“Loretta’s mom has an Academy Award, and Henry’s dad is literally like a musical genius. Trust me, no one talks about Dad.”
Ah, the joys of a private school in Manhattan.
“There’s a story going around the Internet. Someone accused him of something. It’ll get cleared up, but I need you to try to block it all out today at school.”
“What do you mean, he was accused?”
There was no way I could keep the details from my son, not with the 24/7 media cycle. “It’s a student from the university. College students can overreact, Spencer.”
I started babbling from there. I told him that sometimes extremely troubled students found their way into the university. That his father had done nothing but try to help her by supervising an internship. That teachers have conflicts with students all the time, but Dad had the additional complication of being a public person. It was possible the student was looking for attention at his expense.
“So what are people going to say?”
I searched his pale brown eyes, which peered out beneath wisps of hair that should have been cut two weeks ago. My son was too old to be treated like a child, but he was young compared to his peers. His friend Henry, for example—son of the “musical genius”—had two nannies, a driver, and a bodyguard at his disposal, and saw his parents twice a month. These kids would pull no punches.
“That a student accused your father of inappropriate behavior.”
“What? Like . . . sex?”
I said I didn’t know exactly. That it was a misunderstanding. That I only told him in case someone mentioned it at school.
“And this is, like, online?” He started to get up, probably heading for the phone I made him dock downstairs in the kitchen, one of the phone-related Mom Rules, along with divulging his passcode, asking permission before sharing photographs of others, and, most controversially, all phones in airplane mode while the car is moving.
I tried not to think about the other parents whispering in their kitchens right now about my husband. Or the NYU students texting links to one another during class. Or the people I used to know on the East End, gloating that my perfect life in the city hadn’t worked out quite so well after all.
“This young woman is obviously troubled, Spencer. Deeply. And your father’s been trying to help her, okay?” I was hinting at facts I knew nothing about, but needed to offer some kind of explanation for what was happening. Troubled girl gets fixated on successful mentor seemed, sadly, to work.
“Mom, I can’t go to school. You have to let me stay home.”
I walked to the bathroom in the hallway and turned on the water in the shower. It took forever to heat. “You can’t stay home, or people might assume he’s guilty. He’s your father, Spencer, and you’re not a child anymore. We have to protect our family.”
7
While Spencer was in the shower, I tried Jason again. I hung up when I heard the familiar “You’ve reached Jason Powell . . .” I’d already left two voice mails and three text messages.
I flipped on the small television hanging beneath our kitchen counter, keeping the volume low to make sure I’d hear Spencer on the stairs in time to turn it off. I flipped to New Day. Jason initially became a semiregular on the show due to our friendship with one of the hosts, Susanna Coleman. Now that Jason’s commentary was widely sought after, he still appeared about once a month, primarily out of loyalty.
Susanna and her cohost Eric were in the studio’s kitchen, flanking a chef I recognized from one of those cable cooking shows. The chef was saying, “See? Perfect al dente,” while Susanna and Eric attempted to sample the supposedly perfect spaghetti strands with grace.
Susanna was nodding in agreement until her mouth was free to speak. “You’re my hero. I always overcook my pasta.”
Had Jason already been on the air this morning? What was he supposed to talk about today? He had brought it up the night before, while I was trying to read Spencer’s paper about James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. My son was only in the seventh grade, but some of his homework was already more sophisticated than anything I had ever done in school. I had stopped reading to look up the word circumlocution on my phone when Jason mentioned his plans for the TV segment.
Now I remembered: seven retailers who were changing the world in small ways. It didn’t take an economist, let alone one with Jason’s credentials, to hype footwear and blankets, but these were the compromises he made for the sake of expanding his “platform.”
Had he really gone on air and talked about guilt-free splurges without acknowledging the claim against him? No way. The Twittersphere would have been merciless. These days, the public thinks they’re owed an immediate explanation.
I reached for my phone and googled “Jason Powell New Day,” then narrowed the search for posts within the last hour. I found the answer to my question on a website that covered celebrities from a feminist perspective.
Seven minutes into New Day’s opening, cohost Eric Jordan abruptly interrupted one of Susanna Coleman’s stories about her beloved dog. “I’m sorry, Susanna. But no one wants to hear about Frannie. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.” He identified the elephant as the New York Post’s report that morning that a college intern had accused Dr. Jason Powell—“our own Dr. Jason”—of “inappropriate conduct.”
The irony of a man interrupting a woman to insist that she discuss allegations of sexual misconduct did not seem to be missed by Coleman. “You’re telling me what I can and can’t talk about right now?”
Jordan proceeded to read what appeared to be a prepared statement. “As journalists, we know that every individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. But as a television program, New Day is also aware that the offscreen actions of on-air personalities can be distracting from quality content. As such, the segment we announced yesterday featuring Dr. Jason Powell for today has been canceled.”
The program went to commercial and proceeded as business as usual from there.
In other words, everyone’s presumed innocent unless we think it will hurt our ratings.
Hearing Spencer’s heavy steps on the staircase, I clicked off the television and placed my phone on the counter, screen down.
“Chocolate-chip pancakes?” he said drily as I placed three perfect round discs onto a plate. “I thought you said I shouldn’t ‘eat like a little kid anymore.’”
I hated the voice my son used when he impersonated me—so pinched and harpy. I let it slide for that day, and didn’t mention the context for that particular lecture: his picking at his dinner the night before, only to order pizza two hours later.
I shrugged and handed him the plate and a bottle of syrup. Pancakes were not part of the usual rotation of weekday breakfasts.
“If some skank accuses Dad of murder, will I get a car?”
“Don’t use words like that,” I said, pointing a stern finger, though I was smiling as I said it. Finding humor was my son’s way of dealing with the most unhumorous situations, and he knew how that kind of talk got under my skin. “Besides, I’m in denial that you’ll ever be old enough to drive.”