by Chase Novak
Adam has not even bothered to zip his skimpy jacket. Michael stops himself from telling the boy to bundle up against the cold. None of them seem to close their jackets anymore; none want to seem like vulnerable boys.
As they descend the steps to the subway, surrounded by others on their early-morning commutes, Michael, suddenly sensing that the boy might do something foolish, takes hold of Adam’s arm—not tightly, but with just enough force to remind the boy that someone is in charge. Yet the touch of the teacher’s hand seems to electrify Adam, who twists away from Michael.
“Settle down,” Michael says, but as he gives Adam an admonishing look, the boy’s eyes narrow and his lips part, revealing two rows of bright white teeth. Too bright. Too sharp. The sight of them unnerves Michael momentarily, and he stumbles on the subway steps. He regains his balance by gripping the railing, and the next thing he knows Adam has yanked himself free, turned around, and leaped away. It almost seems as if he is flying.
“Adam!” Michael cries out. Maybe half the thirty or so people on the staircase show some interest in the commotion Michael is creating, while the others either don’t hear or are absorbed in difficulties of their own, or perhaps they both hear and care but have been trained by city life to always reveal as little as possible.
Michael chases after the boy. He has no choice. And, also, no chance. He sees Adam knife into the crowd on Twenty-Third Street, dart this way and that way, at absolutely awesome speed—and then, to Michael’s horror, the boy dashes into traffic to cross to the gloomy greenery of a small park. A beat-up-looking truck hauling large sheets of plate glass brakes quickly to keep from hitting Adam, and Adam rises as if there were wings on his heels and steps onto the truck’s hood, using it as a platform from which to vault across the street. And disappear.
“Did you see that?” a middle-aged man in a cashmere topcoat and a brand-new baseball cap says to Michael. “I’ll bet you a sock full of nickels that kid is on one of those energy drinks.”
There is a cold, steady drizzle soaking the streets and the tops of the parked cars when Michael arrives at Berryman. It’s still a few minutes before classes begin; most of the younger students are already there, deposited by caretakers who have other duties to attend to or by their parents, faces stark and worried in the weird light of their smartphones, who must be prompt because they have early-morning meetings to chair. “They hold their phones out like Hamlet addressing Yorick’s skull,” Michael once said to Xavier—and the thought of Xavier brings Michael’s hand reflexively into his pocket, where he finds his own phone and calls his great dear friend’s cell for the tenth time that morning.
“You’re here!” announces Davis Fleming, Berryman’s headmaster. Fleming is large and fleshy, but with his broad smile, well-scrubbed skin, and silvery hair, he looks like a large boy cast as the father in a school play. Fleming’s grandfather and both his parents attended Berryman Prep, as did Fleming himself. He lives in a Berryman-owned apartment next to the school, and, except for college and a honeymoon to an island off the coast of South Carolina where he and his wife (Berryman, class of 1983) had their honeymoon, he has never been farther than ten miles from these corridors. But despite the animation in his face and the unvarying, unyielding smile, there is annoyance in Fleming’s voice and a bit of steel in his hand as he grips Michael’s biceps through the slick chill of his leather jacket.
“What can I do for you?” Michael says, falling into step as Fleming marches through the hall, past the glassed-in case with fading old pictures of by-now-aged Berryman athletes taking flatfooted set shots in basketball games a half century ago, where the time eternally shows six minutes to go; and wrestling boys in black sneakers and unitards, their expressions hovering between nobility and teenage hormonal haze, lawyers now, surgeons, bankers, grandfathers, dead and buried, some of them. Michael and Fleming are in the old wing of the school, with its Gothic touches and scuffed maroon floors, where the light is dim and somehow humid, like the watery gloom of a submarine. Fleming doesn’t keep his grip on Michael’s arm, but he continually touches it nonetheless, as if Michael might need reminding that flight is not an alternative.
“Can you tell me what this is about?” Michael finally asks.
“About?” Fleming says, as if the word itself were peculiar.
“Why am I basically being abducted here?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Medoff.”
There’s nothing Michael can say to that. He does, more or less, know why he is following Fleming to his office.
But what he is not prepared for is that both the Twisdens are already in Fleming’s office, Leslie, the mother, in flared trousers, a turtleneck, and a long raincoat, and the horrible father pacing back and forth like a beast in its cage, snarling into his cell phone. When Fleming leads Michael into the office, the furious parents turn toward him with devouring eyes.
“Where is our son?” Alex says, snapping his phone shut.
“And our daughter,” adds Leslie. Her voice shakes; her eyes are red, presumably from crying.
“Yes,” Michael says, and clears his throat. “Yes.”
“Yes what?” Twisden says.
Michael tries to quickly consider his options, and in the confusion and uncertainty he decides it is best to stay as close to the truth as possible, though he is loath to state that Adam spent the night in his house, and that upon rediscovering him after Twisden’s late-night visit, Michael did nothing to inform Alex, thus, by implication, entering into a state of collusion with the little boy. “I haven’t seen Alice, and I have no idea where she is,” he says to Leslie.
“And what about Adam?” Twisden says. He is wringing his hands with suppressed rage; there is something reddish beneath two of his fingernails. He sees Michael glancing at them and he quickly puts his hands in the pockets of his expensive-looking suit jacket and steps closer to Michael—years of tough negotiating have schooled him well in the body language of intimidation, and even though his career is sputtering now (at best!), he knows how to impose his will.
“What about him?” Michael says.
“Did he go back to your little love nest?”
“My love nest? What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know damn well what that means,” Twisden says.
“I resent that,” Michael says.
“If you would just answer Mr. Twisden’s question, we could get this matter squared away,” Fleming interjects. “Please, Michael, let’s stop all this… posturing. A child is missing.”
“Two children,” Leslie says. She wraps her raincoat tightly around herself, though it is as warm as an armpit in Fleming’s office.
“Mrs. Twisden,” Michael begins, but Leslie cuts him off.
“Ms. Kramer,” she says.
“I don’t know where your daughter is. I’m sorry.”
“And our son?” Twisden says.
“I don’t know where he is either.” He knows what question will come next and chooses to offer more of the truth rather than endure the viselike grip of Twisden’s inevitable interrogation. “Your son came back to my apartment last night after you left,” Michael says. “He was cold, he was wet, and he seemed very, very frightened.”
“You see?” Twisden says to Fleming. “It’s exactly as I told you.”
“And why didn’t you call Mr. Twisden and Ms. Kramer the moment he first arrived?” Fleming asks.
“Adam told me they were out of town.”
“And he believed him,” Twisden says, as if nothing could be more unlikely or absurd.
“Yes, I did.”
Alex and Leslie exchange quick glances.
“And what other tales did our son tell you?” Alex says, this time with a shade less bluster in his voice
“Mr. Medoff,” Fleming says to Michael. “This is highly irregular.”
“If you so much as touched him,” Twisden says, shaking his head and grimacing, as if sickened by the punishment he would be forced to mete out.
>
Michael has never seen eyes quite like Twisden’s—so intense, yet with no more emotion than halogen lamps.
“And now where is he?” Leslie Kramer says. “What have you done with him? And why in the hell did you not call us when he returned to your apartment?” The atomizer of whatever perfume she is wearing seems to have been given several extra pumps this morning; her lipstick appears to have been applied with a trembling hand.
“It was… it was a strange situation,” Michael says. “I thought Adam had taken off again, and when I realized he hadn’t—well, he begged me. This morning, I tried to bring him to school. But he ran away. He’s very frightened—of both of you. And because of certain things he said to me, I am obliged to make a formal report to Child Protective Services.” Michael’s heart is beating so furiously that he is certain everyone in the room can hear it.
“He ran away from you?” Twisden says, as if this in itself were an admission of Michael’s malfeasance.
“Yes,” Michael says. “Just as he ran away from you. Just as he hid when he knew you were drawing near. Just as he spent hours hiding in the park before that. We’re talking about a boy who came to me cold and wet and frightened out of his wits, and let me tell you—let me tell you and you and you, too, Mr. Fleming, I wasn’t the one who was frightening him. I was the one he came to for protection. And I believe he ran away from me on our way to school because he knew his parents would be here looking—”
But that is all Michael is able to say because Twisden has pounced upon him. The furious lawyer’s hands are on Michael’s chest, and Michael staggers and falls backward, and the objects in Fleming’s office recede like the cars of a speeding train on its way to the darkness of a long tunnel. And now he is inside the tunnel and instead of the deep confident howl of a train whistle, he hears his own voice, hoarse and anguished, scared and unstable, and when the darkness relents he has awakened to a view of the recessed track lighting in Berryman Prep’s nurse’s office. Looming over him is the soft, moon-shaped, somehow nun-like face of Jeanette Cavanaugh, the school nurse, and the worried, guilty face of Davis Fleming, who is not only frowning but wringing his hands.
“Hello there, Michael,” Fleming says as Michael’s eyes open. “Wow! You had yourself a good old-fashioned knock on the noggin.” He seems to have settled on the strategy of treating Michael’s being attacked by a crazed parent as some sort of delicious, madcap adventure the two of them can now share.
“Don’t move, not yet, and not too quickly,” Jeanette Cavanaugh says.
“How did I get here?”
“I carried you,” she says.
“I tried to help, but she wouldn’t allow it,” Fleming hastens to add. “This is one strong lady.”
“Where are they?” Michael says, lifting his head, propping himself up on his elbows. The pain seems located primarily in the back of his neck and the top third of his spine, a twisting, cold pain, the sort that makes you wonder what will come first, the moaning or the throwing up.
Jeanette hands him a bright blue ice pack, the outside of which is white with freezer burn. “I’m going to give you something for pain,” she says.
“What’s on the menu?” Michael asks.
“The strongest we keep is extra-strength Tylenol.”
“Give him extra,” Fleming says, as if money for the extra pills were coming out of his own pocket, and costs be damned!
Michael struggles to his feet. The room flaps and flutters like a flag; he holds on to the edge of Nurse Cavanaugh’s medical-supply cabinet for balance. “I’m all right, I’m fine,” he says, as much to himself as to them. He pats his pockets, looking for his phone, and asks Jeanette if he might use hers.
“Who are you calling?”
“The police. Of course. I mean—come on.”
“Michael,” Fleming says. “First CPS, now the police. That’s not necessarily the way to handle this.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you insane?”
Fleming looks at Jeanette, clears his throat. “Jeanette, may I use your office for a private moment or two with Mr. Medoff?”
Jeanette has been looking at Fleming with some degree of disbelief, and now, when she hears his request to vacate her own office, her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “If you insist,” she finally manages to say.
“Terrific,” Fleming says. He waits for her to leave and as soon as the door is closed he turns to Michael and with great urgency says, “I want you to allow me to handle this situation, Michael. I have friends at CPS and I will make sure a report is filed. As for the police, I think we had better let cooler heads prevail. Make no mistake about it—what Mr. Twisden did to you is unacceptable. What I don’t want to happen is for you to be dragged into some pissing match with his guy. You understand? They are going to accuse you of molesting their son, Michael. And I think you know me well enough to understand that there is no greater champion of gay rights in the world than me, but I don’t care how liberal and up-to-date New Yorkers are supposed to be, gay teachers are vulnerable. When it comes to children, everybody is just a teeny-tiny bit reactionary. I wish it were not the case. I wish we lived in a better world.”
“Did I ever tell you I was gay?” Michael asks.
Fleming seems taken aback by the question.
“Then why do you refer to me as a gay teacher?” Michael persists. “Do I look gay? Do I talk or walk gay? Did I one day come to school with a rainbow scarf?”
If the personal side of Fleming is rattled by Michael’s questions, the administrative side is unflappable. “Your personal life is of no interest or importance to me. But it is to the Twisden-Kramers, and I don’t want them making accusations, I don’t even want innuendos. The Twisden family is prominent in this city. Both Adam and Alice are full-paying students who receive not one penny of school aid, which helps us to continue our outreach program for the sons and daughters of doctors and dentists and other less fortunate New York families. If you want to rattle the parents’ cage you will (a) not get anywhere, (b) risk a valuable resource for the Berryman community, and (c) and this is the most important part, Mike, and I say this not only as your supervisor but as someone whom I would like you to consider a friend, you will find yourself in some disgusting sex scandal. And the thing about sex scandals is everybody loses—especially the accused.”
As Michael prepares himself to rebut what Fleming has said, he is interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Both men turn toward the sound and before either can say Come in or Please Wait, the door opens and they are confronted by the sight of Mrs. Fillmore, a squat, fierce woman who has worked as a secretary at the school for the past thirty-eight years. She has white hair cut in an oddly girlish way, and large black-framed glasses.
“We got a call from the police,” she says, looking at Michael. “Someone found a wallet belonging to Xavier… Rivera, or something? They can’t find him, but there’s a card says in case of emergency, contact you.”
“Where did they find it?” Michael asks.
“Someone brought it into the precinct. Don’t worry, I’m sure the Good Samaritan kept all the money—if there was any. They found it in a gutter somewhere on Twenty-Third Street.”
It feels to Michael as if his heart is being punched to death.
Rodolfo has been as good as his word and has taken Alice to a place where she can eat, get warm, and sleep. It’s a large apartment on West End Avenue, in a building that once was fancy but has gone down in the world, and now there is no doorman, and the elevator is self-service. The apartment itself is on the tenth floor, unlocked and unkempt. Rodolfo warms a can of soup for her, plunks down a carton of milk, and makes some toast—though he butters it with a heavy hand, crumbling it to bits. As soon as she has eaten, she is overcome with fatigue, and suddenly nine hours have passed like a shooting star glimpsed from the corner of your eye, and Alice awakens on a soft green sofa the pillows of which have a sharp but comforting animal smell. This must have been the favorite sleeping spot of the f
amily dog.
“Hello?” she calls out softly, tentatively, sitting up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. When her feet touch the ground, they land directly on Rodolfo’s shoulder—he has curled up next to the sofa and slept on the floor.
He reacts quickly to her touch; in less than a second, he is on his feet, in a slight crouch, his eyes sharp and wary. Seeing Alice, he relaxes, smiles. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
Alice shakes her head. “I can’t remember where we are,” she says.
“We’re at Peter Burns’s crib.”
“Who’s that?” Alice hears voices in the next room, laughter, the scuffle of feet.
“A friend. A kid. Don’t worry, he’s cool.”
“This is a kid’s apartment?”
Rodolfo shrugs. “Sort of.”
A boy about seven years old races into the room looking agitated and afraid. “Hey, Rodolfo, you better come. Luke and Dave are starting to fight.”
“Let them,” Rodolfo says with a wave.
“But last time…”
“It’s okay. Just let it happen.”
The boy shakes his head, submissive but dissatisfied. And a moment later, a hideous yowl comes from the next room, followed by a long rumbling growl that feels to Alice as if it were coming from right below her feet. She covers her ears the way she does when the subway comes roaring into her station.
“Come on,” Rodolfo says, taking her hand. “I’ll show you the place. You can come here whenever you want. It’s ours.”
As Alice allows Rodolfo to lead her across the largely bare living room, with its windows covered by bedsheets and its walls without pictures, she notices a couple of other sofas shoved into far corners. On one of them someone is sleeping, but so tightly curled that Alice cannot say if it is a boy or a girl, and on the other a teenage boy sits with his back to a teenage girl, who is vigorously brushing his long russet-colored hair. Rodolfo opens a door and just before he leads her into a long corridor, dimly lit by wall sconces with faltering flame-shaped bulbs, the young boy comes racing in again, this time even more agitated than before.
