Breed (19 page)

“It was… it was a strange situation,” Michael says. “I thought Adam had taken off again, and when I realized he hadn’t—well, he begged me. This morning, I tried to bring him to school. But he ran away. He’s very frightened—of both of you. And because of certain things he said to me, I am obliged to make a formal report to Child Protective Services.” Michael’s heart is beating so furiously that he is certain everyone in the room can hear it.

“He ran away from you?” Twisden says, as if this in itself were an admission of Michael’s malfeasance.

“Yes,” Michael says. “Just as he ran away from you. Just as he
hid
when he knew you were drawing near. Just as he spent hours hiding in the park before that. We’re talking about a boy who came to me cold and wet and frightened out of his wits, and let me tell you—let me tell you and you and you, too,
Mr.
Fleming, I wasn’t the one who was frightening him. I was the one he came to for protection. And I believe he ran away from me on our way to school because he knew his parents would be here looking—”

But that is all Michael is able to say because Twisden has pounced upon him. The furious lawyer’s hands are on Michael’s chest, and Michael staggers and falls backward, and the objects in Fleming’s office recede like the cars of a speeding train on its way to the darkness of a long tunnel. And now he is inside the tunnel and instead of the deep confident howl of a train whistle, he hears his own voice, hoarse and anguished, scared and unstable, and when the darkness relents he has awakened to a view of the recessed track lighting in Berryman Prep’s nurse’s office. Looming over him is the soft, moon-shaped, somehow nun-like face of Jeanette Cavanaugh, the school nurse, and the worried, guilty face of Davis Fleming, who is not only frowning but wringing his hands.

“Hello there, Michael,” Fleming says as Michael’s eyes open. “Wow! You had yourself a good old-fashioned knock on the noggin.” He seems to have settled on the strategy of treating Michael’s being attacked by a crazed parent as some sort of delicious, madcap adventure the two of them can now share.

“Don’t move, not yet, and not too quickly,” Jeanette Cavanaugh says.

“How did I get here?”

“I carried you,” she says.

“I tried to help, but she wouldn’t allow it,” Fleming hastens to add. “This is one strong lady.”

“Where are they?” Michael says, lifting his head, propping himself up on his elbows. The pain seems located primarily in the back of his neck and the top third of his spine, a twisting, cold pain, the sort that makes you wonder what will come first, the moaning or the throwing up.

Jeanette hands him a bright blue ice pack, the outside of which is white with freezer burn. “I’m going to give you something for pain,” she says.

“What’s on the menu?” Michael asks.

“The strongest we keep is extra-strength Tylenol.”

“Give him extra,” Fleming says, as if money for the extra pills were coming out of his own pocket, and costs be damned!

Michael struggles to his feet. The room flaps and flutters like a flag; he holds on to the edge of Nurse Cavanaugh’s medical-supply cabinet for balance. “I’m all right, I’m fine,” he says, as much to himself as to them. He pats his pockets, looking for his phone, and asks Jeanette if he might use hers.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police. Of course. I mean—come on.”

“Michael,” Fleming says. “First CPS, now the police. That’s not necessarily the way to handle this.”

“Are you kidding me? Are you insane?”

Fleming looks at Jeanette, clears his throat. “Jeanette, may I use your office for a private moment or two with Mr. Medoff?”

Jeanette has been looking at Fleming with some degree of disbelief, and now, when she hears his request to vacate her own office, her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “If you insist,” she finally manages to say.

“Terrific,” Fleming says. He waits for her to leave and as soon as the door is closed he turns to Michael and with great urgency says, “I want you to allow me to handle this situation, Michael. I have friends at CPS and I will make sure a report is filed. As for the police, I think we had better let cooler heads prevail. Make no mistake about it—what Mr. Twisden did to you is unacceptable. What I don’t want to happen is for you to be dragged into some pissing match with his guy. You understand? They are going to accuse you of molesting their son, Michael. And I think you know me well enough to understand that there is no greater champion of gay rights in the world than me, but I don’t care how liberal and up-to-date New Yorkers are supposed to be, gay teachers are vulnerable. When it comes to children, everybody is just a teeny-tiny bit reactionary. I wish it were not the case. I wish we lived in a better world.”

“Did I ever tell you I was gay?” Michael asks.

Fleming seems taken aback by the question.

“Then why do you refer to me as a gay teacher?” Michael persists. “Do I look gay? Do I talk or walk gay? Did I one day come to school with a rainbow scarf?”

If the personal side of Fleming is rattled by Michael’s questions, the administrative side is unflappable. “Your personal life is of no interest or importance to me. But it is to the Twisden-Kramers, and I don’t want them making accusations, I don’t even want innuendos. The Twisden family is prominent in this city. Both Adam and Alice are full-paying students who receive not one penny of school aid, which helps us to continue our outreach program for the sons and daughters of doctors and dentists and other less fortunate New York families. If you want to rattle the parents’ cage you will (a) not get anywhere, (b) risk a valuable resource for the Berryman community, and (c) and this is the most important part, Mike, and I say this not only as your supervisor but as someone whom I would like you to consider a friend, you will find yourself in some disgusting sex scandal. And the thing about sex scandals is everybody loses—especially the accused.”

As Michael prepares himself to rebut what Fleming has said, he is interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Both men turn toward the sound and before either can say
Come in
or
Please Wait,
the door opens and they are confronted by the sight of Mrs. Fillmore, a squat, fierce woman who has worked as a secretary at the school for the past thirty-eight years. She has white hair cut in an oddly girlish way, and large black-framed glasses.

“We got a call from the police,” she says, looking at Michael. “Someone found a wallet belonging to Xavier… Rivera, or something? They can’t find him, but there’s a card says in case of emergency, contact you.”

“Where did they find it?” Michael asks.

“Someone brought it into the precinct. Don’t worry, I’m sure the Good Samaritan kept all the money—if there was any. They found it in a gutter somewhere on Twenty-Third Street.”

It feels to Michael as if his heart is being punched to death.

Rodolfo has been as good as his word and has taken Alice to a place where she can eat, get warm, and sleep. It’s a large apartment on West End Avenue, in a building that once was fancy but has gone down in the world, and now there is no doorman, and the elevator is self-service. The apartment itself is on the tenth floor, unlocked and unkempt. Rodolfo warms a can of soup for her, plunks down a carton of milk, and makes some toast—though he butters it with a heavy hand, crumbling it to bits. As soon as she has eaten, she is overcome with fatigue, and suddenly nine hours have passed like a shooting star glimpsed from the corner of your eye, and Alice awakens on a soft green sofa the pillows of which have a sharp but comforting animal smell. This must have been the favorite sleeping spot of the family dog.

“Hello?” she calls out softly, tentatively, sitting up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. When her feet touch the ground, they land directly on Rodolfo’s shoulder—he has curled up next to the sofa and slept on the floor.

He reacts quickly to her touch; in less than a second, he is on his feet, in a slight crouch, his eyes sharp and wary. Seeing Alice, he relaxes, smiles. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

Alice shakes her head. “I can’t remember where we are,” she says.

“We’re at Peter Burns’s crib.”

“Who’s that?” Alice hears voices in the next room, laughter, the scuffle of feet.

“A friend. A kid. Don’t worry, he’s cool.”

“This is a
kid’s
apartment?”

Rodolfo shrugs. “Sort of.”

A boy about seven years old races into the room looking agitated and afraid. “Hey, Rodolfo, you better come. Luke and Dave are starting to fight.”

“Let them,” Rodolfo says with a wave.

“But last time…”

“It’s okay. Just let it happen.”

The boy shakes his head, submissive but dissatisfied. And a moment later, a hideous yowl comes from the next room, followed by a long rumbling growl that feels to Alice as if it were coming from right below her feet. She covers her ears the way she does when the subway comes roaring into her station.

“Come on,” Rodolfo says, taking her hand. “I’ll show you the place. You can come here whenever you want. It’s ours.”

As Alice allows Rodolfo to lead her across the largely bare living room, with its windows covered by bedsheets and its walls without pictures, she notices a couple of other sofas shoved into far corners. On one of them someone is sleeping, but so tightly curled that Alice cannot say if it is a boy or a girl, and on the other a teenage boy sits with his back to a teenage girl, who is vigorously brushing his long russet-colored hair. Rodolfo opens a door and just before he leads her into a long corridor, dimly lit by wall sconces with faltering flame-shaped bulbs, the young boy comes racing in again, this time even more agitated than before.

“Rodolfo! Please. You’ve got to help. He’s going to kill him!”

Rodolfo heaves a sigh and lifts a wait-a-second finger. “The kitchen’s at the way end of the hall,” he says to Alice. “When food…” He shakes his head. “I mean,
there’s
food in it.”

He saunters casually into the depths of the apartment with the boy, and Alice makes her way down the dim hall, past a series of closed doors, some with the paint peeling, others with deep gouges in the wood. She figures that behind one of these doors is a bathroom, but she is afraid to open one and see something unforgettable.

This is the first morning in years in which she has awakened and has not had to wait for her father or mother to unlock her bedroom door.

She knocks lightly on a door chosen at random. “Hello?” she says, and waits. “Hello?”

She hears what sounds like someone clearing his throat, followed by words rapidly whispered back.

“Come in!” It’s a woman’s voice, cheerful and inviting, like a lady in a bakery or a nice teacher.

“Sorry,” Alice says. “I’m looking for the bathroom?”

“There’s one in here, sweetheart,” the woman says. “You can use it.”

“Come on in,” a man’s voice joins in. The voice is not so friendly—it sounds tired, unhappy.

Now she has no choice but to open the door. The room is dark. Blankets have been hung over the windows. The only illumination comes from a single Little Mermaid night-light, but even in the heavy shadows of this room—bereft of furniture, freezing cold, and with the overwhelming, disorienting stench of burned hair, rotted food, feces, and urine—Alice can make out two figures, grown-ups, sitting on the floor side by side with their knees drawn up and their eyes blazing.

“Hello there, little girl,” the woman says. And now Alice can tell that the lady’s voice is not really sweet but meant to sound that way.

“Hello,” Alice says. Her eyes are becoming used to the sludgy gray gloom of this room and she is starting to make out more clearly the two adults on the floor. They both have long graying hair and neither of them wears anything on top; on the bottom they both wear satin running pants—the man has hiked up one of the legs on his and he is scratching and scratching at something that seems to be bothering him on his shin. There is a bowl next to them and another one that has been tipped over.

“I don’t recognize you,” the woman says. “I’m Peter’s mother. Are you a friend of our son?”

“I guess.

“How old are you, sweetheart?” the mother asks.

“Ten and a half.”

“Oh! What a nice age!”

The father picks up the metal bowl that’s been tipped over and skitters it across the floor toward Alice’s feet, where it rattles and echoes. “You’re looking for a bathroom, right? It’s right over there.” He points to a door behind him. “And while you’re in there, I wonder if you could fill this up with water. Cold water. Let it run for a while before you fill the bowl. There’s sediment in the pipes in this old building.”

The urgency to reach the bathroom is irresistible. She picks up the bowl and walks into the small bathroom at the back of the parents’ room, wondering why they can’t get their own water, why they are crouched on the floor, why they are wearing practically no clothes in this chilly room, why the room is so dark, why it smells so horrible. But the behavior of adults is often inexplicable, upsetting, and bizarre, and she is so accustomed to cutting slack for those who are honor bound to cherish and protect her that she is now in the habit of judging no one.

The bathroom is small and cold and smells of ammonia. The floor is covered in layer upon layer of newspaper, some of it damp, some of it torn. There is only a small sink for washing; the turner for the hot water has been removed, exposing a long rusted bolt. The toilet is a catastrophe, and Alice hovers above it as she relieves herself. At least there’s toilet paper, but with stupid jokes printed on every square, and some of them show drawings of girls with big boobs, their elbows resting on the rims of gigantic martini glasses.

The medicine cabinet that must have once been above the sink is gone, and Alice looks at the blank, torn-up wall as the cold water thunders into the bowl. She carries it to the huddled parents. “Where should I put it?” she asks.

“Oh, thanks so much,” the mother says. “So nice of you.”

“Put it right over here,” the father says, patting the space between him and the mother.