Chapter 20
Andrew
I know I’m sticking my neck out, but I don’t care. The guilt is eating me up on the inside. The need to be there for him, overwhelming. They don’t own me, and there are no do-overs. I will never be able to make up for abandoning him on this day.
Mrs. Stovall is not at her desk. With a confidence I don’t feel, I knock on Mr. Redmon’s open door. He’s typing but glances up briefly and motions me in. I get right to the point.
“I’d like permission to attend Mr. Westfall’s funeral this afternoon.”
Mr. Redmon’s eyes remain fixed on his computer screen. “No. We’re short on subs today.”
“I can get someone to cover my sixth- and seventh-period classes.”
He ignores me, but I am not giving up so easily. This is nonsense.
“Robert is my student. He talked to me a lot about his dad. I feel like I’m letting him down if I don’t at least make an appearance at the funeral.”
Mr. Redmon settles back in his chair and finally looks up at me. “Robert Westfall has seven teachers, Mr. McNelis, in case you’ve forgotten. I can’t release seven teachers to attend a funeral. Ms. Lincoln, Mr. Hough, and Mr. Gorman are already going. There’s no need for you to be there. I suggest you send a card to the family.”
The argument is stupid. I doubt even one of those other six teachers, with the exception of the band director, has expressed any interest whatsoever in attending the funeral. And Logan Hough? The twelfth grade assistant principal? I doubt Robert even knows him. He’s not the kind of kid to spend a lot of time in the AP’s office. I tell Mr. Redmon this and suggest I go in Logan’s place, but he doesn’t budge.
“I’m not releasing you. That is my final word.”
I know what he’s thinking, and it pisses me off.
“I could ride over with Ms. Lincoln or Mr. Gorman.”
I wait for him to respond to my suggestion, but he ignores me. After a long moment, I stalk out of his office, furious.
The funeral is scheduled to begin at one o’clock. Mr. Westfall is Catholic, so the services will be held at St. Mary’s. In the next few minutes before my planning period ends, I call the church. If I can’t be there for the funeral, maybe I can be there for the family gathering after the burial. I jot down the information the church secretary gives me.
Until this morning, I hadn’t even considered trying to attend the funeral. It was Kiki who changed my mind.
She’d been especially hard to disengage when I dropped her at Ms. Smith’s Village. She clung to me, she cried big two-year-old tears, she begged, “Daddy, no leave.”
Robert had said he wanted his father to die, but I wonder if somewhere down deep inside, he’s crying too. Daddy, no leave.
I’ve really known Robert for only a little over four weeks, but I feel like, in some ways, I know him better than anyone else. I feel like he’s shared with me his deepest hurt.
I need to be there.
When the final bell rings, I usher the kids out, lock the door, and use the MapQuest page I printed to find my way to him.
The family is gathered at the home of Robert’s aunt, Dr. Whitney Bloom. The house is in a transitioning neighborhood where large, ostentatious homes on small lots dwarf the 1950s-style one-stories of older residents who are still holding out. Two homes on the street are under construction. The cars packed in the driveway and the photo attached to a gas lamp point the way to the house.
I find a place to park on the curb six houses down and walk back.
Through the thick leaded glass, I can see the mourners. A middle-aged man in a dark gray suit opens the oversized, heavy steel door. I reach out my hand. “I’m Andrew McNelis, Robert’s Calculus teacher.”
“Oh. Thank you for coming,” he says, gripping my hand firmly, then swinging the door open wide.
“Robert’s here somewhere. I didn’t see you at the funeral?”
“I couldn’t make it. Is it okay if I’m here?”
“Of course it is. Come on in. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen; please go help yourself. I’ll see if I can find Robert.”
I thank him and migrate toward the food, but I’m not hungry. Still, I don’t know these people, and standing around with my hands in my pockets is awkward, so I take a plate someone hands me and lay a few slices of ham and a roll on it and wander back into the living room.
It’s cool but sunny outside, and someone has propped open the French doors. Two young boys, twins, a few years older than Kiki, are taking turns dunking a junior-size basketball into a Little Tikes hoop a few feet away from the pool, while the adults sitting at the patio table look on. They seem relaxed, and I think, were it not for the black suits and dresses, this could be any poolside party.
No one pays any attention to me, and I don’t want to intrude on the gathering of family and friends, so I continue through a wooden gate that leads to a covered area just outside the garage.
I almost don’t see Robert. He’s sitting on the concrete pad, his back pressed against a stone column. He’s staring out at the construction the next lot over. As I settle onto the concrete next to him, he looks up, surprised. His face is pale and pinched.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” he says.
I offer him some ham, but he shakes his head. “Have you eaten anything today?” I ask.
“Not hungry.”
I set the plate on the ground next to me. “Your dad must have had a lot of friends. That’s quite a crowd in there.”
Robert smirks. “They’re my aunts’ friends, colleagues, I don’t know.”
He looks back at the construction. I study his profile as the silence stretches out. He’s gotten a haircut recently, his sideburns trimmed with neat precision. But he looks exhausted, like he can barely keep his eyes open.
“Are you sleeping?” I ask.
“You know, I didn’t even know we were coming here until Father Vincent invited everyone at the end of the service.” He scoffs. “Mom and I spent all day cleaning the house yesterday, and now everyone’s in there telling Aunt Whitney and Aunt Olivia and my grandmother how sorry they are for their loss. They look at me like I’m just some random kid who was dragged to the funeral by his parents.”
“What about your mom?”
“She disappeared right after we got here. I think she’s upstairs taking a nap. It’s been a hard couple of weeks on her.”
He stretches out his legs for a moment, then pulls them back to his chest.
It makes me angry to think how self-centered these people are. This day should be about this young man, comforting him, offering him words of encouragement, but here he sits, alone in a carport, and nobody inside even seems to notice his absence.
“Why did you come?” he asks. “I thought Mr. Redmon read you the riot act?”
“Yeah, well. Mr. Redmon may be the boss of me at school, but he doesn’t own me. I couldn’t get away for the funeral, but I wanted to be here for you, even if I am a little late.”
“Ms. Lincoln and Mr. Gorman came. Mr. Hough too.”
“I know. Did they talk to you?”
“They didn’t come to the cemetery, but they did come through the receiving line after the funeral. Ms. Lincoln sent a little magnolia tree with one bloom for us to plant in the yard.”
I smile. “That’s a nice gesture.”
Robert is still wearing his suit, but he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, and when he stretched his legs, I noticed that he’s holding a small notebook. “What’s in the notebook?” I ask.
He looks down at it for a moment like he’s just seeing it for the first time, then turns it over twice in his hands.
“One of my aunts gave this to my dad before he got so bad he couldn’t write anymore. It was so he could record his memories, words of wisdom, his hopes for my future . . . his love.”
He bites his lower lip, then looks away. I take the notebook from him and open it. I flip through the blank pages and silently curse the man who dared to call himself a father.
He’s beginning to twitch. I lay my hand on his shoulder. “Robert . . ”
He suddenly pushes himself to his feet and stumbles over me, fishing his car keys from his pocket. I catch up with him at his car. “Robert.”
He turns, his face stricken. “I have to get out of here.”
I nod and hold out my hand. “Let me have your keys. I’ll drive.”
He hesitates, then hands them over.
I hit the unlock button, then get him settled in the passenger seat before climbing behind the wheel. When I crank the engine, Muse’s “Uprising” explodes from the speakers. Robert doesn’t even flinch at the loud music, and he doesn’t complain when I drop the volume.
I don’t think about where I’m going when I pull his car into the street. I just drive, glancing across the console at him when I can. He’s folded his arms tightly across his chest, and he’s twitching more violently, almost like he’s cold. And I know he’s hurting, for the father he’s lost . . . or maybe the one he never had.
A short time later I find myself pulling into a parking space in front of my apartment. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is a bad idea. But I’m not thinking about consequences; I’m thinking about a young man who’s falling apart.
The efficiencies are aligned along the back parking lot, the bottom units each with a front door and a broad window overlooking the concrete front porch. The last time Robert had stood on that porch, I’d sent him away.
I wrap my arm around his shoulders and walk him to my apartment as he furiously wipes at his eyes. But once I unlock the door and show him in, he turns and falls into me.
“It’s okay, baby.” The words are out of my mouth before I can check them. I close the door behind me and hold on to him as he sobs into my shoulder, his fingers gripping at the back of my shirt. When his anguish dissolves into something like hiccups, he turns his face to my neck.
“Come on,” I say, pulling away. I settle him on the futon, then bring him a small glass of wine and sit on the sofa table in front of him.
He takes a sip, grimaces, then drinks the whole thing down. I reach for the bottle and refill his glass. He stares into it, but he doesn’t drink again. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“Don’t be. Everybody needs a good cry every now and then.”
He sniffs and swipes at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “When was the last time you cried?”
I want to make him feel okay about letting go, but it seems important that I be honest with him. So I tell him the truth. “I don’t know. I guess it’s been a while. I almost cried this morning when Kiki wouldn’t let go of my pants leg. I had to shake her off like a dog. That hurt like hell.”
He smiles a little, but it lasts only a moment.
“Do you want to talk?” I ask.
He shrugs and swallows hard. “I thought I’d be relieved when he died,” he says finally, turning the glass around in his hands, “but I just feel so damn empty.” He looks up at me. “So damn . . . insignificant.”
“You’re not insignificant.”
He searches my face, and for a moment, his eyes settle on my mouth. I feel like some invisible elasticity between us, like a rubber band that has been stretched, is about to release. And then his eyes find mine again, and he says, “Thank you.”
He looks around at my apartment. From where he sits he can see every inch of it, with the exception of the bathroom and the inside of the closet. “Where do you sleep?” he asks.
“You’re sitting on it.”
“I’m in your bed?”
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say that.”
He laughs a little, the first really happy sound I’ve heard him make in almost a week. I realize how much I’ve missed that. It feels like the sun rising on a cold winter morning.
“Can I use your bathroom?” he asks.
“Are you going to nose around in my cabinets?”
“Probably.”
I smile back at him and nod my head toward the bathroom.
While he’s in there, I look for something to feed us. The toilet flushes and then the faucet turns on and then off again as I pull out leftover burger patties and buns from the night before and set them on the counter. I can hear him opening the medicine cabinet, the cabinet under the sink, the shower curtain. I think he’s doing it all loudly so I’ll know. I have no secrets, but I’m amused by his blatant snooping.
I turn on the toaster oven. I’m just slicing a tomato when I hear the rush of water in the tub. The distinct bubblegum smell of Mr. Bubble wafts under the door.
“Dang this stuff makes a lot of bubbles,” he calls out.
I laugh to myself and turn the toaster oven on low, wrap the meat in foil and toss it inside.
I’m watching some breaking news on CNN when he emerges half an hour later. His white dress shirt is unbuttoned and hanging loosely over his trousers and he’s holding a Binky up by the plastic handle, a grin playing across his face.
“Ah, so that’s where I left it,” I say, plucking it from his hand and into my mouth as I make my way back to the kitchen. I lay the Binky on the counter. “Feeling better?” I ask over my shoulder.
“Yeah. Has Tom Cruise come out of the closet?”
I glance back at the TV. “If he did, I don’t think it would be breaking news. What do you like on your burger?”
“Whatever you got.”
I settle next to him on the futon. He takes the stacked paper plates and separates them on the sofa table. I hand him a cold can of Coke. He sets the can down next to his plate and picks up the ticket stubs from a pewter tray where I dump my pockets at the end of the day. “The Iron Maiden concert,” he says, looking at them. He fans them out in an unspoken question.
“I went with a colleague.”
“Male or female?”
I wonder if this is a loaded question. “Female, actually. Ms. Went.”
He sets them back in the tray and picks up the blank notebook I had placed there. I curse myself for not throwing it away. Robert fans the pages. His eyes are slightly puffy and the edges of his lower eyelids are tinged red. He sets the notebook back down and takes another sip of his soda.
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer is soliciting Sanjay Gupta’s opinion of some protests somewhere in the world.
“Aren’t you worried about my being here, in your apartment and all?” he asks.
“A little.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
I think about this a moment before I answer. A few days ago this would have been out of the question. A few days ago all I could think about was my career, my reputation, how a scandal might affect my daughter.
But when he’d showed me that notebook, something about those blank pages had written something on my heart, and there was no unwriting it. I could have taken him to a Starbucks half an hour away to talk, someplace where no one was likely to recognize us. We could have sat in his car in a parking lot somewhere. But I’d taken him here, right into the lion’s den, so to speak.
The fact is, he was crashing, and he needed a soft place to land. It was just that simple.
“Because,” I say, turning to him, careful to keep my eyes above his shoulders, “I’m more concerned about you at the moment than I am about me.”
He locks eyes with me, and I think he’s going to cry again, but then his eyes drift down to my mouth, and an alarm goes off in my head.
“Eat or you’re going to hurt my feelings.”
As he picks at his burger, I realize I have no appetite either. I focus on the TV, but I am keenly aware of him next to me. “How about some ice cream?” I ask after a while.
“Moo-llennium Crunch?”
“Ah, you were paying attention. Lucky for you, I haven’t opened it.”
I stack our plates and dump them in the trash under the sink and find a couple of bowls. I’ve got the ice cream carton open, and I’m looking for the scoop with the sugar cone handle that Kiki likes when my phone signals a text.
If I said you had a beautiful body . . . ?
I laugh when I read his text. I know what comes next. “Country Western? Argh, you’re killing me.” I glance over my shoulder. He’s leaning against the facing that delineates kitchen from living/sleeping quarters.
“They’re not lyrics,” he says.
I know that. I can see it in his eyes, soft and pleading. I smile at him again like he’s joking around and turn back to the ice cream. “One or two scoops?” I ask stupidly.
“Can we just talk about this?”
No, we can’t. I scoop up some ice cream and release it into one of the bowls.
“Please look at me,” he says quietly.
“Do you want ice cream or not?” I ask lightly.
“Please.”
“Robert, do me a favor, will you? Button your shirt.”
“Why?”
“Do you really have to ask that?”
“No,” he says, “but I want to hear it from you.”
I realize I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the counter. In the bowl, the lone scoop of ice cream is melting around the edges. I can’t do this. I can’t look at him. He sees right through me. Part of me is glad that he knows, and part of me is terrified about what he’ll do with that knowledge and whether or not I can put on the brakes if it comes to that.
“If I button my shirt, will you talk to me?” he pleads. When I don’t respond, he says, “I’m buttoning it, okay?”
After a moment, I pick up the scoop from the counter and set it back in the carton, then turn to him, my eyes fixed on the linoleum floor.
“I think there’s something going on between us. The way you look at me.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, I can hear the frustration in his voice. “I just want to talk about this. Why can’t you look at me? I’m not a kid. I’m eighteen. And look around. There’s nobody here. Just us. Dammit.” In my peripheral vision I can see him hold his hands out, then drop them limply again to his sides. “I think I’m in love with you, Andrew, and I think, maybe . . .” He mutters a fuck. “Just tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll never mention it again. We can go back to where we were. Pretend like this never happened. But I need to know. Please. Please, just tell me.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know how to respond. I won’t deny it, but how can I confirm it either? The silence stretches out between us. I’m afraid to look at him.
The heater kicks on.
Finally, he turns away. “I’ll drive you back to your car,” he says quietly.
“Robert . . .” He stops, and I lift my eyes to him. I want to reach out to him. Instead, I grip the counter behind me more tightly. I’m about to make an admission I have no business making, but I can’t let him go like this. I take a deep breath and allow myself a small smile. “The minute you walk down that aisle with a diploma in your hand, I’m going to be all over you like glaze on a donut. But until then—”
I don’t get to finish because he’s there, his hand over my mouth, his eyes searching mine. Every neuron in my brain, every nerve ending in my body fires at once. A war wages in my chest—the teacher who knows this is wrong, and the man who aches to hold him close. With his free hand he touches my cheek, my jaw, my neck. I won’t touch him. I won’t. But I know this too: I won’t stop him from touching me. He releases my mouth.
“Robert . . .” It’s a plea. For what, I’m not sure. He uses both his hands to draw my face to his, and when he presses his mouth to mine—tentative at first, and then desperate—I can’t help but respond in kind. It’s wrong, and it’s right, and it takes every ounce of my willpower to finally bring it to a stop.
“Shit,” I mutter, pressing my forehead to his and grasping his wrists to pull his hands from my face. “We have to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop,” he says breathlessly, pulling his hands free. His mouth is on my neck now as one hand works its way up my shirt. My stomach retracts, and I feel the gap between my waistband and my abdomen. A groan escapes. I can hardly think as his hand grabs at the hair on my chest.
When the rational part of my brain finally surfaces again, I put the palm of my hand against his chest and create a narrow distance between us. “We have to stop.”
Robert
“I don’t want to stop.” I withdraw my hand and reach for the buttons on his shirt, but he locks his fists around my wrists.
“Stop,” he says firmly.
He’s breathing heavily, and when he shivers, I can’t help but smile.
“Okay,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment and pursing his lips. When he opens them again he smiles back at me and shakes his head slowly. “So much for my timeline, huh?” He takes a deep breath and blows it out through fluttering lips. “I’m taking you home.”
I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be anywhere that he’s not. He doesn’t give me a choice, though. He slips past me, grabs my keys off the table, then opens the door—“After you.”—but he’s still smiling. It’s this impish, guilty little smile. I growl my frustration and walk through the door.
I drive, but every chance I get, I glance over at him. He watches me, thoughtful, still smiling. All I can think about is what it would be like to get him naked. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.
I pull into Aunt Whitney’s street. It’s not quite dark yet, and a number of cars are still parked in her driveway and at the curb. I ease the car down the street until I locate Andrew’s. I pull up to the curb behind him and put the car in park.
He’s still smiling like the Cheshire Cat. I laugh. “So what do we do now?”
He exhales, then looks off down the street, then back at me. Still smiling. My heart swells because I had something to do with that smile. “New rules of engagement, okay?” he says.
I’m not sure what he’s talking about, and I’m not sure if I should agree, so I just wait.
“First,” he says, finding my hand on the gear shift and linking his fingers with mine, “you delete every text, immediately. Sent and received. If my name is still in your contacts, get rid of it. You can memorize my number. No friend requests on Facebook, don’t follow me on Twitter, and no more lunches in my classroom.”
“Okay.”
“And no more lingering gazes in the classroom. You want to look at me . . .” He pauses a moment and looks away, shaking his head like he can’t believe he’s saying this. When he turns back, his face is more serious, but soft. “You look at me in your dreams. As far as everyone else is concerned, you are my student. And that is all you are. Four months, baby. Okay?”
He called me baby. I nod, and a tremendous relief floods through me.
“And I want you to keep seeing Nic, at least for a while, okay?”
I let out a groan and drop my head back against the headrest. That is asking too much.
“I mean it, Robert. You’re going to go on being that little twerp’s boyfriend until graduation. Got it?”
I let out a huff. “Okay.”
“And I’m going to spend more time with Ms. Went.”
“What? Mr. Redmon already knows—”
“Mr. Redmon doesn’t really know anything. And neither do those kids. And if they think they do, then I’m going to give them a reason to doubt.”
“Anything else?”
“We play it cool, okay? No taking risks. I can’t bring you to my apartment again, not yet, and you can’t just drop by. I don’t want Maya asking a lot of questions if you make a surprise visit when she’s there. She already knows there’s a guy. But I haven’t told her everything.”
Everything, as in the fact that I’m still a high school student? He doesn’t have to spell it out for me. But then I fix on the other bit of information. She already knows there’s a guy. I smile at that thought.
“And besides,” he adds, gripping my hand more tightly, “I cannot guarantee that I will continue to behave honorably if I spend time alone with you.”
He glances up and down the street, then leans across the console and kisses me. Behind him, his hand finds the door handle. He pops it, and he’s gone.
Four months. Glaze on a donut.