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“Mr Cobblepot, Martin is such a smart, special boy...”
As conversational openers went, that was up there with “Hands in the air and don’t make any sudden moves.” Oswald went on immediate high alert, although he was certain nobody in the schoolyard could tell from the pleasant, patient smile he forced onto his face.
For some reason, that didn’t seem to put Ms Levinson at ease, going by the nervous returning grin and the way she backed up a step. Martin had been following the other children to the entrance, but now he glanced back around as if he’d noticed their teacher wasn’t with them – of course he’d noticed that, he was a smart, special boy, even if only two people in the world seemed capable of saying so without it being a prelude to “but…”
Oswald flicked his fingers in a minute shoo gesture on top of his cane, and Martin frowned but trailed into the building after his classmates. Respectful, as well; it was a great mystery to Oswald how so many people could have bad things to say about such a perfect child.
“But I was hoping you’d have a few minutes to talk about...”
“Ms Levinson,” Oswald cut her off. “As much as I enjoy these unscheduled parent-teacher conferences, I’m currently in a very delicate stage of negotiations for a new...” This was the kind of school that would look down their noses at someone running a casino and nightclub, even if they’d be only too happy to take a cut of the takings in fees and donations. “...a new business venture, and I have a zoning meeting in ten minutes.” It was in an hour, and really it was just a dropoff of the bribe in advance of the meeting tomorrow, but a fourth-grade teacher didn’t need to be bored with these little ins and outs of his occupation.
“Maybe you could drop by this afternoon?” she suggested, with a smile that he hoped looked less frayed when she spoke to the children. “I know you don’t usually collect him from school, but I’d actually like to sit down with both you and Martin, if you could...”
Oswald stopped her with a raised hand. “If Martin had a fight, the other child started it. If he lit something on fire again, it was an accident. Either way, bill me for the damages, the front office has my details, I bid you good day.”
“I just had some concerns about this book report he turned in,” the teacher insisted, and Oswald rolled his eyes up to the overcast skies before he turned back to her.
“A book report, really?” He snatched the sheaf of papers from her hand and leafed impatiently through the pages. “And how, exactly, is reading books alarming behavior? I was under the impression this was still a free country. I’ll admit, Martin’s choice of reading material isn’t always age-appropriate, but I’m guessing something called, let me see,‘The Little Mermaid’ is intended for...” His eye caught a sentence at the top of a page, underlined in green pen and with asterisks drawn either side of the paragraph: “An interesting thing which I do not think many people know, is that a person can have their throat cut but not die. This sounds fake but it is a fact, my friend has seen it.”
Oswald folded the pages in thirds and slipped them into the inside of his jacket.
“So,” he said, “I should come back around two-thirty?”
**
“You have,” Ed said, “zero evidence that this is my fault.”
For a magnificent liar, Ed was a terrible liar. Oswald narrowed his eyes.
Ed, for the moment, stuck to his guns. “Sofia Falcone hired a maniac in a pig mask to hold a knife to the poor kid’s throat. If he has a morbid imagination, take it up with her.”
“Well, lacking a Ouija board, I think I’ll keep taking it up with you, because this has your fingerprints all over it.” Oswald rifled through to the last page, moving it to the top with a great dramatic flourish. “In conclusion, I am supposed to say if I would recommend this book for the rest of my class, but I would not, because it is not a book. Books have chapters. This is a short story. Maybe it would count as a book for babies, but I am not a baby, I am almost ten.”
“That’s just an objective fact. He’s ten next month. Anyone could have written that.”
“Also, mermaids are not real. I think Mr Christian Andersen would have had enough to write about to make this a book if he had known about some of the real unusual animals which live in the sea, such as the sunfish or the vampire squid. Here are some facts about them, and then it goes on for another two and a half pages about squids, Ed, do you honestly expect me to believe you had nothing to do with this?”
“…I may have made a few very minor contributions to the writing process,” Ed conceded.
He was ready with a tirade about how Ed was always the one going on about education this and academic integrity that – he had been perfectly prepared to just pay a tutor to do Martin’s homework assignments for him, until Ed had worked himself into a snit about ‘cheating’ – but an obnoxious buzzing started up from one of the timers lined along the top of the bank of security monitors. Oswald huffed, but kept quiet while Ed swiveled around in his chair to cycle through video feeds. Ed’s work, like his own, wasn’t to be interrupted for anything short of a dire emergency, and Martin’s school worrying he was some kind of nascent serial killer was a problem but it wasn’t that.
He sat down in the small room’s one other chair, careful of the way it teetered unevenly onto its back legs. He wished Ed would stick to one base of operations long enough to justify insisting on gifting him some decent furniture. When the casino deal came off he’d do it anyway. Ed would prefer a new suit, but he could throw in one of those too. And he’d need to get Martin something nice at the same time, for fairness’ sake, maybe that telescope he and Ed had been ogling in the camera store.
The lighting in here was terrible, a dim, flickering green, forcing him to squint at Martin’s tidy script. He could always just throw Ed under this particular bus, he thought. Tell the teacher Martin had written his report with help from his...
Oswald looked up at Ed, who was half-turned to him, biting his lower lip as he scribbled something on a clipboard. He had no clue how to explain who Ed was in relation to Martin. Or to himself, really. In his head he was Ed’s life partner, Martin’s father, but it wasn’t something anyone had ever addressed out loud, and it was foolish but he knew he couldn’t bear to know that either one of them didn’t think of their relationship that way.
“I’ll give it another fifteen minutes before I electrify the floor.” Ed put down his notes and turned his attention back to Oswald. “I don’t even know why it matters what Martin’s teacher thinks, since she gave up the right to be taken seriously as an educator when she chose to work for a school that refuses to give students letter grades.”
He thought of saying, When you pay half his school fees you get a vote, but it might hurt Ed’s feelings, plus he knew that he’d wake up tomorrow to Gazette headlines about the Riddler robbing a bank. “It matters because I don’t want him to have to switch schools again, Ed. He’s starting to make friends, he doesn’t hate his teachers, he’s never once been caught retaliating against the other children. He could be happy there. His distaste for the assigned reading aside.”
He looked glumly at the incriminating report. There was a sweet little doodle on the front page beside the title, a woman with long hair and a fish’s tail. “I don’t remember my mother ever telling me this story. Is it really about a girl having to choose between stabbing her true love through the heart or dying herself after she’s had to watch him marry another woman? Because if that was all Martin’s imagination I think I’m going to have to promise to get him a therapist.”
Ed looked wounded. “Oswald, you can think that I helped him write it, or that he turned in a report with huge factual inaccuracies, but it’s one or the other. Yes, that’s the real story. With some other tedious religious stuff. By the way, the first draft made a strong case for why the little mermaid should have just pushed the prince’s fiancee overboard and pretended it was an accident. Which I made him take out even though it was, frankly, hilarious.”
“That was the right thing to do,” Oswald said, guiltily grateful that Ed had missed the unfortunate parallel to their own complicated history.
“Talk about the apple not falling far from the tree.”
Or perhaps he hadn’t. “Well, it sounds like if the teacher wants to make an issue out of this, I can turn the blame around on her. If she’s going to assign macabre violent stories, of course sensitive little boys like Martin are going to write disturbing things.”
“If that doesn’t work, I doubt even private school teachers are so well-paid they couldn’t be bought. And worst-case scenario...” He jabbed a thumb behind him at the monitors. “I’ll handle it.”
Oswald had always known he could do it all alone if he had to, both running his empire and raising Martin, and he certainly didn’t need anyone taking out his enemies for him; but it was a warm, sweet feeling to have someone who cared enough to offer. He tucked the papers into his pocket again and stood, crossing the room to give Ed, still seated, a hug and a kiss. “I should get back to the school. See you at home?”
“If you give me,” he turned to check the alarms, “twenty minutes I could come with you. I help with his homework all the time. Maybe it’s time I met his teacher.”
Oswald stroked a hand through his hair. “My darling, it’s a nice thought but I don’t think it’s going to help if Martin’s schoolteachers find out that he lives with the city’s most wanted super-criminal.” Ed arched into his hand, looking delighted at the compliment. Good. He never needed to know that Oswald was fairly sure nobody at the school would have any idea who he was, and absolutely certain that this would spark a tantrum and some huge show-off crime spree.
As he shut the door he heard Ed say into an intercom, “Fifty-eight minutes and counting. Congratulations. You are officially slower at escaping than a bright nine-year-old.”
He hesitated, considered going back, and then decided to table his many questions about that for the moment. One parenting problem at a time.
**
Oswald’s memories of elementary school were of vicious teachers, terrible food, being shoved and pinched by bigger, louder children, and the only bright spot in every day: rushing gratefully to his mother at the gates after he was finally released from that cramped, chaotic child-prison. It was why he’d been determined to find the best school for Martin, whatever the cost or Ed’s opinions of their educational ethos. Martin’s classroom was large and airy and bright, with shelves of storybooks and posters of children’s science fair projects.
Not that Martin, already in a chair in front of the teacher’s desk when Oswald came in, looked at all appreciative. He was slouched low in the seat, glowering to himself and clutching his message-board face down against his chest. Oswald hoped that didn’t mean he’d written something inappropriate.
“Thank you so much for making time in your busy schedule,” Ms Levinson gushed.
“Not at all.” He took the empty seat at Martin’s side. “Nothing is more important to me than Martin’s education.”
Martin angled the board ever so slightly, enough for Oswald to see I didn’t even DO anything this time!!! written across the page. He reached out and patted the boy’s shoulder.
“I want to thank you for bringing this important issue to my attention,” he told the teacher smoothly. “I’ve read Martin’s report, and I do see your concerns. It turns out a family friend who trained as a forensic scientist helped him with it while I was working late, and rest assured that we will be having a talk about child-appropriate conversation, but in Martin’s defence and to my own great surprise that anecdote about throat-cutting was, in fact, somewhat relevant to the story which you chose to assign, so...”
“Oh no, no, Martin’s report was extremely well-written, with some... blunt but well-phrased constructive criticism of the piece, well beyond what I’d expect from his age.”
Oswald didn’t let his guard down, but he nodded in acceptance of this compliment. Martin continued to radiate pure ice at his side.
“What I wanted to speak to you about was this section.” She held out a page, and Oswald frowned but took it. It was a photocopy of one of the pages he’d read, with the last paragraph highlighted in yellow – he recognized it as the one that continued onto the next page with the interesting fact about non-fatal throat-slitting.
“I think this story was the one assigned to me because the main character cannot speak,” he read. “Well – I agree that that could have been better thought through.” Martin nodded emphatically.
“It was a substitute who assigned the stories, at random, and I’m afraid she hadn’t been made aware of Martin’s condition.”
“We accept your apology,” Oswald said grandly. “If that’s all...”
“Please, Mr Cobblepot, could you read the rest of the highlighted section?”
Martin, who’d jumped to his feet, dropped back into the chair with an exaggerated sigh.
Oswald looked back down at the paper. “Maybe this was meant as a nice thought, because maybe the substitute teacher thought I would like to read a story about a person like me.” He skimmed the part where Martin had laid out in neat, bullet-pointed detail the ways in which he differed from a mermaid whose only concern seemed to be marrying a prince, and skipped to the next highlighted line. “What I found unrealistic is that the mermaid cannot speak because she sells her voice to a sea witch so she can have legs. This is not a real way that a person can lose their voice. People can be born without vocal cords, or they can be so extremely sad or frightened that their voice stops working, or maybe it could happen if they have their throat cut but not die.” That was the end of the page.
Ms Levinson leaned forward over her desk, steepling her fingers together with a look of patient concern. Martin was looking doggedly down at his shoes.
Oswald didn’t pretend to be an expert on these things, but he accepted what Leslie Thompkins had said when Ed had asked her to take a look at Martin: that there was no physical reason he couldn’t speak; that that, in turn, could imply some past trauma that had made him silent. Martin had been adamant about not discussing it, and Oswald’s one attempt to bring it up had led to days of slammed doors and jarring discords thumped onto the keys of the manor’s piano, and dozens of scribbled abstract drawings crumpled all over the floors. He’d never dared mention it again.
“I think it’s obvious he’s talking about this in a general sense,” he said. “I wouldn’t try to look too hard into his own situation.” Martin gave him a tiny sideways look that might have been grateful.
“But we’ve wondered why Martin has been so against learning ASL,” Ms Levinson said – Martin was already starting to shake his head but she persisted, “because we have excellent resources here in the school...”
Martin ripped off the top page of his pad and started to write.
“...and from what he’s written, it seems that Martin believes...”
Martin held up his board. “NO. I need my hands to write things.”
Ms Levinson sat back, looking like he’d just solved a complicated equation.
“I don’t understand,” Oswald said. “Martin, do you think if you learn sign language, you won’t be able to use your hands at all?”
Martin hesitated, then bent over the pad to write some more. This time he only held it up for Oswald to see. “Yes. If something happened like with my voice. I know it’s only a small chance because you and Ed are taking care of me but it’s scary.”
Oswald blinked hard against a sudden prickling in the corners of his eyes. Something awful had happened to his child; and Martin might never feel able to tell him what, but if a person had done this, and they were still alive, he would hunt them to the ends of the earth, he would visit every possible torture on them and then hand them over to Ed for his turn, he would...
The teacher, obviously pleased with her breakthrough, was talking about tutors and the school’s wonderful facilities and how it would be so much easier if Martin didn’t have to communicate in writing and Oswald cut across her with, “Is he wrong?”
She stopped, confusion coming into her smile. “I’m sorry.”
Oswald took a breath. “Is he wrong? Can you absolutely, one hundred percent guarantee that if he starts to learn to sign, believing there’s a chance it might cause him to lose the use of his hands, that his brain wouldn’t somehow... make that a reality?” He was remembering Ed transforming before his eyes just because he believed it would happen if Oswald spoke his name. He was thinking of apples, as Ed had put it, falling frighteningly close to their trees.
Ms Levinson’s smile fell further. “I’m... not a psychologist, of course...”
“Then I suggest we end this conversation right now,” Oswald snapped, rising to his feet. Levinson shrank back into her chair as he loomed over the desk. “Martin will learn ASL on his own schedule, if he ever chooses to. Until then, he’s managing just fine with the board. If that’s less convenient for you, or anyone else, I don’t care. Whether he wishes to communicate through the written word, or charades, or interpretive dance, every single person at this school will accommodate my son or I will...”
Martin’s board clattered against the tiles. Oswald looked to see what had happened, and saw with dismay that Martin’s eyes were huge, his jaw dropped; “Oh,” he said helplessly, “Martin, I wasn’t – nobody’s mad at you.” What was wrong with him? Hadn’t he just heard that some monster might have frightened this poor child half to death?
But Martin was on his feet, grabbing the photocopy of his essay from Oswald’s hands and a pen from the teacher’s desk; she started to protest but Oswald glared her quiet.
In large, shaky letters, Martin had written: “I’m your son?”
“I...” Caught, Oswald didn’t know what to do except, against the instincts of a lifetime, tell the truth. “Yes,” he said simply. “Yes, of course you are.”
Martin flung his arms around him, almost knocking him backwards into the desk.
“I should give you two a moment,” Ms Levinson said, already scurrying towards the door.
Oswald closed his eyes and held tight to his child.
**
One more surprise in an afternoon that had had a few of them; when they’d pulled themselves together (mostly Oswald, and thank God Martin knew where his teacher kept a box of Kleenex), and Ms Levinson had returned to walk them out, Ed was waiting at the gate.
At least, it was someone who looked very much like Ed. Some benign version of Ed, less threatening than even the one Oswald had first met in the GCPD, with soft hair and a green wool sweater vest over a checked shirt, and a pleasant smile as he advanced towards them with his hand outstretched. No one would ever give this blandly nice, nondescript man a second glance. Most wouldn’t give him a first. He looked like something from the Riddler’s very worst nightmares.
Oswald could feel Ed’s satisfaction at what he thought was the cleverness of his own ‘disguise’, but he was ridiculously touched anyway.
“You must be Martin’s teacher. Edward. Oswald’s partner, this one’s other dad.” He said it with a breeziness that took Oswald’s breath away, reaching out to ruffle Martin’s curls at the same time. Normally that earned him a death glare, but today Martin was glowing with delight. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about me.”
“...of course!” Ms Levinson said brightly. She was a better liar than Oswald would have given her credit for. “How lovely to meet you. At last. I can see the resemblance.”
“We get that a lot,” Ed lied, although now that she said so Oswald did see how someone could mistake Ed and Martin for a father and son.
He was still thinking about that as their driver took them back to the manor. He watched the two of them beside him on the back seat, conspiring together over some little notebook Martin had handed Ed from his book bag: “Easy. Easy. Too easy. Hmm, this one has potential.”
“Tell me you’re not teaching him to write riddles,” Oswald said.
“I can tell you that, if you want me to.”
“One Riddler in the family is enough. Much more than enough.”
“He doesn’t mean that,” Ed assured Martin, who hadn’t looked the least concerned anyway.
“I really don’t,” Oswald said, feeling very honest today, and very brave. “You two are everything I love in the whole world.”
Martin stuck out his tongue, either at the sentiment or the fact that Ed leaned across him to kiss Oswald quickly on the mouth, but he was grinning too.
“Sweet, but untrue,” Ed said, settling back on his own side. “Power. Respect. Wealth.”
Martin sketched what Oswald would have called a deeply unflattering stick figure, and drew arrows to its pointy stylized hair and large collar.
“I don’t know what I’ve done,” Oswald said, martyred, “to deserve this kind of abuse in my own car, from my own family.”
“Oh, and wreaking vengeance on your enemies.” Martin poked Ed’s arm. “Which word don’t you know? ‘Vengeance’?” He took the pen and printed the sentence down on Martin’s board. To Oswald, he said, “A child of ours is going to need to know that one sooner or later.”
Oswald lay his head back against the seat and contentedly shut his eyes. “A child of ours will be just fine.”