The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  “I saw you,” I said.

  She smiled. That’s what she’d needed to establish. She’d been on TV and she’d been seen. Then she made a face of mock-disgust and waved away my words, as if I’d said something nattering instead of simple fact. “I looked like a tank! TV adds so much weight, I could have died when I saw myself!”

  My turn to wave away her words. “Don’t be—” but she was already bouncing off on her expensive running shoes. It was comforting to know that some things never change, and Edie was one of them. Her thrill at having been on the air was in no way tarnished by the murder of the man who’d caused the demonstration. The important thing was how she looked.

  Think of the Edies throughout history, missing the point as they worried whether they’d worn the right toga while Rome burned, fretted over frayed gloves for the Boston Tea Party, or brooded about whether their bonnets were giving them hat hair at Gettysburg.

  Jake sighed heroically. I turned back to him.

  “Does your father know what happened?” I asked. “And do you think your mother might move back up there now?”

  “She said no,” he answered me. “First thing this morning—she screamed it, really. Said she was staying where Harvey was going to be buried.” He shook his head, bewildered by her, as was I.

  “And your father?”

  “I e-mailed him. I’m sure I’ll hear soon.”

  “Keep him posted.” It was something for me to say, for him to do, not something to hope would yield results. “Let him know your mother could use emotional support.”

  His nod belonged to a person much older than the boy reporter he’d been all year. “Maybe I shouldn’t write that story. It’d be biased. How did everything fall apart all at once? Even Griffin’s being sent away—”

  “His parents don’t seem willing to change their minds about pulling him out. I thought, given the reversal of policy…”

  “It wasn’t ever about that. That was an excuse. Griffin and them, they don’t…they aren’t…they make each other miserable.”

  “You said the Roederers were nice people. That they didn’t hassle the two of you.”

  “They don’t. And they are. But they don’t get along with Griffin. Not on purpose, just…because. You know, he came to live with them when he was pretty old. He isn’t really adopted. They couldn’t. His mother would see him just enough, every few years, so the law said he couldn’t be adopted away. So there were a lot of foster homes. The Roederers knew all that, but if he does anything—normal things—they act like they got a bad seed and they do something rotten back. Like this, like sending him to boarding school. Might as well be reform school. Why does he have to go away, even if they want him out of here? It’s like he just didn’t work out, so too bad, get rid of him, but not so people notice. Maybe so they can move again, like this round’s over, game finished, give back the toys. Maybe Philadelphia and Griffin bore them now.”

  “You make the Roederers sound much meaner than you have in the past,” I said.

  He shrugged. “They’re changing. Everything annoys them. Yesterday, at the TV station, they acted like I was committing a crime, getting out of line when I asked for the tape for my dad, did you see? Like anything you do that isn’t according to their plan is wrong. And this is mean, what they’re doing, isn’t it? Sending him away? Like he hasn’t been in enough weird places already?” He shrugged again. “They’re strung out—Harvey made them that way—and they need a quieter kid. They don’t like to pay much attention, you know? Lots of times, the only way we know they’re home is if Margaret tells us.”

  “Who?”

  “The housekeeper. She’s there, and the maids or the cook, but mostly that’s all. Like they got him and then they didn’t know what to do with him.”

  Jake sounded terminally glum. Poor kid had too much to carry. I would have suggested that he reconsider going home, but I was afraid Betsy’s bullheaded hysteria would be the proverbial straw on Jake’s back. I checked my watch. I didn’t have a first-period class today. My ninth graders were off with their general science class on a trip to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. More precisely, to the Mutter Medical Museum, where they’d been promised such sights as Grover Cleveland’s cancerous jawbone, skeletons of a giant and a dwarf, a collection of swallowed objects extracted from people’s stomachs, and the liver shared by Chang and Eng Bunker, the nineteenth-century Siamese twins. The science teacher had given me a list so that I could use this trip as a writing exercise. Yech. Their teacher, drumming up enthusiasm for a “Scientific Philadelphia” trek, had mentioned the Mutter in passing, and had sparked such interest that he felt obliged to take them there. Who knew what might jump-start a future research scientist? I myself had become intrigued when the teacher told me that Cleveland’s jawbone had been replaced by a rubber one in a secret operation aboard a ship. The press never knew. I imagined what the paparazzi and tabloid shows would have made of that today.

  In any case, I had a free period in which to plan and catch up—and worry about how my missing class would be tomorrow, while we were being observed. But Jake was not free. It was time for him to get going.

  I pointed at my watch. “Why don’t we make our decisions during journalism class? If you decide to stick around.” That gave me till the end of the day, although I don’t know what I hoped for in the interim. A search of the Internet for www.the-answers-to-everything?

  There was no hope or expectation in Jake’s nod, and his stride as he left was aged and defeated. I had to come up with something. And in fact, I already knew what it would be. I should have said it right away. As irrelevant as it might be and as damaging as it could be, Jake had to tell because it might turn out not to be irrelevant at all.

  That’s what Mackenzie would have said. He was becoming my conscience, my Jiminy Cricket. Was that normal? Healthy? Sane?

  I walked down to the office to belatedly pick up my mail. There were, sooner than expected, flyers full of warnings and admonitions from Dr. H. No references to the recent strike were to be made! No class writing while being observed! Three Important Ideas: Activity! Energy! A Positive Impression of Philly Prep!

  One for my eyes only: Miss Pepper—the inflammatory statement by Mark Twain is still on your board!!

  I chucked the flyers. I refused to associate with that many exclamation points. As I walked toward the faculty room for another cup of coffee, I felt a whisper of a touch on my shoulder, and I half turned to face the Latin teacher, Caroline Finney. “My dear,” she said, “isn’t it terrible?”

  Apprehension chilled me. It was not like Caroline to risk being late for class for the sake of gossipy commiseration.

  “Were you as troubled as I when you heard the news about Reverend Spiers?” she asked in a quiet tone.

  I couldn’t answer that, as she knew, so I waited.

  “Because of Jake,” she said even more quietly.

  I turned her words over, looked at them from the other side. “You mean because Reverend Spiers was his stepfather?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  I plowed on. “I’m worried where he’ll go now. His mother seems incapable of functioning on her own, and his father—”

  Caroline tilted her head and regarded me with piercing blue eyes. I felt like one of her students, suddenly transparent, all my mental potholes visible. “No, dear,” she said. “I mean because of what he… Amanda, I’m afraid that if you haven’t already done so, I’m going to notify the police.”

  I’d just had this conversation with Jake, but she didn’t know about Spiers’ threatened blackmail. “Why?”

  “About Jake, dear. Perhaps even if you have already done so. To corroborate, you know.”

  “Why would I have?”

  “Ah,” she said. “So you haven’t. Pity. I’m a bit intimidated by them, you see, and given that you have familiarity with them, I had hoped...”

  “Please, Caroline, I need you to explain.” I thought of Jake, of the world that kept
closing in on him, and a fear as painful as strep rose in my throat.

  She inhaled, shook her head, and exhaled. “I was there, you know. In your room borrowing chalk while he was talking.”

  I got it. But I didn’t want it, so I refused acceptance, as if being obtuse and stubborn would stonewall Caroline Finney, when nothing I knew of ever had.

  “He said he wished Harvey Spiers was dead.”

  “No, not really. Whatever he said was talk. You know adolescents, what they say versus what they mean. You can’t possibly think—”

  “He said that better people were killed all the time, even children, that he could go back to Canada if his stepfather were dead, that his life would be better—as would his mother’s. Whatever the specific words, the boy was full of rage.”

  “He was understandably upset. He’s a teenager—he exaggerates. Hyperbole, bluster, not—”

  “My dear,” she said gently, “I see you’re nearly distraught by the thought, and I understand. I, too, am agitated about it. It’s a moral dilemma. I’m also fond of Jake and, in truth, I was not at all fond of his stepfather.”

  “He’s had such a rough time,” I said. But in my head, a whirlwind deafening me, was the image of Jake hoisting his loathsome stepfather, the man who had him in a bear trap, who was costing him everything he held dear. Hoisting the man up over a bonfire—and nothing that said impossible, inconceivable.

  “Amanda,” Caroline said, “we are a school full of the products of less than optimum parenting. Having not had children of my own, I try to keep my observations on this subject to myself. But whichever direction you’d point, you’d find a child who is neglected in some serious way. Except economically.”

  Griffin. Jake. Half a dozen others. And that without any conscious effort at thinking. Lousy parents, selfish parents, childish parents. You couldn’t use that as an excuse around here, only as a fact of life. The exceptions were the newsworthy ones.

  “If this were only about bad parenting, not murder,” Caroline said.

  Oh, Jake, I thought, and his name cut through me.

  “I have heard,” Caroline was saying, “many children make foolhardy statements, but this was different. Jake’s attitude—his lack of emotion chilled me. I had a dreadful moment thinking I should do something, except I had no idea what it should be, so I talked myself out of it, told myself it was old-lady nonsense, but of course, now I’m consumed with guilt at having said and done nothing at all, and I can no longer ignore the force of those words.” She looked heartsick. “Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur cum mala per longas convaluere moras.”

  I shook my head. It had been too long since Latin I.

  “Ovid,” she said. “It means ‘fight the disease at the start—once the symptoms develop, medicine comes too late, losing effect from delay.’ I’ve known that wise quotation for decades. Why didn’t I act on it, then?”

  “He’s a gentle person,” I said. “His words were harsh, but he couldn’t murder, Caroline. He simply could not!”

  She looked even sadder, her crepe-paper skin pleated and fine around her eyes and mouth. “That decision should be left to people who do that sort of work. Meanwhile…I’m afraid all logic points that way. This crime required brawn and heft along with hate. Someone had to lift that body, to construct and tug on a pulley with the rope.”

  “Jake’s all sudden growth. He’s big, but he isn’t that strong. Honestly.” I sounded pathetic.

  “He’s not yet filled all the way out. That isn’t the same as weak,” Caroline said. “He plays soccer. He and Griffin lift weights, go biking. He told me. He is not weak.”

  And then I felt light-headed, wondering whether Jake’s visit this morning had been honest, or an attempt to implicate Neddy Roederer, or Mother Vivien—or his own mother—anybody else, and to use me for that purpose.

  How had I so quickly come to distrust the person I’d most wanted to protect? I fought a quick and urgent need to cry.

  The bell rang. “I’m sorry to have upset you,” Caroline said, “but I do understand. You are a person who cares about your charges, and I admire that. Unfortunately, we can’t let that blind us. Times like these, situations like these, shouldn’t exist. It’s almost unbearable, isn’t it, when doing the right thing feels dreadfully wrong?” Her voice trailed off as she turned and left.

  She was wrong about one thing. The situation didn’t feel almost unbearable at all. There was nothing almost about this.

  This was, well and truly, horribly and thoroughly, unbearable.

  Nine

  I could barely face Jake in after-school journalism class. I grabbed a few pages out of the pile of article drafts and began proofing one, almost convincing myself I was occupied with the work of checking stories rather than buying a few more minutes and praying for inspiration. Jake wasn’t going to burst into a room full of his peers and demand my instant and full attention, but sooner or later, I had to answer him.

  He came in silently with Griffin, both their faces hollow-looking shells, their minds and emotions missing in action, off-limits to me. I’m sure the concept of aliens assuming human form started with an adult who had to deal with teenagers.

  Given that both their situations involved humiliation by over-visible parents, and generated avid and unwholesome interest wherever they went, I understood their withdrawal. They sat near one another, presumably involved in preparing their big story; except that each time I glanced their way, they were whispering to one another. Nodding, head-shaking, shoulder-poking, debating. They looked like coconspirators. Two boys furious with their parents. One parent down.

  I wished I had somebody to whisper to. I wished someone would whisper wisdom back.

  What was I going to say?

  The universe opted to keep its opinions to itself. I returned to the printout on the desk in front of me.

  ...no more than seven inches of soapy water, face down. The Web site shows photos of the suspects as well, with computerized aging, and they’re a whole lot more interesting than those Have You Seen Me? flyers that come in the mail. This is more like Unsolved Mysteries on TV, except that since a Web site doesn’t have to create a whole drama around it the way TV does, they can list a whole lot more crimes and be even more interesting.

  Too many mores. I red-circled the last two and considered the rest. Not that I was their copyeditor, but I didn’t see any harm in working with a student’s writing style while I had him captive. The drowned woman felt overfamiliar.

  …for example, the case of Chester Katt, whose name and the fact that he disappeared with millions of dollars (which probably left him smiling) has him nicknamed the Cheshire Cat. Chester, a balding man nobody remembers well, apparently masterminded sales of nonexistent Canadian Underwriters policies to large corporations and despite the magnitude of the crime, was never again seen and is thought to have created a false identity and name for the precise purpose of committing the crime. Or take the case of headless Gretchen of the Green Feet, whose death is tied to a silk factory where that precise shade of green was being used on a line of blouses. Why the dye was on her feet has never been explained, but her naked unmarked torso was found…

  Old material. All of it. I felt a flare of anger—a what-does-Jake-think-he’s-pulling? rush. But the real question was what I thought I’d been doing.

  I was reading last month’s copy. Bad enough, but it had taken me forever to comprehend the words I was reading and still longer to realize I’d read them before, including the surfeit of mores.

  At his desk, Jake studied the paper in front of him. I suspected that its words made as much, or little, sense to him as the old column’s copy had made to me.

  Griffin had returned to cropping photos. Their conversation was over, because Griffin was wired to a radio on the table. He must have been listening to a news or call-in program because there was none of the usual humming, foot-tapping, or finger-jiggling of the plugged-in young.

  Jake felt my glance and looke
d up. I smiled and nodded. He started to stand, but Griffin pulled off his earpieces and grabbed Jake’s arm, whispering rapidly while handing Jake one.

  Jake inserted it without pausing to wipe it off. That might be one definition of a really good friendship.

  He listened, closed his eyes, and sucked in his bottom lip. After a moment, he pulled it out, handed it back to Griffin, and shook his head slowly, as if in disbelief. Then he came over to my desk.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Here, next to me.” I waited for whatever had so dismayed him. Of course, it could have been nothing more than a losing sports score, but Jake’s reaction had seemed personal and tinged with shame.

  “My mother,” he said. “She’s talking to radio and TV stations. Crying to them. I just heard her.” He looked down at the desktop and pressed his thumbnail into it, cutting a tiny channel. “They told her they were questioning Mother Vivien, and my mother called her a harlot and the Whore of Babylon and said she’d killed Harvey, as a woman scorned.”

  He looked haunted. When I didn’t respond quickly enough, he said, “She’s my mother and she’s coming off like…”

  Like an hysterical, self-centered jerk who never thought of how her public ranting would affect her teenaged son. Or what earthly good it would do except momentarily relieve the pressure inside her and make strangers who didn’t care feel sorry for her.

  Jake’s bony nose and cheekbones flushed. “Why’d she have to call the TV and radio people?”

  “They probably called her,” I said, as if that made everything all right. I shook my head, glad that we’d passed the point where I had to give Jake any opinion of his mother or her actions.

  “She—Mother Vivien—called us early this morning. I mean, Harvey hadn’t been dead but a few hours. She wants our house. The Moral Ecologists own it. She said we couldn’t live there anymore. And my mother just told the entire world that, too.” He closed his eyes. “Like I want everybody to know I’ll be homeless soon.”