Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure

by Joanne Dobson

  ***

  That early in the evening, Rudolph’s bar was not particularly busy. The bartender was a former student of mine, dark-haired and skinny, an aspiring poet with a housefly tattooed on his right cheekbone. Not wanting to leave the sheer, untested promise of college life behind, some graduates hang around Enfield for years.

  Clark overrode my abstemious request for a glass of ice tea, ordering a bottle of cabernet and two glasses. “Hey, I’ve got you to myself for once. I’m not letting you go so easy. So—you want to know about Frank Vitagliano and me, do you? Well, here goes.”

  Clark admitted that he’d recognized Frankie the moment he saw him in September at the first Enfield all-college faculty meeting of the year. “Then at the reception afterwards I walked over to him.” He shrugged; his broad shoulders were shifting sand dunes. “I thought, of course, that he was at Enfield College as Professor Frank Vitagliano. I was surprised, because he hadn’t been a great student, and I sure didn’t remember him finishing his dissertation.

  “But when he saw me, Frank went bone white and he staggered. I thought he was about to pass out, and I grabbed his arm to steady him. The way he tensed up you would have thought I was a cop with handcuffs and a warrant.” Clark indulged in a crooked smile, shaking his head in amiable disbelief. Telling this story, he seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. “I might as well have been saying, ‘Okay, buddy, the jig is up.’ It’s a wonder he didn’t have a heart attack on the spot.” He laughed his big, booming laugh. “But the funny thing is I still didn’t have any idea he wasn’t here as Frank V. himself.

  “Have more wine.” He filled my glass almost to the brim.

  The wine was good, the story fascinating. Against my better instincts, I began to relax. “Did he tell you then that he was posing as Joe Lone Wolf?”

  “Ha. He took me down to Moccios’, got sloppy drunk, and begged me to keep silence—at least for the rest of the school year. Said he’d known for a long time that there was no way he was going to survive an Enfield tenure review, and he’d planned for it. He was working on yet a third identity into which he could vanish when the Enfield job disappeared. He planned on leaving Joe Lone Wolf behind.”

  “Really,” I breathed. This was better than a novel. “Did he say what his new identity would be? Who…whom he would become?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me—only that, oddly enough, it ‘still sort of had something to do with Indians.’ Then he pleaded with me to give him some time, just until the end of the school year, before I made his deception known.” He leaned toward me, his elbows planted firmly on the table, and frowned fleetingly. “I don’t want you to think I was being frivolous by not reporting him to the college authorities. Truth is, I had the college’s best interests in mind. Since Frankie-Joe…,” McCutcheon flashed his sunny grin again, “…was planning to disappear anyhow, I kept quiet in order to spare Enfield the embarrassment of being known to have hired a fraud.” It was amazing how well the expression of sheer disinterested benevolence sat on Clark’s well-tanned face, but I didn’t believe him for a minute.

  I took a long sip of wine. “That was…thoughtful…of you.”

  My skepticism must have showed, because he sat back and winked at me. “We-e-e-ll, to tell you the truth, Karen, I was so amused by the whole thing, I didn’t have the heart to turn the pathetic little phony in.” He laughed heartily again. “And, besides, it was wicked fun to watch all these pretentious stuffed-shirt Eastern academics being bamboozled. It’s not often you get such a good laugh, and I wanted to let it play out for a while.” He shrugged. “And, besides, he seemed to be a good teacher—who was being harmed? Bartender, another bottle of the same.”

  “Clark, no. I’ve got to drive home.”

  “So do I. What’s the problem?”

  ***

  At supper that night Mom said, “There’s something I have to tell you, Karen, but you can’t ever let anyone else know. Not anyone, not ever,” she insisted, “not even your sisters.”

  “Maaa,” I sputtered. “What could be so terrible that I can’t tell Connie?” Denise, I could understand. We all tiptoed around Denise. Given the slightest excuse, Denise drank. But Connie, she was as tough as chewed leather.

  “Not Connie.” Sitting at the table, eating her chopped-up spaghetti, she couldn’t keep her hands steady. “It’s too…shameful.”

  “Shameful?” Must have something to do with sex. I shook grated Parmesan on my pasta. Hmm, was it possible I had been born seven months after my parents’ wedding at St. Brigid’s, instead of the righteous nine?

  She covered her plate with the paper napkin. Her fingers were white at the knuckles. “No. I can’t tell you. Forget I said anything about it.”

  Across the table I took her trembling hands in mine. “You’ve got to tell me, now, Mom. What is it? Am I…Was I, maybe, born illegitimate?”

  She muttered something almost inaudible. I heard it as, “Of course not.”

  “What is it then? What could be so unspeakable?”

  Her head hung low and she muttered into our conjoined hands. “My grandmother’s mother…oh, I can’t tell you.”

  “My great-great-grandmother was illegitimate?”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous.” She raised her head and looked straight at me with suddenly lucid brown eyes. “I heard you taking about Indians on the phone, you know. I never heard anyone talk about Indians before. So, I think it’s time I told you—your great-great-grandmother, you know—when the family was still in Canada?—well, your great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded Mi’kmaq Indian.”

  With a whoop, I abandoned my own meal. “You. Are. Kidding. Me!”

  Mom lowered her head and her eyes. If she were a turtle, she’d have been totally inside her shell. “I’m sorry, Karen.”

  Jumping up, I rounded the table and hugged her. “Don’t be sorry. It’s wonderful news.”

  She pushed her head up and forward. “It is?”

  “Of course! I’m proud to be Native—well, I’m only a little bit Native, but I’m delighted. You should be proud, too. And, Amanda, she’ll be thrilled!”

  “But…Grandmère…she told me never to tell. She said it was a family scandale.”

  “That was then—this is now. We live in a different world. Things have changed.” I could save the scholarly lecture on racial politics for another day. Little could my mother understand how much things had changed, how her “dirty little family secret” had created false shame, twisting—warping, really—her understanding of our family’s heritage.

  And, really, I wanted to laugh. Only yesterday I’d found out Joe wasn’t an Indian. Today I was finding out that I was! And really, wasn’t it ironic that departmental politics should give the tenure edge to the non-Indian and overlook the actual (if unconscious of it) part-Indian?

  I decided on the spot that I would mention this to no one at the college until after my tenure petition was decided. I wasn’t raised as a Native. I hadn’t known until now that I had Native blood. I was who I was, and they could take me or leave me.

  But, secretly, I hugged the news to myself. I did the math: what did that make me? One-sixteenth Native? I couldn’t wait to look in the mirror, check myself out. So, maybe my high cheekbones and straight dark hair didn’t come from French ancestors after all.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Amanda.

  Chapter 22

  Thursday, late afternoon

  Ned Hilton looked like death, and there was nothing warmed-over about him. He was standing halfway up the granite steps that lead to Emerson Hall, the administration building, his lugubrious features frozen in an expression somewhere between indecision and horror. I was on my way to see if either the president or the dean had returned yet from Detroit. Just as I approached Ned, he turned, as if he’d decided to descend rather than ascend the stairs. He didn’t seem to see me. He took a step down, one dusty brown loafer touching the lower step, then the other. Immediately he pivoted back and climbed up two steps. The
n he stopped and began muttering to himself.

  “Ned?” I queried, but it was as if his name went through some kind of force field before he heard it. Then he started, as if I’d set off a firecracker next to his ear, and stood staring at me. It was quitting time for the office workers, and people were streaming down the steps, clutching car keys and griping about the unseasonable cold. They eddied around us on both sides, buttoning fall jackets to the neck, turning up collars. Ned was shivering in his well-worn beige corduroy sports jacket over a rumpled white dress shirt with the tie askew. He still didn’t seem to realize I was there.

  “Ned, you’re freezing. Let’s go inside and get you something hot to drink.”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. Something hot to drink.” It was the voice of an automaton. He allowed me to take his arm and lead him up the steps into the Emerson Hall faculty lounge, where he then allowed me to sit him down and put my coat around his shoulders. I made him a steaming cup of coffee from the coffee-pod machine that sat on an ancient carved-oak sideboard next to an elaborate arrangement of sunflowers in a square dark-green vase. I was becoming increasingly concerned about Ned—he seemed disoriented. What should I do? Whom I should call? His wife? But she had never seemed much more stable than he was. Security? But that would be a bit overdramatic, wouldn’t it?

  After a few sips of the milky, sugary coffee, Ned looked around. “What am I doing in the faculty lounge?”

  Good. At least he knew where he was. “Don’t you remember?”

  He peered, frowning, into the distance. After a minute he spoke. “I wanted to see the president.”

  “The president? He’s been away at a conference, but he might be back by now.” That’s why I was at Emerson Hall; I wanted to make certain Avery had been informed about Joe Wolf’s false identity. Was that why Ned was here? Had he also planned to divulge Joe’s deception?

  “You seem a little…distressed.” Understatement of the year. “Could I help you with something?” What a statement of hubris; who was I to offer myself as a substitute for the college president?

  “A woman came into the office.” A long pause. “It was about Joe Lone Wolf.”

  A grey-uniformed security guard ducked his head into the room on his rounds. He stopped and stared at Ned, who was thin-lipped, grim, and shaky.

  “The professor has had a shock,” I said, and asked the guard to get someone over here from Health Services.

  I could hear him on the phone out in the wide, marble-floored entrance hallway, but I didn’t attempt to make out the words.

  “You had a visitor?” I prompted, turning back to Ned. “It was about Joe Lone Wolf?” Another opportunity to follow through on my queries into the Lone Wolf murder.

  “Yes. She was an Indian. She had a funny name. Tallchief or something.” Suddenly he was talking at full speed. “What was her name? She knew Joe from Mohegan Sky Casino—she’s a blackjack dealer there. She said he wasn’t Joe at all—he was a professional gambler named Carlo Mangeri. I said, no, no, he was Joe Lone Wolf, a professor.”

  “Don’t you remember?” I corrected Ned. “Joe was really Frankie Vitagliano from Brooklyn. I told you that on Monday. He was only posing as a—”

  “That’s what I said, Joe Lone Wolf. A professor. I tried to help him, to make the world right for him—the representative of an oppressed people. I tried…but I failed. And then he…Oh, what was her name?”

  The wail of a siren, at first an inconsequential distant whining, grew louder and louder, until I realized, with a jolt of panic, that the ambulance was headed our way. Oh, no. Not an ambulance! I’d had in mind maybe a nurse with a couple of Xanax. But with a screech of brakes and one last flourish of the siren, the Enfield Health Services ambulance pulled up in front of Emerson Hall; student EMTs love dramatics. Two of them in their shiny green EMT jackets came rushing into the lounge pushing a collapsible gurney on wheels; what on earth had the security guard told Health Services? Hearing all the excitement, administrators and a handful of students began to gather, peering in the door of the spacious and formal faculty lounge. In his high-backed chair, Ned cringed, gripping tighter to the carved wooden arms; I could tell I wasn’t going to get another word out of him about his mysterious visitor. And then, as if the situation could get any worse, the front door into the massive entrance hall just outside the faculty lounge opened. Sanjay Patel and Avery Mitchell, carrying briefcases, pushed their way through the crowd of onlookers and into the lounge. Avery, in a dark topcoat and a white wool scarf, said, “What’s going on here?” Our president looked exhausted; he and Sanjay must just now be returning from Detroit.

  One of the EMTs, my student, Cat Andrews, turned from checking Ned’s blood pressure and answered him. “Professor seems to be losing it. Gotta take him to Enfield Regional for assessment.”

  “Oh, good God,” Avery said. He set his briefcase on a chair and began to unbutton his coat. “Patel, why don’t you go with Hilton? I’ll call his wife—let her know where he is.” He tossed the coat on top of the briefcase. Then he noticed me next to the gurney. “Karen?” he queried. His lips constricted. “I should have known you’d be in the middle of this. What’s wrong with Hilton?”

  Ned began to mumble again. “What was her…”

  I raised a finger to Avery. “Give me a minute, and I’ll tell you.”

  “What was her name?” Ned muttered, as the EMTs lifted him onto the stretcher. Cat Andrews handed me back my coat, then covered Ned with a blanket. “What was her name?” he repeated.

  I took Ned’s hand and held it as the EMTs bumped him through the massive outer door and down the steep granite stairs. “What was…” He seemed to have no idea he was being taken to a hospital.

  The back doors of the ambulance were open.

  “What…?”

  I squeezed his hand and, as the EMTs began to raise the stretcher, I let go; I’d learn no more about Ned’s visitor today.

  “I’ve got it!” He tried to sit up, pulling against the wide restraining straps as the EMTs rolled him into the back of the ambulance. “I’ve got it! Her name was…Graciella! Graciella Talltrees!” The double doors slammed, cutting off any further disclosure. The ambulance took off with an earsplitting blast of the siren.

  Graciella? Where had I heard that name? Graciella? Graciella? Oh, Graciella! Wasn’t that was the name of the woman who’d slugged Joe Lone Wolf and floored him the night Earlene and I had seen him with Clark in Rudolph’s Café? The beautiful Native woman Earlene had called Pocahontas? What on earth could Graciella Talltrees possibly have said to Ned Hilton that had sent him over the edge?

  I knew, then, that I would have to go to the casino as soon as I could and find out.

  ***

  Flames crackled in the president’s office fireplace; judging from the frequent loud pops, the wood must be pine or cedar, softwood laid to get a new fire up to quick heat. I edged one of Avery’s maroon leather wing chairs closer to the fireplace and held out my hands to warm them.

  Avery put the phone down and stood thrumming his fingers on the desk. Then he turned toward the neat little mahogany bar concealed behind sliding doors in the alcove next to the desk. “I’ve been doing bourbon lately,” he said, handing me the amber liquor in a squat Waterford glass. “Do you want water in it?”

  “No.” I sipped decorously and let the heat of the bourbon challenge my mouth.

  “Good choice.” He moved the other wing chair closer to the heat, and raised his glass. “To Kentucky, where they know how to distill the elixir of the gods.” He drank, sighed deeply, then sat back in the deep maroon chair and gave me an inquiring look. “So, what the hell was that all about?”

  “Well—”

  “And Loni told me you dropped by the office the other day but didn’t leave a message. Did that have anything to do with this Hilton fiasco?”

  Reaching out, I centered a crystal bud vase on the side table next to me. It held a single elegant miniature white lily, the blossom a tiny furled cup at the t
op of a thick green stem. I picked up the vase to sniff the flower—absolutely no odor. “I suppose so,” I said, “in that Ned was mumbling something just now about Joe Lone Wolf.”

  Avery groaned and took another drink. He appeared to be bone-weary, the patrician features drawn, the thin lips turning down at the corners, where they ended in short, deep grooves. “Some obsequious homicide detective dropped by last week, and I’m afraid I wasn’t at all convinced of his abilities. Whatever happened to…that friend of yours? Lieutenant Piotrowski, isn’t it?”

  This last was more than an idle question; like many of my colleagues, Avery seemed to be intrigued and puzzled by my relationship with a cop.

  “Right now Charlie’s with the National Guard. In Iraq.”

  “Really?” Avery straightened up in his chair. He was interested now. “For how long?”

  “A year.” It sounded endless to me. “Well, ten months, now. He’ll be back next summer.”

  Avery wasn’t the type of man who would know anything about the military—or have ever had anything to do with it. His family line went back to the Puritan dissenters who had colonized New England and who had learned quickly how to profit therein. Preachers had given way to planters, who had begotten merchants, who had spawned industrialists, who had bred statesmen and poets, who had given breath and being to Avery Claibourne Cabot Mitchell, prince of privilege and longtime president of Enfield College.

  Why was I, daughter of the deep working class—and, as it turned out, of partial Native blood—so goddamn attracted to this aristocratic son-of-a-bitch?

  Avery raised the glass to his lips again and tilted his head at me in silent inquiry.

  I told him what I’d wanted to tell him on Monday, that Joe Lone Wolf was really Frankie Vitagliano. I told him how Ned had forbidden me to tell anyone about Joe but had imparted the knowledge of Joe’s deception to the senior English faculty.