Margaret and Eddie popped heads into my room before class. “We’ve got all the cash,” Margaret said. “Are we still on for counting?” Eddie asked.
I gave them a thumbs-up. “Mrs. Codd awaits you,” I said. They beamed, first at me, then at each other. I was positive they’d be running a Fortune 500 firm in the foreseeable future. They’d run it now, if someone wasn’t sure to quibble about age requirements. “See you in a while,” I said, and they were gone.
The class discussion went well. I asked a difficult question, demanding enough sophistication to move beyond pure story and consider what Dickens was saying through his characters. “Was he trying to say anything about the French Revolution, or revolutions in general, or other things?”
And at a surprising gallop, we were off and running. At first, they weren’t sure of their ground, didn’t trust their own impressions, but after a while, they gained confidence and were surprisingly insightful.
“Too violent,” a boy said.
“But it was a revolution!” another shouted.
“Yeah, but the good guys turned just as bad as the bad guys in the end. Killing everybody who disagreed. Going out to watch people beheaded like it was a football game.”
“So is Dickens against changing the social system in France? Does he think it was fair before the Revolution?” I asked.
They had a hard time letting each other speak. They remembered the aristocrat who flipped a coin at the man whose child he’d just killed, the starvation of the ordinary people, the worker. When Eddie and Margaret returned, a late entry together that might normally have set off suggestive noises, they were barely acknowledged. I considered this proof of an academic triumph.
“Then, what might he be saying is wrong, or not a good way to go?”
And eventually, we got to the idea of vengeance versus forgiveness, and to Madame Defarge’s role in the novel.
“She was going to kill the little girl,” somebody whispered. “Just because her grandfather had been evil. He was, but now she’d become evil, too.”
“She watched people die and she kept on knitting. Served her right when she shot herself.”
“That’s called poetic justice,” I said, and as I explained the Aristotelian origin of the term, they didn’t flinch. They didn’t flinch when I used the word “irony” either and high-fived when we mentioned the ironic twist of fate that had Madame Defarge shooting herself while trying to kill Miss Pross.
I turned to the board and wrote Shakespeare’s famous phrase, “Hoist with his own petard.” They didn’t flinch then, either.
When I explained that a “petard” was a small bomb or firecracker (and, they were delighted to know, it also meant “an exhalation of intestinal gas”) and “hoist” meant lifted up, they smiled and let that bit of the literary canon slip into their systems.
We were having such a pleasant time, I hated to dampen their spirits with their homework: writing their own opinions of what Dickens was saying about the French Revolution, or about France versus England, or about English conditions at the time. “Think about today’s discussion. Lots of good ideas were mentioned. Use them or come up with your own. You can have any idea in the world, and any opinion, but justify it. Back it up. Give examples and let me understand your thinking.”
Now they looked insulted, as if I’d tossed that coin to them as I killed their babies. It was possible that we were about to have a revolution in the classroom. “Come on,” I said. “You’ve spent this period having all kinds of ideas and giving tons of examples to back them up. All I’m asking is for you to—”
“Write it!” a freckled boy’s agonized voice made his point conclusively.
“It can and should be brief. If you write down a guide for yourself, what the point is that you want to make, why you feel that way, you’re just about home free.”
“In writing? Tonight?” The freckled boy had not been convinced or swayed by my performance.
“Yes. You can’t go through life text-messaging every idea with abbreviations and signs. Imagine if the revolutionaries we’re reading about couldn’t frame an argument, couldn’t make their points.”
They didn’t believe me. After all, cell phones had been invented in order to eliminate the need for written exchanges.
“Write it tonight? Really?” the freckled boy said in a still louder, more incredulous tone.
I nodded.
They sulked and sighed, and I smiled and wished them well. It really wasn’t fair. They went off, overburdened, abused children.
Between classes, I called Marc Wilkins, he who blamed his midlife crisis on Phoebe. I’d Googled him last night before I staggered off to bed, and today I hoped to use the information to see how he’d react.
He made sense as “M.” Phoebe would have been glad to see him, sure she could make things right between them. His claims sounded like a madman’s to me, but maybe he really believed them, believed that she’d embezzled, or kept fake financial records. Maybe he’d come to find what he’d lost.
He taught writing at the University of the Arts, and according to the online class schedule, he had office hours right now. I crossed my fingers and prepared to lie and flatter him sufficiently to get him to see me today.
Nine
* * *
* * *
Thank you!” I said. “I can’t thank you enough for seeing me on such short notice. You’ll never know what this means to me. Everything’s been happening so fast, and I know I’m late about the application process, but I just found out—”
“Whoa!” Marc Wilkins said, not unkindly. We were in his office, or rather, an office he shared with two other lecturers who either used the room on different schedules or were out to lunch. “Ruby, is it?”
The smile he gave me clearly signaled that before this session was out, Marc Wilkins was going to make a pass at me.
“Yessir, Ruby Osgood.” I have no idea where the name came from, but I did not want to risk the chance that he’d listened attentively to his wife’s chatter and had somehow heard of me, or Sasha’s friend Amanda. I was being overcautious, but given that every other sentence I was likely to say to him would be a lie, why not my name as well. “I’m so lucky you were here today and—”
“How can I help you, Ms. Osgood?” He was a good-enough-looking man, well maintained. Sasha said Merilee claimed he had been left a small trust, which cushioned his teaching and writing income. If so, it was all the more infuriating that he was being so petty about the failed business and Phoebe’s role in it.
I looked down at my hands. “I’ve never had the opportunity to go to college, but all of a sudden, I do. And this is where I want to go, and you are the person I want to study with. Uh—with whom I want to study!”
He lifted and cupped my hands in his. “Why me?” he asked softly.
I extricated my hands as gently as I could. “Because my godmother knew you and thought you were so talented. Loved your book, and your movies.” According to the website, he’d written the scripts for two films I’d never heard of, Warbucks and Once Upon a Mesa. My never having seen them meant very little since I saw so few movies. He’d also published a book he called a novel. It was about an unhappily married writing teacher at an urban university.
“And it’s my godmother who’s making all of this possible,” I, or Ruby, said. “Unfortunately—this is very sad, and I don’t mean to trivialize it—it’s because she died and left me money that I can afford to quit my job and study full time now. I had no idea she would ever do such a thing—I didn’t even think she had any money! I know it’s so late for me to be trying to find out about applying, but truly, I just found out about my inheritance and so—here I am! I so want to write for the movies!”
“And you came to me rather than to the admissions office because…?”
“I thought you could tell me how to make myself the best application, and what I’d need—because, like I said, I’d heard of you, and I’m at a loss as to how to proceed.”<
br />
He smiled and patted my upper arm. I smiled back and twisted slightly to dislodge him. “Phoebe, that’s my godmother,” I said. “She admired you and your talent. I’m sad that it took her death for this to happen.”
“Phoebe. That’s an unusual name. You say I knew her? Or she said she knew me?”
I nodded vigorously. “Phoebe Ennis.” I waited, with what I hoped was an expectant smile on my face. When instead he bit at his upper lip and lowered his brow, I resumed babbling. “Maybe you knew her under a different last name. She was married five times. Isn’t that incredible? The last names of her husbands were alphabetical, starting with the ‘A’ husband, and then the—”
“I think I remember her. In fact, I’m sure I do. She knew my wife more than she knew me. I’m sorry to hear that she died.”
“You didn’t know?”
Now he raised his eyebrows, as if I’d just said an amazingly naïve thing. Then he said, “No. I’m afraid not.”
I nodded. “You must have left before she…before she did it.”
“Left where and did what?”
“You must have left her house before she killed herself.”
“What? What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“See, that’s one of the stories I want to try to write. Her life was such a…Well, it was a mess, kind of. And yet she is doing this for me. A kind of redemption, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never visited this woman. I don’t even know where she lives.”
“Really? I wonder what she meant, then. I spoke with her that very day. I think about it a lot, because maybe I could have done something if I’d heard the despair she must have been feeling. But honestly, I couldn’t tell at all. She hid it well. I was going to ask you if you could tell, but you’re saying—”
“Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have me confused with somebody else.”
“I don’t know. I thought she said Daddy Warbucks was coming over. I could swear that’s what she said, and didn’t you write a movie about him? About his early life, before he even met Annie? That’s what she told me. Sounds so clever.”
Bless the Internet.
Either he was the “M” who’d visited that night, and she might have said that—or he’d think my imaginary Phoebe meant it symbolically, that she was referring to the man whose money she had funneled into her hands, her unwitting benefactor. And now mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said when he continued to stare at me. “I’m probably mixed up. She said something about being pleased, about Daddy Warbucks. It turned out to be such a bad night for her, and for all of us who loved her, that I probably got all confused about her exact words.”
He sat forward in his desk chair, his hands clasped. “Let me get this clear. She left you enough money for four years of school?”
“Even better. Four years of tuition and my living expenses. Amazing, isn’t it? Like a fairy tale come true.”
“And you want to write about this? About her?”
“Well, yes, because she was amazing, and I’m interested in character. On getting great characters up on the screen.”
“You need a story as well, you know.”
“See? That’s exactly the kind of thing I need to know—exactly why I have to come here and learn all this!”
“It could be interesting to write it as a mystery. Where did this woman get that money?”
“Great idea because yes, it is a mystery to me! I mean she was a widow, and she’d never had a good-paying job, and her husband didn’t leave her much. Everybody I’ve told was stunned, too.”
He grew pale and his skin had a sick sheen. “You might want to consider a twist in your plot about the magic money,” he finally said. “If it’s ill-gotten gain, your inheritance might be in jeopardy.”
“Ill-gotten? I mean that could be interesting in a script, but it wouldn’t fit her character. I can’t imagine how…”
“Things happen,” he said. “If the money was stolen, for example, there’d be a victim with, probably, a desire for revenge.”
“Stolen! My godmother would never—that’s just not possible!”
He took a deep breath and leaned further forward and patted my knee. “Let’s consider this your first lesson. You must exercise your imagination, envision how anything could happen. That’s what will make you a writer.”
“But—but—”
He shook his head. “I’m glad that you’re interested in getting an education. If you take care of the application process promptly, you aren’t too late. The directions and requirements are spelled out online, or you can go talk to the admissions people now. I’m flattered that your godmother admired my oeuvre.”
I controlled the urge to gag.
“And I wish you much luck. I also wish I could write you a recommendation, but it would be worthless, given that we’ve just met. Aside from that, I am afraid there is nothing I can offer you but my best wishes, and the hope that I see you in my class next year.”
I left, thanking him for his time.
Marc Wilkins was a letch and a liar. It was stupid to lie about knowing Phoebe, let alone knowing she was dead. Only somebody as naïve as my imagined Ruby Osgood would be too dim to check him out and know that his wife Merilee and Phoebe were in partnership in a business he’d underwritten. What was the point of a complete lie?
Marc Wilkins—and his oeuvre—stayed on the list.
I was meeting Sasha at five, but I didn’t want to drive to Jersey at all, and I didn’t want to sit in Phoebe’s cluttered rooms and look at more teddy bears or souvenir spoons. We’d moved through the house yesterday with amazing speed. It was easy, after all, to decide about the large objects, the ones that would be Toy’s primary focus. And even the abundance of what Phoebe would have called “collectibles” was no real chore. No sentimentality was attached to the perfume bottles, though Sasha thought they might appeal to an antiques dealer along with a dozen or more enamel boxes and a group of milk-glass vases. The paintings in their ornate frames were mostly unlikeable—including the one Sasha had so generously given me—and we left their fate up to Toy.
Our decision-making ability accelerated with the hours, and by night’s end, the house was close to inventoried, at least as far as things to be saved, sold, or forgotten were concerned. I went home with the painting and the carton holding Phoebe’s laptop and all the contents of her desk. Sasha had gone home with three cartons’ worth of Phoebe memorabilia, including the silver.
We could have called it quits yesterday, and I thought we should have, but Toy was coming over around five for that last walk-through, or showdown. I was to be moral support in case of a clash of wills or, more likely, a clash of budgets.
Once in my car, I hesitated, debating between going home for an hour or going into the office for the same amount of time. But the thought of Ozzie Bright’s office made me remember that my other act of Sasha–friendship required closure. I had to finish, to Sasha’s satisfaction, the futile investigation of Phoebe’s cause of death. So Bordentown it would be.
The weather was nastier than it should have been at this point on the calendar, with a raw wind blowing off the Delaware, and I wanted to be home, curled on the sofa, or standing by the range, making soup. Even marking papers seemed preferable to spinning wheels in Bordentown, and nothing was helped by the traffic creeping over the bridge.
Nor did I have any hopes that this interview—if it happened—would reveal anything worthwhile. Why would Phoebe have been any more forthcoming with this neighbor than with the other two in her tea-party trio?
I might not have been overly enthusiastic about meeting her, but as soon as Sally Molinari opened the door, she behaved as if she’d been waiting for me all her life.
“Hey!” she said with a big smile. “Glad to see you!”
I hadn’t said a word. Not an introduction or an explanation of my presence, and she ha
d no way of knowing who I was. I had a fleeting moment of fear that she was part of a cult and I should refuse her overly friendly greetings, but then I decided that I didn’t mind being prequalified as good news. What would school be like if all the students greeted me this way? And meant it?
I explained my presence, heavy on the word “investigator” and intimations of an inheritance “confusion.”
She nodded and smiled even more, waving me into her home with one hand as she held the door wide open with the other. “Yes, yes,” she said, “I read mysteries and I know lawyers hire investigators, use them all the time, to sort things through.” I didn’t contradict her because what she said was true, even if it didn’t have anything to do with my presence.
“Come in, come in, make yourself comfortable,” she said. “Poor Phoebe, of course I knew her, and there—sit there. It’s a comfy couch. Or here, on this chair. Or anywhere, really.”
She’d pointed to the sofa, then a wing chair, and I settled on the latter, already feeling a bit exhausted. The living room and what I could see of the dining room behind it, the mirror image of Phoebe’s layout, were filled with heavy pine and maple Early American pieces, with a rag rug on the floor, a dry sink on one wall, rush-bottomed chairs in the dining room, and everywhere, brass accessories. Even what I was sure was a TV cabinet had been engineered to appear to be a Colonial hutch. Every wood surface looked lovingly waxed or polished, and the phrase “controlled comfort” popped onto my mental screen, even though I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Sally plumped a sofa cushion before sitting down on the one next to it. She was an ace homemaker.
The coffee table in front of her held a wineglass and a fraction of a second after she sat down, she popped back up and retrieved a second goblet and a bottle of red wine. “Yes?” she said, already pouring.
“Thank you.” It seemed the polite thing to say.
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