make some more.’
Scott held the carafe in midair. ‘I’ll just microwave it.’
‘No, you should have fresh coffee. It’s terrible microwaved. Skunky.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘It’s no trouble.’ She already had the grinder out and was dumping the cold grounds into the trash.
Scott stepped away, folding his arms over his chest; even though he was fairly thin, he filled up a room. Sylvie spooned the fresh grounds into the filter and cleared her throat. ‘So. What’s new with you?’
He didn’t answer, opening and closing cabinet drawers, looking for something to eat.
The coffee maker began to burble and hiss. Sylvie licked her lips, staring at a slight water blemish on the stainless-steel toaster. Her heart drummed fast. ‘Wrestling team going well?’
Scott snickered. Sylvie was glad she wasn’t holding a coffee cup; if she had, it would be rattling in her hand, the liquid sloshing over the side. He knew that she knew. He knew what was being said. And now he was enjoying watching as Sylvie scrambled to figure out a way to talk to him about it. How could he chuckle? A boy had died. Was he that remorseless?
She turned to him then, vinegar suddenly in her veins. ‘They said you have to meet with some of the teachers.’ There. That was her way in.
He assessed her, leaning against the counter. One eyebrow arched. ‘Yep. That’s what they say.’
‘Do you know when your meeting is?’
‘Next week, I think.’ He inspected his nails.
‘Ah.’ It was as though they were having a conversation about the weather. If she should put regular or premium gas in her car. Sylvie ran her finger on a chipped spot on the countertop, wishing she could crack something against it. ‘And…do you know who the meeting is with?’
‘Nope.’
She stared at the slowly filling coffee pot and took a breath. ‘Well. Maybe you could dress up to the meeting. Wear a jacket.’
Scott made a noise at the back of his throat. ‘A jacket?’
‘Or at least a shirt and tie.’ Just don’t wear those ridiculous pants that show your underwear. Just don’t wear the sweatshirt that says that word I can’t even think, that N-word, on it. Just comb your hair.
Scott said nothing. He turned and took the lid off the old earthenware cookie jar, the very same one that held homemade sugar cookies when Sylvie was a girl. Scott reached for a chocolate chip cookie, took a big bite, and then held the uneaten part outstretched reflectively. ‘Mmmm,’ he decided. Crumbs fell to the floor.
He finished his cookie, laced his hands together and turned them inside out, giving each knuckle a crack. ‘I thought you were, like, a powerful force at that school. You can make it go away.’
She blinked at him, trembling inside. Is that what you think? she wanted to say. But now Scott had walked into the mud room – presumably, the conversation was over. A few moments later, he returned with his sneakers, loud orange and white high-tops. She watched as he sat down at the table, propped up one foot on his knee, and began to lace the shoes up, casual as he could be. It was like she was a woman and he was another being entirely, one whose actions she couldn’t begin to predict. One of those sea creatures that lived in the sunless depths of the ocean. A carnivorous plant that ate gnats.
‘Going somewhere?’ she asked.
‘To the city. Just for the morning.’
‘How come?’
He gave her a pained look. ‘I’m helping out at Kevin’s shop. Someone can’t come in until one. I said I’d cover.’
‘Kevin was at the funeral, right?’ Scott had come with three friends, two girls and a guy, all of them black.
‘Uh huh.’ Scott threaded the other shoe but left the laces untied and dangling.
‘What kind of shop does he own?’
‘Shoes.’
‘Oh!’ She knew she sounded relieved, but shoes were so…innocuous. ‘Well. Tell him “Hi” for me.’
He sniffed. ‘You didn’t even speak to him that day.’
Sylvie shrank. At that, she strode out of the room, found her handbag near the laundry, and walked to the driveway to her own car – she still parked outside, not yet wanting to disrupt the half of the garage that housed James’s jigsaw, lathe, and woodworking rasps. She slammed the door hard. It felt good. Once belted in, she shut her eyes, listening to the birds and the gentle swishing sounds of the tree branches. She lifted her ring finger to her mouth, cupped her lips around the big yellow stone on the ring James had given her, and sucked.
That first night, when she just thought James wasn’t coming home, when she figured it was retaliation for what she’d brought up the night before, she’d taken off this ring and buried it at the bottom of her jewelry box, hating what it meant. Then she’d gone into James’s office and looked hard at the room. James’s infuriatingly clean desk, the stack of blank computer paper next to the printer, the Lucite plaques on the bookshelf. She’d walked in and touched the bare spot on the bookshelf where she’d found the little box that held the bracelet. A film of pale gray dust had stuck to the pad on her finger.
The ring tasted like cold metal. Maybe it was primal, like a child sucking on a pacifier. Only after Sylvie let the stone click against her teeth and press on her tongue did her pulse begin to settle down.
In no time Sylvie found herself pulling up the hill to Swithin, the school resplendent at the top. The guard at the gate recognized her right away. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bates-McAllister!’ he cried. ‘So nice to see you!’ He waved her right through.
Sylvie loved this drive up the Swithin lane, how the school rose up before her, all stone and brick, with its spires and bell tower and flags and dazzling green fields beyond. There wasn’t a tree branch out of place. The steps and windowsills and sidewalks were swept twice a day. One of Sylvie’s earliest memories was of her grandfather bringing her into the library and showing her the rare books. ‘These were almost lost forever,’ he told her. And then he wove the tale of the fire, how it had caught in the east wing classrooms and spread into the gymnasium horribly fast, burning half the school to the ground before the firefighters even arrived at the scene. When her grandfather surveyed the damage the day after, he sobbed. ‘It was just so sad,’ he told Sylvie. ‘I felt like the school was calling out to me, Please don’t let me go.’ Whenever he got to that part of the story, tears always welled in Sylvie’s eyes.
Since it was the Depression and no one had any money to spare, Charlie Roderick Bates financed rebuilding Swithin with his own money and resources. He used materials from the countless limestone quarries and brick foundries he owned to pour the new foundation and rebrick the walls. Recreating the school from scratch provided a lot of jobs, so he was a hero several times over, hiring Polish and Italian crews to do the construction, even providing duties for people in the black neighborhoods. ‘But we had to make great sacrifices during that time,’ he told Sylvie. ‘I paid everyone’s wages. I bought all
