The Bluest Blood (15 page)

I read for an hour, the words sliding off each page as I turned it. I wished Sasha were not so consumed with Dr. Perfection and that I was out with her, enjoying human companionship. “I am seriously bored,” I told Macavity.

He stalked off. Another country heard from. “I’m sorry,” I protested. But the truth was, his snoozing was also a rerun and not sufficiently entertaining.

I paced. Tidied things that were not messy. Relocated objects and stood back to test the effect. I considered the tall windows facing the street, their plain shades. Window treatments. There was a boring topic that could occupy a lot of time. Mackenzie’s shades were stark and institutional, near-clones of those in my classroom. I didn’t like lowering them because then the street side of the loft looked blank, as if its eyes had been blinded.

Nonetheless, I needed to enclose this too-large space that made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I went over and looked down at the street, several stories below, to see what was happening in the greater world.

And saw a man happening. That man. The one who’d been across from school too often. The shy lurker. The round one with a pale face that stared up at me. His head, covered by the Russian-style hat, ducked quickly.

Coincidence, I reassured my suddenly quaking self. He happened to be around here and he stopped and unkinked his neck muscles. He hadn’t really been looking up here. It wasn’t me he’d been watching from the Square, or now. After I’d repeated the idea several times—and lowered the shades all the way—I half believed myself.

By the time Mackenzie called, I once again had turned the TV on, waiting for updates on Harvey Spiers’ murder, fearing I might see Jake or Neddy Roederer being hauled off in handcuffs.

I muted the set and wandered around the loft with the cordless phone, listening to C. K. offer the unsurprising news that he would not be home tonight as hoped. Even in Kansas, red tape could hog-tie a man, hairs could be split, and insignificant clerical errors could delay the extradition of a multiple murderer.

He asked about Spiers, whose manner of death had been sufficiently grotesque and innovative to win it national coverage.

I transmitted what little I knew, pacing and talking. Touching pieces of furniture as I passed, as if their constancy and stolid reliability turned them into talismans.

And every time I was near the front wall, I peeked outside, through the side of the shade. The Russian hat was nowhere to be seen. He’d been a symptom of my jumpiness.

“Roederer,” Mackenzie said. “You’ll see.”

“Vivien is the prime suspect, but Jake, oh Lord…” I updated him on that fog-filled possibility, which led us to the issue of Jake’s telling the police about Harvey’s blackmail threats.

Mackenzie’s ethical system was shaped around the letters of the law and didn’t include many shades of gray. It differed in subtle ways from Caroline Finney’s, but like hers, it was clear-edged and definitive. I wanted his take on Jake’s obligations.

“Absolutely,” Mackenzie said. “He has to tell them. Just ’cause somebody loves books doesn’t mean he can’t kill. Especially when facing the threat of prison.”

“Come on. That was Harvey Spiers’ craziness talking. Has anybody since Oscar Wilde gone to prison for sexual preference?”

“How about scandal, then? How about having his wife—the one with the money—find out about extramarital affiliations? How about the possibility of deadly viruses?”

“Neddy Roederer is not the murdering type. He has good values. Even just the news of it—he looked ravaged this morning.”

“You sure it was the news? Or fatigue? Or remorse?” His voice was far away and uninvolved. I resented his ability to be dissociated.

Maybe he also regretted the distance because his voice softened, came closer. “I love his library, too,” he said. “And his aesthetics. And his charity. But don’t let that interfere with what’s staring you in the face.”

What was truly staring me in the face at the moment was Mother Vivien on TV. QUESTIONED, it said under her head shot. Her cascading curls were more incongruous than ever, as the hard-worn, painted face grimaced. “Wait a sec—” I turned up the volume.

“—have revealed prior convictions. The self-proclaimed Mother Superior of the Moral Ecologists, a.k.a. Vivien Sessternass Devine Butterick Conkle, was previously convicted for fraud, as well as assault and battery.”

My, oh, my. I transmitted the news to Mackenzie.

“No wonder she only uses one name,” the man with no name said.

Vivien was shouting, the veins ropy on her neck, her cerise lips grimacing. She looked like a gargoyle with blue eyeshadow.

“You know,” C. K. said, “if you’d get online, you could e-mail me every detail when I’m out of town.”

This was not the time for a tech vs. no-tech debate. I hadn’t even included the computer in my talisman-touching routine. It seemed happy with its own company, its bubbly screen saver looking like a party it was giving itself.

Mother Vivien’s tears didn’t match her words. “God will smite anyone—will send them to eternal damnation—who doesn’t forgive past sins well-atoned for and respect spiritual love! What we had was God’s own gift to us, and we were partners in this holy crusade. The reverend was my other half, my—”

Even I’d had enough of her lies. Harvey hadn’t seemed God’s loving gift, her other half yesterday in the greenroom. Back down went the volume. And in what felt like too few minutes, I was once again alone. Except for Macavity, who was either still sulking at my insult or, more probably, since it happened every time the man left, simply pining for Mackenzie.

And
except, when I took a last peek out the side of the window shade, for the round man in the Russian hat, who was back on the corner. Looking directly up at me.

Ten

The man wasn’t there in the morning. That turned out to be the day’s only good news. Otherwise, Friday, a.k.a. Open House, was anything but T.G.I.F. It seemed to last two or three months and felt like a combination of conjuring and tap dancing: all an act.

It was quiet on the streets—the student protests were over and the Moral Ecologists hadn’t yet regrouped if, indeed, they intended to return. It was quiet inside as well. At least, inside our brains.

The only rational lesson plan would have been to have the students talk through, then write about the week’s events. With both sides taking to the streets, decisions made and rescinded and finally, the murder—there’d been enough to fill entire notebooks and years of therapy. We could have sorted through the tangle of events; pulled out ideas about freedom of speech, censorship, ethics, the meaning of democracy, individual responsibility—tons of big issues; dealt with the emotions generated; and had an outstanding lesson in organizing thoughts. In fact, it would have gone to the very heart of what we were supposedly learning in a Language Arts classroom.

But no. The staff was under strict orders not to mention the “recent troubles” and to have only “active” lessons, meaning in Havermeyerese, “visibly active”—which writing, with its long sighs and hunched-over bodies and one hand moving a pen or pencil over paper, definitely was not. Watching someone else think was boring, and the bored watcher might take his child and tuition payments to a more entertaining school.

Free-ranging, uncensored talk was also dangerous. Ask any dictator. What if, during the discussion (of free speech, in this instance) the students spoke freely and stumbled across concepts that made Philly Prep and its leadership look bad? Couldn’t risk it. Had to censor it. I therefore tried to stick with the assigned material. Which, by ten minutes into first-period class, and as I’d known it would be, was impossible. It wasn’t that the kids disliked
Jane Eyre
or wanted to make me look bad. In fact, some of them actually allowed themselves to enjoy it. But they’d obviously—and despite my warnings—felt they’d been on a mini-vacation, with picketing followed by their trip to the Mutter Museum. All prior assignments had been vaporized by the sight of Grover Cleveland’s jaw tumor.

In theory, they’d been doing independent research relating to the novel, reading biographies of the Brontës, and reporting on Victorian and contemporary critical responses to
Jane Eyre,
along with broad-based views of the literature of the time, as well as the status of education, family life, social class, and so forth. They were scheduled to give oral reports. Very controllable, very unthreatening, and very active, meeting Havermeyer’s terms.

Except: that assumed they’d done the work. The real lesson of the day, at least
my
real lesson, was to assume nothing. Scheduled reports were not ready, and I was not about to raise a ruckus in front of skeptical visiting matrons. They already looked nervous, clutching their coats around them, despite the heated room, as if afraid of being robbed.

I was a zoo exhibit. See the teacher—what tricks does she know? But I was also the zookeeper, and there was no telling what the animals would do. They could be koala-cuddly, monkey-clever, or, with a change in their metaphorical stripes, deadly man- and lesson-killers.

So with a gaping hole in the fabric of the hour, we segued into character analysis, which was sufficiently vague as to obscure how unprepared a Philly Prep student is apt to be. Brooding, dark-browed, irrational, unfathomable Mr. Rochester, a man I found annoying, worked for hormone-raddled teenagers. It was amusing to watch him generate girl-heat, and less amusing to speculate about what was wrong with my gender that it lusted for the unavailable, the withheld. It was also mildly heartrending to see gawky ninth-grade males trying to comprehend surly Rochester’s chemistry.

I thought we might look good dealing with the easy issue of Mr. Rochester’s secret. “Why do you suppose the tree cracked in half in the storm?” I asked.

“Because it was rotten,” a pragmatic boy said. His voice cracked, like the tree, mid-sentence. We wouldn’t hear from him again today. I wished I could console him for his lack of imagination and grace, tell him it would eventually be okay. Once he finished with the pimples and crackling voice he, too, could be unreachable and remote.

“Good,” I said. He blushed, making his acne all the more appalling. You have to love a boy like that. He’s struggling against so much, he’s going to grow up to be either a sensitive, new-age gem or a freeway sniper.

“Let’s look at it from another angle. Why do you think Charlotte Brontë chose to have a tree crack in half just then? On the eve, more or less, of Jane’s marriage to Mr. Rochester?”

“Miss Pepper! Miss Pepper!” A hand and wrist crisscrossed with silver and black leather straps waved wildly. I hoped those disdainful women were properly impressed. Look at the intellectual excitement of a Philly Prep classroom.

God bless Caralee Mintz. She pushed back a lock of striped hair—peacock blue and platinum this week. Caralee was always a visual treat. She intended to be a feminist designer, she’d told me, and she wore her works in progress to class. Her latest “line” was formal attire, hence today’s tulle combined with recycled plastic, tin, and grommets. She clunked and bristled as she waved her hand.

It was her newly discovered and rather rabid feminism, not her design concepts, that could be a pain, but at least she showed actual academic eagerness. “Yes?” I asked, waiting for her take on the split tree.

“Why’s she call him
Mister
all the time if they’re getting married? She’s Jane, he’s Mister. Why is that? What’s his first name? Why doesn’t she use it?”

Damn. Inquiring minds want to know on the wrong day. “Good question,” I said, “but weren’t we…about the tree? The split tree?” I had no idea what Rochester’s first name was. I wasn’t sure I ever had. More appallingly, I had never cared.

“I think this is important,” Caralee grumbled. “This is about
equality.
See? They’re getting married, but he’s still, like, the master.
Mister!
She’s like his kid or his servant.
Jane!
”

“It’s an interesting point, a valid point. Even if that was the practice of the time, it still reflects a basic inequality, and you’re correct. But back to that tree…” A silence long enough to make me wonder whether they might actually dislike me. And then from the edge of the room came a male voice heavy with scorn. “We aren’t talking
symbolism
here, are we?”

I ignored the edge of contempt. “Perhaps,” I said. “Or foreshadowing. Remember what that was?” Come on, team! Show those ladies we learn stuff here—and what the hell was Rochester’s first name?

A few nods, a frightening spot of dead air, and then a volunteer to talk grudgingly about setting a mood, hinting at what’s ahead. As for me, I wished that life as clearly foreshadowed coming events.

Maybe it did. The burning effigy the night of the fund-raiser now felt as clear a signal as a blinking light. But too much clutter and junk made the picture over-full and confusing without a friendly author highlighting which piece of the puzzle was the important one. The trouble with life was that you never knew if something was significant or irrelevant until it was all over.

While these thoughts drifted by, I pedagogically pulled teeth, all the while demonstrating mine in a big smile for the visiting critics, whose numbers waned and waxed, giving me repeated anxiety attacks throughout the hour. “What feeling does the splitting of the tree give you?” I wanted to go home, to lie down and not think. “What mood does it create?”