by Elise Juska
Maggie had passed this street countless times, but it was possible she’d never actually turned down it. It was in an unremarkable neighborhood of small, ranch-style houses made of clapboard and vinyl. A school bus sat parked in a driveway, a boat in another. The front yards were cluttered—lawn ornaments, toys, bikes, plastic pools, a salting of satellite dishes—as if compensating for the smallness of the houses by furnishing every inch of property they had. The house Maggie had grown up in, fifty miles west of here, had been small too, but unadorned. It sat on land, she thought; the land made the difference. A dog roamed a driveway, unchained, letting out a sharp bark as Maggie drove past. She flinched slightly as three teenage boys on bikes came careening down the street and whizzed by—stone-faced, stiff and upright, hands loose in laps.
At the next intersection, she made a left, then a right, attempting to stay parallel to the main road. Another long march of small, ranch-style houses, nearly identical, but set more widely, on just one side of the road. The other side was woods—mossy, untended, choked with blowdown. A beer can was tossed at the edge, a torn plastic bag. Up ahead, Maggie spied another roadblock, several cars and people, a small truck blocking the street, and again she felt a flare of panic—an accident? But no. These cars didn’t seem damaged. The truck was maneuvering itself into a spot in front of the small house, lemon yellow—she froze.
On television, the house had looked bigger, but in fact the people gathered outside were congregated on a small patch of lawn. Maggie watched, unable to go forward, as some spoke into microphones; others stood with arms folded and stared at the house, as if challenging it to speak. She recalled seeing Nathan’s mother on the news, but now there was no light or movement from inside the house, no evidence that anyone was there. Maggie felt a stab of sympathy, imagining this woman trapped in her own home. When a car drew up behind her, honking, Maggie saw the truck had pulled over, and that it wasn’t a truck at all, but a news van. She drove past the house, keeping her eyes on the road.
By the time she reached the end of the block, she had lost her bearings. Ten minutes to four: At this rate, she would be half an hour late. Two turns later, she finally found a large intersection, Standish, which would connect eventually with Route 18. She leaned on the gas as she passed by a bleak stretch of storefronts: check cashing, gym, tanning salon. A small red building, a wooden sign shaped like a rifle—the gun shop. She startled as she recognized it, nestled inconspicuously next to a cheap motor lodge that advertised cable TV.
When she pulled into the parking lot beside the English building, it was nearly four thirty, but Bill’s car was still there. She rushed inside. On a Saturday in August, the lobby was deserted but still had an anticipatory air—floors waxed and gleaming, bulletin boards neatened, sounds of grounds crews buzzing somewhere on the quad. Despite everything, the freshmen would arrive in four days.
“Bill,” she said, arriving at his office door, slightly winded. “I apologize. The traffic by the mall—”
Bill was sitting at his desk, hands folded, staring absently at his computer screen. Maggie thought for a moment he was praying. The overhead light was off, the only light in the room coming from the desk lamp and the rim of sun around the window shade.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m interrupting.”
He drew his glasses down to hang from the black cord around his neck. His eyes had a faraway look. “I was just reading the news. About the victims,” he said. “The security guard, Poole. He was the uncle of one of our students.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “I hadn’t heard. Who—”
“A sophomore. Samantha.”
Maggie shook her head: not one of hers. “How awful,” she said.
“And the girl, Doreen,” he said. “Her fiancé is a senior. Arlen Mackey.”
“Oh no,” Maggie said. She recalled the sound of this boy, crying, on the news.
For another moment, Bill just stared at his computer. Even on a Saturday, he was wearing his customary tie and jacket, but up close Maggie could see how disheveled he was. The tie was slightly crooked, his beard in need of trimming, details unremarkable except for the fact that Bill was ordinarily so meticulous. She thought again about the thinness of his voice on the phone the night before, the lateness of his call.
He touched his tie then, the knot at his neck. “Please,” he said. “Come in. And close the door, if you would.”
Maggie couldn’t imagine who in this vacant building might overhear them, but she pulled the door shut behind her.
“Tea?” He gestured to the low shelf by the window, where a hot plate sat among orderly rows of books, a framed picture of his three teenage children. Two boys and a girl, smiling broadly, arms slung around each other’s necks like loose towels.
“I’m fine,” Maggie said. “Thank you.”
“My mother was a big believer in tea,” he said. “The great curative.”
Bill had a cup by his elbow, though it appeared untouched. Maggie took the chair across from his desk and placed her bag by her feet.
“Well,” he said, then allowed himself a sigh. “I trust you found the Facebook post. At last count, it’s been shared—” He pushed his glasses back on and returned to his computer, tapping the keyboard with one finger. “Two thousand one hundred and three times.”
“Really?” Already the number was more than twice what it had been the night before—it felt large but abstract, oddly weightless. Maggie even laughed a little. “How are these hordes of people even finding it?”
“The mysteries of the Internet,” Bill said. “Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram.”
“You’re speaking a different language,” she reminded him.
“You have a daughter who’s a teenager, don’t you? High school?”
“College,” she said. “She’s about to leave for college. Tomorrow, actually.”
“Well, I’m sure she could give you a social media tutorial before she leaves.”
Maggie assumed that he was kidding, but Bill’s expression had no humor in it. “Yes, well, I’m sure she could,” she said. She might have added that she couldn’t be less interested, but held her tongue. “In any case, I found it, yes. I read it.”
“And did you agree?”
She hesitated. “Agree with what?”
“With how Dugan was depicted. How he was described.”
“Oh—well. In part, I suppose.” She had been working on laying out the fairest way, the best way, to describe him. “I remember him as quiet,” she said. “Like Luke did.”
Bill nodded, angling his chair toward the screen.
“He wasn’t as engaged as his classmates,” she continued, and when Bill reached for the keyboard, Maggie thought he was consulting Facebook again, but then he began typing. Taking notes.
She hesitated, and he looked up. “Don’t mind me.”
“Right,” Maggie said, with a wry laugh, though she reminded herself that Bill, thorough as he was, probably took notes in every meeting.
“You were saying that Dugan was disengaged—”
“Yes.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “And well—that particular class, they were a close-knit group. A terrific group, in fact. But Nathan, he didn’t seem as invested,” she said, and as Bill resumed typing, she had a flash of the couples counseling sessions with Jim Whittier, the long stretches of quiet and one-sided conversations, the sense that every word was becoming a matter of permanent record. Maggie hadn’t particularly liked Jim—was sure she’d sensed a subtle allegiance between the two men in the room—but she had to admit the sessions had been effective: They’d coaxed damning things to the surface, done what they were designed to do.
“The Facebook post,” Bill said, looking up again. “It said he brought a dog with him to class.”
“He did, sometimes.”
“Why was that?”
“Do you mean—officially?”
“Was it an emotional support animal?”
“Oh, no, I doubt it. There was no off
icial—paperwork, or anything,” she said, fumbling. “I’m not really sure. And I’ll admit, I don’t think I ever asked. But the animal was well behaved, not disruptive. Sweet, even.” She paused again. “I almost always get to know my students quite well, but Nathan, he was difficult to connect with.”
Bill frowned. “He was isolated?”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Maggie said. “But he kept to himself. He didn’t participate too often. He wasn’t responsive to feedback. In many ways, most ways really, he felt simply absent.”
“Absent,” he repeated, looking uncertain.
“He was there, of course,” she said. “But uninvolved. Distracted. Clueless, maybe,” she added, then regretted it. Cluelessness suggested a student who was sloppy, dreamy, lost-in-the-clouds, a student who with guidance could be brought around. “He lacked a certain sensitivity,” she said. “The other students were actually quite nice with him, given the circumstances.”
Bill was now studying the screen. “You said he was insensitive.”
“Well, no—I said he lacked sensitivity.”
He nodded toward his notes but, she noticed, didn’t change them. “How so?”
Outside, the hedge trimmers were drawing close. “Well,” she said. “Naturally, comp is a class where students write about personal subjects, and Nathan wasn’t always so aware—so perceptive—about these things.”
“Was he rude to the other students? Was he hostile?”
“No, not exactly,” Maggie said. “He could be quite literal,” she added, and by way of example, she recounted the way he’d reacted to Meredith’s essay about her brother.
Bill raised his eyebrows. “He lacked empathy then.”
“That’s one interpretation, I suppose.” Isolated, hostile, lacking empathy—she had the feeling Bill was quoting key terms from a checklist. “I think I interpreted it as sort of disconnected,” she said, then pressed her lips together. “Actually, I’m not sure that’s the right word, disconnected—”
“And this didn’t concern you at the time?”
She flinched at the note of judgment. None of these things struck you as unusual?
“If you’re asking if I thought Nathan was dangerous, Bill, then no, I didn’t, not then,” she said firmly, but felt a quiver of self-doubt. She recalled the commiserating looks she’d received from the other students, the way the rest of the class had navigated around him, the deliberation with which she placed him in small groups. She hadn’t thought him dangerous, but she couldn’t say she hadn’t been concerned. The concern, though, had been primarily for Nathan’s classmates, for whom she had wanted to dilute his presence. In fact, to even imagine the scenario where her concern was expressed to Nathan, for Nathan, that simple pivot in perspective—to have taken him aside, seen him as the student in need of help—was nearly impossible to do, and this made her feel alarmed.
Bill had leaned back in his chair. The hedge trimmers were getting louder, making their way up and down the mulberry bushes flanking the building. He drew his glasses off, rubbing both eyes until the sound began to fade. His nose was creased with deep pink dents on both sides. “You know, Maggie,” he said, “I consider you one of our most dedicated faculty.”
“Thank you,” she replied, feeling a fresh, floating worry.
“You’ve been teaching here for—what, twenty-five years?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Bill nodded. He rested his fingertips along the edge of his desk. “So you know how things have changed. The mental health concerns on campus. The pressure to accommodate students. To protect them. It’s the university of the twenty-first century,” he said. It was a term Maggie disliked, but Bill spoke it neutrally enough that she couldn’t tell whether he rejected or embraced it. More likely, neither: For Bill, policy was policy, fact fact. “Did you know, last year, one in every two of our students was medicated for anxiety?” he asked.
Maggie knew, of course, about anxiety in teenagers—far more than Bill could ever guess—but still, this statistic surprised her. “I didn’t, actually,” she said.
“We’re in the midst of an anxiety epidemic. The students are anxious, parents are anxious. They send their kids to college and trust us to keep them safe.” He smiled wanly. “Your daughter’s headed to college. You must know what I mean.”
“Well, yes,” Maggie said, squeezing her elbows in her hands. “Obviously, though, it’s not that simple. We can’t guarantee the students’ safety.”
“Of course not. But we have a responsibility to try. And we need to do better. From where I’m sitting—frankly, you can’t imagine the pressure. This tragedy didn’t happen out of nowhere. Whatever measures we can take, whatever red flags we can be more vigilant about moving forward—this young man was on our campus not three months ago with what were obviously very severe problems. No doubt there were signs, and they were missed.”
Panic was creeping inward. The clock on the chapel chimed five. On any other day, this was a sound Maggie loved—robust, collegial—but today it felt ominous.
“It’s getting late,” Bill said, sitting forward and pushing his glasses back on. “And I’ve steered us off-track.” He tapped at the keyboard, sending a faint splash of light into the room. “Two thousand one hundred seventy-one.”
The hedge clippers abruptly cut off, and in their absence, Maggie registered the sound of a light but steady rain.
“Let’s get to the writing samples,” Bill continued. “Nathan’s writing samples. What did you find?”
As if from a distance, Maggie observed her hands, now curled in her lap like pale shells, the bluish glow of the computer screen. She felt the presence of Nathan’s essay, leaning against her knee and waiting to be sprung. Frankly, you can’t imagine the pressure. She was certain that, if she produced this paper, no matter what, Bill would deem it troubling, incriminating. That, in the face of his conviction, her rationale from this morning would sound woefully thin. And the prospect of the dean thinking Maggie—Maggie, a teacher whose dedication to, attention to, her students had come more easily than to her husband and her daughter—that he might think her negligent, even in some small way responsible for what had happened—it was impossible to bear. Too easily, she could picture the essay plucked from her hand, the dismay on Bill’s face, and what she said was: “I didn’t find anything, I’m afraid.”
Bill’s expression altered only slightly, a flinch in one eye. “You didn’t find anything that concerned you.”
“No,” she said. “I meant I couldn’t find anything at all.”
“The required writing samples.” He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “You didn’t archive them?”
“I did,” she said. “But unfortunately, I don’t have them.”
“I thought you said you kept them—”
“I do. I always do. But I store them out in my barn. And there was damage.”
“Damage?”
“Rain,” she said, the lie coming with unsettling ease. “It must have been those heavy storms, back in June. I didn’t know it until this morning.”
“And they weren’t saved electronically.”
“I’m afraid not, no,” she said. “As I said, I’m not a technology person.” This part, at least, was true.
Bill sat back in his chair and rubbed one palm back and forth across the top of his head. Maggie held still, trying to remain composed, and when Bill spoke again, his voice was thick with feeling. “I know people don’t like the way I do things,” he said. “All the policies, all the rules. But this is why they’re important. Naturally, I’d like to believe there was nothing incriminating in that paper. I trust you would have caught it if there were. But now, without it, we can’t know for sure. If more comes of this—” He nodded toward the computer. “We’re in no position to respond. And say there were something, even something subtle, we could learn from it. We could know what to look for. Because if a red flag had emerged in one of Nathan Dugan’s papers, had it been noticed, there’
s a chance a tragedy might have been avoided. It might have been caught.”
Maggie cradled one hand inside the other. Tension was climbing up her spine. It was at that moment—she would remember it, later—that she thought about handing Bill the paper, correcting the lie she’d told, apologizing for her momentary lapse in judgment. Bill would understand; he was a decent man. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, imagining the fallout, the ensuing scrutiny—the essay, and her insufficient comments in the margins, picked over line by line. Quietly, she said, “You have to admit, Bill, this isn’t something teachers are equipped for. We’re not trained psychologists. We’re hired to teach students how to write. It’s not our job to know if they might be shooting people in a mall in four years.”
Bill peered at her, in surprise, over his glasses. “There’s no need to get defensive,” he said. “We’re all upset about what happened.”
“I’m not defensive,” Maggie returned. “I’m saying that often these aren’t easy calls to make.”
“But by your own admission, this student had some difficulties—”
“As do many students,” she said. “As do most students.”
“And now this Luke Finch remembers something being wrong.”
At this, Maggie merely nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said, “that I don’t have Nathan’s work to show you. I can tell you though, with absolute certainty, I never could have imagined he would do something like this.”
