“Well,” she started, stopping again just as fast. She was the one doing the fidgeting now.
The discomfort didn’t seem to suit her. It was like a set of clothes that didn’t fit right, Cort Wesley figured. Julia De Cantis had a sheen to her, a kind of persona that she slapped on for meetings with board members, alumni, fund-raisers—and parents too, to some extent. She appeared to him to be cut from a more natural cloth, stitched in the classroom, absent of political or financial pressures. The freedom to mold young minds was what she’d signed up for. In the natural order of things, Cort Wesley guessed, she’d likely become a victim of her own success and popularity in that venue, fueling her rise to the administrative level.
“Rule seems plain and simple to me,” Cort Wesley said matter-of-factly.
“There is nothing either plain or simple about the relationship between these two boys.”
“The relationship, as you call it, is over, ma’am. They’re just friends now,” Cort Wesley corrected, even though he wasn’t so sure himself.
Nearly a year before, Luke had come out about himself, and then about his relationship with Zach.
Came out.
How Cort Wesley despised that term, though he supposed there was no easy way to classify the experience of learning that his youngest son was gay. That revelation had been sprung on him at the same time that he had learned an equally difficult truth about his own father, who, it turned out, wasn’t nearly the bastard Cort Wesley had figured him for. Not even close. More a hero, during his final days, in fact.
Realizing he’d had both his dad and his youngest son all wrong filled him with a new respect for the truth. Now he welcomed it, in spite of the anxiety and tension it had wrought initially. Hell, he was about Luke’s age when he started boosting major appliances with Boone Masters.
“All the same,” Julia De Cantis was saying, “we are dealing with precedent here, more than appearances.”
“So what you’re saying is that a boy and a girl can’t room together for obvious reasons.”
“Of course.”
“And my son can’t room with his best friend for what you’d label equally obvious reasons.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you meant,” Cort Wesley said, leaning forward closer to her desk. “And it implies, from your way of thinking, that Luke can’t room with any other male student. So tell me, ma’am, what if he wanted to room with a girl?”
De Cantis drummed her fingers against the uncovered wood of her desk and then tightened her fingers so stiffly her knuckles cracked. “Mr. Masters—”
“I’ve got a confession to make, Julia,” Cort Wesley said, instead of letting her continue. “I didn’t take this news so well myself, and it took me some time to come around. So I’ve been looking for an opportunity to prove myself to my son, to show him my support isn’t just window dressing. So the fact that rooming with Zach is very important to him makes it even more important to me. You hearing me on this?”
“I believe a single room would be in his, and the school’s, best interests.”
“I guess you’re not hearing me, then. You know about Luke’s mother, I suppose.”
De Cantis nodded slowly, the compassion returning to her expression. “Yes, and I’m sorry.”
“But not so sorry that you have a mind to do right by a boy who deserves at least that much. He loves your school. It’s the best in the state, and you should be proud of your work.”
“So should your son. He’s been a stellar student, a credit to the Village School in all ways. He’s unquestionably earned all the boarding privileges we can afford him.”
De Cantis stopped, collecting her thoughts. Outside the window, Cort Wesley could see a trio of riding mowers working at trimming the grass, which was moistened by the morning dew and by underground sprinklers that he now recalled had been on when he’d driven on campus.
“Zachary Russo’s academic record, on the other hand,” De Cantis continued, “requires no such privilege be extended.”
“That’s the way you want to play this?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Masters?”
“Drawing this line in the sand. Fine strategy. But in my experience people aren’t prepared to deal with what happens when somebody crosses it.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just a statement. And I could just as soon ask you the same question when you brought up Zach’s—what’d you call it, ‘academic record’?”
The engines of the three riding mowers grew louder as they drew closer to the window. De Cantis paused so she wouldn’t have to talk over the roar. The blades churned up stray acorns and discarded twigs, grinding them with a crunching sound that made Cort Wesley think of trying to chew ground glass.
“You have quite a reputation yourself, Mr. Masters,” the head of the Village School said, after the sound had abated.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”