The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  “Can’t be,” I said. “Why would he con you?”

  “There’s the humiliating part. He’s a stupid con man. An inept, second-rate one who doesn’t do his homework if he goes after a woman who doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. I think he liked my place and generalized from it.”

  For some obscure legal or tax purpose, Sasha’s father had given her a condo during one of his frequent divorces. The walls around Sasha were those of a wealthy woman. Her wardrobe almost confirmed that. Like Tea Roederer’s, it was the eccentric garb of one who didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion. Only difference was, Tea found her togs at the couturiers and Sasha found hers in the Goodwill bin. Her life as a freelance photographer was hardscrabble.

  She finished her wine. “I think his plan was that my rich friends and I would put together a tidy sum for the foundation. He thought it was cute that I was a photographer. Obviously considered it a lark, a rich girl’s hobby. I realize all this, you understand, only after the fact.”

  “Are you perhaps leaping to conclusions?” Sasha was prone to professional gamblers, demolition derby drivers, flakes, and phonies. Dr. Wonderful had been her first appealing-sounding man in recent history. Maybe she was overreacting or picking at nits. “What makes you think he wasn’t for real?”

  “Mackenzie.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mackenzie found stuff out for me. After I got suspicious and asked him to. See, one night, we passed an accident, and Pete got agitated when I asked if he wasn’t going to stop and help. I thought that was what they did, had to do, in fact. But he couldn’t even look in the direction of the crash. Seemed ready to puke at the idea of blood, and it made me wonder about the medical degree and the work. India has to be worse than I-95. So I asked Mackenzie to find stuff out.”

  Mackenzie had researched somebody for her—had been a romantic detective, the sort my mother wanted to hire, and he hadn’t told me. Not a hint. I felt stranded outside the loop—all the loops—to the point of wanting to bawl. “He never said.”

  “I asked him not to.”

  Was that sufficient reason? Was it okay that he agreed?

  “He called me tonight. Right before I went out with Dr. Fake. I went anyway, thought maybe Peter and I could talk it through, find the explanation. You know, computer error. Somebody else with his name. Somebody who’d stolen his credit card and was committing felonies under his identity. You read things like that all the time. So we went to this place in South Philly. Had spaghetti with calamari and all was well. A Chianti Classico and much talk about India and the foundation and the grant deadline. Which is when I broached—gently, I swear—the things Mackenzie told me. Peter was perfectly charming, laughed at the idea of his being a fake, excused himself to go to the men’s room, and hasn’t been seen since. Except by a busboy who spotted him bolting out the back door into the alley.”

  She was in pain now, but she’d recuperate, and quickly. That was her talent and downfall as far as romance was concerned.

  “I wasn’t convinced for a long while,” she said. “I sat there like a stupid cow and finished my pasta. But upon due consideration, after I’d paid the bill, I decided his failure to reappear might mean that the three warrants out for his arrest were, in fact, true. Because of the other women he bilked.” Sasha’s voice was low and soft, but that didn’t mean it was calm. “Other fiancées. Did I tell you that he’d asked me to marry him? Probably not, because I was keeping it secret, going to surprise you with it.” She sighed deeply. “Surprise,” she said.

  “What a night. I can hardly believe it.” I poured us both more wine.

  “What?” she asked. “Something else?”

  I wanted to tell her about Detective Skippy, to match her story of a double life with mine. She knew my mother all the way back to when we were in high school, and my mother profoundly disapproved of high-risk, bad-girl Sasha.

  But I didn’t want to play I Can Top That with Sasha’s pain. Besides, my mother’s half truths hadn’t put me in jeopardy the way Dr. Wonderful’s had done to Sasha.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just… I’m sorry about him. He sounded so fine.”

  “The one I told you about was. Unfortunately, he was also imaginary.” She lifted her glass. “Let’s drink to the men we make up, even if there isn’t a chance in hell they really exist.”

  We drank to the creatures of our imagination, but also, at my suggestion, to another Peter, last name Schlemiel.

  “Who?”

  I told her Mackenzie’s story: how it turned out that Schlemiel needed his shadow to be accepted as a human, and how people who have no dark side are two-dimensional and false.

  She stood up. “You know,” she said, “that’s probably right. Wise, even. But it doesn’t make me feel one iota better. Let’s watch the late movie instead. And do you have chocolate in any form? Ice cream? Don’t bother with a plate. Just a spoon.”

  “Two spoons,” I said. And that’s how we spent the evening until we both realized that we had in fact fallen asleep on opposite ends of the sofa. I offered to put sheets on the sofa and make Sasha’s snooze official, but she yearned for the pleasures and miseries of home and left.

  *

  Having napped during the movie, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, exhausted as I was. With every passing minute, I grew more tense, even though the next day was Saturday, which meant I could sleep in as late as I liked.

  That thought must have finally relaxed me, because I was deeply into a mental filmstrip featuring my mother, Skippy, Dr. Wonderful, Mackenzie, and Mr. Rochester—all running hither and yon, wearing masks and saying “Shh!”—when the phone jolted me awake.

  “Miss Pepper?” The voice was male and unfinished.

  Jesus. A student. Was I late for class? Wait—it was dark—and it was Saturday. Or still Friday. “Who is this?”

  “Jake.” He cleared his throat. I had the oddest sensation he was fighting tears. “Jake Ulrich.” He whispered, as if hiding from someone.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Not really.”

  Of course he was not. Who would call his teacher when it was so dark if he were all right? I checked the clock. Four A.M.

  “I wouldn’t bother you at such a—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Miss Pepper? You’re the one call they’ll allow me. I need help. I’m in jail.”

  I held out the receiver and stared at it, because from fatigue or stupidity, I didn’t get or believe it. I thought it was an adolescent prank: get teach.

  And I felt awful. My head banged and throbbed from a lack of sleep and an overdose of whatever hormones doubt, anxiety, confusion, and too much chocolate produce.

  Then as I became more fully conscious, I realized what must have happened. Caroline Finney had gone to the police. She wouldn’t dawdle or debate or simply intend to do something the way I would. And with that dear old lady reporting her fears, the force of the law slammed down on the boy. I sat upright, ready for action. “Poor Jake,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll…”

  What? Did they really allow only one phone call? And if so—why me? He’d need bail. Big bail—for a murder case.

  Wait—did they grant bail for murder?

  What was the phone-called person supposed to do? They never showed that part in movies. They cut to her or him charging into the station, knowing what to do.

  And while we were on the subject—why me?

  “I need an adult to, um, claim me,” Jake said.

  “They’ll let you go? Where do people get bail? Do you need a lawyer?”

  “They said I needed a responsible adult. Nothing else.”

  “I never heard of that before. You’re amazingly calm, you realize that? Good for you, I’m impressed.” I was babbling noise, in lieu of real ideas, but I couldn’t slow myself down. “Okay, the police have you and will release you if—but should I be the one? What about—”

  “I can’t ask my mother. I mean literally
. I tried. Twice. She’s not answering the phone, and she turned off the machine, so they didn’t count that as a call and I got to phone you. Shouldn’t I have?”

  “Oh, no, sure, no problem.” An optimistic alien presence was speaking through my mouth, because I had more sense than to reassure a student that he could call me at four A.M. from jail. “Sure,” the alien said again. “It’s okay. Just tell me once again—you’re where?”

  “In jail. Gee, I’m sorry—were you sleeping?”

  Duh. “What jail?”

  “Radnor.”

  Spiers had been murdered in Radnor. You probably had to be locked up where the crime happened, so the police had dragged Jake out there.

  Then why had he needed to call his mother? Why hadn’t she gone with him to the station?

  “That’s where the party was,” Jake said.

  “Excuse me?” What were we talking about?

  “Griffin’s party. We thought you knew, heard us at school Thursday. I was trying to stop him, thought he was in enough trouble already. He should have listened.”

  “I’m sorry, I must have missed…what does a party have to do with jail?”

  “The police arrested everybody. Like three hundred kids. But Griffin and me, we weren’t even there.”

  “Of course not. I’m surprised anyone would think you’d leave your mother to go to a party so soon after your—her husband was—”

  “But I did, kind of. Not for the party, for the leaving.”

  “You went to a party so you could leave it?”

  “Leave everything. Griffin and me.”

  A suicide pact? My breath caught—until I realized it didn’t fit what had come before, so I moved from fear back to confusion. There was no comfort in the transition. “Jake, you should have called me. There’s no reason to think of such a drastic—”

  “Well, we didn’t, but that was the plan,” Jake said. “Leave in the dead of night. Nobody was supposed to see us or know for a long while, and by then, we’d be long gone and far away.”

  Running away. I exhaled.

  “It was pitch dark, no moon,” Jake said. “We took back roads and didn’t even turn on the headlights. The car was black, too, like we could just disappear into the night. It should have worked, but it didn’t. Not exactly.”

  Shaking my head wasn’t clearing it of confusion, just giving me whiplash, so I stopped.

  “We didn’t think it through. Plus, the Roederers came home last night instead of today, and when they saw all the cars, they called the police.”

  I will sort this out, I told myself. Calmly. In order. Point one: Jake’s in jail. Point two: this doesn’t have to do with Harvey Spiers’ murder. Point three: Griffin gave a big party. Point four: Griffin and Jake were not at the party. Point five: the Roederers surprised the party-in-progress. Point six: the police arrested all the partygoers, of which Jake was not one. Point seven: Jake’s in jail.

  Maybe if I tried it again?

  Go to jail, go directly to jail. A roundelay that wound up behind bars no matter where we began singing it. And since we were back to the start, anyway, how about my initial question. Why me?

  I had to claim him, he’d said. Like a coat I’d checked. Or was it more like staking a claim—to Jake? Would that imply future responsibility for him? I’d told him he could count on me. I had fantasized being the semi-mythical teacher of Hollywood fame, the one who’d make All The Difference. I hadn’t meant it to involve the wee hours or long drives into suburbia. I wanted to be a sage advisor full of pithy observations about life—not Jimmy Cagney’s mother coming to bail the gangster out.

  “Miss Pepper? They say I can’t tie up the phone anymore.”

  I stood up, carrying the receiver as I tried to one-handedly pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. Whether or not I understood what had gone on, time was wasting and Radnor Township was not nearby.

  And the longer Jake stayed there, the higher the risk that some Radnor policeperson would correlate him with a Latin teacher’s incriminating phone call.

  “Listen, Jake. In case…if the police ask you about anything besides the party, whatever you do, don’t say anything. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  In this black-and-white movie, I’d been cast not as a war-torn lover at a train station, but as one of those poor but saintly mothers whose only fashion accessory was an apron. Middle of the night, I was going to see my boy in the slammer, brave smile hiding my broken heart.

  Top of the world, Ma.

  Thirteen

  All the way to Radnor I argued with myself. I shouldn’t be going. It wasn’t my role. I was his teacher, not his keeper. And what was I supposed to do at a police station? I was out of my league, and so nervous and irritable, I felt like an ad for analgesics. The before part, and nobody held out a remedy.

  My mood wasn’t helped by a low fog, a miasma rising from the vestigial snow and still frozen earth. Cold steam like the breath of the underworld obscured vision and made the drive look like a hokey, low-budget horror movie.

  And why not? Life of late had gone peculiar—histrionic and overdone. Bad actors, overblown rhetoric, changes and turnarounds, paranoid fears, betrayals, shocking surprises, and ultimately, death.

  Curtain.

  Where did this call of Jake’s fit in? Was it the start of a new act? The finale? And was this a tragedy or a comedy?

  The instant I entered the police station, I felt cowed. I had crossed the bridge from good citizenship to the netherworld of baddies. I wasn’t alone, though. Scores of parental faces reflected my own shame. The difference was, I told myself, their discomfort was deserved. Their spawn had gone wrong. I, on the other hand, was picking up an unrelated rental. I fought the desire to announce this significant difference to three testy patrolmen attempting to control the clearing-out process.

  “Excuse me,” I said, squeezing through a sea of tightly screwed faces. “I need to talk to somebody.”

  “Who doesn’t?” a man wearing a parka over pajamas asked wearily. “Broke my neck getting out of the house, then it’s wait, wait, and more wait.”

  “…juveniles,” a sergeant was telling us, “…records sealed and if they don’t get in any further trouble, this will…”

  “Excuse me.” I addressed a woman I recognized as the mother of a Philly Prep junior. “Have you already done whatever it is to get your child out?” She stared at me blankly, her eyes blind with that where-did-I-go-wrong mix of shame and fury.

  “Is this a line?” I asked someone else. “Am I in line?” The parka man shook his head; the woman next to him barked, “Yes”; and a third parent shrugged.

  So I pushed on, unsure whether I was being rude or pragmatic.

  “…not pressing charges at this time, pending a complete household inventory of the damage and theft. They retain the rights to…”

  In the bedlam of parents, each trying to manage the trick of being simultaneously aggressive, submissive, polite, quick, and subtle, it took forever to be heard, and then to deal with the paperwork and official chastisement that would release Jake from the clutches of the constables.

  “Your son—” the cop began.

  “I’m his English teacher, not his parent.”

  He didn’t care. These wealthy suburbs suffered, someone clever said, from affluenza, and the cops had seen enough smashed and shattered families with kids catching hold of whatever adult steadied them for however long. They didn’t understand why I wasted breath establishing nongenetic ties.

  The more I thought about it, the less I did, too.

  *

  Jake slumped low on the seat and deeply into his parka, imitating a six-foot turtle holding a backpack.

  “Where was Griffin?” I asked, as we drove back through surreal ground fog.

  “Like I said, we weren’t at the party long. Then we were on our way. He stayed on his way.”

  “And you?”

  Jake looked away from me. “I hadn’t thought things through enough. I got…nerv
ous. I asked him to drop me at the police station. I figured I wasn’t in trouble and I could get a ride from somebody. After all, I wasn’t at the party when the police came. I didn’t do anything wrong. But Mrs. R.—she was there looking for Griffin—she didn’t believe me.” With that, he sank even lower on the seat. He was in danger of strangling on the shoulder harness. “She knows me,” he said. “Why did she think I’d lie? She was really pissed. She got me in trouble like the rest of the kids.”

  “Let me get this straight—you went to the police station solo.”

  He nodded. “I realized I needed a passport or papers or something to get over the border.”

  “You were headed for Canada?”

  He shrugged, as if that went without saying. “They could have just made everybody go home. Had everybody call a designated driver. That’s what other people do.”

  “The Roederers? But the police said there was damage.”

  Jake slid still farther down the seat. Soon his long bones would fold one atop the other and he’d collapse under the glove compartment.

  “Was there?” I asked. “Damage?”

  Jake sighed. “So the police could have taken everybody’s address, like they did, anyway. They didn’t have to do that stuff with holding cells.”

  “How did three hundred kids come to that house? Griffin seems a loner.”

  “He hired an organizer, a pro. This kid gets the kegs, spreads the word, you know.”

  I’d thought the swollen, destructive parties that erupted whenever parents were out of town were at least spontaneous. I considered this profession of guerrilla party-planner and wondered if he followed through all the way, let himself be rounded up with the guests.

  Jake wore gloves with the fingers cut off; he tapped his knees and seemed deep in thought. “It wasn’t Philly Prep kids who did the real damage,” he said. “It was the other ones. Like they were angry, right from the start. Before we left, we tried to get them out of there. They were already messing up, putting cigarettes out on rugs and floors.”