Small Blessings (18 page)

Russell handed the note back to Tom. “Well, it's pretty obvious from what Iris told me about Henry that he's not the biological offspring of you and Retesia Turnball.”

“I know.”

Silence again.

Russell found himself thinking about what Iris had said about Henry, about how handsome the boy was, with his great blue eyes and crop of Little Orphan Annie curls.

“There's more,” Tom said.

“More?”

“Yes.” Tom took the deep breath of someone about to detonate an information bomb. “Henry came with a half-million dollars in his backpack. Fifty thousand in cash and a cashier's check for the rest.”

Kapow!
“Oh. My,” Russell said.

“I know. It's a lot of money.”

“Do you think it's somehow … somehow criminal?”

Tom shrugged. “How would I know?”

“Have you asked Henry?

“Not yet.”

Russell conjured up a picture of Retesia sitting primly across from him in departmental meetings. “I cannot see Retesia hanging out with gangsters. She was
so
uptight.”

Even in the dim light, he saw Tom's cheeks flush violently.

So Retesia had not been all that uptight. At least in some areas. “Let's forget about possible criminal involvement,” Russell went on hurriedly. “No need to invent complications.”

Tom frowned down at his still-full mug of coffee. “Agnes and I
did
have enough sense to figure we shouldn't deposit the money in the bank. You know—federal regulations about cash deposits of more than ten grand and all. But it never occurred to either of us that Henry's money could come from criminal activity. We were just trying to keep the government out of Henry's business until we could figure out a bit more about what's going on.”

AA Lewis spoke up in Russell's head, admonishing him again to
keep it simple!
“Good idea. Forget I said anything.”

“Okay.” Tom looked hard at the lavender paper. “Henry's from Picayune, Mississippi. At least that's where his ticket was from. But he was born in New Orleans.”

New Orleans!

Russell's haunted and pathetic mother had been from the Crescent City. When he was growing up and things had gotten really bad at home in Atlanta, his grandparents had taken the train up and rescued him. The weeks he'd spent in their ramshackle robin's egg blue shotgun house had been his only childhood experience of reliable happiness.

He'd gone to treatment in New Orleans because of those memories. “How do you know Henry was born in New Orleans?”

“He brought his birth certificate with him. It's in the drawer over there. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes.”

Tom got up, fished another folded piece of paper out of the same kitchen drawer, and handed it to him.

Russell took it, opened it, and read: Henry Thomas Putnam, born September 23, 1998, at Tulane Hospital in New Orleans; mother Serafine Despré; father Thomas Marvin Putnam.

*   *   *

Russell had been perfectly aware at the time that he and Serafine Despré had begun having sex mainly to flout the rules, being almost as addicted to subterfuge as they were to their substances of choice.

The sex had been good; the sneaking around to have sex had been terrific.

Russell hadn't used a rubber. He hadn't thought to bring any, and there certainly weren't any on offer at the treatment center. He'd never asked Serafine if she did anything toward birth control, because he hadn't wanted to know.

Serafine Despré.

What a bewitching creature she'd been, a Creole from right there in New Orleans, in treatment for an alarming array of cross-addictions, forced into rehab by parents who were willing to pay for endless stabs at sobriety. Serafine's problem had been that she'd had no interest in sobriety. All she'd been interested in was getting out again, and then getting her hands on enough of her parents' money to fund her various habits. Poor, poor Serafine had been so beautiful and so lost.

However …

During the three weeks their paths had intertwined at treatment, Russell had talked a lot with Serafine Despré about his best friend, Tom Putnam. At the time, he'd been going through a period of Tom adulation. Marjory's grip on the rails had become transparently precarious, but Tom's commitment to her remained unwavering. Tom Putnam, Russell remembered explaining to a rapt Serafine, had the fortitude to offer his crazy wife the kind of steady, warm, unconditional acceptance that every child dreams of getting from a parent. Or at least that he, Russell Jacobs, had dreamed of getting from a parent.

And it had evidently been Serafine's dream as well. She'd kept pumping him for information about Tom. It was, Russell realized, his fault that Tom's name was on Henry's birth certificate, and his fault that Serafine knew about Retesia Turnball, for he remembered holding up to her Tom's one, short slip in the fidelity department as a kind of oddball testament to his friend's superhuman steadfastness.

Seven-plus years later, Russell could still see Serafine's beautiful, intent face listening to him as he talked about Tom. What he remembered most vividly were her eyes, dark and full of unutterable longings.

It was now perfectly clear to Russell that while Serafine might have had sex with him, she'd dreamed of Tom Putnam.

*   *   *

Tom was rattling on. “Isn't that a wonderful name Retesia dreamed up? Serafine Despré? It's exotic and angelic at the same time.”

Yes,
Russell thought,
she was
. Where was Serafine now? She'd left treatment ten days before him and—the staff had whispered this to each other—disappeared a scant two days later from her group home. The orderlies and nurses, he remembered, had appeared stricken by this. But then, how could they not be? We all long to save beauty such as Serafine's from destruction, so as to have its light available to shine on our own less resplendent selves.

Russell realized Tom had stopped talking and was waiting for him to respond. “I suppose,” he said.

This seemed to suffice. Tom barreled on. “Agnes did Google Serafine Despré just out of curiosity, but couldn't find anyone by that name who might be even remotely connected with Retesia.”

Serafine shone at Russell from out of his murky past like a tiny pinprick of light. She had been the real deal, completely genuine, in her own self-destructive way; everything he was not. Serafine Despré had shouted at the world that she was a junkie in need of help, while he, to this day, had not told a single person outside of AA—even Tom—that he was an alcoholic. Or, for that matter, begun to come clean about his chaotic, humiliating childhood. “Did Agnes find anything out about anyone of that name when she Googled it?”

“She did. Some junkie by that name hanged herself in the St. John the Baptist Parish jail the same day as Marjory's funeral. Agnes said she was only thirty-two but had arrest records dating back over the last decade and a half. This Serafine Despré was the only daughter of two doctors who lost their lives in Katrina. Talk about a hard-luck family!”

So Serafine was dead. No more beauty. No more light. “Yes,” Russell said. “Hard luck. Very sad.” And an impossible loss for him to grieve in any open way. He couldn't even admit to
knowing
Serafine Despré without publicly exposing his secrets. And who would he be without his secrets?

Just at that moment a small, beautiful boy entered the room from the hall, clutching a bright red Tonka dump truck. Russell stared. So this was Henry! His heart reached for the boy in the same magically improbable way it had once reached for Serafine, for Henry was absolutely and completely a blue-eyed version of his mother. As far as any mark a father had made on him, the boy's conception could have been immaculate.

Henry was dressed in a smaller version of Tom's college T-shirt, all very father-and-son. Russell's first reaction was that this was just so wrong. He was the one who had slept with Henry's mother. Tom didn't even know she existed.

Rage rumbled inside Russell, even as he reached out in full-blown Russellian persona to shake Henry's hand.

*   *   *

Usually Russell gloried in the status that had attached to him a little over four years ago when he'd moved into his current imposing residence. It had been built in 1913, a time when the college had been particularly flush, as an homage to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, complete with a third-floor domed top hat of a reception room.

The Dean Dome (as Russell always referred to his residence, having been a fan of Tar Heel basketball since his graduate school days) sat a couple of imposing residences down from the president's house. It had been occupied for years by the late Dean Patrick, a straitlaced administrator with tremendous backbone whom Russell had deeply admired. When Dean Patrick had retired, his replacement, a shiny young history professor named Ralph Eagle, had expected to move into the house, but Russell had been tapped instead. Residency came with VIP hosting duties, and Russell had long been recognized as the college's most gracious host.

Russell had envisioned holding grand, inventive gatherings in the Dome Room stocked with fascinating people from business and industry, the arts, and the University of Virginia. Sadly, soon after he'd moved in, the Dome Room was declared off-limits by the college insurance company, so these days it functioned mainly as Russell's indoor track. He did not pace around it often, but he was pacing around it tonight—or rather this morning, for Wednesday night had turned into Thursday morning a good hour ago.

Russell had dutifully called AA Lewis as soon as he'd gotten back from Tom's. Lewis had promptly asked him if anything was bothering him.
Of course something's bothering me!
Russell had wanted to shout.
That's why I've called you!
But if he'd done that, Lewis would have asked him what that something was, and even if Russell had wanted to tell him, he couldn't. Because unloading what was bothering him could possibly do real damage to Henry, who could be—and once again Russell furiously did the math—his own son.

So instead of saying anything in response to AA Lewis's question, Russell had slammed the phone down, trembling with the certainty that God, whatever God was, really had it in for him.

Here he was, alone, pacing around the Dome Room like a hamster on a wheel, trying
not
to think about Serafine Despré or Henry, while a loop tape of disturbing episodes from his own childhood played over and over in his head. Usually these distasteful parts of his past stayed caged in the dark recesses of consciousness. Russell might dream about them, but he rarely thought about them. This evening, however, they had not only escaped but taken over.

Russell felt a great weight pressing down on him, forcing him to his knees. His mother had always been just sober enough on Sundays to drag him to church for their joint weekly wallowing in guilt. Her voice sounded now in his head, echoing across the decades. “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”

Oh God,
Russell thought,
I need a drink …

 

chapter 11

As reliably as death and taxes, Thursday afternoon at two o'clock rolled around.

Heeeeeeere's Shakespeare!

Rose sat bolt upright in her classroom chair and looked around. Here she was, face-to-face with
it
again, whatever
it
was. Could the difficulties she'd had with her first Shakespeare class have anything to do with the building itself? Not bloody likely, she decided. Elston Hall was a century old and had no reputation for weirdness. The second-floor seminar room, empty except for her, seemed as benign and sun-filled as a baby's smile. Its six enormous double-hung windows let in a flood of fresh air; its tall, transomed door was propped ajar.
It's just a room,
Rose told herself.
It's not a prison cell or a torture chamber
.
Any problems you have in here are all in your head.

She'd sat down in the chair directly across from the table podium where Professor Putnam would stand. Surely if she sat here, right under the man's nose, then all would go well. He was about as nonthreatening as people got; very nice, not bad-looking, but not at all the type of driven man that she serially attached herself to. True, as far as attraction went, there had been that one moment at his house when he'd looked at her and said, “But you're Marjory's guest,” in a way that had quieted everything and conjured up images of Mavis and her professor. And that other moment in the Book Store when she'd watched him attentively shepherding poor Marjory out the door. And, oh yes, that moment Monday at the Amtrak station when he'd smiled down at Henry. But surely here in the classroom Professor Putnam could be written off as innocuous.

Rose put her book and notebook and pen on the table in front of her. She had read and reread
Othello,
preparing herself to say something cogent about every aspect of the great tragedy, should she be called upon. Hopefully she would not be called upon. Hopefully she would sit here quietly, calmly, anonymously, taking notes and
not freaking out
while Professor Putnam delivered his lecture.

A breeze stirred and brought in the scent of fresh-cut grass. The grounds crew had been swarming the campus that morning like first graders let loose for recess. What, Rose wondered, if she was wrong in her assumption that simply being in a classroom gave her the jitters? What if her troubles last week in class had to do with something entirely outside this room? What if they were somehow tied into her rather abrupt decision to end things with Ray? She had been having some peculiar moments in the last few days, wrestling with
that look
of Marjory Putnam's, wondering what Marjory had seen in her that she herself had missed. Or—and this would be much, much worse—was hiding from.