“Well,” Marjorie says. “We should take our seats. Looks like the slideshow is about to start.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say to Emma, who dips again at the knees.
I turn my attention to the front of the tent, where the president stands patiently while someone adjusts the gain and dinner conversation dies down. He begins the solemn task of welcoming everyone for a weekend to celebrate the life and impact of his dear friend colloquially known as PT. “The film students wanted to put together the following tribute for their professor,” the president says. “And if I may be so bold—Faye Heron, you have yourself some competition.”
I laugh with everyone else, but my body is tense enough to snap in two. I had not stopped to consider what it might feel like to hear my name spoken in the same room as Henry in a way that acknowledges my ascent. I feel like we are images on one of those infrared cameras, everyone else in blue, us in red. The only two in the room burning with the truth about who I really am when it is just the two of us.
The president steps away as the projection screen fills with an image of Professor Toner as a young man with a beard and gold aviators, a Bob Dylan track playing, though the picture looks to be from the eighties. A voiceover begins, and the camera cuts to a self-tape from Jonathan Granger, talking about the premiere of the first show he ever made, how he brought PT as his date and he wound up on the worst dressed list and PT on the best. The film students managed to dig up a twenty-year-old issue ofUS Weekly, and a cheer goes up from the crowd, seeing PT in his suspenders and dapper velvet slippers. When everyone settles again I realize that there is a scene unfolding behind me, a child demon-growling the wordnoover and over. I only dare to glance back when the screaming starts in earnest and only then because a few others do too. Henry unbuckles his youngest from the high chair, her legs swinging and kicking, and carries her into the house withoutexpression. But there is some sort of amplification that occurs once he’s inside with her. It’s like listening to your neighbors fight, wondering if you should call the cops, if that would be overkill, if it will make it awkward next time you run into one of them taking out the garbage. The tribute is going, but everyone is stiff with these kinds of thoughts, and after a moment Henry’s inoffensive-looking wife whispers something to her older daughter, and she scoots off her chair and follows her mother into the house, dragging her rapidly blinking doll by one arm. And with that, Henry leaves without ever saying hello.
Chapter 3
This is where it starts, really, with my decision to head back to the hotel. Corrine and Campbell try to convince me to come to Sig Phi with them, but I am far too injured to drink tepid beer while bleary-eyed barely legals assure me I’m much smaller in person than I appear in photographs. I slip out the side door, but innocuous little Emma King spots me and asks if I’d mind company. Though I tell her not to leave on my account, she insists in a way that will come to matter later. We tango around the line of cars in the driveway and fall into step. It’s tenish, muggy but mild, and the air is stuffed with the scent of some perennial so sweet it smells rotten.
“I love LA,” Emma declares. She says it on an exhale, and I am in no mood for this brand of youthful whimsy. I want to be alone, to lick my wounds, to think my strange thoughts.
“It’s a great place to live,” I say in a lackluster tone.
“I mean. I’ve only been there once. PT took us to visit Jonathan on set.”
I nod. I remember the year they came. The show was still going, but we were on a hiatus, and my husband and I had taken a trip to Hawaii that went poorly for us.
“It’s not easy to get there,” Emma remarks. “From here.”
There is some suspicion in how she says this. It is completeconjecture on my part, but my brain instantly leaps to a scenario where Emma knows that while of course I went to the trouble of returning to campus to honor PT, I was also hoping for a run-in with the ex who ruined me exactly the way I told him to. Paranoia is also an option here.
“I have a writing retreat planned for myself right after this.” I feel ridiculous, explaining myself to Emma, like I am a teenager whose parent has detected alcohol on my breath.
“Professor Toner canceled all his classes the day before he died. Did you know that?”
This is a very abrupt thing to say, and I don’t know how to react, so I only shake my head.No. I did not know that.
“Do you think that’s weird?”
I frown. Consider it. “Did he say why?”
“He didn’t give a reason. Just sent out an email letting us know and gave us some reading to do.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, fitting this information in with what I know to be true. “He had a massive heart attack. From what I understand, people don’t feel very well in the days leading up to that.”
“He had Band-Aids. All over his hands.” Emma demonstrates, turning her hands front to back.
I stop walking. “How do you know that?”
“I’m the one who found the body.”
I stare at Emma, gobsmacked. She’s lying. To my face. About finding the body of our professor. “I thought it was the house cleaner.”
“I mean, technically, yes. But he had emailed me the night before and asked me to come over first thing in the morning. She was already there when I got there. She told me he was upstairs in the bathroom, and so I ran up to check on him. And he was lying thereand he had at least, like, ten Band-Aids, all over his hands, and I mean, clearly he had something to tell me. And then he died before he could.” Emma is wringing her hands, like she’s nervous, but her eyes are also sheened with excitement. Maybe what she is saying is true, but from my vantage point, there is something unbelievable about her story.
“Did you tell the police this?”
“No. I left before they got there.”
“Emma,” I say, firmly, “if this is true, you need to be talking to the police, not me.”
“Comeon,” Emma says with sudden, snotty force. And then she has the gall to roll her eyes at me.
“Come on what?” I repeat in a new, icy tone. Emma is displaying that overfamiliarity that I loathe in young people with dreams of becoming somebody. Fear is underrated. It’s okay to show it, to certain people, in certain situations. Fear has taken me far.