Till the End of Tom (8 page)

Zachary looked stunned.

“Just joking,” the other boy said.

It was time to get to the business at hand, however, and we bounced ideas around for future articles: the vote on the senior class trip, the mural the art class was painting on a wall in South Philly, the upcoming Halloween Party, whether we could have more elective classes . . .

“Definitely an editorial saying no more assemblies about Life!”

We all laughed guiltily, but did not put that on the list.

“How weird was that?” Carrie, an eleventh grader said. “We’re all stuck listening to the talk about life while a guy’s dying right outside the auditorium.”

Lewis, a cute sophomore, broke the meditative gloom this produced. “What about a follow-up?”

“To that?” My mind was still on that ironic juxtaposition.

“To the drug thing. Why don’t we talk to the police about how come we can find the dealers, but they’re still there, like the cops can’t.”

“Excellent!” someone said.

Zachary, our new expert, smiled. “It’s not like the TV dramas of the inner city. The dealers aren’t hanging on the corner, waiting to make a sale. You know the dude, you say what you want, he gets it from somebody else. And he maybe only has a total of five pills at a time. Not that high on a cop’s priority list. And who’s going to tell, anyway? Aside from that, he’s just a kid like us, making a few extra bucks. And he doesn’t sell heroin or crack, only pharmaceuticals.”

“But how about somebody like me?” I asked. I felt a twinge of guilt about using them as information sources, but I kept thinking about staid-looking, middle-aged Tomas Severin with that drug coursing in his veins. “Someone my age? Older? How would they find the person?”

“Like . . . for which one?”

“Like . . . the date-rape drugs.” Like the drug in Tomas Severin.

“Ask any kid,” someone said, and everybody laughed.

“Or make it yourself, if you’re careful. Or so I heard,” another boy said.

“You’ve got to know what you’re doing, man,” his friend said.

He shrugged.

“I’m not planning to cook any up,” I said quietly. “Not to worry.”

At least the uneventful day had been well rounded. A start with girls destroying their bodies, and a conclusion about the ease of obtaining drugs. And somewhere to the side, a murdered man.

Who was it called school an ivory tower?

Eight

I
N
Hollywood they call them hyphenates. Writer-producer. Director-producer. Actor-whatever—you get it. There’s a certain glamour to being a hyphenate there. It suggests a deliberate and chosen expansion of one’s creative roles and life.

There is no glamour in needing a second job so as to pay the rent. Teacher-PI not only lacked the glamour of Hollywood’s hyphenates, but sounded ridiculous. I felt competent and fine as long as the second job remained clerical. I know my alphabet, and I can file. I have also learned to work a computer relatively well. But Mackenzie was supposed to do the heavy lifting. He was the one with the license, and I was his trainee or apprentice. He supervised me, at least in theory. But while I thought of
supervision
as akin to teaching, something that involved pretty constant monitoring and guidance, Mackenzie thought of it as a casual dinnertime catch-up on how the day had gone. He said he trusted my instincts. He said I was smart.

It was a good plan if you wanted to save time and effort. I considered telling my students I trusted their instincts, and they could take the semester off to read great books.

I set out for my two interviews with my usual uncertainty, wishing I had a clear sense of purpose for either of them. Citizen Mackenzie had given Owen Edwards a heads-up about Cornelius, but I still didn’t know any more about him than that he was engaged to a sporadically dotty woman forty-six years his senior. Included in what I didn’t know was what I was supposed to find out or notice.

I drove out of the city into ever-increasing green and open spaces. Ingrid Severin lived in Villanova, in a sprawl of stone behind gates that bordered a city block’s worth of lawn. My ancient, held together with duct tape Mustang so clearly understood that it didn’t belong here that it stalled twice on the cobbled drive.

I was greeted by a silent, efficient woman I assumed to be the housekeeper, and led into a spacious room that overlooked another park’s worth of careful landscaping. Autumn had been exceptionally warm, and only now, close to Halloween, were the trees turning. French windows lined the far wall, and through them blazed a velvety lawn studded with masses of chrysanthemums that seemed to reflect the trees’ lemony, orange, and flame leaves.

Obviously, nature was one of the things that money could buy.

Penelope Koepple was standing when I entered the room, as was a woman dressed entirely in black, with hair to match. She was petite, voluptuous, and furious. “You are not in a position to make decisions,” she told Penelope in a low and lethal voice. “Don’t pretend
she’s
in charge. I know this is your sort of meddling, your definition of propriety, but I will take my rightful place. I hope that’s understood. Whether or not it is, I will take it at the funeral, so don’t try to prevent me. I came here as a politeness, nothing else.”

Penelope glanced at the housekeeper. “Mrs. Severin will be needing her coat,” she said. “She was just leaving.” She didn’t push the petite widow out the door, not physically, but the effect was as rapid and efficient as if she had.

So that was Nina Severin, who, given her phone call rant to Sasha and this performance, might benefit from anger-management classes. And I thought I would benefit by putting her on my list of interviewees.

Meanwhile, Penelope retrieved me from the housekeeper and escorted me into the room as if I were a pet she’d just found. “And after that,” Penelope called to the retreating housekeeper, “that” referring to young widow Severin, “you may bring tea.”

She introduced me to the two people seated on one of the long chintz-covered sofas, though she needn’t have. Who else could the emaciated woman in the dark blond wig and black knit dress have been? Who else could be the man who could have been her grandson had she not had her hand on his thigh?

Miz K. was less sure of herself here than she had been in the office. There was the hint of obsequiousness in her voice as she introduced me to her employer, the hint of the desire to not provoke anger or resentment, to have me be a good entertainment for today’s teatime. “Miss Pepper is working with the police to investigate Tomas’s death,” she said by way of introduction.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.

Ingrid Severin looked at me with the alert expectancy of a child at a puppet show. Maybe I’d be interesting, and maybe I wouldn’t.

Penelope poured us all tea. “No sugar for me, no, no.” Ingrid shook her head for emphasis.

“I know that,” Penelope whispered.

“A girl has to watch her figure.” Ingrid chuckled. I don’t know how she watched hers, as it was close to nonexistent. She was acutely thin without a soft turn on her anywhere, and her black knit dress and jacket appeared to cover a loose arrangement of bones. Her face was smooth, her eyes wide, and the few lines between her chin and ears skewed, rising on an angle toward her temples in a way that said a facelift too many had trumped the laws of gravity. Her head looked borrowed from someone younger. It didn’t match her hands, the crinkles in the flesh of her wrists, or any of the rest of her. It also didn’t look quite human.

“And oh, my—none of those cakes that look so good! Not for me or I’ll get fat!”

Her weight concerns, particularly given the circumstances, also didn’t seem fully human.

“I know.” Penelope let weariness into her voice. She didn’t seem to care who heard it.

The cakes did look incredibly good, light and moist, with ganache filling and chocolate glazes decorated with candied violets. It was all I could do to keep from salivating, but I waited to be offered one. My mother would have been proud of me.

“Ladies do not want to be fat!” Ingrid said. “No, no, no!”

She seemed on automatic pilot. This is what one said when faced with edible objects. We could slip her into Philly Prep with the bulimics and they’d understand each other perfectly. She made me morose.

On the other hand, Liddy Moffat would probably make her a goddess. After all, Ingrid’s face had been recycled enough times to win an ecology prize.

“I’ll bet Ingrid would love one of these cucumber sandwiches. Wouldn’t you, Li’l Thing?” Cornelius piped his voice up an octave.

Penelope K. sighed dramatically.

Cornelius ignored her, and didn’t wait for Li’l Thing to answer, either, but used the silver tongs to pluck a waferlike sandwich onto a small plate he passed to her. She took the plate and beamed upon him.

I wondered if she was under sedation.

Cornelius was a surprise. I didn’t have the sort of bank account or interests that exposed me to a lot of gigolos, so my imagery’s out of date. I’d imagined Ramon Novarro or Valentino—a lounge lizard complete with pencil-thin mustache. Cornelius Westerly was nowhere near my fantasies. Given a room of men from which to choose my fortune-hunting fake, he’d have been close to my last choice.

He was strikingly average. He had sandy hair, a somewhat rosy complexion, and not a single feature you’d single out. Average height. Average weight. I could more imagine him coaching Little League than courting a woman who could be his grandmother and attempting to con her out of millions of dollars’ worth of real estate.

Ingrid beamed at him.

Penelope fumed. I half expected steam to emerge from her ears.

Cornelius smiled back at Ingrid, patted her hand, and fed her bits of cucumber sandwich.

Ingrid’s tiny right wrist held ivory bracelets that made muffled clunks when she returned the china plate to the coffee table. The bracelets were the only jewelry she wore except for a large emerald-cut diamond ring on her left hand. I glanced at Cornelius, wondering how he’d afforded it. Perhaps in arrangements such as this, it was customary for the bride to buy her own ring. To engage herself. Maybe all rules and customs were off when there was this much of a disparity between means and age.

“Cornelius always knows precisely what I want, doesn’t he, Penelope? Isn’t he amazing?”

Her mind might be going, but she remembered how to needle and torment. The wink she gave her social secretary emphasized the fact that she knew precisely what she’d said and meant.

“Have we met before?” Ingrid lifted her teacup, and holding it at chest level, paused to ask her question in a sociable melodic voice with a hint of the crackling of old age. I could imagine her a young hostess, and I could see how lovely she must have been. What was now starved and cadaverous must have once been willowy and svelte, and somewhere beneath the pulled tight, puffed-lipped face, there appeared the vestiges of real beauty. “Pepper, is it? I’ve known a Pepper or two. Are you one of them?”

I don’t know what I had expected her to say or do. I don’t know how families behave when one of them has been abruptly, cruelly, and murderously taken from them. I hope I never have to know it firsthand. But I would have thought the loss would be taken more seriously.

Life must go on, but must it go on quite this superficially, catered and politely low-key, as if purely social? Maybe it was a matter of propriety to keep up appearances, maybe women like Ingrid Severin were trained to keep a stiff—if artificially inflated—upper lip no matter the circumstances. I, however, didn’t get it. The woman’s only child would be buried tomorrow. Did she honestly feel in the mood for cucumber sandwiches, geriatric flirting, and social niceties?

Nobody offered the cakes to me. Perhaps they were saving me from becoming fat, or from Ingrid’s reaction to my accepting one. She seemed numb to human emotions, except on that topic, but on that topic, she had enough emotions to produce a stroke.

“Now what is wrong with silly me? How are you expected to know if you’re one of the Peppers I know?” She trilled a small, insincere laugh.

I thought she’d be consumed by grief. That she’d ask questions, demand I find whoever had harmed her beloved son.

“I never forget a face—or a pair of shoes, for that matter,” she said. “But names . . .” She shook her head. Her dark blond hair—a wig, I had to assume—was cut in a straight bob. “Not that I was ever that good about names, was I, Penelope?” she added, to reassure us, or herself, that nothing was really wrong with her.

Penelope’s murmur was unintelligible.

“I think this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you,” I said. “Meeting the both of you,” I added.

Cornelius looked startled, as if he generally wasn’t included in conversations.

I didn’t know how to proceed and Penelope wasn’t helping. She’d asked me to come here to get a better sense of Cornelius, and I didn’t know how to do that in this situation. “Tomas’s death must be quite a shock,” I said to the two of them. Connect! I mentally urged them—grab the thought and go with it. You know, the way people with emotional systems do?

Instead, they regarded me as if from a distance, as if whatever they might have felt was none of my business. Maybe if I mentioned calories she’d respond.

Penelope finally spoke. “Miss Pepper is the teacher who—”

“You’re the one?” Cornelius asked in a tone that combined amazement and sympathy. I wondered how bright he was. He seemed surprised by everything.

“I wanted to convey my sympathy,” I said.

“How sweet of you,” Ingrid murmured. And without warning or transition, the cordial hostess mask she’d been wearing crumpled, as much as her lack of facial elasticity would allow, into a bereaved old woman’s face. “My son,” she said in a flat voice. She put her cup on the coffee table, but kept her hand on it, as if it steadied her. Then she looked at me. “My son died.”

I nodded.

“He was such a pretty baby, such a pretty little boy.”

“Now, now, L’il Thing,” Cornelius said.

Penelope looked away from them.

“Don’t upset yourself,” Cornelius said.

“My lady friends oohed and aahed, he was that pretty. And at our soirees, his Nanny would bring him in, and sometimes he’d sing in that pretty little-boy voice he had. He looked like a Botticelli angel.” She nodded and her smooth blond bob shimmered with the movement.

“Always a beautiful boy, wasn’t he, Penelope? A shining jewel—prettier, even. Irresistible, wasn’t he?”

Penelope wrinkled her forehead. She hadn’t been with the family when Tom Severin was a boy. Ingrid was confused, but Penelope knew her role, and she acknowledged the memory all the same. “A very good boy,” she said. “And irresistible.”

“He was perfect. I was so proud to be seen with him. And then such a handsome young man and man. But the police came,” she said. “He died. They think . . . do you think what they think?”

“I wouldn’t have the expertise to say, one way or the other.” Of course it was murder. She knew it; I knew it. A man doesn’t drug himself, then bash himself in the cheek and then fall backward down the stairs. But I saw no reason to burden her with ideas that wouldn’t change her painful reality and that, in truth, I was sure she already understood herself.

“There’s no sense speculating and upsetting yourself. Think of good memories. Happy times.” Cornelius sounded as if he was quoting a book of phrases for the newly bereaved. He sounded like someone thirty-two years old and happily ignorant of losses as devastating as this one.

Ingrid Severin ignored him, pulled her hand out from under his. “He was a graceful man, Miss . . . Miss . . .”

“Pepper,” Penelope reminded her.

“Yes. I knew some Peppers. Are you . . . ?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Tom was an athlete. Outstanding ballroom dancer. Not the sort to ever, ever trip.”

Everyone trips. How could even a mother believe that her son was the exception?

“And he did not take drugs,” she said firmly. “He did not. He said, ‘Mother, taking drugs is . . . taking drugs . . .’ Well, he said something, and it wasn’t good about taking drugs.
He
wasn’t the one got addicted.
He
wasn’t the disgrace. He knew—we all knew—drugs . . .” She shook her head again, the gesture substituting for a host of bad things that he’d said about drugs.

“Time to lie down,” Cornelius crooned. “A little nap so you’ll feel better.”

I didn’t know what impression Penelope had hoped I’d get of the young man, but I was watching an attentive, ineffectual, and unimaginative person try to ease an old woman’s pain and confusion.