In the Middle of All This (21 page)

Mrs. Stingle came out on the stage and offered various announcements, rules, and mild scoldings, as if the audience were all her students. Finally the three-piece orchestra of the special-ed teacher, the phys-ed teacher, and the music teacher struck up, supported by a recent graduate on the violin, and the first of the acts marched out. The kindergartners and the special-ed class sang a song about purple—the theme, this year, was colors—then a section of first grade gave a spirited rendition of golden, and Martin played and played with the camcorder and still could not get it to bridge the distance. A tie-dyed ensemble offered a multicolor song, and then the light darkened and his program informed him that this was it, and he wheeled around and focused his camera on the rear of the packed room and out came Sarah's second-grade section, in white top hats, white T-shirts, and blue skirts or pants, waving American flags. They sang, he was certain, the same song he had sung in an elementary-school play thirty years before, while marching like soldiers with their flags held like rifles to their shoulders. Up onstage they came, almost briskly, and one group retreated to the wooden bleachers while four kids manned one microphone stage left, and Sarah and another girl commanded the microphone stage right. In Sarah he could clearly see, when he finally solved the blur of the zoom lens, a little of the ham and a little of the wannabe. She looked stunning. Her wavy, knotty hair was combed out in wild tresses, and her pale face was ablaze with a smiling glee. The piece she recited she'd written herself, and it was about how red must be the most important color of all, because people always said red-white-and-blue, not blue-white-and-red, and it was the second-longest recitation of the entire section, and she offered it without a single hitch, at almost exactly the right speed, and he was proud.

Afterward he shut off his camcorder and waited for the show to be over. He had a coveted aisle seat, but beside him the Italian guy from around the corner who ran a bicycle shop and had about thirty grand worth of toys in his backyard (
numbers or drugs
, the neighbors whispered, as he rode his John Deere industrial tractor-mower around his half acre or his daughter blared the latest Britney Spears from the Bose CD stereo system in her wired playhouse,
he's Sicilian
) kept doing the European thing and invading his body space. The curtain closed for another set shift, and out strode a plain-looking third-grade girl to stand at the microphone by herself. Martin felt his heart pinch for her, though she didn't look terrified. She just looked uncertain. She nodded at the music teacher and the music teacher nodded at her, and distinctly he heard the first strains of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” She sang in a thin, steady, unremarkable voice, its subtle underdevelopment offering sketchy variance between high and low notes, the differing pitches caught more by volume than tone. All by herself, in front of the shut curtain, in the stuffy gym, she sang, her hands clenched to her sides in fists, her feet never moving, still except for the lilt and sway of her compact upper body. By the middle of it, he felt his eyes welling, and he knew the Italian was watching him, and just as he reached to dab the tears before they escaped, the Italian turned to face him, taking him in, then turned back, crossed his arms over his belly, and shook his head.

In the hall outside their daughters' classroom, the Italian's wife murmured to him, “Sarah had the big lines, eh?”

“Everyone did well,” he said, not wanting to engage her limited English, knowing that she was so unhappy here she slept most days, as if waiting out a permanent hangover.

“Yes,” she said. “Sophia, she had no lines.”

“Next year,” he said.

The husband would not look at him.

Sarah came out and he took her hand, and they bumped down the hall filled with familiar strangers.

“I'm proud of you,” he told her, when they were outside.

“The teacher said I talked too fast. Did I talk too fast, Daddy?”

“No.”

“Why did you have that camera pointed at me the whole time?”

“I'm making a video for Aunt Elizabeth,” he said. “She asked me to.”

“Today?”

“What?”

“I mean did she ask you today?”

“No,” he said, as they crossed the street, passing parents in clusters talking in quiet, apparently cheerful conversation as their kids tugged at them. “A while ago.”

“Hey, Martin,” a woman from around the block called to him. “Nice to see you back.” Her mother had died a few months ago. “How is she?”

“Hanging in there,” was all he could say.

She squeezed his forearm. “That's good. You're a good brother.”

They crossed the street and cut up their path and into the house. Lauren sat at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

“How was it?” she asked.

“It was great,” he said. “Sarah was great!”

“Jenn fumbled a line,” Sarah said.

“Don't gloat,” he said. “Any messages?”

“Just the dean.”

He picked up the portable and took it into the study. The dean answered on the first ring. Martin spoke, the dean spoke. It was all quite cordial. He had an interview at nine A.
M
.

“I know you must be jet-lagged,” the dean said. “But we need to do this. For the family's sake and for our sake.”

“I understand,” he said.

“I'll see you then.”

“Thank you.”

Now he felt fuzzy headed. He hadn't felt that way watching the show, watching that girl sing. He'd felt incredibly sharp, clear, alive, in a tenuous way, just like her voice had seemed. Now he was numb. An interview. He dropped the portable on the foldout futon and switched on the computer. He began typing. What Jane Wilson was like the first day of class, what he remembered from all the other days, exchanges they'd had. He knew he was caustic and sarcastic in class. He knew that he'd said any number of complicated and culpable things. He knew he hadn't called Psychiatric Services about her. She had four other teachers. It wasn't only about him.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and jerked around.

“I thought you were still on the phone,” Lauren said.

“Kiss good night?” Sarah said.

“Oh.” He kissed her good night. “Congratulations, sweetie.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

She went off up to bed.

“I've got an interview at nine,” he said.

“Lovely,” Lauren said. She looked on the screen at his notes.“These look good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They can't pin a suicide on anybody.”

“You never know,” he said.

It was never accusatory was how he would characterize it later, when he had time. It was investigative. They were trying to learn. They were trying to know. They had no opinion. They had no agenda—except for the truth. The provost, the dean of residential affairs, and the director of security sat around a table, and Martin in a sense sat with them. They weren't against him. They just wanted to know. His class was the smallest she had been in, and so perhaps he could shed even more light than the other professors. Nothing was tape-recorded. They took notes. He offered what he had typed the night before, and they politely declined.

“No one's on trial,” the dean said.

“This has no effect whatsoever on your tenure case,” the provost said.

“Look,” the director of security said. “She killed herself. Nobody else killed her. There's no need to even think defensive.”

They asked about the last day he saw her. He described how she'd come into class looking slightly hollow, slightly pasty, not as put together as she usually looked. He told how she laid her head on her desk—the little arm desk that the students sat in—and how he asked her if anything was wrong and she shrugged. She was wearing sweatpants and a sweat shirt and ratty sneakers. Well, can you pick your head up? he asked. Okay, she said. And she kept her head up the rest of the class. It was odd because she was usually the class talker. At the end, as she filed with the others from the room, he asked her if she was all right. Just the flu, she said. Get better, he said. She'd smiled shyly when she handed in her paper.

“That was it?” the director of security said.

“Yes.”

“Did you call her afterward to check up on her?”

“No,” he said. “I don't usually—”

“Did you call or contact her advisor in any way?”

“No.”

“Did you talk to or contact anybody about this?” He shook his head.

“Well, then,” the provost said. “Thank you.”

“Is that it?” Martin said.

All of them nodded. They rose. The provost, a man who had shaken his hand at various formal occasions, reached out to him.

“Good job, Martin,” he said. He had a weathered yet firm clasp. Powerful and odd. “In the future, when you see or notice anything unsettling, you can be more aggressive. We all can be more aggressive.”

“Okay,” Martin said.

“Don't be afraid to get to
know
your students,” the provost said. “That's really what Lincoln College is all about.”

“I understand,” Martin said.

“That's important,” the provost said.

“Good-bye, Martin,” the dean said.

“Good-bye.”

When he returned to his office, the message light was flashing. He picked up the phone to retrieve whatever messages there were, but there was no dial tone.

“Hello,” a voice said.

“Hello?” he said. It was one of those weird times when the phone hadn't rung because he'd picked it up right when it was about to.

“Is this Professor Kreutzel?” the woman said.

“Yes,” he said uneasily.

“This is Mary Lou Wilson. Jane's mom.”

“I know,” he said, his voice going soft. “I'm very sorry.”

“I'm just, you know, calling around. Tying up loose ends. That kind of thing.” Her voice sounded as if it would erode at any moment.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Could you send me any papers you might have of hers? Anything like that?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Maybe if there were … I don't know how it really works there, Jane just said she always loved it… but if there are pictures you know of… of her, you know, participating in a class, that kind of thing, you could send them.”

“No one took pictures in our class,” he said gently, “but I can ask around.”

“That would be great.”

“What else?” he said. “How else can I help?”

“She talked about you,” Jane's mother said. “She said you were passionate about anthropology.”

That made them both laugh, it sounded so odd, like two words had been uttered that did not belong together.

“I
love
anthropology,” he said.

There was a laugh in that, then nothing.

“I'm sure that the college will be talking with you soon,” he said.

“That's what they say.”

She didn't seem to want to get off the line.

“Well…,” he said.

“Was she a good student? Did you like her?”

“Oh yes,” he said.

“She was really a terrific kid. A terrific person.”

“Yes,” he said again, although he didn't really know her, and he thought it unfair to pretend.

“Well, I guess I should let you go.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You know what?” Her voice picked up again. “You're the only person I've talked to at that place who didn't ask me
why.”

He was silent, hearing her anger.

“As if I know. As if anybody could know.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I like that about you,” she said. Then she hung up.

Each day he tried and she tried, at least twice, to reach them. Early in the morning and late at night, sometimes in the middle of the night. He also called the neighbor every other day, the guy always unfailingly patient. “I'm just not seeing them,” he said, “and, you know, I'm actually looking.”

“I wonder if I should hire somebody,” Martin told his wife.

On the Internet, for “locating” plus “missing persons,” he found 76, 324 hits. It was a whole industry.

He called an old family friend who worked at the FBI and told him everything.

“All right, Marty. I'll see what I can do,” the guy said.

He called back late the same day.

“The last we have is London,” he said. “I'm sorry. But we'll keep looking. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Martin said. “Did you check credit cards?”

“Everything,” the guy said. “It's not a big deal to be very thorough very quickly.”

Once he asked his mother during a turgid phone call what she thought.

“You need to let them be,” she said. “It's obviously what they want.”

“Do you think it is?” he later asked Lauren.

She looked at him wearily. “The point is, they're gone. One day somebody will come back.”

“Somebody?” he said.

“So she just bugged off, eh?” Ruben was in his familiar position in the office doorway. “That's understandable. I wouldn't mind bugging off myself.”

“Where would you go?” Martin asked, trying to be polite.

“Africa? Or maybe the Carribean. I'd take Julia and we'd just bug off. I mean
really
bug off, so that nobody would ever know what had happened to us. Cool, don't you think?”

“It doesn't matter what I think.”

“So you've learned that, too? You're no longer our cocky son of a bitch.”

“That would be David.”

Ruben shook his head. He was practically slurring his words, but he wasn't drunk. There was a rumor he'd be “stepping down” as co-chair at the end of the year. “You have to be young to be a son of a bitch, and David is not young. He's a bastard, he's an asshole. He's kind of a cocksucker, too, I guess. But that son of a bitch is not young.”