by Lev Raphael
“Brenda, please don’t call me again.” I was so rattled I hung up and then said, “I’m sorry,” when I’d meant to do it the other way around. I lingered in my study awhile, dazed, thinking about the time just a few days before when Bill had complained so bitterly about Delaney’s influence with the dean, and how he hated the way that Delaney looked at Betty Malatesta. Had there been something more going on? An affair, and Bill found out? If Valley asked me about Bill, what was I supposed to do? My recounting of that conversation would be very incriminating—I couldn’t imagine having to appear in court and repeat it.
Too clearly for comfort, I could see the powerful, enraged husband slamming Delaney against the men’s room wall. But why upstairs, when both of them had an office in the basement? Unless Bill had somehow chased him up there? No, that didn’t make sense; there’d be signs of a struggle, and surely I would have heard something.
“Nick,” Stefan called from the living room. “Are you okay?”
I trailed out to where everyone, including Juno, sat looking remarkably civilized in that calm, quiet room. I gave them the news and sat in the chair by the fireplace, exhausted.
Stefan seemed most surprised. “Bill’s such a decent guy,” he said.
I filled them in on Bill’s complaints against Delaney and his threat, leaving out the plagiarism.
“‘Dead meat,’” Juno said with a shudder. “How repulsive.”
Stefan shook his head, and Lucille and Juno reported that they didn’t know Bill at all. “Though he’s rather handsome,” Juno threw out tentatively. No one commented.
“I don’t buy it,” I said, my voice unnecessarily loud. I got everyone’s attention. “Of the two of them, Betty Malatesta has a much nastier temper, trust me, and she’s as hard as Barbara Bush was under all those pearls. I know Bill’s athletic and he looks tough, but I think he’s really easygoing.”
Stefan asked me why I was finding it so hard to believe Bill had killed Delaney. “Somebody had to,” he pointed out logically. “And if they found Delaney’s blood in his car, who else could it be?”
“Unless he was framed.”
I had everyone’s attention again, but this time they all looked at me with pity.
“They had to arrest somebody,” Lucille said kindly, at least granting the possibility that I might be right. “Or they’d look like idiots, right?”
I considered that, and then suddenly remembered my manners. “Juno—would you like something to drink?”
“No, darling,” she said softly. “What I would like is the powder room to repair the damage from my lamentable display.” She blotted ineffectively at her face with a balled-up tissue. “Which way is it?”
I pointed out to the hall. “Second door on the left,” I said, and she sashayed off. I wondered how long her volcanic temper would be quiescent.
Stefan urged me to stop worrying about Bill. “And let’s stop investigating. Let the campus police handle everything now, since they have a suspect in custody.”
“Absolutely,” Lucille agreed.
Returning to the room looking completely restored, even Juno agreed. “You can’t be mucking about in police business,” she said when she picked up on the conversation. “Be satisfied that it’s over.” Her renewed composure struck me as somewhat eerie, given that she’d been auditioning for a production of Pride of the Banshees just a little while before. “They could arrest you,” she said. “For obstruction of justice or some nonsense. I don’t trust that slimy man who calls himself a detective.”
Lucille smiled at Juno.
Then, only slightly chagrined, Juno thanked Lucille for being so sympathetic. “Perhaps we can have a girl’s night out sometime,” she suggested. “You remind me a bit of my sister, actually.”
Lucille asked, “Are you busy now? Let’s have a drink. I’m sure you could use one, and I live just across the street.”
“I know,” Juno said without irony. “And a drink would be lovely.” Juno went out like March, Lucille following. “I’ll call you,” she said to us.
Stefan raised his eyebrows when they were gone, and I smiled. “Oscar Wilde was right. Women only use ‘sister’ after they’ve called each other lots of other things first.”
“Juno was really something today.”
“Lucille was being friendly, but did you catch her when Juno said she was fucking Delaney?”
“Even if she’s jealous,” Stefan reasoned, “Delaney’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.”
Remembering the flashing light on my answering machine, I told Stefan I felt up to listening to the messages now, and he headed back outside. There was a handful from various Michigan newspaper and TV reporters, one from my cousin Sharon, and a sweet one from Minnie saying that even though Stefan had assured her yesterday that I was okay, she was still thinking about me. My own mother had called, leaving her inimitable two lines: “This is your mother. Thank you.”
She had never overcome her distaste for the impersonal nature of answering machines, and never left a detailed message or even let me know by the tone of her voice whether something was up or not. I decided to wait on returning her call for a while. After a chat with my parents, I often felt mildly depressed and was never exactly sure if it was me or them. Was I responding to their unstated disappointment in me, or was it the other way around? Whichever, I avoided them on the phone. In person, and with Stefan mediating the conversation, it was always much easier and more cheerful.
I did return Sharon’s call, though, and when I told her that a graduate student had just been killed at SUM, she was angry and astonished. “Another murder?” She sounded like Meryl Streep shouting “Now a warning?” to Isabella Rossellini in Death Becomes Her. Then Sharon burst out laughing at the sheer improbability of it, I suppose, until I told her that I was the one who had discovered the body. She apologized frantically. “Oh, sweetie—please don’t think I’m heartless! But you have to admit it’s getting out of hand. Maybe there isn’t enough fluoride in the water there. Your school should hire one of those PBS gurus to come do round-the-clock seminars on conflict resolution. You people need help.”
“I guess.”
“Nick. I don’t understand why you’re not writing mysteries. Look at Amanda Cross—her books are terrible, and she must make a fortune on them. I know you could do better.”
“Well, that’s the problem—if I wrote something better, it probably wouldn’t sell.” I told her about the time that Henry James got fired early in his career because his columns on Paris for an American newspaper were too erudite. James sarcastically protested that he’d written the worst prose he knew how.
“You have a point.”
“Besides, Stefan and I would probably drive each other crazy if we were both writing fiction.” Was that true? I wasn’t sure.
“But—no offense—wouldn’t writing mysteries be more fun than scholarship?”
“I doubt it. You know what I’d hate? The condescending reviews, if I got reviews. The kind by serious literary authors who announce that they don’t really like mysteries or read them, but this book is good because it ‘transcends the genre.’ What crap! Can you imagine someone reviewing Adrienne Rich’s new book and saying, well, you know, honestly, between us, I really don’t have a high opinion of poetry?”
“Let me ask you something,” she said with loving mockery in her voice. “By serious literary authors, do you mean people like Stefan?”
I laughed. “Guilty as charged. He won’t read mysteries. And why should he? He lived a mystery growing up—maybe that was enough. Now, tell me how you are—did you see your doctor?”
“Yes, I did,” she reported proudly. “And guess what, sweetie, it wasn’t the cold. My hearing’s just not what it used to be. I’m getting old.”
Sharon was almost five years older than I, but still slim and youthful. Of course, some discreet plastic surgery had helped. But her earlier years as a model had trained her how to walk and hold herself, and that’s what made the rea
l difference, I thought. “Most American women walk like clodhoppers,” she’d often said, and it wasn’t until my first trip to Paris that I understood what she meant.
“Last week when Stefan and I went to a twilight movie, we were the oldest people there by easily two decades. Stefan thought it was funny, but it creeped me out.”
“I know, I know. I leaf through the fashion mags, and everyone’s so damned young it’s like visiting another planet. And I expected my skin to change, and my hair, but I never thought my hearing would start to go this early. So much for running at the gym and yoga! Who knew?”
“Is there something you can take for hearing? You’re not sure? Because there’s a supplement for everything else. Stefan and I take echinacea for general health, vitamin E for our prostates, Mega-Men multivitamins, aspirin for our hearts, Gingko biloba for memory. I don’t think I can handle any more pills in the morning.”
“Are you ready for matching rocking chairs yet, and blankets over our knees?”
“Well, not quite. But it doesn’t seem impossible anymore, like it used to. So, is there anything else about your hearing?”
“Not much. My doctor’s sending me to an audiologist to do some tests.”
“What kind?”
“I’m not really sure. It’s nothing serious, though, and I already feel a lot better. Really. Thanks for lecturing me. I wish I could help you out, though.”
“There’s no need,” I said. “It’s over.”
“No way. Someone was arrested. There’s going to be a trial, more publicity. Much more. And even when that mess is done, it won’t be finished. You were at the scene of two murders. It’ll be with you a long time. That’s why I think writing about it would be good for you. Even if you just journal it. Oh, God, did I just use journal as a verb? Say you’ll forgive me.”
“At least you didn’t say ‘journalize.’”
Sharon went on to fill me in on the latest intrigues at Columbia University, both in the archives where she worked and in some of the academic departments. It was the usual stew of adultery, sexual harassment charges, multicultural conflict, stacked tenure review committees, professors getting drunk during the break in their seminars. No wonder Amanda Cross was on her mind.
“Two murders,” I told Stefan later after we were back together in the kitchen, having some Lillet on the rocks with club soda and lime. “There’ve been two murders. And if Bill Malatesta did kill Delaney because he was jealous, why would he also kill Jesse?”
“Who says they’re connected? Don’t they say that the longer it takes to arrest a suspect, the less chance there is of solving a murder? So the campus police got Bill within twenty-four hours. And Jesse’s been dead over a week.” He shrugged sympathetically. “I know you hate this. But there may not be an answer to Jesse’s death. There isn’t always an answer.”
“I don’t want to believe that.”
“I know.”
“And I feel guilty.”
Alarmed, Stefan asked, “Why?”
“Bill Malatesta sat there and told me how much he hated Delaney, how jealous he was, how angry Delaney made him feel. He threatened Delaney, and I didn’t really say anything. I didn’t do anything.”
“What could you have done? Nick, please, you’re not a therapist who has a ‘duty to warn.’ You didn’t listen to someone tell you he was going to commit a crime. From what you said, Bill was just blowing off steam, right?”
“That’s what I thought, but I was all wrong. I didn’t listen to him. How could I miss it when it was so obvious?”
“Nick, you’re no dummy. If you missed it, it wasn’t obvious. It couldn’t have been.”
“You’re just rationalizing. You’re trying to make me feel better.”
Stefan smiled gently. “Is that such a crime?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. But look what’s happened to me. I’ve been in the EAR department only a few years, and I’ve already become insensitive to my students.”
“That’s not true! One student—and you were not insensitive.”
“God, I just want to leave this place, get out, go somewhere, anywhere. Don’t you?”
“If it’s death you’re running from, there’s no place to go.”
“I’m talking about murder, not death. I know when you approach middle age, you start hearing the sound of drums. People around you start dying. Heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, drunk driving. But nobody tells you to expect murder.”
“You’re just feeling helpless. Being at the scene of two murders would fill anyone with fear and self-doubt.”
“Stefan, I’m not having an existential crisis—”
“You got something better to do tonight?” he quipped.
He was working so hard to cheer me up that I had to at least try responding, so I essayed a smile. After all, he was the one who had recently gotten devastating news from his publisher, yet he wasn’t letting it sink him. Surely I could match his effort.
I wanted to grade papers the next day to get a little ahead, so on that Saturday night, instead of spending time cooking, we warmed up delicious leftovers for dinner: turkey and sausage meatballs in a homemade tomato sauce with zucchini and green pepper, served over spinach rigatoni. We polished off a bottle of easy-drinking 1994 Gabbiano red, but I’m not sure how much I really tasted.
As we were cleaning up, the phone rang in my study, and when the message came on, I heard a frantic, tearful voice: “Professor Hoffman—Professor Hoffman—you have to help us!”
I rushed to my phone and picked it up. “Thank God you’re home!” Betty Malatesta moaned. “They arrested Bill for murdering Delaney Kildare, and they’re holding him without bail. I know he hated Delaney, but this is crazy! Bill just got a job offer from Amherst College—why would he throw that away?”
I didn’t ask her about the blood, and she didn’t volunteer anything. “You think he did it, don’t you?” she finally asked, and when I didn’t reply immediately, she hurled her frustration at me in a scream and slammed down her phone.
I felt tired and old that evening, contemplating Betty’s terror, Sharon’s hearing problem, and my own ugly and increasingly intimate acquaintance with violent death.
SUNDAY MORNING I decided I could put off grading papers for another day or two and instead spent the morning in bed reading the New York Times. By noon I was ready to turn with gratitude to the spring project Stefan and I had been looking forward to. We were adding a small shade garden to the backyard right near the fence under the enormous maples. It would be beautiful once it got established: a mix of coral bells, forget-me-nots, lily of the valley, violas, monarda, pink and white bleeding heart, three kinds of hosta, two dozen daylilies, and ostrich plume ferns.
I found it a tremendous relief out back to talk about nothing but the plants when we did talk. Mostly we just dug and scooped and mulched with fragrant shredded bark. Spring had definitely arrived: forsythia and daffodils were blooming in our yard and all through the neighborhood, along with ragged carpets of della Robbia-blue scilla. Birds seemed to flutter and sing in every tree and bush: plangent chickadees and shrill jays, cardinals, robins, mourning doves.
Stefan and I took frequent breaks for water and to stretch our legs, which got stiff with all the kneeling even in gardening pants. The sound of raking and pruning from other yards, of children chasing their dogs, of garages being swept and cleaned out, filled the air as richly as the smell of burning leaves did in the fall.
Time disappeared for me that sunny day until it got cloudier toward sunset. When the planting was done, we washed up almost reverentially, as if this deep and soothing contact with the soil, with growth and possibility, had somehow healed the wounds of the past few days.
And so I read the Michiganapolis Tribune the following Monday morning with the detachment of a convalescent soldier following news from the front. Bill Malatesta had told his story to the paper, against the advice of his attorney, and it was pretty strange. Yes, Delaney Kildare’s blood
was in his car, but not because he’d killed Delaney. Admitting that he was jealous of Delaney, he said that he’d argued with Delaney in their basement office at Parker Hall late Friday afternoon and thrown a punch at him. That was all.
But I knew that it wasn’t the whole story; Delaney had told me that Bill had tried to punch him at a party on Thursday night. I didn’t know where it’d been held, but I was sure the campus police would be hearing about it, now that Bill had been arrested.
The article also said that Bill had no idea how Delaney had wound up dead in the third-floor men’s room of Parker Hall. “The last time I saw him he was alive,” Bill swore, as well as that he loved his wife and was sorry this was causing her any anguish. Betty announced that she was starting a defense fund, and the article was accompanied by a very appealing photograph, along with a sober warning by the DA to the effect that it was up to a jury to decide what was true.
“It’s too late,” Stefan said when he saw the article. “They’re spinning the murder, making Bill sympathetic, not some thug killer. They’ll play the whole thing out in public. It’s brilliant.”
I finished my grapefruit juice. “It’s dangerous,” was my comment, but I couldn’t work up any emotion, as if I were reading some old Scandinavian epic poem and not news about people I knew. Would the whole thing unreel with all the ghoulish media frenzy we took for granted nowadays? Larry King Live, celebrity attorney, sensational rumors?
13
At Parker Hall that Monday morning, a week and a half after Jesse was murdered, I found a departmental memo from Coral Greathouse in my mailbox. Delaney’s family had arranged for his body to be shipped back east after it was released, and EAR was having a memorial service that very afternoon. My instinct was to avoid it, but then I thought that’s what most faculty in our heartless department would want to do, and I was not ready to cast my lot with the unfeeling majority.
But deciding to go plunged me into a fog, and I know my teaching was lackluster that day. I hoped my students just assumed I was shaken by the news, since many of them seemed quieter than usual, too. Though that could have been simply the emergence from weekend excesses.