Ann Beattie - Another You

He was angry at Cheryl Lanier. He was surprised at how angry he was. Angry because she was gullible, but then, he was angry at himself because he had been, too. Still, her leaving school had been an overreaction, and putting the blame on him, implying that he was in any way responsible, was … oh, maybe it had just been the panicked reaction of someone who could hardly be expected to see through impostors, who probably didn’t have great experience in such complicated problems as Livan Baker had posed. She had flirted with him. Drinking his drink, talking the way she had. She had not been blameless and, hell, he hadn’t done anything. One kiss in a car, one moment of letting his guard down, okay, one moment of letting her let her guard down. How amazing that she would drop out of school, go back to Virginia, go back to what? What could her parents think? He would pick up another paper on the way out of the building, send it to her … send it without comment, but with his return address, c/o the department, of course. This would be the perfect excuse to get in touch; he had not responded to her letter, because he didn’t quite know how to respond to it. Thinking of Cheryl, he began to soften: whether or not Livan Baker had appropriated Cheryl Lanier’s story of the rape for her own benefit, Cheryl had still suffered through that, and because she had finally had the courage to tell him about it, she deserved some response. What a difficult position: to have to write someone to console them about something words probably couldn’t touch. She should talk to someone.… He realized he was thinking the way he had thought the night before the stabbing, urging McCallum to make sure that someone would be told what they knew.… Jenny Oughton. Jenny Oughton knew about Livan Baker, didn’t know she was a narc abusing drugs herself … or wait a minute: Did she? Maybe Livan Baker had gone in there and told the truth, and all along, Jenny Oughton had known more than he, more than McCallum. The woman was hardly forthcoming. She had a way of looking at him that made him think she knew more about him than he knew about himself. Quite disconcerting. He hoped her much touted professionalism would keep her from speaking to anyone in the press. He hoped against hope that the whole ugly situation would eventually — no, quickly — just go away.

He saw that Sophia Androcelli had left several messages for him when he finally left the office and went to his mailbox in the department office. There was also a crayon drawing of a flower that looked vaguely like a flapping flag, and a lawn that looked like a deteriorating blue carpet. A Post-it note was attached: “My son and I are very sorry about your recent bereavement,” it read. It was signed “Luftquist.” He sorted through the pile of late papers, immediately discarded flyers advertising bargains on tire retreads. He assured the secretary that he and his wife were doing fine — a sad time, the death of a loved one, but … He thanked the secretary for her kind words. In the hallway, he opened a pink envelope that had no return address. On a pink sheet of paper was a poem, titled “I saw in the Obituaries.”

When others suffer grief

It is so hard to say

What we ourselves would likely do

If pain spoiled our own day

Conveniently we do assume

That we would rise above

From on high we’d take the long view

And remember God is love

But would we really do this

Or would we weep and fret?

We think we know what we’d do in another person’s shoes

When we haven’t occupied them yet

It may be best to simply say

Good times will come again

Till then, dear Marshall Lockard,

Accept the condolences of your friend

Mrs. Adam Barrows

Instead of heading off to see McCallum with the good news/bad news he went back to his office and, still stunned by the poem, unable to imagine any response to it, called Sophia. Facing whatever was in store for him would be good practice toward writing the letter to Cheryl.

Just when he was about to give up, the phone was answered. He asked for Sophia and was told to “hang on,” loud music playing in the background.

“Finally,” she said, when she heard who it was.

“I was at a funeral yesterday. I just got your messages.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll cut to the chase: a reporter from the newspaper is interested in talking to me about Livan Baker’s involvement with your buddy McCallum.”

“Sophia,” he said, “McCallum isn’t my buddy. We teach in the same department, but actually, I hardly know him. I’m pretty sick of all of this, and if McCallum’s in trouble, I’m sorry, but McCallum’s in trouble. I’m not McCallum.” He waited for a response. There was only a slight sigh. “Why would they contact you?” he said.

“It’s not exactly a secret that Cheryl’s my best friend, you know. And Cheryl roomed with Livan. And Livan got busted, and Cheryl’s gone. And I have another thing to tell you: I was in their apartment. Timothy and I were packing the things she didn’t take to send to Virginia. Livan hadn’t been there for days, but the night she got busted they got a search warrant, and Timothy and I found ourselves surrounded by cops.”

“Well, I’m sorry you got involved. This has been a nightmare for all of us. I was on my way to see McCallum with the newspaper. I thought it would make him feel better to know who Livan Baker really was, but since the cops are no doubt going to be questioning him about her, I suppose he might have already heard it.”

“I’ll tell you what I called about,” Sophia said.

He gave a nervous laugh. “I thought that’s what I was hearing.”

“No,” she said, “what you don’t know is that I took one of the notebooks — it was one she had rough drafts of her letter to you in — I took it to the apartment because she’d left it at my place, and I knew she’d want it back. It was there with everything else when the cops came in and it was like the movies; we had to raise our hands and be patted down, you know? We had to leave everything there when they threw us out and took over the apartment.” She sighed. “It’s not incriminating,” Sophia said. “The drafts were just early versions of what you saw. I mean, she’d probably die if anyone but you knew about the letter, but what are the cops going to do? Read it on TV? Maybe they won’t care about every single piece of paper in the place. They were looking for drugs, right? What would they care about her roommate’s notebook?”

All he could think was that for the rest of his life he would be questioned by the police. Sonja would be sure to find out all the details about the whole messy situation. She might even wonder why he’d never written the girl, after she’d made such a painful confession to him. Sonja might wonder, in fact, how much of a secret life he had, since he hadn’t mentioned anything before McCallum’s visit about Cheryl Lanier, alluding only to the problems of her roommate, Livan Baker.

As if McCallum didn’t have enough problems, now there was this.

As if Sonja weren’t upset enough, with Evie just buried.

As if he’d get off the phone with Sophia Androcelli without one more zinger.

“There are two snowpeople outside your building,” Sophia was saying, “both of which are incredibly offensive. One is stereotypically offensive and the other is sexually offensive. I’ve written an editorial for tomorrow’s paper, but in the meantime I would appreciate your not disturbing them, so anyone who missed them can take a look once my piece appears. Just in case you were going to wring the pumpkin tits off on your way out, or decapitate them, or anything.” She snorted. “Just a preemptive strike,” she said. “If I were you, I think I might feel like demolishing something. Just don’t go after my target.”