“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She replied colorlessly, ignoring the plea in his voice.
He pulled his shirttail from his pants and let it hang. Stood there a long time before finally sighing and coming out with what was on his mind. “Look, I’ve been lugging around this question ever since supper, and I can’t lug it anymore. I’ve got to ask. How did it go today with Kent?” She went on jabbing at her scalp with her fingers, lifting her hair and spreading the sweet-and-sour chemical smell in the room.
“It’s difficult. Neither one of us knew how to handle it.”
“Do you want me to pull him from your class?”
She shot him a glance. “Mine’s the only honors English for seniors.”
“Still, it might be better if he had another teacher.”
“Not very fair to him though, would it be?”
Softly, guiltily, he replied, “No.”
She let him suffer awhile before snapping, “Leave him.” Tom turned away into the shadows to finish undressing and put on pajama pants. She came into the bedroom and opened a dresser drawer in search of a nightgown. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he came out she was in bed. He snapped out the bathroom light and picked his way through the dark to his spot beside her. Covered to the armpits they lay as separate as two railroad ties.
Minutes went by while each remained fully aware of the other’s wakefulness.
Finally, Tom said, “I called him into my office today, but he refused to come.”
“Can you blame him? He’s just as mixed up as the rest of us.”
“I’m not sure what to do.”
“Well, don’t ask me.” Claire put a bite in her words. “What does she say?”
“Who?”
“The boy’s mother.”
“How should I know?”
“Well, don’t you consult her on everything?"
“Oh, for God’s sake, Claire.”
“How did you know her phone number, Tom?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, how? You went storming into the kitchen and jerked the phone off the hook and dialed in a split second. How did you know it?”
“It’s in my records at school. You know how good my memory is for numbers.”
“Sure,” she said sarcastically, and tossed onto her side facing the dresser.
“Claire, she’s nothing more than—”
“Just don't!” Claire reared up and glared over her shoulder, one hand slicing the dark above the covers. “Don’t defend yourself because I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a hard enough time as it is. I talked to Ruth tonight and she said she saw you in a car with that woman in front of Ciatti’s last Saturday.”
“I told you I’d seen her that day.”
“In a car, for God’s sake! You met her in a car like some ... some sneaking, low-life philanderer! In a car in some parking lot?'
“Where else was I supposed to meet her? Would you feel better if I said I went to her house?”
“Hell, you’ve done that too, haven’t you? And where were you yesterday?”
“Out at Dad’s.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Call him.”
“Maybe I’ll do that, Tom. Maybe I’ll just do that.”
“We sat on the porch and drank a couple of beers and I told him about Kent.”
“And what did he say?”
“I thought you were going to call him and ask him yourself. After all, you wouldn’t believe it, coming from me. You just said so.”
He plunked over and presented his spine, too.
Back to back, they simmered, devising retorts that would have been sharper and more cutting than those already delivered, wishing they had twin beds.
It seemed hours before they dropped off into fitful sleep, during which any movement from the other half of the bed roused them, the slightest touch made them draw back sharply across the line of demarcation down the center of the mattress. In the deep of night, though each woke at various times, there was no dissolving of anguish, no melting together with whispered words of apology. Only two people who, even in sleep, knew that tomorrow would likely be no better than today.
The following morning before school, Tom faced Claire at the English departmental meeting. Once again he felt uncomfortable as her superior. Once again he felt speculative glances cast their way by their fellow workers, who could easily sense the strain between them. Monitoring the hall as the students arrived, Tom watched and waited for Kent, but the boy must have decided to enter through another door and avoid him. At noon, he noticed that Chelsea and Erin were sitting alone and Kent was clear across the cafeteria at a table with Pizza Lostetter and a bunch of other football players. Though Robby usually sat with them, today he sat apart. Tom followed his customary pattern of cruising the lunchroom, pausing here and there to smile and talk with students, but he avoided Kent’s table. He watched him leave, dropping his milk cartons in the garbage can. Following Kent’s progress from the immense, noisy room, Tom felt the same longing within, a reaching that drew upon him and made heartache a real human condition. His son. His dark-haired, stubborn, hurt, and haunted son, who had defied his order yesterday and left Tom sitting with his heart in his throat until the end of seventh period before finally admitting Kent wasn’t going to come.
*****
Later that afternoon, shortly after two o’clock, Tom was putting his desk in order, preparing to leave for the district office, where the superintendent had called the monthly cabinet meeting of all sixteen principals and assistant principals in the district. He closed the budget books on which he’d been working, made a stack of correspondence that needed filing, and was trying to decide how to handle a student report from a probation officer when Dora Mae came to his door.
“Tom?” she said.
“Hm?” He looked up, distracted, with the paper in his hand.
“That new student, Kent Arens, is out here and wants to see you.”
Had Dora Mae said, “The President of the United States is out here and wants to see you,” she could not have rattled Tom any more. The inner chaos he suffered was both divine and daunting. It shone plainly in the leap of color to his face, his gawky expression, and the uncharacteristic, useless flutter of a hand to his tie.
“Oh, well ... then ...” Tom realized too late he was giving himself away. He cleared his throat and added, “Send him in.”
Dora Mae went out and did as ordered, then whispered to her fellow secretary, Arlene Stendahl, “What in the world is wrong with Tom lately?”
Arlene whispered back, “I don’t know, but everybody’s talking about him. And Claire, too! She’s been treating him like some leper.”
Kent appeared in his doorway, grave but with a faint giveaway of color in his own cheeks. He stood foursquare to his principal, dressed in the jeans and windbreaker Tom already knew. The boy could hold himself so motionless that Tom became thrown into even greater disquiet.
“You wanted to see me, sir,” Kent said from the doorway.
Tom rose, his right hand still near the middle of his tie, his heart doing a mad dance in his breast. “Come in ... please. Close the door.”
Kent did so, keeping ten feet between himself and Tom’s desk while Tom waited breathlessly.
“Sit down,” Tom managed. The boy came forward and sat.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come yesterday,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay. I probably handled it badly, summoning you that way.”
“I didn’t know what I’d say to you.”
“I wasn’t sure what I’d say to you either.”
An awkward beat passed.
“I still don’t.”
“Me either.”
Had their situation been less grave, they might have chuckled, but too much remained electric between them. Casting about for courage to go one step further, Kent let his eyes graze impersonal objects in the office until at last they settled on To
m. The father and son sat taking each other in under the first unhostile conditions since their relationship had been made known to both of them. What they saw rocked them both. Tom watched the boy’s eyes move up to his hairline, across his cheeks, nose, mouth, throat before returning to his eyes. The room was bright with afternoon light coupled with overhead fluorescence. No detail was lost during that intense exchange.
“On Saturday when Mom told me ...” The thought went unfinished as Kent swallowed and looked down.
“I know,” Tom said, low in his throat. “It was the same for me the day you registered and I found out about you.” Kent fought for control and succeeded. “Did your wife tell you I apologized for barging into your house that way?”
“No ... no, she didn’t.”
“Well, I am sorry, and that’s the truth. I was just really bummed out.”
“I understand. So was I.”
A lull fell, filled only with the murmur of voices from beyond the door and the electronic nibbling of office machinery.
Finally Kent said, “I saw you watching me on the football field yesterday. I guess that’s when I decided I should come and see you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Saturday was bad though.”
“For me, too. My family didn’t handle the shock too well.”
“I could tell.”
“If they’ve been acting differently toward you—” When Tom’s words faltered, Kent made no reply, leaving Tom to scavenge around for pertinent dialogue. “If you want to change English classes, I can see to it.”
“Does she want me out of there?”
“No.”
“I bet she does.”
“She says no. We talked about it.”
Kent considered this news. “Maybe I should anyway.”
“It’s up to you.”
“I know I’m going to be a big embarrassment to her.”
“Kent, listen ...” Tom leaned forward. His arm fell onto his oversized desk calendar. “I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much we have to work through. Mrs. Gardner and I... we need to know what you want. If it’ll be too uncomfortable for you to have the other students know, they don’t have to. But if you want to be claimed in any public fashion, I’m ready to do that. Our situation here at school forces some issues that could otherwise have been left alone. Robby and Chelsea, for example ...”
He watched Kent color at the mention of Chelsea, and felt sorry for him.
“We’re all struggling, Kent, but I think our relationship—yours and mine—has to be worked out first, and while we’re doing that the others will have to honor our wishes.”
“But I don’t know, Mr. Gardner ...” When he raised his eyes again, Tom saw not a young man exceedingly mature for his age, but a troubled teenager like any other. The formal mode of address hung awkwardly between them until Kent admitted, “Heck, I don’t even know what to call you anymore.”
“I think you should go on calling me ‘Mr. Gardner’ if you’re comfortable with that.”
“Okay ... Mr. Gardner ...” He said it as if testing it before continuing. “I lived my whole life long not even knowing I had a dad, and now it’s not just you, it’s a half-sister and half-brother, too. I don’t think you understand what it’s like when you don’t know where you came from. You think for sure that your father had to be some kind of bum, some ... some homeless guy on welfare, since he never married your mother. You think only a real immoral creep would leave your mother pregnant, right? So I go through seventeen years thinking whoever you are, you’re some jerk who I’d spit on if I ever got the chance. Only when I met you you weren’t that kind. It takes some time to get used to that, and a half-brother and half-sister to boot.”
Tom’s reactions were rioting. There was so much more to be said while time ticked away and nudged at him to remember his meeting at the district office. Uppermost in his thoughts, however, was the fact that this boy had been seventeen years late meeting him, and Tom could not summon the wherewithal to draw their talk to a precipitous close.
“Just a minute,” he said, and picked up the phone. With his eyes on Kent, he said, “Dora Mae, would you let Noreen know that I won’t be going to the meeting at the district office? Tell her she’ll be going without me so she can drive her own car.”
“Not going? But it’s the superintendent’s cabinet meeting. You have to go.”
“I know, but I just can’t today. Ask Noreen to take notes for me, will you please?”
After a surprised pause, Dora Mae said, “Okay.” Speculation might run rampant among the office ranks and from there throughout the entire faculty, but Tom was a decision maker, and his decision was made within minutes after this boy walked through the door. He would not have dreamed of walking out and leaving this conversation unfinished.
He hung up and sat back in his chair. The interruption had cut some of the tension and given them a fresh starting point.
Kent took advantage of it. “Could we talk about you and my mom?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Why did you do that—meet her at some party and just ... well, you know.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That I was the product of a one-night stand. That she had one class with you and she’d always sort of liked you.” Tom swiveled his chair slightly to the right and picked up a glass paperweight shaped like an apple. It was transparent, imbedded with a pattern of air bubbles, topped off with two pointed brass leaves. He pressed one into the pad of his thumb as he spoke. “Nothing I say now will make it right. Nothing excuses an impetuous act like that, especially since I didn’t use any birth control.” “I still want to know.”
Tom considered the wisdom of telling one of Claire’s students the intimate history of their relationship. Before he could reply, Kent asked, “Is it true that you were getting married the next week to Mrs. Gardner?”
The brass leaf riveted Tom’s thumb. He set the apple down.
“Yes, it is.”
“And Robby’s the same age as me?”
“Yes, he is.”
“When’s his birthday?”
“December fifteenth.”
Tom could see the math wizard compute the fact in a millisecond, along with the ramifications of Tom’s guilt.
“You’re right,” Tom admitted. “I was rebelling, plain and simple. I wasn’t ready to get married yet. But the rebellion ended then and there. Mrs. Gardner and I have had a very happy marriage. I want you to know that, and I think I deserve to say that much in my own defense.”
Kent absorbed the information, ran his hands back across his jaws, and clasped them momentarily behind his head, then let them slide down to his lap. “Wow,” he breathed. “That’s some can of worms I opened. No wonder they hate me.”
“They don’t hate you, Kent.”
“Robby does.”
“Robby ... well, it’s hard to characterize what Robby’s feeling. If you want to know the truth, I think when you first came here he was jealous of you. Now I don’t think he knows how to treat you. He’s been laying pretty low over the weekend.”
“And Mrs. Gardner won’t talk to me.”
“Give her time. She will.”
“I’m not sure I want her to. What I mean is, I don’t know where I belong in the middle of all this. Before—when I didn’t know any of you—at least I knew where I belonged. With my mother. Just the two of us ... we’ve always gotten along. Maybe I didn’t know who my father was, but Mom and I did okay. Heck, I don’t even know how to say this. It’s just that since Saturday afternoon when I found out about you, everything changed. Only it didn’t. I’m still with my mom, and you’re still with your family, so what do we do now? Do I keep staring at Mrs. Gardner’s shoes in English class? And trying to keep ten yards between me and Robby at football practice? And Chelsea... well, I’m so mixed up about her I just want to run the other way when I see her in the hall.”
“I take it from things she s
aid at home that the two of you had formed rather an attraction for each other?”
Kent stared at his knees. “Sort of,” he admitted sheepishly.
“That’s a tough one.”
Kent nodded.
“She’s not talking much around home yet, but I think she feels pretty much like you do. Like she was duped by me. And I’m at fault for not bringing this thing out in the open the day I first met you. But time is going to make a big difference between you two, and between you and Robby, too. I think, as you grow older, you’re going to realize that having a brother and a sister can be a blessing. At least, that’s how I hope it turns out. My dad said as much when I talked to him yesterday.”
Kent’s head shot up.
“Your dad?”
Tom nodded solemnly. “Yes ... a grandfather, too.” Kent swallowed and his lips parted. He stared in stupefaction.
“I told him about you because I needed his advice. He’s a good man, full of old-fashioned morality and common sense.” Tom thought to ask, “Would you like to see his picture?”
Kent replied, quietly, “Yes, sir.”
Tom cocked his hips and drew a billfold from his rear pocket. He flipped it open to his parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary photo and passed it across the desk. “You’ll probably never see him dressed in a suit and tie again. He wears his fishing clothes every place he goes. He lives in a cabin out on Eagle Lake next to his brother, Clyde. The two of them spend most of their time fishing and arguing and telling lies about who caught the biggest fish last year. And that’s my mom. She was the salt of the earth. She died about five years ago.”
Kent stared. On his palm the billfold lay warm with the body heat of the man across the desk. Staring up at him was the picture of a woman he wished he could have known. “I think I got her mouth,” he said.
“She was a very pretty woman. My dad worshiped her. And though I heard her tell him off a time or two, I never heard him raise his voice to her. He called her names like ‘my little petunia,’ and ‘my little dove,’ and he loved to tease her. ’Course, she wasn’t above teasing him back. As soon as you meet him, he’ll probably tell you about the time she put the smelt in his boot.”