“What the hell are you doing, Sean?” Walt was working the disappointed older brother tone. “You knew Bruce was looking into this for you.”
“No,” he spat back. “Bruce was trying to cover his own ass.”
“This is your solution?” Walt’s voice was loud. Behind him, Sean heard whooping and cheering. “You write an unsubstantiated story in a gossip rag? What did you think would happen? That you’d bring down the most prestigious private school in the country?”
“My facts are accurate.” Sean heard a whistle screech from Walt’s side of the phone.
“Bradley will be fine. You, however, have dug your own grave.”
“Screw you, Walt.” He watched his breath freeze on contact with the air.
“I feel bad about the show. I do.”
“The show …” He repeated the words slowly as he put it together. Walt knew about the show. He’d ratted him out to appease the Bradley dieties. “Prick. You fucking prick.”
“I know it’s tough. I like you, Sean. But this goes way beyond me now. You have officially pissed off the powers that be.”
“I’m not scared of Bradley,” he said, seething.
“Well maybe that’s your fatal flaw.” Sean heard a buzzer in the background. “If I were you I’d try to figure out a way to take it all back. But hey, it’s your life to ruin.”
Before Sean had even hung up the phone, he broke into an all out sprint. Chelsea Piers was only two blocks away.
He stormed through the glass doors to the gym, scanned the courts, and found Walt practicing free throws from the line. A couple of the other players were just arriving, unzipping their gym bags. The orthopedist was stretching. The whole thing happened in slow motion. Walt’s eyes widened as he saw Sean run onto the court and rebound his bad shot. Sean must have looked as out of his mind as he felt, because every eye in the place was on him. He gathered his rage and threw a hard pass that drilled Walt in the gut and doubled him over. Walt was still hunched over gasping for air when Sean pulled him up by the T-shirt, wound up, and cracked him in the side of the face with his fist. It hurt like hell, and he thought he’d broken his hand. It’s worth it, he thought, as he left Walt writhing on the ground. He felt the eyes of all of Walt’s influential teammates on him as he stormed back out of the gym.
By the time he’d walked the ninety blocks uptown, the moment of victory was far behind him and the despair was back. The afternoon crowd at the bar oozed self-loathing. These were his people: washed up men wasting their lives. Their guts stretched over their belts, their red noses shoved into their drinks. It was only a matter of time for him. He pushed his glass toward the bartender, who refilled it without a word. With no job, no gallery show, and no chance of convincing anyone that Bradley was doing anything wrong, he sat glued to the TV above the bar, which he’d forced the bartender to leave on CNN. He drank another Scotch as he watched the talking heads tear apart his story. The talking head of the moment was Greg Clark, the President of the Board of Trustees of Bradley. His white hair, angry white eyebrows, and soft, saggy skin made it impossible not to trust the words coming out of his mouth.
“The unsupported accusations in the weekly gossip magazine are figments of a disgruntled parent’s wild imagination,” he said dismissively, as a picture of Sean’s face appeared on the screen.
The bartender looked from the TV to Sean and back again. Twice. “That you?”
He shot the bartender a glance that insured he wouldn’t ask any more questions, then turned back to CNN.
“This wouldn’t be the first time a parent has blamed the school because his child couldn’t keep up with the rigorous academics at Bradley. Mr. Benning’s son was having problems at school. And the … article,” at this the guy made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “contains no documentation or even evidence of any kind. Why?” he asked rhetorically. Condescendingly. “Because Bradley has done absolutely nothing wrong.” He said it with a shake of his head, like he felt sorry for Sean’s inability to distinguish fact from fiction.
Jess rushed in and spotted him. He’d left a message during his hourlong trek uptown, telling her where to meet him, but now he just wanted to drink himself into oblivion. “Are you okay?” She took the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the glass.
“Bradley got to Burdot. I don’t know how, but they made her pull me from the show.”
“But—it’s tomorrow. She can’t … how can she …?”
“Walt did it. You were right.” A surge of renewed vitriol took hold of him and he batted the bowl of peanuts to the floor where they scattered. “I should have just walked away.”
“Come on,” Jess said, nudging him up from the barstool. “We’ll get some coffee on the way home.”
After Gloria went back to her own apartment and Toby was showering, he and Jess flipped through the channels, surveying the damage.
His Buzz article had gone viral. Not only had it been viewed half a million times on both The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, it was all over the seven o’clock news. On NBC, a child psychologist was talking about the pressures on kids today. He kept referring to what he called “the overscheduled child,” insisting parents didn’t give their children enough downtime. On CBS, a representative from a group called Parents of Attention Deficit Disorder, or PADD, was ranting about how video games and high fructose corn syrup were responsible for the rise in ADD. ABC featured a pediatrician who outlined the dangers of methylphenidate-type drugs and reported that one in four college students now relied on ADD medication to help them study. He and Jess watched for a while. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he left her with the remote and sat on Toby’s bed.
“Can we read more Prince Caspian?” Toby asked.
Reading Prince Caspian was the last thing he wanted to do. “Sure,” he said. He was still drunk but the hangover had already started. How was that possible? He lay on the bed and tried to get comfortable on the pillows next to Toby. He tried to focus on the page.
“Everyone except your Majesty knows that Miraz is a usurper,” he read, thinking about how he could get back at Clark for saying those things about Toby on national television. “When he first began to rule he did not even pretend to be the King …” His mind flew to Toby’s future, to the community college he’d be lucky to get into, to his job as a grocery bagger. “He called himself Lord Protector. But then your royal mother died, the good Queen and the only Telmarine who was ever kind to me. And then, one by one, all the great lords, who had known your father, died or disappeared. Not by accident, either. Bradley weeded them out.”
“What?” Toby pried the book from his hands and studied the page. “Dad, Miraz weeded them out. Not Bradley.”
“What?”
“You said Bradley.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Dad, you seem tired.”
“I am. I’m tired. Let’s stop for the night.”
“Aw, come on Dad. Please?”
“I’m beat, Tobe. I’ve got to go to bed.”
“Can I read by myself for a while?”
“It’s late. You need to—” Then he realized: Toby had just asked to read. By himself. For fun. The world could be falling down around them, which in a way it was. But if Toby wanted to read, everything was going to be okay. “You know what?” he said, casually, so he didn’t kill the delicate moment. “Why not? It can be a special treat.”
“Yay!” He snuggled against his pillow, holding the book up awkwardly and started to read.
Sean floated into the living room, unable to contain the smile. “He’s reading,” he said, sliding next to Jess on the couch. “He asked to read.”
“Yesss,” she said, throwing her head back and clenching the remote above her head in victory.
He squinted at the TV. “What are they saying now?”
“It just goes on and on. It’s impossible to look away.” She turned up the volume. On MSNBC, a twenty-four-year-old kid who had been diagnosed with ADD while he was
at private school in Washington, D.C. was talking about his heroin addiction. “As a kid, my parents gave me Ritalin to fix my problems,” he said. “Heroin didn’t seem like a huge stretch to me. I’m trying to get clean now. My parents won’t talk to me until I do, but, like, if you think about it, I’m really here because of them.”
She flipped to CNN. A man in a suit, about Sean’s age, was talking. “I never did well in school as a kid. I just thought I was stupid. Nothing the teachers said ever stuck. I couldn’t focus long enough to finish a book or write a paper,” he told the interviewer. “I was thirty when my doctor diagnosed me with ADD. I took that first pill and this noise in my head I’d never even noticed turned off and everything changed. Things made sense. I read books now. I can finish projects. I’m not saying methylphenidates are for everyone. But ADD isn’t a pretend affliction. It’s very real. And for someone who truly suffers from it, medication can make all the difference in the world.”
“Thank you Duncan,” the interviewer said, and turned to the camera. “That was Duncan Canton. His book, The Medication Maze: How to Treat Your Child’s Attention Deficit Disorder, spent fifty-two weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. And now we’re going to hear from the prestigious Bradley School, which is at the center of the Buzz magazine story that’s got everyone talking.”
A moment later, Bev Shineman was on TV. “Oh shit,” Jess said, and turned up the volume.
“Our hearts go out to Toby Benning,” Shineman was saying. She looked more pasty than usual. Fresh flowers filled the frame, though Sean had never seen flowers in her tiny office before. “We are thrilled with his complete recovery. But as you know, schools don’t put children on medication. Parents do. It’s not our place to even suggest it.”
“Is there any truth at all to Mr. Benning’s accusations that the school counsels parents toward medication?”
“Together with families, The Bradley School works to serve the students’ best interests, so they may thrive and be successful.”
“What about his accusations of forged signatures?”
“I think Mr. Benning has been watching too many movies. It’s not like he has any proof whatsoever to back up his claims. The Bradley School is a top-notch institution with top-notch faculty. We’ve always put children first. It’s why we’ve earned the reputation we have.”
“So why would Mr. Benning be blaming the school so publicly?” the interviewer asked.
“It’s perfectly normal for a parent to blame the school, the teachers, the doctors. It helps alleviate the guilt. But as the parent, he is ultimately responsible.”
Sean snorted. He wondered if Daniels had given her a script.
“Am I right to assume the school will be pressing libel charges?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
A quick cut and Billy Horn was on the screen. “The school psychologist pushed hard to make me put my son on that stuff. No way was I going to do it. But I know for a fact that article was right on. You don’t want to believe Bradley could be doing that. But I’ll tell you and anyone else who’ll listen, you’re wrong. In fact, I’m taking my son out of Bradley as soon as possible.”
“Whoa,” Jess said. “Did you know he was …” The sharp buzz of the intercom cut her off and they both flinched.
He hadn’t ordered takeout and he definitely wasn’t expecting company. Maybe if he ignored it, whoever it was would just go away. The intercom sounded again.
Jess looked scared. Sean stared at the house phone for a moment before picking up. “Yes?”
“I have a Meralee Drake down here for you,” Manny announced.
Minutes later, Melanie was at the door, red-eyed and exhausted. When she saw Jess, she froze.
“It’s okay,” Sean said. “Jess is on the right side of this.”
Melanie relaxed a little, but still looked confused. He thought about explaining, but quickly abandoned the idea.
“I can’t believe you wrote that article,” she said. “That was so ballsy.”
Ballsy meant stupid where he came from. He wondered if Bradley would sue him directly or if they’d go after Buzz instead.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so …” She trailed off, shaking her head guiltily.
“Can I get you something? Tea or …”
“A drink would be great. Anything strong.”
He cracked open a bottle of vodka that had been sitting in the freezer for years and poured three glasses.
“Cal is a private person,” she said, accepting the drink. Sean wondered if someone who made the papers four times a week could really be described as “private.” “At first, he was outraged that people wanted to know details. The peanut allergy seemed like such a simple way to make all the questions stop.” She took a sip, grimaced, then took another.
“That makes sense,” Jess said. “You wanted privacy.”
“Exactly. That was all it was. At first.”
He sat on the edge of his seat, waiting for the rest of it, listening to his pulse pound in his temples.
“I always wondered about the Metattent, whether Calvin really needed it. The school had pushed so hard, you were right about that. But the doctor’s diagnosis was … and so many kids take it now I didn’t think …” Her exhale was filled with grief. “Then that psychiatrist—the one from your story—wrote to me. He said the school had done this before. And then you came to the apartment and told me about Toby …” She cried silently. “Sean, I killed him. I killed my son.”
“They killed him,” Jess said, rubbing Melanie’s back.
“You were trying to help him.” He could only imagine how guilty she felt and would feel for the rest of her life. But she was here. She wanted to talk, and he had so many questions. “When I asked you if Calvin was taking medication, why did you lie?”
She wiped her eyes with a tissue Jess handed her. “I signed something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I signed something that said I would stick with the peanut allergy story. It seemed like a good deal. We didn’t want people gossiping about Calvin. And Susannah’s—you know she’s still at Bradley—she’s looking at colleges this summer. They made it worth our while.”
“Bradley bribed you?”
“They called it a settlement.”
“How much?”
She looked him dead in the eye. “Lots.”
“But …” He assumed the Drakes had more money than God.
“What could Bradley do to you if you talked to the lawyer now?”
“I don’t know.” She wrung her hands. “Cal forbade me to talk about this with you, with anyone.”
He buried his head in his hands. “What a mess.”
No one noticed Toby padding out of his bedroom. “Done reading,” he said.
“Toby.” Melanie brightened briefly. “How are you? Look how tall you’ve gotten.”
“I’m good.” Toby looked at the three of them, trying to figure out what was going on. “When did you come?”
“I just stopped by to talk to your dad.” She tilted her head to get a better look at the book.
“It’s Prince Caspian.” Toby offered it to her. “Did Calvin ever read it?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, he never got to read that one.”
“Because I think he’d like it.”
Melanie nodded silently as tears gathered in her eyes.
Sean hopped up and redirected Toby. “Wow it’s late. Brush teeth and I’ll be in to say g
oodnight.”
When Toby had disappeared down the hallway, Melanie’s expression changed. It was now steely. “I’m going to …” She cleared her throat. “I’m going to talk to the lawyer you told me about.”
“But—” He was trying to keep up. “You just said … so you’re …”
“I’m going to talk to the lawyer.” She said it slowly, clearly. Possibly to convince herself.
He nodded because he was afraid words might break the spell.
“Let’s call her now,” she said. “Before I change my mind.” Her son was dead and now she was about to kill her marriage and life as she knew it. He picked up the phone and dialed Nina. This could unfold in countless ways, but one thing was certain: Nina wasn’t going to be able to sit on this one.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ON HIS LAST DAY IN HIS APARTMENT, SEAN STRETCHED THE packing tape over the last box and looked around the living room. Ellie had come to say goodbye to Toby. In the end, he’d left most of the furniture for her. Either she’d chosen it or it was crap, not worth lugging. His eyes settled on the tea kettle. He couldn’t remember ever having used it, but it had been his mother’s, so he grabbed it.
Looking around the apartment, he flashed back to when he was ten years old, moving out of his childhood house. The idea of leaving everything he knew had been terrifying. Now, he watched Ellie pick up Toby’s backpack in one hand. Her other rested possessively, lovingly, on his shoulder. Either Toby was fine or he was hiding it well.
“Locked and loaded,” Toby announced, pulling the Spiderman suitcase behind him. He held up a plastic bag bulging with five-month-old Halloween candy. “For the road.”
“Toothbrush?” Sean asked.
Toby stopped in his tracks, dropped his suitcase and ran back to the bathroom.
“So,” Ellie said with a sad smile, “this is it.”
“I guess it is.” He’d always hated endings, but this was different.
She pondered her feet uncomfortably. “I didn’t believe you. About Bradley.” Her boobs heaved when she sighed. He noticed they were a little smaller than they’d been.