IN NOTHING LIKE THEIR FINE and playful moods at lunch at Sam’s that day, Ron and Kate waited in the living room for their kids to get in from school. It was a few minutes past six. Kate stood at the wide windows at the front of the house, watching the street through the plantation shades. The sun was low in the west, casting the whole street in a warm yellow glow.
The lovely quality of the light didn’t translate indoors.
Ron sat in his reading chair. Kate had come in a minute before and handed him a heavy glass half filled with Scotch, then gone over to look out the front windows.
From behind her, Ron said, “Maybe you should go back out and make another one of these while I pound this one down.”
Turning back to him, she said, “Finish that one first, and then we’ll talk about the next one.” She went over to him, sat on the chair’s arm, and fingered the black pearl on her necklace. “I’m still in a bit of awe about this thing, you know,” she said.
He looked up. “Changing the subject isn’t going to help.” He took a good pull of the drink. “Although I’m glad you like it.”
“I love it.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “And I’ve got a great dinner planned. We’ll be all right.”
“Of course we will. It’s just a client. You’ve lost clients before.”
“Not like this one. Ten million in billings last year, twelve the year before. You don’t just make that up in a couple of weeks. And fucking Geoff . . .”
“It’s not Geoff, Ron, it’s . . .”
“It’s fucking Geoff, don’t kid yourself. Geoff’s still got Tekkei, my fucking client, because it wasn’t him that screwed everything up. It was me. Except I didn’t screw anything up. I did everything right. Considering what I had to work with—these people just refused to believe that US law forbid what they were doing. I don’t give a shit if it flies in Japan or China. Price fixing is a crime here. So considering that, I saved them. It was a resounding success, the best result possible. The best.”
“I’m sure it was, Ron, but . . .”
“But meanwhile,” Ron on a full-blown rant now, “because of my shame and loss of face, I have to bow to fucking Mr. Hiroshi and tell him I need to resign. When in actual fact I won the goddamn case and kept him personally out of prison. So what if three of his guys are looking at time? It’s so much better—two years max—than it could have been on any level. Hiroshi himself was looking at twenty years. And you know who saved his ass? You want to guess?”
“No,” Kate said. “I know it was you. Everybody knows it was you.”
“Ask Geoff that.”
“Geoff knows, too, Ron. He does.”
“And what good does that do me? What good does it do us? Geoff should have stood with me and let them go take a flying fuck. Instead, he graciously agrees to take over their representation and just keep me out of it. Oh, and since he’ll be putting in the hours on Tekkei and I won’t, his points go up and mine go down. And never mind that my compensation tanks and his flies—what the hell do I do with my associates? Or with my own shares, for that matter?”
“What would you expect him to do, Ron? Tekkei is still with the firm, with you guys. Geoff can’t give up ten million a year.”
“Sure he can! Bina’s a bazillionaire on her own. He’s still got a great book. He could have stood by me instead of tossing me to the wolves.” He took another long drink, finally calming a bit. “Maybe I’ll leave the firm. Start up again on my own.”
Kate gave his shoulder a buck-up squeeze. “Well, let’s see what shakes out,” she said. “We don’t have to make any decisions today.”
Getting up again, she crossed back to the shutters and looked out. “Meanwhile, here are the kids. Finally. Thank God.” She paused for a short breath. “I don’t think we want to start this out by yelling at Aidan.”
“No.” Ron tipped up his drink. “God forbid we show any anger at our little fucking darlings when they’ve helped pretty well shoot this day all to hell.”
She shook her head. “It won’t help.”
“It might. I’d sure like to try it one time and see how it worked. Who knows, maybe we’ve been doing it wrong all these years with all of our peace, love, and understanding.”
“We’ve been doing fine. Aidan’s a good kid. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Yelling doesn’t teach him anything except how scary you can be.”
“How about if I want him to see how scary I can be?”
She crossed to him and went down on her knee in front of him, her hands on his arms, leaned up and gave him a quick kiss. “You don’t want that. You want them to love and respect you, and if you yell, they’ll just think you’re an asshole.”
Ron closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “I know, I know,” he said at last. “Of course we’ll be reasonable. Of course we’ll discuss everything. But I would so like to get permission to vent once in a while. My dad vented at me all the time.”
“And you still think he’s an asshole.”
“Yeah.” He broke a small grin. “But not all the time.”
“It’ll be all right. You’ll see. The firm stuff and this with the kids.” She kissed him again and stood up as they heard the back door open behind the kitchen. “Is that both of you?” she called out.
Janey was in eighth grade and the yearbook editor at Holy Name of Jesus, and Aidan was a junior varsity baseball player for the Wildcats at St. Ignatius. Kate and Ron identified themselves as agnostics—neither had gone a day to a Catholic school—but the schools were a good fit for both of the children; both parents agreed that there was no way either of the Jameson kids were going to a public school in San Francisco.
Aidan’s voice had dropped most of an octave in the past five months. “Yeah,” his voice seemed to reverberate off the walls and hardwood floors.
“Well, before you get comfortable, your father and I would like a word with you.”
Another rumble, some mumbling back behind the kitchen, then both the children appeared under the arch leading into the living room, Janey a step behind her big brother but the first to wade right into it. “Hi, guys,” she said, all innocence. “What’s going on?”
“That’s a good question,” Ron said. “So good I’ll shoot it back at you. Aidan, what the hell is going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“ ‘What do I mean?’ he asks. As if he has no idea. Are you really sure that’s the way you want to go with this? Pretending you don’t know what this is all about? Because let me tell you up front: we do know.”
Ron looked imploringly across at his wife, who picked up the thread. “Father Silas”—dean of men at St. Ignatius—“called your father at work this afternoon, checking to see if you were feeling all right since you hadn’t been in school for the last two days. And you weren’t answering your cell phone or texts either. Two days, Aidan! What in the world were you thinking? What is going on?”
“Don’t be mad at him,” Janey said. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” Aidan shot back at her. “I did it on my own. It was my decision.”
“What’s not her fault?” Kate asked. “Aidan, what was your decision?”
“Cutting.”
“You cut school? That’s the whole answer, you cut school?” Ron asked. “And did what?”
Aidan shrugged. “Just hung out. Drove around.”
“Just hung out and drove around? What for?” Ron threw his hands up in front of himself, brought them down, and stared at his son in disbelief. “Do you realize you only have a month or so to go until you’re done and school’s out for the year? If you fall off the bus now . . . well, you know this is the most important semester if you want to get into college . . .”
“I don’t care about college.”
“Of course you do,” Kate said. “We’ve all been working toward college for both of you since kindergarten. When did this start? What is it all about?”
“It’s about Mr. Reed,” Janey said.
After a long beat, Kate spoke into the silence. “Mr. Reed, your yearbook supervisor? What about him?”
“He’s gay, you know.”
“Yes, we know that,” Ron said. “Or we thought we did. But either way, so what?”
“So what, Dad, is that he’s afraid they’re going to fire him.”
“For being gay? In San Francisco? I don’t think so, sweetie. And what’s that got to do with Aidan anyway?”
“Mr. Reed is gay and teaching in a Catholic school, Dad, and you know the archbishop’s got everybody thinking that’s the next step, and you can’t blame them. Didn’t you read the pastoral letter?”
This was a letter that the archbishop of San Francisco had written a few months earlier to the Catholic high schools in the diocese, reiterating what he believed to be the true teaching of the Church: i.e., it opposed same-sex marriage, homosexuality, birth control, and abortion. The letter specifically forbade educators to “visibly” contradict these teachings, and many believed that this was a thinly veiled threat to dismiss teachers who could not support the Church’s stand on these issues.
Ron nodded to his daughter. “Of course, I glanced at it, but it was so reactionary, I couldn’t take it very seriously. Really? Gay issues aside, and that’s bad enough, but the Church is also against birth control? Still? Your mother and I both thought it was ridiculous. But haven’t we all discussed this already back when it was news? And far more than it deserves? Mr. Reed isn’t going to get fired, Janey. He’d sue and win, and after all the pedophile stuff, the archdiocese is not going to survive another round of lawsuits.”
“And I still don’t see,” Kate said, “what this has to do with Aidan. Unless . . .” As though coming to some profound understanding, she brought her hand up and covered her mouth.
“Jesus Christ, Mom!” Aidan exploded. “I’m not gay, all right! Really! Maybe you haven’t noticed I’ve had a girlfriend for the past two years . . .”
“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean . . .”
“It does in this case! Jesus! I’m sure.”
“All right, all right, everybody. Calm down.” Ron was out of his chair, on his feet. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.” He faced his son. “Nobody’s saying anybody here is gay. And since that’s not it, I still don’t get what cutting school has to do with anything.”
“They’re a bunch of hypocritical cretins,” Aidan said.
“Who’s that again?” Ron asked.
“The teachers, the administration, the whole bunch of ’em. None of them have the guts to stand up on the record and say, ‘Hey, we’re not on board with this stuff. We’re not doing it.’ Either that, or they’re actually in favor of all this medieval shit. And whichever it is, I don’t want any part of it. That just makes me a hypocrite, too. Going to their school.”
“That’s exactly what I told him,” Janey said. “And he decided he had to do something.”
“Wait a minute,” Kate said. “Did you cut, too?”
“No. But if they fired Mr. Reed, I would.”
“She’s in eighth grade,” Aidan said. “Grade schools didn’t get the letter, so there’s nothing to react to. But SI is different,” Aidan said. “The high schools got the letter and should have blasted back at it, but instead they—or at least we, SI—just wimped out. So if I don’t want to be associated with that, and I don’t, I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to quit.”
“I think it’s the right thing, too,” Janey said.
“Well,” Ron said, “it’s arguable and idealistic, for what that’s worth. But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t come to your mother and me and talk about this. We talk about things in this family, do we not?”
Aidan snorted. “You would have just said don’t do it.”
“That’s so not true,” Kate said. “We would have talked about it just like we’re talking now.”
“And finally decide I shouldn’t do anything.”
“Or maybe something a little different, maybe that wouldn’t make you lose a semester.”
“In other words, nothing.”
“Not really, no, not nothing. Maybe an open letter of your own to the Chronicle or the archbishop. Or we—all of us—could go down to SI and tell the administration that if they don’t take a different stand, we’re pulling you out of school for your senior year. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure we can come up with other options that might work, too. But we can’t have you just cutting school and disappearing for a day or two, Aidan. It’s too hard on your mother and me. Okay?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Well,” Kate said, “we’ve got the whole weekend coming up. That gives us a little time to figure something out. How about that?”
His face clamped down, Aidan shrugged. “All right, I guess.”
“All right, he guesses.” Ron’s second drink nearly finished, he spoke quietly so that the kids, now off somewhere in the back of the house, couldn’t hear. “Give me a break.”
“That’s just how he saves some face with us.”
“Do you think I care if he saves his precious face? This is about where he goes to college, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s the only real issue here. Not whether they fire some teacher because he may or may not be gay. I mean, really? That’s an issue? How about the half million or so we’ve spent on their private educations, so that—follow me here—they have a chance in a mega-competitive world to get into the right college? Haven’t we made that pretty fucking abundantly clear by now?”
“They know that, Ron. They know the bottom line.”
“Well, I would have said so a few days ago, but now I’m not so sure. Now I see this self-righteous moral posturing and I’m asking myself, ‘These are my kids? Putting everything we’ve done for them at risk?’ Don’t they get it, really?”
“They get it, Ron. They’ll come around. They’re trying to do what they think is right.”
“How special for them.”
“They’ll come around.”
“They’d better,” he said.