expression.”
At last I look up at the headmaster, whose face is as blank as a blackboard on the first day of school.
“Quite an essay,” he ventures. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I certainly would.”
“Naturally Mr. Edmondson was alarmed when he read it, and quite rightly he brought it to my attention.”
“Alarmed?”
“Of course! This is clearly just a peek into something much more disturbing that your son is experiencing. It’s the reason I called you here.”
“You called me here because my ex-wife is out of town. I know I’m number two on the emergency phone call list.”
“Mr. Sullivan, I hardly think this is the time to quibble over parental rivalries.”
“Have you spoken with my son about this essay?”
His face darkens. “That’s another reason I called you. Yes, I have spoken with him. Sometimes students do things like this in an attempt to be satirical. If that were the case, well, fine. We could all just laugh it off. But according to your son, he meant every word of it. Every single word.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“We gave him the chance to apologize, and he refused.”
“Apologize for what?”
Mr. Plymouth’s eyes widen. “Mr. Sullivan. Did you read the essay? He called this school a sham! He wants the entire system to collapse!”
“Under the weight of its own bullshit,” I add helpfully.
“That’s how he put it, yes. He wasn’t exactly subtle about it.”
“What did he say when you asked for an apology?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t mean it.’”
“He saw through your game.”
The headmaster falls back in his chair, as if he’s just been hit in the chest with a medicine ball. He stares at me in wonder. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, he saw through your game. You. This place.” I gesture at the walls of his office. “He got to the guts of your game. He saw the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain. That’s what’s bothering you, Headmaster Plymouth.”
CHAPTER THREE
The headmaster stares at me in openmouthed disbelief.
“This is not a game,” he says evenly.
“Come on.”
“Mr. Sullivan—”
“Listen, I know what it’s like. I write for the New York Star, and every once in a while I’m interviewing somebody who can tell the angle I’m working, you know? He can tell I’m trying to get him to say something I need to make my story work, and he just won’t give it to me. Happens maybe once every hundred interviews, and when it does it really stings, but what can you do? Not everybody’s an idiot.”
“We’re going off on a bit of a tangent here—”
“No, we’re not. This is the exact same thing we’re talking about. When someone’s wise to your racket, it can be very unsettling.”
The headmaster nearly flinches at the word “racket.” The thoughts spinning through his skull are are as obvious as the zipper headlines in Times Square. How he wishes he’d waited until Monday to deal with this matter, when the boy’s mother will be back in town! Suddenly, his idea of an emergency is not such an emergency. The real emergency is me, here in his office, and now his problem is simple: how do I get rid of this guy?
“What we do here,” he says, “can hardly be referred to as a racket.”
“I would apologize for my choice of words, sir, but the selection of the right word at the right time just happens to be my business.”
He lets out the tiniest of snorts. “Yes, well, for the New York Star.”
Now he’s stepped in it. His face flames up and he regrets what he’s said, but it’s too late. He’s insulted a customer, and the customer is always right—and at this school, the customer is almost always white.
“Well, sir,” I say, “you may not think highly of the product I help produce, but like it or not it’s what makes it possible for my son to be educated within these hallowed halls.”
He holds up his hands, palms out. “Forgive me.”
“Forget it. I knew how you felt about it before we ever met. Not all of us get to write about sailboat races. Somebody’s got to crank out the ugly stuff. That’s just the way it is.”
His face gets even redder. He’s surprised that I know about his sailboat book. I don’t look like the kind of parent who reads school bulletins.
He clears his throat and gets to his feet. This is a pretty good tactic on his part, I must admit. He’s easily six inches taller than me, and what he wants is that rush he’ll get from glowering down at me.
But it can only work if I stand up and go toe-to-toe with him. So I remain seated, gazing straight up into his remarkably hairless nostrils. He must use one of those rotary noise hair clippers.
He’s in a bad spot. After a few moments he sighs, sits back down, and does the only thing left for him to do.
“What do you say we call your son in here?”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
He tells his secretary to send for my son, then drags a chair over and sets it so that the distances between all three chairs are equal. A perfect triangle. The loyalties could go any which way.
And then, silent as a sailboat, my son glides into the room.
I’m jolted by his appearance. I hadn’t seen him over the past weekend, because the whole senior class had been taken on an overnight trip to the Catskill Mountains, and in the less than two weeks since I last saw him he’s actually grown a beard. It’s a fairly thick beard for a kid not yet eighteen years old, as black as coal and startling against his light complexion. His hair is nearly as dark as the beard, shoulder length and parted in the middle. Jake’s dark features come from his mother, who’s Spanish. That creamy white Irish skin comes from me. His sea-green eyes are anybody’s guess.
Those eyes have a serenity I can only dream of for my bloodshot brown ones. He’s wearing corduroy pants, a black shirt, and scuffed boots. The mandatory school tie hangs around his neck in a big, wide loop, as if he’d been condemned to death by a hangman who’d suddenly changed his mind and let him go. He’s as slim as a jackrabbit and if he held out his arms and crossed his feet, you might just think him capable of changing water into wine.
As always, the sight of him makes my heart ache. How can he suddenly
