Mudwoman (19 page)

Kroll spoke with grim satisfaction. M.R. saw that the man cared for his own position, his own reputation and pride, and not so much for the welfare of his student.

“Now, no one will believe him—about anything. Anyone could hurt him.” Strange for M.R. to make such an observation, at such a time. But Kroll took no notice.

“I asked the police about that—if it turns out he’s lying. Any kind of ‘gay’ issue to them—they said—‘raises flags.’ ”

Raises flags.
M.R. had a vision of flags tattered and weatherworn whipping in a hostile wind.

She thought that Kroll might leave now: this was a natural time for Kroll to leave.

Or, she might offer Kroll a drink, belatedly. She might invite the man to remove his suede jacket that must be unpleasantly damp, and heavy, and warm.

Kroll was staring into the shadowy interior of the massive pale-marble fireplace. Beyond the gleaming brass andirons there was—nothing.

Kroll began to speak, at times brokenly, of Alexander Stirk. He’d been drawn to the boy when Stirk was a sophomore enrolled in Kroll’s honors seminar in political theory—he’d been impressed by the boy’s passionately written essays and after-class discussions. Here was a purely—precociously—
intellectual
undergraduate of a kind rarely encountered even at the University, where admission requirements were famously high. That Alexander was so boyishly eager, so (evidently) sexless, or asexual, yet at the same time so (seemingly) “gay”—(a term Kroll found particularly offensive)—was just one aspect of his uniqueness; one facet of his woundedness and pain, and of his virtuoso manipulation of his woundedness and pain. Kroll thought it was courageous of Stirk to turn his “gayness” inside out, so to speak—to make of it part of his identity, not a part to be hidden. Among conservatives, of course “gayness”—“homosexuality”—is an issue—in the Catholic church, to which Stirk belonged, it was particularly an issue. “It’s as if Alexander chose to make
gayness
a weapon to bludgeon his enemies—his ‘liberal’ enemies—and also his father. Yet—the kid wants to impress his father, too. He was always inviting me to visit him—to meet his father. The political is always personal, in adolescents.”

M.R. was thinking
In a counter-world this boy is our son. Misbegotten and wayward, because we abandoned him.

An utterly absurd thought! So swiftly it passed through M.R.’s brain like a short piece of string through the eye of a needle, and was lost.

“Is there any truth to the rumor—the ugly rumor—Alexander hinted at in his newspaper column—that a woman student had had a very late-term abortion?”

“Yes, of course. In everything Alexander has said there is a residue—some residue—of truth.”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. To avoid looking at each other, they stared into the fireplace that contained no fire, nor even the memory of a fire.

“If I hadn’t behaved so stupidly . . . ”

Kroll’s voice trailed off. M.R. wasn’t going to finish his sentence for him.

Was he thinking—they might be together, now? Might have been together, as a couple, for the past decade? Was this possible? Could this ever have been possible? And if possible, would M.R. be residing in this museum-mansion, with Professor Kroll as a husband?

Not very likely. This was a
counter-world
impossible to imagine.

M. R. Neukirchen had been—until just recently, at least—a highly successful administrator precisely because she hadn’t been married, hadn’t had a family to distract her, or a domestic life of any scale—loneliness had galvanized her, and a fierce unswerving wish to
go forward
as along a very narrow plank over a raging river.

Maybe she’d fallen in love with Andre Litovik, as the unattainable male. Maybe, her (secret) lover was the prime mover of M.R.’s adult life.

Remembering how, removing the portrait of Jane, Countess of Harrington from her wall in the rented house, removing the poster from the expensive frame, she’d crumpled and torn it, and felt a surge of relief and elation—then, suddenly, sorrow.

Something had clawed at her chest. Had she loved Kroll despite all her resistance? Or had her feeling for him been, from the start, sheer desperation?

“Of course, if that had been—you wouldn’t be here in this house, Meredith. Probably.”

Kroll spoke dryly, with his TV air of bemusement. It was a tone cultivated to maintain the demeanor of control as the spiky-sharp beard was a disguise that both hid and protected the vulnerable face beneath.

With a sound between a grunt and a sigh Kroll heaved himself to his feet. He’d gained weight, even his close-shaven head looked thicker, more solid. As if his back had stiffened, and was giving him pain, he stretched his arms, and yawned, somewhat boorishly—as if in mockery of their former intimacy.

“Well! Tomorrow all this will be out, I hope. Or most of it.”

M.R. was still sitting, rather stunned. She would be sleepless most of the night, considering what Kroll had been kind enough to tell her.

For he’d come to her, and he’d informed her—he’d had her best interests in mind. That Professor Kroll was M.R.’s political adversary did not preclude his behaving gallantly toward her.

“Oliver, thank you so much! This can’t have been easy for you.”

It was M.R.’s presidential voice, warmly bright, earnest. If there was more to be said, this voice would not speak it.

M.R. led her midnight visitor to the front door. Retracing their steps along the long somber hallway where underfoot was an Oriental-carpet runner and overhead lights that cast unflattering shadows downward onto their faces rendering them masklike with exaggerated eye sockets, brackets beside mouths. In the foyer a spectacular Irish-crystal chandelier was still on, as if for a festive occasion that had gone wrong. And the outside light, that M.R. had hurried to switch on just before Kroll drove up to park in the circular drive just beyond the front steps.

“Well—Meredith. Good night.”

“Good night! And again—thank you so much.”

In the effort of opening the door, M.R. was spared having to look into the man’s face—his eyes. She held the door open for her departing visitor, a massive antique-oak door with a wrought-iron eagle knocker which all who entered Charters House paused to admire, though Kroll took no notice of it. He had only to step outside and M.R. would shut and lock the door behind him.

Kroll stepped outside. Snow fell thinly, wetly. There was a sharp fresh smell as of marrow spilled from bone, unexpectedly moist and cleansing and this seemed to M.R. the very smell of late-night, solitude and deserted streets and large stone houses emptied of all inhabitants save one.

M.R. didn’t watch Kroll stride to his car, drive away. She’d switched off the outside light even as he was switching on his car headlights.

He could still come back. A pretext of more to say
,
or . . .

Upstairs in her private quarters preparing for bed—at last—M.R. would wonder suddenly—did he still drive that low-slung sleek luxury car—what was it called—
Jaguar?
She had not noticed.

Mudgirl Reclaimed. Mudgirl Renamed.

April–May 1965

I
n the hilly countryside south and west of the Adirondacks in Herkimer and Beechum counties quickly the grim news spread: one of the little Kraeck girls had been found in the mudflats by the Black Snake River abandoned by her mother and left to die.

No it could be no accident. No one would leave a child by chance. Not thrown into the mudflats and her battered little doll beside her . . .

For they’d seen on TV news a photograph of the
unidentified child approximately three years of age
in the hospital at Carthage.

Even with a crude-shaved head, bruised face, swollen and mournful eyes the child was recognized by residents of Star Lake who’d known the mother Marit Kraeck—had to be the younger girl, they thought.

Unless it was the elder, the five-year-old, emaciated, near-death and speechless as if the rapacious mud had sucked away her breath.

Not until the child was
found
had it been known that the child was
lost.

As decades later she would propose a teasing proposition at a philosophy colloquium
If words cease to exist do their meanings cease to exist too?

If names are nullified are the named nullified—or, renamed, reconstituted?

Excited calls were placed to the county sheriff’s office. Residents of Star Lake reported that the Kraeck woman hadn’t been seen in or around Star Lake for at least a week and the picture of the little girl on TV—the one found in the mudflats—could have been either of the little Kraeck girls.

And there was the stammering young man—a trapper along the Black Snake River—who’d found and rescued the girl—interviewed on local TV a dozen times and one of these times standing on the embankment above the mudflat to which he’d brought sheriff’s deputies to show them exactly where he’d found the little girl in the mud—as well as the rubber doll he’d described, that was still there in a tangle of mud and rushes.

And so on TV the shocking sight of this naked and hairless castaway doll revealed there in the rushes like a castaway child.

The Kraeck girls were Jewell and Jedina.

There was no known father, or fathers. There were none to come forward to claim the little girl in the hospital at Carthage.

Neither girl had gone to any school. No birth certificates or any documents pertaining to them could be discovered in either Herkimer or Beechum counties or, in time, in any county in New York State. Star Lake neighbors testified as to their probable ages.

When finally after several weeks in the hospital the little girl regained her ability to speak—in a hoarse whisper at first, comprehensible only to the nurses who most cared for her—she would say that she was
Jewell.

She did not seem to know her last name. But she knew that she was not
Jedina,
but
Jewell.

Of
Jedina,
she did not speak. Of
Jedina,
she could not be coaxed to speak.

Nor of her mother, she could not be coaxed to speak.

So terribly emaciated, near death. And her head shaved and stippled with bruises, scabs.

Yet insisting yes she was
Jewell.

Her injured eyes blinking up from the small battered face both fear and in steely resolution
Not Jedina but Jewell.

Jewell. Jewell!

Of
Jedina
truly the child seemed to know nothing. Of
Jedina
the child would never speak for words had been taken from her, and her mouth filled with mud.

And so it was, the surviving girl was noted to be
Jewell Kraeck.
The birth date for
Jewell Kraeck
was believed to be 1960 but this could not be official for no official certificate seemed to exist.

Naturally then it was wondered where was the other sister—whose name was
Jedina
?

And where was their mother
Marit Kraeck
?

The mudflats beside the Black Snake River were searched by rescue workers. The desolate countryside of northern Beechum County, hills of shattered shale, glacial rock-ruins, beech forests part collapsed as by a mysterious plague and their exposed roots gnarled as arthritic fingers—fleetingly these images appeared on TV news, sometimes from the aerial perspective of a helicopter and at such times the rapid-gliding shadow of the helicopter was observed on the ground below like that of a gigantic predator-bird.

And there was long-armed gangling
Suttis Coldham
staring into the TV camera licking his lips trying for Christ sake not to succumb to a stammer like a man trying to contain a large writhing snake encased inside his body saying—insisting—“There was just—the one little girl in the mud. There was just the one. If there’d been two I’d seen two but—
there was just one.
”

Residents of Star Lake and vicinity who knew Marit Kraeck—only just slightly, for Marit Kraeck shunned her neighbors and any who made inquiries of her, as she feared and despised all individuals associated with the county or the state or any government or government service whether named to her or not or actual or only just imagined—these women—for nearly all were women—believed that the county ought to have done more than just food stamps for the poor mother and her little daughters. In Sparta she’d lived for a while at Lake Clear Junction and then at Star Lake she’d arrived with a spiky-haired long-distance trucker a dozen years older than she was who liked to laugh and his gums wetly bared when he laughed—
Vietnam vet
this man identified himself—rank of
corporal
and his first name
Toby,
or
Tyrell—
“shrapnel” in his legs he’d said and a “steel plate” in his head he’d joked about so you could not know if the
ex-corporal
was serious or not-serious and both of them heavy drinkers living together in a run-down place outside town until the
ex-corporal
disappeared then it began to seem that Marit Kraeck was excessively religious—“troubled” and “not right in her head”—initially she’d gone to several churches in the Star Lake area then finally just to the Methodist church—Sunday morning, Wednesday evening prayer service—and there was some incident at Star Lake Methodist involving Marit Kraeck and the minister of the church having to call the sheriff’s office to deal with the angry woman threatening him or threatening to harm herself in his presence. And there was Marit Kraeck arrested for impaired driving, public drunkenness and resisting arrest and so sentenced to a term in the women’s house of detention and subsequently released on parole and for the past fifteen months living in a squalid little rented house not much larger than a packing crate with a sequence of men taking advantage of her and at last—again—the
ex-corporal
Toby, or Tyrell the long-distance trucker who seemed to have returned to her before shortly again departing for—Florida?—and Marit Kraeck had gone with him.

And the little girls, it was supposed. Gone with the adults to Florida.

After the girl believed to be
Jewell
was discovered in the mudflat and at the time of the search for the girl believed to be
Jedina
it was revealed that the run-down place Marit Kraeck had lived in down behind the Gulf station on the highway had virtually every square inch of its walls covered in some kind of religious picture, or crucifix—carved-wood crucifixes, gold-foil crucifixes, aluminum-wrap crucifixes, crucifixes of plastic threaded with tinsel, a two-foot crucifix of crudely crocheted white lace—but no heat except a wood-burning stove crammed with ashes and debris and turned-off electricity and strips of soiled polyurethane over loose-fitting windows, slapping in the wind like flayed skin.

Wherever Marit Kraeck had gone she’d left no discernible trace. The battered old Dodge she was seen to drive had vanished also. And now there was the child in the hospital at Carthage and no one to visit her or take crucial notice of her except Herkimer County Family Services which would place her in a foster home in the Carthage area.

And so the question was everywhere asked in the spring of 1965 in upstate New York south and west of the Adirondacks—
Where is the lost little girl Jedina Kraeck?