Page 55 of After His Eulogy
“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 goingto 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.”
