A Novel Death

by Judi Culbertson

  "But you know what?" I said to their backs. "I'm happy. For the first time, I'm doing what I want."

  By the time I reached Stony Brook and University Hospital, visiting hours had ended. But it wouldn't have mattered. Margaret was in Intensive Care. Her prognosis was guarded, and only family members were allowed up to see her. The fact that she had no family members didn't sway the receptionist. I left, determined to try again on Sunday.

  My last thought before sleep was of the pointing sneaker. It had to be more than a random piece of the scene's kaleidoscope. And most probably, it belonged to Amil. But where he was and why his shoe had been left in the bookstore aisle, I couldn't guess.

  The next morning I dressed more carefully than usual, in a navy T-shirt and khaki skirt. I tamed my hair into a tight French braid and traded my woven bag for a leather Coach purse, a gift from my oldest daughter, Jane. It wasn't until I was closing the front door that I realized I had turned myself into my twin, Patience. But why not? One look from her chilly eyes and empires fell. By the time I parked in the multilevel garage and crossed the path to the hospital, I was convinced I had a moral imperative to visit Margaret.

  The receptionist at the information desk had a froth of white hair and a happy face pin on her pink smock.

  I made my case.

  She didn't agree.

  "But she has no family," I argued. "I'm the same thing." While she pondered that, my identity slipped and I whispered, "You don't even have to give me a pass. Just tell me which room."

  At her outraged look, Patience came back. "I have to speak to somebody then."

  "But-it's Sunday! The Fourth of July." Inspiration. "Come back tomorrow!"

  "This can't wait. Who's her doctor?"

  "I'll check." Bending away from me, she crouched and punched in numbers; I stepped back to let her know I wouldn't try and eavesdrop. After a minute, she looked up, relieved. "Dr. Gallagher will be down. She has some questions anyway."

  Patience and Delhi both thanked her.

  Ten minutes later, a large-boned young woman approached us, giving me a puzzled look. No doubt she was expecting a deranged lunatic, instead of a woman holding a Coach bag.

  She was almost six feet tall in blue scrubs, with a scraped-back ponytail and a friendly face. "Uh-I'm Dr. Gallagher?"

  "Hi! I'm Delhi Laine. Sorry to trouble you but, how's Margaret doing?"

  She nodded at the question. "The good news-if there is any-is that her vital signs are steady."

  "What's the bad news?"

  She sighed. "She's not responsive. There's a test we use-and she's not scoring well on it. The police report said she fell off a ladder?"

  I nodded. "A library ladder."

  "You mean she was inside? I was picturing her like, falling from a roof. What could she have landed on? You don't get a wound that deep just by hitting the floor."

  "Could she have hit her head on the corner of another bookcase?" It seemed unlikely.

  "Wrong angle."

  "Could someone have come up from behind and hit her?"

  "Only if he was ten feet tall." She grinned. "No, she was definitely hit from above. But I probably shouldn't be speculating anyway."

  "When do you think she'll be conscious?"

  "Well." She looked troubled. "She should have been already, if she's ever going to be."

  "Really?" I felt the blow to my stomach. I hadn't realized there was a time limit. "But don't people sometimes stay in comas for a long time?"

  "Yes, but this isn't a coma. We don't know what the problem is."

  "When can I see her?"

  "Really, there's nothing to see." She was edging away.

  "Could you at least call me if there's any change? She really doesn't have any family." My voice choked and I had to stop.

  Dr. Gallagher gave me a smile redolent of wheat fields. "Sure."

  When I handed her the Raj card, she looked at my cat and said, "Cute!"

  Since the university was just across the road, I decided to take a chance and see if Bruce Adair was in his office. Most faculty wouldn't be. Even those who stayed to teach summer school would be on chaise lounges somewhere. But Bruce was not exactly a beach bum. And if anyone knew how I could find Amil, he would.

  Bruce has the nicest office in the Literature Department. His full name, Bruce Malcolm Adair, Ph.D., glows in gold letters on the frosted glass door-he paid to have it painted himself-and he has a window overlooking the Quad. It is the lair of a powerful Scottish warrior. But although Bruce has the necessary intellect, severe scoliosis kept him under five feet tall; he is primarily interested in combat of the mind. As I knocked on the fancy door, I had a vivid memory of Bruce standing next to Colin at a Christmas party, shaking a finger far up at him to make a point. It was one of the few times Bruce was not surrounded by a bevy of fawning young women. I wondered again what his secret was.

  Bruce no longer writes poetry himself, if he ever did. What he likes to do is mentor a deserving but obscure poet, and write brilliantly about him or her, starting them on the road to Pulitzers and MacArthurs. He is happy in his kingmaker role. He has also published essays in journals that Jack Hemingway can only dream about. Bruce would never grab a book out of a colleague's hand.

  "Come in!"

  Bruce was positioned at his large walnut desk, the prized window to his left. Because of his height, bookshelves lined only the lower half of the walls. On the painted upper half were portraits of Keats, Shelley, and Yeats, holograph pages of their poetry, and soft color photographs of misty English landscapes. Two of the photographs had been taken and hand-tinted by me. It had been during my artistic phase, when I was casting around for something meaningful to do-besides ironing. It had come after the painting on china, but before the macrame.

  "Delhi?" Bruce has intense blue eyes that bulge when he is excited. They are the most noticeable feature in his pleasant rosy face. I saw that he had clipped his white beard short for the summer. "My God, it is you. What have you done with your amazing hair?"

  "It's here." I turned to show him. "Just subdued."

  "Sit, missy." He indicated a shellacked blond wooden chair with a slatted back that faced his desk.

  I sat. "Is this where you grill students?"

  "I grill no one. These days they grill me. Mostly about the A that I `forgot' to give them, which they really really need, Dr. Adair!"

  I smiled and he grinned back. He could have asked me how Colin and the children were, or gestured at my photographs to show he still appreciated them. But Bruce does not believe in normalizing chatter; he prefers to keep people off-balance. So he gave me an interested look and waited.

  "I'm looking for a grad student," I began, not knowing how much of the story I needed to tell him. "He's specializing in Irish poets."

  "Which poets?" But he dismissed his question immediately. "Doesn't matter. What's his name?"

  "Amil. That's all I know," I apologized. I had no idea if it was a common male name in India. "A-M-I-L."

  "Amil? No Amil here."

  "But-slender, very good looking? From India. He has-"

  "Delhi." He said my name to stop the flow of words, looking amused. "I have my limitations, but a deficient memory isn't one of them."

  "I'm just surprised."

  "We did have one Indian student, Raphael Singh, but he left the program in April."

  Not Amil then. But I asked, "Why did he drop out?"

  "Well, let's see." It was his way of buying time while he decided whether or not to tell me.

  "Do you have a lot of students from India?"

  "Rarely. They go to the sciences and tech. More than half the engineering grad students are foreign."

  I thought. "Would you consider this Raphael attractive?"

  He grinned. "And you're looking for him because ... ?"

  "Not because of that. He works at The Old Frigate, the bookshop. But he said he needed to tell me something, then Margaret came in and he threw coffee in her face. So I never found out
what it was"

  "Quite the gentleman. But it could be Raphael."

  "Why? Why do you say that?"

  His blue eyes probed mine. "This stays between you and me, Delhi."

  "Of course!"

  "Raphael had an altercation with an instructor in the department. She said he shoved her and raised his hand to her; he said she was blocking the door and he was only trying to get out. It got very messy." Bruce chewed his lower lip contentedly. He has never been above enjoying other people's failings. "Specifically-according to Ruth, my colleague-it was over a paper he wrote that she had criticized. She felt that his conclusions were illogical and told him so. He became furious and accused her of trying to force him out of the program."

  "Was she?"

  "Oh, I doubt it. He was gifted enough. But he always had reasons for not completing the work and wanted exceptions made for him. You know the type, bright but with his own agenda. He got upset when you tried to keep him on task."

  "But isn't that a sign of creativity?"

  "It can be. In a doctoral program there are certain standards to be met. You don't need us if you want to go off and do your own thing."

  "But you might need some structure to push against."

  He grinned. "What are we talking about, Delhi?"

  "Probably not Amil," I admitted.

  "There's more. When Raphael was interviewed privately, he claimed she had been coming on to him all semester and was trying to embrace him when he pushed her away"

  "Yikes. The sexual harassment defense?"

  Bruce spread his pudgy hands. "Maybe. But he was attractive. Ruth isn't. The tendency is to back staff, but his version was persuasive enough to keep her from any hopes of tenure. It didn't mitigate the fact that he grabbed her and almost hit her, but it muddied the waters some. What Raphael didn't know was that he wasn't the first male student to accuse her of impropriety."

  "Really? And nobody told him? That's not fair! If he had known that, he might have been able to fight the charges."

  Bruce laughed. "Before you get all avenging angel, he did what to Margaret?"

  "I know. But I still want to find him."

  "Okay. But you didn't get it from me. And don't give it to anyone named Ruth"

  But as soon as he looked up the address in his computer, he started to worry about my safety.

  "Can't you just call him?" He indicated the sleek red phone on his desk.

  "I've tried, but he's never there. And weird people answer the phone and hang up on me."

  "And you want to go somewhere like that?"

  "Showing up has the element of surprise."

  He groaned. "You used to be so bright. You want to `surprise' someone who has a reputation for attacking women?"

  "He has no reason to attack me. I'll be careful." But I didn't tell him about Margaret's accident. I doubted that it would reassure him.

  This is how you recognize a house rented to college students: blankets and beach towels hang over the windows instead of curtains, cars parked where grass should be. The house inside is bare except for stained mattresses, clothes draped over banisters, and more dirty dishes than a college cafeteria. In summer, you can find it by the music blaring into the neighborhood and the lights left on all night.

  Which was why I drove past Amil's house the first time. I had to check the number, turn around, and drive back slowly until I reached a neat brown-shingled ranch. It was a common Long Island style, the kind you saw and forgot immediately, but I had to admire the tidy mounds of red impatiens and the very green lawn.

  There were no cars in the driveway and I doubted that anyone was home. But I parked by the curb, walked between the flowers and rang a small bell in a brass holder. It chimed far inside the house and nothing happened. But as I was turning to leave, a young South Asian woman, baby on her hip, pulled open the door. The red dot between her brows enhanced her deep brown eyes. She was wearing a blue denim jumper as if it was a sundress. Her baby was more festive in red overalls.

  "Hi," I said. "I called yesterday about Amil."

  Her face stayed a beautiful walnut carving.

  "Is he here yet? You said he hadn't been home. But he gave me a message to call him on Saturday."

  It convinced her to step back and let me come into the beige-tiled hall.

  "Is he here now?"

  She shook her head and I realized she had not said anything.

  "I'm sorry. Do-you-speak-English?"

  Her delicate lids lowered, so I could not see her eyes at all, but her lips seemed to be twitching. "Yes, I do."

  Stupid American. "Is he here?"

  "No." She moved as if she were going to close the door, but I smiled at the baby whose huge golden brown eyes were watching my face. "Hello, sweetheart." I put my hand out to allow him to grab my finger. "What's your name?"

  She answered reluctantly. "Billy"

  Billy? "Hi, Billy," I said, "What a good boy you are!" I turned to his mother. "He's beautiful!"

  It sounded contrived though it was true, as clumsy as my question about speaking English. But she beamed suddenly. "You have children too?"

  "Only big ones. Not so cute." Sorry, Jason, Jane, and Hannah. And Caitlyn. I pushed that sadness away. "Amil wanted to tell me something."

  "But he never came back! Where could he be?" She had gone from aloofness to trust, with no stops in between.

  "Is he your-" I tilted my head at the gold ring on her finger.

  "No, no, Russell is my husband."

  "Was he the one on the phone yesterday?"

  Our eyes met in rueful understanding. "But you know Amil," she said quickly. "Can you find where he is?"

  "I'll try. But-" Reaching into my wallet, I extracted the card with Raj and my phone number. "Tell him to call me if he comes back. Actually-what's your name?"

  "Shara." She looked at the card and then back at me. Billy, who had been remarkably good all this time, made a grab for its bright colors. Touching him playfully on the nose with one corner, she slipped it into her jumper pocket.

  "Was Amil upset when he left?"

  Billy gave a sudden outraged squawk, his small face reddening before breaking into furious sobs. Shara turned deftly away to comfort him, and I saw that her black hair went past her waist. I was left to open the door and let myself out.

  Walking down the path past the vivid red flowers, I wondered about mothers who pinched their babies to make them cry.

  And now it was time to go home and upload the best of yesterday's books to the bookselling Web sites I used. Selling books during the summer is slow, August the worst, but once they were listed on the book sites, they stayed searchable until they sold.

  Driving through a neighborhood of white Cape Cods and saltboxes, I began to have black thoughts about Margaret. What if she never regained consciousness? Would they move her to a nursing home? From my mother's experience, I knew how expensive that could be. What would happen to The Old Frigate? Maybe I should try to keep the shop open for her. It would give her some income and keep up the momentum that was lost when a business closed, even temporarily. During slow times, I could price and upload my own books.

  When I called Alex Kazazian to give him Amil's address, I would ask him if it was okay to reopen the shop.

  Back in the barn, I found the business card he had given me and dialed his number. But it was a holiday and I was shunted to voice mail. I left him a long message, spelling everything, including Christian Avenue.

  Then I settled in. The barn where I shelve my books dates back to the days when this area was farmland. But it is in better shape than the house. When we first moved in, the university was renting the barn separately to an actor who taught performing arts. Unexpectedly he won a part in a long-running musical on Broadway, and never looked back. Colin quickly offered to pay more to use the barn as a study.

  But he was seduced back to the university where there was always an admiring audience. Jane, Hannah, and Jason took it over in turn, but when the last on
e left for college, I moved in.

  I love it more than any place I've ever lived. On the rough walls I hung posters by Rene Magritte, Maurice Sendak, and Frida Kahlo. The floors are covered by worn-out oriental rugs from my parents' home, and the brass banker's lamp from my father's study graces the scarred library table. I store the books waiting to be described in the loft; those already for sale are on tall bookshelves downstairs, grouped by subject and alphabetized. Because a kitchenette and tiny bathroom are hidden in the back, I sometimes fantasize about abandoning the house altogether and moving in here.

  I wrapped a few book orders and packed them in bubble envelopes to mail out, and then picked up some signed art catalogs I had bought from a gallery owner's estate. He had been friends with everyone, from Thomas Hart Benton and Georgia O'Keefe to John Marin and Jackson Pollock. Signed books and catalogs have a magic all their own. They have been physically touched by the artists and the sense of greatness still lingers around them.

  Yet before I settled down to work, I went to the Newsday Web site to see if there had been any story about Lily. There was. A photograph showed her standing in front of a display case of small carved netsuke figurines at the Met; her arm was out, head tilted, as if she had whipped them up herself. The story again described how she died. But this time the reporting hinted at discrepancies in the scenario which the police would not disclose until the autopsy was complete. Discrepancies in the way she had died? Or whether she had done it herself?

  Now I was intrigued. What actor had she been married to, anyway?

  I made an espresso in the kitchenette, and then settled back down at the computer.

  I typed actor and Carlyle into Google, and the usual thousands of references materialized. The one obvious choice was Robert Carlyle from Trainspotting. He was the right age. But as far as I could see, he had never left Scotland and London for very long, and his one ongoing marriage was to someone else. Next I tracked down the actors Francis Carlyle and Jack Carlyle, both of whom had died before Lily was born. A John Carlyle seemed more promising, though thirty years older than Lily. But he had died in 2002, and my sense from Margaret was that he was still alive.