“Did you respond to her email?”
“Not yet.”
Corey bit her tongue, pretty sure that Morgan was still Billy’s girl. A mom’s intuition, she was well aware, but she knew what she knew. And, she knew to stay out of it. Corey changed the subject, “Oh, here’s Aaron’s phone number.” She handed him the napkin. “He’s at his grandmother’s.”
“That’s weird.” He shrugged. “I’ll try again.” Billy loped up the stairs.
Corey watched him, silently offering thanks that family night came just once a year.
“Cor, why are you so down on Olympic?” Abe asked after Billy was in his room upstairs. He was facing the fire, comfortably settled into their worn couch.
Corey came over, unsure how to answer. She sank into the couch beside him. Just thinking about this made her tense. Eventually she turned. “I’m worried, I guess, that something’s not working at that school.”
“What are you thinking?”
She wasn’t sure. “Okay. At Olympic they have like their own very demanding little world: character contracts, a social justice club, anything and everything to get into an Ivy League college. And in this world, everything is supposed to be a certain way. Fine. I could live with that,” she hesitated, “except they don’t get it about kids.” She took another moment. “I mean teenagers are supposed to bounce around. They’re confused… You and I expect that.” She watched him nod; sure, of course. “At Olympic, the adults expect the kids to be, I dunno, fully formed…” Corey just stopped, unable to fathom this. “Since when are kids supposed to know what to believe, what to eat, even—for Godsake—how to feel?” And leaning in, “When I was growing up, I didn’t know anything.” She made a rueful face; it was true. “What I did, I learned to start with what’s real. Including the bad stuff. They start with what they think something should be. It’s the opposite of what I do. I think that’s the problem—I’m not like them. And I don’t want my son to be like them either.”
“People who send their children to private schools aren’t all the same—”
“Okay, maybe it’s me. I’m different. I mean I think it’s fine if Billy goes to a community college. I don’t really know what a start up is. And I like hot dogs. These people make me feel like I should apologize for those things.” Corey sat back, frowning.
“Cor—” Abe brought her back.
“Sorry. Bear with me. I’m starting to get this. What I think is that at Olympic, they hand down all these ideas about how to be, they tell these kids what they should feel, then they leave them to work it out on their own. I mean they made Billy sign a contract about being a good person, told him ‘bisexuality was an option,’ but no one notices when he’s lonely or low. It scares me. There’s no safety net. No regular, reliable, grounded conversation. The grown-ups come on so righteous, so certain of where these kids need to go, what they need to be, and then they don’t even see it when a kid feels bad.”
Abe was looking at the fire. “What’s worse,” he turned, “I’m afraid the kids know that.”
“Yeah, they do. He’s my son, Abe. No one in my family has ever gone to college. His grandmother raised me on a fishing boat…”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Seventeen. Same as Billy. And don’t start that psycho mumbo jumbo with me.”
“Right.”
“Toby asked Billy to volunteer at a shelter in a church on Broadway. He said it would look good on his college applications. When he was locked out of foster care, Billy used to sleep at that shelter. When I explained that to Toby he said, ‘Not to worry. The take away from Billy’s time in foster care and Juvie is that it will help his story for an Ivy.’ His words—no kidding.” She took Abe’s hand. “Billy won’t tell his friends we go duck hunting. And he eats tofu burgers. I didn’t know what tofu was until he started at that school.”
“Your son is just like you.”
“You think so?”
“Forget what he eats. Watch how he thinks, how he handles hard things—in every important way, he’s his mother’s son.”
“Huh,” was all she said. Corey leaned against him, pensive, wondering if this could be true. She loved the idea, but she couldn’t stay with it. She closed her eyes. What was bothering her? Something more about Olympic. It took a moment to get at it. She was worried, she realized, that these people would make Billy feel ashamed, yeah, like the things she’d taught him were old-fashioned, or even silly. And then, without meaning to, they’d come between her and her son, break the connection they’d built so carefully, when things were at their worst.
From the day he was born, she knew what Billy was feeling. But before Billy turned thirteen, his dad disappeared, and drugs were planted on her boat. At her trial a man warned her that Billy could disappear too. In prison she learned violence. It was part of life. Twice she hurt people. It made her feel out of control, stunned by what she could do. When she came out of prison, twenty-two months later, she and Billy had become strangers. Billy said he’d decided that bad things just happened to him.
Here it was, less than two years later, and she, Billy and Abe talked to each other. Checked in. Worked things out.
She glanced up at Abe. Billy was in private school, and Abe thought he was just like her. Her face softened. What a nice thing to say. And it was partly true.
She put her arm across his chest and held him. After a while she whispered, “He’s your son, too.”
Star’s efficiency apartment was in a red brick four story building on Regent, a block and a half east of Broadway. The street had small, run-down, wood houses wedged between newer, cheaply-built apartments and older buildings. A spattering of commercial spilled over from Broadway. From her third floor unit Star could see Alden’s Hair Salon and a used bookstore.
She had one large room with an alcove. Centered on the floor was a king-sized mattress with a baby blue blanket. Beside it there was a Coors lamp and a side table made from two cinder blocks and a piece of plywood. Star kept her bureau against the wall. Her beat-up laptop was on the bureau. In the little kitchen alcove she’d squeezed in a table and two stools. One wide window faced the street.
An empty wine bottle stood on the side table next to a mirror with two lines of cocaine. A half-smoked joint still smoldered in the ashtray, surrounded by cigarette butts. Star, Aaron, and Maisie were on the mattress, naked. Maisie was on her back. Aaron lay beside her, kissing her. Star’s hands were on Maisie’s thighs, spreading her legs. When Star lowered her head, Maisie gently pushed Aaron away. He watched, flushed, as, moments later, Maisie began to tremble. She seemed to relax as her body rocked in orgasm, her second. It was quiet for a moment, then Maisie put a hand behind Star’s neck. She slowly guided Star’s head toward Aaron. Star took him in her mouth. Aaron closed his eyes, leaning back on his hands. After he reached orgasm Aaron fell back onto the mattress beside Maisie.
Maisie leaned in, her short, brown hair pasted by sweat to her forehead. She was intense and sensuous, her adolescent breasts still growing. Maisie ran her tongue along her upper lip, not at all self-conscious, savoring her post-coital feelings. This was new for her and she loved it. Gently, she ran her forefinger along Aaron’s eyebrow then across his cheekbone to the stud in his lower lip. He turned toward her. Aaron was Chinese, adopted at birth. His eyes were brown, steady. His features were sharp, chiseled into his round face. A bright red Z zigzagged through his short, black hair down the left side of his head.
Maisie smiled, sweet and sultry. “We missed family night,” she said.