My Famous Brain

by Diane Wald

  After her Friday night feast, Cybèle would not appear again until late the next afternoon. She was nocturnal, but I fantasized that she rose earlier on Saturdays just for me. It was then I would set out the red plate again, this time laden with canned tuna or salmon, which I had discovered she adored, and I would place it a little closer to the cabin. It took her longer to approach, but she never really seemed afraid. It was just a little game we played: she pretended to be wary of me, and I pretended some fear of her. But neither of us believed it. It was a ballet of politeness between the species, a private little dance we danced only for each other, with all the sure-footedness of enchanted beings.

  When she had finished her fish, Cybèle would sit like a puppy and lick her lips. Sometimes she would roll around on the plate, then spring suddenly up and dart off into the woods. Once I broke the silence as she ran and said, very evenly, very softly, “Cybèle.” I heard her leaf-pattering footsteps stop, then begin again. I nearly expected her to say my name in return. And early each Sunday morning, just before I left, I would look out the kitchen window and see a little patch of dusky red amidst the foliage near the car. I’d load my gear and pretend not to see her. Then, last but certainly not least, just before I locked up the cabin, I’d set out Cybèle’s final weekend feast: chicken, usually, and a great deal of it. I’d put the plate on the steps right in front of the door, then get into the car, put it in neutral, and back slowly and silently down the hill. By the time I’d slid into the shadowy part of the driveway, Cybèle would trot trustfully up to the doorstep and begin to eat. I loved it so. I loved so to have my last glimpse of the cabin each week blessed by her beautiful little figure on my doorstep. The next time I returned, the plate be would be there, whistle clean.

  But one Friday she did not appear. I didn’t worry too much at first, but when I didn’t see her Saturday either I decided to take a little walk in the direction Cybèle always headed when she left my yard. I didn’t have to walk far to stop my heart—to break it.

  Cybèle was dead. I found her poor body about twenty yards or so from the steel-jaw trap that still contained her right front paw and elegant ankle. She had chewed it off, as many animals will do when there is no other way to free themselves, but by doing so had lost so much blood that she did not have the strength to reach her den. She probably would have died there, in any case, even if she’d managed to limp back. I vomited into the bushes and sat down next to her body and wept.

  It was a long time before I could look at her. She wasn’t the same Cybèle. With the life gone out of her, with her dancer’s body disfigured and gory, with her own dried blood still staining her mouth, she was only a bleak line-drawing of a fox. I could hardly bear to see her dead, button eyes; they were flat licorice, instead of the black star-sapphires she had once shown me. I struggled to close them. I touched her fur; it was coarse and dirty. Her scent, now thickened with death, filled my nostrils; I thought I would retch again. I went back to the cabin for a shovel.

  And on my way back I realized that Cybèle had probably been on her way to the cabin too when she met her fate. I was consumed by a rage unlike any other I could remember. I was filled with a hatred for hunters and trappers and vivisectionists and fur-coat-wearers and riders of bicycles trailing fox tails from their handlebars and carriers of lucky rabbits’ feet. I think I was possibly capable, at that moment, of murder—or mayhem at least. I found a stout shovel and drove the point of it insanely again and again into the side of a tree, making hideous gashes.

  I could not stop crying. I told myself I was crazy, but it didn’t help a bit. Finally, I went in the house, downed a beer and two aspirin, washed my face and hands, and sat still for a moment. The phone rang, but I didn’t answer it. The doctor is out, I thought; he is very out indeed,

  I knew I had to bury Cybèle. I dug a deep hole in what I thought was the very spot where she would wait for me each Friday night. I lined it with pine boughs. I went into the house and brought out the red plate, placing it on the branches in the grave. Then I carried her body from the woods and placed it gently next to the plate. She weighed next to nothing. I went back to the trap, forced it open with great difficulty, and carried her foot back to her. It hardly looked like a foot at all anymore. I covered her with more branches, and then with earth. I tried to make the grave look the way it did before I’d dug there; I wanted it to blend in, as she had. I did not want to mark it in any way. Then I sat down on it and said a sort of prayer, more to Cybèle than to any kind of god.

  “Forgive me, my beautiful friend,” I prayed, “for I never thought that knowing me would have led you to so cruel, so premature, an ending.”

  23. Sherlock Takes a Case

  I had to find out if what Don Rath had told me about Mussel were true, and I knew that wouldn’t be easy. Right after he said goodbye to me on the library steps, I went back to my office to think. All afternoon I sat there, pretending to read, and keeping my door open in case Sarah should come by. I had decided not to tell her anything in case it all turned out to be a mistake, but I wanted badly just to see her. She did not appear, however, and it was probably just as well: my festive mood would have been hard to explain, and I did not want to lie to her about it.

  Don called me that night, as he had promised. I’d been, as my mother used to say, “sitting on the phone” in my cooler bedroom. He did not say hello when I picked up the receiver; all I heard was some suppressed giggling and his little cough-laugh.

  “You devil,” I said, “How long have you known all this?”

  “Oh, Mac,” he said, “Not long, not long at all. That is to say, I’ve had my suspicions for a long time, but I wasn’t certain until last week.” Then he stopped and started laughing again.

  “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he continued. “I turned around just as I was going in the library door and saw you run into Mussel! Jesus, Mac! Who the hell is writing this wild script, anyway?”

  I joined in his laughter. “I don’t know,” I said. “Somebody up there has a great sense of humor, I guess. It was crazy. When I turned to go, Mussel was just there. It was all I could do not to blow you a kiss, just to amuse him!”

  “You should have, you should have!” he said, delighted. “That stupid prick! But I think we’ve got him now, I really do. It’s going to take some detective work though. Are you up for it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Have you told Sarah?”

  “No, I thought it best to wait until we had everything in line.”

  “Right-o. Here’s the story. Mussel, without ever coming right out and saying so, has for years dropped little hints here and there that he went to an Ivy League school. I never cared enough to even be curious about which one. But a couple of months ago at that reception for the new faculty members, there was a guy there I’d met before whom I happened to know had gone to Harvard. Mussel was at the reception too, oddly enough—he usually never shows up at those things—and after this poor guy—Ted Sachs, his name is—spent a few minutes chatting with Mussel, he came over to talk with me.

  “He asked me whether Mussel had gone to Harvard as an undergrad or for his doctorate, and I said I had no idea, and why did he want to know? Ted said it was funny, but that Mussel kept mentioning Harvard, saying that he missed the old place and hadn’t been back there since graduation.”

  Don went on, “My curiosity had been aroused, and, odious as it always is for me to talk to Mussel, I decided to engage him in a little conversation. Maybe I’d had too much wine. I went up to the little group of ass-kissers he had assembled around him and waited for an opening. It was the weekend of a big football game between Yale and some other school; I’d seen it in the papers but hadn’t paid much attention. I know nothing about that grotesque sport, but I asked Mussel if he were going up to New Haven for the big game. He seemed a little puzzled at first, then, surmising that I thought him a Yale alumnus, patted me heartily on the back and said, ‘Would that I could, Donald, would that I could. You
never lose your feeling for the old alma mater, do you?’

  “Then I was really confused. Had he gone to Yale and Harvard? It was possible, of course, but I doubted it. For one thing, he hasn’t got a brain in his head. I got out of the group as gracefully as I could and began to circulate among our colleagues. Here and there I’d artfully turn the talk to college days, and, what do you think? I got three different opinions about Mussel’s schooling; someone even thought he’d gone to West Point. So my suspicions took a firmer shape. What do you think I did then?”

  I was growing weak with the desire to get to the heart of this tale, but I sensed Don’s happiness in telling me all the details and I didn’t want to spoil it for him.

  “You consulted a fortune-teller?”

  “Very funny. No. I decided I had to have a look at his file.”

  “His personnel file? Aren’t those things kept under lock and key?”

  “Of course. But I like to feel that nothing is impossible. So, whenever Mussel wasn’t in his executive suite, I began hanging around with Dottie—you know, his secretary. I have a theory about her, but I’ll save it for later. Dottie’s always liked me, anyway, and I think she was glad to have some company when the czar was out. Over the course of a week or two I was able to find out where everything in that office was kept—just by watching Dottie while she was fetching things for people and answering phone calls.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t called Sherlock in a previous life?”

  Don laughed. “I admit, it was fun. My plan was to wait until some day when Dottie had to go on an errand or something, then offer to babysit the phone for her. I didn’t have to wait long. One day she got a toothache, poor thing, and I convinced her it was ridiculous to wait until quitting time to see the dentist. She was afraid to leave, it was obvious, but I told her that if Mussel should return that afternoon (and she was almost perfectly sure he wouldn’t) I’d make her toothache seem like such a matter of life or death that even he couldn’t begrudge her a few extra hours of freedom.

  “She was terribly grateful. The phone did keep me busy for a while, but soon I was able to locate Dottie’s set of keys to the file cabinets. I quickly found the folder that bore Mussel’s name, and what do you think?”

  “WHAT?” I burst out, my patience deserting me.

  Don shouted back, gleefully. “There was NOTHING in it!”

  I was crestfallen. “So we still don’t really know.”

  “My God, MacLeod,” Don said, “You really don’t think that’s the end of the story, do you? Have a little confidence in old Sherlock, won’t you? “

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. But hurry up. I’m going crazy here.”

  “Right-o. I put the empty file back and thought for a moment, then went back to the drawer. Everyone else’s files were in their proper places. There were no other empty folders. I figured Mussel must have taken his and hidden it in his office. There was always the chance he might have destroyed it, but I figured him to be too cowed by the wheels of bureaucracy to risk having someone important ask for it someday. So I decided to break into his office.”

  “Good God.”

  “Yeah. But it wasn’t that hard, actually. I found a letter opener that worked to get the door open, and his desk, oddly enough, was unlocked. I’d locked the door to Dottie’s outside office and put a sign up saying she’d had to leave early because of an emergency and to please come back the next day. My only fear was that some other secretary might have a key and let herself in for some reason, but that didn’t happen. I couldn’t find the file at first, but then I remembered the old desk-blotter trick and lifted up Wally’s. There was the folder. All his official papers were inside, topped off by an old yellowing letter from the university president congratulating him on being made chairman of the department. At the bottom of the pile was his vita. I skimmed it, then read it more slowly. I was afraid to write anything down, so I tried to memorize a lot of the information so I could check it out later. There were three pages of publications and another one of speeches and the like.”

  “What did it say about his education?”

  “I’m getting to that. It said he had a BA in psychology from Cornell, and an MA and PhD from Columbia. Nothing at all about Harvard or Yale. What a jerk that man is: he can’t even keep his own lies straight!”

  “Wow.”

  “And it gave the dates. I finally did jot it all down, including the names he’d given as references, from two previous teaching jobs, at NYU and Northeastern. The resume itself was quite old, of course, since it was the original one he’d submitted when he came here, but I figured very few people would be able to forget Wally Mussel.”

  I was mesmerized, but also losing patience with the length of Don’s story. While he rambled on, I stared at a couple of the house plants I’d brought into that bedroom to cheer it up a bit. As I was watching, a fat leaf on a fat stem fell off the begonia.

  “The first thing I did was check out the publications. That was easy: a half-hour in the library reference room was all it took to ascertain that he’d made up all but two of his citations. The next day I tried to contact the two references. Dead end. I knew it was possible those people were long gone and forgotten, but it did seem odd that no one I talked to even seemed to find their names familiar. I got absolutely nowhere with the folks at NYU—they wouldn’t give me information on past employment over the phone and without permissions—but at Northeastern, with a little sweet-talk and a lot of bullshit, I was able, after three attempts, to find a willing pigeon. A woman in the records office told me she could find no trace of a Mussel-man ever having had a position there, at any time. So I proceeded to try Cornell and Columbia.”

  “Any luck?” I started to fantasize about going out for a snack.

  “That’s the sad part. No. I hit the same dead-end with the records people as I did at NYU. Seems you have to have an officially documented written inquiry of some sort before they’ll divulge that kind of information. But I figured that between the two of us we could get around all that somehow. What do you think?”

  My mind was awash with hope and confusion. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I guess we can try.”

  Don rallied to the cause. “Mac,” he told me, “I just know this guy is not on the level. I know it in my heart. If he lied about his teaching experience and his publications—which is bad enough, you know—the chances are very, very good that he’s lied about the rest. Let’s just put our heads together and think about how to find out for sure.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, “but it’s not going to be easy. If we’re wrong, and if anyone catches wind of our nosing around, we’re going to have a lot of fancy explaining to do.”

  “So what? Come on, Mac. Put your thinking cap on. You’re the genius around here, not me! I’ll supply the guts and the footwork; you supply the brains.”

  I was already formulating a plan; Don’s enthusiasm buoyed me. “How about this?” I said. “I’ll write to the two schools saying I’m heading a secret committee to honor Mussel for his many years of selfless service to NSU, and requesting copies of his diplomas so that we can concoct some kind of nostalgic little presentation—sort of a ‘Wally Mussel, this is your life’ kind of thing. The chances anyone here would ever find out are very slim, and even if they did, I could just say I really had been thinking about such an event. Do you think that would work?”

  Rath breathed his admiration heavily into the phone. “You are a genius,” he sighed. “It’s beautiful! It’s priceless! It combines a dastardly criminal mind with a rare creative talent! Of course, they’ll go for it: there’s nothing a true academic loves more than the promise of another meaningless ceremony. I love it! They’ll never refuse! Can you do it tomorrow?”

  I laughed along with him. “Thanks, Sherlock. That’s high praise coming from the likes of you. Yeah, sure, I’ll get on it first thing. I’ll bring the letter by your office before I mail it, so you can take a look. Will you be in tomorr
ow after lunch?”

  “I will,” he said. “Got to go now, though. Denny’s waiting for me. Sleep well, old boy.”

  24. A Lucky Doggie

  I had been a devotee of magical thinking all my life. I knew it was just a silly game that fed false hope—a close cousin to superstition in fact—but it gave me an illusion of controlling my fate that I often found necessary for survival. When I was first dating Frances, for example, I remember thinking, “If she’s wearing her hair up when she comes to meet me tonight, we will sleep together before the week is out.” When I was suffering dreadfully from the pains in my head, I used to tell myself something like, “If I eat my sandwich with a fork, the pain will be better this afternoon.” Many times it worked, and many times it did not. I am not quite sure there isn’t an element of magic in the practice after all, though of course on a reasonable basis it is all completely ridiculous. But who is to say that the continual harboring and nurturing of a fervent desire is not akin to concentrated, continual prayer, the power of which even atheists are unable to discount? By keeping a hope constantly alive, constantly on the tip of one’s consciousness, might it not be possible to kindle a small flame of possibility into an actual blaze?

  A month or so before it became obvious that I would have to leave NSU, my finances were in a terrible mess. I was paying out large sums every month to Frances, both for alimony (which I felt was unfair, since she was pulling in a large salary herself), and for child support for Harry and Mark. I had been ill for some time, and while insurance covered my few medical bills (there wasn’t much the doctors could do for me, so it didn’t cost that much, except for the painkiller drugs), my illness was draining my bank account in other ways. For one thing, as I’ve mentioned, I’d initially had to cut back my teaching load because I couldn’t drive after dark, and so my salary was diminished. And the increasingly poor state of my eyesight occasioned many other expenses: there were so many things I could no longer do for myself, so many services of one kind or another that I had to pay for. While these expenses were mostly small on a day-to-day basis, they certainly mounted up. I had to do all my shopping over the phone and have everything delivered. (Eliza ran some errands for me, but I usually didn’t let her know the full extent of my need.) I was paying a graduate student for many hours a week spent reading to me, helping me grade papers, and typing my class notes and such on a special large-font typewriter (a pricey item). I suppose I could have cut some of these costs by applying for the many types of aid offered by various agencies, but I was afraid that what I suspected to be my already failing credibility at NSU would only be fueled by the discovery that I was certifiably disabled. It never occurred to me that anyone there would take pity on me.