Chapter 22 Griffin
TWENTY-TWO
GRIFFIN
We go to his apartment in the morning. I had thought we would call from mine.
I had been ready for that. For him to sit at my desk.
For me to be on the couch behind him. For Mendez to be a voice on speaker in a room I have been in a thousand times.
But Reed says, on the walk over, I want to call from my desk.
I do not push. Reed has been making a series of small choices for the last twelve hours and I am letting him make them.
The choice of which desk is one of them.
His apartment is small and clean and exactly what I’d imagined the few times I’d let myself imagine it.
The kitchen window is small and high and faces the side of the building next door — brick three feet away, no view of anything.
The desk isn’t at a window. It’s pushed against the inside wall of the living room, under a bare nail where a previous tenant had hung something, and it has a laptop on it, a mug, the syllabus from a class I’m not in, a small stack of contact sheets from his program weighed down by a coffee cup.
There’s a couch with one cushion that has the impression of him in it from a thousand evenings.
A bed in the bedroom that’s made the way he makes a bed — flat, the corners square, no superfluous pillows.
No t-shirt on the dresser. The dresser is empty on top.
A small dish for keys. A book. No sentimental object visible.
No prints on the walls, which I hadn’t expected — he’s in his second year of a photography program and he’s put nothing of his own up, and the absence is its own statement.
The apartment has been kept for fifteen months the way a person keeps an apartment when he’s been telling himself the apartment is provisional.
He hasn’t put anything down. Hasn’t let the apartment become his. I sit on the couch.
I sit on the couch in the cushion that does not have his impression in it.
I sit on the side that is mine now, though I only realize it’s mine when I sit down — I’ve arranged myself to leave him the cushion he uses.
He sits at the desk. He puts the phone on the desk in front of him.
He plugs it in to charge. He does not need to charge it.
He is doing things with his hands. I watch him do them.
“You ready,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“Take your time.”
“I am taking my time.”
“Okay.”
He picks up the phone. He looks at me. He looks at me and his face is asking me to confirm that I am still here, that I have not changed my mind in the four minutes since we sat down, that we are still doing this.
I look at him. I do not nod, because nodding would make it a thing.
I just look back. He presses the contact.
He puts it on speaker. The phone rings. It rings three times.
“Mendez.”
“It’s Reed.”
“Two days in a row. What’s happening.”
“I lied to you yesterday.”
There is a silence on the line. I watch Reed. Reed is looking at the phone. He is not looking at me. His hand is flat on the desk next to the phone and the hand is not steady. The hand is the hand I have known for years and when it is trying not to do anything.
“Tell me.”
“There is someone.”
Another silence.
“How long.”
“A month.”
“A month.”
“Yes.”
“How serious.”
“Serious.”
“Reed.”
“Yes.”
“Define serious.”
“He was in my life before. He is in my life now. We were together for years. Before.”
The silence on the line is longer this time. I can hear something in the background. A chair, maybe, Mendez sitting down. He has put down whatever he was doing. He is now in the conversation.
“Before what.”
“Before I came in.”
“Reed. Are you telling me…“
“Yes.”
“He was the boyfriend.”
“Yes.”
“At the funeral.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes.”
“How did he find you.”
“He didn’t. We are at the same school. He was already here. I came in September. He has been here a year longer.”
“You knew.”
“No. I did not know. I found out in October. I should have called you in October. I haven’t been calling you since October. I have been operating on a private decision.”
“You have been operating on a private decision for two months.”
“Yes.”
“While drawing a stipend from a program whose entire premise is that you do not make private decisions.”
“Yes.”
“Reed.”
“I know.”
I am watching him. I am watching him and his face is doing something I have not seen his face do, which is that his face is taking it.
He is taking it. He is letting Mendez say the things and he is not interrupting and he is not defending and he is not apologizing.
He is letting it happen. He is sitting at his desk in his apartment with my hand visible to him in his peripheral vision on the couch and he is taking what Mendez is giving him.
“Is he there with you now,” Mendez says.
“Yes.”
“Hi.”
I look at the phone.
“Hi,” I say.
“What’s your name.”
“Griffin.”
“Griffin what.”
“Just Griffin. For now.”
“Smart kid.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.”
I almost laugh. I do not laugh. Reed is watching me. He has caught the don’t thank me, the way I would have caught it. He is not laughing either, but his face does the small thing it does, just at the corner of the mouth.
“Griffin,” Mendez says.
“Yes.”
“You knew this man before.”
“Yes.”
“You know what he did.”
“He told me. A month ago. The whole situation. Yes.”
“And you have been seeing him for a month knowing.”
“Yes.”
“And he did not tell me about you.”
“That was his decision.”
“It was a bad decision.”
“I know.”
“You do.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me why you are still in this.”
I look at Reed. He is looking at the phone. He has decided, I can tell, to let me answer this one without him in the way. He is not going to put a hand on my arm or look at me for a cue. He is letting me answer.
“Because I have already lost him once,” I say. “And I am not going to do it again.”
There is a silence.
“Okay,” Mendez says.
“Okay.”
“Listen to me. Both of you. I am going to tell you what is going to happen now. I am going to tell you and then I am going to ask if you have questions and you can have questions, but I am going to tell you first.”
“Okay,” Reed says.
“I am flagging your case. That means I take this conversation up. People above me ask harder questions than I just did. Some come back to you. You answer. Griffin, you are now in a file. You will be looked at. Nobody approaches you, nobody contacts you, the check-out is on paper. The placement here was working when it was one of you in this town. It is working less now that it is two of you at the same school. The case is now against keeping you here. We are likely to move Reed. Three to six months.”
“Okay.”
“Griffin. You are going to be given a choice when the move happens. The choice is one of three things. You stay where you are and you do not have contact with Reed. You stay where you are and you have contact with Reed under specified protocols, which are restrictive and which will not feel like a relationship to either of you. Or you go with him. Going with him means you take a new placement also. New name. New town. Starting over. Your degree is probably finishable in some form, in some place. The program does not give you an academic career, but the program does not stop you from rebuilding one elsewhere over time. You don’t tell your sister.
You don’t tell your advisor. You walk out of the program by email. ”
“Okay.”
“None of this is happening today. None of this is happening this week. The flag is lodged. The conversation has started. I will be in touch in roughly two weeks with more concrete information. Until then, you keep doing what you are doing, except: you do not lie to me, you take my calls, you tell me if anything changes. Are we clear.”
“Yes,” Reed says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“You did the right thing today. You did the wrong thing for a month. The right thing today does not erase the wrong thing for a month, but it is not nothing.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Mendez.”
“Yes.”
“Are you mad.”
“I am professionally angry. I am not personally mad. There is a difference. I am also relieved you called. There is no contradiction.”
“Okay.”
“I am going to hang up. Two weeks.”
“Two weeks.”
He hangs up.
The apartment is very quiet. Reed is at the desk. I am on the couch. The phone is between us, on his desk, the screen lit then dim then lit then dim. Neither of us moves for a while.
“Okay,” Reed says.
“Okay.”
“That was…“
“Yes.”
“That went better than I had…“
“I know.”
“I had been imagining it would be…“
“I know.”
He turns the chair. He looks at me.
“He didn’t yell.”
“He did not.”
“He said he was professionally angry.”
“That is a thing he said.”
“What does that mean.”
“I think it means he is going to put it in a memo.”
Reed almost laughs. He does not laugh. His face does the corner-of-the-mouth thing.
“Three to six months,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It’s also not.”
“No. It is not.”
He looks at me.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“He gave you a choice.”
“He did.”
“You don’t have to make it now.”
“I know.”
“You don’t…“
“Reed. I know. I’m not making it now. I’m making it in three to six months. After we’ve lived in this for a while. When there’s something to actually decide between.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I get up. I walk to the desk. I stand behind him. I put my hands on his shoulders, the same way I did at the kitchen table last night. He puts his hand up and over mine.
“You were not on it just now,” he says.
“What.”
“You did not put your hand on my arm. You did not… you were not…“
“I did not want to be in the way.”
“Okay.”
“You did okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”