When he finished, he opened his eyes to the judge clapping and laughing. “Bravo,” he said. “Bravo! But I think you might be in the wrong profession altogether, you know.” He laughed again. “Where’d you learn to sing like that?”
“The brothers, sir,” he’d replied.
“Ah, a Catholic boy?” asked the judge, sitting up fatly in his chair and looking ready to be pleased.
“I was raised Catholic,” he began.
“But you’re not now?” the judge asked, frowning.
“No,” he said. He had worked for years to keep the apology out of his voice when he said this.
Sullivan made a noncommittal grunting noise. “Well, whatever they gave you should have offered at least some sort of protection against whatever Harold Stein’s been filling your head with for the past few years,” he said. He looked at his résumé. “You’re his research assistant?”
“Yes,” he said. “For more than two years.”
“A good mind, wasted,” Sullivan declared (it was unclear whether he meant his or Harold’s). “Thanks for coming down, we’ll be in touch. And thanks for the lied; you have one of the most beautiful tenors I’ve heard in a long time. Are you sure you’re in the right field?” At this, he smiled, the last time he would ever see Sullivan smile with such pleasure and sincerity.
Back in Cambridge, he told Harold about his meeting (“You sing?” Harold asked him, as if he’d just told him he flew), but that he was certain he wouldn’t get the clerkship. A week later, Sullivan called: the job was his. He was surprised, but Harold wasn’t. “I told you so,” he said.
The next day, he went to Harold’s office as usual, but Harold had his coat on. “Normal work is suspended today,” he announced. “I need you to run some errands with me.” This was unusual, but Harold was unusual. At the curb, he held out the keys: “Do you want to drive?”
“Sure,” he said, and went to the driver’s side. This was the car he’d learned to drive in, just a year ago, while Harold sat next to him, far more patient outside the classroom than he was in it. “Good,” he’d said. “Let go of the clutch a little more–good. Good, Jude, good.”
Harold had to pick up some shirts he’d had altered, and they drove to the small, expensive men’s store on the edge of the square where Willem had worked his senior year. “Come in with me,” Harold instructed him, “I’m going to need some help carrying these out.”
“My god, Harold, how many shirts did you buy?” he asked. Harold had an unvarying wardrobe of blue shirts, white shirts, brown corduroys (for winter), linen pants (for spring and summer), and sweaters in various shades of greens and blues.
“Quiet, you,” said Harold.
Inside, Harold went off to find a salesperson, and he waited, running his fingers over the ties in their display cases, rolled and shiny as pastries. Malcolm had given him two of his old cotton suits, which he’d had tailored and had worn throughout both of his summer internships, but he’d had to borrow his roommate’s suit for the Sullivan interview, and he had tried to move carefully in it the entire time it was his, aware of its largeness and the fineness of its wool.
Then “That’s him,” he heard Harold say, and when he turned, Harold was standing with a small man who had a measuring tape draped around his neck like a snake. “He’ll need two suits—a dark gray and a navy—and let’s get him a dozen shirts, a few sweaters, some ties, socks, shoes: he doesn’t have anything.” To him he nodded and said, “This is Marco. I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so.”
“Wait,” he said. “Harold. What are you doing?”
“Jude,” said Harold, “you need something to wear. I’m hardly an expert on this front, but you can’t show up to Sullivan’s chambers wearing what you’re wearing.”
He was embarrassed: by his clothes, by his inadequacy, by Harold’s generosity. “I know,” he said. “But I can’t accept this, Harold.”
He would’ve continued, but Harold stepped between him and Marco and turned him away. “Jude,” he said, “accept this. You’ve earned it. What’s more, you need it. I’m not going to have you humiliating me in front of Sullivan. Besides, I’ve already paid for it, and I’m not getting my money back. Right, Marco?” he called behind him.
“Right,” said Marco, immediately.
“Oh, leave it, Jude,” Harold said, when he saw him about to speak. “I’ve got to go.” And he marched out without looking back.
And so he found himself standing before the triple-leafed mirror, watching the reflection of Marco busying about his ankles, but when Marco reached up his leg to measure the inseam, he flinched, reflexively. “Easy, easy,” Marco said, as if he were a nervous horse, and patted his thigh, also as if he were a horse, and when he gave another involuntary half kick as Marco did the other leg, “Hey! I have pins in my mouth, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and held himself still.
When Marco was finished, he looked at himself in his new suit: here was such anonymity, such protection. Even if someone were to accidentally graze his back, he was wearing enough layers so that they’d never be able to feel the ridges of scars beneath. Everything was covered, everything was hidden. If he was standing still, he could be anyone, someone blank and invisible.
“I think maybe half an inch more,” Marco said, pinching the back of the jacket in around the waist. He swatted some threads off his sleeve. “Now all you need’s a good haircut.”
He found Harold waiting for him in the tie area, reading a magazine. “Are you done?” he asked, as if the entire trip had been his idea and Harold had been the one indulging his whimsy.
Over their early dinner, he tried to thank Harold again, but every time he tried, Harold stopped him with increasing impatience. “Has anyone ever told you that sometimes you just need to accept things, Jude?” he finally asked.
“You said to never just accept anything,” he reminded Harold.
“That’s in the classroom and in the courtroom,” Harold said. “Not in life. You see, Jude, in life, sometimes nice things happen to good people. You don’t need to worry—they don’t happen as often as they should. But when they do, it’s up to the good people to just say ‘thank you,’ and move on, and maybe consider that the person who’s doing the nice thing gets a bang out of it as well, and really isn’t in the mood to hear all the reasons that the person for whom he’s done the nice thing doesn’t think he deserves it or isn’t worthy of it.”
He shut up then, and after dinner he let Harold drive him back to his apartment on Hereford Street. “Besides,” Harold said as he was getting out of the car, “you looked really, really nice. You’re a great-looking kid; I hope someone’s told you that before.” And then, before he could protest, “Acceptance, Jude.”
So he swallowed what he was going to say. “Thank you, Harold. For everything.”
“You’re very welcome, Jude,” said Harold. “I’ll see you Monday.”