By the Light of His Lantern

by Abe Moss

  Not the same, she thought. Not the same.

  Whether she thought it in defense of herself or the man in her basement…

  Things were foggy.

  Finally she took the remote and shut off the television. She went to bed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Catherine poured herself some coffee in the teacher’s lounge. School hadn’t started yet. She had an entire period to herself in the mornings, anyway. She liked to use that time to ready her classroom and get things in order before her first class arrived.

  The students were already arriving. Through the door she could hear them chatter. Sneakers squealed and scuffed the floor. Lockers slammed. Obnoxious, high-pitched guffawing.

  She couldn’t stand their voices. The young girls. The boys weren’t much better, either. But at least most of them hollered rather than screeched. And the cackling…

  Thank God I was never their age, Catherine thought amusedly.

  She was snapped out of her thoughts when the door opened and a tall, thin man entered. He looked pleased to see her.

  “Good morning!” he said.

  “Good morning, Andrew,” she answered.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned back against the countertop with one hand, his coffee in the other. His shirt was too baggy for his pencil-thin body, Catherine thought. And yet the neck was too tight. His flesh there looked red and sore.

  “How was your weekend?” he asked.

  She took a sip of coffee and said, “Like any other weekend, I suppose.”

  Andrew laughed, though she didn’t mean it to be funny. She didn’t mean anything she said to be any certain way. It annoyed her when she felt this way. Blah. And it annoyed her worse when other people—people like Andrew—tried to force their good moods down her throat. What did he have to be so damn happy about?

  “I hear you. Every Monday is the same. Luckily there’s only one a week.”

  He gave her a smile and a wink and then left. She was glad.

  Imagine, she thought, if she were to have told him the truth.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  One afternoon, Catherine made what she would later view as a ridiculous mistake. More than that, actually. A lapse in sanity.

  School let out. She tidied up her classroom until she could no longer hear the students filing out of the halls, outside into the near-summer heat. She collected her things. The janitor smiled as she left, told her to have a great day. She ignored him.

  She shielded her face through the parking lot. When she was in her car, she took her phone out from her purse and checked to see that she had no missed calls. Rarely did she have any missed calls. And those she did have were usually telemarketers. Sometimes, though, she hoped she’d check her phone and discover a call from her daughter. It would never happen, she knew, but she always eagerly hoped.

  She decided to make a quick stop on her way home to pick up a few things. Paper towels, some more frozen smoothie mixings. She was in line to pay when someone behind her said her name. She turned to see them, wide-eyed, and saw it was Beth.

  “The look on your face when you turned around, you looked ready to defend yourself!”

  “You snuck up on me!” Catherine said, smiling, trying to be friendly when really she just wanted to get out and go home.

  “Are you busy or anything? You should come over tonight for drinks with me and Ned.”

  Catherine shook her head. “I appreciate it, but I’m looking forward to unwinding at home alone, to be honest. Been a long day.”

  “I understand.” Beth looked at the conveyer belt at Catherine’s purchases, and Catherine felt a spark of irritation. “Don’t turn into a hermit, though, whatever you do.”

  “I’m not turning into a hermit,” she answered, her voice void of humor.

  “Yeah, I know,” Beth said. “I’m only kidding.”

  Catherine knew she was coming off as a bitch. She knew the tone of her voice hid very little, and yet she didn’t feel sorry at all. In a way she wanted Beth to know she was annoyed, to take a hint and let her leave without all the obligatory nonsense. But she also needed Beth. She was her only friend. Someday, she hoped she wouldn’t feel so shitty and in need of isolation, and that Beth would still be around for that.

  “Actually…” Catherine considered. “Maybe I will come over tonight. That might be… nice.”

  “Really? You sure? I don’t want you to feel guilted into it or anything—”

  “Oh, not at all. I need this. I’ve been alone too much lately, I think.”

  She smiled and laughed, to make sure her words didn’t come across as pitiful as they really were if Beth only knew.

  “Well good! I’ll let Ned know you’re coming over. What time you think you’ll be?”

  “I’ll just stop at home for a bit, get changed into something more comfortable I think.”

  “Say seven?”

  “Seven sounds great.”

  Beth gave her a warm smile, one that showed both gratitude and a subtle acknowledgement of what her accepting the invitation really meant. It was an expression akin to pity, she knew. Beth thought she was doing her a favor in getting her out of her isolation, and was proud of her for going along with it. It almost made Catherine change her mind.

  Once she paid, she didn’t wait around. She told Beth she’d hurry home and get her things taken care of, that she’d see her at seven. So she left the store, got in her car, and started home.

  She came to a four-way stop. Looking in her rear view, she saw no one waiting behind her, or at any of the other stops, and decided to take a quick moment to look herself over in the mirror under her visor. She blinked her eyes, smacked her lips. She thought she looked all right. She wouldn’t need to touch up too much before she headed over. She flipped up her visor and continued on.

  Halfway through the intersection a small black hatchback tore through just feet in front of her. Her foot barely found the brake and she slammed it with just the edge of her shoe. Instinctively her hand made a fist against the horn and it bleated like an insect. She caught a glimpse of the single driver inside the vehicle, a teen boy on his phone. He turned to her in that millisecond, wearing a dopey grin on his face, amused at his phone call, apparently. Then the black car raced onward without a care in the world.

  “Oh my God!” she screamed. She said it again, more bewildered than before, gesturing at the car like she were pointing the outrageousness out to someone else. “Oh my God!”

  Planning to go straight, she hung a left instead and followed. She adjusted her seatbelt over her chest, where her heart throbbed almost painfully. She stepped on the gas, pulled back in her seat by the acceleration. Her car growled in pursuit. Up ahead she saw the car’s taillights flash. It took a right. She did the same.

  On the next street, she sped until she was caught up. She drove close, closer than she knew she should. She rolled her window down, arrowed a finger over the roof of her car, as though such a signal would convince the teen to pull over for her. He didn’t, of course. He probably didn’t even notice, but she wanted to believe he did. He ignored her. He didn’t care about her or anything else. He was a moron, child or not. Selfish.

  He’s not a child. Not a child at all.

  She followed him another mile. He turned left, so did she. He turned right, so did she. Eventually he did pull over. It was a park. There was a children’s playground, empty. Next to that was what looked like a skate park, with large concrete bowls and straight rails between them. Across the street was a small library. Catherine parked her car behind his. She wrestled with her seat belt, eyes flitting up to watch the boy get out of his car. He looked at her, saw her. He wasn’t smiling. He scowled, confused—annoyed. Finally she got her seat belt off and jumped out of her car. The evening air felt good in her overworked lungs.

  “Hey!” she called after him, his back to her as he made his way up the curb toward the park, a skateboard in his hand. He didn’t turn to see her. “Hey! I’m talking to you!” />
  There were two other boys already skating, to whom he seemed to be making his way toward. He looked over his shoulder once and they met eyes, but he didn’t stop.

  “Yeah! I’m talking to you! Stop!”

  He stopped. His shoulders sagged. She was an inconvenience to him. She might embarrass him in front of his friends. She wanted to, too. He deserved much worse than that.

  “You’re going to get someone killed!” she yelled. “You know that?”

  He didn’t say anything. One of his waiting friends finally saw them, was standing far off watching. Curious.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the boy said. He looked over his shoulder at his friends, and he smiled at them, but Catherine knew it was an act. He was scared. He was nervous. She knew the feeling.

  “Do you know you nearly killed us both back there?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “You did. You almost got us both killed. You didn’t even stop.”

  He shrugged again. “I thought I did. Sorry.”

  “No you’re not.” She was shaking. She couldn’t keep her voice still—pitchy and wobbly. “You don’t give two shits!”

  He was old enough to drive—had probably heard much worse on a regular basis—but hearing her say it, a strange lady well into her forties, his face changed, lost its composure. This lady is nuts, that face said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “On your phone, not paying attention at all. What if…” Her voice was trembling uncontrollably, to the point she almost couldn’t speak. Hot coals burned behind her eyes, and a hard lump rose into her throat. “What if you k-killed someone back there? Hmmm? One of these days…”

  His friends came and joined him, stood a small ways behind him.

  “What’s going on?” one of them whispered.

  “Your friend here is driving like a sociopath!” Catherine said. She swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to get her voice back in order. “There are other people on these roads besides you. You’re no more invincible than they are, and you’re going to hurt someone one of these days. Yourself included.”

  “It was an accident,” he said, raising his voice a little. “I said I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t going to cut it when someone’s…” she paused, felt the lump rising again. The hot coals burned brighter, and for a moment she couldn’t see any of them through the tears in her eyes. She blinked them down her cheeks, wiped them away quickly with her hand. But it was already started and she couldn’t slow it down. “When there’s someone’s little boy or girl out in the road and you’re going too fast… not paying attention… not… just going through intersections like that…”

  They were all silent.

  “Do you want to be a murderer?” She turned and gestured to the road behind them, at their vehicles parked at the curb. “Do you want to kill someone?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you driving like a… fuckhead!” One of the friends laughed, quietly. She swallowed down the lump. “What’s your name? Tell me your name.”

  The boy only shook his head.

  “Where are your parents? I want their phone number.”

  He exchanged another amused look with his friends, but he couldn’t hide the discomfort in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry if I cut you off,” he said. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”

  “I want to talk to your parents.”

  Suddenly one of the friends stepped forward.

  “Aren’t you a teacher?” he asked. His voice was high and whiny compared to the other. “Don’t you teach at the junior high?”

  The three boys began murmuring between each other. Catherine’s head had started to ache at some point, and she noticed it now—a dull throb through each of her temples. She looked back at their cars. Someone was leaving the library across the street. Another car came and parked farther down the street closer to the children’s playground. The sky was a bright blue, which hurt her eyes to stare into. When she returned her attention to them they were laughing to each other, and the first boy shot her fleeting glances as they chattered secretively. Her face flushed.

  “I’ll find out who you are,” she said, but her voice betrayed her. It was light and small. “I’ll see you at school. Don’t…” She took a deep breath. “Don’t think you’ve gotten away with anything.”

  She turned her back on them and started back for her car. She massaged one of her temples. She felt so tired…

  When she got back in her car they were already back to their skating. The first boy watched the others, and he looked over his shoulder at her repeatedly with a smile. If her head hadn’t started aching she might have felt angrier at that, but she didn’t. She just wanted to go home.

  She pulled away from the curb and headed there.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  She called Beth and cancelled.

  She made another smoothie and took it, along with a glass of water, into the basement. It was getting easier to feed him. He didn’t choke like he had at first. She made far less of a mess. Each time she finished she sat with him for a while—not so much with him, exactly, but rather a few feet across from him, studying him. He responded to the smoothies, drank them down greedily, but outside of that he wasn’t with her at all. He didn’t move in his sleep. He made no sounds. For everything Rosaline had promised, he never talked in his sleep—cried out, whimpered, or showed the faintest hint of fear or torment. If not for the color in his cheeks and the warmth of his skin and the breath from his nostrils, Catherine would have thought him dead.

  He should be dead.

  She wanted him dead, and at the same time she was terribly afraid to make him so. Should he die, she could go back to her life like nothing happened, like he never was. She could carry on with the rest of it. Have closure…

  Before she headed up she turned him onto his side, readjusted the pillow beneath his head, and pulled the comforter tighter around his shoulders.

  She turned off the light and carried the glasses with her up the stairs, left him in the dark alone, feet heavy with weariness, her head with troubled thoughts.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was Friday, lunchtime. Catherine warmed her homemade meal in the teacher’s lounge—it was one of those microwaveable, low-fat freezer meals, only she cooked it at home and put it in a plastic food container for appearance’s sake—and took it back to her classroom to eat in private without the threat of conversation.

  Halfway through eating her meal, a lost-looking woman entered her classroom. Catherine saw her first, and when the woman’s eyes finally found her, eating at her desk, the lost expression hardened into something which made Catherine squeeze her fork uncomfortably tight.

  “Excuse me,” the woman said. She walked to the middle of the open classroom, less than half the floor taken by rows of single chairs. She stopped there. “You’re Mrs. Blake, the music teacher?”

  Catherine set her fork into the container. “I am.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “My son attends this school. I believe you had words with him a couple days ago, off campus.”

  As her heart started to pound and the blood drained from her face, she shook her head and tried to furrow her brow confusedly as best she could.

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.” She smiled, friendly and attentive—but feared she looked like neither of those things.

  The woman shook her head as well.

  “You did. You met my son a couple days ago after school let out. Nearly drove him off the road, from what I understand.”

  Catherine hesitated. Torn between arguing the falsehood or continuing to deny it altogether, she settled for the least aggressive—more evasive.

  “I’m sorry?” she said, shook her head a second time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  The woman grinned, arms folded, a
nd Catherine felt immediate regret. She’d lied outright, and this woman was prepared to not only reveal it, but to rub her nose in it, too. She took a step toward the classroom door and called for her son, who waited in the hall. Catherine buried her face in her hands at the sight of him.

  “So you do recognize him, then.”

  It was the same boy, all right. He came and stood not quite with his mother, a few paces behind, hands in his pockets. His mother asked him if Catherine was the woman in question and he confirmed she was.

  “Your son was an accident waiting to happen,” Catherine blurted. She remained seated at her desk. She felt so cornered. She talked with her hands and they trembled. “He nearly hit me at an intersection, didn’t even stop. If he keeps driving—”

  “He’s a teenage boy,” the mother said, and her voice was full to the brim with authority, with passion, with confidence. This wasn’t her first sword-and-shield dance in the name of protecting her precious offspring. “They’re stupid, that’s a fact. But for you to come after him the way you did, following him for miles like a raging lunatic, was not only completely irresponsible, but just as careless and dangerous as anything he might be guilty of, and that’s unacceptable. You’re an adult.”

  Catherine’s cheeks were burning. From embarrassment or outrage, it was difficult to say.

  “Don’t come in here and tell me—”

  “You should know better,” the mother interrupted. “It… astounds me, that someone as impulsive and thoughtless as you is here teaching at my children’s school.”

  “What about your son?” Catherine said, gesturing to him desperately. “How can you think it’s okay for—”

  “I will handle my son,” she interrupted again. “I’m his mother, not you. Don’t you worry about that.”

  “I am worried about that!” Catherine stood from her desk. “When exactly can we expect you to teach your son the consequences of his behavior? After he’s already killed someone?”