Everything We Ever Wanted (3 page)

He watched as Caroline crossed the square, trying to smile. “I’m here to see Jake,” she explained, shaking his hand. “For a late lunch meeting. Goodness, it’s been a while, huh?”

“It has,” he answered. And then she cocked her head, her expression shifting. Charles could tell she was reaching back to recall just how long it had been since she’d seen him, remembering what had happened between then and now. And then, as though Charles really did have an inside view of her head, Caroline shifted her weight and covered her eyes. “Oh, Charles. Your father. Oh my goodness. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Charles said automatically.
“We read about it in the paper. How awful.”
“Yeah.”
“I meant to call. I didn’t know what was appropriate, though.” “It’s fine. Really.” He smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“What a shame.” She clucked her tongue. “He wasn’t even very

old, was he?” He shook his head. “Healthy every day of his life before it happened.”
“You must miss him.”
The vendor on the corner slammed the metal lid that housed the hot dogs unnecessarily hard. Charles stared across the street at a budding dogwood tree. Further down that block was the Italian restaurant his father sometimes visited for lunch. Once, when Charles had walked down this block to a lunch place on Walnut, he’d glanced into the Italian restaurant’s front window and seen James alone at the bar, with his tie flung over his shoulder and a glass of amber liquid in his hand. There was a ball game on TV, and the waiter was leaning on the bar, watching. Charles’s dad had looked so comfortable being alone, a posture Charles had never mastered himself. Charles had panicked, crossing furtively to the other side of the street so his father wouldn’t see him. He had no idea what James would have done if he’d noticed Charles walking by. Ignore him? Grow furious that Charles was walking down his block, invading his space? One thing was certain, his father certainly wouldn’t have invited Charles into the bar—despite his mother’s Pollyannaish suggestion the day before his interview, Charles and his father never met for lunch. What would they have talked about?
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.

N ormally 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?”
“Or at least a shirt and tie.” Just don’t wear those ridiculous pants that hang around your ankles and show your underwear. Just don’t wear the sweatshirt with that word I can’t even repeat on it. Just comb your hair.
Scott said nothing. He turned and took the lid off the old earthenware cookie jar, the very same one that held homemade sugar cookies when Sylvie was a girl. Scott reached for a chocolate chip cookie, took a big bite, and then held the uneaten part outstretched reflectively. “Mmmm,” he decided. Crumbs fell to the floor.
He finished his cookie, laced his hands together and turned them inside out, giving each knuckle a crack. “I thought you were, like, a powerful force at that school. You can make it go away.”
She blinked at him, trembling inside. Is that what you think? she wanted to say. But now Scott had walked into the mud room—the conversation was over. A few moments later, he returned with his sneakers, loud orange and white high-tops. She watched as he sat down at the table, propped one foot up on his knee, and began to leisurely lace the shoes up. It was like he was another creature entirely, one whose actions she couldn’t begin to predict. One of those sea creatures that lived in the sunless depths of the ocean. Or maybe a carnivorous plant that ate gnats.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
“To the city. Just for the morning.”
“How come?”
He gave her a pained look. “I’m helping out at Kevin’s shop. Someone can’t come in until one, so I said I’d cover.”
“Kevin was at the funeral, right?” Scott had come with three friends, two girls and a guy, all of them like Scott—wild, waiting for confrontation.
“Uh-huh.” Scott threaded the other shoe but left the laces untied and dangling.
“What kind of shop does he own?”
“Shoes.”
“Oh!” She knew she sounded relieved, but shoes were so … innocuous. “Well. Tell him ‘Hi’ for me.”
He sniffed. “You didn’t even speak to him that day.”
At that Sylvie shrank. She strode out of the room, found her handbag near the laundry, and walked across the driveway to her own car. She still parked outside, not yet wanting to disrupt the half of the garage that housed James’s jigsaw, lathe, and woodworking rasps. She slammed the car door hard. It felt good. Once belted in, she shut her eyes, listening to the birds and the gentle swishing sounds of the tree branches. She lifted her ring finger to her mouth, cupped her lips around the big yellow stone on the ring James had given her, and sucked.
That first night, when she just thought James wasn’t coming home in retaliation for what she’d brought up the night before, she had taken off this ring and buried it at the bottom of her jewelry box, hating what it meant. Then she’d gone into James’s office and looked carefully around the room. James’s infuriatingly clean desk, the stack of blank computer paper next to the printer, the Lucite plaques on the bookshelf. She’d walked in and touched the bare spot on the bookshelf where she’d found the little box that held the bracelet. A film of pale gray dust stuck to the pad on her finger.
The ring tasted like cold metal. Maybe it was primal, like a child sucking on a pacifier. Because only after Sylvie let the stone click against her teeth and press on her tongue did her pulse begin to settle down.

I n no time Sylvie found herself pulling up the hill to Swithin, the school resplendent at the top. The guard at the gate recognized her right away. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Bates-McAllister!” he cried. “So nice to see you!” He waved her right through.

Sylvie loved this drive up the Swithin lane, how the school rose up before her, all stone and brick, with its spires and bell tower and flags and dazzling green fields beyond. There wasn’t a tree branch out of place. The steps, windowsills, and sidewalks were all swept twice a day. One of Sylvie’s earliest memories was of her grandfather bringing her into the library and showing her the rare book collection. “These were almost lost forever,” he told her. And then he wove the tale of the fire; how it had caught in the east-wing classrooms and spread furiously into the gymnasium, burning half the school to the ground before the firefighters even arrived at the scene. When her grandfather surveyed the damage the day after, he sobbed. “It was just so sad,” he told Sylvie. “I felt like the school was calling out to me, Please don’t let me go.” Whenever he got to that part of the story, tears always welled in Sylvie’s eyes.

Since it was the Depression and no one had any money to spare, Charlie Roderick Bates financed rebuilding Swithin with his own money and resources. He used materials from the countless limestone quarries and brick foundries he owned to pour the new foundation and rebrick the walls. Rebuilding the school from scratch provided a lot of jobs, so he was a hero several times over, hiring Polish and Italian crews to do the construction, even providing jobs for people in the black neighborhoods. “But we had to make great sacrifices during that time,” he told Sylvie. “I paid everyone’s wages. I bought all the materials.”

“Did you have to move out of your house, Charlie Roderick?” Sylvie asked—her grandfather got a kick out of her calling him by both his names. He shook his head and told her that no, they were able to remain in the house, but Sylvie’s father, who was a young child at the time, wasn’t allowed new riding gear and his wife, Sylvie’s grandmother, couldn’t travel to Paris. They didn’t even have their annual Christmas party. “Did you still have a tree?” Sylvie asked. He nodded, patting her head, “Yes, of course. We still had a tree.”