by Frankie Bow
“Please, have a seat,” he said. “Jeremy will be right out.”
I sat down at the table and pulled out the textbook, some worksheets, sharpened pencils, and my notebook, and arranged them on the table. A few minutes later, Jeremy came shambling in, holding a tall glass of something that looked like green swamp sludge. He was slight and pale, with black hair and large black eyes.
“You’re Barda,” he observed.
“Yes. I’m Professor Barda. It’s delightful to meet you. Victor Santiago told me they sent you some diagnostic worksheets for you. Should we go over those first?”
He slouched into the chair and plunked the glass directly on the koa table, ignoring the stack of coasters. It wasn’t my house or my table, but I still flinched a little.
“I didn’t do it. I got too tired.”
“That’s fine. We’ll start at the beginning.” I tugged at the collar of my blouse. The sunroom felt infernally hot, although Jeremy seemed comfortable in his sweatshirt. “Now, the first section goes into describing data. Before we analyze anything, we need to have a good handle on what we’re looking at—”
“I heard no one likes teaching this class,” he interrupted. “Is that true?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s what I heard. They always get the young teachers to teach stats cause no one else wants to do it. You don’t seem that young, though.”
“This is no ordinary stats class,” I shot back as I pulled out a worksheet. “This is the Young Leaders program.”
“Young losers program, you mean. The only reason Mahina State cares so much is they’re hoping Bernardine puts them in her will.”
“You call your mother Bernardine?”
“That’s her name.”
He slurped his disgusting green smoothie, and I felt my mouth flood with salt water. I swallowed hard and stared at the table.
“She doesn’t even care if I get my degree or not,” he went on. “She just likes that guy that comes over and flirts with her. The one that looks like Tony Stark.”
“Well, I’m sure she has a lot to deal with right now. Are you ready to get started?”
Jeremy opened his mouth and let out a smelly belch, which sent me dashing out in search of a bathroom.
I couldn’t remember the old man’s complicated directions to the servant’s bathroom or wherever it was I was supposed to go, so I headed back down the hallway hoping to find something off the main hallway. I got there just in time. I rinsed my mouth and was heading back down the hallway when I again heard the rumble of voices from Mrs. Bingham’s room. The phrase, “family trust” caught my ear. The fancy car out front must belong to a lawyer, I thought. Bernardine Bingham was putting her affairs in order.
“And Jeremy?” I heard a man ask.
I paused. His Majesty wouldn’t be heartbroken if I was thirty seconds late. I told myself that I was keeping my eyes and ears open as part of my assignment, but the truth is I was madly curious myself.
Mrs. Bingham said something, but in a low tone, so I couldn’t hear.
“Nothing at all?” The man exclaimed.
I held my breath.
“I don’t wish to give the boy any further reason to look forward to my passing.”
Her voice quavered. I couldn’t tell if it was sadness, fear, or something else.
As I headed back to rejoin Jeremy, I patted my belly.
“Hey, Baby,” I whispered. “When it’s time for me to go, at least try to act sad about it, okay?”
CHAPTER SIX
I drove back to campus, but as I neared the Yamashiro Auditorium I saw police cars, lights flashing, blocking off the entrance. I drove around to the lower end of campus and parked in the lot closest to my office, and walked back up. But the crowd was so thick, I couldn’t even get close to the building.
I moved onto the grass some distance from the noisy crowd and texted Emma.
ME: What’s going on?
I scanned the crowd. Aside from the small knot of noisy protestors, about a hundred restless people were milling around.
The text alert on my phone beeped.
EMMA: Hardly anyone here. Where are you?
ME: Protestors blocking the entrance.
EMMA: They’re setting up a live feed for me so you can watch from outside.
I caught sight of Victor in the crowd, then noticed Bernardine Brigham was sitting on a bench beside him. Her head was pulled back in a way that made her look regal and vaguely like a swan, a pose I supposed they taught in modeling school. I wasn’t sure whether I should go over and say hello, but Victor caught my eye and motioned me over.
I fought my way through the crowd, which reeked of body odor and carport-dried laundry (hardly anyone in Mahina owns a dryer).
I found Victor in full donor-charming mode.
“Professor Barda,” he greeted me, with a rare smile. “Bernardine, you remember—”
“Of course I do, Victor,” she simpered. “My memory’s not gone yet.”
She must not have been much older than me, but out here in the daylight, she looked shriveled and frail. A whiff of the overripe floral smell from her house reached my nose.
“Isn’t this exciting,” she went on. “I’ve attended the Faculty Spotlight talks since they began, but I’ve never seen anything like this. When someone wants to prevent me from hearing something, it just makes me all the more curious.”
Victor’s smile tensed a little. He probably wasn’t thrilled at the idea of Mrs. Brigham hearing Emma explain why students like Jeremy Brigham didn’t belong in college.
“And how is Jeremy’s tutoring going?” Mrs. Brigham asked me.
“Very well, thank you. We had our first session today.”
“Yes, you must excuse me for not greeting you. I was in a meeting.”
I tried to look appropriately surprised.
“Your house is lovely. And I really enjoyed meeting your son…”
Bernardine Brigham’s expression soured. Victor immediately bent down and whispered in her ear, pointing at the monitor mounted on the wall. It was the one usually used to post announcements, but it had been hooked up to project the inside of the auditorium. Emma was standing on the stage, wrestling with a stand mic to make it short enough for her to talk into. The sound wasn’t on yet, but the image was clear. I hoped Mrs. Brigham was worse at lip-reading than I was.
“Excuse us for a moment, Mrs. Brigham.” Victor motioned me to follow him a short distance away.
“What did I say?”
His oleaginous charm was gone. He shook his head curtly.
“We were afraid you might say something to disturb Mrs. Brigham if you had too much information about the family. But I see now we’ve given you too little information.”
“I only said she had a lovely house and I enjoyed meeting her son. So yes, I would appreciate knowing what I said wrong.”
“Let me give you some background,” Victor said. We’ll have to trust you to be discreet. The Brighams are a very distinguished family.”
Of course they were. Victor wouldn’t be friendraising them so hard if they weren’t.
Victor told me more or less the same thing Emma had—that Mrs. Brigham’s late husband Alexander and his brother Cyrus had died in the same car accident. Victor had more details: It had been raining, he told me, and no one else was in the car aside from the two brothers.
But the story ended the same way; Cyrus and Alexander Brigham died shortly after they reached the hospital.
“How sad,” I said, wondering what this had to do with my mystery faux pas. I glanced over at Mrs. Brigham, still sitting on the bench, watching the monitor over the restless crowd. Vice President Marshall Dixon was speaking now, but the hubbub and chanting made it impossible to hear her.
“Certain facts emerged when the will was read,” Victor continued. “Cyrus was not married, so most of Cyrus’s estate—and it was significant—was left to his brother Alexander, Mrs. Brigham’s husband. And there was a sti
pulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full legacy as bequeathed to Alexander should go to his widow and any of their children.”
“And that was Jeremy?”
“Please let me finish. Alexander's death, as I have already stated, preceded his brother's by several minutes and consequently, Bernardine became the chief beneficiary. But when Alexander’s will was read, it was discovered that he had fathered a child outside of the marriage.”
“Oh. Mrs. Brigham must not have been happy about that.”
“No. And they already had a son of their own. But she did the noble thing and took the boy in.”
“Where is Jeremy’s biological mother?”
“I don’t know. But I do know Mrs. Brigham was now a widow with two sons to raise. When the boys were eleven years old, they went swimming in the Hanakoa River without her knowledge or permission. Her own son was swept away and drowned. Jeremy survived.”
“Oh, how awful. So Jeremy is her stepson.” And a daily reminder of her husband’s infidelity.
“That’s right.”
I wondered whether Mrs. Brigham blamed Jeremy for her son’s death. I also wondered whether an eleven-year-old could engineer his stepbrother’s drowning.
“Can I ask, sorry, I know this is tactless, but what is Mrs. Brigham’s illness?”
“It’s not contagious if that’s your concern.” Victor had just told me to mind my own business and accused me of being a hypochondriac, in one short sentence.
He excused himself and went back to ooze around Mrs. Brigham. Emma was back on the monitor now, but I couldn’t hear a thing she said. Her voice was drowned out by boos and chants and occasional shouts of “Let her speak!”
The protestors barricading the entrance wore tall paper dunce caps, presumably a reference to Emma’s assertion that not everyone was college material. I observed the spectacle until I heard the smash of breaking glass, then decided it was time to leave.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I arrived at the Brigham House the next morning, it was with the uneasy feeling that I knew far too much about the family. I almost wished Victor hadn’t told me that Jeremy was Bernardine’s unwanted stepson, or that Bernardine’s son had drowned.
And Bernardine, too, was dying. Victor thought so, in any case.
When Edward answered the door, I asked how Mrs. Brigham was doing.
He shook his head.
“Too much excitement yesterday. She should be resting. But she’s in the kitchen again.”
My tutoring session went as expected. Jeremy’s attention drifted, and it was impossible to keep him on task. It was only when I was packing up to leave that things took an interesting turn.
He fixed me with his dark eyes, and said,
“I’m not ready to go, Professor.”
“Oh, you don’t need to go anywhere. I’m going. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“I mean I’m not ready to die.”
I paused and sank back into the chair. I had been through suicide prevention training. I knew that I had to ask the question. Not the polite question, are you thinking of hurting yourself? People who want to commit suicide aren’t thinking of it hurting. On the contrary, they are hoping to make the pain end. I had to ask the uncomfortable question, the one that was so hard to say out loud:
“Jeremy, are you thinking about killing yourself?” I scrambled to remember my suicide prevention training. I had memorized the number of the suicide hotline, and I wrote it down for him.
Jeremy rolled his eyes.
“I don’t think I’m going to outlive her.”
My mind flashed on a suicide-by-cop story I’d seen in the Honolulu paper.
“Jeremey?” I said, “I’m going to get in touch with someone on campus who can help you. Okay?”
“Whatever,” he scoffed.
After the tutoring session, I went straight back to my office, pulled up the online Student of Concern form, and filled it out on Jeremy’s behalf. When I had taught my classes and finished my last meeting, I went to Emma’s office, only to find it closed. A paper sign on the door read:
Class and office hours canceled today
So I drove up to her house.
I expected to see Emma looking frazzled, but when she came to the door, she was in her sweatpants, looking relaxed and holding a coffee mug.
“Want some wine?” she asked.
“Not for me, thanks. Maybe just a glass of water if you don’t mind.”
“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. You’re not showing yet, that’s why. Hey, you get to see my talk last night?”
“I was there, but I couldn’t get in. There was a big demonstration outside, and some people in masks and dunce hats were blocking the door. Looks like you really stirred things up. When did you start drinking white wine?”
“When I was getting ready for my talk. Red stains your teeth. I wanted my smile to look good on camera.”
“I saw you on the monitor, but I wasn’t really paying attention to your teeth. What with the protestors and everything. Plus Victor Santiago was there with Bernardine Brigham.”
“Oh man.” Emma plopped down at the table. “I guess he’s gonna give me a hard time now.”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Brigham seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. So what have you been doing today? I saw you canceled your classes.”
“Yeah, security told me to. I’ve been watching my book rankings. They’re going up, you know. I’m getting a bunch of reviews too.”
“What are they saying?”
Emma shrugged.
“Depends on whether you’re talking about the five-star ones or the one-star ones. My publisher says more reviews are better no matter what they say. Eh, speaking of the Brighams. How’s your tutierging going?”
“Well, for one thing, I still don’t know the difference between tutierging and just plain tutoring. But I’m a little worried about Jeremy. He seems…off.”
“Anyone would be off, shut up in that weird house all day with their dying mother.”
“Emma, I think I overheard Mrs. Brigham talking to her lawyers, or someone, about making sure Jeremy doesn’t get anything when she dies. Now, what if Jeremy decided he’s going to kill her before she can change her will?”
“Doesn’t Victor want her to change her will to leave everything to Mahina State?”
“I don’t think he expects her to leave everything, but I think he’d like something, yes. So it would be in Victor’s interest for Bernardine to survive long enough to change her will. I can’t imagine what he could do about it, though.”
“So we’re rooting for Victor now? That’s funny.”
“Why should it be funny?”
“Cause you don’t trust him.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t. Otherwise you would’ve told him about all this already.”
“I do trust Victor. I trust he’d find some way to make me feel like an idiot for bringing it up. Anyway, in this case, yes, I guess we are rooting for Victor.”
“Cause we want the university to get the money?”
“Because we don’t approve of people murdering their stepmothers, Emma.”
“Stepmothers?”
“Jeremy is Mrs. Brigham’s stepson, apparently, not her biological son.”
“Oh, I did hear something about that. There was some scandal, yeah?”
“Emma, someone might be planning a murder. Don’t you think we should do something?
“What do you mean we, white man?”
“Dang it. I knew you were going to say that.”
“It’s funny cause you’re white.”
“Yes, very amusing. So what do I do about Jeremy wanting to kill his stepmother before she can change her will?”
“Look, Molly, I know you love butting into other people’s business, but I think you should let this one go. The Brighams are a big deal on this island. You don’t wanna get on their bad side. If Little Lord Psychopath wants to slaughter his fam
ily, let him.”
“Emma, do you think it’s too dangerous? Should I quit?”
“What, and have to pay back a quarter of your salary? No way. Besides, you got a front-row seat to the best reality show around. I want you to keep your eyes open and tell me all about it. Just don’t get yourself murdered.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next time I went to the house on Russian Road, Edward was holding a tray with a single glass perched on it. The glass was filled with a frog-colored liquid that smelled like raw broccoli stems.
“Is that one of Mrs. Brigham’s smoothies?” I asked, ferociously hoping it wasn’t meant for me.
“Bernardine has always been interested in nutrition,” he said as he led me down the hallway. “She was a model, you know, so she’s always had to be careful about her figure. She’s got all kinds of vegetables and herbs in here and I think she’ll put in a whole apple now and then. She’d like me to drink them too, but I tell her, just take care of yourself, Bernardine. I don’t know. I don’t think she’s going to pull out of this one.”
“I’m so sorry to hear it.”
Victor wouldn’t be, though.
The man paused at the doorway to let me enter the room first, then followed me in and placed the tray on the table.
“Bernardine doesn’t trust doctors,” he said. “Not for herself, and not for Jeremy. Oh, here he is now. Jeremy, I have your drink.”
“So how did that problem set go?” I asked Jeremy when he was seated.
“Didn’t do it.”
“At all?”
“Don’t take it personally. You’re not that bad of a teacher. I was too tired, that’s all.”
I put on a faint smile. Mahina State better get a giant payday out of this, I thought. I’m certainly not doing any good here otherwise. Although maybe encouraging Jeremy to take the long view would help to motivate him.
“So you’re a psychology major,” I said casually as I unpacked my books and papers. “What are you planning to do after you graduate?”
“I’m probably not going to finish.”