Chapter 61
It was a warm Saturday evening late in October. Ron was taking a walk up to Elwood Park to see if any of his friends were around. He was amazed at the reactions that people had to him playing on the upper level team. They seemed to look at him differently. He basked in the glow of it but not as much as he loved to play. He was as happy as he could remember being in a so long. He hadn’t been slapped since the football season had started. His grades had improved. He was even passing French and Latin and Algebra, although the last was much in need of improvement and he hoped that somehow it would just begin to click for him.
The days were shorter now and it was dark early, but the streetlights that ringed the park created a twilight that allowed you to see. There was a large group of guys and they were playing football. Ron knew that he wasn’t allowed in these kinds of games anymore. It was against the team rules, but he wanted to play. He wanted be unstoppable and with these guys, he could still run with the ball.
He was invited into the game and quickly said yes. He’d dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt. If he had been honest with himself, he would have admitted that this was why he had come here. It was a seven on seven game. Ron was playing his position on defense, he was a linebacker. When his team had the ball, he was in the backfield.
On the sixth play of the game, he caught a short pass and pivoted the way that he had learned from Richie. The fake worked and he raced up the sidelines and scored. The elation sent waves of euphoria racing through him.
Instead of kicking the ball to the other team, these kids threw it. Ron was lined up on the left. The ball spiraled down the middle of the field. When it got higher than the lights, it couldn’t be seen. Ron raced to where he thought it would land and then it was coming down and bouncing and Larry Bonet picked it and ran up the middle of the field. Ron cut in towards him and lunged. As he lunged he planted his foot, the way that he did when he was wearing cleats. But he was wearing sneakers and they slipped and the lunge came up short and he felt his arm curl to grab Larry’s hip, but there was no force behind it.
Ron bounced off harmlessly and hit the ground hard. The pop that he heard was followed by electric jolts of pain. He’d never felt a pop in his body before. He tried to jump up and run after they play. He got to his feet, the adrenalin rushing through him, and ran. On the second step, her heard the pop again and went down hard, rolling and clutching at his left knee.
He tried to get to his feet but he was having trouble straightening his leg. It seemed to be bent like a dog’s leg and he couldn’t manage to straighten it out. He tried to take a step, but his leg wouldn’t move. He stood there with a helpless look of pain and embarrassment. “I don’t think that I can play anymore tonight,” he said.
His immediate problem was how to move. He couldn’t just stand there in the middle of the field. He needed to get home and look at his knee, but he couldn’t take a step.
Larry Bonet and Phillip Rolandelli, helped him to a car that was parked alongside of the park. He felt some relief when he leaned against it. Maybe if he just stood there until the throbbing went away, everything would be alright.
Ron felt his knee swelling. He looked down and to his horror it was pressing out against his jeans. They seemed trapped by the swollen knee. Ron leaned over and tried to pull the jeans down. Another wave of electric shocked rushed through him. This was bad. This was really bad. He watched the guys play a while longer and then the game broke up and the kids started home.
Ron found that if he pressed down on his toes when he tried to hobble that he could propel himself forward. Maybe if he had a stick, something to lean on when he stepped he could make it.
The six blocks he needed to cover to get to their apartment took over an hour. Once he sat down to rest on a porch, but the effort that it took to get back onto his feet convinced him that he shouldn’t do that anymore. He was sweating profusely. The pain just wouldn’t stop. When he reached the apartment he was shaking with the effort that it took to take a single step.
His mind went into shock when he looked at the steps. How the fuck was he supposed to manage them? He had an idea. He placed both hands on the railing and hopped on his good leg. The jolt squeezed tears out of his eyes. He had another idea. He sat on the steps, bent his arms and used them to raise his body to the next step. On his ass, he managed the two flights of stairs. The hallway of the apartment was dark. Ron could see the glow of the television coming from the living room. He hobbled slowly to his room.
Marjorie heard the noise and said, “Is that you Ronald?”
Ron tried to make his voice sound normal. “Yeah Mom.”
“Come in here a moment.”
“I can’t,”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I fell. I’m having trouble walking. I think I did something to my leg.”
“Well, take your time. I want to talk to you.”
Marjorie had seen Ron come home bruised before. He always tried to hide his bumps and bruises so that Marjorie wouldn’t get angry with him. She waited.
Ron tried to take a couple of steps, but he had used all of his energy to get home and then to get up the stairs.
Marjorie heard it in his voice when he half cried, “I can’t.”
Marjorie and George left their TV program and the light went on in the hallway. Ron stood there hunched over. He was leaning against the wall and his left legs wasn’t touching the ground.
Marjorie gasped when she got closer. He was drenched in sweat. His hair was matted to his head. He had been crying. George moved towards him and Ron felt his supporting bulk. George said, “Just lean on me.” Ron could smell the beer on George’s breath as he half carried him into the living room. They laid him on the couch.
Marjorie said, “What did you do to yourself?”
“I don’t know. I tripped in the park.”
She suspected immediately. “Were you playing football?”
Ron shrugged.
“Don’t you get enough of football all week long? Now look at what you’ve done.”
Ron felt guilty, but angry too. Other kids’ mothers felt sorry for them when they got hurt. His mother took it as something that he had done to himself to hurt her.
George showed him how to use a kitchen chair to lean on when he tried to move. He would lean against the back of it and then slide it forward across the wooden floor, but it didn’t work on the stained, shaggy white rug. “I’m going to bed,” said Ron.
“Well I hope it’s better in the morning,” said Marjorie.
Ron slid his chair down the hallway and made it to his bedroom. When he finally got his jeans off, he saw that his left knee was twice the size of his right knee and it was hot to the touch.
Ron had trouble sleeping. Each time he turned in his sleep, the pain woke him up. In the middle of the night he sat up and rubbed his palms up and down the sides of his knee. It seemed ever larger and hotter. Ron knew that he was in trouble. He’d never been hurt like this before. The closest thing was when he fell from the top of a chain link fence and his right ankle had bounced up from the ground and been impaled on one of the twisted bottom ends of the fence. He’d hidden that one from his mother and still had a deep scar.
Why had he done it? How could he have been this stupid? Now he might have ruined everything.
The next morning was no better. They set him in the living room with his knee propped up on his chair and George covered it with an ice bag. Ron felt helpless. The least little thing that he tried to do was an ordeal. Trying to stand on one leg and urinate was impossible. He felt humiliated when he sat on the bowl to pee. He assured Marjorie and George that he was fine and they were to George’s mother’s house for dinner, promising to bring him a plate home for him. At least he’d gotten out of that.
Ron tried to do homework, but his mind would not allow him to concentrate. What was going to happen to him? What was wrong with his knee? How much trouble was he in? The questions tormented him as much as the pain.
After two ice bags, the swelling went down a bit and Ron was elated. Maybe it was going to be ok. He’d heard about sprained knees. Maybe that was what he had done. But in his ears, he could still hear that sickening pop.
On Sunday night, Marjorie said, “I don’t think that you can go to school tomorrow. I’m going to have to find some way to get you to the doctor. Of course I don’t know how I’m going to do that and I might lose my job, but I’m glad that you had fun playing football.” She spit the word football out like she hated it.
Ron kept the ice on his knee all night long. He listened to the radio, hiding it under his pillow and pressing his ear down to the music. Puff the Magic Dragon and You Don’t Have to be a Baby to Cry filtered up into him. He heard Louie Louie at least four times and still didn’t understand what the words meant. Every two hours, he used the chair and limped down the hall as quietly as he could and refilled the ice bag.
Marjorie thought she heard him each time but was too angry at him for getting hurt to get out of bed. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt and now she’d seen him hurt over and over. Was that the joy of being a mother?
By morning Ron said and showed that he could walk without the chair. He limped and he was tentative, but he was improved. “Mom, just let me stay home today, no doctor, you go to work. George was right. The ice is working.”
George had long since left for work. What Ron was offering made the day simple. It was routine. “Ok, but I need to call your father.”
Ron was watching a rerun of The People’s Choice when the phone rang. He liked that Cleo the dog talked. He wanted to see the mayor’s daughter without her clothes. Absently, he was stroking his penis when the phone rang.
“Ronald?”
His erection dissipated in an eye blink. “Hi Dad.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Ron closed his eyes. Now he needed to pee. “I was stupid. I got hurt because I was stupid again.”
“That’s how you learn,” said Harry. “How bad is it?”
“I’ve been putting ice on it. I can almost walk now. It hurts but it’s going to be ok.”
“I’ll call you later. Try not to be stupid again.”
Ron flushed at the admonishment. “OK.”
The receiver clicked. Ron looked back up at the screen to see the Mayor’s daughter walk away with her hips wiggling. He began to stroke it again.
Chapter 62
“Edger Allen Poe was way ahead of his time. So far ahead and so sophisticated that it took his country decades to really catch up to what he was doing. In France, he was loved and respected. Not here. He suffered from what he believed were certain demons inside of him and his stories always seem like an attempt at expiation.”
Ron turned to the chalkboard and wrote to expiate in block letters on the board. “What does this word mean?”
Mark Simon carried a pocket dictionary with his books. He fished it out of his bag and thumbed through pages. Ron saw him and waited. Other students tuned to a dictionary that was in the back of their literature books, but Ron doubted that they would find it there. Mark said, “To atone for as in atoning for one’s crimes.”
Ron smiled. “That’s right. Now after you read tonight’s story, I want you to give me a paragraph that discusses the connection between The Black Cat and expiation.” Ron knew that they had probably read the story before. He had been surprised to see it included in the book. It was something that was usually taught in middle school or perhaps ninth grade. It was a warm up to The Fall of The House of Usher. He gave them the writing assignment to assure that they would read and not try to rely on their younger memories of the story
.
Ron waited outside of Brother Todd O’Malley’s office. It was his prep and he had been given something shockingly disturbing in one of his freshman classes. A student, a rather strange, short and stocky kid named Carl Flack had signed his name in blood on his quiz. Then he’d announced it to the class as he walked his paper up and handed it in. Ron looked at the paper. The penmanship was good and perfectly in red was his name, written in blood. He had pricked his finger and managed to squeeze up a bubble of blood that he dipped his pen into as he worked the letters.
Brother O’Malley was a giant of a man. He stood six feet and six inches tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was in charge of disciple. His size, his demeanor, and his baritone voice made him feel imposing.
“How can I help you, Mr. Tuck?”
Brother O’Malley sat in back of his desk. He did not invite Ron to sit. Ron sat anyway and opened his large book bag. He extracted the quiz carefully. He had placed it between two blank sheets of paper. “A student, a freshman named Carl Flack, handed in this quiz and announced to the class that he had signed it in blood.” Ron extended the paper.
O’Malley’s eyes darkened as he took it. “I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before,” said O’Malley.
“I haven’t either,” said Ron.
“Are you sure that it’s blood”
“Either it is or this kid has one heck of an imagination, Brother.”
Brother Todd O’Malley said flatly, “A diseased imagination.”
Ron’s mind flashed on Poe, but he wasn’t teaching Poe in this class.
“Let’s take a walk,” said Brother O’Malley. He stood heavily, and together they walked to the main office where he looked up the location of Carl Flack’s locker. Ron stashed his book bag in back of the counter and quietly followed O’Malley who was carrying a large ring of keys and his clipboard.
When O’Malley opened Flack’s locker, the disgusted look on his face caused its lines to deepen and become a menacing scowl. Hanging in Flack’s locker, on the hooks that were designed for coats or sweaters, were three strings. From each dangled a freshly amputated rabbit’s foot. He opened the door wider for Ron to see.
The color drained from Ron’s face when he looked. There was something seriously wrong with this kid. O’Malley shut the door without disturbing anything. He’d expected to find some kind of substance, but not this. He felt the anger rising in his massive body. Ron followed him to Flack’s class.
O’Malley opened the door without knocking, stood in the doorway silently. He’d looked at a picture of Flack when he found the location of the locker. Slowly his eyes panned the room. Students fidgeted and put their heads down. The teacher stopped speaking and stood frozen in the center of the class, half turned to the chalkboard. O’Malley’s eyes found Flack. He walked towards him, his long black habit swaying like the motion of a moving battleship. He towered over Flack’s desk. “What have you done?” rumbled the baritone voice.
Carl Flack tried to escape but he tripped and fell to the floor. Calmly O’Malley reached down, grabbed his heel and dragged him out of the classroom, holding his leg in the air.
Ron stood with his mouth open as O’Malley silently dragged the boy, still sprawled on his back, down the hallway to his office. He wasn’t invited to follow.
Chapter 63
On Monday night, Ron told Marjorie that his leg felt better and that he wanted to go to school. “Did you talk to your father?”
“He called. He told me to try not to be so stupid.”
“That sounds like him,” said Marjorie. She always pumped Ron for information about his conversations with his father. He always resisted, but she knew how to wear him down. Harry didn’t have the ability to express emotions like most people. He was uncomfortable with intimacy. He’d built walls around what was important to him for a very long time. Marjorie had been fool enough to think that she was inside those walls and that he trusted her. Now she knew that Harry wasn’t capable of trusting anyone. He had a good heart but he was short on trust and set in his ways. “No football practice.”
“I have to show up, but I’ll tell them that I’m hurt.”
“Will they know how you got hurt?”
“No.”
“Will you tell them?”
Instinctively Ron sensed the danger in the question. It invited conspiratorial confidence, but Ron didn’t trust it. There were always consequences. “Yes,” he lied.
Ron stood in front of Coach Peters in the coaches’ office.
“How did you hurt your leg?”
Ron had stripped off his shoes and pants but left his underwear and shirt on when he went to see the coach. He knew that Peters would want to see the knee. The day’s walking and the lack of ice had caused it to swell noticeably and it was warm to the touch.
“I fell.”
“What were you doing when you fell?”
“I was in the park running sprints, coach.”
“Were you alone?”
Coach Peters suspected that the answer wasn’t true but he wanted to know if any of his other players were involved. “No coach, I was with some friends.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“No, coach.”
“Looks to me like it should be looked at. I can’t have you practice on that leg, Ronnie.”
Ron felt the ease of relief flow through him. Coach Peters would never have called him Ronnie if he was pissed.
Chapter 64
Reading the paragraphs that his students had written about Poe, Ron was surprised that they seemed incapable of separating the actions of the author from the actions of the main character. They write about Poe’s cruelty to animals and about how guilt had driven Poe to write the story as a confession.
Ron was feeling pretty guilty himself. The sight of Carl Flack being dragged down the hallway and then the notice in his mailbox to remove him from the class lists and determine a grade for the work that he’d down so far, left Ron feeling that he had done the wrong thing. At Our Lady of the Forlorn, Ron would have talked to the student. He would have had input into what happened. But his girls would never have acted this way.
Mark Simon had written, “Poe is trying to expiate his thoughts by revealing them and turning them into something better than they were.” Ron smiled. Well at least he’d gotten the difference between author and character.
When the phone rang, Ron expected it to be Celeste, but Elena, one of his former and best students said, “Hello, Mr. Tuck, it’s Elena Rodriguez.”
Ron felt his face break into an immediate smile.
“I hope that I haven’t reached you at a bad time, have I?”
“Not at all Elena. I’m just reading essays. I could use a break.”
“Are they as good as our essays used to be?”
Ron laughed. There was no reason to tell her that these boys had been better prepared than her classmates had been. That was surely true but she didn’t need to hear it. What was also true was that they were nowhere near as sensitive as his girls were. “I don’t think that anything will quite touch me the way that you girls did,” said Ron. It was an honest response and it avoided hurting her feelings.
“Mr. Tuck, I need advice.”
Ron’s mind flashed on when she had called him from a bathroom with a boyfriend waiting in the next room and wanting to have sex with her and her asking him what she should do. Ron laughed in his best teasing way. “I think that you’re old enough to make that decision for yourself now, Elena.”
He could feel the girl blush right through the phone. She laughed. “Not about that, Mr. Tuck. I have that figured out. I can’t believe that I did that and that I was actually able to look you in the eyes for the rest of the year.”
“It was fine Elena. How can I help you?”
“I hate it here, Mr. Tuck. I never knew what racism really was until I got to Princeton.”
Ron face grew troubled. His mind flashed on his old friend Sister Bernadette who had accused Ron of setting his students up for failure because he wanted to be special by making them be more special. “Tell me what’s going on Elena.”
“They look down on the scholarship students. They keep us in our own dorm. They treat us like we are charity cases who need to remember how lucky we are to be here. One of my classmates actually said that her tuition was so high because she was also paying off my tuition.”
“How are your grades?”
“My grades are fine. It’s the people who suck. It’s Americans who suck.”
“Come on Elena. I’m American and so are you.”
“I’m Puerto Rican, Mr. Tuck, and the more I learn about what was done to my country the more I hate being American.”
“Maria, if you lower yourself to that, they win.”
“They already won and they want to make sure that I know it and never forget it.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”
“Elena you are succeeding academically. You are too tough to let prejudice stop you at this point in your life.”
“You don’t know what it’s like here. They look at you like you are a lower life form, someone who should be waiting on them in a restaurant if you are lucky enough to have a job. They don’t care how smart you are. They want you to know that you will never be as good as they are.”
“Elena, do you have friends?”
“Sure I do. I have the other scholarship students who live with me and eat with me and who go to classes with me and also get treated like shit.”
Ron hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to say to her. He didn’t doubt her voracity but he didn’t want her to be weak. “Elena?”
“Yes?”
“Stop whining.” He knew that she must feel like he’d slapped her in the face. “You’re there to get an education and maybe this is part of your education. Did you think that it was going to be easy to change the world?”
Her voice seemed to shrink. “No.”
“You’re letting it get to you.”
Her voice got stronger again. “Of course I am. I’m human and I’m sensitive and I don’t want to be treated this way.”
“You’re Puerto Rican and you’re from Newark. You’ve seen more of life than they have. You haven’t been sheltered.”
“Believe it or not I was sheltered from this until now.”
“So you want to give up. You want to have come all this way just to give up?”
“No, I don’t want to give up.”
“Then stop whining and get on with it.”
They talked for a few more minutes, but he could tell that she wanted to hang up the phone now. She didn’t ask any questions about his life and so he never told her that he was getting married. It was harder to get back to his papers after the phone call. Was it possible that Bernadette had been right?
Chapter 65
The doctor’s office was in an old home that had a fireplace that had been stoned shut. There was a perimeter of chairs that had varying degrees of comfort. Marjorie was thumbing a magazine. Ron was staring at each aspect of the room and rubbing his hands along his jean covered thighs. Most of the people were old and sat patiently. It seemed incongruous when someone was there alone. Everybody went to the doctor’s office with someone.
The wait seemed to go on forever. People judged how many others were in front of them by surveying who was seated in the room when they arrived. There were pocket doors that led into Dr. Polino’s office. His desk was visible each time they opened. There was a second door through which patients left. The examining room was off to his right and just had an open arch between it and the front, conference room. The office smelled of antiseptic alcohol.
Dr. Polino treated Ron when he had asthma attacks. Ron used to go to a doctor who had been one of Rocky’s family. He liked Doctor Merck, but that was just something else that changed when Rocky left them. “So what seems to be the problem Ronald?”
“I hurt my knee.”
“How did that happen?”
“I was playing football. I landed wrong.”
“Let’s take a look at it.”
Ron pulled down his pants while Marjorie waited in the conference room. She didn’t want to see his swollen knee again. It made her start to cry.
The doctor probed and bent and twisted Ron’s leg. He could feel it starting to swell again. The doctor was making it worse. Ron winced and when he couldn’t help it, he yelped. His eyes were involuntarily fixed on the distant figure of Marjorie and he watched her, after each yelp had passed, recovering from it.
“You have what we call a hot knee, Ronald. It’s swollen and there is fluid that has built up inside of it. Sometimes, with rest and elevation, it can heal itself. Other times the fluid needs to be drawn out.”
“Ok,” said Ron.
“You can get dressed now.” Dr. Polino walked to his desk, sat down and took out his prescription pad. He was pretty certain that the knee was going to need to be drained, but there was a chance of reabsorption because he was so young.
When Ron was dressed, Marjorie came out of the corner of the conference room and sat in one of the chairs facing Dr. Polino’s desk. Ron limped over and sat in the other chair. His knee had felt so much better before he came here. “This will help the swelling to go down. I need to see him again in two weeks. Until then I want Ron,” Polino turned from Marjorie and directed his words to Ron. “Until then, no strenuous activity, no sports and you are to sleep with a pillow under your knee. Avoid stairs whenever you can. Do not take gym.”
Ron felt like each statement was a punch in his stomach. “What about school?” said Marjorie.
“Keep him home for the next few days. That knee really needs to stay elevated if it had any chance of draining. Ronald, use ice whenever it feels hot.”
For the next three days, Ron felt like he was living in a cocoon that brought him back to a time when he was happy. There was no homework. There was no time to go to bed or to wake up. There were morning TV programs that he’d almost forgotten had existed. As the swelling went down and his range of motion improved, his hopes soared. Football players had injuries, but they got better. Even the great Frank Gifford had been knocked out of commission for a season. Maybe everything was going to be ok.