Accelerated (2 page)

“He doesn’t care,” she said. She was a mind reader, too, apparently. “We have an understanding.”

An understanding sounded complicated. Or very simple. Who was he to argue with an understanding? He helped her undo his jeans and she pressed herself against him. She slid her tongue into his mouth and for the second time in fifteen minutes he felt like he was being probed.

His body wanted to plunge ahead, but his brain kept nagging at him. He could still walk away. He could walk away from this incredibly hot woman who wanted him. But he was a single father now, he reminded himself. It was hard to meet women. Besides, he might not have a chance like this again anytime soon if he didn’t jump on it—jump on Cheryl—right now.

It turned out he didn’t even need to make the decision. Cheryl was already sinking to her knees. He watched the top of her head tilt as she lowered her glossed lips onto him.

He couldn’t help letting out a groan. It had been four months since anyone had touched, much less handled, him with such authority. And to think, he’d almost ditched the party. He’d remembered to prepare Toby’s dinner. He’d gotten Toby in the shower early, but he’d completely forgotten about hiring a babysitter.

“Oh well,” he’d told Toby only two hours ago. “Guess I’ll have to skip it.”

“Call Gloria in 6A,” he’d countered. “She’s always free.”

“Why don’t we play Monopoly instead? You can win.”

“It’s how Mom used to get me playdates,” Toby said, reasonably. “You have to go.”

Life was so unfair when you were a grownup and so simple when you were an eight-year-old kid. Sean had dialed Gloria’s number, which Toby had written down for him on a Famiglia Pizza napkin that had come with his dinner. He’d go, but he wouldn’t like it. The whole thing had sounded like a gigantic waste of time, not to mention boring.

So he’d been wrong on that last point. Cheryl’s mouth was now vibrating with encouraging moans. She really didn’t need to be so encouraging. In fact, he realized, panicking, everything was moving too fast. He thought of dead puppies, Toby’s tutoring bills. His in-laws. None of it was working. He was dangerously close. He had to stall. He pulled away, hoisted her onto the speckled stone counter that surrounded the sunken basin of the sink and unzipped her dress. He was not going to leave the parent social without knowing if they were real. It would also buy him recovery time. If he was going to make the monumental mistake he was about to make, he was sure as hell going to make it last.

He’d always assumed silicone would be a turnoff. How wrong he’d been. They were dense, fun to play with—a little like water balloons but softer and they stood up all by themselves.

Condoms. It had been years since he’d needed a condom. But he needed one now, and fast. He couldn’t imagine anyone keeping condoms in their mansion’s guest bathroom. He reached past her toward the medicine cabinet, on the off chance.

“I got it,” she said. She put his hand back on the water balloon, then leaned over and grabbed her gold bag from the toilet seat. She pulled out a condom wrapped in matching gold foil that she tore expertly with her teeth and rolled onto him with the speed and precision of a NASCAR crew at a pit stop.

He reached between her legs and pushed aside a sliver of silky fabric that counted as her underwear. Her muscular thighs wrapped around his waist and before he knew it, he was in.

Then he remembered his mandate, the reason he was here in the first place. “Does Marcus want to have a playdate with Toby sometime?”

He wasn’t sure if the
yes
she gasped had to do with the playdate or the thrusting. Soon, she was clawing his skin with her red nails and arching her double-jointed back. He realized, with a whole new level of respect for Pilates or whatever exercise classes she seemed to take all day, every day, that Cheryl’s workouts had even toned her muscles in
there
. There was no doubt about it, he wasn’t going to last long.

He tried, futilely, to hang on, but at a certain point it was impossible.

“No,” Cheryl ordered, through heavy breathing. “Not yet.” She was just gearing up. But there was no turning back. It was all about release. No more than five seconds later, the whole thing was over. He crumpled onto her, spent and relieved. But the relief lasted about as long as he had.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cheryl said, nudging him off her and snapping her underwear into place. She ran her hand along the side of his face, shook her head with a wistful sigh, and let herself out of the bathroom.

He slid to the floor and thumped his head repeatedly against the shiny tiles. Though most of the blood had left his brain, he was able to focus on the fact that he’d have to see Cheryl every day, twice a day—reliving the mortification of this very moment—until Toby was old enough to take himself to and from school. It would be years. Years of remembering how he’d failed at this basic act. He realized with horror that she might tell the other mothers.

He was deflating quickly, until the condom hung sadly between his legs. He peeled it off. Given a second chance, he’d definitely last longer. He toyed with the idea of getting her back on the sink to prove it to her but soon abandoned the idea. He’d had enough humiliation for one night. It was time to go home.

H
E
’
D FALLEN, TRIPPED OVER A PIECE OF FURNITURE HE COULDN
’
T
see in the all-white room. The third-grade parents circled him. They were throwing canapés and kicking him. “Get up,” they shouted. “Get up!” He curled into a fetal position, pulling his knees to his chest.

“Dad, get up!”

It was weird that the third-grade parents were calling him Dad. Then he realized: there were no third-grade parents. Toby was jabbing him in the ribs and yanking his pillow from under his head. He peeled open his eyes. The light hurt. A dull ache throbbed in his temples.

“It’s Thursday.” Toby pulled at his arm but couldn’t budge him. “We can’t be late.”

The night rushed back: the disastrous bathroom sex, skulking home, then Toby crawling into his bed sometime around three. Toby never used to wake up at night. But since Ellie left he’d been creeping in four or five times a week and flailing around next to him all night.

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled. “Tired.”

When Toby pulled the comforter off the bed, letting cold air into the warm cocoon, Sean’s reflexes kicked in. His arm shot out to grab it back.

“Ow!” Toby yelped. “Ow!”

Sean sat up, forced his eyes open. Toby was hunched over, clutching his chest. “Jesus. I’m sorry Tobe. I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t mean to—”

“You hit me!” His eyes were brimming over.

Sean was far from Wonder Dad. He was Hulking Brute Dad. Monster Dad. He rubbed Toby’s back. “I didn’t mean to, I was just …” He rolled up Toby’s pajama top. “Let’s take a look.” It was red. Looked like he’d been hit. “It’ll be okay. Really.”

Toby nodded and wiped his eyes.

“Okay. Get dressed, I’ll meet you in the kitchen for breakfast.”

Sean turned up the hot water in the shower until he felt his skin burn. By the time he was out, Toby had poured cereal into two bowls and was rooting around in the fridge.

“Dad,” Toby said, drawing out the word into two syllables. “Milk.”

Milk was on his list. The list in his head that he never remembered to check. “Do we have half-and-half? You could use that.”

“I used that up yesterday.”

There were too many things to remember. It was impossible to get it all right. “I’ll get some on the way home.” He took inventory of what they did have left. “How about some toast?”

“Mom never ran out of milk. Ever.”

“Yeah, well
I
never ran out on
you,”
he shot back. As soon as he said it, Toby looked stricken. Sean had hit him where it hurt—for the second time this morning. “I didn’t mean it, Tobe,” he said. “God, I’m sorry.”

“Mom’s coming back.” His voice was small.

“Okay.” He wished he could press delete, start the morning over. Toby had been excited about starting the day. Before he’d been beaten physically and emotionally. “Hey,” he tried to lighten his tone. “We have an art class to get to. We don’t want to be late.”

A chocolate croissant from the Hungarian Pastry Shop helped lift the mood for the bus ride. By the time they got to Ninety-sixth and Fifth, Toby was sugared up and ready for the day. He sprinted ahead on the Upper East Side pavement, weaving through the morning migration of well-groomed kids and their parents on the way to school.

Sean had to admit he was looking forward to seeing what went on during a regular school day. Parent-teacher conferences and class parties had nothing to do with Toby’s daily life at The Bradley School. Sean was familiar with the black and white checkerboard floor of the lobby that he saw twice daily at dropoff and pickup, but he had no idea what went on beyond that, because according to Toby, he did
stuff
or
nothing
all day. When Toby’s teacher quit over a month ago, the school had actually reached out to parents, asking if they would volunteer to teach classes while the search committee found a replacement. In the spirit of covert infiltration, Sean volunteered to lead an art class, and today was the day.

When they turned onto Ninety-third Street, parents and children pooled outside the glass and wrought iron door to the school. Fathers waited impatiently. Mothers chatted. Something was wrong. Dropoff was usually a wham-bam affair with fathers blowing kisses at their offspring while checking Blackberries, and a few malnourished mothers on their way to the gym. It was too early for estrogen and small talk—that came at three-thirty during pickup.

Lilly’s mom looked up from a conversation with Melanie Drake, the mother of Toby’s best friend, Calvin. “You’re early today!” she said, looking like she’d been up for hours and already run around the reservoir, worked out with her personal trainer, and cooked a three-course breakfast for the family.

“Am I?” His eyes darted to the entrance. “Why isn’t the door open?”

“Five more minutes,” Melanie said, holding her wrist out so he could see it was only seven fifty-five.

He took a quick inventory of the scene. Kids and their parents bobbed in place to keep warm as they waited to be let in. Sean froze when he saw Cheryl out of the corner of his eye.

“So have you already started it?” Melanie had returned to a conversation with Lilly’s mom. “Susannah’s friend did it when she was eight and this girl just aced her verbal SATs.”

“We’re three weeks in already.” Lilly’s mom looked at Sean. “Is Toby doing it, too?”

“Doing what?”

“Sight training.”

He wasn’t sure what she was talking about but guessed it wasn’t a class for seeing eye dogs. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, you’d know,” she went on. “I bring Lilly to the midtown office three times a week. It’s special physical therapy that strengthens the eye muscles.”

“The school recommended it for Calvin.” He liked Melanie. She was married to one of the biggest developers in Manhattan, but she somehow managed to stay more or less down to earth. “I’m trying to decide if we can fit it all in.”

Cheryl was now standing a few feet from him. When she caught his eye, she cocked her head and winked. Maybe he’d been too hard on himself. Maybe his bathroom performance had been okay. Good even.

“When we finish up with the OT for Calvin’s pencil grip,” Melanie said, “maybe we’ll try it. Is Toby doing OT, too?”

“What?” He eyed the door and vowed never to be early again.

“Occupational Therapy,” she said. “How’s Toby’s grip?”

She was waiting for an answer. “Well, the pencil’s never flown out of his hand,” he said, knowing this couldn’t have been the answer she was looking for.

As soon as the front door unlatched, kids streamed into the lobby and their parents peeled off for work.

“Come on, Dad,” Toby said, pulling him away from all talk of pencil grips. Sean shot the mothers a look that said
you know how kids are
as he allowed Toby to drag him into the lobby and past the eighth grade Jasper Johns study on display. A few of the pieces weren’t bad, especially considering the artists were thirteen. If his own grade school had had a full-time school-museum liaison, everything could be different for him now. He’d had to wait until art school for the kind of exposure Toby had gotten in kindergarten.

Sean tried to keep up, following Toby under the fleet of nine-hundred-ninety-nine origami swans that dangled from an elaborate mobile—the seniors’ first semester art project—then up the grand staircase.

At the fourth floor, Sean followed Toby through a fire door and into a hallway that was carpeted in bright blue. The third-grade self-portraits that lined the walls smiled out with circle eyes, wobbly red lines for mouths, and an oompa loompa orange for skin. He wondered why the girls’ drawings were all about hair and lips, while the boys were obsessed with freckles and teeth. All except Toby’s. He’d obviously sketched himself in a mirror and used perspective and shading, like Sean had taught him. It didn’t look exactly like Toby, but it captured his sleepy lids and long lashes. In the self-portrait, his bangs fell loosely below his blond eyebrows just like they did now. Sean smiled a self-satisfied, cocky smile of a parent who knows his kid has just blown all the others out of the water. He didn’t get to gloat often. Especially at this school. He savored the moment.

“Dad, come on. What are you doing?” Toby was pulling at his arm. “We did those at the beginning of the year. They’re dumb.”

Inside the classroom, red contact paper covered the walls. Maps and cursive letters and more artwork brought the room to life. He hadn’t seen the classroom since the first day of school when Toby had met Ms. Martin. Now, he felt the panic of a tourist trying to see all the sights in a single afternoon.

“Come see my Native American corn project.” Toby was practically bouncing as he dragged Sean over to a diorama he’d built in a Merrill shoebox. “These are my artifacts.” He handed Sean a belt made of red and yellow and white yarn. “I wove it all by myself.” A bell dangled from one of the long strings that hung off both ends.