Still Tuesday morning
RANNIE REMAINED IN THE GREAT HALL WHILE JEM MARSHALL BRISKLY marched stragglers toward the staircase and classes. The headmaster’s demeanor was stiff—ramrod-straight posture and blond hair that looked parted by command—but perhaps he’d loosen up given time, or perhaps the fact that he was barely past forty made him mistake a certain stuffiness for gravitas. At an evening assembly a week ago, he’d spoken about himself and his hopes for the school.
Right after college he had come East, he told the audience, working his way up the ladder of school administration. “Growing up in California, New York was always my dream,” he stated, Rannie mentally wincing…. New York hadn’t “grown up” in California, he had.
“I always hoped one day to head a school like Chaps, a place with a long, illustrious history and living legends like Lawrence Tutwiler.” Jem Marshall had turned toward Mr. Tut who, sitting onstage with the rest of the faculty, acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
“So I ask you. How lucky can a man get? I am doing what I always wanted, exactly where I always wanted.” Then he pinched himself to the amusement of the parents.
Watching him now, Rannie couldn’t help thinking it was a shame his stewardship was starting off on such a depressing note. Then, just as she was retrieving her Clinique freebie from the umbrella stand, the double espresso drunk en route to school hit full force, and, no, she decided she couldn’t wait till she got home.
A single stall unisex bathroom was tucked in the corner of the Great Hall. Rannie ducked in and as she locked the door, a wave of low-level depression rolled over her. She couldn’t shake the vision of Mr. Tutwiler carried out so unceremoniously from Chaps. At the end of the day, did Mr. Tut consider the unswerving path he’d chosen satisfying, fulfilling? She hoped so.
The other night in the middle of dinner, Rannie surprised herself by announcing to Nate, “I think I peaked in high school.”
“Ma, come on. What am I supposed to say…‘Sucks to be you?’”
“You’re right. Dumb remark.”
“Only 127 days left ’til graduation,” someone had written in marker on the stall door. “Pray for snow days,” was scribbled right below, and underneath that, someone else had scrawled, “Or mono.”
High school—most people rated the experience somewhere below unanaesthetized dental work, something you survived, often just barely. But at Shaker Heights High School—simply Shaker to Clevelanders—she had been happy in an uncomplicated way that she’d taken completely for granted, where failing at anything or, at least, anything that mattered to her, seemed unthinkable. Senior year she scored an 800 on the SAT verbal and had a multiple orgasm. Yale wanted her; so did lots of cute shaggy-haired guys in flannel shirts who ended up at places like Oberlin or Bard and whom she never saw again. She was her father’s pride and joy, his favorite of the three girls. Her future was full of nothing but great big, blinking-neon “yeses.” The minute she graduated, she planned to live in New York, work at a publishing company—with a name like Bookman, surely that was destiny calling—and discover beautiful heart-breaking first novels.
Starting as a junior copyeditor at Farrar, Straus wasn’t quite the same as landing an editorial position, but it was a bad economy and a way to get her foot in the door. Peter Lorimer, an aspiring writer, turned out to have no soul-shattering novel in him, although she met him at a book party for some other guy’s brilliant publishing debut…. Four months later she was pregnant with Alice. My, how quickly reality had started sinking its teeth in.
Someone tugged on the locked door, jolting Rannie back to the business at hand.
“Oops, sorry,” said a teenaged girl’s voice. “Didn’t know anyone was in there.”
“I’ll be out in a sec.”
A moment later, she unbolted the bathroom door and found herself face-to-face with Olivia Werner. Actually more nose-to-chin. In platform-soled combat boots, Olivia, a tall girl to begin with, now loomed over her.
“Ms. Bookman!” Olivia clomped aside a step or two to let Rannie pass. Raccoon rings of smudged mascara were under her red eyes. Olivia’s nose was red, too, and running.
“Oh, sweetie. I heard you found Mr. Tut. I’m so sorry.”
She’d known Olivia since kindergarten and always had a soft spot for her. Olivia and Nate weren’t close friends, yet unlike most of the “lifers,” Olivia always smiled and waved whenever she passed Rannie in the halls at Chaps. Rannie opened her arms and Olivia wilted in them, sniffling and breathing raggedly. “It was awful.” Olivia’s voice was muffled, hunched as she was over Rannie, undoubtedly smearing blotches of eye makeup onto her trench coat. And just back from the cleaners. Oh well.
“Poor Mr. Tut.” Olivia pulled back. “He—he was just sitting at his desk…staring…. It was like at first I didn’t even realize he was dead.” Olivia paused and shuddered. “I never saw anybody dead before.”
Rannie stroked Olivia’s bangs off her forehead. A heart attack could hit suddenly and fatally, of that Rannie was well aware after witnessing her own father seize up while reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer almost fifteen years ago. He’d flung himself half out of a Barcalounger as if trying to escape a tidal wave of pain. There had been no mistaking, not for an instant, the fact he was dead, and it had taken her a long time to push the memory of his contorted face and body into a recessed corner of her mind.
Rannie cupped Olivia’s chin in her hand. “Why don’t we sit for a minute? You look a little shaky.” Rannie deposited Olivia on a bench and, fishing in her purse, handed her a Kleenex. Olivia blew her nose hard, the sound echoing in the empty hall.
“Mr. Marshall heard me screaming. He brought me downstairs and made me sit on the sofa with my head between my legs….” Olivia let out a raspy sigh and stroked her skirt, a shaggy orange number that looked like a rug remnant from the 1970s.
From her report of events, the ambulance had arrived at Chaps quickly. So had the police. And while Mr. Marshall was letting the stretcher into the Annex, Olivia had fled to the boardroom. “I knew I’d freak if I saw them bringing Mr. T. down.”
In the boardroom, a police officer had come to question her.
“She kept going, ‘Are you sure you didn’t disturb anything? How did you know he was dead? Did you feel his pulse?’ I mean, no! I definitely did not feel his pulse.”
“The police have to ask questions whenever somebody dies alone.” Rannie squeezed Olivia’s hand. Her nails were bitten painfully low. “It doesn’t mean anything,” although it suddenly crossed Rannie’s mind, recalling Mrs. Mac’s comment about Tut’s increasing pain and low spirits, to wonder whether the police suspected suicide.
Olivia nodded and shredded the Kleenex, blowing through her lips. “He was a cool old guy. He liked Stella McCartney.”
“Who?”
“The dress designer. Paul McCartney’s daughter. Mr. Tut knows I’m into fashion…. I showed him some of her stuff in Vogue.”
That made Rannie smile, the picture of natty, bow-tied Mr. Tutwiler and Olivia—in some cockamamie getup—sitting in his office, studying fashion magazines together. He was a cool old guy.
Olivia sat up a little straighter and attempted a soggy smile. Even with a runny nose and an unflattering choppy haircut, she was a beautiful girl, far more than just conventionally pretty, with full, pouty lips, a honey-toned complexion and wide-set eyes the color of amber. Rannie’s hunch was Nate had a crush on her, not that he’d ever admitted as much.
“Lookit. Thanks for sitting with me. I feel better.” She nodded, as if to convince herself, and rose. “I’m gonna go home now.”
“Me too.”
The rain had stopped although the slate-gray sky was still low and heavy. At West End Avenue, a cab saw Olivia’s waving hand and was slowing to a stop when the girl turned uncertainly to Rannie. “Listen, would it be okay if we maybe stopped and got coffee? If you have time, that is. I mean, you probably don’t. You probably have somewhere to go. So it’s really okay if you can’t.”
“No, no. Sure I can…. I have plenty of time,” Rannie said, oddly flattered.
Five minutes later, Olivia hobbling unsteadily atop her boots, they reached Rannie’s neighborhood Starbucks. Over the past few months, she’d clocked a lot of hours here, bringing along freelance copyediting work. One manuscript had to be returned to the publisher with apologies, its pages neatly blue-penciled but stained cappuccino brown. They settled in armchairs on either side of a crumb-covered table, a latte for Rannie, some caramel-mocha concoction and sticky bun for Olivia. At the table next to them, a baby sat strapped in a stroller happily gumming biscotti while his mother was anxiously reading about the latest S.W.A.K. murder.
“Carlotta’s not in ’til later. I guess I’m being a baby. But I don’t want to be home alone.”
Home, Rannie remembered from playdate pickups years ago, was a beautiful townhouse off Madison Avenue in the 70s.
Olivia peeled off a strip of sticky bun and began nibbling at it. “Mr. Tut’d always get up at Christmas Assembly in this dorky Santa hat and say the same thing every year, about how his hearing was bad so everybody had to sing extra loud. It was sweet.” Olivia seemed to space out for a second, blinking. “You know, Tut was like the only one at Chaps who tried to stay in touch with my brother after—well, you know—after the whole mess….” Olivia shrugged. “Tut wanted to be Grant’s friend.”
Rannie nodded. Olivia’s brother had been in the same grade as Rannie’s daughter, Alice. In fact, Alice had harbored a long-term crush on him, one that fortunately had gone unrequited. Though smart and handsome, Grant Werner was hot-headed, way too quick with his fists. There was a recklessness about him that seemed glamorous to other kids and worrisome to parents. He was the kind of boy who never turned down a dare. At some point in high school, he’d become seriously mixed up with drugs. And in the spring of Grant’s senior year, Tut caught him selling cocaine to another boy. Tut ended up with three broken ribs courtesy of Grant. Both kids were expelled. No graduation for Grant, no Princeton. Still, he was lucky: He’d avoided jail solely because Tut refused to press charges.
“I hope Grant’s doing well,” was all Rannie said.
Olivia nodded and tore off another strip of her bun.
“He is. He’s been living at this place, Windward, for over a year. It’s in New Haven, and he’s got a job at Barnes and Noble. He looks great—I saw him last weekend.” Olivia’s hand suddenly flew to her mouth. “Forget I said that. Please. My parents don’t know he came in. Grant’ll kill me if they find out.” Then she pointed to the rest of her bun and gave Rannie a questioning look, but Rannie shook her head. Instead, she raised her coffee cup and touched Olivia’s.
“To Mr. Tutwiler,” Rannie said. “A gentleman, a friend…”
“…And a cool guy,” Olivia added before draining the last of her drink.
After they gathered their belongings Rannie put Olivia in a cab. Just before it took off down Broadway, Olivia rolled down the window and thanked Rannie “for playing mom. You made me feel like a gazillion times better.”
Rannie smiled and waved. Funny how being a good parent was so easy when you were dealing with someone else’s child.
Voice messages on Olivia’s cell while at Starbucks
Olivia, Omigod! Where are you? Pick up!!! It’s me, Lily. Lily’s here too. Omigod, you found Tut. Was it gross? Is it like on tv? Call toute suite!!
Sweetie. School called. How awful for you. Wish I could get home but tied up in meetings all day. Call my cell if you need me. Also maybe try and schedule a double session with Dr. Ehrenburg…Ambien in my night table if you need it. Kisses.
Me again! You are famous! Everybody is talking about you. That cherry eleventh grader, Henry B., just came up and goes, “So is Olivia okay? Is she around?” Oh, is he ripe for the picking! He is loving you…Call! Call! Call! Lily and me are thinking of hitting Takashimaya after school. You in?
Olivia, Daddy just called from Quito. Told him what happened he sends love and also mentioned you should consider using this experience for your Princeton essay…. Your first brush with death. Think about it.