Around five o’clock, before he came home, I returned the newspaper to the trash can, carefully repositioning it below last night’s rigatoni with tomato sauce (the UNCS Political Science Department assistant, Barbara, had given Dad a few “comfort food” recipes; supposedly they’d been the rock that helped some wayward stepson, Mitch, through rehab). It was a stealthy exercise, much like hiding one’s medication in the elastic of a fitted sheet, crushing it up with a soupspoon, using it to fertilize geraniums.
“Teacher Death Shocks School,” “Dead Woman Beloved Teacher, Community Activist,” “Investigators Hold Details of Local Death”—these were the keyed-up articles about it, us, her. They rehashed the specifics of the rescue, the Stockton community’s “shock,” “disbelief” and “sense of loss.” Jade, Charles, Milton, Nigel and Lu all got their names and grinning yearbook pictures in the paper. (I did not — another blow for being the first found.) They quoted Eva Brewster: “We can’t believe it.” They also quoted Alice Kline, who’d worked with Hannah at the Burns County Animal Shelter: “It’s so sad. She was the happiest, kindest person in the world. All the dogs and cats are waiting for her to come back.” (When someone died prematurely they routinely become the Happiest, Kindest Person.)
Apart from “Investigation Continues into Park Death,” which explained that her body had been discovered two miles from Sugartop Summit, that she had been hanging by an electrical cord, none of the other articles said anything new. After a while, I found it all stomach-turning, especially the editorial, “WNC Murder, Evidence of Voodoo,” by R. Levenstein, some “local critic, conservationist and Web blogger” speculating that her death was occult related. “The police’s continuing reluctance to disclose the details of Hannah Schneider’s death steers the astute observer to a conclusion local authorities have been trying to cover up for years: there is a growing populace of witches in Sluder and Burns Counties.”
No, it wasn’t like it was in the Olden Days.
Due to my new fondness for trawling through the trash, I was able to locate something else of note Dad had discarded for the sake of my mental health, The St. Gallway Bereavement Pack. Judging from the date on the large manila envelope in which it’d come, apparently The Pack had been launched with the velocity of a Tomahawk cruise missile as soon as news of the catastrophic event hit school radars.
The Pack included a letter from Headmaster Havermeyer (“Dear Parents: We are saddened this week by the death of one of our dearest teachers, Hannah Schneider…”), an overexcited article from a 1991 issue of Parenting magazine, “How Children Grieve,” a schedule of counseling times and room numbers, Crisis Team constituents, a pair of 24-hour 800-numbers to call for psychological assistance (1-800-FEEL-SAD, and another I find difficult to remember, 1-800-U-BEWAIL, I believe) and a tepid postscript about a funeral (“A date for Ms. Schneider’s memorial service has yet to be arranged.”).
One can imagine how strange it was for me to read these carefully prepared materials, to realize they were talking about Hannah, our Hannah, the Ava Gardnered person across from whom I’d once eaten pork chops — how scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead. Chiefly unsettling was the fact that The Pack mentioned nothing of how she’d died. True, The Pack had been prepared and mailed well before the Sluder County Coroner’s Office would release its autopsy report. Yet the omission was bizarre, as if she hadn’t been murdered (a sensational word; if I had my way there’d be something a little more serious at the intersection of Death, Murder and Slaughter — Mauleth, perhaps). Instead, according to The Pack, Hannah had simply “passed” she’d been playing poker and decided not to take another card. Or, reading Havermeyer’s spongy wording, one had the sense she’d been seized (“taken from us”), King-Kong-style (“without warning”), by the gigantic, smooth hand of God (“she’s in good hands”), and though such an event was gruesome (“one of life’s toughest lessons”) everyone should nail a grin to their face and continue robotically with daily life (“we must continue on, loving each day, as Hannah would’ve wanted”).
St. Gallway’s Grief Management began, but certainly did not end, with The Bereavement Pack. The day after I found the thing, Saturday the 2, Dad received a phone call from Mark Butters, Head of the Crisis Team.
I eavesdropped on the conversation from my bedroom phone with Dad’s silent complicity. Prior to Butters’ appointment to the Crisis Team, he’d never been a confident man. He had the complexion of baba ghanoush and his flabby body, even on bright, sunny days, reminded one of nothing more robust than a much-used carry-on suitcase. His most obvious personality trait was his suspicious nature, the unflagging conviction that he, Mr. Mark Butters, was the secret subject of all student jokes, quips, puns and personal asides. Over his table at lunch, his eyes searched student faces like drug dogs in an airport for the chalky residue of ridicule. But, as evidenced by his sonorous, newly confident voice, Mr. Butters had simply been a person of untapped potential, a man who needed only a Tiny Calamity in order to shine. He’d given up Hesitation and Doubt with the surprising ease of anonymously returning erotica in the middle of the night to the RETURNS slot at the video store, had effortlessly replaced them with Authority and Daring.
“Your schedule permitting,” said Mr. Butters, “we’d like to arrange a half-hour session with both you and Blue in order to discuss what’s happened. You’ll be sitting down with myself and Havermeyer, as well as one of our child counselors.”
“One of your what?”
(Dad, I should mention, did not believe in anyone’s counsel except his own. He thought psychotherapy promulgated nothing more than a great deal of handholding and shoulder massaging. He despised Freud, Jung, Frasier and any person who thought it fascinating to instigate a lengthy discussion of his/her own dreams.)
“A counselor. To share your concerns, your daughter’s concerns. We have on hand a very competent, full-time child psychologist, Deb Cromwell. She’s come to us from The Derds School in Raleigh.”
“I see. Well, I have only one concern.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Hit me with it.”
“You.”
Butters was silent. Then: “I see.”
“My concern is that for the entire week your school has remained mute — out of terror, I suppose — and now, at long last, one of you has mustered the courage to come forward, at, what time is it, three-forty-five on a Saturday afternoon. And all you have to say is that you’d like us to schedule a time to come in and be psychoanalyzed. Is that correct?”
“This is a just a preliminary question-and-answer session. Bob and Deb would like to sit down with you, have a one-on-one—”
“The true intention of this phone call is to intuit whether or not I plan to sue both the school and the Board of Education for negligence. Am I right?”
“Mr. Van Meer, I’m not going to try to argue with—”
“Don’t.”
“What I will say is that we wish—”
“I wouldn’t say or wish anything if I were you. Your reckless — let me rephrase that — your deranged staff member took my child, a minor, on a weekend field trip without securing parental permission—”
“We’re well aware of the situa—”
“Endangered her life, the lives of five other minors and, let me remind you, managed to get herself killed in what is looking like a highly disgraceful fashion. I am this close to calling a lawyer and making it my life’s ambition to ensure that you, that headmaster of yours, Oscar Meyers, and every person associated with your third-rate institution ends up wearing stripes and leg irons for the next forty years. Furthermore, in the off chance my daughter does wish to share her concerns, the last person with whom she’d choose to do so would be a private-school counselor named Deb. If I were you, I wouldn’t call here again unless you wish to beg for clemency.”