by Chase Novak
After a moment of consultation, the mother takes off in one direction and the father lopes off in another. Dorothy keeps her eyes on him. He stops, cranes his neck to see farther down the block, and then does something that almost causes her to topple over: in a seemingly effortless single move, he jumps from the sidewalk to the roof of a parked car. He seems not to be subject to the laws of gravity. From his new perch on top of the silver Mercedes, he looks up and down the block for any sign of either of his children.
Michael Medoff sits at the kitchen table, which was built into the wall in order to save space in his five-hundred-square-foot apartment on the ninth floor of an old apartment building on Twenty-First Street, near Second Avenue. The apartment would be small even if he lived there on his own, but he shares these two and a half rooms with Xavier Sardina, and the two of them, broad-shouldered and not particularly graceful, are continually trying to navigate around each other, like dancers unsure of the choreography.
Tonight, Xavier is clearing the remains of their dinner while Michael spreads out his homework on the table.
“That’s disgusting,” Xavier says over his shoulder as he slots tonight’s china into the dishwasher rack.
“What?”
“You wet your fingertip and pick up bread crumbs from the table and eat them.”
“I’m still hungry.”
“You didn’t even finish your dinner.”
“No time. I’ve got to grade sixteen essays about Oliver Twist and I have only…” Michael looks at his watch, an ocher-faced Elgin, a legacy from his grandfather. “Two hours before you force me to go out dancing.”
Xavier lowers his chin, arches his brows, but does not allow himself to be drawn into what he is sure is a conversational trap. Xavier and Michael go to a dance club called the Third Degree just off the West Side Highway between Bank and Bethune every Tuesday night, and every Tuesday night Xavier feels Michael’s reluctance to attend. Michael’s idea of a great night is for the two of them to sit on the sofa watching the Tennis Channel on their immense high-def screen with a bowl of low-cal popcorn between them, whereas Xavier revels in New York’s gay nightlife, the later, the louder, the more amped-up and teetering on the brink of chaos, the better.
Though Xavier left Havana and its homophobic inanities more than ten years ago and has been living in New York ever since, he continues to celebrate his freedoms with an almost desperate vigor, as if the right to dance with a man in public, to live with a man, to hold his hand on the street, to share a candlelit dinner with him in a public place, all these things and a thousand other sexual liberties might be revoked at any moment. Michael generally chooses to accommodate Xavier’s restless appetites. Though they have been together for nearly five years, Michael retains some sense of being Xavier’s host in America, as if Xavier has cabbed in from Kennedy with his heart set on taking as large a bite as humanly possible from the Big Apple. If Xavier is bored or lonely even for a day or two, Michael considers it his fault and feels as if he is not only letting down his foreign visitor but somehow putting the United States itself in an unfavorable light. Xavier exhausts him—their evenings together are rarely spent at home; they careen from discos to gallery openings to wine tastings to dinner parties to poetry readings to bookstore events to theater lofts and jazz clubs—but Michael recognizes that without Xavier he might settle into his own personality’s default position: a dour shut-in, content to leave the house for work and little else.
“You work so hard for your students, Michael,” Xavier says, letting the water in the kitchen sink heat up before using the sprayer to rinse the dishes—the torrents of hot water available strike a chord of delirium in Xavier almost as resonant as the pleasures of sexual freedom.
“Well, Zavy, it’s called doing your job,” Michael says.
“For rich kids, no? Why not go across the street to the public school and teach children who are poor and need you?”
“Every kid is poor, really,” Michael says. “Every kid is powerless. And every kid is at the mercy of his family. If they’re not loved and cared for, they’re screwed. Anyhow, I like my job, and I never forget that I am under something of a microscope simply because…”
“There must be a million gay teachers in New York, Michael,” Xavier says. He turns off the hot water, dries his hands on a dish towel. “So why you think you so nervous in your school?”
“For very good reasons, Zavy, and you know it. Starting with a homophobic headmaster.” Michael catches the towel Xavier has thrown at him, uses it to dab off some imaginary crumbs on the side of his mouth, and tosses it back.
While the towel is in midflight, the buzzer near the front door goes off, a rasping, piercing noise that the two men have dubbed the Penetrator.
“Who is that?” Xavier says, with some irritation.
The buzzer sounds its gray, grinding noise again, and Michael pushes his chair back and rises to answer the call. He presses the Talk button in the beige intercom next to the door, and the doorman, a thick-voiced elderly Irishman named James, announces that Adam Twisden-Kramer is in the lobby and wishes to be allowed up.
Adam Twisden-Kramer? The visit is so unexpected that for a moment Michael can’t connect the name to anyone he knows. But then: of course. Adam. Adam is neither the best nor the worst of Michael’s students, yet Michael holds a special fondness for the boy, recognizing in Adam’s downcast eyes and soft voice a version of himself at ten years of age, when his body and mind embarrassed him beyond endurance. Of course, there is the fainting incident.… The way the boy hit the floor with the whomp of a stack of magazines, right in the middle of class. Michael had rushed to him, held him, picked him up. As Adam regained consciousness, he opened his eyes and saw that he was borne aloft in his teacher’s arms, and for a moment there was a wide flickering stare of fear, followed almost immediately by a kind of all-encompassing peacefulness. The boy was like a young sailor swept from the deck of his vessel who learns in an instant that the sea will not swallow him but will keep him afloat. He had closed his eyes and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
There had always been a diffidence in the boy, a melancholy that made him compelling to Michael, and though Adam has yet to ask for anything special, nor has he engaged Michael in anything more than the most passing conversation, Michael has sensed for months that the boy wants to connect with him and seek some guidance, perhaps even solace. He is almost always the first of the students to come into class and he is always the last to leave, and even though his test scores are just slightly better than average and his papers are full of misspellings and grammatical errors, and the ideas they contain rarely go beyond a simple parroting of the remarks Michael has made in class, the effort Adam makes is not only palpable but endearing. If A for effort has any meaning, Adam is an A student.
And yet his suddenly showing up here is confounding. Even though Michael’s address is far from a state secret, Adam would have had to make some effort to find it. And though there is nothing in the bylaws of Berryman Prep that explicitly prohibits a student from calling on a teacher after school, it is simply not the done thing, and frankly, it feels as divergent from the culture of the Berryman community as whistling in the corridors, picking your nose, or, for that matter, being openly gay.
“Send him up,” Michael says through the intercom, though as soon as he says it, it seems like a mistake. Perhaps he ought to have gone down to the lobby and dealt with whatever Adam wants—having him come up is a dangerous precedent, and, worse, it is going to turn the rumor of Michael’s homosexuality into an established fact: no one seeing Xavier and him sharing this small apartment would have the slightest doubt about the nature of their relationship, no one—not a child, not a grandmother, not a visitor from outer space, no one.
Faster, faster, faster faster faster—dodge, cut, hide, run again, faster still.
Alice, clutching her backpack, pounds down Lexington Avenue, not sure if her mother is still chasing after her, afraid to look and see.
It has all gone horribly wrong—she and Adam were not halfway down the fire escape before suddenly the lights of their house came on, square by square, like a model of a brain coming into consciousness. And then: shouts, threats. And Adam going south and her going north, yelling to each other: Call me!
She is amazed by how good it feels to run, and how easy it is. She has muscles she didn’t know she had. She is in possession of a grace that was hers all along. Through the morass of fear and uncertainty, there comes a sudden blaze of sheer animal joy. Before this night, she had no idea what her body could do.…
Michael waits for Adam by the elevator, and when the doors slide open the boy emerges, wearing just a light jacket even though it is a cold wet November evening. The jacket is streaked with rain and dirt; it looks as if he has taken a fall in it. But what makes the jacket particularly strange-looking—and makes Adam himself look mentally unbalanced—is that it has been tucked into the boy’s jeans. His sneakers are soaked; leaves cling to their soles. He has scratches on his pale cheeks, and tiny twigs in his hair.
“Hello, Mr. Medoff,” he says. “Thank you very much for allowing me up.”
The elevator doors sigh shut behind him and the boy stands in the hallway, the path to nine other apartments on this floor, all but one with their doors firmly shut.
“Adam? What are you doing here?”
The boy opens his mouth to speak, but all that is released is a deeper silence. His eyes brighten as they fill with tears.
“Adam?” Michael says. His misgivings about this unexpected visit are suddenly cast into shadow by larger concerns. The boy seems to be tottering, and Michael reaches a steadying hand toward him, and at the touch of his teacher’s hand, Adam feels his knees buckle, and only quick reflexes allow Michael to catch him before he hits the floor.
He half pulls and half carries Adam into the apartment. “Oh my God,” Xavier says, dropping the dish towel and hurrying over to help. He closes the door behind Michael and the boy. He lifts Adam’s legs and helps to carry him to the sofa. “What happened?” Xavier says.
“I have no idea,” Michael answers, his voice unsteady. He crouches next to the sofa and gently shakes Adam’s shoulder. The boy’s eyes slowly open. They are an unusual shade of brown—closer to tan, really, and the whites of them are dark cream. They fix Michael with a stare stunning in its neutrality, neither friendly nor unfriendly, neither frightened nor trusting: all they do is see.
The boy tries to lift himself up on his elbows, but he is too exhausted, and after making it halfway, he gives up and falls flat again. He reaches behind himself and unhooks the backpack’s straps and lets the thing fall onto the floor. “I didn’t know where else to go,” Adam says, staring at the ceiling now.
“You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.” Michael glances up and sees that Xavier has retreated to the kitchen, the cloak of their privacy already unraveling, thread by thread.
“I don’t know,” Adam says. “I’m not sure.” He tries again to lift himself up on his elbows. This time he has more success and manages to swing his legs off the sofa and sit up straight. He rubs his hands over his face as if he were washing it with soap.
“Where did you get those scratches? Do you want to go to a hospital? And I need to call your parents right now.”
“You can’t,” Adam says.
“Adam, this is my home. It’s not a hideaway for guys who’ve had some kind of blowup with their parents. You understand?”
Adam nods. The chaotic smells of the night—wind, rain, soot, the burned-transistor tang of urban darkness—still cling to the boy’s hair. There is something in his proximity that strikes a sudden terror in Michael.
“But I can’t go home,” Adam says. He lowers his head and clenches his fists.
“I need you to tell me why. If something is going on there—I mean, if something is happening that makes you feel so afraid—I need to know. You understand?”
“No, no,” Adam says, very quickly. He waves his hand as if to dispel the notion of child abuse. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“They’re away.”
“Away?”
Adam hesitates before shaking his head. “They’re in Canada,” he says.
“Canada?”
“Yeah, Montreal.”
“And they left you alone?”
“Yes. With my sister.”
“Who’s looking after you, Adam?”
“No one.”
Michael narrows his eyes, tilts his head. Somewhere along the way, he has settled on this gesture as a way of extracting the truth from his students, though he has no idea if it works or not.
“Our mother has family in Montreal,” Adam adds.
“Family.”
“Yeah. A brother. He’s the mayor or something.”
“Your uncle is the mayor of Montreal.”
“Maybe not anymore.”
“Adam. I’m going to need to contact your parents. And right away. You can’t be here if no one knows where you are.”
Adam shrugs. “But they’re not home.”
“You can give me their cell number.”
“They don’t have cell phones. And anyhow, you need a special chip to make them work in Canada. Like for Europe or anywhere.”
Xavier comes out of the kitchen—he wasn’t making himself scarce after all—carrying a tray upon which is a mug of warm apple cider with cinnamon and a peanut butter sandwich cut into quarters.
“Here you taken this now so you no get seek,” he says to Adam in the most atrocious accent Michael has heard from him in years.
If seeing another man in his teacher’s apartment has any meaning to Adam, if it confuses him or confirms a theory, there is nothing in his demeanor to betray it. He reaches for the mug and looks up gratefully at Xavier.
“Oh, thanks,” he says. He holds the cup of hot cider and glances at the coffee table. “Is it okay to put it on your furniture?” he asks his teacher.
“Of course,” Michael says. He sees that the boy’s hands are trembling.
Adam leans forward a little as he brings the cup to his lips. At the moment he is about to drink, the phone rings, and the noise startles him so profoundly that he makes a sad little yelp, and his hands move as if to cover his face, which spills nearly the entire contents of the cup of cider onto his shirt and his lap.
Michael and Xavier have put Adam into the bedroom, where he removes the first of his clean pairs of socks from his backpack and changes into them. In Adam’s absence, Xavier and Michael sit on the sofa, not daring to speak for fear of being overheard but communicating their distress and confusion with shrugs and shakes of the head. Michael mouths the words I’m sorry, to which Xavier curtly frowns and waves his hand. Michael takes Xavier’s hand, links their fingers together, and squeezes.
Michael finds his class list and looks up Adam’s contact information. There are work numbers for both parents and a home number. One category is left blank—In Case of Emergency. Michael dials the home number; not only is there no answer, but there is no answering machine, no voicemail, just the unfamiliar experience of a phone ringing on and on and on.
“Mr. Medoff?” Adam’s voice comes floating out from the bedroom.
“I’m here, Adam.”
“Could you come here for a quick second?”
He enters the bedroom. The bed is made, the pillows stacked one on top of the other, a pair of slippers on either side, half hidden by the bedspread. Everything looks tidy, almost antiseptic, like a Holiday Inn. The room is gloomily lit, with only one of the bedside lamps on. Adam stands in the center of the room holding his T-shirt. The boy is skinny; his nipples are brown buttons; his belly button is raised and hard—it looks like a beehive; and most oddly of all, his chest is starting to get hair on it.
“My back feels weird,” Adam says.
Adam turns, and Michael sees his back has been clawed as if his skin were wrapping paper and someone was overly eager
to see the gift within.
“Oh my God, Adam, what happened to you?”
“Is it bad?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t it hurt? It looks very bad.”
Adam’s small round shoulders bob up and down. Though silent, he is crying. He covers his face with the T-shirt.
“All right, this is completely insane. We need to get you to an emergency room. What the hell happened to you, Adam? Were you attacked?”
The scratches are deep red and the skin alongside of them is livid. Michael forces himself not to turn away and tries to compose his expression—he can feel his own grimace pulling at the muscles in his face, his neck.
“It’s okay, I just want to know if it’s bleeding,” Adam says. “It feels wet.”
“No, it’s not bleeding. Put the shirt on.”
“I’ll mess up the shirt.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get that looked after.”
Adam puts the T-shirt on, pulls it down over his torso, faces his teacher. “I’ll be okay.”
“What are you doing here, Adam? What happened to you? What’s going on? Who’s supposed to be looking after you? I find it hard to believe your parents just took off for Montreal and left you and your sister alone.”
At the mention of his sister, Adam’s face takes on a look of utter anguish.
“I need a place to stay.”
“I want you to tell me what happened to you.”
“I fell. In Central Park. On some rocks I was climbing.”
“They seem like gouges.”
