The Ghosts of Lovely Women (14 page)

I went home and took P.G. to the park. I threw his tennis ball around for a while. P.G. was terrific at fetching the ball and bringing it back, but reluctant to actually let me take it out of his mouth. “Give it, P.G.,” I said impatiently. “Give it. How can I throw it for you if you don’t let go?”

P.G. seemed to be thinking about this. It was a constant dilemma for him. I laughed and said, “We’re going home, bud. You’ve had enough anyway.”

We walked the six blocks back to my apartment; P.G.’s little body looked tired, and he spent a good long time at his water bowl. Then he flopped down with a growling sigh that made me laugh. He was audibly contented.

“You take a nap, sport. I have to run an errand.”

This time P.G. didn’t even bother to look upset; he was just too tired. I grabbed my purse and keys, carefully locked my door, and went to my car.

One unexpected advantage of teaching is that you are privy to all sorts of information simply because you sit at your desk. I won’t even call it eavesdropping, because students choose to come — during lunch, during study hall, during class — to sit in front of me, and then to talk about the most private aspects of their lives. The basic assumption seems to be that teachers are just furniture — that we sit there, sightless and earless, and that anything that is said merely bounces off of our irrelevant bodies.

In any case, one of the things I’d heard while sitting at my desk was that Danny Washburn worked at the Ice Dream near the forest preserve in Pine Grove. It was a popular hangout with teenagers, and it had been open since mid-April. I drove there now, hoping to catch Danny and ask him some questions without bothering him at his home.

When I parked I saw a few St. James kids sitting on the picnic tables, eating their cones, drinking their shakes; a couple waved, but more of them pretended not to see me — another student phenomenon which always amazed me. Some young people would practically fling themselves down a stairwell rather than face their teachers in the hallway and say hello to them. Heaven forbid if the meeting took place in the “real” world.

I waved back to those who had ventured to be uncool and walked to the window of the little hut-like structure where Danny stood, wearing a triangular hat that said “Dream Team.” Behind him another young man was preparing hot dogs on a grill and a girl was making a milkshake, showing impressive speed and dexterity at her blender. The people who had already ordered stood off to one side, talking and laughing.

“Hi, Danny.”

“Hey, Miz Thurber. You have a sweet craving?”

“Not really. I wondered if I could talk to you. Do you get a break or anything?”

“Is this like a date?” Danny joked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Before Jessica’s death, his constant doses of humor had been predictable and often annoying. Now I wished for evidence of that more carefree Danny.

“Not a date, no. But I’ll buy you an ice cream if you want.”

Danny got a cone for both of us and I paid for them. While I held the ice cream, he turned to the young man behind him, who was putting the hot dogs into buns. “I have to take a break,” Danny said. “I’ll be back in a few.”

“I’m not wiping down those counters, Washburn,” the boy said. “Get your ass back in here fast.”

“It’s Sheryl’s turn, Gonad. Take a fucking chill pill.” Danny’s face suddenly swiveled toward me. Swearing is not allowed at St. James, and students caught doing it get detentions.

“Sorry, Miz Thurber. He was being a sack.”

“I’ll wait by the table under the tree,” I said.

I started on my cone, aware of the curious glances of the teens. I didn’t particularly like being under their scrutiny, but I hoped this would merely look like an accidental meeting, and that Danny was stopping by my table to say hello.

The day was warm, but the shaded picnic table was comfortable. When Danny arrived and claimed his ice cream, I took a moment to enjoy the breeze and the smell of some flowering bush nearby. “I wondered if I could ask you a couple things, Danny. Just to clarify.”

I had decided not to mention Kathy’s death. The students would hear about that on Monday, and I didn’t intend to complicate their lives with it now.

“Sure. You mean about Jessica?”

“About Jessica, yes. First — do you know… did she say anything to you about telling me something? Confiding something in me?”

“Like what?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I found out there’s something that Jessica told me, or meant to tell me or something — but I don’t know what it is.”

Danny looked thoughtful. He was carving a symbol into the soft wood of the table with his fingernail. I worried that he’d get a splinter. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think your name came up. But I do think — I don’t know. It’s hard to say afterwards, isn’t it? I mean, conversations might be significant or just dumb. And you look back later and you can’t be sure, because the person you had them with is gone.”

“I know what you mean.”

“It’s funny that all these teachers are suddenly asking me things.”

“What teachers?”

“Well, like Miss Olchen, for one. She was chasing me down the hall like a paparazzo.” He smirked when he said the word. Danny liked words.

I felt suddenly cold. He didn’t know. I couldn’t tell him. “What did she want to know?”

He sighed. “I guess Jessica told her about the website, like over the summer. Then when we found out Jessica died, and now Miss Olchen is asking all these questions, like she was some sort of tv detective. It’s pretty hilarious. You’ll see what I mean at school. She’ll probably start asking you things.”

“What did she ask?”

“Something about some piece of paper. Like that had to do with the website. I don’t know — it was something she was thinking about based on what Jessica told her. But you know Jessica — she loved being dramatic. I’m sure she dangled all sorts of little mysteries in front of Miss Olchen. She made people work to get information.” He scraped his cone with a fingernail, as though to remove a defect. “She even made me wait to find out if she’d go out with me. She sent me all these weird texts and e-mails that were like fucking cryptograms.”

“Did Miss Olchen find out what she needed to know? Did she say that Jessica had told her something?”

“Not exactly. But Jess had some kind of secret. I do think she had some kind of secret, because ever since she came back for her spring break — it’s hard to explain — she just had this aura about her. Sort of like she was up to the greatest practical joke ever, but also like it scared her sometimes. I asked her once about it, but she just put me off. She said every woman was entitled to her secret life, or some weird thing like that. She said it was like in this book by Jennifer Wolfe, but it was about a room, and Jessica said the room was like your mind.”

“Virginia Woolf.”

“Yeah. Her.”

“I’m curious about the website. Why you thought it was a good idea.”

Danny shrugged, still eating. He didn’t even look embarrassed, as Rosalyn had done. “Jessica knew what she wanted. And as you know, she was really persuasive. I mean, the way she put it, it made perfect sense.”

“So you took that picture?”

“Uh—” Now he did blush.

“Didn’t it make you uncomfortable?”

He went for a worldly look. “It’s not like it was um— the first time I’d seen her — um.”

“Ah.” I had set myself up for that one. “But you had no problem with the premise of the site.”

“No. Jessica was raising money for women who really needed it. And she was getting a chance to kick guys in the balls. Metaphorically.”

“Danny,” I said, shaking my head.

“Do you know how much money she raised, Miz Thurber? Just with that website? It was, like, thousands of dollars.”

I doubted this was true. “I understand that her intentions were noble. I think Jessica was a noble person. Who set up the site?”

Danny’s expression changed. “Some guy named Mitch. She knew him in New York. He came here once to visit her and she introduced me. He was like a total computer nerd but he obviously had the hots for Jessica. I think she thought it was funny.” His face revealed that he did not.

“Mitch. Do you know his last name?”

“Uh— hang on. I might have his stupid card somewhere.” Danny shoved the last of his cone into his mouth and pulled out his wallet while he chewed and gulped hugely.

“You should chew more times.”

“Here it is. Mitch Menteith, which you have to admit is a very gay name.”

“Danny.”

“What?” His jaw was clenched with an anger that seemed unproportional to the topic.

“I assume the police know about Mitch Menteith?”

“Yeah. I mean, Rosalyn said they were searching into all the computer stuff, and he was one of the first guys they talked to.”

“Good. Have you talked to Jessica’s mom and dad?”

This did not diminish his angry expression. “Not much. They never exactly considered me part of the family. Well, Mrs. Halliday did. She was cool. But not him. He acted like I was a dirty and disgusting pig who was there to like, rape his daughter. He yelled at her like a psycho right before she died. She told me. He called her a slut.”

I paused. I felt my face reddening on Jessica’s behalf. “Why?”

“She and I had been out pretty late. She got home and he just laid into her. He probably assumed we were having sex or something. I’m not saying we did or we didn’t. It was just none of his fucking business.”

“Maybe he just felt protective, Danny.”

“Yeah, well. There was nothing to protect her from. I never hurt her, physically or emotionally.” His eyes grew suddenly moist. “I can’t say that was reciprocal.”

I set down my cone; I hadn’t made much progress. I touched Danny’s hand. “It’s hard being eighteen and in love.”

“Were you?”

“Oh, yes. His name was Eric.”

“So how come you’re not married now?”

I shrugged. “We agreed it would be mature to go to different colleges. We both wanted careers. We certainly weren’t ready to marry at eighteen.”

“So then you just drifted apart, right?”

I nodded. “Pretty much. Funny how that happens to people, huh? It may well have happened to you and Jessica. And I know that you will meet many lovely young women when you go off to school next fall. None of them will replace Jessica, of course. But it’s possible to store a special love in your heart and still move on to other loves.”

“So how many loves have you had?”

Like many teenagers, Danny wanted to test the veracity of what I was saying with specific examples, and those had to come from my own life. Otherwise I was just talking.

“I guess I’ve had… four.”

“Four guys, huh? So how come you’re not married?” he asked me again.

“Well, aside from Eric, there was one guy who broke up with me, and one that I broke up with, and then there’s one… who I care about right now.”

“So are you engaged?”

“No. This is brand new.”

He nodded. His eyes showed that he was doing some thinking. “Some of the kids said they saw you with Mr. Jonas. That you were, like, walking down the sidewalk together.”

“Mr. Jonas and I are friends.”

“Huh.” He wanted to ask more, but I think my tone made it clear I was finished discussing myself.

The boy from the ice cream stand let out his attempt at a barbaric yawp. “I’m not doing two jobs just because you’re a stupid bastard with a thousand girlfriends,” his thin voice called. Some of the teens in the tables started laughing. Even Danny smirked a bit.

“He’s such a swinging sack,” he said to me, apologetically. Then he yelled, “I’m coming, you stupid dicknose!”

“Danny!” I said.

“Sorry, Miz Thurber.”

“Can I keep this card? For this Mitch person?”

“Sure. I don’t exactly want to go calling upon the fellow.” He said this in a mock British accent. The old Danny was starting to make a comeback.

I stood up. “Thanks, Danny. Listen, I couldn’t finish my ice cream—”

“Do you care if I eat it?”

“I don’t know how sanitary—”

Danny looked at me in disbelief, then popped my cone into his mouth. He had both the appetite and the capacity of a large animal. I suppose, biologically, that was what he was. For the first time I noticed how truly big Danny was — well over six feet tall and probably two hundred pounds, muscular and fit. His hands, too, were big, I noted, as he reached out to shake one of mine, as though we had just completed a job interview.

“Thanks for coming by, Miz Thurber.”

“Thanks for talking with me, Danny. See you in class. Will you have time to read tonight?”

“Yeah. I stay up late.”

“It’s a good couple of chapters. Lots of psychological torment.”

“I can relate,” said Danny, and he went back into the little hut where he did his job.

* * *

I called the number listed on Mitch Menteith’s business card, which identified him as an “independent computer consultant.” I wondered what sort of salary that earned him. His voice, slightly high-pitched but very professional, told me that if I left a message, he would get back to me today.

I left my name and number, saying that I was Jessica Halliday’s former teacher. I hung up the phone and went to my computer to make a handout. I typed “Reading Quiz:
Macbeth
Act III.” I didn’t tend to like company-made tests and quizzes. For one thing, I’d found errors on them — more errors than you’d expect on a professionally-made English exam. For another, the dry questions of some educational facility, while probably very sound and balanced, didn’t always incorporate what we discussed in class, and I wanted students to be able to access the knowledge that our discourse had elicited. The other problem with publisher-made tests was this: if there’s something a teacher can order online, a student can order it online, too. Forget the whole notion of passwords and protected this or that. Kids got teacher tests, teacher editions, all the time, thanks to the Worldwide Web. So I made my own assessments.

I pondered my first question. What would be fair yet relevant? What would test their knowledge without being an unrealistic expectation? I went with “What is bothering Banquo at the beginning of this act?” That would be pretty easy even if they hadn’t read beyond the first speech. (I had only assigned two pages, as it was. We generally read Shakespeare together). Then I wrote “Bonus question: what thematic word does Banquo use in his speech?”