School Days

Chapter 15

WENDELL GRANT'S MOTHER's name was Wilma. She ran a little health-food store near the center of town, with four tables outside, where you could sit and consume sassafras tea and bean sprouts on whole-grain bread. She was a pale woman with big, dark eyes and dark, straight, shoulder-length hair, which was beginning to show some gray. The day I went to see her, she was wearing an ankle-length gray dress with blue flowers, and leather sandals. There was no sign of makeup.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The store was empty of customers, and Wilma Grunt sat with me at one of the small tables on the sidewalk outside the store. She drank some tea. I didn't.

"He just never . . ." she said.

I nodded.

"He never was what I wanted him to be," she said.

Her nails were square and clean, and devoid of polish. Her hands looked as if she washed them often.

"And Wendell's father?" I said.

She shook her head.

"No father?" I said.

"Except in a biological sense," she said. "I'm a single mother. His father is an anonymous sperm donor."

"And you've never been married?"

"No."

"Are you a lesbian?" I said.

"Not being married doesn't mean you are homosexual," she said.

"I know," I said.

"Are you married?"

"No."

She smiled slightly and nodded.

"I have had men in my life," she said. "But I never wished to marry them."

"But you wanted a family."

"I wanted," she said, "someone to share my life. I wanted to teach him and show him and talk with him and be with him. . . ." She stared down the long, still, tree-canopied, almost empty street. "I wanted someone that belonged to me."

"Hard alone," I said.

"You have no idea," she said.

"Maybe I do."

"He was nothing like that. It almost seems as if from the time he was born, he was angry and defiant and just exactly what I didn't want him to be."

"Tell me about him," I said.

She started to cry. I waited. After a while, she stopped.

"What was he like?" I said.

"He was a bully," she said. "My son, a bully. And he played football in school."

"Not a good thing?" I said.

"God, no. I think it's a brutal and dehumanizing game. All these loutish young men trying to hurt each other on the field, while the girls jump around and cheer and show their legs. It is frightful."

"What position did he play?" I said, just to be saying something.

"I don't know. I don't know anything about football."

"Did you ever see him play?"

"No."

"How was he academically."

She shook her head.

"He had no interest in the life of the mind," she said.

"Who taught him to shoot?" I said.

"Shoot?"

I nodded.

"I don't know," she said. "Certainly there have never been guns in my house."

"A woman living alone?" I said. "Not even for protection?"

"I would rather be killed," she said, "than take a life."

"No boyfriends, or uncles, or anyone that might have taught him?"

"No."

I nodded. We were quiet. A fat yellow cat came around the corner of the store and jumped up onto the table. Wilma picked him up and put him in her lap, where he curled into a fat yellow ball and went to sleep.

"Where might he have gotten the guns?"

"I don't know," Wilma said. "I know nothing of guns."

"Maybe the other kid got them," I said.

"Jared Clark?"

I nodded.

"I don't know. I barely know him."

"He was pals with your son, wasn't he?"

"I don't know."

"How did you come to get Alex Taglio for a lawyer?" I said.

"My father."

"Your father recommended him?"

"Yes."

`And your father's name is Grant?"

"Yes," she said. "Hollis Grant."

"He lives in town?"

"Yes."

"How's he know Taglio?"

"I don't know," Wilma said. "I suppose he asked one of his attorneys."

"He has attorneys?" I said.

"My father is a very successful man," she said. "Grant Development Corporation."

"In town?" I said.

"He lives here. His business is next town over."

"Is he close to his grandson?"

"Mr. Spenser, please don't put me through this anymore. No one is close to Wendell. He carries my name. But he is so unlike me I tremble to think what a terrible person my donor must have been."

"You accept that he did it," I said.

"Yes. My father and I have employed Mr. Taglio to see that his rights are protected. But he has committed an unspeakable crime, and he should go to jail and stay there."

"So you don't wish him to get off?" I said.

"No. We can only try to help him spend his time in a less unpleasant prison."

"Like the easiest room in hell," I said.

She didn't say anything. She stroked the cat, and stared down the empty street, and shook her head a number of times.