by Sarah S.
On the other hand, she could resign. It was another way to cover it up. Her family was, in essence, responsible for his son’s death, and her absence—as well as Scott’s—might be justice enough. They could settle out of court on an undisclosed but ridiculously high figure and all would be well.
Resigning, however, would show Scott that she believed the rumors wholeheartedly.
For it was what she believed. She didn’t want to think it was possible, but she was done being naive. It could have happened. She knew what it felt like to have so much pent-up anger inside, rage she had no idea what to do with. It broke her heart to finally realize that Scott could have had something to do with it. He was her son, a boy she had raised, so what did that say about her?
And she hated the idea of her resignation sending a message to everyone else at Swithin that she, too, figured Scott was guilty. She could imagine them chuckling, drunk with Schadenfreude, over the old Bates family finally getting the comeuppance they’d long deserved. She went upstairs and looked at James’s clothes on the bedroom floor, the ones Scott had tried on a few days ago. She hadn’t been able to pick them up. I should have left a long time ago, Scott had said. He’d smirked when she’d insisted that James was a good man. Do you really believe that? But he couldn’t know. It certainly couldn’t be why he’d wanted nothing to do with James all these years. Perhaps Scott suspected infidelity, but why would it matter to him? Scott had been James’s chosen one; why would Scott turn away from him and side with his mother?
The year after Sylvie and James were married, James had brought up burial plots. He said he’d reserved spots for the two of them in the private Protestant cemetery a ten-minute drive from their home. Sylvie had blinked, blindsided. All her life, she’d assumed she would be buried with her grandfather and the other Bateses in the little cemetery near the Swithin grounds. “Yes, but it’s not Presbyterian,” James argued. Sylvie laughed. “You’re not Presbyterian.” “My family is,” he said. “Has been for generations. And that’s important to me.” This was also a choosing of sides. The idea of being buried next to her grandfather comforted her, she told him. “You’re going to be dead,” James protested, raising his hands. “It’s not like it’s going to make a difference.” “Ha!” she pointed at him, enraged. “If you were truly Presbyterian, you’d believe in heaven! If you think we’re just … rotting away down there … then why do you care where we are?”
“Look, I just don’t want to be buried with your family, all right?” James finally spat out. “It’s bad enough I have to live here among your grandfather’s things. It’s bad enough I have to sit at his desk when I’m at home, in his old chair, at his old dinner table. It’s bad enough that it feels like he’s judging me every day of my life—can’t we be alone in death?”
He had been building up to that outburst, she knew. It had been welling inside him for a long time, maybe since that first Thanksgiving with her family. He’d expected something from them, but they hadn’t delivered. Maybe he’d thought they’d passed him over, deemed him subpar. Whatever it was, his respect for them had withered away until it was only resentment.
A little piece of Sylvie’s heart broke loose. He could hate most of her family for all she cared but her grandfather? Hadn’t Sylvie conveyed how important he’d been in her life? Didn’t James understand what a good man he was? “Get your own desk, if it means that much to you,” she’d growled. “I didn’t realize it mattered so much.” “I will,” James said. And he did. He’d spent almost $10,000 redecorating that office, replacing her grandfather’s gorgeous old desk with that hideous glass thing that didn’t match the house in the slightest.
Sylvie obsessed over their argument and what it had revealed. It was the same year that she had decided to run for the Swithin board. If she couldn’t be buried there in death, she could be remembered there in life. After she was elected, she filled her days with Swithin goingson. When she found out she was pregnant, she resolved to emphasize to the baby from a very early age what her grandfather meant to this world. If James didn’t understand, then she’d make sure the baby did.
When Charles was born, Sylvie didn’t let him out of her sight. She practically didn’t let James near him. When James held him, she hovered nervously a few feet away. In the middle of the night, if she woke up and found he wasn’t in bed beside her, she fought the urge to spring up and search through the house for him. She felt guilty for those moments—what did she think he was doing, corrupting Charles? Whispering nasty things about her grandfather? He’s your husband, she kept telling herself, but she felt so protective, as though she was the only one who knew what was best for Charles. She told Charles from an early age, probably before he could really comprehend things, that he was going to Swithin, where mommy went and that his great-grandfather rebuilt. James never argued, but after a while, he participated less and less.
It was no wonder Charles had grown up so sensitive and overprotected. It explained, too, why James lost interest in Charles and, on a subconscious level, turned to Scott, who was in no way Sylvie’s—a clean break from Bates blood. And perhaps it was why he’d momentarily lost interest in Sylvie.
The worst of it was that after James had died, his lawyer discussed his burial wishes with Sylvie, and in James’s will, he had stated that wherever Sylvie wanted them buried was fine with him. She was astonished. After all that, James secretly didn’t care? It made her feel even more confused. She’d based the entire shape of their life on an issue that didn’t even matter to him. And really, so James wasn’t crazy about her family! So he had a chip on his shoulder! Why had she fought it so much? Why hadn’t she tried harder to understand where he was coming from?
When she’d stood over James’s hospital bed before his surgery, watching his heart monitor spike and trough, she’d felt as cold and singular as when she was a new freshman at Swarthmore, her grandfather just having abandoned her. She looked down at James’s bruised face. His eyes were taped shut, and there was a tube stuffed down his throat. Who was to say she hadn’t caused this aneurysm? He’d said he was tired the night before and didn’t want to go to the party, but she’d made him. She’d pushed him; she’d hissed at him; she’d worked him up. Who was to say this wasn’t her doing? These feelings only compounded after the operation failed, and Sylvie found herself standing over James’s cold, inert body again, this time with Charles and Scott by her side. This is your fault, a voice prodded her. She vowed not to show the boys what she was thinking or feeling, terrified they would know that she had somehow brought this on.
When she thought of standing over her husband’s dead body now, it didn’t seem quite real. She hadn’t gone through the motions one was supposed to go through standing over a loved one; instead she’d fixated and obsessed and raged for that woman, that nameless woman, sealing herself off from grief. Sometimes, she wondered if the moment had ever happened at all—maybe James wasn’t dead but just on a trip somewhere, due home any minute.
A little past 8 a.m., Sylvie stood up from the kitchen table. She sat down at her computer in the study and pulled out a piece of stationary from the drawer. The letter should be handwritten, she decided, with a good pen. She thought of a thousand things she wanted to say, but with her pen poised over the paper, very little came out. She wrote a few sentences, changing them some, crossing out words, adding others. She recopied the letter and put it in an envelope. Before sealing it, she reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook.
By the time Sylvie pulled into the Feverview Dwellings parking lot, it had started to rain through the fog. The weather was as gloomy as Sylvie felt.
The apartment house’s double doors were still and closed. The usual dented cars were in the lot. There were a few dilapidated bikes jutting at odd angles in the bike rack, two of them not even locked up. Pink chalk writing was all over the sidewalk. Sylvie’s heart lifted at the sight. At least this was something sweet and childlike, but when she got closer, she saw the marks were drawings of an
atomically correct women with breasts and a wildly curly haired pubic area, and men with penises and overly exaggerated testicles.
Sylvie held her umbrella feebly over her head. Every so often she touched her raincoat’s inside right pocket, feeling for the envelope. Christian’s little shrine was still there, the same soggy pile by the tree. A door to the complex opened, and out walked Warren, the belt of his trench coat flapping, his face paunchy and pale. There were circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. He carried a white mug. Wisps of steam floated out of the top.
It was as if Sylvie had called up Warren beforehand and told him she was coming, though she hadn’t. There was no reason he should be outside in this weather; she’d planned on waiting for him for hours. He trudged to the bench nearest the shrine and sat down. One foot constantly tapped, splashing in a mud puddle. Every once in a while he reached into his pocket and jingled loose change. Sylvie imagined her grandfather standing next to her, witnessing this. What would he say? Would he appreciate this? Would he see this as the only way to save the school?
Warren Givens looked up and saw her. He smiled. “Nice day.”
She stared at him. He seemed serious. “If you like rain.”
“I do.” He held out his palms to catch a few drops. “Rain makes everything very clean.”
She walked closer to him, her heart pounding. When she was right next to him, she took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you.”
“Me?” He thumbed his chest.
The wind picked up, making the empty swings in the park across the courtyard sway. It was as if ghost children were swinging on them, pumping their invisible legs. This was it. This was the time to say it. The time to explain—he deserved an explanation, didn’t he? She stared at his threadbare sweater, visible under his coat. His nicotinestained fingers. His mussed hair. The dirty bandage wrapped around his pointer finger.
She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined Swithin’s gym after they’d lost a match. It wasn’t hard to picture all the boys in there, disappointed and ashamed. They were combinations of their hard-ass fathers, critical mothers, and absent siblings. They were their doting grandfathers and philandering fathers. They were the sum of the family fights, the missed expectations, the parental disappointments, and the genetics that had crossed and created something not quite ideal. It wasn’t hard to imagine getting angry, trying to find an outlet for it.
And then she thought of her grandfather, writing check after check. She’d always believed that each and every check—to workers’ families, to build an art studio, to buy new sports equipment, to provide scholarships—was charitable. But what if some of the checks were for bribes, cover-ups, influence? It was easier to consider it than she thought. Backed into enough of a corner, it was easy to consider anything.
Unless you find a way to resolve this yourself, Michael Tayson had said. But what would that achieve? She’d glossed over so much, too much. She couldn’t do that to this man. It felt wrong to strike some kind of deal, negotiate some kind of compromise.
Warren’s head was cocked, patiently waiting. For the past week or two, he’d probably been walking the rooms of his house, wondering how this might have happened, thinking that this was purely his fault. A part of it probably was his fault—all parents were probably at fault, most of them unknowingly so. We try hard, she could tell him. We take precautions. We think we do everything. We think we send our children to the best schools, our husbands to the best doctors. And yet things still happen.
“My husband died,” she blurted out. “Two months ago.”
“Goodness. I’m very sorry to hear that,” he answered, blinking rapidly.
“I’m not sure I even believe it yet,” she said. “He could have lived. Should have.”
Warren ran his tongue over his teeth, his eyes softening. “It’s hard,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you about that. And I’m not going to say some stupid thing people think they should say, either, because that just makes it worse.”
Her cheeks burned. He shouldn’t be comforting her. It should be the other way around. And yet she couldn’t stop.
“I don’t have many friends,” Sylvie said, her head down. “I … I know a lot of people. But there aren’t many people I can really talk to. I find it hard to connect. I’ve always envied people who find it easy.”
A garbage truck two streets over began to back up, making a highpitched beeping sound. Sylvie brushed hair out of her face. Warren was still staring at her, puzzled. “My last name is Bates-McAllister,” she explained.
His eyes darted back and forth. He put a thumb to his chin.
“You might have heard things,” she said. “Things that seem terrible. I’m not asking you to believe them or not believe them. I’m not asking you to do anything.”
Warren still looked baffled, but she had to keep going. He deserved exactly this, didn’t he? To judge for himself. To make up his own mind. To make this right, if that was what he wanted.
The letter was in her hand. All she had to do was pull it out of her pocket. All that money she knew he could use. But all at once, she knew she couldn’t. It wouldn’t make things right. It wouldn’t make things go away or even serve as any kind of salve. Just like the ring James had given her didn’t serve as a salve. She had accepted it, yes, because if she didn’t, it would’ve made things worse. And all she’d wanted was to wipe the slate clean. It wasn’t possible, though. It wasn’t that easy.
“I have to go,” she said, pulling her coat around her, the envelope still tucked inside her pocket. She walked backward fast, accidentally sloshing through an enormous mud puddle, the water seeping through her shoes and socks and straight to the bottoms of her feet. But she also suddenly felt free, as if she’d stepped off a cliff and was now floating through the air. Down, down, down, as delicate as a feather.
………………………………………………………… eighteen
Charles drove for hours. He drove by landmarks he’d known since he was a child: the old stone house where the family of a childhood friend still lived, the old bowling alley near
Swithin, abandoned but not yet torn down, an old thatched-roof playhouse where he’d taken Bronwyn to see The Importance of Being Earnest in high school. It comforted him to see things that were familiar and unchanged, a reminder of a time when life made a lot more sense.
What Bronwyn had just told him rang in his head. There were so many things to consider. His mother didn’t know about it, for one thing. She might have guessed that some sort of transgression had occurred—perhaps it was the reason for the big diamond ring that had randomly shown up a few months ago—but she didn’t know it was Bronwyn, that was for sure. For she’d asked Charles about her too recently and much too innocently, So no one has heard from her? Well, I’m sure she’s done well for herself. She’d even gone so far as saying, once, I always thought Bronwyn was such a sweet girl. I mean, Joanna is sweet too, of course, but as high-school girlfriends go, she was just so … pleasant.
Charles had tried to call Joanna dozens of times, but her phone went straight to voice mail. Call me, he said in each message. Please pick up. He feared what had happened, what she had assumed.
He reached a familiar intersection and stopped. Charles knew where he wanted to go, only it scared him. Finally, he coasted up the winding driveway. His mother’s car wasn’t there, nor was Scott’s. This relieved him—he couldn’t imagine seeing either of them right now. Not like this.
He gripped the steering wheel, staring at the house. Every day his father walked up those slate steps and through the mudroom door. Every day his father plunged his hand into the stone mailbox and extracted bills, magazines, junk coupon circulars.
We had the same kind of angst , Bronwyn had said. It matched up. We talked about anything. College. My parents. Pressure. He told me a lot of good things about you, Charles. Do you want to
know? Charles felt for the key in his pocket, opened the side door, walked up the s
tairs, and stood in the doorway of his father’s office. He felt along the wall and turned on the light switch. On the left wall was a line of bookcases that held financial reference books, autobiographies, a bunch of glass plaques he’d been awarded when handling a company’s IPO. There was a silver-framed photograph of his mother in a bridal gown next to the plaques. She looked younger than Charles was now, her hair much longer and her body a bit thinner.
Behind the bookshelves was an old bar cart, the kind that he imagined had once been regularly wheeled around office buildings in late afternoons. Cocktail hour. A crystal decanter sat on top, filled with amber-colored liquid. There was one lowball glass beside it, scrubbed clean. In the middle of the room was a big glass-topped desk. There was a Dell laptop closed in the center of the desk. His mother probably hadn’t opened it once since he’d been here last. She’d kept this room absolutely untouched, as if it were a museum or a crime scene.
And that was the worst of it—she’d honored his memory. She probably figured he’d had a short-lived tryst with a woman, someone around her age. It would have been easier to swallow that, easier to accept that his father had reached out for someone for purely sexual reasons. As hard as Charles tried, he couldn’t stop thinking about his father going into a store and choosing something for Bronwyn, asking the clerk to wrap it carefully. And then presenting it to her—when? Did they meet privately, away from the rest of the family?
No, his mother couldn’t know any of that. Charles hadn’t known, either. But according to Bronwyn, Scott did. Why hadn’t he told anyone about it? Telling seemed like just the kind of thing Scott would do. Did he feel some kind of power, keeping what he’d seen to himself?
Charles wanted to ask his father the same questions he’d asked Bronwyn: Did he really hate Charles that much? Had he sought out Bronwyn as some sort of punishment, because Charles wasn’t the son he wanted? Because Charles didn’t buy that his dad and Bronwyn truly had anything in common; their relationship couldn’t have been out of emotional necessity. It was because of some cruel psychological desire of his father’s to hurt the rest of his family. Right?
