MARCH 16, 2001
Dear Franklin,
Well, it’s another Friday night on which I gird myself for a visit to Chatham tomorrow morning. The halogen bulbs are trembling again, flickering like my stoic resolve to be a good soldier and live out what’s left of my life for the sake of some unnamable duty. I’ve sat here for over an hour, wondering what keeps me going, and more specifically just what it is I want from you. I guess it goes without saying that I want you back; the volume of this correspondence—though it’s more of a respondence, isn’t it?—attests heavily to that. But what else? Do I want you to forgive me? And if so, for what exactly? After all, I was uneasy with the unsolicited tide of forgiveness that washed over the shipwreck of our family in the wake of Thursday. In addition to mail promising either to beat his brains out or to bear his babies, Kevin has received dozens of letters offering to share his pain, apologizing for society’s having failed to recognize his spiritual distress and granting him blanket moral amnesty for what he has yet to regret. Amused, he’s read choice selections aloud to me in the visiting room. Surely it makes a travesty of the exercise to forgive the unrepentant, and I speak for myself as well. I, too, have received a torrent of mail (my e-mail and postal address were billboarded on both partnersnprayer.org and beliefnet.com without my consent; apparently at any one time, thousands of Americans have been praying for my salvation), much of it invoking a God in whom I was less disposed to believe than ever, while sweepingly acquitting my shortcomings as a mother. I can only assume that these well-meaning people felt moved by my plight. Yet it bothered me that nearly all this deliverance was bestowed by strangers, which made it seem cheap, and an undercurrent of preening betrayed that conspicuous clemency has become the religious version of driving a flashy car. By contrast, my brother Giles’s staunch incapacity to pardon us for the unwelcome attentions that our wayward son has visited upon his own family is a grudge I treasure, if only for its frankness. Thus I was of half a mind to mark the envelopes “Return to sender,” like Pocket Fishermans and Gensu knives I hadn’t ordered. In the early months, still asthmatic with grief, I was more in the mood for the bracing open air of the pariah than for the close, stifling confines of Christian charity. And the vengefulness of my hate mail was meat-red and raw, whereas the kindness of condolences was pastel and processed, like commercial baby food; after reading a few pages from the merciful, I’d feel as if I’d just crawled from a vat of liquefied squash. I wanted to shake these people and scream, Forgive us! Do you know what he did? But in retrospect it may grate on me most that this big dumb absolution latterly in vogue is doled out so selectively. Weak characters of an everyday sort—bigots, sexists, and panty fetishists—need not apply. “KK” the murderer harvests sheaves of pitying pen pals; an addled drama teacher too desperate to be liked is blackballed for the rest of her life. From which you may correctly construe that I’m not so bothered by the caprices of all America’s compassion as I am by yours. You bent over backward to be understanding about killers like Luke Woodham in Pearl and little Mitchell and Andrew in Jonesboro. So why had you no sympathy to spare for Vicki Pagorski?
The first semester of Kevin’s sophomore year in 1998 was dominated by that scandal. Rumors had circulated for weeks, but we weren’t in the loop, so the first we heard about it was when the administration sent that letter around to all Ms. Pagorski’s drama students. I’d been surprised that Kevin elected to take a drama course. He tended to shy from the limelight in those days, lest scrutiny blow his Regular Kid cover. On the other hand, as his room suggested, he could be anybody, so he may have been interested in acting for years. “Franklin, you should take a look at this,” I said one November evening while you were grumbling over the Times that Clinton was a “lying sack of shit.” I handed you the letter. “I don’t know what to make of it.” As you adjusted your reading glasses, I had one of those juddering update moments when I realized that your hair had now passed decisively from blond to gray. “Seems to me,” you determined, “this lady’s got a taste for tenderloin.” “Well, you have to infer that,” I said. “But if someone’s made an accusation, this letter’s not defending her. If your son or daughter has reported anything irregular or inappropriate... Please speak to your child... They’re digging for more dirt!” “They have to protect themselves.—KEV! Come into the den for a sec!” Kevin sauntered across the dining area in tiny dove-gray sweats, their elastic ankles bunched under his knees. “Kev, this is a little awkward,” you said, “and you haven’t done anything wrong. Not a thing. But this drama teacher, Ms.—Pagorski. Do you like her?” Kevin slumped against the archway. “Okay, I guess. She’s a little... ” “A little what?” Kevin looked elaborately in all directions. “Hinky.” “Hinky how?” I asked. He studied his unlaced sneakers, glancing up through his eyelashes. “She like, wears funny clothes and stuff. Not like a teacher. Tight jeans, and sometimes her blouse—” He twisted, and scratched an ankle with his foot. “Like, the buttons at the top, they’re not... See, she gets all excited when she’s directing a scene, and then... It’s sort of embarrassing.” “Does she wear a bra?” you asked bluntly. Kevin averted his face, suppressing a grin. “Not always.” “So she dresses casually, and sometimes—provocatively,” I said. “Anything else?” “Well, it’s not a big deal or anything, but she does use a lot of dirty words, you know? Like, it’s okay, but from a teacher and everything, well, like I said, it’s hinky.” “Dirty like damn and hell?” you prodded. “Or harder core?” Kevin raised his shoulders helplessly. “Yeah, like—sorry, Mumsey—” “Oh, skip it, Kevin,” I said impatiently; his discomfiture seemed rather overdone. “I’m a grown-up.” “Like fuck,” he said, meeting my eyes. “She says, like, That was a fucking good performance, or she’ll direct some guy, Look at her like you really want to fuck her, like you want to fuck her till she squeals like a pig. ” “Little out there, Eva,” you said, eyebrows raised. “What does she look like?” I said. “She’s got big, uh,” he mimed honeydews, “and a really wide,” this time he couldn’t contain the grin, “like, a huge butt. She’s old and everything. Sort of a hag, basically.” “Is she a good teacher?” I said. “She’s sure into it anyway.” “Into it how?” you said. “She’s always trying to get us to stay after school and practice our scenes with her. Most teachers just want to go home, you know? Not Pagorski. She can’t get enough.” “Some teachers,” I said sharply, “are very passionate about their work.” “That’s what she is,” said Kevin. “Real, real passionate. ” “Sounds like she’s a little bohemian,” you said, “or a bit of a loon. That’s all right. But other things aren’t all right. So we need to know. Has she ever touched you. In a flirtatious way. Or—below the waist. In any way that made you uncomfortable.” The squirming became extravagant, and he scratched his bare midriff as if it didn’t really itch. “Depends on what you mean by uncomfortable, I guess.” You looked alarmed. “Son, it’s just us here. But this is a big deal, all right? We have to know if anything—happened.” “Look,” he said bashfully. “No offense, Mumsey, but would you mind? I’d rather talk to Dad in private.” Frankly, I minded very much. If I was going to be asked to trust this story, I wanted to hear it myself. But there was nothing for it but to excuse myself to the kitchen and fret. Fifteen minutes later, you were steamed. I poured you a glass of wine, but you couldn’t sit down. “Tell you what, Eva, this woman went beyond the pale,” you murmured urgently, and gave me the lowdown. “Are you going to report this?” “Bet your life I’m going to report this. That teacher should be fired. Hell, she should be arrested. He’s underage.” “Do you—do you want to go in together?” I’d been about to ask instead, Do you believe him? but I didn’t bother.
I left turning state’s evidence to you, while I volunteered to meet Dana Rocco, Kevin’s English teacher, for a routine parent-teacher conference. Whisking out of Ms. Rocco’s classroom at 4 P.M., Mary Woolford passed me in the hallway with barely a nod; her daughter was no academic bright spark, and she looked, if this was not merely a permanent condition, put out. When I entered, Ms. Rocco had that having-just-taken-a-deep-breath expression, as if drawing on inner resources. But she recovered readily enough, and her handclasp was warm. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she said, firm rather than gushy. “Your son’s quite an enigma to me, and I’ve been hoping you could help me crack the code.” “I’m afraid I rely on his teachers to explain the mystery to me,” I said with a wan smile, assuming the hot seat by her desk. “Though I doubt they’ve been enlightening.” “Kevin turns in his homework. He isn’t a truant. He doesn’t, as far as anyone knows, take knives to school. That’s all his teachers have ever cared to know.” “I’m afraid that most teachers here have nearly 100 students—” “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be critical. You’re spread so thin that I’m impressed you’ve even learned his name.” “Oh, I noticed Kevin right away—.” She seemed about to say more, and stopped. She placed a pencil eraser on her bottom lip. A slim, attractive woman in her mid-forties, she had decisive features that tended to set in an implacable expression, her mouth faintly pressed. Yet if she exuded an air of restraint, her reserve did not seem natural but learned, perhaps by expensive trial and error. It wasn’t an easy time to be a schoolteacher, if it ever had been. Squeezed by the state for higher standards and by parents for higher grades, under the magnifying glass for any ethnic insensitivity or sexual impropriety, torn by the rote demands of proliferating standardized tests and student cries for creative expression, teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong with kids and turned to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was downright messianic, but even Jesus was probably paid better. “What’s his game?” Ms. Rocco resumed, bouncing the eraser on her desk. “Pardon?” “What do you think that boy’s up to? He tries to hide it, but he’s smart. Quite the savage social satirist, too. Has he always done these tongue-in-cheek papers, or are these deadpan parodies something new?” “He’s had a keen sense of the absurd since he was a toddler.” “Those three-letter-word essays are tours de force. Tell me, is there anything he doesn’t find ridiculous?” “Archery,” I said miserably. “I have no idea why he doesn’t get tired of it.” “What do you think he likes about it?” I frowned. “Something about that arrow—the focus—its purposiveness, or sense of direction. Maybe he envies it. There’s a ferocity about Kevin at target practice. Otherwise, he can seem rather aimless.” “Ms. Khatchadourian, I don’t want to put you on the spot. But has anything happened in your family that I should know about? I was hoping you could help explain why your son seems so angry. ” “That’s odd. Most of his teachers have described Kevin as placid, even lethargic.” “It’s a front,” she said confidently. “I do think of him as a little rebellious—” “And he rebels by doing everything he’s supposed to. It’s very clever. But I look in his eyes, and he’s raging. Why?” “Well, he wasn’t too happy when his sister was born... But that was over seven years ago, and he wasn’t too happy before she was born, either.” My delivery had grown morose. “We’re pretty well off—you know, we have a big house... ” I introduced an air of embarrassment. “We try not to spoil him, but he lacks for nothing. Kevin’s father adores him, almost—too much. His sister did have an—accident last winter in which Kevin was—involved, but he didn’t seem very bothered by it. Not bothered enough, in fact. Otherwise, I can’t tell you any terrible trauma he’s been through or deprivation he’s suffered. We lead the good life, don’t we?” “Maybe that’s what he’s angry about.” “Why would affluence make him mad?” “Maybe he’s mad that this is as good as it gets. Your big house. His good school. I think it’s very difficult for kids these days, in a way. The country’s very prosperity has become a burden, a dead end. Everything works, doesn’t it? At least if you’re white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they’re not needed. In a sense, it’s as if there’s nothing more to do.” “Except tear it apart.” “Yes. And you see the same cycles in history. It’s not only children.” “You know, I’ve tried to tell my kids about the hardships of life in countries like Bangladesh or Sierra Leone. But it’s not their hardship, and I can’t exactly tuck them in on a bed of nails every night so they’ll appreciate the miracle of comfort.” “You said your husband ‘adores’ Kevin. How do you get along with him?” I folded my arms. “He’s a teenager.” Wisely, she dropped the subject. “Your son is anything but a hopeless case. That’s what I most wanted to tell you. He’s sharp as a tack. Some of his papers—did you read the one on the SUV? It was worthy of Swift. And I’ve noticed that he asks challenging questions merely to catch me out—to humiliate me in front of the class. In fact, he knows the answer beforehand. So I’ve been playing along. I call on him, and he asks what logomachy means. I gladly admit I don’t know, and bingo, he’s learned a new word—because he had to find it in the dictionary to ask the question. It’s a game we play. He spurns learning through regular channels. But if you get at him through the back door, your young man has spark.” I was jealous. “Generally when I knock at the door, it’s locked.” “Please don’t despair. I assume that with you, just as in school, he’s inaccessible and sarcastic. As you said, he’s a teenager. But he’s also inhaling information at a ferocious rate, if only because he’s determined that nobody get the better of him.” I glanced at my watch; I’d run overtime. “These high school massacres,” I said offhandedly, collecting my purse. “Do you worry that something like that could happen here?” “Of course it could happen here. Among a big enough group of people, of any age, somebody’s going to have a screw loose. But honestly, my turning violent poetry into the office only makes my students mad. In fact, it should make them mad. Madder, even. So many kids take all this censorship, these locker searches—” “Flagrantly illegal,” I noted. “—Flagrantly illegal searches.” She nodded. “Well, so many of them take it lying down like sheep. They’re told it’s for ‘their own protection,’ and for the most part they just—buy it. When I was their age we’d have staged sit-ins and marched around with placards—.” She stopped herself again. “ I think it’s good for them to get their hostilities out on paper. It’s harmless, and a release valve. But that’s become a minority view. At least these horrible incidents are still very rare. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.” “And, uh—,” I stood, “the rumors about Vicki Pagorski. Think there’s anything to them?” Ms. Rocco’s eyes clouded. “I don’t think that’s been established.” “I mean, off the record. Is it credible. Assuming you know her.” “Vicki is a friend of mine, so I don’t feel impartial—.” She once more put that eraser on her chin. “This has been a painful time for her.” That was all she would say. Ms. Rocco saw me to the door. “I want you to give Kevin a message for me,” she said with a smile. “You tell him I’m onto him. ” I’d often nursed the same conviction, but I’d never have asserted it in such a cheerful tone of voice.
Anxious to avert legal action, the Nyack School Board held a closed disciplinary hearing at Gladstone High, to which only the parents of four of Vicki Pagorski’s students were invited. Trying to keep the event casual, they put the meeting in a regular classroom. Still the room sizzled with a sense of occasion, and the other three mothers had dressed up. (I realized I’d made terribly classist assumptions about Lenny Pugh’s parents, whom we’d never met, when I found myself scanning for overweight trailer-park trash in loud polyester to no avail. I later discerned that he was the banker-type in chalk-stripe, she the stunning, intelligent-looking redhead in understated gear that was clearly designer label, because it didn’t show any buttons. So we all have our crosses to bear.) The school board and that beefy principal, Donald Bevons, had assumed a set of folding chairs along one wall, and they were all scowling with rectitude, while we parents were stuck in those infantilizing school desks. Four other folding chairs were arranged on one side of the teacher’s desk at the front, where there sat two nervous-looking boys I didn’t know, along with Kevin and Lenny Pugh, who kept leaning over toward Kevin and whispering behind his hand. On the other side of the desk was seated, I could only assume, Vicki Pagorski. So much for the powers of adolescent description. She was hardly a hag; I doubt she was even thirty. I would never have depicted her breasts as large or her keister as wide, for she had the agreeably solid figure of a woman who ate her Wheaties. Attractive? Hard to say. With that snub nose and freckles, she had a lost, girlish, innocent look that some men like. The drab dun suit was doubtless donned for the event; her friend Dana Rocco would have counseled against tight jeans and a low-cut shirt. But it’s too bad she hadn’t done anything about her hair, which was thick and kinky; it frizzed from her head in all directions and suggested a ditzy, frazzled state of mind. The glasses, too, were unfortunate: The round oversized frames gave her a pop-eyed appearance, inducing the impression of dumb shock. Hands twisting in her lap, knees locked tightly together under the straight wool skirt, she reminded me a bit of let-us-call-her-Alice at that eighth-grade dance immediately after Kevin whispered I-didn’t-want-to-know. When the chairman of the school board, Alan Strickland, called the little group to order, the room was already unpleasantly quiet. Strickland said that they hoped to clear up these allegations one way or the other without landing this business in court. He talked about how seriously the board took this sort of thing and blathered on about teaching and trust. He emphasized that he didn’t want anything we said that evening leaving this room until the board decided what action to take, if any; the stenographer was taking notes for internal purposes only. Belying the rhetoric of informal chitchat, he explained that Miss Pagorski had declined to ask her attorney to be present. And then he asked Kevin to have a seat in the chair placed in front of the teacher’s desk and to just tell us in his own words what happened that afternoon in October in Miss Pagorski’s classroom. Kevin, too, recognized the importance of costuming, and for once was wearing plain slacks and a button-down of the customary size. On command, he assumed the shuffling, averted-eye squirm that he’d practiced in the archway of our den. “You mean, like, that time she asked me to stay after school, right?” “I never asked him to stay after school,” Pagorski blurted. Her voice was shaky but surprisingly forceful. “You’ll get your chance, Miss Pagorski,” said Strickland. “For now we’re going to hear Kevin’s side of things, all right?” He clearly wanted this hearing to proceed calmly and civilly, and I thought, good luck. “I don’t know,” said Kevin, ducking and weaving his head. “It just got kinda intimate, you know? I wasn’t gonna say anything or anything, but then my dad started asking questions and I like, told him.” “Told him about what?” Strickland asked gently. “You know—what I told Mr. Bevons about, too, before.” Kevin sandwiched his hands between his thighs and looked at the floor. “Kevin, I realize this is difficult for you, but we’re going to need details. Your teacher’s career is on the line.” Kevin looked to you. “Dad, do I have to?” “Afraid so, Kev,” you said. “Well, Miss Pagorski’s always been nice to me, Mr. Strickland. Real nice. Always asking did I need help choosing a scene or could she read the other part so I could memorize mine... And I’ve never thought I was all that good, but she’d say I was a great actor and she loved my ‘dramatic face’ and my ‘tight build’ and with my looks I could be in the movies. I don’t know about that. Still, I sure wouldn’t want to get her in trouble.” “You leave that to us, Kevin, and just tell us what happened.” “See, she’d asked me several times if I could stay after school so she could coach me on my delivery, but before I’d always said I couldn’t. Actually, I could, most days, I mean, I didn’t have anything I had to do or anything, but I just didn’t—I felt funny about it. I don’t know why, it just felt kinda weird when she’d pull me over to her desk after class and, like, pick off little pieces of lint on my shirt that I wasn’t sure were really there. Or she’d take the flap of my belt and tuck it back in the loop?” “Since when has Kevin ever worn a belt?” I whispered. You shushed me quiet. “—But this one time she was real insistent, almost like I had to, like it was part of class work or something. I didn’t want to go—I told you, I don’t know why exactly, I just didn’t—but it seemed like this time I didn’t have any choice.” Most of this was addressed to the linoleum, but Kevin would shoot quick glances at Strickland from time to time, and Strickland would nod reassuringly. “So I waited around till 4 o’clock, since she said she had stuff to do right after the bell, and by then there wasn’t hardly anybody around anymore. I walked into her classroom, and I thought it was kinda strange that she’d changed clothes since our fourth-period class. I mean, just the shirt, but now it was one of those stretchy T’s that are scooped low and it was clingy enough I could see her—you know.” “Her what?” “Her... nipples,” said Kevin. “So I said, ‘You want me to go though my monologue?’ and she got up and closed the door. And she locked it. She said, “We need a little privacy, don’t we?” I said, actually, I didn’t mind the air. Then I asked should I start at the top, and she said, ‘First we’ve got to work on that posture of yours.’ She said I’ve got to learn to speak from the diaphragm, right here, and she put her hand on my chest and she left it there. Then she said, and you’ve got to stand up real straight, and she put her other hand on my lower back and pressed and sort of smoothed around. I sure did stand up straight. I remember holding my breath, like. Since I was nervous. Then I started my monologue from Equus —actually, I’d wanted to do Shakespeare, you know? That to be or not to be thing. I thought it was kinda cool.” “In your own good time, son. But what happened next?” “I think she interrupted me after only two or three lines. She said, ‘You have to remember that this play is all about sex. ’ She said, ‘When he blinds those horses, it’s an erotic act. ’ And then she started asking if I’ve ever seen horses, big horses up close, not the like, geldings, but stallions, and had I ever noticed what a big—I’m sorry, do you want me to say what she really said, or should I just, you know, summarize?” “It would be better if you used her exact words, as well as you can remember.” “Okay, you asked for it.” Kevin inhaled. “She wanted to know if I’d ever seen a horse’s cock. How big it was. And all this time I’m feeling kinda—funny. Like, restless. And she put her hand on my, uh. Fly. Of my jeans. And I was pretty embarrassed, because with all that talk, I’d got... a little worked up.” “You mean you had an erection,” said Strickland sternly. “Look, do I have to go on?” Kevin appealed. “If you can, it would be better if you finished the story.” Kevin glanced at the ceiling and crossed his legs tightly, tapping the toe of his right sneaker in an agitated, irregular rhythm against the toe of the left. “So I said, ‘Miss Pagorski maybe we should work on this scene some other time, ’cause I’ve got to go soon.’ I wasn’t sure whether to say anything about her hand, so I just kept saying that maybe we should stop, that I wanted to stop, that I should go now. ’Cause it didn’t seem right, and, you know, I like her, but not like that. She could be my mother or something.” “Let’s be clear here,” said Strickland. “Legally, it’s only so important, because you’re a minor. But on top of the fact that you’re only fifteen, these were unwanted advances, is this correct?” “Well, yeah. She’s ugly.” Pagorski flinched. It was the brief, floppy little jerk you get when you keep shooting a small animal with a high-caliber pistol and it’s already dead. “So did she stop?” asked Strickland. “No, sir. She started rubbing up and down through my jeans, all the while saying, ‘Jesus’... Saying, and I really apologize Mr. Strickland but you asked me... She said every time she saw a horse’s cock she ‘wanted to suck it.’ And that’s when I—” “Ejaculated.” Kevin dropping his head to look at his lap. “Yeah. It was kind of a mess. I just ran out. I skipped class a couple of times after that, but then I came back and tried to act as if nothing happened since I didn’t want to wreck my grade-point average.” “How?” I murmured under my breath. “By getting another B?” You shot me a glare. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, and we want to thank you, Kevin, for being so forthcoming. You can take a seat now.” “Could I go sit with my parents?” he implored. “Why don’t you sit over there with the other boys for now, because we might need to ask you a few more questions. I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.” Kevin hove back to his original perch, curling with a tinge of shame—nice touch. Meanwhile, the classroom was pin-drop silent, as parents met one another’s eyes and shook their heads. It was a bravura performance. I cannot pretend that I was not impressed. But then I looked to Vicki Pagorski. Early in Kevin’s testimony she’d emitted the odd repressed squeal, or she’d dropped her mouth open. But by the time it was over she was beyond histrionics, and this was a drama teacher. She was drooped so bonelessly in her folding chair that I feared she would fall off, while the frizz of her hair evanesced into the air as if her whole head were in a state of dissolve. Strickland turned to the drama teacher’s chair, though he kept his distance. “Now, Miss Pagorski. It’s your contention that this encounter never happened?” “That’s—.” She had to clear her throat. “That’s right.” “Do you have any idea why Kevin would tell such a story if it wasn’t true?” “No, I don’t. I can’t understand it. Kevin’s class is an unusually talented group, and I thought we’d been having a lot of fun. I’ve given him plenty of individual attention—” “It’s the individual attention he seems to have a problem with.” “I give all my students individual attention!” “Oh, Miss Pagorski, let’s hope not,” Strickland said sorrowfully. Our small audience chuckled. “Now, you claim you didn’t invite Kevin to stay after school?” “Not separately. I told the whole class that if they want to use my classroom to practice their scenes after school, I’d make it available.” “So you did invite Kevin to stay after school, then.” As Pagorski sputtered, Strickland proceeded, “Have you ever admired Kevin’s looks?” “I may have said something about his having very striking features, yes. I try to instill confidence in my students—” “How about this ‘speaking from the diaphragm.’ Did you say that?” “Well, yes—” “And have you put your hand on his chest, to indicate where the diaphragm is?” “Maybe, but I never touched him on—” “Or on his lower back, when ‘improving’ his posture?” “Possibly. He has a tendency to slump, and it ruins his—” “What about the selection from Equus? Did Kevin choose this passage?” “I recommended it.” “Why not something from Our Town, or Neil Simon, a little less racy?” “I try to find plays that students can relate to, about things that are important to them—” “Things like sex.” “Well, yes, among other things, of course—.” She was getting flustered. “Did you describe the content of this play as ‘erotic’?” “Maybe, probably, yes! I thought that drama about adolescent sexuality and its confusions would naturally appeal—” “Miss Pagorski, are you interested in adolescent sexuality?” “Well, who isn’t?” she cried. Someone should have given the poor woman a shovel, so intent was she on digging her own grave. “But Equus isn’t steamy and explicit, it’s all symbolism—” “Symbolism you were eager to explain. And did you talk about horses to Kevin?” “Of course, the play—” “Did you talk about stallions, Miss Pagorski.” “Well, we did discuss what made them such common symbols of virility—” “And what does make them ‘virile’?” “Well, they’re muscular and very beautiful and powerful, sleek—” “Just like teenage boys,” Strickland noted sardonically. “Did you ever draw attention to a horse’s penis. To its size?” “Maybe; how could you ignore it? But I never said—” “Some people can’t ignore it, apparently.” “You don’t understand! These are young people and they’re easily bored. I have to do something to get them excited!” Strickland just let that one sit there for a beat. “Yes, well,” he said. “You seem to have succeeded there.” Deathly pale, Pagorski turned to our son. “What did I ever do to you?” “That’s just what we’re trying to find out,” Strickland intervened. “But we’ve got more testimony to get through, and you’ll have opportunity to respond. Leonard Pugh?” Lenny murmured to Kevin before sauntering to the center chair. Surely at any moment one of the boys would start writhing in agony because Goody Pagorski was smiting them with evil spirits. “Now Leonard, you, too, met with your drama teacher after school?” “Yeah, she seemed real hot to have a conference,” said Lenny, with his poo-making smile. His nose stud was infected again, the left nostril red and puffy. He’d recently gotten a fade, which was neo-Nazi short with the letter Z shaved into one side. When I’d asked him what the Z stood for, he’d said, Whatever, which I’d been forced to point out began with a W. “Can you tell us what happened?” “It was just like Kevin said. I thought we was just gonna practice and shit. And I come in the room and she like, shuts the door? She’s wearing this really short skirt, you know, you can almost see her cheeks.” Lenny mugged a bit. “And did you practice your work for class?” asked Strickland, though coaching proved quite unnecessary. More, detail proved Lenny’s strong suit. “We sure practiced something!” said Lenny. “She said, ‘I’ve been watching you in the back row, when I’m sitting at my desk? And some afternoons I get so wet I have to do myself in class!’” Strickland looked a little queasy. “Did Miss Pagorski do anything that you thought was inappropriate?” “Well then she like, sits on the edge of her desk? With her legs spread wide open. So I go up to the desk, and I can see she’s not wearing panties. It’s like, this, wide open beaver, you know? All red and hairy, and it’s just, you know, dripping —” “Leonard, let’s just get the facts—.” Strickland was massaging his forehead. Meanwhile, chalk-stripe was twisting his tie; the redhead had her face in her hands. “So she says, ‘You want some? ’Cause I look at that bulge in your pants, and I can’t keep my hands off my pussy—’” “Could you please watch your language—!” said Strickland, making desperate slashing motions at the stenographer. “—So if you don’t do me right now, I’m gonna shove this eraser in my hole and bring myself off!’” “Leonard, that’s enough—” “Girls around here are pretty tight with it, so I wasn’t about to pass on free pussy. So I did her, right on the desk, and you shoulda heard her begging to let her suck it—” “Leonard, take your seat right now.” Well, wasn’t it awkward. Lenny shambled back to his chair, and Strickland announced that the board had heard enough for one night, and he thanked everyone for coming. He repeated his admonition that we not spread rumors until a decision had been made. We would be notified if any action would be taken on this case.
After the three of us had climbed into your 4x4 in silence, you finally said to Kevin, “You know, that friend of yours made you look like a liar.” “Moron,” Kevin grumbled. “I should never have told him about what happened with Pagorski. He copies me in everything. I guess I just needed to tell somebody.” “Why didn’t you come straight to me?” you asked. “It was gross!” he said, bunched in the back seat. “That whole thing back there was totally embarrassing. I should never have told anybody. You shouldn’ta made me do that.” “On the contrary. ” You twisted around the headrest. “Kevin, if you have a teacher whose behavior is out of bounds, I want to know about it, and I want the school to know about it. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Except possibly your choice of friends. Lenny is something of a fabulist. Little distance might be in order there, sport.” “Yeah,” said Kevin. “Like to China. ” I don’t think I said a word the whole drive back. When we got home I left it to you to thank Robert for getting Celia, amazingly, to go to sleep without a forty-five-minute tucking-in from her mother. I was reluctant to open my mouth even a little bit, much as one might hesitate to put even a very small hole in an inflated balloon. “Kev, Triskets?” you offered when Robert had left. “Sodium City, man.” “Nah. I’m going to my room. I’ll come out when I can show my face again. Like in about fifty years.” He moped off. Unlike the stagy melancholy of the weeks to come, he seemed truly glum. He seemed to be suffering the lingering sense of injustice that would attend a tennis player who had valiantly distinguished himself in a game of doubles but whose partner had muffed it, so they lost the match. You busied yourself putting stray dishes in the washer. Every piece of silverware seemed to make an extraordinary amount of noise. “Glass of wine?” I shook my head. You looked over sharply; I would always have a glass or two before bed, and it had been a stressful evening. But it would turn to vinegar on my tongue. And I still couldn’t open my mouth. I knew we had been here before. Yet I finally apprehended that we couldn’t keep visiting this place—or rather, these places; that is, we could not indefinitely occupy parallel universes of such diametrical characters without eventually inhabiting different places in the most down to earth, literal sense. That’s all it took, my turning down a glass of wine, which you interpreted as hostile. In defiance of our set roles—I was the family booze hound—you grabbed yourself a beer. “It didn’t seem advisable,” you began after a vengeful swig, “to apologize to that Pagorski woman after the hearing. That could help the defense if this ends up in court.” “It won’t end up in court,” I said. “We won’t press charges.” “Well, I’d prefer not to put Kevin through that myself. But if the school board allows that perv to keep teaching—” “This cannot continue.” Even I was not quite sure what I meant, though I felt it forcefully. You waited for me to elucidate. “It’s gone too far,” I said. “What’s gone too far, Eva? Cut to the chase.” I licked my lips. “It used to have mostly to do with us. My wall of maps. Then later, it was little things—eczema. But it’s bigger now—Celia’s eye; a teacher’s career. I can’t keep looking the other way. Not even for you.” “If that lady’s career is on the line, she has only herself to blame.” “I think we should consider sending him to boarding school. Somewhere strict, old-fashioned. I never thought I’d say this, but maybe even a military academy.” “Whoa! Our son has been sexually abused, and your answer is to banish him to boot camp? Jesus, if some creep were interfering with Celia you’d be down at the police station right now, filling out forms! You’d be on the phone to the New York Times and ten victim-support groups, and never mind a school in Annapolis—you’d never let her leave your lap!” “That’s because if Celia said someone had messed with her, the situation would be far more grave than she let on. Celia is more likely to let some dirty old geez finger her for years because she doesn’t want to get the nice man in trouble.” “I know what’s behind this: typical double standard. A girl gets pawed at and it’s ooh terrible put the sicko away. But a woman paws all over a boy and it’s gosh, lucky kid, gets his first taste, bet he really enjoyed it! Well, just because a boy responds—from physical reflex—doesn’t mean it can’t be a degrading, humiliating violation!” “Professionally,” I said, pressing an index finger patiently to my forehead, “I may have been fortunate, but I’ve never thought of myself as all that bright. Kevin came by his intelligence from somewhere. So you must have at least considered the possibility that this whole thing was a sadistic frame-job.” “Just because Lenny Pugh’s horning in on the show was bogus—” “Lenny didn’t ‘horn in,’ he just didn’t learn his lines. He’s lazy, and a lousy drama student, apparently. But Kevin clearly put the other boys up to it.” “ Balls —!” “He didn’t have to call her ‘ugly.’” I shuddered, remembering. “That was twisting the knife.” “Some nympho seduces our own son, and the only person you care about—” “He made one mistake, did you notice? He said she locked the door. Then he claimed he ‘ran out’ after she had her way with him. Those doors don’t even lock, you know, from the inside. I checked.” “Big deal she didn’t literally lock it! He obviously felt trapped. More to the point, why in God’s name would Kevin make that story up?” “I can’t say.” I shrugged. “But this certainly fits.” “With what?” “With a wicked and dangerous little boy.” You looked at me clinically. “Now, what I can’t figure is whether you’re trying to hurt me, or hurt him, or if this is some confused self-torture.” “This evening’s witch trial was excruciating enough. We can knock out self-torture. ” “Witches are mythical. Pedophiles are real as sin. One look at that loon and you could tell she was unstable.” “She’s a type,” I said. “She wants them to like her. She courts their favor by breaking the rules, by choosing racy plays and saying fuck in class. She may even like the idea of their ogling her a bit, but not at this price. And there’s nothing illegal about being pathetic.” “He didn’t say she spread her legs and begged like Lenny Pugh, did he? No, she got a little carried away and crossed a line. He even kept his pants on. I could see it happening. That’s what convinced me. He wouldn’t make that part up about through his jeans. ” “Interesting,” I said. “That’s exactly how I knew he was lying.” “Lost me.” “Through his jeans. It was calculated authenticity. The believability was crafted. ” “Let’s get this straight. You don’t believe his story because it’s too believable.” “That’s right,” I agreed evenly. “He may be scheming and malicious, but his English teacher is right. He’s sharp as a tack. ” “Did he seem as if he wanted to testify?” “Of course not. He’s a genius.” Then it happened. When you collapsed into the chair opposite, you did not come to a dead halt only because I had made up my mind and you could no more dislodge my conviction that Kevin was a Machiavellian miscreant than I could dislodge yours that he was a misunderstood choirboy. It was worse than that. Bigger. Your face sagged much as a short time later I would see your father’s droop as he emerged from his basement stairwell—as if all your features had been artificially held up by tacks that had suddenly fallen out. Why, at that moment you and your father would have appeared nearly the same age. Franklin, I’d never appreciated how much energy you expended to maintain the fiction that we were a broadly happy family whose trifling, transient problems just made life more interesting. Maybe every family has one member whose appointed job is to fabricate this attractive packaging. In any event, you had abruptly resigned. In one form or another, we had visited this conversation countless times, with the habitual loyalty that sends other couples to the same holiday home every summer. But at some point such couples must look about their painfully familiar cottage and admit to each other, Next year we’ll have to try somewhere else. You pressed your fingers into your eye sockets. “I thought we could make it until the kids were out of the house.” Your voice was gray. “I even thought that if we made it that far, maybe... But that’s ten years from now, and it’s too many days. I can take the years, Eva. But not the days.” I had never so fully and consciously wished that I had never borne our son. In that instant I might even have forgone Celia, whose absence a childless woman in her fifties would not have known well enough to rue. From a young age there was only one thing I had always wanted, along with getting out of Racine, Wisconsin. And that was a good man who loved me and would stay true. Anything else was ancillary, a bonus, like frequentflier miles. I could have lived without children. I couldn’t live without you. But I would have to. I had created my own Other Woman who happened to be a boy. I’d seen this in-house cuckolding in other families, and it’s odd that I’d failed to spot it in ours. Brian and Louise had split ten years before (all that wholesomeness had been a little meat-and-potatoes for him, too; at a party for his fifteenth wedding anniversary, a jar of pickled walnuts smashed on the floor, and he got caught fucking his mistress in the walk-in pantry), and of course Brian was far more upset about separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There shouldn’t be any problem loving both, but for some reason certain men choose; like good mutual-fund managers minimizing risk while maximizing portfolio yield, they take everything they once invested in their wives and sink it into children instead. What is it? Do they seem safer, because they need you? Because you can never become their ex-father, as I might become your ex-wife? You never quite trusted me, Franklin. I took too many airplanes in the formative years, and it never entirely registered that I always bought a round-trip. “What do you want to do?” I asked. I felt light-headed. “Last out the school year, if we can. Make arrangements over the summer. “At least custody is a no-brainer, isn’t it?” you added sourly. “And doesn’t that say it all.” At the time, of course, we had no way of knowing that you would keep Celia, too. “Is it—?” I didn’t want to sound pitiful. “You’ve decided.” “There’s nothing left to decide, Eva,” you said limply. “It’s already happened.” Had I imagined this scene—and I had not, for to picture such things is to invite them—I’d have expected to stay up until dawn draining a bottle, agonizing over what went wrong. But I sensed that if anything we would turn in early. Like toasters and sub-compacts, one only tinkers with the mechanics of a marriage in the interests of getting it up and running again; there’s not much point in poking around to see where the wires have disconnected prior to throwing the contraption away. What’s more, though I’d have expected to cry, I found myself all dried up; with the house overheated, my nostrils were tight and smarting, my lips cracked. You were right, it had already happened, and I may have been in mourning for our marriage for a decade. Now I understood how the mates of long senile spouses felt when, after dogged, debilitating visits to a nursing home, what is functionally dead succumbs to death in fact. A culminatory shudder of grief; a thrill of guilty relief. For the first time since I could remember, I relaxed. My shoulders dropped a good two inches. I sat into my chair. I sat. I may have never sat so completely. All I was doing was sitting. Thus it took a supreme effort to lift my eyes and turn my head when a flicker of motion in the mouth of the hallway distracted from the perfect stasis of our still life. Kevin took a deliberate step into the light. One glance confirmed that he’d been eavesdropping. He looked different. Those sordid afternoons with the bathroom door open notwithstanding, this was the first time in years I had seen him naked. Oh, he was still wearing the normal-sized clothes from the hearing. But he’d lost the sideways skew; he stood up straight. The sarcastic wrench of his mouth dropped; his features were at rest. I thought, he really is “striking,” as his drama teacher purportedly remarked. He looked older. But what most amazed me were his eyes. Ordinarily, they glazed with the glaucous film of unwashed apples—flat and unfocused, bored and belligerent, they shut me out. Sure, they glittered with occasional mischief, like the closed metal doors of a smelting furnace around which a little red rim would sometimes smolder, from which stray flames would lick. But as he stepped into the kitchen, the furnace doors swung wide to bare the jets. “I need a drink of water,” he announced, somehow managing to hiss without pronouncing any S’s, and strode to the sink. “Kev,” you said. “Don’t take anything you might have overheard to heart. It’s easy to misunderstand when you hear something out of context.” “Why would I not know the context?” He took a single swallow from his glass. “I am the context.” He put the glass on the counter, and left. I’m certain of it: That moment, that hard swallow, is when he decided.
A week later, we received another letter from the school board. Already relieved of her classes when the accusations were first made, Vicki Pagorski would be permanently removed to administrative duties and never allowed direct supervision of students again. Yet in the absence of any evidence beyond the boys’ word against hers, she was not to be discharged. We both found the decision cowardly, though for different reasons. It seemed to me that she was either guilty or she was not, and there was no justification for taking an innocent from an occupation that she clearly adored. You were outraged that she was not to be fired and that none of the other parents planned to sue. After slumping around the house as pointedly as one can go about an exercise that is essentially rounded, Kevin confided in you that he had grown depressed. You said you could see why. Stunned by the injustice of the school board’s slap on the wrist, Kevin felt humiliated, so of course he was depressed. Equally you fretted that he had intuited an impending divorce that we both wanted to put off making official until we had to. He wanted to go on Prozac. From my random sampling, a good half of his student body was on one antidepressant or another, though he did request Prozac in particular. I’ve always been leery of legal restoratives, and I did worry about the drug’s reputation for flattening; the vision of our son even more dulled to the world boggled the mind. But so rarely out of the States those days, I, too, had acculturated myself to the notion that in a country with more money, greater freedom, bigger houses, better schools, finer health care, and more unfettered opportunity than anywhere else on earth, of course an abundance of its population would be out of their minds with sorrow. So I went along with it, and the psychiatrist we sought seemed as happy to hand out fistfuls of pharmaceuticals as our dentist to issue free lollipops. Most children are mortified by the prospect of their parents’ divorce, and I don’t deny that the conversation he overheard from the hallway sent Kevin into a tailspin. Nevertheless, I was disconcerted. That boy had been trying to split us up for fifteen years. Why wasn’t he satisfied? And if I really was such a horror, why wouldn’t he gladly jettison his awful mother? In retrospect, I can only assume that it was bad enough living with a woman who was cold, suspicious, resentful, accusatory, and aloof. Only one eventuality must have seemed worse, and that was living with you, Franklin. Getting stuck with Dad. Getting stuck with Dad the Dupe.
Eva
