Special Topics in Calamity Physics (66 page)

Enthused by this illuminating development, during second period Study Hall I opted to blow off Operation Barbarossa in my AP World History textbook,
Our Life, Our Times
(Clanton, 2001 ed.) opting instead to tackle
Death Codes
(Lee, 1987), a gory little paperback I'd brought from Dad's library penned by Franklin C. Lee, one of L.A.'s greatest private snoopers, which I'd started reading during first period. ("Blue! Why are you sitting in the back?" Ms. Simpson had demanded in AP English, visibly aghast; "Because I'm solving a
homicide,
Ms. Simpson, because no one else will get off their ass and do it for me," I'd wanted to shout—but didn't, of course; I said there was a glare on the dry-erase board and I couldn't see from my usual seat.) Dee and Dum, by the Hambone Bestseller Wish List, had just started their daily round of gossip, egged on by their accomplice, Little Nose Hemmings—Mr. Fletcher with
The Ultimate Crossword Omnibus
(Johnson éd., 2000) once again turning a blind eye —and I was just about to stalk over and tell them to shut their mugs (it was incredible, the resolve crime-solving gave a person) when I began to eavesdrop on their conversation.

"I heard Evita Perôn telling Martine Filobeque in the Teacher's Lounge she thinks the Hannah Schneider suicide verdict's a load of dung," reported Little Nose. "She said she knew for a
fact
Hannah didn't commit suicide."

"What else?" said Dee, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"Nothing—they noticed me standing by the photocopier and that was the end of their conversation." Dee shrugged, looked uninterested and calmly studied her cuticles. "I'm all sick of talking about Hannah Schneider," she said. "Total media overexposure."

"She's out like carbs," explained Dum with a nod.

"Besides, when I told my mom some of the films we'd been watching in her class, movies that were totally black marketed to us,
never
on the syllabus, Mom wigged. She said it was obvious the woman was captain of team nutjob, totally schizophrenical —"

"Mixed up," translated Dum, "all jumbled inside—"

"Natch, mom wanted to launch a complaint with Havermeyer, but then she figured the school's been through enough. Admissions applications are in a downward spiral."

Little Nose wrinkled her nose. "But don't you wanna know what Eva Brewster was talking about? She must know a secret."

Dee sighed. "I'm sure it's something along the lines of Schneider pregnant with Mr. Fletcher's child." She raised her head, throwing a grenade-gaze at the poor, unwitting bald man across the room. "It was going to be a carnie." She giggled. "The world's first living crossword omnibus."

"They were going to name it
Sunday Times
if it was a boy," said Dum.

The twins erupted into squealish laughter and slapped each other five.

After school, standing outside of Elton, I watched Perôn making her way to the Faculty Parking Lot (see "Leaving Madrid, June 15, 1947,"
Eva Duarte Peron,
East, 1963, p. 334). She wore a short, dark purple dress with matching pumps, thick white tights and carried an enormous stack of manila folders. A lifeless beige sweater was knotted around her waist, about to fall off, one of the arms dragging on the ground like a hostage being hauled away.

I was a little afraid, but I made myself go after her. (" 'Keep tightening the screws on those chippies,' " entreated Private Peeper Rush McFadds to his partner in
Chicago Overcoat
[Bulke, 1948].)

"Ms. Brewster."

She was the kind of woman who, when hearing someone shout her name, didn't turn around but continued to charge forward as if riding a moving platform on an airport concourse.

"Ms. Brewster!" I caught up to her at her car, a white Honda Civic. "I was wondering if we could talk."

She slammed the door to the backseat where she'd placed the folders and opened the driver's seat door, brushing her mango-colored hair off her face.

"I'm late for a spin class," she said.

"It won't take long. I—I'd like to make amends."

Her blue eyes pounced on me. (It was probably the same daunting stare she gave Colonel Juan, when he, along with the other flabby Argentine bureaucrats, voiced a lack of enthusiasm for her latest great idea, the joint Peron-Perôn ballot for the 1951 election.)

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" she asked.

"I don't care. I wanted you to help me with something." She checked her watch. "I can't right now. I'm due at Fitness Exchange—" "It doesn't have anything to do with my Dad, if that's what you're worried about."

"What's it have to do with?"

"Hannah Schneider."

She widened her eyes—evidently that topic was even less favorable than Dad—and she pushed the car door wider so it hit my arm.

"You shouldn't be worrying about that stuff," she said. Struggling against the purple dress, which had the effect on her legs of a narrowed napkin ring, she heaved herself into the driver's seat. She jingled her car keys (on the key-chain, a bright pink rabbit's foot), jamming one in the ignition quickly, like she was knifing someone. "You want to talk to me tomorrow I'll be here. Come to the office in the morning, but right now I do have to go. I'm late." She leaned forward, grabbing the handle to slam the door, but I didn't move an inch. The door hit my knees.

"Hey," she said.

I stood my ground. (" 'I don't care if they're giving birth, don't let a witness fly the coop,' " ordered Miami Police Detective Frank Waters to his immature partner, Melvin, in
The Trouble with Twists
[Brown, 1968]. " 'No brush offs. No rain checks. You don't want them to reflect. Surprise a witness and he'll inadvertently send his mother to the slammer.' ")

"For God's sake, what's the matter with you?" Evita asked with irritation, letting go of the handle. "What's
that
look—listen, someone dying isn't the end of the world. You're sixteen for Pete's sake. Your spouse left you, you got three kids, mortgages, diabetes—
then
we'll talk. Concentrate on seeing the forest through the trees. If you want, like I said, we can talk tomorrow."

She was turning on the charm now: smiling up at me, making sure her voice curled sweetly on the ends like gift-wrap ribbons.

"You destroyed the only thing I have left of my mother in the world," I said. "I think you can spare five minutes of your time." I stared down at my shoes and did my best to look miserable and
melanchôlica.
Evita responded only to the
descamisados,
the shirtless ones. Everyone else was a complicit member of the oligarchy and hence, worthy of imprisonment, blacklisting, torture.

She didn't immediately respond. She shifted, the vinyl seat moaning beneath her. She pressed the hem of her purple dress over her knees.

"You know, I was out with the girls," she said in a quiet voice. "I had a few kamikazes at El Rio and I got thinking about your father. I didn't mean—"

"I understand. Now what do you know about Hannah Schneider?"

She made a face. "Nothing."

"But you don't think she committed suicide."

"I never said that. I don't have a clue what happened." She looked up at me. "You're a strange girl, you know that? Does
pa
know you're running around, intimidating people? Asking questions?"

When I didn't respond, she checked her watch again, muttered something about spinning (something told me there was no spin class, no Fitness Exchange, but I had bigger fish to fry), then yanked open the glove compartment, removing a packet of Nicorette gum. She shoved two pieces in her mouth, swung her left then her right leg out of the car, crossing them and making a big to-do about it, like she'd just sat down at the bar at El Rio. Her legs were like giant thick candy canes minus the red stripe.

"I know what you do. Next to nothing," she said simply. "My only concern was that it didn't seem like her. Suicide, especially hanging yourself—I guess, I could understand pills,
maybe—but
not hanging."

She fell silent for a minute, chewing thoughtfully, staring out across the parking lot at the other hot cars.

"There was a kid couple years back," she said slowly, glancing at me. "Howie Gibson IV. Dressed like a prime minister. Couldn't help it, I guess. He was a fourth and everyone knows sequels don't do well at the box office. Two months into Fall Term his mother found him hanging from a hook he'd put up in his bedroom ceiling. When I found out"—she swallowed, crossed and recrossed her legs —"I was sad. But I also wasn't surprised. His dad, a third, obviously no blockbuster himself, he was always here to pick him up in the afternoon in a big black car and when the boy got in, he sat in the back, like his dad was the chauffeur. Neither of them ever talked. And they drove away like that." She sniffed. "After it happened we opened up his locker and there was all kinds of stuff taped to the door, drawings of devils and upside-down crosses. Actually, he was a pretty talented artist, but let's just say in terms of subject matter, he wasn't going to be designing any Hallmark cards. The point is—you saw signs. I'm not an expert, but I don't think suicide happens out of nowhere."

She fell silent again, examining the ground, her purple pumps.

"I'm not saying Hannah didn't have her share of problems. Sometimes she'd stay late and there was no reason for her to—
film
class, what do you do, you pop in the DVD. I got the feeling she hung around because she needed someone to talk to. And sure, she had a lot of lint in her head. At the beginning of every school year, it was always her last. 'Then I'm getting out, Eva. I'm going to Greece.' 'What're ya gonna do in Greece?' I'd ask. 'Love myself,' she'd say. Oh,
boy.
Usually I have zero tolerance for that kind of self-help crap. I've never been the type to buy improvement books. You're over forty and you
still
haven't won friends or influenced people? You're still the poor dad, not the
rich
dad? Well, I hate to break it to you, but it ain't gonna happen."

Eva was laughing about this to herself but then, suddenly, the laugh fluttered awkwardly in her mouth and flew away, and she sniffed, staring after it maybe, at the sky and the sun tucked into the trees with a few wispy clouds.

"There were other things, too," she went on, chewing the Nicorette with her mouth open. "Something awful happened in her twenties, a man was involved, her friend—she didn't go into details, but said not a day went by when she didn't feel guilt over what she'd done—whatever it was. So sure, she was sad, insecure, but vain too. And vain people don't hang themselves. They complain, they whine, make a lot of noise, but they don't string themselves up. It'd ruin their looks."

She laughed again, this time a pushy laugh, one she probably used on the radio soap opera
Oro Blanco,
a laugh to intimidate bacon-fingered Radiolandia writers, beef-backed generals, yoke-cheeked compadres. She blew a small bubble and popped it in her teeth, a smacking sound.

"What do
I
know? What does anyone know about what goes on in someone's head? In early December she asked to take a week off so she could go to West Virginia, to see the family of that man who drowned at her house."

"Smoke Harvey?"

"Was that his name?"

I nodded and then remembered something. "She invited you to that party, didn't she?" "What party?" "The one taking place when he died." She shook her head, puzzled. "No, I only heard about it afterward. She was pretty upset. Told me she wasn't sleeping at night due to the situation. Anyway, she ended up not taking the vacation. Said she felt too guilty to face the family, so maybe I didn't know the extent of her guilt. I tried telling her you have to forgive yourself. I mean, one time I was asked to watch a neighbor's cat when they went to Hawaii —one of those long-haired jobs straight off a Fancy Feast commercial. Thing
hated
me. Every time I went into the garage to feed it, it jumped onto the screen door and hung there by its claws like Velcro. One day, by accident, I pressed the button to the garage door. It hadn't gone up three inches before the thing motored out of there. Left track marks. I went outside, searched for hours, couldn't find it. A couple days later, the neighbors came back from Maui and found it flattened on the road, right smack in front of their house. Sure, it was my fault. I paid for the thing. And I felt terrible about it for a while. Had nightmares where the thing was coming after me with rabies—red eyes, claws, the whole shebang. But you have to move on, you know. You have to find your peace."

Maybe it had to do with her bastardized birth and impoverished Los Toldos upbringing, the trauma of seeing Augustin Magaldi naked at fifteen, shoving to great political heights the wide load of Colonel Juan, the twenty-four-hour workdays at the
Secretaria de Trabajo
and the
Partido Peronista Feminino,
looting the National Treasury, stockpiling her closet with Dior— but she had, at some point over the years, become uninterrupted asphalt. Somewhere, of course, there had to be a crack in her where a tiny seed of apple, pear or fig might fall and flourish, yet it was impossible to locate these minuscule fractures. They were constantly being sought and filled.