Academy Gothic Read online

“Thank you, Londell. And thank all of you for your attention. I promise to keep this brief. For the last nine years, Scoot and I worked together very closely and very effectively to keep the winning team of this fine, fine college in the good graces of the accreditation board. Speak freely, Dean Bibb. No need to raise your hand.”

  “I’m sure we’ll talk with specificity in tomorrow’s review, but the faculty and I are very excited to share some of our formative assessments, which Dean Simkins had been putting together for the annual Liberal Arts in Transition conference in Temecula next fall, and—”

  Jefferson Totten had raised his own hand. “Assessments are fine, Dean Bibb. At some point, I suppose one needs to measure what one has done or not done. The board requires a certain amount of fanfare in that regard. Per your central mission, however, I occasionally reminded Scoot that, as my granddaddy used to say, you can’t put pounds on the pig by weighing it. Sooner or later, darlin’, you’re going to have to feed the pig.”

  Chapter 13

  DR. TOTTEN MADE HIS WAY UP THE AISLE, offering condolences with every handshake. “He’ll be back tomorrow,” Delilah said when he was gone. “Prepare for classroom visits. Prepare your students for potential interviews. Please, please prepare.”

  She spoke to Londell in acronyms I was grateful not to understand. Her demeanor was less authoritative, a little frantic, a bird returning to its nest to find a larger bird.

  The rest of us congregated in the lobby. It was tradition, or unbreakable habit, to endure each other’s presence for a few more minutes, express outrage over new tasks we had been assigned.

  From my colleagues’ anger I could gauge how many reminders I would receive when my task went uncompleted.

  “Meet the new boss,” said Mollie. “Same as the old boss.”

  “In my country, we do not hold meetings while a dead man’s ashes are onstage.” This was Esther Yeboah, the Nigerian adjunct whose contributions to post-meeting discussions rarely involved her own opinions.

  “In Nigeria,” said Benjamin Tweel, “I suspect teaching is still a noble profession.”

  “What was that about a dead man’s ashes?” I said.

  “He must not have seen the urn,” said Benjamin Tweel. He opened the door to the theater a couple of inches and peered inside. “Does anyone here,” he said, “have the slightest confidence in Delilah Bibb?”

  My gaze went idly from face to face. No one spoke.

  “I believe we know how Duncan would vote,” said Tweel.

  “What kind of vote, honey?” Mollie opened the door for her own peek. Her tan skirt and lavender blazer nearly erased my memory of last night’s tank top and leather pants. There always had been two Mollies, the one I liked and the one I didn’t. In the months we were together, I tried pretending the bad Mollie, the one who said being with me was like swimming through concrete, was a bad cold she would eventually overcome.

  “A vote of no confidence,” said Tweel. “We could take it to the trustees, and maybe they can get someone in here who knows what they’re doing.”

  A soft leather briefcase slapped the carpet by Tweel’s feet. I traced its arc to the plump hips of Christine Katzen, Parshall’s registrar. Those who came within a ten-foot radius of her cubicle received status updates on her digestive health, or how much more attractive everyone had found her in upstate New York. Today she simply pointed to her briefcase.

  We looked at the briefcase. We gave up on it and looked at Christine Katzen. She bent down and picked up her briefcase. Again she slammed it against the carpet. It wasn’t an impressive sound. I reached against the wall, where Benjamin Tweel had set his own briefcase.

  “Try this one,” I said. “It’s the hard kind with sharp edges.” Tweel yanked it out of her hand.

  Christine Katzen started to cry.

  “Now see what you’ve done,” I said.

  Carly touched Christine Katzen’s arm. Mollie touched her other arm. Her tears kept coming.

  “Do you really think,” the registrar said, holding together her words with obvious strain, “that anyone can save this school? Did you not hear the man praise the effective work of Randall Simkins?”

  The unkempt adjunct whose name I could never remember said, “What I think that dude was saying…” The adjunct’s theory receded, unformed, into the haze of his marijuana buzz.

  Christine Katzen broke loose of Carly and Mollie, picked up

  her briefcase, and flung it into the bulletin board on which no events had been advertised in my years at the school. “The

  winning team?” she asked, steadying herself on a hard platform of anger. “Does anyone here think you’re on the winning team? I’ll tell you what I won last summer. We didn’t have the money to hire the annual temps to play admissions counselor. Guess whose desk that steaming pile landed on?” She blew her nose. “It wasn’t the extra work, mind you. I get paid by the hour. What was particularly enlightening—and by enlightening I mean soul-gouging—was seeing what absolute, bottom-of-the-barrel, empty-headed morons we accept into this school.”

  Benjamin Tweel passed a pen and a sheet of paper around the circle for us to sign our names. When it came to Christine Katzen, she simply glanced at it and gave it to me. I passed it to Esther Yeboah without signing it.

  “If not new leadership, Miss Katzen,” Mollie said, “what do you propose as a solution?”

  “Don’t you see? Don’t any of you see?” She stepped inside the circle and turned to look each of us in the eyes. “Do you have any clue what I do every time the dean decides to overhaul the curriculum? I change the names of existing courses. I change the numbers. I change the descriptions and type it all up in a brand new catalog. That’s the easy part. When I’m done, I get to revise the transcripts of every current student and send them each an e-mail detailing the new courses they now need to graduate. Many of them write back. Many of them stop by to see me when I’m not there and leave red plastic cups under my desk filled with their own feces.” Christine Katzen sucked an elephantine breath into her nose. It whistled on the way out. “I can’t eat fresh fruit anymore. God, how I miss watermelon. How I miss Rainier cherries. It’s stress. The doctors said so. I’m still paying him for that wisdom because I don’t have insurance.”

  “Neither do we,” Tweel said. “If your job is so bad, why don’t you quit?”

  “Why don’t you?” she retorted. “Why don’t any of you?”

  It wasn’t a hard question to answer. The answer wasn’t easy to say. The piece of paper came back to Christine Katzen. She tore it into a pair of oversized bookmarks and let them fall to the floor.

  “It’s time,” said our registrar. “This place has been begging to die for two generations. For God’s sake, if you have any sense of mercy, let this poor school rest in peace.”

  Benjamin Tweel held together the halves of his makeshift petition. “Technically, Miss Katzen, since you’re not faculty, we don’t really need your signature, but we thank you for your frank contributions to the discussion. Carly, I don’t see your name on here.”

  Christine Katzen grabbed the torn halves and extracted a

  pen from her battered briefcase, adding her name with the flourish you’d find in a film whose climax hinges on a last second signature. She pushed the signed page into Tweel’s chest. Her next shove found the exit door.

  “I, Geraldine Christine Katzen,” Tweel read to us, “resign effective immediately. Fair enough.” He handed the half-sheet to Carly.

  “Ben, I’m not even going to be here next year.”

  “That’s right, honey. Carly is going to be a famous author. I’ve not gotten a chance to congratulate you.” Mollie hung a lilt on her words as jolly as Christmas lights and twice as gaudy. “You know, Carly, I’ve been looking for your short story in the River Creek Review, the one you said had gotten accepted there last year. When is that coming out, anyway?”

  The adjuncts, seeing nothing at stake for themselves in the conversation, wandered the way of Christine
Katzen. They were the cockroaches of the academy, admirable for the unwanted scraps on which they survived. Some had other jobs. Some sent their paltry salaries home to family in the third world. Some dedicated nights and weekends to classic rock cover bands and appreciated an employer with leniency on matters of personal hygiene. None of them, I was inclined to believe, expected enough out of Parshall College to point a gun at their boss.

  “The editor and I couldn’t agree on revisions,” Carly said.

  “That’s too bad. What about Cavern Rock?” Mollie asked. “When is that one due out?”

  “I’d be glad, Mollie, to print you a copy of any of my stories. I didn’t know you enjoyed fiction.”

  “Sorry, Carly. I’m afraid I only read published work. What is the release date on that novel?”

  “Next year. I’ll have the publisher send you an advance copy as soon as they’re available,” Carly shouted on her way out the door.

  “She didn’t sign, did she?” Mollie asked.

  “Maybe if you had kept sweet-talking her,” I said.

  Tweel put the pen in my hand. “You can see to sign your name, can’t you?”

  My handwriting isn’t the bee’s knees, but I wrote Tweel a message large enough for him to read. Tweel studied the two words and shook his head.

  Mollie glanced at my penmanship and sighed. “She’s not going to rehire you, Tate.” She said my name with a shot of pity chased with contempt.

  “I suspect she’ll have a hard time firing anyone from a correctional facility,” I said.

  “Jesus, not this again.” Tweel took a dramatic step away from us and paced a quick lap around the lobby.

  “Suppose he was murdered,” Mollie said. “And suppose Delilah did it. Suppose she goes to prison because you have managed, against all reason and probability, to find enough evidence for the state to convict her of murder. Someone is going to replace her. Don’t you want a say in who that is? Some candidates might not see the value of an MBA with quote-unquote paranormal talents.”

  “I’d like to think a college has a home for someone who solves the murder of its dean. That shows critical thinking, Mollie. No doubt your husband’s scholarship on the subject of space tourism will impress any dean looking for teachers with experience relevant to the modern student.”

  Tweel put his hands on my chest. He gave me a shove that wouldn’t have opened an automatic door. I didn’t mean to smile. He stepped back and gave it another try, putting all hundred and forty pounds into it. My smile, along with the air in my lungs, went away when my back hit the wall.

  “I’ve never liked you, Cowlishaw.”

  “I’ll file that under surprising revelations.” I got most of that out without coughing.

  Tweel got close enough to let me smell the hummus he had eaten for lunch. I had forgotten how much his gaunt cheeks resembled those of a British supermodel.

  “You don’t belong in the academy,” he said. “You’re a terrible teacher. You’re sure as hell not a scholar.”

  “He means you’re being selfish, Tate. Think of the students. Think of your colleagues.”

  Tweel stayed put, continuing to brief me on the contents of his lunch. I reached between us for the lapel of his tweed blazer, held on tight, and traded him places.

  I backed away casually, thinking we were even. He thought otherwise. He sent a hard left into my right cheek. My teeth scraped in places that didn’t normally touch. I stared Benjamin Tweel in the eyes, a vain act and an act of vanity. It seemed less so in idle moments of conversation. Tweel was done talking. If I had aimed my gaze at the ceiling, I might have noticed the left hand making a return trip to its recent destination. The pair of punches knocked me off balance. Gravity finished the job.

  He was still pissed, if the force with which he pushed open the front door was any indication. Mollie knelt over me. Her hair was a black curtain between my face and the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry, Tate. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  “It felt like anger. I think Duncan has it, too.”

  Mollie’s hand lay in the center of my chest. Her face got closer to mine, her hair scattering across my neck. Her eyes were closed. I closed mine. Her lips made themselves comfortable against my cheek.

  “He did hit me twice,” I said.

  A white smile streaked below my blind spot. I held her gaze.

  Close as we were, eye contact let me see the rest of her face. It was a face worth seeing, worth remembering: enormous eyes above a tiny nose and a mouth that did everything well. She kissed my cheek a second time. She pressed a finger against the center of my lips and kissed it, our lips coming together at the edges.

  “Carly isn’t who you think she is,” Mollie said, as low as a voice can get before becoming a whisper.

  “Who is she?”

  “Bad news.”

  “And what are you?”

  “I’m married.”

  “I’ve never liked that about you.”

  Mollie’s laugh was short but full of meaning, like one of her poems. Voices became audible behind the doors to the theater. Mollie’s head turned. She stood up and collected the torn sheet of signatures her husband had left behind.

  I propped myself on my elbows. “Tell Ben I hope his hand feels better.”

  Mollie was halfway to the door. “Remember what I told you

  about Carly.”

  “I have a good memory,” I said.

  Mollie tested it by lingering in the foyer. In our months together, she told me the extra seconds by the door were spent waving to me and hoping one day I would see her and wave back. I waved to her, as I used to do once she told me what she was waiting for.

  I had not gotten up when the door to the theater clanged against the side of Delilah Bibb’s wheelchair. Londell could have held it for her. I was certain she hadn’t asked him. She paused beside my legs, which blocked her direct path to the exit.

  “Could you please move, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

  I crossed my legs at the ankles. “I thought you said there wasn’t a will.”

  “There wasn’t. Please move.”

  “How did you know to have him cremated?”

  A few feet behind her, Londell set down what must have been the speakers and microphone.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t like the tone of these questions. In fact, Mr. Cowlishaw, I

  don’t see any productive reason to let you continue your little investigation. This college needs to look ahead, not backward. Henceforth, our deal is off the table.”

  Delilah reversed her chair a few feet and skirted the wall, squeezing past the soles of my shoes. I sometimes wondered which was worse, bad eyes or bad legs. People in wheelchairs could still drive. I could climb stairs. I could walk wherever I wanted, though I might not know where I ended up. I could hide my blind spots, if not as well as I sometimes believed. There was no way to hide a wheelchair. Sometimes I envied that. It tires you, hiding things. If Delilah didn’t know this yet, she would eventually.

  Londell joined me on the floor. His long sigh sounded like an old joke that no longer got laughs. “I just spent the last ten minutes helping Bibb decide whether the PowerPoint slide describing our efforts to enhance reading comprehension should feature a photograph of an open book or a shelf of books.”

  “What happens if this presentation doesn’t go well?” I asked.

  “Maybe they ask us to make another presentation. Maybe the trustees get someone who can guide the school into a smaller iceberg.”

  “FYI, Space Boy’s planning his own revolt. Expect him to ask for your Hancock on a ripped sheet of paper.”

  Londell flung a high-pitched laugh at the ceiling. “Tell him to watch our presentation. He might be inclined to let failure take its natural course.”

  “Maybe Tweel’s angling for a promotion. Is he qualified to be dean?”

  “You’re buddies with F. Randolph Parshall. Ask him.”

&nbs
p; “He isn’t the only trustee.” I fished in my pocket for the memos from Hoopel. “Does the name Theodore Skipwith ring a bell?”

  Londell held it in front of his face for a few seconds. “Never heard of him,” he said.

  “Any idea how many there are?” I asked.

  “Skipwiths?”

  “Trustees.”

  “I don’t have any idea. I’m just the lowly assistant to the interim dean,” he said in the trenchant baritone of Morgan Freeman. He was sifting through the contents of his wallet. “If you really think Simkins was murdered, why don’t you give this guy a call.”

  All four of our knees cracked as we stood up. “Who’s this?”

  “Guy we were talking about. Thayer.” Londell handed me a business card. “I heard a rumor that the police handle crimes.”

  “A black man tells me to go to the police,” I said.

  “Half-black.”

  I stuck the card in my wallet. I asked Londell for a pen and wrote my new phone number on the back of my Café Club discount card for the coffee roaster that had moved to a part of town without sidewalks. I told him to give me a call if Delilah saw any more ghosts.

  I was almost outside when Londell called my name in his best Eddie Murphy. “You don’t think that bitch would kill me, do you?”

  I said to give me a call if that happened, too.

  Chapter 14

  THE ACCIDENTAL STUDENT MOURNER was right about the library’s lack of electricity. I walked through the non-functioning metal detectors, past the unmanned circulation desk. The white-haired reference librarian partial to corduroy jumpers had either retired or resigned, whichever didn’t include benefits and pension. The tall fellow with the gray ponytail, with whom I made pleasant small talk about the movies I used to check out, now worked at the video store across from the Gray Knight that no longer rented videos. A sign on the circulation desk encouraged students wishing to check out books to sign their names on the first page of a three-ring binder. At a faculty meeting I hadn’t attended, I had been selected to verify that borrowed books had come back, but never got around to it.

  Passing through the stacks, I pulled one of the dusty artifacts from the shelves. It had a light blue, possibly gray cover. The edges had been worn to downy fur. I breathed its scent like the hair of an ex-girlfriend. The usefulness of books, like that of cars, had diminished greatly a few months after I turned sixteen. To judge by their perseverance on the shelves of a library unguarded and unlocked, their usefulness to others had also diminished.