upscale area of St. Paul. In the nineteenth century, not long after the citizens had been sharp enough to change the name of their capital from Pig’s Eye, the quality started building along and back from the bluffs overlooking the town and the Mississippi River. Dr. Pratt had taken a lot of pleasure living there, only a few blocks away and a couple of levels up the scale from where Scott Fitzgerald once lived.
I remember reading The Great Gatsby in one of Pratt’s classes. He spoke at length about unreliable narrators, centers of consciousness, and the like. Said we couldn’t trust Nick’s telling of the story because Nick was in the story, and we couldn’t trust Fitzgerald because he wasn’t in the story, and we couldn’t trust what the critics said about the story because they were a bundle of cultural prejudices, and we couldn’t trust him because he wasn’t us, and, most obvious of all, we couldn’t trust ourselves because … well, I don’t remember why we couldn’t trust ourselves, but Dr. Pratt was very adamant about that point.
Anyway, the inside of the house, which I remember from my grad student days, is exactly what you’d expect from a man like Dr. Pratt—cosmopolitan, refined, subtle, and tasteful as hell. Everything possible has been done to minimize the rectangularity of the rooms. Screens or potted trees blunt the corners. Paintings hang just above or below where you expect, sometimes stacked three high on the wall. Most are aggressively non-representational—a slash of color here, a formal conundrum there. Nary a picture of dogs playing cards in sight.
In the living room the mostly white sofas and chairs announce in precise tones, “Admire me—do not sit.” There is an undertone of metal—gleaming, reflective, polished—but the room is warmed by rich, dark cherry, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Many of the books are beautifully bound, each in its appointed place, waiting to be opened. Just as Dr. Pratt’s students waited to be opened.
I was once such a student. The first time I encountered Dr. Pratt, I thought I was already as opened as one could be. I had long since freed myself from the medievalism of my childhood. I had been in the army and lived abroad. I had seen violence and death. I was married. I had gone to college late and thought I understood what was up by the time I started graduate school in the late 1980s.
Dr. Pratt helped me see that I had simply left one fundamentalism for another. I had moved from relying on Holy Writ to relying on Holy Reason, and the difference between the two was far less radical than I had thought. Both assumed a stable, knowable world. Neither, therefore, understood that the god of this world is Proteus the shape-changer, giver of multiplicity.
Dr. Pratt was always kind to me—and I greatly needed kindness. I am, as I said, not entirely well—“a sort of sick” as Ahab said. I carry the wounds of Adam—that orchard thief—like everyone. But I have a few that Adam knew nothing about. They have not been enough up to now to kill me, but they have kept me swimming in circles most of my life, like a whale with one flipper. And now the voices again.
I don’t know whether Dr. Pratt saw that in me back then or not, but he seemed to offer a kind of salve for my wounds. I was bound up, and he spoke of freedom. I was mournful, and he talked about play. I had no center, and he offered the possibility that having no center might be a good thing. Dr. Pratt gave me a new way of explaining my life to myself—or perhaps he simply made me feel better about having no explanation. Either way, I was grateful. And maybe that gratitude explains my finding myself, a few months after his death, standing at his front door, despite an ache in my stomach and a damp, drizzly feeling in my soul.
Judy smiled the whole way over in the car, but puts on her game face when I ring the doorbell. Mrs. Pratt answers and invites us in. She is still attractive, but has been introduced to middle age. She doesn’t exactly have lines in her face, but you can see where they’re going to be soon enough.
She looks quizzically at Judy as we come in, but receives her graciously. Judy is all formality and soberness.
“My name is Judith Mote. I am here with … I should say, with my brother, Jon.”
“Glad to meet you, Judith.”
“And you, I am sure.”
I haven’t seen Mrs. Pratt since I dropped out of graduate school years ago. She was quite a bit younger than Pratt. She won’t be a widow for long, unless she wants to be.
Judy sits beside me on the “don’t sit on me” white sofa, her feet not quite reaching the floor. I talk generally with Mrs. Pratt about the possibility of working for her. I try to be discouraging, something I’m quite good at.
“What do the police think about me working on the case?”
“I haven’t told them. I didn’t know if you were going to agree to it.”
“They won’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a vote of no confidence, sort of like showing up at your girlfriend’s house for supper carrying a bag of cheeseburgers.”
“Well, I don’t have any confidence. My husband was murdered months ago and they’ve made no progress at all.”
“I understand your frustration, Mrs. Pratt. But it’s highly unlikely I would do any better. Those people are professionals. I’ve never been part of a criminal case before. I work with civil cases, and then only in the background. My last case was eight months ago, and it had to do with a patent infringement for microwave popcorn. Do you see what I mean? I research things like the history of popcorn. I don’t know anything about criminal science, or forensics or poisons or weapons, or anything. I don’t even know anything about the law—indictments, grand juries, the rules of evidence. None of that.”
I want to add, “I can never figure out Sherlock Holmes stories until the last paragraph. Even Watson catches on before I do.” But I hold that back.
“Mr. Mote, my husband was a good man. He didn’t deserve to have his life end this way. I believe that whoever killed Richard knew him and knew the academic world. You knew Richard, and you know about the academic world. I believe you could pick up on something the police would miss. I would simply like you to look into things and see what you find.”
“I’m just afraid you’ll be wasting your money. I don’t want to raise any false hopes.”
“My life is one long lesson in false hopes, Mr. Mote. Don’t worry. Even if you find nothing, I’ll feel better for your having tried.”
I look at Judy. Unfortunately, she takes it as a signal that she should say something.
“Sister Brigit says we … we should always try. If … if … at first you don’t sneeze, try … I should say, try, try again.” She flashes me a big, how-do-you-like-them-apples smile and then resumes her formal face for Mrs. Pratt.
Mrs. Pratt interprets my not saying no as an indication that I am saying yes, a mistake the women in my life have often made.
“Just for background, let me tell you something that very few people at the university know. I am not Richard’s first wife. He first married when he was very young. She was a high school sweetheart. He went to college but she never did. They got married a few days after their high school graduation. She was cute but not, I used to think, very bright. It was a strange match. But of course he wasn’t the same person then that he became later.
“His first full-time teaching job was at Memphis State—I think they’ve changed the name recently. He was there three years, teaching four courses each term, trying to write scholarly
