* * *
IN THIS MARGINALLY safer collection of memories, Susannah comes home from the hospital.
When we picked Susannah up from the hospital, she stared out the car window for the entire ride, despite Fay’s brittle attempts at conversation. Once we reached Uncle Gavin’s house, Susannah moved slowly and stiffly up the front steps, like a woman ten times her age. Her room was at the back of the house, across the hall from Gavin and Fay’s, a guest bedroom that was bigger than mine but with all the sterile personality of a motel room—brown comforter, gray curtains, a dusty-looking throw rug on the hardwood floor. Fay had tried, decorating the room with new frilled sheets, some pink-and-white throw pillows, and a My Pink Pony poster on the closet door, but it was an embarrassing sitcom failure of a little girl’s room.
When Susannah first shuffled in, she looked around her new room, then at me, then at Fay, who stood smiling nervously in the corner. “What fresh hell is this?” Susannah said, directly to Fay.
Uncle Gavin strode across the room and slapped Susannah across the face. Fay gasped. I flinched as if Uncle Gavin had struck me instead. Susannah’s face was now pale as paper, except for the reddening handprint across her cheek.
“Don’t speak to Fay that way in my house, and not anywhere if you know what’s best for you,” Uncle Gavin said. “You’ve lost your parents, and I’m sorry. But you won’t give her any cheek in my home. Understand?”
Susannah glared at Uncle Gavin, who glared back. Standing there, useless and frightened and utterly confused as to what to do, I thought of the whole irresistible-force-meeting-an-immovable-object scenario. Susannah was a champion at this kind of standoff, but Uncle Gavin stood before her, unbending, his black eyes fixed on hers. And then Susannah’s mouth tightened as if she had made a decision, and she said, “Yes, sir.”
I let out a ragged, astonished breath.
Uncle Gavin nodded. “Then let’s get you settled in,” he said.
Later than night, I knocked on Susannah’s door. She was sitting in bed, reading one of the Harry Potter books. I noticed the My Pink Pony poster was gone from the wall. After reading for a few more seconds, Susannah looked up from her book. “What?” she said.
I sat down on the edge of her bed. “Are you okay?”
“I got shot in the uterus, Ethan.”
“I don’t mean that, I mean … Uncle Gavin.”
She frowned. “What? You mean earlier? Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I should have done something,” I said. I hated how pathetic I sounded.
Susannah raised her eyebrows. “Like what? Hit him over the head with a lamp?” She closed her book. “It’s okay. Now I know.”
“Know what?”
“Where I stand with Uncle Gavin.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Monday after Susannah appears on my doorstep, I go to work.
The Archer School originally occupied a single stone house built in the 1930s, but since then the school has expanded to include state-of-the-art science labs, an enormous gym, playing fields, a dining hall, a fine arts center, and new classroom wings. The private-school market in Atlanta is rich with choices, each school trying to create and market its own niche, and Archer has staked its claim on an egalitarian ethos that is open, tolerant, and comprehensive in its curriculum. It’s an ethos I appreciate, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s an ethos I aspire to follow. Archer is a place that has accepted me, which is more important than anything else.
Hanging above the glass front door of the Stone House is the school seal, an emerald A in a white circle bordered by the school motto: Mente, Corpore, et Anima—“With Mind, Body, and Soul.” Like an ecclesiastical hall monitor, Father Coleman Carter, bald and built like an ex-linebacker, holds the door open for me. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he says, grinning.
“That’s pretty cynical for a priest,” I say.
Coleman’s blue eyes glint. “You’re pretty observant for an English teacher.”
I walk inside and Coleman matches my stride, letting the door shut behind us. Coleman is blunt, occasionally profane, and delights in mischief. He teaches history and comparative religion. We became friends about a minute after I first arrived on campus for an interview, four years ago.
“What did you think of the conference?” Coleman asks.
I shrug. “Got a nice tote bag out of it.”
“Missed you Friday morning,” he continues. “Did you go to the breakfast?”
“Nope,” I say. “Stayed home. Caught up on my grading.”
Two freshmen boys pass us in the hall. “Mr. Faulkner, Father Carter,” one says, nodding.
Coleman has an impressive vocal range, and now his words ring out like sharp notes from a horn. “For the love of God, son, I’m an Episcopalian. Use the name my mother gave me. It’s Father Coleman. Carter is my surname.” He looks at me. “You teach them what a surname is, don’t you?”
I shrug. “I’m an English teacher, not a genealogist.”
Coleman’s face is large and expressive, with a potato for a nose and ears like flattened leaves of cabbage. I like provoking Coleman because his face will stretch into all sorts of contortions. Now his eyebrows lower in a frown and his mouth puckers up like he is about to either kiss me or spit. He turns to the two wide-eyed freshmen. “I want you boys to witness this,” he says, his voice vibrating with the first tremors of outrage. “This is the death of American education, right here. I look at Mr. Faulkner, and I despair of the future. When an English teacher fails to inform his students of the meanings of basic vocabulary words, I begin looking for the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
I say, a bit defensively, “I teach vocabulary.”
Coleman’s eyebrows rise comically. “Where do you find the time, in between standing on your desk and inspiring your students with Walt Whitman quotations?”
“Dead Poets Society is so clichéd,” I say. “Nowadays we hold hands in a circle and listen to the beauty of words and weep.”
Coleman’s laughter fills the hallway, to the marginal relief of the two freshmen staring at us. “You bunch of effete academics,” he says, still laughing. He then looks at one of the freshmen as if sighting him through a targeting scope. “Mr. Deal,” Coleman says, and the student jumps with surprise. “Do you know that word, effete?”
The freshman licks his lips. “I think … does it mean clever, or something about an accomplishment? Like, a feat of strength?”
Coleman closes his eyes. “Jesus Christ, it’s worse than I thought,” he says. He opens his eyes and glares at the boy. “No, Mr. Deal, it doesn’t mean like anything, nor does it mean clever or anything about an accomplishment. It means weak or enervated, or delicate due to a pampered existence. It can also mean effeminate, but I do not use the word in that manner, as I dislike gender stereotypes about as much as I dislike the New England Patriots. I would suggest that you run, run to the nearest classroom and find a dictionary, or look one up on the internet if you must, and begin reading as if your life depended upon it. Go.”
The two freshmen go.