by Triss Stein
“Your job is to assist me! I am doing this for the museum as a favor, at nothing like my usual fee. You were assigned to work for me. Who are you to question my judgment, a little student with no experience? You overstepped…”
His words felt like shouting but his voice was a sinister whisper.
At that moment, I knew had some choices. I could collapse, as he obviously expected. Or I could start shouting for real, as I deeply, sincerely wanted.
With fierce calm, I said, “I so did not overstep. In fact, I got into trouble for not stepping further. I work for the museum. Their needs, not yours, are my job. Do I look that stupid? You are not here as a great culture vulture do-gooder. Whatever you find here will feed into your glorious reputation. Ryan told me that, as if I could not have figured it out for myself.”
He face went from sickly pale, to red, and back again.
“Now you can leave my workspace and let me get on with my true job.”
And then, all of a sudden he seemed to collapse into his clothes and onto my single office chair. He put his head in his hands.
“Everyone knows. I don’t know how it all got out. I am being criticized everywhere. Attacked. If I lose my reputation—probably it’s already lost—I have nothing. No career, no standing professionally or socially. My whole life is being destroyed.”
“And I am to blame for this?”
His head, still buried in his hands, went from side to side. Was that a no?
Then what was he doing in my office?
“Dr. Flint? Do you have a reason for being here? I have work to do. “
He seemed to shake his head again and whispered something.
“What is it that you think I can do for you?”
His head was still buried in his hands but this time I could hear him. “That poor boy.”
“Ryan?”
He did not look up.
“Dr. Flint!” I still had not an atom of sympathy but I had a wisp of curiosity.
“He was an odd young man,” Flint whispered. “A lost soul. Clueless is the word he used himself. Not part of my vocabulary but it is descriptive. And classless. Not my usual type of assistant but he did the job brilliantly. And I never told him—never said a word—but he was hugely gifted in his art. There, he had that spark…”
“All this—this emotion—is about Ryan? Really?”
Flint finally looked up. He looked like a ghost. “Perhaps.” He took a deep breath. “Perhaps. I am not a complete monster. I live my life as I have chosen, no regrets, but I know that if Ryan had not been at my house…I’ve spent my life studying artists, but he was a real artist. Do you see the distinction? And I’ve never been wrong about that. Now that promise…it’s all lost…because of me…I was too eager…those papers…”
“Dr. Flint? Perhaps we should go out for a walk?” He didn’t move. “When did you last eat? You come with me and have a coffee, at least.”
He stood up and turned toward the hall, without actually looking at me. I led the way out, and over to the farmers market on the courthouse plaza. He followed. I didn’t care what he needed, but I needed fresh air at that moment, and I couldn’t leave him sitting in a stupor in my office. I also needed a fresh-picked apple. Or maybe a cider doughnut. Or maybe a whole bag of them. I bought him a ham and cheese sandwich, too.
I didn’t ask him. I sat him on a plaza bench, thrust a sandwich half into his hand and set the cups of hot coffee, heavy on the sugar, on the bench between us.
“Now eat,” I ordered. “Start with the doughnut.”
He looked mildly surprised at that and mildly surprised at his surroundings.
But he picked it up and ate.
Between my personal high stress and the overall weirdness of the situation, the food had no flavor. I chewed and it helped somehow. The coffee seemed to have no flavor and no aroma, but it was hot. That was enough.
When Flint’s sandwich had disappeared, and I was sufficiently fueled, I finally turned to him. “You tell me what is going on right now. And no more verbal abuse, or I will leave you right here to have a nervous breakdown all alone, in public.”
“My life is over.” He said it clearly enough, though he still could not look at me. “I spent my whole life…created my whole life from nothing…nothing…and now I am…nothing again. Calls and calls from the professional journals…and my colleagues…all oozing sympathy but smiling behind my back…I don’t use all those online things…Ryan did it for me…but I’m sure they are buzzing. I made a misjudgment…they don’t understand it was from good motives!…and someone died. That harmless young fool.” He stopped suddenly, then added, “Does that explain it enough?”
“Not even close. I had a second when I thought it was about Ryan. Now I’m back to thinking you are just embarrassed.”
He turned even whiter. “Is that how it seems? Have I lost all my social skills? It’s not at all…well, maybe some of it is…but there is more.…”
I waited. And then I kept waiting. And then I stood up, and said, “I am going back to work. We’re done.” I turned and walked away.
He caught up with me at the first stoplight, and kept pace with me back to the building and into my office. Again. Before I could start protesting, he said softly, “I will never have children. Never wanted them. I never even wanted to mentor young people. I wasn’t good at it when it was forced on me. I used interns occasionally only if they were thrust on me by a patron, or I was desperate for help. I preferred ambitious debutantes with art history majors. The world was already their oyster, they were useful enough and they didn’t need anything from me.”
He stopped talking.
“And this matters to me—why?”
“Ryan was different. I did need him. He solved problems for me and then he got to me. In my own, not-very-warm-hearted way, I tried to help him. To become a person who could belong somewhere in the world. Now I am…”
“You are sad.” An emotion I knew too well.
“Sad? No, not possible. I have not been sad about any personal thing for…forever. Professional disappointment—the rare occasions!—certainly. And I did not after all know him well. He was not important to me as a person.”
He still had not apologized to me. He still was barely looking at me. And he still was not leaving. I had an inspiration.
“Dr. Flint, how about doing some work today? We have copies of all the original documents. Why don’t we spread them out in the workroom and you can look them over again for anything I might have missed? Ryan and I might have missed?”
I did not think we had missed a thing, but it would get him out of my office. I set him up with a computer, pulled my notes and Ryan’s, showed him how to navigate and then he seemed so confused, I went and printed it all for him.
I couldn’t settle back into productivity because something was nagging at me. Finally I went into the workroom and said, “Stop what you’re doing. I want to show you something.”
He accepted my bossiness and stood up right away. It must have been a measure of how shaken he was.
I had Ryan’s Facebook page up on my screen. “Do you know what this is? It’s a network. People write about their lives and other people—anyone they give permission to—can read it. Some people have hundreds of Facebook friends. Maybe even thousands.” I pointed. “Read this.”
It was Ryan’s foolish musing about this project.
“He wrote about it? After I told him to keep it quiet? How could this have happened?”
I shrugged. “Before you told him. And they forget. Young people just forget that nothing on the Internet is private, even if it feels like a dormitory bull session. And then word can spread from Facebook friends to, well, everyone. But do you see? Other people knew about this. Give yourself a break.”
I knew I had given him that break. I wasn’t sure he deserved it, but still.
Some color came back into his face. “Maybe it wasn’t me. I can…”
He looked right at me for the first time that day. “Who do I seem to be, to you?”
“What?”
“Yes, who do I seem to be?” He ticked off on his fingers. “Supremely well-educated. Brilliant at my work. I do everything with style, refined yet suave. Right? Would you assume I came out of a prep school background? Old money? The world of Edith Wharton and Louis Auchincloss? Because believe me, that world still exists.”
I was so taken by surprise by this train of thought, I barely nodded. It was all true. That is exactly what I thought.
“Behold Pygmalion. And Galatea. Or Eliza and Higgins. Shaw knew. I created my own new self from the son of a dairy farmer in overalls with manure on his work boots. No one knows that.” He shook his head, surprised, perhaps, that he was talking about it now.
“The right Ivy degrees, the right tailored clothes, the right ways of speaking. Do it well enough and you have the perfect disguise. Ryan was doing it, too. That’s why I even made some efforts—not so large, but large for me—to give him guidance. He was wearing a disguise, too. His was an ugly one.” He shuddered. “But he mistakenly thought it to be edgy. In any case, it prevented people from seeing who he really was—a kid off an alfalfa farm in one of those rectangular Midwestern states. Chemical fertilizer on his work boots.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m going home now. I am better. And I will deny everything I have just said, so I wouldn’t repeat it if I were you. Who will they believe, you or me?”
He left and then turned back. “You and Ryan did a fine job on the Maude Cooper papers. Who would have expected it from a Brooklyn guttersnipe and a farm boy? But you missed the underlying story. She’s hiding something, too.”
“Oh? I had that feeling, too.”
“She’s hiding something, just like me and just like Ryan. I have no idea what, but I know she is. I can feel it.”
He was gone and I was left trying to take in everything he had said, my mind really too full to absorb one more new idea.
***
I went to the workroom and put away all the document copies Flint had left out. Then, mindful of Leary’s words, I tackled one more doable task. I wanted to talk to Natalya about Dima and his job.
“Ah, Erica, you have read my mind,” she said when I called. “I was wondering if you had some time tomorrow. I could use help, Alex and me. We are meeting with police. Is there…could you…I am nervous to ask. Is there any chance you could come with us? They scare me. Just going to their building scares me. “
“But Natalya? You did battle with the Soviet bureaucracy. What are New York cops compared to that?”
“I know.” She sighed. “It’s true. They are little baby chickens beside what I dealt with back then, but also I was young and stupid so I could be fearless. And I could talk my ways through in Russian. With cursing, if needed. Or flirting or humor, whatever it took. Now I am not fearless. And you would help, in case that I do not understand all their English?”
I was pretty sure that Natalya’s English comprehension was way more than adequate, but I guessed she needed to know someone had her back.
“Do you know who you are meeting with?”
“Ah, yes, that Detective Henderson.”
That clinched it for me. Whatever else I might have done would wait.
“I’ll be there for sure. Now I have a question for you. Did Dima work at night at Green-Wood Cemetery?”
“Yes, of course he did. He was a night watchman a few nights a week. I worried, having him work all week and also nights. He started last year. But you knew this?”
“Strangely, I didn’t. How did I not know?”
“Ah, it started when you were so upset last year, so many problems, your grant, your father. And then I suppose it just didn’t come up.”
That made sense at last. It had been one of those times when life was throwing one thing after another and I was just barely getting through my days. We didn’t talk much then.
“So that’s the job he was at, that night, and left during the night.”
“They say. That’s what they say, he unlocked the gate with his card in the middle of the night. The people there, oh, they are so sympathetic but they want him really to not be killed there, it is bad for them, for their name. And it changes their insurance, too, I think.” She sighed, a sigh from her toes all the way up. “The police say it, too. You see why I am upset to talk to them?”
“Oh, sure.” I said it absently; I was not sure I understood but I would be there tomorrow. I hadn’t talked to Natalya for a few days so if she needed me now, I was there.
I knew daily calls would only drive her crazy. How many ways are there to say “I am lonely today and my heart is broken”?
For a day I wasn’t even supposed to be at work, I certainly had put in some real effort there. Now it was time to go home and straighten things out with my daughter.
For a guy who claimed he could not give life advice Leary has given me something helpful. Knock off one question at a time, easy ones first; work my way through the list. Not that Chris would be easy.
She was not yet home. Did she have after-school plans? I checked my calendar. Then I checked my phone for a message. She was allowed to make spur of the moment plans but I needed to know what they were.
No messages. None on the house phone. None on my e-mail. I called into my work phone, just in case we had missed each other there. Nothing. Was there a chance she actually was home, in her room, napping?
Her door was still closed, just as it had been in the morning. I knocked softly, then hard. Really hard. No response, so I went in. By then my stomach might have been jumping around a little.
Her bed was made, her room perfectly tidy, unprecedented on a busy school day. No books lying around, no schoolwork, no discarded clothes. No earring tree on her dresser. No art supplies. No plush gray bunny that had lived on her bed since her second birthday.
The piece of paper in the middle of her smooth comforter said, “I am going to go stay with Grandpa. He has time for me.”
Chapter Sixteen
It took me long, measurable minutes to comprehend those two simple lines. She had run away from home? And not even to her friends, but to my dad? That guy, who couldn’t be in the same room with me, in my own teen years, without turning it into a battlefield? Who deserted Chris and me, and went off to Arizona because the new woman in his life insisted, and then came back when she left him? Who tried to make amends now by constant meddling? That guy? And she thought he would be a better parent than me?
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or perhaps hurl some of her personal possessions at a wall in her room. So I did all three, but stuck to the old stuffed animals for the throwing.
When I was done I was sitting on her floor, back against her bed, breathing hard. Only the fact that there was no phone in her room kept me from calling my father and yelling at him. Getting up and walking into my own room, finding my own phone, going back to Chris’ room to tidy up the mess I had made and get rid of the evidence that I had lost my mind…well, by the time I had done all those things, I was ready to have a somewhat more sane talk with my dad. I hoped.
“It’s your daughter,” I said. “Remember? The sole parent of your only grandchild?” I was in no mood for niceties.
There was a long silence. I knew he was still there because I heard him breathing.
Finally he said, stuttering slightly, “Nice to hear from you. What’s up?”
That’s when I lost it again. “You have kidnapped my child. I’m coming to get her.”
“Now, Erica. You know I could not have kidnapped her. Do you think I drugged her and carried her out of your house? Come on.”
“Why should I listen to you? Let me talk to her. Right now. Immediately, if not sooner.”
“She’s at school. Now think. Couldn’t it be normal for a teen to need a little break from her parents? Think about it. I remember a time when you did the same.”
And, somehow, I was able to let a memory come through the red fog in my brain. Tenth grade. My favorite possessions and a change of underwear, in a pink backpack, at my best friend’s. Her indulgent mother let me stay for two nights before sending me home for clean clothes. And I could not even remember what it was about.
“That was different,” I said. Maybe my voice did not have as much conviction as I would have liked, because Dad replied, “Really?”
“Okay, Dad, let’s quit playing around. You tell me exactly what the hell is going on.”
“Not much to tell. She called and said she needed a change, and could she bunk in with me for a while? She promised she wouldn’t be any trouble and she would even take care of dinner for me.”
“She said what? She can’t cook.”
“I think she meant she would take over ordering out. And I said she had to get to school every day, do her homework—I would be checking—and all regular rules apply.”
“Yeah? Like no TV on school nights?’
“What?”
“That was your rule for me.”
“Well, I…times change…”
“Ha. Just as I thought. The real rules were only for me. You’ve always spoiled her. Do you know that? She doesn’t know it. But why? Why did she do it? Surely not because you would let her get away with murder? I’m not that godawful strict.”
“She said you would know and I should not tell you a word about it. It’s an easy promise to keep, because she didn’t tell me anything.”
“I’ll pick her up after school and get this straightened out. “
He sighed. “She did say one thing, loud and clear.”
He waited so long I had to say, “Come on, Dad. Give it up!”
“She’d like to not talk to you for a while.”
I slammed the phone down.
I could go over to my dad’s and drag her home. Perhaps in handcuffs. No.