“I don’t know,” I answered, and then told myself not to be a coward. Sometimes it was hard to hear things but they needed to be said. Like when Phil, my cooperating teacher, had started (another) discussion with me about my classroom management when I was supposed to be teaching on my own. In order to keep the kids in line, he always jumped in—before I could even act, he was already on top of the issue. It wasn’t like I had failed to notice that, but it had been important for me to hear directly from him that I needed to improve. I had reminded myself of that as I’d sat in my car that day in the parking lot, not quite ready to drive. It had been worthwhile for me to hear.
It was important for Everett to consider something that I had been thinking about, too. “Do you really want to have that little boy live with you?” I asked. “Before, when I talked about all the responsibilities that you’d have to take on, you seemed scared.”
“I wasn’t scared.” He closed his eyes, leaned back against the pillow, and repeated that. “I wasn’t scared at all, not at all, none. Why would I have been?”
“Because it’s a huge thing,” I said. “A huge, all-encompassing, love-devouring—“
“Devouring? Come on,” he chided. “A lot of guys on the Woodsmen have kids and it’s no big deal. Even some of the Juniors do, and they handle it fine. I would, too.”
“And you’re only doing this because you think it’s the best thing for that boy.”
He opened his eyes. “Are you trying to imply that there’s another reason?”
“I just wonder,” I said. “I wonder if you really are trying to hold on to Eris. Maybe she’s trying to hold on to you, too. Why else would she bother to send videos? I’m sure she had to do a lot of editing and it would be easier for her just to forget about your existence, rather than bother with all that.”
“She can’t forget me. We’re in the middle of a court case.” He blinked. “I didn’t mean it like that, like I’m trying to keep myself in her life. I’m not, I’m really not. It came out wrong.”
Now I was probably making the face that another first grader had adopted when I’d insisted to her that air, the stuff we breathed, was real but invisible. “I used to believe in invisible stuff but not anymore,” she’d replied. “I grew out of that like how I can’t wear my gold shoes with the bows because my feet got too long.”
“Eris sends that shit to punish me, not to cling to me. She’s done but she wants me to see what I’m missing, and she’s angry that I don’t rise to the bait,” he stated. “I’m fighting for custody of her son because she doesn’t give two fucks about him and it’s a terrible way for a kid to grow up.”
“You didn’t notice that when you were dating? Although, you said that you didn’t date for very long before you got married and she brought you, her new husband that she hardly knew, into her son’s life.”
I watched as a hot flush moved up over his face, nearly reaching his high cheekbones. “You’ve summed it up. We both acted like idiots.”
“I was thinking of it from a teacher’s perspective,” I said primly. “I’m worried about that child. We might see a student acting up in class if there are things going on at home, like the sudden appearance of a new father and then the same guy disappearing just as fast. But maybe her son was already having problems, if his mom is as bad as you keep saying that she is. You know the situation, but I don’t.”
“She is that bad,” he told me. “But he’s really a great kid. His nanny told me about him. He had friends in preschool and he knew all his letters and that kind of stuff. The nanny knew because she went to the meetings and she was the one the teachers talked to. She lives there and she’s with him every day, but Eris is mostly gone filming or playing around.”
I suddenly thought of my mom and wondered what she might be doing, if she was actually in Virginia and playing around there. “I don’t really get that.”
“The need to work or the urge to have fun?”
“I totally get the need to work,” I told him. “I’m going to be in huge trouble if I can’t find a teaching job for the fall. The part I don’t understand is how you could just leave your kid. Although, you did tell me that she only had him to use as an accessory.” I watched him rub his forehead and decided that this was another topic that we didn’t need to hash out at the moment. “Want to take something for your headache?”
He said yes and then he wanted to sleep some more, and the hours kind of slid away with Everett dozing on and off, and with me watching him. I wasn’t used to sitting around like this, but eventually I did have to go to work at Jannie’s and he was awake to talk about it. “Will you be all right?” I asked. I had been reading about head injuries while he was asleep, and I looked carefully at his pupils as I waited for his answer. They seemed ok, and so did he. “I can come back after my shift.”
“I’m fine. You’ve been hanging around here all day, wasting your time. I don’t need anyone.”
I didn’t really like to leave him, though. “You told the trainer that you could ask a friend to stay with you. Can you do that now?”
“Sure, I’ll do it.” Then he ordered up a rideshare to take me all the way back out to the Woodsmen practice facility so that I could get my little car.
Once, when I was in third grade, I’d been invited to a birthday party—this was a few years before I’d started playing my instrument and had met people in the band, so I hadn’t had any friends at that point. Going to the party had been a big deal, especially since they’d had a bounce house and both cake and ice cream. But despite those draws, I hadn’t enjoyed it. I’d been by myself as the other girls had played together. Then it had ended but my mom had forgotten to come and get me. I had been the last guest there as the birthday girl had gone into her room and closed the door, while her mom and dad had cleaned up the chairs and tables and picked up popped balloons. They had been ok about the mix-up at first, but I’d felt ridiculous and awkward.
I felt exactly the same way now as I waited for the car. Everett had seemed grateful that I’d driven him and that I’d made the sandwich, and he wasn’t saying anything like, “Why don’t you wait on the porch?” That was what I’d heard at that birthday party fifteen years before, when the family had finally gotten really tired of me and I’d been exiled like a leper. But he probably wanted me to go and I got more and more anxious as the car didn’t arrive.
“I’ll wait outside,” I suggested.
“No, that’s ok.” He peered through the window next to the door and then checked his phone. “It should be here by now.”
I had the urge to apologize, except I had come here to help him. Hadn’t I? I hadn’t been thinking of this as an opportunity to further our relationship and anyway, we had already delineated that: we were friends.
He checked his phone again and frowned. “I was supposed to leave tomorrow morning. I’ll probably have to change it now.”
“Leave?”
“For Arizona. The Junior Woodsmen season ended a few hours ago and I’m done. I don’t care if they keep the crap I left in my locker. The mice will probably get at it.” He looked repulsed.
