“Joanne,” my mother said, and then to me, “You remember Mrs. Landewehr.”
Joanne Landewehr, my social studies teacher—sixth grade, seventh? My mother and she had been close, I couldn’t remember how they’d met. Something at the school. Her son Jacob was in my year. Although I didn’t understand it at the time, I had a terrible crush on him. Every once in a while he would come to mind and I would scour the internet for news of him. I’d once found photos of his wedding, which, absurdly, sent me into a depressive spiral for days. Some part of me had never let go of the idea we would be together, despite almost two decades of no contact and his enduring heterosexuality. Joanne’s husband died some time ago—I remembered my mother mentioning it—and she had moved into one of the new condos crowding the sky above our heads.
“And this is your Mark?” she asked, opening her arms for a hug. She smelled of hairspray and breath mints. “Very good-looking,” she said not to me, but my mother. “Are you still in New York?”
“No,” I said. “Ohio, of all places.”
My mother cut in. “He’s an English professor. At Sawyer College.”
Joanne hummed approval. “Very impressive.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’ll let anyone teach literature these days.”
“He’s just being modest,” my mother said. “And he’s writing a book.”
“Really!”
“Well, I’m trying to. We’ll see.”
“That’s wonderful,” Joanne said. “I can’t wait to read it.”
I steered the car along the quiet roads. On either side, houses glowed with family gatherings lingering into the night. In the back seat, my father nodded in and out. His cottony snores kept harmony with the rumbling engine of the car.
“Do you want to put on the radio?”
My mother, seated beside me, made no move.
“I don’t know why you do that,” she said.
“Listen to music?”
“No.” Her voice cut short and sharp. “With Joanne. The way you put yourself down.”
The light ahead started to change. I pushed the gas, flying through.
“I wasn’t putting myself down.”
“You were. Dismissing your book like that. Saying anyone can teach. It’s not true.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You worked so hard in school. All on your own. You never needed anything from us. You just did it. Most people don’t even finish college, much less a PhD. And you have a great job. You get paid to think. It’s insulting to act like it doesn’t matter.”
This story that I hadn’t needed anything from them was one she repeated often.Marky has always been independent, she wouldsay.Marky doesn’t like help, he likes to do things on his own. Cassie was always the focus of their concern, and anger rose in me at the thought of it—that a child wouldn’t want his parents’ help. Of course I did, there just wasn’t any left over for me.
“I was just joking. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She turned from me and looked out the window, the headlights of passing cars streaking her face in white bands.
“Your life is not a joke.”
We passed the next few days mostly in the house, venturing to the park a half mile away, to the outdoor mall for an early dinner and movie. The mall was built around a series of fake canals and after the movie we wandered over its bridges, eating small cups of ice cream going soft. I flew back to Ohio on Sunday. My mother was up early, as always. She poured us coffee and we sat in quiet around the kitchen table, sharing sections of the newspaper. My father joined us a bit later and when the hour of my flight drew near, they drove me to the airport. The highway was empty and still. We made good time and I found myself wishing we had left later, done more with the morning. They offered to park and come inside but I said it wasn’t worth it; I was checked in, I’d head right to my gate. I stood at the curb with my bag and watched their car pull off and out of sight and then I turned and went inside.
CHAPTER 9
I guess sex always involves some degree of denial. If we really thought about what we were doing (the mashing of parts, exposing our most insecure and needful selves—our souls’ misshapen moles and dry spots and singularly persistent, springy hairs), would we be able to do it? But it was also probably true that my situation involved a very high degree. I was risking my job at Sawyer, my entire career. Someone like Hal could get away with fucking his students; the academy was built on the backs of such couplings, complicitly overlooked. In my case, on the other hand, there was an entire cultural discourse ready to be mobilized against me:rapacious gay man preys on innocent child. If things with Tyler came to light, I’d be going the way of Annabelle Cleremont—adieu. Never mind what Tyler wanted. Never mind—even as our sex increasingly played with my dominance and his submission—that I felt entirely his supplicant, completely powerless in relation to him. (In calmer moments, I knew this was an illusion, but that knowledge did not make his grip on me dissolve.) None of this would matter if we were found out. I had done my best to box these fears. But as the end of term drew near—just a week of classes after Thanksgiving, the reading period, and then we were done—my fears grew, rattling around, going bump in the night. The menacing apprehension of an end in sight.
I spent the weekend after classes wrapped and the next few days largely with Safie, catching up on work; I was drowning in a backlog of ungraded assignments, and now all the final essays on top of that. I’d mumbled some apologies for the night at the bar, my sharp tone, my distance this semester; she’d graciously accepted. We fell into a rhythm like the old days. I’d show up at her house with my stack of papers and we worked sprawled across her living room, the easy quiet a balm.
