A Student of Living Things

by Susan Richards Shreve

  “Thank God the FBI left,” I said. “I hated what they said about Steven.”

  “That he didn’t have close friends? He didn’t. Just girlfriends and admirers.”

  She reached into the closet, took out the suitcase she had left there and opened it.

  “I’m wearing your clothes,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You can have all of them if you’d like,” she said, an edge of irritation in her voice.

  She wrapped her arms around her chest.

  “I wish you weren’t so pleasant, Claire. You’re always so pleasant,” she said. “Be difficult. Everyone else is difficult.”

  I sat down on the edge of Steven’s bed, taking off my glasses so Lisha was a satisfying blur.

  “What you should say to me is, ‘I like these clothes, Lisha, and I’m going to be wearing them from now on.’ ” Her pretty face was scrunched into a cartoon. “It drove Steven crazy that you are such a—” She stopped, dumped the clothes from the suitcase on the bed and closed it.

  “Such a what?”

  “Such a little girl.”

  The telephone rang before I had a chance to respond.

  That little girl is dead, is what I could have said, except Julia came into the room to say that the call was for me.

  3

  Victor’s voice had the hollow, tinny sound of an older woman’s, so I hesitated when he asked me to meet him at Union Station in forty-five minutes, in front of the fountain at the main entrance.

  “I’m at a pay phone in the Metro,” he said. “My phone’s out.”

  “I know,” I said. “I called.”

  “Disconnected. I’ve moved. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

  My mother was putting dinner on the table when I hung up.

  “The broccoli’s mush.” She dumped it in a bowl. “I cooked it too long.”

  I took a stalk and dipped it in salt.

  “It tastes fine.”

  “Salty.” She turned to look at me. “I heard you say ‘Victor.’ ”

  “He’s a friend from school,” I lied, checking the hook next to the back door where we kept the car keys. “He’s helping me get through finals, since I missed so much time.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “You wouldn’t. There’s nothing to say, except he’s a good student and helps me out.”

  She raised her eyebrows, dissatisfied with my explanation. “Faith’s coming home late, so we’re eating without her.”

  “Without me, too,” I said quickly.

  She looked up from the cutting board where she was slicing chicken. “You haven’t eaten.”

  “I’m going to GW to study.”

  “With this person? This Victor?”

  I picked up my book bag, slipped the keys to Steven’s Toyota into the pocket of my skirt and went out the back door.

  “I’ll be back by midnight,” I called.

  “Midnight,” Julia repeated. “How are you getting downtown?”

  “Driving.”

  “You don’t drive,” she said, sinking into a chair, her head in her hand.

  “I drive,” I said.

  My father met up with me on his way in from the hangar.

  “So I see Milo got his piano in spite of my request,” he said.

  “It’s a small piano. You’ll learn to like it,” I said, hooking my arm through his. “Do you mind if I take Steven’s car to study at GW?”

  “You’ll drive alone?”

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I don’t mind, of course.” He reached out and touched my hair. “But you haven’t driven at all since April. Does this mean you’re feeling stronger?”

  “Stronger? Yes, I suppose I’m feeling stronger.”

  “I’m glad. I’m very glad. We must . . .”

  He didn’t go on, but I could feel him watching me as I crossed the lawn.

  It was almost dark, late spring, the days lengthening, and I climbed into the front seat of the car, turned the key in the ignition, switched on the lights and backed out.

  Mr. Denver, whose interest in our family’s tragedy had not diminished, was on his front lawn checking his garden. He waved at me, and I opened the window.

  “Any luck?” he called.

  “Luck?”

  “Any good luck finding the criminal?” He gave me a complicit smile, and I wanted to kill him.

  It occurred to me that I could turn left, go over the curb and run Mr. Denver down in his own front yard. I had a picture in my mind of the event.

  Mr. Denver would be lying on his back, dead on impact with Steven’s Toyota. I would back out, drive in the direction of Washington, and someplace around Massachusetts Avenue and Sheridan Circle the police would stop me to ask if I had information that might lead to the hit-and-run driver who killed Mr. Denver.

  I would say, “It was me.” Or “It was I.” I’ve always had trouble with grammar. And the policeman would thank me and wave me on my way.

  I pulled out of the driveway and headed in the direction of River Road, my eyes fixed straight ahead, then turned onto River Road, right on Wisconsin, left at the arrow onto Massachusetts. I was almost downtown before I realized that I had actually been driving a car for the first time since Steven died.

  Killing Mr. Denver had occupied that much of my time.

  Victor was pacing by the fountain when I arrived. He got into the passenger seat, closed the door, folded his arms tight across his chest.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “To the movies,” he said.

  “What movie?” I asked.

  “Any movie,” he said. “I don’t care.”

  He was agitated, his feet tapping, his head turning this way and that, nervous about going out with me, but I wasn’t necessarily surprised or even on guard. I liked that he seemed to be a complicated man. It made me feel interesting.

  I drove up the ramp to the open deck, with a view of Washington spread out around us like a toy city. The parking lot was dimly lit, the deck empty of people, silent so far above the city.

  Walking beside Victor, I swung my arms back and forth, hoping my hand would intersect with his. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the evening, but I expected something, was ready for whatever happened, physically stronger, my flesh in the process of hardening.

  As we got on the escalator, our hands did meet palm to palm, and he slid his into the pockets of his trousers and kept them there.

  There were six films playing at the Union Station multiplex and we stood for awhile, early for the films, looking at the selection.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I want some french fries,” he said, and so we sat on high stools in the food court on the lower level of Union Station next to the cinemas, eating french fries and drinking beer.

  He asked what had been going on, and I told him about the FBI and the findings from the autopsy.

  “So do they think it was one gunman or more?” he asked, lighting up with interest.

  “One shot, but they didn’t say. Only that the gun was fired from a small room with a window looking up at the library steps.”

  “That’s odd,” Victor said, but he was distracted, his eyes traveling the mall.

  “Odd?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Odd that they think his death was intentional?”

  “I’m sure it was intentional. I’m just surprised that whoever did it was copying Lee Harvey Oswald. Remember? Risky, you know. Right next to the university library. All those students. So close he could have been caught.”

  “You think it was Benjamin Reed.”

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t know. I only know as much as I told you.”

  “But we’ll find out, yes?”

  “I think we will.”

  We went into the nine o’clock showing of a movie called Rose.

  “Do you know what it’s about?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replie
d. “I like anything Maya Flora is in.”

  The movie was about a convent in Brazil, and I don’t remember it at all, so perhaps I fell asleep, but when the credits started to roll, Victor got up to leave without even looking at me, as if he were sleep-walking, lost in thought, disappearing into the departing crowd.

  I got stuck behind a group of people who moved slowly up the aisle, and by the time I came into the food court outside the theater, he was already on the escalator.

  “Hey,” I said, catching up.

  “I thought you were right behind me,” he said. He checked his watch.

  “It’s not so late,” I said.

  I had thought we would go to a bar after the movie, or get ice cream and coffee, maybe stop by his new place.

  “I’ve got to head home,” he said.

  “Where is that?”

  “I’ve got a place near the station.”

  “We can have a drink in one of the bars upstairs in the station.”

  “I’ve got work to do for DTT,” he said when we’d reached the top of the escalator and the exit to North Capitol Street.

  “Maybe you could walk me to my car.” I wondered if something had gone wrong, something I had done. “The roof deck is creepy in the dark.”

  I was beginning to feel as if we’d just met and there was nothing between us. That I’d mistaken his intentions and he hadn’t asked me to meet him at the movie theater with any intentions beyond the movie, although surely there’d been expectation in his voice.

  Or was it me with expectations? I wondered. And this desire for Victor Duarte was my longing, not Victor’s, and only tangled in Steven’s death. How did a woman know the origin of particular attraction, or did it matter? I understood so little of the world.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s risky at night on the roof deck. Not enough light.”

  He followed me up the next escalator and the next until we had reached the roof parking deck.

  Inside the car he fiddled with the dial until he found a music station and then turned it off.

  “I’m a little nervous,” he said. “I’m like that sometimes, and I’ve got a lot going on, stuff with my job. Since I started working with DTT, I have a double life. You understand?”

  “I don’t.”

  “By day I’m an engineer and spend my lunch hour in the library reading law, and by night I’m like a detective.”

  It was cold and dark in the garage, and I drew my shoulders in, shivering.

  “Steven had enemies,” he was saying. “He could upset people. You know that. It’s why we’re pursuing Benjamin Reed.”

  “I do know he had enemies.”

  I waited until he was settled in the passenger seat.

  “Will you give me your new telephone number before I let you off?” I asked.

  “I’m using a cell phone instead of a landline in my new place,” he said.

  “But I can call you on that number?”

  “I’ll call you in a few days to check what you’ve heard from Benjamin.”

  “A few days?”

  “I’m very busy, Claire.”

  “I thought we were partners.”

  I felt as if something inevitable that had been in the process of happening between us was dissolving.

  “We are partners, but I work in the field like a plumber. I’m never at the office.”

  We were headed down the parking ramp.

  “You’re still interested in our mission together, aren’t you?” I was tentative.

  “It means the world to me,” he said and to my surprise, his voice was suddenly full of emotion.

  I believed him and was physically relieved. Just a slip of misunderstanding between us, I thought. Nothing to worry over.

  He opened the door and got out at the corner of North Capitol, waving his hand for me to wait, leaning into the open passenger window.

  “I was thinking something tonight while we were watching the movie.”

  His face was close enough to mine for me to feel his breath.

  “I was wondering, what have you done with Steven’s clothes?”

  “Nothing. They’re still in his closet,” I said. “We’ve done nothing yet.”

  “It’s too soon,” he said. “I know it’s too soon, but when you’re ready, I’d like to have something of his.”

  “Like clothes? Or something else?”

  “Like clothes,” he said. “Something tangible.”

  It was a sweet request, and the intimacy of it made up for his distance that evening.

  “Of course,” I replied, moved to think of him wearing Steven’s clothes, wanting to wear them. “You and Steven must have been very good friends.”

  “We were, and you can call me V,” he said. “It’s what your brother called me.”

  And then he raised his hand in a gesture like benediction, and I watched him walk down Massachusetts Avenue, turn right and disappear into the darkness.

  4

  When I got home after midnight, the Web site for DTT was up on Steven’s computer.

  “Check this out. J,” my mother had written on a yellow sticky she’d stuck to the screen.

  I scrolled down the index.

  There was a category for membership in the column on the left of the Web page. I opened it and typed in Steven Frayn. His name wasn’t listed among the members.

  This didn’t surprise me. Steven had never joined groups, even in high school when everyone we knew belonged to something. It wasn’t in our “family character,” according to my father, who liked to think such a thing as collective family character existed.

  What did surprise me was that Victor Duarte wasn’t included among the list of members.

  Under “General Information,” I found my brother.

  There were four of his articles from the Washington Post and the Law Review at George Washington University, all pieces related to the recent treatment of immigrants, including the last piece on the Freedom Act that had appeared in the Post the day he died. His obituary in the Post was there, the notice in the news section of the New York Times and a couple of investigative stories that had appeared in various newspapers. There were letters posted by people all over the country—mostly members of DTT, but others as well, especially students.

  I was reading the letters and didn’t hear the knock at my door or my mother walk in without waiting for me to answer. She was dressed for the day, although it was just after three in the morning.

  “You got home late,” she said.

  “Twelve forty-nine. I checked the clock.”

  She leaned over my chair, reading what was on the screen. “Never mind. Stay out all night. It’s your life.”

  I pulled my chair away from the desk so she could have a clear view. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To work.”

  “Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Soon enough,” she said.

  “Did you go to bed at all tonight?”

  “I waited for you, and then I had some things to do.” She straightened and walked across the room, closing the door to Steven’s closet, where I’d been going through his clothes. “Steven’s not on the membership list. Did you notice?”

  “I noticed.”

  “I read those letters, too,” she said, indicating the entries I’d been reading. “He was a hero.”

  “I guess he was.”

  “I doubt they’re going to find out who killed him. That’s my opinion. They’ll look around for a while and find nothing.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “After the FBI left, I told your father there’s not a chance.”

  “And what did he say?” I asked.

  “He said to wait. ‘Wait’ is your father’s favorite word.” She picked up a photograph of Lisha on Steven’s bureau and turned it facedown. “We’re going to give the FBI this long list of people Steven has known, none of them significant as suspects, and a couple of years from now they’ll conclu
de that it was an accident or the bullet was intended for someone else. I can’t think about it.”

  “They said it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Of course it wasn’t, but no one’s going to find that out, I promise. No one will find the killer.”

  I wanted to tell her about Benjamin Reed. I wanted to say that with Victor’s help I was in the process of discovering who had killed Steven, so she’d know there was a chance for retribution.

  Something in the lateness of the night, the two of us together, wakeful conspirators, while everyone in the house was sleeping, encouraged me. A matter of pride to say I knew.

  But I said nothing.

  “Does it matter if they find him?” Julia sat down on the edge of Steven’s bed. “Does it matter to you?”

  “It matters if we find out it wasn’t an accident. That matters very much.” My face was suddenly hot with rising anger.

  “Your father favors enemies, too.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a piece of sketching paper. “I’m designing a glass for Steven.”

  She handed me the design, and under the light on Steven’s desk it looked like a treble clef in cerulean blue. An S with an upside-down F within the half circles.

  “On clear glass,” Julia said. “Can you tell what it says?”

  “S.F.,” I said.

  “Should I include a note with the glasses when people buy them? Something like ‘In memory of Steven Frayn’?”

  “I’d let them think it’s a treble clef.”

  She put the sketch back in her pocket and headed toward the door on her way out of the room.

  And then she hesitated.

  “Something’s going on with you, isn’t it, Claire?” Her arms were folded across her chest, pulling her broad shoulders close together, a smaller woman than I always thought of her, and I wished that I could be comfortable with some gesture of affection, but I could not.

  There was too much sadness between us.

  “Something’s going on with all of us, Mama,” I said.

  At the computer I searched DTT for Victor Duarte again.

  I tried V. Duarte. Nothing.