Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  I wasn’t eager to join forces with another of Beth’s displaced friends. Not with anyone, in fact. I was already drowning in too-muchness, and my current fantasies were of silence and solitude. I wanted a Georgia O’Keeffe life, as long as it didn’t require artistic talent. Few possessions and fewer visitors to my plain white space. No teenagers. No sisters with dull, sad, and needy friends.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “I’ll ask the group next time we meet.” They’d be annoyed with me—they’d settled the issue at the last meeting. I could only hope Beth would quickly forget about her relocated friend. Out of sight and all that.

  “What do you think of our expanded view?” Mackenzie asked. The wall now appeared to have a barn window, through which we saw a vista of fields and grazing cows, the latter suspended a few feet above the painted pasture. We city dwellers living several stories above street level had found the floating bovines funny. I, for one, was in great need of funny.

  Also, the painting filled a whole lot of wall. Judged by price per square inch, it had been a bargain, as my mother would say were she not safely several states due south, in Florida.

  “I think it’s straight,” Sam said. I wasn’t as sure.

  Beth fussed with her children. “You realize you’re going to upset that boy’s parents,” she said to me.

  “Adam’s? About the conference?”

  “I’d be. And if it’s true, wouldn’t they be the first to notice?”

  At which point silent Sam surprised me by voicing an unsolicited opinion. “Be careful about your actions,” he said. “It’s hardly what a parent wants to hear, and given the fact that you have no background in psychology, no credentials in that area…”

  “I’d like them to have him evaluated. To get him help if he needs it. It isn’t as if I’m accusing them of something or libeling them.”

  “His parents might not see it the same way, is all I’m saying. Think twice.”

  We were all expected to listen to Sam’s advice, which was always wise and always conservative, and for which he charged others big bucks, but he was annoying me. What had happened to the concept of being a decent human being? Love thy neighbor. Good Samaritanism.

  “When should people intervene?” I asked. “At what point should somebody stick her neck out and try to help? Shouldn’t we try to prevent things? Or should we wait for a TV crew to arrive so we can say, ‘I noticed he was behaving oddly, but…’ I’m mostly afraid for Adam. Do you know the statistics on teenage suicide?”

  “Mandy!” Beth said, with a fearful glance at her children. “Sam, I think we should all go to Emily’s.”

  I got the sense that Sam most definitely did not agree, but after hosing down the kids, many farewells, and a further warning from Sam about intervening in a child’s personal life, they went off to their party.

  Even with the ladder put away, Mackenzie fretted about his handiwork. “Not sure it’s straight,” he said. I pointed out that we lived in the oldest part of the city. In a former factory. The floors weren’t straight and neither were the walls, and there probably wasn’t a ninety-degree angle to be had, so how could one tell about a painting in the middle of a long, un-straight wall?

  “The appearance of straightness, then,” he said.

  Kin to the appearance of mental illness. “I don’t care what Sam said,” I told Mackenzie. “If I don’t put out an alert about the boy, who will?” I was convincing myself because if my sister and brother-in-law were correct, I was about to kick up a lot of hard feelings, and in truth, I still couldn’t decide if Adam’s essay contained brilliant imagery beyond my puny comprehension, or lunacy. Or whether I’d become such a grumpy, burned-out case that I was looking for trouble, scapegoating Adam Evans.

  “Tell me about the kid.” Mackenzie stared at the wall, tilting his head to the left, obviously still deliberating the painting’s straightness or lack thereof.

  And there you had the problem. I shouldn’t have needed to tell him about Adam. I already had. Lots. He didn’t listen. He divvied up his attention and deeded me almost as little conscious brain space as my students did. Was he listening now as he squinted and realigned himself and paced in front of the wall? Maybe my tales were too thin a gruel for Mackenzie’s daily diet. Compared to a homicide detective’s, my deviants from the norm must seem amusements.

  But Mackenzie’s are either dead or in hiding. Mine are right in my face.

  “He smells, for starters,” I said. “Remember? I told you. I think he’s stopped washing. Permanently. A few months back. Always wears black—black everything, including a long scarf no matter the weather—so the dirt doesn’t show, but he is fragrant. His hair’s greasy, and it’s sometimes hard to be close to him.” I hated how superficial, unsympathetic, and narrow-minded I sounded, and I knew all the counterarguments. A seventeen-year-old boy is bound to assert himself, and annoying the hell out of his elders is a prime method. If cleanliness was valued at home, then keeping dirty would work. If nobody objected to either long or short or completely shaved-off hair, then how about stringy-greasy-smelly? I knew all that, but the sense of wrongness persisted. “He behaves…inappropriately. I can’t define it.”

  “Bad?”

  “Not really. Not what you mean by that.”

  “Disruptive?”

  “Sometimes. But more like off-kilter.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe…well, this is difficult to suggest, but maybe this kid, for whatever reason, annoys the hell out of you, pushes buttons you aren’t aware of, and maybe you overreact to what wouldn’t bother you about somebody else? Did you ever consider that you might be…oh, what’s the technical word for the process…” He looked ceilingward, as if searching for inspiration. “Ah, yes, picking on him?”

  How dare he? To suggest that I—a seasoned, semi-idealistic, underpaid, overworked teacher, champion of the underdog—was not playing fair? That I, despite all I knew and had learned and believed in, was nonetheless prejudiced against one of my own students?

  Of course I was. But it was still rude of him to suggest it. “I read an article about the boy who killed those people at the clinic. He was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and the way he acted for a long while before then—it sounded like Adam Evans. Isolated, withdrawn, unkempt…”

  “Hey,” Mackenzie said softly, finally turning his back to the painting and sitting down at the oak table, across from me and the stack of essays. “That describes half the world’s population, including supermodels and kids on TV. The thing is, you’re not equipped to diagnose—”

  “I know that. I keep saying that. That’s why I want somebody else to evaluate him. Somebody who does know how.”

  “Do his other teachers feel the same way?”

  He had a blue-fire stare that reflected all the way to eternity, and at the moment I did not enjoy being the subject of it. “Are you interrogating me?” I snapped. He looked surprised, confused, and worried, all in one blue blink. As well he might. I sounded less mentally stable than Adam Evans ever had. “Okay, I’m sorry. He’s been cutting a lot of classes, and yes, he’s considered a problem.”

  “What kind of problem? Academic, or as potentially dangerous a one as you…” He searched for a noninflammatory word. I had made him uncomfortable, and now we were talking as if through a translator, to avoid further conflict. I felt ashamed, yet determined not to yield an inch. “As you…fear?”

  Good choice. “I don’t know. I only know what I’m seeing. I’ve talked to the counselor, but nobody else yet. I’m sure they’re all worried—how could we not be? All those news stories about kids going nuts at school.”

  “Does he talk about causing harm, doing something stupid, killing people, the way those kids are said to have?”

  I shook my head.

  “Singing hair follicles aren’t the scariest image I can think of.” Mackenzie’s expression was kind, sympathetic, and pitying?

  I knew what he was seeing—a biddy, a schoolmarm straight out of mean-spirite
d cartoons and the classrooms of his youth. The teacher who’d decided he was trash and treated him like an interloper because the Mackenzie family was large and forced to make do and he wore patched hand-me-downs.

  I’d become an evil stereotype. Somewhere between winter break and early spring, under the pressure and trivia of the daily teaching load plus the additional reams of college recommendation letters I’d agreed to write for students who didn’t deserve admission to those schools—somewhere in there I’d lost my elasticity, my ability to empathize with the thousand variations on the theme of teen weirdness, my perspective. And the headlines about killer teens hadn’t helped.

  “Singing follicles would be like wiring implanted under your scalp,” he said. “Great audio.”

  I checked to see if he was joking, but he meant it. Given his line of work, you’d think Mackenzie would be the one to despair of humanity, but he’s found a balance I sorely lack.

  “If Adam turns out to be an eccentric genius, he’d better come up with a discovery or piece of art worth the stench.” Even his handwriting annoyed me, running off the lines, changing direction, turning corners, and managing to make even ballpoint ink splot. “I’ve spoken with Rachel Leary—”

  He looked confused. He never, ever truly listened. “The school counselor,” I reminded him. “She’s also meeting with Adam’s parents.”

  “Then she agrees with you?”

  “She doesn’t have him in class. She knows his grades are down, that he’s cutting. She knows that kind of thing.”

  “But you said he did well on his SATs.”

  “Way better than I would have thought. He’s smart. I know that—I never knew why he was at Philly Prep. But lately something’s gone wrong. He can’t concentrate lots of the time.”

  “For your sake, let Rachel bring up the topic of mental illness, with a professional reason backing up what she says.”

  “They live with him, they have to have noticed….” I saw it in my beloved’s eyes. I was a zealot, a lunatic insisting on saving a world that had not put in an SOS.

  “The painting’s crooked,” I said. “It lists to the left.” On that issue, Mackenzie took me seriously. As soon as his blue-ice eyes were refocused on the landscape, I locked on my teacherly mask and returned to Adam’s essay. But a shudder raced over my skin, a skittering creature terrified by where it was and where it was heading.

  Two

  I have never seen a woman sit as straight as Dorothy Evans. If I didn’t know better and hadn’t seen her enter the room, I would have sworn she was suspended by a thread set into the center of her skull.

  She was a diminutive woman, but her posture turned her into a spear, and made her height quite enough. She seated herself at the far end of the small couch in Rachel Leary’s office and folded her hands on her lap. She might have been made of poured concrete.

  If I’d met her rigid self earlier on, I might not have pressed for this conference. In fact, everything in me increasingly wanted out, but having set things in motion, I was stuck in a crowded counselor’s office, with two hostile people on a love seat across from me.

  Actually, love seat seemed an inappropriate term for the duo’s perch. Mr. Evans sat as far away as possible from his wife, nearly on the armrest. I knew from looking at Adam’s records that the senior Evans’ first name was Parke, but he didn’t care to share that with us.

  From the moment the Evanses reluctantly, belligerently entered Rachel Leary’s rumpled and comforting counseling office, I knew nothing good would come of this. I wanted to bolt, shouting apologies, admitting that this was a major mistake. Our meeting became a confrontation before a single word was spoken.

  Speaking didn’t improve a thing. Not even when done in the gentlest of ways. Rachel has the ability to project sympathetic vibrations without necessarily feeling much. As a point of fact, I knew that all she currently cared about were her internal organs and their new tenant. Rachel was in the early stages of her first pregnancy and surprised, she said, to be behaving like Scarlett O’Hara. “I thought I was peasant stock who’d breeze through this and have the baby in a field between appointments. I thought women didn’t do this anymore.” Nonetheless, she had morning sickness—and afternoon and evening sickness—and this Wednesday morning she was in a state of quiet terror, fearing that she was about to experience conferencing-with-the-Evanses sickness. “It would probably seem unprofessional to throw up on his polished shoes,” she’d said to me a few moments before they arrived. “Even though I don’t like the guy. He’s hell-bent on having his son achieve some undefined triumph that will blaze both their names across the sky. I will never lay that on you,” she promised her queasy midriff.

  “Why’d they send Adam here? Was he always a problem?”

  “I don’t think so.” Rachel shrugged. “My theory? Parke Evans decided that Adam had the best chance of shining in these dim halls of learning. Here he could have been valedictorian, best in his class. I know that sounds cynical, but Mr. Evans provokes such thoughts. He’s completely competitive, and you’d better not best him. I wouldn’t put it past him to pick—forgive me—a loser school so his son would have better odds of being a winner.”

  “Adam’s mother?”

  Rachel shrugged. “She barely spoke. Just vibrated. Tense creature.”

  The truth was, the old Adam could have done well anywhere, and would have definitely taken whatever honors Philly Prep distributed. His father’s Machiavellian school selection would have proven accurate, if only Adam hadn’t swerved off into a parallel universe.

  Now Rachel leaned toward the couple and in a silky, sympathetic voice that held no trace of her dislike said, “I know you’re busy people, and it’s lovely of you to have responded so quickly.”

  To underscore her observation, busy Mr. Evans checked his watch.

  Rachel cut to the chase. “We’re concerned about Adam.”

  “What does that mean?” Mr. Evans demanded. “I came here because I am concerned about your concern about my son. What right do you have to be concerned?”

  He made concern sound like a weapon that only he was licensed to use. Rachel and I were usurpers, concern thieves. And I made sad note that Mr. Concern himself wasn’t speaking about a boy named Adam but about a possession—and one he had sole title to. “My son”—only his, as if Dorothy Evans was a passerby, a curious onlooker.

  “Maybe this is about his college admission process?” Mr. Evans said. “He hasn’t heard from everywhere yet. Hasn’t responded to the one that accepted him. Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “Concerning us,” Rachel repeated. “Don’t worry about the schools. There’s time.” She swallowed hard and looked as if she’d ingested a green-gray dye.

  “Adam’s behavior concerns me,” I said.

  “You!” Parke Evans looked ready to explode. There was so much fury in his voice that I actually turned to check whether Satan had just blown through the door.

  I had wanted Rachel to present the problem in suitably professional terms. Perhaps to show a graph or bar chart of what’s normal and what is not. But she looked as if she were going down for the count, so I plugged on. “He’s changed dramatically and isn’t the boy I taught a short course to when he was in ninth grade. He was so attentive and involved then. Now he’s—”

  “Ninth grade! The equivalent of a lifetime ago to him! He’s a senior in high school now, a whole different stripe of animal. Why would you expect him to be the same?”

  Parke Evans was like a relentlessly yapping dog. I compensated by making my voice even softer. “I remember how outstanding his work and attitude were, I remember his personality, and now—”

  “This is appalling. This confirms everything I thought—you know nothing about teenagers,” Mr. Evans said. “But it’s supposedly your business, isn’t it? Both of you?” He looked from me to Rachel. “That’s your expertise? That’s why this fancy high-priced school has you on its faculty?”

  Neither of us chose to r
eply. Rachel was busily taking deep breaths while I was wondering whom I could call to have a conference about Mr. Evans’ behavior. One of the items on the mounting list of things I did not love about my job was parents who considered me hired help. I had never thought about dealing with parents when I’d thought about teaching. Goes to show what I knew then.

  Mrs. Evans stared straight ahead, the tight line of her lips crossing the one her spine made. She was all T squares and right angles.

  “I sell appliances,” Mr. Evans said. “Have for…yap, yap, yap…that’s my expertise. I wouldn’t drag you in for a conference because ovens get hot and refrigerators are cold. They are what they are. Teenage boys are what they are. I also have expertise there. Expertise as Adam’s father. Seventeen years of observation.” He sat back. Case closed.

  “Excuse me!” Rachel bolted for the door.

  The Evanses looked in the direction of where she’d been, then looked to me for an explanation. I didn’t feel like giving them one.

  “I am indeed familiar with teenage behavior,” I said. “That’s why I’m so alarmed about Adam’s.”

  “Drugs? Is that what you’re saying?” Parke Evans demanded.

  “I don’t honestly know. It could be.” My gut feeling was that while drugs were possibly, maybe even probably, part of the problem, there was something else, too—that x factor, that wrongness. But even if it were “only” drugs, shouldn’t the Evanses be more concerned? “He’s withdrawn, his hygiene, his work habits, his grades are suffering—”

  “He’s a kid,” Parke Evans said. “Why make an issue of it? It’s the end of his senior year. Why bust a gut? Basically, all he needs to do is pass, so what is this fuss about?”

  “I’m aware of that, believe me.” I was the one who had to keep my students from slipping into comas that last semester. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”