Home Song (27 page)

“Okay, Mr. Gardner.”

“Now I want you both to do something for me. I want you to see Mrs. Roxbury and get appointments to talk to her.” Mrs. Roxbury was the counselor for the junior class. “Chelsea, the sooner the better for you. Erin, I think it might help if you talk to her too, because you're going to be one of Chelsea's support people, and it's important that you understand what she's going through right now.”

Erin murmured, “Okay . . . sure.”

“Is it okay with both of you if I go and get Mrs. Roxbury and have her come in here now?”

The girls both nodded.

“Okay, I'll be right back.”

When Tom went out, Erin whispered, “Gol, Chelsea, your dad is so nice, I don't see how your mom could ever kick him out.”

Chelsea said sadly, “I know. She's just spoiling everything.”

Mrs. Roxbury, a fortyish woman with rimless glasses and a shag haircut, came in and took the girls to her office. As they left, Chelsea looked back at Tom and said softly, with a wan smile, “Thanks, Dad.”

He smiled for her benefit and she went out.

Three minutes later Lynn Roxbury returned to find Tom sitting glumly at his desk, staring at the pictures on his window ledge.

“Tom?” she said quietly.

He swung his gaze to the door. “Thanks, Lynn. I appreciate your fitting them in.”

“No problem. I've got appointments with them tomorrow.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. “Listen, I've got time for you too, if you find you need to talk. There have been a lot of rumors flying around here today, so I have a pretty good idea why Chelsea's eyes were red and you look like you've just lost your best friend. I believe you have.”

He sighed and ground eight fingertips into his eyes, tipping his desk chair back at a sharp angle. “Ohh, Lynn . . . shit. To quote my son.”

She discreetly closed the door. “I hear that a lot in my business.”

“It's been a hell of a month around our house.”

“I don't think I need to say it, but anything you choose to unload will be held in strictest confidence. I imagine this is particularly hard for you and Claire, being you both work in the same building.”

“It's just plain hell.”

She waited, and he said, “Sit.”

“I only have a few minutes right now.” She took the chair Erin had vacated.

He rocked forward, his forearms on his desk, his shoulders rounded. “I'll give it to you short and straight. Claire and I have separated at her request. I'm living with my dad out at his cabin on the lake, and the kids are living with Claire in the house. The reason goes way back into my past and it's kind of a shocker. It has to do with the new senior here, Kent Arens. I've just discovered that he's my son.” Lynn sat with a finger against her lips but said nothing. Tom went on. “I didn't know about him until he walked into the office to register for school. I never kept in touch with his mother,
so I never knew, but as it turns out, he was born the same year as Robby. My indiscretion was a one-night stand the night of my bachelor party. Claire believes I've revived an affair with Kent's mother, which I haven't. Nevertheless, she left me.”

It said a lot about the walloping punch packed by this revelation that Lynn gave away a hint of astonishment upon hearing it.

“Oh, Tom, no! You were the last two I ever thought this would happen to!”

He spread his hands and let them fall. “Me too.” Neither of them spoke for a while. Finally, he said, “I love her so damned much. I don't want this separation at all.”

“Do you think she'll relent?”

“I don't know. It's brought out a side of her I've never seen before. She acts almost fearless, almost . . . I don't know what to call it but aggressive, and absolutely convinced that she has to get away from me for a while.”

“The key words here are
for a while
.”

“I hope so. God, Lynn, I hope so.”

Lynn Roxbury continued to look stunned by the news. “Tom, I'm sorry I can't talk any longer, but I've got another appointment. We can talk more after school though. I'm free around four-thirty today.”

Tom rose to his feet. “I've got meetings at the district office right after school, so I'll be busy, but thanks for listening now. It helped.”

He went around his desk and she squeezed his sleeve. “You going to be okay?”

He gave her a weak smile. “Sure.”

But it had been a difficult day for Tom. His attention span was short. His mind wandered—most often, to Claire.

He looked up once and saw her through his open
doorway, in the outer office, speaking to Dora Mae. His response was as swift and consuming as passion, a desperate yearning for her to turn and look his way, to offer him that much. She knew his door was open, that he was probably sitting at his desk.

But she moved on without offering him a crumb, and her rebuff hurt worse than anything he could remember.

At lunchtime he saw her again, walking through the cafeteria on her way to the teachers' lunchroom. She was with Nancy Halliday, listening to Nancy talk, and she glanced over at Tom, who stood in the center of the room beneath the round skylight watching over the kids.

His heart damn near knocked him off his feet. But she glanced away indifferently and continued through a door that closed on a pneumatic hinge, whisking her out of sight.

He forced himself to stay away from her until the break between the last two periods of the day. Then he went to her room, waiting in the hall while the sixth-period kids spilled out, unconsciously checking the knot in his tie before stepping into the room. She was seated at her desk, which faced the door, searching for something in a lower drawer. Catching sight of her, he felt his skin go hot—his neck, cheeks, forehead—felt the whole chain reaction begin again, combined with a rush that was unquestionably sexual. He grew angry with her for putting him through this. He didn't want this separation, damn it!

“Claire?” he said, and she looked up, leaving a hand between the file folders.

“Hello, Tom.”

“I ah . . .” He cleared his throat. “I told Vince Conti he could come over and pick up our canoe some night this week. He wants to use it for duck hunting. Do you know where the paddles are?”

“Yes.”

“Would you give them to Vince when he comes?”

“Sure.”

“He'll probably talk to you about when.”

“All right.”

“It was a few weeks ago I told him he could borrow it. I didn't think he'd have to be bothering you to . . . well . . . you know. You've got play practice most nights.”

“It's okay, Tom. We'll work it out.”

When he remained where he was, pink-faced and humble, she said, “Is there anything else, Tom?”

It suddenly angered him, being treated like some vassal at the foot of a feudal princess. “Yes, there's plenty more!” He strode toward her, piqued. “Claire, how can you be so damned cold? I don't deserve to be treated this way!”

Once again she bent to the files in the drawer. “Nothing personal in the schoolroom, Tom. Have you forgotten?”

He reached her desk and braced his hands on it, thrusting his head toward her. “Claire, I don't want this separation!”

She withdrew a file and slammed the metal drawer. Two students came in, talking and laughing, as she rolled her desk chair backward.

“Not here, Tom,” she admonished quietly. “Not now.”

He straightened slowly, colored by anger, realizing he should not have come in here. No man needed this in the middle of his workday. In the middle of his life!

“I want to come back home.” He kept his voice quiet so the students could not hear.

“I'll make sure Vince gets the canoe paddles,” she said, dismissing him as surely as if she'd picked up a bell and rung it, like the teachers of old.

He had no choice but to turn and push his way through the incoming students.

T
HE
word spread through the locker room at football practice that day: Mr. Gardner is getting a divorce.

Kent Arens heard it from a kid named Bruce Abernathy, who—as far as Kent knew—wasn't even a friend of Robby's, so how would he know? Kent went to Jeff Morehouse and asked if he knew anything about it.

“Yeah, Robby's dad moved out.”

“Are they getting a divorce?”

“Robby doesn't know. He says his mom threw his dad out because he had an affair with somebody.”

No! Kent wanted to shout. No, not them! Not the family who had it all!

When he had time to recover from the first bolt of news, another bomb exploded in his mind. Suppose it was true, and the other woman was his mother. The thought made him sick.

In that muddled moment he realized he had come to hold up the Gardner family as an ideal: somewhere in this world of half families and screwed-up values, there was one unit of four who'd survived all the treacheries of modern times to
hang together and love each other. They had seemed inviolable, and even though he, Kent, had envied Chelsea her father, he had never wanted to take him from her. And if his mother was a party to it, how could he respect her anymore?

He dropped to a bench, half dressed and shaken, gripping his knees and struggling with a whole new crop of emotions. The locker room thrummed with conversation, and when it suddenly ceased, he looked up to find that Robby Gardner had walked in. Nobody said a word. Nobody moved. The silence was awesome and filled with the echoes of gossip that had been whispered and wondered about all day.

Gardner looked at Arens. Arens looked back, steadily.

Then Gardner continued toward his locker.

But something had changed in his stride. Its brazenness was gone, its spunk. As he passed among his silent teammates, their knowing eyes followed him. Some held pity, some questions. Some were embarrassed for him as he opened his locker door, hung up his letter jacket, and began dressing without the usual joshing.

Kent suppressed the urge to rise and go to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and say, “I'm sorry.” Somehow this was his fault, Kent's, though reason told him perfectly well that his conception was the act of two others, nothing he had willed or wanted or wrought. Still, he'd been born, hadn't he? And it appeared his mother and Mr. Gardner had started up again, and all this had driven a wedge between Robby and Chelsea's parents.

Surely there was some guilt inherent in these facts.

The team went on poking their heads through their jerseys and slamming locker doors until finally they started filing out to the field, the clatter of their cleats fading. Robby, who usually led them, remained behind.

Kent turned to look at him down the length of the varnished benches. Robby faced his open locker, his head hanging as he worked his jersey over his pads.

Kent moved toward him . . . stopped behind him, his helmet hanging from one hand.

“Hey, Gardner?” Kent said.

At last Robby turned around. They stood grounded in place, dressed in their red-and-white uniforms and stocking feet, holding their cleats and helmets, wondering how the hell to get around the morass of emotions that had been forced upon them in so short a time.

The coach came out of his office, opened his mouth to order them to get a move on, changed his mind, and left them alone. He went away, his cleats
tack-tacketing
on the concrete floor, leaving the two boys in silence broken only by the drip from some showerhead on the other side of a tiled wall.

They stood separated by the low bench and the difference in their birthrights. Kent had expected Robby's face to hold scorn. Instead, it held only sadness.

“I heard about your mom and dad,” Kent said. “I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.” Robby dropped his chin and kept his eyes lowered in case any telltale tears should appear. None did, but their threat was as clear to Kent as if his own eyes had stung.

He reached across the bench and for the first time ever, touched his half brother on the shoulder . . . one singular, uncertain touch.

“I mean it. I really am,” he offered kindly.

Robby only stared at the bench, unable to lift his head.

Then Kent dropped his hand and turned to the door to give his half brother time alone.

* * *

Kent went home from practice that night angrier than he ever remembered being with his mother. When he stormed into the house, she was coming up the basement stairs with a stack of folded towels.

“I want to talk to you, Mom!” he bellowed.

“Well, that's a fine hello.”

“What's going on between you and Mr. Gardner?”

She froze in midstep, then continued past on her way to the linen closet with him dogging her. “Are you having an affair with him?”

“I most certainly am not!”

“Then why is everybody at school saying you are? And why has Mr. Gardner left his wife?”

She spun with the towels forgotten in her hand. “He has?”

“Yes, he has! And everybody in school is gossiping about it! Some kid in the locker room said his wife threw him out because he was having an affair.”

“Well, if he is, it's not with me.”

Kent peered at her more closely. She was telling the truth. He sighed and gave her some space. “Jeez, Mom, is
that
a relief.”

“Well, I'm glad you believe me. Now maybe you can stop yelling at me.”

“Sorry.”

She stuffed the towels into the closet. “So you think it's true? Tom's left his wife?”

“It looks that way. I asked Jeff, and Jeff said it was, and he ought to know. He's been Robby's best friend forever.”

She hooked Kent by an elbow and led him back toward the front of the house. “You seem upset about it.”

“Well . . . yeah . . . yeah, I guess I am.”

“Even though I'm not a part of it?”

He shot her a reproving glance.

“Presently a part of it,” she amended.

“I am upset, Mom. You just have to look at Robby Gardner to see that he's really bummed out. I suppose Chelsea's the same way. She really loves her dad, Mom. The way she talked about him was . . . well, it was different, you know? The way kids hardly ever talk about their parents. And I took one look at Robby in the locker room today and . . .” They had reached the kitchen and Kent dropped onto a stool at the counter. “I don't know. The look on his face was pretty awful. I didn't know what to say to him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I was sorry.”

She had opened the refrigerator to get out some hamburger and half an onion in a plastic bag. She set them on the counter and went to Kent.

“I'm sorry too,” she said.

They commiserated together, he perched on the edge of the high stool, she standing beside it, affected by the news of one family's breakup, touched by obscure guilt over it. But they could not change the past. Monica got out a frying pan and started preparing supper.

“Hey, Mom?” Kent said, still sitting glum and gleeless.

She looked over. “What?”

“What would you think if I sort of . . . well, like . . . I don't know . . . tried to become his friend or something.”

Monica had to think about that for a while. She went to the sink and pulled out the breadboard beside it, opened the package of hamburger, and started forming patties. “I guess there's no way I can stop you.” The
pat slap pat
of her hands on the meat filled the room.

“So you don't approve?”

“I didn't say that.”

But something in the way she slapped that hamburger told him his question threatened her somehow.

“He's my half brother. Today when I was looking at him I really thought about that. My half brother. You've got to admit, that's pretty awesome, Mom.”

She turned her back and switched on a stove burner, opened a lower cabinet door and found a bottle of oil, squirted some in the pan, and made no reply.

“I thought maybe I could help some way. I don't know how, but it's because of me they're breaking up. If it's not because you're having an affair with him, then it's because of me.”

Monica swung around, faintly exasperated. “It's not your responsibility, and you certainly aren't guilty of anything, so if you've got that idea in your head you can just get it out!”

“Well, then whose responsibility is it?”

“It's his! Tom's!”

“So I should just stand by and watch their family break up and not do anything about it?”

“You said it earlier—what can you do?”

“I can be Robby's friend.”

“Are you sure he wants that?”

Meekly, Kent answered, “No.”

“Then, be careful.”

“Of what?”

“Getting hurt yourself.”

“Mom, I'm already hurt—you don't seem to understand that. This whole mess hurts me a lot! I want to get to know my father, but if I have to circle wide around his kids every time I want to see him—well, wouldn't it be much easier just to try to make friends with them?”

She dropped a patty in the pan, sending up sizzle and
smoke. It was exceedingly hard for her to give her blessing to his making friends in Tom Gardner's camp.

“You afraid I'll change loyalties or something, Mom?” He came over and draped his arm over her shoulder cajolingly. “You should know me better than that. You're my mom and that's not going to change if I get to know them. But I've got to do this, don't you see?”

“I do.” She spun and hugged him so hard he couldn't see the heavy sheen in her eyes. “I do see. It's why Tom insisted that I tell you he was your father. But I'm scared of losing you.”

“To them? Come on, Mom, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you lose me?”

She sniffed and chuckled at her own foolishness. “I don't know. It's such a mix-up, you and them, you and me, me and him, and him and you.” She turned out of his arms to tend the hamburgers, leaving him standing with one wrist still crooked over her shoulder. They watched as she flipped the patties, then sliced wedges of onion against her thumb, dropping them into the pan beside the meat. The aroma intensified and he drew her harder against his side.

“Boy, it's really hell growing up, isn't it, Mom?”

She chuckled, poked at the onions with the knife tip, and said, “You know it.”

“Tell you what . . .” He took the knife and poked at the onions, too. “Just so you won't feel threatened, I'll come back and report everything to you. I'll tell you when I see them and what we talk about. And I'll tell you how we're all getting along. That way you won't think I'm being lured away from you; how's that?”

“I would have expected you to do that anyway.”

“Well, yeah, but this way you'll know for sure.”

“Okay, it's a deal. Now how about buttering some buns?”

“Right.”

“And getting out a couple of plates.”

“Right.”

“And the jar of pickles.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” As he turned around to help her, she turned around to watch him, and while the hamburgers sizzled and the onions cooked and he buttered buns with his back to her, she realized that she had been silly to feel threatened by his wish to get closer to Tom's children.

She had raised too good a boy to lose him over this. She had done such a good job that
he
was teaching
her
that love need not be competitive.

 

At play practice that night Claire checked her watch, clapped her hands, and shouted above the jabbering onstage. “Okay, everybody, it's ten o'clock, time to wrap it up. Make sure all the props are locked up! Work on those lines and I'll see you tomorrow night!”

Beside her John Handelman shouted, “Hey, Sam, you're going to make a copy of the lighting script and give it to Doug, right?”

“Yo!” the boy called back.

“Good. Paint crew, wear old clothes tomorrow night. The art department's got the flats sketched and we'll be filling in the background!”

A syncopated chorus of good nights drifted back to the pair left onstage. The kids' voices drifted off, leaving the auditorium quiet.

“I'll get the lights,” John said, heading toward the wings.

A moment later the spots disappeared from between the overhead travelers, leaving Claire in shadows. She made her way to rear stage, where only one dim light threw murky gray bands down between the drops. Some folding chairs
stood higgledy-piggledy beside a rough wooden crate, her jacket thrown across the seat of one. She leaned over tiredly to stuff her script and notes into a cloth bag along with some fabric samples and a book on costuming. Straightening with a sigh, she picked up her jacket and drew it on.

“Tired?”

She turned. John stood behind her, putting on his jacket, too.

“Beat.”

“We did lots of work tonight though.”

“Yes, we accomplished a lot.” She reached for her bag and he put a hand on her arm.

“Claire,” he said, “could we talk a minute?”

She left the bag on the chair seat. “Sure.”

“Lots of rumors flying around the school today. Rather than wonder if they're true, I decided to ask. Are they?”

“Maybe you'd better tell me what you heard, John.”

“That you left Tom.”

“It's true.”

“For good?”

“I don't know yet.”

“The gossips are saying he had an affair.”

“He did once. He says it's over.”

“So what's your take on that?”

“I'm hurt. I'm mixed up. I'm angry. I don't know whether to believe him or not.”

He studied her awhile. Their faces looked like masks of Tragedy, eyes mere sockets in the meager light from some distance away.

“You threw the faculty into a major shock, you know.”