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Also Saturday, December 21st, in the afternoon
The newly-widowed Janice Garibaldi sat in her living room in a patch of sunlight that had the eerie effect of making her seem to glow from within. Janice was still a beautiful woman in her mid-sixties; in her prime, back when Charlotte was still a student, she was a cross between a Pre-Raphaelite femme fatale and a hippie, with a pale complexion, long wavy platinum blond hair, and a sylph-like slenderness that made her seem several inches taller than she was. Even Charlotte’s stodgy literature professor, leading a discussion of The Lord of the Rings, compared the ethereal Galadriel to “Dr. Garibaldi’s wife.”
She may have looked fragile, but to Charlotte’s surprise she had answered the door when she arrived, and hugged her warmly. Charlotte felt awkward at first, since she didn’t know Janice well, but supposed she was now part of an inner circle of sorts, as Alexa’s friend and having been at the scene of the crime.
“Alexa is napping at the moment, so tired out from everything,” said Janice, while Charlotte settled into a chair. “She’s having dialysis tomorrow morning, and I’m having a tissue matching test done.” She paused, then felt more was needed. “For donating a kidney.”
“You must be overwhelmed, Janice. I’m so sorry.”
Janice seemed uncertain. “I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet. I know Alonzo’s dead, but I’m not feeling it. Doesn’t that sound awful? Does this happen to other people?”
Charlotte tried to find the right words. “It is such a shock. I’m sure others have felt that way, too.”
“The police haven’t told me much yet, but then I haven’t had anything to tell them, either.” Janice paused as she looked out the window over the snow-covered yard.
Charlotte wanted to ask Janice so many questions about Alonzo, but this was not the time, nor was it her place; she had no idea how recently the police had talked to her, and with Alexa’s fragile health, it didn’t seem right to distress Janice any more than necessary. Best stick to pleasant commonalities.
“We have a mutual friend in Helene Dalmier. She told me your grandfather was Edward Corton.”
Janice turned and smiled. “Yes he was. A wonderful man. I don’t remember my father, he died in the Korean War shortly before I was born, but my grandfather stepped in, and we were always close. My mother preferred my brother Jonathan, maybe because he looks so much like our father. Grandpop was the one I ran to for every little thing. He had the patience of a saint with me.”
“Sometimes it is easier to feel close to those who have mellowed with age. Helene is like a mother to me.”
“She’s such a lovely person, too!” agreed Janice. “Not everyone so talented is also gracious.” She looked out the window, lost in thought for a moment, then spoke again. “Grandpop was born in 1885—the nineteenth century.” She turned to look at Charlotte. “And now we’re in the twenty-first century!”
“How did the university come to be named after him?”
Janice chuckled and turned slightly in the chair, tucking one foot on the seat under her leg and tucking in the robe to stay snug. Reminiscing seemed to help her relax. “Businessmen have always done one another favors in this town. Probably the same sort of thing goes on the world over. But back then the town was smaller, and the most educated, innovative, or successful would form groups that were a cross between the Masonic order and the Chamber of Commerce. The university was originally a Normal School, that’s what they used to call teacher’s training colleges, and Grandpop taught there. But it was facing enrollment and other financial problems by the 1920’s, so it was up for sale.”
“Who owned it at the time?”
“That I don’t remember. But I do remember him saying that the Ku Klux Klan wanted to buy it. They were really pushing for changes in Indiana schools at the time.”
“Oh my! I take it they didn’t succeed? Your grandfather stopped them?”
“Yes, he came up with a scheme to raise the money and buy it—with the help of an inner circle of town leaders. Then he created the University Association, comprised of all the people who financed the purchase. In turn, as a gesture of gratitude, the Association changed the name to Corton College, which became Corton University as it grew. And of course he served as the university president until just a few years before he passed away.”
“I had no idea the town fathers were so anti-racist—I well remember when blacks were threatened and treated poorly here—there was even a cross burning in town when I was a freshman.”
Janice smiled as if she knew an inside joke. “Oh, I don’t think racism had much to do with buying the school. This was during Prohibition, and the Klan members were huge supporters of enforcing dry laws. They’d form vigilante groups to raid bootleggers and speakeasies. But Grandpop and his cronies liked their drink, and they didn’t want to risk a Klan stronghold on their doorstep.”
Charlotte smiled at this secret history of Corton University. “Well, I never read anything about it in the enrollment packet I got as a freshman, or in the Alumni News.”
Janice laughed softly. “It’s not something the university brags about. Grandpop was always conscious of the hypocrisy, even as he played the role of benevolent leader. It took me a while to reconcile the contradictions between the public perception and the private reality. I rebelled something awful when I was young, and I know it hurt him deeply. But still he was patient, and forgave me. I owed him everything. So did Alonzo.”
Charlotte flipped a mental coin. Should she encourage Janice to talk about Alonzo, or would it upset her? She tried an open-ended approach. “How so?”
Janice looked surprised for a moment, as if never having had to answer the question before. “Grandpop suggested I enter the Peace Corps as a way to expand my horizons and give my idealism an outlet. So I trained in New Mexico for a while, and then they sent me to Uruguay. That’s where I met Alonzo—he was a medical student who worked with our group. He did the translating, explaining, helping us get around, just everything. I was in awe of him, so handsome, energetic, so intelligent. He utterly swept me off my feet, and—” she suddenly choked back a sob, “—he called me an angel, a goddess, and he made me feel more special than anything or anyone else in the whole world.” Her expression was one of both joy and pain, but she calmed down. “I married him three months after meeting him.”
“That is so romantic.” Charlotte thought quickly of a more neutral aspect. “Didn’t you have to be a Roman Catholic, though?”
“Oh no, not in Uruguay.” Janice sighed as she regained her composure. “They’ve had civil marriages since the early 1900’s, and they’ve always had a clear separation of church and state.”
“So what did your Grandpop think of your marriage?”
Janice smiled. “I think he was horrified for all of five minutes, as I didn’t tell him until the day I came home and introduced Alonzo as my husband. He just gasped a little. My mother was also there, and started to take me out of the room by my arm. I protested, but Alonzo just looked at me, calm as you please, and said it was okay, everything would be fine.”
“So he had a mano-a-mano with your grandfather?”
“Yes. And it turned out he probably had a better time of it than I had with my mother. She badgered me about Alonzo’s background, if he was a descendant of the famous General Garibaldi, if his family had money, what he thought he would be doing to support a wife, and so on. In truth, Alonzo was an orphan who lived with his aunt and uncle, and had no idea if he was an actual descendant of Giuseppe Garibaldi, since it was a name many people took back then out of admiration for the general. His intent on arriving in the states was to finish his education and set up a practice either here or back home. Mother wasn’t impressed. She suspected he just married me for an American citizenship, but I told her I didn’t care if he did, I loved him. Of course nowadays I understand why she was upset, since I was only nineteen at the time.
“My grandfather, meanwhile, made Alonzo an offer he couldn’t refuse. Medical school would take a long time and a lot of money, but if Alonzo was willing to go straight for a doctorate in chemistry or biology, a teaching position at Corton would be guaranteed, and a house to live in.” She gestured to indicate it was this very house. “Grandfather felt the sciences needed improvement here.”
“That’s fascinating. Did he ever regret it?”
“I don’t think so. Alonzo had an amazing green thumb, and could grow anything anywhere. He knew a lot of traditional and folk remedies, too, but since Uruguay needed doctors more than farmers, he went into medicine. That’s why he set up his own laboratory here, you know, to keep working on medicinal plants.” She sighed. “He was—.”
She didn’t finish, and Charlotte didn’t press. Then she looked up, as if trying to rally herself, but she looked exhausted. “I should offer you some tea.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I just came by to see you and Alexa and if there was anything I could do to help. I should be making you tea.”
Janice smiled and shook her head. “Please feel free to help yourself, and there are all kinds of things to eat in the kitchen that people have brought by. I imagine Alexa will be awake in a little while. But I am going to have to lie down now, myself. The doctors gave me some pills to help me stay calm and I’m not used to them.”
Janice patted Charlotte on the shoulder as she made her way to the hall and the stairs.
Charlotte was about to put her coat on and turned to look at the living room again, now that she knew Paul Dalmier had played a role in how it looked. Outside, there was an arbor of sorts that extended across the top of the windows, a design element he frequently used on windows with full sun exposure. As the sun moved, the play of light and shadow would change from hour to hour, on the exterior wall as well as inside the room, making the space feel alive.
A ladder-back rocking chair occupied the far corner of the room; Charlotte sat down in it, and saw that from there one had an excellent view of the yard and the long driveway past the woods and pines. There were several bird feeders near the windows; a pair of cardinals and several sparrows were taking advantage of them. Then some clunking noises came from the wall, and the birds flew off.
Charlotte watched Hewey Sawyer come into view as he knocked down icicles from the eaves, working slowly and carefully with a long-handled garden rake, his eyes mere slits as he looked up in the bright sunlight. This was the person, thought Charlotte, who was here most days for Janice, a neighbor boy who grew up to be a handyman of sorts, the person she would call when she needed help moving things, turning over the garden, pruning a tree limb, trapping a pine squirrel in the attic, mowing the lawn, trimming the shrubbery. At least those were some of the things Alexa recalled he would do back when she lived at home.
Alexa herself found him useful on occasion, but also a bit of a toady, and claimed to have never liked him.
Charlotte, however, had had the experience of raising an only child, and specifically a daughter. She imagined Alexa, used to getting attention and praise only when she excelled, and then seeing this lunk of a boy get a different sort of praise for doing things just because he was bigger and stronger, a praise that was desirable because Janice needed what he could do. There was nothing that Alexa was able to do that Janice needed, because Janice could do it herself, and do it better. She could then imagine Alonzo treating his daughter as a less useful version of Janice, even while also expecting, she knew from having had Alexa as a student, academic excellence.
It still didn’t explain why Hewey accused Alexa of being the one who shot her father, when Alexa had clearly been with Charlotte. There was a loud metallic jangling coming from the kitchen—she had spotted a set of cowbells hanging from the knob of the back door that morning—and then the sound of someone stomping snow off of boots. Hewey must have come in. Curious, Charlotte went into the kitchen on the pretense of making a cup of tea. She found Hewey rummaging through the lower part of the broom closet, then pulling out a large covered bin. He was still in his navy blue insulated coveralls and knit cap but he had taken off his boots and was walking around in dingy white athletic socks, both of which had holes in the big toes.
He started when he turned and saw her in the doorway, nearly dropping the container, but he held on to it and just stood there staring at her as if uncertain if she was going to somehow assault him.
“Hi,” she said, grasping the tea kettle off the stove to fill it. “Just making tea. Would you like some?”
He continued to stare at her without responding for a few seconds, then shook his head no. He turned away, set the bin on the floor next to the bench by the back door, and began to put his boots back on.
“You must be Hewey,” she said, attempting to get him to talk. “I’m Charlotte, an old friend of Alexa’s. Terrible what happened, isn’t it?”
He paused for a split second when she said “Alexa,” but otherwise didn’t look up at her. She began to think he was going to ignore her altogether, when he said quietly, “I know who you are. Seen you yesterday.” Then, boots back on, he rose, picked up the bin, and went back outside, the cowbells clanging again as the door shut.
Well! So much for that. Charlotte didn’t bother with making tea, watching as Hewey went past the kitchen window. Back in the living room, she could see him open the bin, which had several different bags of bird food, and refill the feeders. One of the feeders was stuck, probably from ice. He pulled out a large pocket knife and used it to pry the lid off as steadily and carefully as he had taken down the icicles. She caught a flash of red on one of the shrubs—a cardinal. A mixed flock of birds landed in the snow about ten or fifteen feet away. As he finished up, he tossed a large handful of seeds on the snow, and only a couple of the birds flew off. The rest fluttered toward the seeds, and then the cardinal perched on the sunflower feeder the moment he left. A pair of squirrels entered the scene, making hesitant zig-zags toward any spilled sunflower seeds.
She left before Hewey came back in to replace the bird seed bin.
As she walked to her Jeep, she noticed a small hybrid car parked near the lab, and would have gone on her way except for spotting a white oval foreign country sticker with the letters “FLP.” Philippines. Gani’s car. Then she saw the yellow tape across the entrance of the lab had been broken.
Curious, she walked down and entered the lab, stopping at the bank of observation windows in the hall, and saw him in the wrecked greenhouse, sitting on a wheeled lab stool with his elbows on his knees and his hands on his forehead, the picture of grief and desolation. She continued walking to the greenhouse doors, which were standing open again, and knocked lightly on the door frame.
He looked up, as if expecting more troubles but with no more fight left. He relaxed a little when he recognized her. They hugged.
“You okay, Gani?”
“Not really. Let’s go to the lounge.”
Charlotte followed him into the office. She couldn’t help but glance down at the spot where she’d found Alonzo, and noted it was clean. Gani went through another door to an area with two armchairs, a large flat-screen television in an entertainment center cabinet, and a counter area with a small refrigerator, microwave, and sink. Another door stood partly open, and Charlotte could see it was a bathroom.
“All the amenities, except maybe windows,” said Gani. “Want a beer?” He opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles when Charlotte nodded yes.
She took a beer and was about to sit in one of the armchairs when Gani stopped her. “No, take the other one.” He settled into it and rubbed the fabric of the arm with his free hand and clinking her bottle with his in the other hand, “This one was Alonzo’s chair. To Alonzo.”
“To Alonzo,” murmured Charlotte.
“It’s good to see you again, Charlotte,” said Gani. “You were always one of my favorite people.”
“Likewise,” she said. They updated each other on the highlights; Charlotte filled in Gani about Ellis and the Paris Conservatoire, and Jack and Mrs. Jack, as well. As they talked, Gani seemed more and more his old self, to her relief.
“I’d run into Jack every now and again, it being a small campus and all, but once he and Shelley got together, they moved more with the Humanities crowd. I was caught up with Alonzo and the lab, and of course the Gay Rights Council.”
“Things have come a long way at Corton since I left.”
He nodded. “In many ways, yes. But in other ways, it’s only progress on the surface. You’ll remember the Foreign Student Coalition, and that I was an advisor there, as well?” When she affirmed, he continued, “The Dean of Students quietly asked me to step aside, since some of the more conservative foreign students were offended by the fact that I’m gay. You know, the ones who are from countries where beheading is the norm?”
“Oh good god, you’re kidding.”
“No. But around the time that happened, Alonzo flipped out on his lab assistant when word got back to him that she was talking about the hybridizing contract to some other students. I don’t think she gave away anything, she was just bragging that she was working with Dr. Garibaldi, who ‘was so hot.’”
“I know the type. Many seemed to think Jack was, too.”
“I well remember. So,” he continued, “he approached me one day about assisting, and I thought, what the hell, it sounded interesting and it was a private, off-campus venture, unconnected to and uncontrolled by the university.”
“But you’re a full professor. I’m surprised you’d do something suited for a grad student.”
He laughed. “You know, Alonzo told me the same thing after I’d been working with him for three or four months. He was actually embarrassed!”
“That’s hard to picture.”
“Oh, but he was! He came to my office one day, sat down in the chair in front of my desk and actually seemed to struggle with finding the words. I thought he was going to tell me it wasn’t working out, but then I thought, if that was the case, he’d just tell me that outright in the middle of the hall, maybe something along the lines of ‘don’t need you anymore, thanks anyway,’ and walk off. But then he tells me he didn’t know what he was thinking asking a respected colleague to do the work of a fledgling, and in particular one who deserved equal footing on the project. He actually laid out the terms of the contract he had for the project, down to the available money, and offered me a handsome salary and team credit, probably the most he could do without renegotiating the contract with the client. I was honored.”
“You must have impressed him.”
Gani thought about it for a moment. “I know I thought that at the time. But as the months went by, I realized there was more to it than that. Alonzo was eyeing retirement, and I think he was also trying to ensure that the work would continue if something happened to him. We got on well. He was a great storyteller, a couple of beers at the end of the day could get him going. In time I also got to know the real Alonzo, and we’d talk about everything, from his life in Uruguay, to meeting old Eddie Corton, to life with Janice and Alexa, and I would tell him about my family back home, and life here. I even told him about the homophobia at the Foreign Student Coalition, just sort of blurted it out without thinking that my being gay might offend him, but he was genuinely outraged at them, and actually went and gave the director a piece of his mind. He truly did not discriminate about anything, race, orientation, nationality, age, or gender. His biggest flaw was impatience with people who were inexcusably uninformed, particularly if they lacked focus and couldn’t deal with facts.”
He looked away from her, and she again saw the look of deeply felt loss.
He spoke quietly. “The soul has gone out of life.”
Charlotte watched Gani’s face subtly shift from sadness, to smiling a little, to hesitating, and then firmness. He looked directly at her. “I loved him.”
It took Charlotte a moment to realize that Gani didn’t mean hero worship or brotherly love, mostly because whenever she had encountered Alonzo or heard him spoken of, “heterosexual” is what came to mind. In the next instant, however, her heart went out to Gani. Whether his love was reciprocated or not, his loss was deep—far deeper than she could perceive in either Janice or Alexa.