“You’ve gotten so tall!” She held Anna out at arm’s length. “And your hair is so cute!” A total lie. Had nobody thought to brush her cousin’s hair? Ever? It didn’t matter. Anna’s big brown eyes locked onto Jeannie’s face, her whole body leaning into the attention being lavished upon her. “C’mon back and see our room. This is the best timing because I just took down all my posters and I’m doing a serious purge. My friend Leighanne and I have been arguing, like, forever over what goes back up. You can be the deciding vote. What are you listening to? Please don’t say the Spice Girls. I swear, I’m, like, the only junior who isn’t into them.”
She chattered brightly, knowing she was talking too much and that probably nobody was hearing a word she said. She also knew it didn’t matter. What mattered was the way her cousin’s little shoulders relaxed, the way she listened with her whole body, the way she followed her down the hall without hesitation. What mattered was the look in her mother’s eyes when Jeannie stepped out of the way to let Anna into the bedroom they would share. Her mom stood at the end of the hallway, hands over her mouth, tears bright in her eyes.
Jeannie winked at her mom, who dropped her hands to mouth the words, “Thank you.”
Whatever was going on, it was bad. There probably wasn’t anything she could do to make it better, but Jeannie Fitzhugh decided that night that the one thing she could do was keep it from getting worse for her young cousin, Anna Shuler.
It wasn’t going to be easy. Since they’d usually only seen each other on vacations during the summer, Jeannie forgot that Anna had been homeschooled by her parents and her parents were weird. Throw in being an only child and Anna was pretty much Jeannie’s opposite in every way. But just like doing box-jumps and making one hundred free throws in a row, Jeannie took her on as a project.
Music seemed like a good place to start. Jewel, of course, and No Doubt, Matchbox Twenty. Fiona Apple and The Verve Pipe seemed a little dark for her sad-eyed cousin, so she decided to keep it light. When Anna told her she listened to someone named Pete Seeger and Édith Piaf, Jeannie was thrown. When she found that her cousin didn’t recognize a picture of Homer Simpson and had never seen Titanic or even Seinfeld, Jeannie decided to try another tact.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, after looking down into the ugly clothes piled up in her cousin’s suitcase, Jeannie untangled a lock of Anna’s hair from her copper necklace. “Do you even like Édith Whatever? Or that Pete guy?”
Anna nodded quickly. “It’s real music. Not pop.” The answer sounded rehearsed, as if she were taking a test.
“Oh, not pop, huh?” She leaned in to whisper. “Do you know why it’s called pop?” Anna shook her head. “Because it’s popular. And it’s popular because it’s good. Have you ever heard any of it? Like Pink? Chumbawamba? Sugar Ray? None of it?” Anna kept shaking her head, looking for all the world like Jeannie was offering her a drug that was both incredibly dangerous and impossibly tempting. Jeannie squeezed her hand. “Oh my god, you have got so much listening to do. We are going to have so much fun! Do you want to watch Daria?”
It was a lot to throw at a kid on her first day and Jeannie saw most of it bouncing off of Anna’s glassy eyes. The first real success came from the junk food pantry and Jeannie finally left Anna curled up in the papasan chair with a can of Diet Coke and a bag of Cheetos. That she opted to read a biography of some guy named Max Ernst instead of watching Friends would just be written off to fatigue.
Mom and Dad were back behind the closed doors of Dad’s office so Jeannie cleaned up the kitchen and did a little homework. As bad as this no doubt was, it felt nice to be able to help in some way; it felt nice to not be the youngest in the house who had to be cared for rather than counted on. By eleven, the office door was still closed. It looked like she would be the one getting Anna to bed.
Anna had already put herself to bed. She lay curled up on the tiniest sliver of the queen-sized bed, barely covering herself with the edge of the blanket. That was sweet—she didn’t want to take up any room. The wave of tenderness that welled up surprised Jeannie. God, Anna was so young. How much would it suck to have to leave your house? To live with relatives while your mom was in jail? Feeling very much like her own mother, Jeannie pulled the covers more fully over Anna, tucked her in, and climbed in carefully on the other side of the bed.
Mom found Anna in the tub. The bedside clock read one-nineteen when Jeannie opened her eyes, hearing noises in the hallway. Mom was guiding a closed-eyed Anna back into bed, tucking her in just as Jeannie had done earlier. Anna mumbled in her sleep, resisting until the covers were tucked up under her chin. Her breathing evened out as Jeannie sat up in bed.
“Go back to sleep,” Mom whispered, and Jeannie nodded and settled back down. When she heard her mom head back to the kitchen instead of her bedroom, however, Jeannie couldn’t stay put. Slipping out as carefully as possible, she followed her.
Mom sat at the dining room table, a green gallon bottle of Gallo Chablis in front of her, drinking from one of Grandma’s good wine glasses. Another wine glass sat empty at the empty seat beside her. Dad had obviously called it a night.
“Go back to bed.”
“Mom.” Jeannie sat in the seat her father had vacated. “Tell me what is going on.”
Her mother closed her eyes, swaying slightly in her seat. She looked a little tipsy. Judging from how much was left in the bottle, Jeannie thought she should have looked a lot drunker. Maybe that’s what had happened to Dad.
“Jeannie, oh Jeannie, it’s bad. It’s very bad. I don’t want you to know what this is.” She reached out and squeezed her daughter’s hands. “Just be good to Anna.”
“I will, Mom. I promise I’ll take care of her, but I do kind of need to know what happened. I mean, what if I’m, like, ‘Oh let’s watch this show about coke dealers and it turns out Aunt Natalie was arrested for coke? Tell me what I’m protecting her from. And what if she asks when she’s going to see her mom again? How long is Aunt Natalie going to be in jail?”
“It wasn’t coke. And she’s going to be in jail for a long time.” Her mom bent over the table and Jeannie could see a tear hanging off her chin, ready to drop to the table. The breath she finally pulled in caught and tore through her and Jeannie squeezed her hand more tightly. This was scaring the crap out of her but she couldn’t let her mother be alone in this. And this was obviously much, much worse than coke.
She was almost afraid to whisper the words.
“Did she kill someone?”
Mom nodded.
“Uncle David?”
Mom nodded again, her face pinched tight against the sobs that made her chest heave.
“Oh my god, oh my god.” Putting this into words made her thoughts jumble and jump. This was so much worse than anything else. Poor Anna. There had to be a way out of this—this didn’t happen in their family. “Oh my god. What happened? Was it self-defense? Did he come back and start fighting or something?” Her mom kept shaking her head, eyes shut tight, and Jeannie couldn’t stop peppering her with questions. Uncle David had run off almost a year ago, and then he just showed up and Aunt Natalie killed him? There had to be some kind of sense to this. “How do they know she did it? Did she confess? Can they prove it?”
The sob she’d been holding back broke out of her mother’s mouth as a moan. She squeezed her daughter’s hand tightly enough to hurt. The look she leveled at Jeannie made the already horrible night worse.
“That’s all you need to know. You need to take care of Anna because she has a very, very hard road ahead of her. You just need to know that I love you and Anna needs you.”
“Mom, tell me.” She couldn’t explain why but she needed to know everything. She needed to be entrusted with this. She was old enough.
Her mother said nothing. Instead she reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a page of newspaper that looked more ragged than it shou
ld. It was dated a week ago. Jeannie scowled at the headline and then at the large black-and-white photo of her cousin in the middle of the page. Then she looked more closely at the picture, trying to make sense of what she read in the caption below it.
She pressed the page to the table, her hands covering the story, trying to make it go away. If she knew she wasn’t old enough to handle this, what on earth was Anna supposed to do with it?
CHAPTER SIX
I don’t know what to do.
I want to go back to my office but I don’t know what the police are going to do. I don’t know if they’re going to shut down the whole building. I don’t know if heading back to my office, my workday, will look odd or out of place when there is a dead body in the basement. I don’t know who’s dead and I don’t care, but I can’t let anyone know that I don’t care.
I don’t know what to do but I know what not to do. I know not to draw attention to myself. I know how important it is to behave appropriately in situations like this because, believe it or not, there is a protocol of proper behavior for this scene. Nobody knows it before they’ve been here; the cops know it and they don’t like to divulge that information beforehand. They issue no pamphlets like “Hey! There’s a body! What do I do now?”
As I watch the clusters of uniforms—black and green; the state police have arrived—I see a great deal of useless milling around. Rubbernecking. It’s safe to say that I have more experience in a scene like this than anyone else present, and I still don’t know what to do.
Radios squawk and lights flash from within the open basement doorway. Pictures. Lots of flash pictures will be taken for what will be a scrapbook of the worst day of someone’s life. Death is messy. Even if the act is tidy, the official recognition of the deed is messy. Cops and technicians and EMTs and reporters and insurance adjustors run pell-mell over the site of human dispatch, not just unconcerned that they’re leaving a mess that someone else will have to clean up, but as if they feel entitled, nay, obligated, to smear their mark on the scene.
Cops and paramedics and even firefighters are here, hitching their pants up, sipping coffee, making jokes among themselves that they’ll tell themselves are “gallows humor.” They’ll tell themselves that the job demands a certain callousness, that otherwise it would kill them. They tell themselves that they are world-weary, a last defense to keep the madness of murder from the sheeplike civilians gathered around gawking at the horror.
Most of them are fucking morons who wouldn’t know horror if it fisted them. Most of them wouldn’t last a minute in a real emergency and almost none of them have the first clue what they’re doing there, besides basking in the excitement. Most of them are unnecessary at best. But not all of them.
I can see them. I can see the ones who are working. I remember them; I know the look. The ones who are paying attention, who will worry about the details. Maybe because it reflects on their job performance, maybe because they want justice, maybe they just don’t like puzzles.
Then I realize that I don’t have a dog in this fight. What’s that line? Not my circus, not my monkeys? I’m not attached to this scene. I won’t be questioned. This isn’t my house. This is no one I love. I have absolutely nothing to add to the discussion of what has taken place. Like the moment the snow cleared and I saw the vista before me, this makes me feel better. It unplugs me from the dark current that has stopped my boots in their tracks.
I turn to head up the stairs to the left, where all the snow has been trampled away by the parade of emergency responders. They’ve packed the powder down and made it slick so I have to hang on to the railing and watch my step. Halfway up, I turn for a last glance over the circus below me, the one in which I have no monkeys.
One person isn’t looking toward the basement or at their phone or into their coffee. One person—a Gilead cop about my age—isn’t looking down. She’s looking up. At me. She’s watching me leave the crime scene.
I probably have more experience at crime scenes than anyone on campus and I just broke the cardinal rule. I just drew attention to myself.
“Well, fuck you, little sister,” I mutter as I resume my climb. Let the newbies watch the spectacle. I’ve seen it.
A crowd is gathered at the top of the steps at the end of the sidewalk from the north door. It’s like the cheap seats for the show below, people who want to know what’s happening but don’t want to fully commit to the event. Good for you, I think, as I cut through their whispering midst. Keep your distance. With any luck, you won’t ever have to have a front row seat.
A glance out over the valley gives me nothing; a heavy, snow-blown cloud hangs over the treetops and I can’t see anything. It’s okay. I don’t feel like being out here anymore anyway.
The hall to my office is quiet. Everyone is probably gathered around on one of the tiers, watching the action. I push open the office door and there’s Meredith at her desk, phone under her chin, gesturing to a pile of paper like whoever she’s talking to can see what she’s pointing at. She looks up when I enter, points her fingers at the receiver like a gun, and pantomimes shooting whoever is on the other end. The familiarity of the gesture, as well as its inappropriateness under the circumstances, makes me laugh.
She’s correcting the spelling of a student’s name—once, twice—and then nearly screams out the letters in correct order. To be fair, the name is a mouthful—Ionuscorfu—but Meredith will not be swayed. It’s that internship at the Corcoran Gallery that Ellis had mentioned. Meredith is relentless when it comes to connecting students and opportunities. I hope whoever is on the other end gets on board with her plan quickly or they’re going to have a very bad day.
By the time she slams the phone down in victory, my boots are off and I’m jumping over the puddle of melted snow around them. Unlike my boss, I didn’t think to bring house shoes and if my socks get wet, this day will blow even worse than it already promises to.
She grins at me from the divider. “How do you like your first snowstorm?”
“There’s someone dead in the basement.” I probably could have approached that more delicately but it’s out there now. Meredith looks at me like I’m speaking in code. “Didn’t you hear the sirens?”
“I heard them.” She glances out the window, the meaning of my words dawning on her. “I thought it was an accident. The usual car-sliding-over-an-embankment sort of thing. Someone is dead? Who? Where?”
“The boiler room.” I’m not the one who answers. It’s Lyle Dunfee, from the Adjunct’s Office, sticking his head in the door. “It was found by one of the maintenance guys. They’ve got the whole scene sealed off and told us all to stay in our offices until the police have a chance to interview us. All of us.” His eyes glow with that same excitement of the kids gathered around the yellow tape. Why does this turn so many people on?
“Thanks, Lyle.” Meredith all but shoos the little man out of our office, dismissing him and his ghoulish enthusiasm. We hear him spreading the news to everyone he passes on the way to his office. This is big news.
Meredith’s scowl has none of the veiled titillation I’ve seen. “That’s awful. I wonder who it was. Probably gas.” She’s speaking to herself more than to me. “That boiler is a thousand years old. It’s a wonder it hasn’t killed us all.” She gives me a weary smile and then turns back toward her desk. “Oh well, I’m not dead. Neither are you. Neither is this paperwork, so we might as well get back to it.”
I’m relieved at her business-as-usual attitude and am fully prepared to get back to the mountain of forms awaiting my attention when she steps around to face me again.
“You don’t think it’s suicide, do you?”
I don’t move.
“It’s just, you know, this time of year. It’s so dark and the holidays are over. So many kids go to such a dark place this time of year.” She sighs and leans her shoulder against the partition. “Am I being morbid? I’m being morbid
.”
I can’t nod or shake my head.
She doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve turned to stone. “I know. I know. I am being morbid, but I have to warn you. I don’t know what it was like in Nebraska, but this time of year you really have to keep an eye on these kids. This time of year, when it’s so dark and they’re drinking and they’re breaking up with each other and they’re not passing their classes and who knows what else is going wrong, some of these kids can really drop off the edge fast.” She sighs. “Let’s hope that’s not it. I’d hate for that to be your first snowstorm memory.”
I never told Meredith about Ron. All she knows of my past is that my husband died “after a prolonged illness.” It was an illness, a dark sickness that drove him to that closet. She’s wrong about these kids. It’s not the darkness. It’s not the holidays. The demon that drives them to kill themselves is an addiction—an addiction to destruction that they have to fight their whole lives, however short they might be.
But if it’s suicide, the thought rolls in unbidden, then the police won’t question anyone. They’ll take their pictures, file their reports, and be gone. The relief I feel at that thought bumps against my guilt at feeling it.
I don’t pay attention to anything but my desk for a while. Paperwork gets a bad rap but at times like this, there is no substitute more sublime than the bureaucratic paper dance that keeps the money coming into school and keeps the kids from leaving it. I read grant proposals and juried exhibition rules and scholarship cut-off dates with the part of my brain that feels like working. The rest of me ignores the sounds of sirens and radios and people marching through the hallway until a particular radio squawk is too close to ignore.
There’s a cop in the office. I act like I don’t notice him and it pleases me that Meredith holds up her hand to silence him while she finishes up on the phone. He’s white, like all the cops I saw downstairs. Like all the cops I saw in Nebraska. Funny that I’d think of that right now. I guess I’m trying to find ways to classify them, to distinguish them from the cops in attendance at the various crime scenes I’ve visited in my life. So far, no luck.
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