You Deserve Nothing (25 page)

O
ne morning there is a note on my desk.  
“Will, Please meet me in Laetitia’s office. Paul.”

* * *

I walk over to the gym where a game is underway. I can hear the familiar hollow pounding of basketballs against the smooth gym floor.

The kids with free periods are packed into the wooden bleachers. Julia waves at me from her seat in the back row. I smile at her and she makes a show of finding me a place to sit, sliding over against Lydia. I make my way through the crowd. There are parents scattered around, cheering their kids on as they charge up and down the court.

“What’s up, Silver?” Lydia asks never looking away from the game.

“Oh my God, Mr. Silver, the game’s so close.” Julia elbows me in the side, watching as an American School of London player makes a free throw.

I watch Rick, his eyes on the basket, waiting for the rebound. I see him in class, fiercely scrutinizing the board. The shot misses. Julia screams in delight. I look out across the court and scan the opposite bleachers.

The game is close and with each basket the gym becomes louder.

There are two minutes left to play.

The fans stomp their feet and the small gym shakes. I watch a middle-school student cup his hands around his mouth and scream for his school. Girls on the London side holding a banner: “London Rocks!”

The bright fluorescent lights hang high above. The crowd seems to undulate and move in unison. A single body. And not only the crowd but also the players flowing from end to end, the ball flying through the air, from hand to hand.

Let’s go London, let’s go. Stomp stomp. Let’s go London, let’s go. Stomp stomp.

I. S. F., we chant. I. S. F.

I am pressed in with the rest of them, cheering every Paris basket and beneath those bright humming lights I’m absorbed by the joyous crowd.

Then with a minute left in the game we call a time out.

The clock is frozen at 58 seconds.

The players huddle around their respective coaches. Julia punches my shoulder.

“Oh my God, Mr. Silver,” she says hitting me again.

Lydia rolls her eyes.

I look up to find Paul Spencer watching me from across the court.

I look back and meet his eyes.

ISF wins the game at the buzzer.

Around me the crowd rises. Everyone is standing. He can no longer see me.

For a moment I stay there beneath them, surrounded, their noise far away.

Then I get up and touch Julia’s shoulder.

“I’ll see you later,” I whisper.

“We won, Mr. Silver! We won!”

“It’s great,” I say. “Bye, Lydia. I’ll see you.”

She smiles at me. “See you, Silver.”

I climb down through the crowd, out of the bleachers and onto the gym floor. I slip through the doors, and toward the entrance where Mazin is standing with Steven Connor.

“Hey Mr. Silver,” Steven says.

“Hi, Steve. How are you, Maz?”

He shrugs and turns away.

I look at him until he faces me.

“Say what you have to say, Mazin.”

“Nothing to say.”

I wait a moment.

“O.K. I’ll see you guys.”

I squeeze Mazin’s shoulder and walk outside away from the fading roar.

I stop at the picnic table beneath the pine tree and sit with my feet on the bench. I feel very still.

I regret that I haven’t said some kind of good-bye.

I think of all those kids I’ve taught spread throughout the building.

I want to find Mazin again. I want to explain to him. To all of them. To Mike Chandler, to Jane and Lydia and Hala and Julia and Colin and Gilad.

But what’s the difference really? Whatever I’ve done for them, whatever I haven’t, all of it is finished. In the end, leaving them with an image of a small white dog limping across a field of snow isn’t so much worse than a grand good-bye.

I call Marie. She doesn’t answer. I leave a message.

“Marie, it’s me,” I say. “I don’t know what’s next for you exactly but the weeks ahead will be horrible. I’m sorry for that. You’re so much braver than I am. Anyway, Marie, it was coming. You knew that. So, here it is. And maybe, I don’t know, it’ll be a relief. Maybe, maybe. Please take care of yourself. We’ll see each other one day. But not for a while, I don’t think.”

I return to the English department where I collect my things—a file of personal letters from students and parents. A few books. My coffee mug.

After all that time, there isn’t much I can see keeping.

I lean against my desk and listen to voices fade in the halls as the school empties.

I leave most of it the way it is.

Red pens in the drawer alongside a box of staples, grade book on my desk for whoever will replace me.

Mia’s coat and scarf are draped across the back of her chair. Everyone else has left with the last bell, or is in the gym celebrating, but she’s working with the kids to prepare the winter issue of the literary magazine. She’ll be there late, hidden away in the computer lab, making final decisions about the latest round of submissions.

I imagine her in that low-lit room, monitors glowing, illuminating our small, faithful club.

She is at her best among those kids who love her. There she is the center of the world, arbiter of taste, patient reader, sharp critic, legislator of perfect moral order.

I sit at her desk and take one of her red ballpoint pens from the drawer and begin to write.

Dear Mia,

But I can’t muster it and leave it there, just those two words across a sheet of white paper: “Dear Mia,”

I get up. I touch her coat hanging from the back of the chair and leave the office.

* * *

From the hallway I can see Moore sitting in a chair facing an empty gray couch. On either end are two matching chairs. There’s Mr. Al Mady in one, left leg crossed over his bent right knee so that I can see the worn sole of his shoe. I walk through the door and my entrance freezes a smile on his face.

Paul Spencer is in the chair facing him.

Moore turns to me as if she too is surprised to find me there. I think I’ve made a mistake. Perhaps they’ve changed their minds. For a moment I feel relieved but before I can speak, before I relax, before I give in to it, she says stiffly, “Come in, Will.”

I take the place that’s been prepared for me on the low couch. I wonder if this suite of furniture is new. I don’t remember it.

Paul Spencer sits rubbing his hand against his beard. Moore faces me, dressed in a beige suit. She’s rigid, sitting with her legs crossed. Behind her I can see the parking lot through the window. The last buses are pulling away. Omar Al Mady, to my right, has shifted in his chair so that his body is turned slightly in my direction.

I’m breathing shallow breaths and sitting forward on the edge of the couch. I can feel the blood pulsing slowly through the veins in my neck. I’m entirely present. It’s a strange sensation, bordering, I think for a moment, on joy.

“Will,” she says. “I’d like to ask you a question.”

I nod.

“I’m just going to be direct here. I imagine you know what this is about and that the question won’t come as a surprise to you.”

She looks from side to side, first at Al Mady and then at Paul Spencer. And then back at me.

“Will,” she says. “Are you now having or have you ever had an inappropriate relationship with a student enrolled at this school?”

I stay still. I don’t say anything. I only lower my eyes from her mouth to the glass table in front of me. I wait.

I feel my heart beating. I imagine the blood moving through my body. In all the time I’ve had to think about it, I’ve never considered my answer.

I focus my eyes on the reflection of the overhead light in the glass. It seems to brighten and take on depth and texture.

I don’t know how much time I let pass.

“Will,” Paul Spencer says.

“No,” I say and quickly raise my eyes to his. I think he’s disappointed in me, that he’d been hoping, at least, if nothing else, that I’d be honest.

Mr. Al Mady uncrosses his legs and sits forward as if he’s about to speak.

Moore says, “We have evidence. Other students who have come forward.”

Her voice is unsteady. She speaks quietly, but beneath the slow control there is rage. I know she hates me, that she sees me as an evil man who’s violated a young woman. I’m a hypocrite and a liar. I’m a child abuser.

“Will,” Paul Spencer says again, this time softly, the way a good father might urge his son to stop crying, to get back into the game, to stop lying and tell the truth.

“Yes,” I say, and raise my eyes. “Yes,” I say again.

“Ah,” Al Mady says nodding his head and placing both his feet on the floor. “Yes.”

“O.K.,” she says. “You are released from your position here. The best thing for you and for Marie and for us, Will, is to leave at the end of the school day, the way you normally would. And then tomorrow you won’t come back.”

“Will,” Spencer says.

I look at him.

“It’s a terrible thing you’ve done. You must know that. The school, it will take a long time for the school to recover. A lot of people cared about you here. But then you know all this.”

He shakes his head.

I’m silent.

After a moment Moore opens a white folder.

“Well,” she says withdrawing a sheet of paper. She places it on the table.

I stare at it laid out on the glass.

“This cuts you from the school. Officially. Sign and it’s over and beginning tomorrow, you will no longer be employed here,” Al Mady says leaning forward, straining to read as if to be sure it’s the correct document. He removes a gold Cartier pen from his jacket pocket and places it on the table. “After you sign you’re free, Mr. Silver.”

I take the strap of my bag and wind it around my fist so that I have something to hold on to.

“You must realize that what you’ve done is wrong, Will. Don’t you want to say anything?” Moore asks, shaking her head.

I look at her and feel that I’m drowning.

I want to say something about Marie—her cool skin smelling like night, the way she looked those dim winter mornings, how brave she is, but I realize it will only make them angrier.

I open my bag and withdraw a plastic ballpoint pen.

I brush the gold pen to the side. It clatters as it rolls across the glass.

I sign the paper.

She returns it to the folder.

They all seem relieved.

Al Mady retrieves his pen. I leave mine on the table.

He says, “Mr. Silver, a question if you’ll permit me?”

I meet his eyes for the first time since arriving in the room.

“I wonder—perhaps I don’t understand—but is it true that you’re not sorry for what you’ve done? Morally. Are you sorry? I mean, fundamentally. Do you regret what you’ve done here? Or are you utterly unrepentant? Do you understand that what you’ve done is wrong?”

I’ve wrapped the strap tighter around my hand. I hold his eyes for a moment, and then turn toward Paul Spencer. I am surprised to find him looking at me hopefully, as if he too wants an answer to the same question.

All of them are watching me so intently.

I get up and am struck by how different I feel standing there looking down at them.

I think I see a flash of fear in Moore’s eyes and it occurs to me that she’s worried I might become violent.

They look at me from all sides until I leave them there.

* * *

I walk down the hall, through the foyer and through the gates, where there is nearly no daylight left. The moon is a bright crescent in the cold evening sky and somehow I feel ready to live my life again. I stop at the end of that familiar street. I look back in the direction of the school and then up at the Christmas lights strung across the intersection. Then I look higher, beyond those pale electric lights, to the darkening sky.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Pascale Brevet, whose love, grace, elegance, and courage have kept me alive for years and years.

To Merritt Tierce and Dorothy Royle, relentless friends and readers whose generosity and talent astound me.

To Jon Brockett, Erik Leidecker, Gretchen Wagner, James Tooley, John McNulty, Grant Rosenberg, Lianne Halfon, Jane Lewty, Andy Scisco, John Heintz, Ellen Adams, Martina Bacigalupo, Adriano Valerio, Sahngmie Lah, Anthony Marra and Ayana Mathis for their tireless support and kindness.

To Eric Simonoff, for his patience, wisdom, and generosity, and for refusing to give up on me.

To Alice Sebold, for her passion and unwavering faith. Reader and editor of my dreams.

To John Burnham Schwartz—mentor and friend.

To Bob Brock, Paul Hoornbeek, Ethan Canin, and Allan Gurganus—the four teachers who mattered.

To Tom Jenks, who was there first.

Thank you also to Susanna Moore, Naomi Shihab Nye, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Alixe Turner, Ziad Musallam, Claire Peverelli, the Biles family, Sophie Maarleveld, Elisabeth Hofmann, Doyeun Kim, Fernando Laposse, Michael Reynolds, Heather Bensko, Brad Listi, Steven Younger, Elena Calabrese, Luca Younger, Bob Goodkind, David Barnes, Cabaret Populaire, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.