watched her push through the revolving door, cross the lobby, accept a badge from security, and disappear around the corner toward the elevator bank, her shoulders held high.
Charles leaned against the cold slate of his building, wishing he could nap beneath one of the big stone benches. The burbling fountain smelled pungently of chlorine. There was a sharp pain at his right temple, maybe the beginning of a migraine. The cleaning ladies were still standing on the corner, chatting. Had one of them been her? The security guard who’d called the ambulance for Charles’s father had met the family in the ER lobby later that same night. ‘A cleaning lady found him,’ the guard had said. ‘She called down to the front desk, and I called 911.’ About a week later, after Charles’s dad had died, Charles tracked down the agency that employed the building’s cleaning staff and asked for the woman’s name. The agency was evasive, saying that the woman had quit and they didn’t have a forwarding number.
Maybe she was in this country illegally. Maybe she felt guilty and embarrassed that she had come upon such a thing – a grown man soaked in his own urine, an executive limp and lifeless on a bathroom floor. But the woman was out there, certainly, and she had something Charles wanted. If only he could just see her. And if he was brave enough, if only he could ask her about his father’s final moments of consciousness. Had he said anything? Regrets, maybe? A sudden confession of love?
The hand on his watch slid to the three. Charles peeled his body from the wall, straightened his shirt, and prepared to go back to work. The sun came out for a moment, turning the marble fountain base in front of his building amber. It was an exact match, Charles realized, to his dad’s headstone.
Normally, Sylvie looked forward to the bi-weekly Tuesday board meetings at Swithin. She loved sitting in the library, drinking tea, plotting, gossiping, the Philadelphia classical station on quietly in the background – it was less a board meeting and more a nice cozy get-together with people she’d known for years. But she dreaded this one, not getting into the shower until the last possible moment. She found herself wishing the weather would abruptly turn biblically catastrophic, raining down frogs or locusts or bumblebees, forcing the Department of Transportation to close the roads. She found herself longing for a sudden high fever – though nothing dangerous, just a passing flu. She even took her temperature as she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee.
It was just that she needed a few more days. A little while longer to collect herself, to get her bearings. If only the bi-weekly board meeting was scheduled for next week instead. In a week, she’d be organized. In a week, everything would be in its place. She would have planned out everything she needed to say, a response to every prying, insolent, loutish question.
James would know how to deal with this situation. He’d talk to Scott, or he’d at least try. He’d been the one to encourage Scott to take the coaching position in the first place. Last fall, at a fundraiser, a Swithin teacher and activities organizer approached Sylvie and James. ‘The wrestling team needs an assistant coach,’ he said. ‘Would that be something your son might be interested in?’ James stepped in, saying he was sure Scott would be happy to take it. Sylvie gawked at him – how did he know? – and that night, when James went into Scott’s apartment and shut the door, she heard them arguing through the wall. ‘Where do you get off, making decisions for me?’ Scott roared. ‘How can you assume that’s what I want to do?’
Sylvie sighed, but she wasn’t surprised. Of course Scott was putting up a fight – James should have known better than to speak for him. Though they’d been close when Scott was young, building things in the garage together, playing in the waves at the beach houses, sharing stories about wrestling matches, as James had played the sport, too, Scott’s interest in his father had seemed to wane over the years, too. Sylvie guessed James knew why Scott was angry at him, for he always seemed so contritely attentive to Scott, forever trying to clear the stale air between them, but it was something he and Sylvie had never discussed.
But then, without explanation, Scott took the job. When James’s schedule allowed, he and Sylvie climbed up Swithin’s bright blue bleachers and watched the matches, just as they’d watched Scott wrestle when he was younger. Scott stood next to the wrestlers, clad in a burgundy Swithin blazer. After the last match, Sylvie and James heard Scott speaking to Patrick Fontaine, the head coach and the school’s Phys Ed teacher. ‘You wouldn’t have any interest in subbing in for me for a few of my gym classes one of these days, would you?’ Patrick said. ‘Sometimes I think these kids need someone closer to their own age to get them moving.’ Scott’s eyes lit up. ‘I have lots of ideas about how to make gym more fun,’ he said excitedly, pressing his right fist into his open left palm. ‘Obstacle courses, real Marine Corps training kind of stuff.’ Fontaine smiled and said that sounded great. It might even lead to a permanent position.
James took Sylvie’s hand and squeezed. You see, the squeeze said. Convincing him to take the coaching job was a good thing. And Sylvie had felt that same swooping, desperate optimism. Yes, this was a good thing. Maybe even the answer.
Even if James couldn’t penetrate Scott, he’d known how to talk to everyone else. James was good at things like that – he had a way of making his opinions sound like inscrutable facts. Global warming is a myth, a regular earthly cycle. Capital markets are best left unregulated and free. Unions are always unwieldy and corrupt. He made declarations about more personal things, too – like that Sylvie had to go out to dinner with him when they first met, no questions asked, as though something horrible might happen to her if she didn’t. And the day after Charles got engaged to Joanna, when Sylvie remarked, offhandedly, that she was surprised Charles hadn’t chosen to marry someone more like Bronwyn, the girl he’d dated in high school, James’s eyebrows melded together, his chin tucked into his neck, and little puckers of skin at each corner of his downturned mouth. ‘Oh no,’ he’d said. ‘Charles and Bronwyn weren’t right for each other at all.’ Sylvie couldn’t recall James saying one word to Bronwyn when Charles was dating her, but her long-held assumptions felt uprooted all the same. Perhaps James was right – perhaps the two of them hadn’t been right for one another. James had a way of appearing very wise, while at the same time making everyone else feel very childish.
Sylvie could see James making a grand, sweeping statement about Scott now. All he’d have to do was unequivocally and righteously say that Scott wasn’t responsible for the boy’s death, and just like that, he would eliminate the foolish necessity of consulting a lawyer. He would reverse everyone’s suspicions.
The side door to the kitchen opened and shut, startling Sylvie from her chair. Scott loped through the mud room and into the kitchen, talking on his cell phone. He opened the fridge and stuck his head inside, not even looking in her direction.
She stared, feeling visible and obtrusive in her own home. When had she last seen him? When had they last spoken? He looked sloppy, unshowered, his mess of dark hair thick around his face. His tattoos peeked from under his clothes, the ones on his wrists, the one creeping up his neck, another peeking out the t-shirt sleeve on his bicep. There was a tattoo on his calf of a black man and Sylvie didn’t dare ask who the man was or why Scott had chosen to put him there. Before Swithin gave Scott the assistant coaching job, they’d balked at his tattoos, ordering he cover them up. It was difficult to imagine Scott at Swithin as an adult figure, a quasi-authority. Certain teachers, all prim and neat in their burgundy blazers and tortoiseshell glasses, probably gave him wide berth in the hallways. Conversations probably halted when Scott entered a room.
Scott barked a few more words into his phone and hung up without saying goodbye. Sylvie cleared her throat, and he looked over. His eyes were dark, unresponsive. She had no idea what to say. Every icebreaker seemed clumsy, inappropriate.
