Read more about author Jonathan Coleman

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The Mess Behind His Clean 'Exit'

Shortly after the turn of the century, an aunt of mine married a colorful Alabaman who had come to Oklahoma and prospered. He was called Jack Summers, but rumor had it he'd killed a man back home, and that may not have been his real name. He'd probably gotten in trouble in his youth and, as they said in those days, had "gone to Texas" -- in his case, a little farther north. Starting over was traditional, as American as Huckleberry Finn.

With the poor it's called desertion; when property and social standing are involved, the vermin press finds it tasty, and pounces. People magazine's headline put this one succinctly: "A Quiet College President Solves Job Stress His Way: One Day He Just Disappears." "Exit the Rainmaker" is Jonathan Coleman's dogged examination of the mystery implied in that teasing summary.

On May 19, 1982, Jay Carsey was the 47-year-old president of Charles County Community College, a respected government consultant, well-married, a prominent figure in southern Maryland, living in a 23-room mansion on the fringes of hunt country. Some considered him Cabinet material. That morning he drove to Washington National, mailed five enigmatic letters of resignation -- from his marriage as well as his various enterprises -- and effectively disappeared. To college dean John Sine, who had once directed him in a production of "The Rainmaker," Carsey sent a postcard: "John -- Exit the Rainmaker. Good Luck. Jay." He added the perfect executive postscript: "pls handle."

To cut and run, to establish another identity: It may be our commonest fantasy. As a member of Carsey's country club put it, "If only Jay had chartered a plane, we all could have gone." Carsey did nothing illegal, was not in significant financial trouble, was not throwing over his wife for another woman. He simply left, untraceably. Outta there. He pulled it off -- sort of.

The first half of "Exit the Rainmaker" establishes Carsey's history: Depression boyhood, a cold-eyed scramble up professional and social ladders, a (childless) marriage that seemed a brilliant capstone. The disappearance made a local splash, with front-page stories in The Washington Post. Outsiders may not quite see what the fuss was about: Another fast-track middle-aged guy wants out, what's the big deal? Sex is virtually absent from the tale (save for one somewhat red herring), and despite appearances, there wasn't all that much money either. There was only the complicated scheme for disappearance -- planned, as one acquaintance put it, as carefully as a bank job.

Two aspects of the story materially reduce its mystery, although the author doesn't rush to reveal them: Carsey was an alcoholic on a desperate downward spiral, and the marriage was no stroll in the park. Mrs. Carsey, a Leona Helmsley type, seemed to enjoy humiliating her husband in public -- which he took with cheerful equanimity. Carsey's well-documented nonconfrontational character becomes the first, easy explanation for his disappearance.

The reader does get a wide range of opinion about that. The Carseys were magnets for gossip before the disappearance, and the author seems to have interviewed everyone who ever knew them. Everyone gets a say, everyone has an opinion. No one gets much beyond a kind of dinette-set psychologizing.

Carsey runs to Houston, San Diego, and eventually to El Paso, a border town where personal inquiry is uncool. After a brief experimentation with low-life, he buys an unprofitable small bar, falls in love with a prototypical good woman, begins putting together a new existence. Within six months People has revealed his identity, and he begins climbing back into the field of education. (The college president who hires him, knowing his history, expresses wistful sympathy for anyone who ever even considered bailing out of that job.) As Carsey restarts his career, one finally begins to see the flim-flam artist at work -- and how much of his previous success was created out of smoke and mirrors.

Cheap-jack ironies abound. Carsey's original note to his wife left her everything, but he conveniently neglected to get it notarized. After rediscovery, he reneges and begins a legal fight over their property. He loses. He appeals. What starts in glamorous mystery ends with two irredeemably shallow sociopaths squabbling over the division of goods. What the book in fact has to tell is the story of a long and rancorous divorce case, spiced briefly by the disappearance of one of the principals. Mystery dispelled: What "Exit the Rainmaker" finally illuminates is how utterly banal the act of desertion is.

The reviewer's latest book is "Stone Work."