Before I could respond, Sara Hilton arrived at the table, towed by three-year-old Hilary and four-year-old Nancy.
“Sara,” Jill said, brightening her mood, seemingly without effort. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before, but I’m thrilled about Ned winning his tenure appeal.” The year before, a powerful—and, now, deceased—member of the Executive Committee had sabotaged my departmental colleague’s tenure case. Ned Hilton had appealed to the College Tenure and Renewal Committee, and had, just this month, been granted his well-deserved tenure. He was still depressed, though—at least I thought so; his movements seemed listless, his lanky frame still slumped. In a profession where the granting of tenure is a mark of legitimacy, the initial denial seemed to have branded Ned a failure—in his own eyes, if in no one else’s.
But bubbly Sara more than made up for Ned’s gloom. “Thanks, Jill. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to get to stay here in Enfield. The girls and I love it—Girls, girls, no. Not so many. You may choose one dessert apiece. Hilary, I said one! That means o-n-e.” She tugged the three-year-old’s plump hand away from the tray of peanut butter fudge, and grinned at us. Then she turned back to her children. “Okay, Nancy, that’s it. If you take the chocolate-chip cookie, you can’t have blueberry pie.”
As she helped one small towhead pour a glass of milk, she added, laughing, “Irena and Greg have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.”
Jill tittered politely, then we moved away toward the edge of the yard where an old-fashioned park bench sat up against a fenced-in garden plot.
“Neither do I,” Jill groaned, sinking down on the bench. “Neither do I.” Her face was a study in tragedy.
I put an arm around her shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Jill. Really it will. If I could do it, you can.”
“Yeah, but you’re a grown-up.” She picked up a lemon square, began chewing.
“For Christ’s sake, Jill, I was nineteen when Amanda was born. You’re twenty-five. And you’ve got a means of support. You grow up damn fast when you’re a mother.”
“I’m not certain I want to grow up.” Jill chose a second lemon square. “I’m Generation X, you know,” she continued, sardonically. “We’re terrified of commitment.” She munched at the edge of the confection, then dropped it back on the plate. “I just remembered—too much sugar’s not good for the tadpole.” She set the plate down on the edge of the bench, picked up the cakes one at a time, and pitched them into the trees. “Something will eat them,” she said.
I shook my head at her. “Jill, you are something—something else.”
“Yeah, but just exactly what?”
We sat, silent for a moment or two, listening to Neil sing “Like a Hurricane.”
“Karen, can I confide in you?” In this secluded nook, we were out of sight of the rest of the party, and Jill seemed to feel safe speaking intimately. “I need some advice.”
“There’s more to confide?”
“Oh, yeah. You know, part of what attracted me to Gerry in the first place was his poetry, the pain in it. I thought I could help him, that I could make it better for him. I still do, if he’d let me. Oh, I get furious at him, but, then, sometimes I think all he really needs is someone to love him, to believe in him. And, then, other times I think it’s hopeless. That he’s incapable of commitment. Actually, I think he’s been seeing—” Jill broke off, swallowed hard, and continued on a different tack. “I told you he’s had a rough life?”
“Yeah?” And who hasn’t?
“Well, he was brought up poor, you know?”
“Yeah?” And who wasn’t?
“His parents were tenant farmers for Dr. Hart, and she was pretty good to the family. His father came from Czechoslovakia, but his mother was born right there on the Meadowbrook farm, so Dr. Hart knew her all her life. Mrs. Novak was like some kind of—well—family retainer, I guess. Anyhow, she—Edith Hart—paid Gerry’s way through college, right here at Enfield. And he did beautifully. Everyone expected great things from him. But, when his father died in the middle of Gerry’s senior year, he dropped out. He says he didn’t see any reason to get a degree if all he was going to do was run a farm and support his mother. Dr. Hart begged him to finish, told him she’d get someone else to run the farm. She’d send him to grad school. But Gerry didn’t want to take any more of her money. Said it was a matter of integrity—”
“But she did that for a lot of needy people,” I broke in, “—sent them to school, supported them as they began their professions.”
“Did she? Gerry didn’t tell me that. Maybe he doesn’t know he wasn’t the only one. Well—anyhow—he had a special reason for—what he did.…”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Breaching confidence didn’t come easily to Jill. A strand of bright hair had fallen down from her demure topknot; she chewed on it contemplatively as she considered what she was about to say.
“Don’t tell me this, Jill, if it’s going to be a problem for you.”
“Well, you’re the only one I can talk to, Karen. I think I’ll go crazy if I keep it to myself.” Jill took a shaky breath, then spoke very fast. “Gerry thinks the Novaks were not his real parents. He thinks he was adopted at birth. He thinks Edith Hart was his real mother, and that she gave him away so she could get on with her medical career without being bothered with him.”
“Jesus, Jill!” I was stunned. “Do you think that’s true?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. But he believes it. He’s got this humongous chip on his shoulder. He thinks he’s been deprived of his birthright—that’s what that poem was all about at the funeral. You’ve got to understand, nobody ever told Gerry this, and he’s got no proof. But he believes it. He says all his life there’s been this sense of some sort of family secret, and when his mother—his Novak mother, I mean—was dying, she started to ramble on about Gerry getting his birthright. What else could it be?”
She was crying softly now, and I shook the brownie crumbs out of my paper napkin and handed it to her.
“What really freaks me out, though, Karen,” she went on, “is that he seems to want to do the same thing to our child. Just walk away, and let me bring it up by myself.” She dabbed at her eyes.
My head was spinning with this news. A family secret. Another motive for murder. I blurted out, “Does Lieutenant Piotrowski know about this?”
Jill’s head shot up. “No! And you’re not going to tell him. Remember, Karen, this is all in confidence. I only told you because I wanted some advice on what to do. Should I stay with Gerry and try to make a family? Or should I simply assume he’s too damaged to ever be a real father?”
I stood up from the bench, wiping brownie crumbs off my blue-jeaned legs. One fat crumb stuck to my finger. I conveyed it to my mouth. Dump the jerk, I thought. “Jill, I don’t give people that kind of advice. All I can tell you is that I’ll help in whatever way I can. If you need a good obstetrician, I’ll give you my gynecologist’s name. If you need a labor coach, I’ll be there for you. If you need help shopping for baby supplies, I’ll come along. But I will not tell you whether or not you should spend the rest of your life with Gerry Novak. That decision is solely up to you. Do you love him?”
“Yes. No. I don’t kno-o-w. How does anybody know if they love somebody else? He sure does know how to make me wild—but maybe that’s not enough.”
“Maybe not.” I looked back to where the festive sounds were coming from. Was that Avery Mitchell’s laugh I heard? Someone had changed the music. Nina Simone was singing “Every Time We Say Good-bye.”
“Maybe I’d better call my parents. Let them know.”
“Maybe that’d be a good idea.”
Jill jumped up from the bench and threw her arms around me. “You’re such a good friend, Karen. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I hugged her back, and Misty, the yellow lab, came galumphing around the corner, followed by the Hilton girls. The children stopped when they saw us, Hilary with
a finger in her mouth, Nancy with her hands on her hips. The four-year-old stood watching Jill and me with our arms around each other.
“Are you the kind of ladies who marry each other?” Nancy demanded.
Jill broke into startled laughter. “Oh, honey, I wouldn’t be in this predicament if we were.”
We walked back to the group, arm in arm, and Jill said, with wonderment, “I just realized something. This baby’s going to be as real as that nutty little girl. This baby’s going to be a kid.”
“A little Jill,” I ventured.
“Or a little Jack,” she replied. She paused for a moment. “But not, I think, a little Gerry. No, not a Gerry.” Her tone was resolute. “I—we—won’t need that kind of turmoil in our lives.”
Good, I thought, breathing a little easier. Thank God.
Greg met us halfway to the house. His expression was puzzled. “Jill, there’s someone here looking for you. Tall blond guy? Frizzy hair?”
Jill’s face lit up. “Gerry,” she cried, and took off for the house on the run.
Fourteen
“Greg,” I said, “I got the weirdest e-mail this morning.” We were gossiping over coffee at the Blue Dolphin after having met at the college pool for a mid-morning swim.
“Yeah? Who from?”
“From whom, Greg.” Grading freshman compositions has ruined me for ordinary conversation.
“You English types …” Greg hates it when I get prissy about grammar. “I got my meaning across, didn’t I?”
I ignored him. “You ever hear of Earl Wiggett?”
“Wiggett?” Greg’s eyes narrowed as he consulted the data banks of his amazing brain; Greg never forgets an iota of information. “Wiggett? Wiggett? Oh, yeah. Isn’t he the guy who found that Louisa May Alcott manuscript? The Duke’s Dastardly Deeds or something?”
“The Duke’s Daughter, yeah. And he sold it to a commercial publisher for what’s euphemistically called seven figures.”
Greg whistled through his teeth. “Good for Wiggett. You have a lead on an Alcott manuscript?” He beckoned to the waitress for a refill on his coffee. The Blue Dolphin makes great coffee.
“I wish.” I held out my ceramic mug for another shot, then I slid a printout of Wiggett’s e-mail across the table top. “Take a look at this, will you? Tell me what you think.”
Greg read it out loud:
“Professor Pelletier: I am making so bold as to remember myself to you via this electronic medium. I have been a great admirer of your work on women writers. As I will be in Enfield the first week in June to do some research into the life and work of Mrs. Serena Northbury, I would much appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and discuss our joint project of recovering the treasures of the past. Earl Wiggett ([email protected])”
“Joint project?” Greg inquired. “You working on something with this guy?”
“No! I mean, I’ve met him. And I was actually talking about him recently—to Edith Hart. But I don’t really know him. And suddenly we’re engaged in a ‘joint’ endeavor? I have no idea what to think.”
“Well, he admires your work. You should be flattered.”
“No, that’s not it. Not with Wiggett. He’s not really a scholar. As a matter of fact, his university e-mail address surprised me; I had no idea he had any academic affiliation. He calls himself a ‘literary gumshoe.’ I dug out the business card he gave me a couple of years ago, and it actually says that: Earl Wiggett, Literary Gumshoe. He searches through archives and attics for manuscripts that well-known authors—you know, Alcott, Poe, Hemingway, Twain—either discarded or lost interest in—for the most part, with good reason. Then he tries to peddle them to commercial presses as sensational new literary finds. He’s in it for the money.”
“So? There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? What’s the problem?”
“It’s just that the ‘treasures of the past’ part’s got me nervous. Most literary ‘sleuths’ work at uncovering lost material because of a genuine love for the past; that’s how a number of the Alcott works have been found. But Wiggett’s different. I’ve always thought of him as some kind of a literary bottom-feeder, out to devour whatever crumbs he can find.”
“Seven figures—that’s a pretty big crumb.”
“Yeah, it is. And for the most part the things he finds aren’t really lost manuscripts; scholars have known about them, but didn’t think they had much literary or historical value. But now Wiggett’s operating at the margins of the whole new literary recovery thing—”
“You going to start trashing the DWM’s again?”
“Greg!” In the academy, the term Dead White Males has become such a cliché for what used to be called “major” authors that people jokingly use the acronym alone. “Get serious.”
Even though Greg’s an anthropologist, he knows a lot about what’s going on in American literary scholarship right now. When minority scholars and women scholars first entered the academy in the 1970’s and 80’s, their research began to uncover fascinating books, stories, and poems from the past that earlier academics had either ignored or even ridiculed. These were texts by, for the most part, (surprise, surprise), women and minority writers. And, because of this research, many of those “lost” works have gotten reprinted and are now available for reading and teaching. So, in the 1990’s, American literature courses are much livelier than they used to be. Instead of being restricted to the sober musings of Emerson and Thoreau, you can also read the comic novels of Emma Southworth and Fanny Fern. Instead of getting only the fictional Huck Finn’s story of freeing the slave Jim, you now can read both Frederick Douglass’s and Harriet Jacobs’s true accounts of freeing themselves from slavery. And now the lusty imaginings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin, Elizabeth Stoddard, can spice up discussion of The Scarlet Letter. It’s not that professors have dumped the DWM’s; it’s just that the DWM’s have a lot more company now.
“So,” Greg asked, handing me back the printout, “what’s got you ‘nervous’?”
“Remember I told you about that manuscript?”
“The Northbury novel manuscript?”
“The one I thought might be publishable? Well, the problem is—it’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“The cops found only a few pages after Edith died. And—”
“And you think Wiggett might be after that?”
“Do you think I’m paranoid? How would he even know about it? Unless …” I thought for a moment. “Well, maybe somebody got in touch with him. Maybe Gerry Novak. He was there when we found the manuscript.”
“Novak? Really? Anyone else?”
“Well, Will Thorpe, but he’d never—”
“I thought you always said there was no money in academic reprints, anyhow.”
“Not much—at least not the kind of money Wiggett’s interested in. So it’s silly to worry, but—”
“But you’re going to keep an eye on this guy. Right?”
“Right.” We sat in silence for a few seconds. Greg finished his coffee and set the fat ceramic mug on the table with a clunk.
“Karen?” Greg’s expression had turned uncharacteristically serious—and a little tentative.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something I want to talk to you about, but I’m afraid you’ll bite my head off.” He rubbed a hand over his dark beard.
“Jeez, Greg. We’re pals. You can tell me anything.” Greg’s reticence surprised me; he generally has no problem saying what he thinks.
“Yeah? You sure?” He chewed his bottom lip. “Okay, here goes. It’s about Avery Mitchell.” Greg took a deep breath. “The other night at my house, I saw how you looked at him—”
“Greg!” My face was suddenly hot enough to glaze fine china.
“I told you you’d snap at me! But, listen, just let me say this, and then I’ll shut up. Avery’s an attractive man, and he’s lonely, but there’s a hitch—”
“Greg, I don’t want—”
He plowed on. �
��I know Liz was gone before you came to Enfield, so you never knew what they were like together. When she left Avery, we all thought he was going to fall apart, but he pulled himself together and got on with his life. But, you know, Karen, Avery never really got over Liz. It’s obvious he finds you, ah, interesting, but you should watch out. He’s the president, you’re untenured—I know you understand the complications. But the main problem is—Avery’s not really free. Oh, he’s divorced, but his heart isn’t divorced, not completely, if you know what I mean.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, Greg.” My face was still burning. “And even if I did …” I paused to pull myself together “… it’s none of your goddamn business anyhow!”
“Uh-huh,” he said, “uh-huh. Got it.” Then he hesitated. “Karen … we still friends?”
I mopped my forehead with a paper napkin. Thank God we were sitting in a back booth where no one but Greg could see my red face. “Of course,” I replied, with an attempt to recoup some dignity. “Of course. And I thank you for your concern. But there’s really no problem.” I stuffed the napkin into my empty mug and changed the subject. “So, tell me—how’s Irena? She looked great the other night, positively glowing.”
Greg gave me an empathetic smile. “She’s really good.” Then he winked. “So—what do you think about Lucy and Maud? As names?”
“How about Hester? And Prynne?”
“Don’t be such a wiseass.”
“How about Wise? And—”
“Karen!”
The interview room was as gloomy green as the last time I’d entered it, but the welcome was a good deal warmer. That may have been because Sergeant Schultz was busy on another case, and Piotrowski met me there by himself. He wore a suit, not the gray elephantine suit of the previous year, but one in blue that fit rather nicely. This time his Save the Children tie was scarlet, with yellow and blue drawings of kids. He looked neat and fit, in spite of his bulk; he looked like a man who didn’t think badly of himself.
The Northbury Papers Page 14