A Butterfly in Flame (17 page)

Chapter Forty-three

The Stillton Café was abuzz. There wasn’t a table free, or room at the counter. Susan greeted colleagues who otherwise kept their distance, due to her present attachment to a representative of the occupying forces.

Once they’d got their coffee and Susan had dressed hers with sugar and cream, they sparred and parried with the crowd, looking for quiet.

“I wouldn’t mind talking with you,” Susan said. “But here it won’t work.”

“Is there anywhere else?” Fred said. “Given it’s raining—I guess that’s rain. Don’t know anything else to call it. You have a studio, maybe? We can’t use my room, obviously. People would—an older man—student—all that…”

“Don’t get studio space till your third year. That’s what makes it so hard and all. We’ll go to my place. Besides, I have this effing drawing to do.”

“Whatever you say,” Fred said doubtfully.

“It’s OK. There’s always people around. If you’re thinking, like, virtue and safety and reputation and parents and danger and rape and all that. Come on.

“Because if I know Meg, she’s not going to let us off the hook. The drawings are due in over a month but tomorrow we have a crit of the work in progress.

“It’s terrible about Meeker. But it gives me an extra day.”

She’d already walked Fred out of the café and into the chilly street, sparkling with damp. The State cruisers were back, nosing around town, frightening everyone with aggressive reassurance. The moving citizens, or students, seemed, if Fred read the signs correctly, to be stricken by this sudden and ominous equivalent of a snow day.

They walked downhill toward the classroom and administration buildings, but turned right when they reached the edge that overlooked the ocean, and moved through lanes separating small cottages, humble, appealing, shabby, that were destined to be worth many millions each, once Stillton Realty Trust had its way. Wasn’t that the plan?

“We’re in here. Second floor,” Susan said, walking into a cottage. Its door was not locked. Nor, upstairs, was the door into her rooms. The layout was akin to Morgan Flower’s apartment, though smaller. The sitting room was almost devoid of furniture. Most notable among the furnishings, propped against the wall by an open bedroom door, and next to a full-length mirror clipped to another door—a closet door, she’d said?—was the study in question, palpably and believably Susan Muller, Fred’s student, nude, but as if she was only barely, and slowly, coming into focus.

“If you’re quick, as soon as you get here in the fall, you get your plywood from a second-year student,” Susan said, dropping her bag.

The head of the figure was almost fully realized, shaded with lights and darks and half-tones, as if it had been worked up from the plaster cast of a Greek nymph. Then, as your eye went down the body—the neck, the shoulders, the breasts not quite symmetrical, the forearms—she’d chosen to represent her hands hanging straight at her sides—the farther down the body the eye moved, the less the shading had been finished. From the knees down there were only a few marks.

“It’s like she’s appearing out of a heavy ground mist,” Fred said.

The drawing was on heavy white paper, much scuffed by erasures and second thoughts. The pubic area, below a plump belly and navel, was trimmed, with the start of a decorative patch above that might, in time, be as curly as the curls that were so finished around the face, depending on the trim.

“It’s the effing feet and the effing ankles and the effing knees I have to get to now, and how do I get down there?” Susan said. She was stepping out of her jeans.

“Let’s keep the door open,” Fred suggested. “You know. Thinking about all those things you wisely mentioned—virtue, safety, reputation, parents…rape we don’t have to worry about right now. But—in general—maybe you want to start locking the street door? Just—with all that’s going on?”

He went to the apartment door and opened it.

Susan was laughing. “Sorry. Don’t worry. I stop at the jeans. I’m just going to figure out the effing legs and feet. If I can. See, I can’t help moving. Have to squat to get down to the feet, and once I squat, where are they? It’s effing impossible.”

She’d pulled the plywood away from the wall. Behind it was a rudimentary contraption of two-by-threes that folded out to make a sort of easel. “I got this from the same guy.” The heavy blue sweater hung halfway down her thighs.

“Maybe stand farther back, you can see more,” Fred suggested. “And find a way to put the drawing higher?”

“Then the scale gets screwed up. I’ll figure it out,” Susan said. “You wanted to talk. Put a chair where it doesn’t reflect. I’ll get confused.”

She had already started to draw, bending or squatting as needed to get marks as far down as she had to. Her sensible underpants flashed white.

“Your roommate, Missy Tutunjian. How far has she got with hers?” Fred asked. “Does she go at it the same way?”

Susan said, “She took it with her.” She had set her feet into marks painted onto the floorboards in white, about eight inches apart. “What the Hag says: you are always drawing from memory anyway. You have to look away from the thing before you look at the paper. But this, this is effing lunacy.” She spoke standing, then squatted to work on a foot, from a foot that had become obscured as soon as she went down.

“The sweater doesn’t help,” she said. “Wait.” She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back she was belting the sweater at the waist with a pink scarf.

Fred said, “Speaking of parents, tell me about Missy’s Dad.”

Chapter Forty-four

“It’s all you came for,” Susan complained, stepping back into the marks again and looking back and forth between her drawing and her reflection. “That’s what everyone says. Missy.”

“You don’t think much of her,” Fred hazarded.

Susan shrugged, then went to work on the inner edge of a knee. “After I’m sure of the outline, then it’s still effing weeks of shading,” she said. “What I want to know is, why?”

Fred said carefully, “That’s what I want to know, too. Why?”

“Your why and my why aren’t the same why,” Susan said, looking into the mirror. Had Fred placed himself so she could see him? Hard to say. “What I want to know, why do you want to know anything about Missy? It’s all you would talk about, that day in class.”

She bent, made a line, cursed and started wiping it out again. “What people say, her old man hired you. To find her.”

“Therefore I’m asking you about him,” Fred pointed out. “That makes sense.”

“To put me off.”

“She took her drawing with her,” Fred said. “Anything else? Books? Clothes? Does she plan to come back, would you say? She pregnant, maybe? It could happen. Because they say she was having a thing with the teacher, Morgan Flower.”

“That’s not against the law. Is it? That’s better.” She approved the newly delineated knee. “I don’t think much of Missy and I don’t think much of Flower. So.”

“Missy’s father. He’s supposed to be a big donor to this place. Big contributor. How much is your rent?”

“It’s in the tuition. I don’t know. It’s mixed up together. I work, and I got a loan, and my folks help some. My big sister. She’s working.”

“Missy say where she was going?”

“Missy and me don’t talk. Not about anything. Beyond, ‘We need milk and this sock has to be yours.’”

“It never occurred to me,” Fred said. “Where do you all do your laundry? I haven’t seen…”

“Laundromat. Back of the gas station. Open all night. Good place to meet people you don’t meet in class. It’s like Stillton Academy’s social life. Her old man? Mr. Tutunjian? He moved her in. She’s from Lowell. Mercedes van. So what? She’s got money. I don’t. He’s short. He’s big in the chest. Smokes a cigar. Drove the van up but didn’t move shit.”

“How come he isn’t all over the place looking for Missy?” Fred asked.

“He’s got seven kids.” She erased the knee. “I can’t work in this effing sweater. If you don’t mind…” She turned and stood, waiting for him to leave.

“Maybe lock the doors now for a while,” Fred suggested again.

“He looked through her things,” Susan said. “Him and that lawyer, Mr. Baum? If they found anything, ask them. I have to work.”

***

“Aram Tutunjian. Lowell,” Fred said into the answering machine at Molly’s mother’s apartment.

***

The painting department’s office might be an office by name, but it was more of an unholy grab-bag of a random mess, in which an ancient wooden desk provided an academic flavor. Bill Wamp’s feet were on it and the remainder of Bill Wamp was tilted back dangerously in a hefty wooden chair, talking with Phil Oumaloff, who was standing but looking like someone who wasn’t going anywhere. Around them in the room were most of a hanging human skeleton, paintings stacked against each other, lumber, a tall gray metal file cabinet whose open drawers spilled props rather than paper, plastic fruit, stained plaster casts missing noses or fingers.

“Make yourself at home, Fred,” Bill Wamp said.

Fred removed the contents of another chair—the best that could be said of the contents was that they were not damp—and sat.

“Terrible. Terrible,” Oumaloff said. The same words had been in the air when Fred walked in.

“Tom Meeker,” Fred said. “What do you think…?”

“It’s not Meeker I’m thinking about. There are a million Meekers. It’s a shame and all, but there wasn’t much talent there. No, it’s Quarrier I’m mourning. He’s been arrested. He’s ruined.”

“He told me he had been in the service. Peter Quarrier,” Fred said.

“Terrible. Terrible,” Oumaloff said. He was twisting a plastic eggplant in his hands, or fondling it, or polishing it, or worse.

“I did his admissions interview,” Bill Wamp said. “You don’t always remember them. But that one I remember. For one thing, Quarrier was older.”

Phil Oumaloff interrupted with an explanation. “We have rolling admissions. A practice I instigated.”

“Rolling admissions…” Fred repeated.

“Meaning,” Bill Wamp said, “You can apply any time of the year and we can admit you at any time, for the next year or the next semester. Until classes are filled. No deadlines.

“Basically, we look to see if they’re any good at anything. They don’t know a thing about art before they come. How could they? Public high school in Lowell or Malden? What they think artists do is draw girls with big breasts and a cape, or G. I. Joe on steroids zapping the Ayrabs.

“Basically, they’re coming from nowhere. But maybe they’re good at rebuilding a truck engine, or one girl sewed her own clothes, which I only learned at the end of the interview.”

“Basil Houel is one of ours,” Oumaloff put in. “Before your time, Bill.”

“He’s not unknown, even to me,” Bill Wamp said.

“He’s all over the art magazines right now,” Fred said. “A big success. New York. Acacia Gallery. Tight, hard-edged Romantic nausea pictures that sell. But he’s the only alumnus name I’ve heard anyone mention. Is he one of a core group, or an anomaly of success?”

Oumaloff put the eggplant down and started doing it to a plastic grapefruit instead.

“But of course Peter Quarrier had been out in the world. Overseas. That fight yesterday with the dead man. So many witnesses. How could it be hushed up?” Oumaloff said.

Bill Wamp continued, almost in a reverie of mourning, “His portfolio—he had the crayon drawings of fruit left over from high school, sure, but there was also—I still remember them—tall vertical panels he’d drawn, like Chinese landscape, with a brush, of camps where he’d been overseas, with the trucks, the flags, the barracks, all seen from above and broken by clouds.”

“Terrible,” Oumaloff said. “Terrible. And over a woman!”

“Emma’s not a bad painter either,” Bill Wamp said.

Chapter Forty-five

“Quarrier could have been our next Basil Houel,” Oumaloff mourned, after a pause he may have thought was pregnant.

“No classes today at all?” Fred asked.

“By decree,” Bill Wamp said. “Respect for the dead. Also there’s yellow crime scene tape everywhere, unless the students have already run off with it. If any of the students are working, they’ll be in their studios.”

“What I can’t understand,” Fred started.

“Two deaths,” Oumaloff said. “Not meaning to crowd you, Fred. But let me speak. Two deaths, by violence. It will strike at the heart of Stillton Academy’s reputation.”

“If any,” Bill Wamp muttered. “Sorry, Phil.”

Fred pushed on, “What I don’t understand. It’s schizoid. What I see so far. Tell me if I’m wrong. What I see, as an outsider—let’s say the teachers and the program are on the up-and-up. The buildings are hanging together. You have enough students. Sure, there are problems, like a respectable schedule of contracts…”

“That is a gray area,” Oumaloff interrupted loudly. “There are two sides. With so small a faculty, imagine the problems if everyone started to expect tenure.”

“Not only do I not have a dog in this fight, I don’t even have a dog. So I really don’t care,” Fred said. “My point was only going to be, to me it seems the ingredients are here for you to survive. Even make a real play for accreditation. Except…”

“Supposing good will amongst all or most of the adults involved,” Bill Wamp put in. “Sorry. Of course the customers, the students, are adults too, after they reach sixteen, which they all are around here, by law. My point is…”

“Good will. That’s what I wonder about too,” Fred said. “Here’s my question. Does the board want the place to survive?”

“Good question,” Bill Wamp said.

“What’s the financial situation?” Fred asked. “The board does fundraising? One board member or another springs for a memorial roof he can put his mother’s name on? What’s the endowment? Where’s all this cash coming…”

“Not the faculty’s business,” Oumaloff declared firmly. “I can tell you. I’ve been thirty years at this academy. It’s never…”

“So I’d assume,” Fred said. “Why haven’t they seized on a good thing? It’s right there in front of them. Why don’t they put Phil Oumaloff on the board?”

Oumaloff turned purple. His wattles shook back of that white beard.

“Watch it,” Bill Wamp cautioned. He took his feet off the desk and sat straight. “You’re on tricky terrain.”

“I resigned from the board,” Oumaloff said. He said it as if under torture.

“How come?” Fred asked.

Oumaloff, holding center stage, took the occasion to exchange his grapefruit for a bunch of plastic grapes. “At least in my day we would never allow the students to paint from these,” he said. “The color is uniform. The size and shape are uniform. A painter must observe natural color. Real color. In natural light. Daylight. Although for drawing…It is no secret. I resigned in protest of the appointment of Rodney Somerfest as director.”

“Phil had chaired the search committee,” Bill Wamp said.

“Our workings were meant to be open, democratic, and transparent,” Oumaloff said.

“Except there were no faculty or students included,” Bill Wamp said.

“Open, transparent, and democratic to its own members,” Oumaloff insisted. “Especially to its own chairman.”

“I have never known where the candidacy of Mr. Somerfest originated. All I can say is that he was not among the applicants I knew of. His nomination was instigated by a faction of the board. His material simply appeared at a board meeting and, by the time of his interview—which I opposed—his appointment was a foregone conclusion.”

“Phil wanted Basil Houel,” Bill Wamp said.

“Indeed, Basil was outstanding among the applicants. That is no secret. An alumnus of confirmed success who stands out for an almost filial devotion…

“At any rate, I resigned,” Oumaloff said. “It was clear how the votes would go. It amounted to a palace coup. A coup. Most of those on my search committee resigned at the same meeting.”

“So,” Fred said. “Since you’ve been on the board, you know the finances.”

Oumaloff shook his head. He took this moment to exchange the grapes for a plastic orange.

“How should I read your negative?” Fred asked. “Is it refusal or emotion?”

“When I left the board, the financial picture was already weak. The endowment had dwindled drastically, or been foolishly invested. Buildings that had not been mortgaged were now under mortgage to banks from as far afield as Lowell, Massachusetts.

“The rationale for the palace coup was this. The academy’s financial status had become so tenuous that only a businessman director could save us. My argument, that such a talent could be brought instead into the board, was laughed out of court.

“Rodney Somerfest had experience buying and selling cars. That was felt to be sufficient. And he was a candidate—as it later turned out an unsuccessful candidate—for a higher degree in education. Of art he knew nothing. It was his impression that Matisse was a men’s cologne. It was obscene.”

“So, Phil resigned, which I understand,” Bill Wamp said. “But ever since, we have not had a shred of information.”

“So,” Fred said. “That brings us to the Stillton Realty Trust.”