“Really?” he said with a smirk. “Because I’m guessing you already know what I did, and you’re here to make one more report to somebody.” He slung a leg over the chair arm. “Can’t you people share transcripts? I’m a little sick of talking about it.”
“About what?”
“The ‘wheelchair incident’. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
It had to be deliberate misdirection. He couldn’t possibly think she’d focus on that and not the incident with his mother. “In part,” she said, opening a notebook to look official. “You were seven. The child was severely disabled. Why on earth would you push him over?”
“To see how he’d react. It’s not good to be passive, even if you’re in a wheelchair.”
“You mean you were bullying him for his own sake?”
Graham shrugged. “I just thought he needed a prod from somebody who wouldn’t go all soppy over him. He seemed to be giving up.”
“What was your parents’ reaction?”
“Duly appalled.”
“And the other kids?”
Pulling out his phone, he checked it for messages and answered her without looking up. “Kids just think what they’re told to think.”
Her scrawl in the notebook was illegible, even to her, but it didn’t matter. He had a prop; she had a prop. “How about the rest of your childhood? Did things go smoothly after that year?”
“I was even a Boy Scout.”
“So what happened in this recent incident, with your mother?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe I didn’t want to see her suffer.”
“So you did move the dials?”
“My father seems to think so.”
When she glanced up, he met her eyes, his expression wiped neutral. Time to ratchet up the questions. “Did you want her to die?”
“No. But I wanted her out of pain.”
Shards of ice, thinner than the finest crystal, shattered against the window. Sarah turned to look outside. It was sleeting again, the broken silver lines slanting across a dark grey sky. She watched for a few seconds before turning back. “What do you think drives your actions, Graham?”
“Compassion, Ms. Markham. Stripped of false sentiment.”
She took a breath and switched gears. “What went through your mind when you stood by your mom’s bed, next to the ventilator controls?”
“Oh, I was probably thinking how interesting all the dials were,” he said, the smirk back. “I’ve been accepted at Harvard, and when I go on to med school, I’m thinking about specializing in neuroimmunology. A lot of viruses affect respiration.”
The rage that came over her was childish, but she didn’t care − she wanted to smash that smug expression with a mallet. Heat seared her neck, and she was glad Graham couldn’t see the tell-tale red mottling beneath her turtleneck.
“Does it bother you at all,” she asked, feigning idle curiosity, “that people think you’re a wannabe murderer?”
He stood, but instead of leaving, he gripped the edge of the desk and leaned forward. “Rest assured, Ms. Markham. If I wanted to do something, I’d do it.”
CHAPTER THREE
Without knocking, Sarah walked into Colin’s study and flopped into the plaid armchair.
He looked up from his book. “How’d it go?”
“He’s fallen in love with the notion of himself as powerful and aloof and detached. Which makes him look like a sociopath, but I’m not convinced he is one. Not that I have a clue, as we both know.” She scooted the chair closer to the fire. “What are his parents like? Have you met them?”
“Professional, urbane, moneyed, and no, I have not. Not yet. But I’m intrigued by their willingness to admit their son might be Satan’s spawn.”
“He’s pretty clear about the fact that his father suspects him of murder. I wonder if the mother does, too?”
“She’s the psychologist. But people never seem to apply their talents to their own children. Want a drink?”
“Let me guess − sherry before dinner?”
“Scotch from Aunt Alice. She married money and feels guilty about it.”
“Here’s to Aunt Alice.”
He poured them each a dram of Bruichladdich. She swirled, sniffed, and sipped. “Butterscotch.”
“Keep going.”
“Wet sneakers. Seaweed. Peat smoke.”
“Unpeated. Toasted barley. Dried bananas.”
While they drank she told him more about Haiti. The riots over the election. The vodou doctors who were killed with machetes because villagers thought they were using cholera to destroy their enemies.
What she didn’t mention was Joseph Desrouleaux, the paediatrician she’d decided should be at the story’s centre.
Babies quieted when Joseph held them. Unruly little boys looked up with rapt adoration. Joseph talked about Haiti’s corrupt politicians with a fierce anger. He spoke of his religion, a wild mix of Catholicism and vodou, with a sort of poetry.
One night he’d made Sarah dinner. Spicy chicken that fell off the bone, tender white rice, and a sauce made with mamba, the best peanut butter she’d ever had. Afterward they sat on his porch swing sipping pinot noir, looking toward the white glow of Hôpital Sacré-Coeur and, high on a distant hill, the violet-brown blur of the Sans Souci palace ruins. “I need to know more about your practice,” she said, “and your hopes for Haiti’s future.”
“Ask away.”
Notebook on her lap, she struggled to form intelligent questions. Why had she let him refill her glass? The wine was good, full bodied and jammy, and the night air was soft, and his arm kept brushing hers, and her questions got longer and more convoluted, full of apologetic parentheticals, until finally he took the pen from her and set it on the step. Turning her hand over in his big palm, he stroked her lifeline with a slow, sure touch that left her lightheaded.
“Tell me about you for a change,” he said. “I am bored hearing about myself.”
Stammering a few incoherent sentences about the Midwest, she felt herself leaning toward him and couldn’t pull back. His arm went around her, fingers spread warm against her back, and with the other hand he cupped the side of her face. Slowly he stroked her cheek with his thumb, unrushed. Finally, tilting her chin up with one finger, he kissed her with a tenderness her ex-husband could never have fathomed. All the hurt and self-pity she’d buried rushed back to life like a beggar at Lourdes.
Joseph’s soft lips brushed hers again and again, until the old sadness dissolved and a fierce need opened up inside her. She slid her hand behind his head and kissed him back. His mouth tasted of wine, and his skin smelled faintly of cloves. Pausing only for breath, she kissed him again, lips twisting hot and urgent against his.
He stood, took her hands, and pulled her to her feet and into his arms again. Through her thin cotton sundress she felt him, hard and hot. Stepping back, she blurted something about getting up at dawn to climb to the Citadel.
Then she walked, alone, back to the volunteers’ compound.
All night long, tossing on her lumpy cot in a tangle of mosquito netting, she replayed the scene, furious with herself for bolting like a sixteen-year-old. In that instant of panic, all she’d wanted was her cool, safe world of books and quiet. Joseph made her feel inadequate, ashamed of her undeserved luck, smothered by his country’s heat and colour and need and mess.
Shaking off the memory, she took another sip of Bruichladdich and thought of young Graham. His was another atmosphere altogether − the thin, frozen air of the highest altitudes. He let nobody in, asked no-one for approval. For a split second, she envied him the clarity of not caring.
*
The dining room’s long table was set with plain ivory china, damask napkins, and pewter flatware that gleamed in the candlelight. Colin introduced Father Charron, whose thin, stern face made Sarah want to sit up straighter, and the English teacher, Adriana Braxton. So soft spoken her voice was barely audible, Adria
na explained that she lived in Aberdeen and often took her meals at the school. She was dressed in a school-marmy grey skirt and ruffled pink blouse, and she wore pantyhose − pantyhose! − the peachy tan of a naked Barbie. But her hands and long neck were pale and luminous, and no contact lens could have produced the green of her eyes, dark-rimmed and clear as water, with a sunburst of gold flecks at the centre. Even in frumpy clothes, the woman looked candlelit, like an oil by John Singer Sargent. Sarah couldn’t stop staring.
Midway through her salad she figured out what was puzzling her. Adriana had none of the self-possession that comes with such beauty. She seemed awkward, quick to startle. Even in repose, she looked so worried that Sarah felt an odd impulse to smooth the creases from her forehead. Either this woman had never looked in a mirror, or she’d been so deeply shaken the gift had ceased to matter.
Peeking under the lid of the covered casserole, Colin announced with satisfaction, “Shepherd’s pie. Only thing better would be neeps and tatties.”
“Neeps?” Sarah repeated.
“Rutabaga,” he said, savouring every syllable, “all boiled up and mashed with honey.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And tatties are bound to be potatoes. Why do you Scots nickname your food? I’d feel like an ogre eating something I called bubble and squeak.”
“You have to be an ogre to eat haggis,” Jimmy pointed out, his imitation of Colin’s Scottish brogue mercilessly accurate. “While we’re on sinister subjects, what did you think of our new student?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think. Not yet. I’m going to meet with him again tomorrow and probe a little harder.”
“What’s your read, Francis?” Colin asked. “He’s in your intro-philosophy class, isn’t he?”
The old Jesuit lowered his fork and rested its tines on the edge of his plate, mashed potatoes ready to topple. “I don’t trust him. He’s as cynical as a forty-year-old, and I’ve no idea why. Alas, that seems insufficient reason to send him packing.”
“Surely it is reason,” Adriana said in a rush, “if he might hurt someone here.” She tilted her head to tuck in a stray lock of hair, and Sarah, staring again, noticed a thin white line in front of her ear, running all the way up to her forehead. It was as delicate as the crazing on an antique porcelain teacup. But it was definitely a scar.
“We’ve let our imaginations get the best of us,” Colin said, using the detached, would-everyone-please-calm-down tone he adopted whenever hysteria threatened. Sarah had always found it patronizing. “Other than a little extra vigilance, let’s hold our worries in abeyance and treat him the same way we’d treat any other new pupil.”
As he finished Mrs. Dalton came in, an apple pie on her spread hand and a carton of Breyer’s French Vanilla tucked under her arm. “I hope you all saved room!” she said, cutting five large wedges without asking, and the tension left the room.
“By the way, Colin, Philip Grant wants to borrow the Matteo Ricci map,” Jimmy said, as he helped Mrs. Dalton pass the plates. “He says he’s making a mashup.”
“That cannae be rutabaga,” Colin said with a sigh.
“It’s video bits, reshuffled and manipulated.” The ruffled ball of ice cream slid off Jimmy’s slice of pie. “It seems he’s decided to take the orientation film on our website and . . . er . . . annotate it.”
“If it’s anything like the video he posted last week on Vine . . .” Adriana tried to frown, but a smile tickled the corners of her lips. “It was this . . . symphony, almost. Hissing, gurgling, streaming, dribbling sound. He called it ‘Pissicata.’ He’d taped people, well . . . peeing.”
A snort from Father Charron. “The scatological gusto of the young male, writ as Art.”
“Give him the map,” Colin said. “But I want to see this . . . mash . . . before it goes public. It can’t be sacrilegious, and he can’t use it in any way that’s commercial.”
“I’ll tell him,” Jimmy replied. “But if he can figure out a way to make money by filming a sixteenth-century Jesuit’s map of China, I say we let him do it and take a cut.”
*
The tasselled green velvet sofa looked like a donation from a bordello, but it was the most comfortable furniture in the common room, so Sarah claimed one end. Jimmy took the other, and they traded college gossip − the geeky theatre major who now headed the Muny Opera; the Bette Midler type who’d married a Muslim and donned the hejab. From the shadows of a wingback chair a few feet away, Colin listened but said little.
When they’d exhausted all common acquaintances, Jimmy stretched. “I’m going to hunt down a piece of music my students can’t massacre, then crash. You’d better get some sleep too, Colin. Tomorrow’s the debate.”
“Ach. Right. I knew that.”
Sarah and Jimmy traded amused glances. He’d clearly forgotten.
“What’s their topic again?” he said.
Jimmy exaggerated his sigh. “One more email that went into the abyss. It’s the legalization of . . .”
“Please say marijuana,” Sarah chimed in.
“All forms of surveillance,” he finished. “With public access to every CCTV recording or wiretap. The Transparent Society.”
“I’m going way out on a limb here, but was this Philip’s idea?”
“Got it in one.”
After Jimmy left, Colin shook his head. “I have no idea where you draw the line on surveillance,” he said, extracting a crumpled Doritos bag from the crevice between two cushions.
“That’s why they’re debating,” Sarah pointed out.
“Right.” He didn’t look reassured. Colin liked to know things, not speculate. When they crammed for exams in college, she used to throw out wild possibilities just for the fun of seeing that fine mind founder.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her up. “I want to show you the map.”
Dreading an endless lecture − he was far more comfortable in centuries not his own − she mustered a ‘Great!’ and followed him into the dark hallway.
The school felt cavernous without the boys’ heat and movement. As they reached toward the staircase, a flicker in the corner of her eye made Sarah spin around. It was only a draft, twitching the fringe of the felt Matteo banner.
The second floor was as dark as deep space and just as quiet. It wasn’t until Colin closed his office door and lit his desk lamp that she breathed normally again.
“Here it is,” he said, pulling a flat, wide box from a cabinet and removing the lid with a flourish. “The first European-style map of the world done in Chinese, with China at the centre.”
Delicate handmade paper, aged a brown gold, was sandwiched between sheets of Mylar. Mountains had been inked in graceful inverted Vs; rivers curved like snakes. Standing in the amber pool of lamplight, Sarah traced the air above the map with one finger. “Do the characters spell out European place names?”
“Right. Canada’s Ka-na-ta, and there are characters for wild horses and bison.” He bent over the map, a shock of dark hair falling onto his forehead, and for a second looked like David Tennant. Except, she couldn’t imagine David Tennant smelling like Ivory soap. “There’s Florida,” he said. “The Land of the Flowers.”
“This is beautiful. He drew it himself?”
Colin nodded. “He had a point to make. He wasn’t the typical arrogant missionary. He honoured the Chinese by putting China at the centre − and in that way he showed them the rest of the world.”
Gently replacing the lid, he carried the box back to the safe. “How about a walk?”
She’d gotten off lightly and was almost sorry. She would have liked to know more about the man who’d drawn such a gracious view of the world.
After stopping at the milkhouse for an exuberant Simon, they headed downhill on the old farm-to-market road, lit by moonlight and a row of copper solar lanterns. “Who planted all the rosebushes?” she asked, stopping to examine the dark red rose hips shrivelled on bare, thorny branches.
“The woman who built the mansion had 3,500 shrub roses put in so her friends wouldn’t see the poorer parts of the farm when they drove out for parties.” Colin paused at a wide stone bridge at the bottom of the hill. “Before she bought the land, it was a working farm called Sheepsbridge. This is where the sheep used to cross the creek. I’m thinking of getting some for the boys − Scottish Blackface.” He tucked her arm under his as they crossed the icy bridge.
His pensive mood had lifted, and he chattered on. “We could fund a few scholarships by stuffing custom mattresses − their wool’s dense and greasy and heaven to sleep on. Either way, I think it’d be good for the boys to learn to shear them. You have to do it just so, gentle and firm at once. And, you have to be really careful, but still go fast enough that they don’t lose patience.”
“I think you just miss shearing them yourself.”
“Aye, that I do. My granddad raised Cheviot for a while, and I used to get up in the middle of the night to bottle-feed the lambs whose dams wouldn’t let them suckle.”
Propping her foot on an ice-glazed log, she bent to tie her shoe. “It’s so good to have you back, I never asked,” she said. “Were you tempted to stay in Islay after you finished your Ph.D.?”
“No. Not with my mother gone.”
She yanked too hard on the shoestring and the bow came undone. Why had she mentioned Islay? After he found out his mother had cancer, Colin had asked to do his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh. The Jesuits had arranged for him to start immediately − but by the time he reached home, she was dead. He’d given Sarah only the barest of details, in a letter so formal it could have travelled by diplomatic pouch.
She knew better than to probe the wound. He’d talk about it when he was ready. Casting about for a new subject, she said, “What’s Adriana like?”
A Circumstance of Blood Page 4