Will Lavender - Obedience

“I think I have some information you’d like to know about Professor Leonard Williams,” Mary said. She was flying blind now, talking off the top of her head. It was an exhilarating feeling, and she went with it.

The man’s eyes took on a dark and knowing tint. “Come in,” he said.

Mary followed him inside. Orman had his newspaper spread out on the floor next to the couch and ESPN was on the plasma television that loomed in the corner. “Forgive my mess,” he said, pushing some of the paper beneath the couch. He gestured for Mary to sit, and she took a seat on an antique lolling chair beside him. Orman was more disheveled than usual. He was wearing a Winchester U sweatshirt with jogging pants. There were holes in his socks, she noticed. His orange hair was matted and tufted on one side, as if he had just risen from a nap.

“Talk,” he said.

“I was in his logic class this semester,” began Mary. “And some of the things that he told us were-let’s just say they were highly unusual.”

“What sorts of things?” Orman was interested now. He was leaning forward, toward Mary, with his bifocals clutched between his interlaced fingers.

“Things about Deanna Ward.”

The man did not move when Mary said the name. She searched him for something, some tic of recognition, but he was stock still.

“Things about the disappearance of this girl,” Mary went on, “and another girl, named Polly, who he claimed you knew.”

Orman laughed. It was a deep and guttural chuckle, barely registering as an exterior noise at all.

“Leonard says things all the time,” Orman said. “He’s been talking off and on for twenty years. Here at Winchester we tend to ignore his theories. Most of them are innocent, but some of them are in bad taste, let alone potentially dangerous. I have talked to Leonard about this more times than you can imagine. He tells me, each time, that he will do better. But he doesn’t. Empty promises, you see. And we think this is why Leonard left.”

“Because you spoke to him about his teaching practices?” Mary asked.

“Because he was tired of playing by our rules,” said the dean. “Well, when you are part of a business you have to read the company line sometimes. It’s the American way, you know. Leonard couldn’t abide by that, so he left in the night and will never teach here again.”

“You’ve fired him?” she asked.

“Of course not. We don’t fire professors with tenure. But we can make it so that Leonard has no course load. Or that he is reading research grants for a living in the basement of Carnegie. Anything to get him out of the classroom. There was a time when he was a brilliant lecturer. But not now. He’s too worried about the nonessential, the clutter of our daily lives, to teach students well.”

“Who is Deanna Ward?” Mary pressed him.

The dean looked at her. Again, there was no stir or awkwardness that told her he knew about Deanna. “A Cale girl who went missing years ago,” said Orman lightly. “Leonard wrote a book about the case, and for years since then he has been trying to sell his crackpot theory to anybody who will listen.”

“What was his theory?”

And then: an almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. Was she taking it too far?

“I don’t know,” Orman told her, resignation in his voice. “I never read the book. It was, as far as I was concerned, a penny dreadful.”

She decided to let it rest for a moment. They talked about the class, and how she would get credit for it. Mary feigned anxiety about getting proper credit for Logic and Reasoning 204. Orman walked her through the steps and gave her a timeline in which the grade could be expected on her transcript.

“I’m just trying to keep my GPA,” she said. Now, Mary realized, the tables had turned. Now she was doing the acting, and she found herself strangely enjoying it.

“I’m aware of that, Ms. Butler. Winchester is going to do all we can to make up for your lost time.”

She stood, then, and Orman stood with her. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom before I go?” she asked him. “It’s a long drive back to Kentucky.”

He showed her down a hall off to the right, and she stepped into a spare bathroom that contained only a toilet and a sink. Mary paced the bathroom, trying to get straight in her mind what she was going to ask Orman when she came out. Think, she demanded of herself. You’re close to breaking him. Push him about Deanna Ward. As she was standing in front of the mirror, she heard the back door open and close. Then a feminine voice was just outside the bathroom, in the hallway leading to the kitchen. Elizabeth Orman.

When Mary came out of the bathroom, the Ormans were in the kitchen. The woman had brought in grocery bags, and the dean was putting some vegetables in the refrigerator.

“I’ll just be going,” Mary said.

Elizabeth turned and saw her. Dean Orman said, “Lizzy, this is Mary Butler. She was just talking to me about Professor Williams’s logic class.”

Elizabeth nodded slightly and went back to her groceries. Mary searched her face for abrasions but saw nothing. Could she have healed so quickly? Was she simply, as Brian had wondered, putting on a performance that night in the woods?

Dean Orman let Mary out, and she returned to her car. She hadn’t gotten the information she needed, but she knew she couldn’t push Orman about Deanna Ward without him becoming suspicious.

Outside, the night was complete. She fell with a thud into the driver’s seat and sat with the heat blowing onto her cheeks. She was, finally, at a dead end. She put the Camry in reverse and started carefully backing down the hill. But as she was pulling down the drive, she saw something in her periphery. When she looked more closely, she saw that the Ormans’ garage door was still open and the security light was on. Mary put the Camry into park and got out of the car. She crept around the side of the house and looked into the garage at Elizabeth Orman’s car. The car cracked and hissed, its chassis still settling from Elizabeth’s trip to the grocery store.

It was a red Honda Civic.

The car’s back door was open, and Mary could see grocery bags stacked in the backseat. There was a bumper sticker that read SCIENTISTS MAKE THE BEST LOVERS. She turned to go back to her car when-

“I just don’t understand why she came here,” said a woman’s voice from inside the door that led from the garage into the house. Mary hunched low, so low that she was almost underneath the back end of the car. The woman wouldn’t be able to see her, Mary knew, unless she came outside the garage.

As Elizabeth Orman descended the steps, Mary scrambled completely beneath the car. She watched Elizabeth’s feet, felt the click of her heels vibrating against her ear. She must have been talking on her cell phone.

“But why?” Elizabeth continued. “I don’t understand it. I think we might be losing her.” Again, she stopped to listen. Mary heard the voice on the other end, but she could not make out the words. It was just a scratchy, distant, masculine buzz. Elizabeth exhaled loudly, and then said, “I hope you’re right. It’s just-it’s just that we’re so close now. I would hate to lose her and have to start all over again.”

At that moment, a can of tomato soup dropped onto the ground. It was just two feet from Mary’s nose, rolling under the car in a little arc toward her. Mary recoiled, tried to wriggle back toward the opposite side of the car without making a sound. Elizabeth’s hand came into Mary’s line of vision. Elizabeth knelt without looking beneath the car and felt around for the soup. When she found the can she rolled it toward her with her fingers, and Mary heard her place it in the sack.