The Dead Student (3 page)

Something important must have come up. That appointment he said was going to make him late at Redeemer One. Something far more serious than a new prescription for Zoloft. Maybe mania. Hallucinations. Loss of control. Death threats. Hospital. Something.
He wanted to believe the story he’d told a few minutes earlier to his fellow Redeemer One regulars.

Moth took the elevator up to the top floor. It creaked and jerked a bit on the fourth-floor landing. The building was silent. He guessed that none of the dozen other therapists in the building were working late. Few of them used secretaries—their clientele knew when to arrive and when to leave.

His uncle’s top-floor office had a small, barely comfortable waiting room with out-of-date magazines in a rack. In an adjacent larger room, Uncle Ed had space for a desk, a chair, and an analyst’s couch, which he used much less frequently than he had a dozen years earlier.

Moth quietly entered his uncle’s office and reached for the familiar small buzzer just by the door. There was a friendly handwritten sign taped above the buzzer for patients:
Ring twice nice and loud to let me know you have arrived, and take a seat.

That was what Moth intended to do. But his finger hesitated over the ringer when he saw the door to his uncle’s office ajar.

He moved to the door.

“Uncle Ed?” he said out loud.

Then he pushed the door open.

This is what Moth managed:

He stopped himself from screaming.

He tried to touch the body, but the blood and greasy viscous brain matter from a gaping head wound splattered over the desk and staining his uncle’s white shirt and colorful tie made him pull his hand back. Nor did he touch the small semiautomatic pistol dropped to the floor next to the outstretched right hand. His uncle’s fingers seemed frozen into a claw.

He knew his uncle was dead, but he couldn’t say the word
dead
to himself.

He called 911. Shakily.

He listened to his high-pitched voice asking for help and giving his uncle’s office address, each word sounding like it was some stranger speaking.

He looked around, trying to imprint everything in his memory, until all that he absorbed exhausted him. Nothing he saw explained anything to him.

He slumped to the floor, waiting.

He furiously held back tears when he gave the policemen who arrived within a few minutes a statement. Then he gave a second statement an hour later, repeating everything he had already said, to first-names-only Susan, the assistant state attorney in the blue suit whom he had seen at Redeemer One that evening. She did not mention that as she passed him her business card.

He waited until the medical examiner’s half-hearse, half-ambulance arrived and he watched as two white-suited technicians loaded his uncle’s body into a black vinyl body bag, which they placed on a stretcher. This was routine for them, and they handled the body with a practiced nonchalance. He caught a single glance at the red-tinged hole in his uncle’s temple before the body was zipped away. He knew he was not likely to ever forget this.

He replied
“I don’t know”
when a tired-sounding police detective asked him,
“Why would your uncle kill himself?”
And he had added,
“He was happy. He was okay. His problems were all behind him. Like way behind him.”

He had abruptly asked his own question of the detectives:
“What do you mean he killed himself? He wouldn’t do that. Absolutely no way.”
Despite his insistence, the detective seemed unmoved, and didn’t reply. Moth had looked around wildly, knowing something was telling him he was right.

He turned down the assistant state attorney’s offer of a ride home. He stood outside in the waiting room while crime scene analysts perfunctorily processed the office. This took several hours. He spent that time trying to make his mind go blank.

And then, when the last flashing light from all the police cruisers clicked off, he descended into a maelstrom of helplessness and without thinking about what he was doing, or perhaps thinking it was the only thing remaining he could do, Moth went hunting for a drink.

2

You’re a killer.

No I’m not.

Yes you are. You killed him. Or her. But you did it. No one else. You, all alone, all by yourself. Killer. Murderer.

I didn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not really.

Yes you could. And you did. Killer.

One week after her abortion, Andy Candy lay in the fetal position, curled up in pink frills and pastel throw pillows on her bed in the small room in the modest home where she had grown up.
Candy
wasn’t her actual name, but a playground rhyme used since her birth by her once-doting, now-dead father. His name had been Andrew, and she was supposed to be a boy and named after him.
Andrea
had been the best at-the-hospital compromise her folks could arrive at when presented with a girl baby, but
Andy Candy
it had been ever since, a constant reminder of her father and the cancer that had stolen him prematurely, a weight that Andy Candy carried permanently.

Her last name was Martine, pronounced with a slightly frenchified tone to it, a family acknowledgment of ancestors who had come to the USA nearly 150 years earlier. Once Andy Candy had dreams of traveling to Paris as an
homage
to her ancestry and to see the Eiffel Tower and eat flaky croissants and sweet pastries and maybe have an affair with an older man in a sort of New Wave romance. This was just one of many pleasant fantasies about what she would do as soon as she graduated from the university equipped with her shiny new English Literature degree. There was even a colorful travel poster on the wall of her bedroom showing a quite stunning hand-holding couple walking next to the Seine in October. The poster underscored the simplistic
Paris Is for Lovers
travel agency vision of the city that Andy Candy believed absolutely had to be true. In reality, she did not speak French, indeed no one she knew spoke French, and other than a high school trip to Montreal for a theater presentation of
Waiting for Godot
she had never been anywhere special. She had never even heard the language spoken out loud by anyone other than a teacher.

But, in any tongue, Andy Candy was now in pain, in tears, in utter despair, and she continued to argue with herself, one second a hand-wringing supplicant, forlornly pleading for forgiveness, the next haranguing herself, like something more than a housewife kitchen scold, more even than a zealous prosecutor: a cold-blooded, dark-hooded, and relentless inquisitor.

I had no choice. None. Really. What could I do?

Everyone has a choice, killer. Many choices. It was wrong and you know it.

No it wasn’t. I had no alternative. I did the right thing. I’m sorry sorry sorry, but it was the right thing.

That’s so easy, murderer. Just so-o-o-o easy. Who was it the right thing for?

For everyone.

Really? Everyone? Are you sure? What a lie. Liar. Killer. Liar-killer.

Andy Candy hugged a worn toy teddy bear. She pulled a handmade quilt decorated with red hearts and yellow flowers over her head, as if she could shut away the fury of the argument. She could feel two parts warring within
her, one whiny and apologetic, the other insistent. She wished she could be a child again. She shivered, sobbed, and thought that by hugging a stuffed toy animal she could somehow shed years, travel backward to a time when things were much easier. It was as if she wanted to hide in her past so that her future couldn’t see her and hunt her down.

Andy Candy buried her head into the toy’s fake fur, and she sobbed, trying to muffle her voice so she couldn’t be heard. Then, gasping slightly, she held the stuffed animal over one ear and cupped her hand over the other, as if trying to block the sound of the argument.

It wasn’t my fault. I was the victim. Forgive me. Please.

Never.

Andy Candy’s mother fingered a crucifix hanging around her neck, then touched middle C on the piano keyboard. She held her fingers out over the ivories in much the same way that Adrien Brody did in her favorite movie,
The Pianist
, and without making a sound, shut her eyes and played a nocturne from Chopin. She did not actually have to hear the notes to listen to the music. Her hands rolled above the array of glistening keys like whitecaps upon the ocean.

At the same time, she knew that her daughter was sobbing uncontrollably in the back bedroom. She could not actually hear these sounds either, but just like the Chopin, the notes were crystal clear. She sighed deeply and rested her hands in her lap, as if a recital had finished and she was awaiting applause. The Chopin faded, replaced by the concert of sadness she knew was playing in the back of the house.

Shrugging briefly, she spun about on the bench. Her next student wasn’t due for at least a half hour, so she knew she had time to go to her daughter’s side and try to comfort her. But she had attempted this many times already over the last week, and all her hugs and back rubs and hair stroking and softly spoken words had merely ended in more tears. She had given up on being rational:
“Date rape isn’t your fault …
” And sensitive:
“You
can’t punish yourself …”
And finally, practical:
“Look, Andy, you can’t hide here. You’ve got to start pulling yourself together and facing life. Bringing an unwanted child into this world is a sin …”

She didn’t know if she believed this last statement.

She looked over to the frayed living room couch, where a half-pug, half-poodle, a goofy-looking golden-colored mutt, and a sad-eyed greyhound were all assembled, eagerly watching her. The three dogs had that
What’s next? How about a walk?
look about them. When she made eye contact, three tails of different shapes and sizes started wagging.

“No walk,” she said. “Later.”

The dogs—all rescue dogs adopted before his death by her husband, a softhearted veterinarian—continued to wag, even though she knew they just might understand the reason for the delay.
Dogs are like that,
she thought.
They know when you’re happy. They know when you’re sad.

It had been some time since anyone would have used the word
happy
to describe the house.

“Andrea,” Andy Candy’s mother said out loud, in a tired tone that reflected nothing but futility. “I’m coming.” She said this, but she didn’t budge from the piano bench.

The phone rang.

She thought she should not answer it, although why she could not have said. Instead, she reached out for the receiver and at the same moment looked over at the three dogs and pointed down the hallway to where she knew her daughter was suffering. “Andy Candy’s room. Right now. Try to cheer her up.”

The three dogs, displaying an obedience that spoke to her late husband’s ability to train animals, jumped from the couch and scrambled down the hallway enthusiastically. She knew if the door was shut, they’d bark and the pug-poodle hybrid would get up on his hind legs and start to paw frantically in
Let me in
insistence. If it was ajar, the mutt, the biggest of the three, would shoulder the door aside and they would all make a beeline for her bed.
Good idea
, she thought.
Maybe they can make her feel better.

Andy Candy’s mother spoke into the phone. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Martine?”

“Yes. Speaking.”

The voice on the other end seemed strangely familiar, although a little uncertain and perhaps shaky.

“This is Timothy Warner …”

A surge of memory and a little pleasure. “Moth! Why, Moth, what a surprise …”

A hesitation. “I’m, umm, trying to reach Andrea, and I wondered if you could give me her number at school.”

A brief silence filled the air when Andy Candy’s mother didn’t instantly reply. She made a mental note that Moth, who wore his own nickname proudly, had often used her daughter’s actual name in past years. Not always, but frequently he had employed the formal
Andrea,
which had elevated his status in the eyes of Andy Candy’s mother.

“I heard about Doctor Martine,” he added cautiously. “I sent a card. I should have called, but …”

She knew he wanted to say something about colon cancer death, but there was nothing really to say. “Yes. We got it. It was very thoughtful of you. He always liked you, Moth. Thank you. But why are you calling now? Moth, we haven’t heard from you in years!”

“Yes. Four, I think. Maybe a little less.”

Four
of course went back to shortly before the day her husband died. “But why now?” she repeated. She wasn’t sure whether she needed to be protective of her daughter. Andy Candy was twenty-two years old, and most people would have considered her a grown-up. But the young woman sobbing away in the back room seemed significantly closer to a baby this day. The Moth she had known a few years back wasn’t much of a threat, but four years is a long time, and she didn’t know what he had become. People change, she thought, and she’d been surprised by the out-of-the-blue voice on the other end of the line. Would a call from her daughter’s first real boyfriend help her or hurt her right about now?

“I just wanted …” He stopped. He sighed, resigned. “If you don’t want to give me her number, that’s okay …”

“She’s home.”