Chapter 17
At Halloween, the students were allowed to dress up. They came dressed as witches and angels and cats. Ron hung a skeleton up over his door but did not dress up himself. The girls giggled as they entered his room, halos tilted, witch hats crumpled and cat tails sticking up and bouncing along behind them. Ron’s first thought was that this was going to be a difficult day. He tried to think of ways that he could have fun and still make it productive. Some of the girls had not dressed up at all and looked embarrassed by their navy blue skirts and white tops. Some just wore silly hats and put on makeup that gave them a clownish appearance.
“Where’s your costume, Mr. Tuck?” said Andrea.
Ron laughed. “I wear a costume every day, Andrea.”
When he was a young boy, his mother would dress him in her clothes because of how much he looked like her. He cringed as the thought sprang into his mind. What was she thinking of, dressing a young boy up like a girl! It had left him never wanting to wear a Halloween costume again.
Ron drew columns that he crossed with lines that made them squares on the board and said, “Do you guys know the game Jeopardy?” Their smiles told him that they did. “Today we are going to play team jeopardy. This side of the room, push your desks together and this side do the same thing. The winners will get 25 points on the next quiz.”
Now Ron had to think about categories that they would know something about. He wrote across the top History, Vocabulary, Music, TV, Movies, and Literature.
Ron figured out some rules and told them that each side would get a chance at the same question until someone got it right. If there was any calling out of answers from the other side it would not count. There was no penalty for wrong answers, just points for right answers. Each girl would get to answer a question for a point value. The questions would be harder depending on the number of points. Only the girl whose turn it was got to answer the question, but she could get help from the others on her team.
The girls were excited and squirmed in their desks. “Where are you gonna get the questions from?” said Maria.
Ron pointed to the side of his head and said, “From here.”
Quickly, he filled in the point values and then he saw Sister Irene Emmanuel opening his door and walking into the back of his classroom. She sat down quietly with a small pad and nodded, smiling to the girls. Ron was stunned. This was the class that she was gonna watch him teach? After all of the gritty work that he had done with them over the last two months, this was the day that she picked to observe him? Too late to do anything about it now! Ron looked at the board and at his smiling students and then thought, “Fuck it,” this is what he told them that he was going to do and this is what he was doing.
The first girl, Sadie, chose TV for 20 points. Ron thought for a moment and said. “What is the name of the bald NY Detective who chews lollipops because he has quit smoking cigarettes?”
A girl in back of Sadie whispered into her ear and then Sadie’s face brightened and she said, “Kojak.”
Ron smiled as Sister Irene began to write. “Correct!”
He put the 20 in a column on the side. Then he saw Andrea whispering to her friends and the next girl picked vocabulary for 30.
Ron said, “OK, from the story The Open Window what does the word endeavored mean?”
The team got it right and for the next 30 minutes his students ignored TV and movies and music and asked questions about history and literature and vocabulary. Ron could have kissed each one of them as the class ended. He knew what had happened. They had tried to save him. In the process they had shown Sister Irene what he had taught them about literature and vocabulary and history. Even the nun was smiling by the end of the class. She stopped by Ron’s desk and said that he should come to her office during his free period.
After lunch, Ron waited outside of the principal’s office like a kid in trouble. They had done a great job but was she going to buy his method? Sister Irene came to the door all black and white and starched and scrubbed clean. He followed her into her office and waited to be asked to sit. Never having down this before, he wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen. When the vocabulary and history and literature questions had run out, Ron had put new point values up to keep it going. His kids had made it seem like it was always that way. “That’s an interesting review technique that you use, Mr. Tuck,” began the principal.
Ron decided to just blurt out the truth. “When I saw the costumes and how they were all wound up, Sister, I made it up so that we could at least get a good review in.”
The nun arched her eyebrow, “You made that up as you went along?”
“Yes, Sister,’ said Ron bowing is head. “ I wanted it to be a fun day but not a wasted day.”
The nun stared at him for a long moment and then said, “We try to keep popular culture out of our studies as much as possible, but given the day and the way that it turned out, there’s not a lot that I can criticize you for today,” she paused and pursed her lips, “except your handwriting. Mr. Tuck, is it necessary to assault the blackboard the way that you do and press down so firmly on the chalk?”
Ron stammered. “I’m not sure what you mean, Sister.”
“I’ve had complaints that you press so hard on the chalk, Mr. Tuck, that it is necessary to wash your boards every night. Do you think you could write a little more lightly and perhaps even a little less sloppily?”
“I can try, Sister or I can just wash them myself at the end of the day.”
The nun was inwardly amused at his response. Of course she had set up him by going in there on Halloween, but he had passed her little test very well. She did need to talk with him about some things though. “There’s another matter, Mr. Tuck. Some of the girls have taken to writing your name over and over on their books like you were a boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know that, Sister,” said Ron, genuinely surprised.
“These are very impressionable minds, Mr. Tuck, and it is important that we don’t overstep our boundaries.”
“I understand, Sister,” said Ron hanging his head again.
“I’m sure that you do. It was a nice review, Ron and I was pleased to see how much vocabulary they’ve learned. That’s what we are going to call your lesson, a literature and vocabulary review. Do you understand?”
Ron wasn’t sure that he did understand but he nodded anyway.
Then the nun said, “And Mr. Tuck, John is spelled J…o…h…n…..not J ….h …o…n.” She enunciated each letter clearly and with what Ron could have sworn was a clicking or her tongue against her teeth.
His felt his face flush hot with embarrassment. Had he really miss-spelled John? “Yes, Sister. I’m sorry about that, Sister”
“Do you realize how much you pace while you are teaching, Ron. It was making me dizzy to watch you.”
“I guess that it’s just nervous energy.”
“Perhaps you can find a way to channel your nervous energy more efficiently, Mr. Tuck.”
When Ron got back to his and Zoe’s apartment he saw her naked body running towards the bedroom when he opened the door. The table was set for dinner and across his plate were six willow switches that she had cut from one of the trees. He stared at them with his mouth open. Zoe was kneeling on the bed with her head down on the pillows and her ass raised up towards the door. Without turning around to face him she said into her pillow, “I played with myself today while you were gone. Please don’t hit me too hard.” Ron laughed and fingered the switches, and then he began to strip off his clothing. The thought crossed his mind that this was one way of channeling his nervous energy.
Slowly, he slid the switches across her raised cheeks. He smiled when he saw that she strained upwards for the contact. He turned them so that the thin, young leaves, spiny and long, slid along her flesh. She whimpered and then he took the end of one of the switches and slid it between her thighs, under her cheeks along her puffed, opening lips. She trembled. He slid them up and down and rotated his wrist so that they would drag along that special place, then he pulled them back and smacked her ass with them. The air hissed as they snapped towards her. Ron felt himself twitch and she moaned. He slapped them across her cheeks fanning them out so that they covered her raised, trembling, slightly reddened flesh. They broke with snaps that surged through him. They fell on the lounge cushions that were their bed and he broke them over her bottom with hissing, plaintiff swats that sent them into pieces.
She turned to him as he dropped down onto his knees. She tugged at the stiffness of his penis. She licked her tongue across the tip of it. Ron was sticking out with his eyes closed, swaying like an inebriated creature. She lay on her belly and thrust up from underneath him with a hope of impalement that slid along his shaft with a wave of intoxicating chills. Then Ron pointed it at her and stuck it right in. Zoe’s arms and legs flung out. She screamed some kind of deep, wordless wish. The liquid releases convulsing through them like a whirling machine that had gone full sprint.
Afterwards they smiled that kind of self satisfied grin that rises from deep inside and holds you like a warm glow of the sun. Zoe stuck her elbow out across the mattress and cradled his head in her hand. She put on her glasses and inspected him.
He was lean, thick-boned with an oval face and spring green eyes that took each signal that she sent and then spun it back to her. Ron smiled and let his eyes explore her. From time to time, he extended his hand to part a thigh, or lift an arm. The warm glow in her belly heated as she noted his approval.
Ron said, “The girls came dressed in costumes today.”
The idea caused her eyes to shimmer like a long caress and then she gazed at him strong and deep and said, “Do you want me to wear a costume?”
Ron’s eyes let off excited sparks that flew at her and she smiled when they entered her like they were his seed. “Let’s make something,” she said
Ron took a scissors to a pair of her cutoffs. He left the seam that ran between her legs and cut an outline of wings to stretch across her thighs and cheeks. Then he cut away the intruding white of her pockets. Then he cut U shapes for where her pockets had been. He slipped the remains of the cutoff’s up snugly while she put on a sheer blouse that she had decorated to accent her nipples, which it covered in a tight pull that was drawn down by inserted ribbons that gathered the fabric up, so that it seemed she was lifting her shirt from her body but was frozen in that pose. Ron, his hands on her hips, held her at the length of his arms; she swiveled back and forth for him.
Then they heard the first buzzer of the evening go off in the October quest for candy. Ron gave her two bars and squeezed her mostly naked cheeks as they jutted out with anticipation and the promise of a quick slap that sent her to answer the door. He followed her, wanting to see the reaction and the way that she responded to it. She looked back at him and extended her arms with the candy in her hands, asking him to do it. Ron made her wait and watched her squirm and then took the candy and opened the door. Two little girls dressed up like ducks held their bags open and chorused “Trick or Treat.”
Ron filled their bags and then he shut the door and dropped to his knees and slowly swirled his tongue up her exposed taunt inner thighs. She came for him almost immediately.
They lay with the bag of miniature candy bars between them. Zoe told him that she wanted to go to New York and get a piece of alabaster that weekend. Ron smiled and asked what that was like.
“There are rooms filled with chunks of stone, different sizes.” She set her hands at shoulder width and navel to nipple height. “I want a piece of white alabaster this big,” she said.
Ron said, “How do you know which piece to take?”
Zoe said, “I embrace it and see if it hugs me back.”
“Can I touch them?” said Ron, eyes like fireworks now.
Her smile spread from her mouth to her ears and she said, “That’s why I want you to come with me.” Then she glanced back and forth quickly and said, “Remember your cat poem?”
Ron nodded, and his mind flashed on Leni in his kitchen, slinky, inquisitive and devoted to him. He recited, “A piece of cheese very small, curled up on its end and stuck to the floor, attracted a black cat with licked white paws.
Raw chopped meat excited her more, and she made sounds for more
I was ecstatic, I wanted her to stay, so I gave her some more cheese
She licked it; she liked it,
Better than the first piece that she’d seen
I had made a friend that I could keep and tell her so out loud
She would agree, nod her head and make such friendly sounds
I dropped some bread, she gave it a clout
Raised her head licked her chin
Turned around and walked out”
“I want to draw it,” said Zoe. “I can see her.” Ron recited the poem again and again as Zoe drew.
Sitting at a desk that Zoe gave him, a blonde oak blank door frame laid over a set of custom made saw horses, Ron opened the Literature book to Canterbury Tales. Immediately, he was flooded with memories of the stage. He was playing Henry II and his partner for the scene was Thomas Becket, played by Todd Crumbly, who later became known as The Crumb after her flipped subsequent to being caught selling joints out of a rooming house in Elizabeth. He’d flipped on Chris and some other people but this was before that and before he discovered his guitar and heavy dope. Ron circled him hissing and screaming like a predator while Todd stood there looking vulnerable and contrite.
Canterbury Tales was about what happened after Henry had Beckett stabbed to death and he become a martyr. Ron absorbed the pages and the details of the Prologue. He saw how the ways that labor was divided were important things for his students to see. The colors they wore and the imperfections used to describe them gave the characters the substance and humanity that Ron wanted to communicate to his kids.
Naked, Zoe was drawing with charcoals; pad on her lap knees bent up, hair tangled and an aura to the movements of her arm. Her pink and straw colored body was intent on creation.
Ron stared back to the page and as he read about the Oxford Cleric, and The Squire and The Cook. He imagined each of them fucking her. He saw her lifting herself up to the pounding thrusts of each of their detailed, clothed bodies and he wanted to be all of them and still be himself. Then he put his book aside and wrote for himself.