by Amanda Cross
“Very much alone,” she said. “Look, Ms. Woodhaven—”
“Woody,” I said. “Everyone calls me Woody.”
“Perhaps you should know the sort of peculiar woman I am before you put any stock into what I have to say about the college. Because I’m a very odd person indeed; some might even say madly eccentric.”
I looked interested, which I was, and nodded. I decided to take one more cookie and stop thinking about them. My appetite, if sufficiently indulged, reaches a point where it’s willing to give up its demands. She smiled, having followed my reasoning about the cookie. I liked her for that, and got on my guard.
“The truth is, I probably welcome the chance to tell someone I don’t know how it was all worked out in my mind. I haven’t talked about this in a long time, and not often then. You see, leaving my job wasn’t all I left. I sometimes think I would have stayed there, at the college, if it had been a place I could feel allegiance to and want to be part of. But since it clearly wasn’t that, it had to go, along with everything else that was supposed to be central to my life.”
“Like your marriage,” I suggested, just to help her along.
“No. My marriage ended years before all this, when the children were in college. I’m in my sixties, you know.” I did know, but there was no point in saying so.
“Here’s the part that will probably shock you, and make you think I’m hardly a credible, or at any rate, an altogether reasonable witness. My children, with their children, came here a few years ago for Christmas. They had always come, but this turned out to be the last time. I didn’t mind preparing the food; I like to cook. I had bought and trimmed a tree, and I was acting as though Christmas were an occasion I was bound to enjoy. And when the children were young, my husband and I, and in those days our parents, did enjoy it. Perhaps it’s truer to say it didn’t occur to us not to enjoy it; it was something we did. It was a natural way to celebrate Christmas.
“On this particular Christmas, the grandchildren were especially noisy and unpleasant, and so were their parents—my children. I didn’t say anything, but I suppose my displeasure was evident. The day finally came to an end with me straightening up here and returning my home to the way I liked it: quiet, tidy, with all my things where I had left them, or wanted them, and with no thought of anyone else in my space. It seems odd to me now that I had never before felt quite so overcome with delight at being alone here, rather like a cat purring, that kind of contentment. We don’t know, of course,” she added, “that cats purr because they are contented, but that’s how it sounds and so that’s what it means for us.”
I nodded; I liked the way she didn’t make claims she didn’t feel entitled to. I liked the fact that she was thinking as she spoke, not just repeating a long-practiced rendition of resentment. So far, anyway.
She got up to get us more coffee. It was delicious coffee, but if I drank much more I would have to pee, which would interrupt the session. I let her pour it, all the same. I’m not as disciplined for a detective as I should be, as I’m the first to admit.
She sat down again and continued. “I don’t quite know what I would have felt if that had been all there was to it, but my children, both of them, wrote to tell me that they resented the way I had treated their children. I had not responded to the little ones’ request to watch a video with them. I had to keep an eye on the food cooking, of course, but the truth, which I was determined to face, was that I didn’t want to watch that video, and I didn’t particularly want to watch the children watching it, which was supposed to offer me, as a natural grandmother, extraordinary pleasure. I didn’t think that I had to indulge my grandchildren, just because it was expected of me.”
She looked out of the window. “You know,” she said, “something snapped, or perhaps I should say fell into place. I don’t want to offer you an extended disquisition on a woman’s life, and how it is made to seem that she really wants what she has, how she believes she has what she wants, and, if she has any secret desires, which are against all the forces of her culture, she hardly dares to face them.” She paused for a moment. “At the time, after that Christmas I mean, Antonia sent me a sentence from Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography. Beauvoir had written of some woman that ‘she was going to mingle with the others, she was going to submit to their conventions and their lives, betraying the “real life” she had glimpsed in her solitude.’ Well, I did it the other way around; I had begun by submitting to the conventions, and now I was going to glimpse my solitude. Antonia is a good friend, and a great supplier of relevant quotations.
“I thought maybe I should never have had children, never pretended to enjoy family holidays, never in fact become a dean to earn enough money to support the children and get them through college.”
“What would you have done? Stayed a professor?” I really wanted to understand.
“I don’t know. That was in the past, and I was a different woman then. All I could know was what I wanted now, and what I wanted now was absolutely clear. To begin with the really shocking bit, I discovered I didn’t want to see my children again. Isn’t that frightful? I actually admitted to myself that neither they nor their company brought me any pleasure. I had done all I should have done for them; I was the best mother I could be. Now that was over. I sent them letters saying that I didn’t think we ought to meet or communicate anymore. I was careful to state plainly that this was not a response to their letters but simply the truth of how I felt. Believe me, Woody”—and she smiled at me— “it is a terribly shocking idea that a mother might not care to go on seeing her children. A man might do that, just barely, but a woman—she must be mad! Well, maybe I was.” She looked up at me, as though expecting an expression of distaste.
“I’m not shocked,” I said. “I don’t want children and don’t like them. For one thing, I can’t understand why, if there is more than one of them, they scream all the time. At least those that I meet do.” I don’t know why I wanted to tell her that, but since it was true I thought it might indicate that I could sympathize.
I decided to put it another way. “We have families, and we owe them support and nurturing”—I didn’t want to say affection —“for a certain amount of time. But why must it be forever if we don’t want it to be? Children not liking their parents is just to be expected; parents not liking their children is harder to swallow, I guess.”
“Yes,” she said. “And the relief was enormous. As though a heavy weight had been lifted from me, as though . . . well, let me put it this way: I’ve had a cataract operation—I’d been nearsighted, and suddenly this late in life I am able to see without glasses—that’s what this decision about the children felt like. It seemed a miracle. Everything else followed from that; I did what I wanted; I made a routine for my day and followed it; I found work I wanted to do.”
She saw my question. “I had been a professor of classics. When I began, gender was not a subject anyone discussed. I started reading the Greeks again, and was struck by how central women were in Greek drama, although they were without any power in their society. Why is that? I asked myself. Of course, other critics had noticed the same thing, but that just made my work more exciting. In short, the college, my children, the need to worry about what I wear vanished—E. M. Forster had one of his characters say, ‘Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.’ ”
“Did Antonia tell you about that?” I asked.
“Yes, I think she did, long ago. I’ve always remembered it, though I couldn’t tell you when or where he said it.”
“Maybe I’ll ask her,” I said.
She nodded, but she was still thinking about the great change she had brought into her life. “I like conversation,” she said, “and can’t bear people un-talented in that way. Am I ever lonely? That’s what I’m often asked. Yes, sometimes I’m lonely, but never as lonely as I was in my marriage, or in the company of my grown children. Here’s a minor thing that may seem silly: when I want to watch something on television, I watc
h it, I can sink into it, nothing draws me away. I don’t have to explain why I’m watching some absurd program, as I had to do with my children when they were visiting. I don’t watch frivolous programs often, but when I do, it’s bliss to just do it, as if it were a sin, really!”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt the same about living alone, but because I hadn’t married, and didn’t look like the sort who’d been overwhelmed with offers from men to shack up with them, no one considered my happy solitude peculiar. It was one of the advantages of not marrying I hadn’t exactly realized before. Just then, a cat door I hadn’t noticed swung inward and a large cat entered the kitchen.
“Time for the cat to eat,” she said, getting up to prepare a dish of food. The cat jumped into a chair and watched her, cleaning itself to pretend it wasn’t watching. I do like cats. Someday I’ll get one, or maybe two so they can keep each other company when I’m not there.
“What about the dog?” I asked. “He’s beautiful.” The dog had been lying on the floor, beating the floor with his tail when either of us looked his way.
“Thank you,” she said. “He’s a Bernese mountain dog—a gift, actually. I’d never have acquired a pure-bred dog on my own, but I do admire his beauty. He’s a good old chap.” And she bent down, once the cat had begun eating, and stroked the dog’s head. “He eats with me,” she said. “Dinnertime.”
Was this a hint? I glanced at my watch. “I know I should be going,” I said, “but I did have one or two more questions.”
“About the English department?”
“Well, yes, but also about what you told me. It’s none of my business, I know, but don’t you ever see your children? You were happy for them just to vanish from your life?”
“Don’t apologize for asking. I told you about myself. You’ve a right to questions. Yes, I do see my children, but not together and not here or in their homes. I dine with them in neutral territory—that is, restaurants—one at a time, just the two of us. I find that there is real communication, that we can enjoy conversation, probably because neither of us is in a situation that tends toward irritation. I wish I’d thought of it earlier.” I must have looked an additional question, because she answered it, smiling at me. “Yes, I see my grandchildren too, in the same way. It began when my granddaughter telephoned me and asked if we could have a meal in a restaurant. We did, and it was a revelation. She behaved wonderfully and we actually talked to one another. With her family and her cousins, she—well, it’s as you said: they scream all the time. Now, what else can I tell you about Clifton College?”
I pulled my thoughts together and concentrated on the task at hand, as I ought to have been doing long since. “Did you ever imagine the situation in the English department could lead to murder? To that much hatred?”
“We sophisticated, so-called literary types never imagine that anything could lead to murder. So I didn’t imagine it. But if you put the question, ‘Were there to be a murder in that department, who would be the victim,’ I would have said Haycock without a second thought. My professor friend who shrugged was not only letting illegalities pass, he was telling me that he didn’t want even to have to consider what Haycock was doing to the department. Which doesn’t mean the murder didn’t astonish me; it did. But not as much as if it had been someone else who died. They are, I take it, sure it’s murder and not some sort of mistake?”
“Definitely sure,” I said. “What sort of person was Haycock? I mean, how would you describe him?”
“I already have,” she said. “He was like those Congressmen we mentioned, the ones who hated Clinton and didn’t care what they did to the country, the ones who couldn’t believe they weren’t in the right, despite all the signs to the contrary, and despite all the damage they were doing to long-established institutions. Haycock was a fanatic, a person who was so sure he was right in his convictions that he could consider no evidence to the contrary. And don’t ask me who I think killed him. Anyone at his house that day could have done it, as I understand it.” She looked questioningly at me, and I nodded confirmation. Any one of them could have done it, and I wasn’t a bit closer to guessing who did it than she was. “But remember,” she said, “I wasn’t a member of the department and don’t know all that went on inside it.”
I got to my feet and so did she. “Take another cookie for the road,” she said. I complied without argument. I gave her my card and wrote my home number on the back of it, something I seemed to be doing lately. I’d given one to Rick too, and to Antonia. And to Kate.
“If you think of anything else, however insignificant, do let me know,” I said. “And thanks for the coffee and the cookies and especially for the conversation. I liked that.”
I wanted to say it had meant a lot to me to hear that a mother could feel that way. I’d suspected it, but no one had ever spoken of it so frankly. But that didn’t seem the right thing for a private eye to say, so I didn’t. She and the dog came to the door to see me off.
I shook her hand and patted the dog. “Say goodbye to the cat,” I said, “and thanks for everything.” Then I roared off.
. . . but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all; Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion.
—TENNYSON, The Princess
Seven
I ARRIVED back at the office later than I had hoped. The Lincoln Tunnel was backed up, as though half of New Jersey had decided to visit New York. Going out, I had sailed through: no toll to leave New York, double toll to return. I wondered how many people had left the city for free and never returned. I bet a lot of New Yorkers think they’ll get away with that, but come back in the end.
Arriving sweaty and irritable, I found Octavia getting ready to call it a day. “Oh, good,” she said when I walked in, “I won’t have to leave you a note. Donald Jackson’s called several times. He seemed eager to talk to you. Here’s his number.” She handed me a piece of pink telephone message paper and waved goodbye. I went into my office, slung my helmet into a corner, dropped into my chair, and dialed the number. Some days seem to jolt you around more than others. As it turned out, this wasn’t the end of the day’s bumpy schedule.
Donald Jackson sounded glad to hear from me. I know what a relief it is to finally get hold of someone who never seems around when you want them.
“Why the hell don’t you get a cell phone?” he demanded. “Your secretary said you were in New Jersey, which is where I was hoping to meet with you as soon as possible. Now you’ll have to come back; it’s important. Trust me, you’ll be glad you returned.”
“Couldn’t you tell me about it over the phone?” I asked rather sheepishly.
“No. We need a long powwow. I have new stuff about our case.” I really liked that our. No policeman I had ever met up with would have said that. “Get back on your bike and come on out here. Same diner, same menu; you said you liked it.”
“I’ll have a long wait even at the New York end this time of the day,” I said. “Will tomorrow do?”
“It will do, but tonight will do better. Look, Woody, go to Penn Station, get on a train, and I’ll meet you at the station. Later, you do the same thing in reverse, having had a couple of beers and maybe something stronger. Don’t object. I’ve got the train schedule right here.”
So after dealing with a few matters that ought to have been decided yesterday, and after washing up and combing my hair and trying to make myself look a bit more together, I left for the train station. I felt I could use a drink and some food. I rather liked the thought of seeing Don again, and anyway, I was a private eye and this was the sort of thing private eyes do. I’ve never admitted it to anyone, but I still have to cheer myself on that way. I left a note for Octavia to find in the morning, saying, Get me a cell phone, damn it. You win. Octavia had been after me to get a cell phone for months now. I didn’t like the thought of being rung up on m
y bike or anywhere else, really; I know, I could always turn the damn thing off, but then why bother getting one? Technology was moving right along, too fast for me.
I had the time to walk up to Penn Station and catch the next train. I thought how right Elaine Kimberly was about living alone. Solitude meant I didn’t have to explain to anyone why, having just come from New Jersey, I was going back there instead of coming home to supper as expected. Accounting to someone else for your time was the pits; I didn’t even have a cat to worry about.
Donald Jackson met me as he said he would, in what I took to be an unmarked police car. Or maybe it was his; I didn’t bother asking. Once we had settled down in the diner, and had ordered food and beer, he sat back with a big grin. “You’ll never guess the news I have for you,” he said.
“I won’t even try.” I smiled. I liked being there, I liked the hamburger I was eating, I liked looking at him looking pleased with himself. “Let’s hear it.”
“When the police arrived at the Haycock house, shortly after the ambulance, most of the party was still there, milling around and tut-tutting. The names and addresses of all those present were taken and filed with the usual police report. As you know, Haycock’s son was blaming the widow, and we had to wait for the postmortem, and with one thing and another, including the investigation moving over to the college, I didn’t go back to that list of those present the day of the murder until recently. I sent a crew out to question everyone on the list and to get from each person his or her recollection of who had been there, who they had seen even for a minute.”
“Good idea,” I said to encourage him. “And . . .”
“And, when I put it all together I discovered there’d been a few more folks there than we had figured on.” I nodded, urging him along. “Two of them were particularly interesting, because they stayed just for a moment and had left before the death. One was an ex-dean of the college named Elaine Kimberly, and the other was a guy named Frank something, whom we couldn’t place at all but who turned out to live with Richard Fowler, late of Clifton College, who hadn’t come to the party and hadn’t been invited.”