Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“I was making sure she was all right.” Stefan is unrepentant. “That coach of hers is a wild card, I can tell.”

“Why is this your job?”

“I take care of people. That’s what I do.” Stefan is belligerent as he confronts his father. That’s what you’ve made of me, he wants to say to Daniel, but doesn’t.

The two men stare at each other in a small windowless interrogation room in the Colorado Springs police station, the fluorescent overhead lights buzzing and flickering sporadically. A fleshy uniformed cop, close to retirement age, his arms crossed against his bright blue shirt, watches from his spot near the door, saying nothing.

Ron Sessions has been doing police work for almost thirty years, and he’s learned a few things. Sometimes stepping back from the problem is more powerful than stepping in. He’s never actually articulated this philosophy to other officers — their work, after all, is almost exclusively about active engagement — but he has learned that there are times when waiting has its merits. And this is one of them. He wants to see if this father can get control of this son. Maybe then they can all avert a problem.

“She is not your responsibility.” Daniel lowers his voice, understanding Stefan’s unspoken accusation even though his son hasn’t voiced it.

“But you are, is that it?”

“God, no, Stefan.”

Ron has heard enough. This is going to devolve into family issues that aren’t going to be solved in a police station, so he pushes his shoulders from the wall, grabs a chair, and sits down at the table where Stefan and Daniel look away from each other in misery.

“Gentlemen,” he says, “let’s take stock. You, Stefan, are on the verge of something we take very seriously here — stalking. Nobody wants to deal with that possibility, am I right?”

Daniel looks at Stefan, waiting for his son to answer. Out comes a mumbled “No.”

“All right, son, then listen to what your father is telling you, because if we catch you back at the Ice Hall or on any of the streets surrounding Miss Kita’s apartment, you’ll be in serious trouble. You get that?”

Stefan nods but doesn’t say anything.

“He understands what you’re saying,” Daniel volunteers.

“Don’t talk for me! Goddammit, I’m not a mute.”

“Then tell the officer that yes, you understand, and you will stop what you’ve been doing.”

“I just did.”

Ron stands. “Okay, we’ll all take this conversation as the one warning you’re gonna get.” And he opens the door to the hallway.

Stefan slouches through the doorway, but Daniel, following him, is stopped by a hand on his arm.

“Take this,” Ron says, handing Daniel his business card. “I raised two like him, both almost thirty now, and I know sometimes you might need to call somebody. That could be me.”

“Thank you,” Daniel says, humbled, grateful. Obviously, whatever he’s been doing with Stefan isn’t the right thing.

“Did you hear him?” Daniel asks his son as they walk out of the station, a squat brick fortress with no windows on the lower floors. “Were you paying attention?”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Stefan answers, sullen.

“Stefan, that girl is fifteen years old!”

“They start them skating at, like, four.”

“No, that’s not the point!” Daniel is struggling to stay on the rational side of his anger. “You were making that little girl and her coach—”

“Who’s a fucking asshole—”

“You made them afraid of you, Stefan!”

Stefan shrugs as they walk. There’s a lot he could say in his own defense, like The coach turned me in, she never would, or She’s afraid of her own coach because he yells at her all the time. But he’s done talking. His dad isn’t listening, and besides, he’d never get it. He hasn’t seen her skate. He hasn’t held his breath as she launches herself into the air and lands on the toe of one tiny skate. He hasn’t watched her spin endlessly into a whirling dervish of color and sparkle and silken black hair that wraps around her head like a velvet cloud. So he stops talking altogether. But he won’t stop watching. Only now he has to be craftier about it.

Daniel knows he should talk to his son about his behavior — it’s not normal — but he has no idea what words to use. All he has to do is look at his own behavior, which is equally far from normal, to know that he has no ground on which to stand if he decides to lecture his son. What can he say? We both had ruinous fathers who failed us?

He tries a variation of that. “I should have been around more when you were growing up.”

Stefan shrugs. “Whatever.” Then: “How are we getting home?” And another thought: “How did you get here?”

“I took a cab.”

“You did?”

“What was I going to do, let you stay in jail for weeks until I could make myself drive over here?”

“You called a cab and stood outside and waited for it and then got into the car? By yourself?”

“Yes, Stefan, I did.”

“Wow…We gonna take a cab home, then?”

“I guess we have to.”

“Cool.” And Stefan finds one for them.

As they sit in the backseat of the moving taxi, Stefan watching the bleak and chilly streets of Colorado Springs out his window, Daniel tries again.

“What exactly did you think you were doing with that girl?”

Stefan gives his all-purpose shrug, his eyes on the scenery, hoping that if he doesn’t turn around, his father will just shut up.

Daniel waits a minute. He’s trying very hard not to start yelling again. When he finally speaks, he makes his voice as soft as he can. “Did you consider how it might look, your following her?”

Stefan shakes his head.

“You need to.”

“I’m sick of other people,” Stefan mumbles, not looking at his father, but Daniel hears him, and despite himself, his face softens. There’s a sentiment he can embrace.

“Me, too.”

And that turns Stefan around to stare at his father’s face. Did his dad just agree with him?

“But mostly,” Daniel says in a rare moment of confession, “I’m sick of myself.”

Some things change after that. They never discuss the incident again — what does Daniel have to say that he hasn’t already? — but he keeps his son as close to him as possible. It’s the best he can do. He insists that Stefan come into the classroom with him whenever they walk together to campus and stay for the entire hour, right there in a seat where Daniel can keep an eye on him. Stefan’s expression says it all: I am going to die of boredom here. And on the days Daniel doesn’t teach, he keeps his son in the apartment with him.

Stefan idly wonders how many hours of daytime TV it is possible for a person to watch without losing IQ points, because he feels he’s crossed the line. His mind has become logy and slow and his body loose and sloppy from hours sprawled on their broken-down couch.

It’s only in the evenings that Daniel lets his son out of the apartment, to pick up their dinner. For the first week or so after their unplanned visit to the police station, Daniel called for dinner to be delivered, but it soon became apparent how expensive that was, and so the Jablonski men returned to their previous habit: Stefan walks to one of the many restaurants close to their apartment and picks up their food.

What Stefan doesn’t tell Daniel is that often, when he feels he can get away with it, he jumps in the car and makes a quick trip to Mitsuko’s apartment and stands across the street, pleading with the universe to allow him a glimpse of her through the second-floor window.

He keeps a disguise in the trunk of the car — a battered fedora which he’s convinced hides his face, a Denver Nuggets jacket bought expressly for this purpose and which she’s never seen. Even if she looks out the window and sees a guy leaning against a tree, barely lit by the streetlight several feet away, she has no way of knowing it’s him. That’s Stefan’s firm and deluded belief, which is completely shattered one late March evening. There he is, in his disguise, gazing longingly up at Mitsuko’s brightly lit window, and there she is, standing at the window looking right down at him! And suddenly there’s another girl by her side, taller and probably older but looking so much like Mitsuko that she must be her sister. What happens next makes him so happy he feels he might just levitate right up to their window. They both wave. They giggle behind their hands at their audacity, then clutch each other’s shoulders in embarrassment, and then pull the drapes tightly closed. Stefan is left limp with happiness and wonder.