“Let’s look at it from another angle. Why do you think Charlotte Brontë chose to have a tree crack in half just then? On the eve, more or less, of Jane’s marriage to Mr. Rochester?”
“Miss Pepper! Miss Pepper!” A hand and wrist crisscrossed with silver and black leather straps waved wildly. I hoped those disdainful women were properly impressed. Look at the intellectual excitement of a Philly Prep classroom.
God bless Caralee Mintz. She pushed back a lock of striped hair—peacock blue and platinum this week. Caralee was always a visual treat. She intended to be a feminist designer, she’d told me, and she wore her works in progress to class. Her latest “line” was formal attire, hence today’s tulle combined with recycled plastic, tin, and grommets. She clunked and bristled as she waved her hand.
It was her newly discovered and rather rabid feminism, not her design concepts, that could be a pain, but at least she showed actual academic eagerness. “Yes?” I asked, waiting for her take on the split tree.
“Why’s she call him Mister all the time if they’re getting married? She’s Jane, he’s Mister. Why is that? What’s his first name? Why doesn’t she use it?”
Damn. Inquiring minds want to know on the wrong day. “Good question,” I said, “but weren’t we…about the tree? The split tree?” I had no idea what Rochester’s first name was. I wasn’t sure I ever had. More appallingly, I had never cared.
“I think this is important,” Caralee grumbled. “This is about equality. See? They’re getting married, but he’s still, like, the master. Mister! She’s like his kid or his servant. Jane!”
“It’s an interesting point, a valid point. Even if that was the practice of the time, it still reflects a basic inequality, and you’re correct. But back to that tree…” A silence long enough to make me wonder whether they might actually dislike me. And then from the edge of the room came a male voice heavy with scorn. “We aren’t talking symbolism here, are we?”
I ignored the edge of contempt. “Perhaps,” I said. “Or foreshadowing. Remember what that was?” Come on, team! Show those ladies we learn stuff here—and what the hell was Rochester’s first name?
A few nods, a frightening spot of dead air, and then a volunteer to talk grudgingly about setting a mood, hinting at what’s ahead. As for me, I wished that life as clearly foreshadowed coming events.
Maybe it did. The burning effigy the night of the fund-raiser now felt as clear a signal as a blinking light. But too much clutter and junk made the picture over-full and confusing without a friendly author highlighting which piece of the puzzle was the important one. The trouble with life was that you never knew if something was significant or irrelevant until it was all over.
While these thoughts drifted by, I pedagogically pulled teeth, all the while demonstrating mine in a big smile for the visiting critics, whose numbers waned and waxed, giving me repeated anxiety attacks throughout the hour. “What feeling does the splitting of the tree give you?” I wanted to go home, to lie down and not think. “What mood does it create?”
Somebody finally said “sad.” Not eloquent, not even exactly on the mark, but we ran with it until we reached the glimmer of the idea that something bad was ahead, something as yet unseen.
“Those cries Jane hears,” one bright young thing suggested.
“So the tree, which is originally one thing, the way, perhaps, a married couple is supposed to be…” Come on, I’m doing all the work! But zilch was happening on their faces, in their brains. “…supposed to be the way Jane and Mr. Rochester will be once they are joined in the near future—or should be, splits in—”
“I got it! It splits! Like marriages do. Hey! Cool.”
“And Charlotte Brontë was foreshadowing what?”
They waited, expectantly.
“The secret?” I prompted. Oh, please, they were supposed to have read past Rochester’s secret by last week, but I’d never had a chance to check. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead—though I don’t know why not—but could I spare an ill thought for the educational effects of the dead’s tactics? This less than stellar performance was Harvey Spiers’ fault. “Mr. Rochester’s secret,” I said, hoping that my sense that whole seasons had just passed was not accurate.
There was a general aura of recognition, including nods. And eventually, a discussion about what it might do to a person to carry an important secret about themselves around for a long time. “If you pretend to be other than you are,” I asked, “are you then truly that something else? Are all lies wrong? Is it the same with secrets? Does secrecy poison the air around you?”
It was sufficiently interesting to even make Caralee forget the issue of Mr. Rochester’s missing first name. Or perhaps her creative mind was absorbed elsewhere, designing fiberglass frocks.
The morning staggered on, one yoctosecond at a time. For those not overly familiar with yoctos, Alex Fry had informed me that they are the smallest designated unit of time. Think of a decimal point, then twenty-three zeros, and then a one. Think how infinitesimal that sliver of existence is, then think of one yocto placed with deliberation next to another, on and on with numbing repetition, and you’ll have a hint of my morning.
Afternoon, too. The misery didn’t stop at noon. Parents came and went and I performed, pushing the boulder of student inertia up the hill. We never spoke of murder or mayhem or civil disobedience or freedom of speech. Mark Twain’s quote—still on the board—was the only hint that anything controversial might have happened. The events and passions of the week were our secret, our madwoman in the attic. I found the weight of it exhausting. By the end of the day, I barely had the energy to move my limbs down the stairs and out to my car. I don’t know how actors and actresses keep up their strength to perform over and over, but at least they get more money than I do, and sometimes, a bouquet at the end.
*
I approached my overlarge, overempty building unwillingly, dawdling outside, pondering where else I could go, what I possibly needed to buy, whom I knew who’d be at loose ends on a Friday eve. My status was vague and less than a good fit—not exactly single, but still alone.
It was First Friday, the monthly official ramble through gallery options in Old City. My turf. A few smartly dressed folk already wandered my streets, peering into windows, deciding on dinner first or after. Their numbers would increase as the nine-to-fivers concluded their work week and the suburbanites commuted in.
Maybe it was time to stop behaving as if one of my limbs had been amputated just because Mackenzie was away. Instead, I’d treat myself to a night on the town and see what was happening in the art world.
I went upstairs to drop off my briefcase and wash my face, calling greetings to Macavity, who clearly considered me the second-best possible returnee home. I wondered how he felt about being alone in this vastness all day. But since he slept through the alone time, maybe he hadn’t noticed what, to me, was a space with the disquieting ability to grow and dwarf a solo occupant. Semi-empty, it became a warehouse once again, with no inventory besides me, and I took on the properties of a piece of stored merchandise, which is to say, a lump.
That era had to end, now.
But before I could get on with my new self and my evening sojourn, I had to respond to the enticing summons of the blinking answering machine. Somebody wanted me. More than one somebody.
Unfortunately, the first somebody was my mother. It was amazing how the sound of her voice reversed the problem of feeling adrift in a too-large space. Instead, I felt smothered in a feather comforter wrapped over me with the best of intentions, but nonetheless suffocating.
I had to warn long-distance providers to stop sending her special offers that allowed her to reach out and molest me.
At least she’d dropped the insane idea of my hiring an investigator. Now she wondered if I’d heard about a new bestseller that provided women with rules—a few of which she mentioned pointedly—on how to capture a man. I’d already broken all the ones she mentioned.
Neddy Roederer assumed I’d have told the truth about something as basic as my escort’s first name. Silly, trusting man.
Why did Neddy want to talk to him? The message didn’t clarify anything. “…and if you have the time at all in the near future, I would profoundly appreciate it. Sorry to bother you, but you’re the first member of the police force I’ve ever met socially, so I’m afraid I am taking liberties. But I would like to consider any man who admires books as much as you do my immediate friend. If you could call me at my club, I’d appreciate it. If I’m not there, leave a message. The number is…”
What was that about? I was about to phone Mackenzie, leave a message at his hotel, if he was still there, to call Neddy, then immediately call me. Then I remembered that Neddy was away, scouting schools and impossible to reach.
So the long and short of it was that nobody—except Mom—wanted me. I could go out with a clear conscience.
Monday, my students would be allowed to write again, and we could explore the subject of secrets. I wondered if anyone else would find the topic as interesting as I did. I thought the internal pressure of secret-keeping would bend your bones and cripple you. Maybe Rochester was once a jolly party animal, now curdled and remote because his insane wife weighed on him like ten times Quasimodo’s hump.
And then, of course, there were the victims the secret-keeper created, intentionally or not. Like Jane.
But that was for Monday, two days away. Meantime, I accepted this gift of guilt-free, papers-to-mark-free, man-free time as a boon. I’d do precisely and only as I alone chose to.
I was almost out the door when the phone rang—my faraway beloved. Frankly, his conversation did not meet the level of entertainment I expected from the evening. He had a lot on his mind, all of it revolving around “damned bureaucracies,” “damned lawyers,” and “damned incompetence.” I assumed this was code for “I’m not there now and I am definitely not happy about it because I love you and miss you.”
Finally out of steam, he halfheartedly asked about my day. But as I tried to bring its convoluted tediousness to life, I heard the miles between us, felt each syllable I uttered squeeze through the phone wires and expire unattractively at the other end. He had the Away Syndrome.
I learned about this affliction during a now-and-then (and finally never) thing with a consultant who was forever leaving town.
Basically, those suffering from the Away Syndrome confuse motion with advancement. Mackenzie, for example, suffered under the illusion that because he had relocated his butt to Kansas, he had moved on, evolved, while I was still mired in the same old same old. Stuck in the same place.
Luckily, Mackenzie and I didn’t have to contend with the Syndrome often, so I didn’t try to deal with his patronizing attitude or shortsightedness. To return home is to be cured.
I abandoned my spiel. Mackenzie didn’t notice.
“Incidentally,” I said, “I reread Jake’s article yesterday and something dawned on me. That Cheshire Cat guy—the embezzler?—his name, or alias for the job, was Chester Katt. He disappeared.”
“Yes?” he said with insufficient interest.
“Chester with a C and Katt with a K. Disappeared from Canada right around the time you with the same initials pop up in this city. You care to explain?”
“You got me, clever girl. And probably you’ve already found the bags of money under the mattress.”
“While I’m on the line with a member of the Association of Missing First Names,” I said, “do you happen to know a fellow member’s? That’d be Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre’s honey. He doesn’t even have initials.”
He didn’t know Rochester’s name. And he politely, but palpably, wanted out of the conversation. I had pity on him and we ended the brief call and said good-night.
While we’d been talking, I thought I’d heard taps on the roof. Did I need an umbrella? Or had it been squirrels?
I went to the window to check the sidewalk.
No rain.
But in lieu of precipitation—the breath stopped in my throat: him. There. Again. A round man in a Russian hat. Not the product of nerves, but there across the street. Lurking. Stalking. Waiting. For me.
Eleven
Taking deep breaths, I gingerly stepped back from the window. Okay, I said to myself, okay now, okay. But it wasn’t okay. How had I forgotten to watch for him? Nothing was okay. There’d been terrorism, blackmail, murder, tentacles reaching ever outward. This.
Okay, I nonetheless said again. Okay, okay. He hadn’t done anything frightening. Hadn’t tried to contact me, let alone hurt me. Not today, not earlier. He was just…there. What did he want with me?
I stood in place, not moving a muscle, as if he could see through walls, then I took a deep breath and lifted the shade again.
Still there.
And that was that. I did not enjoy victimhood or fear and trembling. Not from over-lofty lofts and not from a stranger in a Russian hat. I grabbed my coat and keys and change purse, the latter for no reason I could think of, except the habit of taking mad money before leaving home—one of my mother’s basic laws—persisted. And God knew I was mad.
Once downstairs, I opened the door to the street slowly, giving the lurker time. And when I was out on the pavement, he was, to my odd satisfaction, back in a doorway, hiding in the shadows.
I walked until I was directly across from the spot where he was trying for invisibility. I checked my surroundings in the dusk and saw enough gallery- and restaurant-goers to suggest safety in numbers. These were Philadelphians, after all. They would respond to a neighbor in trouble. I stepped off the curb, pointed, and shouted at the top of my lungs.
“You! What are you doing, lurking outside my place day after day? You stalking me?”
He tried to merge with the paint on the doorway.
“Answer me!” I screamed. A few people slowed their pace and eyed me warily, wondering whether they were witnessing a mundane urban drama, a future episode of Unsolved Mysteries—or just another street person off her meds.
They gave me further courage—or fed my insanity. “You!” I shouted.
“Lady?” a passerby asked tentatively. His date shushed him, told him to leave me alone, and they walked along more quickly.
I was too far gone to quit. “Come out of the shadows and answer me!” I screamed.
To my great surprise, the man in the Russian hat complied. Slowly, his head bowed—hangdog, actually—he walked across the pavement, looked both ways and then crossed the street onto my sidewalk, where he faced me in a semi-cringe.
He didn’t look capable of passing Intimidation 101. But you never know. I’ve seen pictures of serial killers who looked just as repressed and terrified as this man. In fact, that very lack of social graces is why they resort to stalking and stealth. “I’m sick of this!” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Shh.”
What kind of response was that?
His glance flitted from left to right, and his single eyebrow crinkled even more tensely in the center. “Please,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Not upset me? With you at school and here, too, watching me? Not upset me? I’ve called the police!”
“Oh, please, no. Oh, God, no. Can you call them off?”
“I’m sick of the Moral Ecologists—of people thinking they know it all!” I felt myself reach the far border of self-control. This was it: the one thing too many.
“Huh?” he said. “Listen, please call off the police. They’d ruin everything. It was supposed to be a simple job, and if I botched it and your mother finds out—”
“My mother?”
He looked clinically depressed as he nodded. I could barely breathe and definitely couldn’t think. He stood there, head bowed.
<
br /> But…a simple job, he’d said. Job. Now it was clear, if still unbelievable. He wasn’t a Moral Ecologist. “You’re—a detective, aren’t you?”
“Private investigator,” he said in his doleful voice. “Listen, could we go somewhere? The police…this is embarrassing. Professionally embarrassing.”
I couldn’t see the harm in a public place. Besides, I was suddenly aware of being hungry, so I nodded and pointed him toward the coffeehouse down the street. Restaurants would be crowded and require a whole meal. Easier and faster at this hour to follow the aromatic trail to warm safety.
The coffee-rich air fed my anger toward my mother. She still used freeze-dried granules to make coffee, so obviously she was capable of anything, including spying on her own daughter.
I had to confirm that. “My mother hired you, didn’t she?” I demanded, as we slipped into a booth.
He sighed and nodded. He also pulled off the Russian chapeau, revealing crinkled reddish hair.
“Why on earth put me under surveillance?”
“I wasn’t,” he said lamely.
“What do you call following me, watching me, waiting that way?”
He looked at his fingernails and sighed with heartfelt sorrow. “I was trying to watch your…the…Mackenzie.”
Relief of sorts. My mother hadn’t put me under surveillance.
“Supposed to note where he went, what he did when he left there,” the round-faced man said.
“He’s out of town,” I said. “Didn’t you notice that? And why my school? Why were you there?”
“I’m not sure, except…I can’t put police headquarters under surveillance, can I?”
I called over the waitress and ordered a double cappuccino and a ham sandwich. My tablemate, sounding frightened, said he’d have the same. When she left, I leaned forward and spoke softly. “I mean this kindly,” I said. “But somebody has to tell you. You’re not at all good at this sleuthing thing.”
“I know.” His hands were now in a prayerful position. “But it’s better than what I did before. It’s better than telemarketing. You can’t believe how mean people are on the phone.”
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