by Chris Knopf
“So does Ross. And Lionel Veckstrom. Actually, they’re not wondering. They’re sure that Milhouser, in a drunken rage, burned down her house. And that a few nights later you confronted him and killed him. It hangs together very nicely.”
“That didn’t come up at the arraignment.”
“They don’t want to talk about it till they gather all the evidence and build their case.”
“Then who told you?” I asked.
“A little birdie.”
“You mean a big birdie with a blond crew cut.”
She smiled a tight-lipped smile and just looked at me.
“Okay,” I said, “so about this DEC thing.”
She pointed her pen at me.
“That’s not important now,” she said.
“You’re right. Why should I give a shit.”
“I’ll see what I can get out of McDaniel when he’s not trying to impress his homies.”
“Thanks, cutie.”
I spent another hour playing testimonial ping-pong with her before she had to go to another appointment, for which I was grateful. I don’t think what I said made her very happy, but she kept up a good face. I was glad to be back in the Grand Prix heading west with Eddie in the front seat, his head out the window, oblivious to the tempest this caused in the interior of the car. The air was too cool to be completely comfortable, but warm enough to qualify as another harbinger of spring. I rolled down my own window and propped my elbow on the door frame.
I felt an impulse to keep on driving until I was off the Island and through the City and on my way to other climes. Until I had a vision of being hunted down, pulled over, dragged at gunpoint from my car and returned to Southampton in chains. I had to accept being imprisoned in my childhood home, the place I’d left to engage the outer world, that I’d crawled back to beaten and deranged.
There had to be some weighty metaphorical significance in all that, I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe if I kept reading Kant it would come to me. That might be all my memory- impaired, acuity- disrupted, faculty- degraded brain needed. A little philosophy to postpone the inevitable. The preordained moment when the center of consciousness either shatters or implodes, and like a dying star, shrinks down to a dimensionless point, a singularity where time and space, awareness and love, cease to exist.
TWELVE
I NEVER UNDERSTOOD the sentiment some people felt for their high schools. If you know high school kids, you know they’re a breed overwhelmed by anguish, selfishness, delusion and self-doubt. Not their fault, according to Joey Entwhistle, who said they were simply in a developmental stage designed to thoroughly alienate them from their parents, thereby facilitating the transition from dependence to reproductive vitality. To look back on that with wistful longing was evidence of how delusional that phase of life can be.
For my part, I hadn’t set foot in Southampton High School since the day I graduated. Only now it wasn’t the high school. It was the middle school. I knew they’d built a new high school, but I didn’t know where it was. So I went to my alma mater to ask. The woman at a desk inside the lobby told me the new school was over on Narrow Lane, just around the corner. We didn’t have a desk inside the lobby when I went there, and definitely not one with a large woman in a blue security blazer with a suspicious look on her face.
“What’s your interest?” she asked.
“Sentimental journey,” I told her.
“Uh-huh. Check in with security and have a good reason for being there.”
The hair piled on the woman’s head was the color of richly oiled walnut. It would have been more impressive if paired with a face not covered by half an inch of spackling compound.
“Do you know Rosaline Arnold?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Rosaline was the school psychologist. She’d taken a few years off to care for her father. He’d started selling real estate in Southampton during the Truman administration, but after hitting ninety-five was forced to give it up. I’d recently read his obituary, so I guessed Rosaline would be back on the job. I didn’t know her well, but she struck me as the type who would return to her professional responsibilities as soon as her father no longer needed her.
“She still at the high school?”
“Yup.”
“I’d like to see her.”
“For sentimental reasons?”
“After a fashion.”
I wondered how Rosaline fared in a high school environment, the type not always distinguished by kindness and tolerance. On first meeting few realized how attractive she was, having trouble seeing past her nose. A big nose. Big enough to challenge the powers of exaggeration.
The security lady leaned back to take a look at my own nose.
“You two related?” she asked me.
“Same species.”
“No shame in it.”
“Think she’s there now?”
She shrugged.
“That’s a question for Rosaline. Though don’t expect answers. All shrinks do is ask questions.”
“That’s the Socratic method.”
“Well, everybody’s got a scam.”
The new school apparently wasn’t all that new, having been built around 1974. It was made of nicer-looking brick than the high school I went to, though it was not much more of an architectural triumph. More like a standard pre-postmodern, nominally Bauhaus institutional fortress.
They also had a desk in the lobby, this one with two people in blue blazers, both large men appropriately scaled up from the security staff at the middle school. Their hair wasn’t as colorful and their blazers barely buttoned over their distended guts. They watched carefully as I approached the desk.
“Is Rosaline Arnold here?” I asked.
They looked at each other, puzzling over the question. The taller one frowned.
“Who?”
“Rosaline Arnold.”
“Who’s that?”
“The school psychologist. I think she works here.”
“Who’re you?”
“Sam Acquillo.”
“She know you?”
“I think so. Let’s ask her.”
“You know Rosaline Arnold?” the taller one asked the shorter one.
He stuck out his lower lip like Maurice Chevalier and shook his head.
“Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“You have a directory of people who work here? Maybe she’s in there.”
The taller one thought about that.
“I think they got a directory in the office. But we don’t have one here.”
He looked like a man who’d just solved a problem.
“If I can go to the office, I can look at the directory. Or maybe Rosaline’s working there and that’ll be that,” I said, brightly
That made them both unhappy.
“This is the Southampton High School,” said the shorter one, as if that explained everything.
“Right. I went here,” I said. “Well, not here, at the other school on Leland.”
“That’s the middle school. This is the high school.”
“Right. I went to middle school in the Village. In the building they turned into Town Hall.”
I knew I shouldn’t have said that, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to recoup.
“I got an idea,” I said. “One of you stays here to control the entryway. The other escorts me to the office, where we’ll either check the directory, or we’ll get to see Rosaline Arnold, which I can tell you is worth the experience.”
Their unhappiness descended into gloom. Resistance hardened across their faces.
“I got another idea,” I said, quickly. “Call the office on your cell phone,” I pointed at the phone hanging off the tall one’s belt. “Ask them if Rosaline is there and if she’ll come out and get Sam Acquillo.”
Then I stood back a step and raised my hands, as if to say, problem solved. The tall guy bought it, hoping it would get rid of me. As it turned out Rosaline was there,
and willing to escort me into the inner sanctum.
The first thing you’d probably notice as she walked toward you, backlit from a big window at the other end of the hall, is the catwalk posture and pleasant swing of her hips. It caused her full print skirt to wash from side to side, which drew attention to the pleasant curves above her narrow waist and her slender ankles, nicely staged by a pair of fabric wedges. It was only when she drew closer that you’d see the sumptuous aquiline shear of her nose, an extravagance of proboscis sufficient to cause the wary to step back a foot or two when it entered a room.
“Sam Acquillo,” she said as she approached. “Still upright and inappropriate.”
“Can’t have one without the other,” I said, accepting her handshake.
“You found me.”
“Not hard. You told me where you worked.”
“I suppose you want something from me.”
“I do, but it’s also nice to see you.”
“Let’s go someplace more comfortable,” she said, pivoting lightly on her toe and heading back down the hall. I fell in behind.
“We didn’t have comfortable places when I went to high school,” I said.
“Let’s say relative comfort might be a better description.”
The faculty lounge never had the exotic allure for me that it did for the other kids at school. I don’t know what they thought was going on in there. Maybe it was the word “lounge,” which described types of rooms in restaurants and hotels that you weren’t allowed to go into. I figured we were all a lot safer when our teachers were congregated in there, distracted from their official duties, temporarily less of a peril.
My friend Billy Weeds and I broke into the school one night and had a chance to check out what the faculty lounge was really all about. A bunch of couches, some work tables and a refrigerator filled with Coca-Cola, which in those days you’d be as likely to score at school as a whiskey sour. But that was about it.
The place Rosaline took me to wasn’t much different. Better furniture, some pretentious-sounding books and nice-looking glossy brochures from the American Federation of Teachers. No Coke.
Rosaline swept toward a cozy seating area and settled like a swan into a dirty leather couch. I dragged over an office chair.
“Once I get into a sofa I have trouble getting up again,” I explained.
“I’ve kept track of you,” she said, smoothing her skirt across the tops of her thighs. “You look better than I thought you would, given what I’ve read.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“I don’t. For example, I don’t believe you killed Robbie Milhouser.”
“Finally.”
“Others don’t agree?” she asked.
“Only those who want the best for me.”
“Typical.”
“My condolences on your dad.”
“Thanks. But no condolence necessary. He was due,” she said. “By the way, he kept track of you, too. In the newspaper. He liked you. I think because you talked to him like he was a regular person, not just a very old man.”
“Very old men are just regular people who manage to live a little longer.”
“I know Jeff Milhouser, but not his son.”
“And you don’t think I killed him?”
“Not enough motive.”
“So if I had a motive, you think I’d do it,” I said.
She sat back in the couch and crossed her legs, in the process managing to pull the hem of the skirt up and over her knee. Her shin looked a mile long.
“Maybe.”
“That’s helpful.”
“Sorry. I wouldn’t make the best character reference.”
“Actually, you’d be a notch up from what I’ve gotten so far,” I said.
“The prosecutor is quite confident.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“She told me.”
“She did?”
“Edith Madison’s a friend of mine. The DA. She used to be in my book club.”
“Haven’t met her. Only her ADA.”
“One of her attack dogs.”
“I guess so. Cute pup.”
“How’s Ross treating you?” she asked.
“Friendly enough. The cop on the case, not so much.”
“Lionel Veckstrom?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?” I asked.
“He wants to date me.”
“Could be some interesting pillow talk.”
She threw her head back and looked at the ceiling, laughing a silent laugh.
“Never happen. Can’t bear him.”
“Did you tell Madison you knew me?”
“Yes, at great peril to our friendship. She harbors rather a dim view of your mental stability.”
“Based on our long association?” I asked.
“Based on the historical record. Prima facie. It’s not just that you threw away a good career, and a long-term marriage, and reduced yourself to a hand-to-mouth existence.”
“If you want to look at it that way.”
“But how you did it.”
“With style?”
“As I said, a question of mental stability,” she said.
I noticed as she tapped the arm of the couch with her long middle finger that she’d grown out her nails and painted them a deep, glossy red. Before now, I’d only seen her in baggy sweat clothes and T-shirts, hair pulled back or unbrushed, no make-up, hands chapped from constantly cleaning and sterilizing her father’s house, obsessed with the mortal consequences of infection.
“She can share all this with a friend of the accused?”
“Are you and I friends?”
It’s true I hadn’t seen her for a while, ever since I took up with Amanda. I hadn’t been conscious of it, but I guess I’d steered clear to avoid misinterpretation. Or temptation.
She smiled at me.
“Don’t panic,” she said. “We’re still friends. Of a type.”
“I guess I deserved that.”
“You didn’t come to Dad’s funeral, but you sent a note to the rabbi, who slipped it to me. You didn’t sign it, but I knew who it was.”
“Never try to get one past a psychologist.”
“I told Edith about it. Didn’t do any good.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“And to answer your question, she didn’t share much with me. Just the vaguest outline. But I could fill in the blanks. I know an awful lot about you.”
“Awful waste of time.”
“I’ve had time to waste. Basically lived on the Internet. Doing research, after a fashion. You were one of my favorite subjects.”
She looked at me with her soft, sensitive eyes, made more so by the dominating presence of the mountain ridge in between. They were moist blue, filled with commingled sadness and humor.
“Probably know more than me,” I said.
“Definitely,” she said with some conviction.
“Puts me at a disadvantage.”
She considered that.
“Yes, of course it does. Not a place you like to find yourself.”
“See, I didn’t know that,” I said.
When she smiled, razor-thin crow’s-feet flared up from the corners of her eyes.
“What I don’t know is why you’re here,” she said. “Specifically.”
“You’re good at research. Already been stipulated.”
“It bothers you that I’ve researched you,” she said.
“A little.”
“Did I ever tell you why I broke up with my husband?”
“No,” I said, knowing I’d never ask and would pray she’d never bring it up herself.
“Whenever I pressed him on anything, he’d push back. And the harder he pushed back, the more I pressed. The more you try to protect your secrets, the more curious I get. It’s a problem of mine.”
“You need a psychologist.”
“Or something to research,” she said. “A place to put all that curiosity.”<
br />
“What do you know about Southampton High School? Say about twenty-five years ago.”
“Robbie Milhouser was a student,” she said.
“I’m curious about what he did. Who he hung out with. His record.”
“His confidential record.”
“Yeah. The good stuff.”
“Which of course I can’t reveal.”
“Of course not. All you have to do is read it, then we sit around and you tell me what you think.”
“Why don’t I photocopy the file and bring it over to your house?”
“I don’t want the file,” I said. “I want to know what you think.”
“No one else cares.”
“About what you think?”
“About Robbie Milhouser,” she said, smiling again. “No one has asked.”
“Why would they? High school was a long time ago.”
“Then why are you?”
“Curiosity.”
She stopped tapping her fingers, but then started twitching her foot. She looked at it and frowned, perturbed by the errant body part.
“I am a very good researcher,” she said, looking back up at me. “If modesty will allow. Lucky for you, I’m also open to barter.”
“I liked your other business model. I asked you for favors and you did them for nothing.”
“My accountants have encouraged me to make adjustments. Anyway, your balance with me is paid in full.”
“With what?”
She pointed to her nose.
“This.”
Like she said, Rosaline knew me a lot better than I knew her. What I mostly remembered was sitting around her father’s living room, drinking tea or rye depending on the hour, and comfortably marking the final ticks of the old man’s clock.
“Okay. Now you’re out ahead of me.”
“The offended always has a clearer recollection than the offender.”
“Ah, thoughtlessness. Now I get it.”
“You told me I’d been hiding my insecurities behind my nose, so to speak. And if I fixed it, they’d have to live out in the sunlight. Or words to that effect.”
“You call that offensive? I can do better than that.”
“I took your advice, but did you one better. I kept the nose and shed the insecurities.”
From the way she looked, and was looking at me, you could almost believe her. Even if part true, it was all for the good.
