Gerald, the guy who creeped out Wiesner, for God’s sake.
And yet he’d planted a little green tendril of doubt.
Here we’d spent all this time—me and Dean and Markham, with his brigade of hungry young associates—trying to figure out whether the man’s deep dark raison-de-resignation secret was having gotten busted for dabbling in smack or groping innocent little Japanese schoolboys.
But something about the way he’d gotten all weepy made me hope he really was just a prissy, old-maidish guy in Sears, Roebuck wing tips, with his “rubbers” and his exacting OCD chewing of each bite at every meal.
I was just having a hard time maintaining my conviction that he was secretly this totally ruthless amoral killer of children and grabber of dicks. Part of me wanted to give him the benefit of Markham’s lawyerly “alleged” on all of it. Not least because I could totally see how the dick-grabbing allegations had worked like a get-out-of-jail-free-card charm for Wiesner and Mooney’s third roommate—a card I might have considered playing, had I ever been unlucky enough to do time here myself in my misspent youth.
Bad enough being Santangelo’s hireling. We teachers could just walk out whenever the going got nasty. The kids had Arbeit Macht “Free to Be” day after day, with those stupid iron butterflies flopping around the gate just to rub it all in.
But when Gerald gave my hand another little squeeze, I knew for damn sure there was no way I trusted him enough to risk finding out whether any cuppa joe at his place—flagon with the dragon or vessel with the pestle—brimmed with “brew that is true.”
Markham had said poison was most often the female weapon of choice, but Gerald wasn’t exactly the butchest guy who ever came down the pike. If he had killed Mooney and Fay, the idea of him having done it with a gun or a knife or a blunt instrument in his soft moist grip strained credulity to the point that only dogs could hear it.
So, coffee was out, if he’d been anywhere near the carafe. And I wasn’t about to go to his apartment, either.
I wondered if he’d come to Lulu’s and talk there over some of her Mr. Raspberry-Hazelnut Fufu, or even up to our place in Pittsfield for Bustelo, with the side benefit of Dean’s bulk backing me up.
In the end, Dhumavati’s intervention during the next break period rendered my plotting pretty damn moot.
She walked up to me and Gerald and told me to follow her back into the meeting room across from the dining hall. After shutting the door behind us, she turned to me, stern. “Did you know Fay was pregnant?”
“I guess that means the autopsy results are back?” I asked.
She ignored that. “And did you know they were planning to hit the road, she and Mooney?”
“Dhumavati, look, I—”
“What were you thinking? Were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that Mooney was sitting there with his hand bleeding all over me, and I figured he needed someone to talk to about why, and I didn’t know what to do, since I had no idea whether or not Santangelo would react to the news by screaming at him that someone should shove the poor kid’s head through a wall, so I told Mooney that yes, I’d wait for a few days before I told anyone.”
“And do you accept any responsibility for the way that decision turned out?”
“For the fact that somebody killed them, Dhumavati? For God’s sake, what the hell does one have to do with the other?”
“So you’re okay with letting yourself off the hook because something even worse happened to two of our students than running away from the safety of school? I don’t think so, Madeline.”
“I do think so, Dhumavati. I’m sorry.”
“I presume you mean you’re sorry about failing to act responsibly, immediately following that conversation with Mooney.”
“No. I mean I’m sorry to hear you describe what they wanted to run away from as ‘the safety of school.’ And I’m even more sorry to come to terms with the likelihood that you actually believe it. What happened to all your talk about standing up to David?”
“This has no bearing on my relationship with David.”
“Of course it does. Fay and Mooney died here. At this school. Is that what you call safety? I want to believe you know better.”
“What’s at issue here is your decision to set yourself above the rules of this community.”
“Rules I thought you questioned as much as I do.”
“Madeline, you have to take responsibility for the consequences of the choice you made.”
“You’re going to claim with a straight face that keeping a confidence is worse than murder? Seriously, listen to yourself—that’s talking what, like, apples and machetes?”
“No, that’s talking a staff member who can’t think clearly enough to protect the students in her care, or the future of this school as a whole.”
“And what exactly would it have changed had I told you that Fay was pregnant? Let’s presume that somehow it would have prevented her death, and Mooney’s, although I don’t see how. But okay, say it did, then what?”
She started to answer, but I kept going. “I’ll tell you what the hell would’ve happened. Santangelo would’ve sent her home to her family so they could all gang up and force her to bring the pregnancy to term, right?”
“That wasn’t your concern.”
“Who the hell’s concern was it, then? Who the hell’s should it have been?”
“She was a minor, Madeline.”
“Not as of Tuesday. Fay was legally an adult when she died.”
“And that’s what you were waiting for? That’s why you kept this information to yourself?”
“I kept it to myself because I’d given Mooney my word. I agreed to respect their confidence until she turned eighteen—that was the condition he set for telling me in the first place.”
“You could have told me.”
“And what would you have done? Told David she was pregnant? Would that have changed anything?”
“We can’t know that.”
“Without David, she never would have gotten pregnant,” I said.
“What?”
“David’s the one who banned the use of birth control on campus in the first place. I mean, that’s certain to keep a bunch of teenagers from fornicating and knocking each other up, right? Make sure there’s no sex education. Make sure they don’t have access to even condoms. There’s a goddamn brilliant plan.”
“Madeline, you are out of—”
“Out of what? Line? Bounds? Patience? My mind? You know better than this, don’t bullshit me.”
She was livid. Fuming. “That’s your projection. And evidence of how very deeply you’re in denial about your own part in the fate of those two poor children.”
“I wish I could be in denial about my part in their fate. Because what I should have done was tell Mooney to grab Fay before that ambulance came, and run like hell. That’s the only hope of safety they ever had.”
“That’s ridiculous. He’d almost certainly have bled to death.”
“Did it make any difference in the end? I could have saved her. That beautiful, beautiful girl. We could have saved her, Dhumavati—you and me—if only we’d had the courage to break the rules just once. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that Fay’s life mattered less to you than the goddamn rules do?”
I waited for her to say something, anything.
“I want you to meet with Sookie. And I want you to do it now,” she replied.
“Dhumavati,” I said, “you’re breaking my heart.”
I sat down on Sookie’s love seat.
“This wasn’t my idea,” I said.
“Does it have to be?” Sookie asked.
I gestured toward the typewriter on her desk. There was a half-written document sticking out of its platen.
“You’re obviously busy,” I said.
“Dhumavati felt it was important I make time to meet with you.”
“Dhumavati seems to feel it’s important I open up to you about the part
that my lack of spiritual and psychiatric evolution played in Mooney’s and Fay’s deaths.”
“You seem angry.”
“Ya think?”
“Want to talk about it?”
“My attorney has instructed me not to discuss Fay and Mooney with anyone on campus,” I said. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said. “It seems like a perfectly reasonable precaution under the circumstances.”
“I appreciate your saying that.”
“Thank you,” she said.
We looked at each other.
“So where does that leave us?” she asked. “Is there anything you’d like to discuss that your attorney didn’t prohibit? I understand you’ve been through a lot this week.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“A night in jail, the possibility you might be accused of the murders . . .”
I crossed my legs.
“It must have been tremendously upsetting,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Scary?”
“Please tell me that’s a rhetorical question.”
“Sure,” she said. “What do lawyers say? ‘Asked and answered’? Let’s call it that.”
“Let’s.”
She gave me “the nod.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“What?”
“The nodding. Really. Save your breath. Or, you know, your neck or whatever, okay?”
“Okay.”
We sat there.
For a good while.
Sookie crossed her legs.
I uncrossed mine.
“Is there anything I can tell you?” she asked.
“Such as?”
“Such as how angry I am?”
“About what?”
“About your having been put through all this . . . this . . . shit.”
“Sookie, are you serious?”
She pointed to the typewriter. “I’ve written my letter of resignation.”
I looked at the piece of paper.
“I was tempted to give it to Dhumavati,” said Sookie, “the minute she walked you in here. And then I realized I should see if there was anything I could help you with first, while I still officially work for these people.”
“I’m, um . . . wow.”
“Anything, Madeline—answer your questions, talk to your lawyer, testify on your behalf—you name it.”
“I admit to being shocked. Pleasantly.”
“This is not what I signed on for when I worked my tail off to become a shrink. It’s a travesty. And I don’t mean just what they’re doing to you, I mean all of it.”
“So, Sookie,” I said, “how does that make you feel?”
She giggled. “Ready to blow the damn roof off this place. Where should we start?”
32
Let’s start with what you meant by ‘what they’re doing’ to me,” I said. “They who, and doing what?”
“I just can’t believe it’s a coincidence that all this started after you told me about what you’d gone through last year.”
“Because you did the show-and-tell at Santangelo’s house last Friday night?”
“You know about that?”
“I do now,” I said. “A little late to matter.”
“For both of us.”
“And it never bothered you before, the fact that there wasn’t any confidentiality? I mean, wasn’t there a bit of a contrast with the other places you’ve worked?”
“I didn’t have any other places to compare it to, Madeline. This was my first job out of graduate school.”
“It still didn’t raise any flags? Pardon my saying, but confidentiality’s pretty much the cornerstone of therapy. I can’t believe your professors failed to mention that.”
“I thought you knew,” she said. “I thought everyone knew. The kids, the parents—”
“The teachers.”
“It never occurred to me that we were being pumped for information without our clients’ consent. I can’t believe that’s legal.”
“It probably isn’t,” I said.
“Then I guess maybe I should be making my own appointment with your attorney.”
“He’s expensive.”
“I have a feeling I’m going to need expensive,” she said, “if I ever hope to work in this field again.”
I couldn’t dispute that, much as I would have liked to.
“I know,” she said. “I’m an idiot.”
“I think that probably goes for both of us. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“Take them down,” she said.
“If they don’t take me down first.”
“I won’t let that happen. I don’t care if it means I won’t ever get a second job doing this.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so let’s scuttle a little confidentiality of our own. What else do they know about me? What else do you know about them?”
She thought about that.
“Start with who goes to the meetings,” I said. “I presume Dhumavati and David . . . all the shrinks . . . any faculty?”
“Only two,” she said. “Gerald, of course. And then lately, that new guy’s been showing up too.”
“Tim?” I asked, knowing full well that Sookie would have just said Tim, had he been the new guy in question.
“No,” she said, “I’m talking about your ‘friend’ Pete.”
“I’m not liking the way you just said ‘friend,’ Sookie. Makes me nervous.”
“It should,” she said. “He thinks you did it. He thinks you killed them.”
It took a minute for that to sink in.
And a very bad minute it was.
“He told you guys that this Friday? What was it, last night? I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”
“We had an extra session this week,” she said. “I suppose for damage control.”
“When?”
“The night before you were taken to jail.”
“Is that why?”
“Yes,” she said, “I think it was. Detective Cartwright came to the meeting. With another officer, a woman.”
“Baker,” I said.
Sookie nodded.
“Have they been back since?”
“Twice,” she said. “As far as I know.”
“To sit in on more meetings?”
“To talk with Pete. And Dhumavati and David. So I don’t know what was said at those meetings.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ll do my best,” she said. “And they’re coming back tomorrow morning. Apparently, Cartwright wants to talk with Gerald.”
“And tonight Gerald wants to talk with me,” I said.
Sookie looked thoughtful. “Are you going to take Mr. Jones up on that invitation?” she asked.
“Not alone. Not in his apartment.”
“Are you saying you think he might have . . .” She shook her head, stunned.
“He was serving the punch the night Fay and Mooney died. Other than that, I have no idea.”
“What does he want to talk about?”
“About what originally brought him here to Santangelo.”
“I may be able to tell you that,” she said. “In fact, I have a feeling Gerald would want me to. He recently opened up to me about it.”
“You’re his therapist?”
“We’ve been doing a lot of private sessions, which he specified would be confidential.”
“How did he finagle that?”
“He pays for them. And we meet off campus.”
“If you’re willing to tell me, I’m presuming his reason for coming here wasn’t something horrible.”
“You’d be wrong,” she said.
“Anything to do with the accusation that he grabbed that boy last year?”
“You know about that?”
“Wiesner told me.”
“Wiesner . . . You watch yourself with that boy.�
�
“Wiesner aside,” I said, “do you think Gerald might have done any grabbing?”
“I know for a fact he didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I still don’t want to go to his apartment alone.”
“Why don’t I come with you?” She looked at her watch. “We could walk over right now. He should be there. He speaks with his mother every day around this time. She’s in a hospice in Great Barrington. Stage-four bone cancer.”
“Oh, Sookie,” I said.
“They’ve always been close,” she said. “Gerald’s the eldest of seven children, and his mother was widowed when he was still very young. He helped raise the other kids.”
“I had no idea.”
“Gerald is a remarkable man. It’s been a privilege getting to know him. Not just professionally.” She checked her watch again. “I’d call, but they’re probably still on the phone together.”
“You’re sure it would be okay for us to barge in?”
“She’s in a great deal of pain. Their calls don’t last very long these days.”
When Gerald greeted us at the door of his apartment, it was obvious that he’d been crying.
He and Sookie hugged, and what with the way he looked at her after welcoming us inside, I began to sense why she had such absolute trust that his passions had nothing to do with young boys. Gerald was smitten with her, and she with him. They fairly glowed with it.
“Is it getting harder for her?” she asked him. “How was she today?”
“Mother’s ready to go,” he said. “I’m the one who can’t accept it, and I can’t stand the knowledge that she’s suffering so greatly to make the transition easier on me. She’ll wait until I’m ready. I want to be ready, able to let her go, but I’m not strong enough. Not yet.”
I looked around his apartment. A lot of very good Japanese wood-block prints. Hiroshige. Hokusai. Bookshelves jammed with nonfiction hardcovers. Family photos on all the tables—group shots, mostly, in clean-lined sterling frames.
Over on his desk, there was one color eight-by-ten of a smiling dark-haired woman, taken in the early sixties, if her cat’s-eye glasses were any indication. She had Gerald’s jaw. His eyes. She was proudly holding up a fishing rod in one hand and a rather large walleye in the other.
Next to that shot was another of the same woman, only this time she had a laughing little girl on her lap. Beautiful-looking. Huge gray eyes, ash-blonde hair. Six years old, maybe, and holding up a minnow.
The Crazy School Page 21