Archives for July 1, 2013

Chapter 23

Ron got to school early the next morning. Zoe wasn’t in bed next to him, tempting him to stay just a little longer while she sucked or sketched or massaged some part of him. So, he got there with two containers of coffee over an hour before the official day was to begin. Sitting in his room, staring out the window over the fire escape, Ron drank coffee and watched the street. This part of the city, because of its tumult of large oak trees, was filled with squirrels. They scampered along tree branches and over the sidewalks and between the cracks in stone walls. Ron sipped and watched their movements, almost ballet like, their senses tuned to the heartbeat of the day.

“Good morning, Ron” Sister Bernadette stood in his doorway, filling

it with her large shoulders, her modified habit, her warm dark-eyed smile.

 

Ron turned towards her, pulled from the reverie of the street, missing the scent of Zoe on him, nervously puffed with the allusions to a future that Robin had suggested and said, “Good Morning Sister Bernadette.”

She waited in his doorway and then Ron invited her with an unopened container of coffee which, to his surprise, she accepted. “Are things better for you now?  I mean, since the fire?”

Instantly, Ron saw and felt the flames dancing in back of his eyes. Waking up, feeling their heat, staring into it, pulling away and hollering Fire! “Yes Sister, I seem to be doing better.”

“The girls were all worried about you. You know, they care for you very much.”

“They are quite special aren’t they?”

“Yes, but,” she said smiling. “We are only here to witness how special they are.”

Ron felt genuine warmth emanate from her as she smiled for him. He found himself returning the smile and sharing something with her that cut through everything else. In that instant, he saw the two of them wanting only the best for these young people, willing to make an investment in their success, sadly dedicated to some invisible future of potential.

Driving without a license, and in the teeth-grinding grasp of an epileptic seizure, Alfredo Mora crashed the front of his car into the solid brick corner of their building. His head snapped forward and banged on the hard plastic steering wheel. Blood sprayed from his nose. He was chewing his tongue and drooling. His sister, Gina, was thrown against the passenger side door, screaming.

Alarmed dismay jumped like an electric arc between Bernadette and Ron and then they were on their feet and out the door, just in time to see the now stalled car roll back towards the street. Bernadette ran towards Gina and pulled the door open and gathered the girl into her strong and freshly laundered arms. Ron sprinted to the driver’s side. Alfredo was bent over the wheel but as the car rolled back so did he, mouth open, eyes fluttering, tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth.

Ron yanked the door open and slid his hands into Alfredo’s armpits, pulling him out of the car. He rested him down against the ground and then someone brought him some kind of cloth and he propped it under Alfredo’s neck. Bernadette ordered, “Put wood between his teeth, and make sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue.”

Ron reached into his mouth and tried to find the tongue. Teeth bit into the back of his hand, wincing fingers probing for the tongue, bringing his head up and bending his shoulders forward. Then Alfredo spit out a stream of bile and Ron saw that his tongue was sticking out as the phlegm slashed against him. The squirrels disappeared with the sound of the siren and as Ron held him up not thinking of what he should do next. People arrived and Ron was moved away.

The North Ward Citizens Group ran a private ambulance service and as soon as they got the call from the school, a detail had been dispatched. They had arrived within five minutes. Although they had the reputation of being a racist group, their ambulance served the neighborhood, irrespective of color. Founded by Anthony Imperiale, a loud- mouthed, ex-marine who extolled the value of all things Italian, the group had gained a sort of national attention during the Newark riots, when Tony’s boys trained in Branch Brook Park and according to lots of rumors, did a lot more than train. All of the members were recruited personally by Imperiale and were, again according to rumor, at least half Italian.

Ron had once met Tony at one of his step-father’s hangouts. He had been appalled when the gavonne had called Martin King “Martin Coon.” His stepfather had grabbed Ron hard by the shoulder when Ron had said, “Now how does talking shit like that do anyone any good?”

Tony did not seem to recognize Ron as he and another man laid out a stretcher and lifted the still twitching Alfredo into the back of the ambulance. Then a patrol car arrived and Ron went back into the school and to the bathroom so that he could try to clean up and get ready for the day.

For the first time since he’d begin teaching, Ron was out the door with the bell. He drove back to the apartment and called Zoe. She was out. He left a message hearing the word Freedom sing in his ears. Then he dialed Robin.

Her mother answered the phone. Her voice was a bit shaky but had a lilt that bore some resemblance to the way that Robin spoke. “Yes, Ron, she is here. She’s been antsy waiting to hear from you all day and now she has thrown herself onto the bed because I didn’t give her the phone right away.”

Ron could not picture this. It was at odds with the cool exterior view with which Robin presented to him these days, but the idea of it still made his heart flutter. Maybe it was true. Maybe his instincts about her had been correct. Maybe having a relationship with Zoe was gonna royally fuck up any chance that he and Robin had of getting back together. Ron said, “Just ask her if she would like to drive down and pick her up now, if you could Mrs. Pavel.”

Then Robin was on the phone and her voice had that cool soft lilt and Ron closed his eyes at the sound of it. “Are you coming down?”

“Where do you need to go?”

“I don’t need to go anywhere. I thought that maybe we could just spend a little time together.”

Ron flew down the parkway. His radio was blasting Deacon Blue. He wanted to be there instantly. He felt fit and a little edgy. He was pleased with his appearance. Maybe that would have an effect on her, but he doubted it. When he got to her mother’s house, she said, “Would you mind taking me food shopping?”

They wandered up and down the aisles of the supermarket, him pushing the cart, she holding a list. She said, “My mother is crazy.”

“That’s not news,” said Ron before he thought about it.

She looked at him strangely and said, “So this teaching thing has really got you, huh?”

“It’s special. I close the door and it’s a different world and nothing except for what I do with them matters.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“I don’t know. Not anywhere expensive based on what they are paying me. But I did get a second job.”

“Doing what?”

“Tutoring.”

“Doesn’t it feel as if it has you trapped a little?”

“Not so much as some other things,” said Ron.

 

Then they unloaded the groceries and checked out. Working as they always did, without need for the “you do this and I’ll do that” conversation. Anticipating each other, in control of an immediate goal, like a scene on a stage or the making of a meal, but no longer with the in and out intimacy of people who had sex.

In the car, she said, “Have you been going to Rahway?”

“Not so much, it’s not like it used to be there either,” said Ron. “I don’t ever just go there.”

She laughed. “Are you ever invited?”

Ron blushed. “Not so much, no.”

In back of his eyes, he saw her and in his ears he heard her words. “You’re not a real person, you know. You just made yourself up and it’s all fantasy and acting.” Ron winced. He tried to blink the words and image away but he couldn’t move it. He had believed her. Did he still believe her?

He extended his right hand and she took it. Her fingers against his palm, inclining her head and rubbing the backs of his fingers against her cheek, she said, “We’ve made such a mess of this.”

Ron just gazed at her. Was it really possible that they had a future? He wanted to speak out but his voice wouldn’t come. Her cheek was smooth and the touch of her fingers intoxicating. He felt himself slipping away and tried to hold on. He tried to hold on, but an image of her needing to be rid of him overtook his vision. He stared at Robin and thought she had tried so hard to be free of him. Did holding his hand feel like a defeat? Did sliding the backs of his fingers over the intimate smoothness of her face constitute surrender? Ron traced the line of her lips and she parted them ever so slightly. He thought of all the nights that she had slept naked next to him in her bed and not allowed him to touch her. Again, he thought of Zoe. And again he tried to push the image away. Zoe defenseless.  Zoe vulnerable.  Zoe in need of him.  Robin’s lips at the ends of his fingers. Tracing her lips. Entranced by the fire in her eyes. The stubborn fragility of her cheekbone.

Ron said, “I love teaching my students.”

She didn’t answer.

Chapter22

Nervously, he thought about what he was going to do when he saw her get off of the plane. Was it going to be like other times, when his mind went into a slide show of her smiling at him, looking at him as if he were the center of her world, taking his hand into hers, walking with him as if they were two explorers who could overcome any obstacle that was set in front of them. Or, was it going to be the small smile that upturned the edges of her mouth with strain. Was her body going to stiffen when she was close to him and was her hand going to tentatively pat his back as if the very feel of him was toxic? Waiting for the plane and thinking about how he’d phoned Zoe’s house and been told that she was out. Nothing more: out. Hearing the humiliating pause, he’d asked if her mother would tell her that he’d called. The begrudging “yes” followed by the distinct click of receiver being replaced in its cradle.

The announcement came that the plane had landed. She carried one bag slung over her shoulder. She was standing upright in spite of the weight, keeping her posture and smiling at him. He moved to her instinctively, lifting the bag from her shoulder. He kissed her. She said, with a nervous tension in her voice, “It’s good to see you.”

They walked to his car together. He still wore his tie, although he had tugged the knot down to the center of his chest hours ago. Her leather jacket was form- fitting and her long skirt swayed beneath it and brushed against her ankles. The longing that he felt was deep, sad, and uncontrollable.

“Have you eaten?”

“I’m starving.”

They drove to the Café Mozart in Union. They ate goulash and spaetzel and red cabbage. They drank German beer. He told her about the fire and about his students. She told him that she had learned to make paper. No, she never thought about acting anymore. Yes, she was seeing someone but he wasn’t important. She was going to stay with her mother. No, her mother hadn’t stopped drinking. Yes, she was thinking of coming back to New Jersey.

She didn’t touch him as they spoke. Then she reached her fingertips across the table, slid them along his forearm and said, “If we can just stay friends long enough, who knows what might happen.”

 

 

Chapter 21

 

Ron was waiting as they walked into the room. He was amazed at how he could forget and did forget anything else that was on his mind as soon as he saw them. They stood, said their customary prayer before the start of class and then opened their books.

“Ok, so last night you read a story and then rewrote it into your words, correct?”

Some faces nodded and others looked down. Ron knew that meant that some had found the assignment too difficult to finish or had not done it for one reason or another, so he decided to go with volunteers. “Joyce, why don’t you go first.”

Joyce looked nervous. Her “OK” was timid.

Ron said, “Come right up here in front of the room and stand behind my lectern.”

“Do I have to do it from up there? Can’t I just sit here?”

Ron thought. Yes, he could understand how being in front of the class could be intimidating. But Joyce sat near the back of the room and he wanted everyone to see her face while she was telling the story. Then an idea. “Ok, what we are gonna do is make a big circle with the desks.”

Joyce smiled. Some of the girls groaned their teenaged “Do we have to move” complaint. But they did it. Ron waited as the desks scraped and pulled across the floor and then there was not what you could call a circle but a perimeter around the outside of the room. Ron moved into the center of it. “Pens out, notebooks open, you are responsible to take notes on what Joyce says.”

Ron looked over at Joyce. Her head was bent over her notes and she was moving it back and forth, her lips moving. Then she looked up at him and smiled and then giggled at the other faces that were staring at her.

“Which story did you pick Joyce?”

“The Miller.”

“Do you know why you picked that one?”

“Yeah, my sister, who graduated last year, said it was a dirty one.”

 

 

Nervous giggles spread across the room. Joyce began. “This old guy John marries a young girl named Allison. Now why a young girl would marry this old guy,” She elongated the old. “We don’t know but she did. I mean maybe the guy had money, or maybe she was just stupid. She seems kinda dumb, but anyway she married him.” Joyce put her hand down to her hip behind the desk. “And of course she was bored.” Joyce paused. “And frustrated.” The girls laughed. Ron smiled. “But she was stuck with him. Until this other guy whose name I can’t pronounce and so I decided to call him Abe,”

“Absalom,” said Ron.

“Yeah that’s it. Abe starts coming around and telling her that he can’t live without her. But he’s such a dork even if he is young, he’s just too dorky. Even her husband laughs at him.” Ron smiled as she continued with the story. It was working. They were listening to every word. He walked around the back of the outside of the perimeter as Joyce continued and told about Absalom and Allison and John. “So now this guy Nicky comes along and Nicky was hot!” Joyce smiled again and paused. Then she said, “I mean slick and handsome a good dresser and knows how to talk.” Ron noticed three heads turn in the direction of a girl named Marion a pretty girl who was very quiet and really not buying into what Ron had been doing so far. Her responses had been terse and clearly designed to make him leave her alone whenever he questioned her. Joyce was looking at her and smiling as she described Nicky but Marion was not smiling back and there was immediate tension in the room. Ron felt it and saw and knew, he instinctively knew. He decided to interrupt.

“Ok wait a second Joyce. I’m seeing a lot of Nicky’s in people’s notebooks, his name was Nicholas right?”

“Yeah Mr. Tuck, but you said in our words right?”

Ron shrugged, “You’re right Joyce, I’m sorry.”

But he had relieved the tension and Marion no longer had a real excuse to think Joyce was talking about her boyfriend he thought, feeling proud of his instincts. “So Nicky, cause he’s a dog, wants to sleep with Alison and cause she’s bored and frustrated and a slut wants to be with him too.”

Now it was Ron’s turn to feel uncomfortable. Was it alright for them to say that the character was a slut? But then he looked at the faces and saw that each one of them including Marion was hanging on every word and said to himself, “Screw it.”

Joyce went on and she did a good job. She even got through the farting in face business and made it seem so natural that all Ron heard was a couple of “Ewws” from different parts of the room.

When Joyce finished Ron said, “You did a really good job with that, excellent in fact. So what is the moral?”

Marion raised her hand. Ron called on her. “They had no morals, like some of the people in here.”

During lunch, Joyce and Marion fought. It was a face slap that led to a hair pull and a ripped uniform top and scratches down the sides of the necks of both girls. Sister Irene Emanuel called Ron down to her office. He saw both girls sitting outside of her closed doors staring daggers across the room at each other, while the old nun who served as a secretary sat at her desk in between them. Ron was shocked when he saw them.

“What happened?” he said to Joyce. She looked down and was silent.

He walked over to Marion. “Was this about the story in class?”

Marion just stared at him.

“Sister is waiting for you, Mr. Tuck”

Ron opened the door of the office. Irene Emanuel was seated in back of her desk reading and looked up at him over the top of her bifocals. “Well, it seems that we have had a problem and although the faculty council hasn’t met yet, I thought that it would be a good chance for you to see how things work, Mr. Tuck.”

“I think I may have had something to do with it, Sister.”

“You?”

“Yes Sister, it started in class. I was having them retell Canterbury Tales in their own words and I think Marion was offended by Joyce using the name Nicky. I think Nicky may be Marion’s boyfriend.”

“Mr. Nick Bontieri is Marion’s father, Mr. Tuck. And it seems as if Marion’s father has,” she paused pursing her lips and thinking about how she wanted to say it. “not been behaving himself. But that is no excuse for this. These girls have to learn that if they break the rules, they get punished.”

Now Ron was even more shocked than he had been before. “Joyce knew about it?”

“Joyce and Marion were friends and of course the one girl shared things about her home life which was better not shared and so when they stopped being friends, of course, there were hurt feelings. As far as I can tell, this was revenge.”

“I’m sorry, Sister.”

“What are you sorry for? You did nothing wrong. Perhaps you got used a little bit, but you would be awfully foolish of you thought that you could teach these girls and not have them try to manipulate you.”

“I don’t know,” Ron said. “I saw the tension in the room and I thought I had dissipated it. I thought it was a boyfriend issue. I was wrong.”

“And is this the first time in your life that you have had the unpleasant realization that you were incorrect in your judgment, Mr. Tuck?”

“No, Sister.”

“Then it is hardly worth mentioning, is it?”

Ron broke into his dimpled grin. “I guess not.”

“Well, sit over here on my left while we conduct our own little version of justice, Mr. Tuck”

Ron moved his chair over in back of her desk and to her left.  She turned to him and said, “Half of the time I wish this was a boarding school so that we could minimize the influence of their parents. But we work with what we have.” Then she buzzed for the girls.

They walked in one after the other, looking guilty, wearing the marks on their necks, and their puffy red eyes as both signs of their crime and also, Ron thought, with a certain amount of pride. These were tough kids who had grown up in a tough neighborhood. They may have been frightened of this very proper nun, but they knew that they could take whatever it was that she had in store for them. And besides, it had been worth it.  Joyce had gotten completely under Marion’s skin and shattered that “I’m better cause I’m prettier” façade of hers.  Marion had loved the hot sting on her hand when she had slapped Joyce right on her pimply face. Marion was thinking that when she told the story later she would say that when she had slapped her that she had popped one of her zits and had to wash her hands forever just to make sure the puss was gone.

Ron was about to learn that out and out declarations of war between girls was never over. They would carry a hatred of each other for the rest of their lives unless of course something radical happened.

“Well ladies, have we anything else to add?”

The girls were silent. Irene Emanuel waited and then said, “Did I mumble? Are your ears too clogged with wax to have heard me?”

Both girls mumbled, “No Sister,” in unison.

Irene Emanuel turned to Ron. “Are you allowing these girls to speak in class Mr. Tuck? Have you been keeping them so quiet that they have lost any power of elocution?”

“Not at all, Sister,” said Ron careful to enunciate distinctly.

“Good, although sometimes it is best to hold one’s tongue, isn’t it Joyce?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“And to learn to retain your dignity as well. Isn’t that true, Marion?”

“Yes, Sister”

“Since we have not given you the proper demeanor that your parents have sent you here to achieve, since we as a school have failed you, and are shortly sending you out into the world in an obvious state of  ill-preparedness, we shall have to try harder in these few months that we have left. Therefore for the next month, each of you will spend Saturday morning working and praying with us in the convent. I will be speaking to your parents this evening. It would be best for both of you to come clean, as they say, before my call.”

“But Sister, I have a job on Saturdays, Joyce whined.

“Yes, you do and it is to be here promptly at 7 am. That’s all ladies. You may leave.”

Chapter 20

 

Zoe sat naked in the middle of the room. She held the shirt that Ron had worn yesterday up to her face and inhaled the traces of his scent. With her other hand, she worked the hard plastic buttons on the cuff of the shirt back and forth over her clitoris. Her eyes were closed. She imagined herself flying through the air and he was flying with her, his head between her legs, his tongue snapping the way that it did across her clit. Her mouth opened and she rocked back and forth and then, in the dream, he opened his mouth and began to devour her. He took large bites out of her vagina, chewing and swallowing her. She tried to fly faster, tried to get away from his mouth but he was devouring her from between her legs. Her hips bucked faster over the buttons, the hard buttons that could have been teeth. She was sweating and smiling at the same time. He was eating away all of her fat. She would be thin if he kept eating at her. The waves of the orgasm rushed over her and she bucked her hips faster. Then he was spitting her out. Parts of her dropping down from the sky and wherever they dropped, flowers sprang up and tried to ensnare her. It was the fat trying to get back into her. He was spitting her out. He was just like she was. She raised her fingers from between her legs and stuck them down into her throat and then began to gag into his shirt and then the burn of the vomit, the harsh gritty feel of the vomit in her mouth, making her pay for what she had eaten. Her body wretched and shook and still she was cumming. Then she got up and ran into the bath room, frightened as a little girl. She scrubbed the shirt clean of what had come out of her, her entire body shaking. Now she could draw. She sketched the likeness of a fat hippo sucking on a straw that was stuck into an ice cream sundae.

When Ron came home, he found her curled up in his aunt’s wingback chair. She had been crying.  Her hands were in front of her mouth. She watched him walk in and drop his book bag down and take off his jacket and then walk towards her. She held up a hand for him to stop before he reached her.

“Why do you want to live with me?

“What?”

“I’m a pig. Why do you want to live with a pig?”

“You aren’t a pig.”

“I’m a fat, filthy, disgusting pig and I don’t want to be with someone who could stand to live with a fat, filthy, disgusting pig.”

“You aren’t fat. You aren’t a pig. You aren’t disgusting.”

He stood in front of her an expression of complete confusion on his face. “Did you have a bad day?”

She screamed and ran passed him into the bathroom and locked the door. Ron stood there feeling helpless. What was he supposed to do now? What was wrong with her? What did he have to do to fix it? He paced through the apartment rooms. His stomach growled at him, a reminder that he hadn’t eaten all day, nothing except coffee. He picked up the mail that he had gathered from his parents’ house the day before and sorted through it. The envelope in Robin’s handwriting made him drop the stack of mail like he had been given an electric shock. Was this it? Had she seen the letter? It was still sealed. Had she found a way to open it or read it through the envelope? The door opened and she walked out fast, her face angry. “I’m going to take the train back to my father’s house.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t stand to be cooped up in this ugly apartment all day long. I want to run. I want to swim. I want to ride my bike.”

“I’ll drive you, if you really want to go, Zoe.”

“There’s no place for me to be free here,” she screamed. “I’m dying here.”

Ron felt like he had been slapped. He felt as if he took a step off the curb and that some bus had whacked him in the side of the head. “Wait,” he said.

She dropped her bag to the floor and he moved to her and gathered her into his arms. She was crying and shaking and he body trembled like a leaf in a stiff breeze. She reached her arms up and held onto him, like he was the branch that was keeping her from being torn off. “I’m so fucked up,” she whispered, “and I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Ron patted her ass and said “Go clean yourself up and get dressed.”

 

She went back into the bathroom and Ron picked up the envelope and opened it.  “I’ll be arriving on Wednesday on Flight 148 on American Airlines. It gets in at 8 pm. See you then. Love, Robin.” Wednesday, today was Tuesday. Ron walked to the bathroom door and said, “Maybe a few days up at your parents’ house will help you to clear your head.”

She opened the door. She looked like the angelic child again. “You won’t mind?”

“If it’s what you need, it’s what we should do,” said Ron.

Her face brightened.  I just want to run and swim and get my head in a better place so that I can come back to you healthy,” she said.

Ron nodded. “It’s ok. I trust you.”

Someplace inside a voice told him that he should be feeling very guilty, but he wasn’t. He would tell Robin that he was staying with his folks until he figured out what to do about an apartment. She definitely would not want to go to his mother’s house.  Funny, he thought, she calls it her father’s house and I call it my mother’s house. Is it a gender thing?

That night after he drove Zoe, and picked up a pizza, he sat at his desk and called Robin. She answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” she said. “The phone is disconnected and I really didn’t want to be calling Rahway again so I wrote in care of your parents’ house.”

“That’s where I’m staying, just until I get things sorted out. I didn’t want to stay at Rahway. I’m sure you can understand why.”

She laughed. “No, actually I thought that any excuse that got you back into Rahway would be the one that you would take.”

Ron flushed. “Contrary to popular opinion, I do have some integrity, Robin.”

“Anyway,” she said, “Can you pick me up?”

“Absolutely.”

“How’s the teaching going?”

“It’s incredible. It’s where I want to be. It’s who I am. It may be the best thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

“That’s good, Ron. Just remember that you aren’t Warren.”

Ron’s hand clenched on the receiver. Why did she have to say shit like that?  His voice was small. “I don’t drawl,” he said with fake drawl.

She giggled. “I’m really looking forward to seeing you and everyone else.”

Ron felt panicked. Who was everyone else? “How long are you staying?”

“Let’s see how it goes.  Ron, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be staying in Minneapolis. Things have gotten complicated here and I am thinking of coming back home.”

Ron felt his pulse quicken. Zoe cleared from his mind like she was a hallucination.  “There is nothing that I would like more than that.”

And then they hung up.

A minute later the phone rang. Zoe’s voice said, “I miss you so much. I don’t want to sleep without you next to me.”

Chapter 19

 

“What is a pilgrimage and why did people go on them?” Ron was pacing. The chalk rolling between his fingers while his students watched him like they were at a tennis match. It was a very warm day for early November and the windows were cranked wide open.  The students seemed fidgety because of the change in temperature and the excess of clothing. He had them trained to have their notebooks open at the start of each class. He kept a supply of pens and pencils in a canister on his desk and anyone who had forgotten to bring one could just walk up and take one. If you hadn’t brought your book, you had to sit with someone else, but then you knew his eyes were going to be on you and that you were sure to get called on at least a couple of times. Their initial testing period of him was over. He could be flustered by them but it was much more likely that they were gonna wind up blushing on account of the way that he turned things and his class was fun. They wanted to read for it.

 

Andrea said,” It’s like a journey or a vacation.”

Ron smiled, “You mean like going down the shore?”

Andrea felt herself redden. “No, not like that. They didn’t have boardwalks or anything like that.”

Ron paced and ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, they did in a way. They had this shrine for this guy Tom who was a patron saint of the Saxons, who were kinda like the poor. Everybody felt good about Tom now that he was dead, and people would take trips to the place that was dedicated to him.”

 

Andrea sat back in her desk and spread her legs wide open under her desk, the short skirt hiking up along her thighs. Ron pacing saw her white patch of panties and turned his head to keep his mind focused.

 

“But the trip could be dangerous, like going out for a walk by yourself in the middle of the night around here. And so people traveled in groups and as they went, they made up stories to tell to entertain each other.”

 

Now her legs were opening and shutting like a bird that was flapping its wings, only slower. Ron was hoping that she needed to go to the bathroom or that she would stop because he was finding it more and more difficult not to look. He took off his jacket and noticed that his shirt was wet from the perspiration that had gathered underneath.

 

“So these stories were things that they made up as part of a contest to see who could tell the best story.”

“You shoulda been there, Mr. Tuck. You woulda kicked butt.”

Ron laughed and the grin spread across his face and showed his dimples and the girls smiled and one with bleached bright blonde hair who had a case of acne that would not quit said, “But they were all religious stories right?”

“Some of them were, Joyce, but some of them were pretty raunchy.”

There was a giggle and then one of his seniors who liked to look confused because she thought that it was attractive said, “What’s raunchy?”

“Off- color stories,” said Ron.

The blonde grinned at him and said, “You mean dirty stories?”

There was that nervous laughter that bounced through the room like a crazy ball that was careening off the walls. The blonde wiggled herself back and forth on her seat and made a show of renewed interest in her book and then said, “Ok let’s read those and skip the others.”

 

It gave Ron an idea. He was learning that if he threw things out to them and listened to how they reacted that something would be revealed to him, a way into the piece and there it was. “What we are gonna do is divide up the stories and tell them to each other like we are on the journey together. Each of you is gonna pick one and read it and put it into your own words and then we are gonna tell the stories to each other. Now there are some that we have to tell and I will handle those if you don’t pick them first but for the rest of them, you need to look the book over, skim the characters and decide whose story that you want to tell. Some of them are long, some are really short and some are really exciting and some are really boring. I’ll try to keep you away from the boring junk.”

Andrea was flapping faster Ron was wondering if he should ask her if she needed to use the bathroom and then the absurdity of asking a 17 year old girl is she needed to pee struck him and he dismissed  that idea.

There was a knock at his door a light tapping, but Ron didn’t hear it. He was at the board and writing down names of the pilgrims for the kids to choose from. He rattled off the first dozen or so from memory and then he was looking in the prologue to find the others. The girls heard the tapping immediately. Their heads all turning towards the door and then their eyes going straight down to their books and their hands making sure that they were copying what he was writing on the board. The was a second set of taps and this time Ron looked up to see the face of Sister Irene Emanuel standing in his doorway with a crooked finger that was beckoning him. He walked quickly to the door as she opened it and backed up and asked him to step into the hallway.

“Yes Sister?”

“Mr. Tuck, you have your jacket off.”

“Yes Sister, it’s really warm today.”

“But Mr. Tuck, your bare arms are dangling out.”

Ron blushed and looked at his arms and then back into her face. She turned him into a child almost instantly but he liked her. He trusted her and above all else he wanted to please her and have her think well of him. “Yes Sister, I’ll put the jacket back on right away.”

She nodded with a serene kind of admonishment and said, “That’s an excellent idea,” and walked back down the hall towards her office, the black habit floating along just above her feet.

Ron walked back into the room and as his students watched put his jacket back on immediately.

Joyce said, “Busted.” And the girls giggled.

Ron smiled and said, “Yes the sight of my arms in apparently an unnecessary distraction.” and went back to writing at the board.

Andrea said to Joyce, “Wasn’t his arms that I was staring it.”

 

Ron noticed that he lit up in a gleeful way when he taught his younger students. It wasn’t that the lessons were easier to do or that he liked the literature more, it was them. They rushed into the room eager to be there, to be in contact with him and he brightened so visibly at the sight of them that it was almost as if he became someone else. It was their writing that he pondered over. It was their questions that reappeared in his mind on his drives or when he was in the shower, never when he was with Zoe.  He wanted to keep them to himself, to mold them. At the end of the day it was they who flew passed his room and stuck their heads in and wished him good night.

That afternoon Ron left his class room early to attend a faculty meeting. Sister Irene Emanuel presided over these meetings with a look that commanded respect. She could use her facial expressions to convey her thoughts, particularly to accent what she wasn’t saying. Looking freshly laundered and finely scrubbed, she smiled at the gathering of her teachers and said. “Well it seems that we have settled in nicely and started the year off well and gotten through the foolishness of Halloween. Our enrollment is up by 30 and so we now have 485 students, which, all things considered, must be thought of as successful. Now, paper is not free and I have been finding too much of it wasted and discarded into the trash. Please remember that the girls do have notebooks and that it isn’t necessary to give them our paper for every little thing that they do. Also, please remember that we are not a provider of pens and pencils. The girls know that they need to come prepared and it would be wrong of us to spoil them.”

 

Ron felt heat come to his cheeks. He wondered if this was directed at him. Maybe he was being foolish and spoiling them but wasn’t it more important for them to learn. He almost raised a hand to ask this but then thought better of it.

Sister Irene Emanuel continued after a pause and a scan of her eyes and a pursing of her lips that communicated that she was not talking about the sisters who knew better. The nuns smiled and looked down. This had been a topic of discussion at the convent. They knew it was coming and she had delivered the line expertly, although one or two would not have minded if she had singled out the prime offenders. “Now the subject of discipline needs to be discussed. We are instituting a system of demerits.” She passed out a stack of freshly copied pages that were passed up the aisles. “I’m not going to read to you. Take a moment and look over the page.”

Ron read quickly. It was a system of offenses and the number of demerits that each carried with it.

Late:  1 demerit

Uniform violation: 1 demerit (first offense) 3 demerits (second offense and a call home) 5 demerits (for each additional offense and a parent conference) Excessive makeup is a uniform violation.

No homework: I demerit and an academic penalty

Failure to be respectful:  3 demerits

Unprepared for class: 1 demerit (this includes lack of book covers, or coming to class without the necessary tools for that day)

Fighting: 10 demerits (a parent conference in the principal’s office)

Inappropriate Behavior: the number of demerits assigned for this is at the discretion of the teacher. (Whatever she thinks is appropriate.)

Conduct unbecoming a lady: 2 demerits but perhaps more depending on the severity of the offense.

Inwardly, Ron groaned as he read the list. It was all about class control.  He had no problems with class control. Why should anyone have a problem with it? Ron knew enough to not say any of these things. He sat and listened.

“Today we are going to form a faculty council that will meet with girls who have exceeded the ten demerit limit. I know that any of you that are chosen will take this responsibility seriously.  There will be five members of the council, two lay teachers, two sisters and myself.”

Ron nodded and looked around wondering who he would think was best. Sister Juliana Marie was quickly nominated as was Sister Bernadette. Ron knew both. Juliana taught math in the classroom above his and Sister Bernadette taught religion and led the choir. Marsha was nominated and quickly confirmed by the staff as one of the senior lay teachers. Then Irene Emanuel said, “I think the addition of a male presence would help us in our cause and without asking for a vote looked over at Ron and said, “Would you be kind enough to join our effort Mr. Tuck?”

Ron almost gasped. Then he said as obediently as he was able, “Yes Sister”