White Rabbit Chapter 25

25.

           

The house was lavish and enormously large. Besides for James and Rosetta there were the drivers, Murray and Tom, and a gardener, Harold, who were all resourcefully mute. Phillipe, the old French mechanic and handyman, was the boisterous exception. He told Delores a joke every time he saw her, sometimes the same joke repeatedly. Delores asked him several times about the Eiffel Tower and he told her stories of the times he had been. He was a taxi driver in Paris for a while and it was of course the most popular destination. There and the Louvre. “Someday,” Delores would say starry-eyed, “I wish to hail a taxi there myself.” She showed him her four inch green statue. “Oui, c'est l'endroit.” he smiled.

Whitney Ryan had red hair, orange really, but no one calls it orange. She was fair in complexion with slight freckles, tall, thin and had grayish blue eyes. She was quiet only speaking when spoken to with adults and very well mannered. She had been trained like so since the age of five and beyond manners she had perfect posture, knew her salad from her dinner fork and ate like she was not eating at all. But she spoke freely to Delores and Delores was amazed at Whitney’s Jekyll and Hyde-ness. She was a chatterbox in private but in public, demure as a mouse. Her father was a Lieutenant General in the US Army and worked at the Pentagon and her mother, well, Whitney never mentioned so Delores assumed she was dead. She was very pretty and Delores admired her for being sweet, kind and naïve.

The girls shared a room on the third floor. It was a large room with one window and slanted ceilings, wood floors and a large oriental rug that connected their comfortable brass beds.  Though there were many vacant rooms, Lady Goodyear insisted that they share a room as she had shared a room with her older sister, Margaret. Privacy, she said, is the devil’s window. The girls often laughed about this but they both knew she meant well and it was nice to room together so they didn’t worry of it. Lady Goodyear wasn’t arrogant; to the contrary, she was quite modest for being a wealthy widow with a degree in medicine from Johns Hopkins. She was a beautiful and thin woman who only showed signs of aging through her graying hair and few wrinkles, wrinkles that were unopposed in the war of makeup. Vampires do age. The silly presumption that they are immortal and ageless is just that. They don’t live forever, but their aging is retarded by their slowed pulse, low blood pressure, and relative lack of life. Their blood is filled with an antifreeze sort of mix that has been tested and proven in several research laboratories across the United States and Europe. Delores would never guess that Agnes Goodyear was a vampire for she was not cruel and desperate the way the goons who have written vampire novels always make them out to be for the benefit of scaring the reader and selling books. They are everyday people. Cab drivers, repairmen, newspaper boys, police officers, nurses, garbage collectors, kindergarten teachers, perfectly capable of being wonderful human beings or terrible ones. Stereotyping is bad sport.

Four Arab men are waiting to board a plane in D.C. with eyeballs all over them. Christ, they are traveling in groups! TSA is going bananas.

Agnes Goodyear never had children. She had a faulty uterus. She never wanted to adopt because she was terribly afraid that outliving children would be a fate worse than death and she would regret her vampirism. So instead, she took borders and has in Boston for St. Anne’s since 1976. Previous to that, she lived in St. Louis, Missouri and did the same for a catholic school there. She was very good friends with St. Anne’s dean, Dr. Haley Lowery, who suggested Agnes to parents looking for a place for their daughters to stay. There were other places to stay but Lady Goodyear’s was the premier, well reviewed by parents and former students alike, and Delores and her mother happened to visit soon after a phone call from Agnes to Dr. Lowery about a vacancy. Dr. Lowery noticed Delores’ arms just as she had noticed Whitney’s extreme introversion.

A portrait of Mr. Goodyear hung above the dining table. He died in 1983 when his boat sank off the coast of Maryland, explained delicately by Lady Goodyear at dinner on the first night in a way that said there will be nothing more discussed of the portrait. Her final words were, “He was a wonderful husband but a terrible sailor.” In three months, Lady Goodyear never said another word of him but at every meal he looked down upon them in his dark blue dinner jacket, black turtleneck and white captain’s hat with the blue crested gold anchor smiling brightly, tufts of hair jutting from underneath the sides just beginning to pepper. Behind him, a prophetic stormy sea.

“Who painted the portrait?” Delores asked weeks later.

“So curious!” Lady Goodyear replied smiling. She didn’t answer. Delores assumed he had died after some fierce struggle against a sudden unforeseen storm. She imagined it all in her head. The waves crashing over the schooner, Mr. Goodyear at the helm, the cracking hull, the dark stormy skies and, alas, the swallowing of the ship by the angry sea. Maybe it involved mermaids, she considered. But Delores later learned from Phillipe that his first name was George and he was a writer who died very anticlimactically of old age in bed. Delores didn’t ask anything more though she was curious as for what reason Lady Goodyear would have claimed that he died at sea. She let it alone, and the vampirism of her hostess remained undisclosed. Delores asked Whitney in private if she thought it strange too, but Whitney didn’t seem interested and hardly paid attention to the portrait. “He is kind of creepy, if you ask me.” She said.

Delores and Whitney were Lady Goodyear’s only two borders. Each year she took two girls from St. Anne’s and usually kept them until their graduation. Occasionally, Delores would meet an alumnus and former border when they came to visit Lady Goodyear. They often brought flowers with them, orchids or lilies, typically, and almost always, caramels which were Lady Goodyear’s favorite. Delores could not recall a day that she hadn’t seen Lady Goodyear eat at least one. The abundances of caramels from the frequent guests were kept in the kitchen on a counter by a coffee maker in a gluttonous crystal cat whose head had to be removed for retrieval. Neither Delores nor Whitney cared for caramels so the beheading was unnecessary. Some of the former borders were as old as fifty and some were not much older than Delores. They were all polite to Delores and Whitney, who were always called down from their room to meet guests, and nearly always said something along the lines that living with Lady Goodyear was the greatest experience of their life which was also usually accompanied by the women looking around and happily remarking, “Not much has changed!”   

Delores smiled and shook their hands and Ms. Goodyear usually announced proudly what the former border was doing now as a career. Delores could tell if the woman was unsuccessful for Lady Goodyear would omit this routine from the introduction. In turn, Lady Goodyear would inform the guests that Delores wished to be a writer and that Whitney wished to be a doctor. One evening, Delores got to meet a former border that wrote for the New Yorker and had several novels published. She gave Delores an autographed copy of one but it was dreadful. Some romance novel that was filled with deception, adultery and murder and Delores wondered why she had been given that one. The lady’s name was Ruth and she was in her early forties. Delores wondered if it were a sign or a message from Ruth to her and if the novel may have been based upon Lady Goodyear. Her mind began to race at the thought. She dismissed the thought though when the stories main character, Madame Alice Kimball, turned out to be a vampire sucking the blood from young girl borders. It was the way Ruth gave the novel to Delores that made her wonder.

Five Arab men looked at each other at the airport. They had been selected by TSA for a body screening. No sweat. They each said. Christ, they are not worried! Bomb must be in their luggage. Clock on the wall says 6:02 p.m. Plane scheduled for departure at 6:30 p.m.

Delores and Whitney were happy. They didn’t have television, or internet, and the house didn’t receive a cell signal. Must be the bricks, Delores told Whitney. They used the house phone to call home which Lady Goodyear reminded them to do every Friday night. They had quickly given up trying to use their cells. The house was a sanctuary and Delores didn’t miss masturbating to a litany of transcontinental boys. She felt like she was becoming a nun.  They had access to a large library on the second floor at the end of the hall. The hall was lined with locked doors and the girls both wondered what was behind them but after a few times their curiosity diminished and they walked straight to the library with little interest of the contents of the rooms.  In the library were twenty foot shelves filled with books and there was a ladder on a track that the girls goofed off on. There were thousands of books, classics and modern, and more came weekly. Delores sometimes took her laptop to the coffee house on a corner near her school and went into chatrooms where the usual suspects waited saying and doing the same things as always, begging for a phone call or video. But she began to lose interest as sitting in a public place was not conducive for dirty chats with horny boys and men. She once told Whitney what she used to do on the internet and with whom and Whitney looked stunned as though Delores had told her that she murdered small children. Then Delores told Whitney of the strange man she met at the train station months ago, Alex De Wolfe, she remembered.

They were lying in Whitney’s bed as they usually did when they talked.

“Alex De Wolfe?” Whitney repeated fantastically. “And he disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“And he said you were a werewolf.”

“He said, something like, ‘It’s the least I could for a fellow werewolf.’”

Whitney laughed. “So, are you a werewolf?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then he was probably some crazy creeper.”

“But he just left. He didn’t try to say or do anything inappropriate.”

“He just disappeared?”

“Yes!” Delores affirmed emphatically. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“It isn’t that I don’t believe you,” Whitney explained, “only that perhaps he was quick.”

“Quick?!”

“Yes. Some people move fast. Maybe you just didn’t see him because he is one of those people. And maybe the werewolf thing was a joke. Maybe he is a Twilight fan and presumed you to be as well. You are a teenager, after all.”

“Goddamn.”

“Delores!”

“Sorry. But I hate Twilight.”

“You are in a small minority for your age group.”

“You?”

“I am also in the same small minority. Bella is a fucking whore.”

“Whitney!”

“Well, she is. She is so weak and stupid. And I was going to name my daughter Bella but I can’t now. Had that planned since I was six.” They were looking up at the ceiling when they heard footsteps. Delores hopped out of Whitney’s bed and raced to her own. A modest three part knock.

“Come in.” Delores replied. Nighty check-in. Lady Goodyear always wished them goodnight and kissed their foreheads. But she concluded their evening chat with some grim news.

“There was a terrible tragedy tonight girls.” Lady Goodyear explained. “A plane exploded leaving an airport in Washington D.C.”

“Oh my God! Dad!” Whitney cried.

“No, no, your father is okay. I called him a few minutes ago. He didn’t want to wake you. He said it was terrorists. The world is a dangerous place.”

FBI agents had everyone who worked for TSA that shift in a backroom at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Flight 1202 was the topic of discussion—the flight that ended up in a desolate burning heap in the north Virginia wilderness, coincidentally, on a battlefield where twelve hundred soldiers had lost their lives during the Civil War. Two hundred and thirty four were aboard the 747 destined for Denver, Colorado. One by one the TSA employees responsible for screening that flight’s passengers were being called in for questioning. The lead investigator sat at the head of a conference table and asked each person the same questions then some impromptu questions based upon their answers to the scheduled questions. They already knew who blew up the plane. They received a letter delivered roughly one hour after the plane blew up to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. by two homeless men who were also questioned. One was drunk. The man paid each of them twenty bucks to deliver an identical letter and had paid two men in case one got drunk and passed out or didn’t bother to deliver it. They each showed up, one a little late.  

            Agent Benson was an alumnus at St. Anne’s and stayed with Lady Goodyear. She was the lead investigator asking the questions. Everyone walking in the room thought that Agent Benson would be a white man. She was a black woman. The last TSA agent who had pulled the four Arabic men over for body scanning was confident that they must have got the bomb on the plane by other means. “I examined them thoroughly!” He insisted. His name was Mark Olsen and he was an ex-Marine with a spotless record, above average intelligence, and a two year degree from a community college in Maryland. He shook his head and rethought everything. He kept staring at Agent Benson.

            “Problem?” Agent Benson asked. The other agents at the table leaned back and put their heads in their hands or exhaled slowly or something to indicate their anticipation for impending hostility.

            “I just didn’t expect that you would be a woman.”

            “No?”

            “No. Not at all. “

            “Well, do you think that affects my ability to do my job effectively?”

            “Oh, no.” Olsen replied.

            “Well, what did you expect the terrorist that blew up Flight 1202 to look like?”

            Five agents started at him. Notepads and pens idle. Olsen gulped. He was smart enough to figure it out from here.

            “The four Arabs that you pulled aside for body scanning, who you spent all of those twenty eight minutes worrying about were cardiologists heading to Denver for an American Heart Association conference. The bomber was this man.” She shoved an 8x10 photograph in front of Olsen. “Look familiar?”

            The photograph was a white man in his forties named Claude Van Wert. He had sandy blonde hair, skinny and was wearing glasses and smiling like an idiot. The photograph was taken a year ago at someone’s retirement party. “Claude Van Wert, conservative Republican, forty six from Nashville, Tennessee, fired from his job as a commercial pilot, wanted revenge. How much attention did you pay him?”

            Olsen gulped. Van Wert had winked at him. Olsen thought he was a homosexual.       

            Agent Benson was leaving out a few details. Claude Van Wert was a Tea Party fanatic that hated the government. The letters he sent to the FBI were written in French in case the bums got smart and decided to read them early. They were long anti-government rants and blamed the government for almost everything terrible that ever happened to him with well-spoken and thought out logic. Everything from his acne as a teenager, to his divorce from his first two wives, to the loss of his job for excessive absences, and to the decline of good art. And at the end of the letter, very insouciantly, he blamed the government for his werewolf-ism.

            He was wearing a C4 vest that worked better than a silver bullet.