You Deserve Nothing

by Alexander Maksik

  I told him about the baby. I mean the imaginary baby. About how it looked like him. How I thought it looked the way he looked in the photograph with his mother. I said that I loved him. I said, I’m sorry, Will. And he said, You have nothing to be sorry for. We were quiet. Then I told him that I thought I’d miss the baby. I said, That’s probably stupid, but I think it’s true. He said, It isn’t stupid at all.

  All of this happened so slowly. The conversation, I mean. One of us would speak and then there’d be a very long pause as we’d both fall asleep for a few minutes and then wake up and say something else. There was a strange quality to the whole evening, like we were drunk or hadn’t slept for days, and we lay there for hours just looking up at the beams never at each other.

  And then he said, You’ll be a wonderful mother someday, Marie. Maybe, I said. But what about you, Will? Don’t you want to be a father? He didn’t say anything for a long time. I lay there listening to his slow breathing and then he began to cry. I could feel it, and I sat up in bed and looked at him. He was lying there with his eyes closed and he was crying.

  Hey, I said as gently as I could. I touched his face. Hey.

  But he wouldn’t open his eyes. He looked like a kid, like a boy. Will, I said. I kept saying his name.

  After a while he opened his eyes and when he did I understood that I didn’t know him at all. Because I didn’t know what else to say, I said, Will, why are you crying? He said he was sorry that I’d had to go through it. And I told him not to worry about me. That I was sick of talking about me. And he laughed the way someone laughs right in the middle of crying.

  He said, Yes. He’d planned on being a father. He said he’d been married for five years. That at the time they were planning on having children.

  I looked at him and tried to imagine him married, living with a woman, carrying his child in his arms. And even if I expected it to be hard, I realized that it was easy to imagine. I asked him what had changed and he told me that he’d left his wife and moved to Paris. Or maybe he’d moved to Paris and then left his wife. I don’t remember. Why? I asked him. Why would you leave your wife? Weren’t you happy?

  He lay there and reached out his hand and touched my face and said, I don’t know, Marie. And I said, Of course you know, Will. Of course you know. Why would you leave your life like that?

  He looked at me for a long time, not speaking, as if he were about to begin a story. I watched him, his mouth slightly open. But he never spoke and slowly he disappeared as fast as he’d come to life.

  GILAD

  After school on our first day back from the break, I saw Colin sitting in the small café by the entrance to the métro. He was writing with some books and a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of him. I stopped at the top of the stairs and watched him through the glass. He wrote slowly, never taking his eyes away from the page. I was balanced at the edge of the steps between descending into the station and walking into the café. We hadn’t spoken much since that Saturday at the protest.

  Watching him that afternoon, with people pushing past, I felt again as if I were on the precipice of something. It was as if my life had slowed and accelerated all at once. I thought I’d leave him alone to smoke his cigarettes. But I couldn’t stop watching him work, tapping his fingers on the table as he wrote and wrote.

  He was a kid writing a paper. He was my friend. The only person who’d never disappointed me. I walked to the café and knocked on the glass. He looked up, raised his chin, and waved me in.

  By the time I got through the door and to his table at the window, he’d cleared a space for me. We shook hands—this time traditional, solid, and strong. The waiter came over and I asked for a coffee but Colin said no and ordered us two beers. I shrugged and the waiter left.

  “What’s this?” I asked glancing at his notebook.

  “English.”

  “Already?”

  “I’ve got things to say, mate. And I want to make sure he fucking reads the thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The waiter put our beers in front of us. When he’d gone Colin looked at me. “He won’t be around much longer, Gilad.”

  “Why not?”

  “You really don’t talk to anyone.”

  “What?”

  He picked up his beer and went to take a sip but then stopped. Instead he held his glass up, “Cheers,” he said.

  “Cheers.”

  We touched glasses. The low sun was shining through the window onto our table.

  “Gilad, man, look, O.K., you know who Marie de Cléry is?”

  “I know her. So what?”

  “We were together for a long time. I dumped her last year.”

  “O.K. So?”

  “She’s insane and she talks, man. She talks to everyone. She’s fucking him. She’s fucking Silver, O.K.?”

  “Bullshit, Colin,” I laughed.

  “How do you not know this? You’ve never heard this story? She hasn’t shut up about it.”

  “You believe it? You’re serious?”

  “Not at first. At first, I thought it was bullshit but now, mate, I’m pretty sure it’s true.”

  “There’s no way it’s true.”

  “I didn’t think so either. I mean, fuck, you see the way the girls here follow him around, that guy could have anyone he wants, so why does he choose her? There’s no way, right? And I keep shaking my head, thinking there’s no way. But now I hear people’s parents are talking about it. It’s out there, mate.”

  He took a sip of beer. I looked outside. We sat in silence for a while, watching people funneling from the street into the métro. From time to time kids from school would walk past the café and down the stairs, their backpacks slung over their shoulders.

  “Look, man, why do you think Ariel hates him so much?”

  I shook my head.

  “She was the first to find out. She was the first one Marie told, mate. She says she’s morally outraged. She’s so full of shit. All she could talk about last year was how she wanted to get with him. She’s just jealous he didn’t choose her. We got into a big fucking thing a few months ago. She told me she was going to tell her parents. I told her she was jealous and she lost her shit. When I said that, I didn’t even believe it was happening, but now, man, I’m sure it is. Or it was. I even heard she got pregnant.”

  I watched the street. The sun had fallen behind the trees and the streetlights had come on.

  “You think they’ll fire him?”

  “That’s what I hear. I mean, of course they will.”

  We were quiet for a while. We drank our beers.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Colin said.

  I glanced at him, “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about the whole thing. Not just the Marie thing, but what he did at the protest. The way he bitched out like that? Let that dickhead spit on him? I don’t know. I was mad. I was so fucking mad. Just walked away like that. I expected, I don’t know, something more. More . . . more . . .” he trailed off.

  “Heroics,” I said.

  “Heroics,” he nodded. “But in the end, at least I learned something from the guy. At least, I don’t know. He’s not what I thought. Or what I wanted. Maybe he’s a disappointment. To you too I know. So he’s not a fucking hero. Who is? What do we expect, you know?”

  Colin finished his beer. We sat together watching as a woman walked slowly with a cane to the steps of the métro. She paused to catch her breath, and then began awkwardly descending the concrete stairs.

  “You sound like my mom,” I said.

  Colin laughed. “Yeah?”

  “She asked me the other night, ‘What do you expect of people?’ As if the only thing we should expect from anyone is disappointment.”

  “No man, it’s just one of the things we should expect. But in the end, mate, you’re better off not expecting anything. The fucked-up thing is that I still want to write for him. I still want to know what he thinks of what I w
rite, of what I say. Of me, I guess.”

  “While he’s still around,” I said.

  “While he’s still around.”

  For a while neither of us spoke. Colin stared out at the street and spun his lighter on the table with quick flicks of his wrist. I watched as it turned and turned on the tabletop in a blur of blue.

  And then we both watched as Silver came up the street from the school. He walked slowly and alone. His coat was buttoned with the high collar turned up, his gray scarf wound around his throat and his old brown satchel slung over his shoulder. At the steps of the métro he stopped. For a moment I thought he might come into the café. Instead he turned and looked back in the direction of the school, then at the Christmas lights still strung across the intersection, and finally higher into the night sky.

  Then he turned and vanished into the métro.

  * * *

  Soon I was on the boulevard St. Germain walking home. The cafés were crowded. The sharp night air smelled like chestnuts and burning sugar. It seemed a long time since I’d noticed any of it. The entire boulevard was lined with blue lights.

  From the hall I heard voices in the apartment. I slid my key into the lock and opened the door. My mother sat facing the fire, her arms spread out behind her, a glass of champagne in her left hand. She was wearing jeans and a heavy white turtleneck sweater, her legs folded beneath her. She was laughing when I walked into the room, her mouth slightly open, her eyes fixed on my father in a black suit and a light-pink shirt. There was no tie. He held a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other. He was smiling.

  “Come on, Gilad, it’s cold out there,” he said.

  I closed the door behind me. The warmth of the room, the low lights, my parents there, the fire, it felt so familiar. I wanted to collapse into the couch next to my mother, take off my shoes, lean against her, give in.

  “Do you want to sit down, sweetheart?” she asked, touching her fingers to the place next to her.

  I stood, pretending I wasn’t grateful for the warmth, for the fire, for the music.

  “You want a glass of champagne, kiddo?” He lifted the bottle into the air.

  I looked at him. His eyebrows raised, a slight smirk on his square face, his dull eyes. “Have a glass,” he said. “Welcome me home.”

  “Gilad,” she said, “take your coat off, come sit next to me.”

  I turned to her, took off my coat and dropped it with my bag on the floor. I sat next to her. She wrapped her arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. I stared into the fire trying not to blink.

  “No,” I said. “No champagne.”

  “Go on, honey,” she said. “It’ll do you some good.”

  “A peace offering,” he said, raising the bottle again.

  I turned from the fire toward him. “A peace offering?”

  He walked to the fireplace and rested the bottle on the mantelpiece. “I know you’re angry with me, Gilad. We’ll have a glass of champagne and let it go, O.K.?”

  “It?” I asked, looking up at him.

  He sighed and shook his head. The smirk was gone along with his momentary joviality. “The whole fucking thing, Gilad. We’ll just let it go. Why do you always have to be so sour? We were having a lovely time here before you showed up with your little mood.”

  “What’s the thing you’d like to forget, exactly?” I was sweating and my mom must have felt it through my shirt. My heart was beating hard.

  “Gilad,” she whispered.

  From the fireplace he reached for the standing lamp just to my left and flicked the switch so the room filled with a harsh light.

  “The thing I want to forget, Gilad, is how whiny you are.” He looked down at me. I looked back at him.

  “Michael,” my mother said.

  “What?” he asked, looking at her angrily.

  “Turn off the light, please.”

  “I want to look at our son,” he said. “Come on Gilad, kiss and make up? Make your mother happy?”

  He kept his fingers on the switch. There beneath that white light, I studied his hand. In spite of his manicured fingers, his skin had begun to wrinkle and break in hundreds of lines around his knuckles.

  I smiled.

  “Good,” he said. “Finally.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I stood up.

  We were close there, tucked in between the couch and the fading fire, his back nearly touching the mantle. I looked him full in the face. He was an old man. His eyes were tired. His skin had begun to fall from his jaw. There were deepening lines across his forehead. When was the last time I’d been this close to him? When had his hair gone so gray?

  “You look old,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “You’ve gotten old.” I looked straight at him.

  He shook his head as if I were crazy.

  “It isn’t complicated. You look old. You’re an old man.”

  He straightened. “Watch your mouth.”

  “I hadn’t noticed before, but with the light, it’s incredible. You’re an old man now.” My voice was steady.

  Like that. It was gone. I could see my father, standing there, dying. As if I were watching the end of a life. I imagined him aging to death in front of me. His skin wrinkling, his spine curving forward, his rotten teeth falling from his mouth.

  “Another word you little fuck,” he whispered.

  “And what? You’re going to hit your wife again?”

  He moved toward me but I pressed my hands against his chest, pushed him back hard against the mantelpiece and held him there. Neither of us moved. I could feel his heart beating through his clean, pressed shirt, his skin warm. We looked at each other until I pulled my hands away.

  I reached beneath the lampshade, turned off the light, touched her shoulder and went to my room.

  That night in bed I could still feel his chest warm against my hands.

  MARIE

  For weeks he took care of me. Every possible moment I could spend with him, I did. He cooked for me. He put me in the bath and washed my back. He brought me flowers. You’ve never seen a more attentive man. But he barely spoke and the feeling that he was fading away, that he might not even fully exist, was stronger than ever.

  Then he was gone.

  It was Ariel who told me.

  I was sitting alone at a table in the library at the end of the day.

  She came in and said, I’m so sorry, Marie. I looked at her and didn’t know what she meant. She crouched down next to me, put her hand on my knee and said, her face full of false compassion: Mr. Silver. They fired him. I just stared at her. I didn’t say a thing. She touched my hand. Are you O.K., Marie? I didn’t tell anyone, she said. I swear to God, Marie.

  I stood up and left.

  Mr. Spencer stopped me in the hall.

  He said we needed to talk. He took me to his office and asked me if it was true. And I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, You don’t have to lie. You don’t have to protect him. And then the head of the school came in. I’d never talked to her before. I can’t remember her name. She sat next to me and put her arm around my shoulder and said, You’re the victim here, Marie, and we’re going to do everything we can to take care of you. She said, You’re never going to have to worry about him again. He’ll never touch you again. He’ll never be back here. Never.

  I pulled my chair away so that she couldn’t touch me. Mr. Spencer said they needed to talk to my parents. He picked up the phone and called my mother and asked her to come to school. There was a pause and then he said, It’s about your daughter.

  Then he said, Well, I’d prefer to have the conversation in person. He waited. O.K., well there’s only one way to say this, Madame de Cléry, your daughter has had a sexual relationship with a teacher. One of our teachers. He nodded and hung up the phone.

  I guess she can’t get to school today, he said. He gave the head of the school a look. Then he said to me, We’d
like you to see the psychologist before going home. I didn’t know what he meant by we, if it was we the school or we the school and my mother.

  I told him that I needed to leave. That I needed to go home. That I had a paper to write. The head of the school said she didn’t want me to be alone as if I’d kill myself or something. I got up to go, but when I turned around there was Ms. Carver standing in the doorway. She gave me one of those bullshit looks and hugged me and said, I’m so sorry. Oh sweetie I’m so sorry.

  I said, What for? She said, For what he did to you. I said, What do you mean? And she said, Sweetie, you don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to protect him. It’s all over now. It’s all over. You’re safe.

  I tried to leave but they wouldn’t let me go. The head of the school said that legally they couldn’t leave me alone. That after something like this they’d need me to be picked up by a loved one.

  A loved one.

  Where is he? I asked. Where’s Will?

  The head of the school told me that he’d left the campus that afternoon. That he’d been fired. I wanted to cry. Instead, I concentrated on hating them.

  I took my phone out of my bag and listened to my messages. They didn’t stop me. He’d called. He was very calm and spoke so softly it was hard to hear. Everyone in the room watched me, listening, waiting for me to say something. I listened twice and then I erased it. Goodbye Marie, he said. I’m sure you’ve heard. I don’t think we’ll see each other for a while.

  Mr. Spencer took me home. He kept saying that I’d be O.K. That everything would work out for the best. When we got there he insisted on walking me to the door. He wanted to talk to my mother but she wasn’t home. I didn’t ask him in and eventually he left.

  My mother never talked about it, either. She never said a word to me. I don’t think she even told my father. If she had, he’d have called at least. Maybe he wouldn’t have said anything about it, but at least he would have called.