Archives for July 1, 2013

Chapter 38

The energy in the school that Monday morning was amped up to a degree that was startling. Many of the girls had been locked away in the houses since before the snow had started to fall, and they descended on the school with a burst of energy that was throbbing and palpable. They had tired of their mothers and siblings.  They embraced the school like it was freedom itself.

Ron was overjoyed to see them and he smiled so much that his face hurt. He had gotten there early. Last year’s experience had taught him that while part of the lot would be plowed out for the teachers’ cars, that there would be a premium on spaces. Street parking was non-existent. Where there were spaces, chairs and boards had been pulled out to fill them until those people who dug the space out returned. It was an unwritten law of the city during snow. You cleared the space out and you owned it until the snow was gone. And if someone was foolish enough to move your chair, it was license to do whatever you wished in retaliation against the disrespectful car.

Last year’s seniors were gone, but they had been replaced by another group that looked strangely younger to Ron. His 9^th graders were now world wise sophomores who had gotten through their second fall. Many of them had signed up for one of the two electives that he was teaching: public speaking and creative writing. Some of them had taken both classes. Ron was not teaching Reading anymore and still taught Ninth grade and Twelfth grade English along with his electives.

His public speaking class was the first of the day and today he was going to introduce them to Extemporaneous Speeches. He had gone to the store that Sunday and bought five copies of the Star Ledger and five copies of the New York Times. The idea was that they would have 15 minutes to read, research, and then speak from their notes on a topic that he selected. The night before, he spent time scanning the papers and circling articles that were short enough for them to accomplish the task. Almost immediately, he abandoned much of the Times. The articles were just too long for what he had in mind. But another idea occurred to him and he had also circled pictures with long captions, thinking that they could just as easily work from those.  But first he wanted to know how they were.

“So, how have the last four days been for you?” he asked at the very start of class.

The answer was loud and responsorial, “Boring,” they said in unison. Then all of them laughed and Ron laughed with them.

“Didn’t anyone do anything that was interesting?” said Ron.

Elena said, “You don’t really want us to tell you about that stuff, do you Mr. Tuck?” Her dark eyes were dancing and her lips were curled into a tempting smile. There was a wave of giggles.

Ron made his exaggerated look of mock exasperation. “No Elena, not that stuff.”

Sandy said, “Well I ate so much that wasn’t sure that my uniform was going to fit.”

Ron laughed. “I wound up living on chicken roll and Swiss cheese until Saturday because I didn’t have food in my house and just about every place was closed.”

There was a scattering of “Ewws” about his diet. Then Sonia said, “Don’t you have anyone to cook for you, Mr. Tuck?”

Ron blushed and the girls laughed merrily. Some of the girls thought that they would be happy to cook for him while Ron explained the assignment. “Speeches will be short. Only two minutes each. Those of you that don’t get to go today, will go tomorrow. I put all your names into this basket, he held up a small wicker basket that he had found in his closet, left by the previous teacher in the classroom. So, it will be random who goes when.”

He watched them as they worked. Some were trying to write out their speeches and Ron corrected them and said in a whisper, “You don’t have time for that. Just take notes. I’ll show you what to do.” They smiled up at him and he knew that they trusted him and he felt his chest swell with pride at their trust. Fifteen minutes became twenty as Ron paced up and down the aisles. They were all working hard and he decided to let it go until he got the sense that they were mostly ready. It was not their fault if he had underestimated the amount of time that it was going to take them.

Finally, about twenty-five minutes in, he said, “OK, times up. Put down your pens, fold the newspapers and lay them aside.” He heard their groans but knew that he wasn’t rushing them too much. He let another minute go by. “Now,” he said, “let’s see who goes first.”

Their eyes followed his hand as he reached unto the basket.  He opened the slip of rolled up paper dramatically. “Angela Peronne.”

There was a burst of laughter. Maria said, “She’s absent, Mr. Tuck. You forgot to take attendance.”

Ron laughed and quickly went in back of his desk and took attendance, saying, “See I was so happy to see you, that I lost my head there.”

“Tammy Padilla, are you here?” Ron knew that she was and the tall girl with blonde streaks in her hair raised her hand. “Ok Tammy, up here in back of the podium.”

“I have to do it up there,” she said hoping that maybe if he forgot to take attendance, other things might have changed as well.

Ron moved to the side of the room, his face growing serious. The girls saw the shift and Tammy wiggled out of her desk and went to the front of the room.

“Now,” said Ron. “Remember your posture, feet shoulder width apart, back straight, eyes on us, just glance down at your cards when you need them. Voice nice and loud, speak slowly.

“The Shah of Iran has left his country,” said Tammy.

Sister Irene Emanuel’s voice broke in over the loudspeaker. “May I have your attention please.” Her voice was crisp but Ron detected a bit of tension in it. “Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are going to have to close the school for the rest of the day. Girls you are to go to your lockers and collect your things. Anyone who needs to call home, is to go to the convent where we will provide you with a phone and local calling privileges.”

 

The girls looked disappointed but they quickly got up and left. Ron felt disappointment as well. He had missed being with them and his mind had already raced ahead to his next classes and what they would be like. He gathered his books and slid them into the green canvas shoulder bag that he carried and walked over to the principal’s office.

Irene Emanuel looked distracted and rushed. She was in the hall in front of the office and shooing the girls out the door. “Is there anything that I can do to help,  Sister”

She looked up at him almost not recognizing him at first. Then she smiled and said, “Please make sure the other building is cleared, Mr. Tuck and then if you could let me know.”

Ron crossed back into his building and looked around the first floor. Then he went to the girls’ room and knocked and waited. And then he opened the door and went inside. It was empty and well-manicured. He felt uneasy about being in there and quickly backed out and shut the door. He climbed the steps to the second floor. It was deserted. He came back down and saw that he was the only one in the building and then crossed back over the courtyard to her office. There was a circle of nuns and teachers standing around her. He caught her eye and said, “All cleared out Sister.”

She nodded and said. “We have a gas leak that has been determined to be dangerous. We will all be leaving this area at once. You can expect that school will be in session tomorrow unless you hear differently. Mr. Tuck, would you be willing to stay behind with me for a few moments?”

“Of course, Sister.”

He answered her without thinking. Sister Margaret Evette said, “Does this mean that we can’t work in our classrooms?”

The look of annoyance that passed over Irene Emanuel’s face was unmistakable. “Sister, for the safety of everyone concerned, we would be better served to clear the area.”

Margaret Evette nodded in an uncomprehending way. She wanted to go back to her class and be a model of vigilance. People started leaving the hallway. Ron heard Doris tell Marsha that she was getting as far away from this dump as she could. Marsha nodded and they both waddled towards their cars. Irene Emanuel reached out and touched Ron’s shoulder. “Thank you for your help,” she said.

Ron answered, “You’d better be leaving too Sister.”

Irene Emanuel nodded. “I am as soon as I am sure that we have everyone out of here.”

“Do you want me to run upstairs and check around?”

“No, Ron. I’ll take care of it.”

Ron walked out the door and thought that it was funny that no one had mentioned smelling gas. He made his way along the shoveled paths to his car and then he saw Sister Bernadette standing over by the Rectory. She was pacing, which was unusual for her. He large shoulders were straight and square and her black shawl was gripped around them. “You ok, Bernadette?” She had told him to drop the “Sister” unless they were in front of other people by the end of the first year.

“What did she tell them was wrong?”

“Gas leak, but the funny thing is that I don’t smell anything.”

“You would have by the end of the day,” said Bernadette with her sarcastic humor that she only showed to certain friends and some of her older students.

“I found a body in the basement,” said Bernadette. “Father Jones decided that we should clear the school before calling the police. He was worried that the idea of a body might worry some of the parents. Now,” she said pointedly, “he seems to have gone out and I have to wait here for him before I call the cops, which I am going to do for about two more minutes before I just make the call. I mean how could the old fool go out when he knew there was a body in the basement?”

Ron searched her face and wanted to comfort her. He had never heard her talk disparagingly of the priest before. He knew that she must be genuinely distressed and admired her. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to hold it together this well if he had just found a body. “I’ll wait with you.”

She smiled at him. It was a loving smile and Ron had seen it flash across her face before when they were helping some kid together or when he made a joke while they were talking over morning coffee, which they had together when he got in early. A couple of times he thought that he had seen desire in that smile, but he dismissed that idea, telling himself that he was completely nuts.

It was then that Father Jones opened the door of the Rectory and seeing Ron standing there with her frowned. “You’d better go,” she said quietly. She started towards the Rectory door. Ron wanted to go with her but held back. It wasn’t his place and he knew it. Jones watched the nun and knew that she had told him the truth. He had told Irene to not have her say anything and he kept her waiting while he was on the phone with the bishop making sure that he was doing the right thing.

Ron got into his car and drove around the city. The streets were all cleared and the snow that was shoveled to the sides rose in high piles that blocked the view of the sidewalks. After a few minutes, he circled back towards the school. There was a collection of police cars in the parking lot and a large red city ambulance. All had their lights flashing.

Ron wanted to stop and to offer some assistance but he knew that at this point his presence would just be an embarrassment to people that he had come to truly like. So he drove up Heller Parkway and through the park and out of the city of Newark and into the Bellville Silver Lake district.

The stores and sidewalks were clean here. There were sanitation trucks that were gathering the snow and leaving the streets completely free. Ron smirked and thought to himself that nothing was too good for Silver Lake. The legend was that it was the place where the connected guys had their parents installed. The shops had the best meats and produce. It was rare that you ever heard anyone who was not speaking Italian when you were in these stores.  The legend was also that if you were black you could drive through the area but that you were not allowed to walk the streets or shop in any of the stores.

What was he doing back here? Bodies in the basement, restricted neighborhoods and priests that lied. Hadn’t he seen all of this before and decided that it was not going to be part of his life? Hadn’t he decided that these people were so clannish in the way that they saw the world that he would always be an outsider? The thoughts flooded him in torrents and he wanted to go back home and write again. But he drove his car up to his Mom’s new ceramics shop on Bloomfield Avenue just outside of Newark.

Ron found a place to park about a block and a half up the Avenue. He was in front of a liquor store a safe spot. He stuck his hands into his pockets and walked down the street. People were coming out today. They looked like nocturnal creatures who were wincing at the sight and feel of sunlight.  The reflection off the snow made the glare worse and they squinted and shuffled with uneasy steps.

Only Marjorie and her new partner Lois, who had somehow gotten the nickname Bumpy, were in the shop. Marjorie was stunned but happy to see him. “Ronald,” she smiled “is everything ok? Did something happen at work?”

“We got sent home,” he said.

“Did you lose your job? Did something happen? Did they fire you?”

Ron was surprised at the remarks. “No Mom, the only one who has ever fired me was you.” It was true. He was in college and working at her employment agency.  Things were starting to get rough in her business and she called in an expert to tell her how she could cut her overhead. The guy had looked at her business and cash flow and recommended that she let one of her agents go. There wasn’t enough of an outside business to support all three agents now. Marjorie was bringing in the bulk of the referrals with her contacts at local banks and she was really paying about a quarter of the salaries of the others out of her share. Ron was working part time, cold canvassing for new leads and his efforts were producing some listings but when the man said that somebody had to go, Marjorie decided that her son was the most expendable. She knew that he could get another part time job and these other people were feeding their families from what they made at the agency. So, she fired him that afternoon, no notice. Ron had been pissed at the time but the benefits of throwing it up over the years had already eclipsed what she was paying him.

“Do you always need to bring that up?” she said.

“They sent us home,” said Ron. “They said it was a gas leak but Sister Bernadette told me that they found a body in the basement.”

“Again with the bodies in the basement?” she said. “What is this fixation that you have about bodies in the basement? Do you think that you need to talk to someone about this? It really is getting to be too much.”

Ron laughed and remembered his dream and the way that he had told her about it.  He thought that it really was funny that he hadn’t made the connection. The truth was that there wasn’t a connection, as he saw it. It was a coincidence.

Bumpy was carrying in a batch of new molds and Ron was impressed at the way that the short, stocky woman was able to heft the weight. She really was as strong as a man.

“I haven’t seen you in a while and I didn’t expect to have the afternoon off.”

“I’m glad that you came Ronald. I’ve been waiting to call you.” She paused and sat down close to him and lit a cigarette. She was smoking Virginia Lights these days and every time Ron saw the package he couldn’t help but hear the jingle and the line, “You’ve come a long way baby.”

She drew in on the cigarette and said, “George moved out.”

Ron was stunned. The idea of George or his mother or his father going anywhere had never even slightly occurred to him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he moved out. He’s living with another woman and he wants a divorce.” Ron watched as her faced tightened and saw the tears that filled her eyes. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Thank God for Lois or I think I would go out of my mind.”

Ron sat there feeling stunned. George had left? What was gonna happen to his Mom?

 

Chapter 37

Ron was asleep in his clothes when the phone rang. It was 3am. He knew immediately.

“Hi Ron, I know I’ve woken you.”

“Hi Robin. It’s ok. I don’t have work tomorrow. I figured you didn’t. I was talking to my Dad earlier and he said that it was snowing like hell. How are you?”

Ron tried to think. How long had it been since he’d heard from her, six months. She must be working at a bar again and just getting home from work. “I’m ok. I’m snowed in but it’s warm here.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Can we talk for a while?”

“Sure.”

“I’m struggling with a decision Ron and I wanted to hear your voice. My boyfriend Keith wants me to move in with him.”

Ron was silent. He felt his hand tighten on the phone. Well there went the rest of this night’s sleep. “Do you love him?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

Ron felt tears start to run out of his eyes. “Well, that will help,” he said, hoping that she could not hear it in his voice.

“It didn’t help us much did it?”

“I guess not.”

“I never thought that I would be able to live with anyone but you.  But I have been seeing him for a while now and it seems like the next step.”

“I think you’ll be fine Robin.”

“He reminds me of you, but he’s different.”

Ron wasn’t going to take the bait. He held the phone away from his mouth and tried to clear his throat so that his voice didn’t sound heavy. Then he tried to be light. “Well, concentrate on the differences,” he said.

“How’s the teaching going?”

“It gets better all the time. I know the girls now. I know the school. I make fewer mistakes. I feel confident when I stand up in front of them.”

She was silent for a while. Then she said, “Maybe I should come for a visit.”

Ron almost choked out a sob. “You could stay here.”

“I think that I would like that.”

“When do you want to come?”

“In a couple of weeks. Before I do anything.”

Ron said that he would pick her up at the airport and she said that she would call him with the information and then she was gone.

He sat up turned on the lights and went back to his typewriter. Maybe, just maybe if he could recreate how he was when she fell in love with him, she would fall in love with him all over again. Either that or at least it would be as if he had never met her. He wrote until he looked up and saw light coming through his windows. Then he went back to bed and was asleep almost immediately.

 

Chapter 36

 

Ron was sound asleep in bed when the phone rang. He heard it as if in a dream and then it grew louder and her sat up in bed and fumbled for it. His voice was thick with sleep. “Hello.”

“Good morning Ron,” said the crisply starched voice of Sister Irene Emanuel. “The school is closed today because of the snow. Enjoy your holiday.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

He put the phone back into its cradle and looked around the dark room. He rolled on his side and stretched up to look out the window. He could see nothing but a white sheet of snowy ice that stuck to the plane of glass in the darkness. He heard the muffled whisper of wind.  He threw the covers off and got out of bed naked. He walked into the living room of his three room apartment and went to the bay windows that looked out onto Glenwood Avenue.  The sight stopped him. Everything was buried under a blanket of snow and the wind was blowing the small flakes down in a slant that made everything look askew.

He smiled and padded back to his warm empty bed and crawled under the covers and pulled them up to his chin and closed his eyes.

Two hours later he woke up again and saw that there was light outside. The telephone was ringing again and Ron rubbed his face and reached for it. “Hello.”

He could hear breathing on the other end of the line but there was no answer. He repeated, “Hello.” Still there was no answer and he knew why. “Zoe, it’s ok. You can talk to me. It’s ok.”

Still there was nothing but silence and the breathing. He waited several minutes and then said, “If you aren’t going to speak, I’ll just hang up.”

He heard the receiver click and lay back down staring up at the ceiling. It had been this way since she left and went to Boston. Once a week, sometimes more, the phone calls. Sometimes, she actually was able to speak, but then she just began to cry and tell him how much she missed him and before he could answer, there would be that click.

They had been living together for months before he really figured out about her eating disorder. He didn’t even know what bulimia was then. But he took the approach of trying to understand and being careful not to have any food in the house. He took her out to eat every single night and stayed with her after they came home, sometimes following her trips to the bath room with his own and looking for the tell-tale smells of either vomit or air freshener. It came to a head the night that he had forgotten about a half-gallon of ice cream that Quimpy had brought over and woke up in the middle of the night to find her frying it and then pouring it into a bottle and gulping it down until she could make herself sick.

Ron closed his eyes. It was then that he told her that he would never consider having a baby with her while she was like this. After that, she talked about art school more and more. Her father had convinced her that she could not get student loans because of his income. Ron had showed her how to get around that, and then she left him to go to an art school.

Ron opened his eyes again. He didn’t want to think about her anymore. He knew that if he kept thinking about her, it would come back to him how she had fucked Quimpy, and he would get angry and feel betrayed all over again.

Ron got out of bed and dressed in warm layers. He really didn’t own a winter coat so he made up for it with two sweaters and his warmest jacket. He did have boots and wore two pairs of socks under them. His feet felt huge as he trudged through the snow to the corner luncheonette.

He never kept coffee in the house, or that much food at all.  No one had been out to shovel their sidewalks and the one black walk required him to lift his feet high and feel a bit off balance.

The sidewalk in front of the luncheonette had been cleared and the lights from inside pulsed out through the windows.  The snow blew into his face and melted on his lips and found its way into his mouth.

He stamped his feet when he entered. The counter man looked up and recognized him and nodded. “What a fuckin’ mess this is,” he said.

Ron nodded. “Half expected you guys to be closed.”

The guy pointed up the ceiling. “It’s an easy commute.”

Ron got two containers of coffee and a buttered roll. He bought a quarter of a pound of chicken roll and a quarter of Swiss, figuring that he wouldn’t be going out again anytime soon with the way that this storm looked. He trudged back out into the snow, holding one container in each hand, the roll stuffed into his shirt with the deli food tucked under his belt. The walk back was precipitous and Ron was sure that he was either going to fall or drop one of the containers. About half way back he felt the deli food slide down below his belt. “Fuck,” he growled as he felt it inch lower with each step that he took. Still more than a half-block away and already feeling the package slip down to his upper thigh.   Trying to bend his body forward gripping the coffee containers in each hand and feeling it slip lower and lower; the deli meat now just above his knee.

Ron stopped and looked around and saw no place to set the containers down so that he could adjust. He bent lower and tried to press his elbow against the escaping package. Finally trying to cradle the second container against his chest, Ron reached down and grabbed the package through his pants. The pressure of his arm was too much and the lid popped off and the coffee spilled out against his jacket. Ron watched with dismay as it gurgled out over his glove, at first very hot and then swiftly cooling. Finally he just let it drop into the snow. He watched the brown circle spread out. He clutched the package and trudged the rest of the way back to his apartment feeling defeated.

Ron ate his roll and drank his remaining coffee sitting in front of his bay windows watching the snow come down. He liked watching the spectacle. His eyes watched the cars coming slowly down the street, some carrying absurd roofs filled with mounting snow and some completely cleared. He heard the click of chains as a bus rolled passed his windows. He felt like this was time in a bubble. His work was done for his next class. His papers were all graded. He knew what he wanted to do for the next couple of weeks.

It was then that a thought flashed in his mind. “Suppose I wrote the truth.”  The idea stunned him for a moment, but it didn’t go away. Suppose he did write the truth? What difference would it make? He stared over at his typewriter and the pile of paper that rested, well stacked and empty, next to it. It was then that he saw the plow truck push the snow against his car and the other cars that were on that side of the street. The snow was icy and caked and dirty when it slid against his car and all but obliterated the sight of his wheels and parts of the front and rear fenders. “Shit!” he said aloud.

Wrapped in a scarf and with more layers of clothing on and slogging in his boots, Ron reached the car. His shovel was in the trunk so he held his arm against the top of trunk and tried to sweep the snow off. He got about halfway when the weight of it stopped his progress and ice made its way under his glove and up under his sleeve.  He lifted his arm and shook it to get the ice out and this motion sent his glove into the snow. Ron looked down at the glove with a helpless feeling. Snow was already working its way into the fingers. He bent over and picked it up with his bare hand. His fingers were already turning red.  The glove was wet and cold on his hand. This time he used his other hand to sweep and made it to the end before the ice and snow went up his other sleeve. “Motherfucker!” he said under his breath. Then he reached with his trembling and now bare fingers for his keys. He got them out and tried to insert the key into the lock. It was frozen solid. He made a fist and slapped the lock. Then he put his gloves back on and tried to punch the ice off. Both of his hands were cold and stinging and going numb and the lock wasn’t budging.

Sullenly, Ron trudged back across the street and up the stairs into the kitchen. When the ice on the underside of his boots contacted the linoleum of his lichen floor, his feet went up into the air and he came down flat on the floor. He lay there a moment in panic and checked his knees. They were ok. He exhaled a long sigh of relief and slowly got up, clinging to the side of the sink as his boots began to slide again. He bent down and took them off and hurled them at his door.

Ron ran the water until it was very hot and then filled an aluminum pot.  He knocked the ice off of his boots in the tub. He put them back on and carried the pot of hot water down the stairs but he had forgotten to use a lid and the water sloshed out over his gloved hands and down his pants leg. It burned and he opened his mouth into an oval of pain. By the time he got across the street, almost a third of the water was wasted but he thought he still had enough. He poured it on the lock and watched it steam the ice away. They key went in easily now.

Ron liked to dig and he was good at it. He bent his back into it and found a rhythm and then he was able to open the car door and get inside and start it up.  The exhaust made a black circle of soot by the tail pipe as Ron dug and listened to the car engine hum. An hour or so later, he was ready to give it a try.

He felt exaltation when the car nosed its way out onto the street. And then he backed it in again. He gathered his now very cold aluminum pot and put the shovel in the back seat and went back up to his warm apartment, feeling a sense of accomplishment. Ron piled his wet icy clothes in a corner of the kitchen, put on clean, warm, dry clothes. He sat down at his desk and rubbed his hands together and looked back out admiringly at his work, just as the snow plow came back down the street and pushed a fresh load against the side of his newly re-encased transportation.

He laughed to himself. It really was absurd. Then he sat down at his typewriter and began to write. Where to start was easy. Lashly’s class. What class? It just came out in a stream. Ron felt his hands flying over the keys and then he looked up and it was dark. How long had he been doing that? He was hungry. It was still snowing.

Ron went into the kitchen and took out the lunchmeat. He had no bread, but he did have some mayo. He rolled the chicken breast and the cheese into cylinders after coating the insides with mayo and went back into the front room to read what he had written. He was appalled. The truth was that he could not write a sentence without having at least three typos and two misspelled words. He wanted to take out his red pen and put an F on every page, but set about to correcting the errors with a dictionary opened up beside the stack of fifteen pages that he has written. When he was finished he felt sick to his stomach. Whatever made him think that he could write anything? What was the matter with him? Of course his poetry was shit. Because he didn’t know the language!

Ron ate silently and sulked, staring at the red marks that he had made like they were accusations. Then he heard a feint tapping at his door. He walked through the rooms and opened the door. No one was there, but on his mat was a small plate of macaroni and sauce. He looked down at it, both wincing and smiling at the same time. It was the old woman who lived next door to him. She was forever leaving him scraps like he was a pet. But Ron chose to see them as gifts. He never told her what he ate and what he flushed down the toilet. He always washed her dish and knocked politely on her door the next day and thanked her for being so kind to him and told her that she didn’t have to do that. She never really answered and when Ron looked at her face, he saw someone who did not understand what he had been saying. He was unsure if she was hard of hearing or did not understand English.

But this time he was hungry and without thinking about it he just ate the food. It tasted good. It was cold but tasted good.

He was just finishing when his phone began to ring.

“Ron the school will be closed until Monday. Enjoy your weekend and stay warm.”

“Thank you Sister Irene. I’ll see you on Monday.”

It was Thursday night and his bubble had just gotten much bigger. He felt a rush of freedom surge through him as he walked back through the rooms. He turned on his stereo and Bob Dylan’s voice sang “Changing of the Guard.” He cranked it up and rolled a joint. He filled a large glass with water and sat back down at the typewriter. The music was distracting him. He tuned the volume down, but still the power of Dylan’s words broke through and he found himself thinking about them as he tried to write. It was no good.  He got up and found one of his Bill Evan albums and slipped it on. No voice, no words and now the piano was helping. It could give him a rhythm that he could write to. It was like his soundtrack. It kept the thoughts arranged in his head. The side was long finished before he realized that it wasn’t playing anymore.

Ron turned the record over and then watered his plants. They were healthy and wild and they loved him back when he loved them. The music drew him back to the desk. It was Zoe’s desk. She had wanted it back. He had said that he would give it to her when she made some effort to pay back some of the money that she had borrowed from him. He had felt like an asshole doing that, but enough was enough. It’s not like she ever used the desk and of all the dozens and dozens of drawings that she had made of him, she had given him none. He wondered why she had done that. She would just have destroyed them anyway. He loved the way that he looked through her eyes. What had Julian called her? A boardwalk portrait painter. Julian was an ass. Yeah, maybe he was, but he hadn’t stolen her desk.

Chapter 35

 

Saturday morning was unbelievably cold and sunny. The wind blew the car as they drove passed the new football stadium on Route 3 as they made their way into New York City. They drove into a place called Sculpture Supply. Zoe was effervescent. She was bouncing up and down on the seat of the car before they even went into the place. Ron was thrilled to see her so happy and delighted.

“The sculpture is already in the stone,” she told him as they wandered down the aisles that were like nothing Ron had ever seen before. There were heavy wooden racks and placed on them were pieces of rock. There were no labels, no prices. The understanding was that if you were shopping there, you knew what you were doing. Ron listened to her carefully as she spoke but he didn’t look at her. His eyes were drawn to the rocks. He ran his hands over them. He stared at them from different angles. Zoe craned her neck to look at them from the top. “I love to work with marble. I think it is my favorite thing.”

“More than painting?”

“Yes,” she said dreamily, “much more than painting.”

And then she stopped and stood very still. She was looking at a piece of white alabaster. It lay on its side and was rough all around. She rubbed her hands on her thighs before she touched it. Ron stood back from her and watched. She called someone over and they talked about the stone.

It was alabaster. It weighed 48 pounds.  She could take it with her. She could afford it.  Then Zoe began to cry. Ron looked at her with astonishment. Why was she crying? What had just happened?

“Zoe, is something wrong?”

She had her fist clenched tightly to her mouth and Ron could see that she was biting herself. Her body was trembling. “Everything is wrong,” she said. “Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“What am I doing here?” she said. She looked at him as if it was his fault that they were in this place. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Zoe, you asked me to bring you here.”

“But why did you?” She stepped back from the stone and looked at him accusingly and then she turned on her heel and headed for the door. Ron stood there feeling completely helpless and confused. He felt the eyes of other people in the shop looking at him. There was the feeling of accusation that was coming from them. Then he started after her and caught up with her on the street alongside the car. He reached out and took her shoulders and turned her to him. Her face was scrunched and red. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and had pooled up in back of her glasses. Ron could see the light refracting on the tears in back of the lenses.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“That stone is beautiful. It is perfect and I have no place to work on it. I don’t have the right tools to work on it. I need more training to be able to do what I want to do with it and I am stuck here. I need a studio and all I have is a pad and pastels.”

“But didn’t you know all that before we came here?”

She slapped his face hard. He felt his neck snap when she hit him. And then she was turning and walking down to the street. The wind blew her hair to the side. Ron stood there motionless. He could not recall ever being slapped in the face before. Maybe he should just get into the car and drive away. He couldn’t do that! And then he was jogging down the sidewalk after her. She heard him and saw him and then bolted. She was running full speed and Ron knew instantly that there was no way that he could catch her. He stopped running and watched as she reached the corner and then turned to the left and was gone.

He went back to the car and got in and turned on the engine. He was shivering. He was angry. He shoved his hands into his pockets and sat there thinking that he had given up the chance to take Robin to the airport for this.

A long time passed and then he got out of the car and looked around to see if he could spot her. He did not see her wedged into a doorway with her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking from the uncontrollable crying that wracked through her body. She told herself that she was being stupid. She told herself to get up and go to the car but she couldn’t seem to move. She waited for his car to pull out and leave but it didn’t. He turned off the engine and sat there smoking a cigarette. Why was he waiting for her? Why wasn’t he just smart enough to see what she was and just leave?

She got up slowly and walked to the car. She opened the door and got in. She stared at him and waited. Without looking at her, he started the engine and began to drive back home.

She kept staring at him, waiting for him to scream at her. They went into the tunnel and when they were in the semi darkness and she could not see the face that had not taken its eyes from the road, she asked, “Why didn’t you just leave me there?”

Still without looking at her, he said, “I was frightened for you.”

Ron felt like he had crossed the border back from some alien land when the car shot out of the tunnel. Jersey reassured him. He knew the rules.

When they got back to the apartment, she said, “Will you just take me to bed?

Ron said, “No.”

He opened his book bag and spread papers out on his desk and began to work. She sat in a chair in the kitchen and watched him.

End of Part 1

Chapter 34

 

Zoe was having trouble sitting as they drove down to Rahway.  Ron was smiling. That afternoon, between their repeated sessions of frenzied love-making, he told her that Robin has been back for a visit. She became frightened. “Did she take you to bed with her?”

“No.”

“Did she ask you to?”

“No,” said Ron. “She’s seeing someone.”

“Would you have fucked her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I would have understood,” said Zoe. “I know how much you love her.”

“How do you know that?” Ron was more than amazed at her reaction. He was expecting tears and recriminations. He was almost unable to believe her reaction.

“Ron, I knew that she was coming. That’s why I ran away.”

Ron wanted to ask how she knew, but something inside of him said that he was better off to just let it go and for the first time that he could remember, he did. Zoe was squirming on the seat next to him but he could tell that she was happy. She had her sketch pad and her pastels with her. She told him that she was looking forward to a chance to do some drawings of Rahway.

The house was brightly lit. Cars filled the gravel driveway and Ron had to back out again and park on the street, so that he didn’t block anyone in. They went up the drive and to the back door. The bells over the door jingled as they entered.  Neil Diamond’s Longfellow Serenade was playing on the stereo.  They walked into the kitchen and there was Kelly, a very pretty girl with impossibly long red hair. It hung straight and meticulously manicured down to her waist. Ron knew her well. They had been Warren’s students together. Kelly hadn’t liked him since he had dumped one of her girlfriends and the girl, despondent over Ron being the first man to fuck her, had tried to kill herself. Ron always felt tense around Kelly but he smiled and said, “Hi Kelly. I’d like you to meet Zoe.”

Zoe stood there in her jeans holding her pad and pastels and Kelly looked over at her without really acknowledging Ron and said, “Hi.  I’m just trying to figure out how this over works. I’ve never seen one this old before.”

Zoe put her things down on the counter and said, “Let me help.”

And then the two of them were kneeling down and looking inside and turning knobs. Ron stared for an instant at the way that Kelly’s hair and Zoe’s hair intertwined and then he walked down the single step into the living room.

The white washed fireplace was blazing and pine branches had been laid across the top of the split flue mantle. There were six people seated on cushions drawn up close to the flames in a semi-circle, all turned in and facing the burning wood. All of their heads seemed to swivel at the same time.

Warren called out, “Hey Ron, how are you?” in his unmistakable drawl.

Laureen’s eyes flashed dark in the flames when she saw him. “Hi Ron, happy holidays.”

Julian T. Willy said with his unmistakable sarcasm. “Well, now the evening will surely get more interesting.”

April’s smile was soft and radiant and she stood when she saw Ron and came to him and hugged him to her. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. It’s really good to see you.”

Ron embraced her with delight and surprise. He held her at arm’s length and said. “You look great April. It’s good to see you as well.”

“Come sit by the fire,” said Warren. “We have just been talking about the year gone by.”

“Did you bring Chris, or is someone else marching in your bimbo parade these days?” said Julian, who was now openly gay and never passed up a chance to make some sexual reference to Ron and Chris’s friendship.

Laureen laughed and said, “Julian, make some attempt to be civil.”

Julian, with a flourish threw his scarf around his neck and over his shoulder, “What? I can’t have fun with the entertainment? Please tell me that it is why you invited him, Warren and that it was not some misplaced notion of a contribution to the conversation other than that of comic relief.”

Laureen laughed again and said, “Julian you are so funny when you are drunk.”

“Zoe is in the kitchen with Kelly,” he said.

“The boardwalk portrait painter?” said Julian.

Laureen slapped him playfully and stood up to go and greet Zoe in the kitchen.

Ron sat down cross-legged opposite Warren and Julian. April curled in next to him. “No,” said Ron. “I didn’t bring Chris, but I have his number if you want to give him a call and see if he still loves you, Julian.”

“Be nice,” said Warren. “Now, you were about to tell us what you thought was the most important thing that happened this year, Julian”

“The most intriguing event of the year has been the death of Nadezhda Kashina” said Julian.

Ron had no idea who he was talking about. Warren and April seemed to know. “Who is that?”

“Someone far beyond your ability to comprehend,” said Julian.

Warren drawled, “And what event has your imagination Ron?”

Ron thought that Warren had no idea who he was anymore but played the I’m current on Events of the Day game “I’d say that it was what Sadat has done,” said Ron.

Warren smiled. “I thought that you would have said Carter’s pardon.”

“I think it’s been a dull year,” said April.

Kelly and Zoe and Laureen walked into the living room and announced that the oven was hopeless, but that they had things under control. Warren asked if they wanted him to take a look at it, but Kelly assured him that it was fine and sat between his legs and kissed him. Zoe put her hands on Ron’s shoulders and then knelt alongside of him to avoid sitting on the wooden floor. Everyone said hello to Zoe. Ron was tense and thought that if Julian made one insulting crack about her that he could easily strangle him in his scarf.

“For me,” said Warren, “the death of Gary Gilmore is symbolic. It displays an entirely new level of marketing death that is dangerous for our culture.”

“As if we weren’t already marketing death,” said Ron.

“The work of Vicente Aleixandre,” said Laureen.

“You really do like him, don’t you?” said Warren.

“He’s amazing,” said Laureen.

Again, Ron did not know who they were talking about. He would ask Laureen about him later, outside of Julian’s earshot.

“What do you think is the most significant event this year, Kelly?”

Kelly moved her head from side to side to make her incredible long hair shimmer and then she said smiling, “Being with you.”

Everyone laughed and Kelly blushed. Warren reached over her shoulder and squeezed her right breast. “That’s deflecting the question.”

“Warren, you fool, the woman just said that she loved you. Take it with a simple smile and treat her well,” said Laureen.

Everyone laughed again and Kelly slid down to rest her head on Warren’s lap. Then Warren turned his gaze on Zoe. “And what would be your answer?”

“The light reflecting off of a lake that I saw in New York State. The way that the colors blended into the water and made it seem like a large diamond.”

“Costume jewelry,” said Julian.

“What was it really for you Julian, the bath houses?” asked Ron.

Julian stiffened. “I go to the bath houses as a political statement.”

Laureen laughed. “Not at all for all the naked bodies, I know.”

Ron stared at the fire. He hadn’t done it when he had first walked into the room. The immediacy and emotional reaction to the people there had held his attention. But now the fire was reaching for him again and he was giving himself to it. The flames waved to him like another old friend. The fire smiled at him. In a wicked kind of way, the fire laughed at him. Ron held the gaze of the flames. The sounds of the people’s voices faded. The fire wanted to talk to him, to tell him something, but he had to blot out the distractions first. He was being pulled closer to the flames; he felt the heat on his face. The fire was chanting. “Mine, mine.”

He felt Zoe take his hand and squeeze it but he didn’t respond. He wanted to dance with the fire. He wanted to help the fire claim what she owned. And then there was Zoe’s voice in his ear. “Ron, are you alright?”

He looked away from the flames and into her face. She was staring at him and brushing his hair with her fingers. The rest of the people in the room were looking at him.  He looked back into Zoe’s face and the fire was dancing on her glasses waving to him and laughing. Ron tried to laugh but it came out like a grunt. “I guess I just zoned out there for a little while.”

Julian’s eyes were filled with glee. Kelly was staring at him with a distant curiosity. April hadn’t looked at him since Zoe had come into the room. Warren drew in on his pipe and Ron saw the embers glow.

Laureen laughed and said, “I asked you if you had seen Robin.”

“Oh,” said Ron. “Yes, I saw her. She’s doing well. She’s learning to make paper.”

At dinner, Warren returned to the earlier topics. He wanted his guests to think about what they had chosen as significant events from the perspective of whether those events were going to change the lives of the people seated around the oval shaped, oak table. He looked at each one of them. In his opinion, only Kelly and Zoe had brought up events that were truly significant. Of course he did not mention his references to Gary Gilmore, but he was getting to it. “What I’m working at here,” said Warren, “is to come to an understanding of why this avant garde painter or this Nobel Prize winning author are important to you personally. What significance will the Sadat visit really have? I can understand why someone would think that a relationship is important. Or why someone would think that a particular experience was important.” He gave Zoe a smile of acknowledgement. “But why these other things?”

Laureen giggled again. “Of course Warren is conveniently leaving out his personal interest in Gary Gilmore.”

“Not at all,” said Lashly pointedly. “My interest is in the way that the culture responded to the execution. I’m trying to discover why this is a culture that has found itself distracted by the macabre. And that is of some importance to me, both personally and as a member of the culture.”

Julian T. Willy stood. “Well on that happy note, I do think that I will be going.” The announcement startled the table. They were in the middle of the meal.

Laureen and Kelly both said, “Julian stay,” in a harmony that if no one knew better would have sounded rehearsed and almost like the chorus of a song. But Julian was on his feet. He kissed Laureen and Kelly on the cheek. Thanked Warren for inviting him over.

But Lashly wasn’t ready to see him go. “I can understand you feeling uncomfortable with this conversation, Julian. But it’s not going where you think that it is.”

Julian smiled and brought his heels together with an audible click. He looked down at Warren and said, “What I think is that I graduated from college some time ago.”

“I don’t think that you really want to leave,” said Warren.

Julian walked in long, stiff legged strides to the door with his arms held straight down and immobile. Putting on his jacket and saying, “Ho, ho, ho,” he was gone. The bells over the door jingled as an after-effect.

Ron watched and thought there was something admirable about Julian’s actions. He had always been a fan of fast exits.

Warren clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the table. “He was not ready to have this conversation. My guess is that he felt too exposed.”

“Maybe it was us, Warren. Julian hasn’t been around for a long time and I’m sure that it wasn’t easy for him to come here tonight,” said Laureen. “He doesn’t love this place the way that we do. It holds some bad memories for him.”

Ron spoke up. “We all have some bad memories to deal with Laureen. It’s how we handle them that makes the difference.”

“Not everyone is as hard as you are Ron,” said Warren. “Laureen is right. I pushed him too hard. “

Ron wondered what the hell that they were talking about. No one had pushed Julian at all from what he could see. It seemed to Ron that he just didn’t want to spend another evening as Warren’s student. Then Ron wondered what he was doing there. He had his own students now and he was certain that he wasn’t going to ever sleep with any of them or pry into their personal lives for his own satisfaction the way that Warren did. But maybe they all wanted him to pry into their lives. Maybe they all thought that he had some of the answers about themselves that they were yet to discover. Maybe Warren saw them all as lab rats. Maybe he saw himself as giving everything that he had in his life to his students. He was surely not shy about taking some things back. The truth was that every one of them around the table, with the possible exception of Zoe, knew exactly what the story was with this guy, especially Ron.

“What happened to you a while back in there?” said Warren looking at Ron. “You looked like you were in some kind of a trance? Have you been smoking or taking something?”

“No, I just caught up staring at the fire,” said Ron.

“You’re sure that was it?”

“Yeah, it’s the first time that I have been around an open fire since the apartment burned up.”

Laureen said, “I think that Ron has a whole lot on his mind these days.”

The dinner table was lit by candles after Kelly and Zoe cleared the dishes. April and Laureen watched them but Ron got up and helped. They carried dishes down the galley style kitchen to the sink and then returned for more. Zoe managed to brush against Ron each time that they passed each other. Kelly never looked at him and seemed a bit annoyed by his nearness.

Then they all settled back to the table and Ron lit a cigarette.

Warren said, “So how’s the teaching going?”

“I never expected to love it this much, Warren. I didn’t understand how I would feel responsible for them.”

“You have to let that go,” said Warren. “You aren’t responsible for them and you can’t teach them anything that they aren’t ready to learn.”

“They need to learn to read and write. They are ready for that and that’s what I’m concentrating on. It’s interesting to see their language skills develop. And I do believe that it will help them immensely in their lives to be able to read and write well.”

“Only if they want it to help them,” said Warren.

Laureen said, “And how are the nuns?” She giggled after asking the question.

April’s eyes got bigger in the light. “You are working at a Catholic school? With nuns?”

“I know, “said Ron. “ I know. But they’re just people, ya know. Mostly they are very good people.”

“And what do they think of you?” said April.

“I don’t know,” said Ron.

“They are going to put him in charge of discipline,” said Zoe.

Laureen was in mid swallow of a glass of diet pepsi and began to choke and laugh at the same time.  The soda went up her nose and she held a napkin to her face and choked while she turned red and laughed. Ron laughed too and Warren smiled.

April said, “I just can’t picture you around nuns.”

Zoe said, “Ron is the most sexual person that I ever met. Do you think that they pick up on that?”

Before they left, April said, “Will you call me? I really have missed talking with you.” Ron said that he would.

As they drove home, Zoe snuggled into him and said, “It’s exciting to be there.”

Ron smiled. “Why did you find it exciting?”

“I don’t know. It made me feel like I was at the center of things. And when Warren asked me questions at the table, it was embarrassing but at the same time it made me feel important. Like I was speaking and what I had to say mattered.”

“I know what you mean,” said Ron.

“You and Warren are a lot alike.”

Ron felt himself tense when she said that. “Why do you think that?”

“You’re both very strong and very smart. And you both know how to get what you want. Why doesn’t Kelly like you?”

“It’s a long story. I used to date one of her friends”

“She told me to be careful of you.”

“That was nice of her.”

“I didn’t care what she said. I told her that I thought you and Warren are alike and she agreed but then said ‘not in a good way though.’”

Ron felt himself getting angry. Julian had been right.