The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  The halls were silent, only a faint hum of pipes working underneath her feet and up the walls. A distant squeak of a janitor’s wheeled bucket. Even the bathroom lights were dimmed and every soft thump, squeak, and bump echoed in the dark building. She rarely stayed this late.

  She looked down the hall. The science wing ran perpendicular to the English wing, the building shaped like an H, with the English Department dominating the connecting hall between everything else—language and math—and science.

  Nate’s classroom spilled light to the empty hallway.

  Bridget immediately turned toward it. She’d been withholding the mill adventure from him, just until she was sure what was going on, but Nate always had a unique perspective. Thoughtful. Maybe he’d even heard from Lucia; he’d been worried about her, too. Bridget knew that Lucia talked to Nate, at least more than she talked to anyone else. He’d had her as a junior and again as a senior, repeating algebra and electing a statistics class. Not that Lucia was dumb, far from it. Bridget couldn’t imagine her home life lent itself to any kind of study habit.

  If nothing else, Nate might listen. Plus, she wanted to rib him about the flowers for Ginny. What a suck up.

  His door was partly closed and she silently nudged it open with one hand. She almost walked right in but stopped and hovered in the doorway, blinking.

  She saw Lucia first, the fine, downy hair the first thing she noticed. Nate sitting in his desk chair, and Lucia leaning against his desk. His hand resting on her shoulder and her hair, covering her face, fanning out, spilling over Nate’s outstretched arm.

  Bridget stood frozen in the doorway, dumbfounded, but exposed. If either had looked up, they would have seen her.

  Lucia leaned forward and pulled at a handful of Nate’s shirt, hovering over him, his knee between her legs, her hair covering both of their faces.

  Then she kissed him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucia, March 31, 2015

  Her Goodwill shift ended at nine and she stuck around with Randy for a while, just shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes on the stoop after they closed.

  Randy was twenty-two, almost as poor as her, lived with his mom in a trailer. They’d taken to going to his place while his mom worked. He’d roll a joint with his thick fingers and seal the paper with his tongue. They’d play Xbox, stupid war games she didn’t care about. Sometimes she let him do things to her, his hand between her legs, his fingers sliding around inside her, his tongue in her ear, licking, his stubble scratching her cheek. Once she climbed on top of him, his jeans pulled tight across his thighs, boxers bunched up under the buttoned waistband. She lifted her skirt and took him in, just for a second until he pushed her off, rough, and came all over the brown velvet couch, the wet spot combining with all the other stains to form a pattern.

  This time, she shoved him off, and he blinked, hurt and rejected. When he dropped her off later he gave her a half wave. She could tell he wanted to come in, but she eyed her house, never knowing if Lenny was inside or not.

  Lenny.

  The hitting started not all that long ago. Shortly after Jimmy left, long after their mother left. Their house—owned by Jimmy’s father, then Jimmy, and now, apparently, Lenny—stood, slowly biodegrading into the dirt, like paper in a landfill.

  She tried not to come home until late, after Lenny had retreated to his room. She tried to not turn on any lights. Because of this, she could tell by the smell the house was growing things: mold, fungus. She could hear the scrabblings of mice late at night. Squirrels in the ceiling. Coming for the food rotting in the kitchen sink.

  It was only ten o’clock.

  She opened the door, the smell hitting her in the face like a wall. Goddamn it.

  In the kitchen, Lucia flicked on the light to the audible skittering of cockroaches. Her father would have died. Before he became a drunk, when she was a kid and the mill was still open and her father had a job, he was a decent father. Not a great one. But he was there. He kept them fed.

  This would have appalled him.

  She dumped half the dishes straight into the trash can. Under the sink, behind crusted bottles of cleaning solution, she found rubber gloves and donned them. She hadn’t eaten here in weeks, instead grabbing on the go, out of her own paycheck, stealing food from the caf, and sometimes Randy even bought her McDonald’s. She didn’t need to eat a lot, so she didn’t.

  When the garbage was cleared out, she ran hot water in the sink. Found an old rag and some dish detergent and let the water scald her skin red, her arms zinging with the burn. Things weren’t always this bad. This was neglectful and disgusting and she couldn’t live like this. This was squalor. Worse than Randy’s trailer.

  Lucia closed her eyes. She envisioned Andrew’s bedroom, that warm vanilla candle smell. Taylor’s family room, the softness of the sofa beneath her bare thighs, exposed by silky track shorts. She imagined Mr. Winters’s home, his cozy townhouse living room. She’d never seen it, of course, but she saw the outside once, drawn there like a magnet, driving by in Lenny’s truck. A row of townhomes, mums on the stoop, in a cul-de-sac filled with kids. Quaint.

  When she opened her eyes, she was still there, in her kitchen, the garbage stinging her nose. She pulled a plate up out of the sink and at first she thought it was rice. Then the rice moved.

  She screamed, threw the plate, which shattered against the wall.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Lenny stood behind her, for how long she didn’t know. When she turned to look at him, she knew.

  She wasn’t an idiot. Lenny was a drug addict. Heroin, mostly, she thought, but she steered so clear of him she could never be sure. His usual high was dopey, slow, falling asleep so hard and fast she thought he’d died. Sometimes she’d hoped he’d died. Lately, it had been something else. Something up, jumpy and angry, a flashing behind his eyes and in his voice that scared her. A new kind of violence. Him hitting her, only a few short months ago had been new.

  “This is disgusting. How can you live like this? How did I let it get like this?” She lived here, too. How long had it been since she’d even entered the kitchen? Weeks?

  “Shut the fuck up. You’re never here, what do you care?” His voice was gravelly, broken, and his eyes darted around at the sink, the garbage, the maggots on the plate, then at her face. He sucked a cigarette and blew smoke at her.

  Without thinking, she smacked it out of his hand and it rolled to the linoleum. She dropped the garbage bag.

  He closed the distance between them, his palm striking her cheek, quick and biting. It wasn’t a hard hit—he was too messed up for that—but it still stung. Brought tears to her eyes and a pulse to her face. She covered the spot instinctively with her hand and took a step back.

  “Fuck you.” She spat, unable to tame the anger that crested in her throat, her head. She had to get out of there, not just for the night, but permanently, but how? He came at her and she pushed him away, hard. When they fell to the ground, her on top, she punched at his chest.

  The fight was slow, almost childish. She, weak from lack of solid sustenance and exercise, and he, feeble with the chemicals in his blood. Her hands around his neck, a rapid pulse beneath her thumb. Too rapid for heroin. Was it coke? Meth?

  His hand shot out across the floor and the cigarette was there, suddenly in his hand. She felt the sear against her neck, the smell of burning skin.

  She let go, cried out, jumped back. She clutched her neck, the boil bubbling beneath her fingertips.

  From the floor, Lenny laughed.

  She left, the screen door slamming behind her. Standing on the broken sidewalk, the weeds tickling her ankles, she could still hear him laughing, a loose, maniacal sound, and she knew she’d never go back.

  CHAPTER 11

  Nate, Tuesday, April 28, 2015: A week after the birds fell

  “You have to understand where I’m coming from, Nate.” Tad Bachman crossed and uncrossed his legs, settled finally with his ankle resting on his knee, his b
ody pitched forward as if any moment he might dart for the door.

  Nate studied the degrees behind his desk. Mounted in gilded frames, the glass glinting with a hint of Nate’s own reflection.

  “Suspended? No, I really don’t. I didn’t do anything with this girl. I bought her a hotel room to get her away from her abusive brother.” His mind flashed briefly on her fingertips brushing his bare skin, a feather touch between the buttons of his shirt. He took a breath, took a gamble. “Bring her in, ask her. The reporters are here looking for a story. There’s no story in the birds. There won’t be for weeks. They know that. They’ve all gone home, except for one. Why? She’s looking to take something back to her editor. She dug up this little gem; who cares if it’s not real?” He was protesting too much, going on about it too long. He could see the doubt in Tad’s wrinkled forehead, his face almost a wince.

  “I made the same argument to the superintendent. I did.” He paused then, picked up a pen, flicked it between his fingertips. “But we did bring her in, Nate.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t about what the paper says anymore. It’s what she says.” Tad’s voice dropped and he looked off to the side, a bare expanse of wall that held no interest. Nothing to look at, except it wasn’t Nate’s face.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Lucia wouldn’t say that. We’re friends.”

  Tad’s face snapped back, his eyes widening. “Friends? How so?”

  “Don’t pull this shit on me, Bachman. The same way I’m ‘friends’ with all my other students. I teach them algebra, precalc, statistics, yes. But you know as well as I do they come to me. I’m the coach. I pay attention. Which is more than some of their parents do.”

  “You’re on dangerous ground, Winters.”

  “Again, what the fuck does that even mean? I’m not doing anything differently than you’ve known about for years. And now you’re high and mighty on me? Come off it.” Nate stood, his legs shaking, his blood pumping in his throat. He gripped the edge of Tad’s desk, an easy three feet between them.

  “I never thought you’d abuse it.” Tad’s voice was loud, almost a shout. Nate pictured Ginny on the other side of the door, her fingers working at her blueish hair, a nervous twitch, her hand hovering over the phone. To call whom?

  “I’m not abusing anything!” Nate slapped at the desk, his hand stinging, and Tad jumped back, took a breath.

  “Look.” Tad lowered his voice. “Let me just do my job, Nate. If you weren’t involved,” his voice broke on the word, “it’ll come out in the wash, okay?”

  “She really said that? That we were involved?” Nate’s mind spun, thinking back to all their twilight conversations in his classroom, after the halls fell silent, that veered toward too intimate, too close, the ones that made his heart thud in his chest like a drum.

  “She called it . . . love.” Bachman flexed his fingers against the glass top of his desk, his eyes darting at the word love.

  “I need to know, Tad, exactly what she said,” Nate said, a scratch in his throat. He tried to clear it, but couldn’t. He could hardly breathe.

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s an ongoing investigation,” Tad said. He held his hands out, plaintive. “It’s my job, you get that right?”

  “She called it love?” The idea seemed unfathomable. They’d never uttered those words, the very idea of it ridiculous.

  Tad stood, crossed the room, put his hand on the doorknob. A dismissal. Nate’s job, then, suspended. A continued paycheck, but for how long? Tad half turned, his head down, eyes studying the carpet, a red-and-black square pattern that looked like a maze.

  “She said you loved her.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Alecia, Tuesday, April 28, 2015: A week after the birds fell

  The story first hit the Harrisburg Courier, a second-rate paper with day-old news. The byline said Rowena White, the reporter who cornered Alecia outside Bridget’s house the day of the shopping spree (was it only Saturday?).

  “Teacher Accused of Student Affair” was the headline, but Alecia could hardly bring herself to read the story. She read it in bits and pieces on the computer, scrolling up then down again, the text flying by making her dizzy. The whole story rested on anonymous sources; it was horrible reporting, really. Irresponsible. The reporter corroborated that Nate and Lucia were seen together at Deannie’s Motel. She found the desk clerk: “I thought she looked young, but not like a student. I’d never seen either of ’em before in my life.” You could hear the gum smack through the print.

  The story named no one on record.

  The school had no comment. Nate, of course, had no comment. Alecia had no comment. Alecia suddenly wanted to punch something, a surge of anger blooming bright hot in her chest.

  The article itself was short, only a few paragraphs. The only pictures included were Nate’s yearbook photo and Lucia’s senior pictures. Her long hair looked more blond than white, and her makeup was minimal. She looked almost girl-next-door, save for the glittering piercing in the soft skin between her lip and her nose.

  Nate came home at two, before the last bell, and he stood in the hallway, his backpack hanging impotently in one hand. “I think I was fired.”

  Alecia could only nod, the bile rising in her throat.

  Now that it was in print, it all felt so much worse. Even if she had believed Nate before, when he begged her to and got mad and broke the beer bottle and cut his hand that night in the kitchen (Was it only three nights ago? Saturday? How was it possible?), how could she believe him now?

  She could ask him about the picture, the girl’s ivory skin, her bursting cleavage. Alecia wanted to ask him if Lucia felt younger, tighter, smoother. She bit back the words. He might lie. She wasn’t sure if she could bear it, the way his eyes would skip around the room, his tongue finding the words slowly. She needed more first, she needed something concrete.

  She stared at him, his hair ragged and disheveled, and felt angry, like she wanted to punch his chest, and profoundly sad. What had they done to each other here? If she couldn’t even be sure he was telling the truth, what did they have?

  “Alecia, I didn’t do this. You have to know that.”

  “Do I? Do I have to know anything?” His reasoning seemed sound, his actions explainable. Except that picture. The red bra, the pale expanse of skin. She couldn’t unsee it.

  Gabe was coloring at the dining room table, mostly arranging the colored pencils to comply with some internal need. He loved markers, crayons, colored pencils. He rolled them around his hands and smiled. He pressed the sharpened tips against the pads of his fingers and threw them across the room when they weren’t sharp enough. He peeled the wrappers off the crayons and then got furious when they broke. They spent half of Nate’s paycheck on new crayons alone. Oh God, Nate’s paycheck.

  “Fired?” Alecia repeated, feeling slow, late on the response. “As in . . . ?”

  “Temporary leave. Until ‘we get the mess sorted out.’ Bachman’s words.” Tad Bachman, Mt. Oanoke school principal, a young guy, not much older than Alecia. Nate’s racquetball buddy, of course.

  “I’ll have to go back to work.” Alecia said automatically, her brain spinning. She said it like it could be a sacrifice, and she flashed on the new outfit hanging in her closet. Shoes she hadn’t even shown Nate. Expensive, creamy makeup. It didn’t feel like a sacrifice, it felt slippery and decadent and freeing.

  “No. It’s temporary. I’ll still get paid. I’ll just be . . . here.” Nate looked around then caught Alecia’s eyes. “I didn’t do this thing. Never.”

  “Why do they think you did, then? What did you actually do?” Alecia pulled her arms around her waist. She was shivering. Their townhouse had a shoddy air-conditioning system; it needed maintenance, maybe replacement. It rambled and groaned and they spent April through September sweating through the thinnest T-shirts. But Alecia couldn’t get warm, and her back teeth clanged together.

  “I let a student get too close. I wan
ted to help her. Her family—it’s awful. You can’t even understand the nightmare. I’ve done this before, you know. Gotten too close, tried to help too much. It’s never backfired like this, and it’s never . . .” Nate looked around the room, avoiding Alecia’s eyes. “Sexual. It wasn’t this time, either. God, this is impossible. Someone is saying it is, that I slept with her. That’s just crazy.”

  “Who is saying that?”

  “Bachman said that she admitted it. Those were his exact words. I said, admitted what? You can’t admit a lie.” He toed the chair, like a caught toddler, and shook his head. “I asked what’s ten years of friendship mean to him? He said it’s more complicated than that.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Nate.” Alecia remembered the Instagram picture, the flush swell of breast up close to the camera lens. She imagined Nate thumbing the image, his breath hitching. She imagined that girl straddling her husband’s body, her long skinny, teenage legs wrapped around his middle-aged naked bottom, her white hair splayed on a white pillowcase.

  “Look, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Tad. I paid for her hotel room. I met her at that motel; she said she needed help and I helped her. The reporter took a picture of me hugging her. I was comforting her. Do you see that?” Nate said slowly, annunciating each syllable, like they often did to Gabe, but with more patience.

  “I know this is what you say. But you lied about it. You lied to me. How do I believe you now?” Alecia knew that Nate often believed she was unreasonable. That her opinions on mostly everything, to him, seemed unfounded. The difference between them was that he blindly trusted: people, fate, goodness. And she, largely, did not.

  “I explained all that. I’ve been explaining all of that. For days now, but like everything else, you can’t let it go.”

  Alecia said nothing because she knew he was lying about at least one thing: that picture. A lie by omission is still a lie.