UnCatholic Conduct

by Stevie Mikayne

  “Buck, I appreciate your concern,” Jess said. “And, Julia, I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

  “Surely you don’t agree that she should be allowed to teach this?” Buck spluttered. “It’s heathenism. This is a Catholic school!”

  “Yes, thank you,” Jess said icily. “I am well aware of this school’s Catholic roots. I am also well aware of the church’s position on Goddess religions. It’s the same as its position on Buddhism, Sikkhism, Islam, and Judaism. Thou shalt not worship false gods. According to the Bible, all religions are created equal—equally wrong.”

  “But at least they’re all practiced today.”

  “This isn’t a Twenty-first Century World Religions class,” Jil exploded. “What’s wrong with educating the students about things that were important to the ancient Celts? Things that shaped their own futures as Christians?”

  “Christianity does actually have a lot in common with Paganism, Buck,” Jess said reasonably. “Isn’t it fair to let the students explore those links for themselves?”

  “She told them Christ was born in April!” Buck roared. “Where the hell did you get that?” His face was flushed, and he banged his hand down with emphasis on each word.

  Jil lifted her head. “Some researchers believe that Christ’s actual birthday fell in the spring. Christmas was purposely placed in December to overshadow the Winter Solstice, in order to get the Pagans to convert to Christianity.”

  “She’s been reading the DaVinci Code,” Buck spat.

  Jil sighed. “Paganism was around a long time before Dan Brown.”

  “You’re just going to let her dig this hole?” Buck demanded.

  Jess sighed. “Buck, Julia is the teacher of the class. It is up to her to decide what units to teach and how.”

  “I’m the department head. She’s supposed to follow the curriculum! Shouldn’t she at least run these ‘additions’ by me?”

  “Perhaps if you were more open-minded, I would!”

  Buck rolled his eyes. “So, I hear Satanism is big nowadays. How about having a go at that?”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Jess interrupted. “Ms. Kinness, I want a unit outline on my desk by noon. Mr. Weekly, I will review the content and let you know my decision.”

  Buck stood and wrenched open the door. He composed himself, seemingly with effort, and strode through the front office, grimacing at everyone as he passed.

  Jil stood up. “Thank you for considering it,” she said tensely.

  Jess, already standing, reached behind her and closed the door. She faced her squarely, not flinching from her gaze. “Don’t ever put me in that position again. I need to know what you’re doing in that class every single day. Otherwise Buck Weekly will have every parent in the school calling for your resignation, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.”

  She wrenched open the door and stood aside.

  *

  The next morning, Jil woke to the sound of Zeus puking on her bedroom floor. She leaped out of bed and hauled him down the three flights of stairs to the common backyard, where he finished retching in the snow. She shivered outside in her pajamas while he did his business, then brought him on the elevator back up to her loft. En route to finding a bucket, a shammy, and some pet deodorizer, she stepped in a cold, wet puddle.

  “Oh, Christ!” she yelled, lifting her foot from the pile of vomit she’d stepped in. Gagging and holding her foot up so as not to spread the mess, she hobbled to the en suite and lifted her foot into the sink, trying not to topple over as she rinsed the puke off.

  By the time she’d cleaned the mess, she was twenty minutes late. She hurriedly shampooed her hair, and managed to cut herself only three times with a razor. Bleeding and stinging, she toweled off and pressed a Kleenex to her nicked skin. No time for contact lenses this morning. She shoved her glasses on, dabbed a little moisturizer on her face, and trekked to the closet. She realized she’d forgotten to do the ironing last night. She had no pressed pants to wear, and it was definitely not dress-down Friday.

  “Shit.” She had absolutely nothing but jeans, and a black skirt that she reserved for funerals.

  Sighing, she wrenched on black lingerie, black pantyhose, and her black skirt. “I look like I’m going to a fucking wake,” she muttered to herself. From the kitchen came Zeus’s thunderous bark.

  Jil abandoned her makeup and dashed through her bedroom door, sure he was alerting her to an intruder. He stood, watching her plaintively, almost smiling. She scratched his head. “Sorry you’re sick,” she muttered. He whined. And then puked on her feet.

  By the time Jil got to school, “O Canada” had been sung and the morning prayer had been prayed. She dumped her stuff in her office and banana-clipped her hair, which, not surprisingly, had chosen this day to be completely unmanageable. Taking one last look in the mirror and discovering poppy seeds in her teeth from her drive-thru bagel, Jil exhaled in disgust. What the hell had happened to her? She used to be so together, so organized. She actually looked like a harried schoolteacher this morning—and not on purpose. What would Padraig think of her?

  With determination, she gritted her teeth and mentally started the morning over. She hated skirts of any kind. And more to the point, she hated nylons. But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She was going to prepare for this morning’s class and then sit in the staff room having coffee. She needed to check three more names off her list this week, and she knew just the person to chat with.

  “Hey,” she greeted Rosie McMonahan. The gym teacher grinned and brought her power bar over to the couch where Jil was sitting.

  “How’s it going?” she asked in a hushed voice. Why did she look concerned? Sheepish even?

  “Okay. Why?”

  “I heard you had a run-in with Buck,” Rosie said sympathetically. “I’m so sorry. I know what a hard-ass he can be.”

  Jil sat up straighter. Usually people acted like Buck was King Midas himself.

  “He was certainly in his glory yesterday,” Jil replied. She didn’t ask how Rosie had heard. News traveled as fast as people’s feet in this school. And they had got into it in the middle of the atrium. At least half a dozen students and staff had seen them following Jess into her office.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Rosie said. “He does that to everybody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a real control freak,” Rosie said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Last semester, Holly wanted to take the kids on a trip to the museum.”

  “Holly Barnes?”

  “Yeah. The one whose classes you have.”

  “Okay. The museum sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah, it does. Right? Well, Buck told Holly that it was too risky to take the kids on a field trip in the winter, especially since there was only one of her and about thirty kids. Holly said that she’d ask around and see if anyone wanted to go along. Buck said he didn’t think it was a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  Rosie shrugged and looked over her shoulder before continuing. “Holly didn’t know either. But she didn’t push it.”

  “Why does everyone let him get away with that stuff?” Jil asked.

  Rosie just smiled and sighed. “I don’t know. He’s a real prick. I guess people are afraid of him. Anyway, the next week, Buck went to Jess and told her he thought Holly should be doing more with her kids. He told her he’d suggested a field trip to the museum and that Holly had refused to take them.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Yeah, it gets better. So Buck makes this huge public show of ‘helping Holly out.’ He organizes the trip, calls the museum, and tells everybody who will listen that he’s going on this trip so that Holly doesn’t have to take her kids alone. Then, on the day of the trip, the kids are all waiting outside, and the buses don’t show up.”

  “Did he forget to order them?”

  “Oh, no. He says, in front of everybody, to Holly, ‘Didn’t you confirm the buses yesterday?’”r />
  “What?”

  “Yeah. And then Holly goes ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to. You didn’t say anything.’ So Buck is all polite and respectful, meanwhile making accusations left, right, and center.”

  “So they didn’t get to go?”

  “No. And then Buck goes to Jess and tells her that Holly screwed up the buses and Holly’s banned from taking field trips for the rest of the year.”

  “Oh my God.” Jil shook her head.

  Rosie’s eyes glinted, and she nodded slowly. “There’s one more thing,” she whispered.

  Jil leaned in. This was the stuff investigations were made of.

  “I didn’t know you well enough before, but now I know I can trust you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know how Holly’s off this semester?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They said she was in a car accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was, but she wasn’t hurt.”

  “What do you mean? Jess said she’d ruptured her spleen and had to be off for medical reasons.”

  Rosie shook her head. “That’s what she told them. But there’s not a scratch on her. A bit of whiplash, but that’s it. Cleared up almost right away.”

  “Why is she off?”

  They were so close their heads were almost touching. “Stress leave,” Rosie whispered. “She was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Her doctor wrote her a note to get her off until after Christmas, but I doubt she’ll be back.”

  “Why stress leave?”

  “Wouldn’t you go on stress leave working with him?” Rosie asked pointedly.

  Jil nodded.

  “If everyone weren’t so afraid he’d go off the deep end again, someone might actually say something to the guy.”

  “Go off the deep end again?”

  “Yeah, back to the loony bin?”

  “He’s actually been to the mental hospital?”

  Rosie arched her eyebrows. “More than once. Why do you think everyone tiptoes around him?”

  Jil exhaled slowly. Wow.

  “Oh,” Rosie said, looking at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”

  “No problem. See you.” Jil sat nursing her coffee for a long moment after Rosie had left. Glancing at the clock, she realized she still had half an hour before next period, and a lot more sleuthing to do. Tucking that information about Holly in the back of her mind to revisit later, she walked over to the next table. With her widest smile on, she extended her hand.

  “Hi, I’m Julia. I don’t believe we’ve met…”

  When Jil saw Jessica in the hallway, they acknowledged each other with a nod and a small wave. That was all for the entire day. And as she proceeded to her office against the thronging crowd, trying to maneuver her way through students with a cup of coffee in her hand, she saw Bex talking to a tall blond guy with a white T-shirt on.

  Bex didn’t meet her eye. In fact, she seemed to be deliberately avoiding looking at her. She didn’t report to class that morning. And later, in the cafeteria, when four strides would have brought them into speaking distance, she deliberately turned and walked out the other door.

  *

  The next morning, Jess was standing in the atrium when Jil got to school. She looked like she hadn’t slept well. Jil was going to head straight to her office to take off her things, but found she couldn’t walk by without at least saying hello. She hadn’t slept well herself.

  “I’m sorry,” Jil said quietly, carefully avoiding any contact.

  Dark circles rimmed Jess’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “I am too. I’m sorry Buck is being so hard on you.”

  “I’m trying to understand him,” Jil said. “Truly I am. But we have such different points of view.”

  “I know.”

  Students brushed past and doffed their hats and iPods when they saw her. She nodded good morning then looked away.

  “Okay,” Jil said, heading off again. “I’ll see you later.”

  “My office. First period?”

  Jil smiled. “Sure.”

  Jess had the side door unlocked, waiting. The blinds were tilted down and the curtain on the glass window beside the door was drawn.

  “Jess, we need to stop seeing each other,” Jil muttered as the door closed behind her. “This is too hard.” She deliberately didn’t look her in the face. She didn’t want to see the hurt or disappointment or misunderstanding that she always caused when she opened her mouth on the subject of relationships. Deliberately, she concentrated on the steel toe of her black high-heeled pump—the only pair of shoes she’d found that blended her need for professionalism with her own personal style.

  If she ever set off a metal detector, she could blame it on her shoes, the toe and stiletto of which gleamed silver in the dullest of lights.

  “I thought you would say that,” Jess said softly. She perched on the side of her wide oak desk, folding her hands in her lap. “I don’t blame you at all. It’s too risky. It’s not worth it for you. I understand.” She smiled wanly, but her eyes revealed how much Jil’s words had hurt.

  “Jess, you’re worth everything,” Jil murmured, crossing the space between them in two long strides, and taking Jess’s delicate face in her hands. “You’re beautiful and perfect, and I would happily be fired for you. But you’ve worked hard to get to where you are, and being with me could ruin it.”

  “It could,” Jess whispered. “It absolutely could. But I want you. I want you more than I’ve wanted anyone in my life.”

  Jil stared at her, more surprised than she’d ever been. Jess wanted her? Even knowing what it could do to her career?

  She kissed Jil’s palm then rested it against her face.

  “You haven’t thought this through. You have to consider the consequences.”

  “I have.” Jess pulled Jil in, locking her in a long, slow kiss. She pulled away. “What the hell am I going to do when I’m sixty? Retire with my glass-blown apple to talk to at night? I will have sacrificed my whole life for something and be totally alone in the end.”

  “Jess, slow down,” Jil said gently. “Don’t throw away everything you’ve worked for.”

  “I’m not.” Her tone was completely matter-of-fact. “I’m not taking out a billboard, and I know you aren’t either. Let’s just take this one day at a time and see what happens.”

  Jil felt her heart race, her pulse speed up almost to the point where she felt dizzy. Jess had obviously given this a great deal of thought. More than she had herself. Emotions surged through her, and she kissed Jess back, deeply, wanting to taste her lips, her tongue, her soul.

  Wrong! Her brain screamed. Stop! But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even want to stop. No. She wanted to keep going and going and going until she and Jess were on a plane, riding away from this whole fucking mess, never looking back. The kiss went on forever, as Jess wound her hands through Jil’s hair, tears streaming down her face. They fell noiselessly against the cement wall next to the hidden door, kissing and touching—reading each other’s faces.

  Jil closed her eyes to the secret she couldn’t share, promising herself that she would find a way out of it, somehow.

  Jess traced her finger along Jil’s hairline, outlining her eyes, her nose. “I want you,” she whispered.

  “Here?”

  “Please.”

  “Is the door locked?”

  “They both are.”

  Jil’s eyes went to the exit, scoping out the room, even as she reached up and slowly undid the buttons on Jess’s shirt. Jess let her, moaning softly from that slight touch, and Jil saw the desire in her eyes. She peeled her shirt open to reveal Jess’s hard nipples. “You’re not wearing a bra,” she said, her jaw dropping.

  Jess grinned. “Sometimes I feel a little rebellious in the morning.”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “Often enough.”

  Jil captured one ripe pebble between her lips and pushed Jess gently back so she was half-sitting on the de
sk. “You’re sure you want to do this now?”

  “I want to be fully awake this time,” Jess answered.

  Jil’s mouth worked around Jess’s lips, her neck, her breasts. Tiny goose bumps flashed across Jess’s collarbone in the wake of her hot breath, and Jess shivered, her legs wrapped around Jil’s thighs, holding her close.

  In one breathless motion, Jess firmly took Jil’s hand and guided it to the waistband of her dress pants, fitting it snugly inside.

  Jil took the hint and slid her hand in all the way.

  Jess moaned softly, leaning back as Jil’s fingers found the place that made her melt.

  Jil kissed her to silence the noise and whispered gently in Jess’s ear to be quiet, for God’s sake.

  Jess breathed hard, but quietly, as Jil slid her hand up and down in the slick space. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip, but Jil didn’t stop. She stroked Jess’s throbbing nub until she bucked upward and clamped her legs shut, letting out a gasp that made Jil’s groin throb.

  “Good God,” Jess said when she’d recovered. She slid down off the desk and pushed Jil into a chair.

  Just then, her phone rang. Jess looked at it, then back to Jil.

  Jil laughed. “Never mind. We can finish this later.” And she slid out the side door as Jess picked up her phone.

  “This is Jessica Blake.”

  *

  Jil found a blue slip of paper in her mailbox that morning. She smiled a little, wondering if perhaps she’d been gifted with her first infraction for an untidy office. She left it folded and gathered up the rest of the mail: a copy of this week’s announcements, a flyer advertising a bake sale to support the breakfast program, and a little handwritten card with an envelope.

  Back in her office, she threw away the announcements and the flyer and peeled open the card.

  Dear Ms. Kinness,

  Thank you for our enlightening chat. I enjoyed speaking with you. Please come again anytime.

  Maggie Reitman.

  Jil smiled and tucked the card back in the envelope, pinning it to her corkboard as a reminder that she had at least one friend in this increasingly disturbing environment. Then she unfolded the blue slip, and the smile vanished from her face.