Wildwood

by Drusilla Campbell

  Jeanne slipped the pen into her purse, smoothed her bun and tugged down the jacket of her blue wool suit. “Enter.”

  A frail, delicately featured boy with muddy shoes stood on the threshold.

  “Where have you been, Adam?” Jeanne frowned at the footprints on her hardwood floor.

  He looked down at his feet.

  “Answer me, Adam. I won’t bite you.”

  “Robby and me . . .”

  “. . . Robby and I . . .”

  “We went to the drugstore.”

  “I know that, Adam.” Jeanne smiled. “Was the drugstore muddy?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then how did your shoes get so dirty?” Bluegang and the wildwood were off limits and all the boys knew it from their first day at Hilltop. Nevertheless, the temptation of trees and water and rocks was too much for most of them. “You’ve left tracks across my floor.”

  Adam looked at his feet and then up, as if the answer to her question were written somewhere in the far corner of the ceiling.

  Jeanne waited. When his gaze didn’t shift, she repeated her question with more force but with sweetness too; she didn’t want to frighten him. She hoped no teacher had ever frightened James/Mark. She hoped that all his life loving, thoughtful people had surrounded him. She gentled her tone still more. “Where did you get the mud on your shoes?”

  He looked out the window.

  “Adam?”

  “Where the roses are.”

  “What were you doing in the rose cloister?”

  Adam blinked and thought. “Smellin’ ’em.”

  Jeanne considered him. “Where did Robby tell you to take your shower bucket, Adam?”

  “Where the roses are.”

  Was he lying? She couldn’t tell. With a troubled, distracted boy like Adam Weed, truth and falsehood were often indistinguishable and by doggedly pursuing the truth she would only cause humiliation and further confusion. As it was the boy quivered with tension and she pitied him.

  “Do you like your room, Adam?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re in the oldest wing of the school. Boys have lived in your room since I was younger than you are now.”

  And before them, nuns in black habits.

  Adam blinked several times. She wondered if his eyes had been tested recently and made a mental note.

  “I know you’ve never shared a room before. You might feel a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it. If you have any trouble, I want you to remember that the secret of living with people happily is cooperation and compromise.” Adam’s gaze was on the ceiling again. She wasn’t even sure he was listening. Jeanne made another note to herself: reexamine his test scores. “Roommates are like a little team, Adam. They have to work together.”

  His face brightened. “My Uncle Louis plays for Chicago. He’s the nose tackle.”

  That stopped her. “I didn’t know you had an uncle.”

  “He plays nose tackle.”

  “That’s an important position. My brother played football. I was very proud of him.” She paused. “You must be proud of your Uncle Louis.”

  Adam nodded.

  “My brother played for Stanford back when they were called the Indians. He was a wide receiver.”

  “Did he go with the pros?”

  Jeanne shook her head.

  “Uncle Louis played for Wisconsin. He was an All-American and runner-up for the Heisman.”

  “A nose tackle, huh?” Jeanne took care not to smile. “That’s very unusual for the Heisman. Uncle Louis is an unusual man.”

  “How come your brother didn’t go with the pros? Wasn’t he good enough?”

  “He died his last year of college.” For a second her gaze locked with Adam’s, and the pain she read there pierced her heart. “I was sad for a very long time after that. I wasn’t too much older than you.”

  “Uncle Louis’ll probably be All-Pro this year,” Adam said, looking up at the ceiling again. “I’m gonna ask my dad if I can go to Hawaii and watch him play. I might take Robby with me.”

  Jeanne thought of Simon Weed, so deeply troubled by his son that his eyes grew wet when he spoke of him. The boy had come upon his mother hanging by the neck, and then he walked away and pretended it never happened. Or maybe he had truly forgotten.

  Amnesia. Like Young Widder Brown.

  “I want you to make me a promise, Adam.”

  “What kind of promise?”

  “Will you come back and talk to me sometimes? Let me know how you’re doing at Hilltop?”

  He blinked and yawned and scuffed his shoes into the hardwood parquet. Jeanne was merciful and let him go.

  Jeanne opened Adam Weed’s file and quickly reread the contents. Low academic scores, poor social skills, some vandalism in the year since his mother’s death. Increasing signs of vagueness and confusion, inclined to wander off. She keyed his name into her computer and quickly noted the details of their meeting in his file.

  Unhappy boys were not a novelty at Hilltop. Most students carried around at least one misery. Even parental suicides were not unknown. But Adam moved Jeanne because when she saw him she saw at the same time his beleaguered father, the tycoon reduced to confusion and clumsy neediness.

  Without knocking Teddy came in. He wore light gray slacks and a fashionably oversized black cashmere sweater. His handsome aristocratic face looked tired.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Still hurts.”

  “Call the doctor, Teddy. You don’t have to suffer. There’s nothing noble about a sinus headache.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me a change of climate wouldn’t cure.” He tossed a manila folder across her desk. “Look that over, will you? Punch it up? It’s that book review I said I’d do for the Journal of Private School Educators.”

  “I didn’t read the book.”

  He shrugged. “I put the bones in, you can flesh it out. Take you thirty minutes.”

  “I can’t do it this afternoon. I’m meeting Liz.”

  “I only take these assignments because it’s good for the school’s rep. If you’d rather I didn’t . . .”

  She looked at her husband and then at the computer screen. In its blue well she saw her blurred reflection with the cursor pulsing on her temple. “What I’d rather is that you finished them yourself.” Before he could respond she added, “Just don’t expect it before next week.”

  The clock chimed the half hour. She closed Adam’s file and logged off. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about before I go.”

  Teddy prowled from the door to the window and back to the door again. He lifted the cushions on the loveseat under the window. “I wish to hell I could find that pen.”

  He was upset, she had made him that way. Now, if she wanted to, she could take the pen out of her purse and say oh, by the way, look what I just found. And make him happy. Once she took fifty dollars from his wallet and stuck the roll of bills in the inside pocket of his favorite sports coat, then she lay on the bed and watched him go crazy trying to find it and his confusion when he found it after twenty minutes. He kept saying he never put cash in that pocket.

  Jeanne clicked her purse shut. “Will you stand still a minute and listen?”

  He dropped onto the loveseat and grinned like Buckwheat. “Yes, ma’am, Miz Tate. I’s all ears.”

  “I’ve just had a conversation with Adam Weed. He told me his uncle Louis plays for the Chicago.”

  “So? I told you his father owns a piece of the team.”

  “Simon Weed particularly told me that he is Adam’s only living relative. No uncles, aunts or cousins.”

  “So? It’s an honorary title. Like Hannah’s kids call you Aunt Jeanne. For all we know, little Adam calls the whole team Uncle.”

  “He came in with mud on his shoes and when I pressed him about where it came from he told me he’d been to the rose cloister. But I’m sure he was lying.”

  “My goodness, Sherlock, you’
ve had a full afternoon of lies and innuendo haven’t you?”

  “I let him go with Robby earlier. They used Bluegang as a shortcut into town. It’s quicker than the road.”

  Teddy laughed and she wondered why. If she asked, if she pursued his humor to its motive . . . well, she knew what would happen. Teddy would find a way to make her feel stupid. She let the laughter go as if she hadn’t heard it.

  “We need a better fence at the edge of the property.” She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “One of these days someone is going to be hurt down there and we’ll be liable.”

  “The rules are clear. Every boy knows . . .”

  “The rules don’t matter. Rules get broken. Bluegang is an attractive nuisance. That’s what the law calls it and if we don’t have a secure fence we’re negligent.”

  “Jesus-fucking-Christ, Jeanne, don’t tell me you’ve found a way to cram in a law degree.”

  “Don’t swear at me.” She forced her voice down. He liked to make her mad; he took it as a victory. As she began straightening her desktop it came to her that there was a secret war going on between Teddy and her, quite apart from the verbal sniping to which she had grown accustomed. He said and did things to get a rise out of her, to manipulate and prove his power over her; and it was for the same reason his pen was hidden in her purse right now. Just thinking of it down at the bottom mixed in with the lint of old tissues and crumpled receipts gave her a pleasant zing of power. It vaguely disturbed her that she had not noted this similarity before. Not having done so must mean something though she couldn’t guess what.

  Teddy put his hand over hers. “We’re talking thousands of dollars, Jeannie. Thousands of dollars that won’t do a damn thing to get anyone to send their kid here.” He made a comic face. “Can’t you just hear Mr. Simon Weed saying, I want my boy to go to Hilltop because of its high quality chain link fence.” When she didn’t laugh or even crack a smile he said, “Lighten up, will you?”

  “If you don’t arrange for a new fence, I will. I won’t cut corners when it comes to safety.”

  A long look held them.

  Jeanne spun her Rolodex, stopping at W. “I want to ask Simon Weed about this Uncle Louis.” She lifted the telephone receiver and punched in a phone number.

  Teddy broke the connection with his index finger. “I’ve already talked to him this morning. Over at the house.”

  “He called you? At the house? How’d he get that number?”

  Teddy sat on the edge of Jeanne’s desk and played with a hexagonal cut glass paperweight, peering at her through its facets. “I called him and we had a congenial chat about school finances. He was extremely sympathetic to our lack of a computer facility but he never mentioned a fence. Not once.”

  “Teddy, what’s the matter with you? You can’t hustle a parent when his kid only just got here.”

  “Hustle is your word, Jeanne, not mine.” He reached across the desk and lifted the bang of dark hair that fell across her forehead. She started back and he laughed. “Relax, will you? Why can’t you take it easy and trust me, huh?”

  His hand slid down to her cheek and she pushed it away. “What did you say about Adam?”

  “I told him Adam was fitting in fine, just great, and he should stop worrying. I told him boys are my business, just like electronic widgets are his.”

  “You’ve never even spoken to the boy.”

  “Weed’s got a business to run. He left us the kid so he wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  Not true. Simon Weed had not used Hilltop as an expensive dumping ground for his son. She recalled the hunger and confusion in the man’s eyes and heard herself promise that at Hilltop School Adam would be safe.

  “The kid’ll adjust,” Teddy said as he walked to the door connecting their offices. “They always do, don’t they? Meantime, the happier we make Simon Weed, the happier he’s going to make us when check-writing time comes around.” He grinned. “Trust your old man on this.”

  She watched him close the door behind him. The slacks and cashmere sweater he wore today had cost more than nine hundred dollars. He didn’t bother to hide the bill from her and why should he?

  Liz had been waiting ten minutes when Jeanne met her at Hannah’s mailbox. The sun was hot on her arms and legs and at the open neck of her camp shirt; the hard, dry California heat burned her eyes and prickled her skin so she felt the wrinkles forming.

  “Sorry, I’m late.” Jeanne told her about Adam Weed. “Shall we climb to the flume?” She pointed across the road to a steep trail and set off, saying over her shoulder, “Watch out for poison oak.”

  Once after a Brownie hike when Liz was eight, a reaction to poison oak had so swollen her throat she had to be rushed to O’Connor’s Hospital in an ambulance. She remembered how cross that made her mother and father who had other plans for the evening.

  Up the steep dusty trail they went with long-legged Jeanne striding as the lead in hiking shorts and boots, setting a pace that made Liz puff.

  Liz had trudged behind Jeanne up hills and down streets, down theater aisles, into restaurants, out of bookstores, watching her dark braids bounce against her back, watching her ponytail, or the comma curve where her hair brushed her shoulder. The time they met in Paris, even there Jeanne took charge. In the Louvre she barely paused at the Winged Victory, aimed herself in the direction of Monet and plowed through the crowds. Jeanne always knew exactly where she was headed. It galled Liz that for years she had compared herself to Jeanne and been found wanting—in courage, in drive, in every category but imagination, which as far as Liz knew, numbered last on Jeanne Tate’s list of talents and attributes.

  At a level spot they paused. Liz held her side and looked back down the path. “Was it always that steep?”

  “You’re built like an athlete, Liz, but you never had much stamina.”

  I’m pregnant, goddamn it.

  The thought stunned her and automatically she folded her hands across her abdomen.

  “Don’t you trek all over the rain forest with Gerard? I thought you two were ecological warriors.”

  “Not me.” Liz wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m just a camp follower.”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve never been just anything.”

  This was meant as a compliment, Liz knew; but almost everything Jeanne said had barbs attached. Barbs were her portcullis. Eventually it would lift if the day was long enough and Liz’s patience held.

  “It’s too humid for me to hike much. We have a boat, though. We dive.” They talked about Belize, the day-today life of Liz Shepherd and Gerard Robin.

  “A nice life,” Jeanne said and smiled. She was the only person Liz had ever known with naturally straight teeth. “It sounds like a good life.”

  A perfect life. Since childhood, Liz had trusted no one as completely as she did Gerard, trusted him to take and appreciate her just as she was from day to day, pissy moods and all. She wanted Jeanne to acknowledge how rare and precious such intimacy was, to say that it made her happy that Liz—who had never belonged much of anywhere—belonged in Belize with Gerard. Fat chance of that. Being Jeanne’s friend meant rarely hearing what you wanted, meant reading between and under and around the lines of conversation. Liz wondered if she and Teddy spoke in this guarded, multilayered way in their private moments. The thought exhausted her more than the steep grade to the flume.

  After another climb, the path leveled and followed the curve of the hill. Occasionally the alder and live oak thinned, and Liz saw the gold and green countryside below bisected by streets and marked with houses.

  “Rancho Rinconada Estates.” Jeanne swept her arm wide. Her fingernails were painted a sheer pink. Jeanne: successful, controlled, professional, and scrupulously groomed. Even on a hike her hair stayed tightly coiled. “The Peninsula’s most prestigious bedroom community.”

  “Jesus,” Liz said, wiping the back of her neck with a handkerchief. “Doesn’t anyone in this town have any tast
e?”

  How big were the houses? Three, seven, ten thousand square feet? Towers and portes cocheres, swimming pools, putting greens and tennis courts and guest houses and servants’ wings.

  “They’ve ruined it.”

  “Greed rules.”

  “Our beautiful valley, these hills . . .” Liz felt a bitter impotence. “Once I went with Gerard . . . There’d been poaching in one section of the rain forest. Someone had clear-cut acres . . .” He had covered his face with his hands and wept.

  “The Elizabethan one has an indoor pool. For the dozen truly cold days we get in the Santa Clara Valley.”

  “Silicon Valley.”

  “Yeah.”

  They resumed walking and after another fifteen minutes reached the flume that had once carried water to Rinconada from the reservoir in the hills. It was a semicircle of rusted-out metal about four feet in diameter, bolted to V-shaped iron supports sunk in blocks of concrete that raised it a yard or so off the ground. Split and rotten plywood covered the top of the half circle.

  Liz pried up a worm-eaten board, peered in, and recoiled. “Stinks.”

  “Teddy says it’s full of rattlesnakes.”

  Liz stepped back.

  Jeanne laughed and hoisted herself onto the flume. She pulled Liz up beside her.

  Liz stood with the hot sun in her face and the mating calls of grasshoppers shrilling in her ears. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she was eight or ten or twelve again. Crows in the distance sounded the same. The sun still burned her skin. The brushy and pungent woods still smelled dry and tickled her nose like Vicks. She grinned down at Jeanne who sat on the edge of the flume, dangling her legs, staring up at her, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. She pointed at Liz’s leg with the other.

  A circle of small red welts clustered between her anklebone and Achilles tendon. “Shit.”

  Jeanne’s mouth tightened. “You and Hannah. Can you communicate without swearing?”

  “Come on, Jeannie. I’ve heard you cuss with the best of us.”

  “I guess that doesn’t happen much anymore.”

  Liz sat down. “Speaking of Hannah—”