The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  Steve Dinks and Christopher went to the same preschool together, a Montessori run by an aging hippy out of an old house inland from Port Manitou. That’s how I first met Leland; we both dropped off our kids on the same days of the week. It was a hectic time; Wendy and I were living with her parents while we were building our own house in the field next door, and during that summer vacation I’d drop Chris off so I could return to the orchard, put on tool bags, and work on the house with Dick.

  I say sometimes now that I built the place myself, but really it was my father-in-law who knew what he was doing. I just did what I was told.

  Wendy made friends with Leland’s wife, Sherry, too. Leland and Sherry kept suggesting we all get together for dinner sometime, they had just moved up from Chicago and didn’t really know anyone yet, the boys got along well and why not? It’s funny to remember that we found excuses to not see them for a while. Not because we disliked the two, but because we were too embarrassed to admit we were living in Wendy’s parents’ basement.

  We got over it, though. Soon we were hanging out with them pretty regularly, promising we’d have a housewarming fete as soon as our place was done. Leland and Sherry even helped us paint before we moved in, joking that they wanted to get the job over with so we could have our party sooner than later.

  Leland was getting started out in real estate then. He worked for a brokerage at first, just an agent, and though he only obliquely talked about it, it was clear sometimes that people reacted negatively to the color of his skin. Someone asked for a different broker to list his property, he’d tell me, or a different person to show him around. They needed a local agent, they’d say. A coded request. That was as much as he’d discuss it, he’d act like it was no big deal, but obviously it troubled him. Sometimes I’d say sorry, without even knowing exactly what I was apologizing for, or why. He’d just wave his hand and say: “Ah, forget about it, Neil.” I always wanted to ask him more about it, but I guess back then I didn’t really know how.

  Here’s what Leland was: he was smart, and funny, and personable, and most of all shrewd in business. By the time the boys were in the fifth grade he was running his own brokerage, as well as owning a Laundromat, a car wash, and part of Port Manitou’s touristy seafood restaurant in Old Town. We didn’t see him and Sherry as much as before, but Steve and Chris stayed best friends. The boys played together, and they did sports together. They did every sport together, it seemed: Pop Warner football, Little League baseball, basketball camp, indoor soccer, the whole deal. They were rough together too, the way boys are, tumbling and scratching like a pair of lion cubs, fighting one moment before bounding off together to try something new the next.

  In seventh grade the boys joined ski club. We used to have a little ski hill nearby; it’s out of business now but it was less than twenty minutes from my house. There were a few rickety old chairlifts and a rope tow, and the school would send a bus full of kids on Thursday nights to exhaust themselves under the stark night-skiing lights. Leland and I would chaperone sometimes, and the kids—all the kids—would howl with laughter at our knock-kneed attempts at the sport.

  The winter of eighth grade for Chris, not so long after Wendy’s accident, his therapist suggested we try ski club again. Routine was good, she told us; we were just shooting for something close to normal then. Christopher seemed normal, most of the time, but every so often in those first months he would explode with rage. Lamps were knocked over, holes were punched in walls. This, I was assured, was normal too. We’d work through it. Chris could find a release for his anger, and I, on extended administrative leave, would continue numbing myself to the mess of it all with gin, tonic and Xanax.

  The ski club did help. One night that year some other school district from downstate had bussed up a big group, and the ski area called and asked for parent volunteers as it was going to be a very busy, and possibly unruly, evening. I wasn’t ready to try something like that, wallowing in my new normal, and didn’t even consider going.

  By that point the boys were pretty good skiers, and they liked to show off by bombing down under the chairlift, showing off to their friends or attempting to impress girls. Chris had a problem with his ski binding that night, and on one run, a couple turns from the top, he and Steve stopped so Chris could try to clear snow from his boot. Up above, on the lift, one of the blue jeans-clad downstate boys saw them.

  “Look at that!” the boy called with a sneer. “Check it out, a nigger on skis! You ever seen that before? It’s a nigger on skis!”

  Maybe they talked like that all the time. Maybe they didn’t, and thought they’d get lost in the crowd. Steve took a deep breath, shrugged and shook his head. He said nothing. Chris, however, looked up, made a note of the chair number (it was, he told me later, number twenty-four), and actually ran uphill in his cumbersome ski boots to beat the chair to the top. As it approached the crest, the two boys on board watched Chris with expressions of awe and terror as he pointed at each of them, asking:

  “Was it you? Or was it you?”

  Chris walked up to the chair as the two boys tried to get off. They were older, but he was bigger, and he grabbed both of them and pushed them, tripping over their skis, to the ground like a pair of dominoes. He punched the one to his left in the mouth and the boy cried: “It wasn’t me, it was him!” So Chris turned and punched the other boy’s face again and again until the snow around him was flecked red with blood.

  Chris stood up from the guy and backed away, maybe realizing the state he’d slipped into. The lift operator had run over along while other people had started to gather around, and Chris stepped back as the kid picked himself up off the snow.

  “It’s cool,” the kid said through his bloodied lips. “Everything’s cool.”

  Chris staggered away, through the crowd that had gathered to watch and down the hill to his skis. Steve Dinks had left; he’d skied down quietly, called his dad and got a ride home. I got a call too, from the manager of the ski area telling me that my son was not welcome to return, ever, and I’d better come and pick him up immediately.

  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 ha
ppened, 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: xc.coach.kaz@gmail.com

  To:w.kazenzakis@gmail.com

  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 Caro
l 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.”