“St. Maarten’s was ninety degrees,” Kayla’s mom said. “Not Christmas-y at all. But we had a nice time.”
Not that he knew what he’d say when he and Toby reached Jess, but the waiting was killing him. Now Dylan was giving her a presidential handshake, looking her right in the eye. When Dylan’s Caribbean sitter whisked him away, it was Toby’s turn. They were last in line.
“Bye Jess,” Toby said, giving her a perfunctory handshake. Jess shook his hand then flashed Sean a fleeting smile that packed a lot in: regret, wistfulness, kindness, and even, he thought, a hint of longing. It was possible he was reading too much into it.
“How’ve you been?” He tried to sound like a regular parent. One who hadn’t explored every inch of her naked body.
“Fine,” she said. Her eyes darted away briefly. “How was your break?”
The chitchat was practically unbearable. “It started out well, but the rest of it was just so-so.”
She took a breath and held it before letting it out slowly.
“I sent you a couple of emails.”
“Sorry, I’m pretty backlogged.”
“It’s about Toby,” he said, enjoying the small pleasure of being able to play the parent card. “It’s kind of important.”
“Oh.” This had taken her off guard. It would derail her from whatever script she’d prepared. “Okay.” She looked at her watch. “I have about ten minutes.”
Toby waited in the library while Sean followed Jess to her classroom.
She pulled an adult-size chair next to her desk, and he sat on it. Her eyes looked everywhere but at him. Finally she focused on him, business-like. “We should probably deal with … what happened.”
“What happened was great,” he said. She was so close he could reach out and touch her. Except, of course, he couldn’t.
“This relationship,” she started, “our relationship—has to be strictly parent-teacher.”
He knew it had been coming, but it sucked hearing it, nonetheless. “Okay.” He nodded. “So … you two are back together?”
She fiddled with the ring. “I feel awful. This whole mess is completely my fault.”
Fault was a tough word. It implied a deep crack that couldn’t be mended. “I don’t know about that. I’d like to think we can both take credit for what happened. And for the record, I don’t see it as a mess.”
“Still …” she said.
“I do have a parent-teacher thing to discuss.”
“Oh.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “Okay.”
He told her about giving Toby the Metattent Junior. Her mouth gaped slightly. “The doctor suggested that?” Her tone was strange.
“Why?” he said. “You don’t think he needs it?”
“No.” She said it quickly. Emphatically. Then she backed off. “I mean, look. I’m not a doctor. I can’t make a diagnosis. But Toby’s … he’s not what I’d call ADD.”
“But …” It was what he’d wanted to hear all along. “They’re calling it inattentive-type ADD. Because he gets distracted in class.”
“Yeah, well I call that being a kid.” She sighed. “Sorry, this is just one of those things that drives me crazy.”
“No, I want to hear what you think. I need to hear it.”
“I can see medicating kids who need it—kids who jump off walls and kick and scream during class. I’ve seen drugs help kids like that. It’s amazing, actually. But in general …” She trailed off. “Look, a lot of boys can have trouble sitting and listening. They get there, though.”
Maybe Altherra had been wrong. Toby would get there.
“Do you think I should stop giving him the pills?”
“God, don’t ask me that.” She looked nervous. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t have a clue what the right thing to do is.”
He’d made this decision already. And it hadn’t been easy. “Will you keep an eye on him? Tell me if the medication is helping at all?”
“Of course.” She wrote her number on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “Let’s talk in the afternoons. I’m here until five.”
He folded the paper and put it in his wallet, then tried to see what was going on behind her eyes. “How are you doing?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS, HE GAVE TOBY A PILL BEFORE school. Every afternoon he called Jess at four forty-five to check in about Toby. Every afternoon Jess told him there was no change, nothing to report.
When he talked to Dr. Altherra, she upped him half a pill. “Relax,” she said on the phone. “This is how we get the dosage right. We’ll know when we’ve hit it.” The stab in the dark strategy seemed to lack scientific specificity.
On Monday he dialed Jess, but hung up before it rang. He wanted to hear her voice. But not at school, not in the middle of a workday. He wanted to hear her voice the way it had been the night of Art’s party. He decided to wait and call later—after Toby had gone to bed. He wondered if the fiancé would be there, if he’d answer her cell phone. The guy probably had one of those my‐dick’s‐bigger‐than‐yours voices, too. If Sean could just talk to her, she’d have to remember why she attacked him in the taxi. At the very least she might remember she liked him.
That night, he stretched out on his bed. She’d been lying on this exact spot just a few weeks ago. He dialed the phone.
“Sean?” She sounded surprised and possibly annoyed.
“Yeah. Hi.”
“Is everything okay?” Her voice was full of concern. “Is Toby okay?”
“He’s fine. I just … I hope it’s not too late to call.” Obviously it was too late to call. “I had some meetings at work that went over and I wanted to make sure I talked to you today. About Toby.”
“Oh …” He heard a man’s voice in the background. He couldn’t make out the words, but the guy didn’t sound pleased. “Hold on,” she said into the receiver. Her voice was muffled as she said something about work.
So this had been a bad idea. But he couldn’t hang up now. What would she wear at home on a weeknight? He pictured her in her oversized sweatshirt and jeans from the Scotch and Oreo night. He remembered how her eyes had been pink from crying.
“Sorry,” she said. The business-like tone was back. It was the exact thing he’d been trying to avoid.
“So what’s the report from today?” He tried to sound parent-like.
“He was adorable, as always,” she said. “But no change. Mrs. Looning made him sit out again in music.”
He didn’t want anything to be wrong with Toby, but somewhere along the way he’d found himself hoping this would be the easy fix Shineman said it would be. Dr. Altherra would most likely tell him to up the dose again.
“Sean?” she said. There was just a hint of panic in her voice. “You there?”
“Yeah.” It was all so futile. Trying to make Toby fit Bradley’s expectations. Being stuck on a woman who was engaged to be married. “Thanks. Sorry to bother you at home like this. It won’t happen again.” He started to hang up.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know this is a hard time. How are you holding up?”
“Honestly,” he said, “it sucks.”
“Just trust your instincts.”
How could he trust his instincts? They were obviously untrustworthy because they were telling him to pursue Jess. “Can I ask you a kind of personal question?”
“I don’t know.” The wariness was creeping back into her voice. “Maybe.”
“Have you set a date?”
A pause. “For what?”
“The wedding.” He was officially pathetic.
“You know, I should go. Let’s be in touch tomorrow,” she said. “About Toby.”
He rested the phone on his chest after he’d hung up. He had to get a grip. He’d heard the muffled voice of Jess’s future through the phone. She was take
n.
Toby knocked and pushed open the door to his bedroom.
“Hey Tobe. Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
“Can’t sleep.” Toby had a funny look on his face, somewhere between puzzled and sheepish.
“Hop up.”
Toby climbed onto the bed and faced him, seriously.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I heard a word today. Can you tell me what it means?”
So maybe Bradley was paying off after all. Toby was interested in expanding his vocabulary. “I’ll try. What’s the word?”
“Master … master bashun.”
Sean opened his mouth. Then closed it. Not what he’d expected. “Where’d you hear that word?”
“Kayla said her brothers do master bashun. But I’m not exactly sure …”
“Her teenage brothers,” he nodded, thoughtfully. Trust his instincts. Maybe the advice was the same as it had been in the death article: be honest. But where did you start with a kid this age?
“So do you know what it means?” Toby was getting impatient.
“Uh, yeah, I do. It’s just …”
“So what is it?”
Why had Sean been so keen on Toby learning vocabulary? “Okay. Uh, so you know what sex is, right?”
“Sure,” he said, way too quickly. “Yeah. Of course.”
Toby was eight. He didn’t know what sex was. At least they’d never had that conversation. It was idiotic to start the conversation that way. Whatever Toby knew, he’d probably learned from Kayla and Lord knows what she was telling them. “You know what, scratch that. Never mind. Okay. So masturbation …” It was like in a spelling bee—you had to say the word out loud before spelling it. “So … it’s when you, uh, touch your private parts. Do you understand?”
Toby was nodding yes but his eyes said no. “Why?”
“Because, you know, it feels good.”
“And does stuff come out? Kayla says stuff comes out.”
What was an eight-year-old girl doing with this kind of information? “Yeah, that can happen. It’s totally normal.” He was sure this was the part of the conversation where he was supposed to make his son comfortable with his own sexuality, like when Toby had finally gotten out of diapers and discovered he could yank on his penis all day long unencumbered by bulky absorbent plastic. Ellie’d reminded Sean that men of an entire generation were in therapy because their mothers told them they’d go blind if they jerked off too much. “And, just so you know,” he went on, “… masturbating is fine. As long as you do it in private, it’s, you know, totally fine.” This conversation would be so much easier if Toby were thirteen or sixteen, or maybe twenty-one. But at this point, his main objective was to walk a fine line. Sean had to send Toby from this conversation knowing it was okay to jerk off and yet not make it sound so appealing that he’d decide it was the best invention ever and that his dad was totally into it.
“So boys do this?” Toby was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept.
“Well … not only boys,” he said, before remembering the other crucial part of the death articles: don’t give too much information. Why had he felt the need to share that gem?
Toby’s eyes went wide. “Mom does that?”
Toby might have been able to deal with all of it up to that moment. But now his little head was spinning. Sean had to backpedal, and yes, maybe even lie. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t say that.” He hadn’t actually said Ellie didn’t masturbate, but he hoped it would be taken that way. “Maybe you ought to get back to bed.”
“But …”
“It’s pretty late.” Sean helped him off the bed and walked him back to his own room. Bedtime was such a useful excuse. What would he do when Toby was too old for bedtime? “We can talk about it more tomorrow if you want.” He would invent better answers in case the subject came up again, but he was banking on the fact that Toby would move on to something more age appropriate like Pokemon or temporary tattoos.
ON FRIDAY, DR. ALTHERRA UPPED TOBY’S DOSE AS PREDICTED, to two pills twice a day.
“There’s news,” Jess said that afternoon when he called her. “The kids took the ERB today.”
“How’d he do?”
“We won’t get the results for a few weeks,” she said. “But he sat through the whole thing and filled in answers for all the questions.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was full of energy. “It’s good.”
On Friday, Toby came home with a grin on his face. “I got a gold star.” He held up a piece of sheet music with a sticker on it.
“In recorder?” He hadn’t meant to sound so shocked.
“I know, it’s weird. But I didn’t laugh when Kayla made faces. I forgot to even look at her. And I played “Mary Had A Little Lamb” with only about five mistakes. Or maybe ten.”
Sean stuck the piece of music on the fridge with the Liberace magnet he and Ellie had bought in Las Vegas before they were married.
Later that afternoon, Shineman called him at work. “I wanted to say how pleased I am with Toby’s results,” she said. “You must be thrilled.”
Relieved, cautiously optimistic, worried, maybe. But thrilled? “He seems good,” Sean said.
“I was in the classroom today observing Toby,” she said. “He’s definitely heading in the right direction.” Her tone was shifting almost seamlessly into something else. “But I think there’s still room for improvement.”
“But …” She had an uncanny ability to blindside him. “You just said—”
“He’s doing much, much better.” But her tone wasn’t mirroring her news. “When I was in the classroom, though, I noticed he was looking out the window. And he was tapping his foot against the leg of the table. He’s still fidgety. If he can settle down even more, I bet we’ll really see some results,” she said.
“You just said you did see results.”
“Calm down, Sean. We’re just having a conversation about Toby’s progress. This is good news. He’s responding very well.”
“Are you saying the other kids don’t look out the window? No one’s looking out the window except Toby?”
“This is what you asked the school to do. To keep an eye out. And Jess and I have been doing that. It’s my professional opinion as an educator and psychologist that I don’t think Toby is getting the maximum benefit from the medication yet.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Call your doctor. Talk it over with her.”
Before he could even hang up, Dr. Altherra was calling to check in. “Are we seeing results yet?” she asked.
He told her about Jess’s report and wondered if she noticed that his voice was shaking. Admitting Toby was responding to the medication was the same as admitting something had been wrong.
“So we’re making progress.” Dr. Altherra sounded happier than he’d heard her. “Is Toby feeling good about it?”
He told her about the gold star.
“We’re getting close. Now we figure out if this is the right dose. This is when I like to send a new Conners scale to the school.”
Gathering more information sounded at least sort of scientific.
“So do I have your permission to send that over today?”
“Okay.” He allowed his shoulders to untense for the first time in weeks. “Sure.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“MEETING!” RICK BELLOWED THROUGH THE MOROSE BUZZ offices. “Now!”
The shit had hit the fan. Somehow, Buzz missed Owen Wilson shoving his tongue down the throat of a nineteen-year-old model at Liquid. And while stories like that usually constituted a blip on the slime-covered celebrity radar, this affair seemed to have stuck, rendering Buzz disastrously behind the other tabs. Ideally, this would be the moment Sean would save the day with a quick call to Gino, who in turn would stalk the star until he or she acted like a moron, looked like shit, stripped naked, or ended up in another compromising position.
But today Gino wasn’t answering. A little research revealed that a run-in with one of Katie Holmes’s bodyguards had laid him up in a fifteen hundred dollar per night room at New York Hospital.
Sean picked up the phone at his desk and put in a call to Lauren Ropa, the photographer who broke the Madonna thing for Star last year.
“Let’s go!” Rick was still yelling. Sean joined the staffers who were trudging toward the conference room heavily. He refused to take Rick’s theatrics too seriously, but he seemed to be the only one.
“How the fuck do we turn this around?” Rick’s face was red and the circles under his eyes were darker than Sean had seen them. “Hey, I’m talking to all of you. Wake up!”
“I’ve got Ropa on this thing,” Sean offered. On it may have been an overstatement, but it was what Rick needed to hear. “If Owen Wilson so much as brushes the ass of a woman on line at Starbucks, we’ll get it on film.” He knew he should care more about the botched coverage. But he’d gotten an email from Camille that morning telling him the top reviewer from the Times was coming to his opening. Things were looking up. Finally.
“My very best clients will be coming,” she had said. “I guarantee the specialty collectors will take home a couple each.” A couple each. It was less than a month away.
“What are you smiling about, Benning?” Rick glared at him.
The whole room turned to look at him. “Nothing,” he said, trying to look like he cared. “Not smiling. We’ll fix this, but you’ve got to let us get to work.”
Rick shooed them out with a disgusted wave of his hand.
When Sean got back to his desk, the message light was flashing. He prayed it was Ropa telling him she’d already gotten some money shots. He put the phone on speaker and pressed play.
“Mr. Benning, this is Patty from Bradley,” the voice said. “I’m afraid there’s been a … well, there’s been an accident at school. A serious accident. Toby is at Mount Sinai, and you should go there as soon as you get this message. The address of the hospital is—”
As soon as he heard the word hospital, he couldn’t think straight. Somehow, his body went through the motions of getting him out of there fast. Don’t worry was what the school always said when they called during the day. Toby’s fine. But they hadn’t said that. Patty had used the word serious. Sean shoved his arms into his coat as he ran toward the elevator bank and punched the button. For strep or a fever it was a call from the nurse. The school had never told him to go to the hospital. He imagined stitches. Lots of them. A concussion. Broken arm. How long would it take to climb down forty-two flights? He punched the button again.