by Jaime Clarke
The salve, of course, was that Mr. Hancock’s return Monday would put right again the pecking order at Garden Lakes, and Figs and Hands would be taping and beading right next to the rest of us, wiping their brows and griping about the heat. Unbelievably, some of us found ourselves daydreaming of Mr. Hancock’s return during the last of Mr. Baker’s instructions. But that day seemed far away as Mr. Malagon put Hands and Figs in charge so he could run to town to buy binoculars for us to watch the fireworks, his Jeep rocketing through the front gates. We’d been programmed too completely to realize that, for the moment, we were without supervision, and even Mr. Malagon was pleased to learn that all was well upon his return a few hours later.
Hands and Figs were disputing a call when Mr. Malagon brought us together to watch fireworks the following evening, instructing us to bring bath towels to sit on. The palm trees standing guard to the entrance of Garden Lakes were lit yellow and orange, the last of the sunlight burning furiously. Finally the sun was slain, the red sky dissolved into a pale lake that gave way to the bluish purple of night. We wiped sweat with the backs of our hands. The dirt we stirred caught in our lungs, powdered our shoes.
A cannonade of color flared against the sky as Mr. Malagon passed the binoculars. Lindy angled his telescope at the concentric circles erupting from the show being put on at South Mountain. The muffled crack-crack-crack of someone shooting a gun in the air died in the wind.
Mr. Malagon leaned back on his elbows. Some mimicked his pose, while others of us lay flat for a panoramic view.
Outside the front gate, Smurf lay on the roof of his car, his smiling face reflecting the same colors as our own. He could hear odd strains of our conversation—us kidding Warren about bullets fired into the air landing near us, us asking Lindy if we could look through his telescope, Mr. Malagon asking Figs and Hands to make a run to the dining hall with him to get soda, (and the foul joke Roger told in Mr. Malagon’s absence); and as the fireworks were spent, Smurf awaited the silence that signaled the beginning of his plan to rejoin our ranks. We trudged wearily toward slumber, for what would turn out to be our last night of peaceful sleep.
Chapter Nine
The arrest happened at home, saving a shamefaced walk through the newsroom. Charlie was dialing Charlotte’s number again when Gallagher pulled him into the stairwell to tell him what that day’s headline would be, that Darrell “Duke” Torrence Jr. was resigning as publisher of the Sun. Gallagher didn’t know what Duke had been arrested for, but it came to light that Duke had not been arrested but had resigned, which only piqued everyone’s curiosity. Duke, after all, had a court-appointed driver to keep him from getting behind the wheel after a string of DUI arrests. The newsroom quieted as the managing editor huddled with Brennan and other editors in the conference room, the blinds turned. Charlie absentmindedly tidied his desk. A series of messages from Richter that he’d left unreturned, as well as his to Charlotte that she wouldn’t return, had sent his mind into overdrive, and Duke’s resignation cinched the idea he’d spun in the sleepless early hours that everyone was gunning for him, a lifetime of misdeeds revisiting him until he fled his airless apartment for the friendly confines of a noisy all-night diner near the Sun offices. He’d successfully managed to appear at work propped up by caffeine, a high that had evaporated as the conference room door shut behind Brennan, who cast a disappointed glance in his direction. He reached for a half-torn roll of mints in his top drawer as Gallagher slipped out a far exit. Charlie resisted a similar urge until caffeine withdrawal caused him to stand on shaky legs. He popped a mint and sauntered toward the elevator, running to his car in the underground parking lot, the echo of his squealing tires resounding as the guard at the gate saluted him with two fingers.
The horror of Duke’s downfall being a consequence of his hiring Charlie away from the Tab was a humiliation that would dog him to the end of his days, he knew. He’d spent countless hours at Duke’s feet, in his office and his home, both decorated with the trophies of Duke’s many accomplishments: his early days as a runner for one of Arizona’s most notorious post-Prohibition liquor distributors; his season as a catcher for the Seattle Rainiers, where he wound up after serving as a fighter pilot in WWII; his subsequent rise through a resume stocked with stints at papers weekly and daily before marrying the daughter of the owner of Desert Newspapers, Inc. His office included photos of Duke with political personages of note, both local and national. Duke’s laissez-faire administration of the Sun was lauded by some and mocked by others, but everyone at the paper respected Duke and his career.
But the voices coming through Charlie’s car stereo as he drove aimlessly from Phoenix to Tempe to Mesa, coursing the freeways, alighting at gas stations to refuel or use the restroom, shredded what respect Duke had held. Charlie’s attention divided between the traffic and the volume of information filling his ears about Duke Torrence and his fictional military background, endless updates about the carefully crafted war stories Duke had apparently spent decades constructing. Charlie fought light-headedness as revelation after revelation spilled forth, the fake war plaques, the closetful of tailored military uniforms bearing the rank of colonel, the new information that Duke’s youngest brother had been killed in action and the news commentators’ speculation that this tragic childhood fact might account for Duke’s deceptions. Charlie tuned out the amateur psychoanalysis, as well as the purported detail of Duke smashing his war trophies, but was interested in the innuendo that the investigation had been fueled by the Sun’s pursuing a story about questionable expenditures in the county attorney’s office.
Charlie’s disbelief was overridden by the blow that Duke was the target of Richter’s investigation and not him. He’d anticipated a humbling and craved the penance and redemption that was to be Duke’s alone. He envied Duke his chance to ask for forgiveness. He’d been prepared to confess to every lie he’d ever told in exchange for forgiveness. Charlie had even convinced himself that religion—the popular curative he loathed the most—was a viable salve and found himself struggling with the handles to the Randolph chapel around midnight, after cruising past Charlotte’s darkened windows. The chapel doors had been open to him all the time he’d been a student at Randolph, but he’d graced them only parochially, sitting for the requisite masses while his mind wandered.
But the doors were shut against the pews he’d so freely accessed in his youth. To kneel where he’d previously kicked up his heels in defiance of his Catholic brethren would be sweet relief. He contemplated waking Father Matthews, wondering if anyone in the rectory had heard him wrenching on the chapel doors. He bemoaned his flip answer to Father Matthews’s question about whether or not Mr. McCloud deserved forgiveness for the sins he’d committed.
“That’s between him and his god, I suppose,” Charlie had said. He hadn’t been in the mood to parse the subtleties of posthumous forgiveness; but if Father Matthews would answer his midnight calling, Charlie would gladly continue the conversation. He’d admit peremptorily that his columns about McCloud and Garden Lakes were retribution for what had happened that summer, what he’d been exposed to, validating Father Matthews’s suspicions. Charlie understood that McCloud was just a symbol of his misery, that at some point long ago he’d been unable to keep his head above the tide of his experiences. He’d taken to journalism as a dare, to see if he could tell unembellished truths, but his emotional reaction to every story more suited the temperament of a columnist. It’s what Duke must’ve seen in him. But there were too many Heather Lamberts in the world and not enough chroniclers to herald their stories. Worse, the number of people like those who contributed to Heather Lambert’s death seemed exponential. How did so many find it so easy to live with so much selfishness? It was laughable to him that the customs and laws he’d come to think of as absolute were anything more than ceremonial, talking points when referring to the behavior of others.
Maybe it was inevitable that Charlie had succumbed—his most recent transgression being his promise to
Father Matthews that access to Randolph’s Garden Lakes files would end his investigation into the past—but as for anyone, convenient blame and excuses easily defeated the notion of personal responsibility, and he realized then, holding on to the chapel doors, what he didn’t realize that day in Father Matthews’s office: He wasn’t a strong enough person to overcome the malice in his heart.
Chapter Ten
Katie Sullivan was a name that didn’t mean anything to any of us, though Katie Sullivan was the axis on which the plot at Garden Lakes turned that summer. That she was Mr. Malagon’s lover, and that she was a freshman at Xavier, became known to us much later, when the story was laid bare, after Mr. Malagon was fired. The story as it was told to us then was remarkable not just for its spectacular nature, but also because once we worked back through it, our own unwitting complicity in Mr. Malagon’s lusty schemes thrilled us.
No one could attest to Mr. Malagon and Katie Sullivan’s first meeting. As a freshman, she would not have had any classes at Randolph; and her older sister had graduated before Mr. Malagon began teaching at Randolph. Still, we all knew that freshman girls would travel in packs across the Bridge of Sighs to torment us and to activate our supercharged hormones. So while there was no official link between Mr. Malagon and Katie Sullivan, it was easy for us to imagine a superficial one based on Mr. Malagon’s charismatic ribbing of any blue and green plaid skirt he saw bounce in front of his classroom window.
In the administration’s version, the relationship had begun toward the end of the school year, in either April or May. The stone-faced administration did not provide any scurrilous details but only reported that the relationship included “inappropriate behavior against the moral code of Randolph College Preparatory.” Some whispered that the inappropriate behavior featured weekend jaunts to Mexico, as well as all-day “tutoring sessions” at Mr. Malagon’s condominium. Unconfirmed stories placed Mr. Malagon at Katie Sullivan’s house after school, before her parents returned from work.
The chief witness against Mr. Malagon was Mr. Hancock, who happily related the incident whereby he discovered Mr. Malagon using the mobile phone to call Katie Sullivan from Garden Lakes. Then Mr. Hancock hauled Lindy, who had suffered unimaginably and who would tragically die young, before the administration and compelled him to recall the events that had occasioned his visit to the emergency room. Lindy reluctantly recounted how Mr. Malagon had disappeared for hours while he waited in the emergency-room lobby, his arm in a cast and sling (which was why Mr. Hancock insisted on driving Laird to the ER for his snakebite). Katie Sullivan tearfully admitted that she had met up with Mr. Malagon on that afternoon after he called her from the hospital. She also accidentally divulged that she was the one who had given Mr. Malagon the telescope—an unopened Christmas present from a faraway aunt and uncle—so Mr. Malagon would have an excuse for his absence. Katie also volunteered that she’d met Mr. Malagon in the mall food court the day Mr. Malagon bought the binoculars for us to watch fireworks.
The most damning testimony came not from Mr. Hancock or Katie Sullivan, but from Figs and Hands. Their testimony concerned the night of the quarantine. Several gave supporting testimony that Figs and Hands had gone to solicit Mr. Malagon’s permission to free us from the quarantine for dinner. That we had been denied food was a fact in heavy rotation among the administration in the first days of the inquiry, the truth about our houses being stockpiled with soups—enough to get us through the night—exorcised as a matter of convenience.
Hands’s testimony, given separately, mirrored Figs’s: that Figs and Hands had approached Mr. Malagon’s house on Regis Street with the intention of securing Mr. Malagon’s consent for the fellows and sophomores to eat dinner; that upon knocking on Mr. Malagon’s door, they could hear Mr. Malagon talking to someone whose voice neither Figs nor Hands recognized; that the conversation halted and a period of no less than one minute elapsed before Mr. Malagon answered the door.
Figs and Hands described Mr. Malagon’s demeanor as impatient as he replied to their request. One or the other—Figs accused Hands, Hands said it was Figs—wore a suspicious look that caused Mr. Malagon to bark at them, telling them that their stretch as monitors was over and that they were to report to their house until morning. Figs and Hands were starting down the walkway when they heard a girl laughing. The two wended their way around the house and peered in the windows, spotting Katie Sullivan (though they did not know her name) and Mr. Malagon bounding from room to room in amorous chase.
Figs, who would later successfully cover up an embezzlement at his firm, shifting the blame to an innocent department head, resulting in the department head’s firing at the insistence of his father-in-law, who also happened to be his boss, testified that Hands was particularly incensed and that it was he who led them through the unlocked front door, frightening Katie Sullivan, who screamed and scampered up the stairs. Figs and Hands watched the backs of her tanned legs disappear and then demanded to know what was going on. Mr. Malagon threatened to expel them both from Garden Lakes if they did not leave, but Figs and Hands repeated their question. Mr. Malagon reached for his shirt, which lay strewn across the back of the couch, and put it on, saying that if they knew what was good for them, they would leave without uttering a word to anyone. Mr. Malagon then threatened to engineer Figs’s and Hands’s expulsion from Randolph if they told, Katie Sullivan peering surreptitiously from the top of the stairs. Mr. Malagon’s even tone was more menacing than his threat.
It was at this point, according to Figs’s and Hands’s testimonies, that Katie Sullivan called Mr. Malagon upstairs. Mr. Malagon told Figs and Hands to have a seat. While neither could remember precisely how long Mr. Malagon spent upstairs, it seemed to them both that he was back in a flash, wearing a less combative expression.
“This is no one’s business,” Mr. Malagon said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with anything.” He searched their faces as he spoke, hoping for affirmation, but Figs and Hands were too stunned to speak, which Mr. Malagon read as insolence. His face colored like it had the day he threw the eraser at Garth Atlon, but the redness drained and he pleaded for discretion. “It’s important that this not get around,” he said.
Mr. Malagon’s supplication ended when Katie Sullivan reappeared at the top of the stairway. Her red and yellow floral sundress was like seeing color again for the first time, and Figs caught himself before he could say hello and ask her name. Hands stood, staring Mr. Malagon down. “You should get her out of here before someone sees,” he said indignantly. Figs stood too, with the purpose of raising the idea of dinner again, but Hands’s exit pulled Figs toward the door.
Figs was startled by the intensity of Hands’s anger. “He’s going to ruin it for all of us,” Hands said, pointing back toward Mr. Malagon’s residence.
“Are you going to say anything?” Figs asked.
Hands breathed deeply through his nose and exhaled, his nostrils flaring. “If I see her around here again, I will,” he said.
“I was going to use it to get us dinner,” Figs said.
Hands wheeled around. “Fuck dinner,” he said. “Don’t you get what’s going on? Don’t you see how he’s trying to sabotage everything, wasting our summer and shit-canning our fellowship?”
Figs didn’t answer. While he agreed that Mr. Malagon was acting recklessly, he didn’t see how it would jeopardize all our fellowships, especially since he believed that Mr. Malagon would make sure that Katie Sullivan exited the premises quietly and without a long good-bye. Figs would later say that Hands’s hostilities were partly a result of the whispers of favoritism that they’d both heard but ignored. Favoritism was an asset as long as the person showing you favor was not a lecherous, soon-to-be-fired teacher and interim leader of your summer leadership program. Hands fumed about Mr. Malagon’s duplicity, accusing Mr. Malagon of setting him and Figs up for a cover story from the beginning. “He must’ve known he would need someone to protect him if he was caught,” Hands said, spitting the word
s out. They sulked back to their residence, not letting on what they knew. Only the sound of Mr. Malagon firing up the Jeep to drive Katie Sullivan home later that night brought Hands peace, and he fell asleep, fatigued by bitterness.
Mr. Malagon did not recognize Smurf’s car as the Jeep’s headlights swept across the blue Toyota parked on the side of the road outside the gates of Garden Lakes. Smurf was not in the vehicle; he had sneaked up to Mr. Malagon’s residence when he heard the murky stew of raised voices. Smurf kept hidden as he strained to hear the conversation, making out enough bits to piece together what was happening. He’d overheard Figs and Hands on the sidewalk in front of the house, too, and the whole picture came into focus when he saw Katie Sullivan in the passenger side of the Jeep. She appeared to look right at Smurf, but he realized she was seeing her reflection, checking her tearstained face for smudges.
What Smurf said to Katie Sullivan that weekend he would never say. Some of us speculated that Smurf had threatened to tell the administration about her affair with Mr. Malagon if she did not do his bidding, but blackmail was not Smurf’s MO. It was more likely that Smurf, before he successfully slandered the woman at work with whom he was cheating on his wife, had colluded with Katie Sullivan, coaching her on what to do to make Mr. Malagon hers forever. Smurf learned what the rest of us would later: that Katie Sullivan was so sick in love with Mr. Malagon that she had once physically harmed herself when she believed that Mr. Malagon was seeing the Spanish teacher at Central High. What Smurf didn’t know was that Katie Sullivan had a plan of her own, one that involved her running away to live with her college-aged friend in North Carolina, a scenario we had to believe Mr. Malagon would’ve found juvenile. The plan as Smurf had designed it in his mind was simple: Katie Sullivan would keep Mr. Malagon away while Smurf sneaked back into Garden Lakes before Mr. Hancock’s return. He would skip breakfast on Monday, as would Mr. Malagon, owing to the eyedrops Katie would mix into a vodka tonic for Mr. Malagon the night before. Smurf would catch Mr. Hancock outside of chapel. Mr. Hancock would be surprised, and Smurf would explain that Mr. Malagon had accepted Smurf’s apology and that he and Mr. Malagon had worked out the punishment, which would be executed once school commenced. He would then pay a visit to Mr. Malagon, who would be recuperating from his stomach trauma, and hint that he knew about Katie Sullivan without having to threaten to use the information—he still admired Mr. Malagon and did not want to embarrass or demean him in the presence of others—and voilà! His reenrollment at Garden Lakes would be complete.
