The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel Page 5

  I ended up finding a few photo albums I had never noticed before. I opened them randomly and discovered pictures of Harry and me from when I was in college: in the classroom, in the boxing ring, on campus, in the diner where we would often meet. There were even pictures from my graduation. Another album was full of press clips about me and my book. Certain passages were circled in red or underlined. Apparently Harry had followed my career from the beginning. I even found a clipping from the Montclair newspaper in 2006, reporting on the ceremony organized in my honor by Felton High School. How had he gotten hold of that? I remembered the day well. It was just before Christmas. My first novel had already sold half a million copies, and the principal of my old high school, carried away by the excitement, had decided to pay me what he considered a well-earned tribute.

  The event took place amid great pomp one Saturday afternoon in the school’s main hall, before a select audience of current and former students, and a few local journalists. Everyone had been crammed in on folding chairs in front of a large curtain, which, after a triumphant speech, the principal had raised to reveal an impressive glass cabinet, inscribed with the words: IN TRIBUTE TO MARCUS P. GOLDMAN, KNOWN AS MARCUS THE MAGNIFICENT, A STUDENT IN THIS SCHOOL BETWEEN 1994 AND 1998. Inside this cabinet was a display including a copy of my novel, my old school reports, a few photographs, and my volleyball and cross-country jerseys.

  I smiled as I reread the article. My time at Felton High—a small public school in Montclair—had made such an impression on my classmates and teachers that they had nicknamed me Marcus the Magnificent. But on that day in December 2006, as they applauded that cabinet in my honor, what everybody failed to realize was that my status as Felton’s undisputed star for four glorious years was, due to a series of misunderstandings, fortuitous to begin with and then deliberately orchestrated.

  It all began my freshman year, when I had to choose a sport. I had decided on either football or soccer, but the number of spots on those two teams was limited, and on the day we were supposed to register, I arrived very late at the registrar’s office.

  “We’re closed,” said the fat woman behind the desk.

  “Please,” I begged her, “I absolutely have to register, otherwise they’ll fail me.”

  She sighed. “Name?”

  “Goldman. Marcus Goldman.”

  “Which sport?”

  “Football. Or soccer.”

  “They’re both full. All that’s left is acrobatic dance and volleyball.”

  Acrobatic dance and volleyball? It was like choosing between cholera and the plague. I knew that joining the dance team would have made me the butt of my classmates’ jokes, so I chose volleyball. But Felton had not had a decent volleyball team in decades, and no one went out for it. So the volleyball team was made up of the rejects from all the other sports, or of people who turned up late on registration day. And that is how I became part of it. Hoping to be picked up by the football team later in the season, I wanted to show such sporting prowess that I would get myself noticed. So I trained with a hunger I had never shown before, and by the end of the first two weeks, our coach saw in me the star he had been waiting years for. I was immediately made team captain, and I didn’t have to make any great efforts in order to be considered the best volleyball player in the school’s history. I easily beat the record for the number of kills made during the past twenty years—which was absolutely pathetic—and as reward for this, my name was listed in the school’s Order of Merit, something that had never before happened to a freshman. This was enough to impress my classmates and win the attention of my teachers. From this I came to understand that in order to be magnificent, all that was needed was to distort the way others perceived me; in the end, everything was a question of appearances.

  I learned fast. Obviously there was no longer any question of my leaving the volleyball team, because my sole obsession was now to become the best, by any means necessary, to hog the spotlight, no matter what the cost. Soon afterward there was a science fair, won by an annoying little nerd named Sally. I finished sixteenth. At the awards ceremony, in the school auditorium, I arranged it so that I could give a speech—and made up a spiel about the weekends I had worked as a volunteer helping mentally handicapped people. This had, I explained, taken valuable time away from my science project. But, eyes shining with tears, I concluded: “Winning first prize doesn’t matter much to me, as long as I can provide my Down syndrome friends with even a glimmer of happiness.” Of course everyone was deeply moved by this, and I easily eclipsed Sally in the eyes of my teachers and classmates—and even in the eyes of Sally herself, who, having a severely handicapped little brother (something I was completely unaware of), refused her prize and demanded that it be given to me instead. This got my name displayed under the categories of Sport, Science, and Good Citizenship on the Order of Merit, which—fully aware as I was of my duplicity—I had secretly renamed the Hoarder of Merit. But by now I was like someone possessed, and I couldn’t stop myself. One week later I beat the record for raffle-ticket sales by buying them myself with the money I had saved during two years spent picking up litter from the lawn at the local swimming pool. This was all it took for a rumor to start circulating around the high school: Marcus Goldman was an exceptional human being. It was this observation that led students and teachers alike to call me Marcus the Magnificent. It was like a trademark, a guarantee of absolute success, and soon my fame spread all over our corner of Montclair, filling my parents with immense pride.

  This scam led me to practice the noble art of boxing. I’d always had a weakness for boxing, and I’d always been a pretty good slugger, but in going off to train in secret at a Brooklyn gym—an hour by train from my home—where nobody knew me and Marcus the Magnificent did not exist, what I was seeking was the ability to be weak; I was claiming the right to be beaten by someone stronger than I was, the right to lose face. This was the only way I could escape the monster of perfection I had created. In that boxing gym, Marcus the Magnificent could lose; he could be bad at something. And the real Marcus could exist. Because, little by little, my obsession with being number one was growing beyond imagining. The more I won, the more terrified I became of losing.

  During my junior year, budget cuts forced the principal to get rid of the volleyball team. So, to my great dismay, I had to choose a new sport. Both the football and soccer teams were now making eyes at me, of course, but I knew that if I joined one of them, I would be confronted with players who were much more gifted and determined than my old volleyball teammates. If I did that, I risked being eclipsed, becoming anonymous again . . . or worse. What would people say when Marcus Goldman—Marcus the Magnificent, former volleyball captain and team record holder for the number of kills made in the past twenty years—found himself the football team’s water boy? For two weeks I was in a state of anxiety until I heard about the high school’s little-known cross-country team, which consisted of two stumpy-legged fat kids and one scrawny wimp. Moreover, it turned out to be the only sports team at Felton that did not participate in any interscholastic competition. This ensured that I would never have to measure myself against anyone who might prove dangerous to me. It was, then, with relief and without the slightest hesitation, that I joined Felton’s cross-country team, where—from the very first training session, under the infatuated gaze of the principal and a few groupies—I easily beat the times set by my teammates.

  Everything might have gone swimmingly had not the principal, inspired by my results, come up with the absurd idea of organizing a major cross-country meet featuring all the schools of the region in order to boost Felton’s image, confident that Marcus the Magnificent would win easily. Panicking at this news, I trained relentlessly for a whole month, but I knew there was nothing I could do against the other schools’ race-hardened runners. I was nothing but a flimsy façade; I was going to make a fool of myself, and on home turf too.

  The day of the race, all
of Felton, along with half of my neighborhood, was there to cheer me on. The race began, and, as I feared, I was immediately left in the wake of the other runners. This was the crucial moment; my reputation was at stake. It was a six-mile race. I was going to finish last, defeated and disgraced. I had to save Marcus the Magnificent at all costs. So I gathered all my strength, all my energy, and desperately launched myself into an insane sprint. Cheered on by a few supporters, I took the lead. It was at this point that I resorted to the Machiavellian plan I had devised: leading the competition and sensing that I had reached my physical limit, I pretended to trip and threw myself to the ground, rolling spectacularly and howling as the crowd erupted. It turned out I had broken my leg, which had certainly not been my intention, but which—for the price of an operation and two weeks in the hospital—saved my reputation. The next week the high school newspaper reported it this way:

  During this historic race, Marcus “the Magnificent” Goldman was easily dominating his opponents on his way to what promised to be a crushing victory when he became the unwitting victim of the poor quality of the track: he fell heavily and broke a leg.

  This was the end of my running career and my sports career in general. Due to serious injury, I was exempted from sports during the rest of my time in high school. As a reward for my commitment and sacrifice, a plaque inscribed with my name was displayed on the Wall of Honor, alongside my volleyball jersey. The principal, cursing the poor quality of the facilities at Felton, had the entire track resurfaced, paying for it by draining the budget for school outings and thus depriving every student in the school of any kind of extracurricular activity the following year.

  In the spring of my senior year, bedecked with perfect grades, certificates, awards, and letters of recommendation, I had to make the fateful decision of where to go to college. So one afternoon, lying on my bed and reading the three acceptance letters I’d received—one from Harvard, another from Yale, and the third from Burrows, a small little-known school in Massachusetts—I did not even hesitate: I chose Burrows. Entering a great university meant risking my reputation as Marcus the Magnificent. At Harvard or Yale the bar would have been set too high. I had no desire to face the nation’s elite, who would insatiably monopolize the deans’ lists. The dean’s list at Burrows seemed much more accessible to me. Marcus the Magnificent did not want to burn his wings. Marcus the Magnificent wished to remain Magnificent. Burrows was perfect, a modest campus where I would be bound to shine. I had no trouble convincing my parents that the English department at Burrows was superior in every respect to that of Harvard and of Yale, and that is how, in the fall of 1998, I came to leave Montclair for the small industrial town in Massachusetts where I would make the acquaintance of Harry Quebert.

  • • •

  In the early evening, while I was still out on the deck, looking through photo albums and brooding over memories, I received a call from my panic-stricken agent.

  “Marcus, for God’s sake! I can’t believe you went to New Hampshire without telling me! I’ve had journalists calling, asking what you were doing, and I didn’t even know you were there. Come back to New York. Come back while there’s still time. This case is completely beyond you! Quebert has an excellent lawyer. Let him do his job, and you concentrate on your book. You have to deliver your manuscript to Barnaski in two weeks.”

  “Harry needs a friend to stand by him,” I said.

  There was a silence and then Douglas began muttering, as if he had only now realized what he’d been missing for months. “You don’t have a book, do you? You’re two weeks from Barnaski’s deadline and you haven’t even bothered to write this goddamn book! Is that it, Marc? Are you there to help a friend, or are you escaping New York?”

  “Shut up, Doug.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Tell me you have an idea, at least. Tell me you have a plan and that there’s a good reason you’ve gone to New Hampshire.”

  “Isn’t friendship enough?”

  “Jesus Christ, what do you owe this guy that you have to go there for him?”

  “Everything. Absolutely everything.”

  “What do you mean, everything?”

  “It’s complicated, Douglas.”

  “For God’s sake, what are you trying to say?”

  “Doug, there was an episode of my life that I’ve never told you about. When I got out of high school, I might easily have taken a wrong turn. And then I met Harry. In some ways, he saved my life. Without him I would never have become the writer I am now. It happened in Burrows, Massachusetts, in 1998. I owe him everything.”

  29

  IS IT POSSIBLE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL?

  “I WOULD LIKE TO teach you writing, Marcus—not so that you know how to write, but so that you become a writer. Because writing books is no small feat. Everyone knows how to write, but not everyone is a writer.”

  “And how do you know when you’re a writer, Harry?”

  “Nobody knows he’s a writer. It’s other people who tell you.”

  EVERYONE WHO REMEMBERS NOLA SAYS she was a wonderful girl. One of those girls who leaves an impression on people: gentle and considerate, radiant and good at everything. Apparently she had a unique joie de vivre that could light up even the dreariest days. She worked at Clark’s on Saturdays; she would twirl lightly between the tables, her wavy blond hair dancing in the air. She always had a kind word for every customer. She was all you saw. Nola was a world in herself.

  She was the only child of David and Louisa Kellergan, southern evangelicals from Jackson, Alabama, where she herself was born on April 12, 1960. The Kellergans moved to Somerset in the summer of 1969, after the father had been hired as pastor for the congregation of St. James’s Church in Somerset. The church, located on the south side of town, was an impressive wooden building of which nothing remains today because it and the main church in Montburry eventually merged due to dwindling attendance and contributions. A McDonald’s was built in its place. Upon their arrival the Kellergans moved into a nice one-story house belonging to the parish, located at 245 Terrace Avenue. It was, in all probability, through her bedroom window that Nola disappeared into the woods six years later, on August 30, 1975.

  These details were among the first given to me by the regulars at Clark’s, where I went the morning after my arrival in Somerset. I woke spontaneously at dawn, tormented by the unpleasant feeling that I was not really sure what I was doing there. After I went running on the beach, I fed the seagulls, and it was then that I wondered if I had really come all the way to New Hampshire just to give bread to seabirds. My meeting in Concord with Benjamin Roth, who would take me to visit Harry, was not until 11 a.m.; in the meantime, because I did not want to be alone, I went to eat pancakes at Clark’s. Harry used to take me there early in the mornings when I was a student and staying with him. He would wake me before dawn, unceremoniously shaking me and explaining that it was time to put on my running gear. Then we would go down to the beach to run and box. When he got tired, he would coach me, interrupting what he was doing supposedly in order to correct my movements and positions, although I knew it was really so he could catch his breath. Jogging and exercising, we would cover the few miles of beach that link Goose Cove to Somerset. Then we would climb up the rocks of Grand Beach and pass through the still-sleeping town. On the main street, which was still plunged in darkness, we would see from afar the bright light that poured through the bay window of the diner, the only place open at such an early hour. Inside, all was perfectly calm; the few customers were truck drivers or farmhands eating their breakfast in silence. In the background we could hear the radio, always tuned to a news channel but with the volume turned so low that it was impossible to understand all the newscaster’s words. On hot mornings the ceiling fan creaked metallically as it beat the air, making dust motes dance around the lamps. We would sit at table 17, and Jenny would appear instantly to
serve us coffee. She always smiled at me with a gentleness that was almost maternal. She said, “Poor Marcus—is he making you get up at dawn? He’s done that ever since I’ve known him.” And we would laugh.

  But on June 17, 2008, despite the early hour, Clark’s was already bustling. Everyone was talking about the case, and when I entered, the regulars crowded around me to ask if it was true, if Harry had had an affair with Nola, and if he had killed her and Deborah Cooper. I avoided their questions and sat down at table 17, which was still free. That was when I discovered that the plaque in honor of Harry had been removed. All that remained were two screw holes in the wood of the table and the shape where the metal had discolored the varnish.

  Jenny came to serve me coffee and greeted me kindly. She looked sad.

  “Are you staying at Harry’s place?” she asked.

  “Yes. You took off the plaque?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He wrote the book for that girl, Marcus. For a fifteen-year-old girl. I can’t leave the plaque there. That’s not love—it’s disgusting.”

  “I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.

  “And I think you should keep your nose out of this, Marcus. You should go back to New York and stay far away from all of this.”

  I ordered pancakes and sausage. A grease-stained copy of the Somerset Star was on the table. On the front page there was a large photograph of Harry at the peak of his fame, with that respectable air and profound, self-assured look. Just below was a picture of him entering the hearing room of the Concord courthouse, the fallen angel, handcuffed, his hair a mess, his face drawn and haggard. There were inset photographs of Nola and Deborah Cooper, and the headline read: WHAT HAS HARRY QUEBERT DONE?