Chapter 25

 

The next morning, Ron drove down to see Robin. He had driven Zoe home about 11o’clock the night before and was exhausted by the time that he called Robin. They had agreed that he would drive down the next morning. But when he woke up, lying  in his and Zoe’s bed, Zoe not there but the scent of her lingering on their sheets and on his body and in his brain, he decided that it was time for the difficult conversation.

As he showered, he tried to formulate what he wanted to say.  The question really was “why had she done that to him?” Why had she utterly destroyed him that way and left him feeling so empty and then continued to torment him? What had he done to her?  The answer came to him with stunning clarity as the water sprayed over his face. He had refused to leave New Jersey with her. He had dumped their cats on her. He had slept with other women while they were together. He had refused to stop smoking pot and staying stoned most of the time. He had told her that he was less interested in being romantic than she was. He had let her work a full time job while he lived off this scam or that scam.

True, he had always paid for his share of things. True, they had agreed to have other people in their lives. True, he had joined her in Minneapolis when his assistantship was up. True that he was completely straight when he was with her out there. True that she knew that it was supposed to be a fresh start away from their families, away from their friends where the two of them could just create a life for each other. True that he was now much more romantic that she seemed to be.

Ron tried to juggle the competing truths. Were they a wash? Did it just mean that between them they had beat the shit out of whatever it was that they once had and that now it no longer existed?

He had never been deliberately cruel to her. That was the thing that he could not shake. She had set out to break him into little pieces and when he was broken, she had enjoyed seeing him try to piece himself back together. That was the real question. Why had she been so deliberately cruel? If they had any chance at anything, he needed to have that resolved in his head.

He would do it carefully. Robin had a way of reducing him, making him feel silly and stupid. He thought about how she did it. She used, he tried to think of a phrase, reductive simplicity! That was it! Ron smiled, pleased that he had come up with a way to put it into words.

Robin met him at the door. She looked radiant and for that moment all of his resolve vanished into her beautiful face, the smile that was there for him and only for him. The way that she that she took his hand and slid it around her waist, as she kissed him so gently and molded her body to him. Then she said, “My mother is sleeping, can we just make a break for it?”

Ron smiled and said, “I have an idea. Let’s get in the car and drive to the ocean.”

She was thrilled with the plan and said, “I’ll get my camera.”

 

As soon as they got into the car, Robin picked up the scent of another woman. Zoe didn’t wear perfume. They hadn’t made love in the car. Robin couldn’t have said what it was that was informing her nostrils but it was there and it was unmistakable. She thought about Minneapolis and whether she could go back.

The ride down the shore was a straight shot down the Garden State Parkway. The road was almost deserted on this Saturday morning.

Robin said, “How was the dance?”

Ron laughed and said, “They love disco and those girls can sure dance. I wish I could dance that way.”

“Did you dance with them?”

“No, they would have lost all respect for me if they had seen me dance, but I did wind up taking two of them home.”

“Is that smart?”

“No, but it was late and their rides didn’t show up.”

That was the scent that she smelled. Robin relaxed. She was still very much in control with no competition about which to worry and then she shook her head to herself. “Competition for what?” she thought.

“Robin, I love seeing you. It feels so good to be spending some time with you but I have to ask you about something and I’m not sure that you want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to sleep with you,” she said automatically.

Ron stammered and felt flushed. Everything that he had been thinking disappeared from his mind like the lines of an etch-a-sketch that someone had shaken clean. “That wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

“Ok,” she said, “what did you want to ask?”

“I don’t know,” said Ron, and fell silent.

Long moments passed. Ron drove and tried to reformulate his thoughts. How was he going to put it? Was she right? Was it that he was going to work the conversation around to wanting to sleep with her? He didn’t think so. He thought about Zoe and their love-making last night. He thought about how she lay under him on her belly and squeezed her muscles like she wanted to suck the very life out of him through his cock. He thought about the way that he had such incredible control when he slept with her. They would fuck until she orgasmed and then he’d pull himself out of her and let her bring him off. He felt himself hardening.

“Do you want to eat?” said Robin.

They reached the shore town exit and pulled into an International House of Pancakes. The both were grinning. IHOP had been one of their favorite places to go for dinner when they were living together in Verona.

She had pancakes and he ordered an omelet. They emptied the bottomless pitcher of coffee and asked for more. She showed him her camera. They talked about how the ocean would look.

“I need to talk with you about Minneapolis,” Ron blurted.

“What about it?” said Robin, putting her elbows on the table and bringing her hands, in fists now, up under her chin.

Ron tried to ease his way in. “Why do you want to leave?”

“No place is forever,” said Robin.

Ron paused. He let that sink in. Maybe no relationship was forever either. He began again. “Why did things work out the way that they did?”

She met his eyes and said coolly, “Because you left.”

Ron was flabbergasted. What could he possibly say to that? He fell silent and felt defeated. He felt himself drawing into himself, curling into a little ball inside of himself.

Then she said, “Let’s go see the water.”

 

They walked along the beach in a steady drizzle. The water was calm and the gulls were diving down and making small splashes as they fed. The beach was deserted and the white foam of the small waves licked the sand with the gentle lapping of a soft tongue. Everything was shuttered closed and the breeze blew the rain into their faces. The summertime signs seemed old and lonely and forsaken. Ron wondered if they were like insects that had outlived their season and did not know enough to curl up and die.

Robin sensed the depression that passed over them. These were quiet moments that she no longer loved because they led to conversations that she was not ready to have, like the one over breakfast. Life should be bright and happy and filled with bounty and love. Regrets were just silly and more than that they were a trap from which she was determined to extricate herself. She thought to herself, “I can’t fight his sadness. It’s too strong and besides it is boring.”

Then he seemed to brighten and said, “After the holiday I am diving right into Shakespeare, Macbeth with the seniors and Romeo and Juliet with the 9^th graders.”

She smiled and said, “That’s quite a combination.”

“When did you last read them?” he asked.

“Oh, I can’t remember,” she said dismissively.  “I’ve been reading new stories. There is so much that is new that I really don’t want to revisit things that are old. Maybe when I am 40 or 50 I will want to go back and look at them.”

 

Chapter 24

Ron went through Friday as if he was in a fog. It surprised him and it frightened him. Nothing had distracted him from his students until now. Thoughts of Zoe never entered his head when he was teaching. The fire had distracted him but not when he was teaching. And now, in less than two days, Robin had him hearing her voice and seeing her face in back of his eyes almost non-stop.

He tried calling Zoe when he got back to his apartment. To his surprise she answered the phone. She almost squealed when she heard his voice. “I’ve been thinking about you almost non-stop,” she said. “We have to get an answering machine.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you too,” said Ron, trying to tell himself that it was an obligatory thing to say.”When are you coming home?”

“I thought I would stay her through the holiday,” said Zoe. “They make a big deal about it here.”

At first it didn’t register with Ron. What holiday? Did she mean Christmas that was a month away? Could she really mean that? Then it dawned on him. Thanksgiving was this Thursday. She meant Thanksgiving! “Whatever you need to do,” said Ron. “Are you running?”

“Yes, every day and riding my bicycle and swimming and feeling great except that I miss you so much. I want to be with you. I want to live in the country with you and make babies and raise chickens for the eggs and plant a garden.” He didn’t respond and there was a pause and then she asked, “Do you want to come up and pick me up like we used to and bring me back home and ravish me?” She lowered her voice when she said this last part.

“I really do,” said Ron. “But I have this thing at my mother’s house in preparation for the holiday and I have so much school work to do because it is a short week next week and I assigned all these essay tests that I want to grade and get back to the kids before the break.”

She seemed crestfallen, and just said, “Oh.”

The guilt spread through him like dysentery in a refugee camp. He felt himself begin to sweat and cramp. He wanted to get off the phone. He wanted to call Robin. Then he realized that the sound of her voice had given him an erection and he wanted to fuck her. But who was “her”?

“Look, suppose I drive up now and we take a ride somewhere and at least get to spend some time together.”

Her voice instantly brightened again. She said “OK, when are you coming?”

“I just want to change my clothes,” said Ron.

 

As soon as he hung him, he dialed Robin’s number. She answered on the first ring and before he could give her the excuse that he had invented about having to do something at the school that night, she said, “Can we get together tomorrow? Some of my mother’s friends are coming over and I promised her that I would spend a little time with her, but if you aren’t busy, I would really like to see you tomorrow or maybe later tonight.”

Almost involuntarily Ron found himself saying, “What time later?”

“Whatever works best for you.  Drive down sometime after 10.”

“That works,” said Ron. “I have this thing tonight at school.”

“You’re going to be exhausted,” she said. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow.”

“Why don’t I call you when I’m done,” said Ron.

There was that unmistakable lilting laughter that communicated to him that she knew that he wanted to see her and that she was pleased that he wanted to see her. Then she said, “No, I’m being selfish. Call me in the morning.”

Ron wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

 

 

When Zoe got into the car she kissed him with incredible hunger. And then she whispered into his ear, “Please just take me home and rip off my clothes and do wicked things to me.” Then she reached down below the steering wheel and opened his pants. She stroked him and then said coyly. “Will you leave it out all the way home?”  A droplet of clear liquid oozed out of the head of his cock and she said, “You have missed me.”

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.”