Caroline shifted onto her left hip, waiting for Charles’s answer. Did he miss his father? He didn’t really know. “I—I should be going,” he said, turning blindly toward the street.
“Of course,” Caroline said, her voice dripping with foolhardy sympathy. Maybe she thought he was too overcome with grief to properly respond. Charles still said nothing, focusing instead on the shiny spots of mica in the sidewalk, the xylophone part of a Rolling Stones song he’d heard on his iPod that morning thrumming absurdly in his head. Finally, Caroline patted his arm and told him to hang in there. Charles watched her push through the revolving door, cross the lobby, accept a badge from security, and disappear around the corner toward the elevator bank.
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. Was one of them 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—an executive limp and lifeless on a bathroom floor, soaked in his own urine. But the woman was out there, certainly, and she had information Charles wanted. If only he could see her and 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. An exact match, Charles realized, to his dad’s headstone.
Chapter 3
Normally Sylvie looked forward to the biweekly Tuesday board meetings at Swithin. She loved sitting in the library, drinking tea, plotting, and gossiping with 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, staying in 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 longed for a sudden high fever, 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 biweekly board meeting was scheduled for next week instead. In a week, she’d be organized; everything would be in its place. She would have planned out everything she needed to say, a clever 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 had been the one to encourage Scott to take the coaching position in the first place. At a fund-raiser last fall, 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? 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 with my life?”
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. James and Scott had 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, which they both had experience with, but then, around the time Scott was in high school—around the time of the Swithin awards ceremony Charles had referred to the night before—Scott abruptly stopped speaking to his father. 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 yet another thing James and Sylvie never discussed. Maybe it was just that Scott was disinterested in all of them. And maybe, deep down, Sylvie felt a tiny bit grateful that her husband was suddenly as disconnected from their son as she was.
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 overheard Scott speaking to Patrick Fontaine, the head coach and the school’s phys ed teacher. “You wouldn’t have any interest in subbing for me for a few of my gym classes one of these days, would you?” Patrick asked. “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 to helping Scott.
Sylvie’s mind wandered back to James. 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. 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 announced his engagement to Joanna, when Sylvie remarked, offhandedly, that she was surprised Charles hadn’t chosen to marry someone more like Bronwyn, James’s eyebrows melded together, his chin tucked into his neck, and little puckers of skin appeared at each corner of his down turned 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 she and Charles were dating, but perhaps James was right. Maybe the two of them hadn’t been right for one another. James had a way of appearing very wise, while simultaneously making everyone else seem 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 thought 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 glancing 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 out from under his clothes, the ones on his wrists, the one creeping up his neck, another peering out under the T-shirt sleeve on his bicep. 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 and conversations probably halted when Scott entered a room.
Scott barked a few more words into his phone and hung up without saying good-bye. 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.
Scott shut the fridge, shuffled to the coffee maker, and lifted the carafe. “The coffee’s cold,” Sylvie said quickly, rushing over to him. “Here. I’ll 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, instead opened and closed 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 Sylvie scramble to figure out a way to talk to him about it. How could he chuckle? A boy had died under his watch.
She turned to him, a vein at her temple suddenly throbbing. “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.”
She stared at him, trying her best not to blink. Would it be better or worse to just flat-out ask him what had happened? Did she want to know, or was she happier remaining in the dark? Even if she did ask, would he tell her? “Do you know when your meeting is?” she blurted.
“Next week, I think.” He inspected his nails.
“Ah.” It was as though they were having a conversation about the weather or 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 for the meeting. Wear a jacket.”
Scott made a noise at the back of his throat. “A jacket?”
