tried to tell her. He chooses to be an outcast.
And, of course, Charles envisioned Bronwyn in the mud room, standing behind Charles as he held Scott by the throat, all those hideous things spewing from his mouth. He would hear that gasp until the end of his days.
‘Charles?’
He raised his head now. ‘Charles?’ the voice said again. Caroline Silver was striding across the courtyard. She worked in the marketing department for Jefferson Hospital, and Charles edited their promotional magazine for donors. The magazine only came out biannually; Charles hadn’t seen her or needed to talk to her in a while.
He watched as Caroline crossed the square, trying to smile. ‘I’m here to see Jake,’ she explained, shaking his hand. ‘Just for a late lunch meeting. Goodness, it’s been a while, huh?’
‘It has,’ he answered.
And then she cocked her head, her expression shifting. Charles could tell she was reaching back to recall just how long it had been since she’d seen him, remembering what had happened between then and now. And then, as though Charles really did have an inside view of her head, Caroline shifted her weight and covered her eyes. ‘Oh Charles. Your father. Oh my goodness. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Charles said automatically.
‘We read about it in the paper. So awful.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I meant to call. I didn’t know what was appropriate though.’
‘It’s fine.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’
‘What a shame.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘He wasn’t even very old, was he?’
He shook his head. ‘Healthy every day of his life before it happened.’
‘You must really miss him.’
The vendor on the corner slammed the metal lid that housed the hot dogs unnecessarily hard. Charles stared across the street at a budding dogwood tree. Further down that block was the Italian restaurant his father sometimes visited for lunch. Once, when Charles had walked down this block to a lunch place on Walnut, he’d glanced into the Italian restaurant’s front window and saw his father alone at the bar, his tie flung over his shoulder, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. There was a ball game on TV, and the waiter was leaning on the bar, watching. Charles’s dad had looked so comfortably alone, a posture Charles had never mastered himself. Charles had panicked, crossing furtively to the other side of the street so his father wouldn’t see him. He had no idea what his dad would have done if he’d noticed Charles walking by – ignore him? Or grow furious that Charles was walking down his block, invading his space? His father certainly wouldn’t have invited him into the bar – despite his mother’s Pollyannaish suggestion the day before Charles’s interview, Charles and his father had never met for lunch. And anyway, what would they have talked about?
Caroline shifted onto her left hip, waiting for Charles’s answer. Did he miss his father? He didn’t really know. ‘I–I should be going,’ he said, turning blindly toward the street.
‘Of course,’ Caroline said, her voice dripping with foolhardy sympathy. Maybe she thought he was overcome with missing his father to properly respond. Charles still said nothing, staring at the shiny spots of mica in the sidewalk, the xylophone part of a Rolling Stones song he’d heard on his iPod this morning thrumming absurdly in his head. Finally, Caroline patted his arm and told him to hang in there. Charles watched her push through the revolving door, cross the lobby, accept a badge from security, and disappear around the corner toward the elevator bank, her shoulders held high.
Charles leaned against the cold slate of his building, wishing he could nap beneath one of the big stone benches. The burbling fountain smelled pungently of chlorine. There was a sharp pain at his right temple, maybe the beginning of a migraine. The cleaning ladies were still standing on the corner, chatting. Had one of them been her? The security guard who’d called the ambulance for Charles’s father had met the family in the ER lobby later that same night. ‘A cleaning lady found him,’ the guard had said. ‘She called down to the front desk, and I called 911.’ About a week later, after Charles’s dad had died, Charles tracked down the agency that employed the building’s cleaning staff and asked for the woman’s name. The agency was evasive, saying that the woman had quit and they didn’t have a forwarding number.
Maybe she was in this country illegally. Maybe she felt guilty and embarrassed that she had come upon such a thing – a grown man soaked in his own urine, an executive limp and lifeless on a bathroom floor. But the woman was out there, certainly, and she had something Charles wanted. If only he could just see her. And if he was brave enough, if only he could ask her about his father’s final moments of consciousness. Had he said anything? Regrets, maybe? A sudden confession of love?
The hand on his watch slid to the three. Charles peeled his body from the wall, straightened his shirt, and prepared to go back to work. The sun came out for a moment, turning the marble fountain base in front of his building amber. It was an exact match, Charles realized, to his dad’s headstone.
Normally, Sylvie looked forward to the bi-weekly Tuesday board meetings at Swithin. She loved sitting in the library, drinking tea, plotting, gossiping, the Philadelphia classical station on quietly in the background – it was less a board meeting and more a nice cozy get-together with people she’d known for years. But she dreaded this one, not getting into the shower until the last possible moment. She found herself wishing the weather would abruptly turn biblically catastrophic, raining down frogs or locusts or bumblebees, forcing the Department of Transportation to close the roads. She found herself longing for a sudden high fever – though nothing dangerous, just a passing flu. She even took her temperature as she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee.
It was just that she needed a few more days. A little while longer to collect herself, to get her bearings. If only the bi-weekly board meeting was scheduled for next week instead. In a week, she’d be organized. In a week, everything would be in its place. She would have planned out everything she needed to say, a response to every prying, insolent, loutish question.
James would know how to deal with this situation. He’d talk to Scott, or he’d at least try. He’d been the one to encourage Scott to take the coaching position in the first place. Last fall, at a fundraiser, a Swithin teacher and activities organizer approached Sylvie and James. ‘The wrestling team needs an assistant coach,’ he said. ‘Would that be something your son might be interested in?’ James stepped in, saying he was sure Scott would be happy to take it. Sylvie gawked at him – how did he know? – and that night, when James went into Scott’s apartment and shut the door, she heard them arguing through the wall. ‘Where do you get off, making decisions for me?’ Scott roared. ‘How can you assume that’s what I want to do?’
Sylvie sighed, but she wasn’t surprised. Of course Scott was putting up a fight – James should have known better than to speak for him. Though they’d been close when Scott was young, building things in the garage together, playing in the waves at the beach houses, sharing stories about wrestling matches, as James had played the sport, too, Scott’s interest in his father had seemed to wane over the years, too. Sylvie guessed James knew why Scott was angry at him, for he always seemed so contritely attentive to Scott, forever trying to clear the stale air between them, but it was something he and Sylvie had never discussed.
But then, without explanation, Scott took the job. When James’s schedule allowed, he and Sylvie climbed up Swithin’s bright blue bleachers and watched the matches, just as they’d watched Scott wrestle when he was younger. Scott stood next to the wrestlers, clad in a burgundy Swithin blazer. After the last match, Sylvie and James heard Scott speaking to Patrick Fontaine, the head coach and the school’s Phys Ed teacher. ‘You wouldn’t have any interest in subbing in for me for a few of my gym classes