Borderlines (25 page)

“Eat all you want.” She sat opposite me and began to fill our cups.

%164 “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or is this to be a one-way conversation?” I recognized I was not dealing with some prehistoric busybody, as her neighbor had implied. Whatever Mrs.

Grissom had done in her heyday, she hadn’t kowtowed to other people.

“Bruce Wingate’s been murdered.” She didn’t pause in her activities, but she stayed silent for a moment.

She pushed my cup over to me and looked me in the eye, her face serious.

“I’m sorry to hear that. How’s Ellie?” “Hard to tell. She’s bottled it up. She also has a guy running interference for her, so it’s hard to get close.” “What guy?” The way she pronounced the second word, I could tell she wasn’t fond of casual English. “He’s some kind of anti-cult counselor-organizes peer support groups for parents of children who have joined cults. He probably has other irons in the fire, but that’s the gist of it.” She nodded. “I’m not surprised. So Julie is mixed in with this?” “They drove up to Vermont to find her.” “I thought that’s what it was. They gave me their keys so I could water the plants and feed the cat.” I was a little disappointed by that. The implication was that Mrs.

Grissom and the Wingates were old friends, which made her an unlikely source for objective information.

“Silly mess. All three of them should have run away to separate parts of the country.” I raised my eyebrows questioningly in midsip of tea.

“Theirs was the most minatural-feeling family group I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?” “I never heard any music from over there, or any laughter, not even any shouting. They never held a party, never had friends over, little Julie never played in the yard with a playmate. Any time I saw them together, they were mostly silent. Who killed Bruce?” “We don’t know. Were you good friends with them?” “No,” she answered immediately.

“Nor do I think they had any. I think that was Bruce’s doing more than Ellie’s. My impression was that he dominated the family.” “How?” “Oh, you know, seeing them coming and going, it was always, ‘Don’t get Daddy mad,’ ‘Daddy wants this done,’ ‘I’ve got to get Daddy’s dinner ready.”

Daddy obviously pulled all the strings. It was more than that, though.”

%165 “Oh?” My mouth was half full of doughnut. Mrs. Grissom looked out the window. “Well, what I’ve described ‘t much different from many homes-my own father was a bit of a ciplinarian. I don’t know how to put it, really, except to say that uce controlled them. He was with that child all the time, especially en she was a youngster. The only times I saw her in the yard was his company.” “You mean playing?” She tilted her head from side to side in a vague gesture. “PlaySome would call it that. I would stand at that window years 0,” she indicated the window over the sink, “and watch them tother, throwing a ball back and forth or shooting marbles in the iveway. He would constantly instruct her, his face serious, as if what ey were doing had long-range, almost grim consequences. Neither e of them laughed or smiled. They would just go through the moveents-throwing a ball back and forth, back and forth-without any ling whatsoever. It was almost as if Bruce had read somewhere that was supposed to do these things with his daughter and, being a man sound character, he would therefore do them. There was an utter k of spontaneity.” “Did you ever suspect there was anything unnatural going on?” Her eyes opened wide. “You mean child abuse?” “It happens.” “Yes.” She paused a moment, reflecting. “I would have no reason say that. I certainly sensed that Bruce was the unchallenged authorof that family, which I think is abusive, but in the sense you mean I’d have to say I don’t know I wouldn’t rule it out.” I figured I’d better stop with the doughnuts and leaned back ainst the wall, cradling my teacup.

I was suddenly struck by a notion. 0 you have anything with Julie’s handwriting on it?” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “No, I don’t think so.

e looked up abruptly, her eyes bright. “Wait a minute; yes, I do.” She rose and crossed to a bulletin board littered with calendars, tes, photographs, and postcards. “They went on a trip to the Berkires several years ago and she sent me this.” She unpinned one of the stcards and brought it back to me.

On the back was scrawled a brief note describing the weather and e fact she was writing this in a hurry. It was signed, “Julie.” “May I keep this? I can get it back to you later.” “It doesn’t matter. I have no sentimental attachment to it.” I slipped it into my pocket, wondering if its author had also dressed the envelope that Bruce Wingate had received the night of %166 his death. “You seem to be talking about long ago all the time, when Julie was a little girl. What about recently?” “I can’t say. Once Julie began going to high school, Ellie got ajob.

Every morning, I’d see them head off in the car-Bruce driving, of course-and that would be that. I assumed he dropped the two women off on his way to work, and picked them up later.” “But school got out before five. What did Julie do in the meantime?” “I don’t know. They always came back together.” “And on the weekends?” “I never saw much of them. Julie never seemed to have any friends over, or go out on dates, though, if that’s what you mean.” “You said you ‘thought that was it’

when I mentioned they’d gone up to Vermont. Did you know Julie had run away?” “Yes-Ellie had told me-oh, more than a year ago. She seemed almost embarrassed by the fact, as if Julie’s action had brought shame to them all.” Mrs. Grissom leaned back and gave me a long look. “You know, I can’t say I was surprised when you told me Bruce was dead. It may sound cruel to say, but I always thought it would take his death to allow the other two any kind of freedom, especially Julie. Knowing that family was like seeing a life raft foundering because it carried one person too many.” Growing up in Thetford, there had been two centers to my life.

One was at home, where I was lucky enough to benefit from great comfort and support, and the other was at high school, where my emotional state bounced around as routinely as a basketball in full play. I proceeded to Julie’s high school.

The parking lot was full. Mrs. Grissom had told me how to get there, but from then on, I was on my own. I walked to where I thought I might put the administrative offices if I were an architect. I found a chemistry lab instead, filled with surprised, white-coated students and one teacher, who gave me directions. Once at the principal’s offlce, with much talk and much display of my essentially worthless credentials, I was ushered into a small, bare office to meet a nervous, chain-smoking rail of a woman. After listening to my request to talk with Julie’s guidance counselor, she tapped her pencil on the metal-topped desk for a few moments of reflection, then finally gave me the name I needed and further directions to the teachers’ lounge. There, I was met at the door by a fat, balding, pink-cheeked man %167 with an old-fashioned pencil mustache that looked absurdly at sea on his enormous faee “Mr.

Gunther?” “Yes.” We shook hands. His was damp and flaccid. “Miss Stevens called me on the intercom. You want to ask me about Julie Wingate?” “That’s right.” The lounge was a tired, threadbare room, smelling of stale cigarettes and burned coffee. The furniture had been colorful and modern twenty years back; now it was stained and exhausted.

Harvey Mullen led me to a couple of fabric-covered tubular chairs by the window. “Would you like some coffee?” What I wanted most now was a bathroom. I declined his offer and we both sat, facing each other as if we were at some encounter group. Mullen began rubbing the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. His eyes blinked, I noticed, with the precision of a clock-once every two seconds.

“I gather you were Julie’s advisor.” He nodded a few times too many.

“Right.” “What kind of girl was she?” “Oh, average.” “How do you mean?”

“Well, you know, there was nothing special about her.” “Did she have a lot of friends?” “I don’t know.” Right, I thought Mullen was as obtuse as Mrs. Grissom had been perceptive; too bad their roles in Julie Wingate’s life hadn’t been reversed. I started over. “What kind of advice do you give students here?” “All kinds. If they have problems with their grades, I see about tutoring; if it’s drugs, I see about counseling. I help them with their college choices, assuming they’re interested. I try to find their strengths, so the school can help them out in the best way.” “Julie went to college?” “B.C.” I took that to be Boston College. “Did she have good grades?” “So-so.” “What was her strength-was she particularly good at any one subject?” He pushed out his lower lip for a moment. “No, not really.” “What was she like to talk to? What did you discuss together?” He gave me another big smile.

“Nothing, oh.. headaches.” This was starting to get to me. “I’m investigating a murder, Mr.

%168 Mullen, which well might involve Julie. Could you be a little more generous with your answers?” Now he looked hurt. “I’m trying to help.

She just never said anything to me. Every time we sat down together, I’d do all the talking and she’d just sit there. The only time she said anything was about headaches.” “What about them?” “She got them a lot, and she complained to me that the nurse wasn’t giving her aspirin anymore, said she was taking too many.” “What did you do?” “Told the nurse to lighten up. It was just aspirin, after all.” “And that was it?

The two of you never spoke about anything else?” “Not really.” “What about when you discussed college choices?” “We didn’t discuss. She said her father wanted her to go to B.C.

and that’s where she was going. That was almost the longest talk we ever had.” Mr. Mullen finally did admit that Julie spent more time in art class, under the supervision of Mr. Petrovic, than she did anywhere else in school. Art class became my next stop.

Mr. Petrovic was everything Mr. Mullen was not tall, slim, thoughtful, concerned, and very aware Julie Wingate was not average in any way.

“She spent every afternoon here, after school let out. She was supposed to be waiting in the library that’s where her father picked her up every day after school but I let her hang out here. She loved to draw, she was good at it, and she never got in my way. Had she been a little less uptight, it would have been a joy to have her here. I could’ve felt I was nurturing the creative process, you know? An art teacher’s dream.

Most of the kids I get here can’t paint their fingernails.” “So she kept to herself”’ We were in a large room, mostly empty of furniture aside from dozens of easels and a few pedestals with odd lumps of clay on them. One entire wall was made up of glass windows, and with just the two of us here, it was a little like sitting in a secular church; it reminded me a bit of Sarris’s lair. “She kept to herself, all right, like a volcano with a loose lid.” The image startled me mostly because it fit my image of Bruce Wingate to a T. “Did you ever meet her parents?” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. The kid had my sympathies.”

%169 His expressions and outlook reminded me a lot of the young jaded ynics who’d grown up in the sixties, the ones who hadn’t trusted people over thirty and still didn’t, despite being ten years beyond that hemselves.

“What were they like?” His expression turned bitter. “Martinets, both of them, although e was the bandleader. She just sort of tagged along.

It was the damnedst parent conference I ever had. You know, some of them just want 0 know how their kid is doing, others are worried because the little enius isn’t painting like Picasso-or maybe he is painting like Picasso nd they hate it-but most of them are looking to the teacher for some nput. Not this duo. The old bastard basically told me what the kid hould be doing and let me know that if she wasn’t, it was because I as a shitty teacher. He told me he taught her himself how to paint nd how to read and write, and tell time, and do math, and everything Ise. I got the feeling he sat on her like a mother hen, telling her how 0 do everything but pick her nose. It was incredible. I tried to encourge them to let her go a little, let her try some things on her own. He amn near bit my head off.” His eyes were blazing by now.

Mullen, who presumably had reeived the same treatment from Wingate, hadn’t given a damn. Petrovic ad probably cared too much. I wondered how many times he’d taken ulie aside and encouraged her to fly on her own while her parents ere holding on for dear life. “You said Julie was like a volcano with a loose lid. Did she ever xplode?” Petrovic’s eyebrows shot up. “You bet. We had to call the ambuance once.” “Why?”

“She flipped out. She took the place apart, smashing equipment, icking the furniture over. She stuck a palette knife in her arm. It was cary.

I was in the room with her, doing something in the far corner; he’d been painting for a couple of hours, wrestling with something. She alked to herself when she got mad, although never loud enough for me 0 hear what about. Anyhow, this time, all of a sudden, she hit the roof. didn’t even get near her ‘til after it was over, you know, to see what could do for the arm she’d have taken my head off.” “Did she do this other times?” “I heard she did. I only saw it that one time.” “What kind of paintings did she do?” “Mood stuff, at least that’s what I call it. Some of her work would e normal, everyday landscapes, portraits, whatever.

But then, every %170 once in a while, she’d tuTn out soTnctlting dark at’d pessiult’stic, Ii something out of a concentration camp, you know?

Introspective 1
,”,FJ
~” “You keep any ofit?”’ “I wanted to, but she kept track of it; destroyed it all. She on brought the bland stuff home.” “Did you ever talk to her about all this?” He hesitated before answering, and I wondered again how mu< he wasn’t telling me. There was an edginess to the man, an element caution in his eyes. My instinct wasn’t to imagine the worst, howev~ for I’d seen the same expression in other teachers, especially the go’ ones. Their concern for their charges often overran pure educatio spilling over into the personal and becoming possessive. Their frustr tion with poor parenting often made surrogate parents of them, wi all the worries, despair, and occasional pride that entailed.