Jane Doe January (16 page)

Tears everywhere, blurring my vision, flying when I move my head, bouncing and splashing on my chest and shoulders.

Once, I was worrying that some people might be indignant about the swear words in my writing about this. John shook his head, mouthed “no,” and looked a little sad. He said that it was all right, he promised me that it was all right. Then, later in the same conversation, he casually referred to someplace he'd recently been as “a shithole,” which made me laugh. I think he did it on purpose so that I wouldn't be alone in swearing. He didn't want me to feel alone.

Words are my favorite things, so I try to think of any words that John had ever said about me, but I keep remembering instead how he would light up whenever he saw me, how, when I'd ask if I was a bother, he would smile and shake his head slowly. I remember him always leaning, legs crossed, relaxed and patient, pretending, whenever he was with me, to have all the time in the world. It's pictures in my head, not words. I don't know what to do with that.

I receive condolences. Choir parents who loved John's happy, gentle presence but didn't know him outside of evensongs bring me hugs and chocolate.

I try, desperately, to think of anything I'd done for John. My depending on him and trusting him feels pathetic, a take not a give, no matter how much I thanked him; I think, though, that he might have been happy to be trusted and needed, so perhaps that counts.

Once at a dinner party at our house—this was before the prosecution, so it wasn't out of pity—he stayed past midnight even
though he had services to lead early the next day. We were all just too happy to stop talking. He's the one who got me my May Ball ticket after it was sold out. We were friends.

Alice the choir admin worries about Mark, the Director of Music; we all do. As with John, the college is in some ways Mark's family, and, like family, we feel protective. He prefers to protect all of us, especially the students and choristers. We push through recording the new CD as scheduled, as an excuse to be together and to honor John. Mark is fine when he's working. Between takes, though, his posture drops, and his bereavement is evident. He leans. He looks like he may fall.

The recording party is already booked. Mark insists that it go on, for the sake of the leaving boys whose voices have recently changed (including S.) and the sake of the leaving choral scholars who have just graduated. Alice takes me aside and urges that Mark needs for this to be
happy
.

I steel myself and stick ribbons onto a bottle of champagne. I stuff gift certificates into cards for Mark, Alice, and the organ scholars from all of the parents. Mark's card is the special one: a pop-up paper organ that Gavin bought years ago and had been saving. All of the boys have signed it, in different colored pencils, in their sweet, messy, young handwriting.

I remember one thing I did do as a friend to John: I put him in two scenes of a book (which I'd written well before he and I started meeting about the prosecution) and he loved that. This is the novel I've been revising this past year, which I've at last gotten right. I told him a few weeks ago that it's to be published this coming February, and a mutual friend says that John was excited and pleased. I don't usually put real people in my books, but this one is set at this college and I'd needed the chaplain. I'd been mindful to present him carefully and to protect his character from the ambiguity and danger that, per crime novel convention, most of my other charac
ters suffer. He'd joked to me in return that he was disappointed that his character wasn't a victim or suspect.

I pack the champagne and cards for handing off to another mother when I get to college. Another parent is picking up the cheerful bouquets. The presentations are someone else's responsibility. Alice and others are looking out for me; no one will be allowed to turn to me for answers or instructions today. I'm no longer in charge of anything except for my own children, and even they'll be among friends who'll take up any slack I might leave. I'm given a protective circle of grief to carry with me and walk around in.

John is mourned all over the city. Besides his official funeral next week, which requires a cathedral to even attempt to hold all of the people who loved him, various churches hold their own services. For the college chapel's service, at which the boys will sing, I choose my clothes carefully: not black, which would be presumptuous; just something modest enough and dressy enough to match the men, who'll all default to suits. I unwrap an outfit that I'd had dry-cleaned for trial when I still thought it was going to be in June.

At the chapel service, Gavin and I sit with the architect who had designed the chapel's lighting and the new vestry. He shakes his head and says that John was “just a boy, just a boy” because John had always looked young, even at thirty-five, and had had a manner that was sweet and enthusiastic, despite his being a formidable scholar. When I had first asked John about forgiveness, all those months ago, he had brightened and said, with cheerful eagerness, “I once wrote an article about forgiveness! I'm an
expert
on that!” He'd been artlessly delighted to have something relevant to offer.

At home, Gavin asks me to get references to John out of our calendar because the pop-up reminders grieve him. I assure him that we're past the last one today, but I refuse to delete past events, even the two that were supposed to happen with John this week. Our
calendar is more than a record of what we've done; it's a record of what we'd intended. Our expectations and hopes and planning did happen, even if they weren't fulfilled. I leave John in there. I left the canceled June trial week in there, too.

Things that didn't happen still matter, in that we wanted them to. The wanting happened.

I'm grateful for the way bodies work, how they insist on being fed and washed and touched. Having a body is like having an extra child, a young one. It makes demands. It keeps me moving forward, whether I feel able to or not.

There are a few duties left: organizing rides to the upcoming cathedral-funeral; organizing a gift from the choir parents to John's parents; organizing a schedule of choir parents to visit Alice's office while Mark is away in August so that she, whose only other boss was John, won't be alone. By then, the bouquets in front of John's rooms, and the memory book in the cloister, and the candles in the chapel will be gone. As things are now, the college is a gauntlet of communal mourning. Even just two days ago, it had been good to share the grief. Now I want to hide from it.

Even just two days ago, when I'd considered someday talking to anyone else about the things that I used to talk about with John, I'd felt certain that I could only ever turn to someone who'd known him, someone like Liz, the chaplain at St. John's College, or Cindy, from Wesley House. Now I want the opposite: someone who didn't know John, who I can then tell about him; someone who'll be surprised and amazed.

I don't need to find someone to talk to quickly. There's not much new to say about Pittsburgh yet, just that Fryar's attorney has suddenly left the public defender's office, though it's not clear whether she'll be allowed to drop this case or forced to see it through. I don't
think that I'll ever get to know why she left, but in my imagination it's because Fryar disgusts her. I think:
High-five, fist-bump, join the club.

The police sergeant (later captain, now retired) who took Fryar's confession of the 1976 rape gets back to me, even though the address I'd written to turned out to be his ex-wife's house, not his. It's another reminder that what I find on the Internet is usually, probably, only sort-of right.

His name is Santo Centamore; his ex calls him Sam. He took so long to reply because he was trying to dig up old police records on the case, which he was unable to do. The Orange County Clerk's papers are probably all that's left.

There was one local newspaper record I'd finally found, which gave all of two sentences to Fryar's rape indictment, and communicated only his name, street of residence, and the date of the then-alleged crime. I appreciate the privacy given to victims, but our facelessness makes history look strange. There are gaps.

I wish I could see us in a lineup and figure out what we have in common. I was surprised to read in the medical report that the victim from 1976 is black; we two Shadyside Jane Does are white. Like I had looked to Vietnam for some explanatory trauma, I had also wondered if resentment of racism might have been motivating, or if, like Ted Bundy, he had a physical type. These options aren't neatly fitting.

Centamore had typed the confession himself, he says. He recalls that the crime was “brutal,” which comforts me. I'm glad of his respect for the seriousness of it.

I'd included a printout of the confession with my letter, and he asks if I have anything else, to help jog his memory. I promise him more.

I've told him only that I'm a writer researching the case, which is true, if not complete. His ex, before forwarding my letter, had
asked me what my interest was; I'd said that I'd “lived in Pittsburgh” when the currently-being-prosecuted Shadyside crimes had happened, which is also true, also incomplete. At some point, I'm going to have to admit my involvement. I don't know if now should be that time. I would have tried to figure that out with John.

Everyone I can imagine asking for help is in mourning themselves. John will have kept all of our talking from this past year confidential, which is the right thing to have done, but it leaves me feeling lost. I wish that he'd told someone to look after me if he ever couldn't. I wish that someone would say to me, “John would have wanted me to check on you.” Then I remember that people have already offered me variations of that, and I've been too ashamed to interfere with their own sadness by saying yes. I wish that someone would insist. I'm quite falling apart.

We're in the center of town, forcing the boys to enjoy the Cambridge leg of the Tour de France despite their whining and the heat. Afterward, I feel once again able to face the makeshift memorials in college, if only to get away from pretending to be cheerful. The city streets are decorated with colorful bunting and crowded with smiling people. Gavin takes the boys home and I go to the chapel.

I'm inside only a short while when an American tour group wanders in, with a boisterous leader who heartily points out chapel highlights. They file past me, tactfully ignoring my tears, perhaps not even seeing them, but they have to notice my solemnity. The tour guide points out the flowers and candles, and stammers that the chapel suffered a great loss a week ago. The visitors murmur sympathetically. I suspect that he's explaining me, my posture and mood, more than the flowers. I slip out as soon as they turn their backs.

The choristers are done for the summer and the students of the choir are on tour until the funeral, so there's no chance of seeing anyone I know, which feels lonely. Except for the funeral, we won't see any of them again until autumn.

I'm lucky to have W., who will still sing treble then; other families have finished choir forever this term. In S.'s former place in the stalls, I'd found the penciled graffiti he'd recently left of his name and choir years:
2010–2014
. It echoes in form the birth and death years that Alice had had to type on John's service sheet.

I send more paperwork from the seventies to Centamore, to help him remember: arrest warrants with Centamore's name on them, court minutes, the official sentence. I tell him about Fryar's ridiculous appeal of the conviction years later, long after he'd served the time. I don't know how far that ever got or if Centamore had known about it.

Happy memories of John continue to sneak up on me. He'd thought I was joking when I'd told him that the Pittsburgh sex-crimes police chipperly answer their phone with a singsongish “Sex Assault, may I help you?” But they really do; at least, one of them really does, and she answers often. John and I had had a good laugh.

At the funeral, everything is perfect—the music from Duruflé's requiem, the thoughtful prayers—except for the slim, black-clad undertaker who accompanies the coffin down the aisle, looking ominous and frightening, like the child-catcher from
Chitty
Chitty Bang
Bang
. Perhaps, though, that's perfect, too. Death is terrible, especially early death. It should look it.

The men and women of the choir sing here, but the boys don't. We chorister families sit together, our sons wearing ties striped in thick bands of black and red, the college colors, with a thin gold line to represent the choir. The cathedral is full, its high, high ceiling painted with angels, and its long, long aisle filled with procession. My two worlds are growing wider apart. My American life has become ridiculously hard-boiled, starring detectives and set in courtrooms, as if it comes bound in paperback with a titillating but painterly cover illustration. My Cambridge life, in contrast, has
taken on the formal tone of an illuminated manuscript: profound medieval scenes touched with gold.

While chaperoning the last day of recording the new CD last week, I'd gotten to sit in the vestry with the record company's producer and engineer.

After the final take of the final song, and the announcement that the tally of all takes that week had been in the hundreds, the last act had been to record a minute of the ambient noise of the chapel, the unique sound of that room with the choir, just sitting still and voiceless, in it. It's a kind of silence, but not complete. The presence of people buzzes, and the walls of the chapel make that buzzing bounce, just under what we consciously notice. That sound will be used as filler as the best bits are matched together for the final cut.

I love the idea of unique silence, that they can't use just any nothing, and certainly not actual nothing. Apparently, silences have character, depending on where you are and who it is that's not making any noise.