Christopher Conlon - Savaging the Dark

“Connor, please open the door. We shouldn’t be caught alone together. People may get ideas.”

“So?” He looks defiantly at me. “You’re the one who’ll get in trouble, not me.”

“Connor—I can’t believe you’re speaking to me like this. Sweetheart…”

“I can get you fired. Right now. All I have to do is scream.”

“Connor…” Beads of perspiration run down my neck. My heart pounds.

“I can go to the principal’s office and tell him everything.”

I try to sound calm, reasonable, the adult in charge. “Mr. Lewis? Do you think he’d believe you, Connor?”

“I’d make him believe me. I could tell him about the motels we go to. About how you plan where to pick me up every time.”

“He’ll never believe any of that, Connor.” I’m not sure that I do myself.

“I can tell him how you started with me in your house. Touching me. Then coming into the bathroom and taking my clothes off.”

“You don’t have any evidence that any of that happened, Connor.”

“I can tell him what you look like naked.”

“Do you think Mr. Lewis has seen me naked? How would he know you were telling the truth?”

“They’d get a police lady to look. When they arrest you.”

I feel myself deflating, my vision going dark. All I can think of to say is, “Connor, I love you. I’ve tried to make things special between us. I’m sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing. I really am. We can stop if you want. We won’t do it anymore.”

He frowns, looks at the floor, wipes his eyes with his palms.

“I have a family, Connor. A husband. My daughter is four years old. Think of what would happen to them. And to my classes. All the kids.”

He doesn’t meet my eyes, just looks at the floor.

“Just don’t scare Kylie again,” he says.

“I won’t. I promise. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

Finally he looks up and nods. He turns to the door, twists the knob.

“Connor?”

“What?”

I look at him. “Are we meeting this afternoon, Connor?”

He stands there a long time. Finally he says, “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

Once I’m stepping into the grocery store with Gracie as Mr. Blue is stepping out. He has on his usual faded denim. He smells of cigarettes and alcohol.

“Hello, Mr. Blue,” I say.

“Hey. Mrs.—Straw, right?”

“Ms. Yes.”

“Connor’s teacher. Hey, he’s doin’ pretty good this year.”

“Yes, he is. He’s a good boy, Mr. Blue.”

He continues out to the parking lot, gets into his pickup, and drives away. It’s the last time I ever see him.

I throw myself ever more deeply into my job, stay later hours, bring more work home, call more parents. Nothing works. None of this is real to me anymore. I’m dead, dead inside, there’s only Connor and every lunch period I watch him moving farther and farther from me. He doesn’t want to talk to me. He spends his lunchtimes with Kylie McCloud. On nice days they sit out on the grass reading books, sometimes close enough together that their shoulders touch or their shoes. It’s accepted among the other kids that Connor and Kylie are now a couple, the first real couple in their grade. They’re not like most kids who become couples, who claim to be going steady but who rarely actually talk to each other. This is not a pretend relationship. They’re actually together, at least as friends. Connor sits there reading an Alfred Hitchcock paperback while Kylie leans over one of her big fantasy books. Once, my heart dying, I walk outside where they are, step up to them and say, “Hi Connor, hi Kylie. Whatcha readin’?” Kylie smiles up at me, tilting her head back to see me through the glasses that have slid down her nose, and shows me the book, tells me all about it. Connor merely glares at me. I smile, tell them to enjoy themselves, slink away like a criminal.

I can hardly even remember the first times, months and months ago now, when everything was fresh and new and his eyes opened wide with every new sight and sensation. When he was innocent. He’s not innocent anymore. He’s grown bored with me. What we do is stale and repetitive to him. I can hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes. He begins to say no to our afternoon times more regularly, until I find myself pleading with him, “Connor, I need to see you, I need us to be together.” But even when we’re together it’s not the same anymore. Increasingly he just lays there passively allowing me to do whatever I wish to do, but seemingly disconnecting himself from me, from us. He rarely makes eye contact. When he comes he makes hardly any sound at all, just a little grunt. He doesn’t want to talk afterwards. He doesn’t want to shower together. He doesn’t want me to touch him at all, really. I’m as unwanted as an old strip of film on a cutting room floor.

He’s taken off his sneakers and socks and pants and is standing in the middle of the room in his shirt and shorts when, facing away from me, he says, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“C’mere, Connor,” I say, patting the bed. I’ve been ready for him for several minutes.

“I mean it.”

“Come over here and tell me all about it.”

“No.” He turns around, faces me. “If I do you’ll just… just grab me and I’ll get—confused.”

“You mean horny?”

He makes a disgusted face. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“If you come over here we don’t have to talk at all.”

He stands disconsolately, looking down. “Mona, I don’t want to do this anymore. You said we could stop if I wanted to. I want to stop.”

“Aren’t you having fun?”

“Not really.”

“We can do anything you want, Connor. Together. Anything at all.”

“I don’t want to do—nasty things with you. I feel like I want to take a bath after we do things.”

“I’ll take a bath with you, sweetie.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He turns, pushes the curtains aside a few inches and looks out to the street. “Sometimes I think I just want to kill myself.”

I sit up. “Honey, no.”

He speaks very quietly, very sadly. “I feel like a—like a fake with Kylie. I feel like some kind of pervert. Like a sex maniac.”

“You’re not doing anything with her, though, are you?”

“No. That’s just it. It’s like—like I’m the man who knew too much.” He scoffs sadly at his own Hitchcock metaphor. “She doesn’t know anything. I don’t think she knows where babies come from.”

“Well, maybe you’re just too mature for her, sweetheart.”

“I’m not, though. I really like her. She’s funny. You don’t hear it ’cuz she’s shy around other people but she’s really funny. The things she says about people. The, like, the things she notices. She makes me laugh. It’s just that I feel like she’s a little girl and I’m… I don’t know.” He seems to consider. “If we’d never started all this stuff I wouldn’t feel this way. I wouldn’t know any more than she does. Or—at least not that much more. We’d be like—like the same age. I… I don’t know. It’s just weird.” He falls silent.

“I’m sorry, Connor,” I say at last, sincerely.

He doesn’t respond.

“But you have me, you know, sweetheart. And I love you.”

He looks back at me, his expression unreadable. “Yeah,” he says in a flat voice. “I have you.”

But I don’t have him, not anymore. There’s a terrible dropping sensation in my heart, a sick feeling of vertigo, as if my stomach were coming up through my throat. It’s over, it’s ending, it’s finished, it’s done. He doesn’t want me anymore. I get up that afternoon from bed and put my clothes on and Connor puts on his and we drive in silence back to the city, time wasted, money wasted, risk wasted. During the drive I start to cry and to my amazement I find I can’t stop. I hold both hands tight on the steering wheel and cry. The tears run down my face and onto my blouse. Some drip onto my skirt. My throat is so tight I can hardly breathe. I try to stay quiet because I suspect Connor will get angry with me. I don’t shriek, I don’t wail. I just cry, cry silently, cry, cry. Connor doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even look at me.