Richard Stevenson - Red White and Black and Blue

She stood next to her desk glaring at me. She was taller than she looked in her Facebook photo, her amber hair was even more meticulously unruly, and her big china-blue eyes were bright with anger.

"You're working for people who cared about Greg? And who exactly would those people be who supposedly cared about Greg? I think you're a fucking liar is what I think you are. Did you by chance call me last night at home?"

"I did. You hung up on me. Can you say fucking in an elementary school? I'm surprised."

"Well, your shock would disappear in a hurry if you spent a day with today's sixth graders."

"Do you wash their mouths out with soap, or how do you handle present-day potty mouthery?"

"No, I do not wash their mouths out with soap, nor do I touch the children in any way whatsoever that could be construed as corporal punishment. What I do is, I explain, without actually saying it, that fuck is a rude word, and life is nicer for everybody if we refrain from using rude words in the same way we should all try to refrain from using rude 84

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson behavior. Sometimes this argument makes an impression, although often it doesn't. Back when I was a naive beginning teacher I once asked a boy if he used language like that in front of his parents. He said yeah, he did, and if they didn't like the way he talked, they could go fuck themselves."

"Gee. And you're not allowed to Taser the children?"

"No. Even though electronic zapping would not involve touching a child, it's not permitted. But I am allowed to Taser uninvited classroom intruders such as yourself, or at least to call security. First, though, let me ask you something. Are you by chance working for a life insurance company?"

"No, why?"

She relaxed a little now and looked not so much outraged as merely nettled. "Well, who are you working for, and what's your interest in Greg's death? Greg died more than five years ago. His insurance company, Shenango Life, not only refused to pay out benefits but seemed to be hinting that I had something to do with Greg's suicide. I was the intended beneficiary of his fifty-thousand-dollar policy, and they acted as if I was an accomplice in an attempt to defraud the company. When you called last night, I thought, oh God, it's Shenago Life driving me up the wall all over again."

"I'm not surprised," I said, "that you were Greg's life insurance beneficiary. Greg's relationship with his boyfriend if that's the correct term for his friendship with Kenyon Louderbush-was apparently troubled. I guess he wasn't about to leave that violently unstable guy fifty thousand dollars."

I didn't know what the cold look she gave me meant, but she abruptly walked over and shut the door to the classroom.

"Okay, sit down."

"Thank you."

"If Mrs. Weaver, the principal, drops in, I'll say you're a friend."

"I told the security guy I was your cousin from Minneapolis."

"Fine. Cousin Donald. Just so no one thinks you're a guy I'm dating. If word went around that I was dating an aging kickboxer, I'd be really embarrassed."

"No kickboxing for me, not to worry. If it's my banged-up appearance you're referring to, it's only rugby. My boyfriend thinks I'm getting a little old for that stuff, but I can't seem to give it up."

This fib had the approximate intended effect. "You're gay.

Okay. Now I'm supposed to see you as less threatening than I did two minutes ago. All right, I do. So, did you actually know Greg?"

She was perched on the edge of her desk now, and I eased onto one of the sixth graders' chairs in the front row. Stiver needed to feel as if she was in charge of the situation, and that was fine with me because in all the most important ways she was.

"No," I said, "I didn't know Greg at all. I'm just learning about him. I've met his neighbors on Allen Street, Janie Insinger and Virgil Jackman, and I've met his thesis adviser, Professor Podolski. They all spoke well of Greg and were very sad when he died. The thing is, someone has hired me to look 86

Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson more closely at Greg's relationship with someone else who was very important in his life: Kenyon Louderbush. You knew about that, I take it."

A tight look. "Of course."

"And you were aware that it was abusive? That Louderbush beat Greg?"

"Yes." She shook her head and looked as if she might cry.

She walked around and plopped onto the chair behind her desk. "Look, here's the thing if you really have to know. I tried to get Greg into therapy so he could put an end to this horrible, masochistic self-destructiveness. But he wouldn't do it. He said he had to finish his thesis, and that was the only thing he had the energy for. Then when the thesis was done, it was some other reason. He was going to be moving away from Albany, and he said there was no point in starting therapy around here and then quitting, and he would do it after he got settled wherever he ended up. My hope, of course, was that he'd move somewhere far away from Kenyon, and he'd be okay at least until he found someone else who would treat him the way he thought he deserved to be treated. That is, really, really badly."

"That had to do with his father? Insinger and Jackman both said Greg had been beaten as a child by his father. Your father."

"Our stepfather actually, Anson Stiver. Our dad, Jim Cutler, died in a car accident when Greg and Hugh and I were one, four and six, and Mom married Anson the next year and he insisted that we all change our last names. I'm glad," she said, nodding approvingly, "that Greg was able to talk to someone else about how Anson beat him and Hugh almost from the day he moved in. Greg told me he'd opened up about it to a few people, but I never knew who they were.

Kenyon, of course, knew. But to him, that knowledge just gave him the means to exploit Greg in his sick way."

"So Hugh was also abused? But not you?"

"I have no idea why I was spared. Maybe because Mom and I were close when I was young, and I was a girl, and Mom wouldn't have put up with Anson hurting me. But she looked the other way when Anson beat Greg and Hugh. I think she saw it as the price the family was going to have to pay for financial security. Well, it was way, way too high a price. Hugh was so traumatized by his upbringing that he left Schenectady as soon as he turned eighteen, and he hasn't been in touch with any of us since then. Greg actually grew up to be a sane and functioning adult and one of the nicest people I've ever known. Of course he was so fucked up by the abuse from Anson that he must have thought at some level that for him intimacy could only be violent. It all just makes me so really, really mad."

"You know, of course, that Louderbush is now running for governor in the Democratic primary."

"Oh yes. I know that. Who doesn't? And it occurs to me that that's the reason you're here. Am I right, Donald?"

"You are. Kenyon Louderbush is not morally fit for the governorship. He's not fit for the State Assembly either, but if all the assemblymen unfit to serve suddenly vacated the Capitol, it would be a thinly populated institution."

She gave me an I-should-have-seen-this-coming look. "So, which side are you digging up dirt for? McCloskey, I'll bet."

"Does that matter? What counts is that Louderbush is forced out of the race and never gets to be governor."

"You know, after Greg died I almost went to the police about Kenyon. I truly believed that Greg's death was legally a form of manslaughter. That Kenyon had somehow driven Greg to take his own life. But I was so upset over the whole depressing mess that I was just paralyzed for a while. I stayed out of school for two terrible weeks and barely got out of bed. The only reason I eventually got my act together was, I was terrified I'd be fired. And with all my student loans I just couldn't afford to lose my job here. Also, I missed my kids. So I came back to school and just concentrated on saving my teaching career. And time went by, and I got distracted by one thing or another, and I never did turn Kenyon in. But I felt I had to do something. So instead I wrote Kenyon a letter."