Exposure (33 page)

Kim said now, “I could have gotten him out sooner if I’d used the bondsman, but I can’t afford to just give away three thousand dollars—that would’ve been the fee, ten percent of thirty grand.”

“I wish you had called me first. Maybe I could have liquidated something and paid the whole thing.”

“Mom, thank you, but I wouldn’t think of compromising you that way. If the accused person doesn’t show when he’s supposed to, the court keeps all the money—which isn’t to say that I don’t trust Anthony, but …”

“But?”

“But, there are a lot of pressures on him, and he’s very angry, and I
think
he’ll handle the next weeks, or possibly months, all right, but what if he doesn’t?”

Her mother looked aghast. “If the accused person doesn’t show up, the court gets to
keep
the money, really?”

“Yes—to pay for pursuit efforts, I suppose. It’s …” Kim clenched her fists, then opened them. “It’s insane, this whole thing, it’s just ludicrous. Both kids are being treated like criminals, and for what?”

“So the DA can look like a hero to his supporters, I’d imagine.” Her mother wrote out a check, then carefully folded it back and tore it from its pad. “Here. Please let me know if I can do more.”

Kim took the check gratefully and said, “Everything I’d put aside for his school is gone to the lawyer. Our trip to France next summer: gone. My house is tied up until everything gets resolved, so I can’t even touch the equity if I need to. I can’t buy groceries unless I use a credit card—or couldn’t, without your help. Thank you. I’m paying you back as soon as I get paid.”

“It’s all right, there’s no rush.”

“Look at me. A professional woman, a homeowner, and thanks to one uptight, reactionary father and an all-too-eager DA, I can no longer help my son afford college—assuming there will still be a college that will let him in when this is done—and I’m scraping the barrel just to get by until payday. My son is being painted as a sexual predator and pervert, and I’m being made out as neglectful. He
loves
Amelia. It’s ludicrous.” She put her hand to her forehead and said, “And listen to me, I’m a broken record.
Ludicrous
, that’s my new favorite word.”

“It’s apt,” her mother said.

Kim slumped back in the chair. “Thank you for not judging him, Mom.”

“He’s not the first, you know.
They’re
not the first, none of the kids out there who are doing this are—and I’m sure there are plenty. A lot of people did the same thing with those early instant cameras. You won’t remember, probably, but we had that Polaroid, the Swinger—and so did a whole lot of teenagers, who took a whole lot of what everyone called ‘dirty pictures’ when, of course, plenty of adults were doing it, too. The difference between using those instant cameras and using cellphones and such was there was no way of tracing where the picture had come from.”

“The real difference is that sending pictures of a minor by text or email, or even viewing them electronically, is a
federal crime
, Mom. It’s already ludicrous—Christ, there I go again—it’s already ridiculous, crazy, insane, unbelievable, absurd that they were charged with possession and production crimes, but we’re also waiting to see whether the Feds get involved.”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother reached for her hand and held it between her own. “What would happen then?”

“I’d have to find about a hundred thousand dollars somewhere, for one, just to pay the lawyer. Buy a lottery ticket or two, will you?” She laughed ruefully. “And Anthony … God, I can’t imagine.” She could, though, and what she imagined struck terror in her heart. He was not a person who could be imprisoned—especially for such a noncrime, not without losing every meaningful part of himself, not without his soul withering and leaving him an empty, angry pessimist. The world certainly didn’t need more of those. And she knew she would not be able to stand having him locked away, knowing what he was going through. She would fight for him, do everything she could to right the wrong. But you didn’t get to almost-fifty without seeing, again and again, travesties of justice that took years to work their way through the appeals system—and no guarantee of a good outcome. Even if his sentence were short, he’d spend the decades afterward as a registered sex offender. How would he ever get a job, or credit? How would he be able to rent a place to live—and supposing he managed that, would his neighbors fear him, harass him, assume the worst without ever asking for his side of the story? And if they asked, would they believe him?

Ludicrous.

She thought of what he’d said in the lawyer’s office yesterday afternoon, the questions he’d asked about Amelia, the objections he’d raised to Mariana Davis’s defense strategy. She told her mother, “He’s more concerned about Amelia than about himself.”

“You raised him well.”

“I have a feeling you’re in the minority with that opinion,” she said, standing up.

Her mother stood too, and followed her to the front door, saying, “I’m sure that’s true. We have to admit, there’s no question that the kids would have avoided all of this if they had just been more judicious and stayed clothed—”

Kim turned. “Of course they would have! But for God’s sake, when was the last time you saw a pregnant teenager and her teenaged boyfriend arrested for what
they’d
done? When were the musicians and filmmakers and advertising agencies and, and, and magazine publishers hauled in for subjecting children to explicit language and soft porn? I mean, yes, I wish they
had
kept their clothes on, and I’m pissed that they didn’t, because wouldn’t we all be a lot better off right now if they had? But can we
please
get some common sense here?”

Her mother’s eyes were sympathetic as she said, “I doubt it, but I hope so.” She hugged Kim, then kissed her on the forehead the same way she’d done when Kim was a fourteen-year-old raging at the world’s injustices.

“Thanks for letting me vent. I better get going. I’ve missed three days already. It won’t look good if I’m late this morning.”

“If there’s anything I can do for you, you’ll let me know, right?”

The lump in Kim’s throat grew. “I feel so powerless,” she whispered. “I’m his mother; I’m supposed to be able to fix things for him. It’s all so wrong, and this time I can’t undo it.”

Her mother drew back and looked into her eyes. “Believe me, I know just how you feel.”

At Ravenswood, Kim walked into the faculty lounge, a square room arranged with chairs and sofas and resembling, more than anything, a Starbucks, and conversation stopped. Then, following an awkward pause in which she simply stood and returned the stares, it resumed in such a way that Kim could tell everyone in the room had abruptly changed their subjects.

Astonishingly, not a single one of her fellow teachers greeted her. No one offered support, or asked for information. These people who had welcomed her, commiserated with her, laughed with her over coffee or cocktails, were now apparently reconsidering their fondness for the mother of an accused sex offender. She was the elephant in the room. She pulled her shoulders back, gritted her teeth to keep her lips from trembling as her colleagues resumed their exclusive conversations. So be it, then.

She was pouring coffee into her mug when William came in. The room quieted again as he came up to her. In his black pants and pin-striped dress shirt, cuffs rolled to his elbows, wire-rimmed glasses giving him a studious look that disappeared when she saw him in sunglasses, tennis shoes, and shorts, he was every bit
Mr. Braddock
. He kept his hands at his sides and said, “Can I have a word? In my office?”

“Of course. Sure. I’ll be right there.”

“Great, thanks.”

She watched him pivot and leave without engaging anyone else in the room, rare for him. At work he was, under ordinary circumstances, that lovely combination of sociable and authoritative, resulting in respect given freely rather than grudgingly—which was more often the case with administrators, if respect was accorded them at all. As a headmaster and as a friend, he got invited to and welcomed at cocktail parties and dinners and birthday celebrations and nights on the town. Which explained in large part how he had managed to see her publicly without raising suspicions. That he had been so brief just now did not bode well.

Kim took her time getting the pint of half-and-half from the refrigerator, opened it slowly, poured it slowly, closed the carton, and returned it to its spot on the top shelf. If she didn’t appear stressed or hurried, her son would look less guilty, wasn’t that how it worked? As conversation resumed once more, she took a teaspoon from the sink, rinsed it off, stirred the cream into her coffee, rinsed the spoon again, and set it in the drainer. On her way to the door, she stopped to speak to Shirlene Marshall, a fellow art teacher whose specialties were pottery and papier-mâché.

“You did a wonderful job with the new display near the office,” Kim said.

Shirlene looked at her archly and replied, “I’m surprised you noticed.”

Bryce Edwards, next to Shirlene, said, “Give her a break, Shirl.”

Kim touched his shoulder and moved on.

The passage leading from the lounge to William’s office went through the main office, where Sue Pender and Andrea Barnett, who habitually stopped what they were doing in order to chat with passersby, remained occupied as Kim passed them, knocked once on William’s door, then let herself inside.

He was standing near the windows, with their view of rolling lawn and pin oaks that had stood since Civil War days. As she entered, he turned toward her.

“So, that was awkward and unpleasant,” she said. Getting the words out eased the constriction in her chest, slightly.

“I’m sorry. I tried to get you on your cellphone—”

“You did?” she said, taking it from her pocket. The display was black, and remained black even when she pressed the power button. “The battery’s dead; I forgot to charge it, no real surprise. On my way in, I saw that my gas gauge is on E, and twice this week I wrote the wrong year on a check.”

William looked sympathetic, but he remained standing where he was. “How’s Anthony?”

“At loose ends, as you might expect.”

“I had a seven o’clock meeting this morning,” William told her, tugging at his ear. “With the advisory board. This kind of situation is unprecedented here. The calls we’ve been getting, the emails … I’ve gotten everything from demands that we confiscate cellphones and disable our Internet connectivity—as if kids only use these things inappropriately at school—to detailed proposals from counseling agencies who’d like to do programs here, to diatribes—really vitriolic stuff—over how I could be so blind to the obvious pornography ring operating here, right beneath my nose. Three parents—so far only three—have threatened to withdraw their kids.”

She moved toward him. “William, I am so sorry—”

“The worst, though,” he said, looking defeated but holding a hand up to keep her at a distance, “is that I am required”—he sighed heavily—“to put you on leave without pay, indefinitely, effective immediately, while I conduct an internal investigation—which I will do as quickly as I can, I promise you. And I need to warn you, the State Bureau of Investigation is likely to show up at your door to question you, soon.”

Kim stared at him. “Me?”

“There could be charges, if they determine that you knew what was going on and didn’t take any action, inform me, inform the Wilkeses, that sort of thing.”

She sank into a chair. “Jesus God, that’s just what I need,” she said. “Who told you that?”

“One of the school’s lawyers.”

She thought of all the time she and William had spent together, the conversations they’d had about their childhoods, their aspirations, the goals they still had, and the way they both sort of circled around the unspoken possibility that they’d pursue those goals together, somehow. They’d talked a lot about Anthony, too, and his plans, and she’d let William speculate on Amelia’s uncommon talent and love for theatre and her post-high-school plans, wanting to share what she knew, forcing herself to keep quiet. They weren’t close enough for her to share secrets. And now, with this new layer of complications … now it looked as if they might never be.

Hadn’t she earned some happiness of her own, some companionship, a shot at something lasting—especially now, when she was about to have the time to give it her best? How was this fair? Right, sure,
life’s not fair
, and hadn’t she tried to calm Anthony with assurances that
things could be worse
? How easy it was to speak in platitudes.

She said, “I didn’t know the specifics of what was going on, the things they’ve been charged with.”

“I believe you.”

“Even if I
had
known, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that they could be charged with felonies for it. I … I wouldn’t have reported it,” she said, turning her palms upward. “That’s the plain truth. Maybe that does make me culpable.”

“You’re not saying you’d have condoned it?”

“
No
, I—”

He paced in front of the windows. “We
tell
them—it’s in the Health curriculum—‘respect yourself, make good choices regarding sexuality, recognize the dangers out there.’ ”