In Between Days (2 page)

Elson looks out the window and feels his body loosening, his mind swimming with possibilities.

“What I’m saying is it hasn’t come to that yet. They’re still in deliberations.”

“Who?”

“The provost, the president, the dean of student life. Most of the Student Judiciary Council.” She pauses. “As I said, we’re hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

“Jesus,” he says. “What the hell did she do?”

“Well,” Cadence says, but doesn’t finish. “Look, Elson, this is something she wants to talk to you about herself.”

Elson sits there for a moment, silent.

“I told her I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You’re keeping secrets from me now?”

“No,” she says. “It’s not like that.”

“How long have you known?”

Cadence is quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” she says. “A couple weeks, I guess.”

“A couple
weeks
?”

“Look, Elson, I’m not going to talk to you like this, okay. I’m not looking for a fight. I just wanted to tell you that she’s coming home tonight and that she’s agreed to meet with you tomorrow if you’re willing. She can explain the whole thing to you then.”

Elson considers this. “Who’s picking her up?”

“Richard.”

“I’ll get her.”

“No, Elson, that’s not part of the agreement. Look, I told her—I promised her—I wouldn’t even tell you until tomorrow.”

Elson grips the edge of the dashboard with his left hand, squeezing it until his knuckles turn white. “So, you’re telling me that I can’t even pick up my own daughter from the fucking airport? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Cadence.”

“I’m hanging up now, Elson.”

And before he can get out another word, the line goes dead.

He looks at the phone, then redials her number, but all he gets is Cadence’s voice mail. He considers leaving her a message but decides instead to just hang up. He drops the phone on the floor and then feels his stomach drop. He wonders where his daughter is now, whether she’s high above the earth in an airplane cabin, circling the tiny suburbs of East Texas, or whether she’s still back at the airport in Boston, waiting for her plane. He tries to picture his daughter’s face, tries to remember the last time they spoke, but the memory is vague. Instead what he sees is his daughter as a child, as a young girl, standing in the doorway of his study, asking him what he’s working on, then coming over and sitting on his lap, watching him as he works on his latest blueprint, studying his hand as he makes tiny markings on the page, measuring things out with a ruler and pen. She smells like bubble bath, her hair still wet, her skin moist, and as he lights up a cigarette and turns to her, she makes a face, scrunches her nose, as she always does.
I thought you were going to quit
, she says.
You promised
. And he assures her that he will, that once his project is over, once he’s finished, he will definitely quit, and then the memory is gone, and Elson is reaching into his pocket for a freshly opened pack.

A moment later, as he’s driving past the gay bars in Montrose, he dials up Lorna’s number, his fingers twitching so badly now that he can barely hold the phone.

When she answers, her voice is calm, guarded. She tells him that she’s talking to someone on the other line.

“I’m coming to see you,” he says.

“I’m not ready,” she says. “I haven’t even showered.”

“I need to see you right now,” he says. “Something’s happened.”

Lorna is silent. Then she says, “What’s happened?”

But he doesn’t answer. He realizes only now how upset he is, how he doesn’t even have words to explain it.

“I’ll tell you when I come,” he says finally.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” he says, and then he drops the phone on the seat. Outside his window, the storm is finally breaking, the heavy clouds from the east rising up over the city, combining with other clouds to form a giant mass. He pulls over on the side of the street and parks. The rain is coming down quickly now, pounding the car, and in the distance he can see brilliant displays of lightning splintering along the horizon. He looks out the window to his left and notices a small row of brown stucco houses, all old and somewhat disheveled, and realizes then, with something like panic, with something like fear, that he doesn’t actually know where he is, that he must have made a wrong turn somewhere, that somehow, in this city where he’s grown up, this city where he’s lived all his life, he is lost.

ON THE OTHER SIDE
of Montrose, less than a mile from where his father sits helplessly in his car, Richard Harding is reading the final stanza of his latest poem to a small group of regulars at Dr. Michelson’s house. The Michelsons’ house is large, the room where they’re sitting, dimly lit. An old baroque study filled with antique bookshelves and dusty books. At the far end of the table sits Dr. Michelson, a retired professor of English, a former professor emeritus at Rice University, who now spends his free time dabbling in poetry and leading a small, biweekly workshop for a group of recent Rice graduates. That Richard himself never knew Dr. Michelson at Rice doesn’t seem to matter. He was brought in by his friend Brandon O’Leary on the second week of August last summer and has been a regular ever since.

It’s no mystery to Brandon or any of the other students that Richard has quickly become Dr. Michelson’s favorite, a fact that both delights and annoys Richard. He sometimes wishes Dr. Michelson wouldn’t praise him so effusively in front of the others, that he wouldn’t make it so obvious that he likes him. Sometimes, at the bar they go to afterward, the others will make a joke about it, pinching his side or mussing his hair.
So, the old queen’s got the hots for you, huh?
Or
Hey, I think I spotted old Michelson sporting a woody
. Richard knows it’s all in fun and probably just a result of their own insecurities, their own jealousy, but still, it makes him wonder how much of Dr. Michelson’s praise is real. What are these comments, after all, but thinly masked truths?

Tonight, he reads slowly, quietly, the words of his poem overshadowed by the violence of the storm outside. The others seem distracted, more interested in the splitting thunder and the sudden streaks of lightning
flashing across the lawn. But Dr. Michelson remains poised, his eyes focused on Richard, his head nodding each time that Richard looks up from his poem. When Richard finally finishes, Dr. Michelson looks at him and smiles.

“Thank you, Richard,” he says. Then he turns to the group. “Any suggestions?”

The others are quiet, unsure of what to say. Normally a very vocal and spirited group, they are typically quiet whenever Richard reads. Maybe it’s the fear of dissent, the fear of disagreeing with Dr. Michelson, or maybe it’s just the fact that they’ve grown exhausted over time with the inevitable praise that always follows.

Finally, Eric Stevenson speaks up. “I thought it was kind of long at the end. You know, like it kept going on and on, repeating itself.”

“You’d suggest condensing?” Dr. Michelson breaks in. Then he looks at the others. “What do the rest of you think?”

“I kind of agree with that,” says another boy, very timidly, looking away as soon as he says it.

Michelson looks up at the boy. “Really?”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

A few other people chime in quietly, agreeing with Eric. Richard stares down at the poem he has written, a poem about his mother and father’s recent divorce, a poem that he has to admit is probably a little long. After a while, the others begin to bring up other things. The clichéd imagery in the second stanza, the overly sentimental language at the end of the poem, the somewhat-oblique references to things that have happened in the parents’ marriage.

Finally, Dr. Michelson breaks in, praising the group for their thorough critique, but also explaining that while their points are all fair, what they seem to have overlooked is the utter simplicity of the writing. The simple beauty of it, that is. The emotional honesty. He goes on for a while longer, but Richard zones him out. He has grown wary of this type of praise, these types of compliments. He no longer knows whether or not to believe them. The poem was something he had worked on for days, labored over, but in the end, what did it really mean? Even he couldn’t say. He wonders sometimes whether any of this is even relevant, whether anyone but the person who has written the poem can actually say what it means. And if the person who has written the poem doesn’t know what
it means, then is the poem even valid? He looks down at his hands, unable to meet Michelson’s eyes, even as he explains to the group that what they’re looking at here is
real
poetry.

When Dr. Michelson finally finishes, the group adjourns to the kitchen, where Mrs. Michelson is waiting with a small tray of drinks.
Margaritas tonight
, she says to the boys and then winks. The boys circle in around her, thanking her profusely. Then a few of them head out to the yard. Normally, after one of these biweekly workshops, they all go out to the pool to swim. They swim there until eight or nine, drinking whatever Mrs. Michelson brings them, before heading off to the bar. But tonight they just stand there cautiously beneath the small overhang in the roof, watching the rain as it comes down in violent waves, the lightning as it crackles at the edge of the lawn.

After a while, one of the boys starts off toward the pool. It’s Eric Stevenson, the one who didn’t like Richard’s poem, and as he does this, the others begin to cheer. He stands there for a moment at the edge of the pool, then pulls off his clothes and jumps in. A few of the others begin to follow, stripping down to their briefs, before Mrs. Michelson catches wind of what’s going on and comes over to the door.
Better come in, boys!
she yells.
I don’t think it’s safe
. But before she can finish, the rest of the boys jump in, and the cause is lost. Dr. Michelson, who has just returned from his study, comes up to the door and laughs, perhaps a little too loudly, then takes a drink from his wife’s hand and shepherds her away from the door.

“Let them play,” he says. “They’re young.”

“It’s dangerous,” she says. “The lightning.”

But Dr. Michelson just shakes his head and laughs. “Haven’t you ever swum in the rain before?” he says, and then pats his wife’s hand. “I know for a fact you have.”

His wife looks at him but doesn’t answer.

A moment later, Dr. Michelson turns on the pool lights, and the pool glows. A bright electric blue. The boys, all of them half naked, swim for Dr. Michelson’s pleasure.

Richard moves across the room toward a small group of boys in the corner, trying to avert his gaze from Dr. Michelson. He knows that at some point Dr. Michelson will want to corner him, will want to tell him
again how brilliant his poem is or remind him again about the application deadlines for summer fellowships. Lately, he has been talking to Richard about graduate programs in creative writing, something that Richard has little interest in.

As he approaches the boys, Richard can hear them talking about how crazy this all is, swimming around in the rain—not to mention in a lightning storm—how someone is probably going to die out there. At the far end of the pool he can see his friend Brandon O’Leary splashing about, waving to him. Richard waves back, then starts toward the door, trying purposely to avoid Dr. Michelson’s gaze. He stands for a moment beneath the small overhang in the roof, waiting for Brandon, and when Brandon finally approaches, he smiles.

“Why don’t you come in?” Brandon says, his body glistening and tan.

“Can’t,” Richard says. “Gotta pick up my sister from the airport.”

“Chloe?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s up?” he says, smiling.

“Long story,” Richard says. “I don’t really understand it myself.”

Brandon nods. “Well, you gotta come out later, okay? To Limelight.”

Limelight. One of the newer gay clubs in the city, a poor excuse for a club, really. More of a bar than a club. A meat market. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” Brandon adds.

“A job?”

“No, not a job. A friend.”

Recently, the only people Brandon has wanted to introduce him to have been jobs, what Brandon calls johns. Overworked businessmen looking for a hand job in the back of their BMWs. Men wanting to believe that they’re only taking a little recreational vacation from their wives, a little break, relieving stress. That this has become Richard’s life is a little perplexing, even to him. The son of a prominent Houston architect hanging out with a boy who gives out hand jobs for fifty bucks a pop in the backseat of some ophthalmologist’s car. It sickened him the first time Brandon told him about it, amused him the second. But now it simply seems routine. Something Brandon does two or three times a month to supplement his income, his measly paycheck from Café Brasil.

“Who’s this friend?” Richard asks.

“A guy I met. I think you’ll like him.”

“I’m not looking for anything serious.”

“Dude, believe me, this guy isn’t serious. In fact, he’s the total opposite of serious.”

Richard nods. “I’m not looking for anything, really.”

“What do you mean?”

But Richard doesn’t answer. “What did you think of my poem?”

“I liked it.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, no. I mean, it was sad. And I agree with Eric, it was maybe a little long. But it was good. I mean, all of your stuff is good. Michelson practically creamed himself.”

Richard shrugs this off. “I don’t know,” he says. “Lately, I don’t know what any of this stuff I’ve been writing means.”

“You’re getting better,” Brandon says.

“You think?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Definitely.”

And then a moment later, there’s a shout from the pool, and a group of the boys begins to beckon Brandon to come back in and join them.

“Better go back,” he says. “Call me on my cell, okay?”

“Okay,” Richard says, and then, as Brandon is turning around to go back to the pool, he yells, “Hey! What’s his name?”

“Who?”

“Your friend.”