Impulse (2 page)
If the state’s governor has his way, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, BWI in the trade, will be renamed Thurgood Marshall Airport in honor of the late Supreme Court justice who grew up on Baltimore’s mean streets when it was still just a segregated southern town. How the late justice would feel about the honor was problematic. His opinions of Baltimore were a matter of record and mostly negative.
The airport turned out to be the first of a series of culture shocks for Frank. He remembered when it was Friendship International. He remembered when they’d built it. He remembered its predecessor, Harbor Field, for goodness’ sakes. The last time he’d flown east, he had landed in Washington at Reagan National—the airport that congressional vanity and self-importance kept open as a full service facility in spite of warnings it was a time bomb ticking away, a disaster waiting to happen. And when it did, public outrage would be followed by public wringing of hands and great crocodile tears from the body whose self-centered need for a quick exit from the District kept it going. It would work fine, he thought, if they limited Reagan’s traffic to corporate aviation and smaller, commercial commuter aircraft. They could manage the river approach. But that wouldn’t happen anytime soon, and in the meantime what price would the nation be asked to pay to maintain the privileges, the reserved parking spaces, and perquisites assigned to senators and representatives too busy, too important, or too self-absorbed to take a cab and spend the hour it required to get to Dulles or BWI?
But BWI—what a transformation. Construction equipment cluttered the access roads. Buses and cabs fought with each other for a few feet of curb.
“This place is a mess,” he said and looked around him. A limousine nearly knocked him down even though he still stood on the sidewalk.
“It’s like a cathedral,” his daughter replied. “They’re never finished. At least that’s what they tell me.”
“Ah, airports. America’s twenty-first century spiritual centers.”
“I don’t think I’d go that far.”
“No, neither would I, but it’s a thought.”
“You could use it in a book.”
“Maybe I could at that. Remind me later.”
Barbara Thomas was a well put together forty-something. As tall as her father at six feet and celebrating the same thick, glossy hair that prompted envious thoughts by both men and women. But where hers curled and glistened with chestnut highlights, his lay flat, straight, and gray. She steered him to the garage and her car.
“Take me through the city,” he said. “I know it’s dark and I won’t be able to see very much, but I’d like to see downtown.”
“You got it, but we can’t stop. I told the kids they could wait up for you and it’ll be nearly ten before we get home.”
They drove in silence while she negotiated the various detours and lane changes occasioned by construction. Once on Route 295 she relaxed and settled back in her seat. Frank waited for the question he knew was coming.
“So, is there anything new?”
“You mean have the police made any progress on your mother’s disappearance?”
“Well, yes. But surely they don’t still think she just disappeared?”
“No, they don’t. They believe she was murdered and they think they know who did it, and so they’re waiting for him to make a mistake.”
“They’re not pursuing leads—?”
“They’ve settled in to wait.”
They drove on in silence. When Route 295 became Russell Street, she moved to the right lane. She swept around Oriole Park at Camden Yards and turned east on Pratt Street. The Inner Harbor appeared in front of them. Who would have believed the dingy waterfront he knew as a child could be transformed into this elegant retail center?
“I used to buy my suits over there. This whole area was Baltimore’s garment district. Joseph A. Banks, that is, the man himself, mind you, used to make suits right over here, before his company went big time.”
“I know.”
“They had this manufacturing facility on that corner, and you just went in and tried suits off racks made of pipe. Old Jewish guys cut fabric and stitched them up in the next room.”
“I know. You told me.”
“If you didn’t find what you liked, you got to go through the swatch book. ‘Make me a 39 long in this,’ you’d say and they would. Need two pairs of pants? No problem, a vest—”
“Dad you’ve told me that story a hundred times. I know, I know.”
“It’s not a story. That’s the way it was. Hof-Tex was around the corner but I didn’t like their clothes as much, no style. Your grandmother did, though, mostly because they sold their suits cheaper.”
They turned north on Calvert Street and past row houses with marble steps, some boarded up, all a little shabby until they crossed North Avenue. Then the real estate steadily improved. They continued past the Union Memorial Hospital, veered north onto Charles Street and finally turned into Homeland. Whereas downtown Baltimore had undergone a metamorphosis, its residential neighborhoods remained unchanged, in an urban time warp. He relaxed.
“So, with no off-the-pipe-rack Joseph A. Banks to supply you, where do you shop now?”
“Goodwill.”
“No.”
“Oh yeah. I go across Bell Road to the Goodwill near Sun City. Those old folks know how to dress and when they die….You see this blazer?”
“Very nice. You didn’t—”
“Seven dollars and fifty cents.”
“It has a patch on the pocket. What’s it for?”
“No idea—came with the coat. A country club in Illinois, I think.”
“Dad!”
“Relax, I only wear it around the house. I have another one for the shindig at the school. It cost—”
“I don’t want to know. Here are the kids, don’t tell them about Goodwill. If you do, they’ll want to do all their clothes shopping there, too. They think you hung the moon.”
***
“What time do you need to be at the Academy tomorrow?”
Frank shrugged and wiped the yolk of his egg from the plate with a toast crust. His grandchildren were noisily gathering their books and lunches. School would go on for another three weeks. He wished the reunion had come later in the year, after the schools closed. Then he could have enjoyed the kids’ company more. He basked in the cacophony of children’s voices and breakfast’s aroma. The combination of frying bacon and perking coffee is the finest fragrance known to man, he thought. Society’s ambergris.
“More coffee?”
“Yes, please. A continental breakfast is scheduled for eight. Then there are activities of various sorts during the morning, a luncheon with the headmaster at noon, a bus tour and some athletic events after that. Are you sure you won’t need the car? I could rent, you know.”
“I know. No need. The kids should go there.”
“Go where? To Scott?”
“Why not?”
“Do you have that kind of money? I don’t know what the tuition is but I bet it’s huge.”
“It’s seventeen thousand dollars a year…each.”
“You have that kind of money?”
“No, but you do.”
Frank stared at his daughter. In all of her adult years, she’d never asked for anything from him. Even when she and her husband, Robert, were young and struggling, she never asked for help. Frank assumed his wife sent her money from time to time, but he never did. His son was another story.
“Yes, I suppose I do. And you think that would be a good investment?”
“They’re your only grandchildren, Dad. I work. Bob works. We manage, sort of. We don’t need or want your money. But we can barely keep them in the schools they attend now and certainly not Scott. But they’re bright and Jesse will be moving to middle school next year—”
“Not Scott. Send them to Saint Paul’s, Boy’s Latin, any place but Scott.”
“Dad, it happened fifty years ago. Let it go. Times change. You can’t hold those people accountable for what happened to Uncle Jack.”
Frank sipped his coffee. It tasted bitter. She rose and moved into the living room to referee the departure of her children. He listened to their bright young voices and her cautious one. She did not return right away. He heard her moving about in the front room.
“What would you like to do today, before your big dinner at the Maryland Club?” she called.
“Don’t know. I have no plans. Read through these, maybe.” He waved the brochures from the reunion committee.
“Right. There’s a new Michael Connelly book on the coffee table. You read the competition, I guess.” She appeared in the doorway and stood contemplating him, a small frown on her face.
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
He looked at her, tried to read what lay behind her eyes. “Do you think I did?”
“No…. No, of course not.”
The hesitation in her reply lasted no more than a heartbeat, but he heard it. Once, researching a story, he’d watched a pathologist prepare a frozen section in liquid nitrogen. The tissue went from slippery pink to rock hard, frozen solid in less than a second. That’s what that pause did to his heart now. Barbara’s eyes betrayed nothing; there was just that tiny pause.
“The police think I did.”
They were silent a moment. Finally she turned and marched to the front door. “I’ll see you this afternoon. I have to go to work. You know where everything is.”
He guessed he did.
The door slammed behind her.
***
Your 50th reunion. Meet your classmates for dinner Thursday night, and then join them for a full day at the Academy. Talk with Dr. Darnell about the school’s future. Join your “pen pal class” for lunch….
Fifty years! Who would he recognize? What would he say? Frank’s mother had died in an assisted living facility, one of countless Alzheimer’s victims, a fact which made Frank considerably more sensitive than most to things like memory lapses. And now he had to face his own advancing decrepitude by attending his 50th high school reunion. Of the 65 members of his graduating class, 15 were already dead, and of the remaining, he guessed another dozen or so had the proverbial “one foot in the grave.” The knife edge of despair began its near daily intrusion into his consciousness—the low-level panic he felt whenever reminders of his advancing age invaded his thoughts. He closed his eyes and tried to push them away.
He had not set foot on the campus in fifty years. He leafed through pictures of buildings and fields, most of which he recognized only with difficulty. New buildings screened out remembered vistas, distorted the familiar lines and landmarks of what was once familiar topography. So many changes, so much newness. As he scanned through the photographs, it seemed as though his past, his youth, had been methodically erased and replaced by the shiny new physical plant that now defined Scott Academy.
He’d grown up on the campus. It had been his home, its woods and streams his backyard. He’d roamed over every square acre of it. He knew where the springs of ice cold water gushed out of mossy stream banks, surrounded by beds of tangy, crisp watercress. He could tell you where you could trap rabbits, hide from parents, or just loll in the sun on a lazy Saturday afternoon unseen, unharried, invisible. The nearly nine hundred acres of woods and fields were as familiar to him as streets and alleys were to the city born and bred.
Of course, his memories of the school differed significantly from those who only experienced Scott as students. His father taught at Scott for thirty-eight years, twenty-five of them as a beloved English teacher, “Jolly Cholly,” his final years as plain Dr. Smith, taciturn, sometimes rude and usually angry.
Growing up as a “campus kid” had its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand you had access to all that land, the playing fields, barns, and woods. Few of his friends could boast such a playground. On the other hand, there were the frustrations of being different, of being Dr. Charles Smith’s kid. There were many days, when he thought the balance sheet, advantages versus disadvantages, tipped heavily toward the latter. There existed among some of his fellow students, particularly the slower, duller ones, an impulse to bully a teacher’s offspring. He had endured his share of fights—won some, lost most, and learned to run like the wind.
In Frank’s senior year, the Academy expelled his younger brother, Jack. It caused a small sensation. Some anonymous students accused Jack of homosexual behavior. Whether he was, in fact, gay, not a word used in that way then, had never been addressed. Fifty years ago, suspicion and rumor sufficed, indeed, were cause enough. No one ever attempted to discover the truth. No one offered to defend him. After all, everyone knew Jack was a little fey. And that was that.
Frank went off to college that fall. His brother committed suicide over the Christmas holidays and Frank vowed he’d never return to the Academy. Never. It took him nearly thirty years to forgive his parents and deal with his own guilt. He’d kept his vow until this year. But now, as he finished off his sixty-eighth year, and mellowed somewhat by his own tragedy, he decided he needed to forgive the school and have one last look, to touch his past one last time before the judicial system or old age had their way and succeeded in closing him down forever.
Scott Academy provided housing for as many of its faculty and staff as possible. Young couples, without sufficient down payments for houses, and older men and women consolidating their assets for retirement found this possibility an attractive perquisite, and that, in turn, helped the school recruit many above average teachers. Brad and Judith Stark occupied an end unit in a row of six townhouses. The complex had been built into a hillside so that the front door and first storey were at ground level facing the main campus but the basement door also opened at ground level in the back. On the whole Brad seemed satisfied with the arrangement but said he missed the annual deduction from his Schedule A for interest and taxes and the equity build home ownership provided.
This morning he sat in the tiny kitchen amidst disorder and clutter. He valued order while his wife, Judith, had a cavalier attitude about housekeeping. In fact, she hated it and put off doing it as long as possible. She sat across from him in a Kelly green robe. Its tie had come loose and the robe was perilously close to falling open. As much as he enjoyed looking at his wife’s naked body, it made him uncomfortable with the children tumbling around the house gathering their school things.
“The twenty-fifth year reuners may be a problem,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Well, you can hardly blame them. It must have been a big deal at the time.”
“Yeah, but it’s been twenty-five years. Enough is enough.”
“Brad, you are too sensitive about that day. I mean, it was in all the papers and television news then. What’d you expect? For some of those guys, it might have been the only important thing that ever happened to them.”
“It was for me. They were my friends, Judith. More than that. I could have been—it could have been me….”
Judith nodded. She’d heard it all before. She had not wanted to move to Scott Academy. She liked her job and her home in Squirrel Hill and did not understand Brad’s insistence on returning to the school where, by his own admission, he had been desperately unhappy as a child. His descriptions of life as a teacher’s kid, a TK, were anything but glowing. Yet, when the offer to move east and become the school’s development officer came along, he’d jumped at it. No consultation, no “should we,” just pack up and go. She had to admit he seemed happier than he was as a stockbroker. And the pay was good. Good enough so that with the housing provided by the school and other perks, free tuition chief among them, she reckoned it a positive exchange. Still, when reunion weekends came around, she wondered. And then there was the unhappy fact that Brad had not yet distinguished himself as a fund raiser. Selling securities to people ready to buy anything is different from prying dollars from alumni. She wondered how much longer they’d be at Scott. She made up her mind to call her father, just in case.
Brad pushed back from the table, frowning.
“Four boys go into the woods and disappear forever. No sign of them. No bodies, no motive, no suspects. No one ever figured it out. It
is
a big deal,” he said.
“It’ll be fine,” she replied. “Wait and see. A few ghost stories and some wild speculation, maybe. The farther away in time it moves, the dimmer the memories. By their fiftieth, they won’t remember a thing.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The one thing I’ve learned in this business is this, as the alumni become increasingly geriatric, their memories about their school days become sharper. It’s a law of nature; the memories retrieved are directly proportional to the gray cells lost. Some of those old geezers can repeat the dining hall menu from September to June of their senior year.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Only a little.”
“Look, you had better get used to it. Every class for the next several years will have that incident on their list of school day memories, right up to your own.”
“That’s a happy thought.”
“Why don’t you have a second coffee? I’ll walk the kids up the hill to school today.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that. I have a ton of things to do. I need time to figure out how to approach Meredith Smith.”
Judith Stark moved like a ballerina, which at one time in her youth she’d dreamed of becoming. Five foot eleven in her stocking feet, hair as black as obsidian, thin and elegant, she dominated any room she entered. She rose and glided toward their tiny foyer. The children were waiting, backpacks slung low on their spines.
“Tighten your straps.”
“Mom!”
“I mean it. Put the weight of those packs up high. You’ll all turn into Quasimodo if you don’t.”
“What’s a Quasimodo?” Lillith, the youngest, asked.
“The goofy looking guy who rang the bells, stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Be still. Pull up those straps…. Don’t even say it. I don’t care what the other kids do.”
She imagined in the next decade or two, there would be legions of deformed men and women hunched over at bus stops, in offices, and on street corners—victims of a peer pressure that insisted that backpacks should be worn like fanny packs—an orthopedic disaster waiting to happen. She glanced back at her husband. He stared, eyes out of focus, off into space, lost in his private world. Where was he now, she wondered.
***
“C’mon Ned, let’s go.”
“Shhh….Wait a minute. There’s someone over there in those trees.”
“Who?”
“I think it’s Light and Hot Pants.”
“No way! What would they be doing out here?”
“Shhh.”
“Don’t be such a jerk, Bobby. What do you think they’re doing?”
“They’re doing ‘it,’ you dope.”
“Oh, you know so much, Tom, like the time you said we could sneak in the Pikes Theater through the back door.”
“Well, we could have if you hadn’t been such a jerk.”
“Jerk? You could have gotten us arrested and anyway, who let the door slam?”
“Shut up you guys, they’ll hear us.”
“I gotta go.”
“In a minute. Let’s sneak up and watch them do it.”
“Are you crazy? We’re not even supposed to be here. You know what your dad said.”
“I’m going to look.”
“Jeez, Ned…okay, if you go, I will too. Who else?”
“Shhh.”
“They’re not doing it.”
“Shhh.”
“They’re just talking.”
“Well, she’s old enough to be his mother.”
“That makes him a mother—”
“Shhh.”
“Maybe they’ll do it later.”
“Well, I’m not waiting to find out—Light’ll kill us if he catches us.”
“Big deal. What’s he gonna do? We could tell about him and Mrs. Parker. Then what?”
“Shhh.”
“I really gotta go. I’ll be late and I can’t get more demerits or my dad will kill me. Never mind Light.”
“Okay, okay, in a minute. You still have time. Listen, follow me. I found something really neat last weekend.”
“What now, Ned?”
“Wait and see.”
They followed him along the west bank of the small stream that wound through the thick canopy of oaks and maples. They pushed their way through the underbrush carefully at first, until they forgot all about the couple behind them. Then they kicked at the leaves and tossed stones at frogs.
“My dad said these are sugar maples. We could come out here in the spring, you know, like early when there’s still snow, and collect the sap and make syrup and sell it.”
“Tom, you dork. How are we going to make syrup? You need equipment to do that.”
“We could make it in Shop.”
“Oh, sure. ‘Hey Mr. Simpson, we want to make stuff to go into the maple syrup business, can you help us?’”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
“Come on, you guys.”
“Look, here it is.”
The stream, one of those meandering creeks that carve their way through the woods and countryside in the area, made a gentle right turn. For the last several decades it had slowly cut into the earth to the left. Roots of trees ready to fall dangled in the cold water where it undercut the bank. Opposite, on the right bank, the stream had deposited a sandy delta. Above that, an embankment rose nearly six feet to form a minor escarpment, evidence of the stream’s original course. A wilted bush punctuated its center.
“I found it and put that bush in front so nobody else would.”
“What’s the big deal about a dead bush?”
“Not the bush, moron, behind the bush.”
The boys clambered up the bank and pulled away the bush.
“Wow! That is so cool.”
“Nobody knows it’s here except us.”
“Well, somebody else must know. I mean this is not natural.”
“Maybe a bear did it.”
“Bobby, you are so dense. There haven’t been any bears in these woods since, jeez, colonial times, I bet.”
“Like you know.”
“My dad said he saw a bear in Cumberland.”
“Well, that’s not near here, is it?”
“Boy, if the Empire ever attacks, we could hide out here and be like guerillas.”
“Like Ewoks?”
“No, like Luke—”
“Teddy can be R2D2.”
“Yeah and you can be Darth Vader, peabrain.”
“We could get a machine gun.”
“Maybe we could fix up the one in the museum—”
“That was an old World War I machine gun. I don’t think they make ammo for that anymore.”
“Tommy could make us some in Shop.”
“Shut up.”
“Boy, this is so neat. We could light a fire.”
“I gotta go now. What time is it?”
“You have fifteen minutes. If you hurry, you’ll make it.”
***
Brad stared at the cold coffee in his cup and let his mind return to the moment. He still wasn’t sure how he would approach Smith. He wasn’t sure about anything. He shook his head to stave off the tears that threatened to spill out over his cheeks. Tom, Ned, Teddy, and Bobby. He caught his breath, wiped his face and looked at this watch. What happened to time, he wondered. Where did it all go? If he hurried he’d make it.
