The Half Brother (15 page)

Then he smiled and all around me I felt the silent sigh, and I knew he was forgiven henceforth and forevermore.

“The newest member of our math department!” Adam said. “Via Haiti and Afghanistan! Boy, has he got some stories to tell. He’s just gonna knock the kids’ socks off. Oh, and by the way, it’s all in the family, Nick here is the brother of our own Charlie Garrett—”

“Half brother,” I said. I moved closer, reached up to clap Nick on the shoulder, allowing the inevitable inspection. “Obviously.”

For a moment, gazing at Nick as though he were the last wild dodo, Adam looked supremely satisfied, as only Adam could, and only Adam could be forgiven for.

But that wasn’t all. As I’d known he would, he’d saved the best for last. “Folks, folks!” he cried. “And finally! One of our beloved Abbott families. It just hasn’t been the same without a Bankhead!” He ticked through all of them, even Florence, not mentioning the pot or the academic probation or the divorce, lauding instead the southern refinement and warmth, the lacrosse and wrestling and crew, the
esprit
, oh so dearly missed. Preston an institution. “A cultured and cultivated citizen. A patrician in the true sense of the word …”

And meanwhile there she was. There she stood.

Through the whole hagiography I waited for that slouch, the look that meant she wanted to disappear, but it never came. Salter wound down and then looked at her expectantly, waiting for an answering paean to school spirit, but May just raised her hand in a gracious little wave.

She was back, she was twenty-nine, and it was breaking my heart.

And then she was walking over to us, she was kissing Divya on the cheek and then me, and I didn’t even feel it, and I must have introduced
Nick because then she was saying to him, “I think I saw you already. So
that’s
who you are.”

She was wearing a suit. Pale yellow linen. Three-quarter sleeves, pearls, Jesus all she needed was the pillbox hat. “You look so cool, May,” I said. “You always look so cool.”

Behind me, Divya sighed.

I saw recognition in May’s eyes, but she only smiled. “Thank you, Charlie.”

That suit: it was buttery. I had to bite my tongue not to say it.
You look like butter
. Not just the yellow linen but it made her buttery, she herself, oh, I was a blithering idiot, she looked so
rich
. Her skin was creamy brown from summer, summer, the bare heels flicking down in Abbott Pond, the head sleek as a seal’s, and I could not think these things, I had to find a way to not think them.

Her smile was china white; she was perfectly in control; her hair was shorter, cut to her shoulders, straight and shining, oh, the woods are lovely, dark and deep. As soon as was polite, sooner, really, if the truth be told, I extracted myself, set my empty glass on the nearest table, wove my way through all the seersucker and white, all the last rites of summer, and out under that arbor, beneath the last roses, beneath their falling petals.

THE TABLES WERE IN A U.
The maple outside the window was still green. It was my seventeenth first day, but in a complete reversal from that young teacher standing terrified, years ago, this classroom was now my safety. This was the safest I would be all day. With May somewhere in the building, as she would be, from now on.

And so I began. “Well, look—at—all—of—you. Huh.
Who
is responsible for this?”

I walked slowly around the tables, feeling the wattage of my seniors’ attention on my face. I had no doubt I looked engaged, mock stern, in control, because I could see myself, in fact I was nowhere near my body but floating elsewhere, pulling all my old moves out of the files, my old speeches; no need to reinvent the wheel. “Mr. Pentecost. Miss
van Slake. Mr.
Bolling
?” They started to grin. “Mm-hm. Mm-hm … Miss Hirschfeld. And Mr.
Middle
ton.”

I hardly ever called people by their last names anymore. Today it was just for effect, and they knew me well enough—I was known, here at Abbott, well enough—for them to realize. The habit had died away gradually, as I began to use it more and more ironically, until it lost its significance, its protection. Until the protection was no longer needed. No more the great division. No more the professor on high.

Syllabus. Handed it out. Expectations For The Course. They listened with open, serious faces: there were colleges to be gotten into, high, slick walls to be scaled against all odds. We all knew this. We all knew too that actually I was on their side. Poor seniors. Poor fetuses, still floating warm and safe. Teetering on the edge.

I turned and wrote on the board (oh the comfort), turned back. A senior seminar (this one was the Observer and the Hero) was really a bunch of my favorite books with a theme attached because, by God, that’s the point of a senior seminar. Well-known fact. I even told them that, and they liked it, liked that I was honest with them, giving them the skinny, letting them in on the code.

I tried to take them in. Because they deserved that, my dramas aside. There were Abeje Chukwu, earnest all-rounder, and Darius Flake, ramshackle charmer, and Candace van Slake, of the streak of fuchsia hair, inveterate arguer, either side, didn’t matter; there were Daisy Coomeraswamy, determined nihilist, and Minnie Zheng, who favored animal prints (today she wore zebra-patterned shoes of a dizzying height), and Dexter Angus Pentecost, ginger-haired class president, who wrote his full name on every paper, test, and quiz, without fail, as well he should, as we all should, if our name were Dexter Angus Pentecost.

(Over the course of seventeen years my classroom had become diverse, even international. Challenging but better. More real—maybe. Just last year I’d had the son of a Nigerian oil baron and the daughter of a sheikh.)

Marina Hirschfeld, making sidelong glances at Dex. Will Bolling and Victor Onyango, whom I’d had to separate in my class sophomore year—let’s see if they could control themselves now. Celia Paxton,
slight, Asian (adopted? Chinese girl baby, abandoned, now cherished?), long braid down her back, oval face like a young novice’s; a sweetness to her, a breakability. Celia of the graceful duck walk: she was a dancer.

And Zack Middleton. I’d been looking forward to finally having him in my class. He towered over me now, fully Booker’s height, his shoulders even broader. He was a running back on the football team. His essential reserve hadn’t changed. Cassie and B.J. had both been easily confident, rarely awkward, dependably popular, but Zack seemed to fall into the interstices of the social system. He was most frequently seen alone—or with Celia Paxton. They’d been an item since the previous year, glued to each other, adoring, one of those couples occasionally scolded for PDA. Yes, Zack would be the loyal type; he’d find a girl, wouldn’t let go. At this very moment Zack was draping his arm over the back of her chair, and I glanced at him, pointedly. He could damn well canoodle on his own time. He dropped the arm.

Celia’s expression didn’t change. She was private too—but she sometimes reminded me of May. There was a look I sometimes caught. Aimed at no one. A sudden, homeless glance.

But I could not think of May.

There was a little chitchat, who’s read any of the books already,
what?
you didn’t read them all for me over the summer?—ah, well. Zack was watching me with a seriousness that was almost hostile. Maybe he didn’t want to exploit the connection. Good man. I’d missed him. I felt oddly shy around him, too. How had adolescence descended on him so heavily? His face was pitted from breakouts, his nose too big, his features not settled. Becoming. His springy light-brown hair was close-cropped now. His eyes were the same, though—pale green, heavy lashed.

“Mr. Garrett?”

I’d have to get used to the name. I wondered if he felt the same way. “Yes, Zack?”

He lolled back in his chair. “I did start reading
All the King’s Men
. And there’s
nigger
. On the first page.”

I sighed. “I know it,” I said. “I wish it weren’t.” I noticed that Darius Flake, who was president of the Diversity Forum, was rolling
his eyes. “How much should we excuse? Because of the historical context? It’s an active question. And the book is no
Huck Finn
either.” Zack watched me with that flat gaze. “In
All the King’s Men
there’s no Jim, for better or worse. Very few black characters to speak of. None, really, except for one in an extended flashback, and I’m not sure she even speaks. Although she drives the plot, in a way … so what we can talk about,
when
we get to that book, is whether it’s about race. Because somebody could say, hey, there are no black characters, so how could it be about race? But on the other hand, how could a book set in 1930s Louisiana
not
be about race?”

I was overanswering, shutting him down. I was watching myself do it.

“Some of you have had me before, and you know that I think it’s all there. In the text. It’s where you look. It’s where you dig. Sometimes we want to put things there that aren’t there. Sometimes we don’t want to see what
is
there. Right? But here’s the thing. Sometimes what isn’t there, isn’t there deliberately. It’s an elision that has great meaning. Maybe the book is based on information we aren’t given outright, but we have to find it, we have to deduce it by its absence. Sometimes it’s what we
don’t
know that is the
point
. That drives
everything
.”

I had to stop.

“So when we get to the Penn Warren, we’ll talk about that. Let’s get out our first book though. Here we go.
The Good Soldier
.” Shuffling and mumbling. Books appeared. “A great deal we’re not told. At least not in the order we expect it. One of the most famous unreliable narrators in the English language. Along with Humbert Humbert. Heh. Some other year.”

I had them read the first five pages, and then I gave them a microquiz, a gimme, on what they just read, to show what I was looking for. Or was it to fill the time? On the first day? I had to do right by them. I felt myself ache with it. Celia’s foot was pressed alongside Zack’s. I could see it perfectly well under the table. All the heads bowed over their papers.

There was no first-day freshness in my soul. It wasn’t fair to them, not fair at all. Instead there was some sordid thing in me giddy with
panic. Maybe all I could do was laugh. I felt it bubbling up. “Okay. Time’s up. If anyone didn’t get one hundred we’ve got a problem,” I said. “Any questions? Zack.”

“Is Mr. Satterthwaite really your brother? The new math teacher?”

I assumed a wry tolerance, copied from Divya. “Is this a question about the quiz? Or this
class
?”

“No sir. Just general knowledge, sir.”

He was being very thorough with the
sir
s. As though determined to remind me of how long ago our closeness was. “Yes, he’s my brother. Half brother.”

“He’s got a southern accent.”

“Yes, I know. He’s managed to retain the signs of his origins.”

Minnie Zheng said, “I
like
his accent.”

Daisy Coomeraswamy said, in either horror or agreement or both, I couldn’t tell, “Oh my
God
, Minnie.”

Zack said, “Where’s
your
accent?”

“I used to have one. You were too little then to remember, Mr. Middleton.” There. He looked away. “I guess I’ve lived up here with you heathens for too long. And besides. My brother was born with a great deal more charm.” I had to tell them, somehow, that I knew the differences were glaring. Although I was disturbed to think I had any pride about that anymore. Here at my school. In my place.

Zack’s expression, anyway, said that he gave not one flying fuck about charm. “Be nice to him, everyone,” I said. “He’s new.” Just then, the door opened. A sudden, zinging snap of attention. “Speak of the devil,” I said.

“Hi, everyone,” Nick said.

“Bye, people. First three chapters tonight. Dig.”

At the door, every girl giggled, then went silent as she brushed by Nicky. Even Celia glanced up, then quickly down. Zack was one of the last to leave. “Hey,” I said, as he went by my desk. “A moment?” He stopped, huge, even forbidding, backpack slung over one shoulder. Celia hovered just outside the door. “Are we good?”

He shrugged. “Sure.” But he didn’t move. “You don’t know what it’s like to read that word,” he said.

“No. You’re right. I don’t.”

“It’s like I’m
not there
.”

“Let’s talk about it,” I said. “Okay?”

“We don’t need to talk about it, Charlie. You just need to know.”

He waited a moment, the hint of insolence still in his posture. Zackie long gone. Was he just tired of his status of being known, of long histories with adults who remembered him when he could crawl? “We’ll have a good discussion,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can. And I’m always here. If you change your mind.” He gave me a curt nod and turned, free to sling his arm around Celia again. The hardness in his face melted when he looked at her. He had it bad.

Out in the hall it was like joining a school of fish headed to a spawning ground. We were carried along down the stairs and into the first-floor hallway, where there was an obstruction, dividing the flow: and as quick as that, there she was, there was May, I had seen her, here at school, and it was done.

She was the one blocking the current, talking to Zack, with Celia still at his side, although they’d detached themselves for the moment. Zack was taller than May by a head; she looked up at him, delighted. There was an embarrassed half smile on his face, but he didn’t look displeased. Celia was impassive. Then May reached out and gave him a half hug, one arm—all we were allowed, if that—and then let them go.

“Hi, May,” Nick said. “Are you going to lunch?”

This was what would happen. Every day. There was no way around it. It must cease to amaze, it must become normal.

When we emerged from the building, Zack and Celia were a little ahead of us, relinked. Nick said, “They’re in one of my calculus sections. That kid is huge.”