Chapter 45
Andrew
Crews from two of the four local TV stations are waiting outside the jail when they release me. They dog Maya and me and my lawyer all the way to our cars, shouting questions and getting no answers. Maya takes charge, elbowing reporters out of her way, telling me in a no-nonsense voice to keep moving.
As she pulls the car into the one-way street, I see the signs advertising bail bondsmen. There’s one on every seedy little dump for blocks. I wonder for a moment which one she used. I feel like I’m in a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I watch from the window as the grungy city slides away. I want to go home.
“Kiki’s with a sitter,” Maya says, turning on her blinker to enter the interstate. “She doesn’t know.”
I acknowledge that information with silence.
“I picked up your car this morning. Karen next door drove me up to the school.”
I feel her glance at me. I notice that a few early wildflowers are just starting to bloom in the scruffy patches along the freeway. I try to remember their names—crimson clover, red poppy, Indian paintbrush, bluebonnet.
“One of your teacher friends called. Jennifer, I think. She said to tell you she’s taking care of your classes.”
My classes. My students. Funny. If anyone had told me this is how my teaching career would end—fingerprinting, a mug shot, a command to jerk off in a room so my erect penis could be photographed—I would have laughed. It was just that absurd. I almost refused. They couldn’t force me. But if I could prove that I did not send that photograph, that the penis in that photograph was not attached to me, then I had to try. The officer had uncuffed my wrists and handed me a Boys’ Life magazine. A Boys’ Life. I can still hear him snicker.
But I couldn’t do it.
It didn’t matter in the end. I don’t know how, but by the time Maya had arranged bail, I had already been cleared of any charges relating to Stephen Newman, but those charges had been replaced by another—improper relationship with a student. No amount of jerking off could exonerate me on that charge.
They’d pulled my credit card bill and then pressured Robert into a confession.
I don’t blame him. I’m only profoundly sorry for dragging him into this mess.
“It’s going to be okay, Drew,” Maya says, patting my knee.
I don’t think so.
When we pull into the driveway, the sitter opens the door and Kiki runs to me. I scoop her up. “Hey, baby girl.” I choke on the words and bury my face in her hair. She doesn’t understand, and in a moment she’s crying too.
“I’ll take her,” Maya says, reaching for her. But I clutch her to me, her wails covering my own, quieter sobs.
Maya quickly pulls a few bills out of her purse for the babysitter, who is standing by in awkward silence. Then she takes my elbow and ushers me into the house. Inside she peels Kiki from my arms and quiets her with some juice and crackers in the kitchen. I retreat to my room.
Sometime later she knocks on my door and comes in, then sits on the bed next to me. “Can I make you something to eat?”
I shake my head and close my eyes, hoping she’ll just go away and leave me alone.
She begins to shift a little closer to me but stops when I roll over and turn my back to her. After a moment, I feel her pull her legs up onto the bed and settle closer to me anyway, and then her thumbs press into my shoulders.
“You just need to relax, baby,” she murmurs. “Everything’s going to be okay. How about I draw you a bath?”
I answer her with silence.
“Oh, Drew. You’re home now. And I promise you, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. We’re a family. We’ll get through this together. One day we’re going to look back on this and—”
“Can I borrow your phone?” My voice is rough, like I haven’t used it in a while.
Her hands freeze on my back for just an instant, then resume their kneading. “I’ve already called your parents. They know you’re home and you’re okay.”
That’s not what I want, and she knows it. I can hear it in her voice. “Please, Maya,” I plead. “I need to use your phone.”
She removes her hand from my back and the bed shifts as she gets up. I hear her huff. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation?”
I wince at her shrill, angry tone.
“Do you have any idea how this has affected me? How it’s affected your daughter? You stay away from that kid, or so help me . . .”
I roll my face into my pillow.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “But you have to understand that your relationship with Robert Westfall is over. You’re going to be damn lucky to escape a prison sentence as it is. If you contact him again—don’t do that to your daughter. Think about somebody other than yourself for a change. This thing you had going, it could never last. You know that, don’t you? He’s a bright young man with a big future ahead of him. If you care anything at all about him, you’ll let him go.”
I feel like I’m suffocating in her presence, and then I hear the door close behind her.
Robert
“I just want to talk to him. Just for a minute.”
Ms. Momin steps out onto the porch and pulls the door closed behind her. “He doesn’t want to see you, Robert. He goes before a grand jury in a couple of months. If they know you’ve been here, it will only make things worse for him. Don’t come again. Do I make myself clear?”
“Will you at least tell him something for me?”
She pushes the door open behind her and slips back in without another word.
Andrew
Maya is just coming in the front door as I’m coming in the back with Kiki. I can see on her face that she’s upset.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She smiles. “Nothing.”
Jen takes a good look at me when I open the door later that evening. “You look like shit,” she says.
I take the box she hands me. “Thanks, Jen. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Your sub’s been poking around your desk, and no one else was breaking down the door to protect your stuff, so here I am.”
“What are they saying about me?”
“About what you’d expect. Pervert. Stupid. Incompetent. Sleaze. Creep. Everybody knew there was something different about you.” She makes those finger quotes when she says different.
“Thanks for making me feel better.”
“Aah, come on, Drew. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Isn’t it?” I take the box to the kitchen counter. She closes the door and follows me in.
“You know, this whole mess would make a great novel.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
She laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll change the names. So, um”—she pauses then gives me an impish grin—“what’s he like in the sack?”
I can’t believe she just asked me that.
“Come on. Throw me a bone.” She lifts a tie from the box. I always keep one—kept one—in my desk drawer just in case. She wraps the tie around her fingers and flicks her eyebrows at me. “Is he as hot naked as he is in those jeans?”
I look at her for a moment in disbelief, then take the tie from her.
“Okay,” she says, undeterred, “so this is just research. So, let’s just say that gay men engage in three different acts. I think one and two are a given. But what about number three?”
I stare at her, trying to make sense of what she’s asking me, and then I get it. “Are you asking me if we had anal sex?”
“Well, yeah,” she says, grinning.
I feel my eyes fill with tears.
“Oh, shit,” Jen says. “Okay, don’t cry. Crap.”
I press the heels of my palms to my eyes and will them to dry up, but it’s no use.
“What’s going on?” Maya asks, coming into the room.
I drop my hands and turn my head away, blinking a few times. Then I introduce Jennifer. “She’s in the classroom next to mine.”
“Oh,” Maya says coolly, then continues on to the kitchen.
“I’ll show you out,” I say to Jen.
She follows me to the door, but I don’t open it right away. I study my bare feet, reluctant to let her go because right now, she’s the best link I have to him.
“I didn’t know,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat and look up at her. “Have you seen him?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him.”
“Does he look okay?”
She shrugs. “Kinda quiet, but that’s nothing new.”