by Amber Foxx
“Practicing my chi. So maybe I can heal you.”
He lifted his right hand, a warning finger raised, and the balls knocked hard against each other. He couldn’t resist it. He could still stop things. Chi balls. Golf balls. Maybe the blood at the doors of his own heart.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the aftermath, Charlie’s office felt empty in spite of its excess contents. He had been taken away in an ambulance. Bernadette walked over to the plant and touched its leaves, stroking dust off them with her finger.
“Are you okay?” Mae asked.
“I feel like I killed him.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I told him I’m leaving—and I wasn’t nice about it. I made him mad when I said he didn’t work.”
“Does he?”
“Honestly? Not much. Meetings. But teaching? No.”
“So you think the truth can kill him? He got mad at me about telling the truth, too.”
Bernadette rearranged the plant’s long green tendrils where they were crawling over the chaos, and began to pick up some of the papers and books it had been covering. If his office was any sign, Charlie’s life looked out of control. The plant was the only thing that seemed to have any direction, and it seemed to be trying to crawl out the door.
“I always fall back to this guilt.” Bernadette brought the books and papers from the plant table over to the chair at Charlie’s desk. “It’s a reflex. People abuse me and I take the blame. My parents got drunk and beat me, it was my fault. Charlie ruins his health and has a heart attack, and it’s my fault. I really feel it.” She sounded close to tears. “Like I have to make it up to him.”
“Don’t do it by staying.”
Bernadette shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve already signed a contract for my new job.” Her voice broke. “I’m so happy I’m leaving—but he’s so hurt.”
Mae walked over and hugged her. Bernadette only held the embrace long enough to pull herself together and stop her tears. She pulled away, and looked around at the office. “I should make it easy for him to come back. To start over.”
“You’re gonna clean this?”
Bernadette nodded. “Seems like a good goodbye, doesn’t it? He needs to dig out from under an awful lot.”
“You need some help?”
“You’d do that? You don’t like Charlie.”
“I’m doing it for you. Though I’m sure he’d say I still owe him for a couple of favors. Might as well work that off in case I ever see him again.”
Randi appeared in the doorway. “Hi.” She sounded dazed. “I called his daughter. She’ll be flying in. He’ll have some family here.”
“Thanks,” Bernadette said. “I never met her. I don’t have her number.”
Mae felt a wave of irritation with Charlie. More proof of how secretive he’d been, hiding Bernadette so he could stay on the market for younger and prettier women. He’d been with her for six or seven years and never introduced her to his family.
“I talked to the dean, too,” Randi said. “She’ll officially assign some other professors to take over his courses. I figure he’ll probably end up with a bypass or something and be out for a while.” She paused, took a breath. “I’m counting on him to make it.” Her eyes filled. “We can’t lose Charlie. Anyway,” she plowed on through her emotions, “the dean said that if anyone wants to volunteer to finish certain courses to tell her. I can let you know where he is in the undergraduate classes as far as the readings and topics.” She looked around. “But I can’t tell you where anything is that you might need. He still keeps his lecture notes on paper.”
“Why?” Bernadette asked.
“I think it’s because they’re really old. They look like the Dead Sea scrolls.” She sighed. “God. Charlie.” The tone was both affectionate and exasperated. “I hope he’ll be okay.”
“I think he will be,” Mae said. Unless Malba's prediction had been that he was going to die. You’re the one, he’d said. The one Malba predicted? The one who’d done or would do what?
“I have to go back to work at Oceanfront.” Randi looked at Bernadette. “I’ll be back tonight, though. I’ll be in my office after your class. Let me know if I can help with anything.”
Bernadette thanked her, and Randi left.
Mae and Bernadette surveyed the mess. “We need boxes,” Mae said.
“I have some I didn’t use when I packed up in my office.”
Bernadette started with the desk while Mae worked on the floor. None of the students’ papers she found appeared to have been graded. And didn’t Paula say she was doing research? Wouldn’t professors all be doing that? Charlie didn’t seem to. Someone else had written everything Mae found so far. Maybe he had stuff on his computer, though, work in progress. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it looked.
The books she found buried under papers had other people’s names written in the front. Paula Hart. Bernadette Pena. Other names. Mae set the books in a separate stack to return to their owners.
She remembered him in the classroom when she had visited, how he went from person to person, touching them on the shoulders or the back, exchanging cheerful and joking chat. Maybe even then he was drawing energy from people. Girls who revised their lives for him, while he stayed the same. Other people’s books he read and never returned. All taking, no giving.
Paula poked her head in. “What are you doing?”
“Helping him come back to a fresh start. Finding things we’ll need for whoever takes over his classes,” Bernadette said. “I’ve got 530, of course.”
“I have 450. I think James will finish up 425 if I ask him.” Paula leaned in the doorframe. “I don’t feel like I can do anything right now. I’m sure Charlie’s going to end up in surgery.” She watched them for a moment. “But I guess it does feel good to do something for him.”
“Archaeology,” Bernadette said. “I feel like I’m doing Charlie archaeology.”
Paula let out a rattled laugh, as if the humor relieved her. “Found anything Neolithic?”
Bernadette gestured to the deepest piles on the floor. “I think I may even get to Cretaceous.”
“What are you doing here?” Paula seemed to notice Mae for the first time. “Digging through his office?”
“I’m helping Bernadette.”
“I don’t think you should be. I can help. Randi can. But you shouldn’t be here.”
Bernadette stopped sorting the desk. “Paula, I want her help. What do you think she’s going to find?”
“Do you know what kind of things she can do?”
“Yes.”
Mae looked at the stack of books, the stack of papers. She hadn’t even thought of it, but finally she had full access to things that could reveal Charlie’s past for Dana. Dana, more than Bernadette, might be dragged back to Charlie by his heart attack. She had not necessarily decided to let go. Hadn’t answered Mae’s calls. There was no certainty about Dana getting free of him.
Paula stepped into the office. “So do you think she should be pawing through his papers and his personal things?”
“Paula, it would take us days to do this. Mae had time, and she offered.”
“Probably for her own reasons. I don’t think Charlie deserves that. He needs support, not—”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Mae said. Bernadette had enough to deal with. She didn’t need to hear Mae and Paula argue. Mae got to her feet and walked into the hallway, gesturing to Paula to come with her. Outside the office, Mae spoke softly. “Randi has more work than she has time for. You and Bernadette have your classes to teach and now Charlie’s. I’m practically unemployed. If I can help her, I’m going to.”
“So you can do some sort of psychic spying for Dana?”
The word spying troubled Mae. She didn’t want to be thought of that way, nor did she want to see herself that way. Had she found out enough already to discourage Dana? Would she need to use anything in the office? The heart attack might make that effort pointless. “Did yo
u call her, tell her he had a heart attack?”
“Of course not. I can’t act like I know about their relationship.”
“I’m gonna call her. And tell her. Unless she asks me to keep going, I won’t do any more of what she asked me to do. But if she does, I will.”
“You had better not take anything from Charlie's office.”
“I’m not a thief.” But in that heap on the floor there were envelopes, candy wrappers, all sorts of things that might be the leavings of various girls. Would that be stealing, if Dana still wanted to know more history? “You sure sound like you think I’m gonna find something. Like there’s a whole lot to hide.”
“Everyone has the right to hide something.” Paula’s face turned pink, and she returned to Charlie’s office, where she began to work on clearing the table. She might as well have admitted she was part of what he had to hide, even if it was back in the dark ages.
Mae got her phone from her purse, returned to the hallway and called Dana. Still no answer. It felt cold and awkward, leaving a message that Charlie had a heart attack and had been taken to—Mae didn’t even know what hospital. She took a guess that by the time Dana came to class tonight Bernadette would be able to give the students an update on Charlie and where to send cards, put that at the end of her message, then went back to sorting the materials on the floor.
It really was like archaeology. Finding a layer from 2004, Mae labeled a box by the date on the papers. The magazines and journals were from that year, too. There were notecards. Valentines. She made a separate stack for those. She didn’t want to read them, although using them for energy traces might be powerful. How many girls had this man seduced over the years? What if there had been fifteen or twenty? If that were the case and Dana knew ... In front of Paula, though, even taking a single pink envelope would look like theft.
Bernadette said to Paula, “Take those papers he never read out of the envelopes.”
Mae looked up. Paula had reached several stacks of twenty or thirty manila envelopes that looked thickly stuffed.
“You don’t think ...” Paula looked at them. “I’m sure he read them. He must have intended to send them back to the remote sites.”
“I’ve been team-teaching with him. I know what he does. He asks the students what they think they earned and why, how hard they worked, how many classes they missed, and that’s how he grades them, unless I do it or Randi does. Open one. See if they’re graded. Look at the date.” Bernadette walked over and took some papers from an envelope. “No grade. 2005.” She tossed the papers into a new box. “Look at the rest.”
Paula slowly opened one from the other stack, then another, leafing through. “No grades. 2006.” She sounded wounded, as if this hurt more than his heart attack.
Bernadette returned to sorting the things on the desk, and Mae to the layer she’d been excavating on the floor. A picture of the granddaughter—then three more—had been lost under the papers. She set these aside.
“Oh my God.” Bernadette sank into Charlie’s chair, on top of the papers she had put there. “I shouldn't have looked.” She dropped a card to the floor and put her head in her hands. “I shouldn’t have seen that.”
It fell near Mae. The card showed a 1940s couple in a passionate embrace. Its text read Finally she was able to convince him. It was probably from Dana. Bernadette shouldn’t have been so shocked. Mae picked it up. She was so fed up with Charlie and concerned for Bernadette that it seemed natural to look. The illustration inside showed the couple’s clothes on the floor, and the text read ... that she would still respect him in the morning. The humor didn’t fit with Dana’s personality. The handwriting that signed it was large, slanted, and confident. “You make me smile. Randi.”
Don’t bring her in. I don’t want her to see me like this.
“You have no business—” Paula snapped. “Give me that.”
Mae didn’t like doing this to Randi, but she handed it to Paula. “Old dogs and their old tricks.”
As Paula read it, her jaw dropped and her eyes seemed to burn though the card. “No. I can’t believe this.”
“Maybe I should show it to Dana. Or is that the kind of thing I shouldn’t take from his office? Maybe I’ll find one from Marla Gresczek, too.”
“He could be dying, and you’re talking about him like this?”
“I hope he doesn’t, but if he dies someone’s gonna clean this mess and find it anyway.”
Paula started to tear the card, but Bernadette said, “He kept it, Paula. It meant something to him.” She reached out, and Paula handed it to her, staring. “We’ll make a box for all his personal things. Cards, pictures.”
With a sharp exhalation, Paula yanked another stack of papers out of an envelope, then stopped, dropping it to the table as if were suddenly too heavy to hold. “I can’t stand this. I’m going to get you some more boxes. But I’m done.” She walked out.
In silence, Mae and Bernadette gazed at their tasks. Bernadette resumed sorting the desk, placing personal items in a stack, tossing papers in a box.
“You’re really doing all that for him?” Mae asked. “Sorting every little thing? Saving things like that card? You’ll torture yourself, and it's gonna take days.”
“I know. But I don’t know what else to do.”
“It’s gonna be more of the same.”
“I know. And worse. I found an incredibly nasty memo to the dean.” Bernadette picked up the paper and laid it back down. “About being accused of relationships with students. Defending himself. Did he really send this? It’s signed. It’s photocopied. Maybe he sent it. He likes to fight.” She looked at Mae. “I’m telling myself not to read this stuff unless it looks like it relates to an ongoing class, to just clear it off, but I keep looking. I keep thinking, he might need it, he might want it, but it gets uglier the more I look.”
“Why don’t we just keep books and medical journals and recycle everything else? All of it. Randi said his class notes are like a thousand years old. He’s probably got ’em memorized. And you wouldn’t use ’em anyway.”
Bernadette shuffled aimlessly through the desk surface’s clutter. “I gave him gifts ... I wonder if I’ll find them.”
Mae thought of the medicine bag and the vision of Charlie at home. “I think he’d take anything valuable home. Anything he cherished.”
“I hope so. It’s so hard to let go. Even when I’m totally disgusted with him, there’s this scar on my heart that still cares.”
When Paula returned with some empty office-paper boxes, Mae rose and gave her the books of hers that she had found and brought the boxes into the office. “It looks like this is getting to you, too,” Paula said to Bernadette. “Why don’t you lock it up and take a break? We’ve all had a shock.”
Bernadette nodded, but didn’t move. Then she turned to Paula. “What’s the shock? What happened, or who he is?”
“That’s enough of that,” Paula said. “We’re not talking about anything you found. That stays here.”
“You think you can contain that?”
Paula dropped her books in the hallway, marched to the table, and began to sweep everything off it into a box, even books, DVDs, old VHS tapes—she was no longer sorting. “Just do this with everything. Label where it came from.” She walked to the desk, took a black felt tip marker from a pottery jar of pens, and labeled the box Surface of round table, added the day’s date, put the lid on the box, and began to sweep things into another. “Go on. With the floor, the desk, everything. He doesn’t need this lying around for everyone to see. Box it up.”
“You might find some of my journals,” Bernadette said.
“All right, save those. But let’s do this.”
Bernadette hesitated, but then she also began to dump things into boxes. Mae felt the urge to sort recyclables—the Ridley influence was impossible to shake off—and she wrote the word RECYCLE on boxes that held only paper, rapidly sorting the clutter to spare books and journals from the fire that had ta
ken over Paula.
As Paula cleared and packed recklessly, it looked as if her respect for Charlie was sliding down into the boxes along with the evidence of how he lived—until with the last armload she closed it up. In a way what Paula had done preserved the record of his chaos, like sealing up a really bad Pharaoh’s tomb. Maybe the old friend, the artist of the angel, was still somewhere in Charlie, but it had to be hard to hold on to him in the face of this. Maybe Paula was burying all this as fast as she could to save him. To make sure Mae didn’t take a single scrap out to ruin Charlie for anybody else.
When they were done, Bernadette thanked Mae and Paula and locked Charlie’s office. The professors went to their own offices, and Mae went outside. The contrast relieved her. Grass, trees, squirrels, people going to and from classes. She sat on a bench and watched blankly for a while.
So many confusing feelings and events. Mae noticed a shakiness in her body. It might be because she'd missed lunch and done all that work, and had so little sleep. Or it might be because she’d stood up to people, been this strange, strong person who said what she really thought. She still wasn’t sure if she should have.
She hadn’t taken a thing from the office after all, not a single trace of some old girlfriend, and not just because Paula was watching. It was like she’d seen so much that was shabby and disappointing about Charlie without even using the sight, it didn’t matter how many additional students he’d had affairs with. Randi. Pamela. Dana. Marla. Way back, probably Paula. And all the nameless girls in between. He’d done it, and that was enough.
Mae called and left another message for Dana. “I know you’re probably worried about his heart attack, but I think you should hear what I learned about him. You need to know more.”
Dana had not replied by early evening, so Mae decided to try to find her before class. She wanted to make sure that Dana wasn’t sucked in by the heart attack, didn’t lose sight of Charlie’s true character. On the bridge over the pond with the fountain, a small figure in a crisp uniform stood grasping the railing and gazing into the water. Mae stopped beside her, and Dana jolted from her reverie.