Name Games (34 page)

Don’t go there, I warned myself. Don’t even think about it. Forget that his sixteen gangly years will blossom into eighteen strapping ones. You do not find the kid attractive—not that way. The very notion fills you with a revulsion that’s been hardwired into your psyche by society, by law, and by nature itself.

My run had slowed to a sloppy jog, barely a brisk walk. So I stopped, alone on the trail in the middle of the park. Breathing deeply, I assured myself that this angst was unwarranted. I had weighed the fear routinely promoted by homophobes—that I was unfit to serve as Thad’s father, that I was somehow out to recruit the boy. And in weighing this fear, I was able to dismiss it. I knew myself well enough to understand that Thad did not live at risk under my roof. I had made a commitment to his mother, my cousin, that I would raise him in her absence. Granted, when I made that promise, I felt certain that I’d never be called upon to fulfill it, but circumstances had decreed otherwise, and I was determined to prove myself the boy’s best possible father—for my own sake as well as Thad’s. Within such a mind-set, any sort of leering thoughts, to say nothing of abuse, were simply unthinkable.

With that resolved, I continued along the path, walking at a comfortable pace, heading back up the hillside that would take me home.

Home. The house on Prairie Street had in fact become a home for me, but it still lacked Neil’s permanent presence, and I fretted again over whether he would eventually feel drawn to join me there. He took so naturally to the task of parenting Thad, and he enjoyed it too. While I had initially feared that my responsibilities toward Thad might make Neil feel distanced from me, the effect was the opposite—emotionally, Neil was closer to me now than ever before, a partner in the unlikely duties of raising an orphaned adolescent. For Thad, the house on Prairie Street was now the only home he knew; he had no other options.

It was humbling to realize that I now played such an important role in this kid’s life. We hadn’t
asked
for this arrangement, but then, kids never do get to choose their parents, and similarly, the babies dealt to even the most willing parents are a bit of a genetic crapshoot. So my relationship to Thad, while unconventional, had at least one advantage—we both knew what we were getting.

Even so, the whole setup was still new and unnatural to me. I wasn’t Thad’s father—not really. I wasn’t even his uncle—Roxanne had explained, with lawyerly precision, that we were cousins once removed. And now I realized that I was profoundly (perhaps irrationally) bothered by the lack of a clear label for my relationship with Thad.

I also realized that I’d been playing these name games all my life, most recently with Neil, back when we met. Though instantly attracted to him, it took me months to act upon my desires simply because I dreaded losing the label that described my former life—and I mortally feared the names that would apply to the new life I was entering. Then, when it finally happened, the transition was painless, indeed joyful. Though much had changed around me, I was still “myself.”

Perhaps I would still achieve that comfort level with Thad. Perhaps it didn’t matter if I was his father or guardian or uncle or foster parent. The names didn’t seem to perplex Thad; he simply called me Mark. And Neil never cared whether I was his lover or roommate or husband or friend; he simply called me Mark.

Lighten up, Mark, I told myself as I reached the edge of the park.

Go home. Start supper.

G
LEE SAVAGE HAD PHONED
Miriam Westerman to pitch our idea for a photo feature on her New Age school, and predictably, Westerman snapped at the bait, inviting Glee to visit the new facility on Friday, shortly after the opening of school.

Wanting to see Westerman in action with my own eyes, I offered to pick up Glee at her apartment before work that morning and drive her to the school; she readily accepted, happy to have me along. What I didn’t understand when making this offer, though, was that Westerman’s school operated on two calendars—a lunar calendar to determine which weeks classes were held, and a solar calendar to govern the school day. “What the hell does
that
mean?” I asked Glee.

“It means that the schedule shifts every day to get the kids in sync with their planet. Classes start at sunrise.”

“Christ. These days, that’s about…when, six-thirty?”

“About.” She grinned. “Miriam insisted I arrive well before seven—in order to fully appreciate the day’s birth energy.”

So Friday morning, at the crack of dawn, I drove from the house on Prairie Street toward Glee’s downtown apartment building. My dashboard thermometer said the outdoor temperature was forty-two, forcing me to wonder why I’d been foolhardy enough to leave the house without a topcoat. The windshield defroster switched on automatically, and the rush of dry, heated air against my face served as a reminder that summer was truly gone.

Glee’s building lay ahead, on the corner of Third Avenue and Park. Lights burned yellow in many of its windows as residents arose to prepare for the day. Under the portico, between a pair of ornate lanterns that had been left on all night, stood the
Register
’s veteran features editor, ready to roll.

Dressed for fall in a deep-hued wool skirt and jacket, Glee also sported a tidy waist-length cape, its collar trimmed with dark fur—that touch of mink. She always wore a hat—today’s brown velvet pillbox was spiffed with an enameled pin representing a cluster of leaves in bright autumn colors. And she always carried a purse—today’s portfolio-size carpetbag was pumpkin orange, overlaid with a darker pattern of fallen leaves.

Strutting toward my car as I circled into the driveway, she grabbed the door handle, swung it open, and hopped in. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen the sunrise,” she told me dryly. Brightly, she added, “Morning, boss.”

“Good morning, Glee. Ready to take on Dragon Woman?”

“Bring ’er on,” she said boldly, peeping inside her purse to check for her notebook. Satisfied, she snapped the bag shut.

Pulling out of the driveway, I asked, “Where is this place—what’s it called?”

“A Child’s Garden,” she reminded me.

I snorted. “Pretty sappy.”

“It’s on some converted farm outside of town.”

Glancing at her with raised brows, I asked, “Not out there by the porn shops?”

“No!” She laughed. “Other side of town. Scoot out on First Avenue.”

And we did. Breezing through downtown (there was no traffic yet), I recapped, “Now the plan is, I’ll stay in the background. The interview is all yours. Miriam won’t like the fact that I’m there at all, so you do the schmoozing.”

“Right. She’ll be expecting a photographer, though. What’ll I tell her?”

I thought for a moment. “Say that we’ll be sending one to follow up later.”

“Maybe we
should
send one. This joint sounds weird. It might be worth a feature—though I doubt if Miriam would appreciate the tack we’d take.”

I grinned. “I do like the way you think. Have you prepared enough ‘intelligent’ questions to flesh out a real story?”

“Of
course,
” she mocked offense that I would ask. “Miriam won’t have a clue that our true purpose this morning is to ferret out any connection she might have to the Cantrell case.”

“We assume that she had ample reason to hate Cantrell. So remember, we need answers to two questions: First, how could she possibly have been clued to the fact that Cantrell was here to testify for the porn industry? And second, was it Miriam who made that cake?”

Glee nodded patiently—she was fully aware of the plan.

As we zipped past the city line, the sun slid through a bank of clouds that clung to the horizon like distant gray mountains. The clear sky overhead instantly grew blue. Responding to something in the air, my car’s defroster shut off, and the cabin now seemed eerily quiet, as if awed by the solemn moment of daybreak.

“The school’s just ahead,” Glee told me, pointing, “on the far left.”

“That’s appropriate,” I muttered while slowing the car.

A rough-hewn sign at the edge of the road announced
A CHILD’S GARDEN
, its letters woven from tortured twigs. Beneath, a second sign, crudely painted on barn boards, explained,
PRIVATE DAY SCHOOL, K-12, MIRIAM WESTERMAN, HEADMISTRESS
. Amazed, I asked, “All twelve grades?”

“Plus kindergarten.”

Pulling into the crushed-limestone driveway, I saw that the grounds were clearly those of a farm. The house, barn, and its old outbuildings still dotted the property, as did several new buildings of spare, featureless design—all freshly painted a goofy shade of park-bench green, the color of the eco-movement. The driveway opened to an irregular-shaped gravel parking lot, where a dozen or so vehicles were scattered without order.

Near the door of the largest of the new buildings, a gold-trimmed Jeep idled, its muffler sputtering exhaust into the cold morning air. The woman behind the wheel wore a bathrobe, and her hair was a mess—she’d obviously overslept and had torn out of the house to get her kid to school. When the youngster leaped out and ran inside the building, the mom pulled away, meeting my car in a tight squeeze. I opened my window to apologize. She opened hers, telling me, “This shifting sunrise schedule—I don’t know.” Peeved, she blew a shock of hair from her face.

When our paths had cleared, I parked wherever space allowed, and both Glee and I got out of the car. All was quiet. Looking around, we weren’t sure where to go, so we moved toward the building that we’d seen the child enter. A sign at the door listed
SCHOOL OFFICES, FSNACH OFFICE, CLASSROOMS.
Glee and I exchanged a quizzical glance—this was apparently the school’s all-purpose building. Opening the door, we stepped into a hall.

“…and if you don’t agree, you can damn well get
out!
” screamed a shrewish voice, Miriam Westerman’s—I’d know it anywhere. She was ranting at someone inside an office, its open doorway just a few yards from where we stood.

Another woman’s voice, far quieter, near tears, responded, “But don’t you think you should at least take into account the views of some of your faculty?”

“
Views?
” asked Westerman, crowing sarcastically. “There are no ‘views’ that matter here other than those expressed in the founding principles of the Society.”

“But some of the
boys
in the school—”

Westerman cracked something on a desk or a table—it sounded like a bullwhip. When the other woman had stopped speaking and started crying, Westerman hissed, “I think I know what’s best for the chill-dren.” She pronounced the word with slow, exaggerated precision. “Now get back to your class—they’re late for leaf-gathering.”

The young teacher skittered from the office into the hall. Seeing us, she found her anguish compounded by embarrassment and buried her face in her hands, stumbling off in the opposite direction.

Jerking my head toward Westerman’s office, I told Glee under my breath, “I guess the headmistress is in.”

Behave yourself, she told me silently with a smirk. Then she stepped to the open doorway, rapped on the jamb, and asked, “Miriam, is this a bad time?”

Westerman gasped. A chair scraped the floor as she stood. Her voice dripped sweetness as she said from within, “Why, Ms. Savage, I didn’t hear you arrive.”

Of course you didn’t, I wanted to say. You were practicing your banshee act.

“It’s Miss Savage,” Glee corrected her. “But do call me Glee.”

“Glee,” Westerman said the word with delight, as if hearing it newly coined. “Such a fine, spirited name, it sounds as if it sprang kicking from the womb of Mother Earth herself.” She tittered while clomping toward the door and into the hall, reaching to shake hands. “It’s indeed a pleasure, Glee, to welcome such an esteemed writer to A Child’s—” Westerman stopped short, features falling as she saw me. Brusquely, she asked, “What’s
he
doing here?”

“Mark’s just along for the ride,” Glee assured her blithely. “You know
men
—nosy but harmless.”

“Hello, Miriam,” I told her through an innocuous smile.

Glee continued, her tone girl-to-girl, “He signs my check, Miriam, so I thought I’d better let him come—but I made him promise to keep his mitts off my story.”

I smiled benignly.

“Well”—this was clearly against Westerman’s better judgment—“all right.” She swirled her head away from me, returning her attentions to Glee, as if I ceased to exist. What she failed to understand was that her insulting behavior suited me fine. As she stood there in the hall, engaging in sister chat with Glee, I had the opportunity to study the woman unnoticed, as a fly on the wall might.

She wore her usual formless gray cloak, which hung to the knees. A pair of snagged green tights slithered down to those lumpish, muddy clogs. In addition to the primitive necklace (the one that looked like painted bones and teeth) that always rattled against her chest, she’d strung a crude, childish chain of still damp leaves around her neck. Flecks of these leaves, bark, and other debris clung to her cloak like dirty scabs. Her lifeless hair was an oily tangle, knotted with a leather thong into a halfhearted ponytail—apparently her “office do.” I knew she was forty-five (the same as Doug Pierce and Harley Kaiser, who were all contemporaries), but she looked far older than Glee Savage, who was in her early fifties. In fact, compared to my stylish features editor, Westerman looked like an absolute hellhag—but then, my view was a tad tainted.

Glee had fished the notebook out of her bag and was asking, “And your enrollment is what, Miriam?”

“We opened two weeks ago with a charter enrollment of seventeen chill-dren.”

Glee noted the number. “That’s about…two students per class.”

“On average, yes. But the lower grades are the largest. In fact, we have only one student in ninth grade, and none above that—yet. The lower grades will ‘feed’ the upper school, of course, and we continue to recruit new enrollment from the ranks of our FSNACH membership.”

“With such small classes,” said Glee, “you must be able to lavish considerable attention on each student. I assume your curriculum is highly progressive—computers from day one?”