“I was her classmate even before this school. But I don’t know anything about the Odyssey of the Mind. What is that?”
“It’s a nationwide problem-solving competition for gifted students. The winner gets a scholarship to the college of his or her choice. Here’s the thing: in our last correspondence, we asked Katie to provide us with additional materials about her improvements to current weather balloon designs. Well, despite the circumstances, without these materials we can’t grant her family the reward. So, the reason I’m talking to you is—”
Thomas scrunched his face up and turned to me, planting a hand on his hip, rather effeminately. As for myself, I was performing much better than I’d expected, even if my Rick Wilder character was emitting more of a Bud Fuze vibe than I’d intended.
“What’s the point in giving her the scholarship now?”
“The board decided to award it to Katie’s sister.”
“The National Board of Education?”
“That’s right.”
Thomas started zipping and unzipping his backpack, his mental gears obviously grinding. “What exactly are you looking for? Some blueprints or something?”
“You got it,” I said, feeling the interview starting to get away from me. I cleared my throat in an attempt to regain some sense of authority. “It’s a pretty complicated design, and Katie forgot to send us the blueprints for one of the more minor sections of the model.”
At this point Thomas was thoroughly flustered. He wiped his glasses in his shirt, apparently to better scrutinize my face, during which time he kept nodding to himself and sighing. I couldn’t guess where he might’ve seen me before, but my mind raced to come up with the fewest number of questions that would offer the greatest set of answers, feeling it was only a matter of time before he identified me.
“Katie’s parents have searched everywhere and can’t seem to come up with these blueprints. I was hoping you’d know what she might have done with them?”
“I told you I’ve never heard of the Odyssey of the Mind.”
“But you might have a guess about where she collected her work, a secret hiding place or something like that. When you consider the potential value of the project, it’s not so surprising that she would’ve done everything she could to protect her plans.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Thomas said, shrugging in apparent disagreement. He shaded his face and searched the lineup of cars, taking his time to think it over. “I guess I’m not
surprised
, but I doubt she was worried about someone stealing her plans. She probably just didn’t want her parents to find out. She wasn’t supposed to enter any more contests until after the surgery. That’s why she didn’t take the national Spanish exam.”
“Surgery?” I said, breaking character by way of an anxious tone unbefitting an academic contest facilitator with no relation to the contestant. I stared into the sun, trying to hide my astonishment in the glare. “I knew Katie had multiple sclerosis, but I wasn’t aware of any multiple sclerosis surgery.”
“There isn’t any. At least not that’s
proven
,” he said, apparently drawn in by my concern. At that moment Thomas seemed suddenly much older than before, even given the youthful blaze in his cheeks and the occasional cracks in his voice. “She was supposed to join a
clinical trial
at the Mayo Clinic up in Minnesota. They were going to take some cells from her
ankle
to replace the damaged ones in her
brain
and
spine
.” He stared into the illustrated cover of
Moby-Dick
, sighing deeply, apparently annoyed at himself for getting so worked up. “Anyway, it’s complicated and Katie didn’t talk about it, so I don’t want to talk about it, either. I knew her since we were six years old.”
I pulled at my mustache, glancing nonchalantly in the direction of a group of boys shouting and laughing as they tossed a tennis ball from one to the other, teasing a kid who’d been playing catch with it against the side of the school. Meanwhile Thomas turned to a lone cloud, likely considering his own questions that only Katie could answer. Soon enough he grabbed his backpack by the straps and stood up, looking like he regretted the conversation and was planning to walk off, even if his ride had yet to appear. But again he decided against it. (Perhaps talking about Katie made him feel she wasn’t so far away, though I really don’t know why he sat back down.)
“Her doctors told her that all these contests made her more stressed out and caused her symptoms to get worse. And if her symptoms got worse, she couldn’t have the surgery. They said she’d be too weak to recover.”
I nodded, like this information might somehow help me find what I was looking for. I wondered if Katie’s other classmates knew about the surgery or if she’d only confided in Thomas. I wanted to believe that she hadn’t confided in anyone, and the only reason Thomas knew was because Mrs. Schell had informed one of Katie’s teachers who wasn’t as discreet with the information as he or she should have been. When Thomas stood up for the last time, I rose with him and reached for his hand.
“Thanks for your time,” I said. “It sounds like I talked to the right guy.”
Thomas shrugged and stepped back. “I don’t know anything about these blueprints. All I know is that I’ve seen you before and your name isn’t Rick. Besides, there’s no such thing as the National Board of Education. It’s the Department of Education. Everybody knows that.”
Thomas waited for a response with an expression akin to a father’s pity and disappointment for his fledgling teenaged son. When he realized I had nothing to say he turned and walked away, dismissively cool, appearing much closer to his lady-killing years than I initially thought.
Thirty-four
While the additional facts I received that day have led me over the years to consider gross revisions to the notion that Katie’s drowning resulted from a jinxed slip out of a mostly buckled life jacket, I have never shared this or any other alternative theory with anyone. That is not to say I never felt tempted or occasionally entitled to ask Emily about Katie’s attitude regarding the experimental operation she was scheduled to undertake. Perhaps someday I’ll change my mind, but that day has not yet come, and I hope it never will. In any case, according to my research in the days after my meeting with Thomas Staniszewski, the half dozen surgeries of the type Katie was supposed to receive all resulted in modest decreases of the debilitating symptoms afflicting her. Even in the two cases where patients experienced only the mildest improvements, no records exist to suggest that they suffered additional damages. According to my interviews with several eighth-floor nurses at Mercy Frederick Hospital, Thomas Staniszewski’s story checked out. These are the facts. It is enough to conclude by saying that I regretted my visit to Whitfield Academy and wished I’d never considered, nor would continue to consider, the questions it raised.
Thirty-five
I’m now recalling a snowy Sunday, staring out my window at a vision so blurred by white windswept veils that I felt a mirage of Tolstoy’s tundra arising between the space of my bedroom and the now invisible, brightly shuttered house across the street. It was unlike Zach to bother answering the phone. I guessed it had been ringing all morning.
4
Zach handed me the phone and marched out of my room as fast as he’d marched in. Emily and I hadn’t spoken since her family’s decision to spend Thanksgiving in Tennessee, and were incommunicado for several weeks before that.
“This is Emily Schell’s study buddy informing you of her updated status as a collegiate dropout. That’s right, she’s failed, and the city of Chicago has requested that she kindly buzz off back to the farm. She will henceforth and hitherto begin her march of shame back to Des Moines, though she’s considering taking a personal weekend on the way with the only redhead who ever really gave a crap about her.”
“Did you get my electronic mail?” I asked, having deliberated for weeks if I’d inspired our latest bout of silence by a misdeeded adjective or adverb.
“Yes I got your
e-lec-tron-ic
mail. But Becky’s waiting in the car as we speak and her dad owns several Hy-Vees and it seems she’s in a serious rush.”
“You’re coming right now?”
“Didn’t I say
henceforth
and
hitherto
? It’s right here in my script. So do you think you’ll have enough time to break up with your new girlfriend and erase all evidence of her existence?”
I looked out the window, suddenly convinced she was on a cell phone and sneaking up the driveway. “Are you still reading from the script?”
“I cut that line from the opening statement, the longer version. But I’m glad I got to use it.”
“Oh, well, I don’t have a girlfriend. Did someone tell you I have a girlfriend? Smitty’s the one with the new girlfriend. What the fuck is wrong with people?”
“Sorry,” she said, getting serious. “I guess that was a bad joke. No one told me anything about your girlfriend. But here’s the deal. Becky’s from a wonderful little place called Davenport, Iowa, which is three hours from here, and only two hours from Des Moines. So, what would you say about meeting me at the Davenport Super 8, then driving me the rest of the way in your big badass Ford?”
“I’d say I’ll be waiting for you.”
“You know your way to the Super 8?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just make sure Becky doesn’t make any sudden turns. There’s a lot of black ice out there.”
“We’ll be careful,” she said, affectionately flippant. “Thanks a million, George. I’m really glad it worked out this way. I’ll see you in three hours, okay?”
“Three hours,” I said, then hung up, immediately attending to the preparatory details of sallying forth in the middle of a storm. First thing I called Frank, who in typical fashion didn’t ask a question and told me to take whatever time I needed. Next I wrote a note to my parents, showered and shaved, checked the pickup’s fluid levels and tire pressure, packed the cab with a tow chain and security blankets, gassed up, bought condoms, and set off for the highway feeling that every action since hanging up with Emily was accomplished in one sinuous balletic sequence. But as soon as I entered traffic one of my windshield wipers defaulted and I passed a minivan bunked down in the ditch and soon found myself crawling at forty miles per hour, keeping much more than the recommended distance behind my fellow drivers, even though the roads were recently plowed and salted and everyone else was cruising along with little more caution than usual. I listened to the radio for weather updates, hoping my patience over the previous months had paid off, but trying not to think about whether we’d soon return to official coupledom.
When I reached Davenport the snowstorm was building up again, despite giving passage to a few bright rays of light. The office buildings next to the Super 8 were curiously shorter than I remembered them, surrounded by parking lots covered in fresh white sheets, everything flatter, like a vast plain. After nervously pacing about my quiet motel room, I paged through a few magazines in the lobby, then stepped outside to wander the premises. Despite the fact that I was waiting for her, my first sighting of Emily caught me even more off guard than her phone call. She was strolling down the sidewalk with black bobbed hair and blunt bangs. I might not have recognized her if she hadn’t stopped at the edge of the parking lot, dropping her gym bag and smiling, like that was it, she’d shown up after all, new and improved, full of raven-haired wisdom and intrigue. As always I was struck by the lovely intelligence of her smile, but even that reflected her adoption of a new persona that I could only compare to an unruly starlet of silent film. When we met in the middle of the lot, she kissed my cheek and ran her fingers through the hair on one side of my head. I didn’t know what to do or say except to stare into the most familiar aspect of her visage: her hazel eyes, more forlorn than when I’d first studied them outside the St. Pius auditorium, but tempered by a customary measure of rapt wonderment. We held hands and smiled, then hugged for a while, making sure it was really us.
“Should we start off with a tour around town?” she asked, tugging at her navy peacoat and thick woolen scarf. “This is your town still, isn’t it?”
“We get offended when you call it a town.”
“If Chicago’s
that toddlin’ town
, then Davenport can be a town, too.”
“I’ll run it by the committee,” I said, strolling around her to inspect her haircut. The new look would take a while to get used to, but it was mature and exotic, seemingly fit for a dauntless actor paving her own way. I pulled at my chin and nodded.
“It’s okay?” she asked.
“It’s more than okay.”
“Then I’ll keep it,” she said, stomping a foot in the snow for effect. I took her gym bag and we started toward the entrance to the motel, wondering where Emily had come from, but assuming Becky lived nearby, that for our first encounter in three months Emily preferred we meet alone.
“Who gave you the new coat and scarf?”
“I did. I’ve given myself a lot of new things. I’m thinking about giving myself an honorary degree.”
“While you’re at it, might as well make up two of them.”
“I will,” she said, stopping and swiping a hand over the iron railing. A sparkling cloud of snow flittered to the pavement. “But first things first. I know you’re going to play tough about visiting your old neighborhood, but you should at least show me the kennel where you and Zach let all the dogs loose.”
“I wouldn’t call it
my
neighborhood.”
“Neither would I,” she said, raising an impertinent eyebrow. “I’d call it your
old
neighborhood. It’s really a beautiful drive into town, or the city, or whatever. It’s a pretty nice place, George.”
I took a peek inside her gym bag, which was hardly packed beyond a pair of jeans and a sweater. “So you’re really quitting?” I asked.
“It’s a done deal. I’m hoping it will soften the blow when my parents realize I’ll be living at home for a while. My mom calls about ten times a week.” She stretched her arms out, yawning and lifting onto her toes. I had a feeling she wasn’t as sure as she sounded. “Maybe you should take me for a walk by the river. It’s not that cold, really.”