The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

“Dad,” Aidan said after a minute.

  “Yeah, Aid?”

  Aidan leaned back and got a serious look on his face.

  “I’m not lying, Dad. Charlie did it. On purpose.”

  “But—”

  Aidan reached out and clamped Beck’s mouth shut with his palm, a moist patch of warmth on his frosted beard. Through gritted teeth and with a strange look in his eyes, Aidan said, “He’s jealous, Dad. He wanted to hurt me.”

  * * *

  —

  After Beck had arranged a bag of ice around Aidan’s ankle, he went back to the fridge for a beer. He popped the top. A tense silence had settled in the condo since they came inside, no one brave enough to break it. Finally some idiotic part of Beck’s brain made him say, “Sorry, babe. The boys really wanted a last run.”

  “That’s not true,” Aidan said from his spot by the fire.

  “Aidan,” Beck said.

  “It was your idea, Dad,” Charlie added helpfully, finding a mischievous joy in his brother’s misery. He scare-quoted with two fingers and a cheese knife. “‘How many weekends do we get free of soccer?’ ‘Think how awesome that fire’s gonna feel after one more run, boys.’”

  “Enough, Charlie,” Beck warned.

  Sonja spun away abruptly and stomped up the stairs, leaving him with Tessa and the kids. Charlie abandoned his slicing task and flopped down in front of the TV, as far away from his brother as possible.

  Beck drained his beer. The guys should have known better than to mess around on a black diamond. Those slopes were steep, fast, perilous. Every year you heard about a broken neck or a snapped spine, some paralyzed teenager. That patrolman had been right. Aidan was lucky as hell.

  He wheezed out a sigh.

  “Another?” Tessa asked, surprising him. Her eyes dropped down to his empty. He held up the bottle, wondering how he’d managed to finish his first so quickly.

  “That’d be awesome, yeah.”

  She fished a beer out of the fridge and tossed it to him. Then she was back in for another. She opened it and took a long gulp before he could say anything.

  Beck tried to remember what Julian and Lauren’s daughter had looked like at five but couldn’t summon it. Crazy how she’d grown. He gave her a cool-dad smile, watching her guzzle. No skin off his back if Tessa wanted to have a few after a day with his baby.

  “Your mom would kill me if she thought we let you drink up here,” he said.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “Just one, though.”

  Tessa rolled her eyes. “Okay.” She sauntered into the living room and threw herself into one of the big chairs between the twins. With a fuzzy slipper propped on a knee she was gone, lost in her phone.

  SIXTEEN

  BECK

  When they came out and hot-tubbed late like this, Sonja would usually float to him and stay there, clingy and wet, but tonight she lingered on the opposite bench above the hum of an unseen motor, heated water churning white. The chlorine stung his eyes. After a while she leaned over to moisten her face, then pushed up from the bench and stretched to her full length in the middle of the Jacuzzi. Beck’s wife was a broad-shouldered woman, and her torso could have served as the centerpiece of some exotic Roman fountain, steam swirling up to sheathe her nude form in clinging wisps.

  “Still mad at me?” he said.

  “You take all this for granted, Beck,” she said. “Including me.”

  “I don’t. You know I don’t.”

  “It feels sometimes to me that you do.” She stretched her arms and planted her hands on the sides of the tub. “You think I just have your baby and make pasta and give sex and do it all again next day.”

  “Nein, Sonja, nein nein nein.” Her perfect English slipped when she was drunk or stoned or, as now, angry.

  “I am your wife. I am not your au pair. I am second mother also to Aidan and Charlie and responsible for them too. I do their laundry like you do and I cook for them like you do and I clean up after them like you do.”

  “Hey, now, no need for the passive-aggressive stuff.”

  Her head tilted left. “You have to respect my opinions about things I know. Like black diamonds.”

  Beck nodded, contrite. “That was stupid. I should have listened.”

  “They were not ready. Aidan could be dead right now. You understand? Your son. Dead.”

  With a low clank the jets died, the timer cycled off. She stared at him across the fogged and calming water. “You are a baby, Beck,” she said into the new silence. “Like our Roy. A big baby.”

  She climbed out and wrapped herself in one of the Egyptian cotton towels stocked by the laundry service. “I am going to shower,” she said from behind him. “Will you come to the bed?”

  He dropped his head back to look up at her. “Gimme ten minutes.”

  She held up a hand. “Five.”

  Sonja went inside and left the sliding door open six inches. Beck gazed up at the tapestry of stars, in dazzling focus on this cold April night at nine thousand feet. The condo shared the Jacuzzi with the unit backing theirs, but no one had taken the place that weekend, leaving the deck nearly silent.

  He kept his head there against the smooth curve of the tub. Found Orion’s Belt and the twinned lines of Gemini, with the Monoceros horn just beneath. His father had taught him the constellations, over a summer of buggy campouts in the Delaware Water Gap when he was about the boys’ age. How many times had Beck taken his guys camping, like ever? Four, five? He closed his eyes, thinking of humid nights in the soft give of a sleeping bag, glow of dying coals. Bear bags dangling from limbs.

  * * *

  —

  Whoosh.

  The jets went on, startling him out of a doze as Tessa stepped onto the deck. Her towel fell to her feet, and she stood there topless, pale skin luminous in the turquoise glow. She set a water glass and her phone on a bench, then took a step toward the Jacuzzi. Beck gaped.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry.” She cowered to cover her chest. Beck turned away, gulping dryly. “I didn’t think anyone was out here.”

  “Hey, it’s cool.” Beck tried for nonchalant. “Just tell me when you’re in.”

  “Okay, in,” she said moments later. He turned back and saw her head popped up above the frothing water. “How’s Aidan’s ankle?” she asked.

  “We’ll see. Scared him, though.”

  “I bet.”

  “Did Roy treat you well today?”

  “He was sweet. He likes whipped cream.” She giggled. “Don’t tell Sonja.”

  “I won’t.”

  Silence for a minute or so, and Beck started to get a little uncomfortable with this almost-nude sixteen-year-old sitting across from him. He was about to get out when Tessa reached behind the lip of the tub for a plastic sandwich bag. Inside, the faint white line of a joint, the dark shell of a Zippo.

  “Smoke?” she asked.

  He considered it. Sonja was waiting. “Maybe a puff or two.”

  Tessa wriggled a foot closer to him on the bench. The lighter clicked and flared. Her breath hitched. Flame and shadow danced across her young features as she dragged. When she handed him the joint he took a long pull, letting the smoke baste his lungs.

  “Another thing not to tell your mom,” he rasped on the exhale, handing her the joint.

  Tessa sneered. “She wouldn’t give a fuck.”

  “Seriously?”

  “All she cares about is Xander, his chess. Plus that lame school he’s testing for.”

  Beck allowed himself a self-righteous sniff. “Azra’s all ragged at me because I let the guys skip out on the test today. But there’s no way I’m letting them go to that place. I hate all that gifted bullshit.”

  “You’re an awesome dad.”

  Beck sat up a few inches.

  “Beca
use my mom’s obsessed with it, whether Xander gets in.”

  “Your brother’s a genius, like your old man. She’s actually worried?”

  “You. Would. Not. Believe. It’s all she talks about. Meanwhile I’m just the druggy slut.”

  “Well, that sucks.” Not a surprise, though, knowing Lauren. What had Julian seen in that woman? Beck had never forgotten what a drag Lauren was during those ugly months around his divorce, by far the worst of Azra’s uptight friends, taking the opportunity whenever she saw Beck to make fun of his relaxed lifestyle, drop not-so-subtle hints about the wanting intellects of sporty kids like the twins. They lose half an IQ point with every header, Lauren once said right in front of him. Azra just ignored it but Beck had stomped out of the room, defensive and furious.

  He waved off another hit but watched Tessa as her sucking pulls burned through the rolling paper. Something about the angle of her nose, the shape of that mouth—

  “You look like him,” he said, “your dad.” The memory percolated up through the early high.

  Tessa was in mid-drag. The end of the joint stopped glowing and she choked out a cloud. “Really?” she said between coughs. “Because everybody says I look more like her. Which, like, fucking kill me now.”

  “Maybe in the cheekbones. But you got his whole—I don’t know.” Beck hesitated. “He saved my fucking life one time. Julian.”

  “Really? That’s crazy.”

  “It was two, three years before you came around and—shit, you know I haven’t told this story in ten years. I almost told it for your dad’s eulogy, but Lauren wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  The question made him glow. “What the hell.”

  It had been an idiotic free up Salt Pinnacle, he told her. No ropes, no clips, no helmets. Midway up Beck got in trouble. In trying to get out of it, he slipped down the rock face and ended up hanging on by his hands, his feet scrambling for purchase. Julian was ten feet above him and maybe eight feet to his right. Seeing Beck struggling below, he scooted over to a crevasse and reached out a hand to give him an option. But the closest he could reach was at least two feet from Beck’s hand. To save his own life, Beck would have to swing and grab and more than likely take Julian down with him.

  “You have to understand,” he said, stoned gaze on Tessa’s floating chin. “We were a hundred and fifty feet up, and it was waaaay less than fifty-fifty that your dad could stay on that pinnacle with my weight. Stay where I am and I’m dead for sure. But if I go for it and grab him, I’ll probably kill us both. I know it. He knows it, I can see it on his face. But he keeps shouting at me, ‘Take it, Beck! Goddamnit, Beck, you take this fucking hand,’ and so I’m thinking, Do I kill my friend? Do I kill my fucking friend? And I do it. I grab his hand and he swings me to his crevasse and I hug rock until I get my foot in a crack. Then he slips a couple feet because of how much it strains him to get me, but I catch him and smash his skinny ass against the pinnacle, and we both just hold on and laugh and laugh and God.”

  He looked at her through the blur of his tears. Tessa was watching him, transfixed by this dangerous gleam out from the void of her father’s life.

  “Did you keep going?” she said.

  “Fuck no. We descended, climbed in your dad’s truck, went back to Crystal, and got more shitfaced than either of us had since college. Maybe ever.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She dried her hands on a towel and reached for her phone.

  “Every word’s true, swear to God.” He crossed his heart under the water. It felt good, sharing this.

  “Thank you for that, Beck,” she said, in a low and solemn voice. Looking at her phone, she offered him the joint again.

  * * *

  —

  Ten minutes later he went inside, and when the door slid shut, the weed hit him like a velvet brick. He stopped with his mouth agape and his hand on the back of a sofa. His stomach knotted and churned as he rethought that whole encounter with Tessa and why she’d come out when she did, two minutes after Sonja went inside. It had been gnawing at him since she slipped into the water—or had it?

  No, he was pretty sure he was right.

  Tessa had been watching them out on the deck. She’d heard every word of their exchange. Lurking, listening, waiting for his wife to leave.

  He took a deep breath. Chill, you paranoid freak.

  He moved through the darkened kitchen, still spinning with his high, when he bumped into someone standing by the island. He sprang back and his towel dropped to the floor.

  “Gross,” said a voice.

  “Christ, Charlie.” When the towel was around his waist again, Beck leaned against the counter. “Just hot-tubbing.” His voice tight. “What’s up? You need some cocoa?”

  Charlie didn’t answer. He glanced out through the kitchen window just as Tessa, still bare-chested, hopped out of the Jacuzzi for a sip of water, skin lit faintly blue by the underwater bulb. Beck sidestepped to block Charlie’s view.

  His son held up a new jar of Nutella. “I can’t open this.”

  Beck twisted the lid and lifted off the foil covering. Damn it looked good. He dipped in and took a big scoop and licked it off his finger. “You want some toast, maybe an apple for this?”

  Charlie looked out the window again. “Never mind. I’m actually not hungry,” he said softly, walking out of the kitchen back toward his room.

  “Charlie, wait.” Beck stumbled forward with the towel loosening again. He clutched it tight and smeared it with Nutella. Charlie kept going down the hall. “Charlie, dammit.”

  Charlie stopped beneath the light fixture. “What,” he said, without turning around.

  “Look at me.”

  Slowly Charlie rotated the upper half of his body toward Beck, a cold look in his young eyes. Beck swallowed dry air. It killed him but he had to ask. “Did you do that on purpose up there? Slow Aidan down like that, so he’d crash?”

  His son’s face changed. For a moment Beck saw the flash of guilt, and he waited for the familiar hitch in Charlie’s voice. Beck was ready to go to him, hold him, tell him it was all okay as long as he apologized and told the truth.

  But no hitch. Instead Charlie’s lips made a nasty, hateful curl, almost animal. Beck blinked and the door to the twins’ bedroom closed on the empty hall.

  A Touch of Tessa:

  One Girl's Survival Guide to Junior Year

  A Video Blog

  Episode #138: BRECK WITH BECK

  . . . 15 views . . .

  [Beck in a frothing Jacuzzi, taking a long hit from a joint. Holds in, coughs out smoke, leans forward and hands joint off to Tessa.]

  TESSA: So, Beck.

  BECK [stoned]: Yo.

  TESSA: Tell me another story.

  BECK: What kind of story?

  TESSA: Not about my dad this time. Do you have one about my mom?

  BECK: Seriously? That bit— Sorry.

  TESSA: It’s all good.

  BECK: A story about Lauren. Oh shit, I’ve got one.

  TESSA: Awesome.

  BECK: Okay. So this was three, four years ago. Kev had this old college friend coming to town, and Samantha thought Azra would like him. You know how she is, the yenta bullshit, always trying to hook my ex up with some D. So this guy, they arrange for him to come out with Kev and Sam to “meet some friends,” right?

  TESSA: Right.

  BECK: Samantha gets this couple they know plus Azra to meet the three of them at the Sky Bar, that restaurant up on Sapphire. Now, I just happen to be out with my lovely wife that night at the same restaurant. Sonja and me, we’re halfway through our first bottle of Barolo when your mom shows up.

  TESSA: Wait wait what?

  BECK: Apparently Azra let it slip that there was this triple date going on, and Lauren’s not invited because she
’d be like a ninth wheel—

  TESSA: Seventh.

  BECK: Seventh wheel. But she comes anyway, right, she’s just walking in five minutes after they all sit down. And she just fucking stands there, arms folded, staring at them, and they’re staring at her. The whole place goes quiet. Really awkward and about to get awkwarder until finally Azra—of course it’s Azra—jumps up and pulls a chair from another table and starts to push it around to where Lauren’s standing. But—

  TESSA: She doesn’t sit.

  BECK: Your mom just picks up this bottle of wine in the middle of the table, kind of in front of Samantha, she picks it up and slams it down on the table, and a huge amount of it shoots out and sloshes over all the plates, the appetizers. Then she just turns around and huffs out of the place.

  TESSA: God.

  BECK: Yeah, but you know what, though? I wanted to go hug your mom right then. Because I get lonely sometimes too, and sometimes I wish I had more guys to just hang with, like back in the day when I climbed with your dad. And believe me, I get it, flying off the handle like that. Because some people are well friended and some aren’t. I mean, obviously.

  TESSA: What do you mean?

  BECK: Well just look at Lauren. Who’s she got? Who are her friends? Azra, Rose, and Samantha. And that’s it, man. That’s all she wrote, at least as far as I’ve ever seen, I mean Azra’s told me, you know? She says the quad is all Lauren’s got, aside from you and Xander.

  TESSA [long silence]: Wow.

  BECK: What?

  TESSA: I need more. You want more? [Reaching out with another joint.]

  BECK: Nah, I should get upstairs to the old ball and chain. The admiral. The buster of balls. The castratrix-in-chief.

  TESSA: You are so stoned right now.

  BECK: Yeah. Yeah, I guess I fucking am. Anyway, your turn to look away, young lady.

  [Reaches back for towel, then muscles out of the Jacuzzi, everything fully exposed for a long moment before he wraps towel around waist.]

  BECK [sucking in gut]: Okay, done.