by JJ Partridge
Nadie arrived around six-thirty and stayed with me as I broiled the chicken. She was not conversational. Even my summary of the draft Campus Crime Report got little reaction which surprised me since Nadie has lots of opinions, often strongly expressed, about campus life and security. But not tonight. The glass of Chianti I poured for her was barely tasted, and despite the lush food smells and a Putanayo CD of French Caribbean music, she picked at her meal and my culinary efforts merited little acclaim. When we finished, she made espresso while I put away leftovers and cleaned up the kitchen. She didn’t wait for the coffee to brew and went upstairs to the loft. When I joined her, she had on her reading glasses and was sitting in an overstuffed chair under a lamp which cast a pool of light on a folder holding a number of handwritten pages that she seemed to scan with impatience. The shades on the loft’s oversized, cantilevered windows were up; in the blackness of the night, their panes captured the room’s walls of books, eclectic furniture and artwork, even the geometric designs and stylized foliage of a red, gold, and olive Anatolian rug. A brushed nickel ceiling fan rotated slowly keeping the room’s air moving. I put her espresso on the table next to her and took mine to my work table where the draft report awaited me. I pressed the CD player remote and a Muir Quartet recording of something by Schumann began with a cello’s sharp arpeggio; barely a minute into it, Nadie got up, turned down the music so low that it was barely audible, and flopped back into her chair. Okay, I thought, how long would it be before she got it out.
Ten minutes later, after not a word of conversation, as I was finally making progress with the conclusion to the report, she said, too matter-of-factly, “I was at the Center this afternoon and I checked to see if we had a file on Anne Sullivan. We did.”
I was stunned. Nadie is not one to bend privacy rules. I turned to her; her glasses rested at her hairline above a face that was troubled. I touched the power button on the remote and the room became still. “And ...?”
Her head went back to the chair’s headrest and her eyes closed. “I know I’m going to regret this,” she sighed. “Late May, just before commencement, she had a consult, said she was pregnant and was thinking of leaving school. She was already looking for an apartment. Maryann Gounoud was her counselor and Maryann, I’m sure, would go over her options. Her notes are really difficult to read, never got into the computer because she left in July for a job in California, but Maryann seemed to think Anne was emotionally stable. Even exceptionally so, under the circumstances. The words underlined are ‘cool’ and ‘determined.’” Nadie’s head snapped to attention and she looked at me sharply. “If you ever tell anyone that I took that file, I’ll ....”
“You know that I won’t ....”
“Just don’t. I still don’t know why I did it. I guess I wanted to know if she had been a client before she dropped out and what we did, if anything ...” and her voice drifted off.
That ended my thought that she had broken the rules for me!
“There’s something else,” she said reluctantly. “Apparently, she saw Maryann back in February, beginning of the semester. Depression, sleeping problems, fitful appetite, emotional involvement with someone unnamed that was difficult, serious enough to recommend psychological consultation. No indication if she followed up.”
“Complicated kid. Anything else?”
She frowned and slipped her reading glasses down from her forehead. “End of report. End of comment.”
She knew I would press her. “How about the referral? If she was going to get an abortion, where would she have gone?”
She turned over a page. “The file doesn’t indicate but I imagine it would’ve been the Planned Parenthood clinic downtown. Student health insurance would cover it, or most of it, but not any extras.” Her eyes sharpened. “And don’t get any ideas about checking it out because, mister lawyer, the privacy laws don’t give you standing to even ask the question.”
I knew that! Hadn’t even crossed my mind! “If someone was willing to pay her for an abortion and keeping quiet about it, maybe Franks is right.”
“Maybe Franks is wrong,” she said dismissively. “Or his client was lying. Or, it simply makes no difference.”
I remembered Tuttle’s lack of empathy for the young woman. “I wonder if her parents knew about the abortion. Tuttle gave me the impression that they are religious Catholics. Her uncle is a priest.”
She flipped through the pages before she answered. “She lists her sister Patricia as the person to be notified in case of emergency, not her parents. Same address as her parents. Anyway, it’s just speculation but if she was ‘cool’ and ‘determined,’ she must have had the abortion ….”
I turned back to the work table and locked my hands behind my neck. Knowing Nadie, there might be more to it, maybe some additional insight by the counselor, but she had decided what she would tell me. Okay, it was a good bet that Anne Sullivan’s sister would at least know about the abortion. The money? Maybe. My eyes fell to the shelves full of mysteries and thrillers across the room, from Block, Burke, and Cornwell to Sayers, Simeon, and Tey. A Morse or Spencer or Dalgleish or Maigret would have the truth out in a single interview of Patricia Sullivan. Ah, well, so be it. Franks would have to get his information to prosecutors quickly if Lavelle Williams was picked up. Assuming that Franks had loyalty to his nominal clients. What if he didn’t? Would Senor Flores be unhappy if Williams disappeared, or if arrested, was permanently silenced by some rogue cops?
I took a sip of espresso that was now lukewarm. Last night, Nadie had berated me when I had been wondering out loud about Ms. Sullivan’s character. “Yes,” I said, smart-alecky. “You’re right. We shouldn’t speculate. Not at all professional. Shows a morbid curiosity ....”
I heard a dismissive breath as her reading light went out. “Yeah. Right. Uh-huh.” She got up from her chair. “Listen to the voyeur who rummages around in a dead woman’s apartment, the bleeding heart who spends his time with the prime suspect’s lawyer and anguishes over his role in delivering him up. Listen to the patrician who spent Monday night in the police station like a knight-errant and worries about being perceived as Don Quixote.” She picked up the remote to the forty inch screen Sony Vega. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m in the mood for something not too serious,” and she channel surfed until she found a “Mary Tyler Moore” rerun on TV Land and flopped down on the sofa. “You can speculate if you want to. I’m all done.” A bellow from Lou Grant interrupted her.
I gave up on the draft report, turned off the desk lamp, and joined her on the sofa. She had the right idea; it’s a lot easier to laugh at Ted Baxter and Rhoda Morgenstern than it is to ruminate about Ms. Sullivan’s personal crisis of months ago. Much easier.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thursday
I woke—alone, since Nadie had gone home last night—with my mind on Carl Reinman’s estate. Tomorrow, I’d be appointed his executor. I imagined Eustace Pine in the dusty precincts of the Providence Probate Court, his trademark bow tie bobbing beneath a prominent Adam’s apple as he requested a bench conference with Judge Cremascoli, the huddle at the bench, the presentation of affidavits from the witnesses to the will, some side bars about other cases, the clerk stamping the petition, and Reinman’s will admitted to probate. When did Pine say Reinman’s will was executed? Two years ago? May? Was that around the one time he come to my house?
* * *
I was slouched on a bench on The Green, delighting in the pleasure of the sun warming my face. With the temperature well into the eighties, kids were in tee shirts, halter tops, shorts, and cut-offs, some noisily tossing frisbees and softballs, others sprawled on the grass, reading, in conversation, many with cell phones at their ears, with one oblivious couple smooching passionately at the base of an elm. Excited talk and music came through open windows in the surrounding buildings as fresh, youthful voices passed by me on the cobblestone walk. The pungent sweetness of newly mowed grass enriched my sense of spring and growth. I was very conten
t.
Abruptly, I was in shadow. Reinman was standing over me, a corona of sunlight streaming over his head and wide shoulders. “You look so damned comfortable!” he said and deposited a battered briefcase next to me as he sat down. “The last exam books for a whole year!” he said, indicating the bulging briefcase, and stretched his arms along the back of the bench, turned his face to the sun, and closed his eyes.
He seemed put together for a Ralph Lauren advertisement: blue blazer, pink button-down shirt with open collar, khakis, Docksiders, square but narrow chin etched with a trace of a dimple, high cheekbones, well-formed nose, dark eyebrows, and a complexion that was unseasonably tan. His wavy black hair, attractively gray above the ears, was long and combed straight back until it fell into a spray of curls over his collar, giving him an annoyingly handsome, Pierce Brosnan-like, appeal. It struck me that his angular good looks gave him a formidable edge in any argument, especially on television, where his telegenic features radiated charm and his resonant voice conveyed intellect as he jabbed at his liberal opponents.
The Chapel Bell struck three o’clock and I couldn’t think of one pressing reason to go back to the office. “Got an idea,” I said, startling Reinman, and a few minutes later, jackets over our shoulders, we were cutting between Channing Hall and College Hall to the brick walk which crossed the University’s well-groomed front yard, and out through Billings Gate to Prospect Street. Reinman kept up a constant chatter, bubbling with enthusiasm for his upcoming sabbatical year which included September in Tuscany and two months in Brazil for a PBS “American Experience” project on Teddy Roosevelt’s post-presidential Amazon adventures. His monologue continued virtually uninterrupted as we entered my house. Reinman used the hall lavette while I mixed a pitcher of kir in the kitchen; he hadn’t returned when I finished so I went into the hall and found him at the entrance to the commodious living room, taking in its twelve foot high ceiling, eggplant walls, Persian carpets, groupings of furniture, artwork, family photographs, and tabletop objects and baubles. With a smile, and without comment, he followed me through the kitchen and french doors to the patio where I placed a tray holding the pitcher and glasses on a glass-topped table between two chaises.
We leaned back into the flowered cushions of the chaises facing the lush greens and bright yellows of the patio’s flowerbeds and a profusion of irises, geraniums, and daffodils in oversized terra cotta pots. Puffs of wind wove through a pair of early-flowering dogwoods and blossoms swirled down to the sun-burnished bricks. Reinman, after a few moments of silence, raised his glass of pinkish liquor toward the sun, letting its rays diffuse into copper colors on his face, and began to gushily praise my house and its incredible views of the city, which became a segue to the cost of renovations to his 1790’s house on Benefit Street and to his farmhouse, recently purchased, near the wineries in Little Compton.
I realized, as he went on, that most everything in his conversation was, sooner or later, about him.
He drew a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket and lit it with a disposable lighter that he had fished awkwardly from his pants. He didn’t ask me if I minded nor ask for an ashtray. He inhaled deeply and blew out a cloud of acrid blue smoke which drifted my way without apology. He was now into his over-scheduled life of speaking engagements, opinion pieces for the country’s major dailies, on call availability for cable news hot topics—besides those on which he was a regular—a bimonthly column in the Weekly Standard, and seemingly most irksome and tiresome, his two lecture courses at Carter. He became more and more puffed up about his role as an intellectual touchstone for modern American conservatives, as though his participation and views were vital to contemporary political dialogue.
I made appropriate noises of attention—I’ve always been good at that—but eventually stopped listening. Had he always been this self-centered? What had triggered his metamorphosis from campus radical to stalwart of the right?
“... And the country still misses Reagan,” he was saying, as he ground out the cigarette on the bricks. I winced but covered up by using his reference as an excuse to ask him about Reagan’s endorsement of T.R.
Reinman apprised me carefully, perhaps considering my motivation for the question, then smiled broadly and poured another kir from the pitcher. Ironically, he said, it was a Carter story, his tone suggesting intimacy. “It was the time of Iran-Contra, with all those rumors about him nodding off at Cabinet meetings, and this White House intern, a student of mine from here, gave the President a copy of T.R. It happened to be on the President’s desk in the Oval Office and a reporter noticed it during an interview. Then, later, Reagan was asked about the book at a press conference and said it was a wonderful book about Theodore Roosevelt, his favorite president. Since nobody had ever seen Reagan with any book, not even a paperback whodunit, it was news! And, zoom!” Reinman’s glass became a rocket; when he put it down sharply, the glass tabletop rang. “If you were inside the Beltway, you had to read T.R. Everybody assumed it gave off all kinds of signals as to where the man was coming from. The flacks at the White House flogged it and the media swallowed it whole. People wanted to buy, sell, digest, record ..., you name it ..., T.R. A best seller for forty-six weeks! A six hundred and sixty-four page, serious, bestseller!” He took a swallow of kir. “When sales went into overdrive, I got on the book and lecture circuits, invited to White House functions, and Teddy-mania is all over the place. Ken Burns does a PBS series on Roosevelt, and I’m the narrator! The President loves it!”
He paused. “Great days.”
I waited for him to get to the manifesto of his political sea change, an Op-Ed piece in the Times in which he excoriated the cherished liberalism of his colleagues, but he swallowed the rest of his drink, refilled his glass, and said, “Of course, it was a damn good book, too!”
We lapsed into silence. I waited for more but he seemed finished. A purplish cloud covered the sun and it immediately turned cooler. No longer in the sun’s glare, I discerned that Reinman’s face was flushed and that a smirk was firmly gripping his lips. Unexpectedly, he turned to me.
“I’m glad you invited me, Al-gy.” He slurred my name. “It’s mostly stubbornness that keeps me at Carter. Let me tell you, they may listen to NPR all day and eat only tofu and vegetables, have a “Hey Jude” self image, and wear those clunky shoes, but they play dirty and for keeps. Political correctness is the enemy of clearheaded observation and I remind them of it all the time so they snub me and criticize my stands on the issues. Not just because it’s ingratiating and popular here to do so, but because it makes them feel like they’re so much smarter than all the poor schmucks out there. Makes me ill!” He hacked a smoker’s cough. “Of course, it’s jealousy. In academia, the purist poison. They cling to this ‘he sold-out’ thing. Can’t imagine that I could have principles. Or that my ideas could evolve. They don’t get it.” His voice took on a tone of earnestness. “You have to take advantage of opportunities, especially if they fit your principles. Reagan preached that. Opportunities! That’s what this country is all about. Opportunities! Sometimes ..., well, to be absolutely honest ..., you can be born to it ....”
I felt a dart directed at me and he knew it.
He shook his head and waved his hand at me as though to fend off my reaction. “Don’t get me wrong. Please. I mean you have your family’s heritage. And that is your opportunity. Your family reminds me of Roosevelt’s. Tradition, wealth, work, service. Your family’s achievements ...,”—he moved his head to take in the view of the house—“... all of this. Really, I admire you. But for me ...”—he leaned forward, put out his hand, and quickly closed a tight fist—“…I saw the brass ring. And I grabbed it!” He stared at me meaningfully, as though satisfied we shared a common ground, then turned back toward a downtown increasingly streaked with shadows. His smirk became a knowing smile.
In the silence that followed, I fought off my annoyance. He was my guest. I reminded myself that T.R. had been published a long time ago,
that Reinman’s recent work hadn’t included much history or biography but were tomes blaming the decline of America’s values on an amoral, liberal elite. His television appearances as the conservative talking head, not his scholarship, kept him in beer and skittles and in the public eye. So, why this maladroit attempt at intimacy? Had it just occurred to him on the spot?
Reinman slipped his legs off the chaise and faced me. “And the compensation isn’t just emotional. My agent called me yesterday about …”—he mentioned a well-known character actor who’d played Roosevelt in a movie a few years back—“... who’s thinking of doing a one-man show on Teddy. Has an HBO contract in hand! And he wants me to collaborate on the script!” He stood up, hands on his slim hips, looking more like a graduate student than a tenured professor of American History. “Good old Teddy! Just keeps rollin’ on!” He shrugged his shoulders as though he just couldn’t comprehend his good fortune.