Black Mirror

by Nancy Werlin

  And then Thursday night, after an innocuous two hours of stacking dusty cans of beets and mushrooms at the Unity food pantry (with George de Witt, who wouldn’t say more than two syllables the whole time), I was called into the office to meet, alone, with Patrick Leyden.

  One more little weirdness: As I climbed up off my hands and knees to follow the summons, I thought—no, I was sure—that I heard George mutter beneath his breath: “Oh, Christ, no.” But when I looked at him, he had his back to me, so I shrugged and followed Pammy to the office.

  “There you are, Frances,” said Patrick Leyden from behind the desk. He consulted his watch. “Have a seat. I can give this about ten minutes. Pammy”—she was lingering behind me—“you can close the door on your way out.”

  I heard the door close. I sat down on the edge of the chair opposite the desk, and was unable to repress a swift memory of Bubbe, years ago, mocking Daniel and me: Look at you two, sitting right on the edge of your chairs. Ready to run! Daniel, defiant, had responded by sliding his butt back firmly into the kitchen chair and glaring at her. But I had stayed exactly where I was, with my feet on the floor. Ready to run.

  Now I wondered if, of the two reactions, mine hadn’t in fact been the more defiant.

  I had my feet on the floor now as well. I looked at Patrick Leyden. I stuck out my nose that was so like Bubbe’s. You could say this for Bubbe: She appeared to fear nothing and no one. “What’s up?” I said boldly.

  Patrick Leyden raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “This is about the fund-raising campaign, Frances. The Daniel Leventhal Memorial Fund Drive. Didn’t I tell you we’d need to talk about that?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.” But I hadn’t realized it would be this soon. I squirmed, feeling a little less bold. I hated this memorial thing as much as ever.

  “Well then,” said Patrick Leyden briskly. “I explained the parameters of the situation and what I wanted to one of the people in my marketing department, and she was kind enough to prepare a letter that will go out over your signature. This will be the central mailing piece of the capital campaign. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a good job.”

  He held out a sheet of paper toward me.

  I could feel my lips compressing into a tight line, but I took the letter. It was printed on Unity letterhead.

  Dear Friend:

  Not long ago my brother, Daniel, took a deliberate overdose of heroin—and with it, his own life. Daniel was funny and smart. He could have become someone wonderful. Instead, he is dead. He was seventeen years old.

  I loved my brother and I mourn his passing. But I am also angry that Daniel made a decision that hurt his family and friends so much. I am angry at the waste of his potential. And I am angry because I know that my brother was only one of many young people who lose their way to drugs and despair. Who lack vision for the future.

  I am writing to you because I believe that, if we try, we can help teens like Daniel. I believe we can fight drugs, death, and despair. And win.

  As a friend of Unity Service, you probably know that Unity has been cited by the President of the United States, on the occasion of the award of a Presidential Freedom Medal, as a “shining beacon to teens everywhere, proving that it’s possible for positive action by young people to impact not only the local, but the national community.” (See enclosed reprint of Time magazine article.) Our network of charity programs is well known and has received extensive praise (see enclosed brochure).

  The brightest light in Unity’s beacon is our scholarship program, which began right here at The Pettengill School, where I am a student. The program has since spread to excellent preparatory schools all over the country. Nearly two hundred underprivileged teenagers today now have access to the best possible secondary education. This education is intended to provide the foundation for long, happy, productive futures.

  We in Unity Service have therefore begun this capital campaign so that we can expand the scholarship program downward to middle schools. We do this for teens like my brother, who began using drugs when he was eleven—

  There were several paragraphs more, but my head snapped up without reading them. I’d been growing steadily more sickened, but this was the worst. “This is a lie! Daniel wasn’t using drugs at eleven!”

  “Yes,” said Patrick Leyden evenly. “He was. He told me so.”

  I gritted my teeth. I looked back down at the letter as if I was reading on, but I didn’t do so. No. I remembered when Daniel was eleven, and this I would not buy.

  My father’s words came back to me. What was in this for Patrick Leyden?

  Pretend work.

  The dusty cans …

  A voice in my head was screaming at me. You know. You know. You know!

  Wallace’s voice as he talked with Pammy. They are our partners, you know…. All the customers need to be reimbursed.

  “Well?” Patrick Leyden said impatiently. “There should be no surprises in the letter. I’m particularly pleased about the associated website. That was a good thought; people can just charge their contributions online. Maybe we’ll move that information from the bottom to nearer the top of the letter. Or add it to the letterhead. Or both.”

  I didn’t say anything. A disembodied terror had gripped me. I folded the letter in two, carefully creasing it.

  “I see,” said Patrick Leyden. “You’re still being childish about this, Frances. I thought you’d had a change of heart.”

  I remembered the way I’d felt when I’d first learned that Daniel was dead. My—incredulity.

  Daniel wouldn’t have done it. Daniel wouldn’t have killed himself. But Saskia had known Daniel better than I did, and she’d had no doubt that he’d killed himself … had she? It was to Saskia that Daniel had addressed his final letter….

  Daniel, in my dream, shaking his head. No, no, no.

  Dread filled me. I could taste it, acid, at the back of my throat. I didn’t want to know.

  As my silence—and my staring—continued, Patrick Leyden grew red in the face. “You do understand that I don’t need you for this? The letter could easily be rewritten in the third person. We’re going to do this capital campaign with or without you.”

  And then suddenly I could talk. I was myself. I was present. I looked at Patrick Leyden and said, “Yes. I understand that.”

  “Then make up your mind. If you want to be part of this organization, you will help this organization in whichever way I see fit. Otherwise—you’re out.”

  “I’m just going to think about it for another day,” I said calmly, and got up. “I’ll get back to you, Mr. Leyden.”

  Patrick Leyden began speaking—perhaps it was sputtering—but I ignored him. I walked out. I left. Andy Jankowski had taught me how.

  Andy.

  Outside the office, things had slowed down. End of shift. End of night. I looked around. George and Pammy were talking over by the clothing area. Most of the lights had been switched off.

  Are you here to do pretend work too, Frances Leventhal?

  I think they’re going to have me pack cans of vegetables.

  Pretend, yes. All fake work.

  I discovered that even though I didn’t understand anything, I absolutely knew what I should do right now.

  I went and found Andy. He was sitting by the entrance, a faraway expression on his face. I waved as I approached, and he waved back.

  “Hello, Frances Leventhal,” Andy said. I thought he looked pleased to see me.

  “Hey,” I answered. As ever, I felt something in me soften and relax in his presence. I said awkwardly, “Andy, I was wondering if you would walk back to Pettengill with me. After you finish up here? I need an escort, and I’d like to talk to you about something. If that’s okay with you.”

  Andy sat up. He looked solemn. “Frances Leventhal, that is no problem. I am a very good escort.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And,” said Andy, shyly, but with something a little defiant in his voice as well, “I have someth
ing to tell you.”

  CHAPTER 25

  It was cold outside again, but the temperature was not too much below freezing. Pammy and George had seemed incredulous when we declined a lift in the van, but it wasn’t bad if you kept moving. I had Daniel’s scarf wrapped around my head and ears, and my mittens on, with my hands stuffed in my pockets for good measure. Andy was bareheaded but seemed indifferent to the temperature, except for offering me his coat with some persistence.

  “Really, I’m fine,” I said. “This is a warm coat. And I promise I’ll tell you if I get cold.”

  “You’ll tell me?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay,” he said finally.

  We walked briskly in silence for a few steps, while I tried to think of a clear way to ask Andy why he’d implied that stacking cans was as much pretend work as watching the door. But before I could formulate the question, Andy forestalled me. Again with that hint of defiance in his voice—and, I thought, some excitement—he said, “I checked, Frances Leventhal. And it is all pretend work. All of it!”

  My head swung sharply to the side. In the street lamps, I could only see the shadow of Andy’s profile, but he was nearly bouncing with emotion: indignation? Affronted pride? “What?” I said. “You checked? What do you mean?”

  “I checked the boxes again,” Andy said. “They were stacked by the door. And they’re still the same. Always the same old boxes, packed with the same stuff. Carry in, carry out. It’s fake work. I already knew. But I checked today while you were there, and yesterday, and the day before that. There’s no real work. It’s the same old boxes, Frances Leventhal! Always the same old boxes!”

  Andy paused. I felt my heart rate increase. What Andy was saying—it still didn’t make sense to me, but the feeling that I knew, I knew, intensified.

  “Something is very wrong at that food pantry.” It popped out of my mouth. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself say that in front of Andy, but—

  He smiled at me. I could see the gleam of his teeth in the darkness. “You didn’t understand me the other day,” he said with satisfaction. “You thought packing the cans was real work. I could tell. So I checked.”

  “Huh,” I said. I found myself remembering how dirty the “newly-arrived” cans had been. My hands had gotten filthy, unpacking and stacking them. Would new donations be that dusty, right out of the box? Well, maybe some, but all of the cans? I felt that flickering lightbulb struggling, again, to come on above my head.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying now?” Andy demanded. We had hastened our pace a little, and were hunched against the wind.

  “I’m getting there,” I said grimly. “Explain again about the same old boxes.”

  It took nearly the whole walk—Andy got tangled up as he talked—but I listened intently, and eventually I figured out what he’d been struggling to say. Why he thought the work at the pantry was “fake.”

  Why he was right.

  Andy had come to recognize the two dozen or so cardboard boxes that came and went, every couple of days, from the food pantry. The one with the battered corner; the one that said “Green Giant #1890065279” (Andy recited the numbers precisely); the one with part of its top flap ripped away. A box would get replaced from time to time, as it broke, but for the most part the same boxes were used over and over. Each box would leave the pantry full of stuff, securely sealed with packing tape—and then return a day or two later, still sealed with the same packing tape.

  “Same boxes. Same contents. Into the van one day. Out of the van the next,” Andy said. “Fake work. Waste of time.”

  “Maybe the boxes are just being recycled?” I ventured. “And the contents have changed?” But as soon as I’d said it, I shook my head. It didn’t make sense to work that way. Why would you pack up and seal new donations into boxes, when they were just headed for the warehouse to be sorted and stacked and so on? And why wouldn’t you leave the boxes with the families who were supposed to get them?

  “Andy, you say the boxes come back still sealed, the same way they went out. And they weigh the same?”

  “They weigh the same.” Andy sounded very pleased with himself. “I can tell. And the packing tape hasn’t been changed. It looks the same as before. The same stuff must be inside. Does that make sense, Frances Leventhal?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “It makes sense …”

  I thought of all the things I’d seen at the pantry. Heaps of things. Shoes, clothing, toys. I burst out incredulously, “So wait. Nobody’s getting anything, then? No families are getting toys or cans or clothes? And nobody’s giving any of those things to the pantry? The same items cycle in and out? Pretend donations? Pretend charity?”

  Andy frowned. “I don’t know. I just know it’s fake work.”

  At that exact moment the lightbulb above my head stopped flickering; it came on and stayed on.

  I wet my lips. I could feel my heart begin to pound. “It’s a front,” I said hoarsely. “The Unity food pantry is a front.” Presidential Freedom Medal. Biggest student charitable concern in the country. The same boxes. Carry in, carry out. No charitable deliveries. No charitable donations. Fake work.

  It wasn’t just one bulb above my head now. It was a whole sound-and-light show.

  Unity was a front.

  CHAPTER 26

  “What’s a front?” asked Andy.

  It took me a minute to focus on his question. Other bits of knowledge were snaking through my bloodstream, threatening to paralyze me. Daniel—shaking his head in my dream. That lying letter of Patrick Leyden’s. The fact that Daniel’s note had been to Saskia. What I really did, and really didn’t, know about my brother …

  I searched for words, soothing words that would hold off that darkness a little longer. I said slowly to Andy, “A front is a business operation that isn’t what it seems to be. Like, for example, a store that sells refrigerators, but their true business is something illegal like, oh, counterfeiting money in the back room, or—or selling drugs.” I felt my mittened hand go to my mouth, but it was too late.

  I stopped walking. I stood on the sidewalk and, abruptly, ceased to fight a battle I hadn’t even realized I was waging. I let a geyser of sounds and images swell up within me.

  I let myself know what I knew.

  When’s she going to figure out that it’s easier to do speed than throw up? Maybe somebody should ease her in with some diet pills.

  Wallace Chan to James, my love, the small-time drug dealer, at that Pettengill meeting. I can’t believe you’d seriously presume to lecture us about ethics. The irony of it …

  My subterranean feeling—for days, weeks, no, years—that lots of people—Daniel, Saskia, James—knew something I didn’t.

  Saskia’s jewelry and clothes.

  My wild musings about James running a drug empire at a prep school because the customers and money were plentiful.

  As if I were operating a kaleidoscope, the things I’d seen or heard or knew whirled round and round and then settled into a complex but perfectly symmetrical pattern.

  All these thoughts took only a few seconds. Meanwhile Andy had gone on a step or two, but then had turned back for me. “Frances Leventhal?” I was vaguely aware of him as he put out a hand and caught my arm. “Are you all right, Frances Leventhal?”

  I was still looking at the pattern. It was not unlike the paintings on the walls of my room; obscured, but clear to anyone who took the time to see. And I might be slow, but in the end I always recognize when a picture speaks truth.

  Even—or especially—when it’s ugly.

  Unity Service was a front for a prep school drug dealing operation. And Daniel had been involved with them. He was no innocent, but—

  I felt my lips move. “They killed my brother,” I whispered.

  “What?” said Andy. He had both hands on my shoulders now. He was holding me upright. His hands tightened a little in anxiety, and somehow the feel of them brought me back to myself a little. His voice ro
se. “Frances Leventhal, what did you say? What about your brother?”

  All at once I realized that I couldn’t get Andy tangled up in this … in this … whatever it was. And I was crazy! Daniel had killed himself—taken an overdose. There was no reason to leap to another conclusion. “Never mind,” I managed. “I’m sorry. I just—just …” I couldn’t think what to say.

  I wanted—I couldn’t—I didn’t know—couldn’t assimilate—

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think. The police—I had to tell the police—but what about James—was he involved?—No! He couldn’t be. My brother—my father—Saskia—I couldn’t think—

  Andy was looking down into my face. “You’re pale, Frances Leventhal. You’re sick again. I heard you were in the infirmary.”

  “No, I’m not sick now …” I said. But I did feel sick.

  A deep wrinkle cut straight across Andy’s forehead. “It’s only a few minutes back to Pettengill. I can take you to the nurse.” His expression brightened. “I’ll carry you there. I’m very strong.” Before I could say anything, he stooped and all at once was carrying me in his arms, walking carefully, his face anxious. “Only five minutes,” he said. “Are you warm enough, Frances Leventhal? Say something!”

  I wanted to say that I could walk, but I didn’t. “I’m warm,” I said confusedly. “I’m okay. I don’t want the nurse.”

  “You’re sick again.”

  “No …”

  Andy had told the truth; he was very strong. I felt his arms beneath my back and legs; I felt oddly secure. I knew he wouldn’t drop me. My eyes squeezed shut. Where was my father? He never touched me.

  I looped an arm around Andy’s neck and held on, to make it easier for him to carry me.