The Admirer

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “There is one more thing,” Terri added. “Most of the news reports say Al–Fulani got deported after the investigations started. Funny thing is, she had just gotten a green card. I called one of the reporters, a woman in Springfield. She saw Al–Fulani’s paperwork. Al–Fulani was very proud of it, took her to her trailer and showed her.” Terri trailed off.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m asking. Do you like this girl?” He was no longer speaking in the clipped tone of an attorney. “You know you are entitled to have a relationship, Helen.”

  Helen paused. “It was a mistake.”

  “College presidents do fall for people. Some would even say it’s important for leaders to have personal lives. I’m just saying, I checked your contract and hers. There is nothing that forbids you from pursuing a relationship with this woman.”

  “You are thorough,” Helen said dryly.

  “It’s my job. Especially when my friend’s happiness is at stake. Why don’t you go find this woman? Grab a bunch of flowers, tell her she has pretty eyes or whatever you young career women like to hear.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  It was an almost comical scene: Helen with a bouquet of mini–mart roses, telling Wilson she had “pretty eyes.” Wilson’s white–blue eyes were as beautiful as an avalanche.

  “Okay. Take her to a gay bar and get her drunk.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  Terri snorted. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “I am not going to do any of that,” Helen said. “Goodnight.”

  Still, as Helen mounted the staircase that led from the Craven to the street, she thought she might follow Terri’s advice. It was the intuition, groundless but absolute, that if she showed up at Wilson’s door, Wilson would be happy to see her—no, not happy, joyful—that made her pause on the last step. Wilson would be waiting for her, was waiting for her.

  Helen took another step, emerged on the street, and came to her senses. There was someone else she needed to find.

  ****

  It was odd how ubiquitous the homeless where when they were not wanted. Now that Helen needed to talk to Sully, the streets were empty. It took her an hour before she found a man with an army duffle bag sleeping on a bench behind the elementary school. She asked if he knew where she could find the fortune teller.

  “She’s probably at the camp,” he told Helen. He gave her directions to the bike path that ran along Crescent Street, past the asylum.

  It was after nine and the day had faded to mute blue when Helen found the gravel parking lot the homeless man had flagged as a landmark. Slowly, carefully, remembering the terrifying fall into the asylum spring, Helen crossed the field toward the light of a small campfire. As she drew closer, figures scattered into the darkness.

  A toothless man sitting by the fire called, “Are you a cop?”

  Someone in the darkness yelled, “She’s a social worker. Tell her to buy us some cigarettes.”

  There was a murmur of laughter.

  “I’m looking for Sully the fortune teller.”

  “You want to hear about tall, dark, and handsome. Sully won’t give you that. The hanged man. That’s her card.” The voice came from the ground. As Helen looked more closely, she saw the sleeping bag near her feet. She had almost stepped on the woman inside.

  “You got a fiver?” The sleeping bag stirred, and one dark, boney hand emerged from the covers like something rising from the dead. “You never have a fiver when I need it.”

  Helen recognized Sully’s crackling voice.

  Slowly Sully stood, keeping the sleeping bag wrapped around her. In the darkness, she appeared to be more beast—or rock—than human. Her back was humped and the dirty bedding accentuated the mound. Her head seemed to emerge from the center of her chest, like some nightmare creature drawn in the margins of an ancient, sea–farer’s map.

  “So, you finally want to know? Mrs. Boss, finally came around.”

  “Can we talk in private?” Helen asked. “I’ll pay you, if that’s what you want.”

  Sully extended a gnarled hand. Helen placed a twenty dollar–bill on her palm without touching Sully’s skin.

  “This way,” Sully said.

  She shuffled away from the fire. When they reached the parking lot, she stopped and beckoned for Helen to come closer.

  “Everybody is listening,” Sully whispered.

  Helen took a step forward, trying to block out the odor of cigarettes and sweat, so much like Eliza that she watched Sully’s face to remind her it was not her sister.

  “I need to know about Crystal Evans,” Helen said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know if you think she committed suicide. I want to know how she died.”

  Sully drummed her fingers on the metal guardrail. “So,” she said, “they figured it out. They weren’t Crystal’s legs.”

  “They think the legs belonged to a student at Pittock. They think she committed suicide.”

  “And Crystal? What did Crystal do?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you. They think she committed suicide in the same way. A copycat.”

  “That was Crystal for you. Always had to be better, always had to tell a bigger story. But she didn’t kill herself. No. She wouldn’t have done it on the second.”

  “The second?”

  “She had just gotten her Social Security check. She would have blown it first, had a big drink up. At least, she would’ve cashed it and given us the money. Crystal was like that. She was a good girl.” Sully returned her hands to the depths of her sleeping bag, pulling it tightly around her, although the evening was still warm. “You should drain the well before someone else falls in.”

  “What?”

  “I see you in the well.”

  Sully shifted in her sleeping–bag cloak. The moon had not risen, and the night was suddenly dark. Helen could not make out her sooty face. She was just a voice in the shadows. A voice, and occasionally the glint of yellowed eyes.

  “But you didn’t want your fortune.” Sully spat on the dirt. “You wanted to give me your money. You wanted to give me your charity, but you need to buy the future. You need to know.”

  “I’m looking for information about Crystal,” Helen said.

  “You aren’t listening.” Sully’s hands darted out of the sleeping bag and she waved them like airport staff guiding in an airplane. “You don’t understand. I am Cassandra.” Sully lunged at Helen, grabbing her shoulders. “You don’t listen.” The smell of Sully’s breath was sickening. “I am Cassandra. I see all, and I know you. Mrs. Bosswoman. I see you.”

  For a second, Sully’s third eye glowed blue in the darkness. Then it closed, and she was gone. Only her voice remained, vibrating in Helen’s skull.

  “Drain the wells, Helen.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Helen was shaken enough by Sully’s rantings, but when she entered the Pittock house that night, she thought she had finally, irrevocably lost her mind. The first thing she felt was a fierce blush spreading across her face. The embarrassment! She had been so distracted she had walked into the wrong house and was standing in a stranger’s foyer. Then another thought struck her: there were no other houses near the Pittock house. She had wandered, like Eliza, far from home, and now she stood in this hallway, seconds before discovery. The police would come, and there would be long, quiet conversations to which she was not privy. Drummond would stand up for her, and the homeowners would not press charges. And then?

  But no. As she looked around, she saw the familiar layout. The long hall. The parlor. Even the filigreed wallpaper was the same. It was just that everything else had been transformed. On the floor, a white shag carpet ran the length of the hallway. In the parlor, the horse hair sofas, the pram, and the baby doll had all been replaced. In their stead sat a white velvet sofa, white velvet arm chairs, and a white marble coffee table. In place of Jedidiah Pittock’s portrait hung an oceanscape. Helen took a ste
p closer. The texture of the paint told her it was no reproduction, and it was gorgeous, all done in hues of white, as though the artist had painted only the light. Totally abstract and yet clearly the ocean at dawn.

  On the marble table stood a vase of white lilies. The note below read, “I need you. I love you. You belong in white. Adair.”

  “No,” Helen said. “No. No. No.”

  She ran down the hall. In the kitchen, stood a white–tiled butcher block table and white stools.

  Hands trembling, she was barely able to press Terri’s speed dial.

  “It’s everywhere,” she said. She pulled a drawer open and then another. Gone was the cafeteria cutlery. Gone, the dull, wood–handled knives. Gone, the cheap, gas station wine opener. Everything had been replaced. There were instruments in all the drawers—all white. Spatulas, whisks, a carving knife, something that looked like a plastic lemon on a stick, something labeled a micro–planer.

  “She’s been here. She’s touched everything. She could still be here. What am I going to tell Drummond?”

  It took several minutes of slamming cupboards for Helen to realize that Terri had been repeating the words “calm down” over and over again. When she finally heard him and stopped, he told her to start slowly, from the beginning.

  When she finished he said, “So…do you think she’s a stalker?”

  “Of course she’s a stalker.” Helen stared at a cupboard full of white bone china.

  “Or do you think she’s a wealthy, young woman in love who’s not making very good choices?”

  Helen could not fathom her motives. She rushed back to the living room.

  “I don’t know what she did with the portrait of Jedidiah Pittock. It’s gone. It’s hung over that fireplace for a hundred years.”

  “From what you told me it was hideous.”

  “It was an heirloom.”

  “So call her and ask.”

  “I can’t call her. No one can know about this. If they know about this, they’ll know everything.” Her mind reeled from point to point: Wilson, their affair, the money it must have cost to refurnish the house. It was all wrong.

  “Call her,” Terri insisted. “And tell her not to talk. Or go on Twitter. If the students saw someone redecorating your house, they’ll accuse you of mishandling college funds while their tuition goes up. Count on it. You’ll know who saw what soon enough.”

  “It’s breaking and entering. I should have her arrested.”

  “Yeah,” Terri said in a way that seemed to imply no. “If you feel unsafe,” he added, “get a hotel. I mean that. Even if it’s just a premonition. But if you trust this woman, call her, make sure she didn’t throw the antiques in a dumpster. I bet she didn’t. She’s old money. They appreciate these things. Then say thank you. ‘Thank you for doing something completely inappropriate in an effort to cheer me up.’ She sounds rather romantic.”

  In the end, Helen took none of Terri’s advice. She did not call Wilson to thank her or to scold her. Once the initial shock and indignation wore off, she could not work up the energy to care about Pittock’s portrait. She certainly did not care about the baby doll. She simply went upstairs, marveled at the transformation there too, and fell into the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in, drifting off beneath sheets as soft as the sky itself.

  ****

  In the morning, Twitter was silent on the subject of Helen’s décor, as was the newspaper and her voice mail. Still shaking her head at the bizarre transformation of her home, Helen walked across campus and called the DOT office as soon as it opened at 8:00 a.m. The DOT worker was courteous to the point of obsequiousness, but he was not budging on the issue of draining the asylum springs.

  “We don’t have the budget for it. We’ve secured the area. Perhaps if there had been some incident, we might be able to move this to a higher priority. But there hasn’t.”

  Helen drew a series of vicious hatch marks on her desk blotter. “Two women were killed in the forest, and their bodies are still missing. That’s an incident.”

  The man on the other end of the line paused, as though leafing through a report. “It says here that the Pittock police did some kind of scope, found nothing in the springs.”

  “What if I had it on good authority that the scope was wrong?”

  “That would be a police matter. They would need to re–scope or order a drain. We deal with accidents. They deal with crimes.”

  “There was an accident.” Helen jumped at the opportunity. “I fell in. I nearly drowned. Is that enough?”

  “Can anyone verify that?” The man sounded embarrassed. He thought she was crazy.

  “Absolutely. Adair Wilson.” Helen gave him the number. “She was there.”

  A few minutes later, he called back. “I’m sorry ma’am. The woman you mentioned said she had never been in or near the springs with you.”

  “Look. I’ll pay with my own money. I’ll mortgage this school. Just do it.”

  ****

  “How are you doing, Helen?” Drummond asked.

  He and Helen were sitting on the edge of the fountain in the science courtyard, eating their lunches. The picnic had been his idea. Helen sensed he was trying to comfort her. He was kind. Just beneath the cool, New England exterior was a real affection. He sat very still, not looking at her, yet Helen could feel his full attention.

  “You’ve been through so much recently.”

  “I’m fine,” Helen said. “I really am all right.”

  Helen hated lying to him. She hated the subterfuge. But she could not share her fears. She made a concerted effort to smile, to dabble her fingers in the water. When he was not looking, she searched his face for signs that he knew about Wilson or that he had guessed her apprehensions about his son. She saw none.

  “It’s been tough dealing with my sister’s death, but I’ll be okay.” She let her words trail off cheerfully, like the breeze that had kicked up to stir the first fall leaves. There was something brittle in the way it darted, twirled, and then died down. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” Helen added. “You said it was time to start our capital campaign. What did you have in mind?”

  “I do like you, Helen,” Drummond said appreciatively. “You don’t break easily.”

  Helen smiled. “I’m a tough old soldier.”

  Drummond chuckled. “That makes two of us.”

  He took off his Pittock class ring and held it up to the sunlight. The stone glinted, darker than any amethyst Helen had ever seen.

  “This was my father’s ring. He went to Pittock, and my grandfather went here before him. Institutions like this survive because they plan for the future. We plan for the future. What better way to show that we can weather this storm?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Helen said. As long as she could keep him focused on college business, as long as he thought they were working together for the good of the campus, she could watch Ricky.

  “Do you want to hear my plan?” Drummond asked.

  Helen nodded

  “There is a lot that needs renovating, updating. I’m thinking about something that will make a statement: the old asylum. It’s not school property, but it could be. The state has been trying to get rid of it. They can’t tear it down because of its architectural significance. However, it’s a huge liability and the state does not have the budget to renovate. What if we turned those buildings into student housing? We need it, and they are right there.”

  “Over two hundred and fifty private rooms,” Helen mused, “each with a window. Courtyards, kitchen facilities. We could replant the gardens. It would become a state of the art dormitory. I’m glad you mention that. I’ve ordered a team to come in and drain the wells.”

  “You fill the wells; you don’t drain them.” Drummond was vehement.

  “What?”

  “It costs many thousands of dollars to drain a well. It’s almost impossible. If you fill them, it’s the price of a dump truck and rough fill from the constructio
n site. Oh Helen, call them back and tell them ‘no.’ We can’t afford that.”

  The breeze had chilled. The sunlight glared in Helen’s eyes without warming her.

  “I can afford it.”

  In the distance, she heard a rumble of thunder.

  “But why?”

  Drummond’s patronizing “oh Helen” and her own fear made her angry.

  “I saw the figures on Adrian Meyerbridge’s estate,” she spat out. “We were counting on that money.”

  “He also donated a quantity of stocks from his portfolio.” Drummond did not meet her eyes.

  “I went over the figures,” Helen said. She was not sure how far she wanted to push. “Give or take, it looks like he could not have left more than half a million, less if the market drops.”

  Drummond said nothing.

  “There are collectors with no connection to the college who would pay at least a million for their name on an administration building.” Helen tried to keep her voice friendly. “We may need to think about that in the future.”

  “I know,” Drummond said, still avoiding her gaze. “I wanted Adrian to have that building, Helen.”

  “What did you tell the board?”

  “I told them the truth. The market is variable. The gift was worth more when Adrian first signed.”

  Helen leaned her head back, resting it against a decorative, stone urn. She closed her eyes to the sharp sunlight filling the quad. She was angry, not just at Drummond and the foolish gift but at the whole town and its old rules. Drummond could give away college buildings like his personal possessions. Hornsby could redact reports and treat the police department like a hobby. Ricky Drummond could mistreat Carrie Brown and then walk away as though he had no part to play in her life. Helen heard Wilson as though she were standing beside her: You’re not part of this place yet. Things disappear here. People disappear. She could not let Drummond guess her feelings.

  “Some things are more important than money,” she said without opening her eyes.

  The breeze blew a cold spray of water from the fountain. Helen was about to speak, when she heard footsteps. Helen opened her eyes just as Ricky Drummond burst through the arched doorway to the courtyard.