The Hour I First Believed

“Because she’s an unappreciative little brat,” I said. “I’m sick of her rudeness, and I’m sick of doing all the heavy lifting with this ‘buddy’ thing.”

“You know, ever since her birthday, she’s been standoffish with me,” Mo said. “I don’t get it.”

I shrugged. Said we never should have had her over.

I had trouble sleeping that night but didn’t want to wake Maureen. I went downstairs to read. Passing by the bookcase in the study, I noticed the space where my signed To Kill a Mockingbird was supposed to be.

THE COLORADO ARTS COUNCIL NOTIFIED the school that Velvet Hoon had won the writing award in her division. “I thought you might want to be the one to give her the news,” Ivy said. I suggested we do it together.

Velvet was asleep at her cubicle, her cheek against the desktop. When she heard she’d won, she looked more jarred than happy. “What do I have to do?” she asked Ivy. She wouldn’t look at me.

“There’s a ceremony in downtown Denver,” Ivy said. “At the State Capitol. You and the other winners each read a five-minute excerpt from your essays. Then you accept your award, get your picture taken, get fussed over.”

“I don’t want my picture taken,” she insisted.

“You get a check for two hundred dollars,” I said. “That’s not too hard to take, is it?” Velvet ignored the question. When I mentioned that we should go over what was appropriate to read at the event, she finally looked at me. “For instance, you’d want to omit the opening paragraph,” I said. “There’ll be younger kids there.”

“And assholes,” Velvet said.

Ivy looked from Velvet to me, then back again. “What I thought,” she said, “was that you, Mr. Quirk, and I could drive downtown together. The ceremony’s at five. And after, maybe we could take you out to dinner to celebrate. There are some nice restaurants at the Sixteenth Street Mall. Or how about the Hard Rock Café at the Denver Pavilions?”

Velvet nodded in my direction. “Can his wife come?”

“Sure. Sure she can.”

From across the room, Mrs. Jett asked what all the excitement was about. When Ivy told her, she wanted to know if she could photocopy the letter of congratulations for her bulletin board.

“No!” Velvet said.

Walking back down the corridor, I remarked to Ivy that Velvet was the most miserable award winner I’d ever seen.

“Not uncommon for kids with her kind of history,” she said. “So many bad things have happened to them that they can’t trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can snatch them back.”

At the end of the day, I stopped in the health office to see Maureen. Velvet was with her. “Velvet was just telling me the good news,” she said. “Congratulations to you both.”

“She’s the one who wrote the essay,” I said.

A kid appeared in the doorway, asking for a form for his sports physical. When Mo went to the outer office to get it, it was just Velvet and me in there.

“Didn’t I tell you you’d written a prize-winner?” I said. She shrugged. “Hey, by the way. When you were over at our house that night? Did you borrow my book?”

“What book?”

“To Kill a Mockingbird.”

She shook her head.

“Because it’s missing. And I know you really love—”

“I didn’t steal your freakin’ book!” she shouted. She practically plowed Maureen down getting out of there.

ON THE DAY OF THE award ceremony, Velvet was absent from school. Ivy caught up with her by phone in the afternoon. Velvet knew where the Capitol building was, she said; she’d meet us there. Some of her friends were going, too, so they could give her a ride. Ivy reminded her to practice what she was planning to read, to wear something appropriate for the occasion, and to make sure her swastika tattoo was covered.

The Capitol was stately and grand: polished brass, stained glass, marble floors, and pillars. The granite carvings depicting Colorado history made me think of Velvet’s grandfather. They’d set things up just inside the west entrance: rows of cushioned folding chairs, a podium atop a riser, refreshments. The other winners, spiffed-up Type A’s, sat with their Type A parents. “Think she’ll show?” Maureen asked. I said I wasn’t going to hold my breath. When I spotted Mrs. Jett in the crowd, I walked over to her. “Thanks for coming,” I said. “It’ll mean a lot to her. If she gets here.”

Mrs J. said she was rooting for Velvet, too—that she rooted for all of her ISS kids. “Come sit with us,” I said.

A woman in a red and purple caftan mounted the riser, tapped the mic, and asked if we’d all be seated so that the program could begin. There was still no sign of Velvet.

She arrived, boisterously, during some seventh-grade girl’s cello intercession. Her entourage consisted of an emaciated woman in black leather pants, late twenties maybe, and a stocky young man wearing a prom gown. The prizewinners and their parents craned their necks to watch the commotion. Velvet was wearing zebra-striped tights, a black bustier, an Army camouflage jacket, and her silver boots. A torn bridal veil hung from her rhinestone tiara; she’d attached plastic spiders to it. No doubt about it: the three of them were high on something.

The caftan woman stood and asked them twice to please respect the other readers. When it was Velvet’s turn to read, she kept looking back at her friends, exchanging private remarks with them, and breaking into fits of laughter. Maureen reached over, took my hand, and squeezed it.

Instead of reading “Hope Cemetery,” Velvet rambled nonsensically about freedom of speech, Kurt Cobain, and “asshole” teachers who try to brainwash their students. I sat there, ramrod straight, paralyzed by her betrayal of herself and me. When she left the podium, she lost her balance, stumbling off the riser and crashing into the lap of a frightened fellow prizewinner, one of the middle school boys.

I stood and left. Waited in the car for the others. Told Ivy and Mo, when they came out, that I’d rather go home than out to dinner. Never again, I promised myself. Never, ever again.

VELVET NEITHER WITHDREW FROM SCHOOL nor showed up for the rest of that year. Maureen said she heard she’d left town. But the following year, she reenrolled after midterm exams and resumed her relationship with Maureen. I spotted her name on the absentee list as often as not. I hardly ever saw her, and when I did, neither of us spoke. So when she emerged from the woods behind our house that morning, climbing the picnic table to be safe from dogs who were never going to hurt her, it was the first exchange the two of us had had in over a year.

I ran all the way out to Bear Creek that morning, ate a PowerBar, took a whiz, and ran all the way back. Maureen’s Outback was in the driveway. She was at the kitchen table, working on our bills.

“How was your run?” she asked.

“Hard,” I said. “How was your breakfast?”

“Hard. She’s trying, though. She just got a job with an industrial cleaning company. But it’s night shift work, so—”

“Yeah, well, just remember, Maureen, you’re not her fairy godmother. You can’t wave your magic wand and fix her fucked-up life. And if you think you can, you better put a check on your ego before she body-checks it the way she did mine.”

“That was terrible, the way she treated you,” she said. “But she’s reaching out to me, Cae. I can’t just write her off. The last thing that kid needs is more rejection.”

“I’m going to grab a shower,” I said. It was either leave the room immediately or risk telling her about Velvet’s come-on for no better reason than because I was pissed about her innocence of what I’d protected her from.

I was toweling off when Mo entered the bathroom. She put her arms around me and rested her forehead against my chest. “I need a friend,” she said. I lifted her face to mine. Kissed her. Kissed her harder.

We made it over to the bed. I lay there, watching her undress. She got in and pulled the covers over us. Snuggled beside me. Kissed my shoulder, my mouth. Ran her fingers across my chest, my belly. “Suck me,” I said.

She looked at me, puzzled, then repositioned herself to oblige.

I was impatient with her gentle preliminaries. “Come on,” I said. “Do it!” She pulled away. Got off the bed. Grabbed her clothes and started for the door. “Hey,” I said. “Where you going?”

Her back to me, she said it over her shoulder. “I’m your wife, Caelum. Not your whore.”

“Fuck this,” I said. Reached down and started jerking myself off. I mean, I had to get release from somewhere. Sophie was on the side of the bed, watching me. “Get out of here!” I screamed. “Get the fuck—” I whacked her with a pillow and she fled.

After I’d ejaculated the anger out of me, I lay there with my puddle of regret. I’d apologize later, I told myself, but for now…I grabbed a magazine, got through a paragraph or two of some article that held no interest, and let my fatigue rescue me….

MO WOKE ME OUT OF a sound sleep. She was seated beside me on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Caelum,” she said.