Page 35 of The Falcon and the Foe

“He will get there,” I said, my body rapt with conviction. “I’m going to work with him every night, and we’re going to read a shit ton of books. Harry Potter. Do people still read Harry Potter?”

“They do.”

“Then we’re going to read all the Harry Potter books and do all the math problems, and it’s going to be fine. He will have all the structure.” I stood up and shook her hand. Yet my confidence eroded once I left the classroom and further dissipated with each step I took.

The halls had cleared out. Parents had taken their snacks and left. At the front entrance was Russ, who looked behind at me, then tried unsuccessfully to push open the door.

“I think it’s stuck,” he said.

“You’re supposed to pull.” I reached past him and pulled open the door. “As head PTA guy, you should know that.”

“Right.” He opened his mouth to say more, but I kept on walking into the cool night air.

Outside, the stars aligned in all sorts of crazy patterns. I could teach Josh constellations. I wanted to teach him about the endless cool shit there was. There was so much interesting stuff out there that he didn’t know about that I needed to share with him.

I pulled my keys from my pocket. A smattering of cars was scattered across the parking lot. Most parents had gotten their praise, their refreshments, and left. I walked down the middle row to my car. It was older and had a few scratches on it, definitely not as fancy as the other parents, but it got the job done.

Clomping footsteps trailed behind me. Across from my underdog of a car was Russ’s glimmering black Lexus SUV.

I spun around. “So, how much did you hear?”

The bright streetlights illuminated the busted drop of his jaw. “Hear about what?”

“I saw you eavesdropping. Doing a pretty lousy job of it, too, Nancy Drew.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I just happened to be walking by.”

“Yeah, and you’re not gay, but you just happen to click on gay porn when you surf the web.”

Russ fiddled with his emptied and cleaned out serving dish. I had snuck a handful of his homemade chips between rotations. They were salty perfection. Of course, they were.

“I only heard a little bit,” he said sheepishly.

“Well, let me fill you in on what you missed. My son can’t add, and he can’t read, and it’s all my fault because I’m a shitty father.” I laughed to cover the pain.

“You’re not a shitty father,” he shot back instantly, not a second of hesitation.

“You don’t have to be nice.”

“Since when do I care about being nice to you?” The lazy smile on his face was like an old friend here to cheer me up. It broke through my haze of self-pity.

Russ put his serving dish on the roof of his car and walked over to me. Yes, he did have an inch on me, but he loomed larger in the darkness, a strong and comforting presence.

“Everyone is so quick to blame the single parent. They have pity for us and disdain us at the same time,” I said.

“They try to connect anything about our kids to that one fact. I get it.”

“Do you? You’re like Superdad.”

“Less than a week ago, my son declared that he hated me.”

I flashed back to Quentin screaming at him. I didn’t think I’d ever forget that. It hurt Russ a lot more than he let on, but I appreciated he was sharing it with me.

“How do you do it?” I asked him. “Does your work let you take off whenever you want?”

“Basically, yeah. I have enough seniority to have a flexible schedule. I made myself indispensable to the company, and they’d rather have me leave early here and there than let me go. Whatever I don’t finish at the office, I do at home.”

The market would be fine if I quit. I was incredibly replaceable, like a pair of socks.

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