Wallflower (40 page)

"I still don't know exactly what it was about," he said, relighting his pipe. "Were the two hangings actually suicides or the result of a strange sex practice called autoerotic asphyxia that was then finding its way into various Ohio schools? But what did come out—and to me this was the most shocking aspect of the whole affair—was that not only had the two dead girls been seeing Bev Archer for counseling, but other members of the ‘club,' in fact, a majority of them, had been seeing her as well. I want to make something clear. There was an understanding that if a girl wanted to see the quote school shrink unquote, she was under no obligation to tell anyone, nor would Bev report the consultation to either the school or the girl's parents. Total confidentiality was to apply; that was the whole idea. But I never expected Bev would take the
rule so literally, especially after a girl who was in her charge took her own life. When I found out that
both
dead girls had been her patients, I couldn't believe my ears. The way it looked, Bev was the common thread in the affair." Bramhall angrily tapped his pipe against the top of his desk. "She might as well have been that damn suicide club's faculty adviser."

Janek could see that the shock of that revelation had still not abated, even after so many years.

"Bev was quite broken up by the suicides, of course. 'My fault,' she told me. 'Those girls were in my care, and I let them down.' She wept a lot and beat her breast. I felt she was sincere. But still, with her arrival, it seemed something almost . . . evil entered Ashley-Burnett. Well, whether she was responsible or not, I couldn't countenance her not keeping me informed. She clearly wasn't up to the job. I told her to take leave and that at the end of the term I'd have to let her go, as, of course, I did. . . .
"

Bramhall fell silent for a time. Then he opened a file folder on his desk and removed a sheet of paper. "That spring Bev left Cleveland and moved to New York to start her career again. A couple of years later I received a letter from a Dr. Carl Drucker at a psychiatric hospital in Derby, Connecticut. He wrote that Bev had given my name as a reference and asked if I could recommend her for a part-time staff position."

Bramhall handed Janek the sheet he'd been holding. "Here's a copy of my response. I'm ashamed to admit it, Lieutenant, but as you can see, I recommended her."

A
s they followed a freshly shoveled path back to the visitors' parking lot, they ran into a group of Ashley-Burnett students walking the other way. The girls, red-cheeked, bundled in goose down coats, their tartan hats powdered lightly with snow, smiled demurely as they passed.

"Aren't they gorgeous!" Aaron exclaimed. "Aren't they the healthiest-looking kids!"

Janek nodded. The girls did indeed look healthy. The thought that Beverly Archer had brought her sickness into this academic Eden filled him with a sad and poignant fury.

Back in the car they didn't talk much. Bramhall's tale spoke for itself. Now they knew about two more young lives Beverly had screwed up. How many others, Janek wondered, could there be?

A
aron's next stop was a handsome slate-roofed, stucco-with-inset-timbers house on the edge of Shaker Heights.

"Beverly's kid sister's place," Aaron explained, as he parked in front. "Mildred Archer, now Mildred Archer Cannaday. Nice gal. Very informal. Two teenage kids. Local tennis champ. Call her Millie, Frank; she likes that. Her husband's a big shot cardiologist."

Millie Cannaday looked so different from her sister that at first Janek couldn't believe that they were siblings. He was persuaded only when he heard Millie speak; then he recognized Beverly's accent.

Millie was a tall, robust, handsome woman in her mid-thirties who moved with the light, liquid grace of an athlete. In certain ways she reminded Janek of Fran Dunning: her relaxed, friendly manner, so unlike the tense guardedness he'd observed in Beverly, and the straightforward way she made eye contact. But above all, there was a pervading aura of good health and of being comfortable within. After only two minutes in her presence, Janek knew that Mildred Archer Cannaday was not and never had been a wallflower.

The interview took place in a gracious, well-proportioned sunken living room with tall leaded windows at either end. French doors led out to a terrace with a view over a park behind the house. The furnishings consisted of twin chintz-upholstered couches, dark wood side tables, old-fashioned lamps, framed family photos displayed on the top of a baby grand piano, and fine Oriental rugs spread on a polished chestnut floor. Janek felt he was in the home of successful well-adjusted people, so unlike the effect of Beverly's minimalist office and her medieval bedchamber, dominated by the shrine to her mother.

When finally they settled down and Aaron brought up Beverly's name, Millie Cannaday sadly shook her head.

"
Poor Bev. Such a miserable, unhappy woman. When I think of what she could have been . . . It's been a pretty long time since the two of us have really talked. It's not that we've become estranged. It's just that in the last few years she's become so
weird.
Oh, we exchange Christmas cards and call each other on our respective birthdays, and she usually remembers my kids' birthdays, too, and sends them a little check, four dollars or something ridiculous like that. I think last year she actually sent each of them five." Millie's eyes twinkled.
"
It isn't that she's stingy, you understand. Bev can't help herself. She was always tight, ungiving, retentive—isn't that the word? Well, I'm no psychologist, Lieutenant. I don't know the terminology. But I do know what happened to my sister and whose fault it was. Our mother's. Mama was the one who ruined Bev's life."

As Millie Cannaday launched into an extended monologue, Janek could feel the interview slipping into the kind of deeply felt reminiscence by which a speaker dredges up old memories and purges conflicts from his past.

"
It's sad to say. But I'm afraid it's just that simple. Our mother was a totally self-centered person. Oh, she was beautiful. Everyone thought so. 'Victoria Archer's the most beautiful woman in Cleveland,' people used to say. And talented. Mama was very talented. At her height she was probably the best nightclub singer in town. With the right kind of luck she might have gone on to become a national star. God knows, she had the ambition for it, but I think underneath she was afraid of going up against the best. So she stayed out here, a nice enough place, as I'm sure you've noticed, Lieutenant. We actually have it pretty good in Cleveland. Great orchestra. World-class art museum. Fine university. But still, it's Cleveland, isn't it?" Millie's eyes twinkled again.
"
We can get pretty defensive about that. We don't like it when our town gets a cheap laugh on a talk show or when someone calls it ‘the mistake on the lake' with a knowing little sneer. Mama always said she
hated it here. Funny, isn't it, that she stayed here her entire life? She was born here. And this is where she died."

She herself, Millie said, proceeding with her saga, had happily managed to escape her mother's domination.

"I was lucky. I broke away. I didn't need Mama so much, so I was able to stand up to her and make my break. But Bev couldn't do that. She needed Mama desperately. And so she got her, perhaps more of her in the end than she ever bargained for. I think Bev paid an awful price for her need. Mama used her terribly. She twisted and distorted whatever possible chance at happiness Bev might have had. I'll say it again because I believe it's true. Victoria, our mother, truly ruined Bev's life."

There was, Millie said, a kind of bizarre "contract" between her older sister and her mother, a contract which, although unspoken, was as binding and as forceful as if it had been cut in stone. Its basic terms were starkly simple: Victoria would live her life to the hilt, laugh, be beautiful, glamorous, thin, successful, and, most important, a sexually active and satisfied woman. Beverly, on the other hand, would be depressed, unhappy, plain, mousy, fat, mediocre, and asexual so as never to compete. And as in any personal services contract, there was a schedule of compensation: In return for not competing with her mother, Beverly would be loved."

"It was a real lousy deal," Millie said. "The love Bev got was second-rate. Because the only person Mama was capable of loving was—yeah, you guessed it, Mama."

Millie excused herself. When she returned a few minutes later, it was with a tray, several glasses, bottles of beer, and a bowl of nuts.

"
Have you met Bev, Lieutenant?"

Janek nodded.
"
I interviewed her a couple of times."

"
How did she strike you?"

"Unhappy, plain, asexual—pretty much the way you just described."

"
Well, you may find this hard to believe," Millie said,
"
but she was quite handsome as a girl. Still, I bet it's been twenty years since she's had a date. See, the more time she spent with Mama, the fatter and plainer she got. Then, when she dyed her hair red,
it came out blah rather than glossy like Mama's. When they'd stand together near the end of Mama's life, they looked more like sisters than even Bev and me. Mama had had her face lifted several times, and Bev had really let herself go. Beautiful Vicky and drab Bev—the Archer girls. God!"

Millie believed that even though Bev worshiped their mother, she at times also hated her for imposing the awful contract. But every time Bev tried to break away, Victoria would pull her back.

"Can you imagine?" Millie asked. "Can you imagine how wasteful and stupid it is to allow your mother to rule your life?"

It was a rhetorical question, Janek realized; he made no effort to respond to it.

"I think that was Bev's tragedy," Millie said, "that she had a chance to live for herself, and in the end she wasted it."

Their father, Jack Archer, had been a distant figure. He and Victoria had married young and split up early, just after Millie was born. Jack, an engineer, had moved to Chicago, remarried, and started a second family. The girls had had very little contact with him, though Victoria had received substantial child support. Both girls were bright and had no trouble getting into Ashley-Burnett. Meantime, Victoria launched her career as a singer. Her success was instantaneous.

"Mama had an excellent voice. She was an accomplished singer. But there're plenty of good singers around. What Mama had that was extra was her incredible style. She could take a standard, a song everyone knew, and dramatize it, make it passionate. She knew how to reach people, put a song across. The glamorous nightclub singer—that was her public face. But there was so much more to her than what she showed her fans. Behind all the beauty and glamour there was one very hard-boiled lady. She was a great injustice collector, you know. Cross her and she'd never forgive. She had a kind of personal code, the gist of which went something like: If someone wrongs you, don't ever forget it. Nurse your anger and your hurt until it turns to bitterness and hate. But (and this was probably her most important tenet) never, never let your hatred show."

Millie sat back on the couch, her arms hanging limply. She had expended great energy describing her sister and mother; now she seemed exhausted.

Janek decided it was time to focus the interview. "Could Bev have inherited your mother's code?"

"Possibly." Millie smiled. "Oh, hell! I've told you this much. Why not the rest? Sure, she inherited it. Mama taught it to her. It became her code, too, for God's sakes."

In the last few years of her life Victoria started going mad. At least Millie thought she did. Beverly did not agree. For all her sister's background in psychology, her training and experience as a therapist, she refused to see what was obvious to all Victoria's friends—namely, that the singer was being eaten up by her hate.

"
Eight years ago, when Mama died suddenly of a stroke, she was only fifty-five years old. But in the last five years of her life she carried on sometimes like a lunatic. At the lounge she'd be fine, her glamorous self. But in the afternoons before work she'd lie out on the chaise in her living room at the Alhambra Hotel, ranting and raving at the world. Out of nowhere she'd bring up someone's name, an old lover maybe or someone else she thought had done her wrong. Then she'd start in. Curses, pronouncements, spiteful value judgments. 'He's a prick.' 'She's a shit.' That kind of vulgar talk. And when she said something like that, it was usually about someone who really hadn't done anything particularly wrong. A man might have forgotten to send flowers, or one of her girlfriends might have forgotten to return a call. Trivial offenses to which she had these ludicrous reactions. It was truly awful to listen to. Meantime, there was Bev flying in from New York practically every weekend, rushing over to Mama's, listening to all her garbage, taking it all in, nodding her agreement. Sometimes Bev would stop by to see me afterwards. 'Isn't Mama wonderful!' she'd say. 'Aren't we lucky to have such a talented and brilliant ma!' God! The sick way she worshiped that woman! The weird way they fed off each other's madness!" Millie peered straight into Janek's eyes. "I guess by now you know that's what I think: that Bev got as crazy as Mama in the end. . . ."

The time had come, Janek thought, to put some tough questions to Millie.
"
Did your sister ever have a run-in with a teacher at Ashley-Burnett?"