I return to the living room. MacMurray and Stanwyck are at the train tracks, disposing of her husband’s body. I sit down on the sofa this time, hardly aware of what I’m doing. I’m on the other end, not close to him. Everything is perfectly innocent, appropriate, explicable. If Bill and Gracie were to come in at this moment they would be a little surprised, but there’s no mystery. After all, Gracie even knows this boy. He’s just finished shoveling our back walk. He’s tired, he’s sweating. I offered him cocoa and he wanted to watch Double Indemnity. I haven’t even been here the whole time, Connor can attest to that. I disappeared for at least twenty minutes, washing those cups until they were as clean as they had ever been, as clean as anything could possibly be. It’s all right. There’s nothing wrong here.
The movie plays. After a while Connor says, “Ms. Straw, can I go to the bathroom?”
I smile. “Sure.” I take the remote, pause the film, point. “It’s up the hall on your left.”
“Thanks!”
He gets up, moves quickly to the bathroom. The door closes. I don’t listen, I try not to listen, but I can’t help but hear, faintly, the sound of the lid being raised, the rustling of clothing, the liquid sound of his urinating. Then clothes again, flush, the sound of the faucet. Good boy, I think. He washes his hands.
He reappears, smiling, and drops down where he was on the sofa. As he sits I smile and take up the remote, simultaneously sliding closer to him. He doesn’t seem to notice as the movie begins running again. I watch him instead of the screen, watch his bright eyes, his lips, the supple curve of his neck. I force myself to look at the film, a film which has never seemed so dull, so utterly irrelevant. As the movie nears its end I suddenly find that my hand is on Connor’s hair, smoothing it, stroking it so gently that it’s possible he hasn’t even noticed.
When the film finishes he sits there unmoving, still staring at the screen which is now blank except for a bright blue glow. My hand hasn’t left his hair. If he wasn’t aware of it before, he is now. My fingers move outside my own control. I’m unable to stop them as they drop to his neck, gentle touches of the sort you’d offer to a small, frightened bird. The fingers move to his cute little ear, run softly around its edge. They move to his temple, his nose, across his lips.
“What are you doing?” he says finally, in a quiet little voice.
“Nothing,” I say.
We sit there, my fingers moving over his hair and face for a long time.
“I have to go home,” he says finally.
“Okay, Connor. If you want.” I smile at him.
But he doesn’t move. Neither does he look at me. He simply stares at the blue screen.
After several minutes he says again, “I have to go home.”
“Okay.” My fingers don’t stop. They can’t. I’m where I want to be, where I need to be, for the first time since I can remember. I want to be nowhere else, with no one else.
My hand finally moves down to his, covers it. I squeeze it gently, hold it. I turn it palm up and our fingers intermingle. He glances at our hands entwined, looks back up at the TV.
“I—” he starts to say. “I have… to go… home.”
I think: You are home, Connor. But I don’t say it. I lean to him, kiss him softly on his flushed cheek. He sucks in his breath. I can see the outlines of an erection pressing against his blue jeans.
Finally the sound of Bill’s car pulling up in the driveway. I break away, drop his hand. I stand, listening as Gracie’s voice comes over the sound of cars doors closing: “You shouldn’t do that!” she shouts. She’s laughing. So is Bill.
They crash into the house, all giggles and fun, as I’m pushing Connor into his coat. I introduce him to Bill, show Bill the good work he did out back. I pay the boy and lead him to the front door. “Bye, Connor!” I say loudly. “Thanks! Have a nice snow day!”
He stumbles down the walkway. He says nothing, looking back at me for a moment and then toward the street. He walks away very quickly, almost running.
After Gracie calms down she grows sleepy and I lay her down in her room. Then I go to Bill, and with no preamble at all kiss him deeply, press against him, pull him toward the bedroom.
12
Things are different between Connor and me after that. I can see it in his eyes. He’ll stare at me for a long time in class and then suddenly look down, blushing. He still comes for movies at lunchtime but says little, rarely makes eye contact. When he does speak I can feel the effort he’s making to sound as if everything is normal.
Of course everything is normal, I tell myself over and over. We’ve done nothing that couldn’t be easily explained. Even the touching, the quick kiss—Ms. Straw felt sorry for her young student, that’s all. She was being supportive, caring. After all, he doesn’t have a mother. Yes, it’s possible that for just a moment she got a little too friendly with the boy, in a way that wasn’t wise, a way he might, in his innocence, misinterpret. A gentle reprimand might be called for: Ms. Straw, we know how much you care about your students, and you’re a wonderful teacher. But in the future be just a little more careful about the signals you may be inadvertently sending. Young boys are very impressionable.
Connor lingers in my classroom now, more so than before. He seems reluctant to leave it at the end of lunch and at the end of the day. I can feel his eyes on me even when I’m not looking at him, even when I have Lauren Holloway or Richard Broad or Kylie McCloud with me at my desk, carefully going over their homework with them or trying to draw them out on how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. Ms. Straw the great teacher has reappeared, organized, professional, compassionate, caring, one of the stars of the staff of the Cutts School, liked and admired by students, teachers, administration, parents.
One day when Connor comes into the room and takes off his sweater I see that he has a big bruise on his left bicep, an ugly purple splotch. “Hey,” I say casually, as the other students shuffle loudly in, “what happened to you?”
“This?” He looks at it as if he’s never noticed it before. “Nothin’. Walked into a door.”
This is the second time something like this has happened, with the same excuse. And the second time I don’t believe him.
After class, as I’m putting the cassette of Saboteur into the machine, I say: “Hey, Connor?”
“Yeah?” He’s drawing something on a piece of paper at his desk, doesn’t glance up.
I sit next to him. “Hey,” I say gently. “Can you look at me?”
He does.
“Is everything okay at home, Connor?”
“Sure it is,” he says, scowling, returning to his sketching.
“Sure?”
He doesn’t say anything, just moves the pencil on the paper. Circles, spiraling this way and that. We sit there for a moment.
“Can I come over again?” he asks finally, staring at the circles.
“Over?”
“To your house?”
I smile. “It hasn’t snowed, Connor.”
“I know. I can do other work. I’m pretty strong.” He looks up again and, smiling, flexing his little bicep for me. “See?”