Exposure (15 page)

Bless her mother; she’d come to Kim’s emotional rescue so many times. In the car now, hearing Anthony’s startling words, Kim thought she might need her mother’s calming influence again very soon.

“Who’s pregnant?” Kim said, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. Then again, she didn’t want to presume.

Anthony shook his head. “It isn’t that.”

“What, then?” She’d picked him up at a gas station at the far end of Capital Boulevard, a part of town she wouldn’t ordinarily feel safe stopping in. What had he gotten involved with? Drugs? Gangs? Neither seemed likely. She’d know if he was into any of that—but then wasn’t that what most parents said?

He braced his hands on the dashboard and hung his head for a moment, then said, “I got arrested. Earlier. They let me go without bail.”

“What?” she said, her voice shriller than she expected. “Arrested?” The possibility had not occurred to her, not this night, and not ever. She’d raised him to question authority, yes, but not by breaking the law. She said, “What happened? Why—”

“Okay, it’s really lame, but Amelia …” He sighed heavily. “That is … This is stupid, okay, but, what happened was, I took some pictures of myself, and I sent them to her, and her parents must have found them and freaked.”

“Pictures? How would that get you arrested?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, when she saw the tight line of his mouth, lips compressed, eyes wide and nervous, the answer dawned on her. She said, “Pictures that aren’t … appropriate. That’s what you’re saying.”

He nodded.

“Oh Jesus.” She pressed her fist to her mouth for a moment, then said, “Anthony, what were you
thinking
?”

“That they would be just between her and me. It’s none of her parents’ business.”

“None of their business?” she said, her voice rising. “You can’t really think that.”

“She’s almost eighteen.”

“She’s their
daughter
—and not exactly a girl you’d expect would have pictures of—” She stopped herself, not wanting to imagine the details. “Of
course
they’re upset.”

“Oh, nice,” Anthony said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now you want to defend them? Now that they’ve screwed me over, you’re suddenly all parental?”

“What?”

“Where was all this … all this
sympathy
for them when you were going along with keeping our secret?”

Kim stared. Oh God, he was right. Where was her sympathy? Where were her priorities? But she knew: they’d been tied up with her son, and her own heart, which was now twisting into a confused knot.

Anthony seemed smaller, sitting here next to her, his limbs drawn in, his shoulders hunched, his lower lip protruding a little, the way it used to whenever he was on the verge of tears. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him cry, seen him even on the verge. He was no longer her little boy, no longer a boy at all. He was a young man who could, and had, shared who knew how many kinds of intimacies with a young woman who was no longer her parents’ little girl. How natural this progress was, and yet how cruel it seemed. Why couldn’t they stay young and innocent always?

“Are you okay?”

“The magistrate made it out like I’m a rapist,” he spat. “A ‘serious sexual offense,’ ” he said mockingly. “Like it doesn’t even matter that Amelia asked me to send the pictures—she told the cops she asked for them, before they even talked to me.”

“When did all this happen—the questioning, I mean. Was this why she didn’t come back to school?” Anthony nodded. Kim went on, “She
asked
you to, really?” About this, Kim was surprised. Amelia? If ever there’d been a teenaged girl who wasn’t ruled entirely by her hormones, who appeared to be infused with all the good sense most of her peers lacked, Amelia was the one.

“Yes, really, and I have pictures of her, too, okay? God, everyone’s acting like we made a porn flick and screened it in the gym.”

“Can I see that?” Kim asked, pointing at his release order. He handed it to her, and she switched on the dome light and put her glasses on to read it. It was a confusing fill-in-the-blanks form that revealed little beyond the charge and a hearing date that was only nine days away. She looked up at her son, who was biting a hangnail. “What are you supposed to do to prepare? Do you need a lawyer? What did they tell you?”

“They didn’t tell me anything.”

“They must have,” she said, reading the document again, front and back, and coming up with nothing more than she had the first time. “What does this mean? What happens in court?”

“Mom, I don’t know. It was …” He turned toward the window. She could see his face, a ghostly reflection on the window glass. “They handcuffed me and pushed me around, and nobody would answer my questions—like I was some kind of lowlife. It was bullshit.”

She took his hand and squeezed it, though whether she was giving or receiving reassurance she wouldn’t have been able to say. “Okay, well, look: we’ll figure it out. We’ll make some calls, get some answers.…”

Anthony rubbed his face, then reached for the dome light’s switch and turned it off. “Okay, but right now, let’s just go home.”

“Are you hungry? We could stop, or—”

“Home,” he repeated, a hairline crack in his voice that made Kim wish he could have stayed in Neverland just a little while longer—or why not forever? It wasn’t about the innocence so much as the safety of youth, protection from adult urges and adult consequences. Gone now.

Kim spent the twenty-minute drive considering ways to handle the situation, while Anthony spent it staring out the window, saying nothing. If Kim had to guess, she’d say it was likely that Amelia’s parents had pulled every plug where communicating with Anthony was concerned, and she couldn’t blame them if they had. Bringing in the police, though? Having Anthony arrested? How could they possibly think that had been the best response? Granted, she hadn’t raised a daughter, and granted, girls came with added complications, such as possible pregnancies and the problems that then followed. Even with all of that, though, and even considering Amelia’s particular potential and her parents’ expectations, Kim could not see how they could respond to the discovery of photos of someone they knew—even if those photos were indecent—by calling the police first.

At home, Anthony headed straight upstairs. “I gotta change clothes … and I need to call Eric,” he said.

“Sure, but listen—”

He paused on the stairs and leaned over the banister to look at her. “Yeah?”

“It might be wise to hedge a little on why you weren’t at work. Food poisoning would be a good excuse for being unable to call.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is—I didn’t do anything wrong, so why not talk about it?”

“Honey, I know you see it that way … and I’m sure Eric and a lot of other people would, too. But—”

“But I’m supposed to worry about what closed-minded, uptight people will think of me if they hear? You’re the one who’s always saying we have to fight ignorance.”

“And we do. We do. This, though—you have a lot at stake right now. You need recommendations and references for scholarship applications, so why give people a reason to decline?”

“Anybody who knows me—”

“Why take the chance?” she insisted, feeling like a hypocrite. How different her ideology had become now that her own son’s future was on the line. She said, “We have to weigh cost and benefit.”

“Fine,” he said. “I get it. But it’s complete bullshit.”

“I’m going to call Amelia’s parents. Maybe … I don’t know, they probably reacted without thinking. Maybe we can undo this and, well, handle the whole situation like grown-ups. I mean, if you two are truly serious about your plans—”

“We are. You know we are.”

“Then the Wilkeses deserve the opportunity to get on board, don’t you think?” As she said the words, she couldn’t fail to note the irony that only
now
was she spouting this high-minded ideal, when it would have been far better for all of them if she’d taken this position in the first place. She should have insisted that they not go behind the Wilkeses backs. How ironic that only now, when her one and only son, her only child, was facing trouble, was she questioning whether keeping the kids’ secret had been the right choice. Thinking this, she felt small.

Anthony came back down a few stairs. “If we thought they would get on board, we’d have told them right away. You see how they are.”

“They had a shock, honey—and I’m not taking sides, saying this. It’s a fact. Finding pictures like that isn’t an ideal way to learn about some boy’s relationship with their daughter. Give them a chance. I’m sure they’ll be more rational now that some time has passed.”

“Oh really? Then why isn’t she answering her phone? I know why, and so do you.”

“Be patient. Parents can be slow about these kinds of things.”

“Hers are glacial about everything.” He took the jail paperwork from his pocket and said, “I’m gonna go see how screwed I am,” then went off to his room, presumably to research the offense online.

Kim put up water for chamomile tea and sat down at the kitchen table, where she’d been grading French assignments before Anthony’s call. What to say to Amelia’s parents? They’d met—twice now—which should make things a little easier. Though maybe not, since they clearly elected not to contact her when the storm blew in. And, she supposed, it wasn’t as though the kids were six-year-olds who, during a playdate, had broken a lamp or something and then hidden the evidence. Amelia, their baby, had photographs of a naked young man—had them on purpose, had asked to have them. If Amelia’s parents were as conservative and protective as they appeared to be, and as uninformed as the kids (and she, Kim) had intended to keep them, she could hardly expect their reaction to have been any different than it was.

There, good. She’d reasoned her way into their point of view, which would make talking with them easier. Thank God she’d had a lot of practice at this kind of thing—dealing with unhappy parents—over the years.

With her mug of tea at hand, Kim looked up Amelia’s parents’ contact info and dialed their home number. As prepared as she thought she was, her heart was behaving otherwise. There was a difference in making such a call as this one in the role of mother, rather than teacher, whether her brain wanted to think so or not.

A man’s gruff voice said, “Wilkes residence.”

“Hello. I’m calling for Mr. or Mrs. Wilkes. This is Kim Winter.”

She heard a snort, then, “Guess you know about the trouble your boy’s got into.”

His tone rankled her. “That’s why I’m calling, yes. Is this a good time to talk?”

“Not unless you’re calling to say he’s been locked up or you’ve had him castrated.”

“Mr. Wilkes, I know you’re angry,” she said, struggling to maintain her “teacher voice” despite his hostility, “but really, that’s not called for.”

“I’ll tell you what’s not called for: your son putting perverted ideas into my daughter’s head the way he’s done. I don’t know what sorts of standards you single-mom types have, but good families teach their sons to respect a young lady, not corrupt her—
prey
on her like … like she’s some common little whore who’d welcome that kind of thing.” His voice cracked as he spoke. He cleared his throat, then added, “Don’t think William Braddock isn’t goin’ to hear about this. ’Fact, I’m fixin’ to call him right now.”

Kim opened her mouth to reply and heard the dial tone buzzing in her ear. She dialed him back and got his voice mail. He really was calling William. She tried William’s phone, and that call went straight to voice mail as well.

“Shit,” she said, imagining what Harlan Wilkes must be telling him. The man was
crazy
. He hadn’t even given her a chance to speak. She tried his number again. Again, she got no answer.

Without giving in to the anger and self-doubt she knew would swamp her if she thought too much about what had just happened, she looked up Sheri Wilkes’s cell number, and dialed it.

“Hello?” a woman said, in the soft, Southern tones Kim recognized as Amelia’s mother’s.

“Mrs. Wilkes, this is Kim Winter. Maybe you heard, I just tried speaking with your husband—”

“Would you mind holding just one minute?”

“Oh, all right, sure.”

Kim waited, counting backwards from ten and breathing deeply as she did it. Sheri Wilkes returned at three, saying, “Thank you so much. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I needed to find a quiet place to talk.”

“I understand. So then, did you hear the conversation?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I did, and let me apologize for my husband. He isn’t really himself just now.”

“I understand,” Kim said again, an overstatement. His anger and dismay, yes. His behavior, no. She continued, “As I told Anthony, this must be very surprising and stressful for you and Mr. Wilkes. But I’d hoped we could have a conversation about it, all of us, maybe, and … and I hope set things right.”

There was a short pause, and then Sheri Wilkes said, “Ms. Winter, if there was a way … I came home after Harlan had already contacted the authorities. To be plain with you, I thought he might have jumped the gun—though let me stress that I’m not happy about this either, not a bit.”