The Snow Garden (47 page)

     Lauren cried out and leaped back from the counter, tipping the mortar and sending a shower of blue powder onto the floor. She lost her balance and hit the floor butt first. Kathryn kicked the door open, strode across the kitchen, shut the door to the dining room, and threw her back against it.

     “What are you doing?” Lauren gasped.

     “I ask the questions right now.”

     “Kathryn, any questions you have, you have to ask Mitchell. I’m sure he’s told you — ”

     “He hasn’t told me
shit
!
 He pretended to be interested in me, he asked me out on a date and the whole time I was pledging your fucked-up fraternity. What the hell is this, Lauren?”

     Lauren just sat there, her hands pressed to the floor alongside her thighs, seemingly so unthreatened by Kathryn that she wasn’t going to cry out. Kathryn stepped away from the kitchen door. “All right, fine, how about your question then? It’s a good one. You couldn’t have possibly known that my ex-boyfriend almost gave me AIDS. So how the fuck do you know now?”

     Lauren lifted her head, expression blank. “Mitchell said it was the perfect lesson.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “Kathryn, I’m not going to talk to you when you’re—”

     Kathryn wrenched the collar of Lauren’s shirt into one fist and yanked her off the floor. “Get off me!” Lauren cried, grabbing at Kathryn’s wrist, and Kathryn shoved her, sending her into the side of the counter. She cast a nervous glance toward the door, but no footsteps came echoing through the house in response.

     Despite Kathryn’s display of force, Lauren remained unnervingly composed, staring blankly at Kathryn as if just biding the time it would take for her to leave. Lauren’s complacency was adding fuel to her already smoldering anger; Mitchell had shared everything she had told him with strangers, and she wasn’t about to be stonewalled by someone who seemed to be filled with the unquestioning resolve of a .. . she couldn’t think of a better term than cult member.

     “I know you were molested, Lauren. And I know Jesse knew too.” 

     Nothing. Not a blip. Maybe false     pity would do the trick. “And I’m very sorry.”

     Lauren straightened herself, raking her blackened hair back into place with one hand. “You think that’s why I’m here? I don’t need you or anyone else to feel sorry for me. And I don’t live here now because I need pity. We don’t deal in pity. And Kathryn, no one here’s going to hold your hand because you were so hot for your badass boyfriend that you turned the other cheek when he infected all your friends with AIDS. We’re not going to feel sorry for you because your sex drive almost killed you.’’

     Kathryn was too stunned to interrupt. Lauren’s composure was giving way to anger that forced breath between each of her words.

     “This house is for people who are fed up with being told that their bodies are something to be obeyed. They’re not. They’re something to be overcome. How many more false costumes will lust have to wear before everyone else figures out what we have?” Her words sounded rehearsed but urgent, and Kathryn had no doubt that Lauren believed them, with a little help from what she’d been grinding into a fine powder. “Our sex drives promise everything and deliver nothing. It offers only the briefest of pleasures and gives the most lasting of pain. And human beings are so weak that they endow this meaningless physical act with all the emotional qualities of fulfillment and purpose that can be found in every other aspect of daily life.”

     “Mitchell and Maria, they taught you this?” Kathryn asked.

     “My uncle taught me. And Jono Morton taught you.”

     Kathryn started to lunge at her and was happy to see Lauren shrink back against the counter.

     “Jono taught me that it was entirely too easy to live my life as nothing more than a product of what someone else did to me.” Kathryn’s voice was hard, the words of her reply becoming true and apparent to her even as she said them. “If he taught me anything, it was just how easy it is to consider yourself nothing more than the disease you might have, or what someone else did to you. The only thing you’ve been
taught,
Lauren, is how to make wallowing in your own self-pity sound like an intellectual pursuit.”

     Kathryn turned for the door. “I told him you weren’t ready,” Lauren called after her.

     “Yeah, well, maybe he just wanted to fuck me,” she answered without stopping.

“Is Mitchell Seaver here?”

     The receptionist looked up from her magazine, startled to see Kathryn standing in front of her desk. Almost all the office doors on the first floor of the art history department were shut, and Kathryn guessed that emergency meetings were being held in hushed tones on the other side about the fresh disgrace Eric Eberman was bringing to their department.

     “You’re a student?” the receptionist asked, still holding her magazine open.

     “Yes. Not a reporter,” Kathryn answered with as gracious a smile as she could muster.    -

     The old woman chucked. “Mitchell should be in Adamson right now. Filling in for Dr. Eberman.”

     Adamson Hall was one of the oldest buildings on McKinley Quad. Gothic in form, it held only two lecture halls, and when Kathryn stepped into the foyer she could hear Mitchell’s amplified voice coming from behind the swinging doors directly ahead. She stepped through the doors, surveying the darkened two-hundred-seat auditorium in front of her. Most of the seats were filled with students hunched over their notebooks. On stage, Mitchell lectured from the podium in a halo of light. The authoritative sound of his voice, rising and falling in pitch so as to avoid a boring monotone, recalled all the nicely packaged lectures he had used to calm her into letting down her guard and sharing her personal trauma.

     Before her renewed fury could paralyze her, she began walking down the aisle. A few students stirred in their seats, but when Kathryn glanced in their direction she saw that they weren’t students at all. The rear rows of the auditorium were filled with reporters, bored, some checking their watches or consulting notepads on their knees that were half the size of the ones the students were using.

     Despite the presence of the journalists who had come to document his mentor’s downfall, Mitchell Seaver was giving a command performance.

     She was halfway down the aisle when he spotted her, but he didn’t stop lecturing until she ascended the steps to the stage.

     “Kathryn,” he muttered as she approached the podium.

     When he saw the expression on her face, realization flickered in his eyes before it was replaced by a look of bewildered indignation. The star had been interrupted.

     Slapping a man was a revenge reserved for soap opera heroines; it was a desperate, usually hysterical attempt to show strength, and in her experience it usually failed miserably at making a woman feel better or a man chastened. Instead, Kathryn grabbed Mitchell by one shoulder to steady herself.

     “The answer’s no,” she whispered, before she rammed her knee into his groin.

     Shocked gasps turned to laughter, and as she left the hall, flashbulbs lit up the back rows.

Eric held the front door open, expecting John Hawthorne to duck through it quickly as if seeking cover. When Hawthorne stepped formally across the threshold, Eric guessed that this meant the reporters outside had abandoned their vigil. By five o’clock, all three local television stations had already called the house, and Hawthorne had been lucky to get hold of Eric before he had disconnected the phone.

     Without a word of greeting, Hawthorne moved into the living room, eyes darting to the shutters that had been drawn over the windows. He scanned the room, maybe in search of the wrench used to kill Lisa in the library, Eric thought bitterly.

     “My office faxed a preliminary response to the
Journal
this morning, and then we put out a general press release.” Hawthorne tossed his coat onto the arm of the sofa and backed up to the gas fire, warming himself with his hands crossed behind his back. His eyes met Eric’s without warmth or sympathy. “The university is, of course, puzzled by these allegations and highly suspicious of the source.”

     “Something to drink?’

     “Talk to me like I’m a student, Eric. What’s going on here?”

     Eric gave him a dry smile and saw Hawthorne regretted his word choice. All he wanted with Hawthorne was to convey his unwillingness to fight. There was no lawyer present, and Eric didn’t plan on hiring one.

     “I didn’t kill my wife. Can you fax that to the
Atherton Journal
?"

     “That isn’t my concern,” Hawthorne said. Clearly he didn’t appreciate Eric’s candor. He surveyed Eric with disdain, as if he wanted to make sure Eric didn’t have any more barbs up his sleeve. “I am the first in a long line of visitors. None of whom you will want to welcome into your living room. I also happen to be the friendliest one of the bunch.”

    Eric managed a nod. “Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?”

     “Is this humor that I’m being deflected with?”

“Yes.”

     “I admire your levity given the circumstances.”

     “And I admire the fact that the university I’ve worked at for over a decade has sent the campus publicist as its emissary,” Eric retorted. Hawthorne raised his eyebrows, indicating he was little more than impressed that Eric could attempt to be the angry one in the room. “Atherton will be rid of me soon enough. I’d like the remaining time I spend here in my own home not to be wasted.”

     “What do you have?” Hawthorne asked. Eric looked at him finally, puzzled. “To drink. What do you have?”

     “Wine. White.”

     “I’ll take it,” Hawthorne answered.

     In the kitchen, Eric poured Hawthorne a glass from one of the bottles he had stolen from the House of Adam.

     Hawthorne accepted it with, a wan smile and took a tiny sip. “Do you even know Randall Stone?” he asked after a heavy silence.

     Eric nodded at the fire. Hawthorne didn’t press any further.

     “The fact that Randall Stone made these claims to a newspaper has the administration viewing him with more dubiousness than it’s viewing you right now. He doesn’t have a prayer if he ever plans to file a complaint against you with the disciplinary council. Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it turns out that Mr. Stone is currently nowhere to be found. All that being said, I was allowed to take a rather extraordinary step.”

     Eric, who had barely been listening, his mind on the purging that would take place that night, turned at Hawthorne’s final sentence.

     “I secured a copy of his application. Under the condition that I keep it to myself, of course.”

     Eric had to stop himself from asking Hawthorne if he had brought it with him. Even now, the idea of being given a glimpse into Randall’s past, a past the young man had ferociously guarded, lit a hot flicker of excitement in him. He managed to quell it with sarcasm, “That’s pretty impressive, John. If some students run for president, Atherton doesn’t want anyone finding out they were admitted with a two point zero high-school GPA and two parents who donated a new dorm.”

     Hawthorne blanched and stared at the floor. “Are you familiar with this young man’s background?”

     “He’s from New York,” Eric answered weakly. Also his legs are covered with burns and I never once believed his explanation for them.

     “I’ll get to the point. What I discovered in his application could end up being a double-edged sword.”

     “I’m not following.”

     “The registrar’s office swears they know nothing about it and just by asking I’ve become rather unpopular all of a sudden. But Randall Stone is probably the first student Atherton has ever admitted who was homeschooled for his entire high-school career. Never mind that his birth certificate’s missing.”

     “I thought we had a rather thorough admissions committee.” 

     “They believe they’re thorough, which might explain why they haven’t returned my calls.”

     “What are you saying, John?” Eric asked, genuinely confused. 

     Hawthorne met his eyes. “Randall Stone is engaged in a media battle and nothing more. If I had the full faith and confidence that you did not have a sexual relationship with this young man, I could find a way to let this information slip regarding his application. And the next time this young man tried to talk to a reporter, first he would have to explain just why he was admitted to Atherton without a basic high-school education and proof of his own birth.”

     Eric was struck silent. Proof of his own birth? What was Hawthorne saying? But the man mistook Eric’s silence for indecision. “I imagine it’s a tough decision. Asking the university to go to the barricades for you. And to be quite frank, the resulting explosion might be something even I couldn’t manage.”

     Eric remained mute. Hawthorne took his second swallow of wine since sitting down. “Pretend I’m not who I am. Pretend I don’t work for Atherton. How well do you know this young man?”

     “Well.’’

     “Then it should be no mystery to you why anything regarding Mr. Stone might merit my attentions first? Why the university sent me as its emissary, as you said.”

     Eric said nothing.

     “Can you imagine the story? A complete refurbishment of the Sciences Library, a brand-new Technology Center at half the original estimate. Three more projects in the works. And what did Atherton have to do to get its discount? Admit a young man who probably didn’t have the credentials to be accepted to your average junior college.” Eric’s breath left him and a sudden chill told him that blood was leaving his face. Hawthorne noticed. “Eric, you didn’t know?”

     Eric gripped the mantel to hold his balance as the past sank its teeth into the present.

     “Michael Price is listed as Randall Stone’s legal guardian.”

APRIL WAS SLIDING HANGERS ON THE ROD AND TOSSING CANDIDATES
&  for the evening’s outfit onto her mattress. Kathryn lazily flipped through the pages of Randall’s story. “Come on, Kathryn. You can laugh about it a little! Aren’t you the least bit excited you got on the news?”