Till the End of Tom Read online

  It wasn’t hard to understand how young girls acquired distorted visions of themselves, how they were trained to never be satisfied with who they were and how they appeared. After half a dozen of the ads arrived, I looked at myself differently and asked Mackenzie—only half in jest—whether I’d be a better me if I trimmed or augmented various parts.

  He suggested that I should. In fact, he advocated that I add a Pinocchio-sized nose and remove my current boobs so that I’d stand out in the plasticized crowd.

  He is definitely the guy for me.

  I remembered why I was in this office. “So my question is, what are we supposed to do about the problem? Or maybe—are we supposed to do anything about something like that? Tell me we can’t. Can we? And if so, what would it be?”

  She exhaled loudly. “How about we DNA test the girls’ room mess, and, of course, the entire student body so that we can track down the offender, tie her up, and force her to actually digest what she eats.”

  “Great plan. Do you have any suggestions that approach reality?”

  “Nothing short of changing the entire culture. Eliminate all ads for fried and fattening and delicious and chocolate and beer and burgers—no wonder obesity’s such a problem—but then, in order not to make them truly crazy, also eliminate all the TV shows with the incredibly thin stars, and all the airbrushed, Photoshopped, further thinned-out models in their magazines. How about if we stop saying you’ll be happy and feel good if you eat this great-tasting fatty, salty, sweet stuff—and then, if you want to be adored, look like you’re starving to death. What if women could simply look like themselves?”

  She reached over to a teen magazine on her makeshift coffee table and flipped through it until she stopped and pointed at a page. “This!” she said. “Look at this model.”

  She was, of course, beautiful. Also, judging by her proportions, slightly over seven feet tall, and perhaps sixty pounds, and all of that in the chest. Her legs began at her neck. “This is who they want to be,” Rachel said. “And she doesn’t exist. I actually got a letter from the photographer who did a similar ad, lots of similar ads. He had repented and was trying to spread the word about how fake these images are. His mission has obviously failed and the images go on. I personally find it immoral, but there aren’t any laws about it. He said that the photo of the already emaciated model had been further altered, at the orders of the art director, so that her legs were made longer and thinner, and her crotch lifted.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that last item. “A new kind of plastic surgery?”

  “It’s necessary to lift the region in the photo so as to convince you that her legs really are that long and thin,” Rachel said. “Millions of dollars spent on ads for food nobody needs, and then billions spent forcing these images in front of every pair of dying-to-be ‘normal’ eyes, compelling them to believe this is normal, ‘This is how you have to be!’ when it’s not only unhealthy, it’s not only damaging what remains of their bodies, but it’s also physically impossible. No wonder you wind up with Liddy Moffat ready to quit.”

  I let her rant. This was obviously not a new issue to her, or to this office. Whether or not it was one she, or we, or anyone could tackle with even a slim hope of success remained to be seen. Meanwhile, I would stop wondering whether I really had to lose weight in order to become the right sort of bride.

  AT NOON, when I checked, there was a message from Penelope on the cell phone. “Please call, Miss Pepper. Ingrid is in a good phase, which is astounding given the shock of her son’s death. I thought it might help you with your investigation if you actually met her and . . . Cornelius.” She made his name have four distinct syllables and made it clear that each one of them left a bitter taste on her tongue. “I wondered whether you’d be at the funeral tomorrow. Please let me know.” She gave me her private line’s number and an e-mail address, and I phoned in my regrets, telling her that my partner would be there.

  “Pity,” she said. “But wait, is there a chance for this evening?”

  Once again, I had to demur. “I’ve got an appointment,” I said. “Concerning this issue.”

  She didn’t ask me with whom, which I found strange.

  “Pity.” Her voice had lost its verve. And then her spirits rebounded. “Last try—have you a minute later today? She generally rests midday so that she’d be refreshed by teatime.”

  Teatime indeed. Why not? While I didn’t think much of a practical nature would be gained by the visit, I was curious about the old woman. Definitely curious to meet the fabled Cornelius.

  And a cup of tea never hurt.

  If I say the day passed without much incident, you must take that to mean on this day, nobody died. There was, of course, incident aplenty. You can’t be in a community of adolescents without hourly doses of high drama. Tragedy, comedy, and lots of farce are our daily fare, although most often, they hinge on less than Shakespearean themes, such as whether a given boy likes a given girl, or whether a given girl has erupted with an unfortunately located pimple, or whether someone’s parents were allowing him to see the new movie the night it opened. The laws of physics are suspended in high school, because any action, no matter how insignificant, can produce a reaction that is operatic in intensity. With the exception of schoolwork and adults, everything mattered to everyone, all the time, enormously.

  The Inkwire staff met at the end of the day. Last year, we’d placed third in an all-city contest for design and layout. Not exactly the Pulitzer, but a start. This year, we were going for the gold, entering the actual journalism contest with the drug feature. When I told them the plan they looked as delighted as if they’d already won, and in a way they had, by being eligible for it. “We should specially send the part Zach wrote,” a dark-haired girl said. For once, I was fairly sure this wasn’t teen code for “I have a crush on Zachary Wallenberg.” She was paying simple and honest tribute to his work, which was, in fact, the strongest part of the issue. “That’s the one that could win,” she added. “It’s not like the usual ‘just say no’ junk. It’s real.”

  We were not a school used to garnering awards, particularly in anything resembling intellectual endeavor. The possibility of a prize for a piece of research and reportage loomed large in all our minds.

  Zachary, who’d found the dealers and established how frighteningly easy it was to acquire whatever illegal substance one had in mind, or to make some of them, looked both pleased and embarrassed. Then he succumbed to the excitement swirling around him and raised his arms in a mock victory salute. It was an intentionally funny gesture, since the show of strength was tempered by the cast on his arm. He’d broken it in a soccer accident the first week of school. Still, even an autographed and grimy cast can express triumph, and he’d earned it.

  “The dude who died here,” one of the other boys said. “The paper said he had stuff in him. You think he came here to make the buy? You think he found out where to go from your article, man?”

  Zachary looked stunned.

  “Just joking,” the other boy said.

  It was time to get to the business at hand, however, and we bounced ideas around for future articles: the vote on the senior class trip, the mural the art class was painting on a wall in South Philly, the upcoming Halloween Party, whether we could have more elective classes . . .

  “Definitely an editorial saying no more assemblies about Life!”

  We all laughed guiltily, but did not put that on the list.

  “How weird was that?” Carrie, an eleventh grader said. “We’re all stuck listening to the talk about life while a guy’s dying right outside the auditorium.”

  Lewis, a cute sophomore, broke the meditative gloom this produced. “What about a follow-up?”

  “To that?” My mind was still on that ironic juxtaposition.

  “To the drug thing. Why don’t we talk to the police about how come we can find the dealers, but they’re still there, like the cops can’t.”

  “Excellent!” someone said.r />
  Zachary, our new expert, smiled. “It’s not like the TV dramas of the inner city. The dealers aren’t hanging on the corner, waiting to make a sale. You know the dude, you say what you want, he gets it from somebody else. And he maybe only has a total of five pills at a time. Not that high on a cop’s priority list. And who’s going to tell, anyway? Aside from that, he’s just a kid like us, making a few extra bucks. And he doesn’t sell heroin or crack, only pharmaceuticals.”

  “But how about somebody like me?” I asked. I felt a twinge of guilt about using them as information sources, but I kept thinking about staid-looking, middle-aged Tomas Severin with that drug coursing in his veins. “Someone my age? Older? How would they find the person?”

  “Like . . . for which one?”

  “Like . . . the date-rape drugs.” Like the drug in Tomas Severin.

  “Ask any kid,” someone said, and everybody laughed.

  “Or make it yourself, if you’re careful. Or so I heard,” another boy said.

  “You’ve got to know what you’re doing, man,” his friend said.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not planning to cook any up,” I said quietly. “Not to worry.”

  At least the uneventful day had been well rounded. A start with girls destroying their bodies, and a conclusion about the ease of obtaining drugs. And somewhere to the side, a murdered man.

  Who was it called school an ivory tower?

  * * *

  Eight

  * * *

  * * *

  IN Hollywood they call them hyphenates. Writer-producer. Director-producer. Actor-whatever—you get it. There’s a certain glamour to being a hyphenate there. It suggests a deliberate and chosen expansion of one’s creative roles and life. There is no glamour in needing a second job so as to pay the rent. Teacher-PI not only lacked the glamour of Hollywood’s hyphenates, but sounded ridiculous. I felt competent and fine as long as the second job remained clerical. I know my alphabet, and I can file. I have also learned to work a computer relatively well. But Mackenzie was supposed to do the heavy lifting. He was the one with the license, and I was his trainee or apprentice. He supervised me, at least in theory. But while I thought of supervision as akin to teaching, something that involved pretty constant monitoring and guidance, Mackenzie thought of it as a casual dinnertime catch-up on how the day had gone. He said he trusted my instincts. He said I was smart.

  It was a good plan if you wanted to save time and effort. I considered telling my students I trusted their instincts, and they could take the semester off to read great books.

  I set out for my two interviews with my usual uncertainty, wishing I had a clear sense of purpose for either of them. Citizen Mackenzie had given Owen Edwards a heads-up about Cornelius, but I still didn’t know any more about him than that he was engaged to a sporadically dotty woman forty-six years his senior. Included in what I didn’t know was what I was supposed to find out or notice.

  I drove out of the city into ever-increasing green and open spaces. Ingrid Severin lived in Villanova, in a sprawl of stone behind gates that bordered a city block’s worth of lawn. My ancient, held together with duct tape Mustang so clearly understood that it didn’t belong here that it stalled twice on the cobbled drive.

  I was greeted by a silent, efficient woman I assumed to be the housekeeper, and led into a spacious room that overlooked another park’s worth of careful landscaping. Autumn had been exceptionally warm, and only now, close to Halloween, were the trees turning. French windows lined the far wall, and through them blazed a velvety lawn studded with masses of chrysanthemums that seemed to reflect the trees’ lemony, orange, and flame leaves.

  Obviously, nature was one of the things that money could buy.

  Penelope Koepple was standing when I entered the room, as was a woman dressed entirely in black, with hair to match. She was petite, voluptuous, and furious. “You are not in a position to make decisions,” she told Penelope in a low and lethal voice. “Don’t pretend she’s in charge. I know this is your sort of meddling, your definition of propriety, but I will take my rightful place. I hope that’s understood. Whether or not it is, I will take it at the funeral, so don’t try to prevent me. I came here as a politeness, nothing else.”

  Penelope glanced at the housekeeper. “Mrs. Severin will be needing her coat,” she said. “She was just leaving.” She didn’t push the petite widow out the door, not physically, but the effect was as rapid and efficient as if she had.

  So that was Nina Severin, who, given her phone call rant to Sasha and this performance, might benefit from anger-management classes. And I thought I would benefit by putting her on my list of interviewees.

  Meanwhile, Penelope retrieved me from the housekeeper and escorted me into the room as if I were a pet she’d just found. “And after that,” Penelope called to the retreating housekeeper, “that” referring to young widow Severin, “you may bring tea.”

  She introduced me to the two people seated on one of the long chintz-covered sofas, though she needn’t have. Who else could the emaciated woman in the dark blond wig and black knit dress have been? Who else could be the man who could have been her grandson had she not had her hand on his thigh?

  Miz K. was less sure of herself here than she had been in the office. There was the hint of obsequiousness in her voice as she introduced me to her employer, the hint of the desire to not provoke anger or resentment, to have me be a good entertainment for today’s teatime. “Miss Pepper is working with the police to investigate Tomas’s death,” she said by way of introduction.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.

  Ingrid Severin looked at me with the alert expectancy of a child at a puppet show. Maybe I’d be interesting, and maybe I wouldn’t.

  Penelope poured us all tea. “No sugar for me, no, no.” Ingrid shook her head for emphasis.

  “I know that,” Penelope whispered.

  “A girl has to watch her figure.” Ingrid chuckled. I don’t know how she watched hers, as it was close to nonexistent. She was acutely thin without a soft turn on her anywhere, and her black knit dress and jacket appeared to cover a loose arrangement of bones. Her face was smooth, her eyes wide, and the few lines between her chin and ears skewed, rising on an angle toward her temples in a way that said a facelift too many had trumped the laws of gravity. Her head looked borrowed from someone younger. It didn’t match her hands, the crinkles in the flesh of her wrists, or any of the rest of her. It also didn’t look quite human.

  “And oh, my—none of those cakes that look so good! Not for me or I’ll get fat!”

  Her weight concerns, particularly given the circumstances, also didn’t seem fully human.

  “I know.” Penelope let weariness into her voice. She didn’t seem to care who heard it.

  The cakes did look incredibly good, light and moist, with ganache filling and chocolate glazes decorated with candied violets. It was all I could do to keep from salivating, but I waited to be offered one. My mother would have been proud of me.

  “Ladies do not want to be fat!” Ingrid said. “No, no, no!”

  She seemed on automatic pilot. This is what one said when faced with edible objects. We could slip her into Philly Prep with the bulimics and they’d understand each other perfectly. She made me morose.

  On the other hand, Liddy Moffat would probably make her a goddess. After all, Ingrid’s face had been recycled enough times to win an ecology prize.

  “I’ll bet Ingrid would love one of these cucumber sandwiches. Wouldn’t you, Li’l Thing?” Cornelius piped his voice up an octave.

  Penelope K. sighed dramatically.

  Cornelius ignored her, and didn’t wait for Li’l Thing to answer, either, but used the silver tongs to pluck a waferlike sandwich onto a small plate he passed to her. She took the plate and beamed upon him.

  I wondered if she was under sedation.

  Cornelius was a surprise. I didn’t have the sort of bank account or interests that exposed me
to a lot of gigolos, so my imagery’s out of date. I’d imagined Ramon Novarro or Valentino—a lounge lizard complete with pencil-thin mustache. Cornelius Westerly was nowhere near my fantasies. Given a room of men from which to choose my fortune-hunting fake, he’d have been close to my last choice.

  He was strikingly average. He had sandy hair, a somewhat rosy complexion, and not a single feature you’d single out. Average height. Average weight. I could more imagine him coaching Little League than courting a woman who could be his grandmother and attempting to con her out of millions of dollars’ worth of real estate.

  Ingrid beamed at him.

  Penelope fumed. I half expected steam to emerge from her ears.

  Cornelius smiled back at Ingrid, patted her hand, and fed her bits of cucumber sandwich.

  Ingrid’s tiny right wrist held ivory bracelets that made muffled clunks when she returned the china plate to the coffee table. The bracelets were the only jewelry she wore except for a large emerald-cut diamond ring on her left hand. I glanced at Cornelius, wondering how he’d afforded it. Perhaps in arrangements such as this, it was customary for the bride to buy her own ring. To engage herself. Maybe all rules and customs were off when there was this much of a disparity between means and age.

  “Cornelius always knows precisely what I want, doesn’t he, Penelope? Isn’t he amazing?”

  Her mind might be going, but she remembered how to needle and torment. The wink she gave her social secretary emphasized the fact that she knew precisely what she’d said and meant.

  “Have we met before?” Ingrid lifted her teacup, and holding it at chest level, paused to ask her question in a sociable melodic voice with a hint of the crackling of old age. I could imagine her a young hostess, and I could see how lovely she must have been. What was now starved and cadaverous must have once been willowy and svelte, and somewhere beneath the pulled tight, puffed-lipped face, there appeared the vestiges of real beauty. “Pepper, is it? I’ve known a Pepper or two. Are you one of them?”