'If The Rule You Followed Led You To This, Of What Use Was The Rule?' - The Short, Unhappy Life Of Frances Macomber

The Anton Chigurh character in the film version of Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men, asks a private detective he is about to kill, 'If the rule you followed led you to this, of what use was the rule?'. The detective shakes his head and asks Chigurh if he knows how crazy he is. 

'You mean now?' replies Chigurh. 

'No' says Carson Wells, 'I mean the way you are'. 

Chigurh smiles, looks for a long minute at Wells, and then pulls the trigger. 

Forensic psychiatrists who watched the movie have observed that the Chigurh character was the most accurate depiction of a psychopath they had ever seen on screen or even in their practices. Chigurh, demented beyond description, without a shred of moral composure, a calm, determined, calculating indifferent killer is 'a frightening example of human nature gone completely awry'. 

The now famous line has gained popular currency, applied to lives far more mundane than that of Anton Chigurh.  It is the existential question asked by many older people nearing the end of their lives without particular regret but with a nostalgia for the road not taken.  What if? is the refrain often heard in game rooms of retirement communities. 

Frances Macomber, widowed for many years, childless, but with the professional freedom that barrenness afforded, had recently and reluctantly retired from her position at a Washington area university and accepted an emeritus position, was given a pleasant although not corner office and all the logistics support she required.  She was at work on her memoir - Diary Of A Reluctant Mind - a book which would chronicle her long career and offer insights about womanhood, feminism, the glass ceiling, and the compromises of marriage and professional responsibility. 

To be honest it was make-work - a project to keep the now elderly woman off the streets.  The subject had been beaten to death by legions of women who thought their lives particularly illuminating and whose university presses gave them a by and printed a limited number of copies at their own expense. 

Frances, however, took the work seriously, pounding out page after page of prose narrative.  She had, despite many years as Chair of the English Department never lost her prolixity and tendency to overwrite, and now, since there were no editors looking over her shoulder, the memoir became a kind of A Child's Garden of Verses with all the romanticism of lost youth but without Stevenson's poetic grace.

As she labored away at the book, she became increasingly disconsolate as she heard the happy chatter of young Assistant Professors in the hallways, knowing that she would never again be one of them; and slowly but surely doubts began creeping into her head.  Perhaps she really had nothing to say, nothing 'illuminating' or interesting. She had led a predictably comfortable life in academia, publishing now and again, teaching a desultory course or two, keeping office hours which had become little more than whining sessions for unprepared students.

Not surprisingly her long tenure in academia strengthened the early liberalism of her youth.  She had grown up in a modestly successful Ohio family whose members were solidly Democratic, swimming against the tide of rock-ribbed Republicanism of the state, and who suffered the opprobrium of colleagues, friends, and neighbors. 

They were old-line progressives, weaned on the heady laborism of LaFollette, Gompers, and Brandeis who argued for workers rights at a time when socialism still had a chance to prosper in America, and dinner table conversations were always about the dignity of the working man and the failure of the country to give him his due. 

 

She had tired of these mealtime commiserations, and had vowed that as soon as she could, she would leave the farm, liberalism, and reformist policy.  She went east to college, one of the famed Seven Sisters schools where she became friendly with the daughters of the rich and well-to-do.  If she had been immured within walls of liberalism back in Ohio, she had more than she could take of aristocratic indifference. 

She returned to the progressive fold and joined a movement which had changed since the days of labor, factories, and the depredations of robber barons, and had become the party of civil rights, diversity, and peace, all of which suited her.  While her relatives' holier-than-thou sanctimony had bored her to tears to the point that she completely empathized with Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan, she now found this new cant, dogma, and canon particularly relevant. 

 

She added social activism to her already significant workload at the university where she was making her way up the ranks, and became what she increasingly thought of as 'a modern woman'. 

Yet now bent over her manuscript and checking the clock as it approached time for 'Community Talks', the informal women's political discussion group she had organized and arranged, she felt a wave of anomie, a feeling of hopelessness and despair.  Of what earthly use was a hen party of disaffected old women banging on about Donald Trump and the ignoramuses in his thrall?  

And who on earth would want to read the reminiscences of a woman who had never been one of the best and the brightest, an academic who published regularly but whose readership was insignificant at best, and whose students, admitted under affirmative action and its post-Supreme Court shady covers, were as clueless and unprepared as Tibetan monkeys. 

Her old friend Margaret Tippet, like her a graduate of the women's Ivy League but who had labored thanklessly in the vineyards of second rate schools, said, 'Bake a cake', her own typical, ironic rejoinder to older women's depression. 

'Bake a cake indeed', replied Frances, glad to have a sympathetic ear but not ready for her friend's catty remarks.  After all, what had she done?  Nothing to speak of, hanging on to an even more questionable position at a third-rate school and a frequent speaker and smarmy gender-reveal political advocacy groups.  Neither woman had lived up to their promise or potential but neither was willing to accept it and move on to life's final phase. 

A phase which was frightening to say the very least, a vacuous void, an eternal emptiness, a horrifying nothingness.  Again the light switch along the emotional wall of old women flipped on.  Why had she so abruptly left the church, avowed atheism, and turned away from anything spiritual except hippy worship? If she only had had God in the wings, an unquestioning hand of mercy, she would not feel so lost and alone.  But deathbed conversions let alone while she was still alive and kicking were not her style.  She would have to go struggling into that long dark night like Ivan Ilyich without anyone with her. 

 

Frances had seen the No Country movie and like thousands of other viewers and was taken by the Chigurh line about rules and unexpected ends. And here she was, facing the barrel of his shotgun without a clue or answer in the world, and welcoming the annihilating blast. 

Suicide is the only unforgiveable sin, Scobie, the character in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter tells Mrs. Rolt, his lover; but he rejects his profound, obedient Catholicism and does just that. He is tired of pity, self-recrimination, and responsibility, and he must do the right thing. 

Frances was in no mood for self-abnegation.  Suicide was too final a solution for the ills of an ordinary woman, so suffer she must.

She soldiered on despite her dispiritedness - her memoir, her political chat group, Commentary, The New Yorker, the New York Times, and NPR. 

Nietzsche had said that the only validation of the individual in a meaningless world was the expression of pure will, but here she sat with little will, no meaning, and no hope - a sorry, pathetic old woman who should have followed a different rule. 

 

But then again as philosopher psychopath Chigurh would have certainly said, 'The rule itself doesn't matter.  Any rule will do'.