It was just that she needed a few more days. A little while longer to collect herself, to get her bearings. If only the biweekly board meeting was scheduled for next week instead. In a week, she’d be organized; everything would be in its place. She would have planned out everything she needed to say, a clever response to every prying, insolent, loutish question.
James would know how to deal with this situation. He’d talk to Scott, or he’d at least try. He had been the one to encourage Scott to take the coaching position in the first place. At a fund-raiser last fall, a Swithin teacher and activities organizer approached Sylvie and James. “The wrestling team needs an assistant coach,” he said. “Would that be something your son might be interested in?” James stepped in, saying he was sure Scott would be happy to take it. Sylvie gawked at him. How did he know? That night, when James went into Scott’s apartment and shut the door, she heard them arguing through the wall. “Where do you get off, making decisions for me?” Scott roared. “How can you assume that’s what I want to do with my life?”
Sylvie sighed, but she wasn’t surprised. Of course Scott was putting up a fight; James should have known better than to speak for him. James and Scott had been close when Scott was young, building things in the garage together, playing in the waves at the beach houses they rented every summer, sharing stories about wrestling matches, which they both had experience with, but then, around the time Scott was in high school—around the time of the Swithin awards ceremony Charles had referred to the night before—Scott abruptly stopped speaking to his father. Sylvie guessed James knew why Scott was angry at him, for he always seemed so contritely attentive to Scott, forever trying to clear the stale air between them, but it was yet another thing James and Sylvie never discussed. Maybe it was just that Scott was uninterested in all of them. And maybe, deep down, Sylvie felt a tiny bit grateful that her husband was suddenly as disconnected from their son as she was.
But then, without explanation, Scott took the job. When James’s schedule allowed, he and Sylvie climbed up Swithin’s bright blue bleachers and watched the matches, just as they’d watched Scott wrestle when he was younger. Scott stood next to the wrestlers, clad in a burgundy Swithin blazer. After the last match, Sylvie and James overheard Scott speaking to Patrick Fontaine, the head coach and the school’s phys ed teacher. “You wouldn’t have any interest in subbing for me for a few of my gym classes one of these days, would you?” Patrick asked. “Sometimes I think these kids need someone closer to their own age to get them moving.” Scott’s eyes lit up. “I have lots of ideas about how to make gym more fun,” he said excitedly, pressing his right fist into his open left palm. “Obstacle courses, real Marine Corps training kind of stuff.” Fontaine smiled and said that sounded great. It might even lead to a permanent position.
James took Sylvie’s hand and squeezed. You see, the squeeze said. Convincing him to take the coaching job was a good thing. And Sylvie had felt that same swooping, desperate optimism. Yes, this was a good thing. Maybe even the answer to helping Scott.
Sylvie’s mind wandered back to James. Even if James couldn’t penetrate Scott, he’d known how to talk to everyone else. James was good at things like that—he had a way of making his opinions sound like inscrutable facts. Global warming is a myth, a regular earthly cycle. Capital markets are best left unregulated and free. Unions are always unwieldy and corrupt. He made declarations about more personal things, too. Sylvie had to go out to dinner with him when they first met, no questions asked, as though something horrible might happen to her if she didn’t. And the day after Charles announced his engagement to Joanna, when Sylvie remarked offhandedly that she was surprised Charles hadn’t chosen to marry someone more like Bronwyn, James’s eyebrows melded together, his chin tucked into his neck, and little puckers of skin appeared at each corner of his down-turned mouth. “Oh no,” he’d said. “Charles and Bronwyn weren’t right for each other at all.” Sylvie couldn’t recall James saying one word to Bronwyn when she and Charles were dating, but perhaps James was right. Maybe the two of them hadn’t been right for one another. James had a way of appearing very wise, while simultaneously making everyone else seem very childish.
Sylvie could see James making a grand, sweeping statement about Scott now. All he’d have to do was unequivocally and righteously say that Scott wasn’t responsible for the boy’s death, and just like that, he would eliminate the foolish thought of consulting a lawyer. He would reverse everyone’s suspicions.