Exposure (23 page)

What is this thing that builds our dreams,
then slips away from us?

—QUEEN

14

IM
W
INTER STOOD INSIDE HER CLOSET, A SMALL WALK-IN
that the home’s previous owner had outfitted with cedar paneling, and breathed deeply. The pungent scent always reminded her of her Ithaca house and, tonight, a simpler time. In Ithaca, she’d never had such anxiety when preparing for a date—because in Ithaca, she’d never dated a man who wasn’t supposed to date her, and who really should not, now, be seeing her romantically when her son, a student under his charge, was having a run-in with the parent of another of his students, and with the law.

Lunacy, that’s what this was. She knew it. William knew it, too. And yet, he’d stood there in the art studio earlier today after it had emptied of students, watching her while she made what was her third pass at a 4×4 canvas on which she was painting a wren, and said, “I’d love to see you, later.”

She’d pushed her unruly hair from her face using the back of her hand and looked at him critically. “Not really.”

“Yes, really. Are you still angry with me?”

She had been. For a week she’d avoided him at school, avoided everyone but her students, cursed, silently, the uptight attitudes of the Ravenswood advisory board members who’d unanimously recommended that Anthony be suspended until he was cleared—
if
he got cleared—and cursed William for caving in to them. She’d asked him, “And if he’s not?” He had answered, “One thing at a time, all right?”

One thing at a time. Who ever had that luxury?

By the time she stood there in the school’s studio working on the wren, however, her anger was gone. She’d had time to think it over, to talk to her mother, to talk to Rose Ellen, who’d said, “And I thought Mark’s girlfriend’s pregnancy scare was stressful. But listen, Anthony’s mess isn’t William’s fault, right? If our kids would just keep their pants on, they wouldn’t
have
these problems.”

Kim had to agree. And, given the situation, he had been right to suspend Anthony. She set her paintbrush down and told William, “No, I’m not angry. I understand, and really, he’s better off at home.”

“So, I’ll pick you up?” he said, his eyes so compassionate, so
blue
behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Kim felt a flutter low in her belly. What caused that butterfly sensation—
physically
caused it? And why did William have to provoke it so easily? She really ought to be sensible, to resist.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said.

“I haven’t named a place.”

She’d smiled. “Name it.”

Now Kim stood in the closet in her panties and bra, unable to decide between wearing a skirt, or a dress, or pants. They were going to an intimate little bistro, where they’d hear the jazz trio that played there on Friday nights. If this night had been taking place two weeks earlier, she’d have been excited, anxious in an entirely different way. As it was, the hollowness in her gut and the way she kept catching herself clenching her teeth were akin to anticipating a lousy performance review (which she’d never had but always, always feared). She wanted to see William, was, truly, eager to see him, and yet there was no denying that the timing was incredibly bad.

That lousy performance review was sure to come, though it would be about mothering and not work, and would probably not come from William. It would come from other women whose sons had managed to either avoid or evade run-ins with the Moral Authority. William would be mostly concerned with maintaining order at Ravenswood while being subject to judgment himself. How, the Authority was sure to ask—had begun asking already, if rumors were to be believed—could he have permitted such an environment as had bred behavior like Anthony’s? That behavior was expected at
public
school; what was their tuition money being spent on, if not an educational experience that was in every way superior?

If she chose the dress she’d ideally wear to this kind of restaurant—say, this sleeveless plum sheath in embroidered silk that she’d bought in Italy for next to nothing, would William be more likely to set aside his own anxieties regarding Anthony’s situation, or would he think she was trying to distract or influence him? And, well, wasn’t she? And in asking her out tonight (regardless of what she might wear), wasn’t he in essence saying he wanted her to distract and influence him?

She groaned. Why did this have to be so damned complicated? Eyeing her cellphone where it sat atop a pile of folded T-shirts, she reached for it. How much easier she would make things by simply canceling the date. No dress, no tension. She could stay home, build herself a chocolate-chip macadamia nut sundae. Start that new Elizabeth Berg novel her mother just finished. She could iron … something.

“Oh, just deal with it,” she said, laying the phone down again. She chose the plum dress, and a delicate black cardigan, and the engraved silver bracelet her parents had given her when Anthony was born. “To remind you that you are still you,” her mother had said, fastening it around her wrist. Over the years, Kim had found that she often chose the bracelet when she needed that reminder. It was so easy, far easier than she’d imagined when she set out on the journey, to lose yourself in the job of motherhood and not realize you’d gone missing. Tonight, she wanted to be Kim Winter, amateur artist, lover of French culture, lover of the ocean, of the forests, of the lingering scent of rain on fallen leaves. She wanted to reclaim Kim Winter, lover.

She left her room and stopped in Anthony’s bedroom doorway to say she was leaving. She found him lying on his bed with his feet propped on his headboard, reading a slim paperback that he held in one hand with the cover folded behind it. In his other hand was the charm Amelia had given him. He turned it end on end and passed it from finger to finger like a magician keeping limber.

“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked.

“Shakespeare’s poems. ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’ ‘A Lover’s Complaint,’ like that.” He laid the book on his chest.

“I thought you were scheduled to work tonight.”

“Eric gave me the night off.”

“Why?” This seemed unlike the man who owned and managed Anthony’s workplace, a fastidious, terse, single man whose entire existence centered on music and its production and reproduction, and the running of his store. She could not recall one time in the year that Anthony had been working there when Eric had altered the schedule in an apparent fit of generosity.

“He felt like it,” Anthony said, too casually.

“Try again.”

“Okay, fine.” He stilled the charm and closed his hand around it. “He asked me to stay away, for the moment. He thinks maybe I’ve been bad for business. Anyway,” he said, not giving her a chance to protest what surely could not be true, “you look great. Have a good time—which means, don’t talk about me,” he said wryly. “Take the night off.”

Kim dredged up a smile. “Thanks. I’ll try. You should, too. Maybe find something more upbeat to read.”

“Upbeat. What a novel concept.” He pulled his feet down and turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “But hey, I wouldn’t want to spoil my righteous anger.”

“Maybe you should get out, too. Do you have any plans?”

He raised and lowered one shoulder. “Maybe.”

Eleven days of separation, during which Cameron McGuiness was his only connection to Amelia, had been a strain and a test of his endurance unlike anything soccer had ever demanded of him. To his credit, he’d spent a lot of the time working on the play he was writing for his senior project, starting over, writing it out in longhand in a notebook. He wouldn’t tell her much about it. She was sure, though, that it wasn’t a comedy.

“Have you heard from Amelia?”

“Like that could happen,” he said.

“From Cameron, I mean.”

“Nothing new,” he told her, but he averted his eyes.

She went to him and kissed him on the temple. “Be good.”

“How could you imagine I wouldn’t?” he said.

She wished she had some way to comfort him. As long as she was wishing, she wished she had done a better job of whichever parenting aspect applied to teen love and sex and the exploding capabilities of electronics. Or that he had done a better job of policing himself and Amelia. She wished he had chosen a girl who didn’t feel her parents needed to be deceived.

“I won’t be out late. But if you go anywhere, leave me a note—and lock up.”

“Don’t I always?” he said, resuming the position she’d found him in.

“Yes, you do. You do,” she said, an apology and acknowledgment, both. “Don’t mind me. I’m just a little scattered, you know?”

“Tell me about ‘scattered,’ ” he said, waving his good-night.

Outside, Kim pulled her sweater closed and buttoned the top button, then left the house, stepping out into the twilit world. She stood on the porch long enough to catch the minty scent of bee balm in her flower beds, to admire the deepening blue of the sky and the sweep of two bats crossing paths beneath the streetlight, where bugs still swarmed in November. Anthony had been delighted by this their first year in North Carolina. Kim had been delighted by the reason for it: warm days that in most years continued into December. A twentysomething woman jogged past with a large dog at her side, its collar jingling, and then the evening was quiet again, interrupted only by the noise of Kim’s not-so-sensible heels tapping the sidewalk as she walked to her car.

Driving out of the neighborhood, Kim tried to shake off her stress—not an easy task, despite the dress and the bracelet and the shoes. There was a lot to shake off. She’d plodded through the days that followed their descent into the world of criminal defense angry with the Wilkeses, furious with the television news stations and the way they’d framed the situation, sickened by the story that had run on the front page of Thursday morning’s
Wake Weekly
, and ready to shoot every reporter who’d called the house or the school or had called or texted Anthony. Even if Harlan Wilkes was the impetus, as Mariana Davis had suggested, why was so much being made of so little?

The worst, though, had been the cheerful TV reporter who had come to their house looking for Anthony on Monday afternoon while the vividly marked news truck sat provocatively at the curb. A skinny young man with gel-combed dark hair had come to the door and asked, “Hi, is Anthony home?” as if inviting him to come out and play.

He was home. Because of his suspension he was home and brooding. He texted Kim several times each day, venting, causing her to be, at turns, upset
for
him and upset
with
him. He needed to settle down and keep a positive outlook, not complain about William, or about Harlan Wilkes, or about the ravenous media and the salacious tale they were building from the slight information they had. The newspaper’s headline had read,
RALEIGH MAN ARRESTED FOR PREYING ON PREP-SCHOOL GIRL
.

Kim told the reporter, “Nope, he’s not here.”

“I’d like to talk to him about—”

“He’s not home, I said.”

The man eyed Anthony’s car, which was parked at the curb in front of the house, then said, “Are you his mother? Can I ask you a few questions?”

If Kim had possessed claws, she’d have slashed the reporter’s face. She forced herself to keep her voice calm and even. “No, you can’t.”

“No statement? People would like to know Anthony’s side of the story.”

“
His
side? They don’t even know—” She’d almost said Amelia’s name before remembering that her identity was protected because of her age. Not that this practice had to be observed by the accused’s mother, but Kim had no desire to complicate the situation by giving the Wilkeses another reason to despise Anthony. “They don’t even really know
the girl’s
side,” she said, “so it won’t matter much if they don’t know his, either.”

If she set an example of levelheadedness, there might yet be a chance (granted, a slim one) for the Wilkeses to relax their stance and for the kids to resume their relationship. They might all be able to one day look back on this week and if not laugh about it, at least smile ruefully and shake their heads. That, they might all say, was
such
a crazy situation, but all’s well that ends well!

Kim, with this in mind, told the reporter, “It’s really a misunderstanding. A mistake.”

“Is it?” the reporter asked eagerly, making Kim sorry she’d said anything. “Why is that? What happened?”

“Mariana Davis will be happy to answer your questions,” Kim had said. She closed the door and turned to find Anthony watching her from where he sat atop the stairs, his arms wrapped around himself, mouth clamped shut, angry wariness in his eyes.

Now she parked her car in a lot across from the restaurant, wishing she could relax, wishing Anthony’s appearance in court two days earlier had been the end of things. Instead, they’d shown up at nine, along with a great many other unfortunate citizens (some of whom were badly in need of a shower), and waited anxiously to see Mariana Davis. When she came in forty minutes later, one of a dozen lawyers milling about the room, having whispered consultations with clients and with one another, they’d watched her meet up with a dark-suited man near the judge’s bench, speak to him quietly while other defendants stood before the judge and were processed, and then she’d waved them to the exit. Outside the heavy double doors of courtroom 3-C, Ms. Davis said, “We’ve pushed the hearing back. He claims they don’t have their paperwork in order, but I think they’re buying time to wait for the results of the search and seizure.”