A Circumstance of Blood

by Jeannette Batz Cooperman

  “Quiet. Thoughtful. Brilliant at Shakespeare. She grew up in St. Louis, nice Catholic family. Graduated from St. Louis U. a few years before we did and got her master’s at Washington U.”

  “There’s something . . . ethereal about her.”

  “She’s very sensitive. A little fluttery, sometimes. Easily thrown off kilter. I’ve always been surprised at how good she is with the boys − I thought they’d eat her alive. But she pulls more feeling from them than I ever could.”

  “Is she married? Seeing anybody?”

  “No, and I don’t think so. You almost feel like she’d shatter if she let that kind of emotional upheaval into her life.”

  “Maybe it would ground her,” Sarah suggested.

  They were back at the bridge, and Colin squatted to pry a few loose stones free. “The problem,” he said, his voice muffled as he repositioned the stones, “is that you can’t know ahead of time which it will be.”

  *

  Huddled under the extra blankets she’d piled on the bed, Sarah stared at the round stone wall and thought about the fifty boys sleeping on the other side. Adolescence was one long rite of passage: They’d been sent into a jungle together to find their future. Some tiptoed forward like they were crossing an alligator pit on a rope bridge. Others glowed with uncomplicated male energy; they’d take a zip line through the canopy.

  Thinking about their chaotic hormones made her wonder just how many were jacking off that very minute. Did priests allow masturbation these days? She groaned and rolled over.

  She didn’t miss being Paul’s wife. The first year they were married, Paul kept his hand at the small of her back when they entered a party and bent close to whisper jokes about the other guests. He’d said he loved her healthy appetite, her small waist and broad hips. When they lay facing each other, he’d run his hand over her hip’s curve and quote Cleopatra: ‘Such women, they say, have sons’.

  By year two, his career was taking off, and he’d started asking if she really needed that second slice of cake, touching her nose with his index finger so it looked like tender teasing. She shuddered. No, she didn’t miss being one of Paul’s projects.

  But she did miss the sex.

  When she closed her eyes she could still feel his warm finger tracing the curve of her breast, brushing light as air across her nipple. Paul was dark and wiry, not much taller than she, but with a nervous system pitched ten levels higher, and that intensity made him adept. He’d slow till he drove her near mad, then build to a frenzy that burned away all thought. She lost all decorum − once she moaned so loudly a neighbour called an ambulance. Afterward, they’d lie, arms and legs flung across each other, for an uncounted time, until they could lift their heavy limbs and return to the world.

  In high school, Sister Aileen had informed Sarah’s biology class that real sexual pleasure was inextricable from love.

  Sister Aileen had been wrong.

  *

  With bold strokes of a Sharpie, Philip crossed out two more names on his list. Only one left: Adriana Braxton. And her past was a blank slate. All Philip knew was that she’d graduated from Saint Louis University around the time his father did. The university’s alumni site was locked, but Philip had stolen his father’s alumni magazine. No way would Northrup Grant have ever registered on SLU’s chatty alumni site. Philip did so for him now, keying in the ‘advancement number’ from the Universitas mailing label. Checking box after box, he requested information about donating to minority scholarships and typed GLBT and pansexual as areas of special interest.

  Less than a minute later a password and username showed up in his email. He felt a tingling light headedness, like breathing pure oxygen. Logging in as his father, he clicked on Find Your Classmates and entered ‘Adriana Braxton’. She came right up. It wasn’t a married name then. He clicked on a yearbook from her junior year. My, had she improved with age. Same dark hair and pale skin, but she looked dorky and plain in the old photo. She wore squarish, metal-rimmed eyeglasses, and − he magnified the image − her nose had a bump on it. Plastic surgery? “Ms. Braxton,” he said aloud, “you surprise us!” He checked the next yearbook. No senior picture. Funny, she didn’t seem cool enough to skip her photo session. Her name and bio were listed: Alpha Sigma Nu honour society, vice president of the Inklings literary club. And she’d played lacrosse, of all things.

  He went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch site and searched ‘Braxton AND lacrosse’. She’d played second home, whatever that meant. “A versatile playmaker,” he read. “Fiercely vigilant. Led the team in goals scored . . . Player of the year sophomore and junior years . . .”

  After a page of sports news, he saw a longer article dated March 1972: ‘Tragic Plane Crash Critically Injures Coed’. Philip’s fingers clamped down on the mouse. Quickly he skimmed the story’s lead.

  Adriana had gone on a date with a young pilot studying at the university’s aviation college. He’d wanted to take her up at night, fly by starlight. The two-seater had engine trouble and crashed just after take-off, knocking her unconscious. The pilot managed to extricate himself and drag her from the wreckage seconds before the fuel tank exploded.

  Philip read the whole article, his fingers poised motionless above the keyboard, his knee jittering. Couldn’t have been. Not possible. His palms were sweating, slicking the mouse’s curved top as he scrolled back to the companion’s name.

  He stared at the monitor until his screensaver came on.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Sarah finally fell asleep it was like sinking into a bog, dark and airless. She woke groggy and realised she’d slept right through breakfast.

  Throwing on sweats, she took Simon for a run, weaving in and out of pine trees. Still breathless, her cheeks ice cold and stinging, she snuck into the small kitchen behind the faculty dining room. No coffee in sight, but a rack of still-warm oatmeal cookies sat on top of the oven. She stole three, rearranged the rest to hide the gaps, and carried her breakfast into the library, figuring it would be deserted between classes.

  Six boys looked up. They’d covered the centre table with old photographs, maps, and musty books. Max was showing a piece of paper to a skinny kid with the face of an angel.

  “Sarah!” Max called. “Check this out.” He held up a scan of a journal page, closely written in brownish-black ink, every down stroke perfectly parallel. “Peter Kincaid was a doctor for Napoleon. Then he founded the village here. He used to row across the river to take care of some lady who swallowed a tadpole and thought it grew into a frog inside her stomach. He got tired of rowing over there so he ‘gave her a physick’ − that’s an enema − gross − and stuck a frog in the bucket. As soon as she saw it, she got better.”

  “Now that,” said Sarah, “is a great story.” She set her cookies on the window seat and warned Simon away from them with a raised index finger. With a resigned sigh, he lay down to guard them, and she walked back to the table. “Is this some kind of class assignment?”

  “It’s for social studies,” said the boy with the angel’s face. His fine brown hair curled softly, and a single, angry red pimple marred his translucent skin. “We’re supposed to research local history.” He spoke in an excited rush, but every word had the same pitch. “There’s a cave right below Honeybee Point − they say it’s where Meriwether Lewis fell three hundred feet and saved himself by driving his knife into the rock to break his fall.”

  “Here’s Dr. Kincaid,” announced Max, showing her a portrait of a man in small round spectacles, a high-necked shirt, and a long frock coat. “They say he went bald and wore a red wig.”

  One of the other boys mimed gagging. “That is so gay.”

  “He taught his patients an itch dance called a schottish,” volunteered the angelic one, talking over guffaws about the wig. He started to read a description, stumbled, shook his head in frustration. “You read it, Luke,” he said, pushing the book toward the raw-boned kid Sarah had seen playing chess the first
night.

  “Steven can’t read right,” Max informed her. “He’s got this really cool disease called dysgraphia.”

  “Max!” she protested.

  “No, it is. I mean, it sucks that he can’t get his driver’s licence, but he can tell you the pro-ve-nance” − he exaggerated the French pronunciation − “of anything.”

  “What year it was made,” Luke chimed in, “and how much it’s worth.”

  “Seriously?” she asked Steven.

  He turned to look, not at her, but just over her shoulder, at the wall of books behind her. “I remember visual details,” he said in his rapid monotone. “They don’t know if it’s because of the dysgraphia. My doctor called it ‘an island of genius.’ I recognised a Ming vase at a flea market when I was ten.”

  “That’s quite a talent.”

  “He’s his own Antiques Roadshow,” Luke said dryly. Stretching, he reached for the book and read aloud. “In executing this dance, one hops and jumps about in even time and scratches and rubs quite lustily.” His chair teetered as he jumped up to demonstrate, scratching in a frenzy that lost him a shirt button and left his hair standing straight up. Simon came over, hoping it was a new game

  “It was chiggers,” Max supplied.

  She laughed, liking their ease with each other. She’d had friends in high school, but never anybody she could really open up to. That would have meant sleepovers and shared secrets and explaining why her dad was home in the daytime.

  The first person she’d really confided in was Colin, junior year in college. She smiled, remembering how instantly and completely he’d understood.

  The boys were laughing about something else now. To hide her preoccupation, she reached down to scratch the fuzzy curls on Simon’s neck.

  No dog.

  “Guys, I’ve got to find Simon,” she blurted, hurrying to check the dining room, kitchen and common room. Her boots made a nervous click on the terrazzo floor. How had he gotten away so fast? Could somebody have let him outside? As she reached for the front door knob, she heard a low voice − Graham’s − coming from the cloakroom with the shelving cubes.

  She spun to her right. Psychopaths started by torturing animals. What if . . .

  Simon lay on his back, eyes squeezed shut in bliss. Graham squatted on the floor next to him, stroking the white fur on his belly and murmuring, “So this is what you wanted, buddy.”

  At her blown-out exhale, he looked up. “Hey. Your dog came in by himself. I wasn’t sure whether to turn him in.” He sounded himself again, sardonic and cool.

  But she’d heard him a minute earlier.

  *

  “You come with me,” Sarah told Simon sternly, wrapping his lead twice around her wrist. Someplace in the village she was bound to find coffee. Besides, it was so cold it felt virtuous just to be outside. Eyelashes already frozen, she blinked tears onto her cold cheeks.

  Halfway down the hill, which wasn’t nearly as high as it seemed in the dark, she saw the dark green tile roofs of the village’s storefronts, the white-painted bricks worn to pink, the doors painted glossy black. Signs were brass plaques or wooden shingles, no neon in sight, and the road along the storefronts was cobbled, which was probably why she’d slid so badly the night before. Across from the stores was a lake and out in the middle a gazebo, icicles dripping from its octagonal roof.

  As she neared the bottom of the hill she heard sounds of civilization − BMWs and Tahoes and Cadillac Escalades zipping past, kids’ muffled yells inside a passing school bus. Sarah waved stiffly, her arm half frozen, at a few other dog walkers, all of them tied to their familiars by lengths of nylon or leather. Outside The Village Deli she looped Simon’s lead around an antique light post. “Back soon,” she promised.

  The smell of fresh-ground coffee beans floated from the doorway, mixing with swirls of wood smoke and the fresh, damp air that promises snow. Reminding herself not to ask for espresso in an old-fashioned deli, she walked inside.

  A fiftyish woman with rosy cheeks pushed a tray of pastries forward. “Latte or cap? How many shots?”

  Sarah loved being wrong. “Latte, skim, double espresso and a shot of hazelnut,” she said happily. “And one of those,” pointing to a scone latticed with white icing.

  “Good choice,” the woman said, lifting the glass dome. “They’re Aberdeen scones, filled with currant jelly. You just move in?”

  “No, I’m staying up at the school.”

  She nodded. “You didn’t look the type.”

  “And what type is that?”

  “Soccer mom or rich old biddy. You’re young, I don’t see an SUV, and your dog’s not a Lab.”

  “I gather you were here before they closed the gates to the gated community?”

  “I’m Jane Sealy,” she said, raising her voice over the gargle of foaming milk. “My family’s farmed in Aberdeen since the 1800s.” She handed Sarah a tall mug. “I feel kind of sorry for the new ones, truth be told. There’s no weight to them; they’re all trend and fuss.”

  “What about the kids up at the school? Old money or new?”

  Jane shrugged. “A mix, from what I can tell.”

  “Any of them give you trouble?”

  “Nah. They come in all grown up asking for a flat white and then dump five packets of sugar into it.”

  The cowbell on the doorknob jangled, and Graham Dennison walked in.

  Sarah took another sip of her latte − just enough hazelnut to cut, not cancel, the dark roast’s smoky bitterness − and smiled at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class by now?”

  “I’m cutting it.” He turned to Jane. “Cappuccino.”

  She reached for a tiny cup, squirted two shots of espresso and spooned froth on top. He drank it in one gulp, tossing his head back, then handed her a $10 bill. “Keep the change.”

  When the door swung shut behind him, they burst out laughing. “All that swagger,” Jane said, shaking her head. “You just know he’s trying too hard.”

  Huffing up the hill, Sarah realised Jane was right. Graham wasn’t cocksure at all. He was playing at it.

  And that meant he did care, very much, about what people thought.

  *

  Not until Sarah’s parents picked her up at the airport had she broken the news that she’d been in Haiti, not just ‘a sunny little island off the coast of Florida’. Now, she realised, they had no idea she was out at Colin’s school. She called their land line.

  Beth shushed barking dogs while Sarah gave a rambling explanation of her whereabouts. “Colin says I’ve got empathy,” she finished. “Which is something I wanted to ask you about.”

  “Well of course you do, honey. Think what you’ve had to go through with your father.”

  “No, no, I mean I need your expertise. The kid who’s a potential sociopath? This morning I caught him petting Simon, and Simon didn’t recoil at all. I think he was about to fall asleep.”

  Beth chuckled. “Simon’s sensitive to the feelings of somebody he loves. With a teenager he doesn’t know? He was just deciding if the boy posed a threat. Dogs tune into fear, rage, violence, desperation − anything that might rock their world.”

  “So his reaction means nothing?”

  “Only that the kid was peaceable in that moment.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  On Sarah’s second try, the library was deserted. Armed with her laptop, she settled on one end of the mullioned window’s wide ledge. Gothic-arched shelves stood on either side, the books’ deep green leather and faded red linen bindings like ivy against worn brick. Brass library lamps threw pools of light on the study tables, and a nook held two tweedy armchairs, a reading light between them. The room felt restful, not empty − an earned peace that would shatter the minute classes let out.

  She’d made it halfway through a workable outline for the Haiti story when a light, amused male voice remarked, “You must be Father McAvoy’s lady friend.” A young man leane
d in the doorway, clad in tight black leather pants and a dark green velvet smoking jacket. He’d drawn a narrow black triangle above his left eyelid, the tip of an arrow painted on his white-blond hair. “I’m Philip Grant.”

  “I thought you might be,” she said, feeling oddly comfortable. At least she wouldn’t have to muster conventional small talk. “Come join me, if you don’t have class.”

  “Oh, I have plenty of class,” he drawled. “It’s the rest of the world that’s vulgar and pathetic.” He settled on the other end of the window seat, one knee up, facing her. Beneath the make-up he was beautiful, his brow high, his nose straight and fine. Thin lips peaked abruptly, deepening the centre groove.

  “Pathetic how?”

  “They’re all gutless. They lock their true selves in little boxes, like it’s too nasty or weird or precious to show the world.”

  Suddenly she felt middle aged and very tired. “There aren’t many situations where that other half is welcome. You learn to choose carefully what to reveal.”

  “Well, you’ve all over-learned.”

  “For example?”

  He brought up the other knee and clasped both together, his long fingers interlaced. “My father. He’s so eager to make money, he’s sold out whatever principles he once had. Yet he’s so desperate to be a deacon of the Church, he can’t bring himself to tell anybody his wife left him.”

  “And how does he explain you?” She kept her voice light.

  “Oh, he can’t. I’m so far out there, he can’t find a label.” Picking a speck of lint off his velvet lapel, he blew it into the air with a single, disdainful puff. “I’m where a world view like his falls apart.”

  She smiled. He was probably right. “What about Graham Dennison? He doesn’t seem too worried about other people’s approval.”

  “I’d say he needs it more than anybody.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Not particularly. Do you?”

  She checked the time. “Yikes. I should go.” She slid off the window seat. “Thanks − it was fun talking.”