"This is a just a preliminary question-and-answer session. Bob and Deb would like to sit down with you, have a one-on-one— "
"The true intention of this phone call is to intuit whether or not I plan to sue both the school and the Board of Education for negligence. Am I right?"
"Mr. Van Meer, I'm not going to try to argue with—"
"Don't."
"What I will say is that we wish — "
"I wouldn't say or wish anything if I were you. Your reckless—let me rephrase that—your deranged staff member took my child, a minor, on a weekend field trip without securing parental permission—"
"We're well aware of the situa — "
"Endangered her life, the lives of five other minors and, let me remind you, managed to get herself killed in what is looking like a highly disgraceful fashion. I am this close to calling a lawyer and making it my life's ambition to ensure that you, that headmaster of yours, Oscar Meyers, and every person associated with your third-rate institution ends up wearing stripes and leg irons for the next forty years. Furthermore, in the off chance my daughter does wish to share her concerns, the last person with whom she'd choose to do so would be a private-school counselor named Deb. If I were you, I wouldn't call here again unless you wish to beg for clemency."
Dad hung up.
And though I wasn't in the kitchen with him, I knew he didn't slam down the phone, but gently returned it to the wall, much in the manner of putting a maraschino cherry atop a sundae.
Well, I did have concerns. And Dad was right; I had no intention of sharing them with Deb. I had to share them with Jade, Charles, Milton, Nigel and Lu. The need to explain to each of them what had happened from the moment I left the campground to those seconds I saw her dead was so overpowering, I couldn't think about it, couldn't attempt to outline or ABC it on note cards or legal pads without feeling dizzy and dumb, as if I were trying to contemplate quarks, quasars and quantum mechanics, all at the same time (see Chapters 13, 35, 46, Incongruities, V. Close, 1998).
Later that day, when Dad left to go buy groceries, I finally called Jade. I estimated I'd given her enough time to recover from the initial shock (perhaps she'd even continued on, loving each day, as Hannah would've wanted).
"Who's calling please?"
It was Jefferson.
"This is Blue."
"Sorry, honey. She's not taking calls."
She hung up before I could say anything. I called Nigel.
"Creech Pottery and Carpentry."
"Uh, hello. Is Nigel there? This is Blue."
"Hey there, Blue!"
It was Diana Creech, his mother—or rather, adopted mother. I'd never met her, but had talked to her countless times on the phone. Due to her loud, jocular voice, which snow-plowed everything and anything you said, whether it be a lone word or the Declaration of Independence, I envisioned her as a large, cheery woman who wore men's overalls covered with clay smears from her own gigantic fingers, fingers that in all probability were wide as naked rolls of toilet paper. When she talked, she took big bites out of certain words, as if they were bright green, solid Granny Smiths.
"Let me go see if he's awake. Last time I looked in on him he was sleeping like a baby. That's all he's been doing for the past two days. How are you?"
"I'm okay. Nigel's all right?"
"Sure. I mean, we're still in shock. Everyone is! 'Specially the school. Have they called? You can tell they're nervous about a lawsuit. Obviously we're waiting to hear what the police say. I told Ed they should have made an arrest by now or come forward and said something. Silence is inexcusable. Ed says no one has a clue what happened to her and that's why they're holding out. What I will say is that if somebody did do it—'cuz I don't want to think about the other possibility, not yet—you can be sure he's on his way to Timbuktu with a fake passport in a first-class seat." (The few times I'd spoken to her on the phone, I noticed Diana Creech always managed to stick the word Timbuktu into the conversation as many youths stuck in like or whatever.) "They're dragging their feet." She sighed. "I'm sad about what's happened, but I'm thankful you guys are safe. But you turned up Saturday, didn't you? Nigel said you weren't with them. Oh, here he comes. Hold on, sugar."
She put the receiver down and walked away, the sound of a Clydesdale trotting down on a cobblestone street. (She wore clogs.) I heard voices and then the hooves again.
"Mind if he calls you back? He wants to eat something."
"Sure," I said.
"You take care now."
No one answered when I called Charles.
At Milton's, the answering machine picked up, a whine of violin accompanied with a woman's fanciful voice, "You've reached Joanna, John and Milton. We're not home ..."
I dialed Leulah. I sensed she'd be the most unglued out of all of us, so I hesitated calling her, but I had to talk to someone. She answered on the first ring.
"Hey, Jade," she said. "Sorry about that."
"Oh, it's Blue actually." I was so relieved, I oil-spilled. "I'm glad you picked up. How are you? I-I've been going crazy. I can't sleep. How are you?" "Oh," said Leulah. "This isn't Leulah." "What?" "Leulah's asleep," she said in a strange voice. I could hear, on her end, a television. It was thrilled about house paint, only a single coat necessary for total coverage, Herman's Paints are guaranteed to last five years regardless of exposure to rainfall and wind.
"Can I take a message?" she asked.
"What's wrong?"
She hung up.
I sat down on the edge of my bed. The bedroom windows were crammed with late-day light, soft, yellow, the color of pears. The paintings on the wall, oil landscapes of pastures and cornfields, looked so shiny they might have still been wet. I might have run my thumb through them and made a finger painting. I began to cry, dumb, lethargic tears, as if I'd cut into a scarred old gum tree and the sap could barely leak out.
This, I remember distinctly, was the worst moment—not the insomnia, not my wasted courtship of the TV, not the endless chanting in my head of a certain hysterical phrase that became less alive the more I said it—someone killed Hannah, someone killed Hannah—but this awful desolate feeling, desert-island aloneness. Worst of all, I knew it was the beginning of it, not the middle or the end.
25
Bleak House
"If n 44 B.c., ten days after he stabbed Caesar in the back, Brutus probably felt the same way I did when the student body returned to St. Gallway for the commencement of Spring Term. Brutus, strolling down the dusty roads of the Forum, doubtless came face-to-face with the harsh realities of "Corridor and Country Road Ostracism," with its principal tenets, "Keep a wide girth," and "As you come closer, fasten your eyes to a point immediately north of the leper's head so for a second he/she thinks you're acknowledging his/her pitiable existence." Brutus most likely became well versed in "Modes of Seeing Through," the most startling of which were the "Pretend Brutus Is a Diaphanous Scarf" and "Pretend Brutus Is a Courtyard-Facing Window." Though he once drank watered-down wine with the perpetrators of this unspoken cruelty, once sat next to them at Circus Maximus and rejoiced in the overturning of a chariot, once bathed with them, naked, in both the hot and the cold pools of the public baths, these things meant nothing now. Because of what he'd done, he was and always would be their object of disgrace.
At least Brutus had done something productive, albeit controversial, carrying out a meticulously laid plan to seize power for what he believed to be the continued well-being of the Roman Empire.
I, of course, had done nothing at all.
"See, if you remember, everyone thought she was amazing, but I always thought there was something hair-raising about her," said Lucille Hunter in my AP English class. "Ever watch when she's taking notes?"
"Huh-uh." "Barely looks up from the page. And when she's taking an essay test she mouths what she's writing the whole time. My grandmother in Florida, who my mom says is totally going senile, does the same thing while watching Wheel of Fortune or writing checks."
/>
"Well," said Donnamara Chase, leaning forward in her seat, "Cindy Willard told me this morning that Leulah Maloney announced to her entire Spanish class that. . ."
For some reason, it perpetually slipped both Lucille and Donnamara's meager minds that my assigned seat in Ms. Simpson's AP English class was, and always had been, immediately behind Donnamara's. The girl handed me The Brothers Karamazov handouts still warm from the Faculty Lounge copier and seeing me, nervously bared her long and pointy teeth (see "Venus Flytrap," North American Flora, Starnes, 1989).
"Wonder if she'll leave school," mused Angel Ospfrey, four seats away.
"Absolutely," whispered Beth Price. "Expect some announcement in the next few weeks that her dad, Account Executive for Whatever Corp, was recently promoted to Regional Manager of the Charlotte branch."
"Wonder what her last words were," said Angel. "Hannah's, I mean."
"From what I hear Blue doesn't have too long to say hers," said Macon Campins. "Milton detests her. He said, and I quote, that if he ever meets her in a dark alley, he'll 'Jack-the-Ripper her ass.' "
"Ever heard that old wives' tale," asked Krista Jibsen in AP Physics, "that it's okay never to be wealthy or famous or whatever because if you never had it, you won't miss it? Well—and I bet this is how Blue feels—if you've tasted fame, then lost it, that's like, extreme torture. You end up with a cocaine addiction. You have to spend time in rehab. And when you come out you make vampire movies that go straight to video."
"You got that off the Corey Feldman True Hollywood Story" said Luke "Trucker" Bass.
"Well, I heard Radley's mom is over the moon," said Peter "Nostradamus" Clark. "She's throwing a Return-to-Power party for Radley because after undergoing such an ordeal, the girl won't be able to hold onto Valedictorian."
"I heard from a very reliable source—wait. No. I feel bad spreading it around."
"What?"
"She's a full-scale lesbian," sang Lonny Felix that Wednesday during Physics Lab 23, "Symmetry in Physical Laws: Is Your Right Hand Really Your Right Hand?" "The Ellen kind, by the way. Not the Anne Heche kind, when you can go either way." Lonny pony-tossed her hair (long, blond, the texture of Wheaties) and glanced toward the front of the room where I was standing with my lab partner, Laura Elms. She hunched closer to Sandy Quince-Wood. "Guess Schneider was one, too. That's why they went off together in the middle of the night. How two women get it on is beyond my comprehension but what I do know is that something went fatally wrong during the sex act. That's what the police are trying to figure out. That's why it's taking so long for them to have a verdict."
"That same thing was on CSI: Miami last night/' said Sandy distractedly as she wrote in her lab manual. "Little did we know what's going on on CSI: Miami is happening right here in our physics class."
"For gosh sakes," said Zach Soderberg, turning around to look at them. "Would you guys keep it down? Some of us are trying to figure out these laws of reflection symmetry."
"Sorry, Romeo," said Lonny with a smirk.
"Yes, let's try to keep things quiet, shall we?" said our substitute teacher, a bald man named Mr. Pine. Pine smiled, yawned and stretched his arms high over his head revealing sweat stains the size of pancakes. He resumed his scrutiny of a magazine, Country Life Wall&Windows.
"Jade's trying to get the Blue girl kicked out of school," whispered Dee during second period Study Hall.
Dum scowled. "For what?"
"Not murder, but like, coercion or brute force or something. I heard her pleading her case in Spanish. I guess Hannah was all bueno. Then she goes off with this Blue person and five minutes later ends up muerto. It's all not going to hold up in court. They're going to declare a mistrial. And no one can use a race card to get her off."
"Stop acting like you're all Greta van Susteren with an eyelift because here's a breaking headline for you. You're not. Neither are you Wolf Blitzer."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Dum shrugged, tossing her crumpled copy of Startainment on the library table. "It's like so, obvious. Schneider pulled a Sylvia Plath." Dee nodded. "Not a terrible assumption actually. Think about my last Intro to Film class."
"What about it?"
"I told you. The woman was supposed to give us an essay test on the Italians, Divorce Italiano Style, L'Avventura, Eight and a Friggin' Half—" "Oh, yeah— " "But when we showed up, all prepared and everything, yet again she was all flailin' and flappin'. It'd totally slipped her mind. She played it off, said not having the test was our surprise, but everyone was creeped out-it was obvious she was blowin' those excuses out the wazoo. She plain old-fashioned forgot. So she hastily puts in Reds, which isn't even Italian, right? Plus we'd already seen it nine times because three days in a row she forgot to bring in La Dolce Friggin' Vita. The woman had no teach cred, was hopelessly ding-headed, suffered epizootics of the blowhole and was full of booty-cheddar. But what kind of teacher forgets their own essay test?"
"A bugged-out teacher," whispered Dum. "One who's mentally unstable."
"Damn straight."
Unfortunately, my instinctive response to overhearing campus-wide chitchat of the aforementioned kind was not The Pacino (godfather-styled vengeance), The Pesci (urges to stick a ballpoint pen in someone's throat), The Costner (flat, frontierlike amusement), The Spacey (scathing verbal retaliation accompanied by a blank facial expression) nor The Penn (blue-collared bellows and moans).
I can only compare how I felt to being inside an austere clothing store when one of the workers silently follows you around to make sure you don't steal anything. Though you have no intention of stealing anything, though you've never come close to stealing anything in your life, knowing they see you as a potential shoplifter unexpectedly turns you into a potential shoplifter. You try not to peer suspiciously over your shoulder. You peer suspiciously over your shoulder. You try not to look at people sideways or sigh artificially or whistle or shoot people nervous smiles. You look sideways, sigh, whistle, shoot nervous smiles and put your extremely sweaty hands in and then out of your pockets over and over again.
Not to complain all of St. Gallway was hashing me over like this, and certainly not to whimper about such abysmal treatment or feel sorry for myself. There were some extraordinary kindnesses, those first few days back at school, such as the moment my old lab partner, Laura Elms, who at four-feet-nine and approximately ninety to ninety-five pounds typically exuded the personality of rice (white, easy on the stomach, went well with every kid), suddenly snatched my left hand as it was copying down F = qv x B from the dry-erase board: "I totally know what you're going through. One of my best friends found her father dead last year. He was outside on their driveway washing their Lexus when he just collapsed. She ran outside and she totally didn't recognize him. He was this really weird blueberry color. She went crazy for a while. All I'm saying is if you ever want to talk I'm here for you." (Laura, I never took you up on your offer, but please accept my thanks. I apologize for the rice comment.)
And there was Zach. If velocity affected the mass of all objects, it wouldn't affect Zach Soderberg. Zach would be the Amendment, the Correction, the Tweak. He was a lesson in durable materials, a success story of sustainable good moods. He was c, the constant.
On Thursday, in AP Physics, I returned from the bathroom to find a mysterious folded piece of notebook paper sitting on my chair. I didn't open it until class was over. I stood very still, right in the middle of the hallway with all those kids gushing past me with backpacks, sagging hair and lumpy jackets, staring at the words, at his schoolgirl's handwriting. I was refuse in a river.
HOW ARE YOU
I'M AROUND
IF YOU WANT TO TALK
ZACH
I kept the note folded in my backpack for the rest of the day and surprised myself by deciding I did want to chat with him. (Dad said it never hurt to glean as many perspectives and opinions as possible, even those one suspects will be unsophisticated and Calibanesque.) Throughout AP World Histo
ry, I found myself fantasizing about going home not with Dad, but with Patsy and Roge, having a supper not of spaghetti, lecture notes, a one-sided debate of J. Hutchinson's The Aesthetic Emancipation of the Human Race (1924), but roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, a discussion of Bethany Louise's softball tryouts or Zach's recent paper on The American Dream (the most ho-hum of paper topics). And Patsy would smile and squeeze my hand while Roge embarked on an impromptu sermon —if I was lucky, "The Fourteen Hopes."
As soon as the bell rang, I hurried out of Hanover along the sidewalk to Barrow, up the stairs to the second floor where I'd heard Zach had his locker. I stood just inside the doorway and watched him in khaki pants and a blueand-white striped shirt talking to that Rebecca girl, the one with prehistoric carnivore eyeteeth. She was tall, propping a stack of spiral notebooks against her jutted-out hip, her other bony arm hooked on the top of the lockers so she resembled an angular Egyptian character scrawled on papyrus. And something about the way Zach gave her his full attention (aware of no one else in the hall), the way he smiled and ran that giant hand through his hair made me realize he was in love with her, that they were doubtlessly both Kinko's employees always shoulder-to-shoulder and engaged in tons of color-copying, and now I'd stand there trying to talk to him about Death with that Hieroglyph breathing down my neck, her eyes sticking to my face like smashed figs, bushy black hair flooding her shoulders like the River Nile —I couldn't do it. I spun around, darted back into the stairwell, shoved open the door and raced outside.
I also can't overlook the Good Samaritan Kindness of another occasion, that Friday in Beginning Drawing, when I, exhausted from the sleepless nights, dozed off in the middle of class, forgetting about my Line Drawing of Tim "Raging" Waters, who'd been chosen to sit at the center of this week's Life Drawing Circle.
"What on earth is wrong with Miss Van Meer?" roared Mr. Moats, glaring down at me. "She's green as El Greco's ghost! Tell us what you ate for breakfast and we'll make a point of avoiding it."
Special Topics in Calamity Physics Page 42
