Home Song (26 page)

Unfortunately, she could. She had.

He slept poorly and awoke to the grim prospect of showering in his dad's tin shower stall with its soap-coated plastic curtain and gooey walls. He'd always excused his dad's lack of cleanliness since his mother died, but maybe he'd have to talk to the old man about it if he was to live here indefinitely.

His trousers had gotten wrinkled jamming them into the tiny closet beside the chimney stack, and so had his suit jacket. When he asked where the iron was, he got a relic
whose steam holes were packed solid with tartar. The condition of the ironing board cover made him set his jaw with grim determination.

But he was too excited about seeing Claire and the kids at church to complain.

To his dismay and anger, they weren't there.

He called home afterward and said, “Claire, what are you trying to pull? Why weren't you in church?”

“The kids were tired, so I let them sleep till a later service.”

They had an argument that led to nothing but more frustration, setting the tone for the rest of the day.

On Monday morning he pulled out more wrinkled clothes and had as little success with the corroded steam iron. Checking his reflection in the mirror before leaving for school, he tried unsuccessfully to get a wave out of the hem of his suit coat by pressing it against his thigh with his hand.

Finally he muttered, “Aw, shit,” and clattered out of the cabin cursing his father for living in semi-squalor. Without a garage his car windows had gathered moisture and the rear window needed to be squeegeed before he could set out, irritating him further when he couldn't find a squeegee in his car and his dad didn't have any paper towels. The search for rags made Tom late. When he was finally under way he kept thinking about frost coming soon and how he'd have to scrape his window every morning. He understood now why people said that it never worked when adult kids moved back in with their parents after being out on their own.

At school he was faced with the regular Monday morning faculty meeting, where he arrived five minutes late and confronted Claire without the reassurance of perfect grooming. When he looked at her with desperate longing and a need to be recognized, she gave him nothing.

They made it to the end of the meeting without exchanging any personal words, but his stomach immediately began its nervous dance. He ran into the nurse's office and begged for some Kaopectate, which he gulped in haste because the school buses had already begun arriving, and the worst disaster in the world that morning would have been to miss Chelsea when she walked through the door. Robby always came in early and worked out in the weight room, so he was already somewhere in the building.

Rushing toward the front hall he actually felt panic at the idea that he might have already missed Chelsea. But he hadn't, and when he saw her approaching the building with Robby at her side as well, he felt as if his heart had exploded inside him. They came through the door and headed straight for him as if they, too, needed the contact. Their eyes were sad and their faces long. He touched them both and felt heartsick and afraid the way so many of his students had told him they felt when their families were breaking up because of a divorce. Such a parade of sad stories he'd heard in his years as an educator, never believing he'd be the one experiencing them.

He and Chelsea shared a hug, there in the hall with students streaming past while the two of them—helpless victims of Claire's decision—felt their eyes sting.

He broke free and gripped Robby's arm. “Come on, you two, let's go into my office for a minute.”

“I can't, Dad,” Chelsea said, blinking hard to control her tears. “I didn't do my homework over the weekend and I need to write something quick for health class.”

Tom turned to Robby. “What about you? Did you do yours?”

“I didn't have any.”

“What about weight lifting? Don't you usually go in before school for that?”

Robby averted his gaze. “I didn't feel like it this morning.”

Tom hated chiding them first thing, but he and Claire hadn't been apart for forty-eight hours and already the kids were showing signs of typical divorce fallout.

“Listen, you aren't going to start this now, are you? No matter what happens at home, you can't slough off on your schoolwork and extracurricular activities, okay? You just keep on doing everything the way you were . . . promise?”

Robby nodded sheepishly.

“Okay, Chelsea?”

She nodded too, but refused to meet his eyes.

“All right then, I'd better let you go,” he said, even though he felt as if he would buckle into a heap and die the minute they walked out of his sight.

Chelsea seemed reluctant to head away.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don't know. It's just . . . well, it's hard to act normal when nothing's normal at all anymore.”

“What else can we do?”

She shrugged and looked glum. “Can we tell our friends, Dad?”

“If you must.”

Robby said, “I don't want to tell mine.”

Chelsea finally decided she couldn't handle getting into this at the beginning of the day. Her eyes were blinking hard and fast, and in a minute her tears would win. “I've got to go, Dad.”

She went off without further remarks.

“I'd better go too, Dad.” Robby sounded absolutely defeated.

“Okay. See you later.” Tom touched Robby's back and
watched him drift into the traffic. Left behind, Tom realized that neither of the children had inquired about his emotional state, about how it was staying out at Grandpa's, if he was getting along okay. They were all so busy coming to grips with their own emotional upheaval that they couldn't handle anyone else's. His trained mind realized this was typical, but he couldn't help feeling hurt that no one seemed concerned about
his
needs.

Heading back toward his office he made a silent vow that he would never get so wrapped up in his own grief that he grew immune to the children's.

 

It was inevitable that some situation would force the truth to be told around the school building. It simply happened faster than Tom expected.

He was passing the teachers' mailboxes when the band director, Vince Conti, stopped him. “Oh, Tom . . . I was wondering if I could come over and get that canoe one night this week. Duck hunting season opens next Saturday.”

Weeks ago he and Tom had talked about Vince borrowing the canoe because his teenage boys wanted to take up the sport, which he had enjoyed years ago but had given up after he was married.

Nonplussed, Tom stammered, “Oh . . . oh, sure, Vince.”

“Your schedule is busier than mine, so you name the night.”

“Ahh . . . well, any night is fine, actually. I'll ahh . . .” Tom cleared his throat and felt a spear of panic at the idea of divulging that his marriage was in trouble. He'd never guessed it would be this hard, or that he'd feel like such a loser when he made the admission. “The truth is, Vince, I'll have to tell Claire where the paddles are and you can make
arrangements with her to come and get it. I'm not living there anymore.”

“You're not?”

“Claire and I are separating for a while.”

He watched Vince battle shock and search for the proper response. “Gee, Tom . . . I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

“It's all right, Vince, nobody knows. You're the first one I've told. It just happened over the weekend.”

Vince looked grossly uncomfortable. “Tom, I really
am
sorry. You'd offered to let me borrow your canoe and—well, hell, I mean, I don't have to—”

“No need to change your plans, Vince. You can still borrow it. I'll make sure Claire knows you're coming and that she has the paddles out for you. If you need some help loading it on your car I can make sure Robby is home to help you, or I can meet you over at the house.”

“No, no, I can take one of my boys.”

“Fine. Well . . . you know where it is, then. Out behind the garage.”

“Sure.”

“Claire can show you.”

It was obvious from the look on Vince's face that he was curious, but to his credit he asked no questions. When he walked away it was clear to Tom that in spite of the commonness of divorce, people still found it awful, and got uncomfortable when they were told about it. Perhaps Vince didn't want to intrude. Perhaps he didn't know what to say. The fact remained that the instant he was told, he put up a barrier that had never been there before.

Vince wasn't the only one who had to be told that day. A school the size of HHH functioned much like a small community with many interdependent parts. As its head, Tom had to be accessible at all times, in case of emergencies, or
simply to answer questions, necessitating his having to give his dad's phone number to his assistant principal, his secretary, the liaison law enforcement officer, the chief of police, the head of the school board, the school counselors, and Cecil, the head janitor, who often called at night when his crew did the bulk of their cleaning. With all those people apprised of the situation, it took no time at all before the word seeped out to the general population of the building. Once it did, it spread faster than an Elizabethan plague.

Erin Gallagher came hustling to find Chelsea between classes. “Is it true, Chelsea?” Erin looked owl-eyed and dopey. “Everybody's saying your mom and dad are getting a divorce!”

“They are
not
getting a divorce!”

“But Susie Randolph told me that Jeff Morehouse told her that your dad moved out.” Chelsea's battle to control her tears confirmed the rumor. Erin immediately became sympathetic. “Oh, Chels, you poor thing. Oh, gol, how awful. Where did he go?”

“To my grandpa's.”

“Why?”

Chelsea's face began to corrugate. “Oh Erin, I've just got to tell somebody. I can't keep it to myself anymore.” Her tears began running even before the words were out. The girls went and sat in Chelsea's car, and Chelsea told her friend everything, then swore her to secrecy.

“Oh my gosh,” Erin whispered in wonder, “Kent Arens is your brother . . . wow . . .” Then she added, “I bet you're bummed.”

The girls hugged, and Chelsea cried, and Erin asked if Chelsea thought her dad would ever move back home, which made Chelsea cry even harder. They skipped all of sixth period and part of seventh, and by the time they were ready
to go back inside, Chelsea looked so puffy and red that she said, looking into the rearview mirror, “I wouldn't be caught dead looking like this.”

Erin said, “Maybe you better skip cheerleading practice tonight, and by tomorrow you'll be feeling better. You'll look better, too.”

“What are we going to say to our sixth- and seventh-period teachers?”

Erin, usually the follower where she and Chelsea were concerned, suddenly became the leader. “Come on,” she ordered, opening the car door and heading straight for Tom's office.

“No, Erin, I'm not going in there! I'm not going to talk to my dad!”

“Why not? He'll give us excuses.”

“No! He'll kill me if he finds out I skipped classes!”

“How are you going to keep him from finding out? Come on, Chels, you're not making much sense.”

“But he and Mom don't let us skip for anything, you know that! If there's one thing at our house that's inexcusable, that's it.” Chelsea balked in the hall outside the main-office doors.

“Well, I don't care if you're not going in. I am.” She left Chelsea in the hall and went into the front office. Dora Mae let her go right into Tom's office.

“Hi, Mr. Gardner,” she said from the doorway. “Chelsea and I have been sitting out in her car talking. She told me what's going on at home, and she's been crying a lot, but she wouldn't come in here and tell you we skipped two classes. Would you give us excused absences?”

“Where is she?”

“Out in the hall. She said you'd kill her if you found out,
but I didn't think so since you know what we were talking about.”

Tom was up and heading for the hall, with Erin at his heels.

Chelsea stood around the corner where she could not be seen through the glass wall. When she saw him coming toward her, her eyes began to fill. When he hugged her, she clung. “Oh, Daddy, I'm sorry I told, but I just had to talk to somebody. I'm sorry . . . I'm sor—”

“Shh, it's okay, honey.”

Erin felt out of her element, watching her principal and her best friend hugging while he choked back tears and she bawled on his shoulder.

“I understand,” he murmured, rubbing Chelsea's hair. “It's a hard day for all of us.”

A student came out of the main office and gaped as she walked past.

“Come on,” Tom said. “Let's go into my office. You too, Erin.”

“I can't go in there looking like this,” Chelsea cried. “All the secretaries will see me.”

“You're not the first student to come in crying.” He handed her a handkerchief from his hip pocket. “Just dry your eyes. I want to talk to you.”

He ushered them inside and closed his office door. “Sit down, girls.”

They sat facing his desk and he perched on the edge of it, close to them. “Now listen. I'll give you excused absences because I understand that you couldn't cope with everything today, but honey, you can't skip any more classes. I know that's a tall order, but I want you to try really hard for me.”

Chelsea nodded, eyes downcast and brimming, while she stretched Tom's handkerchief over her thumbs.

“Because no good will be served if you start letting your grades slide on top of everything else.”

Chelsea kept nodding.

“Erin, you did the right thing coming to me today, but in the future, if you skip classes I won't be able to excuse you.”