Baggage

by S. G. Redling

  I refrain from bringing up the instances I’ve seen of professors and TAs being short with my boss. Meredith works passionately for her students but I’ve seen that passion exasperate others in the department whose visions don’t jibe with hers. But Jeannie is the first person I’ve seen elicit any real anger.

  “You don’t like Jeannie. Why not? Everybody likes Jeannie.”

  She turns back to her paperwork. “You might be surprised to learn the truth about that.” It’s such a pissy thing to say and so unlike Meredith. I’m not in the mood for whatever this is. I turn to head back to my desk when I hear her sigh.

  “Anna, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That was petty and immature. God, I sounded like Lyle.”

  I lean against the divider, arms folded. “Why don’t you like Jeannie?”

  “I do like Jeannie. I do, inasmuch as I know her. To be honest, we didn’t interact that much, but I know the students respected her. That’s what really matters.”

  “And?”

  She chooses her words carefully. “It’s just awkward that she’s here now. With what just happened. With the funeral coming up. I mean, all things considered, you’ve got to agree, right? Professor Fitzhugh-Conroy here for Ellis’s funeral? That’s going to be awkward. You saw Zig’s reaction and he’s so nice, he wouldn’t say boo to a fart.”

  Zig did seem uncomfortable when he saw Jeannie. He seemed shocked. “Why would that be awkward? Because they dated?”

  “Is that what she told you? That they dated?” She seems uncomfortable with what she’s saying but it’s my face that’s turning red. I don’t want to hear what I think she’s going to say. “Maybe they dated briefly at the beginning but, Anna, your cousin didn’t take it well when Ellis broke it off. If there was even anything to break off. It was not pretty. She caused a couple of scenes around campus that were, well, unprofessional. She didn’t tell you any of this?”

  I don’t say anything but I can feel my cheeks burning. Of course she didn’t tell me and of course it was bound to happen. Just because I think Jeannie is perfect doesn’t mean she never fails. I can’t be the only one in the family with less-than-illustrious moments and, all things considered, handling a breakup badly isn’t an abomination. But still, she never told me anything about it. She never even hinted at it. I’m embarrassed for her and embarrassed for me. I can feel myself channeling that embarrassment into anger toward Meredith.

  She must see it in my face, because she says, “You know what?” She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I did. It’s mostly gossip. There are always two sides to every story and you know how gossip spreads. Well, I’m proving it right now, aren’t I? It spreads by stupid people like me repeating stories they heard somewhere else and not even thinking about how those words might hurt.”

  Meredith should give a course in how to deliver a proper apology. All my anger flees, my cheeks cool off, and I feel bad for my readiness to ratchet things up at such short notice. “It’s okay,” I say and I mean it. Meredith is kooky and frantic but she’s not a gossip and she’s been good to me. I decide to let us both off the hook. “This is just a shitty situation. I think we should all give ourselves a ‘get out of jail free’ card for bad behavior until spring.”

  She smiles. “Now that’s a good plan! I’ll write up a memo. Until then, however, we have work to do. We have two dozen Literature majors looking for summer programs that they can’t afford and an art exhibition coming up that has just lost one of its main judges.”

  I groan and head back to my desk. Despite Jeannie’s derogatory reference to “adorable local art shows,” the Rising Tide Exhibition is a serious undertaking with a strong reputation and Ellis Trachtenberg played a big role in getting it there. His absence might hurt the show and the funding, which will trickle down as bad news for the student artists.

  Even dead, he’s screwing Karmen Bennett. It irks me that he killed her scholarship for such a sanctimonious reason. I know drugs are illegal and detrimental to education and all the other saintly proclamations we’re all supposed to make against chemical addictions, but maybe she needed the drugs. Did he ever consider that? Maybe her life was such an uninterrupted shit storm that the drugs kept the worst of the pain at bay. Did he look down at her and tell her that she was just hiding from the pain? That when she straightened up, those problems would still be there? Did she then flip him off and tell him that they’d be there whether or not she was high, that they weren’t going away, and so why the hell wouldn’t she take her mind on a pharmaceutical vacation once in a while? That maybe there wasn’t any virtue in suffering and that the real test of a successful life was outsmarting the pain?

  Am I still talking about Karmen?

  I rifle through my files until I find her application to the exhibition. I read her proposal and flip through her preliminary sketches. She plans to title her piece “Pain Scale,” mixed media sculptures of four body parts ranked in order of their ability to cause pain. She’s submitted several spec sketches of each piece. What does it say that she considers the fist the least dangerous? She’s drawn feet “for leaving or staying,” she’d said. Then a mouth. In her sketches, the mouth is open and snarling, jagged teeth that she plans on fashioning out of metal and glass.

  And finally, the most dangerous part of the human body in Karmen Bennett’s opinion? The brain. She’s sketched out a cutaway skull with a colorful, wrinkled canvas for the brain. She’s made notes of details she’ll incorporate but I don’t read them. I want to see the work first. I like Karmen. I’m glad she came back to school despite the financial hardship. Yet another addition to the ever-growing list of reasons I’m glad I didn’t sleep with Ellis. I feel like it would have been a betrayal of Karmen.

  More than an hour has passed when Meredith leans against the divider. “I’m not getting anything done,” she says. “You?”

  “Yeah,” I say, putting the file up. “I’ve pushed all these papers from that side of the desk to this one. I’m optimistic I can push them all back to their original position by the end of the day. That’s my goal, at least.”

  “It’s good to have goals.” She pulls her sweater tighter around her body and shudders. “Do you think this building will be haunted now?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Even after a violent murder in the basement?” I shake my head. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “No.” Not the kind you’re thinking of.

  She clucks her tongue. “I know, it’s silly. This building is over a hundred years old. I’m sure plenty of horrible things have happened here and the only thing haunting these halls is the smell of old mop water.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “It’s just that after what I’ve heard, I can’t stop thinking some really horrible thoughts. I’m spooked. I know, I know, I shouldn’t spread rumors, but these aren’t technically rumors. I told you I have some friends at the police station and some information about Ellis’s death has come out.”

  I can think of about a billion other things I would rather discuss at this or any other time, but Meredith shows no signs of stopping. Her eyes shine with held-back tears and she gestures to my office chair, asking for an invitation. I can’t bring myself to say an actual yes because I do not want her to sit down and tell me whatever it is she’s heard, but I can’t refuse to hear her because she’ll want to know why I don’t want to hear it. She’ll want to know why I’m not curious about whatever gruesome information she’s discovered. That kind of curiosity is only natural for most people. As much as I don’t want to talk about it, I want to explain why even less, so I nod toward the chair and she settles into place.

  “Don’t tell anybody what I’m going to tell you.”

  Not to worry.

  She heaves a big sigh. “It’s just bouncing around in my head and maybe if I say it out loud it won’t keep morphing into this hell-beast that’s haunting me.”r />
  That’s not how hell-beasts work.

  “Ellis was beaten to death.” She waits for a reaction that doesn’t come. “But that’s not the worst part of it.” She scoots closer to the desk and whispers, as if she doesn’t trust herself to say the words too loudly. “He was also . . . damaged.”

  “Damaged.” That’s an odd word under the circumstances.

  Her hands flutter as she searches for a way to say it. “He was partially dismembered.” I don’t even blink and she doesn’t notice. “Anna, somebody cut off his hands. His hands! You can’t tell anybody this because it’s part of the investigation and my friend would lose her job if word got out that she’d let that slip. Seriously, you can’t say anything. Promise me.”

  She doesn’t need to worry. I can’t move. I can’t feel my lips and my face has been still for so long that it feels odd, like it’s been put together wrong. My scalp is sweating and a wave of cool dampness flushes over my skin. None of this must show, because Meredith keeps talking.

  “It’s so horrible, Anna. She said it was like something from a horror movie. And that’s still not the worst part.”

  I’d give anything to make her stop speaking.

  “Whoever cut off his hands took them. They weren’t in the basement. Someone cut off Ellis’s hands and put them somewhere else. The police can’t find them. They think that maybe someone took them as a trophy.”

  She finally stops speaking once I vomit in the garbage can.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bakerton, Missouri

  Summer 1995

  Anna Shuler, 9 years old

  Anna sat at the kitchen table, coloring, staying out of the way. In the living room, Mom and Dad laughed loudly at something Yvonne Gilkerson said. Mom didn’t really like Yvonne but the Gilkersons had let them ride along with them on the trip to Chicago so Mom was being nice. Dad told her the trip was part of Anna’s birthday present but since she wouldn’t turn ten until November, she didn’t know if it was part of last year’s birthday or this year’s. She didn’t care. The trip had been great. Mom and Dad laughed and sang with her in the back seat of the Gilkersons’ Toyota.

  They’d all gone up to see a special Gustav Klimt exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago. It was the only thing Mom and Dad could talk about for weeks. They’d brought in books and posters and spent hours explaining to Anna what she would be seeing, why these works were so important. Mom helped her research the elements of Klimt’s work, his Japanese influences, his use of allegory. Anna tried to pay attention. She fed off of their enthusiasm.

  The paintings were beautiful. Anna preferred the ones from the Golden Phase over the Vienna Secession, even though her father told her not to be distracted by glittering colors. He told her to look deeper and try to understand the rules Klimt had broken in his creation. She tried as hard as she could but kept coming back to the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, staring into the eyes that floated along her dress.

  Anna had gotten bored. Dad and Yvonne were arguing over something about allegories and Mom was reading every single plaque on every single wall. She didn’t know where Mr. Gilkerson was. Probably the bathroom again. So Anna wandered off, through gallery after gallery, until she discovered the painting that she considered her real birthday present.

  The Bay of Marseilles, Seen from L’Estaque by Paul Cèzanne. Anna had seen pictures of it before. Dad had a lot of opinions about Cèzanne, not all of them favorable, and neither of her parents had ever remarked on this painting in any particular way that she could remember. But standing in front of it, alone, Anna felt herself falling into the water before her. She had the room to herself—the crowds were here for Klimt—and so she could be quiet and still and just look.

  It was a simple subject—houses with chimneys clustered around the edge of a bay, mountains in the distance, a muted multi-colored sky overhead. It didn’t glitter like Klimt’s work. There were no naked people, no strangely bent bodies, none of the hypnotic swirling curves or lines, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. She felt a fluttering low in her stomach when her gaze trailed over the crowded rooftops and into the blue-green-purple of bay and mountain and sky.

  Away. That was the word she heard in her mind. Away.

  To be away, to be in the blue, off the land, away from the crowded houses and across the blue water to the blue mountains to see the blue sky. So much space. So much motion.

  Mom found her. She wasn’t angry; her parents encouraged Anna to roam freely in museums and galleries. She took her hand and said that it was time to go but there was one more treat—a visit to the gift shop. Mom told her she could pick out one thing for herself, anything within reason, and Anna knew just what she wanted. It took her a while to find it—most of the books were hardcover catalog collections—but she finally found the coloring books.

  Dad looked disappointed in her choice. He showed her the special edition “Klimt Your World” creativity set that came with metallic markers and little bits of glass and jewelry to paste on the pictures she could draw herself. Mom held up a poster of The Kiss, promising how nice it would look in her room, but Anna clutched “Color Cèzanne” to her chest.

  As soon as they got home, Anna headed right to the kitchen and grabbed her box of sixty-four Crayola crayons. Dad had told her she wasn’t ready for the student-grade oil pastels yet but Anna didn’t mind. She knew the colors she needed. She could find them in the box with just her fingertips. So while the Gilkersons talked and laughed and let Mom and Dad thank them for the ride with cold drinks and pita chips and hummus, Anna colored.

  Periwinkle, cornflower, cadet blue, orchid, burnt sienna, maize, sepia—color after color Anna drew from the box, coloring lightly, carefully, checking again and again where the light landed in the picture, where the solid shapes sat. She took the most time with the mountains—those she had to get right, those were what pulled her into the picture. The shapes of them, the shadows and the solidness and the mystery of them.

  She knew she wasn’t Cèzanne and these were only crayons but she could feel the colors blending and coming to life. She could see the balance of water and air and land pouring out beneath her careful fingers. She even got right the little scribbled gray smoke that puttered out over the water. While her parents and the Gilkersons drank and talked—their voices raised again over that allegory thing—Anna colored, replicating as precisely as she could the magic of the picture that had moved her.

  “Whatcha doing, Peanut?”

  Anna looked up and saw her dad in the doorway. He looked messy, like he had just gotten out of bed. His hair looked dirty and his eyes were dark and red-rimmed. His voice sounded nice, but it didn’t go with the hard line of his lips. He looked like a thunderstorm standing there. His rages could roll in fast. Anna hoped he was just tired or that Yvonne Gilkerson had just really irritated him and that once she was gone, her dad would calm down. The storm would blow over. Mom was still in the living room. The toilet flushed so Mr. Gilkerson was still there too. Dad just stood in the doorway staring at Anna’s hands.

  “You’re coloring,” he said in a flat voice. Anna couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad one. She was glad she’d been so careful to get the picture right. It wasn’t perfect. She hoped he wouldn’t notice that she’d used the wrong green for the closest trees. She used too much plain green and had tried to cover it up with forest green but still the colors were off. She hoped he would see instead what a good job she’d done on the sky, the way the lavender and periwinkle sometimes blended, sometimes sat side by side.

  He leaned across the table, his big hand pulling the book away from her and turning it so he could see it right side up. He looked from the left side of the book, where a photo of the painting sat, to the right side, where she had been coloring so carefully. His fingertips bounced from side to side, from print chimney to crayon chimney, from inked skies to wax. Finally he looked up at her.

&nb
sp; “It’s exactly like the painting.”

  Anna exhaled and grinned. She knew she was close. She’d been so careful. The periwinkle had been a good choice and she was just about to point out the tiny gray smoke when he smashed his fist against the table.

  “It’s exactly like the fucking painting!”

  Anna froze, her hands balled up beneath the table, the worn periwinkle crayon breaking in her palm. She pressed the back of her head against the wooden ridge of the chair back, hard enough to hurt, away from his red face that leaned in close enough for her to smell the beer and feel the spit hit her cheeks.

  “Do you know why we make art, Anna? Do you?” She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t move. “We express ourselves. Do you hear me? We express ourselves. Ourselves! Not what other people have created, not what other people tell us to see. I didn’t raise you to be a monkey, to be an ape just coloring in the lines, following the rules!”

  He screamed and pounded his fist against the paper and Anna made herself as small as possible, knowing how these storms went, knowing to stay low, to never be a lightning rod. But when he grabbed a fistful of crayons—magenta and orange-red and black, the colors she had set aside that didn’t belong in the landscape—she tried to grab his hand. She yelled and jumped to her feet but he was faster. His fist scribbled across her beautiful bay. He ripped black and orange scars across her periwinkle sky. The magenta point tore a hole clear through her mountains.

  “There! There! Now it says something! Now we’re speaking the human language!” He screamed and scribbled, coloring the table as he ripped through the pages, unhindered by Anna’s smaller hands, unmoved by her cries begging him to stop.

  Mom came in and a full fight broke out. Chairs flew and glass shattered and all sorts of profanity was thrown at the Gilkersons, who finally left. Everyone stormed out of the house and porch furniture groaned as it was hurled into the street.