The Banks of Certain Rivers (16 page)

Christopher burst into tears on the ride home.

“What did I do?” he kept repeating, wiping snot from his
upper lip with the sleeve of his ski jacket. “What did I do to
that guy?”

I told him everything was okay. The manager had explained to me what
had happened; there was no need to push Chris on it. I didn’t
think what he’d done was right, necessarily, but I felt a bit
of pride over him standing up for his friend like that. I
didn’t want to send mixed signals, so I kept my mouth shut.

I told Chris he could stay home Friday; we’d get the therapist
over for a long talk. He nodded, eyes and nose red from crying, and
went to bed. I fixed a drink, and Leland called me not long after
that.

“We need to talk about what happened,” he said.

“I know. I mean, I’ve raised him to use his words before
his fists, but in this case, maybe there was a place—”

“Neil,” he said, stopping me. “Neil. There is
never, ever a place for that. Ever. You have no idea. You should
know, you’ve seen how I’ve tried to bring up my kids, how
I’ve told them no matter what, no matter what, they need to
hold their heads up and let that roll off of them. That….”
I heard a tremble in his voice. “Ignorance, Neil. It is pure
ignorance, and stupidity. You show them that it’s meaningless,
you show them that it’s stupid, you do that by letting it go.
You don’t dignify it, you don’t glorify it, and you don’t
martyr an idiot and harden his views by
beating the shit out of
him
!”

“Whoa, wait a minute, Leland—”

“Is this how you’ve raised Christopher?”

“Leland, how long have we been friends? How many times has
Chris slept over at your house? You know he’s a good kid.”

“Look, I understand what you guys are dealing with right now.
But I am…I’m furious.”

“It’s like you’re blaming me for this.”

“Maybe I am. You know what? If this hadn’t happened, what
that kid said would be a non-issue. Or, okay, maybe three other kids
heard it up on the hill. Maybe they say something about it later at
school. But then when they ask my kid about it? He says nothing. He
doesn’t dignify it, Neil. He lets it go, because it’s
stupid. And it goes away, and everything is as it is. But now, now,
you know what’s going to happen? Every kid at school is going
to be talking tomorrow, and over the weekend, and over the week after
that. This is going to be humiliating for Steve. He’s going to
have to live it over and over. I came here to raise my family away
from all that. Do you understand? Can you see why I am agitated?”

“What are you asking me to do, here? My son reacted strongly to
a racist asshole. Am I supposed to tell him he should have done
something different?”

Leland sighed. “You’re not getting this at all, Neil.”

“Maybe I’m not,” I said, and I hung up.

We didn’t talk so much after that. I didn’t really notice
the erosion of our friendship as it was happening; I was blinded
enough already by the shot my life had taken in the fall. Truthfully,
I wasn’t noticing very much at all back then. The boys stopped
hanging out too, and I didn’t notice that change either.

Sometime in the spring, with only a few weeks to go in the school
year, Chris was in home economics class, his last class of the day.
Steve Dinks was in the class too. In the past they’d have sat
next to each other, but as things had become Chris sat toward the
front with Steve a few rows behind him. The teacher informed the room
that they’d be starting a fruits and vegetables unit as part of
the nutrition section of the class.

“Vegetable unit?” Steve said softly, but still loud
enough for everyone in the room to hear. “What are you going to
do, bring in Chris K.’s mom as an example?”

People who were there have described to me how Chris lunged at Steve.
In an instant, with no warning, he vaulted over two rows of desks and
students, twisting through the air, and took Steve to the floor with
an arm hooked around his neck. They were an even match, equals in
battle—all those times they’d scuffled, all those times
one had used his best moves against the other—and maybe that
primal understanding ended it quickly. They rose to their
feet—panting, glaring—without anyone having to separate
them, and never spoke to each other again.

After I came to the middle school and was told what happened, I
couldn’t bring myself to even look at Steve Dinks while he
waited for his father in the office. I took Chris home, and told him
it was okay. And after Chris went to bed that night I
could
have called Leland,
could
have asked him if that was the way
he raised his kids, but I did not.

For what it’s worth, Leland didn’t call me either.

I ended up pulling Chris out of school for the rest of the year. He
needed more than just counseling once a week. We got him a tutor for
over the summer, and he made progress with therapy. He started school
with no problem the next fall.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Sent: September 10, 3:55 pm

Subject: Proposal

_____________________________

Even though it was kind of a
formality when I proposed, you’ll recall I did get on my knee
(because you just do that when you’re proposing, right?) But I
never told you that the real reason I wanted to get married so soon
wasn’t so things would be official, or because of my whole
adoption thing and I wanted the baby to have a proper father on his
birth certificate (though that was pretty important to me), it was
because I was completely freaked out about the thought of having an
infant at the wedding. Now I know it’s no big deal, that no one
would have cared, your mom didn’t care, my parents didn’t
care. No one cared, but I sure did.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At practice Monday afternoon,
I find the girls
on the cross-country team seem to have been
affected by the past weekend as well. They whine through our
stretches, whine through our warm-up, whine when I tell them our plan
for the week. So I make them run sprints to snap them out of it. I’m
not above punitive measures. Just after I’ve sent them off for
the second time, Kevin Hammil shows up, looking ashen.

“Jesus, Kevin, are you all right? Did your girlfriend have
second thoughts about the engagement?”

“Coach,” he says. “I am so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Walt told me.”

“Walt told you…what?”

“About your wife.” I wait, and watch Kevin’s newly
bare Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallows. “About
how she’s not well.” In this, in the way he says it, the
real anguish set in his eyes, I am reminded that Kevin Hammil is
still a very young man, and not yet so experienced with the weight of
the world.

“It’s the reality of my life,” I say. “You
don’t need to be sorry about it at all.”

“It’s not that, I’m sorry for coming up and asking
you for marital advice when I didn’t have a clue about it. I
feel like an asshole.”

“Come on, if you were really an asshole you wouldn’t feel
so bad about it,” I say. “You wouldn’t even
consider it if you weren’t a good guy. And you are.” I
hold up my left hand to show him my wedding band. “And if I
wanted to avoid it, or pretend it never happened, I wouldn’t be
wearing this, would I? In a way, I’m kind of asking for it.”

“Well, I’m real sorry that it happened, Coach. I’m
sorry that happened to your wife.”

I nod and thank him. In a strange way, this exchange is the most
positive thing I’ve experienced all day.

After everything happened
,
as more time passed, I got better at finding those positives. If I
found enough of them, I discovered, they could be assembled into
something resembling a normal life. There was a rough spot for a
while—a very dark time—for me and Christopher both, but
we shouldered our burdens and worked at accumulating positives. Chris
got serious about basketball and made good friends through his
sports, and I blinked my eyes open and rededicated myself to teaching
and running. I met Lauren and we began to see each other, secretly,
more and more. Al and Kristin became part of the secret, eventually,
but I wasn’t ready to tell Christopher yet. I didn’t
think that disclosure would be much of a positive for him.

Once, after nearly a year of Lauren and I spending stolen time
together, I was over at Carol’s house working on installing a
new disposal in the kitchen sink. Lauren was there, but busy, and we
quietly went about our respective jobs. When I slid myself out from
the cabinet beneath the sink, I found my crypto-girlfriend sitting at
the kitchen table.

“Hey,” I said, dusting myself off.

“Shh. Carol’s asleep in her chair. Let’s go
outside.”

It was late fall, I remember. A cold day. Rainy. We stood outside the
garage door and I, without my jacket, hugged my arms to keep myself
warm. Lauren’s eyes looked tired.

“You okay?” I asked.

“My neighbor, Marilyn,” Lauren said, watching me for a
sign of recognition. “You’ve met her. She drives that old
Corolla. Anyway, yesterday, she had a total stroke. Right in front of
me. She was putting some crap in her trunk when I got home, I said
hi, she said hi, regular chit chat. I run upstairs and come back
down, and she comes over in a panic talking gibberish. I mean,
literal gibberish. Complete aphasia, right? She couldn’t speak.
Lost all her words. She’s almost laughing, like, panicking, but
laughing, and trying to talk to me, putting her hand in her mouth to
try to make her tongue work the right way. I’m trying to get
her into my van, but she wouldn’t get in…” Lauren
sighed. “I finally got her over and got her admitted at
Critical Care. But then it’s like, back home, I’m in her
house, trying to figure anything out,
anything
, insurance,
family, whatever. Her son’s a fucking deadbeat, worthless. So,
you know, dealing with that.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No, I’ve got it. Really. Malcolm’s helping too.
Will she be able to live at home again? Will she be able to drive?
Who knows? I’m worried about her. She’s not even sixty,
Neil. I worry. Then I come here, and it’s just…I just
want Carol to have one good day, you know? One. Can’t she pick
up, just once? Can’t the sun shine on her for just one day?”

“How is she doing right now?” I asked.

“Confused. Very confused. Rough day, like they all are lately.
No sunshine. I am glad she’s finally getting some rest.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and Lauren shrugged.

“Some days are better than others,” she said. “We
need to talk to the doc about her meds. How is Wendy?”

“Same as always,” I said. “They thought she maybe
had an infection last week but it turned out to be—”

“Can I meet her?”

“Can you meet…who?”

“Can I meet Wendy? Will you take me to see her? I understand if
that’s too strange. But I’d like to meet her. Someday. If
it’s okay.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Let me think about it.”

It seemed, in that moment, not proper somehow. But I considered it
for a couple days, and it became hard for me to come up with any real
reason to say no. Why shouldn’t I take her to make an
introduction of sorts? I didn’t want Chris to know about it,
though, so I confirmed that he’d be at his basketball camp one
Saturday, and I checked to make sure that Shanice would not be
working that night. If there was any way it would get back to my son,
I figured, it would be through some innocent comment made by her.

The day we went to Wendy’s place was cold and clear. We took
Lauren’s van to get there. Once we arrived I glanced inside
first to double-check that Shanice was not in, then waved for Lauren
to follow me inside. Wendy’s room was dark and quiet. I leaned
down and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“So,” I said, kneeling next to the bed and touching my
wife’s shoulder, “this is Wendy.”

Lauren nodded, but said nothing. She seated herself on the opposite
side of the bed, and took Wendy’s wrist in her fingers. At
first I was surprised by the intimacy of the gesture, but then
realized—given her vocation, maybe it was just habit—that
Lauren was feeling for Wendy’s pulse. Lauren kept her
fingertips pressed there for a long time.

“This is Wendy…” I repeated, trailing off.

What could I say? If my old love could meet my new love—truly,
coherently—what would even be discussed between the two? Would
Wendy approve? Would Lauren approve? Would they argue? Would they
caution each other, suggest I was toxic, suggest that the other
should consider not getting involved? Perhaps my worthiness would be
discussed. Or maybe they would simply talk about the weather.

I stood up. The whole situation seemed too absurd. “This is
just…I’ll be at the van.” I went outside and stood
in the chilly air. Why did I agree to it, really? Maybe I’d
imagined some sort of absolution, or some sort of direction toward
the proper path going forward. But there was nothing of the sort, and
I stood in the cold and stewed about it. Lauren took longer than I
thought she would to join me, at least five minutes, maybe it was
almost ten, and I was nearly shivering when she came back out.

“Okay,” she whispered when she rejoined me, and she
unlocked the car so we could get inside. She didn’t speak again
until we’d been driving for a bit.

“It’s a very nice place,” she finally said.

“Yes, it is.” I stared ahead at the road.

“And a good staff?”

“Yep.”

The van rolled over a series of hills, and Lauren started to cry.
“God, I’m sorry, Neil. I should have never—”

“It’s fine,” I said flatly. “How is your
neighbor doing?”

“Stop it,” she said. “Stop. Don’t be an
asshole, Neil.” She shot me a look with her red-ringed eyes. “I
like you so much, but please don’t ever be that way. I just
never really understood.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of
her jacket. “I never understood how it had to be for you, I
mean. The whole thing, all of it. I’m sorry.”