Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

St. Gallway’s Grief Management began, but certainly did not end, with The Bereavement Pack. The day after I found the thing, Saturday the 2, Dad received a phone call from Mark Butters, Head of the Crisis Team.

I eavesdropped on the conversation from my bedroom phone with Dad’s silent complicity. Prior to Butters’ appointment to the Crisis Team, he’d never been a confident man. He had the complexion of baba ghanoush and his flabby body, even on bright, sunny days, reminded one of nothing more robust than a much-used carry-on suitcase. His most obvious personality trait was his suspicious nature, the unflagging conviction that he, Mr. Mark Butters, was the secret subject of all student jokes, quips, puns and personal asides. Over his table at lunch, his eyes searched student faces like drug dogs in an airport for the chalky residue of ridicule. But, as evidenced by his sonorous, newly confident voice, Mr. Butters had simply been a person of untapped potential, a man who needed only a Tiny Calamity in order to shine. He’d given up Hesitation and Doubt with the surprising ease of anonymously returning erotica in the middle of the night to the RETURNS slot at the video store, had effortlessly replaced them with Authority and Daring.

“Your schedule permitting,” said Mr. Butters, “we’d like to arrange a half-hour session with both you and Blue in order to discuss what’s happened. You’ll be sitting down with myself and Havermeyer, as well as one of our child counselors.”

“One of your what ?”

(Dad, I should mention, did not believe in anyone’s counsel except his own. He thought psychotherapy promulgated nothing more than a great deal of handholding and shoulder massaging. He despised Freud, Jung, Frasier and any person who thought it fascinating to instigate a lengthy discussion of his/her own dreams.)

“A counselor. To share your concerns, your daughter’s concerns. We have on hand a very competent, full-time child psychologist, Deb Cromwell. She’s come to us from The Derds School in Raleigh.”

“I see. Well, I have only one concern.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Hit me with it.”

“You.”

Butters was silent. Then: “I see.”

“My concern is that for the entire week your school has remained mute — out of terror, I suppose — and now, at long last, one of you has mustered the courage to come forward, at, what time is it, three-forty-five on a Saturday afternoon. And all you have to say is that you’d like us to schedule a time to come in and be psychoanalyzed. Is that correct?”

“This is a just a preliminary question-and-answer session. Bob and Deb would like to sit down with you, have a one-on-one—”

“The true intention of this phone call is to intuit whether or not I plan to sue both the school and the Board of Education for negligence. Am I right?”

“Mr. Van Meer, I’m not going to try to argue with—”

“Don’t.”

“What I will say is that we wish—”

“I wouldn’t say or wish anything if I were you. Your reckless — let me rephrase that — your deranged staff member took my child, a minor, on a weekend field trip without securing parental permission—”

“We’re well aware of the situa—”

“Endangered her life, the lives of five other minors and, let me remind you, managed to get herself killed in what is looking like a highly disgraceful fashion. I am this close to calling a lawyer and making it my life’s ambition to ensure that you, that headmaster of yours, Oscar Meyers, and every person associated with your third-rate institution ends up wearing stripes and leg irons for the next forty years. Furthermore, in the off chance my daughter does wish to share her concerns, the last person with whom she’d choose to do so would be a private-school counselor named Deb. If I were you, I wouldn’t call here again unless you wish to beg for clemency.”

Dad hung up.

And though I wasn’t in the kitchen with him, I knew he didn’t slam down the phone, but gently returned it to the wall, much in the manner of putting a maraschino cherry atop a sundae.

Well, I did have concerns. And Dad was right; I had no intention of sharing them with Deb. I had to share them with Jade, Charles, Milton, Nigel and Lu. The need to explain to each of them what had happened from the moment I left the campground to those seconds I saw her dead was so overpowering, I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t attempt to outline or ABC it on note cards or legal pads without feeling dizzy and dumb, as if I were trying to contemplate quarks, quasars and quantum mechanics, all at the same time (see Chapters 13, 35, 46, Incongruities , V. Close, 1998).

Later that day, when Dad left to go buy groceries, I finally called Jade. I estimated I’d given her enough time to recover from the initial shock (perhaps she’d even continued on, loving each day, as Hannah would’ve wanted).

“Who’s calling please?”

It was Jefferson.

“This is Blue.”

“Sorry, honey. She’s not taking calls.”

She hung up before I could say anything. I called Nigel.

“Creech Pottery and Carpentry.”

“Uh, hello. Is Nigel there? This is Blue.”

“ Hey there, Blue!”

It was Diana Creech, his mother — or rather, adopted mother. I’d never met her, but had talked to her countless times on the phone. Due to her loud, jocular voice, which snowplowed everything and anything you said, whether it be a lone word or the Declaration of Independence, I envisioned her as a large, cheery woman who wore men’s overalls covered with clay smears from her own gigantic fingers, fingers that in all probability were wide as naked rolls of toilet paper. When she talked, she took big bites out of certain words, as if they were bright green, solid Granny Smiths.

“Let me go see if he’s awake. Last time I looked in on him he was sleeping like a baby. That’s all he’s been doing for the past two days. How are you? ”

“I’m okay. Nigel’s all right?”

“ Sure. I mean, we’re still in shock. Everyone is! ’Specially the school. Have they called? You can tell they’re nervous about a lawsuit. Ob viously we’re waiting to hear what the police say. I told Ed they should have made an arrest by now or come forward and said something. Silence is inexcusable. Ed says no one has a clue what happened to her and that’s why they’re holding out. What I will say is that if somebody did do it—’cuz I don’t want to think about the other possibility, not yet — you can be sure he’s on his way to Timbuktu with a fake passport in a first-class seat.” (The few times I’d spoken to her on the phone, I noticed Diana Creech always managed to stick the word Timbuktu into the conversation as many youths stuck in like or whatever. ) “They’re dragging their feet. ” She sighed. “I’m sad about what’s happened, but I’m thankful you guys are safe. But you turned up Saturday, didn’t you? Nigel said you weren’t with them. Oh, here he comes. Hold on, sugar.”

She put the receiver down and walked away, the sound of a Clydesdale trotting down on a cobblestone street. (She wore clogs.) I heard voices and then the hooves again.

“Mind if he calls you back? He wants to eat something.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You take care now.”

No one answered when I called Charles.

At Milton’s, the answering machine picked up, a whine of violin accompanied by a woman’s fanciful voice, “You’ve reached Joanna, John and Milton. We’re not home…”