The Crazy School

by Cornelia Read

  I took a sip of my own coffee. “And in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, Ms. Dare,” said my non-Samoan attorney, “you are to lay low.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

  “Don’t think I haven’t turned my youthful associates loose with rakes to sift through your own background,” he said, shaking a paternal finger at me.

  “Bummer,” I said.

  “Shootings, suspicious deaths, family hunting compounds spontaneously combusting,” he said, ticking these items off on that paternal finger and its cohorts one by one. “Not to mention Porsches suddenly inherited. I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t have a hand in the Watergate break-in.”

  I cleared my throat. “Now, listen, Markham . . .”

  He cocked his head to one side and shot me a wicked grin.

  “Watergate was Nixon’s baby from the get-go,” I said. “I barely even encouraged the man.”

  “And you listen to me for a moment, Madeline,” he said. “I do not want you talking to or about this Gerald Jones—to anyone. Nor second-guessing the state troopers. Nor snooping around on your own. Nor answering a single question from anyone at that damn school, aside from admitting that you are enjoying the brisk November weather here in the Berkshires, before thanking the person asking so much for the gracious inquiry.”

  I nodded.

  “We want you there,” he said, “maintaining a clean record of employment, but I don’t care how nicely anyone phrases the merest hint of wanting information from you—cop, student, teacher, whoever—you refer the curious to me, your attorney, and politely inform them that you are not at liberty to discuss the case, on my advisement.”

  “Done,” I said, hand raised in oath.

  “And for God’s sake,” he added, “leave that shotgun of yours at home.”

  “You say that with a certain Samoan conviction,” I said.

  “Aloha,” Markham replied.

  “That’s not Samoan,” I said.

  “Nor, as I warned you earlier, am I,” he replied. “Shall I return around seven o’clock tonight?”

  “I’d be honored,” I said.

  “We have a further meeting scheduled with Detective Cartwright. Ten a.m. tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there with bells on,” I said.

  “No bells,” he said. “Bells make the police a trifle nervous.”

  25

  On my journey to campus that morning, the Porsche got rode hard and put away wet. I blasted more Strauss with an Allman Brothers chaser, thinking about Markham’s prohibitions.

  No Gerald. No cop second-guessing. No chatting with anyone official at school.

  Check.

  Check.

  Check.

  Which left me Wiesner, in a letter-but-not-spirit-of-the-law kind of way, since the kid wasn’t Gerald, a cop, an official, or even on campus, last I’d heard.

  I parked near the dining hall, having passed Santangelo’s completed helipad, on which sat a spanking new chopper. It was a little snub-nosed budgie-looking thing, white with two-tone-blue stripes swooshing along the undercarriage and up to the tail boom.

  I wondered how many child-labor hours at the Farm “Dr.” David had double-billed his students’ families for, in order to swing the purchase, betting he would’ve hit up Gerald for a sweetheart loan had he known the guy’s bank balance.

  I climbed out of my car into the cold dry world, eyeballing the bulk of the school’s population through the dining hall’s picture window. Not a happy bunch.

  The tables and salad bar had been shoved against a far wall, all the chairs pulled into a wide lumpy circle along the room’s perimeter. The kids were seated in those, along with Dhumavati and some of the shrinks. As Lulu had explained to Markham, mere teachers got the floor—a clot of blank-eyed, cross-legged misery huddled on the threadbare carpet’s center, like a band of early Christians resigned to their matinee-martyr fate.

  I slogged into that shabby Coliseum and took my place among them, wondering whether to expect lions or gladiators. As if it mattered.

  Nobody said a word when I grabbed a spot of carpet next to Lulu. Nobody said a word for the next hour, either. We all just sat there, looking at the ceiling or the floor or the windows, anything but each other.

  Someone behind me had a bad cough. Mindy kept sniffling, then dabbing at her nose with the same soggy Kleenex.

  Gerald picked at the carpet’s weft, his pants riding up to reveal inches of thick white tube sock above each cheap wing tip.

  There was a pair of galoshes lined up neatly beside his left hip—the short kind that slipped over your shoes only after a struggle, what we used to call “rubbers” before the advent of AIDS. Useless for warmth or protecting anything more than your shoes when the slush was deep. Anachronisms, like those thin plastic rain bonnets that folded up into little packets when they weren’t protecting old-lady hairdos from rain and wind.

  I wondered if Gerald had dressed this badly in Tokyo or London. Whether his prissy octogenarian fashion sense was the mark of tone deafness or subterfuge.

  He started picking at his socks, stifling a yawn.

  I tried to picture him as a ruthless pedophile and killer. Couldn’t do it. Maybe the camouflage was doing its job.

  If not him, who?

  I glanced around the room, picking individual faces out of the silenced dozens in attendance.

  Mindy with her chafed nostrils, pink enough to rival today’s fluffy sweater.

  Forchetti cracking his knuckles in a distant chair, grown-up black eyebrows clenched in that baby face.

  Dhumavati checking her watch while trying to hide a yawn of her own.

  Tim stretching out his legs, no doubt hoping to avoid their falling asleep, as mine were.

  Lulu literally twiddling her thumbs, humming some snatch of Andrew Lloyd Webber under her breath.

  Sitzman on the verge of sleep, snapping his head back up each time it started sinking toward his chest.

  The usual suspects, none of them prime.

  No Wiesner, no Santangelo. Skeleton half-crew for the adults, who did their Sitting in alternating duty-roster shifts, but kids had to suffer the full daily complement—two hours at a stretch, with half-hour meal and ten-minute toilet breaks.

  Nobody could leave for the bathroom otherwise, which I supposed was some kind of homage-nod to Werner Erhard’s early EST sessions on Santangelo’s part. Or maybe he just figured full bladders might do more to speed a confession than straight guilt ever could.

  Probably true, if you came right down to it. Not that that was any excuse. And fuck him for not being here in the room, too. Ever. Fuck him for setting up all these bullshit rules and “traditions” and torturous, meaningless crap in the name of therapy.

  Fuck Freud.

  Fuck Jung.

  Fuck Werner Erhard, and his little dog too.

  Santangelo was just the latest charlatan to wrap himself in their snake-oily mantle of overpriced navel-gazing hooey.

  Who was it helping? How was it a good idea to cancel classes for kids who’d missed years of school already, locked down in wards and hospitals and sanitariums before they’d gotten “well” enough to end up here?

  Maybe they didn’t need to get crammed full of Yalta or Maya Angelou—maybe Wiesner was right, and that stuff wouldn’t help, either—but they sure as hell deserved better than this.

  Double-fuck Santangelo for his lip service to “solidarity with the kids” if he couldn’t stomach it himself.

  I pictured him lounging in his plush house with his stupid espresso machine, leering at his stupid fucking helicopter out on the lawn, licking the edge of his thumb before counting his piles of money again just for fun.

  These kids weren’t his patients/clients/charges, they were Santangelo’s marks.

  The shithead. The fat greasy weasel. The smug nasty pompous low-rent-lumpen Tennessee-Williams-Big-Daddy suckbag of a potentate.

  O, the mendacity!

 
; Patti Gonzaga stood up and started growling at everyone in the room. She picked up her chair and threw it at one of the windows.

  I hadn’t realized they were Plexiglas before the chair bounced right off.

  Those nearest her started closing in for what was called a Limit Structure here at Santangelo, which consisted of all available hands piling on top of anyone who seriously lost his or her shit.

  It took about ten people to pin her and a half hour before she ran out of steam.

  Horrible thing to watch, and I kept thinking about her shy, exhausted parents, who only wanted to welcome their darling girl home.

  The holders, teachers and students alike, waited to let her up until a good ten minutes after she’d stopped twisting around on the floor and screaming. Then they made her go pick up her chair and place it back in the circle.

  She sat down in it, panting and flushed, tangled strands of hair sweat-plastered across her forehead and cheeks.

  Sitzman started snoring.

  Forchetti punched him awake.

  I had to piss like a racehorse.

  26

  Lulu and I leaned against the outside of the dining hall, despite the cold.

  “Oh my God,” she said as Santangelo waddled across the snowy lawn toward his shiny new helicopter, flight instructor in tow.

  We were on our ten-minute afternoon break from Sitting, not enough time to sneak off into the woods for a smoke.

  Santangelo was wearing, for some reason, a hot-pink flight suit. His far svelter instructor wore one in a darkish alligatory green.

  “Give them a couple of fountains to waltz around,” I said, “and it would be that hippos-in-tutus number straight out of Fantasia.”

  The two men climbed into the cockpit.

  “It looks like some giant bug,” said Lulu, gripping her dining-hall mug of decaf. “What the hell would you even call that thing?”

  Sitzman stood a few feet from us, clapping his hands and stomping against the cold.

  “It’s a Bell 206B-3,” he said. “JetRanger III.”

  I smiled. “Any good?”

  “The 206L-4’s cooler,” he said. “Seven-seater—the stretch model. Plus, it’s got that whole Noda-Matic setup in the transmission to cut vibration.”

  Sitzman squinted as the engine started to whine, taching up. “Santangelo probably couldn’t afford the upgrade.”

  The big rotors on top, still droopy, traced the outline of their first slow circles.

  “So what did the basic model run him?” asked Lulu, taking a sip of decaf.

  “A million bucks,” said Sitzman, “give or take.”

  She did a Sanka spit take. I had to clap her on the back a couple times to stop the choking.

  “A million bucks?” she said when she could breathe again.

  Sitzman shrugged. “If you want to impress the chicks, buy a Sikorsky.”

  He stomped his feet again, turning toward the door.

  “It’s cold out here,” he said. “Break’s probably just about over.”

  “A million fucking dollars,” muttered Lulu, “and Santangelo won’t even spring for decent coffee, the—”

  And then the chopper got so loud I couldn’t hear the last word she said, though I’m pretty sure it was “asshole.”

  Dhumavati stuck her head out the door and beckoned us both back for the next session.

  Lulu and I trudged inside. The door closed behind us, and I could hear again.

  “There’s Gerald,” she whispered.

  “I can’t talk to him anyway,” I said, “on the advice of my attorney.”

  “‘My attorney.’” She chuckled a little. “Well, la-dee-dah.”

  “Oh please,” I snapped, “who died and made you Annie Hall?”

  “Get a good night’s sleep, did we?”

  “No,” I said. “Sorry. Really. It’s just . . .” I flopped my hands, useless. “Just . . . everything. Attorney. Jail. Fay and Mooney—”

  “Sweetie?” she said, patting my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, my dear friend . . . I am so not okay.”

  “Sweetie?” she said again, hand now steady on my shoulder.

  An anchor.

  A blessing.

  I closed my eyes.

  And then I started weeping, and Lulu gathered me into her arms.

  I heard a door close gently.

  Felt someone else patting my back.

  Looked up to find Dhumavati standing next to us, her face soft with concern.

  “Let’s go sit across the hall, Madeline,” she said. “Just the two of us.”

  We were back in Santangelo’s blackboard-tantrum room where I’d fake-appreciated Mindy. Same-old same-old, with the welcome addition of a saggy institutional sofa along one wall.

  Dhumavati collapsed into it with a sigh.

  I sat next to her. I didn’t want to cry. I bit the inside of my lip to fight it back.

  “Honey,” said Dhumavati, “it’s okay, just let it all out.”

  “Please,” I said. “No.”

  I sat up straighter. Rigid. Shoulders back.

  “Madeline,” said Dhumavati, “you don’t have to keep everything inside. There is room for you in the world. The couch will hold you up. Trust gravity.”

  It was halfway dark in the room, since the blinds were twisted almost shut. Dhumavati’s voice was so gentle, so soft, and I was so goddamn tired.

  “Why don’t you just put your head down in my lap,” she said, stroking my hair. “Talk or don’t talk, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.”

  “I’d love nothing more than to tuck my head into your lap,” I said, “but if I lie down now, you won’t get me back up without a crane.”

  “I could probably rustle up a crane.”

  “You’re very kind,” I said. “I know you’ve got a great deal to worry about, other than me.”

  She stretched out her feet, kicked off her shoes, and slumped into the back of the sofa. “You’re doing me a huge favor. If I’d had to spend one more second in that damn dining hall, watching David hop around the lawn in his new toy . . .”

  “Bless you for saying that.”

  “The man is my oldest and dearest friend, don’t get me wrong,” said Dhumavati, “but sometimes I want to wring his neck.”

  She put her arm around me. “I want you to know I think it was absolutely ridiculous, you getting arrested. I hope they’ve come to their senses.”

  I shrugged. “I have another meeting with Detective Cartwright tomorrow morning.”

  “Did they tell you why?” asked Dhumavati. “I just don’t understand. Do you have even the vaguest idea?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I am not at liberty to discuss any of this, on the advice of my attorney.”

  “Not even anything about who you think did it?” asked Dhumavati.

  Mindful of Markham’s injunctions, I said, “Oh, g’wan—you tell first.”

  “If I thought anyone on this campus were capable of having killed two students,” said Dhumavati, “he or she would no longer be on this campus.”

  “Someone did, though,” I said. “One of our own.”

  We sat with that idea for a minute.

  “I don’t imagine we’ll be hearing a turn-in about it,” I said finally.

  “I don’t imagine we’ll be hearing a turn-in about the Xerox machine,” said Dhumavati. “Not today.”

  “How long do these Sitting things tend to go?” I asked.

  “The record was fourteen days.”

  “For what?”

  “Somebody stole a rake.”

  I turned to look at her. “And you think this is a good idea? I mean, all the kids cooped in there . . . no classes, no way to get out of that room unless they’ve got a shrink appointment . . . two of their friends just killed . . .”

  She looked away.

  “I don’t mean that as a bitchy question, Dhumavati.” I drew my legs up onto the sofa. “Does it help?”

  “Sitting?” />
  “All of it. Sitting, the meetings, the Farm.”

  “It’s helped me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s given me peace, and I’ve been able to share that peace with a great many kids over the years. Kids no one believed had a chance in hell to survive—not them, not even their own parents—and we made sure they did.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?” I asked.

  “I’m here because it saved my life, and I know mine isn’t the only life this place has saved— can save.”

  I tried to look like I believed her. She deserved that much.

  “I couldn’t save my daughter,” Dhumavati continued, “and the only way I can live with that is to fight for the lives of other children.”

  She rested her hand flat over the center of her chest, the way Tim always did. “When I heard about Fay and Mooney . . .”

  “Dhumavati,” I said, “you can’t—”

  “We failed them, David and I. I failed them.”

  “All of us did.”

  Dhumavati shook her head. “I should have asked for help. If I hadn’t been so tired, none of this would have happened. David saw that months ago. He knew I needed to get away, get my head straight. I was too selfish to admit it.”

  “Not selfish,” I said.

  “Hubristic, then. Arrogant. Convinced I couldn’t allow anyone else to take the reins even for a moment, because I was so indispensable. It was only when he suggested you that I allowed myself to realize how very much I needed to let go, but I’d waited too long. I can only hope your taking over for me will keep it from happening again.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “How could I possibly take over for you after this week?”

  “Because David and I know you had nothing to do with what happened. And because we need you.”

  The helicopter whined to life again outside.

  “Madeline, I can’t do this alone anymore,” she said. “I don’t have the strength.”

  “The strength or the conviction?”

  “Both.”

  “Let’s be honest,” I said. “You’ve gotta know I think David is full of shit.”

  “So you’re wondering why I’m ready to put all of this on you?”

  I nodded.

  “Because you’ll stand up for the kids,” she said, “even if it means taking on David.”