New England White (12 page)

“I’m so glad,” said Julia, irritated by her condescension.

“I know it sounds silly. But Kellen said he had the goods on a major political figure.” She pointed toward the glass doors. “Maybe the guy in there. Maybe somebody else. I don’t know, and he wouldn’t say.”

Maybe the guy in there.
No. No. Do not think about it. Do not invite Kellen back into your life.

“It’s not my fight, Mary.” She turned away to look at the Monument, the red lights blinking for the benefit of air traffic, even though air traffic was no longer allowed.

“No. I suppose it isn’t.”

Julia heard something in the writer’s voice, or thought she did. She spun around. “There’s more. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“We should go back inside.” Despite the fiery eyes, the voice remained calm as autumn. “They’re going to miss us in a minute.”

“What did you leave out, Mary? What else did Kellen tell you?”

A beat while the white woman decided how much to tell. From inside came the novelist’s laughter, raucous with drink. “He said he would set it up so that the girlfriend who got away had only one, ah, welfare-maximizing choice.”

“Choice about what?”

“About whether to…follow his footsteps. Search for his surplus. His inventory. Kellen seemed to think he could, ah, force you to help.” While Julia processed this distressing notion, Mary scribbled on a business card, which she handed over. “My home and office number are the same. I wrote my cell phone. You give a ring, I’m on the next flight.”

“I doubt that I’ll be calling.”

“Because you’re not interested in what Kellen was up to. So you told me.” Mary reached for her cigarettes, then changed her mind and tucked them back in her handbag. “Or maybe you’re putting on a show. They say you love the theater.” The writer delved in her purse for a piece of paper, handed it over. Julia, still in a snit, unfolded it, glanced, then glanced again. She sagged. Snowflakes danced across the floodlit lawn. She was holding a photocopy of a letter from an outdoor electrical contractor recommended by Norm Wyatt, the architect who designed the house—and, as it happened, That Casey’s father. The letter, addressed to Julia, contained an estimate for replacing the broken lampposts on the Carlyle driveway.

From far away, Mary Mallard was speaking to her. “I think a lot of people would be very interested in knowing exactly what happened to your lights, Julia.”

Julia clutched the rail, all her warring selves, present and past, mother and child, docile and aggressive, defensive and patient, sinner and penitent, hater and lover, roiling around inside. She had no idea which would be left standing when their eerie dance ended.

“You’re a considerable bitch,” she finally said. “Did you know that?” Mary waited. “So—what is this exactly? Are you accusing me of some kind of—”

But by that time the President himself had flung open the French doors and come outside to see what they were doing, and invite them back in for charades.

Good choice.

(III)

L
EMASTER ENDED THE NIGHT
in a sour mood, once he realized that the dinner was no more than social, and grumbled about one thing or another all the way back to the hotel. Julia, who had dithered over telling him about Mary, decided that she could not.

Not yet.

So she let her husband run on until he realized for himself how close he was to whining. That snapped him out of it, as she had known it would. Carlyles never complained. Carlyles took charge, turned the tables, grabbed the bull by the horns, reversed the controls—he and Astrid and her brother, Harrison, all three embarrassingly successful in their chosen careers, had so many different ways of describing their shared life philosophy that they sounded like each other’s coaches, which perhaps they were.

And so tonight, as usual, Lemaster transformed himself, becoming once more the cheerful and confident man she had known since divinity school twenty-odd years ago. He told her, as they sat at the table in their hotel suite, sharing a snack and a drink and watching a basketball game, how the President had drawn him into a small study for a private conversation, to the envy of others in the room.

“What did he want?”

“Well, he beat around the bush, but, to make a long story short, he wanted me to promise not to endorse Mal Whisted. Apparently rumors have gotten around, maybe because of Astrid’s little visit.”

She waited, but Lemaster made her ask. “And did you promise?”

“I told him what I told Astrid. I’m through with politics. I told him I’m aggressively neutral.” That triumphant smile, tinged tonight with sadness. “I told him that both parties had moved so far from any real interest in the future of African America that I don’t much care who wins.” The fun faded. “That’s true, Jules. I don’t care.”

“I know,” she said, because he told her so often, although, just now, the meaning seemed somehow more profound, a fundamental axiom of his faith.

“You know what the trouble is? The Caucasians aren’t afraid of us any more.” About to answer, she decided to let him talk his own way out. “Besides,” he said, brightening, “it’s not like my endorsement is worth anything.”

“Oh, Lemmie, it is so,” she assured him, and, for a while, they talked sports.

The only uneasy moment came when they lay abed a bit later, after a brief and dutiful conjugality, and Lemaster asked the dozing Julia what she and “that woman” had been discussing for so long.

“Girl talk,” Julia tried, playing to his vanity.

“What kind?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, guessing, correctly, what his response would be.

Up reared the handsome head. “Please, Jules, tell me the two of you weren’t out there smoking. I thought you quit.”

“You know the old joke. I’m sure I can quit because I’ve done it so often?”

Then she pulled him down for a kiss, knowing her husband, in this respect, better than he knew himself. Thinking he had caught her at sin, he would never look for the lie. And, right on schedule, there beside her in the darkness, Lemaster began to explain, as though any living grown-up owned any doubts, all the health hazards of tobacco use. And Julia held him and stroked his back and nodded and promised to do better, because promises were what he liked. It was not, she had once told Tessa, that Lemmie thought he was better than other people. He just got such a kick out of lecturing them.

CHAPTER 12

AN ALMOST NORMAL DAY

(I)

T
HE
Y
OUNG
C
HRISTIAN
S
OCIALISTS
were demanding the impeachment of the President of the United States, Professor Helen Bohr sought a student research assistant possessing a working knowledge of Ugaritic, the gay-and-lesbian caucus was holding a potluck for questioners, and the Vesperadoes needed two more tenors: in short, the notice board outside Julia’s office was much the same as on any other Thursday afternoon, as was the rest of the shadowy Gothic hallway, with the exception of the thin, sober man in brown suit and soft cap waiting patiently on the fading wooden bench.

At first Julia barely noticed him, far too frustrated from her luncheon meeting with administrators at Lombard Hall who were trying to force the divinity school to become more selective in choosing its students—otherwise, they said, having crunched their numbers, the size of the class must be reduced, meaning less tuition money, and a fresh round of layoffs. Julia had complained to Lemaster last night that some of his people seemed to imagine a world full of twenty-two-year-old geniuses dying to spend two or three years preparing for the ministry, but he had told her that he could not interfere, that Kepler would have to mend its own fences. She returned to Kepler frustrated and embarrassed and probably angry at her husband for his many fussy proprieties, as though, in all the history of the universe, nobody had ever winked at anything. She continued to fume as she unlocked her office. Before Lemaster’s triumphant return from Washington last spring to take charge of the university he loved, she had never had to ask his per-mission for anything. Now the entire divinity school, once her sanctuary, seemed to value Julia principally as a conduit to her husband.

She was angry for another reason, too. The day before yesterday, in Washington, Tessa had pumped her for inside information about the relationship between the President and Senator Whisted back when they were students. Julia, nervous, had said she did not even know if the two men had been friends, and was not comfortable talking about it. Last night, on her show, Tessa had told the world that a source close to both candidates informed her that the two men had probably not even been friends back in college. She added, ominously, that her source was uneasy even discussing the subject. Julia had a call in to Tessa this morning, which her old roommate had not yet seen fit to—

“Mrs. Carlyle?”

She swung around in surprise, because nobody called her that on campus. She was “Dean Carlyle” to the younger students, “Julia” to faculty and, by her own insistence, staff and older students as well.

The man removed his soft hat, uncovering a familiar crew cut and pinched, locked-in face; although not smiling, her visitor looked at her out of pale eyes that just missed sympathetic. Julia said, “May I help you?”—her tone probably too shirty—and then realized who he was just before he spoke.

“My name is Richard Chrebet, Mrs. Carlyle. I’m a lieutenant on the homicide squad of the state police.” He offered his credentials. “You might remember speaking to me at your home a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if you could spare a moment.”

The mirrors, she thought wildly. Seth Zant told them about the Comyns. Frank Carrington told them about the cheval.

“You visited my husband the other day.”

“Yes. And now I’m visiting you.” Like a children’s game.

“May I ask what this is about?”

“Your daughter.”

Maternal panic. “My daughter? Which one? What happened?”

He held up both hands but never smiled. “Nothing has happened. Your children are fine. Nevertheless, we have to talk about Vanessa.”

(II)

I
NSIDE HER SQUEAKY-CLEAN OFFICE
, Julia waved him to a chair and then shut the door, a thing she almost never did except when counseling a student, both because Kepler had a long tradition of informality, and also because she liked to project a friendly image. Chrebet sat very straight, like a suitor preparing to ask for the hand of his beloved—a simile, come to think of it, that had led a clutch of students to boycott old Clay Maxwell’s course on Paul for a few days last year when he offered it in class. Sexist and heterosexist both, they said. Julia puttered, watering her several plants, taking off her boots and slipping on her flats, shuffling papers on her perfectly neat desktop, doing everything she could to postpone whatever Lieutenant Chrebet had come to tell her. He had arrived at an hour when both of her assistants were out, one at lunch and the other running errands, and perhaps he had planned it that way. Despite his stiffness, he seemed in no hurry, like a man who had in his day outwaited experts.

Finally, she ran out of ideas, and so sat down.

“What about Vanessa?”

“Mrs. Carlyle, let me begin by explaining that I have children of my own—”

“Julia. Please.”

“Then call me Rick.” But still the investigator did not smile. “I have children of my own, so I understand how fiercely a parent wants to protect them. I have asked my superiors for permission to interview your daughter Vanessa. I would come to you in any case before approaching her, because she is, of course, a minor. I also have another reason. You are her mother. You might be able to explain things that I would miss. Or to help me frame the right questions.”

A second’s faintness passed. “Just tell me, Rick. Don’t prepare me. Tell me.”

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I am not suggesting in any way that Vanessa had any sort of involvement in what happened to Professor Zant. I do think she might help us shed a little light on what has proved to be more difficult than we expected—figuring out what Professor Zant was working on when he died.”

“Why would Vanessa know anything about that?”

“She might not. That’s why we want to ask her a few questions.”

“Ask me.”

“She’s under a psychiatrist’s care, isn’t she? Your daughter. Behavioral issues.” He nodded as if to say every teen had them. “How’s that going?”

But Julia refused to be drawn. Yesterday Vincent Brady, Vanessa’s therapist, had wondered to Julia whether the teen might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—he pointed in particular to her tendency to freeze up and dissociate—to go along with the anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders he had previously diagnosed. If indeed a stress disorder was part of her problem, he explained, the initial trauma had predated both the death of Kellen Zant and the torching of her father’s car: that was apparent, Vin said, from what he called her behavioral trajectory. He had also speculated, in months past, that Vanessa was showing signs typical of drug or alcohol abuse, or, possibly, withdrawal, but blood screens were consistently negative. He had already ruled out sexual abuse. Lemaster grumbled that Brady was running through the manual like a first-year psychiatry resident.

“Why do you think Vanessa would know what Kellen was working on?” she asked, ignoring the detective’s question. “Give me reasons.”

He lifted a finger, ticking off a point. A raucous laugh outside the door told her that her assistants were back. “First. Last summer, Vanessa volunteered several hours a week at a soup kitchen at the Methodist church near the campus. Professor Zant sometimes volunteered at the same soup kitchen.”

“I’m missing the connection. I bet fifty people volunteered there.”

“Seven adults, four teenagers. Those were the regulars, present at least two hours a week.”

She shook her head. “Even so, I don’t see what this has to do with—”

“Second.” Another finger. “In October, on her seventeenth birthday, your daughter received a delivery of maple-walnut fudge from a mysterious admirer.”

The rapid-fire delivery, so different from the pace he had set at Hunter’s Heights with Lemaster present, brought out in her, as Julia suspected it was supposed to, an urge to pull immediate answers from up her sleeve.

“She guessed it was from her boyfriend—”

“The card didn’t say ‘love.’ It said ‘thank you.’ Correct?” Stunned by the intimacy of his knowledge, Julia could only nod. “Did your daughter happen to mention whether the fudge was stale?”

The light was growing fuzzy. Perhaps the sun had gone behind a cloud. Perhaps it would stay there. “Stale? Why would it be stale?”

“Did she mention it, Julia?”

“Not that I remember. No.”

A knock. The door swung wide open. Latisha, her hefty full-time assistant, the one Boris Gibbs wanted her to fire. “Julia? I got a call back from IT? About what’s wrong with your computer?” Because it had started locking up and crashing regularly. At the moment, said computer was not even in the room, but somewhere else on campus, being tested, quarantined, treated.

“Not now. Please.”

“But they said it’s important—”

“Please. We’ll do it later, okay?”

Latisha looked at Julia, looked at the detective, and then, eyes wide, backed out of the room in a flurry of desperate apologies. Like everyone around Kepler, Latisha was dreadfully aware that layoffs were coming, and she was certain that she was to be one of them, for she had not been around long enough to gain protected status under the collective-bargaining agreement.

When the door was shut, Rick Chrebet continued, not missing a beat. “Three weeks before your daughter received the package, you sent Kellen Zant a box of fudge for his birthday, purchased from Cookie’s on Main Street in Tyler’s Landing.”

“Yes. I did.”

“It was maple-walnut, wasn’t it?”

Julia felt violated. She did not care if some judge had signed a dozen subpoenas. She was going to strangle Vera Brightwood.

“I believe the fudge that your daughter received was from Professor Zant. It was the same box you sent him. That’s why it might have been stale.”

Pin-drop silence. The room wavered. Julia knew that if she turned, the stained-glass figures decorating her windows would be shivering with disapproval.

She said nothing.

“Third. Most important, we would like to know why your daughter’s cell number was in the address book of Kellen Zant’s phone.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m afraid I am, Mrs. Carlyle. Julia. Not only was her number in his address book, but, during the two weeks before his death, Professor Zant made at least five calls to her phone, and she made at least three to his.”

Just weeks ago Julia had been lamenting the awful truth that Kellen had died before she had the chance to say goodbye. Now, for a mad moment, she wished he were still alive, so that she would have the pleasure of killing him. Slowly. Painfully. But she held on to her sanity: a near thing, but she held it and when she answered, was impressed by the calm in her own voice.

“Why are you telling me this, Rick? I would have thought you’d prefer to spring it on us—on Vanessa—as a surprise, instead of warning me. You know I’ll ask her.”

Chrebet crossed bony legs, folding his fingers over his knee. It occurred to her that the lieutenant was taking no notes. “I am hoping you will ask her, Mrs. Carlyle. I’m afraid it is possible that I won’t have the opportunity.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We may not receive clearance to interview her.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

The detective measured her briefly with those pale eyes, as if wondering whether to bother. Anger, she finally realized: that was what she had been reading in the pinched, locked-in face. The fury of the athlete tripped up on the final lap.

“Don’t you read the papers, Julia? The case is about to be closed. It was a robbery.”

Only after he left did Julia take time to puzzle over why the detective had not asked these questions during his visit to Lemaster.

(III)

A
LONE IN HER SMALL OFFICE
, Julia began the process of not thinking. She tidied shelves that needed no neatening. She straightened the edges of the three stacks of admission folders on her work table, arranging them in razor-sharp lines. Having already watered the plants, she fed them their various magical foods, then stood at the window, watching through the colored panes and involute leading as Rick Chrebet crossed the parking lot, leaning into the afternoon wind whipping down from the north. She respected the bitter fire she had noticed in the pale eyes at the end of their interview: the fierce pain of incapacity to fight what the soul says must be fought. She used to see it in the mirror every morning in the final weeks of her final relationship with Kellen.

Julia slipped into her parka and pulled on her Ugg boots. Most days she left Kepler as early in the afternoon as she could, in order to beat the children home. The buses dropped off Vanessa and Jeannie a little after three. It was now minutes before two. The drive was twenty-five minutes. In the outer office, Latisha handed her a memo the IT people had sent over, summarizing their findings, while Foxon, her white part-timer, who never seemed to do any work and plainly would rather not have had a black boss, whispered importantly on the telephone: Foxon, who, if Latisha went, would get an upgrade.

“Leave it on my desk,” said Julia.

“They said to tell you ASAP.” Reproach. Confusion. Fear. “You should at least look at it.”

“I have to go. I’ll look at it tomorrow.”

But Latisha, to Julia’s surprise, stood her ground. “They said today.”

“Please. Just leave it on my—no, never mind.” She took the memo, folded it, stuffed it into her pocket.

Trying to slip out of the building, Julia ran into Boris Gibbs and Iris Feynman, her fellow deputy deans. Boris saluted her with his ubiquitous candy bar, offered a smeary wave. She remembered how he had promised to find out what Kellen was up to in the Landing. Their lunch seemed ages ago.

Iris, said Boris, was making trouble again. “
I
say Kepler is too Christian-centric.
She
says it’s supposed to be, it’s a divinity school. And she’s
Jewish.
She should be leading the protest!”

In Boris Gibbs’s world, this passed for humor.

“This isn’t my kind of argument,” said Julia, eyeing the exit.