Till the End of Tom (19 page)

Eighteen

T
HE
afternoon also went relatively smoothly, though my seniors seemed agitated, as if a low-grade electrical current pulsed through the entire class. They did their work, participated in the discussion, and I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong enough to ask them about it coherently. So I asked incoherently by saying, inanely, “Everything all right?” They responded with that powerful blankness only a teenager who is hiding something can master. I deserved it.

We were having our final discussion about the book, talking about topics they’d suggested. We’d therefore once again gotten absorbed by nature versus nurture, and this time we included place, and how where we live and in what times might affect our lives. We touched on how much we all fulfill our parents’ expectations and play our assigned roles in the family, and whether we have to continue doing so. We talked about the concept of fate, all in the context of the novel.

Somewhere during the discussion, I realized that Zachary, normally a voluble boy and an eager participant, had said nothing all period, and with a rising sense of dread, I understood that he was the still center of the hurricane that was crackling around the room.

They knew something I did not know.

I found out soon enough. He stayed behind when the day ended and stood in front of my desk, almost at attention.

“Yes?” I asked. “What is it? Sit down, please.”

He considered that, then nodded and sat. “I tried to come tell you at lunch,” he said.

“I was out of the building.”

He nodded again, looking as if an enormous struggle was being waged inside him, something that needed airing; something that needed to be kept private.

“What did you try to tell me?” I prompted softly.

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“You’re not. I’m sorry I missed you at lunchtime, but—what is it?”

His cast was on the desk, and he seemed to be engrossed in the messages written on it.

“Zach?”

He raised his head and looked at me with no expression, then he looked away, staring at the chalkboard while he spoke. “I’m ah . . . not going to be here tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. Is something wrong? Are you ill?”

He shook his head.

“Getting the cast off?”

He looked at his arm as if it were a completely new thing to him. “I . . . um . . . phoned the cops.”

“Did you remember something?”

“Kind of. Yes.”

I nodded, as if I actually understood what was going on. “What did you . . . did you come in here to tell me what you remembered? Is that it?”

He nodded.

“Zach, you’re a verbal kid. Could you use that skill now? What did you remember? What are you trying to tell me? I’m here. I’m listening. It’s okay, whatever it is.”

He looked almost angry with me before he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and, watching me intently, spoke. “I remembered that I killed my father.”

“Your fath—Tom Sev—you—?” That was most definitely not okay. That was not even true. “Killed him?”

He nodded.

“What kind of crazy—you just now
remembered
?”

“No, I just said that because you said that. I knew it last week. I hoped . . . I didn’t think . . .” He shrugged both shoulders as if he were trying to throw a weight off himself. His expression said that he hadn’t succeeded.

“But you came to me—you said you hadn’t . . . I believed you.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have. You’ve always been straight with me. I was scared.”

He still looked frightened. I leaned back in my chair, willing myself to think logically, not emotionally. My pulse rate was in the millions and I felt as terrified as if something tangible menaced me. “I don’t see how you could have. You were in assembly.”

He shook his head again. “Mr. Summers fell asleep. It was so boring. He has no idea when I left—maybe even wouldn’t have known I left if I hadn’t told him. It’s not like he’s going to tell you or anybody that he was out cold. So was half the class.”

That was possible, even probable, given the sedative effect of Maurice Havermeyer’s lectures. But still . . . “Tell me about it. Tell me what you told the police.” This is not true, I heard inside of me. Don’t even listen. Not. True. Not. Happening.

“I, ah, like I said, I was having a smoke out back of the school, and I saw him coming up the street, and I couldn’t believe he was coming here because he never did. Never. I followed and saw he really was coming in, so I ran back around the building and in the back door and I came around, past the auditorium.”

The same route I’d taken.

“But he wasn’t there, so I went up the stairs and he was in your room—the door was open—standing there and sipping something like it was completely natural for him to be there. And I thought—this was stupid, because he wasn’t like that, but we’d just had our blowup about college, and then he was here, in my school, so I thought maybe he’d come to tell me he’d changed his mind. That he realized he wasn’t fair, that this one time he was going to treat me like . . .” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Like I was his son. Like he cared about me.” He bit at his upper lip and shook his head. “I don’t know why I had such dumb thoughts, but I went in and tried to keep it casual, and I said something like, ‘Hey, welcome to my school. How come you’re here?’ And he wheeled around and looked confused and then angry. And he said, ‘Leave me alone. Get out. This has nothing to do with you.’ And I don’t know—I was so angry. He had left his cup on the windowsill, so I dropped the stuff in it—”

“He didn’t see you doing that?”

“My back was to him.”

I stood up and walked to the window where I’d found the cup of tea. I backed away as Tomas supposedly had, which would have put me either smack into the chalkboard, the desk, or Zach, according to his scenario. “This is pretty difficult to envision,” I said. “Where was he when you were doing this?”

“I don’t know—my back was to him.”

I walked back to my desk, and leaned against it. “Are you saying you always have roofies in your pocket, just in case? In case of what? I remember what you wrote about that kind of seduction. You called it rape. You called it all sorts of things, so was that all a lie to make the teacher feel good?”

He didn’t answer.

“Besides, you were here, on a Monday school day. Carrying drugs? How about the truth this time?”

He looked straight ahead as if engrossed by the portrait of Lord Byron on the side board. And he spoke as if I hadn’t said a word. “And, like, I couldn’t shut up. I wasn’t shouting, but I couldn’t stop saying things—everything bad he’d done to me, all along, and then this, about college. Lied to me. That’s the worst. Lied like I was some kind of idiot, like it didn’t matter what promises he made or how hard I worked to keep them. And then he came out of the room after me, and he didn’t shout, either. That somehow made it worse. If he’d been angry back—if he’d
cared
enough to be angry back!”

That seemed too much for Zachary to contain. He stood up and paced the front of the room. To the windowsill and back toward the door. I was fairly certain he didn’t even know he was in motion.

“He called me names, in that I-don’t-give-a-damn-how-you-feel voice he has. All flat, slowing down like he didn’t have the energy to talk to me, or like I was about as important as whatever he had for lunch, and I just—I don’t know—I saw red, like they say. I really did, like things were exploding inside me, and I did shout that time, and he pushed me, pushed me away. Grabbed my arm, so I punched him with the other one. That was the only thing he’d ever taken time to teach me, how to punch somebody really hard. Except, see, the cast hit his face and I heard this noise—it was awful—something breaking, and he backed off from me, out the door, and he was shouting, and then I heard more shouting and I panicked. I turned around and ran down the back stairs and outside, and then I went back into the auditorium. Mr. Summers was awake then, but I said I’d only been gone a minute and he believed me.”

“And then what? You came here later in the day insisting you were innocent?”

He stopped pacing, and looked at me with what seemed true regret. “I’m sorry. You deserved better.”

My turn to stand up. “I’ll tell you what I deserve—the truth and what you just told me was not it. That story is so full of holes I’m angry you’d think I’d believe it.”

“The police must.” He looked at his watch. “They’ll be here soon—I’m going outside. I thought that was decent of them, waiting till the day was over.”

“No scene in the school?”

“No scene here. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About the lying part.”

What a waste. If any of this was true, what a waste. He’d finally recuperated from his father, gotten past whatever fury and despair had driven him for too long. He’d been able to let the true Zachary emerge and grow strong until, if this was true, his father reappeared in his life and now what? A prison sentence?

But it couldn’t be true. Small details sounded possible—the punch on the cheek, perhaps—but as a whole, it did not make sense. Why would he lie this way? “You ran away while he was standing outside the room?”

He nodded.

“Alive, then. You forgot the falling down the stairs part. The fatal part.”

He stared at me, visibly working to keep all emotion to himself. “He must have—he must have been falling, but I didn’t see because I turned away and ran to the back, down the back stairs.”

This was infuriating. “When did your father have a chance to drink the drugged tea?” I asked quietly.

His face first blanched, then turned scarlet. I had a sick sense that if he was hellbent on taking blame for something he hadn’t done, I’d just shown him the raggedy patches he had to repair the next time he told his story.

“Has your mother gotten you a lawyer?” I asked. “You need one immediately.”

He shrugged, and turned to go.

It wasn’t hard to translate that gesture. “Wait a minute. Does your mother know what you’ve done? Does she know about your suddenly recovered memory? This bizarre confession? Did you tell her?”

He turned halfway around and looked at me briefly, his eyes wide and dead-looking. “I don’t see why I’d have to ask permission to tell the truth. It’s what she’s always told me to do.”

“Then why didn’t you listen to her? It was good advice!”

But he was already out the door. He didn’t hear me.

W
HATEVER MY MASTER PLAN
—or even my sketchy and improvised idea of a strategy—had been, it was now gone, trashed before I could recall it. I stared at the afterimage of Zachary, hurrying away to a doom he’d orchestrated, hoping for a revelation or insight that never arrived.

I finally roused myself. Mackenzie would be here in a half hour and in the meantime, Zachary needed a lawyer. He needed his mother and his mother needed to know about this.

I stopped at the bottom of the staircase. Students’ home numbers were treated like state secrets. Staff was not given easy access to them, as if we were likely to abuse the privilege, to have pajama parties and phone the students in the middle of the night with silly jokes.

I entered the office ready to do battle with Mrs. Timidity who, in fact, greeted me with an expression so alarmed, I had to slow down and force out a smile.

She pointed toward the cubbies. “You didn’t check.”

Counting to ten to get calm would take too long. “I’m in a rush and—”

“You’re supposed to.”

“Mrs. Wiggins!”

“There’s a message for you, that’s why.”

She might have been a painted backdrop with a movable mouth and a tape that would run until I clicked it off for all she looked likely to give up and listen to me. I nodded and went to the rows of open mailboxes.

“Your friend, she said.”

I reached for the “while you were out” slip and saw “S. Berg” at the top of the pink square.

“Call me,” it said in Mrs. Wiggins’s careful but loopy hand. “I am asking her to put three exclamation marks because it’s important. About the not so dear departed.” Mrs. Wiggins had seen fit to write every word of that down, plus Sasha’s number, which I knew by heart.

If I had had more time, I’d have been more annoyed. Here it was—another message that didn’t include a message. Instead of making exclamation mark demands, couldn’t she have said what was so important?

“I need to make a call,” I told Mrs. Wiggins.

She nodded and reached out for the message slip. “No, not to her. I’ll call her later, from the office, or she can reach me there,” I said. “I need to call Zachary Wallenberg’s mother. Could I have his home phone and emergency numbers?”

She tilted her head, chin up and to the side, as if posing for a coin. “Not allowed,” she said. “Those numbers are confidential.”

“They’re for emergencies. This is one.”

“Is he hurt?” She elevated, standing on tiptoe, to look out the door at the entryway as if expecting to see another paramedic crew in action.

“In trouble. It’s important. It’s an
emergency.
”

“I’ll phone,” she said, fumbling for and then nearly dropping the telephone.

“Please,” I said, reaching for it. She was going to mess up the message—she didn’t even know the message—and meanwhile Zachary was efficiently destroying his life.

She snatched the phone away from me and her eyes reminded me of photos I’ve seen of horses trapped near a fire. “I’ll get in trouble,” she said. “I—you’ve been nice to me, so I’m sorry, but—I’m in trouble already.” She rolled her eyes toward the office door. “He—after what happened last week and I wasn’t there. I mean here! He, Dr. H., he’s very angry and he said he was giving me one more chance.”

“That isn’t fair. You didn’t have anyone to cover for you. And by the way—did you hear somebody shout?”

“I wasn’t here!”

“I mean on your way back, maybe?”

“No,” she said. “No. Nobody shouted.”

So that part of Zachary’s tale was also a fabrication.

“Why? Did Dr. H. say I was here? He’s pretty angry about the way I wasn’t—”

“I’ll talk to him, I promise. It’ll be fine, but not now. Right now, I need to—”