The Admirer

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “I read your vita online. You saved Vandusen from losing their accreditation. And now you’re the youngest college president in Pittock history.”

  “I would be at most colleges.”

  Helen leaned her head on Wilson’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Wilson put an arm around her.

  “Why so ambitious?” Wilson asked quietly.

  “Not everyone has a father who will buy them a building.” As soon as Helen spoke she felt bad. “I didn’t mean it like that. It would have been nice to get a building. My father was a house painter, and we struggled financially.”

  Wilson kissed the top of her head.

  “So? Why so ambitious?” Wilson repeated. “Every ambitious person I know is neurotic. They’re all trying to win their father’s love or prove they’re not like their mothers. I am too.” Wilson chuckled. “Distant father, over achieving brothers, perfect Martha Stewart mother who drank herself to sleep every night. I’m as bad as anyone.”

  “I’m not that ambitious.”

  “No.”

  “Pittock had been trying to recruit me since the last president died. I turned them down. I was used to a big school and a big city.”

  “But this time you said yes.”

  “Vandusen restructured.”

  “And then?”

  “They restructured me out of a job.” Helen felt a surge of anger, just as she had when she first got the news. “They should have just fired me. There was no restructure in the strategic plan. No one else got let go, nothing changed. A few departments reported to a different dean and one secretary got reassigned. It was just a ploy, so they could let me go and feel good about themselves. They thought they were doing me a favor. We had worked together for years.”

  “Why would they do that to you?” Wilson searched her face. “It wasn’t because of something like this, was it?” She looked frightened.

  “No.” Helen let out a sad laugh. “If it had been something like this, they would have just fired me.”

  “Then what was it?”

  This is how it ends. If Helen said the words out loud, she could not take them back. She could not pretend it had never happened. She could not reinvent herself.

  “My sister, Eliza, was very sick,” she began.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Wilson pulled her a bit closer. Helen paused. “No. She wasn’t sick. She was a crazy, awful sister. She used to melt my dolls with cigarette lighters, and then she would scream for them. She would scream, as though she was being tortured, and beg for it to stop. She’d hold the lighter to their faces for so long, it really would burn her. She burnt her thumb so badly one time, it got infected. I could smell it rotting. Once you’ve smelled that, you will always know. She said she had to sacrifice my dolls so our parents would not die, but I think she killed them in the end. Killed them with worry. Killed them with sacrificing everything to try to help her.”

  Wilson put her other arm around Helen, in an encircling embrace.

  “Even the good times were awful, and there weren’t many of them. Occasionally, Eliza would curl up with her head on my mother’s lap. Then no one would move, not to change the channel, not to pee. It was like having a bobcat sleeping beside you. You were afraid to move.”

  Now that Helen had begun, the story poured from her. How she wished her parents had been stricter with Eliza. How she wished they would send her away, and how Helen longed for the day when she could escape the madness of their house and go to college. However, as soon as she left, she began to worry about her parents. Eliza’s care consumed them. Helen feared for them: two sweet, simple, gray–haired people, her mother a school secretary, her father a painter. As Helen was finishing her MPA, her father had a heart attack. Her mother followed a few years later, begging from her hospital bed that Helen never let Eliza go into a home. So Helen took the job in Pittsburg. Work was her refuge, and caring for Eliza was her career.

  “Eliza kept getting worse,” Helen went on. “Instead of hurting dolls or insects or breaking things, she started to hurt herself. She’d wander the city. She didn’t bathe. She didn’t throw anything away. My parents had owned this beautiful old house, and Eliza filled it with garbage. Whole rooms you couldn’t go into because of the trash. Food, trash, excrement and things she bought off TV. I should have put her in a home.” Tears slid out of Helen’s closed lids. “Instead, I killed her.”

  ****

  Wilson didn’t flinch. “Sometimes people don’t understand what we have to do.”

  Helen was not sure if she heard Wilson speak or imagined her voice. Wilson kept her cheek pressed to the top of Helen’s head, her voice in Helen’s hair.

  “How did you kill her?”

  “I had just gotten the news of the restructure, and I had a month left at Vandusen. The school was going through another accreditation, and I thought if I could prove that I wasn’t distracted, that Eliza wasn’t taking me away from work, I could get my job back. I was working twelve hours a day. I didn’t have time to take care of her, so I pressured her doctor to give her a dose of haloperidol. Eliza begged me not to. She said she had had it before, and it was awful.” Helen pressed her face into Wilson’s shoulder. “She said it would hurt so much to sit that she wanted to die. When she stood up it was worse. It hurt to move. It hurt to stand still. She said the Soviet government used haloperidol to torture prisoners. I told her she was crazy. I told her she would take it if she loved me, and she did. A few days later she killed herself.”

  “How?”

  In the low light of the lamps, Wilson’s eyes were exactly the color of moonlight.

  “She gouged her eyes out with a spoon.”

  Wilson’s face remained motionless. If she had cringed or commiserated, Helen would have stopped talking. Wilson just waited.

  “The forensic investigator said it took hours. She probably started by putting the spoon under her lower lid, trying to pry it out. But the optic nerve is thick. She crushed one eye. The other she pulled halfway out of its socket, and then reached behind it with scissors to cut the nerve. There was blood everywhere. You see, she hadn’t planned on the scissors. She blinded herself, and then she had to cut the nerve. She was looking for the scissors with both eyes blind. The doctors said schizophrenics can have strange, sick reserves of strength and courage. Sometimes. When it comes to things like this. From what I’ve read about patients, the wrong dose of haloperidol to someone who doesn’t tolerate it…it’s just that bad. It’s so bad, anyone would put their eyes out, just to stop the pain.”

  “And she did.”

  “Yes.”

  Helen leaned over, clutching her hair in her fists. She wanted to pull it out in searing clumps. She wanted to hurt as much in body as she did in her heart. Then she felt Wilson gently pry her fingers open, and take her hands. Wilson kissed her knuckles, turned her hand over, and kissed the lines in her palm. I’ll read your fortune.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Isn’t it? I always wanted there to be a silver lining. I wanted Eliza to have a gift, something she gave us, something that made her life meaningful. But there was nothing like that.” It was a relief to say it. How many decades had Helen staved off the dreadful sense that Eliza had wasted her own life, as well as Helen’s and their parents’ lives? Three good people in bondage to her madness. “Sometimes she knew how unhappy she made us. Sometimes, but not often. There was nothing remarkable about her, except that she was crazy, and, in the end, she had the courage to gouge her own eyes out. I wanted her dead.”

  “Sweetheart.” Wilson’s lips moved against Helen’s hair as she rocked her in her arms.

  “She ruined my life, and now I’m just like her.” The tears had stopped. The worst realization was the easiest to speak. “I see her everywhere, and I see Carrie, and I’m going mad.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Helen woke early the next morning, wrapped in the sumptuous down covers on Wilson’s bed. The sun was barely up and the apartment glowed with
a diffuse light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Helen rolled onto her side. Looking at Wilson, who was still sleeping, Helen felt a rush of sadness. Wilson was gorgeous, unlike anyone Helen had ever seen.

  After they had gone to bed the night before, they had made love again, and that time it was so soft and slow Helen felt like every muscle of her body had released, like wine pouring from a bottle. She had explored Wilson’s skin with her hands and her lips, and been delighted.

  But Wilson was so unsuitable a partner, the very thought of being with her was inconceivable. As Helen watched her, college scandal was not foremost on her mind. She traced Wilson’s muscular shoulders with the tips of her fingers. Even if Helen wanted to stay, how long would a woman like Adair Wilson remain interested in her? After the thrill of seducing the college president wore off, after Wilson had won, what would be left? What could Helen offer Wilson with her body like Poseidon and her diamonds?

  “I have to go,” Helen whispered.

  Wilson rolled over, opening her eyes slowly. “Don’t go yet.”

  “I have to.”

  Wilson’s eyes flew all the way open. They were the same color as the morning sky visible through the tall windows. Her lips were soft. Her face relaxed. But Helen could decipher her expression: sorrow. Another tragedy.

  “You’re going to leave me.”

  Putting her hand on Wilson’s cheek, Helen spoke softly. “You’re lovely. You really are. But I have to leave.”

  “No.” Wilson drew away, pulling the covers over her chest. “You can’t go.”

  “You are a beautiful, young woman, Adair. You’re kind. You’re talented.” The words sounded paltry compared to the beauty before her. “But I am the president at the college where you teach. I’m ten years older than you.”

  “And now you’re going to say you’re not even gay.”

  “No. I am gay.” It was clear now, so easy to discern. All those men: they were simply a punishment. I killed my sister, and this is all I deserve. “But I have to put the college first.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have to be.”

  “So this was a mistake?” Wilson clutched the sheet.

  “Professionally, yes. Personally, never. But more than this, more than last night, that’s impossible for me.”

  She heard her own voice crack. She wanted to cry for everything that was impossible now. Everything that had been impossible for Eliza; everything Eliza made impossible for her. Maybe in another life she would have fallen for a woman like Wilson. Maybe she would have been a professor, with a cottage on the edge of town. Maybe they would have grown dahlias and kept a cat. Dahlias and a cat and ten thousand dollars worth of diamonds on the end table. No. It would never work.

  “I don’t think I could be in a relationship with anyone.” Helen said to soften the blow.

  Wilson turned away, gazing up at the two–story windows.

  “Of course. The women I love don’t love me.” There was no self–pity in her voice, only the cool statement of fact. “I would not have fallen for you if you had not been untouchable. That’s my weakness. The unattainable.” She turned back to Helen. “That’s my weakness. Yours is living in the past. Yours is being hurt and not getting help. You probably have PTSD. You know people hallucinate after they’ve seen horrible things. You could have a normal life if you stopped punishing yourself.”

  Wilson was angry but not loud. She slipped out of bed and donned an oyster gray kimono that managed to look both militant and feminine. She walked to the edge of the loft and looked down at the living room, her back to Helen.

  “My problem,” she continued, “is that I fall for the impossible. What else could I do? I move to a new town, and I buy the fucking building I live in. What am I supposed to do now? Date the local librarian? Marry some social worker? When I lived in New York, I auditioned for a part with the Gray Preston Company. Big company. Well established. A lot of grant funding and huge ticket sales. I didn’t get the part, and I made the mistake of mentioning that to my brother, Cy. He bought out the stakeholders in the company. Fired the director. Got me the part, and when I wouldn’t take it, he ran the company into the ground.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “I would never let him do that to you,” Wilson said, but the words I could were implicit. Wilson whirled to face Helen. “I want someone he can’t buy and he can’t break. I want someone who has played chess with other people’s lives. There aren’t many people like that, and you know it. That’s why you’re alone.”

  “I need to go.” Helen rose in one motion. She dressed quickly, tearing the shoulder of her blouse in her rush to get away from the growing desire to give in to Wilson’s rhetoric. It would be so easy to fall back into the bed, to say, “You’re right. No one understands me like you.” Her very bones were languid from lovemaking. Her sex was still wet for Wilson’s touch. She threw her blazer over the ripped shirt. When she was dressed, she headed straight for the staircase, glancing only briefly at Wilson before descending.

  “Go,” Wilson said. Her face registered absolute grief.

  She’s an actor.

  ****

  “The garden suggests life and growth,” Helen spoke in a sonorous tone.

  Before her a group of twenty students and a few professors had gathered to commemorate the Carrie Brown Memorial garden. They stood respectfully still, their hands clasped in front of them. In the very back, a few paces behind the rest, Wilson crossed her arms over her chest. Her face was taut with grief or anger. She tried to catch Wilson’s gaze, but Wilson looked away, blinking rapidly.

  “It reminds us to look toward the future, not dwell on the past. It reminds us to tend to those we love and to accept the changing seasons and the cycles of life.” Helen’s voice sounded hollow in her own ears. It was such a cliché. By next year, the commemorative plaque would be overgrown, the garden just a few shrubs on the border of a lawn. Helen stared at the note card in her hands. We are all actors.

  Helen read, “Seeing you here reminds me that we are not alone. We must turn to each other in times of need. If Carrie had known that, had felt it, we might not be here today.”

  In the front of the small gathering, a girl began to cry. Helen guessed from her prim, pink sweater emblazoned with the letters “Delta Delta Kappa” that she was not crying for Carrie. Not really. Perhaps the girl wept from some recent heartbreak, the exhaustion of upcoming exams, or just the pathos of the moment. Carrie Brown had died alone. Like Eliza, there had been no one who really cared at that last desperate moment.

  Helen finished her speech and moved quickly through the crowd, hoping to catch Wilson—although she didn’t know what she wanted to say. The girl in the pink sweater stopped her.

  “Thank you,” the girl sniffled. “That was such a beautiful speech.” The girl threw her arms around Helen, embracing her in a perfumed hug. “That was so sad what happened to Cathy Brown.”

  Helen returned the girl’s hug with one arm as she watched Wilson stride away.

  “Carrie,” Helen corrected her gently. “It was Carrie Brown.”

  ****

  Helen did not see Wilson for a several days after the commemoration. When next she did see her, Wilson was running across the quad, her boots pounding the ground, sending dry leaves flying behind her. She moved with the adrenaline of someone in flight. Wilson came to a breathless halt before her. Helen’s breath seized in her chest.

  “Helen,” Wilson gasped. There was an autumn chill in the air, and her breath billowed like smoke. Heat steamed off her body.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Josa Lebovetski. He’s dead. You’ve got to come, Helen. He wasn’t in class today.” Wilson doubled over like a sprinter at the end of a record–breaking dash, her hands on her knees, her spine heaving. “He hadn’t called in sick. The students were looking for him. He’s been here forever. Helen…” Wilson gasped. “I love him. He was like a father to me. First you and now him. I can’t do th
is alone.” Wilson wiped tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “I can’t be this alone.”

  Helen put her hand on Wilson’s back, feeling her ribs heave.

  “How did he die?”

  “I don’t know. They just found him in his office. Maybe it was a heart attack. A stroke.”

  Helen gazed at Wilson and past her to the quad. The view she looked at was also on the Pittock webpage, red leaves on the ground, gold-tinged leaves on the trees. Perfect.

  Oh, my darling. She stroked Wilson’s back. “Josa Lebovetski was killed.”

  She knew it with animal clarity. She knew it in her bones.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Helen felt a sickening déjà vu as she crossed the campus with Wilson in tow. The young police officer who had helped retrieve Carrie Brown’s body was standing outside Boston Hall, keeping the perimeter clear.

  “The chief is in there,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  The young officer nodded toward Wilson.

  “Ms. Wilson called campus security. They checked it out. Office looked like a tornado hit it.”

  “I think it always looked like that,” Helen said. “How did Lebovetski look?”

  “I can’t say what happened for sure,” the officer said. “He was lying on the floor. He looked like he’d been heading toward the door. It could have been natural causes.”

  “But?”

  “But there were signs of bruising around the head,” the officer added quietly.

  “Why would someone do this?” Wilson dropped onto a bench outside the hall and put her head in her hands. “He was an old professor.” She said it with the same reverence other people used for children.

  Helen sat next to her and put her arm around Wilson’s shoulders.

  “Come on,” she said quietly. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Helen led Wilson away from the police and into the science quad, where the trellis of wisteria vines hid them from view.