Echoes in the Darkness (9 page)

Chris Pappas was as decent and likable as Vince Valaitis, and, in his own way, even more vulnerable. He listened attentively whenever Bill Bradfield extolled the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and pointed out to him that Catholicism proved that one is not enslaved by obedience to higher authority; one is set fee by it.

At the time Chris had a friend named Jenny who was several years younger, but he and Jenny were no more than friends. And Jenny had a best friend named Shelly who was eighteen years old and one of Bill Bradfields gifted students. Shelly was a sturdy industrious girl who reminded Chris of a flouncing Pennsylvania German milkmaid, bursting with energy and opinions and a need for approval.

Soon, Shelly started wearing a Greek sailors cap like the one Bill Bradfield wore. And after listening to Bill Bradfield on Catholicism, Shelly became convinced that she should begin taking instruction to convert. It wasn't long until Sue Myers was peeking out of her classroom window watching Bill Bradfield greeting the girl with a kiss. For a teacher, that could be a dangerous little maneuver on any high school campus, even one with the laissez faire policies of Dr. Jay Smith.

Neither Susan Reinert nor Shelly seemed as threatening to Sue Myers as a woman Bill Bradfield had been seeing on and off for a few years, a woman from Annapolis.

Rachel had originally come to Upper Merion to talk to Bill Bradfield about his advanced students as potential candidates for St. John's College in Annapolis, a liberal arts institution that promoted the Great Books concept.

Sue Myers had met Rachel on the very day that she'd scored the one-kick decision over Susan Reinert. When Sue saw the way Bill Bradfield was looking at Rachel she realized she might have more kicking to do.

Bill Bradfield started urging students toward a further education at St. John's, Annapolis, or at the colleges sister campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

One summer, he and Sue Myers took a trip to Santa Fe so he could enroll in a seminar. Sue had to live in a godawful apartment in the outskirts rather than being close to the school where he spent most of his time. It made her wonder. Then she discovered that Rachel was also at the New Mexico campus.

Rachel was a very articulate, seemingly intelligent young woman, as petite as Susan Reinert. She wore no makeup; her clothing was modest; her shoes were flat. Her black hair was slashed down the middle and looked like it was combed with a steam iron. She had good bones and possibly could be attractive but probably never would be.

To Sue, she looked like she belonged on a widows walk in 19th-century fiction, floating between the gables. Rachel was

different and mysterious and Sue Myers feared her more than the others.

This one, she thought, could be a Bill Bradfield "keeper." Sue was delighted to learn that Rachel had been married at one time. Sue believed that Bill Bradfield could never sustain a relationship with a woman who was not a virgin. Yet the more Sue studied Rachel the more she realized that this young woman looked as virginal as any that prowled the moors in a Gothic novel. And that's how she looked: Gothic.

Chris Pappas enthusiastically agreed to join Bill Bradfield in a summer program at St. Johns in Annapolis where Rachel would be "helpful" to them. There would be vigorous tutorials, seminars, papers to be written on the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Chris hoped to emerge more qualified, more confident.

As for his mentor it would be a very busy summer. He now had a whole bunch of people to keep apart.

Apparently, Bill Bradfield had talked to Susan Reinert about his fear that some of the folks in his summer seminar might not be up to snuff, morally speaking.

Susan fired off a contemptuous letter early that summer showing that she was aware of his friendship with Rachel:

I think its a bit hypocritical for you to rave about St. Johns lack of moral standards and "bed hopping" when you arranged to have your physical needs met from very early on. I wonder if your visits there are so emotionally difficult because you're unsuccessful in reconciling your own past and present to your idea? Why don't you accept yourself and not preach celibacy to others. Please think about what you can offer me come September.

I want: 1) You to love me. 2) You to be separated from Sue. 3) Us to work through our problems.

Love, Sus

Rachel's name began explicitly surfacing in Susans other letters that summer:

You have sent out messages to many women that you were interested in them sexually and that you cared for them in a special way, including former students, Sue,

Rachel, me. Sue has certainly home the brunt of it, hence her misdirected anger at me. I've also felt jealousy, even of Pat, and now Rachel in particular, but always had a feeling of uniqueness to carry me through. Hope it was justified.

Long ago I recognized that I wasn't quite bright enough or disciplined enough for a life of the mind. I opted for a life of service (following my father's footsteps?) yet I am also my mother's daughter. I contemplate human relationships, not philosophy or science. Yes, I know they cast light on each other, but still, does this make us incompatible? It's imperative for us to communicate more with each other. I still think that a serious attempt at therapy would help.

Susan Reinert related to therapist Roslyn Weinberger that Bill Bradfield would get angry at the mere mention of the psychologist's name and ask testily why Susan thought it necessary to talk to "that woman." He never became aware that she was freely talking to that woman about him.

That summer, Chris Pappas could not fail to notice that there were lots of nights when Bill Bradfield didn't sleep in his dormitory room, and it was fairly obvious where he spent those nights. Sue Myers must have gotten the vibes longdistance, because one day when she was especially frazzled from trying to keep the Terra Art store open, she put in a longdistance call to Rachel and simply blurted out her suspicions.

"This is Sue Myers," she said, "and I'm sure you and Bill are pretty much an item by now, so I want you to know that I wouldn't mind giving him up. Maybe you wouldn't mind delivering that message."

And then the telephone practically froze to her hand. "She was cold," Sue Myers later remembered. "'Bitchy' is a word that doesn't even work. She was the original ice maiden."

Rachel said, "I'm afraid you're talking to the wrong party. Mister Bradfield isn't available for messages. I believe he's sailing this weekend. With Shelly."

So Sue Myers stammered something about child molesters and hung up in humiliation, and went back to stewing over things a lot less complex than Bill Bradfield. Things like midlife crisis and bankruptcy.

Chris Pappas hadn't met Rachel until that summer and often wondered about her relationship with Bill Bradfield.

"I found her to be very straitlaced," he said. "She had an underdeveloped sense of humor or none at all, but Bill absolutely appreciated her. He once told me that she was the only woman friend he'd ever had who was able to pull herself up by her own bootstraps so admirably. After a bad marriage she'd gotten her life together. She'd managed to save money and was planning to enter Harvard for graduate study."

When Bill Bradfield talked of Rachel to Chris Pappas, he smiled sadly and said, "She's done a lot better in making something of herself than I've ever done."

Chris wasn't in the dormitory very long before he learned that Rachel and Bill Bradfield were very close friends, indeed. He was in his bathroom downstairs one morning when Bill Bradfield came rushing in with his face flushed and his beard frazzled, and his blue eyes aglow with rapture.

He just had to tell someone. It seemed that he and Rachel had had a terrible row and she became furious because of some complimentary things he'd been saying about little Shelly. And when he tried to tell Rachel that he simply saw Shelly as a "perfect human being" she became even angrier. Rachel admitted then that she was hopelessly in love with him and even wanted to have his children. She said that they had so much in common she couldn't imagine why he could even think of that child.

And then Bill Bradfield showed young Chris Pappas a look of wonder and said, "I didn't realize just how much I'm loved by her!"

Two hours later Chris saw them in the apartment of another former Upper Merion student named Jeff Olsen. Bill Bradfield and Rachel were arm in arm, giggling and chatting. She informed Chris that when Bill Bradfield eventually got his oceangoing sailboat, she was going to have an office on the boat. She'd work while Chris and Bill Bradfield went clamming and fishing and read their Great Books. The ice maiden was tingling. She seemed absolutely girlish.

Susan Reinert made several calls to the dorm that summer and Chris Pappas received them. Bill Bradfield told Chris that he'd made a horrible mistake by offering advice to the troubled woman during the last school year, and now she wouldn't leave him alone. The weekend after Chris took the first call from

Susan Reinert, Bill Bradfield made a sudden overnight trip to Baltimore.

And on a balmy summer evening Bill Bradfield felt he had to explain Rachel in light of his views on chastity and celibacy. He confessed to Chris that no matter how much he believed in obedience to Gods law, he could not himself obey at all times.

On that occasion he said, "Because of a weakness in my character, I have an itch and I know that no matter how resolute I tiy to be, that itch will eventually need scratching. Tliats why I've never formally converted to Catholicism. But I pray that one day I'll be a better man."

About little Shelly, he informed Chris that he'd decided to "send" her to a Catholic college in California. He was very pleased that she was going to convert to Catholicism. He hoped she'd go on to an advanced degree at some Catholic university.

That summer, Bill Bradfield also confessed to Chris Pappas that his life had not turned out as he'd dreamed it in this, his forty-fifth year. He hinted to the young man that perhaps one day he would marry Shelly when she was finished with her education, and that he could then develop the character and lifestyle he'd always wanted and couldn't manage thus far.

Bill Bradfield told Chris Pappas that he looked upon him as a younger brother, not just a friend, and that he was confessing things that he'd told no other. He swore that he would not be physically intimate with Shelly and that he did love the girl whom he saw as something good and real in his life. His relationship with her had inspired him to want to finish a poem he'd begun ten years earlier. It was called "Bloodroot."

It seemed that "Bloodroot" had to do with Maria, a girl he'd once loved in Baltimore. One day when he went to visit her, Maria's parents gave him the terrible news that she'd died suddenly. He had begun the poem in memory of their love, but could never finish it. Now that he'd found this young and fresh and unsullied girl to remind him of the purity of Maria, he was determined to complete the poem.

Bloodroot, the lovely white poppy that grows wild in Pennsylvania, is so vulnerable that it dies at the mere touch of a human being, according to folklore. Apparendy, he was implying that he would never "touch" Shelly in that sense.

During the summer Bill Bradfield and Chris had occasion to spend two days on a rented sailboat with two visitors, Jenny and Shelly. Chris Pappas overheard Bill Bradfield telling

Shelly about the "Bloodroot" inspiration, and at first Chris thought he must be mistaken. This time Bill Bradfield said that Maria had been in an iron lung and he told how he had held her hand as she expired. And before his relationship with Bill Bradfield had gone much further, Chris heard it yet a third time, with a different ending.

It was the same when Bill Bradfield told him of traveling to Cuba at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Chris's version, Bill Bradfield was ordered to count ships for the CIA. During that mission he was forced to creep up and kill a Cuban guard during an intelligence-gathering mission. He killed the Cuban with a knife.

So Chris got a knife killing and Vince Valaitis a garroting. Sue Myers secretly did not believe that he'd even been there at all. She heard that Fran Bradfield had accused Bill of running off to New Orleans for two weeks with Tom, their homosexual lodger. And Sue wondered if it was in a New Orleans brothel that he'd "resisted" all those hussies.

Bill Bradfield once said something about Shelly that Chris Pappas would never forget.

"That girl is my ticket to heaven," he said. Chris Pappas also spent considerable time that summer hearing that Susan Reinert was the "second-worst teacher at Upper Merion." He was never sure who was number one.

"I don't know why she bothers me like this," Bill Bradfield told Chris. "I'm just a casual friend. I wish she'd find somebody else for advice and money loans. Sure, I pity her, the poor neurotic creature, but it's too much being her friend!"

During the middle of August, Bill Bradfield received a letter from Susan Reinert at St. Johns. As was his custom, he couldn't bear to part with it and so tried to hide it away when he got home, but as was her custom Sue Myers dug in every nook until she found evidence that he'd been juggling Rachel and Susan Reinert and even little Shelly. The letter was postmarked August 13, 1978.

Sunday morning

Dear Bill,

Hi honey. I have been uncomfortable since yesterday's phone call, so this is an attempt to straighten it out. First, you said some very nice things. Thank you. My missing you is what I'm most aware of It's awful. That was why I called you Friday night. Chris was very congenial on the phone, although I'm sure he was wondering why I would be calling you.