Channing peeked up at him through glistening eyelashes. “Daddy, I love you.”
“And I love you, but that doesn’t mean anything compared to what you’ve done. How could you, Channing? It’s… it’s brainless.”
“I know,” she said, subdued.
“I moved here from Baton Rouge for you, and now look at you. I didn’t do you any good at all, did I?”
“I like having you here.”
“But now you’re going to have a baby, and your whole life is going to change. What are you going to do?”
He turned on his heel and stalked away from her, back toward the kitchen, not what I would have wanted or advised him to do, but he was entitled to his own reaction and his own way of dealing with this. Whatever he thought, Channing surely wasn’t the first senior from Gunning High School to get knocked up.
That was cynical and I knew it. I rubbed my hand over my face, feeling a hundred years old.
“The next thing to do,” I said, speaking up for the first time, “is to tell your mother. You haven’t told her yet, have you?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I was hoping Daddy would, you know, maybe come with me? Daddy, would you do that? Please, I’m scared to do it myself. She’s gonna kill me.”
“No, she won’t,” Kevin and I said at the same time.
We looked at each other as he came back into the room, and Kevin actually offered me a small, uncertain smile, but I was so far away from that I could barely process what he was doing or what he meant by it.
I said, “You’re not the first young woman to be pressured into having sex before she was ready for it.”
“I guess not,” Channing said as she picked at a thread on the cushion.
“You made a very bad decision,” Kevin said.
“But it’s done,” I said, not wanting Kevin to go down the road of lectures and advice that I didn’t follow myself, that wasn’t relevant for men like Kevin and me. “Now you’ve got to deal with the consequences of it. The first step is to tell your mother, and then the three of you need to discuss this situation together. You know what the options are. I don’t need to spell them out for you. Now, while you aren’t very far along, that’s the time to decide what to do.”
“That woman who ran for vice president, her daughter’s keeping her baby,” Channing said wistfully.
“And you might do that too, but that’s a serious decision that you need to weigh carefully.”
“Daddy? Will you come with me back to the house? I really don’t want to tell Mom alone.”
Kevin sighed. “Sure I will.”
That brought Channing up and into Kevin’s arms again. “Thanks, Daddy,” I heard her whisper against his neck. “You’re the best.”
He held her off a little and looked into her face. “No, I’m not. Do you feel up to driving back? If you do, I’ll follow you.”
Channing nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I feel good enough to drive.” She stepped back and wiped at her face. “Could we, uh, could we do it right now? I don’t want to put it off.”
Kevin glanced at me and then quickly back to her. “Sure.”
“Thanks. I guess I’ll…. Let me use your bathroom first, and then we can go, okay?”
Off she went down the bedroom hall and disappeared with a slam of the bathroom door.
Kevin stood in the middle of the room and shoved both hands along the eighth-of-an-inch growth of his hair. “Fuck!” he said, loud and clear. “Damn it.”
He made a move toward the kitchen, then took a half-step to the hall, and finally he stalked over to the living room windows and looked outside with his hands on his hips. He stood there for a while as I watched him. He was still Kevin, attractive, talkative, persuasive Kevin, but now he was something more too.
I looked away, not wanting to admit how angry I was even to myself. I tried to concentrate on Channing’s problem—abortion? Adoption? Keeping the baby to raise as her own?—and on how Kevin must be feeling, how one thoughtless act could change more than one life catastrophically, but I couldn’t. How dare he not tell me she knew he was gay?
In the bathroom, I heard water running and maybe a little crying. Yes, definitely she was in there crying again. I didn’t care.
“I can’t believe it,” Kevin finally said. “She was giving Julianne a little trouble last year, but then it seemed like she calmed down. We thought getting her involved with the play would get her away from her old crowd, introduce her to new people….”
He walked away from the view of the street, my clever, athletic, smooth-as-silk Kevin. He didn’t make false moves, not on the football field, not on the dance floor, not in the bedroom. From the first time I’d met him, Kevin had exuded a sort of controlled, intense vitality in everything about him.
He went over to the front door where he turned the deadbolt lock. “If I’d had this locked she wouldn’t have walked in on us. That was close.” And then finally he looked up at me. “Tom?”
“What?”
“You were right about the play, weren’t you? You said that it would cause trouble.” He ran one hand over his hair again. “Except I never dreamed—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in a harsh rasp. I gripped the arms of the chair as if I needed the anchor. My nails dug into the fabric.
He knew immediately what I meant. Chagrin was written all over his face. “I didn’t think….” he started, but he didn’t go on.
“You told me about your parents, your sister, and your ex-wife,” I went on, because I couldn’t keep quiet about this, no way, “but somehow you never told me that your daughter, who I see in my classroom every other day at school, knew you were gay. What, somehow you thought that wasn’t relevant?”
“No, I—”
“You can call Channing stupid all you want, and maybe you want me to call you the same thing, but I know you. You’re anything but stupid.” Rage that I couldn’t contain ripped through me. “You deliberately didn’t tell me, right?”
Kevin spread his hands where he was standing, over by the door. We were conducting this conversation in tense, vibrating whispers. “What did you want me to do? Tell you the truth?”
“Yes!”
“That would have scared you away and you know it. We would have had no chance, none whatsoever.”
I stood up. “And now you think we do?”
He took two frantic steps toward me. “Tom, come on. You’re upset right now, but—”
“Upset doesn’t come close to how I’m feeling.”
“I know, I know, but give yourself some time. Think about it. Things aren’t as bad as you think they are. You can’t know if—”
“All I’ve done since I met you is think about it, and look at where I’m at now!”
“You don’t know where you are! So Channing might have suspected, so what? A good-looking teacher who doesn’t date, isn’t married, lives alone… It makes sense that she might have guessed. But that doesn’t mean— Come on, Tom, we were having such a good time. This weekend was going to be special! It already was, because you’re special. We’re special together, don’t you see it?”
Right then, no, I sure didn’t. “Fuck you, Kevin.”
He bit his lower lip and looked anguished, but he didn’t say anything. Behind me there came the sound of the toilet flushing, and then water starting again. Channing would be out any minute.
Kevin knew that too. He erased the distance between us, grabbed my face and kissed me—hard, hard enough to hurt as he ground our lips together. Or tried to, because I pulled myself away and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.
“You really are stupid,” I spit out, “if you think that makes a difference.”
The bathroom door opened and I turned away from him and went all the way into the kitchen. I picked up my keys and then stood over the counter, as the hell that I’d thought I’d be able to postpone suddenly elbowed past my anger.
I looked up at the light fixture, blinking. God, why had I even tried?<
br />
“Mr. Smith?” Channing called behind me.
I swallowed down… everything. And then I turned and looked at her with what I mightily hoped was a bland face that showed nothing. “Yes?”
“I wanted to say thanks.”
“I didn’t do anything. Good luck to you, Channing.”
“You’ll keep my secret?”
I nodded. “It’s up to you to decide what you’ll say about this and when. If anything at all. I leave this in your parents’ capable hands. You haven’t consulted me in any official capacity for the school, after all.”
“Anyway, thanks.”
She started to walk away, and for a few wild, desperate seconds I wanted to beg her to keep my secret the way I had pledged to keep hers. I can’t afford to have this get out at school…. Please keep what you’ve seen this afternoon to yourself.
But my pride wouldn’t let me talk like that to a student. And wouldn’t saying that be admitting there was something going on? Besides, there was no way I could ask her the question burning a hole in my gut: Who else at school thinks Mr. Smith isn’t straight?
“Wait out front, and I’ll pull around behind you,” I heard Kevin tell Channing. “I’ll be right there.”
The front door opened and closed, the deadbolt turned, and then he was in front of me. I looked down at his shoes, not at his face.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay, then I’ll give you some time, and then I’ll call you. All right?”
“Sure, it’s always whatever you want,” I said.
“Tom, that’s not—”
“Go, Channing’s waiting for you.”
I pulled my car out first and waited in the driveway while he backed out the Silverado and brought the garage door down. Only then did I realize that my overnight stuff was in my bag in his room, but I wasn’t going to ask to go back in there. Kevin drove away, undoubtedly around to the front of the house where Channing was. I might have gone, too, and followed them all the way back to Gunning.
But I was through with following Kevin, so I waited.
Ten minutes later, I drove home on my own.
“Hello?” I said.
“Tom, it’s Sean.”
I took in a sharp, angry breath. “You’ve got balls. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”
“Well, you have. Here I am.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“I guess I…. How are you doing?”
“Like you care.”
“I wanted an update. Grant called me last month. He’s a nice guy.”
“There are a few in the world.”
“Tom…. I’m sor—”
“No! Don’t you dare say it.”
“It’s why I called.”
“Well, you can fuck off.”
“I deserve that.”
“You do. Remember when I thought I loved you?”
“Tom…. Look, the police never came by. I guess you didn’t….”
I laughed as cruelly as I knew how, even though I was shaking all over. “They aren’t interested, Sean. Get with it. Who cares? Nobody gives a fuck.”
“I do.”
“Like hell.”
“Yeah, I guess you would think that.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“You don’t understand, that night I couldn’t—”
“Don’t go there.”
“You won’t give me any satisfaction, will you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Then there’s no sense in talking, is there?”
“That’s right. No way in hell.”
“Ah, come on. Don’t you remember…. I remember a lot of good things.” His tone turned soft and intimate. “Can’t we take the good things away with us? Skinny-dipping in the lake? That trip to New Orleans?”
Sweet memories of waking up in his dorm room, wedged between Sean’s snoring and the whitewashed wall, when there’d been nothing better in the world than that moment. But my arm throbbed from the therapy I’d been through that morning. Grant was talking about getting me out on the golf course, even when I hollered at him that I was a cripple and would never be able to do anything like that.
The phone in my hand was suddenly too heavy to hold. Everything hurt. “Goodbye, Sean. Have a shitty life.”
“Tom, I’m sorry. Hear me? I’m sorry.”
“Nope, I don’t. Goodbye.”
I’D ALWAYS thought that the most difficult thing I’d done had been staying on the phone with Sean that day. Now, on Monday morning, I found that walking into Gunning High School was a very close second. I’d spent the rest of that weekend wrapping myself with every scrap of defensive armor I could imagine and convincing myself that Channing had a lot more on her mind than outing her history teacher. If she did that, she would out her own father too. It didn’t make sense.
But cell-deep fear rooted in violence and pain didn’t make a lot of sense either. I had good reason for the way my palms sweated as I walked from the teachers’ parking lot and up the steps to the administration wing. From the moment I’d entered Gunning High the first time, the school had been my sanctuary. Nobody had known me, and I’d been able to construct my own persona, as far from the college student at Texas State as it was possible to be. At least, I’d thought I had. Now I wasn’t sure; maybe all my sacrifices to construct that image had been useless.
“Good morning, Tom,” the assistant principal said, speaking around his habitual morning granola bar.
Farther down the hall two secretaries were walking toward me. “Hi, Tom,” Glenda said. “Did you get the message from the printers that I left in your in-box? They wanted to know about the change for the program.”
I went past Robbie’s locker, where for once nobody was lingering, and then closer to the cafeteria. “Tom, wait up!” George boomed from behind me.
I waited for him, my stomach jumping. His suit jacket was already rumpled, but George himself usually gave the impression of cheerful composure in the midst of bedlam.
“I wanted to make sure you knew all the makeup got here on Saturday,” he said. “Could you go through the boxes and check it out this afternoon, make sure it’s all that we ordered?”
“Okay. Sure, fine.”
He walked ahead of me rapidly and then turned around and walked backward. “Have a good weekend?”
I nodded, a lie. “All right.”
“Gotta run, I’m giving an early test.” He waved, and then off he zoomed.
Three minutes later and I was in my own classroom, home and refuge, and I felt safer. Here at least I was accustomed to being the man in charge. No students were in yet, so I had a moment to re-secure my composure. So far, so good. I took off my jacket and draped it on the back of my chair, tugging on my sweater vest to make sure it was straight. The cold weather had lingered. Once my laptop was on the desk and running, I sat down to work on Rent’s schedule for the day. Carefully, I typed a check mark next to Makeup.
“Mr. Smith?” Jake Somerset came barreling into the room. “Hi, I had some trouble with the homework, and I know you said I needed a good mark, so would you take a look at it before I turn it in to you?”
That’s how it went the rest of the day. If anybody at school treated me any differently, I couldn’t tell. Or if they knew they were harboring a subversive, perverted homosexual in their midst, it was impossible for me to detect that either. Still, I spent the day with my skin crawling, as if everybody’s eyes were on me.
Rehearsal that afternoon was a chaotic mess, with kids forgetting lines they’d learned weeks ago and half the songs sung off-key. I had to uncheck the makeup on the schedule because they’d sent the wrong kind. I spent half an hour on the phone trying to get that straightened out, while emphasizing that the play would be opening, yes, very soon indeed, and we needed that makeup for dress rehearsals pronto.
“Don’t worry,” George said with irritating self-confidence as we walked out
to the darkened parking lot at seven-thirty that night. “There are always days like this toward the end. You don’t want them to have their best performances when they’re practicing. They’ll straighten out.”
I went home, made myself an omelet, and watched something on TV. The phone rang at eight-thirty on the dot. I stood over it and looked at the caller ID. It said BANNERMAN KEV.
I’d been expecting it. Kevin was, if nothing else, persistent. But I didn’t trust myself to talk to him. That was the issue, wasn’t it? I’d trusted him, and in hindsight it seemed I’d done so for no reason whatsoever. A dinner in Houston during which I’d felt that we connected, the coincidence of him moving to my town…. That still bothered me. Had he really not known I was Channing’s senior year history teacher? But then, what reason did she have to mention Mr. Smith to her dad living in another state? What reason did he have to connect that Mr. Smith to the Tom Smith he’d met when he hadn’t even really believed me when I’d told him my name? And if he had known, if he had moved for me, wasn’t that flattering beyond belief? He’d said it: I really like you.
The phone gave one last, abortive half-ring and then stopped. He hadn’t even waited for the answering machine to roll over. So much for my thought that if he’d known where to find me this past spring, he would have followed me. I walked past my fifteen-year-old, good-enough TV in the living room and across the ancient gold shag carpet into the middle bedroom, the one where I kept the porn in the old briefcase. One tug opened the closet, and there it was.
The phone began to ring again, but I stayed where I was. I’d really let Kevin have it on Saturday, and my anger hadn’t gone away. I felt betrayed, had been outright scared this morning, and had spent some time imagining hauling back and punching Kevin hard enough to knock out his teeth. No, I really wasn’t going to answer that phone. Let him stew.
This is 432-555-5678. Please leave a message.
“Tom, please pick up. It’s Kevin. Are you there? I did what you asked and waited, even though it’s been killing me. You’ve got to be hearing this. Pick up, why don’t you?”
I bent over and grabbed the handle of the briefcase, then lifted it. There weren’t all that many DVDs inside. I still had an old VCR machine, so I’d kept all the tapes, and that’s what made up the bulk of my meager collection. So what if I’d never watched any of them with anybody? This was the life I’d chosen, goddamnit, and I wasn’t going to let anybody jeopardize it. Definitely not Kevin Bannerman with his arrogant, know-it-all ways.
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