In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  Mackenzie managed to make his shrug exceptionally cynical.

  “She didn’t work in a massage parlor!” I snapped.

  “They showed a photo. Pretty.”

  “Extremely,” I said softly.

  He stood up as best as he could. “Isn’t much consolation, but I made you dessert.”

  I couldn’t stop picturing April. Stop realizing that last night, while I was sitting on that blanket listening to Brahms and thinking the worst problem in town was being with a grumpy Mackenzie, April was terrified and in danger, grappling, perhaps, for her life.

  “Peaches and toasted almonds,” Mackenzie continued. “Sit yourself down, while I whip up the cream topping. Maybe it’ll make you feel a little better.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll have to pass.” My stomach was otherwise occupied, predicting disaster.

  *

  The next morning, as I walked into school after a troubled night, even Rina was animated. Rina normally confined herself to overwrought, sultry body language, but today I heard her as soon as I neared the building and continued to hear her until the door was shut behind me.

  “So I go ‘Stop the B.S., what do you mean, like snatched? I mean, like right off the street or what?’ And he’s all, ‘Snatched, snatched. You know, like snatched? You never watch TV or what?’ He goes, ‘It was on the six o’clock news’—like duh, that’s what I’d do when I come home after a whole day here, watch news, right?”

  Rina’s sullen silences no longer seemed all that offensive. But obviously April Truong’s disappearance—I refused to call it any more than that—was the morning’s universal topic of conversation. Particularly in my first-period class, where her empty chair sat as mute testimony.

  We had an essay exam scheduled, but everyone seemed so unnerved, I suggested postponing it. “We could talk instead,” I told them. “I don’t suppose anybody has answers, but saying how you feel can help.”

  “Help who? Not April,” somebody muttered.

  “Right,” I heard in several low variations.

  At first I was upset by the anonymous hecklers. Then, in a way, I was glad. The class had bonded, even if I hadn’t noticed. There was concern. There was a Them versus a Me. On some small, irrelevant scale we’d made progress.

  “Too depressing to talk about,” Miles said. “What’s to say about April?”

  “Which one was April, anyway?” The blonde girl, Miss Lethargy, yawned after she asked the question.

  The class—close to the most unacademic bunch imaginable—voted to take the exam and then to work on dangling participles and gerund phrases.

  Boring, perhaps, but within their control. At least Shakespeare and grammar—unlike real life—made a rough kind of sense.

  They settled into their chairs and gradually into themselves. Even Miles seemed willing to commit ideas to paper rather than sing his opinions or turn them into a cartoon panel on the blackboard.

  About ten minutes later the deep quiet was broken by the squeal of the door. There’d been no knock, which violated pedagogical etiquette. I should have known my rude caller would turn out to be Helga, the office manager, She Who Is Impervious to All Rules that Apply to Peons Known as Teachers.

  A woman in a blue uniform followed her in.

  “She’s from the police,” Helga said in a stage whisper.

  “Ah, duh,” somebody in back said.

  Everyone had stopped writing. That wasn’t amazing, but the fact that they seemed sufficiently transfixed to actually watch us rather than use this test break to copy one other’s papers was nothing short of historic.

  Helga continued to behave as if what she was saying was for my ears only. “They think maybe one of our students might know something,” she said with bellowing confidentiality. “About that little Vietnamese girl who disappeared. She wants to talk to them about it. The disappearance. The whole school, really. She’s talking to everybody.”

  “Well, of course she can—” Silly me. I’d thought Helga had been asking permission to disrupt me, but she’d already turned away.

  She clapped her hands twice, as if summoning chickens. “Children, someone wants a minute of your time and all your attention. This is Officer Deedee Klein. Now pay good attention because it is your civic duty to cooperate with her.”

  The class was sufficiently engrossed to not make fun of Helga’s manner of speech, which would have struck even preschoolers as patronizing. Eyes shifted between the secretary and the policewoman, between Helga’s hennaed hair and Deedee’s: sandy brown curls. I expected my students to look heavenward as well, to thank the Deity that had sent in an actual, legitimate reason to interrupt their exams.

  I, meanwhile, nodded at Officer Deedee, pretending that I was giving her permission to go ahead, pretending that she needed it. Pathetic, but I needed it.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you.” Her voice matched her hair, soft and tentative. It was not the sort of voice to shout, “Halt in the name of the law!” or whatever they shouted these days. But maybe she upped the amps on the street. She wrote a two-foot-high phone number on the board, then turned back to the class. “You probably all know about the disappearance of your classmate, April Truong. She was last seen at eleven P.M. the night before last and is presumed to have been criminally abducted. We know that this summer class is made up of people from a lot of different area schools, so you don’t have the usual longtime relationships with everyone, and in fact some of you may not even know April. But if you do, or if you know anything at all that might be of some help—please call the number on the board. Ask for me—Officer Deedee Klein—or for anybody else on duty. Anything you say will be handled with total confidentiality. I thank you in advance for your concern for April Truong and for the help you will, I hope, give the Philadelphia Police Department. Anybody?”

  Then, for what felt an eternity, she silently faced the class, as if expecting someone to leap up and present the tidbit of information that would crack this case.

  No one moved. I looked at Woody as inconspicuously as I could, but he had adopted a purposely blank gaze, as if his eyes were sightless and made of glass.

  Officer Klein gave up. “Thank you,” she said. I wondered if a more forceful official could have generated a response. That raised esoteric questions of gender identity and style, so I squelched that concern.

  I made a separate plea for cooperation after she left. “It won’t help April if you play us versus them—whatever you feel about the police, get past that. Whatever you know, tell. If you don’t want to deal with the police, call in anonymously or tell me and I’ll pass it on. But whatever you can do—do it.”

  I thought that was pretty stirring, but the class looked at me with the same impassivity they’d shown Officer Deedee, then they suggested that it was time to return to their Romeo and Juliet exam. Eventually, after what felt like years, the morning session ended.

  I walked toward the back stairs, deciding to bypass the faculty lunchroom and Lowell’s greetings altogether. In fact, to bypass lunch. I thought I’d walk for the hour, despite the day’s clamminess and drizzle. I needed to be alone, and I hoped a moving meditation might produce a useful idea about this abrupt, awful turn of events.

  En route, I passed Five’s crowded room. I’d had one devoted student, and she’d been snatched away, literally, but Five’s boys’ club, as I thought of the lunchtime convocation, bubbled along. News flash: life wasn’t fair.

  I peeked in. They didn’t look organized. Two were talking to each other in a huddle in a corner, three were reading, and Five was talking to another. What was the allure?

  I realized how pathetic I looked, the impoverished orphan at Christmas, peering through Five’s window while I clutched the piece of coal that had come in my stocking. I turned and walked on. I heard his door open behind me.

  “Mandy,” he called, leaving his classroom and his disciples behind. “Have a minute?”

  I stopped and nodded, mutely.

 
“Did you hear?” he asked. “I had no idea. I spent last evening reading, didn’t turn on the TV, and I walk to school, so once again—my morning class told me. Who do you think could have done it, and why?”

  “Maniacs don’t need a why.”

  “So you think it was just another random city thing?”

  “I don’t know what else to think. It’s not as if anybody’s asking for ransom—and what could they ask for, anyway? She’s poor. So I’m afraid—”

  “I feel a special tie to her, don’t you? You and I—we were the only teachers here who had her. That makes me feel responsible for her welfare. As if I should have been able to predict—or prevent—or solve this.” But he turned his palms up, empty. He had no more solutions than I did.

  I smiled in sympathy. We were two well-meaning, absolutely useless adults. I felt sorry for us, too. I changed the subject, hoping to ease his discomfort and some of mine, as well. “Five,” I said, “what are you doing with those kids at noon? What goes on?”

  He smiled disarmingly. “The truth?”

  I nodded.

  “And you won’t tell your coworkers?”

  I nodded again.

  “Nothing much goes on. No offense, and I hope they aren’t your best friends, and I don’t want to sound like a complete egotist—but I couldn’t stand the lunchroom scene and nothing I did seemed to stop it. Leaving the premises didn’t help—I was ‘accidentally’ joined.”

  The Phyllis and Edie Bake-Off. “There hasn’t been a homemade goodie since you disappeared,” I said.

  He nodded. “So I, ah, offered extra credit to those who wanted to be part of a noontime current events discussion.”

  “A bribe,” I said with a smile.

  He nodded. “Absolutely. But not a complete lie. Sometimes we do actually discuss government, or foreign affairs, but mostly they discuss current sports events, current women, current movies, MTV videos, things like that, and I eat my lunch in peace. Are you going to turn me in?”

  “I salute your diplomacy and determination. Besides, having no break from students all day seems a terrible price to pay for your deception. You’re already being punished. Of course, I could blackmail you, tell the bakers what’s really going on….”

  He grinned, as did I; but then the subject had run its course and the atmosphere changed as once again April dominated my mind. And at the same instant, it became obvious that Five had made the same transition.

  “What was she doing at a massage parlor?” he asked. He didn’t have to say her name. “She didn’t seem the type to make her money that way, even if—”

  I waited, but he didn’t seem willing to finish his sentence. “Even if what?” I prompted. “Go on.”

  He shrugged. “Even if you never really know a person, not in the superficial way of a classroom. Besides, I was told that most of those places—the massage parlors—are run by Asian mobs.”

  “But April wasn’t a mobster.” The word sounded ridiculous. “She wanted—wants to go to college. You know her.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want to finish that sentence.”

  “Sorry. But I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for where she was seen and why. And I’m sure she didn’t work at a massage parlor.”

  “But I hear her parents didn’t know where she worked.”

  “Nonsense. I know. It’s in Chinatown at some café.”

  “The kids said the name she’d given them—Star’s Café—doesn’t exist.”

  “Her brother drove her there every day.”

  “Dropped her off at a street corner. Tenth and Race. Near the massage parlor he and his gang members run, the place she was last seen.” He looked thoughtful. “Mystifying, makes me wonder if there might be something we know that could be helpful to the police. Through her writing, or class discussions, or the tutoring you did.”

  “You’re assuming a logical reason for all this,” I reminded him. “A plot to be untangled, deciphered.”

  “And you aren’t? You think this has no logic? That it’s irrational, unfathomable? I don’t accept that idea. Everything has its own logic.”

  “What logical reason could there be to force a struggling wisp of a girl off the street and into a van?” I said. “Everything may have a rationale, but that isn’t the same thing as logic. Or sanity.”

  Nine

  WHEN I RETURNED FROM MY LUNCHTIME WALK, HOT and weary, I cut across the green and leafy square, which was filled with other shade seekers, including half our students.

  And Aldis Fellows, who was abruptly striding beside me. I had no idea where she’d been before she appeared. We greeted each other, then walked in awkward silence.

  “I’m not comfortable with that, are you?” she said with no preface.

  “I’m sorry, I must have missed—what aren’t you comfortable with?”

  “Them. I thought you were looking at them, too. When we just passed them.”

  I turned as discreetly as I could and saw an assortment of students.

  “Interracial dating,” Aldis said. “Or are you one of those pro-diversities?”

  She must have been watching a black boy who had his arm around a blonde girl. Both were laughing. “They’re talking,” I said. “Horsing around.”

  “I don’t think so. In any case, each step leads to more. And to more trouble.”

  “Well, since you asked, I don’t really have any problem with…” But she zoomed on, almost speed-walking her way back to school. I took the opportunity to deliberately lag. The woman didn’t belong on a summer’s day.

  Normally, I wouldn’t have approached Woody, given his contemptuous use of the word gook the day before, but as I wandered toward school I saw him, looking miserable and sitting by himself on the end bench, smoking. You can hang out with Five, but you can’t smoke in his room. School rules. So Woody was outside in the post-drizzle midday steam, moodily staring into space, his jaw clenched except when he dragged on his cigarette. There was something intensely alone and alien about him, as if he were outlined in black, superimposed on his environment. Maybe he was the kind who needed a crowd around him in order to have any identity at all.

  He was on that same bench—the one where he denied he’d been with April. He looked like a sleepwalker, not able to withstand a sudden shock. “Woody,” I said softly.

  He blinked, then nodded. “Yo, Miss Pepper,” he said in a dull voice. Then he looked at his cigarette as if watching it consume itself into ash were fascinating and all new.

  Only minutes until we had to get back. Uninvited, I sat down beside him. “Okay?” I said when he looked mildly wild-eyed and alarmed. “Your friends going to make a civil case out of a teacher sitting on the same bench as you?”

  He controlled the search for peers his eyes had been doing, shrugged and managed a small, off-center grin. “My reputation is shot now.”

  “So how are you doing with this?” I was willing to bet I didn’t have to explain myself any further.

  “Look, Miss Pepper, like I told you, I…we…there’s no reason I should be having any problem with it. Except we were in the same class and all like that.”

  Up close like this, with his face semirelaxed, he wasn’t that menacing or homely. In fact, he looked pale and plain and exposed, as if his scowl and belligerent pose were accessories he’d forgotten to put on today.

  “But I was wondering, ah…” He flicked the remains of the cigarette onto the paving and stepped on it. “Do you think the visit this morning from the police lady was it? You think they’ll come back?” he asked in a too-casual voice.

  A return visit seemed a distinct possibility. “If they found some more out, or thought we knew something specific.”

  “Like what?”

  “Suppose she had a serious grudge match going with someone. Things like that.”

  “April? If anybody had a grudge, it’d be his gang, now that Vanny got killed.”

  “What would that have to do with her?”

  “He liked
her and was always bothering her, but she didn’t want him and he wouldn’t get it, you know? He was a little off. Bad temper. Followed her. Here, at school, too.”

  The window. The figure in the square. April’s fear.

  “How do you know all this if you and she didn’t have any kind of…anything.”

  He looked at his knees. “We go to the same school wintertime, too.”

  “Friends?”

  He shrugged. “Not enemies.”

  “Why are you so nervous about her? The guys you pal around with on your case?”

  He shook his head. His hair was a soft brown with gunk on it. It didn’t budge in the little gusts of damp wind. “My old man,” he said. “He’d kill me if he knew I hung out—ever—with a gook. He was over there, you know? He fought them.”

  “Not April’s family. They were on the same side. We were fighting for them, at least in theory.”

  “Don’t matter to him.” Woody’s jaw reset. “How he feels is they sent him to fight them and now he’s supposed to let them live in our block. Doesn’t make sense. They’re not our kind, he says. And April’s family’s the same,” he added. “Thomas—he’s a little crazy. If he’d thought his sister was with a white guy…”

  “He did, didn’t he?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is that why he picked her up on her late days? To make sure she wasn’t with…anybody?”

  He continued to find his knees engrossing, and said nothing.

  “Look, Woody, if you know something, if there’s something you could do that might save April, you owe it to yourself and to her to let somebody know. You could call that phone number anonymously, or tell me and I’ll call, if that would work.”

  The whole time I spoke, he shook his head, negating me, my suggestions, and who knew what else. “Can’t,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Can’t!” He seemed taken aback by his own explosion. “Sorry,” he said more calmly, “but you really don’t know what you’re saying. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s too late. April’s…dead, don’t you understand? You think the person who took her is going to let her come back and send him to jail? It’s because of Vanny, I’m sure.”