“Excellent,” Jason said. “Now close your eyes. Start with the letter A. Do you know your letters?”
Spencer smiled and nodded, eyes still closed. He had begun reading when he was only four.
Jason explained the game: Start with A and think of something related to Harry Potter. “Aunt Petunia.”
Then to B. “Broomstick.”
I could tell from my son’s face that he was no longer scared of the street outside. His mind was busy, inside a Harry Potter story. It was the first time I felt sure that Jason was going to love my son, not just me. Jason promised him that if he went back to bed and played the game, he’d be asleep again by the time he made it to Z.
This is how I spend those middle-of-the-night minutes, working through the alphabet—our family’s non-pharmaceutical Ambien—usually in the world of a familiar television show like Scandal or Friends. Something to make time pass. Anywhere except inside the dream that woke me in the first place, back in that house in Pittsburgh.
The second time I wake up—barely—is when Jason’s alarm goes off at precisely 5:30 a.m. By the time I met him, his schedule called for getting up early so he could work on the book he hoped to publish someday. Once that plan had worked, the timeline was set in stone.
As for me, the day doesn’t actually begin until my seven o’clock alarm, at which point my daily routine kicks in. I start with my iPad. Check e-mail. Browse Facebook. Skim the headlines. But I give myself fifteen minutes max, followed by a two-minute plank and a couple of stretches to get the blood moving. I swing by Spencer’s room to make sure he gets up, then it’s down to the kitchen to make breakfast. Boring? Yes. But I’m a firm believer in routine. Predictability is comforting. It’s safe.
I first learned Rachel the Intern’s last name from my iPad. From Facebook, to be precise. Jason hadn’t brought up the incident since initially mentioning it at dinner. He’d spent two days in Philadelphia. By the time he came home, I had actually forgotten about it. I assumed that if an intern’s complaint had moved beyond Zack, Jason would have mentioned it.
On the right side of the screen—beneath the name of an Oscar winner who was in the middle of a contested divorce and that of an athlete I barely recognized—were the words Jason Powell. My husband was “trending.” For a split second, I felt excitement, but then I clicked on the link.
After a quick skim of the article, I reached for the remote control on the nightstand and turned to New Day, where Jason was scheduled for a segment this morning. They were on a commercial break.
I clicked over to MSNBC, where Jason was also a frequent contributor. The Morning Joe panel was interviewing some congressman I’d never heard of. No mention of Jason on the crawl beneath the program.
I flipped up three stations to the channel that focused on finance issues. Nothing.
One more click up to the leading “conservative” station. A photograph of Jason appeared in the upper-right-hand corner, not far from the face of the attractive blonde who was speaking his name. And then I saw the letters in a banner across the bottom of the screen. Progressive Celebrity Economist Accused of Intern Sex Abuse.
The article was from the Post, and 3,000 Facebook users had already shared it. The paper had pulled a photo from Jason’s listing on the university’s website. Jason looked so young. His long face was fuller then, and he wasn’t yet sporting the short-stubble look he’d adopted a few years ago. His green eyes seemed to stare straight through the camera, and he was smiling as if he had thought of a joke.
The article itself was only two paragraphs long. It said that an unnamed college intern had accused “economist turned pundit and political lightning rod” Jason Powell of “involuntary sexual contact.”
“An inside source tells the Post that the dirty professor keeps a secret room with a shower and a bed adjacent to the ritzy off-campus office where he has been earning a mint telling investors how to spend their money according to his liberal politics. The same source reports that the NYPD is close to making an arrest and that we will soon be learning more about the various uses to which the renowned economist has been putting the bed in question.”
I had to stop myself from throwing the iPad on the floor. When we first moved downtown, Jason missed being able to run in Central Park every day. Splurging for that shower when he opened FSS had been a way to get back to his old running routes. And the bed wasn’t an actual bed. It was the daybed we used to have in the hallway alcove of our old apartment. I had been the one to suggest moving it into the room we jokingly called his “suite” at the office. With no windows, the room was perfect for a quick catnap when Jason’s early-bird grind caught up to him in the afternoon.
I tried calling Jason’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. “Jason, call me as soon as you get this.” I sent a text with the same message.
I scrolled down the page on my iPad to see the Facebook comments accompanying the Post article. It was going viral.
I knew his good-guy shtick was an act.
The police are about to arrest? Is he still teaching undergrads? WTF?
I know a girl at school who interns with him. She’s the only female in the program. It has to be her. Name is Rachel Sutton. She’s hot.
Several comments followed that one, scolding the author for “doxxing” the woman who was single-handedly ruining my husband’s reputation. Apparently it was okay for Jason to be named, but her privacy was to be protected. I made a mental note of her name and continued skimming the comments.
What kind of professor meets with a student alone . . . in a bedroom?
OMG. His son goes to my daughter’s school! He always seemed so nice. I’m crushed.
The author of that last comment was a woman named Jane Reese. I clicked on her profile picture and recognized the teenage girl next to her from Spencer’s choir performances. According to Facebook, Jane and I were “friends.” And she was the one who was “crushed.” I clicked the unfriend button.
Spencer.
Jesus, Spencer. I had protected him from so much, but I was powerless to shelter him from this.
I googled my name and Spencer’s—using both Powell and Mullen—searching for any mentions within the last twenty-four hours. No one had dragged us into the story. Not yet, anyway.
But if some random Internet user had already posted the name of Rachel Sutton, how long would it be before people who thought they knew something about me jumped into the fray?
Spencer had a pillow pulled over his head to block the light seeping around the window shade. He let out a moan when I sat at the foot of his bed. My son had a way of treating each morning as a theater audition.
“Do I need to remind you that little girls in other parts of the world have literally died trying to get an education? Time for school, mister.”
He squinted up at me from beneath his shaggy hair. “Normal moms say, Get the fuck up before I kill you.”
This is my precocious son’s idea of “normal.” “I prefer guilt trips to death threats. Get up. But we need to talk for a second. Some kids at the school might be talking about Dad.” Spencer had started calling Jason Dad after our first anniversary. We never asked why. We were just grateful.