Scandalous

Chapter 33

The turkey was good.

He knew it was good because he had been making it for seven years and had long since stopped making the mistakes that made it otherwise, and because Gerald Sherman had taken a second helping without comment, which from Gerald constituted the highest available praise. The sides were good. The table was good. The wine was good — he'd chosen it himself, a Burgundy that was better than the occasion warranted, because he'd needed something to look forward to in the afternoon and had arrived at the wine.

He sat at the head of the table and ate and participated and listened to the conversation move around him with the practiced, composed quality of a man who is present in every measurable external sense and somewhere else entirely.

Maryanne was talking about David's structural notes on the new manuscript — the way he'd identified a pivot in the third act that she had been resisting and had finally conceded was correct. Her mother was listening with the devoted, shining attention of a woman for whom her daughter's success was a source of personal identity. Gerald was cutting his ham with the measured precision of a man who was comfortable enough in the company to be comfortable in the silence.

Nathan looked at the Burgundy.

He thought about the voice on the other end of his phone four hours ago. The specific quality of four hours that had moved like forty minutes. He thought about Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield performing authenticity and the argument they'd been building toward when the knock had come through and ended it. He thought about four people on one hand and the last name on the list.

He thought about goodnight, Nathan — the soft landing of it, the unguarded register, his name in her mouth like something that had always lived there.

He thought about what had happened in his body.

"Nathan."

He looked up.

Maryanne was looking at him from the other end of the table with the expression of a woman who has said something and is noting that it did not arrive.

"Sorry," he said. "Miles away. What did you say?"

"Mother was asking about your semester." The expression contained no particular warmth.

"Of course." He turned to Patricia with the composed, pleasant attention of a man returning to the room. "It's been a strong term. Good group of students this year."

Patricia smiled the smile. "Any of them showing real promise?"

"One or two," he said.

He looked at his plate.

He picked up his fork.

The Shermans left at half past eight. The farewell at the door was the reverse of the arrival — Patricia to Maryanne, the embrace, the I don't know why we let it go so long, the promise of Christmas. Gerald's firm handshake to Nathan, the nod that managed to communicate a ceiling it would not exceed, the pat on his daughter's shoulder that communicated the opposite of everything.

The car pulled out.

Nathan closed the door.

The house had the specific, depressurized quality of a space that has contained people and is now adjusting back to two. He went to the dining room and began clearing plates with the methodical efficiency of a man who has cleaned up after his own dinners for seven years. Maryanne followed. She moved to the other end of the table and began stacking serving dishes and for a while the only sound was the quiet industry of two people clearing a table in parallel.

Then she said: "Who called you."

He kept moving. He picked up the gravy boat. "I told you. Daniel."

"I know what you told me."

He carried the gravy boat to the kitchen. He set it in the sink. He stood at the sink for a moment and then went back to the dining room. She was standing at the table with a serving dish in each hand and looking at him with the specific, still quality of a woman who has decided to have this conversation and is not going to be moved off it by logistics.

"Maryanne—"

"You were in there for almost five hours," she said. "I timed it because I noticed and I wanted to know if I was imagining it. I was not imagining it." She set the dishes down. "Daniel Holt hasn't cooked his own Thanksgiving dinner for six years. He has a standing invitation to his sister's in Pasadena and he goes every year without fail and has never once called you for recipe assistance."

Nathan said nothing.

"I'm not — I want to be clear that I'm not accusing you of anything," she said, in the tone of a woman who is being careful with her language because she has thought about this conversation. "I don't know who called you and I don't know what you talked about for five hours and I'm not—" She stopped. She breathed. "I'm asking you."

He looked at her.

He thought about the truth. He thought about the structure of it — the version that was accurate, that contained no action she could point to, no line she could name. A student texted. He called back to be sure it wasn't urgent. They talked. They talked about a book and about things that were not the book and about four people on one hand and he went to his study with his heart racing in a way he hadn't identified clearly until after he'd hung up.

He thought about the version of the truth he could actually say.

"It was a student," he said. "A welfare check. She mentioned over text that she was spending the holiday alone and I wanted to be sure she was all right." He held Maryanne's gaze because not holding it would be worse. "It became a conversation. I should have cut it shorter. I didn't."

Maryanne looked at him.

The silence was specific. It was the silence of a woman placing what she's just heard against what she already knows and measuring the gap.

"She," Maryanne said.

"She has a difficult home situation," Nathan said. "It's a professional consideration."

Maryanne picked up the serving dishes. She walked to the kitchen. He heard the sound of them being set down harder than necessary — not slammed, not dramatic, just the specific weight of objects put down by someone who is containing something.

She came back to the doorway.

"We're not going to do this tonight," she said. Not a question.

"No," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment with the expression of a woman filing something for later — not finished, not resolved, catalogued. Then she turned and went down the hall and the study door closed behind her with the same quiet, final click as before.

Nathan stood in the dining room.

He looked at the table.

He began, very methodically, to clear the rest of it alone.

The week passed.

He was in the house. He did the things the house required. He went to the market on Friday, cooked on Saturday, read in the study on Sunday with the specific, effortful quality of a man reading without retaining because the part of his mind responsible for retention was occupied elsewhere.

He thought about the argument. He had been making this argument since September and it had been, until recently, structurally sound — the argument that what existed between him and Shae Madison was a professional relationship of unusual quality, that unusual quality was not the same as impropriety, that he was her teacher and she was his student and the integrity of that arrangement was intact. He had been making it in the day and in the occasional two a.m. version and in the kitchen doorway when Maryanne had asked who are you trying to convince and he had not been able to answer.

He made it now and found the architecture changed.

Not because anything had happened. Nothing had happened — he could still say this with complete accuracy, the statement still bore weight, the line was still unbroken. But the argument was supposed to feel like a defense and it had stopped feeling like a defense and started feeling like a record of what he had not yet done, which was a different thing, and the difference was significant.

He thought about four people on one hand.

He thought about it on Friday when he was unpacking groceries and on Saturday when he was cooking and on Sunday at two in the morning when he was not sleeping and Maryanne was asleep beside him in the dark.

He thought: she put me on the list.

He thought: I know what that means. I have known what that means. I am a thirty-five year old man and an English teacher and I have been reading this text.

He didn't finish the thought. He turned over. He looked at the wall.

On Sunday evening he opened his laptop in the study and looked at the document that was supposed to be his own novel — the thing he had been trying to write for four years, the book that was supposed to come after Where The Winds Take Us and had been coming after it for long enough that he had stopped describing it as in progress to people who asked. He looked at the last paragraph he'd written, which was dated six weeks ago and which was competent and lifeless and did not, in any honest assessment, do the thing it was supposed to do.

He thought about eleven pages of a girl in a library.

He closed the laptop.

Monday arrived with the specific quality of a first day back — the campus reassembling itself, the students returning with the slightly loosened quality of people who have had a week and are reinhabiting routine. Nathan parked and walked and unlocked Room 214 with the composed, unhurried bearing he had been perfecting since September, which was, at this point, very good indeed.

He set up the desk. He arranged the day's materials.

He thought about the study door closing. He thought about seven days and the argument that had started to shift beneath him. He put these things in their place and stood at the front of the classroom and waited for second period.

They filed in.

She came in third from the last, which was her usual pattern — not the first-through-the-door punctuality of the anxious student, not the deliberate lateness of someone performing casualness. The particular, unhurried timing of someone who knows where they're going. She had her bag over one shoulder and a copy of Catcher in the Rye in her other hand, which she'd apparently nearly finished over the break. She went to the back left corner. She sat down. She set the book on the desk.

She looked up.

He looked away.

He called the register with the level, professional delivery of a man doing his job, which he was. He began the session — the return from break, the Kafka text, the question of where everyone had landed in Metamorphosis over the holiday. The room found its rhythm in the incremental way of first days back.

She contributed once. A point about the sister — Grete's arc, the argument that she mirrors Gregor's transformation with the opposite valence, that the story is as much about what the crisis makes of the family as what it makes of Gregor. It was exact and it was right and it landed in the room with the quiet precision of a contribution that has done the reading and thought beyond it.

"Expand on that," Nathan said, in the professional voice, directed at the room rather than the corner.

She did. He listened.

He marked the register. He taught the class. He did not let his eyes rest in the back left corner for longer than the back left corner warranted.

He was exquisitely aware of where she was at every moment.

The room cleared.

She took her time — not dawdling, not performing anything. The specific, unhurried pace of someone with somewhere to be next who is not concerned about the transition. She put Catcher in the Rye into her bag. She put her notebook in. She zipped the bag.

She stood.

She looked at the front of the room.

He was at the desk, looking at the register, performing the business of the end of class. She looked at him with the specific quality of looking at something you have named and are now seeing clearly — not hunting for confirmation, not performing her own uncertainty. Just seeing.

She had spent a week knowing what she knew and she had found that knowing it changed the quality of the room. Not in the way she'd expected — not louder, not more charged with the obvious, readable heat of something obvious. Quieter. The specific, settled quality of something that has stopped being a question.

She noticed things she had been too careful to let herself notice.

The way he held the pen. The way the morning light came through the high windows of Room 214 and landed on the left side of his face when he was standing at the board. The particular quality of his stillness when a student said something that actually reached him — the slight pause, the fractional recalibration before he responded, the tell of a man who is genuinely engaged rather than performing engagement.

She noticed the moment — it lasted less than two seconds — when he reached for the register and his sleeve pushed back from his wrist and she saw the watch he wore and thought, with the specific, quiet clarity of someone who has stopped arguing with themselves, that she wanted to touch that wrist. Not dramatically. Just — put her fingers there, at the inside of it, where the pulse was.

She had never thought about anything so quietly and so completely.

She picked up her bag.

She walked past the front of the room on her way to the door. She did not stop. She did not engineer anything. She said, as she passed, without breaking stride, in the even, natural tone of a student leaving a classroom: "Have a good morning, Mr. Kingston."

He looked up.

"Have a good morning, Miss Madison," he said.

She was already through the door.

She walked down the corridor with her bag over her shoulder and Catcher in the Rye pressing against her back through the canvas and thought about the two seconds in which he had looked up and the quality of what had passed across his face before the professional register had assembled itself and produced the response.

She had seen it.

She had been seeing it for months without letting herself see it and today she had let herself see it and it was exactly what she had suspected it was and she walked to her next class with the specific, private, entirely contained feeling of someone who knows something important and has decided, quietly, to follow it.