Those Who Can’t Teach
Dennis Reed
CHAPTER ONE
At night, he would dream of clouds and metaphor. The faces of his students
would come up in his mind, but so would the visions—winning awards in crowds of
civilized people. The applause was deafening but right in the middle of the rapture
he would see the snotty nosed girl in the back of the room scowling at him for giving
too much homework. Maybe he could hold on until retirement, dying behind his
chipped wood desk or wasting away under the weight of one of his manuscripts,
stacked on top of one another in the dark room of the back of his house, maybe one
of them would catch on with an agent and he would win a big advance…
This year, there was a reason to feel some optimism. Rachel, a teacher at the
school, seems to have taken a “shine” to Robert. Rachel’s eyes tested his theory: that
he, like his father, was unlovable. His father spent all day trying to fade from the
world and he succeeded. Family secrets were kept behind cryptic photos. His
mother and father talked mostly about the beautiful son that was stillborn. How
beautiful he would have been if he’d lived and how unlike his coarse, dark haired
brother he would have been, if he’d survived.
Rachel was trying to show Robert that love was possible. They have been
talking for some time, and it seems as if they are going to get together after work.
Robert has a way with women; first there’s coffee, conversation and he lets them tell
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their story. It is while they are telling their litany of broken relationships that he
develops a tactic to get them in a cool room with no clothes. Would you rather make
love to one woman one hundred times or one hundred women one time? An old man
standing in a shabby doorway with split wood had asked him that question and he
never forgotten the man’s eyes, like two sunken caves. Would you rather make love to
one hundred women one time or one woman one hundred times? He could not answer
that question or any other that dealt with his true self.
He was too involved with the pursuit of females to dedicate his hours to the
writing process totally. The memoir lay on his desk, unfinished. It could be the
second book, the novel, that a few agents in New York had read and thought
promising but ever since then it had been “I’m sorry, but your book is just not right
for our list,” and disappointment after rejection and polite refusal. He made his
money as a tenth grade English teacher. So, when it was three twenty in the
afternoon and he was praying for the bell to ring, he thought he might overhear “Mr.
Red, please pick up your phone for an important call from New York,” from the
office, but the voice over the loudspeaker never came or it hadn’t come yet. It was
harder and harder for Robert to keep his mind on his work. His old affliction, the
fascination with women, seemed to fight for ownership of his consciousness. Life
gets sloppy; he had a peculiar habit—he would accept any woman that wanted him.
If she made the act easy and did not affect his professional life or his writing, he
would see her. Her face could look like a boot bottom but it did not matter, if she
would fit into his convoluted plan of life, then fine. Robert devoted little time and
energy to his personal life—because of that, it fell apart. It was life by negation and
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if the woman did not detract from his imagined existence as a writer and she was
willing to bend over, that was enough. This made his existence a quiet hell fraught
with other, greater hells. He never thought that the wires would cross, and he
would be exposed, for having multiple relationships or someone would see his beat
up Subaru at the wrong place and put two and two together. But none of this
seemed to matter to him, he just went, head long into his day, accepting whatever
gifts and pain the young cherubs would offer.
He would pretty much go with any young lady that promised him sex; Robert
wasn’t concerned about her personality or career—he just wanted a decent girl that
would give of her body freely—and one that would leave him alone. Being with
them stopped life for a few hours; he would think of nothing but the sanctity of their
flesh for a while and that would stop his overactive brain from pumping thought
after thought. Women were a means to an end and he had been using them, like a
drug, his whole life. Now, they were taking over his waking and dreaming hours; he
would try to approximate the smell of secret places on girls he had known while at
work teaching relative pronouns. His entire life was in the distant past, where he
would reenact every second of the encounter until the blessed moment, when in
darkness she would shyly slip her panties down her lotioned legs and he would
smile at the bruises at the back of her ankles from too tight shoes. This moment was
what he relived each second because his life had become so desperate.
He was unaware that his view of women as beings in the world for his
personal gratification had changed the arc of his life. He would get back, in a quiet
way, all of the chaos he created in the lives of others. He drifted from relationship to
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relationship, never finishing any one and his “involvements” overlapped. He told
himself that his work was more important. When he could look up from his
computer, he would find a face, an accepting face and if she was willing…
He thought his city was big enough for his “involvements” never to appear
but lately he had been running into women he had slept with and he did not
remember them or he would be with one and run into another and Robert would be
incredulous. Some days, he was reluctant to go outside, fearing that he would run
into someone with a legitimate claim.
One woman yelled at him in the street one day, “You know me. You went out
with me in nineteen seventy-five.” He did not know this lady, bundled up in two
coats, looking askance out the corner of her eyes, but her rage and indignation
scares the bejesus out of him whenever he thinks of it. Was he about to run into
another nice lady with tired, red eyes that claimed he had destroyed her life? You
see, his involvements with women were not real to him—but now those glancing
relationships threatened to own his time and take his illusion of being a writer
away. He could remember every woman that ever looked at him; he lived for
flirtation, an attractive eye; but could he recite his own poems? How could he juggle
all this shit in his memory? How could he manage the shadows of his bed-hopping
past?
When he was younger, he was the darling poet; a male ingénue and
women came easily, wanting to sleep with the brilliant writer. The women became
more plentiful than short stories and he spent night after night showering after sex
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in the cold, alienating bathrooms of perfectly kind ladies that he would meet
downtown and have coffee with, while fantasizing about the meat of their hands
touching his tongue in their bedroom.
Yet, here he was, going crazy in the castle of his spirit, willing to kill
himself or someone else to stop the violent memories that clashed like warriors in
his mind. The tombstones of his past relationships had ghosts and hobgoblins
dancing on their graves. There used to be the beauty of bodies sloping back against
the darkness, now there was just the chaos and not the skin softer than breaths or
promises.
Most of all he would reminiscence about Harriet. He met her on the
upper West Side of New York City and slept with her the first night he went to her
house. He saw her in a coffee shop, and asked her about the novel she was reading.
“Camus?”
“Yes, do you know his work?” she says, bright faced, looking upward.
Her face is a maze of well-placed wrinkles and sunny optimism.
“I do, yes…and I love The Stranger.”
“What do you love about it?”
“The simplicity.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the fact that he doesn’t quite know when his mother dies, but he
doesn’t worry about those details. They don’t stop him from living his little
existence.”
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They talk until dark. He looks and notices her wide hips; she is a violin.
She has a warm birth canal and he is in her bedroom smoking dope that evening.
Her daughter, a little girl with doe eyes, is silent in a room adjacent to her mother’s
huge bedroom crowded with intimidating teak furniture. The daughter plays alone,
throwing blocks of colorful shapes. There was a crowd of other dope smokers in the
spacious bedroom but they have all left, and Harriet and Robert talk until she invites
him to disrobe and lay on the huge king size bed with her. They are watching a
Samurai love story when it happens. He lies on top of her and kisses her as if they
are at a Friday night football game, holding his member back until she is panting and
then he presses it up to her yielding and receptively warm body. The daughter
clashes toys as he thrusts low, curling his body; he takes her voluptuous breasts in
his mouth. They lunge and move on top of each other for hours. She demands
nothing; he thinks of Harriet every day. His days are not lush at all now; they are
filled with late bus passes and excuses from parents.
He tells himself every day that writing is the priority but he is chased by
the past. His involvements with women are starting to erase sentences before he
can write or think or act like a human being. Writing takes discipline and constancy
and that is the one thing he does not have, the stick-to-it-tiveness that it takes to
finish a manuscript, to see it to its end.
There are too many latent thoughts that are still alive, like electric tendrils
shocking his conscious life; there are hundreds of women to remember; their
memories haunt. The women are angry now, realizing they were duped into two
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hours of flesh filled machinations in darkness, giving themselves to someone only
interested in taking.
His students’ faces sometimes sparkle and there are moments in his
unpainted room when learning takes place for more than ten minutes.
Work is sometimes gratifying and some of the English Department meetings
are not so bad—literary jokes were almost funny. As an older teacher told him one
day, “it could be worse.”
But the more he saw the jackets of books in bookstores, the more the hunger
to be well published grew. It was a strange feeling—he envied the writers, hated
them, but he also wanted to be like them. He thought that true writer status,
whatever that was, was attainable. Some writers on the covers looked like people
he would pass on the street and it became particularly insulting if he knew the
author, had been in workshop with them. They had become successful and he had
not or maybe his success would come a little late in life or maybe he would die with
a room full of unfulfilled wishes.
But Rachel made him feel that his wishes were possible, whenever he talks to her
there is a remarkable nature of silence-- and it is that calm that he wants—more
than anything else, the calming nature of Rachel’s lips. She seems to have been
where he is going and she speaks with such an intimate knowledge of the universe
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that it makes him confident that things will end well. They enjoy the silence they
create for each other.
It wasn’t that way whenever he visited his son. The lips were anything but silent.
Cordova, his son’s mother, had asked him to come over to discuss back-toschool-night. He was reluctant but he went to her house to discuss the matter.
Robert wanted to go to back-to-school-night, to get a full picture of how his son was
doing. He realized that he didn’t really know his son—he was like a shadow cast in a
picture, important for the photograph but not essential. He needed to know him at
school, at church, in every aspect.
The little house they lived in needed some work. The roof was slanting and
sagging but Robert had little money or resources to help. Gutters and downspouts
screamed for cleaning but she would not let Robert do a thing; she had no respect
for his physical abilities. He decided, that since his financial life was not rosy, that
he would concentrate on the other aspects of Malik’s life. He would concentrate on
seeing him and building a relationship—then, in time, maybe when the books sold,
he could get himself caught up.
He was supposed to be there at two, but he arrived a little after. Cordova
swung the door open.
“Always late.”
She was pretty but always poorly dressed. Her clothes were too tight,
showing too much, giving men the wrong impression; her ass was almost showing;
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fat bulges oozing out of outdated jean halter and tight skirt. She should dress like
Rachel, he thought.
“I tried. You know my old car.”
“Why don’t you trade it in and try to get a new one? My father has a friend…”
He did not hear the rest of her words. Whenever she mentioned her family
he turned off. He did not the like way her family treated him; they were distant and
condemning, thinking they had the keys to life and he did not.
“Did you get the check?”
“Yes, thank you. But I’m going to start taking it out of your pay.”
“What? I can barely make it now!”
“How do you think we’re doing? You left me with a son and a host of bills.
How in the fuck do you think we’re doing?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“Well, we’re not doing well. Your son has been dubbed at risk at his school
because he has no father and our financial situation sucks.”
“He has a father.”
“Does he? Are you coming with me to back to school night?”
“Yes. I want to know his teachers—I want to come.”
“It’s Thursday. Meet me at the school at seven. Not seven thirty.”
“Is that it?”
“You’re not in the Principal’s office. This is your son. This is a life.”
“I know, and I’ve been feeling increasingly guilty…”
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Cordova was dreaming about her home in the Dominican Republic. Her mind
was on the beaches of Puerto Plata. She remembers a little road that she used to
ride a small horse on. It is bordered by sugar cane. The dirt road was where she
used to spend her time, looking up at the tops of trees and dreaming.
“Cordova, are you listening to me?”
“What do you say? What do you ever say? Except some melee mouthed stuff
about your angst and you can’t write. Nobody wants to hear that shit. Children
need bread and clothing and a father that gives a fuck! You are so wrapped up in
your little world that nothing can fit accept your outdated ideas. I want my son to
know his father and I want his father to take care of him. Is that so fucking difficult?
He has emotional and financial needs—now try to think of him as someone else’s
little boy. How would you take care of him?”
“Okay. I will. I’ll snap back to reality, if I can.”
“How’s Rachel?”
“What?”
“Didn’t think I knew. Bad news travels fast. So, you got your little honey to
make your life better. Make your son’s life better fool!”
“Is there anything else?”
She was almost pretty but when she pushed her face in front of his it became
bigger, contorted and ugly.
“No. Go,” she says, almost pushing him down the street.
************
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Malik’s middle school, Fox, was falling down on itself. It was once a great
school but the old grey stone and once beautiful wood doors are in disrepair. He
stares at the building with awe and walks up the steps fifteen minutes early. It
smells like piled up dust. Cordova and Malik are waiting there, on a park bench,
looking small and afraid.
“Hey…”
“Hey Daddy…”
“You’re early,” says Cordova.
“Yeah, I’m trying. If you will just give me a chance…I’m really trying to turn
over a new leaf.”
“Maybe you need a new tree,” she says with disdain.
“You could be positive about me sometime Cordova,” he says, watching the
parents with their papers and schedules scuttle around the building. Robert wants
to be like them, involved in his child’s life, but there’s something inside, holding him
back. He is an observer of life—he tells himself that’s what writers do but he is
simply afraid. Afraid of the eyes of his son; afraid of the recriminations of Cordova
and afraid, above all, of getting close to anyone.
“Did you get the schedule? I mailed it to you.”
“Um…I think so…”
“Here it is. For the life of me Robert. For the life me. Can you get it together
for your son? Not for you or for me or for the relationship but for him. Can you get
it together for the issue of your fucking loins?”
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Malik is shrinking. Robert takes him to the side and grabs his shoulders. He
is beginning to cry.
“Don’t worry son. Daddy cares about you. Mom is just upset about being
here at school and all. How’s the baseball?”
“Good.”
Robert actually touches his face and wipes off the tears.
He hates sitting next to Cordova but he has to.
The teachers are kind enough. Malik’s math teacher is tall and sultry; he
listens to her intently.
“Your son is quite capable but there’s a problem with equations; he has real
problems with equations. He just doesn’t seem to get the mathematical sentence.
You know x plus y equals?”
Robert is concentrating on her lips. They are small, bird like and opening just
enough for her to emit the words. He dreams of what she might look like naked, soft
skin, forgiving curves. He wonders if Rachel would find her attractive and he
visually strips the woman in his mind. This is his problem—when he sees a woman
he instantly imagines her naked. He imagines the math teacher, a nude, painted by
Modigliani. He sees her curling her legs underneath her on a couch. Then, he thinks
about Rachel—Rachel’s attraction to other women scares him.
“So Dad…do you think you would be able to help your son with homework?”
“We don’t live together.”
“I mean, when you see him?”
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“Sure. I can do that. I’m a teacher.”
“I know. At the high school level right?”
“Yes, well middle school students are quite different.”
Robert wants to think about something else but he is distracted by Cordova’s
smooth, unblemished brown skin. It’s always the same with him—he gets
distracted by the beauty and he forgets about the person. Robert is the king of
objectification. All women are naked to him. It is hard to see them as full human
beings when he is relating to them as objects. He does not hear the rest of her
words.
Cordova calls a cab for her and her son.
“See…see…you were just staring at that woman, thinking about God knows
what and you should have been concentrating on your son. Robert Red, I don’t
know about you. Whenever you show some potential, you instantly fuck up. All you
can think about is women, women, women. That little thing of yours rules you. You
better start thinking about the future and your fucking son,” she says, slamming the
door of the taxi.
“Did you want a ride?” he says to the wind.
She is too independent for that; she can do it all for herself. Cordova is a
parole officer; she makes good money but going in and out of the courts every day is
starting to wear on her. She gets to work early every morning and piles through
stacks and stacks of youthful offenders—assault, petty larceny, shop lifting. There
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seems to be a never-ending trail of disgruntled parents and surly, disgusting
teenagers that are disrespectful and talk out the sides of their mouths.
There are constant interviews and literal surveillance where she has to be
responsible for the child’s whereabouts twenty-four seven. Her favorite client is
Michelle, an angry, disgruntled teenager with four assault charges. This is Michelle’s
day in court and Cordova must give an impact statement to her parents and a
courtroom of victims of teenagers.
“Your honor…as you make your decision I would like you to consider
this…when I first met the defendant she was a shy, reclusive, combative child with
two drug addicts for parents, that did the best they could by working everyday and
keeping a roof over her head but at night, they would take her out with them to try
to boost, steal, and score drugs. What kind of life was this for her? What did she see
during those nights? I am sure she saw weapons, dead bodies, men with
tourniquets around their arms, willing to shoot anything to get a high. I am sure she
became well acquainted with desperation; she grew up around people that would
do anything to change their mood, to alter the world that intimidated them, haunted
them. This had to have had an affect. With little schooling and most of her time on
the street, she resorted to what she knew. Carolyn was a child with no parental or
financial support, living on the street with only her body as a means of production.
She took that means…should we condemn her for that?”
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Cordova turns to the jury and gives them a quizzical look. She is able to support
herself and her son without the help of him. That sticks in his craw, but she still
deserves child support because she has physical custody and Robert strains to meet
his financial responsibilities—some days he searches for money in his pockets and
only fingers dust.
Cordova and Robert hold looks of disdain for each other and act as if they
smell something. He recognizes her talent is in looking for the good in young
people; she is fantastic at her job and at taking care of Malik. He wants her to look
for the good within him, just once, but he will be waiting a long time. Everything
appears to be fractious in his life—it is hard for him to clutch a thought.
On some days, he would change his view of success; maybe success was
getting his students to read deeply or for him to have intercourse with the newest
English teacher in the department? Maybe that was all he could ever aspire to; if he
got up enough courage this evening he would call his son. In his daydreams, his life
had order but in real life things were worse than a rollercoaster. Robert has lost the
details and flow of the meeting; he is losing himself more and more—shrinking into
the inner recesses of his own thought while others, in the outside world, meet and
decide things. He is getting smaller.
In the middle of a meeting in the Principal’s office about the literary
magazine, he is thinking about the haunting green eyes of a girl he met in Starbucks.
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“Mr. Red. Mr. Red. Are you listening Mr. Red? These would mean additional
duties. Taking on the creative writing club would be quite a task. There’s the
creative writing festival that’s coordinated with different schools and…”
“The new teachers are helping out with all this aren’t they?”
“Why yes, Mr. Red, they are.”
“Then I’ll be happy to serve as the faculty advisor,” he offers.
“Being the faculty advisor for the literary magazine would mean staying back
after school and some late nights,” the Principal warns.
“I can handle it,” Mr. Red says, rising and offering his hand.
“If you say so,” Mrs. Stuckup says, signaling for Mr. Red to go now.
Mrs. Stuckup was a nice lady but she seemed scared of Mr. Red. Maybe it was the
list of credentials, his teaching on the college level for twenty years, but he had a
funny feeling whenever she was around. She never talked to him, and actually
seemed like she tried to avoid him. Today was the first time he had ever spoken
more than three words to her. Her office is nice and airy.
The hallway is particularly crowded. He dodges one group of girls talking in
a circle by their lockers. One of them flips her scarf over her shoulders as she goes
by.
“Hello, Mr. Red,” a skinny blond girl says as she taps her foot impatiently in
the smoky hallway.
“Hello…”
There was some virtue to be found in a high school, but not much. There
were days, when he looked atop the heads of the people in the hallway, the same
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people he had spent seven and a half hours with every day for the last four years,
and he felt a light cloud lifting inside.
Junior English is going well for once; luckily he is only teaching one section of
the almost graduates. Rosetta Gonzalez is popping gum but being nice, not mean.
She sits in the back of the class, smacking her lips; she does her make up and stares
at herself in the mirror but she is not disruptive today and she even pretended to be
interested in what Hester Prynne is thinking of in the Scarlet Letter .
But then, right in the middle of class it happened. He knew it would. Malik
Lanon got up right in the middle of Mr. Red’s reading of the first chapter and laid the
biggest gas bomb known to man. Everyone erupted and Robert tried, but the class
period was blown apart with Malik’s fart.
That night, after a few scotches, he tries to write in order to alleviate the
heaviness that he feels in his chest. His e-mail is jammed with refusals and he thinks
about other agents he could write. Then—the idea finally brightens. Why not write
Julia, his old agent. He could tell her about what he was working on, remind her
about the progress when he was her client and maybe she will take him on again?
Harriet’s body was fleshy, wrinkled and warm; in the middle of thinking of e-mailing
Julia, he sees Harriet shake her huge, dimpled ass in front of him. He longs for
mindless hours. Writing forces authenticity; phony shit shows.
He is starting to feel the need for a drink earlier and earlier each day, to take
him away from his life. Some mornings he will wake with a curving pain in his
stomach and the image of the naked Harriet is always there. Robert feels like he is
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sitting against her cool seats in the living room watching a small, black and white
television.
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CHAPTER TWO
He stares at Rachel’s number. She is petite, in black stockings and dark
pumps everyday with her hair pulled back. She has active hands and a good soul.
Rachel teaches French but she is cross-listed now in the English department; all of
the other women at the school are boring; Rachel is the one woman with music in
her thighs and metaphor on her lips. She is the only true intellectual on the faculty,
other than Robert.
When she was in college, she had lived in a five-bedroom apartment with
four other girls. They used to “play,” joking, laughing and smoking dope together.
One afternoon, after all the boyfriends had left, Rita is in Rachel’s room, finishing off
some great buds.
Rita passes the joint to Rachel.
“How’s things going with you and your man?”
“Man…you call him a man?”
“So things aren’t going well?”
“No. I didn’t say that. I’m just beginning to think that men have too many
limitations. They are too conceited to come outside themselves and really see the
fucking plight of anyone else. They’re stuck in that competitive mode.”
“Yeah, always trying to jump the fucking hurdle.”
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“It makes me sick sometime,” says Rachel, reaching over to comb Rita’s hair
with her hands.
“That feels good. Get the brush.”
Rachel reaches to the night table and proceeds to brush long, steady strokes
from the clean part in Rita’s head to the healthy tips of her hair that almost touches
her ass.
Rita leans back in Rachel’s lap as they watch the students amble up and down
Grace Street from inside her bay windows.
“We don’t talk enough,” says Rachel.
“You’re always with him…”Rita says, turning to Rachel, putting her hand on
the brush, signaling her to stop as she inches her face slowly up; Rachel meets her
lips with a glancing, friendship kiss that becomes something deeper, stranger.
They stretch out and spoon until Rita reaches down and unbuttons the top
button of Rachel’s too tight jeans.
“Close the doors, the other girls might hear us.”
Rachel slips out of her jeans, revealing beige, lace panties and a small bulb of
hair that Rita pushes out of the way when she inserts her skinny tongue. Rachel
stifles her sighs so the other roommates will not hear and stretches her body as the
sun goes down to liquid lipped love.
Rachel has not made love to a woman for years, but she cannot forget the feel
of Rita’s soft hair, massaging between her thighs.
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An effete snob, Robert stays to himself because no one is as well read; he is
the only faculty member that can quote Sophocles and Charles Gordone without
notes. Robert likes to spend time alone in his classroom, going over his credentials,
feeling superior or feeling downright inadequate. The administrators made him
move his poster on the door downward; now students can walk by and look in at
any time during the day. He feels like an animal in a cage. Teachers only have about
twenty minutes free time during the day and he wanted that time spent in
substantive conversation behind a locked and closed door. He should call her, he
thought to himself. Call her.
Hours later, at home, he realizes that he has been sitting at the computer for
almost two hours, dozing, producing nothing.
The next morning he wakes with a huge hangover and Rachel’s number
crumpled up in his hand. The phone is violently ringing.
“Hello?”
“Robert, where are you?”
“In bed. What?”
“We were supposed to meet for brunch today. At Stoney’s?”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry—I’ll be there in ten. Twenty.”
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He did not remember calling her or making a date but he thought he should
roll with it. The scotch must have given him fake courage. He was starting to forget
even the slightest things. He throws on some clothes, the same ones he had worn to
school on Friday, brushes his hair with his hands and makes it out the door. On the
way, he passes a Chuck E. Cheese’s, the pizza joint and game palace. He can see the
children inside sliding down the plastic sliding boards, landing into a group of
colorful, plastic balls. The kids begin to smile at the top of the slide and then as they
move down the smile gets bigger and broader until uproarious laughter
accompanies their landing. He imagines his son in the center, with children around
him, laughing with their heads tossed backwards. Coming to get him every Sunday
is problematic; that is one of his two free days during the week and he tries to write
all day. He ends up drinking beer after beer thinking about picking up his son.
Some Sundays he actually makes it but there are many Sundays when the beer wins.
He has never mentioned his son to Rhonda or his son’s blustering mother; he
wonders how she will react. Rhonda has the prettiest light eyes and affectionate,
warm ways. Her hair is a patient dark brown with flecks of blond, pulled beautifully
back. Robert would like to pick her up but she insists on meeting him for the first
date. It’s always what the woman is wearing that will tell you how she’s feeling
about you. If she wears something revealing then there’s the possibility. If she’s
dressed like a nun then there’s no chance; Robert thinks in terms of conquests.
When he first dated his son’s mother she showed enough cleavage to feed the world.
He thought he might actually have sex with her the first night but all of the details
escape him now. He only remembers the side of her face becoming one with his.
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Her lovemaking was flat and uninteresting. Robert barely remembers one exciting
orgasm only because of the music playing at the time. Minnie Ripperton’s Lovin’ You
was playing but now all he can recall are the high octaves of Minnie’s voice. Memory
is selective as hell.
Rachel is dressed like a nun on a holiday. He can see some cleavage, just a
peek, there to tantalize him. Her forehead is creased with real concern. Maybe she
didn’t know him at all. Maybe he became a party animal on the weekend and could
not get his mind straight when it came to commitments.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, playing with the ketchup packages on the table.
“You’re never late at work. I thought you’d carry the same habits with you on
the weekend,” she said, eyeing the menu to make him feel better. She has already
decided what she wants. Rachel has been there for more than a half an hour.
“Well, I try to unwind.” He stares at her tanned skin.
“Alone?”
“Yeah, unless there’s another possibility,” he says, looking around the dead
restaurant.
“Well, what do you do on the weekends Mr. intellectual—inquiring minds
want to know?”
“Write…”
“You write? What do you write?”
“Oh, whatever comes to mind. You know I’m a little like that Walter Mitty
character. I live through my imagination,” he says, noticing that her eyes change to
gray green.
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“Short stories?”
“Sometimes. And then they become longer stories. You never know what
your characters will do,” he says, ignoring the menu, looking at her very long fingers.
“Yeah, that’s very courageous to actually write a book and communicate your
feelings. I have difficulty doing things like that. I can barely bring myself to talk
about death and destruction everyday, much less creating it on the page myself,” she
says, fingering the menu along the frayed plastic edges.
“Not really. It’s courageous if I send it out somewhere to be published but
most of the manuscripts end up in my little study.”
“Is that true? Is that really true?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I would think you’d have a list of publications as long as your arm.”
“Old publications, years old. Publishers want to see you in print now. I’m
frustrated in some ways, like all teachers. Did you order?”
“No. Not yet but I know what I want,” Rachel scoots over in the corner of the
booth.
“The salmon cakes are great. It’s just the doing the work and the getting
published—that’s a problem.”
“Do you work out Rachel? Your arms look amazing,” he says fingering the
menu for a moment.
“All the time. Every day. I’m obsessed with losing weight,” Rachel pinches
her waist with disgust.
“I can tell. Well, that’s one area you’re not frustrated with.”
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“I want to loose more weight. I go to the gym religiously. I need to loose
twenty pounds by Christmas. I’ve been taking all kinds of diet pills,” she says with
finality.
“It’s good to have goals.”
“Tell me about your writing. What are you working on now?” she says with
her eyes wide with acceptance.
So, he told her about his work and his humpty-dumpty dreams. She was very
concerned about his not seeing his son. Rachel understands that he is in pain even
though he is doing little to help the situation. He was in a kind of stasis, unable to
help his son or to get past his own guilt. Lately, he thought of his son’s number and
stared at the phone, which seems to be miles away. He tells himself he will call him;
days became weeks and weeks, months. The excuses and rationales mount and
become the obstacle.
Rachel and Robert talk until the restaurant booths are empty. The waitresses
continue to bring them coffee, one waitress with blue rinsed hair stares at them.
Why should these two be laughing all night and having such a good time while the
waitresses are working on corns and bunions? Where is the fairness in the world?
Rachel asks Robert to walk her to her car and he does. Rachel holds the door
open for a moment, leaning, waiting for him to do something. Robert grabs her
shoulder and pulls her, awkwardly, toward him. He parts his lips for a hot second
and she inserts her tongue quickly, withdraws it, and smiles.
“That was a nice evening. Thank you, Robert. Would you like to follow me
home?”
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“Sure,” he says half-knowing if this is an invitation or an effort for safety.
He follows her through the slightly visible streets. An occasional streetlight
or living room light shining through a window guides him. The break lights of her
car are triangles—he navigates the roads, watching for the red and white moving
through the night.
Her house is smaller than he imagines, a shotgun flat. It is quaint though—
with a fresh coat of paint and creative lighting; the house almost looks like a real
estate advertisement. Each corner of every room has been carefully planned. She
bounds out the car; her breasts are shaking but she is smaller than he thought,
almost a size zero.
“Come in, please…”
“No. I couldn’t on the first date night. I shouldn’t,” Robert shakes his head
quickly back and forth.
“Robert—we’ve known one another for years, besides we’re teachers. There
are no rules for teachers,” she says laughing and taking his hand.
Robert follows her into the house. She leads him to an overstuffed couch. He
sits there and takes off his jacket. There is original art on the walls—abstract,
representational love making, and landscapes, lots and lots of trees and pastoral
glens. She whisks over and retrieves his jacket, throwing it on a bed in the back
bedroom.
She seems at ease, as if she has done this recently. Robert is unnerved by the
whole thing—she seems polished, almost professional about her seduction. He
wants her to be unsure of herself.
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“Drink?” she says with a bottle of vodka in one hand and an ice bucket in the
other.
“Why not?”
“Martini?”
“Neat.”
She comes back with a glass that is iced on the side. The vodka pours in
slowly looking like jelly.
He can feel her eyes on him. She is prettier than he thought and her eyes are
much more cloudy and seductive than they appear at school. He can see the dull,
beige wallpaper dancing only in her eye’s reflection. Rachel curls her body next to
his, looking at him intently enough to drill a hole in the side of his head.
“Is everything alright?”
“Sure. I was just thinking that you are much more handsome than I once
thought.”
“Oh, really. I never think of myself as handsome. Takes too much time. I
have too much work to do,” Robert offers.
“And do you ever break?”
“Remember Miss Villacort? The teacher that died of a heart attack last year?
She always told me to stimulate my mind and then I could stimulate the students’
minds. I put a lot of time into preparation and that doesn’t leave much time for
much else,” Robert complains.
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Rachel rubs her hands on his chest. She moves her hand up to his shoulder
and massages.
“That makes me feel a little better,” Robert says.
“A little?”
“Well, actually a lot,” he says, finally sinking into her hands’
soft center.
“There you go,” she says moving her hands up and down, “there you go,”
He covers her hands with his. They feel soft and pliable and he stays there
for some time with his hands on hers before he bends over to kiss her politely at
first, and then searching, desperately with his tongue.
She responds, reaching and holding him at the same time. He moves her
hands down even further and he can feel her smile as she moves her hands to his
hardness. He could never speak now. Robert reaches over and gently begins to
touch her breasts, find her nipple and when he is finished with a very sloppy kiss he
rubs his lips on her breasts, through her thin blouse.
She kisses him again.
“Robert…”
He thrusts his hand in her blouse, feeling her cool light skin. She quickly
unbuttons, giving him a field to play on. Robert can’t believe the softness and he
kisses her as hard as he can, pushing her head back against the couch. She stands,
and he watches her slowly undress, peeling back the scenes in his mind when he
imagined this; it is almost like a film, running backwards.
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She is like a Brancusi sculpture, glistening and polished. Her breasts are
small domes and her legs curve perfectly with long muscles that relax when
touched.
“Robert…” she says, reaching out to him.
He quickly jumps out of his pants, shirt and comes up to her, clutching and
moving within at the same time.
She digs her fingers into his back muscles as he lifts her, marching to the
bedroom.
Once there, he becomes a mountain man, grateful but sure of each
movement.
He climbs on her and she holds his butt, squeezing her fingernails right
where his asshole is. Robert slowly does a boogaloo between her legs, pumping and
waiting for her hand to come back to his ass to guide him inside and out again. They
build a nice rhythm and blues tempo and her hand stretches on his ass because
there is no need to guide him; he has it now, knows what she prefers, just above the
clitoris, there, thrusting slowly and then speeding up again.
“Robert…”
There. He is climbing and conquering with each downward motion. She
receives him like a dahlia, opening and closing when he is done.
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They avoid each other for the first few class periods of the next day. Rachel
needs some computer paper and she has to come by Robert’s class. She stops at the
door on the way out.
“What are you doing Saturday?”
“Writing. You know I have to use the weekends because of all this,‘” he says,
pointing to the student papers on the walls.
“You have to eat dinner and I’m a great cook, so you could come over, eat,
talk to me about your work and…”
“And then?”
“That’s the drama,” Rachel says turning.
“I know. I know,” Robert says, plowing through the sea of papers.
He would sit for hours and think about his son. He saw him last Saturday. At
first he was reticent and afraid because Robert has missed so many weekends. He
was a few months behind in his child support and he thought that the minute he
showed, she would have the police ready and they would slap the cuffs on him and
squash him down into a cruiser. It was a scenario he had gone over again and again
in his mind. He would show up, ring the bell and the police would answer, make
him turn around, read him his rights and arrest him. He walks over to the phone
and stares at the silver and black thing. Robert reaches out, touches the phone, but
he is afraid to pick it up.
This Saturday was his next date with his son. The morning cracked like a
rotten fucking egg, leaving the sky ugly and full of dark markings. Robert took that
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as a sign that things would not go well but when he got to the eight-paneled front
door with brass knocker he felt suddenly unburdened.
I’m here and here on time for a change. He hit the knocker three times and by
the third hit the door was opening and his son, complete with backpack and comic
books, was ready.
“How are you Malik?” he said, as his ex glares.
“Okay. You’re on time this week. What happened to you last week?”
“I had to write. Your Dad’s a writer you know,” Robert says ushering him
into the car. Robert feels ill at ease with the youthful talk.
“I know but there are no books with your name on it in the library.”
“Not yet, but you know there is always hope.”
“Yeah, I hope we’re going to play some basketball today.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a children’s program at the library.”
“All I do is read. I go to school, come home and Ma reads to me. I read at
school and I take all these books out of the library—and I checked with the
librarian—she could find nothing under your name. But I want to play basketball,
do you have one?”
“No, but I tell you what. Our first stop will be Modell’s sporting goods store
and we can pick up a ball and go to the school to play in our high school gym. Would
you like that?”
“Yeah, but isn’t it closed?”
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“They open the school on Saturdays for teachers to come in and grade
papers.”
“Do you go in on Saturdays?”
“Sometimes.”
“Instead of seeing me?”
“No. It’s not like that. I have work to do, important work.”
“More important than spending time with me?”
Robert rolls down the windows, hoping to get some air in.
“Can we just think about today? A new basketball and a high school gym.
You know some colleges play at our gym.”
“Why because it’s so big?”
The cashier at Modell’s smiles as Robert calculates the available space on his
credit card.
“Are you nervous about something?” his son asks as Robert pats his leg and
looks at the numbers on the self-check out. The sale goes through with the grace of
God and in minutes they are at the gym.
“Where’s your room?”
“Would you like to see it?”
“Yeah.”
“Before we play?”
“Yeah.”
Robert awkwardly puts his hand on his son’s shoulder and leads him down a
cloistered hallway. There is one custodian down the hallway but it is Robert’s
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favorite, Jeff. Jeff is a cross between a dee-jay and a washed out ladies man. He
always has headphones on and music blaring. Jeff is a little hard of hearing and he
can only see out of one eye.
“What you doing here Mr. Red?”
“Thought I’d show my son off. This is Malik. Malik, this is Mr. Jeff.”
“Is that your last name?”
“No. Jefferson is. You can call me Jeff.”
“My mother says it’s impolite to call an adult by their first name.”
“So be it. You need to get in the gym Mr. Red?” Jeff says, eyeing the shinny
ball.
“Please. If you don’t mind. I wanted to show this young-blood that Daddy
still has some skills.”
“Did you play ball Mr. Red?”
“A little. I tried out for the team,” he says, as they walk to the gymnasium
together.
“I thought you were going to show me your classroom?”
“Oh, yeah. Mr. Jeff—we’ll meet you at the gym.”
“I’ll just leave it open and when you’re done, close that bad boy for me, all
right?”
“Sounds good,” Robert says, leading his son to his room. Malik is not
impressed with the lack of color and decoration in the room. High school rooms
look like the subject matter; there’s no fun on the walls. Malik stands in the middle
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of the floor, searching for something imaginative. His eyes seem to curse the
darkness.
“It’s so dull.”
“Well, I guess that’s the difference between a man and a woman—a man’s
thinking about the essentials, the real stuff—while a woman wants everything all
pretty and everything. She thinks about the outside, while we go to the center. Does
that make sense?”
Malik looks puzzled.
“If a man and a woman were playing basketball, the man would be concerned
about making the shot while the woman would worry about form and how pretty
the shot was.”
“I got you Dad, but not some girls I know.”
The gym is lonely but the floors shine well enough for Robert and his son to
see the beginning of their faces in the reflection.
“Can you show me how to shoot a jump shot?”
“Sure….you dribble the ball and then you have to come to a complete stop.
You jump up in the air with your feet together so your body is straight and then you
release the balance hand and follow through. Your hand should be like a duck’s
head. You ever see a duck’s head?”
“No, because every time you say you’re going to take me to the country, you
back out.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I know. Now, try it. Dribble to the crest, right here. Stop
and then…
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Malik steps back a few steps before he gingerly brushes his father’s hand and
takes the ball. He is tentative; his limbs shake.
She is waiting on the front porch when he brings Malik home, her fist
stabbing her side. Her mouth is one line of recrimination.
“Why in the hell are you late all the time?”
“I said I’d be here around five. It’s five o five.”
“See what I mean, always late.”
Jeff, the custodian, let Malik keep a ball. Malik leaves the new ball in his
father’s car, for safekeeping. He holds the battered ball up in the air, smiling.
“What’s that a used ball? How many niggers have touched that basketball
and you give it to your son? You couldn’t take him to Wal-Mart and buy him an
actual new ball? You know you’re sorry. Get in the house, boy. Too bad your father
couldn’t buy you a real ball. You are the sorryist man I ever laid eyes on.”
She slams the door shut before he can explain. Robert slumps and begins the
endless walk to his car.
“And be here next Saturday on time. You’re supposed to keep him through
Sunday you piece of homemade shit,” she opens her huge door, and yells at his back.
Cordova’s face is contorted, like a spectator in a George Bellow’s painting.
She is always yelling, screaming invectives at him. When he gets home, the air in his
apartment seems welcome; he thinks about calling Rachel but he practices Yoga
instead. Sun exercises…If he thinks about her too much, she will take over his
waking thoughts. Robert was unsure of himself during their time together; he
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believed the tapes he ran in his head about his own failure. Now, he must remain in
control and not let his consciousness shrink to the size of the feminine form.
He finds himself, in the middle of the day, dreaming about Rachel’s calves, the
way they shake and come back to themselves. Her legs are slightly bowed and the
gap in the middle gives room for imagination to go crazy. She reminds him of all the
great painting he has ever seen. Rachel becomes every woman in every portrait of
Picasso and every collage of Bearden.
Still, he was plagued by thoughts of other women. He wondered what their
necks would smell like if he passed his nose near. They existed as lovers in his
mind’s eye. Soon his imaginings owned his thoughts and he spent hours reviewing
the details of past lovers. Time was the only entity that was limited…he liked to say.
This is why he had to keep the world out. The more he held people at bay, the more
he would have a chance to achieve his twisted goals.
There were mornings when he felt trapped by his own persona: everyone
knew he loved his subject matter and that he was at work every day with a tie and
starched shirt, willing to give of himself in the classroom, but Robert did not like
being the center of attention. It was emotionally excruciating to be in front of two
hundred people a day when he felt like hiding most of the time. Robert sponsored
the poetry club because he loves poetry and that would quell any criticism of not
being involved after school. He would never be the gregarious kind that drove
students home; he valued his disappearing privacy, unlike Miss Tolbert, she
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crammed as many students as she could get into her aging Volkswagen. “This one
lives near this one,” she would say pointing to the three students huddled together
like an offensive backfield in her backseat as her shapely, big cone breasts stood at
attention.
At the end of every day, he would jump into his car and the illusion of Mr. Red
died. This afternoon when he climbed in his once excellent car with leather seats, it
was as if he was enveloped by Rachel’s memory; he wanted to smell her up close to
his nose, again.
This school thing was a bunch of bullshit. He wanted to “live authentically,” like
Thoreau had said but he didn’t know what the fuck that meant. If I can only talk to
her…just talk to her, and then imagine her skin coming through the perforations of the
phone. If I can just hear her voice against the receiver…he thought.
He would undo his tie, when he was out of the parking lot, and throw his tie
into the back seat of his car.
“Loosen the fuck up,” Creighton, his fellow teacher, would say. The minute he
left the parking lot his professional persona was gone and he was safe for a few
moments; he was too Ivy League, buttoned down. He would go home and be himself
or could he? He remembered the main character of Truffau’s the MAN WHO LOVED
WOMEN; that character died reaching out to touch a nurse when he was hospitalized.
Was he becoming that character? The aroma of different women invades his nostrils.
There is that moment before cupping their behinds and thrusting their middles in your
own face. He loves that moment, when they are trembling, waiting to be blessed by the
slightest touch of your tongue on their little sailors in the boat. They are ocean. They
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possess the ability to be moist, to become liquid and produce another human. They
are magical, noxious and their middles become, give life, spinning screaming babies
from the womb. A crying child and the world gets another fucking chance. Did he
want to spend his life chasing, chasing…the smell was different with every woman.
Some smelled like cottage cheese and still others like fine tobacco, but it was always
good to be there, crouched before them.
What was the self that he wanted to be?
The privacy was there to protect his writing. Now, he was protecting
something that was not there.
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CHAPTER THREE
He felt trapped in the walls of the high school. Rachel called every night.
Sometimes, he talked to Rachel but she broke up his normal routine and made him
have to restructure things. Every night he wanted to be in bed by nine and anything
that kept him up became the enemy. He felt that his most productive hours were
from two a.m. to five. Robert was fond, attached to the world of routine. This is how
he told himself that everything would be all right and that the world was moving on
a prescribed course, even though he knew that was a lie. The world, like human
beings, was spinning out of control. There was nothing tethering or tying human
beings to anything. Terrorism and the bombs placed on airplanes had ruined
Americans’ sense of order and he found little in his own life but the pretense of
organization. In reality, he was unhappy as hell and his life was full of holes. Rachel
was threatening to fill one gaping canyon. He tried to allot time, just to think about
her, hoping that his mind would compartmentalize and stop with this sloppiness but
he could not control his thoughts; they ran around like children with bad parents.
Rachel was messing everything up but she also made him feel a strange tingling just
below his belly button. This was an urge that he never had before on such a
prolonged basis. He felt “hot” toward many girls he would see but his involvements
had always been brief. There was always control in the beginning—the woman
would fit into his schedules and he would see her on Sundays, after church, for an
hour or two or she would come over late at night, usually through the back door,
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and they would do the wild thing and then she would go back to her life and he
would go back to his routines. Once those routines were broken, he felt that the
world was slipping, sliding into some abyss.
Rachel, before Robert, had sworn off men. It was not just because she
enjoyed the lips and tongue and sensitivity of other women but she not been in the
company of an interesting, available man in years. Yes, she had lived through
intense crushes on male Professors; she attended their readings, bought their books
but they never seemed to hit on her. She wasn’t flashy and her breasts were not
larger than her thoughts. It seemed that the Professorial male preferred his
intellectual opposite. In college, she took a back seat to those women that dressed
well, with manicured fingernails and toes.
But Robert was something different—for the first time in her life she was
competing for what the women called “a catch.” She knew that his outside was
better than his inside and that he needed major internal excavation, but she was
willing to invest the time. Her last female lover had been a designer, into
“remaking” human beings. She had done so with Rachel, giving her clothes, access
to make-up professionals and trunks and trunks of originals. With Robert, it was
simply a matter of getting him to believe in himself. If he could stop worrying, and
see a thought through to it’s conclusion, he would be all right.
Until Robert, Rachel had seen men as conveniences and all relationships as
bridges to professional advancement. “Men don’t complete you anymore, they are
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just convenient or not,” her mother told her years ago, from the bottom of the stairs,
yelling up into her room.
Robert was attractive because of his Lord and Taylor clothing, breeding,
publications and background and because he looked better than anything else in the
building. None of the men in the building functioned on Robert’s level—they were
mildly interesting but they were just high school English teachers and former
middle school teachers. Most of the men were beaten; stoop shouldered teachers
that tiptoed around their desks; their pants had no crease. They had no aspirations
but paying the mortgage on their sad little houses and not starving to death in the
summers.
Rachel saw herself as a heavy hitter—capable of publishing and maybe even
a doctorate one day but she needed someone by her side, someone to make
sandwiches for in the mornings, someone to take care of. She did not want children
but she thought she needed someone to sculpt, to render up out of clay. Robert was
that someone—all of the other women in the building talked about his tailor made
clothes, command of the language, scholarly manner.
Robert was so different than the rest—in the age of “gangsterism” and fake
masculinity, muscle passed for might. Masculinity meant talking about carrying a
gun or mentioning wanting to kill someone. Rachel longed for intelligent
conversation at night and true satisfaction. She loved bending backward, allowing
her lover to take liberties with her body. Rachel would say, “any hole…just any
hole…”
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And late into the night, with batteries and dildos, and loving limbs and lips,
women know just what to do. Women are aware of the needs of other women and
can almost predict, coax an orgasm. Poets, sensitive men, seem to listen to women
and respond to their bodies—there is hope for Robert.
Rachel was most fond of vampire stories—she liked the way they swooped
up behind the woman, took control of her fantasies and her body, wrapping their
intended in a restrictive cocoon so she could not break free. She had seen Beauty
and the Beast hundreds of times but her most intense orgasms occurred when she
watched the movie BOXING HELENA. Rachel liked the idea of giving up control
while fucking, letting a man take care of her every need; and just when the dream of
the woman was about to end, she would scream louder than the whir of batteries,
almost as if she wanted HELENA to stay in the box, an ornament for male pleasure.
This was the opposite of her waking philosophy of literary feminism and she
felt ashamed to have such submissive thoughts, but Robert was masculine enough to
just “take” her if he could let himself enjoy a moment.
Robert avoided her in the hallways but there were English department
meetings where they would sit across from one another and he would avoid
her eyes and try to discount what she was saying. Some of the departmental battles
could get internecine and he would have to concentrate on the point Rachel was
making.
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“The exemplars are the key—Mr. Red and I feel that the exemplars will give
the students a grid, a modus operandi and once they have that it will be easy for
them to follow our lead,” Rachel offers.
Robert heard his name but he couldn’t believe she was linking the two of
them together in public. They said they didn’t want anyone to know about their
friendship but here she was talking about what he believed. Someone will know, he
thought to himself. The chair of the English department, Miss Nicole, was very
shrewd; she would figure it out. There was a way people looked at each other and
lingered when they touched each other, someone would guess.
He guarded his personal life because it was something real that he could have
away from the school, not the personal life but the guarding of it. Other than his
writing, he had nothing but the illusion of a personal life and that made him feel
important. So he pretended like he had a former wife and family. He even thought
of buying one of those fake photographs of a family and putting it in a frame on his
desk. Maybe then people would stop asking—“Mr. Red, were you ever married?”
And then maybe he could stop looking for answers as to why he never was.
Saturday night came quickly. Rachel had less on this time and she moved
around him with such energy and lightness that he had to ask.
“What’s the occasion?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you seem so excited,” Robert says, staring at her.
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“I am. Excited about you’re coming over. You know, I waited a long time to
date you. I’ve always been impressed by your intelligence, your grasp of things. I
mean, Miss Nicole will come up with something in the meeting and you seem to have
vast knowledge of every thing we could possibly do in English,” Rachel says, staring
at him with a kind of wonder.
“I’ve just been teaching a long time. I’ve been exposed to a lot,” Robert adds.
“I don’t mean to be too personal, but I have an interest in you, Mr. Red. What
about your experience with women? Have you ever been married? I’m not implying
you’re gay or anything.”
“Why does everybody ask me about that? I’ve been engaged about five
times,” Robert offers.
“Five times?”
“To different women.”
“Couldn’t make the leap? Afraid to make the commitment?”
“No, just afraid. Of everything. Marriage, crossing the street, your awfully
parted lips,” Robert slowly cuts and eats his steak, leaving little pieces in a circle
around the plate.
“Oh. I see. Are you afraid of me?”
“I was at first but now…”
Rachel slowly gets up from her chair; Robert is surprised, in every way. She
moves quickly down the table and places her hand in Robert’s shirt. He pulls her to
him and they meet in the middle, smashing lips.
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Rachel turns her back to him, begging him to make love like dogs do.
Damn…he never expected this from her…there were others he had dated, Georgette,
with the punkish hair and tattoos—he expected roughness from women with tattoos.
Georgette whispered in his ear, on the dance floor, that she liked it from the back. He
expected things from certain kinds of girls but never from Rachel.
He put his hands on both sides of her buttocks and pressed forward; Rachel
startles by taking him down in a circular motion, holding his hands and moving in
time to the music.
James Brown…Money won’t change you…but time will take you on…
She dips again still holding him, baiting him. She flops her head against the
pillow and moves her ass up in the air.
“Harder…can you fuck me a little harder?”
He thrusts with everything he has, putting his hand on her back and
scratching her every so lightly. She coos as his fingernails move slowly down the
smallest part of her back.
Rachel moves her ass coquettishly back and forth, taking his thrusts and
returning with an ass thrust of her own. He looses time and just holds on to her as
she purposely grates his fingers with her fingernails. Rachel knows there are tricks
to keeping a man.
But time will take you on…
After about an hour of solid fucking, she moves over to her dresser. She
takes out a purple long gown and black come-fuck-me heels. By now, he is sitting at
the corner of the bed. She dances for a while a few feet from him then she turns
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around and sticks her ass in his face. He can smell the deep rich coffee smell of her
silent place. He licks her from behind like she is a confectionaries’ treat kept in the
glass showcase of a fine restaurant, waiting for receptive hands.
They have unbridled sex in the hallway, a cross between imaginings and a
strip show; she is good at fulfilling every fantasy except her own. She wondered if
Robert would be up for her kind of fun. She would have to cultivate him and it
would take time but for now it was just good to feel the masculine hand on her skin.
It had been years—four as a matter of fact, since she had given herself to any man.
Robert seemed so sterile and proper at work. She arched her back, knowing that the
Playboy models did the same. Rachel studied Men’s Health, what men considered
sexy, knowing it had nothing to do with her. She read the articles about getting your
mate to give intense sex. It was about their imaginings and she had the knack of
being selfless, seeing the world as males do. She had a closet of multi-colored
stiletto heels and she was just waiting for someone pliable, someone like Robert to
come along, someone not in charge of their heart or their head. There was the
scholarly mind but what about his imagination?
“I want you to fuck me harder. Harder.”
She thought vaginal orgasm with a man was impossible. The only way was if
he banged her deeply and with masculine force. She secretly doubted if Robert had
the energy—but she was willing to find out. Most men ignored the totality of a
woman’s body; they did not explore the hollows, the skin behind the knee, the
underarm, back of a woman’s neck. Most men were in a rush to save the hard on;
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they lived in fear that they would go soft; so when they achieved hardness they
became rude, pushing and wrongly aggressive. She had hopes that Robert was a
little more sensitive and he was, but he has a long way to go to please her totally.
There was the tension that he would go soft, his breathing shortened and he
hovered anxiously during lovemaking. Rachel was gentle, teaching him to make love
to all of the woman, her spirit and not just her flesh.
Some were afraid of the clitoris and treated it like it was something not to be
touched or caressed.
“Please fuck me deeper, harder Robert. Harder.”
Robert woke feeling less than triumphant; she seems to be challenging him,
taking something away from him instead of complimenting what is there.
“Robert…where are you going? I thought last night was wonderful.”
“So did I. I’m a little out of practice, sorry. I feel a little awkward,” he says
sliding toward the door.
“I don’t know why. For two hours, I didn’t know where I was.”
“I guess that’s good. I must get ready for church,” he says pushing her away.
“Can I come with you? Or would you consider missing one Sunday? I have a
sermon for you,” she says, kissing and pulling him down to her at the same time.
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Rachel has inhabited his soul and life is beginning to turn for the better
because of her. His body is being touched by her and it feels as if Rachel owns his
physical and emotional joy. They spend the whole day together, grading papers,
making love and talking. For the first time in his life he has someone that he wants
to open up to, to know. She is incredibly patient with his idiosyncratic ways, his
little quirks. He thinks of her as a sister but he is so attracted to her that he can feel
his loins stirring whenever she is in his presence. Robert wants to pull himself out
of this spell but he can’t—for the first time in his life he feels a little bit like everyone
else. He begins to meet her early, in the coffee shop around the corner before school
every day. Robert is entertained by her laughter—he likes looking down her throat
and imagining his tongue playing with hers. Robert feels the nagging reality that he
is not satisfying her. Although he did his best, he could feel that there was
something within her he was not touching. Usually, the women he makes love to are
grateful for his presence; Rachel did not sleep for hours after they made love, she
was up, walking around talking. Most of his women yelled and screamed at the top
of their lungs because the impressive writer and scholar saw fit to spend time with
them and then they fell into a grateful sleep. This was not about Robert, it was
about the idea of him. With Rachel, things were a bit more challenging; she wanted
satisfaction on an animalistic level. Was he capable of being present in the room?
He spent most of his time thinking about the convoluted future or his fractious
past—he seldom spent time in the present.
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In class, it was sometimes hard to concentrate especially in the afternoons.
He would stare out among the slightly bent heads and think of Rachel as he
discussed something dry like iambic pentameter.
“Accented and unaccented beats. Hell, let’s beat it out on our desks. One
accented and one unaccented beat. Come on do it with me,” Mr. Red says, and they
do it reluctantly, one by one, staring at each other with incredulous looks.
He lets the class roam a little and discuss whatever they want for a few
minutes. Mr. Robert Red never allows anything like this. This is a departure from
the dry normal air of the room. Just the other day, he unbuttoned the top button of
his shirt. What next…a movie? There was something looser, risqué about him.
Everyone in the first row has noticed. His eyes smile now and they never did before.
Now he asks students if he can read their work. Before grading was such a burden,
each paper was another reason to question the diagnosis of macular degeneration.
He wanted to prove his doctor wrong so he tried to read their scribbles late in the
afternoon without his glasses knowing he could not. Sometimes, in the afternoon,
when he would get so tired he could barely speak, he would stare at her room door.
The thought of her quiet skin behind the glass with imbedded wire made him feel
suddenly free enough to teach his last period. Some days, it felt like he was going to
keel over in front of class. That would be a hoot—to fucking die in front of a class.
Lately, he thought less and less about dying. He considered his thoughts his one
indulgence. Romantic poets wrote and thought about their ultimate demise all the
time or it least it seemed that way from his reading. It was as if Rachel had some
power, a civilizing force in his life. Whenever he got anxious, he would think of her
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and the afternoon would flatten out and everything seemed possible. When Rachel
was around, it was sinful to think of death. She was such a life-force dedicated to
Robert’s survival and he knew his destructive thoughts ran counter to her voice,
touch, innuendo.
It was all a burden to him before—the late passes, grins of students, demands
for attendance. Now, Rachel has liberated something within and now he approaches
even the smallest thing—filling out a referral form, with new, distant, joy. After all,
it was only high school.
He even enjoys his name being tossed into the air of the hallway, “Hey, Mr.
Red…how are you?”
There is so much to do—grades, parents and computation. It has to be done,
so lets do it and do it now. Let’s clear our decks for a wonderful weekend and a time
when he will lay next to her, breathing her skin smell in. She was his energy and
another reason to look forward to Fridays. Sometimes, his back felt like it was
splitting, at the base, by his butt, on Friday afternoons—if anybody said anything out
of the way to him, he was just one incident away from attacking a student; so, he
decided to focus on the pleasant feelings that Rachel was providing.
But he was afraid of this pleasantness and being dependent on her. He had
abandoned several writing projects and had begun the most impossible work of his
life. He had always wanted to write like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and lately he had
worked long hours trying to create a world on paper that was fanciful and lustful at
the same time; this demanded great attention to detail and a level of concentration
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that he did not possess. For the life of him, he could not figure out how Marquez
could create a world where the most minute was important—like bird shit—while
constructing a perfect love story.
In the past few months, the editors were taking a longer time to respond and
recently a check. A publication—two thousand dollars for a quiet, little short story
about a Prince. When he wrote the story about the Prince, he forgot about structure
and form and he just wrote like a teenager. He kept the check in his top drawer and
stared at it for days. Publication in the New Yorker—he told no one.
“Why don’t you send me more stuff?” the editor at the New Yorker complains
in e-mail. Eight to twelve months ago, he was sending stories out but since work
demanded attendance, grades, responses to e-mails, complex evaluations and
constant phone calls to parents during hall duty and cafeteria duty—things have
started to pile up. Robert can’t handle details and simple matters appear to
overwhelm him. He would rather give in and let the world topple.
But there was something new in his arms; there was a zest when he sat down
at the table preparing for work.
Rachel left him every Sunday with a feeling of sweet soul contentment; this
was the same feeling he got when the second wind would click in when he ran, then
his brain would calm down but more and more it was not running or writing but
simply her.
Rachel left him feeling uncomfortable and alive in places he did not know
existed before, but he keeps telling himself that this feeling is temporary just like
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everything else in the world. All living things die; all good feelings abate and no
good deed goes fucking unpunished. Robert knows that because you have found
something special does not mean it will go on forever and ever.
Rachel seems like she was waiting for a relationship with an intellectual man;
men were not all they were cracked up to be. Maybe all of the intelligent ones were
in prison or married but there seems to be little to choose from. The rap movement
has given men the right to be rude and they ask for “smashing” before they ask for a
phone number. The highly intellectual men seem to be gay or taken and the dregs
are the only ones left—drunks, the unemployed and the dying. Robert, she hopes, is
none of those. She seems to revel in the long philosophic discussions and
tempestuous lovemaking. A few years ago, Robert had a hard body, now there are
slight bulges and a cute potbelly. His eyes are hazel, almost red, mysterious and
“bedroom.” It is his Walter-Mitty-like imagination and the aggressive sexual self
that she is attracted to. She seems quite comfortable with the idea of a relationship
because to nurture is to live. Rachel sings in the hallways and whistles in meetings;
she was doing some of this before but not to this extent. She has a “lightness to her
that is disturbing,” Mr. Crotch, the AP English teacher says.
Robert was getting Facebook messages from women that he thought he had
forgotten. They were back with requests for kept items, prints, paintings that they
owned. He “appropriated” items from different women because he hated to shop or
were they trophies that he could show to other men? Robert had a draw full of
conquest’s panties and garters and items he had asked for from his former loves. He
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would always ask them when they were across the bed, thinking of nothing and they
gave the items up with nonchalance. Sometimes, late at night, he would reminisce,
running his hands and his nose through their personal items, feeling and lacing it all
with memory. Then, in his nostrils, he would breathe in and smell them. Elizabeth,
his Puerto Rican lover, smelled like dampened new roses, and Denise, like the finest
Virginia Tobacco laced with perfume; Harriet smelled like rain and Linda like warm
cat milk. His activities at night were usurping the fake professionalism of his days
because he longed for the excitement of shadows where he could slip along the
edges of nighttime promises and live there away from the fauna and flora of the car
honks and street sounds.
There is an English department meeting this afternoon. Robert hates being
in the same room with her because he thinks a movement of his arm and a roving
look will give it all away. He resolves to only look at her above the neck. Rachel
likes to contribute because it forces Robert to look at her, to react.
Miss Nicole is on fire today. She is upset about the lack of response to her
recent request for writing samples.
“I don’t know if you all received my request but I need narrative writing
samples. We are trying to use the concepts of story, of beginning, middle and end to
inform our student’s research writing. I take the position that writing is writing and
if you can write a damned story you can write a damned research paper. It’s not
true that if you can write a research paper you can write a story so I want our
students to do the more creative, the more difficult first. They can fail at that, what
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the hell are we raising Philip Roths? Hell no, if they fail at the creative, they’ll be
happy as hell to write research. They all can succeed at that. In fact, the little math
minds will be happy to return to something they can measure,” she says drawing
back, satisfied with herself.
“Mr. Red and I have already finished the short stories. We had a kind of joint
project,” Rachel offers.
“Oh, do you now? Why didn’t you share all this with the department? We
could have all done the same thing,” Miss Nicole says.
“We could still do the same thing. We have all of our lesson plans,” Rachel
says.
Robert Red is grimacing. He didn’t want anyone to know; he thought if they
stayed apart in the daytime no one would know they were together at night. Rachel
seems to want everyone to know that they were linked intellectually. She wants to
be in the same professional room.
“Yeah, uh…we could and then that might lead to a literary magazine at the
end of the year,” Robert offers.
“Sounds good. You two go forward and then report back to me. If it works
out then we can replicate it and work on a magazine. That would make us the envy
of the entire system,” Miss Nicole’s eyes get big.
English chairs like distinction.
After the meeting, Rachel reaches out and pulls Robert’s jacket tail before he
can leave. Everyone else has gone.
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“You act like you’re afraid of me at school,” she says.
“I just don’t want everyone to know. I mean, it’s a wonderful feeling but I like
to keep things separate,” Robert says.
“Are things getting a little messy for you?”
“Messier than normal. But I’m a little strange—I like things in their neat little
cubbies,” Robert offers.
“And I have messed all that up haven’t I?”
“And made me feel alive for the first time in years. I just have to adjust. It’s
not you, it’s me.”
Rachel backs up, pretending she is looking at Robert but she is about to take
off, to fly through the classroom like she is a personal plane. As he talks, she runs
around the classroom taking off, making airplane sounds with her personal motor.
Robert watches with awe.
“What are you doing?”
“I just felt that way. You’ve been making me feel that way, as if I was about to
soar inside. Thank you. I haven’t felt that way, maybe ever,” Rachel shrieks.
“I know. It’s weird.”
“You want to do something? Right here after everyone goes home?”
“No. The only way this can work for me is if we compartmentalize. If things
start to get murky and the lines mix I can’t function,” Robert says to her.
“You have to go with your feelings sometimes. Everything can’t fit. That’s
just the way life is. When you try to limit something that’s when it get much larger.
Just give our relationship its just due. Maybe it’s not the most important thing in the
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world but it is pulling on me and making me feel whole in the afternoons when I
usually doubt myself. And I like feeling this way and expressing my feelings for
you,” Rachel says, with her eyes wide and green and intimidating.
“Well, let’s go to my place,” Robert says. He has never said that to anyone in
the building before, no one knows where he lives.
“Mine’s closer,” Rachel says backing up, gathering a stack of papers.
Robert jumps in his little hybrid Subaru following Rachel as her ponytail
bounces up and down in the front seat of her Beetle. For one quick second he thinks
of his son’s hair. It was just growing in good the last time he saw him. He could use
a buzz cut. Robert feels something kick him in his stomach each time he thinks of
him and he feels the pain of real fear, the shaking hands of his non-existent
fatherhood. Rachel might leave him if she finds out the extent of his estrangement
but he is removed from everything. He tells himself that he is an existentialist and
existentialists are not close to any one or anything because nothing has any fucking
meaning anyway. Jean Paul Satre—that’s his man. Being and fucking nothingness,
that’s the ticket. He read every page of that twenty-one-hundred page book. Satre is
the man. His rationales are getting old and the lies are mounting.
Rachel seems like she’s humming to herself, content with the world, with her
boyfriend following her. Robert is not in as much bliss as she is about the
relationship. She has just finished a love relationship with a distant Marine. He was
never in town because he was always in “training” and when he was in town he was
wrapped up in his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—he could only approximate
reality, he could not live in day to day. Everything ran together for him. Her old
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boyfriend was never on beat, always in another place, removed from the room that
he was in. Maybe that’s why she can deal with the distant, cool intellect of Robert.
He squirms a little as he follows her. Old Lady Perry is standing at the door of the
school watching the two of them leaving the parking lot behind one another. She
shakes her head. Her disapproving gray eyes are stare.
Her clothes are on the back of the door; they are small and shapeless. The
darkness of a woman’s bedroom is designed to disguise all stretch marks and fatty
places. “I like the dark,” Rachel says.
Magazine models have created unrealistic expectations for men or they want
to see what they go to strip bars for. Since females are the objects of adoration, they
must carry society’s crosses into lovemaking. Men look at women and stare, trying
to find the secret place. Robert is confused about his favorite place on Rachel’s
body. Brodsky says “the favorite place on a woman is between the elbows and her
knees” but Robert is fascinated by the ankles of women, spots on the back of their
necks, knobby knees, wrists. He has so many visual oases on Rachel that it is hard to
focus on one place; he thinks of the silence in the center of her breasts. She is
inviting everywhere and he familiarizes himself with her details each time the light
goes off; he tries to find her.
“I know you’re here somewhere,” he says reaching out grabbing her leg.
“I like that. Grab the other leg.”
He is reluctant but he grabs the other leg and the ankle and pulls her toward
him.
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“Put your hands on my back. Hold me down.”
Hold me down? Did she just say that? What kind of fucking freak is she? I
thought she was a nice girl with scholarly interests but there seems to be another self
here. There seems to be something that she wants me to touch, to massage that’s deep
within.
He reacts robotically and sits her ass in the air and makes love again the way
they did before.
“Ride me, like a horse. Be my steer baby. Be my steer.”
What in the hell? Is she some kind of fucking freak or does she really want me
to dominate her? She’s thought about this before…this is a fucking fantasy…
He holds her, places her, rides beneath her while putting his hands gently on
her back.
“Hold me down! With some force! Hold me down!”
Robert tries but the more he presses the more he loses his hardness. Her
screams and orders intimidate him. Robert gyrates and tries to do the move he
recently saw in a porn movie on his computer at home.
What the hell does she want from me?
She humps and presses, still in search of an orgasm. Robert thinks of Harriet;
she was easy to make love to, not demanding. Maybe she was faking, but it took
little effort to make her sigh.
When he is inside of one woman, he fantasizes about another. His brain can’t
process ecstasy because he is always thinking about the next pair of legs and how
they will look hoisted in the air.
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They make love for what seems like days. He is exhausted and spent; he feels
she is unsatisfied; that there is something inside of her that he cannot touch. He
sleeps, snoring, drawing in the ceiling.
Her house is always quiet. Clean. It seems to be easy to look out of her
windows. The earth looks to be lying under a blue blanket. Efficient. He always
feels a strange sense of calm mixed with agitation when he is there. It all leaves him
jittery and she will do what she always does—stroke the side of his face and tell him
that everything will be all right. That the feelings are new but he will get used to
them.
“But I don’t like change,” he pleads, later that afternoon.
“I know you don’t but it’s a change for me to,” she says.
“How is it a change for you? You’ve been in love before,” Robert says.
“Once. But there was no depth there. He wasn’t like you. He was dedicated
to his ideal of America and there was little room for me. Military,” she says with her
eyes wide open.
“And me?”
“I knew you had depth. I listened to you during the faculty meetings and
there is your love of literature, of teaching,” she says with commitment.
“So…”
“So, this is predicated on so much more. This is about the biggest organ, the
brain.”
“Oh, it is?”
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“It is for me.”
“What about the heart?”
“It’s about all of that,” she says, looking around the comfortable room.
“Heart and mind and sinew. Do you see us going on?”
“I love you if that’s what you’re asking. I loved you the first time I saw you
read a poem. You were standing so straight and the words were made more
eloquent because you were saying them,” she says. Men say whatever they want to
get the flesh; Rachel will say whatever she wants to get the relationship.
“I see.”
They rip at each other in a desperate but loving act; they leave marks on one
another; just as he is about to withdraw, his head grazes against her lips and he
orgasms once, leaning back within, again, falling through her body to the soft
mattress of ecstasy.
For the first time, in a long time Robert has a moment of clarity. His body
convulses and he lets go, into her, feeling the bone in the back of his ass vibrating.
He has never felt so unnecessary-- as if he is floating. The room stops moving and he
feels the heat from lamps that surround. The street noise lessens and he strokes her
back where her ass blossoms in his hand.
Tonight when he came, he slowed down and looked at the curve of Rachel’s
accepting thigh. She has curves worthy of Modigliani. For the first time in months,
after they make love, the world seems to come to a slow halt. The light brownness
of her thigh seems to match the reflection of the sun off the brown draperies in the
room. She relaxes and her body looks as though it is bereft of air for a second; she
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rises again and he is sure she is all right. He was scared, scared in some place deep
down inside that he could not name. Scared that the world would change in an
instant and she would never wake up. But she smiles, the broad beatific smile of
morning and he feels lightness without complaint.
School is intensely boring. Everything seems repetitive. Each meeting, new
philosophy, all of it sounds old. He wants to live with his writing and her. He wants
to live between those two things and those two things only.
“Mr. Red, please report to the Principal’s office.”
And he will go and find some gnostic parent with obscene concerns, trying to
get him to pass a child that could not write a sentence if their lives depended on it.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Today, their rows seemed to be moving away from him. The lessons are
lifeless, and he defers to the departmental plans whenever he can. There are some
days, usually after he does his hall duty, that he will prepare with passion. Some
memory of his student-teaching self will take hold and Robert will convince himself
that he is making a difference. When one student smiles from behind the pages of a
book he considers that a pedagogical triumph. It is the little things but there are
many days when nothing positive occurs. He becomes less and less committed to
his students and classes but he is much more kind. He stays after class to talk to
students and he listens to their little same sex stories about wanting to have a
girlfriend and making a friend a boyfriend.
He goes to school theatrical productions. Rachel and he sit apart from one
another. He seems to be winning the battle of compartmentalization; he wants to
keep the relationship out of school. At first, she wants to hold his hand in the halls,
becoming part of the lush life of high school. It doesn’t take long for her to see
Robert’s point. It would affect both of their careers and teaching only gave you the
promise of coming back the next day. They had little money but they had job
security. She saw the practicality of his words and at night, they shared deep openmouthed kisses and hard lovemaking. Her mother had told her that one day she
would meet a man that would compliment her, not complete her but compliment
her and make her days bearable. So Rachel felt Robert was the compliment for her
efforts. He was scholarly and she was practical. He was neat where sometimes
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order escaped her and most of all he was artistic. Rachel was not the artiste; her
classes were extraordinary and she was respected throughout the system. She
loved literature and she loved the kids whose intelligence shined through every day;
however, she was not one to volunteer or take initiatives in meetings. She
sponsored the feminist club and every Thursday they would meet for one hour and
discuss issues that affected young women in today’s society but at five thirty she
was in her car, thinking about what she would cook for dinner for Robert.
When he made love to Rachel, he felt like Batman, or at least Robin, but the
feelings of masculinity would go away while he was at school unless he saw Rachel
coming out of an open door or darting so she would avoid the closing of one. Then
the tingles would move from his neck down to his penis and he would feel like he
was about to take off from his personal runway.
In the past ten years, he never missed a meeting, seldom showed up late for
any appointment. His chairman joked with him and said his head was finally “in the
clouds.”
Little girls looked at him dreamily because they wanted their boyfriends to
have clean fingernails and pressed clothes that were color coordinated and boys
grinned and talked about his relationship with Rachel behind their hands, in the
back of the room. For the first time in his life, he was the subject of gossip, and he
kind of liked it. Something within grinned at being talked about; he was part of the
whole strange, nubile sexuality of high school. Students were screwing on the
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staircases and teachers were dreaming about one another behind their horribly
beaten desks.
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CHAPTER FIVE
The kids drain on him with endless questions, questions that pry into his
personal life. He wants to keep things compartmentalized and separate but it’s
impossible with this population. Robert feels like things are slipping, slowly away.
He wanted to create a hard shell, like a turtle and only stick his neck out when
necessary to breathe to stay alive. From behind his shell, anyone that engages in
deep emotions seems sloppy. Love is hard to harness and quantify and what he
thinks he feels for Rachel is love. His eyes follow her. Every afternoon, after school,
they talk. She usually comes into his room because hers is usually impeccable.
Rachel is getting Robert’s textbooks together and straightening out his desks.
“Honey…”
“I told you never to call me that here…”
“I know but there’s no one in the room except you and me,” Rachel pleads
from her side of the room.
“Someone could come in…”
“So paranoid, you are Robert.”
“Just careful. It’s served me well to this point.”
“But things are changing. Do you feel yourself changing? I mean inside?”
“A little. Well, a lot. You have to stop tinkering around with my heart,”
Robert adds.
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“I’m changing too. This has turned my world totally upside down. I was
thinking of relocating and finding a new job but everything I was searching for—this
fucking sense of internal peace or whatever—all of that I feel now when I’m with
you. So, maybe I don’t need to go anywhere,” Rachel says.
“Well, that’s up to you. I can’t make decisions for you.”
“That’s not what I wanted you to say. In the movies this is where you would
talk about not being able to go on without me or something syrupy like that. Nat
King Cole would be playing in the background.”
“I don’t hear any music,” Robert says
“You are so drop dead romantic.”
“I told you I wasn’t the flowery type.”
“You did, while you were playing I won’t send roses,” Rachel says shaking her
head back and forth.
“Well, I don’t know what we’re really discussing. Let’s just clean up the
room,” Robert says.
“Clean up your own damned room,” she says, turning around and slamming
the door. She hates it when he acts helpless.
Later, there are only two cars in the parking lot. Rachel walks over to
Robert’s car.
“Maybe I overreacted,” she says half-smiling. “Do you want to order pizza?”
“Why not?”
“Follow me home then please sir,”
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“Okay.”
Once at her house, the anger between them seems to dissipate. Rachel
knows she will have to be patient with Robert. He feels a little crowded out of his
world. She has to assure him that everything he put in place, in his little universe,
will be there. That this thing called a relationship, will not tear his little plastic
world apart. She can’t rush him or he’ll fall apart.
His arms and legs relax. For the first time today there are no demands, no
papers being graded or returned. The repetitive sound of the television reporter’s
voice comforts. Rachel lifts the phone next to her ear but Robert intercepts the
phone call by caressing her arm.
“Who was that?”
“Just my old Marine,” she says, staring at the phone.
“Are you sure you’re lying?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean something tells me that was a new friend.”
“Well, it was my old Marine and his new friend, a woman, they want us all to
get together.”
“Get together?”
“Well, dinner, drinks and we’ll see how it goes,” Rachel says walking near the
window so that she can see the face of her phone.
“Sounds a little freaky to me.”
“Freaky is good. Relationships are different now. The old one on one is
over.”
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“Who declared monogamy dead?”
“I did. Just now.”
Robert looks around for air.
“But I thought we were…”
“I thought so too. They just want to meet us, that’s all.”
“Have you been talking about me to others?”
“I can’t help it.”
“Just a meeting?”
“Dinner here. Next weekend? It’ll be painless. I promise.”
Rachel walks up to him and with very quiet hands buttons his nightshirt.
“If it’s just dinner, then okay.”
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CHAPTER SIX
The next day, at school, is full of hustle and bustle. Robert’s play is being
done by the school players. The almost pretty drama teacher, Miss Borders, is
directing the play. Already, Mr. Red has spent hours and hours working at the
theatre explaining the concept of his play. Miss Borders is bubbly and attentive—
her eyes follow her target—long after they have walked away from her. She is a
dynamic lady with light brown skin, relatives in Spain, and an active, tiny mouth.
Miss Borders has opinions on everything, and she shares them spontaneously, with
everyone.
She is well informed and most of what she says is well researched. Robert
loves her laughter and her words and her beautiful breasts that push up out of her
blouse like ripe cantaloupes. When she walks away she bounces, with an ample ass.
When any woman is attracted to him, it becomes a supreme compliment; he is not
tall or muscular or possessing of magazine model looks. As a director, Miss Borders
understands his vision. She gets him, understands the nuances of his work and she
has talked to him for long hours, about the way he sees the heroine of the piece and
the motivations for the male lead. So, there is a philosophic meeting but there is
nothing else as far as he’s concerned.
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This particular piece is like Boesman and Lena; there are lovers caught in a
nation destroyed by a tsunami—they are the only two survivors, lost and sure of
nothing; they pledge their love to each other for four nights before they begin
looking for other survivors. Miss Borders can talk for hours about the two lovers
and their dedication to one another.
“I love the way you’ve depicted the girl. She is strong, yet vulnerable,
unaware of her own power. I love the way she doesn’t know if she’s in love but she’s
willing to go with him, to find out. I really like that. And the way you drew him;
that’s so appealing—he is strong yet not chauvinistically strong. I adore his ability
to move out of his own way and see her as the play moves on, of course. Today, we
have to talk about staging. Where did you study to be a playwright?”
“In the world. I didn’t really study any place. I just started writing.”
“And how long before you wrote your first play?”
“You mean how old was I? About seven. It was called Voodoo.”
“What was it about?”
“A woman under a spell. She was made a zombie by her sister. She put her
under.”
“Really? A pretty complex plot for seven.”
“My aunt was a made a zombie by a voodoo woman.”
“What?” And you cast a pretty mean spell yourself Mr. Red.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, you have been casting your spell over here for years. You knew I
admired you, wanted you…”
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“Wanted me?”
“Yes, Mr. Red. I know you and Rachel have something going on. I don’t want
to threaten that. I just want to share you that’s all. Do you have a free night?
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do you have a free night? For example, if you usually see her on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, you can see me on Wednesdays. Have us both walking around with
smiles on their faces,” Miss Borders says.
“It’s not a matter of scheduling.”
“Then what is it? Oh, you’re faithful to her? Come on, I know playwrights,
they are rakes. They are men about town. They fuck everybody.”
“Not all playwrights are the same, Miss Borders,” Mr. Red says, staring at her.
“I know some great ones. Should I drop names?”
“No.”
“I fucked the best. Oh, you want to go back to your play. Oh, we can do that
but you are coming to visit me one day of the week. Just one day, okay?”
“We’ll see…”
“What do you mean, we’ll see? We both love theatre. I love the way you put
words down on paper, the depth and the atmospherics—I mean, my God you’re like
Soyinka. You have a damned gift and men like you with a certain gift they need
more than one woman. I mean, look at the mistresses Picasso had; he painted most
of them, while he had wives also. Great artists need someone always there to keep
reminding them of the fact that they are geniuses. Genius is delicate—you can’t just
hang with anyone—you have to hang with those that are beneficial to your art.
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Those that serve your art. Is there anyone here, on this campus, that has read more
of your work than I have?”
“No. No one.”
“Then how can you say that they care about you? They would know your
work and through knowing your work, they would then know you. If they loved
you, if they admired your work and wanted to understand you, they would read you
correct?”
“I guess.”
“Then how can they say they love you? How can they say they are close to
you if you are a writer first and foremost and if you live for your craft then the
person that loves you should also know your work? How can that bitch say she’s
cares for you or loves you when she is doing nothing for the service of your work?”
“That’s not true. She’s doing everything. This good humor—was I that way
last year?”
“No. But I thought it was because of the play. I thought the fucking play was
the thing; I thought art was in your soul. Now you tell me it’s that snagga-toothed
bitch upstairs?”
“She is responsible for my emotional well-being, and why do you have to call
her names? Are you jealous?”
“And what am I, chopped fucking liver?”
“No. No you’re much more than that. You mean…”
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“What? Exactly what do I mean? I’m just a colleague. Just someone you say
hello to in the damned morning and flick off at night. Do you think about me at all
after four o’clock?”
“Sometimes I do.”
“Liar, liar, dick on fire! But you were willing to fuck me weren’t you? You
were willing to lie down with me because I asked. You care nothing for me but you
were willing to give me your free night.”
“I didn’t say…”
“Lack of commitment. I never actually said…are you a fucking lawyer or a
playwright? A real playwright, an Ibsen, a Strindberg would fuck the hell out of me.
Which are you equivocator or true artiste?”
“A bit of both.”
“You’re an asshole but I like your play. We’re you really serious about giving
me one night a week?”
“I came here to discuss the play and you made it something else. Some kind
of referendum on my work,” Robert says with anger.
“I made it what it is, man. Now let’s get down to cases—this play cannot
work without changing the female lead,” she says with a flair.
“I thought you liked the heroine?”
“I do, but I think you need to make her harder, more like me and less like that
tawdry bitch you hang out with.”
“Look are we going to work on the play or not?”
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“Oh, now you want to work on the play, a few minutes ago you were all over
me with promises and protestations.”
“Can we just work on the damned play?”
“Oh, now it’s the damned play. It wasn’t that before.”
“It is always the play. The play’s the thing in which I’ll catch the conscience of
the Principal,” Robert says.
“Okay, in the first scene…”
Miss Borders is starting to make him feel confused. He has had some blissful
times with Rachel but Miss Borders must recognize that he is weak for flesh. All she
has to do is to flash the mammary glands and he is silly putty. When something like
this happens, then he begins to question every assumption he has ever made. Is he
just a gonad hanging, waiting to harden? Or is there something more—could he
ever love and be dedicated to Rachel or is he doomed to chase the jiggly things for
the rest of his life?
The kids are on their phones, checking their I-pods, ignoring everything to do
with the play. Most of the time, all you can see is the tops of their heads. They
always look down into the rectangular light of the phone that makes their features
look strangely ghoulish. This is a time of emptiness where the tweet is more
important than substance. There is no present only wrapping, and the children here
are unable to write a complete sentence because they text in a kind of ignorant code.
They talk the language of the message and when they speak it is a strange mixture of
curses and monosyllabic mumbling. Miss Borders lures them back to the stage. Her
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breasts are bouncing up and down. They look creamy and more inviting with every
motion. Robert can’t keep his eyes off her girls every time she shakes her arms. It is
her energy that he is attracted to, yeah. He should be thinking about his work, but
they seem to follow him, dancing with delight. Maybe it was time to have some
uninhibited fun—he hadn’t said the word love to Rachel yet but he felt it was
coming, blossoming within his stomach, begging at his throat. She had already said
it, as in “if I were to say I would love you?” Always asking a question, never
asserting anything. She wanted to hear him say the words and it would not only
mean commitment but it would mean he was growing the fuck up.
Robert stood there in awe for some time, watching the words and
movements of the entire dramatic family, the play slowly unfolding before his eyes.
The son was remarkably impudent and his defiance seemed to light up the stage.
There was a definite glow about him and the other actors knew it and felt the heat.
Emotions are being heaved back and forth and the little family he designed comes
alive. Robert’s eyes get large as he watches the actors in lights. The spotlights spill
onto the front of the stage and the actors move to the edge and dance back to the
center, arguing, diving in and out of his words, making the play bend and change.
The words move and the scene flows on, dipping and changing with their
expressions, becoming larger and stranger with each genuflect. The scene seems to
grow and stretch inside the chambers of his memory. It is a different scene than he
ever imagined or they are playing it differently tonight and the stage seems to
expand inside of his mind. He can see the stage, and all the children on it; then the
stage starts to flatten out and turn. It is almost like the whole thing is suspended in
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air and the proscenium is touching the four corners of his brain as it revolves,
shooting out strange colors and lights.
He can hear the words but they are surrealistic and strange in his head. The
sound like they are clanging against a metallic ceiling in his mind. He feels a kind of
transcendence—the actors’ faces look like they are all back lit and ghoulish; they
look like students staring into their phones. In his mind’s eye, he can see Poe’s
pendulum swing back and forth. The stage turns but the students are still attached
to the stage.
“Robert,” he hears Rachel’s voice calling out to him.
He does not move and just stands there, watching the play in his mind.
“Robert,” she says again.
“Rachel. What is it? I was just watching the rehearsal,” he says.
“Robert, the rehearsal has been over for a half an hour. What are you still
doing here? I thought you were supposed to meet me in the parking lot when
everything was done,” Rachel insists.
“I was. I guess I lost myself. I was just thinking of what I could do with this
play—I mean if it were produced somewhere else. In another venue. A professional
venue.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I mean I knew I was daydreaming but I just went with it. I just
watched my own mind, like it was a movie. It was entertaining. I do that all the
time.”
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“I hope the students didn’t see you. You looked like you were drunk or
dazed.”
“I am dazed. Drunken over the possibility of doing some real work. Having
my plays produced outside of this damned school. I’m dazed at the possibility of
really doing something,” Robert says.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. I am. I just get tired of all of this. The seven-thirty to three-thirty. I
want to break out of this routine and do something real with my art.”
“I thought you were.”
“It’s not happening fast enough. I mean, there’s something inside of me that
wants to burst out. It’s almost like this writing thing wants to own all of me. It is
pushing and pulling and making me something more than just a high school English
teacher. And then I have to come to work, I feel strange all day. I feel like I should
be home writing. And sometimes I love this. Sometimes this is fulfilling but most of
the time I just feel strange. I feel like I’m almost. Almost a teacher. Almost a writer.
Almost a fucking human being.”
“I know that feeling. But I thought our relationship, our talking was making
everything better. I thought all that was helping you smooth things out.”
“It is but something happened today. I don’t know if it was talking to Miss
Borders or not but something is happening. Something is throwing everything else
out of place. I mean it must have been seeing my own work on the stage. That must
have been it—this whole play thing—is taking me to another world. One I can’t
come back from. And then, in the morning—it’s worse than being an alcoholic—I
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can’t feed this reality anymore. I can’t become Mr. Robert Red in the mornings
anymore, after seeing my work on stage and wanting that so much. Do you know
what I mean? I want to call in and spend the whole day writing. Sometimes I do
that, but I end up inspecting the inside of beer cans. I’m sleepwalking at work. Do
you know what I mean?”
“I think so. But what are you going to do? Are you going to split in two?”
“No. I just have to live with the frustration.”
“But I thought we worked through that. I thought you were no longer
frustrated, that you were feeling whole. Wait a minute, who have you been talking
to? Have you been talking to Miss Borders, that crazy assed director?”
“Well, yeah, about the play.”
“I bet you been talking to her about other things, I know. She’s a first class
strumpet.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You sure you’re lying? I know she wants you. Everyone in the building
knows that she wants you. She’s put the word out.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means, Robert Red, that I have to protect my interests,” Rachel says with
finality.
“Your interests? Is that what I am? I thought I was something like your
friend and your lover …”
“You are, but in the world of women there is treachery.”
“What does that mean?”
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“It means they will do anything for a man. They will lie and they will profess
and they will pretend—all for you.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think she wants me, she just is a lonely
woman in need of some intellectual company,” Robert says.
“Oh, is that so? She has said things to me. Things that are quite bold. She
wants you. She is willing to do anything to get you. Look, at the end of World War II,
when women were really getting jobs outside the home the government thought
that teaching would be a good second profession for a family, so women went into it.
Ever look at the English department meetings—you’re surrounded by frustrated
fucking females.”
“I don’t think you’re right. She enjoys talking to me and that’s all,” Robert
says.
“You’re very naive. You don’t understand these women around here. They
would do anything for a man.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. And you are the most eligible bachelor around.”
“Am I?”
“You are Robert Red. It’s just that women around here don’t have many
options.”
“Are you saying I’m the choice of last resort?”
“No. I’m saying there are a lot of unfulfilled women around here and they
decide or make up in their own minds what an ideal man would be. The first thing is
handsome and you fit that bill. The second thing is education and you have the
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degrees, the background and all of that. The women here worship your National
Endowment Scholarship and Distinguished Teaching Awards and all of that. It’s like
in their loneliness; they construct someone. In the morning, the other side of their
bed is empty, and they imagine that someone will fill this void. When they see you
in the morning, in your wonderful suits, they fit you in that void. So, it is you but
then again it is more about them and their minds.”
“I’m just a figment of their imagination then?”
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Her house feels warm and inviting today but the feeling of being uneasy
within his skin is still there. He feels uncomfortable doing everything and incapable
of doing anything. It’s the kind of feeling that he gets when he is at the end of a
bottle; he can barely move or tie his shoes but he has achieved his end—he is drunk.
He can do nothing in this state; so, when he is not drinking he often feels inadequacy
and the dark smelly stuff only deepens that feeling. This morning, when the sunlight
tried to enter his closed venetian blinds, the fear of everything was with him.
Nothing can save him but action—then his mood would lighten. When he used to
write he would feel better with every poem. When he rose from the computer he
could feel something lightening within. Now there is just the heaviness and none of
the wings of poetry lifting. Maybe this whole Rachel thing is a diversion, something
to assuage the feeling of loss. Maybe, like the Pirandello character says, “he is in
mourning for his life.” How can you lose what you do not have? Did he ever have a
life? Rachel seems to be aware of everything that is happening to him but he’s not
exactly sure if she knows about the recent fear.
He plops his stuff down on the couch and just sits for a minute, watching
Rachel but lately he has begun to feel emptiness also for his son. At his age there
should be something he can look back on with retrospect as an accomplishment.
Other than graduating from school and a string of intellectual accomplishments, he
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can point to nothing. Maybe Rachel is making up for all that, but is that possible?
Can she restore him to sanity? Is he more than his resume? The only thing she can
do is to fill the present holes in his body. The lack of a personal life and the regrets
he has for not spending time with Malik; there is nothing Rachel can do about that.
Rachel sweeps through her living room, putting things away and talking at
the same time. Robert can’t wait until she stops moving and talking. Eventually, she
will grow tired and lay down and he will climb on top of her and make mad
passionate. Her bedroom is cool. He watches her disrobe, lift the covers and then
he climbs in. She folds neatly into the middle of his body.
The next morning, Rachel is feeling romantic and clinging. She literally coos
as she bends her head and places it neatly in the fold of his arm. For the first time in
a long time she is letting herself feel. She knows that Robert is not perfect but she is
tired of being Ms. Independent. The feminist movement taught her to be selfsufficient but there are times that you need to lean on someone. Robert is that
someone—why can’t he just let her enjoy this? He keeps asking her questions about
the nature of the relationship. Why doesn’t he just relax and enjoy it?
“What are you doing today? I mean, I know we usually go our separate ways
on Sunday but I was wondering, this Sunday if you would consider staying?”
“Staying where?”
“Over here, at my place.”
“But we never, ever…”
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“I know but I feel like breaking traditions today,” she says looking too deeply
into his eyes.
“I suppose I could stay. I have some papers to grade but that can wait until
later tonight. I really could stay.”
She was starting to feel that Lifetime movie feeling; that I don’t want to leave
you now emotion of serious lovers.
He feels it too. The clinging part. He wants to go but there is something
warm and dreamy in her eyes and a part of him wants to stay but he can’t fight
needing to go and be alone.
“I’ll stay. What about the dinner with your Marine friend?” he heard himself
say, before he could take the words back.
“Next week if that’s okay. Would you like breakfast? Did you know I was a
decent cook?”
“Not really, add that to the list.”
“Of what you don’t know about me. Maybe, this afternoon I can give you a
primer on my life. You should know something about the woman you have a
relationship with.”
The word relationship hung and stuck in the air. Rachel tells Robert about
her stilted childhood and distant father. She learned early that if you loved books,
they loved you back and novels could transport the reader to another world so she
went to England and Russia and to the open plains of Iowa every chance she got.
Literature took her away from the loud voices creating angles of hatred in the living
room. She stayed in her room, away from the arguments of her parents and lived
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inside of her own mind. Rachel created a strict study schedule and focused on
achievement, and awards came one after the other. Her love of French novelists led
her to apply for a travel study scholarship in Paris and she spent two summers there
majoring in French men and women. Rachel has never received a B in her life; she
plunges into everything, like she has with Robert, seeking to organize every aspect
of his little life. Her most important talent is to restore order where there is chaos—
she is a manager of the lives of others; she comes in, finds the source of the trouble
and then cuts it out like a place of bad meat in a sirloin cut.
She was truly trying to live the life of the mind when Robert reminded her
that there was something below her chin. Rachel wants to marry and have one
child, thinking of overpopulation and the lack of dependability in the modern man.
There are just not enough good men to choose from—the world is bereft of choices
for women, they must construct the man they want. She plans everything as she has
planned this relationship; it is moving too slowly for her needs.
The afternoon goes quickly—there is wine and talk and lovemaking. Rachel
tells Robert more about the loveless, spotless home that she came from. Her father
was distant but her mother more than tried to make up for it by pleasing everyone,
so Rachel had two halves of her personality, the pleaser and the self-informed,
driven, distant professional. Each day, there is a battle for which self will triumph.
Rachel is detailed to the last, but her humane side makes her willing to take in stray
animals and disjointed males; she has a way of making you feel that the universe iss
in order and that there was a place in this ragged globe for everyone. Her mother
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was able to shape the world for her father; he was not fit for living in the real world
but he could suffice as long as his wife took care of all the details and created a
context for him to live in. Rachel envisioned a more complete Robert; she felt the
need to help him usher in his greatness. She squinted at times when she looked at
him but she had no idea about the anxiety that lie within. The clothes and the
professional posture created a slick mask for his discord, she thought, but the
illusion of sanity and middle class achievement was enough. No one would probe
into the solidity of his past; it was enough that he looked the part. Prepare a face for
those that you will have to meet—and what was his society, a few teachers holding
on for retirement and the young ones with the computer skills, meeting in the
hallway, with their devices and whispers of change? He could pass for a solid catch
and that’s all women could hope for now.
He stayed even though he longed to be at home with the air in his house and
the silence. When he was by himself there was nothing but the air and his thoughts.
He longed to be alone. The newspapers are a part of his routine in the afternoons,
on Sunday. He hates being pulled out of his normal routine to attend to anything.
Lying in the bed with her seems a little frivolous. He feels his arm falling asleep.
“It’s hard for you to relax isn’t it?”
“Well, sometimes. I just enjoy routines, don’t you?”
“Well not for routines’ sake. I mean, you do the same thing every day
because you can’t think of anything else to do or maybe you’re afraid of breaking the
routine because you might discover something about yourself that you didn’t know
before?”
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“That’s part of it but there are just times when I feel afraid of everything, of
you, and the school, the students…”
“How often do you feel this way?”
“Every day…”
“You mean that every morning you wake up there is this paralyzing fear?”
“Yes. Fear of everything, the bus stop, the traffic and my neighbor.”
“How do you survive?”
“It passes. Sometimes it lasts an hour and sometimes less than that. Some
days I have to proceed with the fear. I take it with me to school on certain days.”
“That’s horrible,” she says, stroking his face.
“Well, you’ve made it much better. This relationship has made it much
better.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t feel it now and I probably won’t feel it on Monday. It comes and goes.
Sometimes I’m in charge of it and I can get past it if I walk or run and I can get some
oxygen to my brain but if I sit on the couch or think about my dead parents the
feelings start to deepen and I can work myself into a full depression.”
“Sounds like fun. How often do you do this?”
“Every Sunday. And then I have to fight and pull myself out of it. Church
helps a lot. Supplicating myself is a good thing. But when I look at you, all tension
busts, and I think I can accomplish anything.”
“So, maybe we should spend more time together?” she says with a sneaky
look.
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“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean the more I see you the more I
want more.”
“You think too damned much. I’m not going anywhere.”
“And, maybe you don’t think enough about me. You just feel and go headlong
into the next week.”
“It’s called love.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
“Did you say what I just thought you said?”
“Didn’t I speak clearly?”
“Yeah, you did. But you know what that means?”
“Nothing. It means nothing. We ascribe the word meaning. I don’t want to
scare you away. We can continue like we have; I just want you to know that I love
you. Now, you don’t have to say it to me. You can wallow in liking me instead, and
call it fondness if you want to, but I know that I love you.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked myself the right questions and the right answers came.”
“And what are those?”
“Unconditional regard. I care for you more than I do for myself.”
“And it’s that simple?”
“No. Nothing is that simple but I know what I know. And I know I love you
and I know that one day you will find the space in your personality to say it to me.”
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Robert walks to the window and looks out; he wants to get the hell out of
here. Rachel is tugging inside and making him feel squeamish. There is definitely
something making him rankle right now. Robert wants to ball up his feelings for
Rachel like they are a piece of easily discarded aluminum foil. He thinks he loves her
and he wants to say it but it isn’t the saying it; it is everything that happens after.
So, Robert decides to hide his feelings. He would tell her in his own time but
it was not time yet.
But Rachel seems to be easy going and strong within at the same time.
Maybe she’s just faking—but he is getting drawn in. There is something about her, a
depth. There is something in the back of her eyes that sustains him, something he
can’t forget.
When he feels like dying, she can force him back to life.
One night, years ago, while coming from the house of a conquest, there was a
transformation, a shift one dark evening, on the fire escape, his hands feel gritty and
unclean leaving in the morning before children wake up. Just one morning, he
would like to meet the children of the woman he has just fucked and say goodbye
before they leave for school; and when the children accidently see you they call you
“Uncle.” You know they have had other “Uncles.” Robert has put his son in the same
position as all these other children.
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Someone is feeling sorry for Malik now because he has no visible father;
Cordova must have a man in her life by now. God, how many years has it been?
Everyone is so civilized now and former spouses, lovers and boyfriends shake hands
and post pretend smiles.
Robert thinks, maybe tolerance of others is the key? Rachel talks Robert into
having dinner with her former lover, the Marine and his present partner, Monica.
The Marine looks like Clark Kent without the Superman cape underneath but he
pats his foot incessantly, nervously. Robert doesn’t like meeting new people and he
does not want to be reminded that Rachel has a history, a history that he does not
know.
After dinner, they sit on couches, stare at each other and talk.
Her Marine has long legs and intimidating muscles and his “friend” is about
six feet tall with legs that go on forever.
“So, the two of you teach together? Isn’t it hard keeping your hands off each
other in the building all day?” the Marine asks.
“It takes discipline,” Robert says.
“Yeah, lots of discipline. We work in a place with floating hormones.
Sometimes, you confuse the floating hormones of teenagers with your own.”
“Do you?” Robert says.
“You know Robert, by the end of the day, I want to come in your room and
tear you apart.”
“I never knew.”
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“I’ve felt that way for years.”
“All that repression of feelings. You two must make monster love,” his
“friend” Monica adds.
“We do all right,” Rachel says almost with disinterest.
“Does he ring your bell like I did?”
Rachel hesitates for a minute; it seems like she is taking the entire room in
visually.
“Not quite. Every man is different.”
“I’ll say. My Marine, that used to be your Marine, is quite talented; a world
class athlete, I must say.”
“Can we find another line of conversation?” Robert says, comparing himself
to the six foot five man.
“Sex is as natural as apple pie,” Monica adds.
“Oh really?”
Monica stands; she is almost six feet. Her long limbs invite. She stands over
Robert.
“I bet I could wrap my legs around you and put a permanent smile on your
face,” she says, looking down.
“Oh, you could? Only if I let you.”
“I thought we were all friends. I thought this was a friendly gathering.”
“It is. The question is just how friendly. We’ve already eaten dinner so it’s
time for rare deserts.”
“Such as?” the Marine asks, on cue.
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“I’m sure you know. Come here Monica,” says the Marine. He whispers to
Monica and she moves next to Rachel.
Monica curls like a snake around the neck of Rachel. She goads her for a kiss
and Rachel sinks deep into her mouth. Robert hits himself in the back with the
screen door on his way out.
Sometimes, when his students are working on grammar assignments, he lets
himself touch the outer rim of his depression. He knows, after months and months
of acting and not thinking, that he can pull himself back from the pool of his own
sadness, lift his head and breathe in the air of the room. Or he can stand over the
shoulder of Barron, one of his favorite students, and say something inane about
sports and he will laugh just enough, in a way not to be disruptive; this will keep the
cloud of depression at bay for a second. It is so seldom that he likes any of the
teenagers but he likes Barron because he is more like an adult.
Barron will go on with his assignment, unknowing that his silly laughter just
caused a sky of depressive clouds to disappear. The children always laughed when
he discussed sports because he obviously knew nothing about it. They chuckled to
themselves, thinking that he read too many novels and plays, when did Robert have
time for sports?
Robert had always been like the small boy in the back of the class that knows
all the statistics but has never played—he worshipped athletes and sport—but he
never actually understood the nature of the games he was watching. He liked
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hanging around the captains of sports teams when he was in high school and
college. Robert played every sport badly but he always admired the physically
strong and limber from his seat on the sidelines.
This is how he amused himself but he couldn’t stop remembering that,
months before he had become involved with Rachel, he had a longing for any feeling
at all. Now, depressions were lasting beyond his weekend and he was looking
bleary-eyed and concave in mornings. Robert wanted to experience something other
than sadness.
“Man was born to be morose,” his father used to say. Things seem to be
lingering in his brain and often his thoughts chase each other like monkeys running
around in an open forest. But they hit against the closing walls of his mind and
rebound and curve. It is hard for him to maintain a thought. Sometimes his
depressions seem like an elastic pit chasing him, with a dominating force—Rachel;
bringing him back in late afternoons.
The mornings are the worse. He awakes with the paralyzing fear; now, by
the afternoon, his hands are shaking violently and he cannot stop them from
shaking. He usually sits at his kitchen table when this happens and just waits for
them to stop moving but they never stop; he would stare out of the window or think
about Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The fear was easy when he was alone; now he has to
explain this fear to someone.
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Since Rachel, he began to feel more normal, but she threw him a curve the
other night. Robert is definitely not down with the gay agenda but watching the kiss
made him hard as hell.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Saturday morning. Malik is obsessed with baseball now because one of his
friends told him that it is easier to make the baseball team than it is the basketball
team. All of the spots on the bench are taken for basketball; the coach knew whom
he wanted this year and most of the spots have been promised to boys that went to
the summer basketball camp. Malik’s mother told him that his Dad was paying for
basketball camp but it never quite materialized. She can blame Robert and diminish
his stock in his son’s eyes.
But no one can argue with the beauty of a baseball field. The dirt smells kick
up; pristine chalk lines invite. The grass gives a low swish as they walk to the
outfield. The sixty yards from base to base afford infinite possibility. The smell of
leather gloves and the expanse, the space—being able to toss the ball in the air and
come down with it in your leather, greased glove is a right to manhood.
“Do you want me to go out in the field? I need to learn how to catch. They
told me there are positions available in the outfield.”
“Yeah, go on out and I’ll hit you some.”
The bat feels good and sticky from the pine tar at the handle. Robert runs his
hands across the wood and throws the ball in the air. He misses the first two but
then connects and the sound of the wood cracking against the ball transports him to
childhood wins and loses.
He watches Malik making mistakes.
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Got to teach him how to get under a ball, call for it, pound his glove and make
the play. I got to get him in a league before he tries out for the team. I don’t want him
looking like he doesn’t have a father. The kids without a father can never play sports;
they are eternally awkward and unsure of themselves. They always hang around the
fence with their fingers caught in the cross hatching, dreaming of the sanctity of their
mother’s house. They are scared of losing or even asking to play. Their lack of being
around men shows—they don’t move like men, they are uncomfortable with running
and jumping. I never want Malik to be like that.
“Catch this one,” Robert says, hitting the ball with all his might. As the
tattered softball rises, he notices the blemish free sky for the first time in months.
Clouds stratify in soft blue. Not so bad, the universe is not so bad…Robert thinks to
himself.
He wants an extra day with his son but he knows Malik’s mother will not
grant it.
Lately, he has been focusing on his son and what his son might conjure up in
his mind about his absent Dad. The last time, he left him on the doorstep of his
mother’s house, with the red door and the fake brass knocker, and the tall panels
framing the fear in Malik’s eyes. He was looking up, giving that will I ever see you
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again look and Robert backed up a few steps but he didn’t want his mother to open
the door and see him there hugging their son. Their few hugs were private, almost
stolen; since his visitation times had been cut because his mother said Robert was
late all the time and sometimes he was at a loss for things to do with him and he
brought his son back early. She was big on penalizing Robert for everything he did
and everything he thought about doing; this made him want to do less and less. She
tried to act more like his mother than anything else and the boy was the ploy. He
had been spotty in his parenting but now he wanted to see his son and hug his bony
shoulders, almost like he was a little fish, but there was the ogre. She was frustrated
because she thought the men would rally around her when she was done with
Robert. It didn’t happen that way—a woman with two children meant one thing—
she would be at home a lot.
Robert opened his mouth and his son looked at him with round eyes of hurt
and fear of the well intentioned but lying words. How could he rub that look out of
his eyes? There was no way to make sure that during the next visit, Malik would not
approach his father with the same reticent hand and bloodshot eyes. Robert knew
his mother was feeding his son negative words. She invented parental alienation.
All pictures of Robert were taken down and his son was not allowed to have any in
his room. Things were quite different at school.
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At school, Robert’s reputation for good acts grows. Why just last class period
he listened to Billie Faison talk about him and how intelligent he was for almost a
half-hour after class. She even wrote a poem about him that he allowed her to read.
The intelligent Mr. Red…
“It would be better if you wrote about the world,” he said when she was
done. She looked down at the written-on seats. “But the poem was beautiful.”
Billie beamed again. She was a sensitive soul and most days he could count
on her for a smile or a wink or something that would take him out of the world of
the school for a second. She made him think that all of the study, the graduate
degrees, the sleeping of four hours a night so that he could achieve, all the talk in
dorm rooms about improving the lot of the downtrodden and giving back to the
children of the working class, all of that made sense when he stared into Billie’s eyes
and she smiled back at him. It made dealing with the adolescent boys, with their
hands stinking from masturbation, worthwhile.
But his joy only lasted for a second and then if he were not careful, he would
sink into a strange depression. He could vault into an emotional valley at any
moment. If he had difficulty putting his key in the classroom door lock sadness
could seize him. The worst moments were in the bathroom; when he was closed off
to everyone else, sitting there, waiting for the bombs to drop, that’s when he became
most sad. There was nothing in front of him but a brown door and he would project
the faces of his students on the back of the door—but they were all dead. By the
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time he finished a shit he was deeply into a depression. Looking in the mirror only
made him feel worse as he stared at the complete, dark circles around his eyes.
Then a class period with the illiterates would almost consume him. An afternoon
moodiness could take him over if he did not quickly get into his preparation—he felt
like his chest was going to explode. The profundity of relative pronouns was the
subject for today.
He opens his favorite grammar book, Grammar, Usage and Mechanics. The
yellow page is flat and uninteresting and he knows he must make it to the copier
before the others. Ten exercises today—“I have to add some sizzle. Creative writing
exercises even though the administration wants to make little journalists out of
them. Like these kids will ever write for newspapers! They need narrative—they
need to get out the stories in their heads,” he says to himself out loud as he walks
through the conditioned air.
He prays over the texts. They file in. Samantha is coming out of her sweater
today. Her breasts fight the argyle. Mr. Red looks up and she is bouncing in front of
his desk.
“Mr. Red, could I ask you a personal question?”
“Could I ask you one? What is a relative pronoun?”
“I guess that means no.”
“It means, could you sit down and get involved in today’s lesson?”
“I could, but talking to you is much more fun.”
“I understand but finish those first ten exercises for me.”
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Samantha bounces back to her seat. Mr. Red looks over the heads of his
students. They have earrings and chains hidden beneath their uniform shirts. The
cowards Klebold and Harris that created Columbine, are responsible for the
repression of individuality. Everyone, almost every school, makes their students
wear uniforms. Now, the individuality and creativity come out in strange, bent
ways. He can see their feet jangling and moving beneath their desks like Christmas
bells, ringing. Because they must wear uniforms, the emphasis is placed on
sneakers. If you buy your sneakers from K-Mart, you will be ostracized. The key is
to have the latest and the greatest; four hundred dollars for Lebron James’ sneakers
are not too much.
They bend their heads and strain over the first ten questions on relative
pronouns. Some have their foreheads pressed against their fists and others look
into the sky, hoping that the answers will appear in air. Moments like this go in slow
motion for him; he watches the class, able to sit. The air in the room seems to dry
out a bit, over their heads.
Robert stands, clicks back in and begins teaching.
“Now how can we use our knowledge of relative pronouns in our writing?
No hands assault the air. Maybe he should ask the question another way?
At the end of most days, he ends up in Rachel’s classroom. It is decorated
with paper and plastic flowers everywhere. It looks like the room of a florist; some
of the flowers are real; some decorations were created by the students with colorful
construction paper. Rachel’s light, green eyes are alive and bright. She is all over
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her classroom, happy to see him. Rachel approaches everything the same way, with
enthusiasm and force, seeking perfection.
“Where have you been? “
“Working on my book.”
“Really? How’s it going?” Rachel quips.
“As well as writing goes. It’s work Rachel, hard work.”
“I know. A thousand times you told me. Did you come by because you
wanted to spend time with me or is this one of those teacher casual visits?”
“No. I miss you.”
“You what? Now, that is progress, admitting that you, Mr. Self-Sufficient,
actually misses someone. That is emotional.”
“Glad you approve.”
“Can we go somewhere? Like a trip to another city during Spring Break? I
know that’s a big step but I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin. I need to go
somewhere and feel like a human being instead of feeling like a computer that
nobody listens to. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Well?”
“I’ll go.”
“Good. Dinner tonight?”
“Yes.”
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After dinner, Rachel gives him a stellar show. Rachel’s tight fitting lingerie is
black and there is a hole in the crotch. It must have been one of those ones she
ordered through Playboy. It looks like she’s wrapped up, in one big fishnet.
Robert reaches between her legs and thrusts several fingers within her and
she gasps and grabs his arm, her head slamming against his shoulder. She bends
over and he continues to finger her, until she jumps on the pristine white counter
and he shoves all of his fingers up her, slowly, holding them together and then
moving them, creating a circle within, as she gets wetter and wetter.
He lays her back on the counter.
They move to the bedroom, and he lays her down and he slips underneath her and
she face-sits, bouncing up and down on his mouth and then they curve above and
move within each other, looking like two tarnished spoons in the early darkness.
Robert does not feel anything but her smooth, hairless skin, and he rises up and
looks at her in a way that he has not looked at a woman before. There is no
conquest, and his body melts, and he just kisses her skin that is cold and soft and
smooth.
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He does what he has never done—he lay next to a woman for hours without the
need to climb atop her and prove that he can get hard again and again, asserting his
manhood or his mastery.
Robert feels devoid of his male rationales and need to prove himself through the
hardness of his gonad. Rachel has disarmed him. He stays close to her, playing and
massaging her back, feeling the air conditioning go on and off gently as he moves his
hand on her skin, just above where hair would be.
And in the dry morning when students stand, trying to pretend as if they
have read literature when they haven’t done the homework, he feels anger, as if he
is struggling with the difficult vines of words. Sometimes the anger at students’ lack
of responsibility makes his head burn, but then Rachel reminds him that they are
only children and they can’t be held accountable for every action. Consider your
population she always says. You are not at Harvard; you are at Julius Peppers High.
Yes, yes, yes…you’re right… he would shake his head knowing that she was
correct but then he thought about the Professors that embarrass you if you do not
know the code words of English, of scholarship. Those same Professors would bleed
all over their papers and will ask them nothing about their personal sociology.
Some thought his classroom was too clean and he sprayed stuff in the air—
there must be something dark and deep about him. Robert was just too good to be
true; not only did he have twenty years experience on the college level but Robert
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put his mind and soul in each lesson. Each class period was too carefully planned
and crafted. He couldn’t just be a good English teacher and a nice guy, no, that
couldn’t exist in the universe: a nice, intelligent guy. They didn’t exist anymore—all
of the guys were weird in some way—pursuing women too young or men too old.
This was an age where goodness was frowned upon, bad girls and bad behavior rule.
There couldn’t be a nice, straight man that loved kids and wanted to teach English
every day and go home.
“You’re too good to be for real,” some of the older teacher/widows would tell
him. It was the age of slick words and tight pants; men fit themselves into skinny
jeans like women and women wanted the power and strength of men. People were
not themselves; brands ruled…Robert was not a brand—he was a well-dressed
English teacher with taste and manners and because he had not had a woman for so
long, he worshipped them. He wore Brooks Brothers suits or Lord and Taylor,
usually bought from wealthy neighborhood consignment stores, cordovan shoes and
only the latest silk ties.
This is what he wanted—clarity. Could Rachel manage to usher out some of
the self-destructive realities and help him find his way in an unencumbered world?
He would never truly have clarity until he could work things out with his son and his
mother. He thought about moving near them and maybe sharing joint custody; then,
he thought again.
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CHAPTER NINE
He tried to stay away from the drama lady but rehearsals were inevitable.
Diversions. His perception of women is the problem—because women had once
come to him easily, as the sunshine in morning, he always felt that women were like
water from his faucet. But now, at this time in his life, he wanted something
permanent, something he could count on but the faucet keeps running and he does
not know how to turn it off. He really has no understanding of romantic love;
women offered themselves to him and he had to do nothing for the offering but be
himself. He thought they came to him because of what he was not who he is. Rachel
seems to be it for him—but something inside fights all permanence, a wall within
him cannot acknowledge her love of him; impermanence and the silence of
unpeopled rooms is second nature.
At the end of every day, he went over his strengths and weaknesses,
pedagogical mistakes and slim triumphs. Most days, there was a long list of
weaknesses but today, he felt he made a valiant effort—maybe it was the snarl of a
student or the lazy legs of the boys in the back, but he just didn’t feel like his effort
was matched today. Oh, he took attendance, dealt with two hundred teenagers,
prepared and tried to execute, but there was the nagging feeling now that he could
have done more. Besides, he liked to beat himself up at the end and the beginning of
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the day. More than anything else, he enjoyed kicking his own ass psychologically.
Teaching was a perfect profession for a guy that likes to beat himself up.
“Mr. Red. Mr. Red. This is Miss Borders, open up. I know you’re in there!”
He swings the door open as wide as possible.
“Do what do I owe the august honor?”
“Your play. We’re almost at the point of dress rehearsal and I’ve heard of the
isolated playwright in his garret but the show is about to go up and we haven’t so
much as seen or heard from you since the second week of rehearsals. What is up
with that? Is my breath bad? You seem to like watching my bouncing breasts most
of the time—why have you stopped coming by? Is it that heifer Rachel? I could
knock her ass into next week with one hand. Let me assure you Mr. Red, if I wanted
you to be a suitor, you would become my suitor,” Miss Borders says, squeezing into
a chair, bending over, showing her inches of sweating cleavage.
“Do we have something to discuss?”
“Yes, when can you take me to dinner?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have struggled alone with this play and the adolescent egos for weeks. You
left me on a fucking dramatic island. I think I at least deserve dinner.”
“Pick a night. Oh? What happened? Thought of your social calendar?
Commitments elsewhere? What happened to the play’s the thing…”
“This Friday night.”
“All right. We can leave from school. I’ll drive.”
“Good.”
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Robert feels good as he closes the door behind her swishing booty.
Friday. Miss Borders seems to relish the night out. She is a dedicated teacher
and director. She is always spending time with the kids and Miss Borders has a
reputation with the boys. She unzips her blouse a bit and leans over between the
candlelight.
“Did you study writing drama in school?”
“Yes, I did. And I just kept writing after that. I love putting words in other
people’s mouths.”
“Oh, you do? Well, write a script for me now. What should I be saying?”
Robert is getting a little bored by all this; if he says something shocking then
maybe she will stop the charade.
“How handsome I am and how much you want to be alone with me,” he says.
“But I do. How did you know? I was attracted to you at first. Remember
when you made that speech about the gutless nature of teachers and how we need
to band together? I fell at first sight. Confidence in a man is so damned sexy.”
“Oh, Miss Borders, I never thought that you felt that way.”
“But I do. I always wanted to be bedded by an intelligent man. The men talk
to my boobs and my boobs talk back to them and they say one thing, sleep with me.
There is nothing to talk about after. I’m very dissatisfied with the men I’ve been
dating. That’s why I thought dating you would be a step up. Not that I don’t want to
screw you. I do, tonight, if things go the way I want them to, but there’s a world of
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things we can talk about. With the others, there was just one thing to do,” she says,
staring between his eyes and then down at his legs and feet.
“And you did it?”
“As much as I could. A girl that can’t find intellectual fulfillment looks for it
somewhere else, you know what I mean?”
“I think I do.”
“But with you, I have it all. Let’s dispense with the next course and go to my
place, all right?”
“Why not?” He could not believe he was saying those words.
“I’ll handle the check. I get paid extra to direct. I can’t wait until you see my
latest outfit.”
“What does that entail?”
“I can show you rather than tell you,” she says patting his hand and rising up,
going to the car while he follows her to her small house. Once inside, she goes to the
closest bedroom. There are clothes hanging on the door and there is a strong scent
of Chinese musk coming from her room. She rustles. Maybe he should leave but
that would create such rancor at school. A redneck he knew told him that there are
times in relationships with women when promises have been made and it’s either
fuck or fight. This is one of those moments. Robert can feel the sweat on his neck.
He adjusts his collar and tries to move his neck so that he can have a full view of the
window and the street. He could just start running but the school is miles and miles
away from his house.
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She rustles and comes out stuffed in a sequined outfit that is four sizes too
small. Miss Borders has on black sparkling boots that are caught by oozing fat just
over her knees. She looks like a contestant in a country western dance contest. Her
breasts look dirty at the unshaven armpits; her bra is filthy, with dark, black rings.
He wants to move but something holds him to the worn, stained, spot in the couch.
Miss Borders does a little dance in the middle of the floor and she barely turns
around. It was an intended twirl but her boot catches in the rug and she stumbles a
bit. The all-enveloping breasts find his face and she presses them against his mouth
until he smells the gap between the two huge beasts. It smells like a gym but it is
too late now. He places one breast in his mouth as his hand touches and lifts the
other.
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CHAPTER TEN
Miss Borders directs his play with passion and she says nothing about their
encounter. His son calls him and they have meaningless talk for a few minutes.
After opening night, he corners Miss Borders.
“How do you think things went?”
“With the play? Well. But I wonder…”
“Why haven’t I called you or talked to you about our little encounter? I
thought it was just that, a little encounter. You and Rachel have something real. I
don’t want to ruin that but I may need you to come over again and straighten out my
sheets, you know what I mean?”
“I’m not a male prostitute.”
“I know. But you wouldn’t want me to mention some little personal details
about your bending to the right, now would you?”
“No.”
“What time can I expect you tonight?”
“Tonight, but I have plans.”
“I can’t hear you?”
“Nine. Tonight at nine.”
That night, Robert made an excuse and went over Miss Border’s house. The
rollick in the sheets was at least fun. After leaving, on the way to the car, he saw
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Rachel’s number come up on his phone. He could run by there, and like the
postman, make sure that all the mail was delivered. He dials.
“Hello. What kept you so long?”
“I had a chapter to finish. Do you still want me to come over?”
“Sure. I made dinner—it’s cold now.”
When he finally gets to Rachel’s small house he can hear laughter outside the
front window. When he looks in, he is amazed by the long legs and luxurious
laughter. It’s Monica—what in the hell is she doing here? I better use my key.
“Robert, nice to see you again.”
She rises and extends her hand. When he leans in she takes his hand, wraps
it around her shoulder and plants one right on his neck. Monica wraps around him
like a viper.
“How’s tricks? I was just keeping your girl company. I don’t want to get in
the way.”
“You’re not in the way. Put your things down, stay,” says Rachel.
“I could use a drink.”
“Why? Tired? I don’t know where you go at night, but I’m sick of staying
here, waiting for you.”
“I told you I’m working on a book and I get inspired at strange hours.”
“I see. What’s her name?”
“What?”
“Men leave you at night for two reasons—drugs and booty. Which one is it?”
“Neither.”
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“Well, Monica and I were just discussing posing for one another. She’s a
painter and I’m a scribbler.”
“Oh, that would be nice.”
“That would be nice. What kind of asshole are you? Your girlfriend wants to
get naked with another woman and you think that would be nice?”
“If it makes you happy.”
“You know what would make me happy? A game of strip poker. You on?”
she says, taking out a pack of cards.
“Sure.”
They collect over by the kitchen table and Rachel begins to deal. Monica
looses the first three hands and strips down to her bra and panties. Rachel takes off
earrings and Robert loses his shoes.
Rachel begins to lose and she is down to her underwear. Monica is turning
red and cannot take her eyes off of Rachel’s bottom; her dark eyes like ball bearings
rolling over the top edge of her cards. Robert nervously deals as Monica runs her
hand down the right arm of his girl and up the left. He looks perplexed and in pain.
After some time, he can only look away as they stare at each other.
“Would you like a ménage trois?” asks Monica with wide-eyed innocence.
Robert knew that this was a trap—if he seems interested, there will be
repercussions later with Rachel and if he is disinterested and Rachel wants to then
he might be seen as a drag on the relationship.
“How do you feel about it Rachel?”
“Positively bubbly.”
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“Then we only need you to go along…”
“I don’t know. I never did this kind of thing.”
“We’re you ever propositioned?” Monica probes.
“Not by two women, no.”
“Well, you have to admit the possibilities are endless for you.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“As long as you can hold out,” jabs Monica, crossing her model jealous legs.
“It might be fun Robert. You need to have some fun. Life is about what
you’re doing now, not what you might do or what your mind tells you, you can do.”
Rachel says, almost as if she is selling a car.
“You seem to be all in,” Robert says.
“Well, Monica and I are strangely attracted to one another and I told you
about how women are sensitive to other women. She could just hold me while your
pounding away or she could pound away with the strap-on and you could hold me.”
“Then you just want to get fucked by man, woman or animal, it doesn’t
matter.”
“Now that you put it like that—it feels good to be fucked.”
Robert’s thoughts are a maze of contradictions--Monica looks, slitting her eyes
for a second—then she stares at my Rachel, and moves her chair over to Rachel,
putting her hand in her lap. I stand up between them and someone starts to massage
Rachel’s back. I devise a strategy in my head: after kissing both of them, I’ll run my
hand through the naked body of Monica.
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The plan works and Monica takes off her panties and bra quickly. We all
stumble to the bedroom and fall on the bed laughing. I like it all until Monica sinks
down between the legs of Rachel and Rachel emits a deep, bass swoon. It is a low,
animal like noise. I come up behind Monica, lift her legs up and insert ruthlessly,
giving her what she deserves. She continues to eat Rachel, licking her like she’s a
banana split, moving rhythmically to my thrusts as she ignores me. I look at Rachel
and her eyes seem distant, alien. I disengage with Monica and kiss Rachel; she slides
down my leg as Monica rolls to the back of me placing her tongue in an-oh-so-sensitive
place. I grab their breasts, and end up on top of Rachel, rolling, fucking, laughing.
Monica seems a little jealous and she edges up by Rachel’s face and sits there,
pushing me back a little as she mounts my girlfriend’s mouth. I turn sideways and
continue to fuck, like I did when Malik’s mother was pregnant, sideways. The sighs and
strange noises make us sound like animals devoid of human feeling.
I finish with Rachel and climb atop Monica and she sinks into sweet
lovemaking, passionate and rhythmic. Rachel massages Monica and we fuck her into
oblivion, taking turns penetrating and violating her sweet snatch.
And this is the way it goes for weeks and weeks and weeks. He would slip
out of the cool sheets at Miss Borders and then go to the loving arms of Rachel and
sometimes Monica and sometimes Rachel and Monica. Robert was returning to the
way he used to feel about women, when he was a young rake. In the literary world,
a young handsome, muscular poet can do very well. Like with singers, the poet
possesses a power, of the soul and word that people, at poetry readings, want to go
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away with. When they see the poet later they want to offer something in return for
the finely crafted metaphor and words, and some women offer themselves. The
discreet male poet in any large city, is a terrible thing, a terrible thing. The most
important thing, as famous women, actresses and on-camera people come to him, is to
never reveal their names or their secrets.
“Learn to kiss and not tell,” an actress once told him. In this way, they are not
referred to as common women and Robert can never tell stories about their moments
of lust (in a barbershop with little balls of hair blown about). The women never
become the tossed to-the-floor gossip of men. Robert was popular because he only
opens his mouth at the right times; now, because Rachel has awakened him, women
seem to be offering tidings again, he returns in his mind to the way he felt as a young
poet—arrogant, a different woman every night—phone ringing so often he must
take it off the hook. Rachel has become exposed and a little desperate; the stories
Robert could tell to custodians if they broke up.
But one morning, he observes his face: a maze of dark, circles around his
eyes, addicted to the promise of bedrooms and lingerie—he was a whore of the
silent rooms again. Once, while living at home his mother called him a whore because
the phone kept ringing and women kept asking for him. His mother refused to take
down the names, to be his pimp. “Some woman called,” she would say with disdain and
obvious derision. She would mispronounce their names out of the side of her mouth
and refuse to take messages. And the attraction and promise of an evening ending in
discreet whispers and touching still makes him tingle.
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Well-meaning ladies made themselves available to him despite his actions; he
could be cruel and unfeeling and that was accepted or he could be sweet and
condescending and that was fine too. He counted on the women being ethical, goodnatured. Men had no ethics, only goals. In fact, Robert searched for women that had
sterling character because they were more likely to trust and to deal in a world of
trust.
These middle class women would be home when they said they would
because they had responsibilities and children. “Besides, middle class women don’t
catch Aids as much; they get M.S.” his friend Majour told him. Middle class women
would invite him over and when he was inside their pristine homes, he would work
with their emotions and once they shared their beds, he was in control. They were
corporate muffins all day; their limbs were tired and they wanted their bodies to be
taken over. Rachel is quite different; she seems to have an insatiable sexual appetite
but she remains polite. Robert is worried about her expressing herself with women
when he is not there but his relationship with Rachel was hypocritical yet warm; he
told himself he was having the greatest time of his life, but was he? He studies the
shapes of their mouths and what their various armatures can do. In his mind, he
conjures images of a woman he has made love to that looks like the woman he is
currently staring at. He rates women based on their potential to satisfy him.
He sees his son’s math teacher, in his mind’s eye, as she takes off her pants
and then slips down her panties. Her behind is tight and mocha. He can smell her
deep allure from across the room and the smell draws him in like a fastball to a
leather glove in October. The panties are lace, beige, tissue thin and beautiful. Her
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mouth is forming around words but it is not her mouth now that he sees, it is her
breasts—brown and full, contrasting with the light beige of her elegant bra. Other
women join the fantasy and they hold one another and stroke one another. They are
all tall with long limbs that tease his imagination.
He still has a fascination with the easy Miss Borders; their encounters
demand that only his body be present. And this above all is what he tells himself
that he wants, a woman willing to take what little he gives. When he left Miss
Borders he could hear the commentator say “It’s a beautiful day in South
Bend….”she loved Notre Dame because of the tight, gold pants the players wore.
Message: Malik. He closes his phone and climbs in his car.
At night, he washes his member over and over, trying to wash off one woman
to make it ready for another, but he can never get himself quite clean enough.
Robert stares in the mirror and he is appalled by look of his hollow, dark eyes, again.
A male whore is what he is, a male whore. He is starting to look washed out and
afraid all the time.
And this is the way it goes for days and days and days and his view of women
seems to diminish.
The opening night of the play, he does not know what to expect. The play
goes well—the students forget their lines and have to ask for prompting and some
actors and actresses brake into spontaneous laughter on the stage. Some parents
laugh with their good-for-nothing children. Robert is bothered by the lack of
professionalism among the actors. He is a professional and a perfectionist and he
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expects the same from others; he is often disappointed. He grimaces and just when
he is reacting to the actors laughing on stage, something happens. He turns and
spies his son making his way down the aisle. His son is uncomfortable with his own
longer limbs; he almost stumbles.
Robert doesn’t know what to do so he walks up to him and gives him a noncommittal, one-armed hug. Malik grabs him about mid-leg and starts crying.
“Why are you crying?
“I miss you and seeing you made me realize that I miss you.” He sat next to
his father for the rest of the evening and asked polite questions.
“When did you write this?’
“I write all the time or I try to write all the time.”
“You write every day?”
“Every day the Good Lord sends me.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Sure. Don’t you?”
“I guess so. I don’t really know.”
“I need to talk to you more and see you more.”
“Then I think I would be sure about things.”
“Oh, you think so? You think by talking to me you could figure things out?”
“I think so. Because sometimes Ma says I should talk to you about girls and
stuff but I don’t know where you are. You’re always away.”
“I plan to be there more now.”
“But sometimes when you plan you don’t always do what you say.”
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“You mean I lie?”
“No, Mom says, you have good intentions but your practice and your
intentions are just different sometimes.”
“Really? Is that what she says about me?”
“Sometimes. Her face used to light up when she talked about you but now
her face stays dark.” Malik’s brown eyes are pliant; he is about to well up. He
tightens the grip on his father’s leg before letting go.
“Oh, I see.”
“Now, she cries sometimes at night because she’s all alone.”
“She does? Does she cry a lot?’
“Well, the later it gets the more she cries.”
He can barely see the actors now because the tears are welling up in his eyes.
He really should see his son more but each time he thinks about seeing him, it hurts.
He reviews the litany of broken promises and he ends up drinking, feeling sorry for
himself and this kills the intention of seeing his son. The alcohol causes the walls
and windows to start moving. Robert falls in love with the feeling of letting go, of
watching his day split into uncontrollable parts. When this mental spiral starts, the
day is over before he knows it and he stumbles into bed, forgetting what happened
hours before. Days are chores to live through.
Maybe he should send out his plays to professional companies and this kind
of thing would not happen but that would take concentration and he looses his
ability to think and stay on task each day.
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Rachel hinted that her father might be an alcoholic. He was a philosopher—
an intellectual—he taught at the local university after his first career and his
academic pursuits kept him away from the family. When he was home, he was
distant from the family; her father seldom talked to them and never held them. He
had an academic life but no personal life whatsoever; Rachel must have felt the
same hollowness and sense of loss in Robert. Robert’s father only spoke with a love
of his dead child.
His baby momma, Cordova, shames him into calling his son at Christmas
time. His voice is low and shaking.
“How are you?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s…umm..your father.”
“I haven’t talked to you in such a long time. Since the play.
“I know. I’m sorry about that but things can change.”
“They can?” There was vain hope in his voice.
“Yes, they can. I’ll talk to your mother about coming to see you.”
“You will? Honest?” The hope in his voice is dying.
“Yes, I will.”
“Thank you. I’m doing well in school.” Malik is on automatic now; his voice
sounds recorded and so does the voice of his father.
“What’s your favorite subject?” It was like talking to a strange child.
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Sometimes, he longed to return to the bells and Pavlovian reality of school.
Rachel saw him and stared at him with disdain. The looks meant one thing to him
and another to her. Could she really accuse him of anything considering her history
with Monica? Maybe her bisexuality would be something Robert would have to
think about, feel and understand. He was sure that she knew about Miss Borders
but the stares he got from Rachel meant nothing like that. Rachel was simply
frustrated with the speed of their relationship. Things had slowed down.
Lately, the good times with Cordova came up in his mind when he passed the
little bodegas in town. It was her coquettish, dark smile; self-effacing but flirtatious,
and the olive skin that became noxious. He would have been safe if it were not for
her slopping shoulders and the oily smell of the finest Rosewater; the music of Eddie
Palmeri that she was playing on her radio, sitting there on the stone stoop that
night.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“What you doing?”
“Sitting.”
“Mind if I sit with you?”
“No. Come on.”
“What are you listening to?”
“A little Eddie Palmeri.”
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He could barely see her eyes, but Robert knew she was concentrating,
looking at him. After more talk, her shoulders loosened and he could tell she began
to trust that he did not come to harm her. They walked together for the first time,
down to the park, where there were lights and sat on a bench holding hands and
whispered to one another all night while congas serenaded from half-open
windows.
And that’s how it started until she drew him in like a strange black widow
spider, with the music of her heavily lip-sticked mouth and playful tongue.
Catholicism keeps Hispanic girls from being too easy, so the demure becomes sexy
and hot quickly.
Rachel took a while. He met her father, who shook his hand and smoked
Cuban cigars; her mother smiled and read magazines from France; the family
seemed to like him but there were other steps that Rachel wanted him to take, that
he seemed to be unaware of; he did not know how to play the game of relationship.
She wanted him to be fully integrated into her social circle, she actually had friends
and Robert felt uncomfortable with what seemed like petty demands. He was
repelled by the idea of social convention. Did the meeting of others have anything to
do with him? It wasn’t that he was doing anything, he wasn’t, but he just did not
know what to say to people in restaurants, at amusement parks. Robert could not
summon up casual conversation.
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His constant lying and making up stories to divert Rachel affected his ability
to tell a truly fictional story.
After school, he decides to go and visit Rachel. She is there with company.
He stands outside for a while and it takes her some time to answer the bell. He
hears rustling in the background and there are quizzical noises.
“Who’s here?”
“No one really.”
“Monica!!!”
She comes out of the bedroom, shaking her boobs in the wind.
“You rang?”
“What the hell is going on here? I thought you told me that you would only
be with her if you were with me.”
“Well, this wasn’t planned, Rachel says, brushing her hair out of her sleepy
and lovesick eyes.
“Nothing is fucking planned around here, that’s the problem.”
“Look—Monica and I understand some things about each other.”
“And what is that? That you’re both dykes?”
“I resent that. I’m just exploring my options, like you with Ms. Theatrical.”
“I am just spending some time with a lonely woman.”
“You are fucking the hell out of her and if you can fuck her then I can fuck
her…” Rachel says, pointing at the wilting Monica. Rachel hesitates a bit, as if she is
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going to feint but she steadies herself on a chair, with her hand, like a football player
giving a stiff arm. She waits for a second and looks back at Robert; there is
something pleading and desperate in her eyes. Rachel is never desperate—this is
something new. Her need to make love to women is obvious.
“I just didn’t think things would end up this way.”
“You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Something is gone. Something is missing. My emotions are stone.”
“Who gives a fuck about your emotions? I don’t.” says Monica from the back.
“Mind your business personal whore.”
“Oh, it’s like that?
“Yes, it is lesbian bitch.”
Robert hears the swishing footsteps and feels the nails dig into his skin as she
grabs him about the eyes.
He tries to doctor on his eyes but the scars are still there the next morning.
He knows that the students will see and ask him questions about the redness. It is
terrible being in front of people every day; Robert would rather be locked away
somewhere with a computer; he feels too exposed some days as if the evening
should have more hours and this is one of those terrible days when the night
stretches into the day and his role is like amour weighing him down. Too soon,
every morning, there were thirty pairs of eyes staring at him before he was ready.
His face was cracking. If he worked with computers, he would be the only one to see
his reflection but there are two hundred or so pairs of eyes that stare at him every
day. They look at the cut of his pants, the pressing of his shirt and the order of his
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mind. He was sure that they were thinking of nothing but him—instead, teenagers
thought of nothing but themselves. T.S. Eliot was right about preparing a face for
those you have to meet but some mornings he cannot fit the public face on the body
of his chaos.
He stares in the mirror, tracing lines that create deep circles of worry and he
only thinks of nighttime.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
School provides some comic relief. There are the boys who think they are
girls and the girls that liked the company of other girls. Actually, the beauty of high
school is that no one is quite sure of what they are. It is normal to be emotionally
lost. At times, Robert feels right at home because his life is full of shattering
moments. In third period, the girls hang on each other as they walk in. Some of the
hugs last for long seconds.
Samantha and her lesbian lover are standing in front of his desk.
“Mr. Red, do you think we should get married? What in the hell happened to
your face Mr. Red? I couldn’t see it from the back of the room but damn—you and
Miss Rachel had a little rendezvous?”
“I cut myself shaving. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I’m trying to get
from one story to another, one page to another, one word to another.
“Shaving way up there, anyway, do you think we should get married though?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know…”
“Well, can you at least think about it? And you need to take care of your
face.”
“I guess.”
“Let me know tomorrow, what you think. We can always adopt.”
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Samantha throws her arm around her lover and happily heads to the back of
the room. Samantha puts her hands in her lover’s lap. Robert rubs his hands over
his eyes; they feel like those topographical maps he used to study in middle school.
He shuffles some papers and then gets up; when he sits down, the papers block his
vision. Students today are crazy, just crazy.
Robert heads for the board. He grimaces to himself as he writes.
Subordinate Clauses—how can he introduce subordinate clauses.
“How many people here have worked a job?”
A few hands assault the air.
“If you are the boss and some other people are new and you are showing
them the job then you are the boss and they are your subordinates. In other words,
they are dependent on you. A subordinate clause cannot function by itself it has to
have a complete sentence or an independent clause to help. So, a subordinate clause
is like a new worker, someone that has just started the job and does not have
enough skills to complete the job. A subordinate clause needs help.”
The varsity basketball players in the back of the room stretch out their legs.
They sigh with boredom. They look at the floor and try to ignore the words that
Robert offers.
“Are you awake in the back? I bet if I was talking about Lebron James or the
beauty of the jump shot then you would listen huh? You know I was quite the player
in my day. I was a pretty awesome point guard. The point is like the general or the
quarterback on the court. I was smart so they made me a point guard. Then I
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learned how to play. Basketball is about working together, like clauses in a
sentence.”
“Awww damn Mr. Red, you lost us…”
Robert turns to the board, laughing to himself. Those guys in the back aren’t
that bad, they really aren’t. They could act worse. I’ve seen them act much worse.
They go easy with me. I think, in some strange kind of way, they accept me. Some of
them think that Rachel’s pretty. If they only knew about Miss Borders and Monica but
shouldn’t he have a personal life? He shakes his head as he walks across the front of
the room. The boys in the back start to laugh and whisper.
He felt like his life spun on the whim of children and he spent most of his
time wondering what teenagers said—it was the space between their hands or the
space between their hands and ears that troubled him. That was the area he could
not control and it was there where the havoc lie. They used their hands to hide their
words about hallway fights and dalliances on the stairs. They didn’t give a damn
about subordinate clauses. It was impossible for him to think of anything else but
what they thought.
Today, the children seemed to like the story. It was a Marquez piece, “The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” For some strange reason, they
understood every nuance, every intention of the author. Could it have been because
their houses had been too small and doorways had to be refit? Did they ever see a
dead body? Were their dreams as bloated as the protagonist’s and did some of
those dreams wash up on shore, only to be unattended? Were their neighborhoods
like the little town that took its identity from Estaban? Did they all live in Estaban’s
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reality? And what about Robert’s son? Did he have dreams or any that Robert was
aware of? What in the hell did he whisper about? How long had it been?
Why did their hands scrape the air? Everyone wanted to be heard about this
story; every student wanted to give their interpretation.
He backed away from the desk and smiled, happy for the first time in weeks.
He leaned for a second against the board and just watched.
“I think the dead man is like every man. I think he’s a kind of symbol,” Janel
says.
“What kind of symbol?”
“A symbol that we all have to die. All of us have to deal with death and we
may be like a big swollen man on shore. Marquez is saying that we have to adjust to
death like the people did in the village.” They were thinking. This, for a moment,
surprised him. They had deaths in their family and some had probably seen a dead
body.
“And when they adjusted to the handsomest drowned man, they changed the
nature of their lives. They took on his name with their growing identity and then
they became Estaban’s village.”
Some days it seemed like there was a sparkling shaft of light in the middle of
the room coming from inside. Janel Edelen lifts her head, she speaks eloquent pearls
and the rest of the class comes alive. This was one of those days. Robert stares in
the middle of the room, where the bolt of answers just came from.
A key awkwardly fits in the door.
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“Mr. Red. Mr. Red. It’s an emergency, Miss Rachel had a heart attack. She’s
at the hospital. She said to contact you.”
Robert almost stops breathing.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
The halls of the hospital are blank and full of faded squares where pictures
used to be. Robert can overhear the conversations of others—putting familial
details in place. Older relatives are going through their pockets looking for nonexistent insurance cards and brothers and sisters fight over power of attorney.
“What did the doctor say? What did he say exactly? Repeat the words!” a
Hispanic woman shrieks.
There are faces shrouded with tragedy. He walks quickly past most of them,
trying to find a doctor or someone that can tell him about Rachel. A heart attack. A
fucking heart attack. How in the hell did that happen? Robert looks for space but he
cannot find it. He looks over the heads, around crowds and he stares in the center of
bowed heads ready for grieving.
In desperation, he reports to the nurses’ station.
“Hello. I’m looking for Rachel Homily. I’m her emergency contact.”
“When did she come in sir?”
“Tonight by ambulance. Heart attack.”
“From the high school? She’s in ICU room three.”
“I C U? Intensive care unit, he thinks to himself, as he passes two daughters
pressing each other’s hands while they pray. The eldest daughter holds her little
sister’s hand tightly. He pauses for a second and then a wall of glass recedes. Rachel
is in the middle of a huge bed with wiring everywhere.
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He swallows and stands before the bed.
Rachel barely lifts her head.
“Are you fucking Miss Borders?”
Robert feels a spike coming into his head. Rachel closes her eyes again; she
turns and he notices some spittle at the edge of her lips. He rushes to get a little
pink Popsicle, wets it and dabs the edge of her lips, then he kisses them. Nurses
speed in.
“Are you the emergency contact?”
“Yes, I am.”
“She was waiting for you. She’s heavily sedated and she should sleep through
the night. Are you a co-worker?”
“Yes.”
“Something about Borders. Maybe she wants you to bring her some books to
read?”
“I can do that.”
“Are you going to stay the night?”
“I’d like to.”
“Now, you don’t have to. I just thought you might. I can get you a cot and
some bedding. I have to leave—it’s the end of my shift but I can square you away
before I go. Did you contact her family?”
“No, not yet.”
The nurse is small with a tight body; she has an insistent stare. She must
work out.
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“Don’t you think you should? This is a heart attack in a healthy woman,
brought on, we think, by some sort of trauma. She should be fine but I think you
should alert her next of kin first chance you get.”
“I will.” Robert Red says, turning to the one available chair; his body feels
like it weighs a thousand pounds. He throws himself in the bottom of the chair; it
sags.
“I don’t mean to pry but she’s going to need some time to recover. Will you
be there for her?”
“Yes, I will. I mean we’re involved with each other. I don’t mean to spill my
guts to you but I think I might have been, in some way, responsible for the trauma in
some way.”
“Look, sir. I’m not here to pry. There are new laws and there is only so much
I can ask you. The rest you have to reveal on your own.”
“Well, I think I caused her pain. I got involved with someone else. It was a
casual thing. It didn’t threaten what we have at all but, then, you know how things
can spiral out of control. Well, it did, spiral, I mean, and one woman threatened to
tell the other and then, well, you know. I think someone told Rachel,” he says,
pointing to the bed, “that I was involved with someone else. Borders. That’s not a
book. That’s Miss Borders at school. I’m really sorry all of this happened.”
“I know you are sir but there’s nothing we can do but take care of her now.
We have to make sure she’s all right. She may have to change the way she lives her
life a little.”
“She lives for others—her students, me.”
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“She may have to see herself as the most important.”
“I see.”
Robert was thinking to himself. It had been one of those strange days—
everything seemed to be passing by as if it were in a car. He seemed to be observing
life as it went by at ninety-miles per hour as he stood still and there was no
possibility of slowing events down. He had no idea of how to care for another
human being—he had never taken care of anyone in his life; he had trouble taking
care of his damned self; all he could do was get up, put his clothes on and go to work.
He used to feel powerful every day, but lately the ease of his profession was gone
and he dreaded every 24-hour period. If Rachel didn’t remind him of paying bills,
his electricity would be cut off and he’d be out in the street.
“I’m a natural manager,” she would say. Rachel was keeping him alive, yes,
she had her controversy but she was keeping him aware of everyday—if there were
no Rachel he would fade from life, like a rare painting left out in the weather.
Everything beautiful would be destroyed by the wind and rain and the poor
treatment he would give himself. Robert was sure of one thing—if there were no
Rachel, there would be no Robert. He could barely teach—his need to have the
creative life and the professional life made an endless litany of chores and details
that he could not keep up with. Robert had forgotten e-mails that were sent months
ago and he was threatened by the coming of morning. Each sunrise meant he would
have to face the unknown again; students were getting larger and harder to control.
If one of them really went off, would he be able to get to the security button in time
and would they respond? Jokingly, he referred to them as “insecurity” and he
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thought they might ignore his buzzer. He really needed Rachel and now it was his
turn to take care of her. What would happen to him?
The day had been gripping—it was a blur and it appeared as if he could do
nothing to stop the train of his existence from crashing. Everything seemed to be
passing him by and he could not reach out and touch it; he could not stop it from
moving past and around him.
Most of all, he wanted Rachel to get out of that bed; he strolled out of the
room and into the hallway. He wanted to flip the calendar back a few months and
do the whole decision making over. Going back to the first rehearsal of his play—he
could have withdrawn it from consideration, but he did not. Like in most things, he
went head first without thinking. In the past few months, he had been worse than a
robot—Robert threw on his clothes and tried to meet his benchmarks as a teacher.
The English department sent around “thought police” to make sure you were at the
point on the “pacing chart” that they wanted you to be and that you were teaching
the accepted materials.
“It was like being Joseph K. in the Kafka’s Trial. Teachers are always guilty of
something,” he said in a faculty meeting. Other teachers admired his pedagogical
spunk. Robert brought in living writers, outside work; consequently, he was always
behind and he didn’t give a fuck how or what they thought. He had been teaching
for over twenty years and he knew some things about his adopted craft. School
became an obnoxious, bureaucratic chore—he tried to ignore everything about
school and immerse himself in the world of nighttime. He stared at Rachel; she did
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not move but he felt she could hear his thoughts. Her face was as placid as a park
bench at midnight. He strolls out to the hallway.
At first, he was incredulous but then he started staring, inspecting her. Then
his eyes traveled down to the valleys he knew well. The dress was haphazardly
thrown on and the manner was brisk and dismissive. For a second, he could ignore
the hospital smells because he was accosted by inexpensive perfume. Miss
Borders…as I live and do not breathe! What in the hell are you doing here? He goes
out to meet her.
“What are you doing here?” Robert says, pushing her back to the nurses’
station, “came to finish the job?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Didn’t you tell Rachel about us just before she had the heart attack?”
“No. But I can’t say that someone else didn’t. The custodians are always in
our business.”
“Oh, I see. Well, she’s semi-conscious. She can’t see anyone right now. Are
you on her visitors’ list?”
“Well, not really…”
“You’ve done enough. Please leave.”
Miss Borders turns around and heads out. She turns back, showing her fat
dimpled face.
“You know, you started all this. It was your little member that made all this
happen,” Miss Borders shouts, pointing to his crouch.
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Robert feels a cold chill down the back of his spine. He walks to Rachel’s
room with slow steps. He straightens her sheet and she moans. There are a few
empty plastic bottles that he inspects. She begins to moan but in a while he can
make out words.
“You know it’s really all right. We’re not married, really. And you won’t give
me a real commitment, so...”
“Look, Rachel, you have to take it easy and get well. We can talk about all this
stuff later. I do want to make a commitment. It’s just that I lived the bachelor-alone
life for so long. I guess I just don’t know how to make a commitment. It will take
time but I want to make a commitment to you. Right now, please get better. Please
rest. I’ll be here all night; we can talk when you feel better.”
“But there are some things I want to get straight right now. No more Miss
Borders?”
“Right. I’m sorry about everything. No more Miss Borders.”
“It’s not that you don’t have the right, it’s just that it’s not right, you know
what I mean?”
“I know. She sort of roped me into it.”
“Yeah,” Rachel says, leaning over. She seems skinner than before. Her arm
looks drawn and tired.
“I know. I know how she can be but you heard about a woman’s scorn,
haven’t you? I can’t wait to get up out of this bed. You got a beat down coming.”
“I think I realize that.”
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“Oh, you do? I’m talking about a beat down emotionally. You need to join the
rest of us in the world. You are too distant from everyone and everything. Try
feeling and thinking, reacting to what is going on around you. I almost lost my life
and it made me see some things. If there’s something you want, you have to go and
get it. I can’t wait forever on you, if you want this relationship you have to say so.
I’m willing to forgive Miss Borders as a little blemish but if it happens again, you’re
history. I just want you to know—the heart attack was not about you it was about
something else. My former Marine is trying to fucking kill himself. Whenever he
talks out of his head I know the post-traumatic stuff is clicking in. I talked to him a
few days ago and he scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m staying the night,” Robert wasn’t sure if it was out of concern or because
the nurses uniforms were so fitting so tightly tonight.
“No. Not here. Go and straighten your shit out.”
Robert Red stood, trying to move to Rachel’s bed.
“No. Go now.”
Robert felt stupid but he turned around to go. There was something
twitching in the small of his back, something painful and uncomfortable. Was
Rachel finally hitting a nerve with him? Did he have to be accountable to her too?
He felt he was being accountable to his students, and now Rachel wanted him to fess
up to his sins and confront the evil Miss Borders! Little things drove him absolutely
crazy; he needed Rachel to be a buffer between him and the real world.
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Michael Bolton’s annoying voice was seeping out of the uneven slats of Miss
Border’s little cabin. There was a sickly green light visible in the tears of the shade.
It seemed to Robert like he was standing there forever. Finally, a rotund form
slivered through the darkness. The door creaked open too slowly. Miss Border’s
eyes were barely open; sleep was hanging in the corners and her mouth looks
crusty.
“I came to tell you that this little blackmail thing is over. I don’t have to
stupe you anymore. And, by the way, stay the hell away from Rachel. She’s ten
times better than you will ever be. I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire!”
“O.M.G…”Miss Borders says, slamming the door.
Robert turns around and marches off. The clouds in the sky seem nefarious
and thin; his forehead feels as if it is about to disappear. He walks toward the clouds,
ignoring whether or not his car is in front of him. He could walk home but he
decides to stop at what looks like his vehicle and jump in.
On the way home, he looks out of the window and it almost feels like his eyes
are blank, that he is seeing nothing and the world is a little empty. Inside, he feels
like a dried up brook. Barren—this is how he made himself feel during the whole
thing with Miss Borders. He knew that was wrong and now his remedy is to
withdraw from the world; this was always his remedy. The sky looks darker,
swirling, a Van Gogh sky. Robert feels as if a part of him is missing. He stumbles a
little and moves off toward his apartment.
The night is blank. Rachel is still with him but he feels something gnawing in
the space she used to fill. For some reason, Robert does not stop at his house, but
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keeps driving back in the vicinity of Miss Borders’ home. He drives slowly past and
he can see a man, just inside the house, arguing and waving his arms at Miss Borders
as if they are weapons. He wants to drive past but something in his stomach makes
him stop. He presses down on the brake, turns the car and heads back to the
driveway. Robert quickly parks the car and sneaks up the walk. By the time he hits
the door, the man is in front of him, staring, snarling like a pit bull on gunpowder.
Robert backs up and sticks his hand out, trying to calm the sniveling human
dog in front of him.
“I have no problem with you. Your problem is with her.”
“Who in the hell are you?”
“A co-worker and friend.”
“I’m her ex-fucking husband. I think I have the right to yell at her ass if I want
to.”
“I guess. Just don’t get physical. They take the man first.”
“I got you. Now move on.”
“I will,” Robert says, backing up.
He starts his car, turns around, and heads back to the hospital. There are
little lights flashing near the corners of his eyes. Floaters. He’s starting to see
floaters again like he did when he was a child. By the time he makes it to the
hospital he is exhausted and disgruntled. Everything is going wrong—his dream of
the unblemished Rachel is falling apart. He thought Rachel was without flaw; now he
knows she’s just like every other human. If she were indestructible, then she would
never fail in bolstering his weak personality; now there is a possibility that she
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might not be strong enough to save him. One of the nurses has left her bulletin
board with Rachel’s vital signs on it. Everything seems to be normal, except for very
high levels of estrogen. He signals to one of the nurses drinking coffee outside, and
she comes in to retrieve the clipboard he is now holding in his hands.
“Thank you,” she says, as she returns to the group of nurses talking and
looking back into Rachel’s room. They have looks of mild concern. Robert stares at
them for a moment hoping that they will come forth with some information that he
needs but they do not budge. A nurse smiles at him, nods her head and goes back to
the conversation while sipping coffee. She is short so his eyes quickly inspect her;
she bats her eyes at him and then becomes stern while turning back into the circle of
gossip. Cute as hell, he thinks to himself, cute as hell.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Once home, massaged by the awful silences of his apartment, Robert
ballyhoos all of his successes and focuses on what he is not doing. It is as easy as
letting go, as accepting himself but he cannot bring himself to accept his talents and
modest successes. He is turning the corner on fifty years and everything he has
done seems small and insignificant. He looks at himself through the periscope of
defeat. Almost every evening, he painfully reviews the major events of his adult life;
each year is another descent. One night, when he is sure he will not write again,
Malik’s mother calls.
“Robert—“
“Yeah, who is this?”
“This is Cardova, your son’s mother, remember me?”
“I do. How are you?”
“Good. I thought you were going to call regularly. Can you ever do what you
say you’re going to do?
“I try, I just can’t always succeed.”
“That sounds like some shit you would say.”
“You don’t understand, being an artist and a bread winner at the same time.”
“Yeah, another line from a poem you’ve stolen.”
“It’s the fucking truth. The fucking truth.”
“Your fucking truth. Just see your son, bitch. Just see your son.”
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She slams down the phone.
He lived between the stoic looks of Rachel, his nighttime activity, and the
disapproving scowls of the children. Some of the actors knew what he was up to;
they would watch his eyes wandering over the mounds of Miss Borders and his
wandering thoughts about the vague and distant memory-- Monica. He was trying
to push Monica to the back of his mind, pretending she did not exist. He knew that
she would be an imbroglio and he would have to deal with her after Rachel mended
but he did not want to think about that now. If he did not think about things, maybe
they would disappear like a child’s blown bubble. Now, the teenager’s looks had
turned to recrimination and they rolled their eyes at him as if he had stolen one of
their brothers or sisters.
Rachel…he wakes on Sunday not knowing where he is or what time it might
be. But the hospital…he rushes to his car and drives directly to the hospital.
When he gets there, nurses and doctors are bending over her. Her parents
have been there to check on her; she is still breathing and thinking, so they decide
not to extend their stay. Her father shakes his hand and thanks Robert for calling;
he is a big man and gentle as a henpecked bird chewing the end of a cigar. Robert
moves in the back, straining to see the patient in the crowded room; he can barely
see her semi-conscious head on the pillow. The parents have spirited conversations
with her doctors before they leave for the airport. Her mother only speaks in
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whispers, on her tiptoes, to her husband. She reads the files, consults with doctors
and stays on the inter-net. When the doctors speak, she tries to talk before they do,
explaining blood work and the results of various MRIs. The short, attractive nurse
that noticed him before notices him again. She turns around and shoots him a sly
smile. The nurses seem to be trying to stimulate Rachel’s heart.
“You came back,” the attractive nurse says, walking toward him.
“I had to. Is everything all right?”
“Sure. Her heart just faltered for a minute. Happens all the time.”
“What?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with. She’s a heart patient and she will be for a
while. This kind of thing happens. Are you going to be caring for her?”
Robert looks as if he has been hit with a stone.
“What?”
“Can you get her family back here?”
“Yes, they just left. I’ll try to catch them.”
Robert vaults outside and runs down the long hallway through the
emergency room, outside to the parking lot. The black, elegant Cadillac turns the
corner and almost hits him. He flags them down.
“You have to go back in. There’s been a complication.”
Her father stops the car and begs Robert to park it as her mother jumps out
and follows him. She looks odd, half his size.
Robert parks the car and heads back in.
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“We may have to operate. Can you sign sir?”
The nurse moves the clipboard over to the desk by Rachel’s bed and her
father signs, as the doctor whispers and comforts the mother. Robert follows the
gurney and her parents stay half the night. They cannot change their plane
reservations so they must leave before she wakes up; Robert assures them that he
can handle any emergency. He sticks out his chest and uses his confident voice, like
he does in the classroom. This is what he thinks she would want him to do and he is
good at performing.
Robert feels isolated and he isn’t sure if the cold is coming from the
instruments or inside. He reaches out to stroke Rachel’s hand, and it is surprisingly
warm and pulsing with life. He wants to cry but he can’t; he hovers over her for a
long minute, thinking of how much of an asshole he is. There was really nothing
stirring around inside of him but something that felt like regret. He felt mushy
inside and he wanted to feel strong but there is something tugging at him that he
cannot name. It begins in his back and comes through, like a metal rod clutching the
center of his stomach. He watches the tight behind of the smiling nurse as she
returns to the nurses’ station. She is squat, built close to the ground and small
around the waist. He can stand behind her and feel muscle and softness, a nice
combination. He keeps looking back at the nurse while he is reaching out to comfort
Rachel.
When women came to trust him, that’s when he would make his play. In the
past few years it happened with increasing frequency, women he would meet in
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bookstores, grocery stores…hospitals. Before he knew it, the compact nurse was
standing behind him again.
“She’s had a tough time of it but I can tell she’s strong. She’ll sleep for a while
now.”
“Yes.”
“Have you had dinner?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about other things. I haven’t had time for dinner.”
“I go on break in about two hours. We have great food here, in the cafeteria
believe it or not. I’ll come back when I’m free, okay?”
“Yeah, I need something to eat. I really could use something to eat.”
“You have to make sure to feed your damned self. Especially when you’re
caring for somebody else.”
“I really don’t know how to care for someone else. I’ve never done it before.”
“It’s hard. You have to be selfless. Stop thinking about Robert, that’s your
name isn’t it? It’s like you’re pulling something out of yourself. You need to just
think of her and think of nothing else for a while. Can you do that?”
“I think so. I think I can. It’s like an exercise. I have to learn that there is
something in the universe besides my damned self.”
“Yeah. I learn that every day in my profession.”
“I’ll bet you do. We…” he says pointing to Rachel… “live in the selfish world
of teaching, where you get nothing but disrespect and everyone is always looking at
you,” he says fiercely.
“Yeah, nursing is a little bit selfless.”
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“But I bet you have your fun sometimes.”
“Oh, well I try. I have to make my rounds; you need to check on your girl. I’ll
be back.” Rachel seems to be asleep. Her eyes are placid when they are closed and
when they are open. She is his angel but what if she would never open her eyes
again? He begins to think depressing thoughts. Death is like a shadow that you rub
against sometime. When you rub against the edge of death, you realize that you
don’t want to go there or you don’t want anyone else to go there because there is no
guarantee that you will ever come back. Robert goes over and sits by her, searching
for her eyes. He brushes her hair back slightly and notices her eyes are perfectly
shut. She couldn’t have heard my conversation with the nurse, he thinks to himself.
He sits up; for the first time today he lets himself feel tired. He glances over at
Rachel again. He stares at her; after a while, he dozes.
“Mr. Red…Mr. Red…are you asleep?” He feels someone lightly taping him.
“Oh, no…I’m not sleeping. I’m watching Rachel. Will she sleep through the
night?”
“Definitely. Would you like to see the cafeteria? You need some food?
Right?”
“I could use a little dinner.”
“Come with me,” she says, taking his arm, grazing her firm breasts against
him.
They walk like lovers. The nurse is instantly friendly. She leans her breasts
against his arm again and holds him tight.
“Are you going to stay here all night?”
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“Probably.”
“Stuck on her huh?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I don’t really know how I feel. She’s been wonderful. It’s not her, it’s
me. I just don’t know if I’m coming or going some time,” Robert says truthfully,
feeling like his head is beginning to spin.
“I know how you feel, between this job and the writing I’m doing, I never
know what world I’m in.”
“You write?”
“If you can call a nurses’ memoir writing.”
“It is, very much so. It’s not what you’re writing it’s how you make it come to
life.”
They stroll down a long dark hallway with dirty glass cases that have old
hospital announcements. He sees Rachel’s sleeping face, in his mind, as families
walk by. If a woman smiles at him twice he has to investigate her, look her deeply in
her eyes. These are reflex actions, unlike sympathy that he should feel for Rachel,
his mind is alert with the possibilities of another encounter—they take away from
the real world and provide fake solace. The cafeteria is huge with choices of
sandwiches, soups and salads. Robert is exhausted; he’s almost breaking down;
taking care of another human being is not what he signed up for. He thought only
about the fun aspects of being with Rachel, now the tables are turned and he might
have to take care of her. The cafeteria, with the many shops, turnstiles and colors
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looks like an amusement park of food to him. He smiles for the first time today and
it feels like his face might break into pieces.
“Come on. What do you feel like?”
“Pizza. Greasy, hot pizza.” She becomes a bit like a hostess, opening her
arms, showcasing the place.
She walks over with him.
“What are you getting?”
“Pizza also.”
They talk for a solid hour. For the first time in months, he feels confident. He
read in MEN’S HEALTH that women find confidence sexy and he owns the words he
speaks and the sentences the words are in and he feels a strange sense of power.
This unbridled power is something he has not felt in a while and when he stares at
her she bolsters his confidence with admiring eyes.
She reads her fine work to him; beautifully wrought, meticulously written.
He didn’t know if it was the writing or her. She is elegant, her mouth savoring every
word. He is mesmerized by her as nurses in plastic uniforms whiz past with plates
and plates of steaming, hot food. The precision of the workers, in starched shirts
behind the counters, amaze. Mouths are going and eyes are diverted so he can
concentrate on her. There are bags under her eyes and her skin has little brown
freckles everywhere. Her nose is cute and turned up but doggie eyes dominate her
face. They are not droopy at the edges but there are big and icy blue, almost
translucent and dark with demonstrative lines and crows feet growing at the edges.
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She looks like she is overly tired.
“So, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but Rachel should go home tomorrow.
As soon as we can get her heartbeat to regulate, after the shunts go in, she’s out of
here.”
“I see.”
“Will you be able to take care of her?”
“You mean take off work? I never do that.”
“You’re one of those people with hundreds of sick days. So, you’re free
tonight?”
“Sort of. I’m dog tired.”
“But, it’s Friday. No work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. But I’m tired of dealing with teenagers.”
“Drained? Maybe you need to deal with an adult.”
“Yeah, sort of. This whole thing has been rough emotionally.”
“Didn’t expect it huh?”
“You could say that. I mean the whole thing of caring for others. I’m afraid
I’m just not too good at that.”
“Coming outside the little world you live in is not your forte huh?”
“You got it. I like the imprints of my own mind.”
“But don’t you get tired of that after a while? I mean your perspective has to
be a little limited, doesn’t it?”
Another short, attractive nurse walks by in a tight uniform.
“I guess. I always liked my own thoughts.”
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“But wouldn’t it be good to share those thoughts with others?”
“Perhaps. It’s entertainment for me.”
“Sounds like mental masturbation. Maybe you need someone to talk to. I just
bought a new house. You should come over some time. I can give you a deep muscle
massage and then you can go off to a deep sleep.”
“Sometime?”
“Tonight? I thought you were tired.”
“I was but I feel a sudden surge of energy coming on.”
“I see. And I bet you’re quite energetic aren’t you?”
“At times,” he says, staring at her eyes that look like there is something
sparkling inside the iris of darkness.
“Tonight might be one of those times?
“Might be.”
“I’d like to just sip some wine and sit up with someone and talk. No pressure
to do anything, no ulterior motive, just offering up words and letting some float in.
You know what I mean? You interested?”
“I might be. What is your name?”
“Brenda. Brenda Thompson.”
Her hand is big, silken; it might have been his imagination but her fingertips
grace his palm. He has no idea that her hands would feel like the smooth edge of
skin kissed like burnished leather. Something stirs within. He looks up at her eyes
again. They must be contacts, a Black woman with blue eyes? Light blue—limpid.
“Can I think about it?”
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“You can. Most men would jump at the chance.”
“I’m not saying no. I’m just saying that I need to think about it. So much has
happened in a short amount of time.”
“You can think about it as long as you’re here. Are you staying all night?”
“Maybe.”
“She might wake up. I know she would want to find you there.”
“I know, but I have to wait and see.”
“Wait and see what?
“If I should stay or not. I think through everything. When I have to make a
decision, I always do a right side, left side.”
“A what?”
“I always list the possibilities on one side and the various possibilities on the
other; whatever list is longer, on the positive side, that’s the one I do.”
“And you do that with everything?”
“Every decision I have ever made has been made that way.”
“That’s kind of boring.”
“Not really.”
“Well, it is to me. Your life is too reasoned. Any undisciplined devil-makecare actions?”
“No. I never get capricious.”
“Oh, okay, I see. Your life is a list of this and a list of that.”
“You could say that.”
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“I just did. Well, it seems to me that you could use some lively moments in
your reasoned existence. I want to give you that tonight if you’re willing.”
“We’ll see.”
He waits in the waiting room for the surgery to be over. Robert gets up and
heads for the darkness of Rhonda’s room. He touches Brenda’s hand for a moment
and she turns her head as if to give him a kiss on the cheek. Robert allows it, stays
with her warm lips for a moment and then moves out of the heat and confusion of
the cafeteria. Rachel is sitting up when he gets back. They have slipped some
nitroglycerine under her tongue and her airwaves and lungs are wide open. Her
eyes are clear.
“Well, Robert, how are you? Where were you? They said you were here.”
“I went to the cafeteria, to get something to eat.”
“I guess that’s all right. I feel much better.”
“You look better.”
“Thanks. I wonder when I can get the hell out of here?”
“Soon. I think they already took a picture of your chest. You didn’t have a
classic heart attack; you just had a blockage. I think they’re just trying to be careful.”
“Careful? I miss my couch.”
“Sometimes things like this take time.”
“You can afford to be so philosophical.”
“Yes, I can.”
“I feel like I’ve been born again.”
“You have, in a way.”
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“Everything seems so bright.”
“It’s a hospital.”
“But it seems like I’m seeing this stuff for the first time. I thought I was worse
off than I actually was.”
“Yeah, you could be out of here in a couple of days. Your blood pressure was
up but your heart rate and your vital signs have stabilized.”
“Yeah, I see you’re up on stuff. You’ve been busy flitting around the hospital.”
“What do you mean?”
“It just seems like you’re taking your time a bit more. Talking to people.”
“Yeah, I think I was squeezing the top of that A in personality.”
“Maybe. When I get out of here can we go away somewhere?”
“Sure. Where?”
“Oh, some place for Spring break. Close. Someplace where we can spend the
most amount of time.”
“Sure. I’d like to get away from here. Things seem to be closing in again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, sometimes, things seem to crowd me and I can’t fucking think
because one thought is chasing the other.”
“You’re a very intelligent man.”
“Yeah, but how does that help me?”
“What do you mean?”
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“I mean all this intelligence. All these thoughts. I get paid the same paltry
check as the next teacher. I could be dumb as a god damned post and it all wouldn’t
matter.”
“My, my…we are pessimistic. I thought I was the one that was sick.”
“You are.”
“Then save the pessimism for me. You do great things outside of the school. I
mean your writing and your scholarship—you don’t need anybody to validate that
for you do you? “
“No.”
“Well then, you exist outside of their parameters. Have your thoughts. You
can’t control them. Those thoughts are your possessions, own them. Forget about
what other people think or feel about what you do.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Easy to do. Just to thine own self be true.”
“Yeah, but my self is so complicated. There’s so much going on at the same
time. Stop the world I want to get off.”
“You can slow that world down. Only you can do it.”
“Hey, I thought you were the one with the irregular heart beat.”
“That’s regulated. I think I might get out of here soon.”
Every four hours they come in—the blood people. They stick her and adjust
her tubes. Rachel is used to it but the needles cause her to wince. Robert looks
away when they draw blood.
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The little, attractive nurse comes in. She bats her eyes at Robert and
addresses Rachel. The nurse seems a bit terse, overly professional, as if there is
something to hide.
“All of your blood work is negative and the sonogram at this point shows
nothing but a little blockage, that could be food, that could be something else. So we
need to do some more extensive tests—one or two days at the max. We have to find
out why this happened before we release you.” Rachel’s chest falls and she turns
away just as the cute nurse winks at Robert.
“Does she really have to stay? Why can’t we speak to a doctor?”
“Well, you can, but I thought I’d deliver the news.”
“With all due respect, we’d like to speak to a doctor, if possible,” Robert
states confidently.
“Sure, I’ll call your doctor…now.” She looks scared.
Rachel sits up in the bed, renewed. Robert’s voice enlivens her.
“You heard the man. Get my doctor—now hurry it up,”
She scampers. Robert follows her with his eyes. A little bit later, Rachel’s
doctor shows up. His face is grim.
“We have to keep you for another day. I don’t think there’s anything really,
seriously wrong with you, but I don’t know. Something caused all this. All we have
to do is to look and see what it was that triggered this situation. You told me about
your Marine. Sometimes a psychosomatic situation can trigger a physiological
response. All the pictures that we have now are negative. So, I could tell you to go
home but we haven’t ruled out there being something wrong, a blockage somewhere
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that caused all this. So, we’ll have to give that a look tomorrow. Sonogram again,
possible MRI. It won’t hurt a bit. You’re doing well. Just rest—that’s what I want
you to do. Is your guest staying the night?”
“Probably not tonight,” Robert says.
“Then get some sound sleep tonight and we should be letting you go
tomorrow. Okay?”
After a few hours, Robert walks out to the parking lot. The glass doors slide
open, and he stretches his arms, walking toward the sky.
“Sir…Robert is it Robert? Did you make up your mind? I’m off now. What
did you decide?”
“That I should be going home but I’m not. I’ll follow you, if the offer is still
open?” He says turning around in the night illuminated only by car headlights.
“Sure. Follow me. Sure,”
Brenda takes him on a long, wild ride. He stays behind her, hugging the
bumper. She moves through the hills and around quite a few winding roads. He
stays close enough to see her personalized license plate. It says HOT GIRL. Her
house is an almost converted trailer with potted plants everywhere. She holds open
the screen door and Robert follows her into the darkness. Robert follows her
closely, smelling her slightly tainted hair. There is a parakeet in the cage in the
corner and a brownish, greenish rug beneath. The rug is thick and feels good to his
feet. He is mesmerized with her slim waist and quick, dancer like movements.
Robert nestles nicely on the couch. He watches her put down her keys and her bag,
throw open the cabinets, revealing bottles and bottles of liquor.
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“Want a drink? Help yourself. I’m going to put some at home clothes on.”
“Okay,” he says, examining the bottle labels with his eyes.
“A little vodka would be nice. Do you have some Stoli?”
“Just so happens I do. Be right back.”
She disappears into her bedroom and comes back with some sheer black
thing on that reveals her belly. Tight. Damned tight—maybe it’s from rolling
around all those patients. She sashays down the hall, darts into the kitchen, bends
down and throws ice cubes into a glass. Noisy.
She is taller than he thought and shapely. Brenda prances in front of him and
walks away, knowing that his eyes are glued to her behind. Black women just know.
They don’t have to ask, but either they want to give it to you or they don’t. The
sisters don’t play. White women may be a bit more “experimental” but when you
got a good home sister, you got something.
The sisters are in your corner. Talking about being behind you in every way.
Robert dreamed of being in back of her, close enough for her to feel his manhood.
She hands him the glass and lets his fingers touch hers. She looks up at him, a
plaintive, willing look. He smiles. Robert thinks unclean thoughts. She sits beside
him, staring.
“What would you like to do?”
“Something exciting young lady, wouldn’t you?”
“Define exciting.”
“Anything your skin reacts to.”
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“My skin reacts to the wind. My skin reacts to sunshine, to wetness. I react
to the universe and you sir, are a part of that universe.”
“And you’re reacting to me?”
“Yes. Strongly.”
“I see. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”
“Like what?”
“Something adventurous.”
“That could be anything from wild sex to Mexican food.”
“Well, I think I would pass on the Mexican food.”
“You would? Well, what else do you have in mind? Could it be the male credo.
Try to get to first and then slide home?”
“No. I didn’t come here for that. I really want to talk. I have a hard time
opening up and you know—I have a hard time caring for others. I mean it makes me
uncomfortable to be in love. It calls on inner resources that I don’t really feel like
engaging. You know, it’s easy to construct your own little world, but it gets harder
and harder when you include others. I don’t know what Rachel wants from me,
sometimes. I really have to step back. My students want so much from me and it
becomes a bit weighty sometimes. I mean I’m just a regular guy.”
“I know what you mean. I have two kids. They’re out with their Dad now but
they drain the hell out of me too. And then, I have a very demanding job you know
what I mean?”
“Yeah, everything is pulling away and nothing is giving back.”
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“That’s the way fucking life is. But then I tell myself it can’t be like that.
There has to be something, something more than just the responsibilities of this
thing. Where is my fucking Yosemite Park, Grand Canyon—when can I sit back and
wonder?”
“I feel that frustration every day.”
“And what do you do with that feeling?”
“I stuff it.”
“You stuff it? That’s not good. And teaching doesn’t give you an outlet for
that? I mean aren’t the kids funny as hell?”
“Sometimes. Some time their annoying as hell and teenagers have major
fucking attitudes, especially in the morning,” Robert adds.
“I can see that.”
“And if you don’t have a love or a house or a damned dog or something to
hold up against it, it can get pretty bad.”
“You have Rachel and her love.”
“Yeah, I know but love is not easy to accept. Hatred is much better.”
“You got a weird way of looking at things. But I like you,” she says, scooting
over closer, putting her face next to his.
And he turns to kiss her, not because he wants to, but because he happens to
be close to her. The air in the room seems to flatten for him as he turns but there is
no exit. Before he knows it, she is smothering him, pushing him back on the couch.
Robert can barely breathe but he twists and turns under her lips, unable or
unwilling to find a way out.
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His body is desperate, seeking somewhere to find harbor. She opens and
spreads her legs wide. He is seeing a different movie. Rachel has her dangers but
Brenda’s silken skin sings sin. He is tampering with a jar he has been told to stay
away from and there is a deep, rangy smell to her cunt, spread open over his face.
Robert moistens Brenda and then stands up, between her legs causing her to
clutch him and sigh deeply. He pulls her closer and closer to him, thinking of
nothing and then he bends her over, thinking of everything.
He spent most of the night there but at about two a.m.; he had the strange
feeling that he was choking because the air in the room had been sucked out and an
oppressive heat was pressing down on his mouth, taking his exasperated breaths
away. She had a ceiling fan and while the fan is cutting his thoughts in two, he
leaves. He kisses her small feet angled at the end of the bed. There is nothing
unusual about the night, but he cannot shake the feeling of his throat closing up on
him. Robert feels an all-encompassing wave of indecision and inadequacy; sex dulls
the pain of Rachel being in the hospital; the waging of the flesh used to deaden the
reality of daytime.
Although he has barely concentrated on the fact—he realizes while standing,
heaving next to his car—that he has not been asleep for days. He has taken
exhausted catnaps, but he has been unable to sleep for a more than two to three
hours a night for weeks. He starts to get really short with people and his forehead
seems to be sprouting new veins. He feels tight and like he is going to jump out of
his skin every moment. He tires to sleep but he only ends up lying down with his
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eyes closed, watching the fan slow down and almost stop. He spends almost every
night doing this, with his eyes open.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The touch of Rachel is missing. He does not feel her in the palm of his hands
anymore. But he can still feel the presence of the nurse; he still feels like he is sitting
next to her. The nurse’s presence makes the side of his body warm but the memory
of Rachel is non-existent. For this reason, he needs to see Rachel, to be with her and
to have her leave her indelible impression on his skin again.
Teaching meant little some days and when he stared in the faces of his
unimaginative students, he knew that at night, he would need the affirmation again.
Rachel was his method of achieving that feeling but now her heart attack made her
vulnerable—she was not there to affirm him so he sought others or the others
sought him.
Robert sat in confusion, sinking deeper and deeper into his little depression.
He felt weightless. Robert thought there would be nothing left if he did not have
Rachel there to bless his every move. So it was this feeling of inadequate adoration
that he clung to. He knew that Rachel would be out of the hospital soon and without
a real family, he would have to step in and try to take care of her.
But that was difficult when he never had to stretch emotionally. Robert had
been living in his own little world but now all of that was shattering and changing.
Who knows in what form Rachel will be in when she returns? He couldn’t depend
on her to shore him up on e-mails and memos. She could not “take care” of him at
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school and he might have to take care of her at home. He was scared, really scared
that he would be unalterably changed by all this and that he would never be able to
go back to his old, solitary self.
Rachel is kept in the hospital for another week. Her family returns to the
hospital and takes her things home. They clean her house, settle her in and make
sure she has the essentials. Robert stays away. He comes to see her one morning.
She was bright and chipper and very alert.
“Did you miss me?”
“Yeah, I did. Very much. I felt like a part of my arm had been taken off.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I felt lost. Like the universe was different because you weren’t in it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean there was little direction. Things were not going anywhere. It was
as if I had lost my pattern, my raison d’etre.”
“Robert Red. I think you really missed me. Like I am becoming a part of your
life that you can’t live without.”
“You could say that.”
“But I don’t know which part.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean, there is something about what we have that’s good. I mean I’m no
angel, Rachel. I am as lascivious as the next man but when I look at you and I think
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about what we have constructed here, it’s like a small building and when that
building is taken away I am at a loss.”
“And you can’t find another building?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s nothing in my life quite like you. This is the first time in my
life that this has happened to me. I never thought it would and it feels strange. I
hate being dependent on anyone but now, for my feelings, for my love, for my very
breath, there is you. I don’t even like getting up in the morning unless I see your
face. I can’t start my day without you.”
“So, what does this mean? I want you to know that I have dealt with my
fascination with women. I still love the way they touch me but I love the way you
touch me more. I sent Monica away. She’s a predator—I think she just wanted to
get between us and cause trouble.”
“I think it means we are a crossroads. Something has to happen. Some
decisions have to be made.”
“Robert are you…”
“I want something permanent.”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“It means that we are in love and I want you to acknowledge it. And that we
need to think about making things more uniform between us.”
“You mean declaring our love for all of the world?”
“I believe they call that marriage.”
“Do you want to get married Robert?”
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“No. I want to get engaged.”
“Oh. Haven’t you been engaged four times before?”
“You did your research. So, what do we do?”
“We get married without engagement.”
“You know I have some skeletons.”
“I know.
“How did you know?”
“Well, there are some things a girl just knows. Some things you can sense
about a man.”
“Oh, really. Such as?”
“That he has a wandering eye.”
“And I have that?”
“Well, let’s just say you have an eye for the ladies and they have an eye for
you.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“I just wanted you to know as long as it goes no further than a look, I can deal
with that.”
“Oh, so you give me your permission to look at other women?”
“Sort of. I see a few men that I’d like to look at closely sometime.”
“And I say what’s good for the male goose is good for the gander.”
“Yeah. So, now you’re giving me permission?”
“No, I just think the world is not necessarily monogamous.”
“I feel you on that one.”
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“So are we proposing to have an exclusive relationship in a polygamous
world?
“I guess that’s what we’re doing.”
“Will it ever work?”
‘’It is working. Just as it is.”
“Oh. Okay. If you say so.”
“It’s not working for you all of a sudden?”
“Well, you seem a little preoccupied.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, with your play, my illness, your little life.”
“And less and less interested…”
“In me. You seem less and less able to process me in your life. It’s almost like
it was in the beginning.”
“I feel the need for some isolation but I know that’s just my old self emerging.
I’m a selfish bastard.”
“You can be.”
“I guess my illness thing has been hard for you. You’re not used to taking
care of someone else, are you? I mean you’ve never had children to take care of or
anything. Your life has been about preparing to teach and teaching, that’s really all.
Am I right?”
“Well, not really. I mean I’ve had involvements with women all my life but
mostly my gonads were involved. This is something different, pulling on a part of
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me that I’m not really willing to give up. Sometimes it makes me a little
uncomfortable.”
“I know.”
“Sometimes, I want to run back to my little life as it was. But I’m different. I
can’t do that isolation thing any more.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you want?”
“I think I want a new and improved you, but I’ll take the one I got.”
“I want a new and improved me also. Give me time. I can change.”
“Okay. But don’t make yourself something you don’t want to be. You need to
accept you before you give yourself to me.”
“We sound like bumper stickers.”
“I know but we have to talk this shit out before we go on too long and if
something happens to me?”
“Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll be here, watching over you like a father hen.”
“Good. I need some sleep. Watch over me.”
Robert gets Rachel a blanket and covers her. He turns toward the window
and thinks about the curve of the nurses’ thigh.
For a second he longs to be under Brenda’s breaths. He hates himself for the
thought and moves to the venetian blinds of ICU and parts them; the nurses move
seductively in their clinging uniforms. The flatness of the evening makes his face
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feel heavy. Robert wishes he had something to do besides look at Rachel breathe.
But this is what he should be doing, he thinks to himself. His thoughts come like a
freight train and he cannot stop them; more than that he cannot separate them. The
thoughts come rapidly, bumping heads.
He should be here with Rachel, after all, she is dedicated to him but he looks
at the history in his phone and rubs his finger over Brenda’s number. Should he
call? Something within his upper thigh twitches. Damn. He wishes he could leave
her alone but there’s something pulling in his stomach, compelling him to call.
He moves near the window to make her name and number clear. He sits at
the small, Formica kitchen table and slumps down. The surface smells like wet
peanut butter. Before he knows it, he is asleep.
Hours later, Rachel stirs and demands to walk around a bit.
“Robert…”
“Right here,” he says, standing.
He carries Rachel to the bed after her walk. She is coughing but breathing
normally against his neck. He stays until the morning and cooks her breakfast. It
feels strange but good all at the same time.
At school, the Principal asks him questions about Rachel’s recovery. He gives
the Principal Rachel’s cell phone number and the Principal calls her to reassure her
that everything is fine with her classes and not to rush back. Actually, there is chaos
in her hallway and her classes have all but forgotten order. Teenagers like adults
that show up every day; they have had enough grown ups promise and not deliver,
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they are used to that but when they have someone consistently there for them, they
respect that. The students long for her return; Robert gives them periodic updates.
Rachel slowly raises her head again and looks at life as it is. Robert shrinks a
little in her view but he stays there somehow. They have lunch twice a week and
discuss departmental politics, the laziness of the children and their need to stay
positive in the educational world of frustration and loss. They use each other again
to pleasure and release. Rachel uses her sick hours to take an extended vacation.
And for a while things between them seem fine, but soon Rachel seems to
want more than lip service to the commitment. And even though Robert gets loose
in this strange season that begins with chills and ends with too much sunshine—he
begins to understand that the universe is not particularly concerned about him and
his little world. He tries to end all “other” involvements but Brenda makes
everything too easy to continue.
Brenda pares down the relationship to sexual muscle and waits for him when
he can get away from Rachel or right after he has finished with her; on his way
home, he stops, like a postman.
Brenda’s body is warm and brown at night and he sometimes has to search
for her in the shadows of the bedroom. He enjoys finding her with his hands. She
acts as if she is grateful when he finds her. This gratifies him but he enjoys the times
with Rachel almost as much as the late nights with the sable and seductive touching
of Brenda. The thoughts of Brenda soften his mind but he can still feel the
impending doom. Robert still thinks about the edges of the darkness; he tries to live
within those distinct lines.
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He stares at Rachel, on the couch, and his thoughts of her are caring thoughts,
almost big brother thoughts, but more. He knows he loves Rachel but he wants his
life to be exciting all of the time and it can’t be. When he is with Brenda he feels like
his life is moving in the right direction, for a second. Brenda takes him back to his
old feelings about women and that is comfortable for him. Rachel forces him to
emote and to be accountable and he wants to escape when he is not in the rooms
with the fixed, staring eyes. His head buzzes when he’s with Brenda and he forgets
about the details of the day.
At night, her house is hot with the rhythms of Aretha Franklin and Mary J.
Blige. The music meets him at the door when he arrives. She is usually bathing or in
the shower. Brenda made a key for Robert so he could let himself in. She calls him
baby.
The shower is going when he gets there. He can hear the pine needles of
water hitting her flawless skin.
“Is that you baby?”
“Yeah, it is. Were you expecting somebody else?”
“No. Not tonight. He usually comes after you leave.”
“Funny.”
“Can you hand me a towel?” she says, with soap in her eyes.
Robert runs to the bathroom and hands her a towel.
“Thank you baby,” she says, peeking her head from behind the blue green
shower curtain with dolphins on it. Brenda goes to Sea World at least once a year.
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“Are you early? You don’t usually get here before six,” Brenda says, getting
the preliminary water off in the shower before she jumps out into the heat of the
room. He ducks his head and exits modestly. She thinks she’s fat; he thinks she’s
perfect. Her apple breasts jiggle and he catches a glance as he goes back into the
living room, diving for the center of the couch.
“They cancelled the poetry club meeting today.”
“They cancelled it or did you? You’re the faculty advisor.”
“They cancelled all afternoon activities. Go figure.”
She runs to the bedroom, drying her hair and talking as she goes.
“So how was the hospital today?”
“Oh, more tubes and bottles. Piss and shit.”
“Okay. So, I’m entertainment for you?”
“What the fuck did you say? What am I for you? A cheap prostitute?”
“No. Not really. I think about you all the time. Your actually in the center of
my brain most always.”
“Really? You never told me that. I thought I was just a diversion. Rachel is
the center.”
“That maybe true, but I think about you all the time. Your skin covers my
eyes.”
“Sounds like the start of a new poem. That’s what I am, a new poem for you.”
“Not really. I can discard a poem.”
“And you can’t discard me? I’m more permanent that you might imagine.”
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“You could say that. You kind of snuck into my soul,” Robert says, playing
with his bum knee.
“Pussy whipped your ass. You never had any black booty before huh?”
“Well, if you put it that way. I was close to some when I was in high school
but we never could work it out. The town, the looks.”
“Scared you away. Black booty is good booty.”
“All booty is good booty.”
“Not true. There are those that you wish you hadn’t.”
“Oh. Yeah. You tell me.”
“There’ve been a few.”
“A few where you wish you stayed in the car.”
“Yeah.”
“Men. They listen to what their dick is saying.”
“We do. Guilty. I think I’ve sort of fallen into most of my relationships. I
don’t choose any woman. They choose me.”
“That’s a problem.”
“You got that right. I find myself in the middle of relationships and then, you
know, it’s a complicated thing but I’ve had nothing to do with the making of it.”
“So you can holler innocence?”
“Yeah, I can. But methinks the gentleman protests too damned much.”
“You mean you accept responsibility for something?”
“Robert Red against the world. You picked up on all that?”
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“I did. You got to stop feeling that way. First of all, the world could give a
fuck less about you and secondly most people don’t have time to be against you.”
“I know that’s right.”
“See. That’s how narcissus was, falling in love with his own image in the
lake.”
“Yeah.”
“And you saw what happened to him? Do you want the same?”
“No. Hell no. I have to come outside of myself. When I’m in my own head,
I’m in deep caca.”
“You just as right as rain. As right as rain. How’s the little snotty-nosed
children?”
Robert thought to himself, how are they? He had no idea. Most afternoons
he was staring at his watch, waiting, begging for four o’clock. He found himself
swimming through the hot hours after lunch, discussing appositives dispassionately,
disinterested in the sentences he used as examples. One day, I’ll wake them up. One
day, I’ll shoot off a gun in class.
In August, at the beginning of the year, he had promised himself that he
would try to live in the moment of each class and laugh at the little darlings, because
they were lazy, unpredictable and funny. It was a little after Christmas, but he could
still remember the empty promises of the beginning of the year. One year, he would
keep his resolutions. Teaching was becoming robotic as states competed for the
federal dollar with test performance. The teachers became the conduit to strong
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Principal evaluations if the school performed well on standardized testing. Pay
would soon be tied to testing. Documentation is the key, and the manipulation of
the computer. Keeping records, recording grades and making sure that all late
notices are filed are more important than getting students to love literature. No one
mentions subject matter any more; it’s all about the data. Mr. Red is overwhelmed;
it is all about the class period for him. He is lost in a mountain of minutia.
But the more he thought about Brenda and made excuses for Rachel’s not
hurrying back to school, the more he lost himself in the beauty and desires of their
various bodies. He thought about his hand passing along their skin, igniting the
hairs on their arms, when he should have been introducing diagramming sentences
with passion, would his students ever pass the High School Assessment test?
Brenda has hopelessly sucked him in, like a witch; her body is a sexual vacuum that
never stops working. The afternoons are long and brutal. There are times when
diplomacy and grace is called for, but he is too tired to emotionally step back.
Robert was like fine, damaged china with a tentative skin of the teacher pulled
across the bones of his crazed relationships.
All day with teen-agers, it could be worse. The students in the front rows
seem to have more pimples than the ones in the back. Today, the boy in the center
seat is picking his until they ooze. Graduate school for this? The giggles of the girls
in the back are welcome this morning. The girls break up the monotony of the
lesson and take Robert away from the dirty fingernails of the boys in the front row.
“Now, what did you think of that story?” he says, trying to replace tiredness
with enthusiasm.
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There is a tired silence in the room. Robert would set off a bomb if he could.
Everything would be different then—they’d listen to him then.
The story for the day was an O. Henry story, “The Necklace.” Sometimes, it’s
difficult to get them to see what you want them to see and there are times when
Robert prods and pushes. On his best days, he’s able to slow down and lean on the
board for a second while he collects himself. Some days, like today, he stands in the
middle of the room, pressing. You have to take them to the water if you want them to
partake of great literature. They want to think about their girlfriends or the prom. So
it’s hard to make a connection with them.
The middle row looks almost alive. A question or two could prompt them on a
good day. Today I might have to just stand in front of them and shout. Would they
hear me? He stares at their potentially bright faces. He wants their brains to be
crowded with ideas not the memory of their last tweet.
“Now, this is a story that deals with hope. The wife hopes for fine things and
her husband will do anything to get those fine things for her. He will give up a lot
and sacrifice and so will she.”
Rachel is texting him. In a few days, she will come back to work and then he
will become part of the school gossip again and inside it will feel like he has an
identity.
Some students give him looks of affirmation in the hallways; the cheerleaders
smile at him and flutter their eyes. Football players grin. They all know about
Rachel and some of them seem to know about the drama teacher. He hates the
recognition and wants to take his life back to what it was years ago. This is going to
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be his last night with Brenda, he thinks to himself, the skinny, ascetic boy in the
second row gets up to answer.
“The woman was a gold digger.”
“Yes, she wanted the so called finer things in life and she was willing to give
up anything to get it.”
“And her husband didn’t know what she was doing. They didn’t talk to each
other.”
“Yeah. And what happened because of that?”
Try as he might, he couldn’t lose his love for teaching. When there was the
slightest spark in the room, it looked like a fire to him. He would always inculcate
learning. It was like a flower that only he knew how to bloom. His eyes were
starting to open a little bit now. The spark might lead to a flame. He was starting to
feel like an amusement park inside.
“How did the rest of you feel about the wife? Did you like her?”
The back two rows sit with their hands folded; they have dissatisfied scowls.
“No. I didn’t like her at all. But I kind of felt sorry for her too.”
“You did? Why?”
“I mean, all she did was…she wanted to go to the opera and look like a fancy
woman, a fine woman for one night. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” says the flashy girl in the corner.
“But is that all it should be about? I mean, is that the most important thing in
life—wearing diamonds to the opera?”
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“Well, literature is written about people trying to find meaning. How many of
you love to shop? Some people find meaning in buying nice things and having nice
things.”
The shoppers hands go up. Mentioning shopping is the easiest way to get
teenagers involved.
“So what eventually happens?”
“She works and works and works to replace something that is not even real.”
“True. So the writer of the story, O. Henry, considered one of the greatest, if
not the greatest short story writer in the world is trying to tell us what?”
A skinny boy in the back stands up straight.
“That the things that we consider so valuable may not be so valuable after
all.”
“That’s a great idea. Any other ideas about the theme of the story? The
reason that O. Henry wrote the story?”
“To teach us what is important,” a little girl without a perm answers. She is
ashamed of her hair but her ideas are freshly minted.
“Oh…that’s great…what does that mean?” Robert says, raising his hands to
the sky.
“It means, money is not everything. My Aunt found that out. She bought a
great, big house and she thought we would be over there all the time but my favorite
Aunt is who we be around. She may not have a lot of money but she sure is funny.”
“So, the most important thing is who and what she is, not the amount of
money she has.”
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“Yesssss…” the less talkative girl says.
“So, maybe, just maybe, the message of the story is that you have to find what
is valuable. That which sparkles and glitters may not be so valuable and something
dull and not exciting may be more valuable than something that shines and is
supposed to be a jewel.”
He hated to pull the theme out of them but he got there. They want teachers
to use the Socratic method but some days, patience gives way to spoon-feeding.
Some days it’s by any means necessary. There is always a light if you look for it,
always a light. The answers from the middle of the class saved the day. At the end
of class, Robert slumps by his classroom door and stares out in the Rachel-less
hallway. If he only had their energy, he would know what to do with it or would he?
Maybe he would use the energy of teenagers to destroy himself.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brenda is in a caustic mood. The nights of free, easy sex were over and he
could feel himself drawing away from her. What he did not understand about
women was that at some point they wanted something more than movements in the
dark. It might begin or end that way but somewhere in the middle, they wanted
something authentic and lasting. For men like Robert, the end result was the
negotiation in the dark—there was nothing else. She met him at the door with her
hands dug into the earth of her hips. She was mad; not the kind of mad that is
quickly done but indignant as if she had realized something that had been going on
for a long time. Now and again, Brenda began to demand things. She became
unhappy with the “arrangement.” He came over late at night, seeking sex but that’s
how she started and that’s the way things were going to end up. Tonight, she wants
to have a discussion about Rachel. She is on her high horse; dashiki clad with
sandals, feeling her history.
“So you and Rachel are picking up again? I’m just a side thing?”
“Not really. That’s not it at all. You began this by offering something to me,
right? I took it and now you want to hit me over the head with the notion.”
“No. I just want you to realize that this ain’t no damned hotel. You do your
laundry here, get some sex and get ready for the next morning. This is an in and out
for you.”
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Her head is going back and forth like the heads of the ladies he sees on
Basketball Wives. This is too much emotion for the cool, calm collected Mr. Red to
handle. Like the kids say, she is up in his face.
“Well what do you want it to be?”
“Can you deliver? You can’t even get up off a feeling for Rachel. What makes
you think you can deliver for me?”
“Deliver?”
“Real emotions. See, you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“And I’m not sure I give a shit either.”
“You need to let the door hit you where God split you.”
“What?”
“Let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
The air was fresher outside. He leaned on Brenda’s screen door after he
closed it and just looked out at the vacant lot between her house and his car. He
strolled slowly, confidently to the car. Before he could open the door of the car, she
was outside, waving him back in. He was just getting used to the blueness of the
night.
She kept staring at his neck as she talked, as if she wanted to stick one of her
come-fuck-me heels in his jugular.
“You just have to let Brenda know some things. I need to talk to you about
your other involvement to see if home girl can have a chance one day. I know what
this is to you now but things have a way of changing…”
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“Is there ever any reasoning with you?” he says, shaking his head and
opening his car door wide.
“I’d just like to know what I’m dealing with.”
“I’ll tell you when I know. I can’t even get a grip on my own emotions, much
less being able to quantify hers.”
“So you don’t know what the fuck is going on, with you or her?”
“You got it.”
“I’m involved with a fucking mess.”
“If the shoe fits, take it out of the store.”
Brenda curls her arm around his back. She stays there hugging him, swinging
him slightly back and forth. She places her warm full breasts on his arm.
“You know you want to come back inside.”
He notices the moon, an almost orange slither. It looks like a moon in a
surrealistic painting. She holds him tighter and pushes him for the first step; she
allows him to walk the others on his own.
Like a sheep he ducks his head and walks inside. He would rather have gone
to his car and ended this thing but Brenda is trying to cling to him like there will be
something lost when he goes.
The dank hallway is familiar. He bends down and she leads him into the
room by offering her hand. He feels like he is in the middle of a web. Robert moves
within the strings but the more he resists the more the web tightens. Her room is
dark and wet with old lust. She does not even look back; she knows he’s there.
Robert dislikes himself all night for giving in; he walks like a blind man in search of a
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scent. She has on the green gown within a gown—her body looks hard and inviting
as she curls above him doing some kind of drop-it-like-it’s-hot move. He tells
himself that any man would but there are men who would have kept going to the
car. There are men that would have never come over tonight and could keep the
relationship with Rachel exclusive. He likes the way Brenda shimmies her body
under his hand. Robert feels so manipulated but willing. Before morning he
becomes restless and leaves a little earlier than he has planned.
Robert feels a little dirty in the shower, as if Brenda is still all over him. He
tries to wash her memory and her smell off, but it is impossible.
Brenda comes to the front window, to watch him leave. She waves behind
the holey screen but he does not see her. He thinks about Rachel on the way home.
Rachel is sitting on his living room couch when he slinks in.
“Where in the hell have you been?”
“Driving and thinking.”
“This late? It’s three a.m.”
“I know but sometimes I go out at about one or so and just drive. I wake up
and I feel restless and what the hell do you do at one a.m.? Meditate?”
“I was here at eleven thirty. I couldn’t sleep and I thought you might want
some company. Evidently you had some already.”
“I don’t know what time it is when I leave. I just leave you know. I get this
feeling of claustrophobia and I have to get out or I feel I’m gonna suffocate or
something.”
“Are you sure? What’s her name?”
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“Alienation. I am too alienated from my own self. That’s her name.”
“That’s a funny name. I got a feeling you’re doing something or someone.
Don’t let me find out who it is. So, while girlfriend is sick, we will fuck around?”
“Not really. But you will run your blood pressure up if you keep on. Why
don’t you lay down?”
“Alright. We’ll discuss it on the way to work. I brought clothes.”
“You have clothes here.”
“I know. I thought you might have sold them.”
“Now, why would I do that? I’m not so sure I know you Rachel. This seems
like a new you.”
“I’m the same old Rachel,” he says sliding next to her.
“Oh, you are? Prove it to me tonight.”
Their lips crash.
He feels clean the next morning, as if a part of his life has returned. They
spend the entire weekend together.
Monday morning. Brenda’s face comes up in his mind and he doesn’t know
what to do with it. He replaces her face with Rachel’s and walks out into the
hallway. The best place to get lost is in a high school hallway. Everyone is
concerned with their little-before-locker-worlds. Students bend over and yell in
each other’s faces. Girls are wrapped round boys and lovers stop to kiss. People are
usually in clumps, hanging on each other, yelling curses in each other’s faces. It’s
easy to hide behind other people when they’re standing, refusing to move, chewing
gum. They bicycle their legs, laugh out loud and pretend to be falling to the ground
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over what was just whispered in their ear. Robert stands, waiting for a group
pulling on each other’s clothes near the lockers, to pass by. For long seconds, he
feels complete just staring in the back of the heads of two teenage girls. Maybe that
is all there exists in the world—the sharing of the laughter of young people,
borrowing their jokes and stealing a moment of joy from the nights of fucking
confusion. He stops for a second by the lockers down the hall but within earshot of
all the commotion. It would be good to know that you had a rack of years in front of
you, that nothing could stop you, feeling invincible would be great right now but
that is very distant.
Rachel is up ahead of him but he can’t get to her because there is a knot of
people between them. Robert feels comfortable in the back of the students and he
doesn’t stress himself out to get in front of the throng. He breathes in and leans on
the lockers. The students start to scamper and he hears the bell ringing faintly.
Robert strolls to class, allowing his students to go into the classroom first.
He wants Brenda to disappear but she won’t go away. He thinks of her all the
time and stops by her house late in the evenings for a few hours while Rachel is in
physical therapy and what starts out as talking becomes something else. More than
anything, Robert enjoys thinking about slipping in the darkness. He thinks about
their ankles and the backs of their legs and the way they smell, their naked skin and
then the aroma after they put on stockings and perfume and cologne, store-bought.
Fine. As a boy, he used to think about women and watch them on television and
wonder what they smelled like and looked like without their clothes. Every moment
is fraught with tension because women are everywhere, threatening to own his next
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idea. Robert will begin with a thought and then a female will come across his screen
and nothing else will matter.
There are women that he would just like to see get dressed, doing nothing
weird, just watching. Even though it seems absurd, there are days, weeks when
Robert is excited by the presence of every woman. “Each has something
redeeming,” he says, with self-assurance. If you look at any female closely enough,
you will find something you like. He always feels appropriately ashamed later when
he crawls into bed beside Rachel. He feels he doesn’t deserve the cool sheets but
morning breaks and he likes the smell of both of the women’s skin still in his nose.
Rachel smells slightly earthier than Brenda—it may have something to do with her
family emanating from Portland, Maine. It must be her closeness to the water, the
brine washed within her touch. Brenda smells like a big city at early evening, after
the washed streets have had a chance to dry in the sun.
Saturday afternoons were his to do as he wanted—museums, writing, music.
Now, since he needed to remind himself that he was in a relationship, he saw Rachel
each Saturday morning. He was starting to miss college basketball—the one
indulgence that he allowed—and he was starting to resent her but there was a
crispness and a bright yellow hue to her living room and he enjoyed being there and
talking with her.
“Do you think you’ll ever teach on the college level again?”
“Sure. I mean I would if someone asked.”
“Why don’t you pursue it?”
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“I might. Do you mind our being together every Saturday?”
“I mean, I don’t mind but I thought you did. This implies a steady
commitment. I mean, I’m starting to feel like the old ball and chain.”
“You shouldn’t. I enjoy these Saturdays and church on Sundays sometime. I
need it.”
Robert lived within the cavern of memory and imagination. He could
envision his college professor days, when everyone was hanging on his every word.
Now, that memory seemed to press in on him, restricting his every movement and
breath. Most of the time, he felt that he could suffocate. The teenagers hung on each
other’s dirty words. Sometimes, he felt as if there was an anvil right under his chest
blade, pressing inward. He thought maybe religious information could help him feel
different. He came from a staunch Catholic background but the recent revelations
about Papal misconduct made it difficult for him to keep going and then there was
the question of bending down again and again on those wood slats in back of the
pews, his bad knees. Catholics had to bend down to pray, to kneel on the railing. His
legs just wouldn’t allow him to bend down on the hard wood rail.
There was a Holiness Church in his neighborhood and he strolled in, late for
service one afternoon. Not only was there no hullaballoo about his being late; the
parishioners seemed to be happy. They had joyous, spirit-filled faces and they sang
and danced in time to wonderful tambourine music. He told himself he would go
again. It seemed to be a true conglomeration of sinners—there were red-eyed dope
fiends and alcoholics with vodka smells still galloping out of their mouths but he
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could not bring himself to go there every Sunday even though there was palpable
tragedy here. A part of him felt superior to the methadone-taking members but
another section of his body felt a great closeness to those around him. He was lost
too; maybe he had suits and a job and he was a little bit more dignified but he longed
to know something larger than the clothes and boundaries of his existence. The
doors of writing and religious dedication remained shut. Robert had forgotten how
to pray and he told himself it was his bursitis that kept him from supplication but it
was his guarded soul. He needed something to believe in. There had to be
something greater than his bad breath existence. The internal hole where religious
fervor would be, got larger and larger. It was surrounded and smothered by pillows
of denial. Robert felt stuffed and empty at the same time, but he felt comfortable
and emotionally released when he was in the Holiness Church around the corner.
The music and motion made him forget that he could not pray; he had tried in the
past but he had nothing to say to God. This is the way God planned it—welcome all
sinners! He felt right at home—he squeezed in between a really rotund woman and
an up tight businessman sweating in a winter suit.
The minister had a curious message today. It was as if the preacher’s words
came in subconsciously.
“When we are most satisfied that is when the forces of the underworld are
the most busy. When we feel a sense of contentment, we are most in trouble. When
we think we have this Christianity thing down, that’s when the devil is most on your
case. It is in that twinkling, duplicitous moment, that we realize we are large in our
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own eyes but small in the vision of God and the universe. We are all just an
infinitesimal dot in the world. We have to realize that the world will go on without
us—so while we are here, we have to be aware of evil and our mission to do good.
When the devil is tapping your phone, listening to your private conversations,
waiting for an opening…the devil is everywhere…”
Robert felt something but he didn’t know what. He started to feel as if
something was itching him. He scratched his side and left.
Brenda had a tight, beautiful body. In his mind’s eye, he flashed her getting
out of the shower. She always called him in to get her a towel. She really wanted
him to see her. It was her way of hypnotizing men. Robert was a willing subject.
Brenda felt that she was a narcotic and that once they tried her they would never let
her go. She referred to her body as physical heroin. Brenda had the quality of a
Hispanic woman and an African-American woman all at the same time. She was
buxom and healthy while also shapely and seductive. Her skin had a special
burnished quality, reminding Robert of the Caribbean and West Africa. There was
darkness there but also a kind of quick movement and turning within, almost a kind
of hidden and undeniable power like the self-assured girls he would see coming
from college, waving their hands in the air and talking while listening to music. Her
comfort with herself was what he was drawn to.
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He was grading papers, spending time with Brenda and Rachel and doing
nothing else; his obsession with these two women replaced his love of writing.
Rachel was sound asleep; Robert sneaks out to Brenda’s. She says she
doesn’t wait for him, but when he opens the door she is there in lingerie and make
up.
“Couldn’t pull yourself away could you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That white pussy.”
“Oh, now. Why did you have to put it that way?”
“What other way is there?”
“Is that what this is about? White and Black pussy?”
“Well, white men do everything they can to preserve white pussy for
themselves. They will have war over it. Now, Black men are the commodities since
everybody learned about the myth and now White women would die and go to war
for a Black man. So, you see, you’re on opposite sides again but it’s not about
slavery, it’s about dick and pussy.”
“I see. What a student of history.”
“There are some things I just know. Black people are supposed to be
seductive. We are passionate, the source of some degree of evil in your literature.”
“Not everybody Black is passionate. You are passionate.”
“And you can’t get enough, can you?”
“I’m kind of strung out.”
“Got you. The power of the hips.”
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“And the lips. I can’t help myself.”
“I see you come over on the regular.”
“Am I still welcome?”
“As long as you bring your hard friend with you,” she says, pointing.
“So, that’s the only thing you’re interested in?” Robert offers, trying to divert
her eyes from between his pants.
“You know that’s not true. I know bigger dicks; they could be here.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I mean you’re cool Robert and this is working out for the both of us. On
some level, we must both not want a big commitment and like Chris Rock says,
hopefully you meet someone and you enjoy the same things and you fuck a lot.
That’s all you can hope for. At least we got the fuck a lot part down,” she says,
looking backward as she walks in the kitchen to throw something away.
“Yeah. Comforting, like I said.”
“You have to understand, I’m a bottom line person and I work in an
Emergency room. I have to save people’s lives right the fuck away. I don’t have time
for creamy bullshit.”
“I got you. So you’re interested in more than just what’s between my legs?”
“Yeah. But that’s of great interest to me. What the hell is wrong with that?
Most people are not aware of their own sexuality. I’m in touch with mine and you
work that for me. We satisfy each other and some motherfuckers live their whole
life without finding that. We found it. Why fuck it up if it ain’t broke?”
“I hear you. It’s just that I have this other involvement.”
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“It ain’t stopped you yet has it?”
“No. But there’s always the guilt.”
“And then I put on one of those camisoles with that baby oil and you forget all
the fuck about whatshername, right?”
“Something like that.”
“I know my power. I am dark but lovely, oh ye daughters of Jerusalem.”
“There’s so much more to you than that. Your emotions. The tenderness that
you treat the patients with. Not many people could work under such constant
stress.”
“Comes from being abused. I’m used to being quiet inside while the world is
crashing apart all around.”
“Quite a skill.”
“So, any man that’s not abusing me is a plus. I never want you to quit her. If
you do, you’ll want to hang out here and try to tell me what to do. That’s when you’d
have to go.”
“So you like it like it is?”
“For today. I may change tomorrow. But for right now, it works for me.”
“And that’s how you live your life, day to day?”
“I try to do a little better than that but you came along and swept me off my
blood pressure machine.”
“Oh, I did. Or did you target me? Lonely male. Will be missing his girlfriend
for some time?”
“That too. Any seduction is a combination of attraction and gamesmanship.”
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“Or gameswomanship in this case.”
“You went along willingly.”
“I did. And I’m here of my own free will but sometimes this has to end.”
“Does it? Because you say so?”
“It takes two.”
“And what if I don’t want it to end?”
“Whose in charge?”
“The one with the pussy. Pussy politics.”
He succumbs to her, allowing Brenda free reign on his arms, legs, between
them, whatever. She slowly inspects and licks him loose from his conscious mind
and he surrenders, giving her everything he thinks she wants.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Spring was a few months away and it meant that he should feel happy. He
hated the seasons of sunshine because he wanted to hide behind the venetian blinds
of his apartment in darkness. The sounds of children playing, of Mr. Softee trucks
with their obnoxious music and the constant rehashing of the same top forty song
over and over meant a season he detested because he could not feel joy. That was
his nemesis— unbridled happiness. Robert would sometimes feel an element of
happiness rising in his stomach and he would quickly kill it, in search of a feeling
that was more familiar. Unhappiness was something that was sown into the seeds
of his existence. His mother courted unhappiness and he learned through her and
the horrible nature of her relationship with his father, how to be miserable. They
were miserable each and every day, hour, minute, and it was that disgruntled
feeling, of never being enough, that he wanted in the pit of his stomach. They were
never enough for each other and their relationship never reached the point of
making joy. Spring meant that there would be laughter at the window and he would
have to replace the joy with something else. It was the sound of someone having a
good time outside that drove him crazy. There were people that actually enjoyed
the nature of this life he was sharing. Robert could find no corner of elation and he
reveled in the large room of his own despair. He could hear joy outside the one
small window in his room and occasionally a brave bird would fly up and sit for a
few moments before a scared teenager would tap on the window and frighten the
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small-chested thing. Teenagers, would-be gangsters, were afraid of everything: flies,
mice, birds or anything except carbon copies of themselves. Some of his students
actually wrote well; some found illumination despite the prescribed, canned
assignments of the school system but most were afraid of discovering the hidden
writer within. Anything that would cause distinction; something that would
differentiate them from the group was the enemy. When he sent them out of the
room, whether or not they were paying attention, they simply wanted to come back.
The whole thing with these young people was so confusing most days.
“You’re doing too much Mr. Red,” they would tell him. He felt hot, but it
might just mean hunger. Robert’s stomach started to somersault. Sweat was
breaking out all over his forehead. Should he call for the nurse? Whatever this was,
he was better off in the bathroom. He left his classroom door open—they would
steal his computer, he thought to himself. His writing. He glanced at the scraggly
tree outside of his window before he left the room. The tree looked surprisingly
strong today.
The commode felt cool and comforting. He was turning colors but he passed
the Principal and she said she would call for the nurse. He was scrounging on the
floor when the call came.
“Mr. Red, call from New York City for you in the office.”
By the time the Principal made it to the teachers lounge he was laying out on
chairs.
She was flustered and concerned.
“Mr. Red, are you all right?”
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“Yes, the phone call?”
“It was your agent. Maybe I should tell you later.”
“No, Now!!! Please!!!”
“She’s leaving the country. She can’t represent you anymore.”
“She’s dropping me? She said those words?”
“No. Her office called. They didn’t say that exactly.”
“Agggghhhh,” he says, turning his face to retch to the right.
“I’ll call 9-1-1.”
The ride in the ambulance is uneventful. The emergency worker is nice
enough but he asks too many damned questions. The hospital wants to do an MRI
but he refuses. They poke him, prod him and keep him for a day. After a half a week
off, he returns with sleep medication in his pocket.
The most basic things elude him and confuse him; he has little appetite and
he cannot concentrate. Now, the universe shrinks. He is only concerned about one
thing—making it to work. Sometimes, his vision blurs and he knows he can’t make
it in because his thoughts overwhelm him. The doctor says that his pressure is
abnormally high and he has to get glasses. His only friend, Mike, has to come by in
the mornings and drive him to school. He is not sure of himself behind the wheel
and the steering seems to get away from him. Robert is not confident that he can
safely arrive anywhere; too often he feels like a failure, like all of the years have
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come to blurred vision and confusing relationships. Mr. Red feels old and used but
he ignores the role of alcohol in all this, because drink alters his mood, and he
desperately wants to feel something.
Wages of the flesh are the only things worth talking about; the teenagers
know something is wrong; he can only feel; he can’t think. Before most classes are
over, he ends up staring out of the window, unable to complete his preparation. The
concept of beginning, middle and end, of the whole class period is gone. Most of all,
Robert misses dreaming. He used to dream in color about men and women in
complex relationships that took them to foreign lands, fighting internal and external
foes but now he just lay awake, thinking. He used to fashion himself as a jazz
musician/teacher, with three sets during a ninety-minute class period. Now, he can
barely get through the first thirty minutes without drifting. Within the class period,
he looses his way. He is happy when they are gone and the room is silent and he can
close his door. Robert wants his life to go somewhere but it feels like his mind short
circuits during each class. After trying to teach, he goes home with Rachel. She is in
a fiery mood.
“Would you do something experimental in the bedroom if I asked you?”
“Sure. Anything.”
Robert remembers the arrogant face of Monica in the back bedroom
screaming at him.
“I mean something a little more s and m-ish.”
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“I could do that.”
“I mean you wouldn’t feel strange or anything would you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you done that kind of thing before?”
Rachel had rare physical tastes and he didn’t know, with her experimentation
with women and all, if he could continue to satisfy her.
“No, but if it makes you happy.”
“I mean, I don’t want you to do it if it makes you uncomfortable in any way. I
am with you Robert and it’s not because of athleticism in the bedroom; I’m with you
because I love what’s inside of you. That can’t change or wither when your body
gets older.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“What? What did you think?”
“I don’t know. I always thought there was something that Monica and that
lifestyle could give you that I couldn’t.”
“No. Not at all, you can be attracted to a lifestyle but you can’t love a
lifestyle.”
Rachel takes his hand. The bedroom looks normal save for a pillow with
some items underneath. Robert follows as she takes his other hand, leading it to her
ass, while she bends over and guides him within her, he lunges as Rachel reaches
under the pillow and hands him a rope ever so gently. All of this is instinct and
practice—he has done his research in the bedroom.
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The rope feels coarse and he can’t imagine ever tying her up but he does tie
her wrists and turns her to the side, making love to her, thrusting upwards while
she moans and then he binds her ankles as she uses her mouth to make love to him.
Robert sneaks out that night. This is his one sinful joy. She catches him,
sneaking in at three a.m.
“Where were you?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I got up to try and write but the words wouldn’t come.”
“Oh, I see.”
“What the hell is going on with you Robert? You seem like you’re slipping.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you can’t seem to concentrate and in the middle of conversations
you loose your train of thought. That’s not like you. And this middle of the night
thing?”
“I know. I’m doing the best I can. I can’t sleep worth a damn and I used to
write from two to five and when I can’t write, I just wander the streets.”
“You used to deliver lectures to thousands of people and now you can’t hold
one thought in your head. What the hell is going on?”
“I’m confused. You know the artist without an art form becomes destructive.
I don’t feel like myself—all I can think about are things ending.”
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“You better get past all of that ego shit and deal with your life as it is. You
feed your own fucking head too much.”
“I know, but now there’s a party going on in my head and I’m not invited.”
He can hear little voices but he tells himself they are just remnants of his
conscience. The floaters seem to breathe and take on dimension. He takes refuge in
petty things. Meanwhile, the world is sliding by. He missed Arab Spring and the
recent bombing attempts in North America. He was not aware of the depth of the
economic collapse and Presidential politics eluded him; he was sinking further and
further behind the boundaries of his own mind. Someone had told him once that
being trapped in your own thoughts was like being behind enemy lines; he was in a
full-scale war, fighting for his own territory. He wanted to change the channel of his
own thinking but he could not.
The Principal always forgot to call a fire drill; at the end of every month,
usually on the last day, she would call one. Robert was standing with his class,
holding the poster that boasted his room number: A101. The girls were popping
gum and the boys were discussing this weeks National Football League results.
Robert looked across the parking lot—the long way, above the cars. Some angry
woman was coming toward him. He didn’t think it was Brenda, but it was. She was
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running awkwardly, shouting and waving her arms wildly; her face was a fire alarm.
He turned, hoping she was not here for him.
Rachel was standing, with her class, right next to his. Rachel looked at him
first.
“Robert. You have to do something. My son is here from Georgia and his
father came to see him and didn’t bring him back. You know some lawyers or some
influential people, don’t you? You have to do something and quick before I never
hear from him again. I need your help. When the fuck did I ever ask for your help
huh? I mean, to be a white man, you’d think you’d be a little more helpful,” Brenda
says, moving toward him, growing tall.
His favorite student, six-five Micah Larry, looks over his shoulder.
“You need some help with this Mr Red?”
“Naw. Not really. She’s leaving.”
“Leaving. I ain’t going no damned where until you help me. I need you to call
somebody right now.”
Rachel is across the parking lot, unable to leave her students, thank god. She
takes several steps toward Robert and the screaming Brenda but her students
follow her.
“This ain’t no damned television show. I could lose my son if you don’t help
me. This is white folks business—this is the court system. I figured someone like
you, being a teacher and all, you would know how to manipulate the system. You
see the system does nothing but use and abuse us. Uses us like Sunday hats that you
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put on for church and then throw in the back of the closet. Well, I’m tired of being in
the back of the closet.”
Mr. Warmsley, a Vice-Principal and forward on the faculty basketball team,
recognizes that his substitute point guard is in trouble. He sprints across the
parking lot at the sight of Brenda. Mr. Warmsley moves behind her, sizing up the
situation.
“Mr. Red, do you need a sub for the rest of the afternoon? I can arrange it
while you get this…uhem…situation under control,” he says eyeing Brenda up and
down.
“Yes. I need a sub immediately.”
“You go ahead Mr. Red. I got you. I’ll sub until we get someone for the rest of
the day. You go ahead and handle your business.”
“Oh, and who is he, the Feds? What you called the police on me? What the
hell is he supposed to do?”
Mr. Red forcefully takes Brenda’s arm and leads her across the parking lot.
Brenda is livid and up in his face.
“What in the hell is wrong with you, embarrassing me like that. Oh, I’m good
enough to fuck at night but not good enough to talk to in the day. To claim. That’s
what the problem is—you don’t claim a damned thing. You just stroll through
fucking life like you don’t own a damn thing, don’t have connection to a damned
thing so there’s no responsibility. You can fuck me at night and come to your little
shitty-assed job and think I’m saving the fucking world. You ain’t saving nobody and
your losing your fucking self. I ask you for one small favor…”
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Rachel is striding across the parking lot. She has given her class to another
teacher for safekeeping and she is recalling her days as a track star.
Robert hustles Brenda into his car. He locks the door and runs around the to
the other side where Rachel is approaching.
“Crazy assed former friend. We used to be close and now she’s about to lose
her son because of her drug habit. Crazy bitch, but I need to get her out of here
before I loose my job. I’ll call back to the Principal’s office. Cover for me!” Robert
says, trying to make his eyes look as wild and panicked as possible.
Rachel must buy this as a legitimate emergency or she would probe like an
unemployed detective.
“Okay. I’ll check to see that your sub is in the room. Emergency prep?”
“On the locked file cabinet. Thanks. I’ll go with her to her hearing and turn it
around to be right back.”
“No. Stay. Spend some time with her. She seems a little cuckoo.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll call you later.”
Robert goes to his car counting his lucky stars. There was too much
commotion and too much movement for her to hear anything. For once, he is
thankful for the energy of teenagers. He looks up to the sky and thinks about the
close call. A house full of flimsy-assed cards.
The car smells like her breath-- hot, stale, and aggressive. She feels too
rushed; if there’s anything Robert does not want to feel right now is rushed. Her
breaths continue.
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“You didn’t have to leave damned work. But since you did—you better help
me get a good lawyer. You know any lawyers?”
Her face seems to cover the whole of the car. He hates every bit of her skin
right now; he would like her to be glass and chrome; he would break her.
“Where the hell are you taking me? You better be taking me to get some legal
help or you gonna need some soon. I know you know somebody. The only way I
could get a hold of you was to come up here, to your place of business.”
“Look. I’m going to give you a counselor, someone to handle your case. She
works at the court. She will handle your day-to-day filings and all with the court.
Call her every day if you have to. Leave me the fuck alone please. The one thing I
have that’s sacred, that I can go to without interruption, is my damned job. Now, if I
don’t even have that, then what the fuck do I have? I don’t have peace at home; the
world is going to hell in a teen-aged hand basket and you want to act like a Tyler
Perry character in a bad fucking play.”
“You can do a lot of things but do not insult Tyler Perry. That man has done
so much for his race.”
“I’m taking you to the court now. Her name is Jennifer Hines. You have to
call her when you have a problem. She works for the family court help center.”
“How do you know her?”
“I had a case,” he says, trying to just keep driving.
“What? You have children?”
“One. Nobody knows about. Spring break baby.”
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“Does Roberta or Rhonda or whatever that bitches’ name is know about it? I
saw her coming across the parking lot. I was going to give her a fucking face
transplant.”
“Uh…yeah. Just deal with her, Jennifer Hines. I’m getting her on the phone
right now.”
Robert holds the cell phone up to his ear with two fingers.
“You do that Robert.”
“(pause) Jennifer…I need you to help out a friend with a custody case. When
do you take lunch today? (pause) I’m buying. Can you meet us to discuss her case
and direct her to the help center and the forms she might need?”
“(pause) Thanks. You’re a life saver.”
Stoneys is his favorite cheap restaurant not too far from the court area.
Jennifer says she’s flexible time wise. When he enters the restaurant he notices that
his head is pounding. He has had a migraine for days but he thought the veins
pulsing out of his head were just normal vessels. They aren’t—they seem like they
just popped out. It’s hard to listen to anyone with his head pounding and hitting but
he tries. Rachel explains her long, convoluted history with this man. It was years,
years before she could get custody of her son and now she asked him to watch him
so that she can work and he’s trying to register him in a school near his house and
get social services. Only for the money, she says. Jennifer assures her that she sees
this kind of thing all the time but Brenda must enter into custody and divorce
hearings before anything can happen legally. She has sole custody now and she has
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to decide if she wants to share custody or what arrangement would be in the best
interest the child. She has to think like a judge.
“Like a judge. Shit. I ain’t even a good defendant.”
“I just meant you have to think about what the court will do before you even
go to court.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Now are you sure you want to
file for divorce?”
“Totally.”
“I can help you with that today and you should also be prepared to talk to the
judge about custody in a few weeks. You can call me any time with questions
because that’s what I do all day.”
“That’s what I need. My questions answered. This bimbo is too busy with his
job and his real girl.”
“I see. I’m here to help.”
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Robert sees the face of Malik in his mind’s eye. He vaults back into memory.
When he was smaller, Robert would race him across the front yard. Robert always
beat him but when his relationship with Cordova began to sour, he saw his son less
and less. After papers were filed and child support started to click in, Robert felt he
was hurting her by not seeing him. This was a failed strategy and he later realized
he was just hurting his son. In Robert’s memory his son’s face looks wet with youth
and innocence. He is nine and now things are a little different; perspectives change.
Robert hasn’t seen his son on a regular basis for about three years, but he vows to
do better. He considers his son part of his former life; that is the life before he
became a writer but his aspirations have not panned out and he compartmentalizes
and makes excuses for shit he did not do.
His son demands attention now and more and more his former life taunts.
Robert does not claim that part of his life. He thinks that he will one day be a best
selling author and all of his sins will be forgiven when he is on television being
interviewed by Charlie Rose, but sins are sins and writing is something done on
paper. There is a difference between the two. One day, out of the semi-blue of a
streaky sky, his child’s mother calls him.
“Robert are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
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“I heard you were a little sick.”
“Not as sick as I was when I was with you.”
“Look male bitch, your son wants to see you. I don’t know why but he wants
to have some sort of relationship with his crazy-assed, drunken father.”
“That makes me feel good.”
“I didn’t call to make you feel good. I called to get you to see your son.
Sunday at two? I’ll bring him and leave him. Can you handle spending a few hours
with your son?
“Two. Not two-o-five. I know you have a penchant for being late.”
“And you have a penchant for not showing up the fuck at all.”
“When I had you waiting for me, there was no rush.”
“Oh, and who are you rushing to see now?”
“Myself. My god damned self. I could never see myself when I was with you.”
“Maybe it was because you had no self.”
“Married sex.”
“Fuck you too.”
He hangs up remembering the old joke they used to tell each other. What is
married sex? Fuck you. Fuck you, too. They only say it to each other; they never do
it. This is what their marriage became.
He goes to sleep without thoughts. His head is splitting. The next class
period a skinny student at the back of the room has memorized Marc Antony’s
speech.
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“The good that men do is oft interred in their bones. The evil lives long
after,” he says, shouting and shaking at the same time.
Robert finally gets it. They will only remember what he did not do as a
father. Maybe, he better start doing something, leaving positive deposits, like in a
bank. Then, they will say something positive about him. He thinks of himself in past
tense verbs as he romanticizes about Hemingway and suicide. Then he will be
mentioned for one minute in a positive light. The good stuff won’t last long; they
will always return to negativity, they always do.
Marc Antony’s message is clear—he came to praise Caesar not to bury him.
Brenda is starting to call the house, leaving messages.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Cat got your balls? They took away your
manhood? You say you don’t have no more balls? Come over when you find them.”
Robert would listen to his baby mama’s messages over and over just to make
himself mad. He tried to use the messages as inspiration for writing but the anger
waned before he could get to the computer. He liked being angry at an amorphous
foe, it made his stomach upset. Even bad feelings made him feel alive.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At two o’clock, he looks outside and his son is standing with his lunch box,
waiting. He slowly opens the door. Malik looks perplexed but excited to be actually
close to his Dad. He bounds in and sits in a chair in the kitchenette.
“Hi Malik.”
“Hi Dad.”
“How’ve you been son?”
Robert leads him into the sparse living room, with a few uncomfortable
chairs, unsure of what to do or how he should start to feel.
“How’s school?”
“It would be better if you would come up to school on Father’s day. It would
be better if you would be where I am sometimes.”
“I will son. Just give me a chance. I will.”
They play video games all afternoon and talk awkward talk. His mother
comes to get him a half an hour before the appointed time.
“You’re early?”
“And I want my son. Give him to me.”
She grabs his hand and takes him away.
“Next Sunday?”
“Same time.”
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The next Sundays are far and few between.
His head is ringing, and the headache that has been pushing at his skull for
days, expands. Because of his lack of sleep, his head is constantly ringing and it is
impossible to maintain a thought. In the morning, Robert is thinking of blowing his
head off. Robert imagines himself with a Hemingway-esque wound in the back of
his head but Hemingway had won two Nobel Prizes before he did it. Why in the hell
did he put that smoking barrel in his mouth? If Robert could just publish one book,
he would never think of suicide again or is there more than that?
Robert sits back. For the first time in months he has written a line. Maybe
his almost breakup with Brenda was helping to clear his mind. Maybe not. At
school, he felt a little less confused after the Brenda conversation. He was able to
smile at Rachel in the hallways and really mean it. Maybe all of this with Brenda
would blow over and burst like yesterday’s thundercloud.
His club and Rachel’s club were planning a joint event. Rachel had been
running around the school like a scared chicken because the event meant so much to
her and her French club. Robert floated, like he did through all things, ignoring the
importance of the task.
Rachel was cross-listed—she taught French and English. Rachel would try to
arrange meetings about the French club and the poetry club’s extravaganza and
Robert would talk romance to her, ignore the academic responsibility and refuse to
give her time commitments. She was getting sick of his in-school behavior but he
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was so attentive at night. His strange habit of getting up in the middle of the night
had ceased and he seemed to be staying until the next morning most times.
Rachel put up with his taking everything so lightly because he was there each
night, massaging her, taking care of her and making sure that she thought their
relationship was going forward.
The “Spring Fling” with the French club and the Poetry club was to include
the reading of Aime Cesaire’s poetry in his native language. Robert was supposed to
train the students and then bring them to Rachel for the final work with idiomatic
expressions and pronunciation.
“How are they doing Robert?”
“Not well. Actually, I haven’t devoted much time to it.”
“What? What in the hell are you devoting time to?”
“Well, my little story about the Prince. I wrote a line the other day.”
“A journey of a thousand miles…”
“Yeah, I have a long, long way to go. And the thing that really bugs the hell
out of me is that my creative writing students are doing so fucking well. They seem
to write with a kind of lack of inhibition that I don’t have.”
“Well, they say a writer is best at nineteen. After that, their powers
diminish.”
“So, I should hang it up then?”
“No. But you have to be dedicated and true to your work. You seem to deal
with your work like you deal with everything else these days—me, the school—like
you’re burdened by it. You want to just pick it up and set it down. Writing is not
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like that—you have to tame the lion every day. You seem to be floating through a lot
of manure that you don’t like.”
“Not really. It’s just my way of dealing with the world.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“As a fucking teenager, I realized that everyone else took themselves so
fucking seriously; I vowed that I was not going to take anything seriously and it
worked. I just walked around the world looking at other people that took things
seriously. Detached. I was seriously detached. And now, I can’t get involved in
anything. I’m one step removed from my emotions all the damned time.“
“But you can’t walk around the world like that and you’re not a fucking teenager anymore. You’ll never be a human fucking being or a success as a writer that
way. Most writers work eight hours a day. You have to realize that some of the
students worship you and your accomplishment to date. That student—is it
Gilberto Fernandez?”
“How did you know?”
“He was in my classroom the other day reading his work. He’s good and he
thinks you shit gold.”
“That’s good but the reality is that I see myself as an abject failure. And the
more I teach in high school, I realize how inactive I am. I am doing nothing. I am
fucking standing still. When I’m not with you, I feel disjointed as hell.”
“So, let’s do something. When will the poets be ready for me to work with
them?”
“By Wednesday.”
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“Let’s go with Friday Robert. Are we on for dinner at my parents Saturday?
Being around people might make you feel a little better.”
“Sure.”
“What? No fight?”
“Writing has released me. I can be around people for a moment.”
“Yeah.”
That night, at Rachel’s, Robert took out his laptop while she was sleeping and
tried to free the Prince but he got caught in the tangles again. And just as Robert
thinks he can create the muscled sentence that would free him, Brenda calls. Her
voice is full of hysteria and pleading. There is also the soft edge of sexiness in the
back of her voice. Would he come over now? There are some things that she needs
help with. No. No. A thousand times. Maybe. Just for an hour or two. Sure.
She is half naked when he gets there and the air is blue and silken.
“I thought you needed some construction advice,” Robert says, leaning
against the wall.
“I do. I have a crack I need to you mend.”
“Look, Rachel and I are getting along well.”
“And I should worry about that shit? That should be something that I should
fucking care about? You and fucking Rachel. That turns my fucking screw, I’ll tell
you. What the fuck, did you come over here to discuss your fucking relationship
with fucking Rachel?”
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“Not really. I came to fix your wall.”
“And you didn’t recognize that as sex talk?”
“No. I believed you, which I have to stop doing.”
“You sound like a fucking commercial for psycho-fucking-therapy.”
“Look. I have to go,” Robert says turning. Brenda runs in front of him and
stops him, holding his hands. She stands in front of him, blocking his path.
“Brenda. Please get out of my way.”
“Go ahead. Hit me. You know you want to.”
“What? What the hell did you say?”
“I said hit me. You know how mean you are.”
“I’m not that way,” he says avoiding her, holding her wrists and moving
around her at the same time. He pushes the door with his back and whoosh, he is
outside near the car.
Brenda is standing on the front lawn with a bra and panties on.
“You know you need to stay the night. What man could refuse all this?” she
says, unfurling her hand and presenting her body to no one.
Robert scurries to his car. Brenda runs over and pulls at the locked car door.
He drives off shaking his head. His head feels like it is about to burst; everything
seems to be threatening to bust out at the center of his skull; there is a fist of
unfinished deeds and thoughts.
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The only refuge can be had at school. When he is behind his desk and
cloaked by the adopted identity of Mr. Red, he feels safe. When the bell rings at
three forty, he twirls in his own inadequacy, feeling lost, without a strict purpose.
The world begins to blur then and he cannot decide whether to see Rachel or
Brenda or if he should put his head in his oven to alleviate this feeling of malaise,
this grand funk that surrounds him and will not leave.
Gilberto has a story he wants only Robert to read. He is early for the
meeting; Robert can see Gilberto’s pudgy face just beyond the glass of his classroom
door.
“Mr. Red, I had that story I wanted you to read.”
“I know but I have attendance to take, and hall duty to do. You know how
seriously underpaid we are. This is gratis. Missionary work. I don’t get paid for
reading your little stories.”
“I know. But, Mr. Red, you’re the writing teacher and I just value your
opinion so much.”
“Okay. Stop the buttering. What’s the plot?”
“This boy has a bucket list. A list of all the girls he wants to kiss before he
dies. And he’s planning a suicide so he has to hurry up.”
“Oh, I see. This is not in any way biographical is it?”
“No. I will die if any girl does kiss me. They don’t like me. I’m not tall; I’m
not on the basketball team and I can’t cook.”
“Cook?”
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“Dance, Mr. Red. I can’t dance so I am eminently uncool. Now, I can write
these little stories and read them to you but I don’t get any cool points for that.”
“I see. So, do you want me to help you be cool or to read your story?”
“Both.”
“Let me see that story first. I don’t know if I know how to be cool, really.”
Robert takes the story and begins to read. Gilberto’s eyes try to follow
Robert’s every eye movement. He is looking for positive indications.
“Why don’t you go away for a while? Here, are the Twirlers selling pizza
today? “
“I guess. There are a few of those Twirlers that I’d like to…”
“Spare me the smashing details. Here’s two bucks. Buy some pizza and talk
to some girls and when you come back I can tell to you about your story.”
“Cool”
Gilberto bounces out of the door. Robert watches his almost buoyant gait
and smiles to himself. Gilberto takes him back to when he was a snotty nosed,
unwanted kid. He shakes his head, laughs to himself and starts the story.
Robert sits uncomfortably in his seat as the words come in. They seem to
travel into his eyes, and he tries to keep them out with resentment but they are so
fine and without pretense that he can’t keep them out. He sits back in his chair,
trying to separate his need to write from his present role. He is reading someone
else’s work and he must realize that. Robert must function as a teacher and a critic
and he must keep his jealously down. His head is splitting and his heart starts to
pound. Gilberto is there, with his bald, young face, sweating and laughing at the
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same time. He seems to be laughing at Robert because this boy is able to write with
nothing restricting him. Like the yokel that knocks out the heavyweight champ, this
country hick has more fluidity in his prose than the halting and careful Robert could
ever have. That fearless part of him is gone and he is shaking, literally,
remembering when he felt electricity at the tips of his fingers. There was a time
when he wrote effortlessly but now there is only the metallic feel of empty nights
and a bare computer screen that seems to be laughing at him. His sleep is two hours
at best and the nights are fitful and he skates from one side of the bed to the other,
sweating, thinking about the undone. He feels like a useless singer with an aging,
scratchy voice. When he looks at the paper and the edgy, insecure boy in front of
him, something winces in Robert’s chest.
That boy wrote this? One day I will be able to write again when I can either
remember or fucking forget. All I have to do is tell the truth.
He knew that Gilberto would be back after lunch and he stares at the clock.
He was stuck on page three. He could not read another word. His desk is full of
nasty piles of papers. There were more papers than he could imagine, and when he
could get through with one pile, there was another threatening to take him over.
How could anyone write under these circumstances? He was tired of being Mr. Red,
with the proper ties and nouns; everything he had worked for, this façade of
respectability was slipping away from him by the second.
How could anyone not write when there was so much to write about?
Gilberto comes back early.
“I like it. I really do. I need to spend some more time with it.
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The lights in Gilberto’s face go off.
“I like the main character. Do you know what’s going to happen next?”
“I just let the characters decide. When will you have a chance to look at the
rest of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tonight. Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Thanks Mr. Red.”
“Sorry I didn’t finish. I’m just a little tired and then it becomes hard to
concentrate, you know.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he says, looking at Mr. Red and looking down at the ground.
Robert turns to his desk. There is pressure in his head. He feels a little dizzy
and sits down for a minute. Luckily, this is a planning period for him. He looks at
the papers on his desk and becomes sick to his stomach. Rachel made lunch for him.
He goes to his “teacher closet” and takes out the plastic bag with his lunch in it. His
hands are shaking; he is still thinking about the easy lyricism of Gilberto’s story. He
used to be able to write like that; life got in the way and now he was unable to make
things simple again.
A teacher falling out is not embarrassing? What if he felt this way in front of
class? Maybe he should get some help now. He goes to the window and he looks
out. He tries to imagine what air would feel like if he could just get outside. If he
could just say good-bye to Brenda for good but he needed the late night strokes to
calm his heart. If he could separate himself from his dick, for a moment, and make
decisions with his brain instead of his gonads, then life might get better. He has one
hour left for planning. The students will be in at two o’clock. Maybe he can skip hall
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duty today—just maybe and no one, least of all, the Principal will notice. This is like
being in a prison; the moment he walks outside he becomes Mr. Red. While he stays
behind his glass door, he can be whatever he wants but the moment he walks
outside, he becomes the school persona of positivity and warmth that he despises.
This is a day when he wants to run away from himself and his prior good actions,
but he is held prisoner by what others believe about him. When he is before them
he is better than he ever will be; when he talks about literature he does so with zeal
and a love that they sometimes find inspiring. He has written recommendations for
others and gotten them in college and put some feet on a firm academic path. Then,
why can’t he find a firm path for himself?
He doesn’t want to open the glass door but he knows if he stays behind it
things will get worse. He will retreat to that place inside where he curls up and
hides but it is impossible to hide in a high school. There are so many sets of eyes
here: students, security, faculty and then the Principal. Lately, he and the Principal
have gotten along famously but now there is a fear bouncing inside; everything
seems to be attacking.
The feeling is curious, like a dull knife cutting for a moment and then
stopping. Then, there is bleeding but the feeling lets him know that he is alive; at
least his imagination is still working. A fear growing within that quickly dies. But he
thought he was past this garbage can of emotion—he thought those things had been
officially quelled. All of the old moods can rush back in a second. He stares out the
window at the pristine cars of the faculty; he should go outside and breathe but he
stays where he is. It is fifteen minutes after; he stares at the clock, feeling like his
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feet are in quicksand. He can’t move either right or left and he is looking at the
whiteness of his own car unable to do anything or move. His vision is blurring. He
wonders what Rachel is doing; he should go and see her but she might have students
and he would hate to intrude.
Somehow he manages to get through the day. Robert is getting together with
Rachel at about nine so he has the late afternoon and the evening to relax or write.
He cleans his living room until it is immaculate. He can see his own reflection in the
glass covering the recently bought paintings in his front room. Robert thinks about
his bedroom; he remembers his tight sheets, covers with little familiar balls; he has
not slept at home in months. Maybe it would be a good thing to just stay there one
night and be alone in the cool depressions of his bed. He finds being with himself
more difficult than writing these days. He entertains himself with the illusion of
being with someone but each day he moves further and further away.
He washes the floors, cleans the counters, scrubs the bathroom sink and then
comes out into the perfectly ordered, sparse living room but it doesn’t look ordered
at all. It looks chaotic and topsy-turvy. He sits at the computer and exhales. One
word, just one word. He thinks that if he can get one word down then a torrent will
follow. Just one word. He stares at the screen for hours and nothing comes but his
house is really clean.
He looks up, noticing that he is sweating. A bird is chirping like hell. For
some strange reason, this annoys him. The damned bird should know it’s not Spring
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yet! What the hell is wrong with him? Damned bird. Each note clangs against his
forehead. He could tell himself that Brenda was not a bitch and that everything
would be all right with Rachel but that would be another lie. Things will get better;
he knows he is a major player in a dangerous emotional game. He sits there until it
gets dark, blue outside. Robert would like to go outside but he feels like he did at
the window of his classroom—immobile. He opens the window, letting the wind and
motion of the outside world in for a second. The bird, looking defiant, sits on her
branch and stares at him.
He returns to his desk and writes one sentence: Spring is coming too soon.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next morning his lecture is always about the same thing: how to write a
sentence. For the last twenty years, he has been teaching resistant people how to
write sentences. How can you learn to write well, if you don’t like sentences? Some
have no interest whatsoever in writing anything but he drones on, hearing himself
saying the same words over and over again, bored by the sameness of his own voice.
Every sentence must have a subject and a verb and must be able to…Mickey
Mouse built a house…”
The skinny, ugly boy in the first row who usually sleeps looks up after
popping his last pimple.
“What did you say Mr. Red?”
“I said, Mickey Mouse built a house. Just wanted to see if you were listening
and you were,” he says, pointing to Aaron in the first row. Go back to sleep now.”
There are some people listening to the same thing for the hundredth time.
Some students are even taking notes.
“The thing to think about is this. A sentence is like a crowded subway car;
once you get in, the difficulty is how to get out. You must develop a clear path, a way
of stating what you want to, in a group of words with a subject and verb, and then
you must get out. Just like, in a crowded subway car, you have to decide how to get
out. You must determine a path and follow that path like with a sentence. Is it
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simple, compound, declarative? Develop a strategy—look at the other sentences in
your paragraph, vary those sentences and then, remember, a simple declarative
sentence is a good sentence. It is most useful in the middle of the paragraph, to give
it clarity and logic…”
His love of teaching is not dead.
During the lunch break, Gilberto slowly sallies up to the desk.
“Mr. Red…did you have a chance to?”
“Today. I’m going to lunch at the Amish Market and I’ll take your story with
me and finish it there.”
Robert had every intention but Rachel wanted to come with him today and
they had things to discuss. He enjoyed the Amish Market because the waitresses, in
seeming French maid uniforms, were very calm and polite. Unlike most employees,
they seemed happy with their lot. He stares at their shapeless uniforms imagining
curves.
“Good evening sir, ma’am. What are we having today?”
Robert is fumbling with the story, trying to keep it away from mustard and
fries, trying to fold the bottom of the story upwards so it will not be soiled.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, just another Gilberto Fernandez short story.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“I do. It’s just that he produces so much stuff and I really don’t have time to
look at it.”
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“Well, at a certain point in the semester, you have to cut it off. It is extra, isn’t
it?”
“Yeah, but I thought I was supposed to encourage creativity?”
“Not when it causes you to be up all night. Are you sleeping at all?”
“Hell no.”
“Well, then you have to cut back. You have to prioritize. What papers are
essential, which ones can you skim and which can go in the ever-present circular
file.”
“You mean you throw papers away?”
“Yes. Every year. Senseless exercises that clutter my room and do not
impact their grades. I throw those away at the end of the year.”
“I never throw anything away. I grade every bit of paper.”
“That’s why you’re up all night. You don’t know how to prioritize.”
“Teach me teacher.”
“I will. Are you still coming with me to dinner this weekend? My parents.”
“Yes. And you said your father was…an aeronautics instructor or some kind
of Professor? He was decorated in Viet Nam and ran for public office after he came
home?”
“That’s some of the highlights.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s a published author. Had to do something with all that time at home.”
“And your dog turned down several invitations to be the best in show at
Madison Square Garden?”
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“Several times. I guess we’re over achievers.”
“You think so?”
“The one thing you never were in my house was idle.”
“Why?”
“The unexamined life is not worth living. It was the credo that my father
lived by.”
“Was he a kind of…”
“Einstein? No. But he raised us with a respect for erudition and we were
surrounded by books.”
“And the demands?”
“There were none. That’s why we achieved—the only demand was to go
beyond the classroom. To educate one’s self.”
“Damn. So, what are you doing with a schlep like me?”
“Anything I can. No, you’re not so bad. If you can just make your own
decisions and trust the workings of your own mind, you’d be fine.”
“I find it hard to do that some time.”
“Why?”
“There are so many voices in my head and I listen to them.”
“What are they saying?”
“Give up. Why try to write? The world does not need one more good book.
There are thousands. The world would be fine without my little book.”
“You’re right. The world would do fine without your book so it has to be
paramount for you. Isn’t it like the most important thing in the world to you?”
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“No. That’s the problem. Some days it means something but most of the
time, after grading papers and reading the work of the great Gilberto Hernandez, I
am too tired to write.”
“The writing of your students doesn’t inspire you? You inspired them.”
“I try to forget that.”
“What?”
“That I can be inspirational.”
“Are you all right? You seem like you’re buying a ticket to that emotional
roller coaster?”
“I’m already on the train. I have my own car.”
“I can tell. So, do you think you’re up for my extended family? They tend to
stare.”
“Staring I can handle.”
“And they ask probing questions.”
“I may have to take time outs.”
“I’ll give you signals and make a room available for you at the top of the
stairs. We have getaways in our house.”
“Secret passageways?”
“Something like that. My Dad can get a little insistent. My brothers and I had
to have places to get away from him.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to mold us in the worse way. When he was making a point, we
could not hold a dissenting idea.”
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“I see. Looking forward to it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Rachel is beginning to pick apart the hypocritical actions of Robert; he may
be a toy with too many destroyed parts that can’t be glued or put back together. His
brain is like old plastic, still entertaining but short on basic functioning. If he
deconstructs at the right time, or makes the wrong decision, he could cause his own
death or the death of someone else. He’s self serving and self-informed. Robert asks
questions of himself but he always likes the answers he gives. Narcissus on the side
of the lake.
Robert is beginning to feel that his footing with Rachel is thin. She really
deserves more than he is giving or is maybe capable of giving. Rachel is finally
realizing that Robert teaches and writes sometimes but he has the maturity level of
the children he teaches.
“How are your classes? Your kids?”
“They grow on you. Like a fungus. How’s your crazy friend?”
“She’s fine.”
“Not that fine. She has some social service needs and I’m helping her.”
“First time I heard it called that—social service needs.”
“We’re just friends. Just friends.”
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“Well, I don’t really believe you but you need to clean your mess up before we
can go any further. So, I won’t press you on it but you better clean your shit up
before I have to push your face in it.”
Rachel’s face looks bigger. She has a strange expression that he has never
seen before—it could only be described as sour anger. She looks like she could peel
his skin off with her teeth.
“All right. I hear you. I’ll fix things, now.”
“You better clean up your side of the street. Nothing can happen in a
permanent way until you do.”
“I see. I hear you loud and clear.”
“I don’t think you want her to come up to school any more. Is she out of
control? She seemed a little frantic,” Rachel says.
“She can be. I told her not to come up there.”
“You seem a little unsure of yourself. If we’re going to go on I have to see that
you are decisive. It’s fine to be in love but life beats you up. I need someone with
me that is strong enough to run through a wall of bricks.”
“How did you feel about me before you knew me?”
“That you could go through a wall of bricks.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“I’ve had a heart attack, I think. I get tired in the afternoons, while thinking of
marriage to the most aloof man in the world that I can barely talk to or figure out,
and you think nothing has changed? When I woke up at night and you weren’t
there, were you with her?”
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“But it wasn’t what you think.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“I know you think it was sexual but it wasn’t. We were old friends and when
her marriage broke up and I found myself alone, we connected again. But, as
always, it was about our lives and discussing how fucked up things were.”
“And you never sought comfort in each other’s arms?”
“We never fucked if that’s what you mean.”
“Close?”
“No, not even close. I never saw her that way.”
“If you say so,” Rachel says, turning away.
All night long, Robert is plagued by the feeling that Rachel does not believe
him. The thoughts pull the rug out from under his couch of sleep. He tosses and
turns, thinking of Rachel catching him with Brenda.
The phone curves through the night.
“Hello. (pause). Brenda, I can’t talk right now. (pause) No. I can’t come
over. Dial 911.”
Brenda calls back and leaves him a message: “you are nothing but a selfish
bastard. All you care about is you and that buck-toothed bitch you’re fucking.”
He dreams that he and Brenda have a violent argument and then he becomes
a vampire leopard and pulls her flesh from her skin with his teeth. Brenda is the one
that can destroy everything he’s built with Rachel. Everything is a bit tenuous but
with one strong blow from Brenda it could all fall apart.
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Something inside feels awkward, moved. Brenda calls at four a.m. He feels
like his shelves are empty. Maybe he should go over and talk to Brenda. This time,
he should be assertive and tell her that she can’t come to his job or call him
whenever she wants to. After all, it was his life that she entered; now it was time for
her to exit. He would tell her that and this time she would understand. He decides
just to drive over unannounced.
The night is deep blue and windy. When he cracks the window in his car the
wind climbs over the edge and assaults his shoulders. The air smells rife. He
shudders, bends over and keeps driving.
When he drives up he notices another car but he ignores it and knocks.
Brenda smiles when she opens the door. He doesn’t notice the Behemoth
behind her.
“Who the hell is this faggot?”
“This is my boyfriend and protector—Robert.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Right Robert? She says blinking and winking at him.
“Right.”
“So, who the fuck am I? The sugar daddy?”
“You might be.”
“Fuck you. Well, my condolences sir,” he says and brushes by Robert on the
way out. “You deserve this bitch.”
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Robert looks at Brenda, shakes his head and turns to go right after the big
guy.
She reaches out to grab him and he wrenches away pulling toward his car.
The big guy sees him and laughs out loud.
Brenda stomps her feet and makes circles on the front porch. Robert rides
off laughing but there is something nagging at the back of his brain. Brenda can’t be
trusted—she can’t even trust herself. She is a powder keg and he knows it. It tears
at him but there is nothing he can do about the woman in the little house. Nothing
can follow but destruction from this point, and he knows it.
And even though he knows he is driving into the pit of hell, he smiles and
thinks about the beautiful sepia skin that he used to be so close to, that he could
whisper over, like a cool, tropical isle. Robert sank into her and cares became blown
feathers; that feeling is gone. He could feel Brenda at the tips of his fingers. Robert
knew he shouldn’t but he can feel the steering wheel tugging, wanting to turn
around. Robert bends down and holds the wheel steadily.
Someone is standing in front of his door with their hands stuck into their hips
like a spear. The head is cocked to one side and the mouth is just going, going.
“So you think you can leave just like that?”
“Look, Brenda, you’re going to have to get out of here.”
“Think I didn’t know where you lived? Keep everything in its neat little
compartment. Well it’s messy now. Impolite not to invite me in.”
“Come in Brenda,” he says with his head hanging.
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He thought it was the lesser of the two evils. What in the hell could he do? If
he didn’t invite her in she would start yelling and gesticulating wildly; if he did
invite her in she would maybe never leave, but then there was the business of her
skin. He liked her deep smell; sometimes she smelled like soap.
“What would you like to drink?”
“Vodka. You know what I like. Nice place. Never been invited here before,”
she says staring at the walls begging for paintings.
“I thought you might change. Now about tonight. What the hell was going
on?”
“That was my ex-husband. He always tries to dog back. That means, get back
in my bed. He doesn’t want the responsibility of fatherhood or anything but he likes
the benefits.”
“And why did you call me over?”
“I needed some help. I thought I heard an intruder but it was him. He still
thinks he has a key.”
“Thinks? He has a key but it’s an old key. I changed the locks since then.
When he puts the damned thing in the lock I open before he can turn it. So, he still
thinks he has the key and he still thinks he can climb in my bed whenever he wants
to.”
“Oh, I see.”
“But I want you in my bed. I’ve become used to how you feel and now you
have punked the fuck out on me. I called you because I need you. Did you ever need
anybody?”
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“I try not to. I need literature or my god damned self, I can’t tell which. I
need writing but this bullshit that you’re creating…”
“What do you mean?
“I mean calling me at the middle of the night or coming up to my school with
some half-baked ideas about something. I am not your boyfriend so you have to
stop treating me like I am. I’m also a fucking writer and these disturbances in the
middle of the night are not helping my art.”
“What art? I never see you doing any writing. You are an artist in your
mind.”
“I’ve been planning a book for years.”
“Planning?”
“Yeah. Writing it in my head. Now, it’s time to actually put the words down.”
“I don’t think you’re serious. I have never seen anything you have ever
written.”
“I know. I haven’t been writing much but that will all change. I need you to
tuck your little life away. I need your life to stop touching mine. You know what I
mean?”
“No.”
“Look at this apartment, everything is neat, in place. I need my life to return
to that. You have to control your own mess so that it doesn’t leak on my neat little
existence.”
“Fuck you and your life is anything but organized.”
“I mean it. I’m sick of this shit. One more time and…”
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“And what?”
“And you can forget about my helping you with child support, or social
services or anything really.”
“You would do that?” she says, steaming.
“And more. I will do what I have to do to return my life to what it once was.”
“What was it?”
“Orderly. Now, you’re going to have to leave so that I can get some sleep.”
“What if I’m not ready to leave?”
“You’re going to have to leave anyway. Sorry, this is my damned house.”
“Oh. I’m scared. Make me leave?”
“Before I call the police, please leave.”
“Now, why you got to do all that? I don’t need to have no confrontation with
the police. They are trifling.”
Brenda gets up; her eyes are big. She must have had a prior run in with the
feds. If she got excited and started fighting and kicking that could be resisting
arrest. Her mouth and her cursing will land her in jail for curse and abuse. She
laughs as she goes out, slamming the door.
Robert tries but he cannot begin to dream; everything is coming apart. For
the last week, when he is able to get to sleep, he has had the worst nightmares.
There must be a reason for his existence: when the writing dries up it seems
it must be teaching. As Miss Bullock says, “there is always the edge of danger.” High
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School is an organism; there are microcosms within microcosms. Each school club
it’s own little growth on the organism.
Lately, this Walter-Mitty-like existence is getting old. He never feels like
himself. Robert cannot break through, try as he might; when he reviewed his old
publications, he began to feel little pockets of optimism. He wanted all his various
selves to come together but he does not understand anything about his true self.
So he promises himself that he will write at the same time every day at six in
the evening until nine but he can hear emptiness of this agreement before he makes
it.
He sinks into a bottle of scotch. It does not help. Instead, he feels hollow and
the headache makes him stumble when he tries to walk to the bathroom the next
morning.
Robert thinks of the faces of his students. He imagines he is teaching a room
full of tombstones just for a moment. The image stays and then he thinks of them all
sleeping, not at home in their beds but on top of their graves. He blinks at himself in
the mirror and the image is replaced by the picture of the Prince struggling to the
top of the wall. Some of the people of the kingdom stop; stare upwards and watch.
There are small clumps of people but with time they become larger. The Prince
wants to climb the wall, beneath the vines as a demonstration of his strength and
powers of concentration, as an example to the people. However, Robert becomes
trapped in his own myth and the more he identifies with his character, the more he
feels like he is caught in those vines too. He begins to feel tightness around his neck
at all times. School feels voyeuristic.
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“When are you and Miss Rachel getting married?” Tanya quips from the back
of the room. There has been an influx of students from another district; they are
decidedly urban and full of questions.
“I saw the two of y’all coming out of your classroom the other day,” Tanya
adds.
“Thank you for sharing. N.C. That means no comment.”
“Oh, come on Mr. Red, we’re tight.”
“Not that tight.”
The class laughs. On the board, Robert has notes relating to character’s
thoughts in the short story for the day. He’s trying to explain stream of
consciousness and the difference between direct monolog and indirect monolog.
Some are getting it.
“In direct monolog the author is not shaping the thoughts. In indirect
monolog the author shapes the character’s thoughts and makes the character’s
thoughts easy to read, so he might say, Johnny thinks to himself, my what a lovely
day?”
Two boys were already asleep. They miss his questions.
“Now, do human beings think in complete sentences?”
“No!!!!” They shout. Most of them are used to texting so they don’t read or
write or talk in complete sentences. He slumps behind his desk, exhausted,
overwhelmed by the imagined task. Some days they’re really not that bad and
sometimes its not them but how he sees them. The filter of his melancholia changes
his view of the people sitting in the too small seats. This afternoon, there is some
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affection in the filter. He stops for a second and hesitates; lately he has been able to
pause and almost enjoy the classroom.
Robert feels heat rising near his nose and eyes. He feels, for a second, like
he’s going to throw up. The outlines of students’ faces blur but he keeps teaching.
Sometimes, he finds himself in the corner of the room with his hands near his
mouth, unable to complete the prep and he can’t remember how he got there; the
calendar tears and he can’t even put the correct day of the week on the board before
they come in. He forgets names and the proper year at times; some teachers even
post the weather. He crouches near the board, unaware of his place, feeling dizzy.
Robert is lost in the strange land of his own pedagogy. Is he in the final set? Does he
need to give them a ticket out? They seem to be talking amongst themselves, looking
at their images in mirrors and phones, laughing about their weekends, texting and
receiving texts. They don’t need him—so he continues to cower, offering nothing,
waiting for the sound of the bell.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
On the way home, his car almost hits the rocks on the side of the road.
Things blur again. He feels like the rocks and the other cars, on the incoming side of
the thruway, are encroaching; the highway seems to widen and then buckle. The
road seems so long and wide as if it is a huge crevice on the earth’s surface. He can
feel the car slipping and the wheel moving outside of the command of his hands as
the concrete threatens to swallow him up. He tries to get the car back to the road
but it goes into the next lane to the left. Robert can feel the ridges on the steering
wheel grate against the palm of his hand as it slips out of his grasp. Overcorrection
and the car wields, grazing the rocks. He busts out a headlight that sounds like a
bomb going off and the side of the car tears back like licorice. Robert’s head feels
like there is no top to it and the sky seems to pull closer to the car. The rocks seem
to consume and move into his car.
Lights pulse and he feels like he is one with the night.
The yellow police lights warm him as they pass over his body. He reluctantly
gets out of the car and lets them pass their hands over him. Cars go by, but all of this
seems like it’s in a movie; it is distant from where he stands and where he is. It
seems to be happening to someone else. The police officer is nosey but kind enough.
All of this seems to fall into a strangely connected plan in his mind.
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“Blow harder. Harder.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” he says barely blowing into the breathalyzer.
“You have to blow harder.”
“I’m refusing the breathalyzer.”
“Then you go to jail.”
Robert shrugs. The handcuffs are locked in and his arms are not his own. He
sits in back of the police car willingly; his arms are two appendages of pain. He feels
like he is sitting on his hands but the breeze is good and the night is black and he
wishes that he could disappear. The road is dim but the flashing lights are like the
lights of a disco. He can feel them dance against his back and it feels good, anything
to lift him up out of this pain. Robert knows there are mountains and hills just
beyond the rim of the police car, but it feels like he is on the edge of the world. This
is finally his perimeter; everything that exists outside of him is unreal. The only
thing that is real is the darkness of the backseat of the police car where he hopes to
be.
The jail cell is like a cave or hovel; he feels comfortable on the stone bed. The
stone matches his mood. There is an open toilet and the stone feels cold. He can
hear the policemen and women talking and their tones soothe. Nothing can happen
to him here. The police are there as much to protect him as themselves. Their
voices are lower than whispers. He imagines they are discussing strategies to save
him and to keep him from the daggers of the outside world. They wouldn’t let
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anyone storm this Bastille and he is the prisoner, being protected. There is a part of
him that likes being behind the bars. In the street, anything can happen to him.
Things can get random out there. In his apartment, someone could break in and
then what would he do? Here, there is no one trying to break in.
He sits on the steel bed, thinking nothing for the first time in years. Finally,
the television set of his thoughts are silent. He does not try to change the channel.
Robert watches his thoughts as if he is watching a movie. Robert can’t seem to get
his mind to click in. He hears voices but somehow, he cannot connect the voices
with mouths. When he does the words are out of sync like with a bad movie. The
calibrations are all there but the gear won’t move into place. Everything outside of
him, that he wanted to push away, is now permanently out of reach. The outside
world simply does not exist. All that is important is that the police officers stay
outside and that they protect him.
He lies down on the metal slab and thinks about sleeping. Robert stares at
the wall, wondering how many others have stared at those walls. How many eyes
have died looking at the bleak brown and nasty, stained black walls of this cave that
he finds suddenly cozy?
For the first time, he is not worried about the morning and what he will
wear, if his tie will match his shirt or what the girls in the first row are thinking. The
only people available to watch him are police officers and they are good at ignoring
the inmates. There is no preparation for tomorrow; all he needs to do is to wake up.
There is something so free about losing your mind. There is no connection, no
responsibility, no relationship to anything. Robert has been seeking this mental
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state for a long time. There were too many things—grades and passes and Mr. Red
could you pass me in English? Now he is safely ensconced in a hole somewhere and
there is no ladder. All of his energy is in letting go. And the marvelous feeling of
falling freely from a mountain is with him all the time now. He feels like he is
eternally falling from a high tree and it is beyond the point of first release, now he is
floating, with the wind caressing him, surrounding him, and there is no bottom only
air. He never wants to leave this psychological place. This peaceful place is where
he has been going all of his life, he tells himself. All of the study and all of the books,
all of the existentialism and inquiry had led him to this place. He feels like he is not
even in a cell, that outside his little cell there are clouds and those clouds will feather
and lift him up to an even higher place and all of this has been for a reason, only now
he doesn’t know the reason but if he thinks long and hard enough it will become less
obscure and he will be able to break through and stop feeling like a piece of him is
always missing. One day he will get so high, maybe to a kind of heaven, then no one
will ever be able to touch him. Maybe the clouds outside will feather and wrap
round his wrists and pull him upwards and upwards to the sky. Along with the
feeling of floating there is the terrible acknowledgement of doom; this is not his
normal darkness, this has an edge, walls, depth and great weight to it. He gives in to
the feeling and the hopelessness covers him. It is a little like an Edgar Alan Poe
story but there is no struggle on the part of the main character; he gives in to his
surroundings. There is no way he can continue to function with these burdens of
time and of place; the responsibilities are too great. He imagines a long cave of
professional and personal chores; he dreams that he is sitting behind a thousand
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teacher desks with endless papers on top of the desks, at the sides, all over. The
papers and faces of his students begin to smother him. Robert thinks that tonight
will be his last night on earth. He is almost certain of the fact that his veins will go
black and flat and that he will stop breathing tonight. His heart is beating like it will
come out of his chest. It feels like his heart is at the nape of his neck, beating,
beating.
Before too long, a man comes in with a pad, he is old and long and has a blue
suit on and glasses.
“How are you today?”
“Fine. But I feel like I’m going to die today.”
“You look big and strong to me?”
“Anyway, could I call my son? I feel like I’m going to die today.”
“What’s today’s date?”
“The twenty-fifth. But a lot of times I forget the date. Does that mean I’m
crazy?”
“No.”
“What day of the week is it?”
“I’ve been in here two or three days—Sunday?”
“Good guess.”
“Thanks. Do you know when I get my own clothes back?”
“Soon. Where do you live?”
“You mean the address? Four twelve Evarts Street. Northeast.”
“And where do you work?”
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“Julius Peppers High School.”
“Good. Why do you think you’re in here?”
“Because I want to be. I heard the food was banging.”
“No, seriously, Mr. Red, why are you in here?”
“I lost my damned way that’s all. I just lost my way.”
“Is that it? Like getting lost when you’re trying to find your way
somewhere?”
“No. I really lost my way. I know that I’ve had problems but I just don’t know
what those problems are. If I could put my finger on what’s wrong with me then
maybe I could change but I just don’t know what’s wrong. I lost my head, my mind,
but I’m getting it back now.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know that I’ve been away, like in a foreign country for a long time. I saw
myself above others and that was wrong but now at least I know that. Because I’m
coming out of a fog. I feel like things are lifted.”
“And do you still feel like you want to do harm to yourself?”
“I never felt that way. I just want to get back to my life now. I teach, you
know, and I want to get back to my students.”
“Oh, what do you teach?”
“Literature.”
“Well, that’s a worthy thing to do. What do you enjoy the most about
teaching?”
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“Looking under the skirts of the young girls and imagining pubescence. No.
You would say I was crazy if I said that. Grading papers until two a.m. each
morning? No. It’s the quiet look of affirmation when they smile to themselves,
when they have actually learned something.”
“I’ll get your clothes for you Mr. Red. We’ll be transferring you.”
Wherever he is, he is behind a locked door with a buzzer. Above all, he had to
believe in himself. It wasn’t just a matter of talent; it was a matter of survival. He
could kill his fucking self if he was not careful and the only thing that could save him
would be his own actions. He had to change and recognize the smallest thing as the
most important. Robert was sleepwalking through life, ignoring the trees and the
plants and everything but the slow walk of a beautiful girl.
He was all caught up behind the Maginot lines of his own mind and he could
make a run for it but he would fall and get taken out by gunfire. As soon as he was
well, he would put everything out for an unbelieving world to see.
Whenever anyone left him, he could hear the buzzer and the jangling of a
door that sounded more like a fence. He hadn’t been outside of his room for days.
There was a four-drawer-dresser and a bed as well as one tall window that gave
Robert a view of a busy street with constant traffic. He wondered where he was but
he didn’t really care.
He stuck his head outside the door and saw some people in patient’s clothes
being led by others that looked like doctors. The people in patient’s clothes looked
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like they were once happy. They laughed the laughs of the committed. The others
looked like hospital workers but some of them had tazers attached to their belt
buckles and some had handguns. There were handcuffs attached to their uniforms
in the back. The people in white were being led by the hand or the arm of the ones
in uniforms and he liked the idea of being led; not having to decide for yourself
where you’re going or what you’re doing. More than anything else in the world
Robert wanted the feeling of giving up, just for a while. He had never had that
feeling before in his life. There were some responsibilities he could share with
others but he felt like he was carrying the burdens and memory of childhood deaths,
personal atrocities and the recall of all the relatives he had lost; he was carrying all
of that by himself. Since he seldom talked to others, he did not know that other
people shared the same burdens. Robert just wanted to call a time out. All he
wanted to do was to put down the load for a minute, the load of teaching, being
there for students, not writing, and most of all the load and responsibility of Rachel.
Loving someone was a responsibility, and he wanted to get rid of that before it
became a burden.
Instead of life becoming a joy and the addition of friendship and love
enhancing, everything seemed to take away but now even though he wasn’t sure of
where he was or what his name might be, he felt unburdened. That was the key—he
finally felt light. And it was that lightness that he wanted to preserve at any cost;
Robert did not want the faces of Rachel and the students to intrude again because
then he would be like the Prince in his story, fighting to find a way out but only
walking in a circle. He did not know what to say to any face in his life and he did not
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want his old life back. He was devoid of words and the beauty of a thought that
could reach a conclusion.
All of his thoughts were short circuits. It was almost like his mind was on the
fritz. It would come on but he could not use it like he once did—anything could
distract him and he would start thinking about the distraction and the symphony of
logical thought would end. Any sound, a chirping bird or a flash of light could take
his attention away for hours. There was a small plant on the windowsill that wound
around itself. The plant had some brown parts but Robert had picked away all the
brown and left some straggly leaves but each time he gave the plant water it would
revive itself. It looked Japanese or something. He would stare at the plant for hours
sometimes, thinking about the sunlight that blessed the leaves and how he would
like to go outside but he didn’t know if he was allowed to. Outside the window, on
the other side of the busy street, there was a park. Some of the patients and some of
the people that worked for the hospital walked to and from the park. He watched
the hospital workers gently take the arm of the patients. He wanted to go to the
park to run and jump. Could he still jump?
There were a thousand questions that he wanted to ask himself but he knew
he had to be slow with the questions because there were few answers. He didn’t
know what his mental state was but he was sure that he was fragile, just like a
building made with Legos. If you blew at him real hard, he would fall apart because
like the Lego, he had no weight or substance.
Tomorrow, he would venture outside his door. He had no idea what he
would find there but he wanted to be outside the prescribed space of his room. He
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wondered, for the first time, what Rachel might be doing but her face quickly
disappeared from his mind’s eye. What could she do to help him? Being insane
wasn’t so bad—it felt comfortable to float on the clouds of no thought, but he had to
get the shape of his mind back and no one could help him with that.
He slept like a dead tree.
The next morning, after eating bland, lifeless eggs and choking down bile
tasting milk, he stuck his head outside of his room. Instantly, he felt air. There were
vents blowing air. He walked out to the carpeted hallway, twirled around once and
ran back into his room before one of the people that worked for the hospital could
question him.
“What are you doing outside of your room?”
“I wanted to see what was out here. I get a little claustrophobic sometimes.”
“I looked at your file. You have a doctorate?”
“Not really. I’m working on one.”
“What the hell are you doing in here? I mean, I don’t want to hurt your
feelings or anything but what happened to land you here?”
“I honestly don’t know. I was doing pretty well and then I guess I just lost my
way.”
“Do you drink excessively?”
“Every night, when I can’t write I drink.”
“How often can’t you write?’
“Every night.”
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The two break up in relaxed laughter. The hospital worker is tall, skinny and
receptive. Her hazel eyes seem to invite the world in; they are clear and searching.
“Can I get you anything? Something to make you more comfortable here?”
“Speaking of here, where am I?”
“You are in the mental wing of the Arundel County Jail. You were arrested for
DUI, and they decided to keep you for observation because you were talking out of
your head. Now, before you go before the judge, you need to calm down and contact
all the people in your life that can help you. Because they thought you were still
drunk, they didn’t allow you to make a phone call. You can make one today. Is there
anyone you would like me to contact?”
“Yes. Rachel. A woman I work with. She teaches with me.”
“Pretty? Light eyes?”
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“She’s been here for two days waiting to see you.”
“I really didn’t want to see anyone.”
“And that’s what you kept telling us. One time we had to send her away.”
“I’ll see her today. What are visiting hours?”
“Oh, you are coming around, Mr. Red. You know what visiting hours are
huh?”
“Yeah, that’s when the outside world gets to see the animals. This is a zoo
isn’t it?”
“You could call it that but the more you show us you’re ready to return to
your old life, the faster you will get out of here.”
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“What if I don’t want to return to that shit? Life is not that exuberant you
know.”
She stops, stares at him, sits on the bed and crosses her long, skinny legs.
“Everybody has shit in their life. I have a no good husband who won’t work
or clean the house or take care of his own damned kids.”
“Wow, what a fucking ordeal.”
“But I live it. This is the plate that I eat off.”
“Why can’t you get a new plate? That’s what this is all about. I’ll have a new
life once I get through this.”
“No. No, you won’t. I’m not supposed to tell you this but they are ready to
transfer you to a state institution, if you don’t start acting normal. Talk to Rachel
today and have her set up a diagnostic for you. You need to be tested so they can see
that you’re not crazy at all, just a little mixed up.”
“So this is just a transitional place?”
“Sort of like a mental holding cell but you can sign yourself out. I’m not
supposed to tell you that and then you would go back to jail. I could lose my
damned job for telling you that. Rachel can help you process out; you don’t have any
time to serve. Tell her about it. I have to go and do some rounds. Would you like to
go to the park today? I can put you on the schedule for one o’clock, okay? I’ll be
back to get you at one.” she says patting Robert.
Everyone wants to comfort him but you can’t comfort a caustic mind.
The plant seems to be struggling.
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He stares at the plant for hours and reluctantly eats the dry chicken salad
sandwiches that they shove at him for lunch. He is invited to the day room but he
does not go. Games. He would rather not play games.
At one o’clock the lady with the clear, hazel eyes returns. Her hair is tied up
and piled atop her head; for a second he wonders what it would look like unfurled
down her back.
“Are you ready Robert? We’re going to spend some time together in the park
and then you can have your visitor come and talk to you after that.”
“That would be nice,” he says walking with her.
“Now, I know you don’t like to be touched but we hold the arm of our people
just for balance sake.”
“Our people?”
“Come on Robert, don’t fight me.”
“I won’t.”
The park is spacious and for the first time in days Robert gets to walk around.
The clutter in his head seems to lessen a bit and his limbs start to feel like his own.
He can just look at something without thinking that the object or a person holding
that object might harm him. He watches the patients—they are all huddled around
the workers, leaning on their shoulders, talking to them, bending their ears.
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He has decided that he will not be the needy inmate. No matter what, he will
not repeat his life story over and over again. He needs to do something about his life
not just talk about it.
“You know, Robert, if you’re to get better, you have to open up to someone.”
“I know that but I get tired of hearing my own voice.”
“You have a beautiful, bass voice.”
“Yeah, but if you say the same shit over and over it sounds like a man trying
to pull himself out of some rut or some Gregorian Chant or something.”
“You’re too smart for your own good.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you should be able to relax, get your thoughts together and sign
yourself out of here in a few days. Listen to me. Stop telling jokes and giving clever
answers—they don’t know you’re smart; they think you’re crazy. Just two and two
makes four.”
“I got you.”
“Then, when you sign the right papers, see the judge and magistrate and tell
them this was all caused by your mental state, you could get out of here. Whose
your lawyer?”
“Rachel would handle all that.”
“Good. She’s usually here early. I’ll talk to her.”
“I would forget all these details. Thank you.”
“For what?” she says, not staring at him.
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When you’re crazy, everyone stares at you, trying to see what’s going on in
your brain but she does not stare.
“For talking to Rachel. For talking to me. Thank you.”
“It’s just my job that’s all. Just my job.”
“And you seem to like your job.”
“I do. Don’t you? I mean I know the kids can get on your nerves and all but
you are dedicated to teaching are you not?”
“Some days. There are some days that I like it but then the next day I want to
quit.”
“Are you like that with most things?”
“Yeah. I guess. I want to end things or have them begin. I have a problem
with middles.”
“Have you had a lot of successful relationships?”
“No. But I’m damned good in bed, in case you’re wondering.”
“No. Not at all. Do you come on to a lot of women?”
“They come on to me.”
“Oh, pimp daddy. Well, there are other ways to be with women you know.
You can talk to them. Befriend them.”
“That’s no fun. I’m goal oriented.”
“You mean you actually like closeness?”
“No. I said I like sex not closeness.”
“Do you like to push things and people away?”
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“Yeah, but today, now I think I want to see Rachel a lot and not just because
she might be in touch with my lawyer. I miss her. For the first time in my sorry
assed life, I really miss someone.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Why?”
“People should need the hell out of other people. It’s like being a human
thing.”
“But what if you don’t need people—what if all you need is art?”
“Art can’t hold you. Books don’t have arms.”
Some of the patients were being led away now. Hospital workers were
directing them to their respective rooms. Some children, just beyond the fence
separating the grounds from the residential district, look on, envying the people on
the playground.
“It’s almost one,” she says glancing at her watch for a second.
“Let’s go,” Robert says, taking her arm.
Rachel shakes and cries when she sees him.
“Honey. Are you all right? You look so much skinnier. I took care of
everything at school. Subs and all.”
She seems to be speaking a foreign language. He stares at the reproductions
on the walls.
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Dreams are the last to return. It is weeks before his sleep transports him to a
land of fluff and nighttime merry. He struggles to sleep more than four hours but he
does begin to dream.
He finds a therapist through an employee help program. The therapist has an
office with symbols of life, running brooks and self-help books. There are quilts on
the wall that the therapist has weaved herself. Just outside of her office window,
there are corporate buildings where muffins drive their fuel-efficient cars frantically
in search of a parking space. The concerns of others seem a little petty now. Robert
is trying to save his own life. Cherlynn is her name; she is large and magnanimous
and seems to have enough empathy for the entire world. Robert calms down when
he enters the room with her in it.
She is a kind woman that sits in a plush chair and asks him questions about
his emotions. She crosses her legs with difficulty—Cherlynn could use some days at
the gym although she says “spinning” is one of her loves. Robert scoots back in his
chair. He feels as thin as a playing card when he is in session.
“You seem to act out of fear?”
“Fear! Why, I’m not afraid of anything.”
“On the surface, maybe. But deep down inside you don’t deal with hurt well.”
“You don’t even know me. I’ve only been coming here for a few weeks.”
“Every day for a few weeks. But you’ve revealed some things. You have to
start living like everyone else. Being like everyone else.”
“But I’m not like everyone else.”
“And how do you feel inside? Do you feel well or confused?”
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“I feel angry as hell.”
“Well, anger is fear turned inside. Unless you resolve what you’re angry
about it will turn into fear.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“Because it is. And if you keep functioning that way, and have more manic
episodes, like you did behind the wheel of your car, I may have to commit you.”
“What?”
“Buzzers and locked doors. Did you like being locked up?”
“No.”
“Then, you better face some fears and act correct.”
“I see.”
Cherlynn looks at him intensely. This is not a game.
The next day, she is kinder but the intense gaze is still there. She is impatient
with his adolescent approach to life. Sometimes, when she talks, he reviews the
titles of the books on the bookcases. He dives in and out of her words, choosing to
listen to the most pleasing constructions. Cherlynn shoots him a look of violent
recrimination; she can be brutal from the seat of her comfortable chair. He has to
come out of his juvenile belief system: if you can get away with it, then keep doing it
until someone stops you.
“Mr. Red, how are you?”
“Tired.”
“Tired of what?”
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“My moods. My inability to be solid.”
“Well, what’s your definition of solid?”
“Consistent. Not all over the place all of the time.”
“How would you become consistent?”
“I could stop blaming others for stuff that I do.”
“That’s growth. That’s good.”
“And give the world’s its responsibility but not too much.”
“I see.”
“So, the writing will only flow if the living gets right.”
“Well, there are no rules.”
“That’s what makes it so tough.”
“Yeah. I don’t have any guarantees to give you over here.”
“I know. You sort of have to figure it out as you go along.”
“Each day is an adventure.”
“And I have to be willing to open my eyes.”
“None are so blind.”
“You got that right? But how do I do that?”
“Just realize that you’re just like every other son of a bitch and get up, brush
your teeth, go to work and do the best you can like every other slob in this country
and you might feel like a part of it all instead of superior or inferior.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Takes being yourself.”
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“That’s hard to do. I was never the one everyone liked. I didn’t play sports
and I was small, mousey, as some people called me. So, I became part of the
shadows and I guess I stayed there. I never learned how to shine and I don’t have a
light up the room personality. I never feel comfortable.”
“Oh, what makes you feel uncomfortable?”
“People in the world or should I say people and the world.”
“Now you live in the world right? You are a highly intelligent man. Most
Americans don’t know about the chaos in Africa, the intricacies of Syria and the true
falling apart of our economic system, do they?”
“No, not really.”
“Now, you understand all that and from what you’ve been telling me, you
have always, even as a boy, taken on the problems of the world.”
“You mean thought about them?”
“No. I mean taken them on. Tried to solve them and felt some great
universal guilt about things that you had no control over, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So, what I want to get you to see is that you do that with everything. You
think ten thoughts with your left brain and then those wild, imaginative thoughts
which are not based in reality at all control you for that day.”
“You mean I’m doing the same thing I did when I was a little boy?”
“Yep. Then it was am I going to start on the football team or does Jimmy like
me but you tear yourself apart with those thoughts in the nighttime and there’s
nothing left inside to face the day with. You have disarmed yourself.”
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“Stripped myself of all my powers.”
“And left yourself weak. Weak and powerless but when you don’t like
yourself, your job in the morning is to make yourself miserable. How miserable?
Enough for the rest of the day?”
“So, that’s why I feel so beaten in the morning?”
“Like you went fifteen rounds with Ali in his prime.”
She uses metaphors that affirm Robert’s frail manhood.
“And that’s tired.”
“Like a running back after carrying the pigskin forty times against the
Packers. And then, because depression and anger is setting in, you have to choose a
student or a faculty member to blame for your own shit. If you meet three assholes
in a day, the biggest one might be you.”
“It’s not about me it’s about what I see.”
“What you take in and what you perceive. It’s not about the I, as in first
person pronouns, it’s about the e-y-e.”
“It’s what you notice.”
“It’s what you choose to notice that takes you either to the rim of a drink and
depression, mental institutions and death or further away.”
“Guess I better stop reading those Emily Dickinson poems…because I could
not stop for death.”
“It ain’t about Emily. It’s about you. Emily is there for all time—it’s what you
do with Emily that’s the problem. It’s not the alcohol it’s what you do with it.”
“I think I understand.”
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Robert leaves her office feeling lighter. The words were heavy—shit he was
carrying around. The air seems to surround his head. His feet glide across the
concrete for a second. Then the heavy thoughts return.
The next morning he notices the sun that streaks in. Cherlynn’s face looks
bright and attentive this afternoon; something about her seems washed clean. The
little clock near her seems not to be ticking as loudly. The movements on the street,
of cars seeking parking spaces, do not distract him. Robert feels clean inside, as if he
is about to reveal something new. He moves his appointment time up because he is
most clear at the crack of dawn. With every session, he seems to get more
comfortable. His personal fucking onion is starting to peel away—he now knows
the difference between his professional life and his personal. That line was a big
blur for him for years. She sits near the window today, near the clock that is ticking,
ticking… his health insurance pays for it all, but he has to fill out bothersome
paperwork at the end of every session. Rachel has to do it for him.
“Sorry to get you up so early Cherlynn.”
“That’s fine. You must have something to talk about.”
“Well, I wanted to talk about women, why I seem to collect or create my own
problems with women.”
“Well, a triangle is not square. You’ve had Brenda hanging around there for a
while and now you have to do something with her.”
“Yeah.”
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“Now, despite the legal problems and her coming on your job and stalking
you, you still want the a piece of her don’t you?”
“Well…”
“Cat scratched your tongue?”
“I guess so.”
“See you create your own love triangles and you create your own danger and
then when she runs across the parking lot and threatens your job you want to cry
wolf.”
“I guess I see your point.”
“It should be clear as crystal.”
“Sometimes I take a long time to learn.”
“You like things to smash in your skull but you’re a little bit too old for that
now. Remember when you were driving and you almost smashed against a wall of
rocks and killed your damned self?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you are looking for ways to kill yourself—alcohol, bad health and bad
relationships are just three of the ways. How do I hate me…let me count the ways…”
“That sounds familiar.”
“And it is real familiar to me because I see it so often. The root is hating the
self.”
“The women are…”
“You tell me, what are the women?”
“Another way?”
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“To destroy yourself. Have you ever loved anyone? Do you love Rachel?”
“I guess.”
“She needs to know. But, first, I want you to attend ninety AA meetings in the
next ninety days.”
“What?”
“Did I stutter at any time? Go to their website for the center closest to you
and attend the evening meetings.”
“Got it.”
“Then, you can begin to answer personal questions after you have begun step
work.”
“Step work?”
“I’ve got the pamphlets here about the twelve steps and the twelve
traditions.”
“Okay. I read well.”
Robert finally accepts the fact that he needs help with his drinking. The
scotch has become more than just a bottle; it is a God that he worships. The
Alcoholic Anonymous rooms have people that are friendly enough and they are all
addicted to the twelve steps and traditions. From inside the room, he can see cars,
moving like children’s toys without batteries. The air is non-existent in the room
hot with worn words. They read the twelve steps with one voice every meeting. He
hates everyone in the rooms with their pat answers and their clear eyes. Each
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session he tries to sit near the window, where a breeze might linger. What in the
hell do they know? Are they literature scholars? Have they ever questioned the
existence of God or do they just blindly go along?
He attends, without listening, for three weeks. Then his ears finally open. He
listens to the speaker sitting in the comfortable green chair in the middle of the
room.
“I came here hating everyone, the traditions, the steps. I was sure of one
thing—that this program is not right for me. I knew that the answers were too
simplistic for someone with my kind of philosophic mind and I knew I would never
fit in here with this jingoistic shit. That was twenty-five years ago. After one year of
attendance, I relapsed, found myself in an emergency room and had to have a liver
transplant. Then my father passed away in an asylum and I realized that I might
need to talk to someone. I thought about the rooms and the people that I had seen
encounter death, cancer and the loss of property, the loss of life. They were able to
deal with all of that without the killing juice of alcohol. Day by day, after I copied
their behavior and imitated their actions, I was able to do it too.”
“Thank you for sharing,” the room said in unison. Robert found his lips
parting at the same time as the others. For the first time he stayed until the end of
the meeting and held the gruff hand of the woman next to him. It wasn’t so bad,
staying until the end.
“God grant me the serenity…” Most of all he hates holding hands at the end—
there might be some insecure sweaty palm to grasp or some overeager newcomer.
Robert is a newbie but he is distant and strange with all of this.
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He hadn’t been granted the serenity to know the difference between what he
could control and what he could not but the rooms gave him something to think
about. For the first time in his life, he felt like he was a part of something. He
started to see some of the members of AA out on the streets. Although they usually
averted their eyes, some would sheepishly speak. There were a few barbecues and
poetry readings at the RECOVERY CAFÉ that he attended. When he was in the
rooms, he felt a curious attachment; like a part of him was in the chair even when he
wasn’t sitting there. Narratives of others seemed to include him. Try as he might to
resist, there was identification in his soul. The people in the rooms were as fucked
up as he was and in fact some were worse, but there were all struggling, trying to
become better.
Robert had not shared in a month but he had made close to thirty meetings.
Now, just like with Church, he missed the gathering; he even missed the skinny
window and the unpainted wood. There was no gospel song, no sermon but there
was a lead at the beginning of the meeting and above all Robert knew how to listen.
He listened intently this morning to the speaker; he told a sanguine tale of sexual
intrigue and personal loss. The speaker said he was unaware of the alcoholism in
his family and he thought that he was the only one that drank until a recent family
gathering where he found out that many of his uncles and aunts had died of the
disease. Everyone goes through their personal narrative as the speaker recounts a
tale of recent loss. The faces in the room are heavy with the memory of lonely
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rooms and the feel of glass. Robert now knew this journey was something he would
have to take.
The speaker before him had shared and Robert let his hand stay in the air.
The lead remembered and called on him.
“I just want to say that I have learned a lot here. I came here thinking that I
knew everything. I’m like that—I think I have the answers to all human endeavors.
And I have read a lot of books and I can make a verbal presentation, but I do not
know anything about my fucking self. I am ignorant of me. And although I’m just
starting here, I now know the difference between head feeding and getting to the
core and exposing myself. So, thank you, everyone for teaching me that. Thanks for
letting me share.”
“Thank you for sharing…”
He liked the unity of speaking together. It almost felt like a real team. Robert
felt affinity and connection in the air hovering just above his head and he began to
know the beauty of gratitude. The tiny staircase, outside of the room seems a little
larger today. The unpainted spaces on the wall do not bother him as he enjoys the
sound of conversation as he walks down the stairs.
After weeks of intense therapy and AA meetings, he is cleared to return to
school. He must continue with his therapist but Robert is tired of being talked
about. There are conversations between therapists and doctors about him. He feels
like a small object. Three Mondays after his little episode, he returns to the glass
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house with hungry students and bells. There is something strangely familiar about
the clumps of people going nowhere.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
The cement of the sidewalk seems to be hotter than usual and the heat is
lifting. It must be his imagination, he tells himself.
If he can just hold on until the end of June, then things will be better and he
can put the loose elements of his life back together. He can write at home every day
then and his mind will be in one piece, he tells himself. Robert doesn’t recognize
that the most important thing is to keep going to the rooms.
Tanya was the most vocal when he returns to class.
“Where you been? We missed you. What’s wrong Mr. Red, Miss Rachel ain’t
give you none last night? Slept on the couch did you?”
“That’s totally inappropriate Tanya. See me after class.”
“Why? You trying to get up with me ‘cause your shorty turned you down?”
“Never mind. Grammar exercises?”
He has asked Rachel for some time and a football field of understanding. In
order for him to reach the goal of finishing the book, he needs some alone time. He
still has artificial deadlines in his mind; but there is no real book. Robert knows he
needs some time to himself, to figure things out. Rachel gives in because she wants
him to feel like a success. Rachel knows being an English teacher is not enough for
him and she wants to support him in any way she can. He tells her about those
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productive times in his life when he wrote all night and into the morning. One night
he stays up, with his eyes open, staring at the front lawn; the house is almost too
quiet. He stares at a bird trapped on a limb just outside his front window.
He jumps when she touches his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me in so I just came in through the back window.”
“Brenda. If you don’t get the fuck out of here I will dial nine-one-one.”
“I dare you.”
“You’re disturbing my work. What the fuck do you want anyway? I’ve been
sick and in the hospital, but do you give a damn? What the hell do you want?”
“You. I miss our nights. You look fine to me. You ain’t crazy. When are you
coming to see me? I miss our times together.”
“I don’t. Now leave or I’ll get some assistance getting you out.”
He clutches the phone. He can hear the toilet flushing in his cell and he sees
the prisoners grinning at him in his mind. Brenda bites his wrist, wrestling him to
the ground. His raises him arm before he notices and it comes down again and again
and again on her skull.
The police say they haven’t seen a beating like that in a while. He is charged
with domestic battery. Brenda tells the cops that she is his wife. Prison does not
wear well with Mr. Red.
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He is interviewed when he goes through intake.
“Have you ever thought of suicide?”
“Everybody’s thought of suicide.”
The intake officer makes notes. She then calls on her walkie-talkie.
Everything is going, going in his head. There are bells and whistles going off as he
watches the inmates with drab clothing move into place. Some of their bodies know
these routines but he knows none of this. Each movement of an inmate seems to
threaten him. Everything around him is offensive. All of the bodies hulk in an
intimidating manner. They don’t work teaching English to reluctant students. Most
of them don’t have a job and they have lost so much that losing a little more
wouldn’t matter. They remove him and place him in a cell with a heavy, bolted door.
He hasn’t brushed his teeth in so long he can taste the sour taste of his own spittle.
He wants to cough but he doesn’t know when they will let him have water so he
swallows his own spit. They tell him nothing, except the charges he is facing and the
time. The next morning he is handcuffed as an officer takes him out to face the
magistrate. They set bail at 40,000. Dollars. He is not allowed to make a phone call
because he is considered a risk. They want to make sure he is totally sober before
he is allowed to make a phone call. He feels like an animal.
From inside of his cell, there is a small window. He watches the movements
of the police and inmates. Some are handcuffed, being led by guards to an area
where they can shower. He remembers scenes from prison movies; he never wants
to shower here. Remaining dirty seems like the best option. He can hear the blows
and the crunching facial bones of Brenda.
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Like a Winding Sheet. He thinks of the great short story by Ann Petry. The
sheet was like a noose around his neck and he begins scratching incessantly. Robert
thinks he feels something near his neck as he watches the grins on the faces of
prisoners as they look in at the inmates in crazy cells. He is sure that the other
inmates are talking about him. Some are institutional men; for him, this is like an
episode of Twilight Zone. He feels nothing but dirt and discomfort but he also feels
he belongs here in a stinking cell for lost souls. The skin on his arm seems like it’s
moving, starting to crawl away from the bone.
Yeah, though I walk through the valley
Of the Shadow of Death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me
Thy rod and Thy staff; they comfort me…
His mind is still for the first time in months. This is better than television—
he watches the inmates get processed by the machinery of the system:
incarceration. It never occurs to him that now, he is one of them. He is a prisoner.
The next morning they move him to a special tier of cells. First, he has a roomie;
then he is placed in a cell all by himself. A woman with a sanguine smile comes in;
she is accompanied by an officer with an I-will-kill-you scowl.
The woman begins.
“What’s your name sir?”
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“Robert Red.”
“And what day is it sir?”
“I really don’t feel like playing twenty questions.”
“This is not twenty questions sir. You’re in here for a serious crime but we
have to assess you. Have you been striking and punching yourself?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel stupid, being in here. I have college degrees. I’m not your run
of the mill prisoner.”
“You’re right but have you been thinking about doing harm to yourself in any
way?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’m going to ask you to change into this suit. They call it a lobster suit
but it protects you as well as others. Would you do that for me, when I leave to give
you some privacy?”
“Sure.”
“The officer here will assist you and he will take your clothes, put them in a
bag and when the time is right they will be returned to you.”
“Sounds good.”
There are three officers watching—one at the desk, one at the door of his cell
and another standing behind the first.
The suit is hot, scratchy and restrictive. He stares at them because they stare
in at him; he moves to the side of the cell where he cannot be seen and he climbs out
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of his clothes and into the suit. They Velcro him in; fastening the turtle suit tightly
around his neck. Then, he tries to sleep on the metal slab but the coldness causes
his head to ring, starting from the back and then numbing his brain and forehead.
He can go to the bathroom but they are always watching; the toilet is angled so that
only the determined can see. He counts the smashed bugs on the wall. It is hard to
maneuver the suit in order to take a piss or a shit. Leave my eyes alone, he thinks to
himself. June Jordan poem.
He misses everything genteel: poetry, new clothes, a shower. He does not
sleep for what feels like days.
The lobster suit begins to itch and he can’t take it off or scratch it; he
scratches his neck, above the suit until his neck is beet red. Robert wants to be
naked and scratch his skin until it bleeds or falls off but they might take that as a
sign of craziness. He feels like punching himself hard. The light is on, full blast, in
the cell for twenty-four hours, making it hotter than hell ever could be. He feels like
a fish in an aquarium with everyone staring as they walk by. He whimpers at night
but only to himself. Robert doesn’t want them to hear him; he wants to take away
any institutional power they have. Their first job is to make him feel like a prisoner.
They’ve succeeded—he feels beaten down and the only thing he can clearly hear is
the guy in the cell next to him continuing to sing in a loud, annoying voice. What in
the hell—can they do something about that incessant noise? The concrete spreads
the voice and muffles it, making it even more piercing. The sickly yellow walls have
blotches of smashed insects. He starts to count them from the ground to the ceiling.
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Of all the things he has lost, the last one he wants to loose is his mind but he
can feel his mind missing and slipping. The toilet seems to talk each time he flushes.
It seems to be saying thank you. What a nice touch. Something to entertain the
prisoners. A talking toilet. Maybe I am going fucking crazy. Maybe I do belong here?
He watches a train of prisoners come in and line up to be showered. He
imagines they are talking about him. In all the films he has seen, the prisoners gang
up on the newbie, when he goes to shower. The baloney on white bread makes his
stomach turn, making him aware of how hungry he really is. Robert misses the
touch of Rachel’s warm palm. He has not been allowed to go to the cafeteria and he
has not been allowed to have a meal in days, while he is officially under observation.
The tin can of his life is torn open and everything pours out into his brain.
Everything is jumbled but he can see faces. There is one face that is bigger than all
the others—the nine-year-old face of his son. If he can get out of here, he will call
and create a relationship with him. Robert wishes he had become a real father now;
at least he would have a legacy. Now, he has nothing but unfulfilled wishes and he
clings to those. Will he ever get out of this place and when the fuck will they give
him back his clothing? The itchy, sweaty, dirty lobster suit is driving him doubly
mad. He must change his story.
He looks at his arms and legs and his veins appear to be flattened and
corroded. He paces the cell, back and forth from wall to wall; the grating voice, from
the cell next door, continues.
“Let me the fuck out of here/I need a god damned beer…”
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It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic. He stares at his arms again.
Robert is no longer Robert; he is now a low life and a horrible prisoner. At some
point he tries to sleep.
He has no sense of time. A skinny man with a kindly smile comes to the
window outside.
“Sir…can you wake up for me sir? I am here to do an evaluation. They said
you wanted your street clothes.”
“Yeah. I’m sweating to death in this shit.”
“Please don’t curse sir. I’m here to evaluate you to see if you can get your
clothes back.”
“It really doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
He had the urge to call his few existing relatives and say goodbye. Just then
he looks at his arms and they appear strong, muscular as hell. Maybe he’s not going
to die tonight after all.
“What is your name sir?”
The inquisition continues.
“And why do you want your street clothes? You’re not hitting yourself
anymore are you? You don’t want to do harm to yourself anymore do you?”
“No, sir. I just want to get out of fuck out of here. Put yourself in my God
damned place. You been in here for days, you don’t know why. I’m like the fucking
main character of The Trial by Franz Kafka. Have you read that? The protagonist is
arrested and never told why. Get me my clothes so that I can feel like a fucking
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human being again, please. That would be the first step to recovery, feeling like a
fucking human being one more time. ”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The next day he receives his clothes back and they move him to an area that
has ping-pong tables and pool tables for recreation. A sheriff comes for him; he is
lean and sincere.
“I’m here to transport you. You’re going upstairs.”
“What does that mean.”
“Means you might be getting out of here. You have to go before the judge and
you’ll do that through a television hook up.”
They take Robert to a large holding room. There are rows of chairs and a
television to watch. Prisoners are split into those that are pressing appeals and
those that are simply appearing in court for the first time.
This is the first time Robert has ever appeared in a courtroom but the
anticipation in his brain of seeing something and someone different, someone other
than those that have branded him crazy, makes him excited. They handcuff him and
take him to a small room. Each time he has to reach his hands out, a part of his self
breaks off, diminishes. They sit him behind a desk and then he can see the judge on
a monitor. Rachel is sitting there, looking pensive and afraid. There is s lawyer
sitting with Rachel—his lawyer.
“Mr. Red, can you hear me?”
“Yes, your honor.” He can hear his own amplified voice. It sounds tinny.
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“You are charged with domestic battery. How do you plea?”
“Innocent, your honor.”
“All right. The grand jury will set the trial date. Your lawyer is right here and
if you are able to raise the funds, you can be released on your own recognizance. I
hear that you are a teacher. We want you or your lawyer or both of you back in the
courtroom on Monday morning. Your girlfriend and your lawyer are working in
your behalf. (pause) Your lawyer has informed me that he is prepared to pay your
bail and as soon as we conclude our business here, you will be released there. Good
day to you Mr. Red.”
He gets up, they take the cuffs off and he is back in the air and light of the
hallway.
“I told you,” the sheriff says, “told you might be out of here before you knew
it.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Well, you had some people working for you,” the sheriff seems happy.
“Yeah, and I can’t wait to see those people.”
“Get your stuff and I’ll process you out.”
For once, the world stops and clicks into a really singular place. He is grateful
for any kindness now. He understands, just for a second, how homeless people feel.
Everyone would avoid eye contact with him now. He feels branded and ashamed; he
is a prisoner and he can still feel the dark abrasions of handcuffs around his wrists.
Rachel calls the school every day and makes an excuse for his absence.
Luckily, he has the sick leave. Robert joined the sick leave bank at school, so he
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would be donated time if he needs it. He hopes he will not have to sit in a room with
a dour faced psychiatrist again but weeks later, he is back.
His sessions with Cherlynn pick up. He goes to her four times a week; her
office is full of books and tapestries still.
“How are you today?”
“How are you? You ever tire of asking questions?”
“Not of people like you. The answers are so interesting.”
“Then, I’m entertainment for you?”
“No, not at all. I take every response seriously but I never know what I’m
getting.”
“Things are a little better. Classes are not as intimidating and I don’t imagine
my demise as much.”
“Thoughts of death?”
“No, just failure. I actually think that I might be able to achieve something
before I die.”
“But how do you feel? Get past the head feeding. How the hell are you?”
“Actually, okay. I feel okay today. It helps to talk. I keep feeling like I’m in
the cell with a small window, with others staring in at me. I feel the same heat
around my neck, the tightness, especially at night or at two or three in the morning.”
“You say you like feeling alone but that reminds you of how alone you’ve
been all your life. How much time are you spending with Rachel?”
“Not enough.”
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“Or maybe too much. You need to get through this with your own resources
now. You have the meeting rooms, a twelve step program, a higher power and you
have me.”
“That’s right…I forget…”
“Short term memory issues…”
Robert’s spoken words slowly unburden him.
There was no mention of this at school, but he is still wearing the lobster suit
in his mind. He feels like he is in a huge fishbowl and everyone is looking in.
Students are vultures, staring, waiting to tear off his flesh.
His lawyer handles everything. There is a court date for the summer and
Robert hopes he will be able to plead to a misdemeanor or maybe he can get Brenda
to drop the complaint. Rachel’s rich aunt opens her pocketbook wide.
Brenda is resistant and Rachel decides she will do anything to save him. He
hopes he can talk to Brenda but he is glad to be back at school. The chaos of the
hallways beat the screaming in cells, any day. He knows he looks bad, like he’s been
through something. Rachel is really concerned. This has strained things again; if he
keeps on fucking up, things might totally sever. But he looks down the hallway, and
there are clumps of students; there is no smell except the smell of cheap lotion and
cologne. The musk of the prison is gone, so is the desperation. Maybe this isn’t such
a bad job after all. As one of the older teachers says, “it could be worse.”
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He finds the sugary sweet teenagers charming and the shy, wanna-be tryouts for sports teams that linger at their lockers talking to ascetic girls, inviting.
Everything about high school attracts him. He lingers after school one day, lost in
the music of the marching band, the activities of the twirlers and the jumping,
twisting and flipping of the cheerleaders.
He floats to his classroom, hoping he can link together the pieces of his
professionalism, which are still lying on the prison floor. A conviction for a felony
would mean his job. He could be a full-time writer if he was actually producing
anything but the computer screen still intimidates him, staring into his rooms,
looking at him; cursing his inaction. Ever since he left prison, the feeling of being in
the lobster suit, and the sound of the flushing toilet is still in his brain as well as the
taste of the flat white bread of the baloney sandwich underneath his tongue and he
can still feel the desperation in air. He can still hear the insane inmate singing his
shrill mixture of Zydeco and Country Western cantor song next door.
“Get me the fuck out of here…and get me a god damned beer…” The memory
makes Robert’s head ring. Everyone, in prison, was there to save their lives;
everyone here takes life for granted. The contrast seems to drive him crazy again.
School lunches smell inviting and the giggling boys and girls line up, smelling
the cookies being baked behind the cafeteria walls. He never thought he’d be
grateful for cafeteria duty but he walks around the tables laughing in rhythm to the
abusive jokes of teen-agers.
He floats, seeing the torn and leathery faces of his inmate acquaintances in
his mind. A beautiful black girl, Avani, stops to talk to him.
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“Hi, Mr. Red, how are you? I haven’t seen you in a few days. Were you out?”
“Yeah, just a couple of days.”
“We miss you when you’re not here.”
“And I miss you and this place. I guess I really like it here.”
“Wow, such a strong show of emotion. Be careful, soon you’ll be hugging and
bubbling all over us.”
“I am rather reserved.”
“That’s an understatement but we got to know you a little bit better this year.
Maybe next year you’ll come to a school dance or the prom or something.”
He thought about the flat voice of the judge.
“Maybe.”
The air conditioning in his classroom is working for a change and when he
turns to go in he feels a strange sense of liberation when the manufactured breeze
passes over him.
Janel Edelen is smiling at him when he enters the room. Her innocuous,
pretty-girl-smile usually makes his stomach turn but today it warms something
inside. He watches his students come in; this is a class that he is learning to like.
They are very smart but their social nature and “out there” hugs and effusive acts of
friendship and ridicule repel him. They were just too big, too alive for him. Third
period often causes him to recoil into himself but today he is amazed and thrilled
with their energy.
He waits for a while until their limbs stop moving. The girls have to hug each
other passionately as if they had not seen one another for years and the boys have to
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argue about their NBA teams and the results from last night. Usually, he would
engage the bass in his voice but today he just watches the relative chaos for a
moment, smiling silently to himself as they run off at the jibs.
He hesitates a few moments before he put the objective on the board. The
class looks at him as if he is sick. He is not demanding or gesturing or asking anyone
to move. He is simply looking, enjoying the moment. There would be no moments
like this in a prison cell; there was something inside of him rising and changing and
it felt like gratitude. He did not want to be overly optimistic, but the children made
him feel light and airy inside. He shared their smiles and spent time in the middle of
their buoyant laughter; in a quiet, sweet way, they seemed to be pulling for him.
They had created a get-well card and tacked it to his door; he found it first thing
when he came back. Everything inside of him seemed to flutter a little. He looked
out of the window for the first time in months and noticed the flat yellow of the sun
reflected off the mountains in the distance. He never looked outside before during
the school day until three-forty-one when the kids were going to the buses.
“Now, class, let’s begin…”
He was starting to manage the first five minutes of class and the last five
minutes well. The middles seemed to be taking shape also—he could remember the
story of the day and some days he could actually find the carefully wrought
preparations of old. He felt sure of the mind of his past. He felt better as the days
wound down; the calendar in his classroom said thirty days remaining for the
semester.
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That night, Rachel and Robert planned to pay a visit on Brenda. He had told
Rachel everything—all of the sordid, grimy details. Brenda was willing to drop the
charges if they would agree to pay her some money. They would have to pay on the
installment plan but they settled on three thousand dollars. Tonight, they were to
bring her the first five hundred dollars. Rachel had gotten some money from her
older, wealthy aunt and there was nothing to fear. The money, in fact five thousand
dollars, was in the bank, but Mr. Red wanted Brenda to sign an agreement stating
that the three thousand was enough and that she would not bother them for
anything more. He knew that would be a problem; Brenda did not want to sign
anything.
She is in a horrible mood when they get there. Brenda does not ask either of
them to sit down—she merely wants to see the little agreement he had drawn up.
“I can’t sign that.”
“Why not Brenda?”
“Because if I take you to civil court and prove damages, I could get more.”
“You’ve been talking to a lawyer?”
“You think I’m stupid? You think I’m stupid don’t you. I ain’t hardly a stupid
girl. You abused me. You did not have to hit me that hard and it was continuous.
You hit me like you were hitting a man. You need to pay for that don’t you think?”
“We agreed upon a sum. If you go through the court system, you’ll have to
wait for months. You could have this money now. I thought you needed money
now.”
“Not that bad. Not for you to play me cheap.”
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Rachel steps to the middle of the room.
“Look, you got a baby in there and she needs bread and milk and diapers
right now, not next week. We can help you now. And your child could use some
clothes too; I can help you with that. I can be of assistance to you and so can my
Robert, my husband. But if you refuse our help now, my lawyers will fight you tooth
and nail in court.”
“Your husband? You come over here with your high and mighty ass talking
about your husband?”
“Well, we’re practically married.”
“Almost chicken don’t make soup bitch. So you need to get your stories
straight.”
“We came over here to make your life easier not more difficult. Now, we are
both sorry about what happened but we can’t go back in time.”
“Are you sorry Robert?”
“Yes, very.”
“Because you’re neat little life is messed up or are you really sorry?”
“I am really sorry.”
“So you say now.”
“I didn’t just start feeling this way.”
“Yeah, you been sorry for a long time; bunch of White niggers that’s what you
are.”
“What?”
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“I said you are a bunch of White niggers. Wiggers. Only niggers would do
something like what you did.”
“I understand your point but we didn’t come over to call names. You’ve done
your dirt too.”
“Why you come over here with her? What the hell is she supposed to do?”
“We are one.”
“Yeah, I put some high heels on and that one would become three.”
Robert did not know how to respond to that but he was sure that he did not like
what he was hearing.
“We have five hundred for you now but you have to sign in order to receive
this money.”
She grabs the money quickly, counting and reluctantly signs without reading
the paragraph about giving up her right for further proceedings. There is a tense
silence in the car.
“I bet she was good in bed.”
“Not as good as…”
“Shut your fucking, lying mouth. Just shut your fucking, lying mouth.”
Rachel is almost always at his side now for more reasons than one. She
makes phone calls to doctors and consults with the psychiatrists and picks up
medication for him. If he could choose a personal assistant, it would be her, and she
functions as his keeper, checking with him every morning to make sure he is living a
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life that emulates the rest of the world. If he observes some simple rituals and
attends his therapy sessions, he might be all right. He has to talk to someone other
than Rachel and the people in small and large rooms are God sends; they are patient
with his narcissism. Robert finds some reluctant kindred spirits there. Rachel has
to make sure that he eats, doesn’t get too deeply involved in pessimistic literature
and that he goes outside. If he keeps reading these novels where the main character
is on the edge, he will push himself over. He still thinks too much and his thoughts
lead him to one place: the destruction of self. Robert doesn’t realize it, can’t admit it
to himself, but he needs her more than air right now. There is no way he can make it
all the way back without her.
She almost acts as if she has done something wrong, allowing him to be
attracted to Brenda. Somehow, Rachel was not alluring enough or available enough
and she makes it her mission to make herself the quintessence of his sexual dreams.
This solidifies their relationship and stops him from wandering at night. He
does not even dream of other women. Rachel has an array of costumes that she
wears; sometimes she even lets him tie her up. He likes the feeling of being
dominant; that’s the way he felt on the down-stroke with Brenda. Now he has
everything in Rachel. Would you rather make love to one woman one hundred times
or one hundred women one time?
One day, as he is sitting in the sweaty A.A. room, he feels an intense gaze. A
woman, with black cherry lipstick is watching him. His head is down and he is
trying hard to deny everything he hears. She is filling out her jeans. After the
meeting, some people allow themselves to be known to a select few. You can be
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anonymous if you want to and you are to the outside world; but you reveal yourself
to the people in the room. The woman with the filled out jeans comes over to him.
“I saw you during the meeting. Are you new to this group?”
“New to any group. I just started this rehab stuff seriously.”
“You remind me of myself when I first came in. I resisted everything.”
“Who said I was resisting? This is my second crack at this. I’m a writer and
it’s hard to hear all these sloppy narratives.”
“Oh, you’re judgmental. Let’s go to the Starbucks across the street.”
Robert follows her, trying to position himself to get a good view of her ass.
She moves out of the way and begins the incessant talking.
“Why did you come to A.A.?”
“I promised my girlfriend, uh fiancé, that I would.”
“Oh, you’re getting married?”
“If I can work on my fucked up self and stop this awful drinking, then I might
make a decent mate.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“I’m not really resistant. I need this information but it’s hard to take it all in.”
She orders a Caramel Macchiato and takes a seat right across from Robert.
“So you know you need the sharing?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been able to talk about myself.”
“It takes time. You have to get past your ego, your accomplishments and all
that other bunk. Maybe you should continue with the individual therapy too?”
“And what is left after all of that?”
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“You.”
Robert decides to order the iced lemon pound cake.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gilberto asks Robert if he’ll take him to see his father—in prison. Mr. Red
cannot decline. He takes him to the hills of Maryland and they laugh and joke as
they cross bridges, riding through hundreds of small towns following the GPS
system lady’s voice to SHERWOOD CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. Gilberto doesn’t
want to get out of the car. His greasy fat hands cling to the door handle.
“It won’t be that bad. Really. It’s not like you haven’t been here before.”
“I know but I have a funny feeling this time.” He looks around the car like
something is going to explode. The menacing brown brick wall wraps around a
square city block. There are guards, with shotguns, pacing and patrolling. They look
all over the grounds with one horrible glance. Their eyes say kill the-first-thingmoving.
Robert begins to massage his fat little neck and begins to talk to him in a
semi-maternal manner.
“Look, you have to pretend that the walls and the guards, the prison isn’t
there. You came to see your father and you shouldn’t let anything stand in the way
of that even the way you feel right now. You have to get past that and just think
about how good your father is going to feel when he sees you, growing up as a young
man should. He can take that back to his cell and that can keep him going for a long
time.”
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Gilberto appears to be thinking.
“You’re right. I came here to see him and I’m gonna see him.”
He inches his hand slowly back on the plastic and then stands and opens the
door at the same time.
Robert is out of the car, matching Gilberto’s enthusiasm and for the first time
in years, he something lets go inside of him. All of his self-consciousness and all of
his insecurity seems to melt away. He stares at Gilberto’s neck and there is joy
there, simple, uninhibited joy. The memory of the joy of being a teen-ager and
acting stupid with reckless abandon liberates Robert for a brief second. It is a bitter,
dry day. The wind is unforgiving. Gilberto’s eyes look empty and lost. It’s that joy
that he must hold, capture; that’s the spirit. Robert reluctantly, slowly, puts his arms
around Gilberto’s slumping shoulders. The wind picks up, threatening to cut them
in half. They take short steps up to the gate. There is an officer with a bulletin
board directing the slow trickling line of huddled figures.
“State your business.”
“Visit an inmate.”
“This way.” He points to the left to a sign that says VISITORS.
They trudge past the barred, dirty windows to the nasty, iron door. Mr. Red
opens it to a dark hallway that they struggle their way through. Gilberto looks
scared and touches Mr. Red’s arm as they walk until there is a little window and
light. A female guard with blonde hair in a bun waits.
“Howdy, who are you here to visit today?”
“My father.”
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“And could I have his name and his offense.”
There it is staring him in the face again, his offense. Murder One. All of his
life he will realize that charge replaced his father. He courageously holds his face
up.
“Right this way. Are you coming in too sir?”
“Yes, all the way.”
Mr. Red is surprised to hear those words. He is never all the way with
anything.
Gilberto fills out all the appropriate paperwork, looking around just a few
times for support. Robert is right there, standing over him, shooting reassuring
looks whenever he needs it. The air becomes thicker as they move from through
locked door to another locked door. Finally, they reach an area with armed guards,
tables and chairs. Frisks are at every checkpoint. They rifle through Gilberto and
Mr. Red’s clothing; what are their intentions? Why are they there? Why in the hell
would they be there if they didn’t have to be?
Gilberto seems edgy, afraid, almost as if there is something around the next
corner that he hadn’t anticipated. He’s been in a prison before but every time he
comes back must remind him of the fact that he is not like other kids. My dad is in
prison. I talk to my dad on the phone collect but that is the only way I can speak to
him. My father is incarcerated behind locked doors, buzzers; my father has keepers
with guns on their hips and snarls instead of mouths. I won’t see my father for
decades, not weeks or months but decades. I am totally different that the rest—my
father is a statistic. In discussions about prisons, he says nothing because he knows.
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His father is locked up. My father is a doctor. My father is a lawyer. My father works
for the government. So does mine. He makes license plates for the feds.
Now they’re waiting for the buzzer and the door to swing open and for his
father to appear. Circles of hopeful families clutter. There is something like hope on
their faces but then they look around and remind themselves of the spots of grime
on an already graffiti filled wall. They are in prison and so is their loved one; hope is
a visit from a toothless male whore with a fake wig.
The door swings open and Gilberto’s shoulders slump. His father is smaller
than he was before; he looks like a beaten institutional man now. The reality that he
is not getting out anytime this decade or the next or the next is marking his brow.
Bars. Buzzers. Guards.
Gilberto forces a smile and his father gives him a non-committal, halfshoulder hug. They both move to an ugly gnarled table. Gilberto motions to Robert
and he nods to them both, staying his distance. He is good at that, not getting
involved; that is his talent, staying on the periphery.
Robert reads their lips, from the how you doing to the questions about girls.
Twenty minutes is all he can hope for. His father tries to reflect back to his time
with girls but his eyes get hollow and searching. There are no girls now. There is
little legacy to hand to his son; this is all like a bad play. He is acting like the father
he cannot be and Gilberto is playing the role of the proud child. The guards start to
move into place. This shift of visitation is over—the buzzer will sound and the
inmates will stand at attention. They slap the cuffs on them right there and lead
them out with one finger. Grown men being led out like children.
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Gilberto kisses his father after he is cuffed.
The hills comfort them as they drive. It is like something has been released
inside of both of them. For the first time in a long time, Robert has let himself do
something for somebody else and it gives Robert an all-encompassing feeling of
warmth. It’s hard to explain but he feels a little bit like a boy—like he is invincible
and everything is possible. He knows this feeling will fade but if he could just mine
the tip of this emotional diamond, he can live. Gilberto seems to enjoy the ride
home; he can laugh open-mouthed at Robert’s stupid, insecure jokes. He is out of
the prison but his Dad is not. But for a second, he can leave the red-stone-wall
behind and the buzzer and the reminder that his family is a little different than
most. With Robert, Gilberto can simply be himself. And they travel through the high
hills telling lies to each other, inventing girls they have not made love to, slaying all
of the bullies of the hallway, as they turn in the dark.
Robert tries to remember the way to Gilberto’s house but he needs help. He
has a horrible sense of direction. He can make it to the gas station near school but
after that he needs assistance.
When he gets to the gas station he starts laughing and so does Gilberto.
“You mean you forgot? That fast? You just took me home last Friday right?”
“Yeah, but I have a lot on this feeble mind. You’d never believe what I have
going on.”
“I know. You’re a busy man.”
“Not really.”
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Gilberto’s mother is waiting just behind the screen door. She is buxom and
friendly. Her hair is cut short and the waves accentuate her burnished brown skin.
She reminds Robert of a song by Fela: you call her African woman/
she say nooo..African Lady/
she say she equal to man/
she say she can do anything man can/
if you call her African woman/
she say nooooo, African lady.
“How did things go?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
Gilberto moves past her quickly and runs to his room. We stare at each other.
“Kids.” There is mutual, uproarious laughter.
Robert calls Rachel on the way home and decides not to come over until later.
For the first time in months, he feels a tingling at the ends of his fingers that cannot
be satisfied by the hum of machines. His fingertips want to feel the impersonal
plastic pressing down but once he arrives home, he sits, staring out of the opened
window. The breeze climbs up, sweeping through the room, landing on his brow.
The next morning, Robert wakes early, feeling cold and alone. His breath is
rancid, from sleeping so many hours. The dark owns the room—it is cool. He feels
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the breathing of someone. He usually welcomes the voice of another, in the early
morning, reminding him of former conquests, the awful shapes of his youth
masquerading as loves when they were only abstract paintings of self-destruction.
He realizes some basic things about himself; in early morning he likes to hear
breaths. He is tired after father’s day at Fox school. The sleeping, hungry, grumbling
face near him moves closer and smiles wide.
“What you want for breakfast son?”
THE END
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