“I’m so darned proud of you,” he said at Rob’s ear.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He moved on down the line—girl, boy, girl, boy—until he came to Kent and shook his hand, the first touch they had shared since discovering their relationship. Tom covered their joined hands with his free one and felt his own gripped so strongly his wedding ring gouged his other fingers. He was quite unprepared for the vehemence of his own reaction, the urge to hug Kent, to hide his stinging eyes in a paternal embrace. But behind him Claire glared and Chelsea watched, mystified and confused, so he could only hide his feelings and hope Kent read them in his eyes.
“Congratulations, Kent. We’re so proud to have you at our school.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kent answered. “I’m proud to be here, but I’m not sure I deserve this.”
“Your classmates say you do. Enjoy it, son.”
The word quavered both their souls while this first crushing grip continued. Tom saw surprise darken Kent’s eyes before he finally pulled free and turned to address the student body.
It was difficult to marshal his thoughts with both of his sons standing behind him, his daughter and wife before him, but he suppressed his personal involvement to do his job.
“I look forward to this day every year, the day when you seniors cast your vote of approval for ten of your classmates who exemplify all the best that a student, a friend, a member of the school community can represent. In the past it might have been true that the election of a homecoming king and queen was nothing more than a beauty contest. But the ten students standing before you today are leaders, each and every one of them. They’re kids who spend far more than thirty hours of classroom time in this building every week. They represent friendship, generosity, respect, academic and athletic leadership, and more.”
Tom let his eyes scan the bleachers while he went on speaking. Frequently they stalled on Claire, who sat for the first minute with one forearm over her crossed knees, studying the underside of her watchband. The next time he looked she was staring at Robby and gave the impression of adamantly refusing to lock eyes with her husband.
His speech ended. The coach said one parting sentence and thanked the students and teachers who’d planned the program. The cheerleaders led the assembly in the school song, and the pep fest concluded.
The stage became a mob of people, Claire among them. She hugged Robby but managed to sidestep Tom. His heart sank while he wished she’d come to him, slip her arm around his waist, and say, “Can you believe it? Great son we’ve got, huh?”
But their estrangement had only been exacerbated by this ceremony today, and he was left to bump around the crowd accepting congratulations from everyone but the one who mattered most.
Then he turned, and there was Chelsea, looking up at him with wounded eyes. She had heat spots in her cheeks and he read very clearly how it hurt her to see Claire giving him the cold shoulder here at this auspicious moment. Her confusion over Kent showed clearly in her eyes, and in her hesitation to hug her father. Before she could, someone spoke at Tom’s side and he turned his attention elsewhere.
As Chelsea sought out her brother she felt as if she were on an emotional bronco ride, one minute airborne, the next jarred to earth by underlying realities.
“Robby!” she said, reaching him, hugging him, feigning glee for his benefit. “I’m so proud! Mr. King Candidate!”
“How about that?” he said, bending down to reach her. She heard the subdued note in his voice, and knew he shared the same confusion of feelings as she, with their mother ignoring their dad, and Kent Arens sharing this stage.
When he released her they became an island of suppressed emotion in the middle of the celebration. What was happening to their family? And when would everybody in the whole school know about it?
“Listen,” she said, “you deserve it. I know you’re going to win.”
He gave her a weak smile and she was turned loose to face the daunting prospect of coming eye to eye with the half-brother she had kissed. She glanced his way and caught him quickly looking away from her. She had seen scenes like this in movies, two people in a crowd, pretending indifference while the maze of others hemmed them both in and out of each other’s reach. He swung his head and their eyes met while voices and motion swirled between them, but the kiss was too grievous a mistake to bury, and their embarrassment too profound to be breached.
She turned away without congratulating him.
*****
The Gardner family reconvened over supper that night and put on a mighty fine show for one another. But Chelsea was not convinced. The divisiveness pervaded even the celebration for Robby’s benefit.
Its threat was evident in the careful distance Tom and Claire always kept between them, even when scurrying around the kitchen like busboys. It was evident in the quick flicking departure of her eyes from his whenever their glances met, and in the fact that Kent’s name was never mentioned though all the other candidates were discussed and dissected as potential kings or queens.
Toward the end of the meal Robby said to Tom and Claire with a look of abject love in his eyes, “Listen, you guys, I know the custom is for every candidate to be escorted into the coronation ceremonies by his parents, and I just want to make sure you’ll both be there.”
“Of course we will!” they said in unison.
“One on either side of me.”
“Absolutely.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll come to the dance afterwards, together?”
“Absolutely,” Tom answered.
And after a pause, “Sure,” Claire said, glancing safely down at her plate.
Always now, there was this stutter step whenever Robby or Chelsea made a move to get the two of them to reconcile. Tom would have made every effort, and Claire pretended she would, but it was a false front.
Neither of her children knew how to make her forgive their father.
*****
That night in her bedroom, Chelsea sat on her bed staring at the wall. On the chair in the comer her homework waited. She had no ambition to open a book or lift a pencil. The house was too quiet, her mother gone to play practice as usual, and her dad sitting in the living room with some financial reports on his lap. Robby had gone to Brenda’s house as soon as he could to escape the tension around this place, but Chelsea couldn’t even call Erin to talk about it, because if she did everyone in school would find out and their family would be the subject of gossip from one end of the district to the other.
Erin had been asking questions lately and watching Chelsea curiously, especially whenever Kent’s name was mentioned. She knew something major was up.
Something major, for sure, Chelsea thought. Her family was falling apart, and she was trying to get her mother and father to talk to each other, and crying secretly in her room at night, and trying to avoid Kent, and wishing she could tell Erin everything. But she just couldn’t! Because underneath she was mortified by what her dad had done, and by what she had done with Kent. And she didn’t know whether her mom was right to shun her dad or not, and if she herself was right to shun Kent, and how she should treat him now that she knew they were related. If only she could talk to Erin about it. Talk to somebody! But even her counselors at school were bound to gossip. Heck, their offices were right next to Daddy’s, and if they knew, it would be just awful for him.
She curled on her side in her oversized letter sweater and lay in the dark with the sleeves pulled over her hands.
*****
Meanwhile, at play practice, a forty-year-old single English teacher named John Handelman supervised the building of the flats and watched Claire closely, offering only a smile of invitation to talk about whatever was bothering her that neither one of them had spoken about.
*****
On the day after the naming of the Homecoming royalty, Tom found a note in his mailbox at school.
Dear Mr. Gardner,
Mrs. Halliday told all of us candidates
that the custom is to have our parents escort us into the coronation ceremonies. I just wanted you to know that if it were possible, I’d have you walk in beside me, and that I’d be proud to have you there. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you because I’d never want to make any trouble for you. But I just wanted you to know.
Kent
Tom’s eyes welled up and he had to go into the boys’ washroom and hide in a stall while the emotion leveled itself out.
*****
That night when Claire got home from play practice, Tom was freshly showered and sitting up in bed wearing pajama bottoms and smelling of after-shave. When she slipped between the sheets and shut the light out, he put his hand on her in the dark and tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away and said, “Don’t Tom. I just can’t.”
*****
The coronation ceremony was held in the school auditorium at two o’clock Friday afternoon. All the parents gathered in a room at the rear, preparatory to escorting their children into the festivities.
For the first time, Claire saw Monica Arens.
She wasn’t pretty, but she had a boardroom chic that stemmed from expensive clothing and understated jewelry. Her chosen hairstyle did little to flatter her face, but open any classy magazine and it could be found on a dozen pages. What she lacked in pulchritude she made up for in bearing. Everything about her said, Don’t mess with me.
Claire turned her back on Monica and her son, pretending they were not in the room. She was aware, however, that Tom, as principal, was forced to divide his loyalties and congratulate the parents of all the candidates. When he spoke to his long-ago lover and shook her hand, Claire could not control a perverse urge to watch. Jealousy and hurt robbed her of all pleasure in this day, and she blamed Tom for robbing her of the joy she should be experiencing on this once-in-a-lifetime event.
Little warmth radiated from Claire on her walk up the aisle with Robby. She flanked him on the left while Tom did so on the right. At the stage steps they kissed him, then sat side by side in the front row. Throughout the ceremonies she spared no word or touch for her husband, focusing on Robby and no one else.
Beside her, Tom read brittle animosity in her every movement and pose. She held her hands too high while applauding, and lifted her chin too sharply while watching. Sometimes she actually tossed her head. When Duke Leonard was pronounced king, Tom sensed Claire bristling and knew she’d wanted Robby to win for many of the wrong reasons.
With a sinking feeling he admitted again that he didn’t like her this way at all. The many virtues for which he’d fallen in love with her were gone, and he was the one who had chased them away.
They danced together at the Homecoming dance and he discovered that a man could dislike a woman’s hard side and still love her. And he did still love his wife. When his hand touched the small of her back he felt sick with longing and tried to pull her closer. She arched away and said, “I guess this is as good a time to talk to you as any, Tom. I’ve made a decision, but I held off telling you until Homecoming was over so I wouldn’t spoil it for the kids. Well, now it’s over, and I can’t live like this any longer. I want a separation.”
His feet stopped. Fear gripped him.
“No, Claire, come on, we can—”
“I thought I could get over it, but I can’t. I’m miserable. I hurt. I feel like crying all the time. I can’t keep on facing you in bed every night.”
”Claire, you can’t mean this. You don’t throw away eighteen years without trying.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“Like hell you have! You’ve been ...” He realized he’d shouted and two students dancing nearby turned to gape. “Come on!” he ordered, and hauled her by the hand out of the gym, down the hall past the swimming pool to the core of the building, where he unlocked the glass doors to the office. “Let me go!” she ordered halfway there. “Tom, for heaven’s sake, you’ve already made a spectacle out of us by storming out of the dance that way!”
Once inside his office he slammed the door. “We’re not separating!” he shouted.
“You’re not the only one making this decision!”
“Before we even try counseling or anything?”
“Counseling for what? I didn’t do anything!”
“Including forgiving me! Can’t you even try to forgive me, Claire?”
“Not while you’re having an affair with her.”
“I’m not having an affair with her! Claire, I love you!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, you don’t believe me. And you think you don’t need counseling?”
“Don’t you criticize me, mister!” She poked him in the chest. “Don’t you dare criticize me! I’m not the one who was unfaithful! I’m not the one who fathered a son that our children have to cringe about! I’m not the one who kept it a secret for eighteen years. I watched your eyes when the king candidates were announced. I saw the expression in them. You need to acknowledge him, Tom, can’t you see that? You’re dying to let the world know he’s yours. Well, let them know! But don’t expect me to be living with you while you do it. It’s embarrassing enough to be working in this building with you, to take orders from you day after day! Have you even considered what an object of pity I’m going to be when this gets out?”
“Then why let it out? Work with me. We’ll go to counseling together. This is worth saving, Claire.”
She took a step back, spread two hands in the air, and took a long, slow blink. “I need to be away from you, Tom.”
His panic spread.
“Claire, please...”
“No ...” She retreated another step. “I do. I feel betrayed and angry and like ... like lashing out at you all the time! The stress is so god-awful I wake up in the morning and don’t know how I’ll be able to function at school all day long. I take orders from you in teachers’ meetings when all I want to do is curse at you. I see you in the hall and I’d walk two miles the long way around to avoid you if I could. And I just can’t fake it at the dinner table in front of the kids anymore.”
“Listen to yourself! Claire, what’s happening to you? You used to fight fair. What about that respect we always promised to one another when we disagreed?”
“It’s gone.” She spoke more calmly. “That’s the scariest thing for me, Tom. My respect for you is gone. And when I felt it go, I realized that all these years I’ve been spouting platitudes. Respect, sure, it’s easy enough to preach about when your marriage has never been tested. Now that mine has, I find myself reacting a little differently.”
“And I hate it!”
“It or me?”
“Oh, come on, Claire, when have I ever acted as if I hated you? It’s the brittleness I hate, the calculated coldness you can turn on like a tap when you want to. You seem to be taking joy in punishing me. You treat me as if my sin was unpardonable.”
“To me right now, it is, especially when I have to be reminded of it every day when your son walks into my classroom.”
“If you want him transferred, I’ll transfer him. I told you that.”
“Transferring him won’t cancel his existence. He is. And he’s yours. And his mother is here in this school district, and you’ve been seeing her again, and I can’t live with that, so I want out.”
He declared through bared teeth: “I am not having an affair with Monica Arens! Why won’t you believe me?”
“I wish I could, Tom ... I wish I could. Why didn’t you tell me about talking to her in your car that day?”
“I...” He raised his arms to shoulder level and let them drop. “I don’t know. I should have, but I didn’t. I’m sorry. I was scared.”
“Well, I’m scared too. Can’t you see that?”
“Then why are you running away from me?”
“Because I need time, Tom.” She put a hand on her heart. Her voice had softened. “I can’t forgive you. I can’t face you. I can’t sleep with you. I don’t know what to say to the children. I need time.”
&n
bsp; “How much time?”
“I don’t know.”
With the dimming of her anger his fear escalated. “Claire, please, don’t do this.”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.” He took her arm, but she turned away. “Don’t. I’ve made up my mind,” she said calmly.
“We could—”
“Don’t make it any harder, Tom, please.”
Terrified, he turned away and stood at the window near the gallery of family pictures. Against the blackness outside, his reflection showed as a silhouette with no face. The fluorescent lights behind him put a halo around his form. He could see Claire’s reflection, too. She was standing in front of his desk, studying his back with her chin high and resolution clear in the set of her shoulders.
He sighed and asked sadly, “What about the kids?”
“They should stay with whoever remains in the house.”
“You’re not willing to try counseling, not even for their sake?”
“Not right now.”
“It’ll kill them. Especially Chelsea.”
“I know. That’s the hard part.”
He felt as if a catheter had shot dye into his veins, a swift burning all along them, straight from the heart. He turned, pleading, “Then try, Claire, for their sake.”
Had her animosity not fled he might have believed there was hope in arguing further, but she spoke as calmly as if she were putting a child to bed. “I can’t, Tom. For mine.”
“Claire,” he appealed, reaching out, taking two steps toward her, but she warned him with the faintest retreat not to touch her. “Jesus,” he whispered, and moved defeatedly around his desk. He dropped heavily into his chair and sat with an elbow on his calendar and a hand to his face.