When she thought of standing over her husband’s dead body now, it didn’t seem quite real. She hadn’t gone through the motions one was supposed to go through standing over a loved one; instead, she’d fixated and obsessed and raged about that woman, that nameless woman, sealing herself off from grief. Sometimes she wondered if the moment had ever happened at all—maybe James wasn’t dead but just on a trip somewhere, due home any minute.
A little past 8 a.m., Sylvie stood up from the kitchen table. She sat down at her computer in the study and pulled out a piece of stationery from the drawer. The letter should be handwritten, she decided, with a good pen. She thought of a thousand things she wanted to say, but with her pen poised over the paper, very little came out. She wrote a few sentences, changing them some, crossing out words, adding others. She recopied the letter and put it in an envelope. Before sealing it, she reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook.
By the time Sylvie pulled into the Feverview Dwellings parking lot, it had started to rain through the fog. The weather was as gloomy as Sylvie felt.
The apartment house’s double doors were still and closed. The usual dented cars were in the lot. There were a few dilapidated bikes jutting at odd angles in the bike rack, two of them not even locked up. Pink chalk writing was all over the sidewalk. Sylvie’s heart lifted at the sight. At least this was something sweet and childlike, but when she got closer, she saw the marks were drawings of anatomically correct women with breasts and wildly curly pubic hair, and men with penises and overly exaggerated testicles.
Sylvie held her umbrella feebly over her head. Every so often she touched her raincoat’s inside right pocket, feeling for the envelope. Christian’s little shrine was still there, the same soggy pile by the tree. A door to the complex opened, and out walked Warren, the belt of his trench coat flapping, his face paunchy and pale. There were circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. He carried a white mug. Wisps of steam floated out of the top.
It was as if Sylvie had called up Warren beforehand and told him she was coming, though she hadn’t. There was no reason he should be outside in this weather; she’d planned on waiting for him for hours. He trudged to the bench nearest the shrine and sat down. One foot constantly tapped, splashing in a mud puddle. Every once in a while he reached into his pocket and jingled loose change. Sylvie imagined her grandfather standing next to her, witnessing this. What would he say? Would he appreciate this? Would he see this as the only way to save the school?
Warren Givens looked up and saw her. He smiled. “Nice day.”
She stared at him. He seemed serious. “If you like rain.”
“I do.” He held out his palms to catch a few drops. “Rain makes everything very clean.”
She walked closer to him, her heart pounding. When she was right next to him, she took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you.”
“Me?” He thumbed his chest.
The wind picked up, making the empty swings in the park across the courtyard sway. It was as if ghost children were swinging on them, pumping their invisible legs. This was it. This was the time to say it. The time to explain—he deserved an explanation, didn’t he? She stared at his threadbare sweater, visible under his coat. His nicotine-stained fingers. His mussed hair. The dirty bandage wrapped around his pointer finger.
She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined Swithin’s gym after they’d lost a match. It wasn’t hard to picture all the boys in there, disappointed and ashamed. They were combinations of their hard-ass fathers, critical mothers, and absent siblings. They were their doting grandfathers and philandering fathers. They were the sum of the family fights, the missed expectations, the parental disappointments, and the genetics that had crossed and created something not quite ideal. It wasn’t hard to imagine getting angry, trying to find an outlet for it.
And then she thought of her grandfather, writing check after check. She’d always believed that each and every check—to workers’ families, to build an art studio, to buy new sports equipment, to provide scholarships—was charitable. But what if some of the checks were for bribes, cover-ups, influence? It was easier to consider it than she thought. Backed far enough into a corner, it was easy to consider anything.
Unless you find a way to resolve this yourself, Michael Tayson had said. But what would that achieve? She’d glossed over so much, too much. She couldn’t do that to this man. It felt wrong to strike some kind of deal, negotiate some kind of compromise.
Warren’s head was cocked, patiently waiting. For the past week or two, he’d probably been walking the rooms of his house, wondering how this might have happened, thinking that this was purely his fault. A part of it probably was his fault—all parents were probably at fault, most of them unknowingly so. We try hard, she could tell him. We take precautions. We think we do everything. We think we send our children to the best schools, our husbands to the best doctors. And yet things still happen.
“My husband died,” she blurted out. “Two months ago.”
“Goodness. I’m very sorry to hear that,” he answered, blinking rapidly.