The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  “Was that Cody Tate?” I manage to ask.

  Stu Lepinski raises his eyebrows. “So you do know him?”

  “I don’t know him at all!” I say, and they continue to stare. “But a student mentioned his name last period. That video is not real.”

  Stu pulls the laptop back, and types and clicks. “That’s what we thought.” He glances up at me. “At first. But this was posted online also—”

  “Also?” I say.

  “It’s since been removed,” Stu goes on, “but someone emailed Karen a copy last night.” He turns the laptop once again, and now I see the same thing happen from a different angle. Run—hey!—shake and throw to the ground. I had to like, fight him off me. A different cell phone camera, a different angle. A secondary source. I’m incapable of saying anything after the video ends.

  “Do you want to see it one more time?” Stu asks. Karen won’t lift her eyes from her notepad, and Gracie looks furious.

  I shake my head. “It didn’t happen that way,” I say, but suddenly I doubt my own memory, and the feeling is beyond unsettling. If anything, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  Stu Lepinski points at his laptop with his pen. “Did you have some reason to be angry with Cody Tate?”

  “Neil,” Peggy says, leaning close to speak into my ear. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “Why would I need a lawyer?” I ask, my voice rising, quavering. I look around the room. “That…it didn’t happen like that! Have you talked to any of the kids who were there? Did you talk to Amy Vandekemp?”

  “We talked to them, Neil,” Karen says, without looking up. “They didn’t see what happened. They only found you afterwards.”

  “We have to ask you to leave the building,” Peggy says.

  “You’re firing me?”

  “No, it’s a suspension—”

  “Standard,” Stu Lipinski cuts in.

  “—While we investigate.” Peggy finishes. “Administrative leave while we sort it all out.”

  “But…this afternoon,” I stammer. “Justin Samples is radioactive, and the girls are running to the river….”

  Peggy puts her hand on my shoulder. “I need to escort you off campus now, Neil.”

  I’m far too stunned to even try to run home, so Peggy, who knows my routine, quietly offers me a ride once I gather up my things from my classroom. I’m shaking as we leave the building, knees wobbly, surprised I can even walk, and it’s all I can do to climb up into her Suburban and slump into the passenger seat. My elbow rests on the windowsill as she takes me north out of town, my forehead cradled in my hand. Peggy says nothing as she drives.

  This is bad. As if the situation with Lauren wasn’t bad enough. This is very, very bad.

  “I didn’t do that, Peggy,” I bring myself to say. “I didn’t—”

  “I cannot fucking believe this,” she snaps. “You, Neil! You, of all people!”

  “It didn’t happen that way, though.”

  “Taking matters into your own hands like that—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “—When we had everything under control. You didn’t even know the details! Do you even have a clue how much you have screwed things up for me? Not to mention the family—”

  “Peggy, what the hell? What family?”

  Peggy turns her gaze from the road just long enough to give me a withering stare. “How could you in a thousand years have thought punishing Cody Tate on your own would make anything right or easier for the Mastersons?”

  “What? Peggy, who is Cody Tate?”

  “The boyfriend,” Peggy hisses.

  “Boyfriend?” My mouth hangs open for a moment. “Denise Masterson’s boyfriend? And you think…are you saying you think I did that because I was trying to punish some kid I don’t even know? I didn’t even know about the pictures until you told me Monday!”

  “I’ve seen the videos, Neil. From two different phones, and they both show me the same thing. I’ve talked to the students involved. There’s only one story that doesn’t line up with the others. You know which one that is? Yours!”

  “Fine,” I say, holding off panic. “Fine. Just go. Drive.”

  “What the hell, Neil. I’ve known you for so long. How—”

  “No, really,” I say, interrupting her. “Just drive.” I rub my face with hands. “Oh, oh, wait a minute. I need to tell you something. I need to tell you about Sparks. Timothy Sparks. Senior. Friend of Christopher. Someone tried to show him one of the Masterson pictures. There. You can ask him about it. I needed to tell you, and now I’ve told you. I’m relieved of my burden.”

  “Why are you talking about this right now?”

  “Isn’t it a felony if I don’t? If I know that’s going on and I fail to report it? Oh, wait, wait, I guess beating a kid up is probably pretty serious too. Assault can be a felony, right?”

  “Christ, Neil,” she says, shaking her head as we slow to stop at a red light. “Are you cracking up?”

  “The video…I didn’t do that!”

  The signal changes to green, but instead of accelerating Peggy turns to me with narrowed eyes. “You are seriously, seriously telling me you didn’t to that to Cody Tate,” she says slowly.

  “I can’t believe you’d ever have thought I would in the first place. I broke up a fight, and the kid hit me with his elbow.”

  “He says he punched you because you were on top of him. He says he was trying to get away.”

  “Why would I do that?” I ask. “How could I do that? I didn’t. But I saw the video too, and now I have to ask myself, did I? Am I going crazy?”

  “It doesn’t look good, I’ll say that.”

  I have to laugh at this. “Well how the hell is it supposed to look? It looks terrible. I’m going to lose my job.”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions yet. You’re a well-liked, well-respected teacher. Which makes this so strange to me.”

  “Wait, wait.” I sit up as the suburban takes off again. “You’re telling me not to jump to conclusions? Who just suspended me from my job? What about due process, or benefit of the doubt? Good reputation? Well-liked? Who’s jumping to conclusions, here?”

  “The district’s getting slammed with calls about it, Neil. Not just local callers, either. Nasty reactions and emails from all over. We have to respond to them. I hate to say it’s PR, but, it’s PR. A big part of it, anyway. And you’re getting your due process. It’s a leave with pay.”

  I rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger. “I’m going to get canned for this. How can that video be possible? If it is I’m going crazy—”

  Peggy shakes her head. “Maybe don’t say anything else about it until you talk to a lawyer. Not to me or anyone else. And the hidden message in that is, you better call your lawyer as soon as you get home.”

  “Is there going to be a lawsuit?”

  “Jesus, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. I don’t even know what to believe here. But we’ve been friends for a long time. Stu Lepinski thinks the family will sue the district. Along with you.”

  “Goddammit, Peggy. What the hell?”

  “Do you have a lawyer? Even if there’s a settlement, you’re going to need—”

  “I don’t care about a fucking lawyer, okay? I don’t care about any lawsuit! I’m going to lose my insurance!”

  “What? Neil, why are you even worrying about….” When the realization hits her, she actually steps on the brakes for a second, and I’m jostled as the car lurches. “Oh, no. Wendy.”

  “Oh, no is right.”

  Peggy turns onto my drive and takes us up to the house. Lauren’s car is parked at Carol’s, but I do not smile when I see it.

  “Neil,” Peggy says, leaning over as I step down from the car. “Did you do that to that kid?”

  “Do you think I did?”

  “I’m conflicted here. The guy I know, and the guy in that video….”

  “I feel like I don’t even know who I am,” I say.

&
nbsp; “Look. Talk to a lawyer. Have Chris come see me if anything is weird for him at school. Don’t sit around and go crazy. Go for a run, or take Tabby out if you want. Just give me a heads-up first if you’re taking the boat. Steer clear of anybody at the district. Don’t be in contact with anyone. I’ll check in with you tonight, and I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Just keep it between you and me if we talk, all right? Get out for a run.”

  I slam the door to her Suburban, go inside my house, and drop my bags to the floor. I lean against the wall, and my knees feel wobbly, like I’ve just returned from a year at sea, or I’m back on earth after a voyage to the moon. I need something to ground me. Anything. I could go see Lauren, but not yet. Not yet. I could take a slug from the bottle of whiskey in my pantry, but I’d like to keep myself from heading down that path. Instead, I go to the living room, drop to my big chair and tap Michael’s name in my phone’s contact list. Mike answers on the third ring.

  “Got the email, you liked the pho!” he says. “It’s pho-fucking-tastic, right? I knew Chris would be stoked to try—”

  “Mike, stop, I am in a big, big pile of shit right now.”

  “What’s up?” he asks. I can hear the sounds of his restaurant kitchen behind him; clanking pots, spraying water, his crew shouting this and that. I tell him what’s happened, only with the video, not with Lauren, and the sounds go away. I hear a door shut, and I know he’s gone into his office.

  “Dude,” he says after I finish. “Dude. So the thing is online? What is it, YouTube?” I hear him typing at a keyboard. “There’s nothing for your name.” A pause. “A lot of me on TV…a lot of my cooking stuff if I put just Kazenzakis in. But nothing for you.”

  “Try ‘Port Manitou,’” I offer. “Or ‘Port Manitou Teacher.’”

  “Hang on, I got something.” He falls quiet, and I hear my shout of “Hey!” over the line. I had to like, fight him off me. I hear the shout again, and know he’s watching a second time.

  “This is fucked up, Neil. How could you do this?”

  “I didn’t do it!”

  “I’m watching you do it right now.”

  “I did not do that. But…I don’t know. I’m going to get canned. I’m going to lose my insurance. I can’t move Wendy, where am I going to put Wendy if I can’t keep her there?”

  “You are really saying you didn’t do this? You’re full of shit.”

  “Mike! I helped the kid up off the ground. That was it.”

  Michael sighs. He’s not buying it. “You should call Kathleen,” he says. He’s right. Kathleen is always calm in a crisis.

  “I know. I’m going to right after this. You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “This just looks really bad, man.”

  We hang up, and I try the Detroit office of the adoption agency where my sister works. I get the worse of her two assistants and know immediately my call won’t be going through.

  “I need to talk to Kathleen,” I say. “This is her brother, Neil. It’s urgent.”

  “Ms. Kazenzakis is with a client right now….”

  I hang up and go to our spare bedroom and open my laptop. I point my browser to YouTube and search for “Port Manitou Teacher,” and there I am, number one in the results. The name of the video is: “TEACHER GOES APESHIT ON STUDENT, WTF???!!!” and it’s already registered more than eighty-five hundred views. I cannot help watching it, once, again, and one more time after that, and each time it’s like gravity departs, like I unmoor from the earth and float uncertainly until it ends. I scroll down to skim through the accumulated comments, already eight pages long:

  “This is MESSED UP.”

  “Look lyk roid rage crazzy teacher haaaa.”

  “Both our daughters had Mr. K. for physics and this seems very out of character.”

  I highlight the address for the video at the top of the screen, copy it, and paste it into an email addressed to my sister. As a subject, I type:

  “Watch this and call me immediately.”

  Two minutes and forty-four seconds pass before my phone rings.

  “Neil, it’s Kath. What the hell?”

  I explain, again, what happened, and I hear my sister scribbling in the background.

  “You know,” Kathleen says once I finish, “my first impression here is that your version of this story is maybe…shaky.”

  “I’m starting to feel that way about my version of this story too.”

  “But you’re my little brother, and right now you’re going to tell me, did you do this or not?”

  “I did not. Do you think I’d do something like that?”

  “Of course not. I don’t think you’re capable.”

  “Exactly. I absolutely did not do that.”

  “Okay. I believe you,” Kathleen says, and for the first time I feel the pressure of the day lift, just a little. I hear more scribbling. “Do you have a lawyer? Do you even know a lawyer?”

  I laugh at this. “Not really. Do you?”

  “The only lawyers I really know all work with adoption. But there’s a guy I know in Grand Rapids who might be able help. Let me get in touch with him. Give me a couple hours and keep an eye on your phone, okay? Watch your email too.”

  In the calmness of my sister’s voice, I begin to feel that my greatest fear of this morning may not come to pass. In her reassuring tone, I can start to believe that, at least today, I might not crack.

  Lauren, I see when I check through the kitchen window, is still next door. Through the line of trees between my house and Carol’s I can see the red color of her car; it’s there each time I check. I could go over there, I almost go over there, but I don’t. I’m not ready to explain what’s going on. Instead, I consider Peggy Mackie’s advice and change into running clothes. And because I’m not ready to tell Lauren what’s going on and don’t want her to see me running down the drive, I head out my back door, across the field, and through the orchard toward the beach house.

  I’m not being deceptive, really. I just don’t know how I’m even going to begin telling her.

  I am not ready. For any of this.

  On this run I push myself. There’s a good reason to push, I’d say. The day is cool, the sky a uniform gray, and I run hard. My mouth is dry, I push myself, I breathe in gulps, and through the effort of propelling my body over the earth I’m able to get a small handle on what’s going on. I stopped running for months after Wendy’s accident, and it just about finished me. Pushing myself here, gasping, I decide that, no matter how far down this video thing sinks, no matter how bad it all gets, I cannot let myself stop running. I can’t.

  Arthur is up on a ladder at the beach house, pounding beneath the eaves with a hammer. He yells something, probably a greeting, or maybe an invitation to stop and chat, but I wave and keep going. I go north, beyond our beach, beyond Leland’s now-busy complex, and back to the sandy ruts I’d discovered back on Sunday. Up through the cedars and left at the highway and, without thinking, onward to Wendy’s facility.

  I’m winded when I get there, and I need to take a moment out front to catch my breath. The breeze is chilly, almost damp, and I’m wishing I’d thought to bring a light jacket along. When I get too cold outside and my breathing has calmed enough for me to go inside, Shanice seems surprised to see me.

  “Take a personal day, Mr. K.?”

  “You could say that,” I respond, and I manage a smile. It’s hard not to smile in the vicinity of Shanice. In Wendy’s room, on the table next to her bed, I find a giant arrangement of white carnations. It’s huge, like a floral shrub, really, and I duck back into the hall to ask where it came from.

  “A little girl passed in hospice last night,” Shanice tells me. “Her parents wanted us to have her flowers over here in long term. Lord, there were more flower arrangements than people in that room. And there were a lot of people.”

  “You guys do a good job,” I say. “Wendy is pretty lucky.”

>   I go back into my wife’s room and take a seat next to her bed. I lean back, close my eyes and reach through the sheets for her limp, dry hand. I play with her wedding ring and graze my fingertips over her knuckles. There is nothing. No squeeze back, no flinch from my brushing tickle to her palm. I slide my fingers up to her wrist, and press to find her pulse. It takes a moment, but there it is: the barest throb, steady and unstoppable. There’s life in there, faded; a facsimile of existence like the carnations in the room.

  Your wrist is so tiny, Wen.

  So many nights were spent by Wendy’s side at first. Nights in recliners, cots, or pillows stacked on the floor. Sometimes Chris would be at my side, or sometimes half-asleep he’d make his way into his mother’s bed and nestle up beside her among the tubes. It was like he knew, but he didn’t know. He’d speak to her, he continued to speak to her, waiting for an answer, long after I’d quit trying. There were flowers in the room back then, too.

  Only once we returned from Wisconsin, and Wendy was settled into her new home, did Christopher’s darkest period begin. Mike was with us most of the time, Kathleen was there a lot of the time, and Carol’s presence was continuous and calming. Christopher’s first therapist was adamant we get him back into school and return some sort of order to his life. My family agreed with this, and through my fog they encouraged me to agree with it as well. His teachers at the middle school were more than understanding, and his fellow students were beyond sympathetic. Where Chris had never had a girlfriend before (he’d always been more interested in sports than members of the opposite sex), now we had several girls calling the house to speak with him each night. His tragic mantle, obviously unwanted by him, had a sort of mythic appeal, and the girls in his class fought for the chance to bring him saccharine comfort. Allegiances shifted like the dunes, and breakups came every other day.

  To the world, my son seemed normal. He carried himself in a way suggesting he handled his burden well. But a rage built inside him, a justifiable anger at the hand he’d been dealt; his mother, who adored him more than anything, and whom he adored in return, was gone, but not really. Alone, there was fury. His guitar was smashed against the floor. Drinking glasses were thrown into the sink with such force that shards flew and scattered into adjacent rooms. He’d hit things, breakable things: walls and mirrors and framed photos hanging in our hallway. And all the time after, eyes filling with tears as he stared down at his sliced-open knuckles or a rip in his shirt, he’d ask: