All was not well in paradise, and Marc was the snake. I couldn’t believe I felt pangs of sympathetic sisterhood for this child-bride-to-be, this husband-stealing young intruder. Nonetheless, I did.
Mackenzie took a deep breath. Something about the way he’d rearranged his facial muscles made me almost imagine him an insurance investigator, or whatever he was pretending to be. He had the look of one who’d had countless interviews with the mates of men who pawed through the garbage every night. “Things have gotten complicated because we’ve learned that Phoebe Ennis phoned a friend on the evening of her death to wish her bon voyage. This friend has come forth only now because she left that evening on a cruise, and she forgot about the specifics of the call until the unfortunate incident in the house this past week.”
“That woman,” Ashley said. “That woman who redoes your house when it’s for sale. I read about her.”
“Correct,” Mackenzie said. “So did this woman, and it triggered the memory of her conversation with Mrs. Ennis. I must make it clear that we still don’t know if it’s relevant, but in any case, it appears that Mrs. Ennis spoke to this friend about a visitor she expected later that evening.” He paused and looked at Ashley, giving her his premium blue-eyed beam. “It was Thursday evening, December first.”
“Yes?” Ashley said politely when she realized she was expected to say something.
“Given what you’ve just said about the so-called loan, it might interest you to know that during that phone call, Mrs. Ennis mentioned the repayment of a debt.”
“Phoebe Ennis said that? Kind of like a deathbed confession or something.” Her voice was hushed. “Marc would be…he’s pretty upset about losing all that money, and…” She shot a look toward the door when she said his name, as if she shouldn’t have and she was worried about being caught at it.
As soon as this was all over, I was going to invite Ashley to lunch and make her reconsider this arrangement, if she hadn’t reached the same conclusion on her own by then. She was studying abnormal psychology. She had to know her garbage-scanning boyfriend was not normal.
“Not quite a confession,” Mackenzie said with a gentle chuckle. “But an interesting riddle, because she was talking about a debt owed to the visitor she expected that evening, and we don’t know who that was, which complicates the disposition of her estate. The mystery man—or woman—who was to visit that evening is apparently owed that debt, which is, of course, not mentioned in her will.”
“Maybe she paid it!” Ashley looked relieved. “The person came to see her just the way she said, and she settled the issue. Nice, so she could die in peace. Not that it was nice that she did that to herself.”
“That may be so,” Mackenzie said slowly. Slowly enough to think a way around this, I suspected. “But we have no evidence of a payment. No cancelled check, no I.O.U., no large withdrawal from the bank.” He shrugged. “Still, as you say, this may all be irrelevant, and perhaps not worth pursuing, but we do have to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t,’ as they say. If that was her wish—expressed to this friend, who has nothing at stake in this—her wish on the last day of her life, then we must try to support it.”
While Mackenzie, the insurance investigator, trowelled it on, I watched poor Ashley’s face. The mention of money produced a dreamy, wistful look, but she still didn’t know where this was going. She wanted Marc to have been that mystery visitor, owed a great sum and repaid it.
“Only thing is, if he got the money, Marc should have told me, shouldn’t he?”
We said nothing. As far as I was concerned, any wedge I could legitimately drive between these two was a good and honorable wedge.
“It should have made him happy. The inheritance was a kind of cushion, you know? The screenwriting hasn’t been all that great lately, and teaching doesn’t pay enough, given his marital situation. What night did you say it was again?”
Ashley’s voice was like clear running water. Lovely. Maybe she really was a country singer. I had spotted a guitar propped against the far wall. “Marc might have phoned her, although I wouldn’t know how to check. Can’t you go over telephone records?”
“We can and will. We’re just trying to narrow the field,” Mackenzie said. “And the date was December first. A Thursday.”
She stood up and took the fifteen-month planner off the shelf, shrugging, as if telling herself this was her datebook, and how was it going to answer any questions about Marc’s whereabouts or phone calls?
“He teaches Thursday nights,” she said as she flipped pages, “so I don’t think…” Then she wrinkled her brow and shook her head. “Jeez,” she said. “It would have been nice to have Marky be paid back, but it was somebody else. She must have owed lots of people money, then, and that’s awful, but the fact is,” she pointed at a page, “we were in Virginia, visiting my parents.” She looked at Mackenzie. “It was Daddy’s fiftieth birthday that Friday, so we drove down on Thursday evening to be there in time to help Mama set up the next day. Marc had to get somebody to cover his evening class so we could leave late afternoon.” She looked at us. “It was something, that party. Lasted all weekend.”
She suddenly laughed. “I just remembered. Poor Marky was grumpy part of the time because his cell phone fell into the toilet in a rest room while we were on the way south. Of course it was beyond ruined. Had to get a new one. So he couldn’t have even made the call, unless he used Daddy and Mama’s phone. But he wouldn’t have been saying he was coming over that evening, that’s for sure.”
I knew this wasn’t the relevant point, but I nonetheless wondered how Ashley’s Daddy had felt about her beau, who was, I suspected, a few years older than he was.
Mackenzie closed his notebook. There wasn’t anything more to find out. Marc Wilkins wasn’t the mysterious visitor, much as I would have liked him to be, if only to spare Ashley some bumpy growing up.
“Should I have Marc call you?” Ashley asked.
Mackenzie looked as if he were filled with regret. “No need, ma’am,” he said.
“I hope you find the right person,” she whispered. She begged us to take home the rest of the cheese crisps, and I accepted a bag of them. Any man who is monitoring every morsel produced and digested in his household, making his beloved terrified of letting a few appetizers grow greasy, is a man to avoid. I wasn’t all that much older than Ashley, perhaps five years, but I felt like her big sister—her negligent big sister if I didn’t actively warn her off this man, as little good as that ever has done anyone.
“That was clever,” I said when we were outside. “That mysterious phone call to the mysterious friend.”
“All you’ve got to do is find a way to hint that money’s involved, and it does it every time. Unfortunately.”
We walked down the path to the car, and my feelings about the relationship spilled over. “What a waste,” I said. “You’d think, studying psychology, she’d wonder about needing a daddy. She’s going to wake up one morning and realize that he’s nothing but…” Somewhere around then I realized that, speaking of relationships, the other half of mine hadn’t been listening to a word. He had his cell phone out, and was getting ready to speed dial.
“Good thing it’s earlier there,” he said.
I didn’t need to ask where, or who, or why.
“I’ll be a minute before we get back on the road.”
I sat in the car, listening to his soothing murmurs and suggestions from where he stood by the driver’s-side door. His words seemed to come from quite a distance, and I could barely make them out, but they made it clear, once again, that as close and sympathetic as we might be, each of us still had a separate story, or at the very least, variations on a theme.
Mackenzie’s evening, the way he’d tell it, was about finding out what he needed to know so as to get out in time to re-engage with the fracturing of his family and friends. And I, if I’d been asked to describe what had been going on, would have spun my tale around observation and worry about the future
of the young woman in the apartment, and of my husband’s smart and easy way of extracting information. Oh, and perhaps a moment’s consideration of my own time crunch—papers waiting to be marked at home. But while we were inside the apartment I hadn’t given a thought to the people who were living nonstop in his mind.
Maybe that should have made me sad, that renewed awareness of the spaces between people, and the unknowableness of others. But it didn’t, because of the places that weren’t unknown.
I got out of the car and went and stood close to him, and when he clicked the phone shut, I kissed him.
“What’s that about?” he asked me.
“For starters, it’s because you don’t count the cheese crisps,” I said.
Eighteen
* * *
* * *
The day bloomed clear and sparkling, as if winter had reconsidered and backed off a step. Days like this always feel like fresh starts, clean slates, and they promise to provide all the energy you’ll need to get through them.
And it did feel that way. Opal greeted me with her usual sunny enthusiasm and said that it couldn’t be a nicer day, could it now, and she wasn’t one to rush south at the first chill of winter. She enjoyed the seasons, one by one, including this one in particular. “Call me cheimaphilic,” she said.
“I don’t think I can.”
She chuckled. “Worse comes to worst, you get yourself a chittering-bite.”
I stood there, waiting.
“Which one?” she asked.
“Both.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Call me fond of winter—”
“Okay,” I said. “You are fond of winter.”
She closed her eyes in mock annoyance. “And if it’s too cold for you, I’d suggest a bit of bread in the mouth to keep your teeth from chattering.”
“My ignorance is astounding,” I said. “As must be evident on a daily basis.”
She looked down and smiled, then told me that yesterday, once again, the hurricane collections had been remarkably generous. “Or maybe they always were,” she said, and her wrinkles moved into a new, more dejected arrangement. “I thought about it last night, and those adorable children hinted at it, and I think now that we had—have—pirates and brigands in our hallways. Some collectors didn’t make it to me with the full amount, I fear. Plus, the first week I was here I thought it safe enough if I put the money I received in the file cabinet. But sometimes, I have to leave the office for a second. I always close that gate there, but…” The webs of wrinkles on her face deepened until her features nearly disappeared. “If I ever find the wantwit who snatched that cash,” she said, “I’m afraid I’ll have a flagitious reaction.”
“Wantwit,” I repeated. “Perfect. That one shouldn’t be lost.”
“What’s wrong with flagitious?”
“Its incomprehensibility?”
“Wicked or criminal,” she said. “Shamefully so. Doesn’t it sound that way? Why on earth should these gems become extinct?”
“We can’t even blame it on global warming,” I said.
“We’re losing so many of them, all the time, it breaks my heart. I’m just doing my bit to try to push back doomsday,” she said.
If I hadn’t already been in an upbeat mood, Opal Codd’s one-woman fight to save endangered vocabulary words certainly put me into one. The same crystal-clear, effervescent air seemed to fill the classroom as well, and I had a remarkably good homeroom and morning.
By noon, I was able to take a necessary deep breath and eat lunch at my desk while I made a list of things I had to do about Phoebe. I wished we’d never promised Sasha that we’d look into it, but we had. When I’d finished my tuna salad sandwich, I still had time to make a phone call, and tick something off the list.
I thought it was fairly useless talking with Jesse Farmer. I didn’t expect much. He wasn’t on my “M” list, and even without having seen that initial in her book, I wouldn’t think a man who’d murdered a woman he was dating would show up at her memorial with his son in tow. And since Sasha hadn’t heard of Jesse Farmer, I didn’t think it had been a very long-lived relationship. But still, maybe he’d have an idea, shine a light on an aspect of Phoebe that wasn’t yet clear to me. I was indeed grasping at straws, but straws were all I had. I went to the office to check Jonesy’s emergency contact numbers, and walked out into the hallway to phone his father. This wasn’t school business, and I could count on being paid no attention by the students passing by.
Jesse Farmer’s answering machine picked up and I listened to his message, said in the lulling voice of a jazz station DJ. He’d missed his calling, working as he did with antiques. I huddled over my phone, shielding it with my hand because students—loud students—were moving back and forth around me, en route in or out of the school. I identified myself after the beep. “But this isn’t a school-related issue. No problem with Jonesy, so please don’t worry on that account. I’m researching something and I believe you could help me out. I’d love to talk with you if I could, at your convenience.”
Let us hope his convenience dovetailed with my teaching hours. “Could you give me a call on my cell about what time would work? I’d be happy to come to your…” I realized I didn’t know what he did with antiques. If he had a store, an auction house, if he was a restorer. “I’d be happy to come to you.” I gave him my cell phone number. “I look forward to talking with you. Thanks in advance, Mr. Farmer.”
I clicked the phone shut and looked up and saw Jonesy staring at me, gape-mouthed.
“I was walking by,” he said. “Was that my father? That Mr. Farmer you were talking to?”
“I wasn’t talking to him, only leaving a message.”
“Yeah, but my father?”
I nodded.
“Why did you phone him?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” I said. “Honestly. So don’t worry.”
“Nothing to do with me,” he repeated. “Really. You phoned my father.”
“I need information about something that has nothing to do with school and I think he can help me, and really, Jonesy, I think I’ve answered your question.”
He kept shaking his head, watching me, then he mumbled, “Sorry,” and hurried past me, outside.
Rushing off to polar poker, I supposed. Sitting in the park, fingers turning blue. Or, more logically, going to a nearby apartment. Student’s parents out working, nobody home, and an hour to play. Griffith’s apartment, I was sure—until I censored myself for always assigning anything I deemed negative to him.
I returned to my room and forgot about Jonesy till two periods later, when the juniors sauntered into my room, or at least some of them did. Others lagged at the door, eyeing one another, and changing the atmosphere with each step and gesture.
The second bell rang, and I realized that a sizeable proportion of the class was still outside the door, hovering in the hallway, and at its center, as I could have said without looking, was Griffith. I’d never seen him speak with any real heat or energy, never heard him tell anybody what to do or where to be, and yet he remained the core of whatever was going on.
This time, three boys were with him. One spoke, glancing at Griffith while he did so, then he grew silent, as was his friend, while Jonesy gesticulated and turned away from the group.
I tried to think back to earlier in the semester, to see if I’d stored any memories of Jonesy as this constantly agitated young man. I couldn’t, but perhaps that was because I’d been overfocused on Griffith and how much he annoyed me.
Griffith put a hand on Jonesy’s shoulder. He didn’t pull or tug, but the gesture was still a command, high school style, and Jonesy reacted with a glance at him, followed by floor-staring, looking chastised.
“Bell rang, gentlemen,” I called out, and all three faces registered annoyed surprise. I was intruding on their lives.
Once everyone was settled, I collected their Richard Cory papers, and we looked at the two other poems by Robinson in our anthology:
“Miniver Cheevy,” who drank, oblivious to the life around him and “sighed for what was not,” and “An Old Story.”
Strange that I did not know him then.
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign.
I read that verse and couldn’t help myself. I glanced at Griffith, hoping I wasn’t reading something autobiographical. He was paying me no attention. His half-closed eyes were on the book in front of him, though I was sure he wasn’t actually reading along.
He wasn’t my friend. The poem wasn’t about us.
When I got to the final lines:
I would have rid the earth of him
Once, in my pride…
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.
Well, then. It had nothing to do with me, but the class was silent for a moment, thinking about its ideas.
“I want you to give this a try,” I said, and their meditative expressions hardened and grew wary. “Robinson imagined an entire town and populated it with recognizable types. I know you aren’t poets and you aren’t expected to produce something eternal in a week, but I want you to observe and think, so that all of us, collectively, can create our imaginary town and its people. One poem about somebody. You can write it like this last one, the inner thoughts of somebody about somebody else, or paint a brief portrait as with ‘Richard Cory’ and ‘Miniver Cheevy.’ They’re all very short stories, aren’t they? Snapshots. If you’re of a mind to do so, you can also illustrate your poem—show us what your Miniver or Richard looks like.”
“Pepperville,” somebody called out.
All's Well That Ends Page 20
