Impulse Page 2

  “I’ll have a word. No, let’s put him at the High Table at lunch next to Elizabeth Roulx. She’s our English maven now and she’s a reader. I’ll have her butter him up. Then I’ll pitch him and you can close. Anything else?”

  “No, sir, that’ll do it. Well, there’s his portrait, we should hang it in the dining hall so he can see it, Smith, that is…and—”

  “And? Please don’t tell me you have another problem?”

  “Dexter Light. He may show up again. Unlike our Frank Smith, he loves reunions.”

  “Loves a free lunch and a chance to embarrass us, you mean. God, I’d have thought his liver would have exploded by now. Give me a heads up if he comes on campus. And then call security.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brad left the office complex and stepped into the bright sunlight. He wandered over to the quadrangle. From there he could see the progress made for the next day’s festivities. The big tent was up. Men from the rental company unloaded folding chairs from a van parked nearby. Women in aprons laid table cloths on the trestle tables under the tent. The temperature hovered in the low seventies. The heavy humidity that would characterize the area later on had not yet arrived, and it promised to be a splendid weekend. Sunlight streamed through old maples, dappling the tent and the grounds. By Friday night there would be four bars, two long tables laden with catered food and desserts, and best of all, no rain. At least none predicted. A reassuring bit of news, although they said of the area, “If you don’t like the weather in Pikesville, wait an hour.” Still, he felt safe enough.

  He returned the greeting of a half dozen students moving from Old Main to Armiger Hall, smiled at a gaggle of kindergarten students like goslings following their teacher to the art gallery. A cloud drifted across the sun, the day went gray. He pivoted ninety degrees and his eyes focused on Old Oak Woods a mile away, down the hill past the chapel. His smile faded. For the hundredth time since he’d arrived at Scott, he asked himself why. Why had he come back? Of all the places in the world he wanted to settle, Scott Academy would have to be near the bottom of his list. Yet here he was.

  The invitation to join the staff at Scott had been wholly unexpected. He’d been active in the Pittsburgh Alumni chapter and raised some serious money for the school. He supposed that must have played into their decision—that and the school’s peculiar habit of bringing back “names.” His father had been a popular teacher there at one time. At the time, he wallowed in what he thought of as an unappreciated life, and so the offer gave his sinking ego a boost. The call had tugged at him, but not enough to overcome its dark side. He had no desire to face memories that haunted him even at the remove of more than two decades; memories that crept in the small hours of the night to rob him of his sleep. Then again, his job provided something of a push. He hated it. He’d never wanted to be a stock broker. He sometimes wondered if he even understood the concept. But his wife, Judith, had pressured her father to give him the job. Judith had a way of getting what she wanted, always, and crossing her inevitably ended in recriminations that might linger for months, even years. His options were limited in any event. An attempt at law school proved an expensive disaster. The only other job offer he’d received involved a two-hour commute only to manage the sporting goods section at a Wal-Mart. So, with no other real job prospects in sight, and in the face of Judith’s insistence, he’d accepted her father’s offer to join his firm.

  They settled in Squirrel Hill and he sold securities. The past drifted farther away. He never felt really secure, and not exactly happy. But he soldiered on as a mediocre stock broker whose only sales came from referrals handed down to him by Judith’s father. His boss/father-in-law disliked Brad almost as much as Brad disliked him. Only Judith kept them in some sort of reasonable relationship. Days slipped by as each month flowed seamlessly into the next. Sometimes he felt like a sleepwalker wandering aimlessly and unconnected to the world around him.

  Then one gritty spring afternoon, his father-in-law asked him to lunch, an unusual request on any day. They’d found a small eatery at Station Square, well away from the office. They ordered lunch and his father-in-law proceeded to fire him before his iced tea arrived.

  “Bradford, I can’t carry you anymore. You haven’t built your business, you’re not earning out, and the rest of the sales force are unhappy—ticked off at me, in fact. Sorry, but you have to go. I’ll let it be your choice, resign or be fired. If you resign, your stock options and 401k stay in place. If I fire you, they’re off the table. Oh, and you’ll have to be the one to tell Judith. She’s my daughter and resident Princess, but I don’t have any intention of being within a mile of her or what she will do when she gets the news.” He showed a lot of teeth and bit into his bacon cheeseburger. Brad recalled with some small satisfaction the glee he’d experienced when a dollop of catsup dribbled down the old man’s chin and onto his white shirt.

  So, he resigned and took the job at Scott. He did not tell his wife why, no way he’d do that. The single point he and his father-in-law had in common involved Judith’s volatility when she didn’t have her way. Besides, he told himself, once again, he had no other viable choice. For a while he even believed it. As for the memories—well, it had all happened a long time ago, a quarter of a century, for crying out loud, how bad could it be? Nobody remembered anymore, nobody cared.

  Twenty-five years ago. Had it been that long? Teddy, Ned, Bobby, and Tom, all gone. When the memories slithered in to steal his sleep, he dreamed about Old Oak Woods, saw their ghosts dancing in the trees, forever young, beckoning him to join them. Not now. Not yet. He shook his head like a cow shaking off flies. He needed to focus. That was then, this was now. The sun emerged from the cloud. He didn’t notice.

  Chapter Three

  If the state’s governor has his way, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, BWI in the trade, will be renamed Thurgood Marshall Airport in honor of the late Supreme Court justice who grew up on Baltimore’s mean streets when it was still just a segregated southern town. How the late justice would feel about the honor was problematic. His opinions of Baltimore were a matter of record and mostly negative.

  The airport turned out to be the first of a series of culture shocks for Frank. He remembered when it was Friendship International. He remembered when they’d built it. He remembered its predecessor, Harbor Field, for goodness’ sakes. The last time he’d flown east, he had landed in Washington at Reagan National—the airport that congressional vanity and self-importance kept open as a full service facility in spite of warnings it was a time bomb ticking away, a disaster waiting to happen. And when it did, public outrage would be followed by public wringing of hands and great crocodile tears from the body whose self-centered need for a quick exit from the District kept it going. It would work fine, he thought, if they limited Reagan’s traffic to corporate aviation and smaller, commercial commuter aircraft. They could manage the river approach. But that wouldn’t happen anytime soon, and in the meantime what price would the nation be asked to pay to maintain the privileges, the reserved parking spaces, and perquisites assigned to senators and representatives too busy, too important, or too self-absorbed to take a cab and spend the hour it required to get to Dulles or BWI?

  But BWI—what a transformation. Construction equipment cluttered the access roads. Buses and cabs fought with each other for a few feet of curb.

  “This place is a mess,” he said and looked around him. A limousine nearly knocked him down even though he still stood on the sidewalk.

  “It’s like a cathedral,” his daughter replied. “They’re never finished. At least that’s what they tell me.”

  “Ah, airports. America’s twenty-first century spiritual centers.”

  “I don’t think I’d go that far.”

  “No, neither would I, but it’s a thought.”

  “You could use it in a book.”

  “Maybe I could at that. Remind me later.”

  Barbara Thomas was a well put together forty-som
ething. As tall as her father at six feet and celebrating the same thick, glossy hair that prompted envious thoughts by both men and women. But where hers curled and glistened with chestnut highlights, his lay flat, straight, and gray. She steered him to the garage and her car.

  “Take me through the city,” he said. “I know it’s dark and I won’t be able to see very much, but I’d like to see downtown.”

  “You got it, but we can’t stop. I told the kids they could wait up for you and it’ll be nearly ten before we get home.”

  They drove in silence while she negotiated the various detours and lane changes occasioned by construction. Once on Route 295 she relaxed and settled back in her seat. Frank waited for the question he knew was coming.

  “So, is there anything new?”

  “You mean have the police made any progress on your mother’s disappearance?”

  “Well, yes. But surely they don’t still think she just disappeared?”

  “No, they don’t. They believe she was murdered and they think they know who did it, and so they’re waiting for him to make a mistake.”

  “They’re not pursuing leads—?”

  “They’ve settled in to wait.”

  They drove on in silence. When Route 295 became Russell Street, she moved to the right lane. She swept around Oriole Park at Camden Yards and turned east on Pratt Street. The Inner Harbor appeared in front of them. Who would have believed the dingy waterfront he knew as a child could be transformed into this elegant retail center?

  “I used to buy my suits over there. This whole area was Baltimore’s garment district. Joseph A. Banks, that is, the man himself, mind you, used to make suits right over here, before his company went big time.”

  “I know.”

  “They had this manufacturing facility on that corner, and you just went in and tried suits off racks made of pipe. Old Jewish guys cut fabric and stitched them up in the next room.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “If you didn’t find what you liked, you got to go through the swatch book. ‘Make me a 39 long in this,’ you’d say and they would. Need two pairs of pants? No problem, a vest—”

  “Dad you’ve told me that story a hundred times. I know, I know.”

  “It’s not a story. That’s the way it was. Hof-Tex was around the corner but I didn’t like their clothes as much, no style. Your grandmother did, though, mostly because they sold their suits cheaper.”

  They turned north on Calvert Street and past row houses with marble steps, some boarded up, all a little shabby until they crossed North Avenue. Then the real estate steadily improved. They continued past the Union Memorial Hospital, veered north onto Charles Street and finally turned into Homeland. Whereas downtown Baltimore had undergone a metamorphosis, its residential neighborhoods remained unchanged, in an urban time warp. He relaxed.

  “So, with no off-the-pipe-rack Joseph A. Banks to supply you, where do you shop now?”

  “Goodwill.”

  “No.”

  “Oh yeah. I go across Bell Road to the Goodwill near Sun City. Those old folks know how to dress and when they die….You see this blazer?”

  “Very nice. You didn’t—”

  “Seven dollars and fifty cents.”

  “It has a patch on the pocket. What’s it for?”

  “No idea—came with the coat. A country club in Illinois, I think.”

  “Dad!”

  “Relax, I only wear it around the house. I have another one for the shindig at the school. It cost—”

  “I don’t want to know. Here are the kids, don’t tell them about Goodwill. If you do, they’ll want to do all their clothes shopping there, too. They think you hung the moon.”

  ***

  “What time do you need to be at the Academy tomorrow?”

  Frank shrugged and wiped the yolk of his egg from the plate with a toast crust. His grandchildren were noisily gathering their books and lunches. School would go on for another three weeks. He wished the reunion had come later in the year, after the schools closed. Then he could have enjoyed the kids’ company more. He basked in the cacophony of children’s voices and breakfast’s aroma. The combination of frying bacon and perking coffee is the finest fragrance known to man, he thought. Society’s ambergris.

  “More coffee?”

  “Yes, please. A continental breakfast is scheduled for eight. Then there are activities of various sorts during the morning, a luncheon with the headmaster at noon, a bus tour and some athletic events after that. Are you sure you won’t need the car? I could rent, you know.”

  “I know. No need. The kids should go there.”

  “Go where? To Scott?”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you have that kind of money? I don’t know what the tuition is but I bet it’s huge.”

  “It’s seventeen thousand dollars a year…each.”

  “You have that kind of money?”

  “No, but you do.”

  Frank stared at his daughter. In all of her adult years, she’d never asked for anything from him. Even when she and her husband, Robert, were young and struggling, she never asked for help. Frank assumed his wife sent her money from time to time, but he never did. His son was another story.

  “Yes, I suppose I do. And you think that would be a good investment?”

  “They’re your only grandchildren, Dad. I work. Bob works. We manage, sort of. We don’t need or want your money. But we can barely keep them in the schools they attend now and certainly not Scott. But they’re bright and Jesse will be moving to middle school next year—”

  “Not Scott. Send them to Saint Paul’s, Boy’s Latin, any place but Scott.”

  “Dad, it happened fifty years ago. Let it go. Times change. You can’t hold those people accountable for what happened to Uncle Jack.”

  Frank sipped his coffee. It tasted bitter. She rose and moved into the living room to referee the departure of her children. He listened to their bright young voices and her cautious one. She did not return right away. He heard her moving about in the front room.

  “What would you like to do today, before your big dinner at the Maryland Club?” she called.

  “Don’t know. I have no plans. Read through these, maybe.” He waved the brochures from the reunion committee.

  “Right. There’s a new Michael Connelly book on the coffee table. You read the competition, I guess.” She appeared in the doorway and stood contemplating him, a small frown on her face.

  “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  He looked at her, tried to read what lay behind her eyes. “Do you think I did?”

  “No…. No, of course not.”

  The hesitation in her reply lasted no more than a heartbeat, but he heard it. Once, researching a story, he’d watched a pathologist prepare a frozen section in liquid nitrogen. The tissue went from slippery pink to rock hard, frozen solid in less than a second. That’s what that pause did to his heart now. Barbara’s eyes betrayed nothing; there was just that tiny pause.

  “The police think I did.”

  They were silent a moment. Finally she turned and marched to the front door. “I’ll see you this afternoon. I have to go to work. You know where everything is.”

  He guessed he did.

  The door slammed behind her.

  ***

  Your 50th reunion. Meet your classmates for dinner Thursday night, and then join them for a full day at the Academy. Talk with Dr. Darnell about the school’s future. Join your “pen pal class” for lunch….

  Fifty years! Who would he recognize? What would he say? Frank’s mother had died in an assisted living facility, one of countless Alzheimer’s victims, a fact which made Frank considerably more sensitive than most to things like memory lapses. And now he had to face his own advancing decrepitude by attending his 50th high school reunion. Of the 65 members of his graduating class, 15 were already dead, and of the remaining, he guessed another dozen or so had the proverbial “one foot in the grave.” The kni
fe edge of despair began its near daily intrusion into his consciousness—the low-level panic he felt whenever reminders of his advancing age invaded his thoughts. He closed his eyes and tried to push them away.

  He had not set foot on the campus in fifty years. He leafed through pictures of buildings and fields, most of which he recognized only with difficulty. New buildings screened out remembered vistas, distorted the familiar lines and landmarks of what was once familiar topography. So many changes, so much newness. As he scanned through the photographs, it seemed as though his past, his youth, had been methodically erased and replaced by the shiny new physical plant that now defined Scott Academy.

  He’d grown up on the campus. It had been his home, its woods and streams his backyard. He’d roamed over every square acre of it. He knew where the springs of ice cold water gushed out of mossy stream banks, surrounded by beds of tangy, crisp watercress. He could tell you where you could trap rabbits, hide from parents, or just loll in the sun on a lazy Saturday afternoon unseen, unharried, invisible. The nearly nine hundred acres of woods and fields were as familiar to him as streets and alleys were to the city born and bred.

  Of course, his memories of the school differed significantly from those who only experienced Scott as students. His father taught at Scott for thirty-eight years, twenty-five of them as a beloved English teacher, “Jolly Cholly,” his final years as plain Dr. Smith, taciturn, sometimes rude and usually angry.

  Growing up as a “campus kid” had its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand you had access to all that land, the playing fields, barns, and woods. Few of his friends could boast such a playground. On the other hand, there were the frustrations of being different, of being Dr. Charles Smith’s kid. There were many days, when he thought the balance sheet, advantages versus disadvantages, tipped heavily toward the latter. There existed among some of his fellow students, particularly the slower, duller ones, an impulse to bully a teacher’s offspring. He had endured his share of fights—won some, lost most, and learned to run like the wind.