by Gurley, Jan
Tapping the shoulders of the packed Greenbacks behind me, was Tio’s (real) dad.
***
“Uh.”
In unison, Phoebe, Helena, Viola, Alex, and Robin all turned to face him. Then we all took a synchronized giant step back, creating a three-body deep, two-body wide barricade. We knew who he was. We’d seen Mr. Vincent before at Tio’s house a few months back for a Friday-night hangout.
“Hi, Mr. Vincent,” I said, my voice thin from the pressure of the group and the stress of the last few hours. I felt the wood door behind me settle and then creak in its frame. “What are, what are you doing here?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I found a call on my cell from the Dean’s office, asking me to come in.” He eyed all of us. “Is this something about that club you’re all in? Are you in trouble?”
“Um. See. Well.” My brain flopped and twisted, unable to find an escape. I tried so hard to force something out that I’m pretty sure thought-blisters swelled and popped under my skull. “We could all go…” (yes, going was a good idea!) “and show you…the thing…the thing” (what thing could we show him?). “The thing that we’re--” That’s when I remembered the trees being cut down, the burst of redwood splinters showering a burgundy red spray, and my voice creaked like the door behind me. I stopped, cleared my voice and tried again, saying, “We could…see the place…we tried to save…”
Mr. Vincent said, his voice low and soft, “Kate, are you okay?”
I didn’t expect the door to give way behind me. There was only one more warning creak, then air where there had been solid wood. For a heartbeat of time I thought that, without Tio there to tell me to put my head between my knees, I’d actually swooned. My stomach did a swing and I went flying the way you jump off at the height of a swing on a play ground, and I stumbled back, crashing into a chair and toppling it.
A chair that held Gremio.
Okay, slipping and sliding off the pork-product smell of rubbery Gremio is a memory I intend to suppress for the rest of my life. Even as I tried to find my footing, I hoped I’d have traumatic amnesia. Otherwise I knew I’d have to scoop out my frontal lobes and sterilize them.
When I sizzled to my feet, my crinoline reeking of rancid oinker, I shoved with one hand my hair up out of my face and with the other hand my skirt down in back. Greenbacks staggered around the room and Dean Verona said, while glaring at us over her bifocals, “May I help you?” in a demanding way to Mr. Vincent, the only one stationary in the doorway.
Mr. Vincent blinked at the sight of his son in a chair, and Mr. Gremio flopping limp as bacon on the floor.
“Uh. Hi. Dad,” said Tio.
Dean Verona zapped Tio and then turned and zapped me with a neon-crackling look and I froze, my right eye twitching.
I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, but before anything came out, the doorway behind Mr. Vincent filled with a crowd of people (Celia, Bianca, Gonzo, Mrs. Bullard, and even Curtis and Nate). The pushing to get a look (mostly from Nate and Curtis at the very back) carried Mr. Vincent along with the others into the room.
In the jostling silence, the room’s attention centered on Mr. Vincent, who stood with his arms crossed, staring from Tio to Gremio. “What’s going on?” he said.
Gremio stood, the chair looking like it was trying to crawl away at his feet. Gremio’s clip-on tie had lost its grip in the fall and now hung, unnoticed by its owner, in a particularly unfortunate place.
From his belt.
Gremio crossed his arms, his belly forward in defiance, and said, “I’m in charge of Tio. Here. Now.”
Dean Verona said, “Kate! I know you know this family and I asked you to verify this man. Explain to me exactly what is the meaning of this?”
I said, my voice rising with hope, “Alternative families?”
As the meaning of my words detonated around the room, I heard gasps and then, “No!” from Gonzo.
“What?!” from Mr. Vincent, and “NO!” bellowed Tio.
I feared, for a moment, from the look that flickered across his face, that Tio might claw his own eyes out.
Gremio said, eyeing Mr. Vincent, “I don’t think so. He’s not really my type.”
A collective gasp sucked the air from the room.
Mr. Vincent said, “Was I really asked to come to the school to explain my sexual orientation?”
“NO.” shouted Tio, even louder. He shot me a death-glare. “Mom will kill me.”
Gremio said, equally matter-of-fact as he righted the chair and sat in it, his tie now neatly tucked into his crotch, “Besides, I’m straight. Just ask my wife.”
My ears popped with the second vacuum-gasp. Gremio gay?! Gremio married?! Gremio and sex of any kind?! It was just too painful for any of us to think about.
“And I’m straight. Too.” Mr. Vincent’s volume dialed up. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it. With being straight. Or not-straight. Not that one’s a better thing. I mean, it’s okay to not be into my type. I mean, for me to not be some guy’s type, or anyone’s type, or to be their type, for that matter…”
Thank God he stopped talking.
At least now I know where Tio gets it from.
All the eyes in the room were tractor-beam locked onto Mr. Vincent. He’s really tall — two or three inches taller than Drew, with an athlete’s wide shoulders and a scholar’s slouch. He’s got salt-and-pepper gray hair at his temples and from his square jaw to his angled cheekbones, his face was deep-red.
Dean Verona eyed Mr. Vincent, then Gremio, then Tio.
I knew what she was thinking — that neither of the men resembled Tiny Tio. But Bianca, at my left, darted her gaze from Mr. Vincent to Tio, noticing, it seemed for the first time, Tio’s elongated arms and legs, and his massive tennis-shoed feet. I heard Bianca say in a loud voice, “Oh my God. He’s going to be HUGE.” Bianca’s first syllable was enough to cattle-prod Mrs. Bullard into bellowing action, like she’d barely been able to wait this long. “My daughter has been subjected to a fraudulent tutor on school grounds! I discovered Bianca’s been writing…” At the same exact moment, Mr. Vincent seemed to snap, and he barked, “I don’t even know why I’m here!” Then Mrs. Bullard whipped out lined school paper covered with hearts and doodles and a few notes on it, shouting “love notes and other inappropriate messages to someone named…” Mr. Vincent bellowed, “Why are we all shouting?!” and it was like Mrs. Bullard announced the guilty culprit in a game of Clue, “Luke! In the Tutoring Hall! Right here on campus!”
Dean Verona rapped her desk with a statue. It shocked everyone into silence, for a moment.
“Mooo-oom,” said Bianca, and slapped her palm over her forehead. The naked embarrassment in Bianca’s voice made every girl in the room cringe. When it comes to mothers, we knew the feeling, but none of us had ever had a mother go so far as to wave our secret notebook love-doodles in front of the entire school administration.
Tio stepped forward and said, his hands shoved in his front pockets, “Um. Mrs. Bullard?”
“Yes? You’re the young man who’s supposed to be her tutor! I’ll get to you in a minute.”
Dean Verona rapped the statue on her desk again with a tunk, but didn’t remove her hand from it. The Oscar-sized metal shape had a rusted dent on the head. Probably from being used for this purpose for many years.
Dean Verona peered over her bifocals at Gremio. She stared at him with a look that promised all kinds of violence. And detention. “And you are?” she asked in a torturer’s voice.
Gremio said, “Tio’s dad.”
Before the room could erupt again, the forehead of the statue took another pounding. In the silence, Dean Verona turned to Mr. Vincent, “And you are?” she said in a voice full of steel.
Mr. Vincent crossed his arms, his jaw set. “I’m Luke’s father.”
“Neat,” Viola’s voice rang out from the back, “like Star Wars!”
The room chuckled and even Dean Verona seemed to relax a bit, like she, at last,
saw where the confusion came from: two dads + two different boy names = mixed up meetings. But then Nate’s voice from my right said, “See. I told you Bianca’s boy-crazy.”
Tio said, his fist clenched at his side, “Listen, jerk-off, I’m Luke.”
I would say there were double-takes around the room, but really they were quadruple takes. From Tio/Luke to Gremio, to Mr. Vincent to Tio/Luke. And back again with the name of Tio/Luke mentally swapped.
Dean Verona honed in on the one person whose head wasn’t swiveling in confusion. She held the statue out, pointing the dented metal head at me like a sword. “Kate,” she growled, and I could hear the expulsion in her voice.
“Um. Well. Yes.” I said, “The thing is, part of this is easy to explain.”
“Explain.”
“Tio’s name is Lucentio. Which means he got called,” I left out the Tiny part, “Tio in elementary school. But, clearly, his family calls him--”
“--Luke,” said Mr. Vincent.
Nate said, “You knew! You little twerp!”
Tio/Luke said, glaring back at Nate, “I found out when you did that maybe Bianca liked me. And then right after that you two bozos ruined…” his voice trailed off as Tio/Luke realized he almost spat out the fact that Nate and Curtis were the ones to expose the tutoring forgery.
Nate turned and stomped to the back area of the room, and Phoebe, standing next to him, said, “Nice eyeliner, Nate.”
Dean Verona said, “You are, in fact, precise, Kate, in saying you’d explain only part of the problem. I’m waiting for an explanation for the rest.”
That’s when Dean Padua said from the still-open doorway, “Knock, knock. Eileen, am I late?” His voice had an oiliness to it. He sidled into the room next to Mrs. Bullard.
Mrs. Bullard still hadn’t recovered from the Luke shock, but Dean Verona saw an opportunity when it arrived. Dean Verona (ignoring Dean Padua, like the rest of the room) pinned Gremio with a glare. “You claim you’re Tio’s father. As Tio’s father, you should know that this young man forged your signature.”
“He did?” Gremio looked genuinely baffled. Then he startled and puffed out his chest, his chin tucked next to his one up-pointing collar. “No he didn’t. I signed it.”
Dean Verona looked down at a golden-rod colored page. “With a daisy dotting your i?”
Gremio blanched, going as pale and clammy as chilled hotdog flesh. He glanced around the room in a growing semi-panic.
“Okay, some things I’ll pretend I’m capable of. But I don’t do that,” Gremio said, hands twisting the end of his waist-dangling tie.
Bianca rolled her eyes and dug in her front pocket. She took out a fuschia piece of paper. “Look, no one forged anything. Take a look at this. It’s MY tutoring form. The one that goes as a pair with Luke’s. I mean Tio’s. See? One student has to have a parent’s approval (with a qualifying grade level over the cut-off), and the other student just needs contact information. No one needs a parent’s permission to GET tutoring, just to BE a tutor.”
Dean Verona stared from one form to the other. “But these are the wrong color forms.”
“So?” said Bianca, “See at the top? I scratched out the title and wrote in the correct one on each of them when I turned them in. One is a tutor and one is being tutored.” She smiled sweetly, “Do you expel students in Academy for using the wrong colors?”
“Um. Well. I see. Looks like the papers are in order, just the wrong color.” Dean Verona tapped her forefinger against her chin and peered at Bianca through bifocals. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been tutoring Tio, I mean, Luke, all this time?”
Mr. Vincent now had a shoulder leaned against the wall behind him, a smile on his face.
Mrs. Bullard turned and said to me, her voice low and ominous, “That wasn’t our agreement, Kate, now was it?”
I said, my mouth dry, “But Mrs. Bullard, educational theory states that people learn best when they’re sharing information. Bianca told me that Tio’s best in her worst subjects, and she’s best in Tio’s worst.”
Bianca blushed as delicate pink. “I did get an A+ on my Romeo and Juliet paper.”
Mrs. Bullard eyed Tio, his thick low-rider jeans and his too-big forehead, “You expect me to believe this…boy…is good at English?”
I could see Mr. Vincent straighten at the edge of the room, but he didn’t say a word. He let Tio answer.
Tio turned, looked at Mrs. Bullard and said, sullenly, “’I am no breeching scholar in the schools. I’ll not be tied to hours, nor appointed times, but learn my lessons as I please myself.’”
Mrs. Bullard looked offended, until Dean Verona said, her voice dry as parchment, “That’s Shakespeare, Eileen. Not an insult.” There was a pause, then Dean Verona added under her breath, picking up the statue and looking at it, “Of course, being Shakespeare, it’s probably also an insult.”
Mrs. Bullard whipped back to Bianca, “And you claim you’ve been teaching too?”
Bianca smiled even more sweetly. “Sure.” She turned and faced the packed crowd. “Did you learn anything?”
Tio, said, “Oh yeah.” Then Curtis and Nate blurted, “Boy, did we,” and “I’ll say.”
Mrs. Bullard narrowed her eyes at Bianca and barked, “We’ll discuss this later. I think we can move on.”
Dean Padua looked confused, “But Eileen, there have been irregularities.”
Mrs. Bullard impaled him with a glare and his voice deflated to nothing. “That’s Mrs. Bullard to you,” she said.
Dean Verona raised her eyebrows at Gremio. “So you aren’t Tio’s…?”
Gremio couldn’t meet her gaze, but hunched his shoulders, his chest sinking in like a falling soufflé. He gave a short jerk of the head no.
“Does that also mean you’re not married?”
Another jerk of the head no, his body sinking so far into itself that his kneecaps pressed together.
“And you’re how old?”
His elbows sunk into his sides, his hands pressed between his thighs with his belt-tugging tie. He practically whispered the words, all ears in the room straining forward, “Twenty-one.”
The silence was so profound, you could hear the murmur of a distant class through the thin office walls. Gremio was 21 going on geriatric.
Dean Verona put her shoulders back, like she needed to square herself for this next part. She narrowed her eyes and made a vague gesture toward Mr. Vincent. “And you two are not…”
“No,” said Mr. Vincent.
Dean Verona gave a shaky laugh, “Forgive me, that’s not an accusation, you understand. Not an implication. Not even an implication of a…a…liaison…per se…”
Thank God she stopped talking.
In the awkward silence, Gonzo blurted, “Deanie, I know just how you feel.” He was impossible to see, buried in the back of the crowd. He may even have been sitting. I imagined him slumped, head in hands.
“Tell me about it!” Celia said, giving a you and me finger wave between herself and Mr. Vincent, who frowned at her, confused.
Dean Verona scanned the back of the room, “Gonzalo?”
Now Gonzo mumbled. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, some things you can’t take back, Dean. Make that Mrs. Dean. I mean, sorry, Dean Verona. Just, you know,” (huge sigh) “sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“We seem to be digressing,” Dean Verona said, her neck mottled with embarrassment.
“Or converging!” Viola said, her voice bouncy as she watched Celia dart secret sideways glances in Gonzo’s direction.
Dean Verona said to Gremio, “The fact is, Mr. Whoever You Are, you came to my office and impersonated a student’s father. For which confusion, I offer my sincerest apologies to the actual father of Lucentio Vincent.”
Mr. Vincent folded his arms. “I appreciate that. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what was going on.” He seemed to be trying hard to look angry, but failing.
“I’ll get to the punishment in a moment. And by punishm
ent, I refer to all those involved. Because — what is your name?”
“Marcus.”
More shocked silence.
“Marcus Gremio.” He added, as if he knew we didn’t believe him.
Dean Verona cleared her voice. Even on such short acquaintance, she was having trouble accepting the name Marcus for the person crumpled in the chair in front of her. “Because, Marcus, you didn’t do this alone, now did you? In fact, without someone’s help, even you and Tio, I mean Luke, the both of you working together couldn’t have gotten in my door.”
Dean Verona placed the statue to the side, and I could see the inscription on a plaque at the bottom. It was indeed a statue of the Bard. She shifted papers on the desk and adjusted her bifocals. “Which brings us to Katharine Baptista. Felony theft of school property, misuse of school accounts, numerous violations of students’ privacy rights, misuse of the school’s internet policies, breaking and entering the boys’ locker room.”
I knew Dean Verona was tough, but it was kind of scary the way her neck sank into her shoulders, her nose wrinkling up into a snarling bulldog position. Even the tweed on the back of her shoulders ruffed up. You don’t mess with Dean Verona’s pod, and here she thought I’d been running an organized crime syndicate.
She kebabbed me with a look so penetrating, I winced. “And, I am to understand from account records, the illegal sale on-campus during break-time of contraband substances.”
Gremio shouted, “I knew it!” Then as all eyes turned to him, he squared his shoulders, his pointed-up collar tapping against his chin, “Kate has all the signs. It’s a sickness. She can’t help herself. I tried to warn her. Over and over I tried. But did she listen? Noooo…”
“Warn her?” Dean Verona narrowed her eyes at Gremio, “About hydrogenated trans fats?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Sank like melting grease back into the chair, muttering. “Oh. Well. At least there’s good money in trans fats, I’ll give her that.”
Dean Verona took off her bifocals and looked at me. Somehow, although I wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible, her stare was worse. Her eyes without her glasses, like my mom’s without make-up, had that soft and vulnerable look, and out of them shone a deep, grieving disappointment with a simmering twinned fury. “Katharine, I have noticed you are capable of championing some of our most, shall we say, at risk students. If I find that you have done so for illegal purposes…” as she spoke, the fury obliterated the disappointment, a kerosene fire of anger that ate up anything soft.
