The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  I cleared my throat. “Jake,” I said. “I promised to talk with you about—”

  But Griffin walked over and waited next to the desk. “Yes?” I asked. “What’s up?”

  “Mind if I cut out early, Miz P.? I could crop those shots next time and print the ones from this morning. There’s a whole lot of other stuff I have to do.”

  Jake, who’d seemed lost in private thoughts, swiveled. “Hey, man, you said we’d talk more first, that you wouldn’t go ahead—”

  Griffin waved him off. “No problem,” he said, still with that vague smile. “It’s under control, so chill.” He looked at me and grinned. Griffin was not a grinner. “Jake likes to worry, doesn’t he?” He sounded mildly amused. Griffin wasn’t one to utter an unnecessary word to a teacher, either.

  He was conning me. Playing the role of a hail-fellow-well-met regular guy. But why? What were the two of them hiding? “It’s okay,” I said. “Do what works for you.” Journalism, an elective, is a loose after-school activity. No need to be rigid.

  Jake sent one final, fiercely emphatic glare and shook his head, No! Then, after catching my eye, he focused down on the desk, at the canyon his thumbnail was digging.

  “What’s…” I began. “You guys need to talk to one another?”

  Jake kept his head bowed.

  Griffin looked at him, then at me. “Not necessary.” Another smile. Why start with the happy face now, close to the end of his stay here, facing virtual exile? “It’s like this,” he said to me. “I have to do stuff for my parents. I promised to help them, and they’re waiting. Jake’s disappointed—he wanted to do something together.”

  Definitely a con. Griffin’s parents were out of town looking at boarding schools. Tea Roederer had told me so.

  “Griffin, I haven’t had a chance to say how much we’ll—I’ll miss you. I’m really sorry you’re transferring.”

  “Not as sorry as I am,” he said, but his expression remained slightly benign. “I’m not the boarding-school type.”

  “You’ll be a big asset to whatever newspaper they produce,” I said. “And a major loss to ours.”

  “Thanks. Whatever.” He shrugged.

  Jake continued to watch him, his features tight with concern.

  “So…” Griffin said. “Adios.” He left the room.

  “Maybe you should head home, too, Jake,” I said softly. “It must be hard to concentrate and your mother probably needs you.” And a muzzle. “I’ve given your situation thought.” That sounded adult and considered, almost judicial. It suggested contemplative retreats in paneled studies, with considerations of precedent, and it bore no relationship to the moth-thoughts that had fluttered in meaningless confusion through my brain all day.

  As a child I believed that wisdom was a secondary sex characteristic, guaranteed to develop to some degree, like breasts, after puberty. My failure to achieve anything akin to it was one of the bad surprises of real life.

  “If what you’ve told me is true, Jake, if you’re sure that’s what you heard, positive it was said precisely that way—”

  “I know what I heard. Jeez. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then why’re you—”

  I stopped this detour. “Sorry.” I’d sounded as legalistic and quibbling as a shyster lawyer. I had to be braver about this. More straightforward. “I think—even though we don’t know whether your—the reverend—ever spoke to Mr. Roederer, and despite the possible harm to innocent people—” I could not stand hearing myself! Maurice Havermeyer was speaking through my mouth, using me like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Tell the police,” I said. “Let them decide if it’s relevant or not.”

  He looked at me bleakly, his features immobile. After what felt like a long time, he nodded. I could almost feel his marrow dissolve in exhaustion. There’d been the long fatigue of divorce and separation, followed by pretending that out-of-sight, out-of-mind didn’t apply to his long-distance dad. The battle with Harvey, the consistent unreliability of his mother, and now the escalating consequences of her second husband’s death.

  I hated to add to that bone- and soul-weariness, but he needed to be warned. “One other thing.” I took a deep breath. “You should be aware that Miss Finney overheard you express, um, serious hostility to your stepfather on Monday. While you were in my room, before homeroom. Remember?”

  He shook his head, then shrugged. I was sure he remembered why he’d come into my room, but not the words his discomfort had produced. He waited, visibly confused about where I was headed with this. I hated what I had to say and kept looking for loops and detours.

  To Jake’s blank expression was now added exasperation and impatience. “And?” he prompted.

  “I know it was nothing more than talk, Jake. Blowing off steam. I’ll speak on your behalf about it, I promise you, but—”

  “Speak on my behalf? About what? Harvey?” Silence for a moment, and then, “You can’t be serious. She thinks I killed him?”

  I sucked in my lips, as if forbidding them to compound this with more words. “Not necessarily. But maybe.”

  “Why would she?”

  “Because you said people got killed all the time and why not him. Things like that.”

  “Wait.” He stood up. When he was sitting, and close to my eye level, I always forgot how tall he was. “Why are you telling me this?” He loomed over me, his hands in tight fists.

  Say no, I silently pleaded. Say you wouldn’t, couldn’t have because it’d be wrong. Say no.

  Instead, he said, “She heard me shoot off my mouth and she took it seriously. Is there more?”

  I nodded and stood up, but at six-two, he had a solid six inches on me. While my new position felt more equitable than facing his fists had, we were nonetheless not seeing eye-to-eye anymore. Not metaphorically or literally.

  “What?” he asked, although I was sure he knew.

  “She, like you, feels that what she heard may be relevant to the case and that she therefore has a duty to tell the police. About you.”

  He stared at me, his mouth half-open, the metalwork of his braces glinting incongruously.

  He was a boy. Tall, broad-shouldered, man-shaped, but nonetheless, a boy. “I told you,” I said. “I’m in your corner. You can rely on me. I’ll be more than glad to speak on your behalf, to go make a statement now.”

  He looked at me bleakly. I could almost hear his unarticulated thoughts. Or maybe they weren’t his at all. Maybe they were the sound of the air currents around us, of how it was. Or of my own pulse, the inside of my mind.

  “Anytime,” I repeated. “I promise.”

  But I ached for him. My feeble promises were not nearly enough to make up for the repeated insults that he had been and was still being dealt. All term I’d wanted to rescue him, but nothing I could do was enough to compensate for the tiny kernel of doubt that even I held.

  It was not enough. But it was all I knew how to do.

  *

  I was jumpy and melancholy all evening, unable to concentrate on any one task for long. The loft felt fine as long as I knew Mackenzie would ultimately be home to boom around in separate syncopation, fill it up, soften its distant corners, provide motion and color. That was not true tonight.

  I went over tomorrow’s lessons to be certain they were observer-worthy, but lost interest halfway through and didn’t care whether that happened to my visitors as well. I tried watching sitcoms, but they were reruns, even though it was only March. There was a new and unfathomable programming theory, as far as I could tell, making viewing a game show, the object of which was to guess which week a new episode would be shown. I didn’t want to play.

  I read for an hour, the words sliding off each page as I turned it. I wished Sasha were not so consumed with Dr. Perfection and that I was out with her, enjoying human companionship. “I am seriously bored,” I told Macavity.

  He stalked off. Another country heard from. “I’m sorry,” I protested. But t
he truth was, his snoozing was also a rerun and not sufficiently entertaining.

  I paced. Tidied things that were not messy. Relocated objects and stood back to test the effect. I considered the tall windows facing the street, their plain shades. Window treatments. There was a boring topic that could occupy a lot of time. Mackenzie’s shades were stark and institutional, near-clones of those in my classroom. I didn’t like lowering them because then the street side of the loft looked blank, as if its eyes had been blinded.

  Nonetheless, I needed to enclose this too-large space that made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I went over and looked down at the street, several stories below, to see what was happening in the greater world.

  And saw a man happening. That man. The one who’d been across from school too often. The shy lurker. The round one with a pale face that stared up at me. His head, covered by the Russian-style hat, ducked quickly.

  Coincidence, I reassured my suddenly quaking self. He happened to be around here and he stopped and unkinked his neck muscles. He hadn’t really been looking up here. It wasn’t me he’d been watching from the Square, or now. After I’d repeated the idea several times—and lowered the shades all the way—I half believed myself.

  By the time Mackenzie called, I once again had turned the TV on, waiting for updates on Harvey Spiers’ murder, fearing I might see Jake or Neddy Roederer being hauled off in handcuffs.

  I muted the set and wandered around the loft with the cordless phone, listening to C. K. offer the unsurprising news that he would not be home tonight as hoped. Even in Kansas, red tape could hog-tie a man, hairs could be split, and insignificant clerical errors could delay the extradition of a multiple murderer.

  He asked about Spiers, whose manner of death had been sufficiently grotesque and innovative to win it national coverage.

  I transmitted what little I knew, pacing and talking. Touching pieces of furniture as I passed, as if their constancy and stolid reliability turned them into talismans.

  And every time I was near the front wall, I peeked outside, through the side of the shade. The Russian hat was nowhere to be seen. He’d been a symptom of my jumpiness.

  “Roederer,” Mackenzie said. “You’ll see.”

  “Vivien is the prime suspect, but Jake, oh Lord…” I updated him on that fog-filled possibility, which led us to the issue of Jake’s telling the police about Harvey’s blackmail threats.

  Mackenzie’s ethical system was shaped around the letters of the law and didn’t include many shades of gray. It differed in subtle ways from Caroline Finney’s, but like hers, it was clear-edged and definitive. I wanted his take on Jake’s obligations.

  “Absolutely,” Mackenzie said. “He has to tell them. Just ’cause somebody loves books doesn’t mean he can’t kill. Especially when facing the threat of prison.”

  “Come on. That was Harvey Spiers’ craziness talking. Has anybody since Oscar Wilde gone to prison for sexual preference?”

  “How about scandal, then? How about having his wife—the one with the money—find out about extramarital affiliations? How about the possibility of deadly viruses?”

  “Neddy Roederer is not the murdering type. He has good values. Even just the news of it—he looked ravaged this morning.”

  “You sure it was the news? Or fatigue? Or remorse?” His voice was far away and uninvolved. I resented his ability to be dissociated.

  Maybe he also regretted the distance because his voice softened, came closer. “I love his library, too,” he said. “And his aesthetics. And his charity. But don’t let that interfere with what’s staring you in the face.”

  What was truly staring me in the face at the moment was Mother Vivien on TV. QUESTIONED, it said under her head shot. Her cascading curls were more incongruous than ever, as the hard-worn, painted face grimaced. “Wait a sec—” I turned up the volume.

  “—have revealed prior convictions. The self-proclaimed Mother Superior of the Moral Ecologists, a.k.a. Vivien Sessternass Devine Butterick Conkle, was previously convicted for fraud, as well as assault and battery.”

  My, oh, my. I transmitted the news to Mackenzie.

  “No wonder she only uses one name,” the man with no name said.

  Vivien was shouting, the veins ropy on her neck, her cerise lips grimacing. She looked like a gargoyle with blue eyeshadow.

  “You know,” C. K. said, “if you’d get online, you could e-mail me every detail when I’m out of town.”

  This was not the time for a tech vs. no-tech debate. I hadn’t even included the computer in my talisman-touching routine. It seemed happy with its own company, its bubbly screen saver looking like a party it was giving itself.

  Mother Vivien’s tears didn’t match her words. “God will smite anyone—will send them to eternal damnation—who doesn’t forgive past sins well-atoned for and respect spiritual love! What we had was God’s own gift to us, and we were partners in this holy crusade. The reverend was my other half, my—”

  Even I’d had enough of her lies. Harvey hadn’t seemed God’s loving gift, her other half yesterday in the greenroom. Back down went the volume. And in what felt like too few minutes, I was once again alone. Except for Macavity, who was either still sulking at my insult or, more probably, since it happened every time the man left, simply pining for Mackenzie.

  And except, when I took a last peek out the side of the window shade, for the round man in the Russian hat, who was back on the corner. Looking directly up at me.

  Ten

  The man wasn’t there in the morning. That turned out to be the day’s only good news. Otherwise, Friday, a.k.a. Open House, was anything but T.G.I.F. It seemed to last two or three months and felt like a combination of conjuring and tap dancing: all an act.

  It was quiet on the streets—the student protests were over and the Moral Ecologists hadn’t yet regrouped if, indeed, they intended to return. It was quiet inside as well. At least, inside our brains.

  The only rational lesson plan would have been to have the students talk through, then write about the week’s events. With both sides taking to the streets, decisions made and rescinded and finally, the murder—there’d been enough to fill entire notebooks and years of therapy. We could have sorted through the tangle of events; pulled out ideas about freedom of speech, censorship, ethics, the meaning of democracy, individual responsibility—tons of big issues; dealt with the emotions generated; and had an outstanding lesson in organizing thoughts. In fact, it would have gone to the very heart of what we were supposedly learning in a Language Arts classroom.

  But no. The staff was under strict orders not to mention the “recent troubles” and to have only “active” lessons, meaning in Havermeyerese, “visibly active”—which writing, with its long sighs and hunched-over bodies and one hand moving a pen or pencil over paper, definitely was not. Watching someone else think was boring, and the bored watcher might take his child and tuition payments to a more entertaining school.

  Free-ranging, uncensored talk was also dangerous. Ask any dictator. What if, during the discussion (of free speech, in this instance) the students spoke freely and stumbled across concepts that made Philly Prep and its leadership look bad? Couldn’t risk it. Had to censor it. I therefore tried to stick with the assigned material. Which, by ten minutes into first-period class, and as I’d known it would be, was impossible. It wasn’t that the kids disliked Jane Eyre or wanted to make me look bad. In fact, some of them actually allowed themselves to enjoy it. But they’d obviously—and despite my warnings—felt they’d been on a mini-vacation, with picketing followed by their trip to the Mutter Museum. All prior assignments had been vaporized by the sight of Grover Cleveland’s jaw tumor.

  In theory, they’d been doing independent research relating to the novel, reading biographies of the Brontës, and reporting on Victorian and contemporary critical responses to Jane Eyre, along with broad-based views of the literature of the time, as well as the status of education, family life, social class, and so forth. Th
ey were scheduled to give oral reports. Very controllable, very unthreatening, and very active, meeting Havermeyer’s terms.

  Except: that assumed they’d done the work. The real lesson of the day, at least my real lesson, was to assume nothing. Scheduled reports were not ready, and I was not about to raise a ruckus in front of skeptical visiting matrons. They already looked nervous, clutching their coats around them, despite the heated room, as if afraid of being robbed.

  I was a zoo exhibit. See the teacher—what tricks does she know? But I was also the zookeeper, and there was no telling what the animals would do. They could be koala-cuddly, monkey-clever, or, with a change in their metaphorical stripes, deadly man- and lesson-killers.

  So with a gaping hole in the fabric of the hour, we segued into character analysis, which was sufficiently vague as to obscure how unprepared a Philly Prep student is apt to be. Brooding, dark-browed, irrational, unfathomable Mr. Rochester, a man I found annoying, worked for hormone-raddled teenagers. It was amusing to watch him generate girl-heat, and less amusing to speculate about what was wrong with my gender that it lusted for the unavailable, the withheld. It was also mildly heartrending to see gawky ninth-grade males trying to comprehend surly Rochester’s chemistry.

  I thought we might look good dealing with the easy issue of Mr. Rochester’s secret. “Why do you suppose the tree cracked in half in the storm?” I asked.

  “Because it was rotten,” a pragmatic boy said. His voice cracked, like the tree, mid-sentence. We wouldn’t hear from him again today. I wished I could console him for his lack of imagination and grace, tell him it would eventually be okay. Once he finished with the pimples and crackling voice he, too, could be unreachable and remote.

  “Good,” I said. He blushed, making his acne all the more appalling. You have to love a boy like that. He’s struggling against so much, he’s going to grow up to be either a sensitive, new-age gem or a freeway sniper.