he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Was it always going to be like this? The anxiety? It was one thing to mentor up-and-coming young bucks in the workplace. If they performed well, he recommended them for a fat bonus. If they fell flat on their faces, he had had no qualms about giving them the heave-ho. Either way, it wasn’t personal.
But with parenting, everything was personal. He couldn’t fire his kid because he skipped out at night without asking permission or leaving a note, nor could he promote him if he made his bed two days in a row. As someone who had never known his own father, the underlying assumption that there existed an unwavering bond of love between a father and a son was an alien concept to him. Would he ever feel it? Even more scary, given his own emotional development, would he mess up his son forever? It was this fear that kept him up at night and kept him from reaching out to get closer. So why he had panicked when Matt had failed to show up?
As an afterthought, Ben glanced over at the teacher who was moving her lips and pointing her finger, giving every sign of talking to him. For the first time, he looked at her, really looked at her. It allowed him to notice the way her mouth formed a small circle while her cupid’s-bow upper lip puckered as she was waiting. Waiting for him to say something.
And that’s when it dawned on him that she was the one. Not the one, but the same woman he had met earlier. The one with the flyaway umbrella and pint-size grandmother and that unexpectedly mesmerizing combination of vulnerability and determination. Though the elements had assaulted her, she had stood resolute.
Tearing his gaze away from her delectable mouth and dove-gray eyes, he tried to focus on her outstretched arm. The gesture to “Sit down” was clear as daylight, and it was one he had seen all too often from his own frustrated teachers.
Ben hesitated. All he wanted to do was collect Matt, find a quiet corner and lay into the kid for scaring him half to death.
“So, Mr. Brown, if you’d just take a seat,” he heard her say.
Ben cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your class. I was just looking for Matt.”
“Well, now that you’ve found him, why don’t you sit next to him? As you can see, we certainly have room for one more.”
He backpedaled. “Taking a class wasn’t really what I had in mind when I headed out tonight.”
“Yes, but you’ll never know if it’s a good idea unless you try, correct? Anyway, just think of the motto printed in the front of the course booklet, something along the lines of education doesn’t end with graduation.” She scanned the class as if looking for confirmation.
“‘Education: the Wellspring of Life,’” Carl said. He opened his copy and showed the class how he’d highlighted that declaration in Day-Glo yellow. He turned back at Katarina and beamed. “And that goes double when the teacher’s a pretty gal like you.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that anymore,” Wanda chastised. “Though I suppose in this postfeminist era of Camille Paglia, chauvinistic statements are now considered meta-statements of female sexuality.”
That had everyone stumped.
Spare me, Ben growled inwardly. Now he was prepared to say, “Thanks for the offer, but tonight is really not the night,” when he noticed the way the teacher’s auburn hair framed her face like a maelstrom of fiery locks….
Maybe the confrontation with Matt could wait, at least until the first break in the class? Then, after offering his apologies, they’d be outta there, at which point he’d attach a chain so strong to the kid, nothing short of heavy-duty bolt cutters could set him free.
That settled, he made his way to the back of the room. Not without considerable difficulty, he scrunched his oversize body into the desk next to Matt.
“Hey, what do you mean taking off without a word to anyone?” he whispered to Matt. “I was worried sick.”
Matt chewed on his lips. The top one was already worked raw. He stuck out his pointy chin, making more conspicuous the few wispy whiskers that protruded at haphazard angles. “How was I to know you’d be worried?” he said. “Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been looking after myself for a long time already.”
Ben didn’t know anything about fatherhood, but he knew enough from his own rough growing up that bravado was a handy mechanism for hiding fear. Matt had already had to live with more fear than most adults ever encountered in their lifetimes. With no close relatives to turn to, Ben had learned from the lawyer in Colorado that Matt had been left alone to witness his mother’s painful decline.
“Well, now there’s someone around to look after you,” he told him as matter-of-factly as he could.
Matt scowled at him as if he were the spawn of Satan. Clearly, the gesture hadn’t had the desired effect. “You don’t need to. Anyway, you should be relieved. All I wanted to do was take an adult school class. It’s not like I was doing drugs or going to some sex orgy.”
“What do you know about sex orgies?” The boy was being sarcastic, wasn’t he? “I mean, what do you know about sex orgies?”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Do you really want to know?”
Ben held up his hand. “Okay, not really, at least not right now. We’ll leave that discussion for another night. But for now, you’ve got to understand, I was sick with worry. If I hadn’t gotten hold of your friend…what’s his name, Victor…Vincent…whatever…I never would have known you’d enrolled in some night school class.”
“It’s Verjesh, not Victor. Can’t even get my one friend’s name straight?”
“I’m not good with names. So sue me.” Ben scanned the class. “What is this course anyway? By the look of the average age, I’d say it was something to do with the virtues of bran and regular exercise.”
“Do you always have to be so sarcastic? You know, there are some people who try to find out what’s going on before they pass judgment.”
“Are you saying I’m judg—”
The teacher’s voice floated above the clanking of the heating pipes. “Iris Phox, the director of the Adult School, had located a guest lecturer for us tonight.”
Ben tried to count to ten to rein in his temper. He made it as far as six. “—that I’m judgmental? Okay, maybe I am, but you’ve got to admit—”
“If anyone can sniff out a speaker, it’s Iris.” Wanda’s strident voice came out loud and clear.
The class chuckled.
“—that if you’d just stop to eval—” Ben stopped midrant.
“Yes, well…he’s a former leading light in the investment community, but now something of a recluse here in…”
Ben quickly glanced over at Matt. “Wait a minute. What is this class?”
“Shush, Ben, would you?” Matt said with a frown. “I’m trying to listen.”
“Unfortunately I never heard back from the speaker, and it doesn’t look as if he’s going to show…” The teacher’s voice dropped off.
Ben
