The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1

by Douglas Kennedy

  Once outside the classroom, he said, “We’ll do this in my office.”

  Do what? I wanted to ask. But I knew the answer to that question already.

  I followed him down the corridor, up a flight of steps, and into the outer office where his secretary worked. She gave me a nervous nod of the head as I walked behind Andrews into his inner sanctum. Once inside, he motioned for me to sit down.

  “I’ve just had three calls from three different school governors, as well as several messages from very concerned parents. They’ve all either seen the item on Fox News or they’ve heard the Ross Wallace item. And it seems that all the local affiliates of the big networks had an item about you on the eight a.m. news.”

  I started to speak, but Andrews raised his hand, like a traffic cop telling me to halt.

  “Let me say what I have to say first. Personally speaking—having known and worked with you for over fifteen years, if you tell me that the Judson guy coerced you into driving him into Canada, I’m going to believe you. Personally speaking, if you were unfaithful to your husband thirty years ago, my attitude is: that’s between you and him, and it’s none of my business. And personally speaking, I think the way that loudmouth Ross Wallace drew a connection between what happened thirty years ago and your daughter’s current problems is loathsome. I might be an ex-marine and I might vote Republican, but I can’t stand conservative showboaters like Wallace and that clown Rush Limbaugh because they’re so damn petty and mean.

  “Still, my personal sentiments don’t have much bearing on the fact that the mess you found yourself in thirty years ago is now in the public domain. What this means is—”

  “You now have a lot of parents and school governors screaming about having an admitted adulteress teaching here?”

  “The adultery isn’t the stumbling block. If that was all, I could have put my big foot down and told everyone to mind their own damn business. No, the problem here, Hannah, is that you helped a wanted criminal cross an international border to escape apprehension. You may have been forced to do it. You may have felt there was no choice but to do what he demanded. Nonetheless, you still did it . . . and on the CNN and Fox News websites there’s talk of the Justice Department investigating whether you can be prosecuted for helping Judson flee. And sorry, but the idea of someone under investigation for a federal offense being allowed to teach here . . .”

  “Do you want me to resign?” I said, my voice strangely calm.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

  “If my resignation would make things easier for you, then you can have it now.”

  “You serious?” he asked.

  “Completely serious,” I said.

  He looked at me with concern.

  “Don’t you want to keep your job?” he asked.

  “Of course I do. I love teaching. You know that. But you also know that I might be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a onetime criminal. You also now know my side of the story—and that I will scream intimidation and arm-twisting in every damn court through which this case is dragged. My conscience is clear on this one, Mr. Andrews. All that really concerns me now is finding out whether my daughter is alive or dead. So if there is going to be a big nasty fight about whether or not I can continue teaching here, then I’d rather just make it easier for you and leave now.”

  Andrews said nothing for a few moments, drumming his fingers on the top of his desk. Finally, “There is no need for you to resign,” he said. “However, I will have to ask you to take a leave of absence. On full pay, of course—and, trust me, I will raise hell with the board of governors if they object to this. I will issue a statement to the press saying that you requested leave, and that it is not a suspension. And if asked, I will simply say that you have been a long-admired and respected member of staff. But the board of governors are an ultraconservative bunch—and if the Justice Department does decide to prosecute you or the entire business spins out of control, I honestly don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep them acting reasonably.”

  “I’m certain you’ll do whatever you can, Mr. Andrews.”

  “It’s probably best if you leave immediately. I’ll get my secretary to clear your office tonight. One last thing—there are about ten reporters gathered at the front door of the school. Do you want an escort out the back way?”

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Is your car in the parking lot?”

  I nodded.

  “A navy blue Jeep Cherokee?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “Could you give me the keys, please?”

  I handed them over. He walked into the outer office and returned a moment later.

  “Jane will drive it around the back.”

  We waited two minutes in silence, then Mr. Andrews nodded for me to follow him. We went down a flight of stairs and out the back door. The car was already there, with Jane standing beside it. But just as I was about to step into it, an entire phalanx of reporters and cameramen came charging around the building. Immediately they surrounded us and started barking questions. Mr. Andrews tried to silence them, saying I had nothing to say at this time. But they shouted him down, their questions running together into one long din.

  Mrs. Buchan, is it true that you helped Toby Judson escape to Canada? Did you know you were breaking the law? Did you want to leave your husband for him? Are you still a member of a subversive organization? Do you blame yourself for what’s happened to your daughter? Did you tell her to have the abortion? Did you say it was all right to sleep with a married man?

  Those last three questions threw me—and I suddenly lost it, hissing at the journalist, “How dare you talk such trash.”

  “Hannah . . .” Carl Andrews said, but I ignored him, shouting, “My daughter is missing . . . maybe dead . . . and you make these vicious insinuations . . .”

  One of the journalists shouted back, “So you’re not going to apologize for what you did?”

  “No way,” I yelled, and somehow managed to climb in behind the wheel. Several of the reporters banged on the window, still bellowing questions, while the glare of television lights caught me full in the eyes. I gunned the motor, everyone jumped back, and I sped off like a mad getaway driver.

  Two blocks away from the school, I pulled over, cut the motor, and started manically pounding the steering wheel. I was furious—not just at those merciless hacks, but at myself. I had taken their bait.

  So you’re not going to apologize for what you did?

  No way.

  How could I have been so stupid? I sat rigid in the car for several minutes, dazed and befuddled. Then I forced myself to drive back to the hotel. As soon as I let myself into the room, my cell phone went off. Margy.

  “Okay, I’ve just seen it,” she said.

  “Margy, hon, I’m so sorry. I . . .”

  “Didn’t I tell you to go hide?” she said quietly. “Didn’t I say—”

  “I know, I know, I blew it . . .”

  “It’s not good, hon. It’s not what we really need right now. And I’ve just had Dan on, fuming.”

  “Why didn’t he call me?” I asked, thinking out loud.

  “You’ll have to ask him that. But he started getting really angry with me, telling me I shouldn’t have let you off the leash.”

  “Were those his exact words?”

  “Look, he’s under a lot of strain too. He’s been asked to go explain the situation to some members of the hospital board this afternoon—and he’s worried about the impact this is going to have on his practice.”

  “And now the press is going to use that comment against me, over and over again.”

  “We’ll do our best to respond. I might have to line up some interview with you and a simpatico journalist in an attempt to do a little damage control. We need to get your side of the story out there in the next thirty-six hours, otherwise Judson’s version of things will stand. It’s how it works now in the media—you’ve got a day-and-a-half window t
o hit back.”

  “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “Well, you must promise me now not to leave the hotel. And if a journalist calls your cell phone, you should hang up immediately. I’ll get back to you later.”

  I rang Dan as soon as I was off the phone with Margy.

  “That was a great performance this morning,” he said, his tone arctic.

  “I’m sorry. I lost it. I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a way that made it very clear it did matter.

  “Margy said you went by the house this morning.”

  “Yeah, thanks to you it was surrounded by journalists.”

  “Where did you sleep last night?”

  “The office,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “Well, I couldn’t exactly go home with all those hacks camped outside.”

  “Dan, is there any chance we could meet up now and try to—”

  “I’ve got a very full day. And there’s really nothing I want to say to you right now.”

  “Look, I know you’re furious with me. And you’re right to be furious with me. But—”

  “I’ll see you tonight. I’ll come by the hotel around seven.”

  And he hung up.

  I’ll come by the hotel around seven. It sounded so formal—which, of course, was exactly his intention.

  I made the mistake of turning on the television. On the top-of-the-hour news on Fox, I was the third item.

  In yet another new development in the Elizabeth Buchan case, her mother, Hannah, took a leave of absence from her teaching job at the Nathaniel Hawthorne High School in Portland, Maine, after revelations came to light in a newly published book that she helped former Weatherman terrorist Tobias Judson escape to Canada. Mrs. Buchan herself was unrepentant about her past actions.

  Then they showed that clip of me going ballistic while getting into my car and turning on the reporter and then screaming that there was no way I’d say I’m sorry before appearing to roar off without the slightest concern for anyone in my way. Viewed coolly, you would have been forgiven for thinking that this woman was a full-fledged viper—evidently demented and morally suspect.

  The final statement from the talking head reminded viewers that the Department of Justice was still considering whether I could be prosecuted and that the Boston police had no new details on the whereabouts of Elizabeth Buchan—though, in a recent development, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston had announced that Dr. Mark McQueen was going on leave of absence to “spend more time with his family.” And Choice Communications, the production company that made his Face It show, announced that it was being taken off the air until further notice.

  At least McQueen got the hospital to say that he was on leave.

  Margy was on the phone again fifteen minutes later.

  “I want you to do an interview this afternoon with a journalist from The Boston Globe. I took the liberty of giving her the green light before talking with you, because she got in touch with the office right after everything broke this morning and said that, if she could have access today, she could have her piece in by tomorrow. Her name’s Paula Houston—I don’t know her personally, but I had one of my people run a background check on her. Vassar-educated, very feminist, and seriously interested in what she called the ‘Rashomon’ aspect of the case—the fact that your version so completely contradicts Judson’s. She’s driving up to see you now. Traffic permitting, she should be at the hotel by noon.”

  “Margy, I’ve hardly slept and I look like a car wreck . . .”

  “After what happened this morning, we’re in damage control mode. Paula Houston can right some wrongs for us. You can’t turn her away when she shows up. You have to do the interview today, hon.”

  “All right, all right . . . I’ll do it.”

  “Smart girl—and I’m working on an NPR angle for tomorrow as well . . . though what I’d really like to do is find some more or less sympathetic conservative journalist who might just take Judson to task for digging up grubby personal stuff from his past for professional gain.”

  Margy was definitely in flat-out PR mode, and I was being treated now as the wayward client who needed reining in. All I wanted to do was run and hide, reemerging again when the parade had passed me by and fixated on someone else’s scandal.

  “How can anyone be so interested in my little life?”

  This was the only question I posed during the hour I spent that morning with Paula Houston. Margy was right—Houston was super-bright and very sympathetic, though not in a touchy-feely way. She was short, wiry, edgy. She had bitten nails and took notes with a pencil that also showed teeth marks. I had taught the occasional student like her over the years—bookish and intense; someone who had learned early on that the only way she was going to survive high school was by being brighter than everybody else . . . and who now, in adult life, used her intelligence as a bulwark against her own awkwardness.

  “What’s it like to have a daughter disappear?” she asked. It wasn’t an aggressive question, rather one dropped out of nowhere, and it came with the sweeten-the-pill follow-up, “I haven’t done the kid thing yet, so I can’t even begin to imagine what you must be feeling right now.”

  We were sitting opposite each other in the two small armchairs by the window of my hotel room. Margy had insisted we do the interview in the room (“Portland’s a small town—if anyone sees you in the hotel lobby or bar, word could get around and you’d have the network affiliates knocking on your door there”). I had called housekeeping as soon as I got word that Houston was arriving within the hour and had them tidy the room and remake the bed. I also fell into the shower and then tried to mask my lack of sleep by slapping on several layers of foundation. Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I thought: Time isn’t just relentless, it is also cruel.

  And now here I was—sitting opposite this nervy, highly intelligent young woman—trying to talk about Lizzie. And yes, we were very close. And yes, I simply have to continue to believe that she is alive. And no, I don’t have the same sort of relationship with my son. Well, he is a rather conservative fellow, and his wife doesn’t exactly share my pro-choice views on abortion. And yes, I do think Dan and I have a stable marriage—but, of course, things are difficult now.

  “Were you in love with Tobias Judson?” she asked suddenly.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But you must have felt something for him . . .”

  “I was young, I was living in a small town, I was a mother at twenty-three and felt as if I had denied myself the sort of latitude that most people have at that age. And Dan and I had been going through one of those periods in a new marriage when things weren’t as stable as they could have been, and I was gripped by a lot of doubts, and along comes this guy—very assured, very worldly, politically savvy, and very raffish.”

  “Did he seduce you?” she asked, not looking up from her notepad.

  “No, it was mutual.”

  “Was it great sex?”

  “Do I have to answer that?”

  “Let me rephrase it, then: was it bad sex?”

  “No.”

  “And I know you’ve said in your press statement that you definitely did not offer to drive him across the border . . .”

  “He forced me,” I said.

  “Would you mind taking me through the entire story of the drive to Canada—as you remember it.”

  I did as requested, explaining everything: the threats, his immense cynicism in the face of my distress, and how once we reached Quebec he told me I should forget all this ever happened.

  “So you think his interpretation of events—”

  “Is nothing more than an outright set of lies; an attempt to reinvent the past to sell his newfound image as a great patriot and a born-again.”

  “You could have turned Judson down back then—you could have held firm.”

  “I was scared.”

  “But ultimately it’s your story against h
is, isn’t it?”

  “That’s true. But I’m not peddling my story like he is.”

  We talked for a full hour. At one p.m. she looked at her watch and said that we had to wrap things up, as she had a four p.m. deadline for the interview and she was now going straight to a rented-by-the-hour office in the hotel business center to get it written in time.

  “One last thing—outside of getting Judson to admit what you say is the truth, what would you like from all this?”

  “You mean, besides Lizzie seeing this article somewhere and picking up the phone and calling me? I’d just like my life back as it was. In the great scheme of things, it’s not a big important life—but it is my life. And I certainly wasn’t dissatisfied with it.”

  She said nothing as she left—no “God, what a terrible story” or “I wish you luck” or “I will do my damnedest to see that truth triumphs,” or any of the other comforting clichés I wanted. She simply shook my hand and thanked me for my time. Once she had gone, I paced the room, wondering if I had struck the right tone, if I had been overly demonstrative or said the wrong thing.

  I stayed in the room for the rest of the afternoon—attempting to kill time with a Carol Shields novel that traced the very ordinary life of a very ordinary woman, a life with few moments of high drama, but which Shields somehow managed to make remarkable. The extraordinary in the ordinary. It was a theme I often discussed with my students—how we can never consider anybody’s life “ordinary,” how every human existence is a novel with its own compelling narrative. Even if, on the surface, it seems prosaic, the fact remains that each individual life is charged with contradictions and complexities. And no matter how much we wish to keep things simple and uneventful, we cannot help but collide with mess. It’s our destiny, because mess, the drama that we create for ourselves, is an intrinsic part of being alive. It’s a bit like tragedy: none of us can avoid it, as hard as we try. Maybe it’s all a reaction against mortality—the cold, chilling, middle-of-the-night realization that everything is finite, that all the striving and ache and want and pleasures and disappointments of life vanish with us when we die. Can anyone really imagine their own death? No you on this planet, and the very absence of you noted by so few people. Which means the point to all the striving and suffering while we are here is . . . ?