Fiction from The Literary Review
After a broken engagement and several weeks in a psychiatric hospital, Mark Copeland has come to Littleton, Vermont, to work as a paralegal in the law office of his cousin-in-law, Arlon Winter. One morning, a few months after Mark's arrival, the wealthy mother of a student at Littleton College appears at the office, asking Arlon for help in investigating the death of her son, Daniel Vaughn. Daniel was found hanged in his room two days ago, and though the college claims it was suicide, Mrs. Vaughn believes he was murdered. Arlon agrees to take the case, but as he cannot afford to spend time away from his legal work and does not believe anything will come of the investigation, he assigns Mark to do the legwork, an assignment Mark does not want.
Synopsis Of Chapter 1
In 1891, the center of Littleton burned to the ground, and Joseph McTell, the largest landowner in Vermont and a prevailing force in Littleton politics, came to the aid of his fellow Vermonters by buying up all their burnt-out properties-at a substantial discount. On the largest part of his expanded fiefdom, he erected the McTell Block, a massive three-story brick and granite structure that dominates the corner of Main Street and Merchant's Row. Tourists often mistake it for an old mill or factory because it has the look of the great turn-of-the-century sweatshops, but it has never been more than what it is today: a collection of high-rent shops and drab, faceless apartments. Its one saving grace is a tall brick turret anchoring it like a carriagebolt to the corner of Main and Merchant, a feature that, though far from beautiful, at least provides some relief to the eye. It would be romantic-especially for someone who once wanted to be a writer-to say that I live in the top of this turret, but my apartment is in fact behind it, in the crook of the block's L.
When I arrive home, I am greeted by the clank and whistle of the radiators, mechanical pets welcoming me. The apartment smells hot and sour, apple peels and ice-cream cartons announcing their deaths from the overfilled garbage bin in the kitchen. I throw my coat over a chair, kick my boots into a corner of the living room, accustomed to the fact that the mottled beige wall-to-wall carpeting cannot be stained in any noticeable fashion.
In the kitchen-a cubby decorated in chrome and plastic and barely large enough to open the refrigerator without backing into the stove-I force open the window, prop a stick under it. An icy mist floats up from the river below, wafts tentatively across the sill. I stick my head out and fill my lungs, spying, on the far bank behind Woody's Bakery, a group of Littleton students trying to collect water samples. Two of the women pretend they are going to throw one of the men in. He splashes them with water and they retreat, laughing. I step away from the window, hoping they have not seen me and wishing I had not seen them.
When I check my answering machine, there are only two messages, one from my sister, whom I have not talked to since January, and another from a therapist wondering if I am ready to start with her. She is the second therapist I have interviewed since coming to Littleton, and she will probably be the last. I have no desire to start with her, or anyone. I only interview them because my cousin Rebecca and my sister tell me I should, though Rebecca has never been to a therapist and my sister hates hers, and everyone else I know who has been in therapy seems no better off than before they started. Not a brilliant testimony to the power of therapy.
I erase the messages, knowing that my sister will not answer if I call her back. Or, if she does, she will no longer want to talk to me. She is moody, like I am, and the windows of opportunity-the moments when she is open and willing to engage with her family-are few and far between. We are not much different in that respect, though our styles are different. She makes no secret of her feelings, chases people off when they get too close. She has intimated at times that she sees herself as weak, easily taken advantage of, but this is a distortion, like a crayfish who does not understand she is protected by a spiny shell. I am more like the anemone, withdrawing at the slightest touch, pulling deep inside to hide what is most vulnerable. When we clash, it is always a conversation of fear and impulse, a show of reflexes, me trying to be smaller, her trying to be harder. I hate the familiarity of this, the automatic nature of our defenses. But it seems impossible to stop.
I eat the dried and greasy remains of a pizza, then fill in the edges of my hunger with some brownies my cousin baked for me last week. Afterwards, I sit down at the desk in my room, turn on my laptop, an old Toshiba that sounds as if it performs its calculations using marbles. I flip through some law school notes, read over an unfinished story about an old widow whose milk is delivered by the devil one morning. I come across the letter to Karen, my ex-fiancée, that I had started months ago but never finished. One of the counselors at Sunrise had suggested that I write the letter, as an exercise, to get my anger out. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it seems ridiculous to me. "You broke my heart . . . ," "I trusted you . . . ," "All those years wasted . . ."-the centuries-old clichés of grief. I was in love with her. She seemed in love with me. Then, suddenly, after six years together, she was not. There is nothing new in this story, nothing redeeming in it. Even if I had managed to kill myself, the story would not be tragic, only pathetic, the trite repetition of a drama the world has seen over and over again. I am the fool, the cuckold, the jilted boyfriend, the quiet man, the victim, the unsatisfying lover, the ball-and-chain, the burden left behind. I am the undifferentiated re-telling of an age-old story. And I cannot remove myself from that story.
I study the scars on my left wrist, short thick contrails of skin flowing over the veins and tendons, paralleling them. The lines are no longer purple. I take this as a sign that my body has forgiven me, though it could just as easily mean it no longer cares. Sometimes I can feel it-the razor burning through my skin again, the deep cold erupting in my lungs, my stomach, blood bubbling out of my wrist like lava out of frigid stone. It makes me shudder. But sometimes it still seems right to me, sensible. I want to feel something, anything, and this is the way to do it-cut an opening in the body, let love and anger and happiness and sadness enter like ghosts into a temple, let their voices populate the empty halls and chambers of the heart. I want to be a reef, a colony that is both life and structure, family and dwelling. I want to echo with the sounds of a clashing soul.
I shut off the computer, brush my teeth. I take out my bottles of lithium and maprotiline, spill the little pink and yellow pills into my palm. I cannot tell if they are helping. I feel less inclined to cut myself, but I feel less inclined to do anything these days. My mouth has turned into a desert, my tongue a swollen cactus. I have gained forty pounds. My hands shake and I am plagued by fatigue, drowsiness. I do not go out, do not answer the phone. I have no interest in sex, or exercise, or physical activities of any kind. At the age of twenty-five, I am an old man. I shake the pills in my fist, like dice, a gambler weighing the odds, then toss them into the sink.
In the morning, Arlon sends me to Littleton College. He has made an appointment for me with Eleanor Tadema-Waters, the Dean of Students. I am not happy about the arrangement. I feel shaky and feverish, my blood running wild with the sudden reduction of medication, and I wish that I could return to bed. But the half-mile walk in the sun and fresh air calms me somewhat, lifts my mood.
It is nearly ten o'clock when I reach the base of College Hill. Despite the skeletal trees and the clots of mud and melting snow, the campus looks beautiful, pristine, the granite and limestone facades of the dorms glittering in the sharp spring sun. The base of the hill is surrounded by gray professorial halls, stone boxes with slate roofs and green, feathery fringes of yew and ivy. In their center lies the main quad, a vast rectangle of frozen mud and brown matted grass. Students group and part across it like beads of mercury, shouting, laughing, a few trying to navigate the sand-strewn sidewalks on rollerblades. It seems to me as if they are all uniformly blonde and blue-eyed, uniformly healthy and wealthy, parading past in a blur of khaki, denim and brightly colored wool. A few minority students appear and disappear in the tide, steelhead salmon leaping in and out of a white foaming river, but most of them look equally blessed, equally vital. I remember Arlon telling me the standard joke about Littleton: if one Latino, one Asian, one African-American, and one poor white trash go into the Littleton admissions office, four white preppies come out. It seems less like a joke now.
A broad concrete path splits the quad in half and slices its way up the hill, cordoned on either side by rows of swollen, sap-filled maples. I stand at the bottom, stare up into the stern, benevolent gaze of Old Chapel, shining white emblem of the college. Forty-foot columns brace a massive Greek Revival roof, a slender whitewashed steeple rising out of it like a finger pointing to the sky. It is the only wooden structure on campus, the only concession to the mortality and impermanence of things. The founders intended for it to be the most humble, the most spiritual building on the campus, an invocation of the purity and dedication they sought to instill in their students. But instead it grew into this mammoth architectural beacon, symbol of both the founders' pride and their undeniable generosity.
To the right of the chapel stands the college's oldest dormitory, Painter Hall, a three-story granite structure distinguished by eight chimneys protruding from its slate roof. To the left of the chapel lies Starr Hall, the college's first lecture hall. Together, the three buildings form the triumvirate of Old School Row, the college's original campus. Looking at them, radiant, benevolent, the three crosses of Calvary guiding the innocent to educational paradise, it is suddenly easy to understand why the college was built here, why tourists and students flock to it, why parents are willing to pay nearly thirty-thousand dollars a year to send their children here. The campus radiates order, peace, tradition, tranquillity. There is no rape or murder here, no drugs, no cults or hate groups, no poverty or hunger or disease. The campus is outside time, outside necessity. And looking at the soft, shining faces passing by, I have the sense that no one even grows old here, no one dies.
Dean Waters' office is in Starr Hall, in a spacious, whitewashed room with bowed creaking floorboards that, if not original, can only be one or two generations removed. The leather-padded visitors chairs and a desk and table piled high with folders are all spaced well apart to allow the Dean-who suffers from multiple sclerosis-to maneuver her wheelchair between them. She greets me pleasantly, offers me a seat, then wheels herself behind the desk. She is perhaps in her early fifties, plump, with bowed shoulders and a sagging chest hidden beneath a heavy burgundy sweater. Her gray hair is cut bluntly, in a style that I have noticed is common among true New Englanders-practical, unassuming-and she wears bifocals suspended from a thin gold chain.
"I've informed Arlon and now I'm going to inform you," she says to me, once the initial pleasantries are over, "the College is doing everything possible to cooperate with Mrs. Vaughn in this matter. But we are not going to be drawn into a battle between her and Mr. Vaughn. If you want to ask questions, that's fine, so long as you do it quietly and with a minimum amount of disturbance to the students and faculty. If you start generating a lot of noise and publicity, or harass anyone working for this institution, we'll boot you out on your legal behinds. Is that clear?"
I nod, mumble my agreement. But I am already intimidated, already cursing Arlon with eleven different kinds of painful death. I should not be here. Every cell in my brain is begging to leave, to be spared the danger and humiliation of conversation. Because that is what conversation is to me-an opportunity to make a fool of myself, an invitation to attack, both from within and without-and I know that I do not have the means to defend myself.
"Good," she says. "Now, as you've probably noticed, I'm Dean of Students. That means my primary concern is the students, not the college. So I'm going to lay down a few groundrules. First, you are not to speak to any student without a representative of the college being present. I'm going to introduce you to Page Reinhardt, our Public Relations Coordinator. She will be your liaison. If you need to see anything, ask anything, do anything, or even photograph anything, you consult her first. If you talk to any student without her being present, I will personally throw you off the campus and make sure that Arlon never does business here again. Is that understood?"
I nod again, face flushing. Arlon has thrown me into the lion's den, and this lioness is defending two-thousand cubs.
"Secondly," she says, "there is still an on-going police investigation. You are not to interfere with them or our campus security in any way."
"Um-I have an appointment at twelve-thirty with your chief of security . . . ," I say, wondering if that meeting is now canceled.
"That's fine," Dean Waters answers. "President King has authorized him to answer any questions he thinks appropriate, but don't abuse his time. He's got more than enough responsibilities to take care of."
She pauses, sits back in her wheelchair. "Well, now that I've put the fear of God in you," she says, smiling, "do you have any questions?"
I fumble through my backpack for my notebook, open it to the page of questions Arlon and I had worked out last night. Dean Waters waits patiently while I quickly scan them, but I am too nervous for the questions to register.
"Um, I guess my first question would be what do you think happened to Daniel Vaughn?" I say, finally. It is the only question I can remember, though I had planned to save it for last.
"Well that's straight to the point, isn't it?" Dean Waters answers. "Personally? I think he very tragically and regrettably committed suicide. I don't say that easily, Mark. As Dean of Students he was my responsibility. They're all my responsibility. And if one of them is so distraught and alienated that he or she feels it necessary to end it all, then I haven't done my job, have I?"
"So you think he was depressed?" I ask.
"I know he was. You can find at least a dozen of his teachers and acquaintances on this campus who will tell you he was. And, without going into any details, our school psychologist, Dr. Townsend, has confirmed that Daniel was having a lot of trouble emotionally."
"Dr. Townsend?"
"David Townsend. His office is above the infirmary. You can talk to him later, though I doubt he'll be able to tell you much. There's the confidentiality issue, which I'm sure Mrs. Vaughn has mentioned to you."
I nod, scribbling Townsend's name in my notebook, only to realize that I already have his name from the interview with Mrs. Vaughn. I pause for a moment, scanning the questions in no particular order, then ask, "Did Daniel ever come talk to you? Did you have any warning that he was this upset?"
Dean Waters looks away, frowning.
"He tried to," she says. "Last Friday. I had left work early. My husband and I were flying down to Pittsfield for the weekend, and he wanted to go while it was still daylight. Roger, my assistant, tells me Daniel came here around four-thirty, very upset, very distraught. Said he needed to see me. When he found out I was gone, he tried to get my home phone number, but Roger's not allowed to give that out."
"Did he ask to see anyone else?"
"Yes, but everyone was gone by then. Friday afternoon, you know-people are eager to start their weekend."
"Did he leave a message, a note?"
"No, he just ran out."
Dean Waters waits patiently while I scribble these things down in my notebook. She seems amused by me and this makes me even more self-conscious. If Arlon wanted me to be a detective, I think, the least he could have done was send me to PI school.
"Do you know why Daniel was looking for you?" I ask. "I mean, you in particular."
"I think he was just looking for somebody," Dean Waters answers. "I had met him a few times. His grades were pretty abysmal freshman and sophomore year, so I had to speak to him about them. He was very quiet, clearly unhappy and angry, not much motivated. I managed to convince him that flunking out would be worse than staying here, but that was the extent of our interaction. I can't say that we had any kind of rapport, and I confess that most of what I know about him is from other sources-the school newspaper, professors, etc."
"The newspaper? He was an editor?"
Dean Waters laughs. "More like a constant subject. Daniel was involved in a few controversies. Page can probably give you more details. But the gist of it is that he suddenly became much more active and outspoken this year. He was involved in several political groups and activities and quickly developed a knack for stepping on people's toes. So he was in the paper a lot."
"What kinds of controversies?"
"Personal, political. He was involved in GLSU, the Gay and Lesbian Student Union. The school paper published a lengthy article about the GLSU, with Daniel figuring prominently. He was less than diplomatic, to say the least, and, of course, there is still a lot of anti-gay sentiment, especially in a small conservative college like Littleton. Also, he was involved in a tenure dispute with the Biology Department."
"Is that normal-I mean, for a student to be involved in tenure decisions?"
"To a point. Daniel was chairman of the Student Advisory Committee for the Biology Department. The committee is consulted for hiring and tenure decisions, but generally it's just an advisory thing, a chance for the students to give their two cents. Their opinion doesn't carry much weight when it comes time to make the actual decisions. But Daniel took the job very seriously, maybe too seriously."
"He went overboard?"
"More or less. You know, at one point or another, every student decides that this is the place to make his or her grand stand. They come in with a lot of anger and dreams and expectations, most of which are not going to be satisfied. My job is to get them through those trials and disappointments with a minimum amount of damage to themselves or the school. Daniel was a very moral and fair-minded person, but he was also angry and self-righteous, and had fairly naive ideas about the way a college works. He butted heads with the Biology department and found himself on the receiving end of a lot of rage and resentment. The ivory tower gets pretty bloody, after all, when jobs are on the line. But I think it was what he wanted."
"You mean, he asked for it?"
"No. I mean that he wanted to do right, in a very naive and youthful way, and was eager to battle a few dragons to get there. It's the most common fantasy you'll find on a college campus. Children begin to feel like adults here and they want to exercise their new-found power. Most of all they want to exercise it against what they see as the hypocrisies and failures of the older generations. So they go after the only adults in sight-the teachers and administrators-not realizing that dozens of other angry students have come before them and dozens more will follow. Daniel saw his position as chairman of the SAC as a chance to effect change. The Biology Department saw him as just another annoyance."
"How much of an annoyance?"
Dean Waters raises an eyebrow. "Not enough to murder him, if that's what you mean. He made a lot of people angry, but he was never a threat to anyone. Not a serious one, at any rate."
That would be a matter of perception, I think, but it seems a useless point to pursue right now.
Dean Waters wheels out from behind her desk. "I have an eleven o'clock meeting to go to, but I'll introduce you to Page on my way out. Just one thing. It's important for you to remember that we're only cooperating with this investigation because Mrs. Vaughn has made it clear she will withdraw her support if we don't. President King does not want that to happen, and though I don't personally care, I'm sympathetic to his position, and hers. But there isn't a person at this college who thinks the facts of Daniel's death are anything other than what they appear to be, and you may find most people are reluctant to talk to you about it at all. Arlon has a certain amount of credit with the college. He is well-known and liked and knows how to talk to people here. You, however, are an unknown. My advice is to step very quietly and very gently. Otherwise, you're going to find that the buildings are not the only things made of stone. Understand?"
It is not clear to me whether this is a warning or just friendly advice, but I nod my head anyway, aware that she has already succeeded in discouraging me. This is a job for Arlon, I think, not for me. He is the one they trust.
Page Reinhardt's office is an oversized pantry squeezed between the Director of Public Relations' office and the ladies' room. It is hard to imagine the space could have been visible on the original architect's plans. A steel-and-Formica desk, topped by a computer, fills the majority of the office to the left of the doorway. Directly in front, nearly blocking the door, is a visitor's chair, and behind it a steel trestle table laden with flyers and brochures. Above it, a single double-hung window holds an air-conditioner in its mouth, like a dusty harmonica.
Page is on the phone when we arrive, hidden behind her computer. Dean Waters has to rush off, but assures me that Page knows all about the investigation. I wait in the doorway, nervous, wanting to go back to the safety and anonymity of Arlon's office. Hot air and perfume and the incendiary bite of an electrical space heater fill my nose and lungs, wrap around me like gauze. I am sweating. I look up and down the hall for a water cooler, but there is nothing in sight, and Page is now off the phone.
"Come on in," she says, squeezing her way out through the small space between her desk and the far wall. I am expecting another graying, middle-age college bureaucrat, but she turns out to be young, perhaps only twenty-two or twenty-three, with short, black hair and hazel eyes that appear too friendly, too alive, for her to have been in the business of college administration for very long. She stands a few inches shorter than me, compact, but with broad shoulders and thickly rounded hips. Her hair has been re-routed behind her ears, emphasizing a pale, slender neck and a face that, though not immediately beautiful, is at least warm and inviting. If not for the formality of the short charcoal dress, black pantyhose and pumps, she could easily be mistaken for a student.
We shake hands and she motions me towards the visitor's chair, then wheels her own chair out from behind her desk. She sits down in front of me, turning diagonally to avoid ramming her knees into mine in the enclosed space.
"I'm sorry about the office," she says, smiling. "I usually entertain in the conference room, but it's permanently occupied these days-crisis meetings."
"Things have been pretty busy?" I say. Page seems less threatening than Dean Waters, and yet I still can't relax. I feel like a man playing a little boy's game-"The Hardy Boys Investigate The College of Doom"-and I am waiting for one of these strangers to see how ridiculous my role is.
Page laughs. "You could say that. I think I've talked to every newspaper reporter in the country in the past two days, not to mention two-hundred parents worried about their kids, and half a dozen state and county mental health agencies. Yesterday, the Psychology Department of the University of Minnesota called, wondering if they could send someone out to research the after-effects of this whole thing on our student population. It's a little crazy, no pun intended."
As if to illustrate her point, the phone rings just then. She reaches over the desk, dials a code to turn the ringer off.
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