Schooled in Death

by Kate Flora

  But that was unfair. The shorthand version might include the word “abandon,” but it sounded like there was a whole lot to Heidi Basham’s story that we didn’t know yet. Until I had the details, I couldn’t make a judgment about her decisions. And I had to remember that we were dealing with a young teenager’s brain.

  I spent the first twenty minutes of the drive making calls to rearrange my day, and freed up the next day as well, in case I was still needed at Simmons. Luckily, our EDGE staff is incredible, and Lisa and Bobby quickly stepped in to pick up what they could. We needed to hire new people, but with Suzanne’s limited availability, everyone was moving so fast there had been no time for that. As soon as things slowed down, one of us would start the process of hiring. Meanwhile, we all lurched from task to task and tried to remain good humored.

  I called Gareth and told him I was on the way. The good news was that they’d located a psychiatrist, a woman with a strong local reputation, and she would be seeing Heidi later in the morning.

  We made some plans about meeting with his deans and the trustees. I gave him some basic advice about keeping his staff and teachers on message, and assembling a list of parents’ names and phone numbers. Then I went back to driving and he returned to damage control.

  Driving in rush hour traffic anywhere south of Portland, Maine, took a lot of concentration. Increasingly, people are finishing their personal grooming in their cars, and some of the things they’re doing are truly astonishing. Shaving? Check. Squinting into the rearview mirror to put on mascara at seventy miles an hour? Check. Eating a bowl of noodles, which required one hand to hold the bowl and the other the spoon? Check. But every time I think I’ve seen it all, something new and more shocking comes along. Among the oddest? The man using scissors to clip his nose hair. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d say in the ER if he was rear-ended and the scissors cut into his brain. The lawyer’s daughter in me wondered if that would be contributory negligence?

  My current candidate for Gross Act of the Year was not on the highway, thank goodness, but on a local street. It was the guy who was brushing his teeth. Seriously. At first I didn’t know what I was watching as that moving arm went scrub, scrub, scrub. Until he came to a stoplight, opened the driver’s door, leaned out, and spat into the street. Then he drove to the next light and did it again. Too horrid to imagine, if I hadn’t seen it done.

  I’m not that old, in calendar years. Only heading into my mid-thirties. But in terms of being judgmental I’m suffering from premature old fart syndrome. Maybe it’s because so much of my work involves helping people out of messes caused by bad behavior or bad choices. And I might be a little influenced by being married to a Maine state police detective whose work involves homicide, child abuse, and other nasty things. If I deal with the difficult and uncivilized, he deals with the inhuman, and the ripples caused by crime in the lives of others. I guess we’re entitled to be a bit cynical.

  The Simmons campus pretty much matched its values. Much of the landscape was open and green, or densely treed. Green lawns ran down to a winding, bucolic river that disappeared into a copse of trees. The buildings were modern, painted brown, and built to blend into the landscape. The architect’s object, I’d been told, was to create a design where the land dominated the buildings rather than the reverse. I knew that nestled into the trees behind the administration building were some larger, modern classroom buildings and a state-of-the-art gym.

  As I wound my way through the campus, admiring the fresh spring greens of grass and new leaves, I lamented, for a moment, a life that never seemed to give me time to be outside. Perhaps little Mason or Oliver or Claudine—MOC or Mock—would change all that.

  As I got out of the car, I could smell spring in the air—that strange combination of wet and muddy and green and hopeful. A hope that might be dashed as a freak late-season snow was predicted for this afternoon. But there was no time to linger. I grabbed my briefcase and hurried inside to Gareth’s office.

  Normally, Gareth was the epitome of calm, the kind of person whose affect calms those around him. Today he looked like someone who has taken a severe emotional beating but has to keep on functioning. His gaze fixed on me like a drowning man hoping to be tossed a life ring. I often worry that people put too much faith in me. It’s a burden that I volunteer for, yet feel the weight of.

  Gareth was an import from across the pond, with an English accent (he would correct me and say Welsh) and a charming, rather un-UK openness. He had unruly sandy brown hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and the kind of dark-framed glasses male models wore in ads to make them look smart. A few seconds of conversation with him, though, left no question that this man was smart. Smart and decent. Dedicated to his school and the well-being of his students. I’ve spent years in the independent school world, and I can vouch that this is not always the case.

  I’d never seen him off his game before, but the way he grabbed my hand told me he was close to the edge. We sat down on a pair of matching sofas, and I got out my pad to take notes.

  “Dr. Elaine Purcell will be joining us shortly,” he said. “She was able to rearrange her schedule and come earlier. We are so lucky she’s available. Dr. Richard Alvin, one of our trustees…you’ve met him, I think…says she’s very good at this.”

  I was about to say that I still had only the vaguest idea what “this” was, when Gareth did his mind-reading trick. “I know. I know. You’ve little idea what this whole business is about, and yet I’ve dragged you into the middle of it. We truly do need your help, so let me fill you in a bit more.”

  I waited while he rang his assistant and asked if we could get some tea and perhaps a plate of scones, while I smiled politely and wished I’d eaten a dozen Kind bars in the car. Or a small cow. Some days, it didn’t so much feel like I was eating for two as that I was eating for a pack of wolves. MOC obviously took after daddy.

  Politeness—and food—having been taken care of, he settled back and began to describe the situation in more detail. The young woman who’d been pregnant and delivered her baby in the bathroom, Heidi Basham, was a sophomore, just turned sixteen. Heidi was a shy, quiet girl who tended to keep to herself, new to the school this year. It had been winter. Heidi was tallish, big-boned, full-figured. She’d favored oversized flannel shirts and bulky sweaters, and although they’d been attentive and made a point of spending time with her, neither her advisor nor her dorm mother had noticed her condition. Even though the Simmons food was very healthy, when Heidi grew rounder, they had assumed it was the weight gain common to students new to eating institutional food. The famous freshman, or in this case, sophomore, fifteen.

  The hand he rested on his knee was shaking. I put mine over it. “Gareth, obviously this situation is serious, but it is not the end of the world. We’ll handle it.”

  “I’m supposed to be in charge here, Thea, and I’m struggling to wrap my mind around this. Around any of it. It breaks my heart to think of the hurt the students feel, their sense of betrayal, never mind the damage to the school, and yet I can’t blame that poor child and I need to see that they don’t, either. At the same time, I keep thinking how could she? I have to keep reminding myself she’s only a child herself.”

  He broke off. “Let me finish filling you in, instead of this pathetic whingeing.”

  Heidi had been home for two weeks for March break, only six weeks ago, yet, as far as he could ascertain, neither her mother nor her stepfather had noticed her condition, unless the squawks of shock and dismay during his phone call were simply well disguised lies. Communication with them had been spotty and difficult even before things became an emergency. Neither parent had taken an active interest in their child’s progress and despite several attempts to update it, the father’s information in the file was so scanty as to render him unreachable.

  “Quite frankly, I have no idea what their reaction is,” he said. “There’s been the phone call I made to report the situation, and another from Mrs. Norris about their travel
plans. In neither have I been able to get any read on their feelings.”

  His eloquent shrug conveyed his disbelief more clearly than words. “They, well actually only the mother, though I could hear the stepfather in the background, didn’t ask any questions about Heidi’s health or emotional state, not whether she was in hospital or distressed, never mind her legal situation.” His wide shoulders rose and fell. “What parent doesn’t express concern or ask questions in a situation like this?”

  A smaller shrug, and a sad smile. “And there was no mention of the baby. I fear it’s what we see far too often at boarding schools. The parents divorce, the custodial parent forms a new relationship, one in which the child becomes an inconvenience, and the child is shipped off to school and effectively forgotten.” He sighed. “Though you know, we see less of that here. We’re not a school most parents would choose. Our Simmons students are pretty much a self-selected population. Heidi had to affirmatively want to come here.”

  I wondered whether, if a parent was eager to be rid of the girl, it didn’t matter what Heidi chose so long as she went somewhere. But we didn’t have enough information at this point to assess that.

  He pulled his hand back and ran both of them through his hair. “But to choose us, and then do this?”

  I had to interrupt. “We really don’t know what she’s done, Gareth, or what may have been done to her. What if she’s telling the truth? What if she never knew that she’d had sex? What if she had no reason to suspect she was pregnant?”

  “Is that possible, in this day and age, in a girl of fifteen?”

  I wasn’t sure of my facts, just of my instincts, when I said, “I think it’s possible. Let’s see what the psychiatrist says.”

  I switched back to our immediate problems—what to do about Heidi’s parents and what to tell the students, faculty, and the rest of the parents. “When does her mother get here?”

  “Mrs. Norris, and the husband she refers to as ‘the General,’ are arriving from California this afternoon. I’ve arranged for a car service to pick them up and they’ll be staying with us at the headmaster’s residence.”

  I was pleased they would be staying at his house, as his guests. Keeping them on campus, away from reporters, would be better for damage control while still showing concern and compassion. I wished more of my clients were as far-sighted. And then I remembered that this was a divorce, and there was a father, and that there were questions I needed to ask about him.

  But Gareth was talking.

  “About Heidi,” he said, and continued to share what he knew. She had had a friendly relationship with her roommate, but had not confided about her condition, and her roommate, Bella, reported that Heidi was very private—almost secretive—about dressing and undressing, so that she had rarely seen Heidi undressed, especially since they’d come back from Christmas break. It was odd, but Simmons was the kind of place that attracted odder students because of its culture of accepting, even celebrating, individual differences. Bella said she assumed, from things Heidi had said, that this was because Heidi was self-conscious about her weight.

  Heidi’s passion was working in the greenhouses, and she seemed to have a real green thumb. She sang in chorus. She played the guitar. She was a strong science student. Her advisor found her pleasant, if somewhat quiet, and a good citizen of the Simmons community. She did not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, though Jaden, a boy who also liked to work in the greenhouses, was described as a good friend, and another sophomore transfer, a boy named Ronnie, was also a friend. No one who knew her at all thought what she had done was consistent with the person they knew. Simmons as a community was big on personal responsibility, and the students Gareth had spoken with couldn’t understand how Heidi could have done what she did. The consensus was this wasn’t like her at all.

  I admired how much Gareth had gotten done while I was driving and most of the world was just waking up. He’d learned—or knew—a great deal about her, information that would be valuable to me in helping to understand, and shape, the story. Another mark in his favor.

  “Where is Heidi now?” I asked. “Still in the infirmary?”

  He nodded. “She went to hospital earlier to be checked out, but they saw no need to admit her. We just wanted her someplace safe, where we could keep an eye on her. Harder to do that in the dorm, with everyone else so agitated, so I suggested the infirmary. The police, and Heidi, agreed. I think, to give them credit, that the police are handling this as sensitively as they can. They’ve no interest in demonizing her. It’s going to be the media and the public. And the police chief warned me that unfortunately we’ve got a grandstanding DA.”

  He ran a hand over his face and I heard his calluses grate against stubble. He had earned those calluses from working with the students in the greenhouse and the gardens. From chopping and stacking wood. The stubble was from having been called out to handle this before he’d had a chance to shave. Headmasters tended to be a tweedy bunch, but Gareth looked like someone who should be wearing hiking boots and a backpack and heading off to climb something challenging in the Brecon Beacons in South Wales. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean, and lanky, he looked like, and was, a good man to have your back. I hoped he and I would have Heidi’s. Despite my earlier reservations, I was feeling strangely protective of this girl I’d never met.

  He’d bucked up while sharing the details. Now his big shoulders slumped. “This is not a case for blame, Thea. It’s a situation that calls for compassion for that baby and for Heidi. But it’s going to be hard to get people to see it that way.”

  He had that right. The public is always looking for someplace to put blame, a focus for all their own anger and frustration with their lives and with the people around them. They loved stories of people behaving badly, especially mothers. The press understood this only too well. They would pump this one dry, demonizing Heidi as sexually promiscuous and heartless, and Simmons as a place that encouraged teenagers to be radical and irresponsible. Few, if any, would read the school’s mission statement, or, if they did, would claim the students cared more about plants than people. In their thirst for sensation and scandal, few would consider what Heidi’s true situation might be.

  Not that I knew that yet myself.

  “What about the baby?” I realized I didn’t know. “Boy or girl?”

  “Little girl. She’s doing okay. A premie. She’s a bit under four pounds.”

  “So this wasn’t a full-term pregnancy?”

  He shrugged. “The doctors say it doesn’t look like it was.”

  “What does Heidi say?”

  He looked at the ceiling, down at his hands, and finally, at me. “She says that she’s a virgin. That she has never had sex, never mind been pregnant. That the baby isn’t hers and this is all a big mistake. She doesn’t understand why anyone would accuse her of this awful thing and is terrified about what the other students must think.”

  The door opened and his assistant, Peggy, came in with a tray that she slid onto the coffee table in front of us. A teapot. A carafe of coffee. Two cups. Cream and sugar. A plate of scones and another plate with bagels, little pots of cream cheese, and smoked salmon. That last was inspired. Far too often, despite my intent to reform, I left home without breakfast and struggled through a client day with nothing that resembled food. I could get by on Kind bars, kinder to myself than I used to be. But they really didn’t count as food. I could tell Gareth shared my views by the way he had to still his hand from grabbing a bagel before he’d thanked her. He probably hadn’t had time to eat, either.

  When Peggy had gone, he smiled. “The bagels are her idea. She worries that I forget to eat or that I don’t eat well. Not that bagels really count as eating well.”

  At least they counted as eating. Thank you, Peggy, I thought. I wanted a Peggy to look after me. I’d had the perfect assistant but she was left behind when we moved the business from Massachusetts to Maine. I organized a cup of cream and sugar with a little coffee. The advice on c
offee and pregnancy was conflicting. I like it a lot and I need it to function. I limited it as much as I could.

  I snagged a bagel, and asked, “But this is her baby, right? She was pregnant? She has recently given birth? There’s no question about any of that?”

  “Absolutely. But what she said was that she woke in the night because she’d gotten her period. It had been irregular and she was worried. When it came, it was very heavy and she was having terrible cramps, so she went into the bathroom and she dealt with it. She cleaned herself up and went back to bed.”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t act like someone who was lying to protect herself. She genuinely seemed to believe what she was saying.”

  It was possible. Sometimes teenage girls could be in serious denial about an unwanted pregnancy. “Sounds like you’re really going to need Dr. Purcell, if Heidi will talk to her.”

  He nodded.

  I could almost feel the ticking of the clock. “Your lawyer,” I began.

  “We’ve talked by phone again. Someone is coming around eleven. I think,” he looked a little embarrassed, “I think they’re sending a woman because it will look better. As though this is a game and not about real human lives.” Another big shrug. “I hope we’ll have some information for them by then.”

  He was right. It shouldn’t be a game and it was about humans. But managing the parents and the media? Shaping the story? In some ways, that was a game. A big stakes game where winning was important. Maybe I was becoming too hardened. Because this was mostly a tragedy, perhaps a tragedy averted for the tiny little girl, but a big tragedy for another girl. For her mother.

  In this context, the word “mother” seemed so out-of-place. I hoped, when Heidi’s mother arrived, Heidi would get some mothering, and there would be someone to make thoughtful decisions about the baby.

  Gareth cleared his throat, a subtle call back to the matters at hand. If I was a human checklist, then Gareth was a big black pen crossing things off. So often, when I give advice over the phone, I show up at a school to find they’d done nothing but wait for my arrival. It’s hard to get out in front of things if you don’t take immediate action.