There had been a brief time in college when I wrote poetry. It was, like most sophomore verse, conceived in the loins rather than the mind. It was a notch better than most such verse, perhaps, but it was no loss to literature when I stopped writing. My brush with poetry, however, left me with a permanent respect for those who wrote it well. Seeing familiar names again, Auden, Frost, Richard Wilbur, took me back to sunny autumn afternoons when I sat in my dorm room writing lame couplets.
Katherine Paris had published a half-dozen slender volumes over the past twenty years and one thick book of collected poems. Each book was adorned with the same photograph I had seen at Hugh’s house and beneath it was the same paragraph of biographical information. She was born in Boston, graduated from Radcliffe, took a master’s degree from Columbia and currently divided her time between Boston and San Francisco. Her work had won the National Book Award and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She had been translated into twelve languages — they were listed — and had once been mentioned by T.S. Eliot who found her work elliptical. Nothing about a crazy husband and a homosexual son; apparently, that information was private.
I struggled with about a dozen of her poems before I saw Eliot’s point. Her work was indeed elliptical, she left out everything that was essential, including logic and meaning. Her words neither described nor observed things. They were just words scattered across the page. This was braininess of the highest order, the verbal equivalent of the white canvas passed off as a painting; so abstract that to have expected some sense from it would have insulted the artist. As my attention wandered from the poems, it seemed to me that I was being watched. I closed the book and looked around. The boy standing next to me quickly directed his attention to his feet.
He wore a baggy pair of khaki shorts rolled up at the bottom over a long sinewy pair of legs. He had on a white sweatshirt with a red paisley bandana tied around his neck and a small button with the lambda — the symbol of gay liberation — on it. He had a round cherubic face, short hair of an indeterminate dark color. He looked about twenty. He raised his eyes at me and I realized that I was being cruised, not spied on.
“Hello,” I said, pleasantly.
Pointing at the book in my hand he said, “I took a creative writing course from her last quarter.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “My name is Danny.”
“Henry,” I said. “Did you like the course?”
“Actually,” he confided, pushing his hair with slender fingers, “she’s a good poet but a very neurotic woman.”
“Don’t the two go together?”
“No,” he said, “I reject the notion of the doomed artist. I mean, look at Stevens, he sold insurance and Williams was a doctor.”
“Sorry,” I said, “It’s been a long time since I read poetry. Who are Stevens and Williams?”
He looked slightly shocked. “Wallace Stevens? William Carlos Williams?” I shook my head. Looking at me intently he said, “Aren’t you a student? A grad student maybe?” “I’m a lawyer and my interest in Katherine Paris is professional, not literary.”
“A lawyer,” he repeated as though describing a virus. “Don’t lawyers wear suits when they’re working?” I was wearing a pair of jeans and a black polo shirt.
“Not on house calls,” I replied. “Where can I find Mrs. Paris?”
“Third floor, English department in the Old Quad. I’ll walk you there if you like, okay?”
“Sure, just let me pay for the book.”
Between the bookstores and the Old Quad I learned quite a bit about Danny’s tastes in poetry, his life and his plans as well as receiving a couple of gently veiled passes. I steered the conversation around to Katherine Paris.
“She had this great lady persona,” he was saying, “but don’t cross her.”
“You did?”
“Anyone with any integrity does sooner or later. Her opinions are set in stone.”
“Not writ in water?”
“That’s Shelley. That was pretty good. Anyway, she doesn’t let you forget who has the power.” We had reached the English department. He smiled at me, sunnily. “What do you want with her anyway?”
“Her son was killed on campus a couple of days ago. He was a friend of mine. I want to ask her some questions.”
“You mean the guy that they found in the creek?” I nodded. “That’s too bad. Was he a good friend?”
I reached out and touched the button on his chest. “We were good friends.”
His look said, “And here I’ve been cruising you.” Aloud, he said, “You must think I’m a real jerk.”
“How could you have known?” I asked, reasonably. “And thanks for the help.’’ We shook hands, he a little awkwardly and I remembered how rare the gesture was among students. “The poem with the phrase writ in water, that was about Keats, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Shelley wrote it when Keats died. He called it ‘Adonais.’” He started to say something else, thought better of it, smiled again and walked away. I watched him go and then turned and climbed up the stairs to the third floor.
Katherine Paris did not look like a woman anyone ever called mother. Her small feet were encased in gold slippers and she wore a flowing white caftan that obliterated any sign of a body beneath it. The string of blue beads around her neck was probably lapis lazuli. It was the only jewelry she wore. Her face had the false glow of a drinker but none of a drinker’s soft alcoholic bloat. It was a hard angular face I saw as I entered her office; deeply wrinkled, deeply intelligent. She instructed me to sit down. I sat. She continued writing.
The walls of the office were bare. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon light and the only source of light was her desk lamp. She worked at an elegant writing table whose spindly legs hardly seemed able to bear the weight of the books piled on top. At length, she looked up at me from beneath half-glasses evidently surprised to find that I was still there.
I introduced myself, to her obvious pleasure, as an admirer of her work. She accepted the volume of her collected poems and signed it for me.
“How were you introduced to my poetry?” she asked. Her voice was a low, whisky rumble.
“Your son, Hugh,” I replied and, at once, the pleasure vanished. Her eyes narrowed.
“I see. Tell me, Mr. Rios, which of my poems is your favorite? Or have you actually opened this — brand new book?”
“In fact I have, Mrs. Paris, but you’re right, I didn’t come here to discuss them. I’m a lawyer.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Mrs. Paris, I was Hugh’s friend “Hugh was rather generous in that regard. He had altogether too many friends. Were you one of his — special friends?” she asked archly.
“I cared for Hugh,” I said.
“Mr. Rios,” she said, mockingly, “spare me the homosexual sentimentality. What is it you want from me?”
“I believe Hugh was murdered. I’m not sure by whom but the first thing to do is determine the exact cause of death. The body was moved before an autopsy-”
“That’s enough,” she said. “You walk in from nowhere, tell me someone killed my son and ask permission to cut open his body?” These last words were delivered in a tone of rising incredulousness. “Just who the hell are you? One of his boyfriends? Do you think there’s money for you in this?”
Unable to suppress my hostility, I said, “Mrs. Paris, I sympathize with your deep grief, however, I’m talking about a crime.”
“My deep grief? Getting himself killed was the most unselfish thing Hugh ever did. As for the body, it was cremated yesterday. As for crimes, Mr. Rios, you’re now trespassing and in one minute I’m going to call campus security and have you thrown out.” She picked up the phone.