“That’s great news, Stan. Any word from the police about the teacher’s cause of death?”
“Cherry, Sluder County Police have issued no statements about the body of the woman found, except to say that for the progress of the investigation, all evidence will be held at this time. We’ll have to wait for the Sluder County coroner’s ruling, which is expected next week. For now, everyone’s relieved the kids are safe. They’re expected to be released from the hospital later today.”
“Great, Stan. And News 13 will keep you tuned as news breaks in this camping tragedy.”
Cherry looked down at the piece of paper and looked up again.
“It’s small. It’s black. It’s something you shouldn’t leave home without.”
“Find out what it is,” said Norvel, blinking at the camera, “in our ‘Get Technical’ series. Coming up next.”
I watched the program until the very end, when Cherry smiled and twittered, “Have a great morning!” and the camera zoomed away from her and Norvel like a fly zipping around the studio. From her triumphant grin, it appeared she was hoping the camping tragedy would be her claim to fame, her Fifteen Minutes (That Could Potentially Lead to a Full Half Hour), her First-Class Ticket to Somewhere (with Fully Reclining Seats and Champagne before Takeoff). Cherry seemed to see it all twisting into the distance like a four-lane highway: “The Cherry Jeffries Talk Show: Spill Your Heart Out,” CHAY-JEY, a conservative clothing line for the serious blond working woman (“No longer an oxymoron”), “Cherry Bird,” the Cherry Jeffries Fragrance for Women in Motion, the newspaper article in USA Today, “Move over, Oprah, Here Comes Cherry.” A car commercial roared onto the screen. I noticed Dad standing behind me. His tattered leather bag, stuffed with legal pads and periodicals, hung heavily around his shoulder. He was on his way to the university. His first seminar, Conflict Resolution in the Third World, started at 9:00 A.M.
“Perhaps it’s not a wise idea to watch anymore,” he said.
“And do what instead,” I asked blandly.
“Rest. Read. I have a new annotated copy of De Profundis—”
“I don’t want to read De Profundis.”
“Fair enough.” He was silent for a moment. Then: “You know, I could phone Dean Randall. We could go somewhere for the day. Drive to a—”
“Where?”
“Perhaps we could take a picnic to one of those lakes people are always praising to the high heavens. One of these local lakes with ducks.”
“Ducks.”
“You know. Paddleboats. And geese.”
Dad walked around to the front of the couch, ostensibly so I’d peel my eyes off the TV and look at him.
“To get on the highway,” he said. “It might remind us that no matter the tragedy, there’s always a world beyond it. ‘Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?’”
I continued to stare at the TV, my eyes sore, my thin bathrobe, the color of tongues, limp around my legs.
“Did you have an affair with Hannah Schneider?” I asked.
Dad was so shocked he didn’t immediately speak. “I—what?”
I repeated the question.
“How can you ask such a thing?”
“You had an affair with Eva Brewster, so maybe you also had an affair with Hannah Schneider. Maybe you had an affair with the entire school and kept me in the dark—”
“Of course not,” Dad said irritably, then he took a deep breath and added very quietly, “I did not have an affair with Hannah Schneider. Sweet, you should stop this…brooding—it isn’t good. What can I do? Tell me. We can move somewhere. California. You always wanted to go to California, didn’t you? Any state you like…”
Dad was grabbing at words the way drowning people grab at floating bits of plywood. I didn’t say anything.
“Well,” he said, after a minute. “You have my office number. I’ll be home around two to check on you.”
“Don’t check on me.”
“Sweet.”
“What?”
“There’s that macaroni—”
“In the fridge, which I can reheat for lunch — yes, I know.”
He sighed and covertly I glanced over at him. He looked as if I’d punched him in the face, as if I’d spray-painted PIG on his forehead, as if I’d told him I wished he was dead.
“You’ll call if you need anything?” he asked.
I nodded.
“If you’d like, on my way home I can pick up a few videos from — what is that—?”
“Videomecca.”
“Right. Any requests?”
“Gone with the Fucking Wind,” I said.
Dad kissed me on the cheek and walked through the hall to the front door. It was one of those instances one feels as if one’s skin has abruptly become thin as one layer of phyllo dough on a triangle of baklava, when one desperately doesn’t want the other person to go, but one doesn’t say anything in order to feel isolation in its purest form, as a periodic table element, one of the noble gases, Iso1.
The front door closed, locked. To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture.
I guess it was shock, the body’s spin on distress, what Jemma Sloane drearily refers to on p. 95 of her book on “confrontational children,” Raising Goliath (1999): “child coping mechanisms.” Whatever the psychological grounds, for the next four days following their rescue (as my beloved Chernobyl reported during First News at Five, returned to their homes like damaged parcels) I adopted the character and deportment of a nasty ninety-year-old widow.
Dad had to work, so I spent the rest of Spring Break alone. I said little. What I did say tended to be to myself or to my colored companion, the TV (Chernobyl proved more enjoyable than any show-offy grandchild). Dad was the grossly underpaid yet loyal caretaker who showed up at regular intervals to make sure I hadn’t burned down the house, that I ate my prepared meals and didn’t fall asleep in strange positions that could lead to injury or death. He was the nurse who held his tongue when I was irritable, in the off chance I might keel over.
When I felt up to it, I ventured outside. The rueful weekend of rain had given way to conceited sunshine. It was too much — the glare, the grass like straw. The sun harassed the yard with a shamelessness I’d never noticed before, inundating the leaves, scalding the pavement. Also offensive were the earthworms, those vagrants, visibly hungover from the downpour, so wasted they were unable to mobilize and fried themselves into orange french fries all over the driveway.
I scowled, kept my bedroom shades pulled, hated everyone, felt grouchy. As soon as Dad drove away in the morning, I rummaged through the kitchen trash to retrieve the latest Stockton Observer, which he’d thrown out early in the morning, so I wouldn’t see the headlines and fester over what had happened. (He didn’t know my well-being was a lost cause; I had little appetite and sleep remained likely as phoenix eggs.)