The Church of Dead Girls (17 page)

F
ranklin and Aaron sat in Aaron's living room. It was a Wednesday morning over two weeks after Sharon's disappearance, the fourth of October. Aaron wound an elastic around his ponytail. “None of this is for publication,” he said.

Franklin stopped leafing through the pages of his notebook and set it on the table. “I understand that.”

“You speak about cause and effect. There's not a cause that isn't also an effect.”

“Going back to the big bang, I assume.”

“And what caused that?” asked Aaron, half seriously. “What I'm saying is that Houari Chihani's coming to Aurelius didn't cause anything. At most he was a catalyst for a few students.”

Franklin sneezed, then took a handkerchief from the side pocket of his sport coat. He had developed a cold during the past few days that included a headache and an itchy feeling in his chest. “So where were you when Sharon disappeared?”

“We agreed not to talk about that,” said Aaron.

Aaron was in the armchair by the window and the sun came in over his shoulder. Franklin sat on the couch, which was lumpy and too low to the floor. On the wall across from him was the red poster of Zapata. Beneath it was a bookcase jammed with books but no novels other than
The Grapes of Wrath
and
The Jungle.

“You're trying to understand what happened,” said Aaron, “by studying the traces of what happened. That's like learning about an elephant by studying its footsteps.”

“You'd have me go back to the birth of the elephant? That sounds like Chihani.”

“I've learned a lot from him.”

“Like what?”

“Imagine two landscapes,” said Aaron. As he spoke he freed his ponytail, then bound it up again. “The first is a field in late spring: flowers, everything growing. Rabbits are running around. Butterflies flutter from blossom to blossom. And lots of birds: robins, chickadees, red-winged black birds, perhaps several pheasants. A woodchuck wanders by. The apple trees are in blossom and birds make their nests in the branches.”

“It sounds like Walt Disney,” said Franklin.

“Exactly right.”

“So what's the other landscape?”

“Just like the first but now we add the cat, the fox, the snake, the hawk.”

“What's your point?” asked Franklin. Aaron had given him a glass of orange juice and he took a sip.

“The first is the landscape people hope is there, the one they like to think they live in. The second is the landscape that exists. No Sharon Malloy disappears in the first landscape. It's a landscape in which my mother wouldn't have been murdered. The trouble is it's false. Only the second landscape is true. And there's nothing wrong with it. That's how the world is: change and violent change, creatures eating each other, nothing secure. Its radical instability is a natural instability.”

“This is what Chihani has taught you to see?”

“He's taught me not to yearn for the other, not to look at the world through what I desire to see.”

“What does this have to do with Marxism?” asked Franklin.

“There're always imperfections, but some can be dealt with and others can't. There's nothing I can do about aging; there's something I can do about inequality and the abuse of power.”

Franklin took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He knew that an effect of being a journalist was he asked questions not for knowledge but for information and that he wanted the information not for his own life but often for something he would write and forget. Did he care one way or another about what Aaron was saying or why Aaron wanted to see a world in which the fox and the cat and the snake and the hawk were pursuing their necessary pleasures?

“Why'd you come back to Aurelius?”

“Why do you think I came back?”

“To find out who killed your mother.”

“You said it, I didn't.”

“And you think Chihani can help you with that?”

“He can help me see things more clearly.”

“What ideas do you have about your mother's death?”

Aaron cocked his head in a way that reminded Franklin of a bird listening for something underground. “I believe she was killed by a man who lives in Aurelius. But how does this connect to what we were saying?”

“I was wondering to what degree your ideas about the world were influenced by your mother's death. Perhaps her death is the window through which you view the world.”

“So if I argue for greater equality, then it's simply because my mother was murdered?”

“That's an oversimplification.”

“If someone reads philosophy and history, then comes to a conclusion as to the nature of the world, that conclusion was in fact formed by his psychology, which was formed by the events in his life and by his heredity, which was in fact formed before he did any reading. Is that what you believe?”

Franklin thought how he could use none of this in a news story and how the next day's paper still had to be finished. In his mind's eye he could see the holes on page one and on the editorial page, which he would have to fill that afternoon.

“Not necessarily.”

“Well,” said Aaron, “let's think about your point of view and what it says about responsibility. If events occur and how you react is fated by your psychology, then that's liberating, isn't it? It means that any particular event is not your fault.”

“What sort of event?”

“Your wife's death, for example.”

“She died of cancer.”

“So it was fated and you couldn't do anything about it.”

“I couldn't do anything about it.”

“Perhaps if she had been diagnosed earlier?”

“There was no sign that anything was wrong.”

“But if she'd had a checkup?”

“She'd had one a year earlier.”

“What if she'd had one six months or even three months earlier?”

Franklin didn't say anything. He was surprised at his discomfort. “Let's go back to my earlier question. What ideas do you have about your mother's murder?”

Aaron again assumed the expression that reminded Franklin of a bird. It had an irony that Franklin disliked, as if Aaron felt he now knew something about Franklin that he hadn't known before.

“What kind of ideas should I have?” asked Aaron.

“Like who might have killed her.”

“Did you ever have sex with her?”

Franklin was surprised. “Of course not.”

“Why ‘of course not'? Your friend Ryan Tavich did.”

“He's single.”

“Do you think my mother only had sex with single men?”

“I've no idea. Do you think a married man killed her?”

“A man killed her, a man who had been having sex with her. That's all I know right now. In your frame of reference, she was fated to die because of a promiscuity that was determined by her psychology. Wait,” said Aaron as Franklin began to speak. “I know I'm exaggerating, but her promiscuity and desire for men, whom she might know nothing about, raised the odds that she would chance upon someone who might kill her. My position is that her belief in a good world blinded her to the possibility that anything might happen. If she had taught herself to see the real world, the world of the snake and the fox, then she would have been more cautious and she might still be alive.”

“What about Sharon Malloy?” asked Franklin.

“I don't blame children for seeing the landscape they hope is there,” said Aaron. “That's what I like about them—their sweetness. And that's why they need adults to shield them. Are you suggesting that Sharon was fated to disappear?”

Franklin didn't want to think that was true. “She rode all over town on her bike; maybe that was a mistake. It put her at greater risk and so perhaps it was fated that something would happen.”

“Is that her parents' fault?”

“It's nobody's fault.”

“Do you think this argument could be used to justify how little time you spend with Sadie?”

Franklin found himself staring at the L-shaped scar on Aaron's cheek. “I don't want to talk about that,” he said.

“It's funny, isn't it,” said Aaron, “when the journalist has to answer questions, he doesn't like it either.”

—

On the evening of the sixth of October the members of Inquiries into the Right, except for Aaron, Jason, and Oscar, met at Houari Chihani's house. According to Barry, they told stories about things that had happened to them in town. “Some woman had started shouting at Harriet in Wegmans, calling her a whore. Jesse and Shannon had been shouted at on the street. Professor Chihani wanted to discuss the incidents. He said they provided a commentary on the capitalist system and its need for scapegoats. Only this time we were the scapegoats. The whole evening was frightening and I'm sorry I went.”

Chihani saw a problem and tried to deal with it by translating it into philosophy. That evening he supplied two dozen doughnuts and a gallon of cider, which was touching because he never offered the students anything except tea and crackers. The very presence of the doughnuts was an admission that something was wrong. The students were scattered around the living room, mostly sitting on the floor. Because of Jesse and Shannon's mistreatment of Barry, he sat as far from them as possible. He sat near Leon, the person to whom he had the least objection. Leon's stomach growled and he smelled of sweat.

“What is a scapegoat?” asked Chihani.

“It's someone who gets blamed for what someone else has done,” said Bob Jenks.

“It comes from the Old Testament,” said Leon. He sat on the floor with three doughnuts in front of him on a square of paper towel. A quarter of one of the doughnuts was missing and Leon's mouth was full. “Leviticus,” he said, “the third book of Moses.”

Chihani turned to Harriet. “What are the attributes of the scapegoat?”

“He has to be different from the rest,” said Harriet, “even if that difference is purely the result of chance, like Barry's being albino. He looks different and he's seen as an outsider. Because he's an outsider he becomes a suitable scapegoat.”

“Very good.” Chihani looked at the students. “By forming Inquiries into the Right you became different. By becoming different you attracted attention. By attracting attention you put yourself in the position to receive blame when the community needed someone to blame. In a community of true equality there'd be no need for a scapegoat. People would see themselves as being responsible for their own failings. They wouldn't need to put the blame on others.”

But Barry knew that wasn't the whole story. Hadn't IIR members tipped over tombstones in the cemetery? Hadn't one of them placed phony bombs on the windowsills of two schools?

Chihani discussed responsibility and how in a capitalist system responsibility for wrongdoing is put onto the shoulders of the disenfranchised, whereas true responsibility belongs to the capitalists themselves. However, since the bourgeoisie hope for the crumbs that fall down from the upper classes, they themselves condemn the lower classes with greater ferocity since, if it weren't for the lower classes, they would be condemned themselves.

“The bourgeoisie yearn to enter the upper classes,” said Chihani, “just as devout Christians yearn to enter heaven. It's the task of the upper classes to keep this yearning alive.”

It was at this point, slightly after nine o'clock, that the doorbell rang.

“It's Aaron,” said Harriet.

But it wasn't Aaron. It was Dr. Malloy.

Barry said he looked terrible. His face was haggard, with little trace left of his healthy Irishness. Since they had expected Aaron, they were surprised to see a stranger. Barry realized that he was the only one who recognized Dr. Malloy.

“To what do we owe—” began Chihani, rather formally.

“I'm Allen Malloy. I wanted to see what you all looked like.” He stood by the door and glanced around the room.

“Why did you want to look at us?” asked Chihani.

“I wanted to see your guilty faces,” said Dr. Malloy, raising his voice.

The students stared at the doctor.

“Why are we guilty?” asked Chihani.

The doctor stepped toward Chihani. His face reddened. “Don't you realize that my daughter is gone?”

Chihani nodded slowly. “As if,” said Barry later, “he was thinking, ‘Aha, so you're
that
Malloy.'”

“You have my profoundest sympathies—” replied Chihani.

“Somebody stole my daughter!” shouted Dr. Malloy. “How could you say that this person is more of a victim than Sharon? Only a fool would say that! Only a sadist!”

Barry didn't know what Dr. Malloy was referring to, but Chihani understood immediately. “I said many things to Mr. Moore and he chose to quote a few of them. But I don't think you want to engage in a philosophical discussion . . .”

“What I want,” said Malloy in a whisper, “is to see you punished.”

Chihani's face wrinkled with emotion. “Believe me when I say that no one in this room was involved with your daughter's disappearance. If there is anything that any of us can do to help find her, then please tell us.”

—

That same Friday evening Sadie was out with Aaron until ten o'clock. When she came home, her father was waiting in the living room.

“I forbid you to have anything to do with Aaron McNeal,” said Franklin. He put his hands in his pant pockets for fear of grabbing her.

“He's my friend,” said Sadie. Aaron had given her a silver necklace with a silver cocker spaniel and she touched it. She wondered whether to show it to her father, then decided not.

“What do I have to do, lock you in your room? Can't you see I'm scared something might happen to you?”

“There's nothing wrong with Aaron,” said Sadie.

“Neither of us know that.”