The Dead Student Read online

  Four of course went back to shortly before the day her husband died. “But why now?” she repeated. She wasn’t sure whether she needed to be protective of her daughter. Andy Candy was twenty-two years old, and most people would have considered her a grown-up. But the young woman sobbing away in the back room seemed significantly closer to a baby this day. The Moth she had known a few years back wasn’t much of a threat, but four years is a long time, and she didn’t know what he had become. People change, she thought, and she’d been surprised by the out-of-the-blue voice on the other end of the line. Would a call from her daughter’s first real boyfriend help her or hurt her right about now?

  “I just wanted …” He stopped. He sighed, resigned. “If you don’t want to give me her number, that’s okay …”

  “She’s home.”

  A second brief silence.

  “I thought she’d be finishing up the semester. Doesn’t she graduate in June?”

  “She’s had a setback or two.” Andy Candy’s mother thought this was a neutral enough description to describe a sudden, unplanned pregnancy.

  “So have I,” Moth said. “That’s sort of why I wanted to speak with her.”

  Andy Candy’s mother paused. She was listening to an equation in her head. More than something mathematical, it was a musical score to accompany runaway emotions. Moth had once played major chords in her daughter’s life, and she wasn’t at all sure that this was the right time to replay them. On the other hand, Andy Candy might be legitimately furious when she discovered that her once-upon-a-time boyfriend had called and her mother had blocked the conversation out of some misguided sense of protection. She did not know exactly how to respond and so she came up with a mother-safe compromise. “Tell you what, Moth. I’ll go ask her if she will speak with you. If the answer is no, well …”

  “I’d understand. It wasn’t like we split on the best of terms anyway, all those years ago. But thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “Okay. Hold on.”

  If I promise to never ever ever kill anything or anyone again, will you leave me alone? Please.

  Don’t make a promise you can’t keep, killer.

  The dogs were suddenly crowding Andy Candy just as they had been ordered. They tried to get to her face under the covers, nosing aside pillows and blankets, eager to lick away her tears, irrepressible in their dog-enthusiasm. The Inquisitor within her seemed to lurk back into some inner shadow as she was besieged by snuffling, odorous, pawing demands for attention. She cracked a small smile and stifled a final sob; it was hard to be miserable with affectionate dogs nudging against her, but at the same time it was hard not to be miserable.

  She didn’t hear her mother at the door until she spoke. “Andy?”

  Instant, automatic reply: “Leave me alone.”

  “There’s a phone call for you.”

  Bitter, expected answer: “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “I know,” her mother replied gently. Hesitation. Then: “It’s Moth. Of all people to call now …”

  Andy Candy inhaled sharply. In milliseconds she was flooded with memories, good, happy ones vying against sad, tortured ones.

  “He’s on the phone, waiting,” her mother repeated unnecessarily.

  “Does he know …” she started, but she stopped because she knew the answer to her question: Of course not.

  This was one of those moments, Andy Candy instantly understood, where if she said No or Get his number, I’ll call him back or Tell him to call me sometime later, whatever reason he had that made him call her right then would evaporate and be lost forever. She was uncertain what to do. The rush of her past captured her like a strong current pulling her away from the safety of the beach. She remembered laughter, love, excitement, adventure, some pain and some pleasure, then anger and a different kind of heartsick depression when they’d split up. My first high school love, she thought. My only real love. It leaves a deep mark.

  A large part of her said: Tell her to tell him, “Thanks but no thanks. I have more than enough pain in my life right now, if you please.” Tell her to say I just want to be left alone. No other explanation is necessary. Then just hang up. But she did not say this, or any of the thoughts that reverberated around within her.

  “I’ll take it,” she said, surprising herself, pushing herself up, scattering dogs to the floor, and reaching for the phone.

  She lifted the receiver to her ear, then stopped and stared fiercely at her mother, who immediately retreated back down the hallway and out of earshot. Andy Candy took a deep breath, wondered for an instant whether she could speak without letting her voice crack, and finally whispered softly, “Moth?”

  “Hi, Andy,” he said.

  Two words, spoken as if from miles and years away, but both distance and time collapsing in an instant, racing together explosively, almost as if he were suddenly standing in the room beside her, stroking her cheek. She raised her free hand reflexively, as if she could actually feel his against her flesh.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said.

  “I know. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Moth replied. “Lately, I guess, even more. So, how have you been?”

  “Not so good,” she replied.

  He paused. “Me neither.”

  “Why have you called?” she asked. It surprised Andy Candy to be so brusque. She thought it wasn’t like her to be direct and forceful, although she understood she might be completely wrong about that. And just hearing her onetime boyfriend’s voice filled her with so many mingled feelings she wasn’t sure how to respond; but she was alert to the idea that one of these feelings was pleasure.

  “I have a problem,” he said. His voice was slow and deliberate, which also wasn’t exactly like she remembered Moth, who was more impulsive and filled with devil-may-care energy. She was trying to detect who he’d become since she last saw him. “No,” he contradicted himself. “I have more than a couple of problems. Little ones and big ones. And I didn’t know where else to turn. I don’t have a lot of people I trust anymore, and I thought of you.”

  She did not know if this was a compliment. “I’m listening,” she said. She thought this was inadequate. She needed to say something stronger to get him to continue. Moth was like that. A little nudge, and he would open up wide. “Why don’t you start with—”

  “My uncle,” he said quickly, interrupting her. Then he repeated himself: “My uncle.” These two words seemed accented with some despair and weighted with some ferocity that resonated. “I trusted him, but he died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Andy Candy said. “He was the psychiatrist, right?”

  “Yes. You remember.”

  “I only met him once or twice. He wasn’t at all like anyone else in your family. I liked him. He was funny. That’s what I remember. How did he …?” She didn’t have to finish the question.

  “It wasn’t like how your dad passed away. He didn’t get sick. No hospitals and priests. My uncle shot himself. Or that’s what everyone thinks. Like my whole tight-ass family and the damn cops.”

  Andy Candy said nothing.

  “I don’t think he killed himself.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then how …”

  “Only one other possibility: I think he was murdered.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He wouldn’t kill himself. That wasn’t him. He’d overcome so many problems, something new—if there was something—wouldn’t faze him. And he wouldn’t have left me all alone. Not now, no way. So, if he didn’t do it, someone else had to.”

  This wasn’t really an explanation, Andy Candy realized. It was more a conclusion based on the flimsiest of ideas.

  “It’s up to me to find the person who killed him.” Moth’s voice had grown rigid, cold, and tough, barely recognizable. “No one else will look. Just me.”

  She paused again. The conversation wasn’t a
t all what she’d expected, though she didn’t know what she had expected in the first place.

  “Why, how …” she started, not really expecting answers.

  “And when I find him, I have to kill him. Whoever he is,” Moth said. Unexpected ferocity. Not call the cops or even just do something about it, something vague and indistinct and actually appropriate. Andy Candy was shocked, astonished, instantly scared. But she didn’t hang up.

  “I need your help,” Moth said.

  Help could mean many things. But Andy Candy rocked back on her bed, as if she’d been pushed hard and slammed down. She wasn’t sure she could breathe.

  Killer.

  Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.

  3

  He picked a place to meet that seemed benign.

  Or, at the minimum, wouldn’t evoke something from their past or say something about what he anticipated for their future—if there was any to be had. He rode a bus and fingered a picture he had: Andy at seventeen. Happy, looking up from a burger and fries. But this memory was crowded aside.

  “Hello. My name is Timothy. I’m an alcoholic. I have three days sober.”

  “Hi Timothy!” from the gathering at Redeemer One. He thought the entire group appeared subdued but genuinely glad he was back amidst them. When he had sidled awkwardly into the room at the start of the meeting, more than one of the regulars had risen from their chairs and eagerly embraced him, and several had wrapped him in condolences that he knew were sincere. He was sure that they all knew about his uncle’s death and could easily imagine what it had pushed him into. When called upon to testify, for the first time he had the odd thought that perhaps he meant more to all of them than they did to him, but he did not know exactly why.

  “Three whole damn days,” he repeated, before sitting down.

  Moth put his ninety hours of recent sobriety into a mental calendar:

  Day One: He woke up at dawn collapsed on the red-dirt infield of a Little League diamond. He had no recollection of where he’d spent the greater part of the night. His wallet was gone, as was one of his shoes. The stench of vomit overcame everything else. He was unsure where he found the strength to unevenly stagger the twenty-seven blocks back to his apartment, once he’d figured out where he was. He limped the last blocks on a sole torn raw by the sidewalks. Once inside, he stripped off his clothes like a snake shedding a worthless skin and cleaned up—hot shower, comb, and toothbrush. He tossed everything he’d been wearing into the trash and realized that it was two weeks since his uncle died and he had not been home in all that time. He was mildly grateful for the blackout that prevented him from realizing what other baseball diamonds he’d slept on.

  He told himself to climb back onto the wagon, but spent the entire day in his darkened apartment hiding, physically sick, stomach twisted, day sweats turning to night sweats, afraid to go outside. It was as if some sultry, seductive siren was awaiting him, right past his front door, and she would lure him into a trip to the liquor store or a nearby bar. Like Odysseus from antiquity and legend, he tried to rope himself to a mast.

  Day Two: At the end of a day spent raw and shaking on the floor by his bed, he finally answered a succession of calls from his parents. They were angry and disappointed, and probably concerned, as well, although that was harder to discern. They had left messages and it was clear they knew why he’d disappeared. And they knew where he’d disappeared to. Not specifically. They didn’t need to know the exact addresses of the dives that welcomed him. And he’d learned that he’d missed his uncle’s funeral. This detail had pitched him into an hour-long sobbing jag.

  He was a little surprised, when they’d finished talking, that he hadn’t gone out for a drink. His hands had quivered, but he was encouraged by even that small show of addiction-defiance. He had repeated to himself a mantra: Do what Uncle Ed would do, do what Uncle Ed would do. That night, he shivered under a thin blanket, although the apartment was stifling hot and the air moist and humid.

  Day Three: In the morning, as his pounding headache and uncontrollable shakes started to diminish, he’d called Susan the assistant state attorney who had given him her card. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from him, nor did she think it unusual that he’d waited so long to call.

  “It’s a closed case, or nearly closed, Timothy,” she had gently informed him. “We’re just waiting on a final toxicology report. I’m sorry to have to say this, but it’s designated a suicide.” She did not say why this detail made her sorry, nor did he ask. He had weakly responded, “I still don’t believe it. May I read the file before you put it away?” She had answered, “Do you really think that will help you?” It was clear that her use of the word help had nothing to do with his uncle’s death. “Yes,” he said, with no certainty. He made an appointment to come to her office later in the week.

  After hanging up, he’d returned to his bed, stared at the ceiling for over an hour, and decided two things: return to Redeemer One that night because that would be what his uncle wanted for him; call Andy Candy because when he tried to come up with the name of anyone in the entire world who might listen to him and not think he was a half-grief-crazed drunken fool running his mouth irrationally, she was the only remaining candidate.

  Matheson Hammock Park was an easy bus ride for Moth. He sat in the back row with the window cracked open just an inch or two so he could pick up the scent of hydrangeas and azaleas carried on the slippery midday heat, without compromising the steady cool wheeze of the bus’s air-conditioning. There were only a couple of other folks on the bus. Moth saw a young black woman—he guessed Jamaican—wearing a white nurse’s outfit. She had a dog-eared paperback Spanish Language Made Easy study book in her hands. Moth could see her lips moving as she practiced the language that was nearly essential to working in Miami.

  At his feet, Moth had a plastic bag with a large media noche sandwich for them to share, some bottled water, and a fizzy lemonade drink that he recalled Andy Candy had liked on their other picnic-type excursions to South Beach or Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. He could not remember ever taking her to Matheson Hammock, which was, in no small way, why he had chosen that location. No shared history in this park. No memory of lips grazing, or the silky sensation of young bodies touching in warm water.

  Love dreams were best forgot, he thought.

  He did not know whether Andy Candy would actually show up. She had said she would, and she was probably the most honest person he knew, now that his uncle was dead. But the realist in him—a very small part, he inwardly conceded—had doubts. He knew he had been cryptic and obtuse and probably a little scary on the phone, with his sudden talk of murder.

  “I wouldn’t come meet me,” he whispered to himself above the sound of the bus engine’s slowing for his stop. He rose and pushed himself into the bright early afternoon sun.

  He stuck to a wide path that paralleled the entrance drive into the park. More than one jogger cruised past him beneath the cypress trees that shaded the route. He ignored the coral rock building, where a young woman sold tickets and maps and which had a large “Florida’s Disappearing Habitat” sign out front, with pictures of how squeezed for territory all the native animals were. He paused near a stand of palm trees that edged up against Biscayne Bay, where a young Latin American couple were going through a wedding rehearsal. The priest was smiling, trying to relax everyone by making jokes, which neither mother seemed to find even remotely funny.

  Moth waited at the end of the parking lot on a bench that had a single palm that shaded it. He could hear high-pitched laughter from the tip of the park, where a wide, shallow man-made lagoon created a special place for small children to play. The nearby beach seemed to glow silver in the strong sunlight.

  He was going to pull out his cell phone, check the time, but stopped himself. If Andy Candy was late, he didn’t want to know it. He thought, There’s always a risk in counting on someone else. Maybe they don’t come. Maybe they die.

  Closing his eye
s for a moment against the glare, he counted heartbeats, as if he could take the pulse of his emotions. When he opened his eyes, he saw a small red sedan come into the lot and pull into a space near the back. Like many cars in Miami, it had tinted glass, but he caught a glimpse of blond hair and knew it was Andy Candy.

  Before she was out of the car, he was on his feet. He waved, and she waved back.

  Faded jeans on her long legs and a light pastel-blue T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in an informal ponytail, the way she typically put it when going jogging or swimming. When she spotted Moth, she slipped off her dark sunglasses. Moth’s eyes took her in, trying to see similarities and changes all at once. With each step she took closing the distance between them, he could feel a surge of some runaway feeling gathering within him.

  Andy Candy almost stopped in her tracks. Moth seemed thin to her, as if his already-lithe body had somehow been shaved away by the years since high school. His tangled hair was longer than she remembered it and his clothes seemed to hang reluctantly from his body. She had not known what she would say; she was unsure whether she should kiss him, give him a small hug, maybe just shake his hand, or perhaps do nothing. She didn’t want to hesitate, nor did she want to seem eager.

  She steadily crossed the parking lot. Not fast. Not slow, she told herself.

  He stepped forward, out of the palm’s shade. Wave. Smile. Act normal, whatever that is, he told himself.

  They met halfway.

  He started to lift his arms to embrace her.

  She leaned forward, but held her hands out in front of her.

  The awkwardness resulted in a semi-touch. Their arms went to each other’s elbows. They kept a little distance between them.

  “Hello, Moth,” she said.

  “Hi, Andrea.”

  She smiled. “Long time.”

  He nodded. “I should have …” he started, but stopped.

  She shook her head. “You know, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I thought you’d just go your way and I’d go mine, and that was it.”

  “We had some memories together,” he said.