A Student of Living Things

by Susan Richards Shreve

  “He makes me mentally ill.”

  She warmed her hands with the coffee cup breathing in the steam.

  “So,” she began, avoiding my eyes, hers focused on the wall, “I went into your bedroom for the first time yesterday.”

  I had been expecting this.

  After I got rid of the animals and moved into Steven’s bedroom, shutting the door to my own, I had only gone back once a day for the bird. The praying mantis had died, and I’d tossed her in the rose-bushes outside my door.

  Julia had been too distracted to notice the changes I’d made, but I knew that one day she’d go into my bedroom and I would hear about it.

  “Everything’s gone except that stupid wingless bird.”

  “I know that.”

  “The plants are dead. Now, that’s a waste of money.”

  I took a banana from the fruit bowl, wondering how much to say.

  “I cleaned my room.”

  “What was to clean, Claire? That was your life, not just a room. You don’t pack up your life in boxes.”

  “It’s my life.”

  “And the stinking mice and the rat whose life you promised to save.”

  “The mice were field mice, and I put them in the field. I took the lab rat back to the lab.”

  “No you didn’t,” Julia said, looking at me directly, her eyes flashing. “You put it outside, probably in the garden. A domestic rat who had no idea how to fend for herself.”

  “Why do you ask if you already know?”

  “I don’t already know,” she said. “I can just imagine you doing it.”

  She had gotten up from the table to dump her coffee in the sink.

  “I can’t take care of living things any longer,” I said.

  “In that case I’ll make your room into a music room for Milo’s miserable piano.”

  I put my dishes in the dishwasher, brushed the crumbs off the kitchen table and stuffed a bunch of grapes into the top of my backpack.

  “Good idea?” she asked.

  “It’s your house,” I said.

  She was looking at me then, her cape over her shoulders, her purse and papers under her arm. “So is that what you’re wearing to school today? A new persona. Why not?”

  “These are Lisha’s clothes,” I said.

  I could tell she was considering saying something mean and thinking better of it.

  “I need a change,” I said, stopping short of explaining myself.

  “Your legs are too long for short skirts,” she said. “But who am I to say?”

  Milo had come into the kitchen, Bernard hurrying behind him. “We have gang wars in Adams Morgan. I heard it on the radio,” Milo announced.

  “Gang wars,” Bernard said, out of breath. “I heard it, too.”

  “Fighting on Columbia Road. They killed a bus driver last night. Be careful,” Milo said to me.

  “I don’t go near Columbia Road,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I don’t worry about anyone any longer.” My mother opened the back door. “Nothing to be gained.”

  I watched her car pull out of the driveway and then went back to Steven’s bedroom, taking the letter I had written to Benjamin Reed from between the pages of Civil Disobedience in Emerging Democracies, where I’d slipped it before I went to sleep.

  The book, turned to page 267, was on the table beside Steven’s bed. At night when I couldn’t sleep, I’d read those pages, my body filling the space on the bed he had occupied, believing that these pages were ones he had been reading the night before he died.

  I zipped the letter into the pocket of my backpack and called Milo to say that I was on my way.

  In the car Milo talked about his new piano and how he’d looked up the Mozart he wanted to play on the first evening the piano was in place between the windows in the living room—a sonata, number K.332, one he knew well and would play while Julia was cooking, the candles lit, the wine poured, the smell of dinner cooking, sometimes burning, he laughed.

  We dropped Bernard off at the Tenleytown Metro and headed to Foggy Bottom.

  “I have this plan, you see,” Milo was saying. “Are you listening, Claire?”

  “Yes, listening,” I said, my face pressed to the glass, the windows half closed, the wind blowing my hair on top.

  I was thinking of the conversation I would have with Victor Duarte as soon as I got to school.

  We came into Washington Circle from Twenty-third Street, threaded our way through the rush-hour traffic headed downtown, and as we were exiting the other side of the circle beside the hospital, there was Victor walking alone just behind a group of young women, as if we had planned it this way.

  “Stop here, Milo,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt. “I just saw a friend.”

  “Here?”

  “At the corner on Twenty-third. I’ll walk to the library.”

  He pulled over, coming to a stop.

  “I had so much more I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Should I pick you up at six again?”

  “I’ll call you at home if I need a ride,” I said, already thinking of plans with Victor. “I don’t know how late I’ll be.”

  Jumping out of the car, I waved good-bye and rushed ahead to catch up with Victor, my heart racing.

  Milo’s car was just out of view when Victor crossed my path, his hands in his pockets, walking at a clip.

  “Victor,” I called, threading through the crowd of students, and he turned around.

  At first he looked at me as if we’d never met, his lips tight across his face, his eyes darker than I remembered, expressionless.

  “Hi,” I said quietly, and, feeling the need to introduce myself, added, “Remember? Claire Frayn.”

  “Of course I remember.”

  I fell in step.

  “I just saw you through the window of my uncle’s car and jumped out, hoping we could talk.”

  “I’d like to talk, but I’m in a hurry,” he said. “Later, maybe.”

  “I have something to show you.”

  I was as tall as he was, but, walking beside him, I was taken by the size and strength of him, the hair on his arms, the weight of his jaw, his enormous hands.

  “I’m headed to work,” he said. “Later would be much better.”

  “We can’t talk now at all?”

  “Five minutes. No more or I’ll be in trouble.”

  He tilted his head to the right, indicating a coffee shop, and I followed him in.

  “I have this reputation for lateness,” he said.

  I slid into a booth and opened my book bag, taking out the letter I’d written.

  “Aha.” He opened the envelope. “So you wasted no time.”

  “The whole idea came to me last night when I was taking a walk in my neighborhood and got lost. I was thinking Sophia Lupe should be a good Catholic girl, proper and faithful but longing for something more.”

  “A provocative novitiate, yes?”

  “I don’t know the word ‘novitiate.’ ”

  “A student nun in training for her marriage to Jesus. You understand ‘provocative’?”

  “Yes. Sophia is provocative.”

  “That’s all you need to know.”

  He read the letter quickly and put it back in the envelope. “You’re an actress,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I could tell when I met you that you were a closet actress.”

  “Oh, no I’m not. I’m a terrible actress,” I said.

  A literalist is how I had always thought of myself. Someone who looked at the visible world as the final truth. But what did I know? My familiar body, long legs, short torso, small shoulders, no flesh. My turn of mind for natural history was in the process of changing. No telling what new character might be revealed. Perhaps Victor Duarte could see things in me beyond what I knew of myself.

  “You’ll need to set up a box at the post office in Foggy Bottom, since you don’t want letters from Benjamin Reed coming to your home. Send the letter in care of the music departm
ent at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and cross your fingers.”

  “Do you like what I wrote?”

  He smiled, getting up to leave. “If I were Benjamin Reed, I’d be on the next plane.”

  I leaned back against the leather cushion of the booth, laying my hand lightly on top of his, surprised at my own boldness.

  “You’ve given me a mission,” I said quietly.

  “Our mission,” he said, taking his hand away. “I loved Steven Frayn like a brother.”

  I believed him. When I consider now why I would have trusted a stranger, when the complications and clues and foolish chances I took without a second thought roll through my mind like the credits at the end of a movie, what I did is still possible to understand.

  I needed to believe him. I had lost my way.

  Victor got up from the booth and put down a dollar tip on the table.

  “I’m off now,” he said. “We’ll be in touch. But carefully, you understand.”

  “I don’t exactly understand,” I said.

  “The FBI is looking for your brother’s murderer. That’s right isn’t it?”

  “They call with questions and come over to speak to my parents. Maybe once a week. But I’d never tell them about Benjamin, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’d be normal for you to tell them that we’ve met, that I’ve suggested Benjamin Reed might know who killed Steven. They look for leads.”

  “So you want us to do this mission by ourselves?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said.

  At the Foggy Bottom branch of the post office, where I went after I left the coffeehouse and before chemistry, arriving late to lab, I paid three months in advance for Box 1330, addressed the envelope to “Benjamin Reed, Music Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor”—writing in a loopy, romantic hand instead of my usual small, crabbed cursive—wrote “S. Lupe, Box 1330,” et cetera, got stamps and stuck the letter in the slot marked OTHER DESTINATIONS.

  As I walked though the front door of the post office onto the street, the wind lifted my skirt and I felt a rush of exhilaration. For a moment on this crystal blue morning in May, I had reclaimed my future from Steven’s death.

  2

  When I arrived home, the Rangely upright had been delivered and Milo was playing Mozart. The living room was dark except for the light beside the piano and smelled of broccoli cooking.

  I dropped my backpack in the hall and leaned into the living room to find Bernard sitting on the couch with his hands folded as if he were at a public concert and must comport himself.

  “The FBI is here.” He put his finger to his lips.

  “Why are they here at dinner?”

  “It’s important. They’re in the kitchen with your parents.”

  The agents were standing side by side, their backs against the sink.

  “Agents Brownstein and Burns,” the older of the two said, indicating the smaller birdlike man as Burns.

  I nodded, sliding into the empty chair next to Lisha.

  “I was saying to your parents that we’re sorry to interrupt your dinner hour. We’ve come up with some news, not much, but as a result we need more information from you.”

  My father had pushed his chair away from the table, tipped it back and seemed to be asleep.

  “There was a group,” Julia said to me under her breath. “Remember when I said there was a group and asked you to find out from Steven whether he had belonged to any group we didn’t know about?”

  “I remember.”

  “I was right. There was one.”

  “The group is called DTT, which stands for Demand Tolerance Today. Do any of you know of it?” Agent Burns asked.

  My heart was beating in my throat. I knew about DTT from Victor and glanced at Lisha to see if she, too, had heard of the group, but she showed no sign.

  “As far as we can determine, it’s a national human-rights organization of young left-wing Democrats who take issue with the Justice Department’s position on immigration, among other things.” Agent Brownstein turned to me. “Still haven’t heard of it?”

  I shook my head.

  “They have a Web site, and some of Steven’s essays appear there. Check DTT.com.”

  My mother wrote “DTT.com” under “dairy” on her grocery list.

  “The people we spoke to at the Civil Rights Division had heard of it, but they showed no particular interest, so we think it’s just one of a million political fraternities. Nothing of significance,” Agent Burns said.

  My father pulled his chair back up to the table.

  “The reason we’re here tonight without any notice is a follow-up of the autopsy report that got to us today.”

  “I don’t know that I can listen,” my father said, but he didn’t get up.

  “It’ll be quick,” Agent Burns, the gentler of the two, said, as if quick would make a difference.

  Julia sat on the edge of her chair with the back of the grocery list on the table, taking notes.

  The medical examiner’s report indicated that the bullet entered Steven’s head at an angle, which suggested it had been shot from quite close proximity and below the steps where Steven would have been standing.

  Agent Brownstein drew a diagram, with an arrow representing the bullet entering Steven’s head.

  My father stood up, his hands in his pockets, and paced.

  “We’ve determined that the bullet came from a small storage room with a window in the basement of Phillips Hall. The window has a clear view of the entrance to the library.”

  “What does that mean?” my father wanted to know.

  “It means that we have evidence to continue exploring the possibility that Steven was an intentional target.”

  “What do you need from us?” My father was visibly shaken, anxious for the FBI men to leave.

  “More names. As many as you can think of who might have known your son,” Agent Brownstein said.

  “I told you everyone I could remember,” Julia said.

  “What about neighbors?” Agent Burns asked. “You live in a transient neighborhood, so you’ve had a lot of neighbors in and out.”

  “I’ll try to remember more,” Julia said.

  “We found the teacher you mentioned, but he didn’t remember Steven or much else. Early-onset dementia.” Agent Burns had walked across the kitchen toward the door, and we all stood to say good-bye.

  “The profile of Steven we’ve assembled so far is one of an outspoken, sometimes brash young man willing to have some enemies along the way.” Agent Brownstein’s voice was matter-of-fact. “We’re in search of enemies.”

  “Or a problem,” Agent Burns said. “A window into some undercover life he might have had, and we can’t seem to find one.”

  “He didn’t reveal himself to everyone.” I was upset by all the questioning, which intrinsically had a suggestion of blame. “He was close to his family. To us. To each of us.”

  “That’s very clear,” they said, and after polite exchanges with Lisha and my parents, they left.

  “Is it true that people didn’t know Steven?” Julia asked my father after the FBI agents had left.

  “We didn’t know him well enough, or we would have known he was in some kind of trouble.”

  Lisha leaned forward at the table, speaking for the first time since I’d come into the kitchen.

  “He kept everything to himself,” she said. “Even with all his talking—and he loved to talk—it was never personal.”

  “I knew Steven,” I said, conscious of the thinness of my voice. “I knew him completely.”

  But I had already come to realize that wasn’t true.

  Bernard stopped me as I headed to my room. “Do they have a suspect?”

  “They don’t,” I said, stiffening as he followed me into Steven’s room and sat down beside me on the edge of the bed.

  “But it’s already been six weeks,” he said.

  �
��They just got the autopsy report and think it’s possible that Steven was an intentional target.”

  “You mean someone wanted to kill him?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  I left the bed and sat down at Steven’s desk, busying myself with papers from school, hoping Bernard wouldn’t stay long.

  “Do you think it’s strange that Steven and I both had accidents, two of us in one American family, and no one ever talks about it? Not even my mother.”

  “Yours was an accident, Bernard,” I said patiently, trying to be careful with him because he loved me and I didn’t want to hurt him. “Someone who didn’t know Bernard Wendt, didn’t know that he’d be coming into the 7-Eleven at five-fifteen that afternoon, minutes after the culprit had put a small explosive behind the cereal boxes. You just happened to be picking up Cheerios when the bomb went off, blasting the 7-Eleven so a girder fell on your leg. It was an accident.”

  “I know what happened because I was there.”

  “Steven was different. He was killed by someone who wanted to kill him, and that’s not an accident.”

  “I just think it’s strange and upsetting.”

  “It is strange and upsetting.”

  “Sometimes I get very confused, Claire.” He got up from the bed.

  “That’s why I’m glad you’re my cousin,” he said, smiling at me sweetly, as he did even when I was having the most terrible thoughts about him. I should have reached out and hugged him then, which was what he wanted from me, but I turned away and opened my chemistry book, listening for him to leave.

  After Bernard was gone, I called the number Victor had given me, which a recording said was out of service. I tried it again and received the same report. When I checked, the operator said the number had been disconnected. I looked up Duarte in the phone book. There was one Victor in northeast Washington—three months dead, according to the woman who answered the phone. I called a V. Duarte without an address but didn’t leave a message when the voice on the answering machine was foreign. There were two other Duartes, Martin on First Street and Estella on Livingston. I was copying their numbers in a notebook when Lisha walked in.