Bloodroot (29 page)

“This is your office,” Danny said. “I’ll defer to your authority here.”

I leaned forward in my chair, elbows on my knees, contemplating just how much damage to do. Questions flashed across Kelsey’s face. Why wasn’t I thrilled to see my brother, the way I talked about him? Shouldn’t they meet if she and I were going to be together? Kelsey looked like my mother had the other night when I told her about Danny’s return. Everyone who spent five minutes in a room with us seemed to end up looking like that. Confused and frustrated.

Danny, on the other hand, stayed perfectly composed, eyebrows high on his head, looking for all the world as though he had
no idea
what the fuss was about, like a bemused and slightly bored owl. I burst out laughing. The fact that our situation was anything but funny only made me laugh harder. I covered my face with my hands until I could gain control of myself. I never could stay mad at my brother. Catching my breath, I slouched in my chair.

Now that I was relaxed the lies flowed forth without a second thought.

“The prison that let Danny out on work release?” I said. “It doesn’t have an undergrad program that really turns him on. So he’s thinking of enrolling here.”

Except for the prison part, it was pretty much the same lie I’d prepared for Whitestone.

Kelsey looked up at Danny. He kept his eyes on mine.

“It’s true,” he said. “Who wants to major in soap-dropping?”

“With a minor in license plate making,” I added.

“You guys are retarded,” Kelsey said. “Like short-bus, helmet-wearing retarded.”

“Seriously though,” I said, “Danny is thinking about getting his degree.”

“The history of psychology,” Danny said. “Asylums and hospitals and things like that. Kevin said Whitestone will help me get started.” He cracked his knuckles. “And maybe help get me admitted. My previous academic record is spotty, to say the least.” He smiled. “As a younger man I was big into chemistry.”

Kelsey stared at me, more questions simmering on her lips. I knew what they were. Since when did Kevin Curran, one hundred and fifty pounds of departmental deadweight, have any sway with Whitestone? And if he really had it, where did he get it? From Danny’s checkbook? Who was I really trying to fool? Whitestone, Danny, or her? But Kelsey had mercy. She didn’t say a word. She bent over and pulled a brown bag from her knapsack.

“Sorry, fellas,” she said, standing, “I didn’t bring enough for three.”

Danny hopped down off the desk. “This meeting won’t last long. Save that for tomorrow. I’ll take us out for lunch.”

“Can’t,” Kelsey said, brown bag swinging at her hip.

She walked to the door and pulled it open. Instead of walking out, she turned to us. I sensed something in the way she looked at Danny and me, something in the way she wrinkled her nose at us. We weren’t two separate men to her. For the moment at least we were a single unit. And she wasn’t sure she liked it.

“I have class in forty minutes,” she said. “And so do you, Kevin.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, pumping one leg, clearly deciding if she had any more to say. She did. “Danny, I know you’ve been gone a long time, but were you really in prison?”

Danny turned and hunched over, pointing at me. “This man? This man right here? He has his whole life been an unrepentant liar.”

“I have not,” I said.

“A-HA!” Danny yelled. “Caught you again.”

Kelsey’s nose wrinkled a little more. She looked us up and down, Danny still locked in his finger-pointing crouch. “So this is the Curran Brothers?” she asked.

“Aye, lass,” Danny said.

I lifted my palms, as if to show there was nothing up my sleeve. “In their unrepentant glory.”

“The act needs some work, fellas,” Kelsey said. “Seriously.” She walked out the door, the lock clicking into place behind her.

“If she only knew,” Danny said. He raised his thumb, turning his pointer into a gun.

“You, motherfucker,” I said, “are gonna ruin my life.”

“If it wasn’t for me, motherfucker,” Danny said, “you wouldn’t have a life to ruin.”

 

 

 

WE HAD TO CLIMB
five flights of stairs to Whitestone’s office. No elevator for us. Cameras in every one, Danny said. All the way up, he sang an old Doors tune, ignoring my repeated snapping at him to shut up.

“I’m a spy/In the house of love,” Danny sang, poorly, while smoking a cigarette. “I’m a spy/For the Maf-i-a.”

I covered his hand with my own when he reached for the doorknob at Whitestone’s floor.

“Can’t you play this a little cooler?” I asked. “Some of us here aren’t experts at this. I’m the one that works here. Shouldn’t I go first?” I looked him in the eyes. “Are you high?”

“Define cool,” Danny said. “And high.”

I growled at him through clenched teeth.

“C’mon, lighten up,” Danny said, rubbing out his cigarette on the wall, leaving ugly black streaks of ash. “Just high on life, but thanks for asking. This is the fun part; I’m enjoying myself. You should be, too. No bodies, no guns. No creeping around in the night, no Drakkar.” He bumped me away from the door. “Admit it, there’s a rush in your veins right now that you don’t get spouting off about the Constitution for the thousandth time. Relax, Teach. Enjoy the ride. Some excitement, a little adrenaline. It’s one of the job’s better perks.” He pulled the door open. “I got this.”

Whitestone’s secretary spotted Danny first, our emergence from the stairwell surprising her. Her head rose high on her goose neck, her arm rose into the air. She snapped her fingers for my brother’s attention. “Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”

I peeked around Danny’s back. “Hey, Lucille. This is my brother, Danny. We’re looking for Dean Whitestone.”

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. Her arm came down. “He said you might be coming up.”

“Yeah, I left a note in his mailbox this morning.”

Lucille smiled a cold, mean smile. “I told him I’d believe it when I saw it.”

“Believe it, sister,” Danny said. “It’s the man himself, Sir Kevin Curran, intellectual acrobat, resident genius, Grand Pooh-bah of American History. Ask him anything about the Constitution.
ANYTHING!
”

“There’s no smoking anywhere inside a campus building,” Lucille said. She turned back to her computer.

Danny dashed to my side when he saw me ready to knock on the door.

“One second,” he whispered, digging into his jacket pocket.

He pulled out his keys, gripping what looked like a laser pointer between his thumb and forefinger. A red beam of light passed over the door handle. “Digital impression,” Danny whispered. “Got it on eBay. You take the lead here.”

I hesitated, afraid of what I was about to unleash.

“Go ahead and knock,” Danny said. “We’re already halfway there.”

I knocked and the dean called us in.

“Dean?” I asked, leaning in the half-open door as if he might not grant entrance if he knew who was knocking. “A few minutes of your time?”

“Of course,” Whitestone said, waving us in. “My goodness, Curran. You’re actually early.” He grinned when he noticed Danny. “There’s another chair against the wall there.”

Danny grabbed the other chair, aluminum-framed with maroon cushions, and placed it next to the identical one before Whitestone’s enormous desk. We sat and folded our hands in our laps simultaneously. I wondered if we weren’t overplaying it. Whitestone begged a moment’s indulgence, turning to his computer.

I had no doubt he was checking his stock portfolio on the Internet, or maybe booking another trip. He fiddled around at his keyboard for a good ten minutes, to show what a busy man he was, to impress upon us that our audience was a special honor.

“Kevin, won’t you introduce me?” he finally asked.

He didn’t offer Danny his hand, keeping them hidden in his lap. He had never before called me by my first name.

“Dean Whitestone,” I said, “this is my brother, Danny. He’s interested in enrolling at Richmond and considering his subject area, I knew he had to meet you.”

“What’s your preferred area of study, Dan?” Whitestone asked.

“The history of child psychology,” Danny said. “Especially treatment of the mentally ill and the severely disabled.”

Whitestone turned to me, his eyebrows raised and his bottom lip puffed out to show he was impressed.

I forced my best competition smile. “You can see why I brought him to you.”

“Indeed,” Whitestone said. “Kevin’s given you some background on our Bloodroot project, then?”

“Some,” Danny said. “I’ve also done some research on my own.”

Whitestone gave me a sad shake of the head. “Kevin, considering your brother’s interests, your reluctance to join the fold only confuses me further.”

“Chalk it up to sibling rivalry,” Danny said. He laced his fingers and leaned forward in his chair. “I really wanted to hear about it from you, anyway, since you’re the authority.”

“True,” Whitestone said. “I’ve been involved in the Friends of Bloodroot since the beginning, founding it, in fact.”

“Of course the history of the place interests me,” Danny said. “I’m already pretty well informed about it. I’ve done some research. I just wonder what would make such a place worth preserving?”

“A reasonable question,” Whitestone said. “To begin, what happened there was unconscionable. No one is denying that or trying to whitewash it. Children being used in unsupervised experiments, living in Holocaust-like conditions. All right under the nose of the greatest city on Earth in the latter half of the twentieth century. Shameful. Worse, Bloodroot was not the only place of its kind. How could such things happen?

“But let’s put our emotions aside for a moment and ask another question. Why does Germany give tours of the concentration camps? Why do the Japanese commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why do American museums and art galleries have exhibits about slavery and lynching, or address the eradication of Native Americans? Because, as we like to say in our department, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”

Whitestone leaned forward, his face a perfect mask of sincerity. He breathed heavily through his nose as he spoke. “Bloodroot changed American history. Who knows how many innocent lives were sacrificed in the darkest days of that place? But what came out of it: the oversight, the legislation, the funding—it saved thousands more. As a historian and as a father, I can’t let such an important place fade unmentioned into the past.”

“It’s a sound argument,” Danny said, scratching at the inside of his left elbow. “But has anyone thought of the families? Bloodroot was only closed twenty-odd years ago. There are surely families in the city who placed children there. Surely there are survivors of that place? How do they feel about their ugly past being put on public display?”

Whitestone’s face lit up with excitement, as if he’d been waiting the entire meeting for that one question. “I have letters from a dozen families supporting the Friends of Bloodroot. Had Kevin attended that press conference, he could have told you as much.”

“I went to the last one,” I said. “About the award.”

Whitestone ignored me. Danny had captured his exclusive attention.

“How involved in this museum is Dr. Calvin?” Danny asked. “Could be redemptive for him.”

“I haven’t even attempted to find him,” Whitestone said. “He hasn’t been heard from in over two decades, disappeared without a trace right after the story broke. You can imagine his disgrace at being discovered.”

“Is he dead?” Danny asked.

“He very well could be. He’d be rather old by now. At the time of the controversy, there were whispers of suicide, but no body was ever discovered.”

“So no one knows for sure, then,” Danny said. “It’d be a coup to track him down. He’d certainly have a contribution to make to the conversation.”

“I don’t know who’d want to hear it,” Whitestone said. “He had his chance to explain himself back then and chose instead to make his escape.” Whitestone shrugged, holding out his hands. “Dr. Calvin is hardly of any consequence anymore.”

“The people who wrote those letters,” Danny said, “might feel differently.”

“Any of those letters of support from the survivors themselves?” I asked. “That would certainly be powerful stuff in your favor.”

Whitestone tossed a commiserating glance at Danny, then looked back at me, pity and impatience dulling his eyes. “Well, Kevin, most anyone at Bloodroot could barely speak their own name, never mind write a letter. It’s pretty impossible for any survivors to understand the situation, never mind express approval or objection.”

“These families supporting the project,” Danny said, “their Bloodroot children are still alive?”

Whitestone shook his head. “No, no children. People as severely damaged as those poor souls usually did not live very long.”

“Usually,” Danny said. “How hard have you looked?”

I snuck a glance at Danny. I feared that he’d taken on more than he could handle in discussing Bloodroot with someone who felt
very
differently about the place than he did. A single blotch of hot, red blood bloomed behind his ear. The clock had started ticking on his temper. Time to draw the meeting to a close. Hopefully, Danny had learned what he needed to know about Whitestone’s office.

“Man, I’m fired up,” I said, standing. “I think the three of us can really get into this Bloodroot thing. I’m not going to miss the next board meeting. Dean, you’ll be sure to let me know about it?”

Whitestone had sunk back in his chair, tapping his lips with a pen, studying Danny and trying to ascertain, I was sure, exactly how much use Danny could be to him.

“I hate to bring a halt to things,” I said, “but I do have a class to teach.” I set my hand on Danny’s shoulder. He hadn’t moved. “Maybe we can get together again another time, set up some introductions over in Psych.” I looked down at Whitestone. “Thank you, Dean, for your time.”