The Other Mrs.(25)

I walked straight past the police cruiser parked outside. I didn’t think anything of it.

But then, at the sight of Otto there in the chair in handcuffs, the mama bear in me reared up at once. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my entire life. Take those off of him this minute, I demanded. You have no right, I said, but whether the police officer did or didn’t, I didn’t know. He stood just feet shy of Otto, looking down on the boy whose eyes sat glued to the floor, head slumped forward, arms awkwardly tethered together behind him so that he couldn’t sit all the way back. Otto looked so small in the chair. Helpless and frail. At fourteen, he had yet to experience the same growth spurt that other boys his age already had. He stood a head shorter than most of them, and twice as thin. Though Will and I were right there with him, he was alone. Completely alone. Anyone could see that. It made my heart break for him.

The school principal sat on the other side of a large desk, looking grim.

Mr. and Mrs. Foust, he said, rising to his feet and extending a hand in greeting, a hand which Will and I both ignored.

Doctor, I amended. The police officer smirked.

The evidence bag on the corner of the principal’s desk, I soon learned, contained a knife. And not just any knife, but an eight-inch chef’s knife from Will’s prized set, stolen that morning from the block of them that sat on the corner of the kitchen counter.

The principal explained to Will and me that Otto brought the knife to school, hidden in his backpack. Fortunately, the principal said, one of the students saw and had the good sense to inform a teacher and the local police were called in to apprehend Otto before any damage could be done.

As the principal spoke, I could think only one thing. How humiliating it would have been for Otto to be handcuffed in front of his peers. To be removed from his classroom by the local police. Because never once did I think it was possible that Otto brought a knife to school or that he threatened children with it. This was a mistake only. A horrible mistake for which Will and I would seek retribution for our son and his marred reputation.

Otto was quiet, kind. Not ostentatiously happy, but happy. He had friends, a handful only, but friends nonetheless. He was always very rule-abiding, never once getting into trouble at school. There had never been a detention, a note sent home, a phone call with a teacher. There was no need for any of these things. And so, I easily reasoned, there was no way Otto had done something as delinquent as bring a knife to school.

Upon closer examination of the knife itself, Will recognized it as his own. He tried to downplay the situation—It’s a popular knife set. I bet many people have it—and yet no one could dispute the look of recognition that crossed his face, the look of shock and horror.

There in the principal’s office, Otto began to cry.

What did you think you were doing? Will asked him gently, a hand on Otto’s shoulder, massaging it. You’re better than that, buddy, he said. You’re smarter than that.

By then, they were both crying. I was the only one whose eyes remained dry.

Otto confessed to us then in not quite so many words, his voice hard to hear at times through the gasping sobs, that, the previous spring, he’d become the target of teenage bullying. He thought it would go away on its own, but the situation had only become more exacerbated when he returned to school that August.

What Otto told us was that some of the more popular boys in school claimed he was making eyes at another kid in his class. A boy. Rumors circulated quickly, and before long, not a day went by that Otto wasn’t called a homo, a queer, a fairy, a fag. Stupid faggot, they’d say. Die, faggot, die.

Otto went on and on, rambling off the epithets his classmates used. Only when Otto paused for breath did the principal ask who, specifically, said these things, and whether there were witnesses to Otto’s claims or if this was simply a matter of he said, she said, so to speak.

There was the clear sense that the principal didn’t believe him.

Otto went on. He told us how the smack talk was only part of it. Because there was also the physical abuse, the threats. Being cornered in the boys’ bathroom or shoved into lockers. The cyberbullying. The photos they’d taken of him, heinously photoshopped to their liking, and shared far and wide.

This broke my heart and made me angry with good reason. I wanted to find the boys who had done this to Otto and wring their little necks. My blood pressure spiked. There was a pounding in my head, my chest, as my hand fell to the back of Otto’s chair to steady myself. What will happen to those boys? I’d asked, demanding, Certainly they’ll be punished for what they’ve done. They can’t get away with this.

His reply was limp. If Otto would tell us who did this, I could talk to them, he said. A look crossed Otto’s face. He would never tell on these kids because if he did, life would suddenly be even more insufferable than it already was.

Why didn’t you tell us? Will asked, dropping down beside Otto so that he could look him straight in the eye.

Otto looked at him, head shaking, and asserted, I’m not gay, Dad, as if it would matter if he were. I’m not gay, he maintained, losing any lingering traces of composure.

But that wasn’t the question Will had asked because things like that—sexual orientation—didn’t matter to Will or me.

Why didn’t you tell us you were being bullied? Will clarified then, and that was when Otto said he did. He did tell. He told me.