The Bluest Blood (14 page)

She was wrong about one thing. The situation didn’t feel almost unbearable at all. There was nothing
almost
about this.

This was, well and truly, horribly and thoroughly, unbearable.

Nine

I could barely face Jake in after-school journalism class. I grabbed a few pages out of the pile of article drafts and began proofing one, almost convincing myself I was occupied with the work of checking stories rather than buying a few more minutes and praying for inspiration. Jake wasn’t going to burst into a room full of his peers and demand my instant and full attention, but sooner or later, I had to answer him.

He came in silently with Griffin, both their faces hollow-looking shells, their minds and emotions missing in action, off-limits to me. I’m sure the concept of aliens assuming human form started with an adult who had to deal with teenagers.

Given that both their situations involved humiliation by over-visible parents, and generated avid and unwholesome interest wherever they went, I understood their withdrawal. They sat near one another, presumably involved in preparing their big story; except that each time I glanced their way, they were whispering to one another. Nodding, head-shaking, shoulder-poking, debating. They looked like coconspirators. Two boys furious with their parents. One parent down.

I wished I had somebody to whisper to. I wished someone would whisper wisdom back.

What was I going to say?

The universe opted to keep its opinions to itself. I returned to the printout on the desk in front of me.

...no more than seven inches of soapy water, face down. The Web site shows photos of the suspects as well, with computerized aging, and they’re a whole lot more interesting than those Have You Seen Me? flyers that come in the mail. This is more like
Unsolved Mysteries
on TV, except that since a Web site doesn’t have to create a whole drama around it the way TV does, they can list a whole lot more crimes and be even more interesting.

Too many
mores.
I red-circled the last two and considered the rest. Not that I was their copyeditor, but I didn’t see any harm in working with a student’s writing style while I had him captive. The drowned woman felt overfamiliar.

…for example, the case of Chester Katt, whose name and the fact that he disappeared with millions of dollars (which probably left him smiling) has him nicknamed the Cheshire Cat. Chester, a balding man nobody remembers well, apparently masterminded sales of nonexistent Canadian Underwriters policies to large corporations and despite the magnitude of the crime, was never again seen and is thought to have created a false identity and name for the precise purpose of committing the crime. Or take the case of headless Gretchen of the Green Feet, whose death is tied to a silk factory where that precise shade of green was being used on a line of blouses. Why the dye was on her feet has never been explained, but her naked unmarked torso was found…

Old material. All of it. I felt a flare of anger—a what-does-Jake-think-he’s-pulling? rush. But the real question was what I thought I’d been doing.

I was reading last month’s copy. Bad enough, but it had taken me forever to comprehend the words I was reading and still longer to realize I’d read them before, including the surfeit of
mores.

At his desk, Jake studied the paper in front of him. I suspected that its words made as much, or little, sense to him as the old column’s copy had made to me.

Griffin had returned to cropping photos. Their conversation was over, because Griffin was wired to a radio on the table. He must have been listening to a news or call-in program because there was none of the usual humming, foot-tapping, or finger-jiggling of the plugged-in young.

Jake felt my glance and looked up. I smiled and nodded. He started to stand, but Griffin pulled off his earpieces and grabbed Jake’s arm, whispering rapidly while handing Jake one.

Jake inserted it without pausing to wipe it off. That might be one definition of a really good friendship.

He listened, closed his eyes, and sucked in his bottom lip. After a moment, he pulled it out, handed it back to Griffin, and shook his head slowly, as if in disbelief. Then he came over to my desk.

“Sit down,” I said. “Here, next to me.” I waited for whatever had so dismayed him. Of course, it could have been nothing more than a losing sports score, but Jake’s reaction had seemed personal and tinged with shame.

“My mother,” he said. “She’s talking to radio and TV stations. Crying to them. I just heard her.” He looked down at the desktop and pressed his thumbnail into it, cutting a tiny channel. “They told her they were questioning Mother Vivien, and my mother called her a harlot and the Whore of Babylon and said she’d killed Harvey, as a woman scorned.”

He looked haunted. When I didn’t respond quickly enough, he said, “She’s my
mother
and she’s coming off like…”

Like an hysterical, self-centered jerk who never thought of how her public ranting would affect her teenaged son. Or what earthly good it would do except momentarily relieve the pressure inside her and make strangers who didn’t care feel sorry for her.

Jake’s bony nose and cheekbones flushed. “Why’d she have to call the TV and radio people?”

“They probably called her,” I said, as if that made everything all right. I shook my head, glad that we’d passed the point where I had to give Jake any opinion of his mother or her actions.

“She—Mother Vivien—called us early this morning. I mean, Harvey hadn’t been dead but a few hours. She wants our house. The Moral Ecologists own it. She said we couldn’t live there anymore. And my mother just told the entire world that, too.” He closed his eyes. “Like I want everybody to know I’ll be homeless soon.”

I cleared my throat. “Jake,” I said. “I promised to talk with you about—”

But Griffin walked over and waited next to the desk. “Yes?” I asked. “What’s up?”

“Mind if I cut out early, Miz P.? I could crop those shots next time and print the ones from this morning. There’s a whole lot of other stuff I have to do.”

Jake, who’d seemed lost in private thoughts, swiveled. “Hey, man, you said we’d talk more first, that you wouldn’t go ahead—”

Griffin waved him off. “No problem,” he said, still with that vague smile. “It’s under control, so chill.” He looked at me and grinned. Griffin was not a grinner. “Jake likes to worry, doesn’t he?” He sounded mildly amused. Griffin wasn’t one to utter an unnecessary word to a teacher, either.

He was conning me. Playing the role of a hail-fellow-well-met regular guy. But why? What were the two of them hiding? “It’s okay,” I said. “Do what works for you.” Journalism, an elective, is a loose after-school activity. No need to be rigid.

Jake sent one final, fiercely emphatic glare and shook his head,
No!
Then, after catching my eye, he focused down on the desk, at the canyon his thumbnail was digging.

“What’s…” I began. “You guys need to talk to one another?”

Jake kept his head bowed.

Griffin looked at him, then at me. “Not necessary.” Another smile. Why start with the happy face now, close to the end of his stay here, facing virtual exile? “It’s like this,” he said to me. “I have to do stuff for my parents. I promised to help them, and they’re waiting. Jake’s disappointed—he wanted to do something together.”

Definitely a con. Griffin’s parents were out of town looking at boarding schools. Tea Roederer had told me so.

“Griffin, I haven’t had a chance to say how much we’ll—I’ll miss you. I’m really sorry you’re transferring.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said, but his expression remained slightly benign. “I’m not the boarding-school type.”

“You’ll be a big asset to whatever newspaper they produce,” I said. “And a major loss to ours.”

“Thanks. Whatever.” He shrugged.

Jake continued to watch him, his features tight with concern.

“So…” Griffin said.
“Adios.”
He
left the room.

“Maybe you should head home, too, Jake,” I said softly. “It must be hard to concentrate and your mother probably needs you.” And a muzzle. “I’ve given your situation thought.” That sounded adult and considered, almost judicial. It suggested contemplative retreats in paneled studies, with considerations of precedent, and it bore no relationship to the moth-thoughts that had fluttered in meaningless confusion through my brain all day.

As a child I believed that wisdom was a secondary sex characteristic, guaranteed to develop to some degree, like breasts, after puberty. My failure to achieve anything akin to it was one of the bad surprises of real life.

“If what you’ve told me is true, Jake, if you’re sure that’s what you heard, positive it was said precisely that way—”

“I know what I heard. Jeez. Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why’re you—”

I stopped this detour. “Sorry.” I’d sounded as legalistic and quibbling as a shyster lawyer. I had to be braver about this. More straightforward. “I think—even though we don’t know whether your—the reverend—ever spoke to Mr. Roederer, and despite the possible harm to innocent people—” I could not stand hearing myself! Maurice Havermeyer was speaking through my mouth, using me like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Tell the police,” I said. “Let them decide if it’s relevant or not.”

He looked at me bleakly, his features immobile. After what felt like a long time, he nodded. I could almost feel his marrow dissolve in exhaustion. There’d been the long fatigue of divorce and separation, followed by pretending that out-of-sight, out-of-mind didn’t apply to his long-distance dad. The battle with Harvey, the consistent unreliability of his mother, and now the escalating consequences of her second husband’s death.

I hated to add to that bone- and soul-weariness, but he needed to be warned. “One other thing.” I took a deep breath. “You should be aware that Miss Finney overheard you express, um, serious hostility to your stepfather on Monday. While you were in my room, before homeroom. Remember?”

He shook his head, then shrugged. I was sure he remembered why he’d come into my room, but not the words his discomfort had produced. He waited, visibly confused about where I was headed with this. I hated what I had to say and kept looking for loops and detours.

To Jake’s blank expression was now added exasperation and impatience.
“And?”
he prompted.

“
I
know it was nothing more than talk, Jake. Blowing off steam. I’ll speak on your behalf about it, I promise you, but—”

“Speak on my behalf? About what? Harvey?” Silence for a moment, and then, “You can’t be serious. She thinks I killed him?”

I sucked in my lips, as if forbidding them to compound this with more words. “Not necessarily. But maybe.”

“Why would she?”

“Because you said people got killed all the time and why not him. Things like that.”

“Wait.” He stood up. When he was sitting, and close to my eye level, I always forgot how tall he was. “Why are you telling me this?” He loomed over me, his hands in tight fists.

Say no, I silently pleaded. Say you wouldn’t, couldn’t have because it’d be wrong. Say no.

Instead, he said, “She heard me shoot off my mouth and she took it seriously. Is there more?”

I nodded and stood up, but at six-two, he had a solid six inches on me. While my new position felt more equitable than facing his fists had, we were nonetheless not seeing eye-to-eye anymore. Not metaphorically or literally.

“What?” he asked, although I was sure he knew.

“She, like you, feels that what she heard may be relevant to the case and that she therefore has a duty to tell the police. About you.”

He stared at me, his mouth half-open, the metalwork of his braces glinting incongruously.

He was a boy. Tall, broad-shouldered, man-shaped, but nonetheless, a boy. “I told you,” I said. “I’m in your corner. You can rely on me. I’ll be more than glad to speak on your behalf, to go make a statement now.”

He looked at me bleakly. I could almost hear his unarticulated thoughts. Or maybe they weren’t his at all. Maybe they were the sound of the air currents around us, of how it was. Or of my own pulse, the inside of my mind.

“Anytime,” I repeated. “I promise.”

But I ached for him. My feeble promises were not nearly enough to make up for the repeated insults that he had been and was still being dealt. All term I’d wanted to rescue him, but nothing I could do was enough to compensate for the tiny kernel of doubt that even I held.

It was not enough. But it was all I knew how to do.

*

I was jumpy
and melancholy all evening, unable to concentrate on any one task for long. The loft felt fine as long as I knew Mackenzie would ultimately be home to boom around in separate syncopation, fill it up, soften its distant corners, provide motion and color. That was not true tonight.

I went over tomorrow’s lessons to be certain they were observer-worthy, but lost interest halfway through and didn’t care whether that happened to my visitors as well. I tried watching sitcoms, but they were reruns, even though it was only March. There was a new and unfathomable programming theory, as far as I could tell, making viewing a game show, the object of which was to guess which week a new episode would be shown. I didn’t want to play.