Shadow of the Lions

by Christopher Swann

  Ren’s comments about my J-Board hearing had been a way for him to show he owned me. Telling people outside the confines of Blackburne that I had once been suspected of cheating on a test would mean little, but Ren knew he had shaken me. More important, one negative recommendation from him and I could forget about teaching anywhere. The irony was, as I had said to Trip, I thought I was actually a good teacher. And my career as a writer still seemed on hold, if not comatose. Every time I opened my laptop to try to write—which, admittedly, was not often—I found myself staring at the winking cursor on the screen, or I spent up to an hour playing Internet solitaire, promising that if I won this round, I would write; by the time I had won, it was nearly midnight and I would fall into bed, exhausted. At least I wasn’t going to coach winter track with Ren, which I found out just before Thanksgiving break. Instead, I’d been assigned extra dorm duties, proctoring study halls, and so forth. So I just focused on my teaching and worked very hard not to give Ren Middleton any reason to notice me except as a productive, happy drone.

  FOR THE FIVE-DAY THANKSGIVING break I stayed at Blackburne. To see the school empty in November, with dead leaves whirling in eddies by the stairs to Stilwell Hall and the dormitories dark at night save for the entrance lights, was eerie. But Sam Hodges and his wife, Laura, invited me for Thanksgiving, and we had a merry holiday together. It was nice to have almost a week to sleep late and finish grading work in preparation for fall exams, which students would take just before Christmas vacation. I avoided running into Ren and Dr. Simmons by either staying in my apartment to work or visiting with Sam.

  Sam brought up Terence only once. We were sitting in his study one afternoon, talking about exams, though it would be more accurate to say that Sam, who had taught English for three decades, was talking while I listened. He glanced out his window at the falling light and then removed his glasses, absently polishing them with a handkerchief. “You doing okay, Matthias?” he asked, looking at me with that strange, almost vulnerable look people have when they normally wear glasses but aren’t.

  I hesitated. I had thought about confiding in Sam, telling him about the marijuana and the Vicodin and Paul Simmons, but I was still shaken by the look Dr. Simmons had given me and by Ren’s implicit threat. I didn’t know if Sam could help, and I feared that if I asked him to try, I would just drag him down with me. So I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I am. Thanks.” Sam glanced at me once more, his eyes as perceptive as ever, but he tapped his desk once with his fingers, put his glasses back on, and we continued talking about essay questions.

  While I enjoyed the brief holiday, I dreaded the idea of spending the forthcoming two and a half weeks of Christmas vacation at Blackburne. So, reluctantly and not without a fair amount of guilt, I called my parents to ask if I could come visit. I had not been home, for Christmas or for any vacation, for almost three years, ever since I’d been with Michele. Her mother had died in a car crash when she was in high school, and she had a rich father somewhere in New Jersey, but he was busy doting on wife number three and their twin sons, so Michele had written him off. She’d balked at the idea of going home to Asheville with me for our first Thanksgiving together. Instead, she wanted the two of us to start our own tradition, cozying together in the big city. I’d had just enough of a taste of an elite Manhattan lifestyle that the idea of going home to see Mom wearing an apron and pulling a turkey out of an oven seemed ridiculously clichéd. When I called to tell my parents we were staying in New York, my father told me they understood, although Mom, when she got on the line, sounded almost shrill in her happy denial of disappointment. “You kids stay up there and enjoy each other!” she said. “Dad and I will be just fine! Don’t worry!” Michele ended up burning the turkey, and we found ourselves ordering General Tso’s chicken to accompany the sides of green bean casserole and mashed potatoes that I had managed to make, which tasted just enough like Mom’s to make me wish I were eating the real thing. After that Thanksgiving, my parents had flown up to New York three times, each visit more stressful than the last. Nothing horrible had happened, although Michele had been brittle and tense, and I felt I was being too loud when regaling my parents with stories of famous people we had met. My parents were nothing but kind to me and Michele, which somehow made me feel worse.

  I had not seen my parents since their last visit the previous February, and while I had told them about losing my agent—to which my mother especially had responded with sympathy and outrage—I had said nothing about Michele’s rehab, or that we had broken up. Anxiety coursed through me as I made the call—I almost hung up as I listened to the phone ring. But then I heard my mother’s warm voice on the other end and, despite myself, I was suffused with something like relief. She was delighted to hear from me and said in her no-nonsense way that of course they would love to have me come for Christmas. “It’ll save us the postage for mailing your present to you,” she said with a laugh.

  The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas break came and went like so many hours. My students clamored for study packets and review sheets and asked questions that I pointed out they should have been asking all semester. I had to force myself to remember that I had most likely done the same thing when I was a fourth former.

  When they weren’t stressing over exams, my students were anticipating Christmas vacation like submariners looking forward to shore leave in some exotic port. Rusty Scarwood’s family was going to the Bahamas, Hal Starr’s to Disney World. Christmas music blared from dorm rooms, the cornier the better—“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” was a favorite. Stephen Watterson was almost purple with embarrassment as he dropped off a gift at my door: a jar of strawberry preserves his mother had made. “She makes them for all my teachers,” he said, as if by way of apology.

  Ben Sipple still looked pale and haunted, but he had moved in with Brian Schue, Terence’s old roommate. Ben would acknowledge me with only a brief nod or a simple yes or no, and I figured he was embarrassed at how he’d broken down in front of me that night in the chapel. However, on the last page of his exam responses—which students still composed in Blue Books—Ben had written, “Have a good break, Mr. Glass.” That lifted my heart a little.

  THE DAY AFTER THE students departed, I graded the last of my exams, and then I packed a bag and drove south. It was a gorgeous day, the sky a deep, clear blue with large white clouds passing overhead, backlit by a bright sun. The mountains marched by on either flank as I drove down the highway, and when I came out of the Shenandoah Valley and began the long, sweeping descent out of the Virginia mountains to the North Carolina border, I could see the cloud shadows racing over the plains a thousand feet below.

  Late that afternoon, I turned westward toward Asheville and was again climbing the Blue Ridge. The sun was going down, and by the time I drove into the valley and past Black Mountain and Swannanoa, night covered the hills.

  Mom and Dad lived in Biltmore Forest, a small community of winding roads and tall pines, rhododendrons, and boxwoods, just south of Asheville proper. As I turned into the Forest, I could see the Christmas lights and wreaths adorning doors and windows, red ribbons on green foliage.

  Finally, I pulled into the driveway, the white gravel shining under the distant stars, and gazed at the modest, two-story brick Colonial Revival house where I had grown up. I hadn’t even gotten out of my car before the front door opened and Dad came out onto the porch, arm raised in greeting.

  We hugged briefly, and then Dad looked appraisingly at my Porsche. “Very nice!” he said.

  This saddened me, since my father seemed to be forcing himself to compliment something he didn’t actually approve of. At that moment I was embarrassed by my car, which suddenly seemed to represent everything shallow and failed about my life. “My only indulgence,” I said, trying to wave the feeling off with a joke, and then opened the tiny trunk and wrestled my bag out. “How’s Mom?”

  “Making dinner,” he said. “A feast for a king.”

  We good-naturedly argue
d over who would carry my bag, with Dad winning and leading the way, wobbling slightly under the bag’s weight. He looked different than the last time I had seen him, a bit more worn, and with a pang I realized he was sixty. How many more times would I walk into this house behind him? Then my mother was in the front hall, wiping her hands on a flowered apron before flinging her arms around me. “Matthias! Oh, it’s so good to see you! Let’s get you inside. I’ve got a roast in the oven. Thomas,” she called to my father, “just put his bag down and let’s get Matthias a glass of wine. How was your trip?”

  I tried to smother a smile, but failed. “Good,” I said. “Good trip.” I was grinning at my mother, at her busyness and her orchestration of everything, from dinner to where my father put my bag. She realized what I was doing and made a face at me. Then she hugged me again, fiercely this time. “It’s so good to have you home,” she said in my ear. Then she hurried back to the kitchen, saying she had to get the roast out before it was burned and yelling again for Dad to get me a glass of wine. I stood in the front hall, listening to them call to each other from separate parts of the house, and closed my eyes for a moment, soaking in everything familiar, awash with contentment.

  CHRISTMAS WAS A BIG deal in my house when I was growing up, the one time of year my parents indulged themselves. As I was an only child, my parents actively worked against spoiling me, except at Christmas. I remember many Christmas mornings when I would sneak down the stairs at dawn, the wooden risers cold and hard beneath my feet, and peek into the living room, where the tree, decorated to perfection by my mother, rose over a spreading pile of brightly wrapped presents. Each of us had at least one big gift that sat unwrapped by the fireplace. My mother excelled at finding small, personal stocking gifts—a tee shirt, a bottle opener, a book of poetry—which she bought throughout the year and stored up for this one extravagance.

  This year was no different. On Christmas Eve, we went to All Saints Episcopal in Biltmore Village for the Lessons and Carols service, which I had always loved. Mercifully, the church was packed, and we didn’t see many neighbors to whom my mother could show me off, or who would ask questions about what I was doing now. After the service, we drove home and solemnly put out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa Claus before heading to bed. As I laid my head on my pillow in my old room, which seemed far too small with its dormer windows and the ceiling slanted along the roofline, I could hear Mom and Dad moving around downstairs, putting something together quietly, almost furtively, as if I were five and still in the grip of the Santa myth. In my darkened room, I rolled my eyes and smiled.

  The next morning, Mom had to wake me up, which was a definite change from my childhood when I had always been awake at dawn on Christmas morning. She went off to brew coffee and bake sweet rolls while I waited at the top of the stairs for my father, who came out in his bathrobe, yawning. “Merry Christmas,” he managed.

  “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  We went downstairs and walked into the living room, and then stopped. In the middle of the room, like a pagan altar, sat an enormous silver gas grill. “Wow,” I said.

  Dad nodded, a smile on his face. “Just imagine what I could cook on that,” he said.

  “You plan on grilling in the living room?”

  Dad gave a slight smile. “Your mother insisted we put it together inside so you could see it when you came down,” he murmured. “Surprise and all. Help me carry it outside later?”

  “Coffee’s making,” Mom said, coming in behind us. She looked at me, her face alight with glee. “Did you see the grill?”

  Once we had coffee, we commenced the opening of the presents. Mom laughed as she unfolded a gift from me, a red apron with a gold Blackburne lion’s head on it. I’d gotten Dad a nice bottle of Shiraz and a Blackburne baseball cap, which he promptly put on his head and wore for the rest of the morning. Then Mom found another present from me and opened it. Inside was an elegant tablet with raised keyboard buttons like blister packs on pill sheets. My mother glanced at me, a strange look on her face.

  “It’s a Kindle, Mom,” I explained. “See, you can download books to it in like sixty seconds. You can carry a whole digital library with you in that one device. Isn’t that cool? I know how you and Dad like to go on trips, and you both read, so I thought—”

  Mom exchanged a look with Dad.

  “What?” I asked.

  Dad reached under the tree and wordlessly handed me a present. To Matthias, the gift tag read, With All Our Love, Mom and Dad. Puzzled, I ripped open the wrapping. Inside, I found an identical Kindle. We all looked at one another and then burst into laughter. When we’d finally settled down, wiping away tears and catching our breath, my mother said, in a reasonable imitation of my voice, “See, you can download books to it,” and we were all howling again.

  LATER, AFTER WE HAD cleared away all the wrapping paper, Mom began preparing Christmas dinner while Dad went outside to get some more firewood, and I sat alone in the living room. Someone had turned on the stereo, and Frank Sinatra was crooning “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I used to hate this part of Christmas morning, with its inevitable sense of anticlimax after the excitement of opening presents. But now I bathed in the post-gift-giving letdown, welcoming it. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been home in three years. Neither of my parents had said anything about it, other than Mom repeating almost hourly how glad she was that I was home. I knew this wouldn’t last, that my parents would at some point gently broach the topic, would ask how I liked teaching, how my writing was going, what I would do next. I had been dreading that conversation, but now I was resigned to it. Let be, as Hamlet said to Horatio. I closed my eyes, listening to Sinatra sing about how we’d always be together if the Fates allowed.

  Dad came in, and I opened my eyes to see he was still wearing his Blackburne cap. “Ready to help me move this thing outside?” he said, gesturing to the grill.

  “Dad,” I said.

  He paused, waiting. Sinatra crooned in the background: “Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore . . .”

  I took a breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come home sooner.” Something hard and hot was in my throat, and then I was weeping. Good job, I thought as I sat there on the couch and cried. I hadn’t cried in front of my father since I was seven and had fallen off my bike, scraping my arm and leg.

  My father was never very affectionate, not physically. He would smile and talk and listen, but he wasn’t a hugger like Mom. Now he came over and sat next to me on the couch, and then awkwardly patted me on the back. “Are you all right, Son?” he asked quietly. I nodded, and then cleared my throat and wiped at my eyes. Dad handed me a tissue, and I blew my nose. “Thanks,” I said, my voice thick. “Let’s get that grill outside, huh?”

  Dad nodded, and we rolled the grill through the living room and out the back doors of the den onto the stone patio. We didn’t speak about it any more, as if we’d rolled the incident outside, too, and left it in the cold.

  AS I EXPECTED, IT was Mom who brought everything up. I suspect Dad may have told her that I had apologized, in tears, about not coming home, because she stopped making a big deal about how glad she was that I was there. But the day after Christmas, when Dad went back to work, Mom stayed home “to clean the house down,” which meant taking down all the Christmas decorations. Once Christmas was over, the ornaments had to be boxed up, the crèche on the sideboard put away, and the tree taken to the curb for recycling—all immediately, as if we were committing an act of hubris by continuing to celebrate a holiday that had already passed. “The office can manage for one day without me looking over their shoulders,” Mom said, shooing Dad out the door. Still, I knew why she was staying home when she told Dad that I would help her clean the house.

  We started with the tree, carefully removing every ornament and laying it in its box or compartment. “Remember this?” she said, holding up a plastic ball ornament with a lumpy handprint in glitter p
aint. “You made this for me.”

  “Yeah, when I was four.”

  “It was sweet. Things like this are important, you know. Good memories.”

  I glanced at her, wondering whether she was using this as an opportunity to open a discussion, but she was looking at the ornament, smiling, and then she laid it carefully in its box. Occasionally she would comment on one or another of the ornaments: a reproduction in gold filigree of Monticello, which we had visited the summer before I started at Blackburne; a wool-knit Santa Claus that my grandmother had made; a cornhusk angel with delicate, dragonfly wings. I unwrapped the strings of lights from the tree, coiled them up, and put them in a Macy’s shopping bag where they had lived for as long as I could remember. Then Mom helped me shove the tree through the front door, and I dragged it down to the street while she vacuumed up the pine needles.

  I was beginning to think that I would escape unscathed, when Mom, who was now packing up the crèche, said, “So, what’s it like, teaching at Blackburne?”

  “Hard,” I said, and then quickly followed up with, “I mean, teaching is hard. Figuring out what to say to students in class, grading, living on dorm.”

  She nodded, wrapping one of the wise men figurines in tissue. “Must be strange, being on the other side of the desk,” she said. “Seeing the school in a whole different light.”

  An image of Terence Jarrar, dead and lying on the rock in the river, was so startling that I flinched. I looked quickly at my mother, but she was putting the wise man into a box and hadn’t noticed. “Uh, yeah,” I said, trying not to sound shaken. “I’ve definitely seen the school differently.” I picked up another figurine, a shepherd, and grabbed some tissue paper to keep busy.