on the bench seat. From a distance he looked the same as before. Up close, the tweed jacket had been mended, the glasses newly taped, and the hair freshly cut.
    “John.” Neutral tone, a substitute for hello.
    “Bo. I missed you.”
    He glanced away, toward the MIT dome. “Been traveling.”
    The first time Bo had opened up at all. I didn’t want to crowd him. “Whereabouts?”
    “D.C. area.” His eyes rolled up toward the emblem on his Redskins cap. “I used to teach there, John. And coach. Private school.”
    I leaned against a tree, keeping my shoes on the macadam and out of the mud. “Get tired of it?”
    “No.”
    Bo moved his left hand over to his right wrist, and I was afraid I’d pushed too far. Then he said, “You ever been married, John?”
    “Once.”
    The voice lowered. “Me too. Even had two little daughters, just toddlers then. But things weren’t going so good between Adele and me—Adele was my wife. And the school, it was running low on money and had to let go a lot of people with less seniority than I had. The pressure started to mount because the rest of us were expected to take on extra duties for less pay. John, the pressure, all these expectations, at home and at school, started building inside me. It was like living in a double boiler, and it soured me. I lost interest in my teaching, my family, everything but the coaching. I started to fixate on it, truth be told. Then the school dropped the other shoe. Said they just couldn’t see their way clear to keep me on. I’d become ‘marginal.’ ”
    “They fired you?”
    “They didn’t renew my contract. Discreet way to fire a guy, eh? But it wasn’t just the job. We lived free on campus, nice little house, John. Nicest little house you’d ever want to see. All brick and ivy, with hedges and flowers. But when I wasn’t renewed, all that was gone. I didn’t have a job or a roof over my family’s head, not even the coaching anymore. I just plain broke down. I was in an... institution for a time after that.”
    “For depression?”
    “Oh, they had a dozen different names for it, John. From a dozen different doctors pushing a dozen different drugs. And none of them knew jackshit. I finally broke out of the blues some, but only when I realized that it was the pressure of the family as much as the job that did me in.”
    “Your family.”
    “Yeah. Adele could see it, too, last few visits to the hospital. Came time to be discharged, like a year later, I didn’t have a job, and after what I’d been through, I couldn’t exactly see getting another one. Adele had already set herself and the girls up