Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  “Briefcase?” I reply, pointing towards the desk. There is a rising intonation in my voice; as though in need permission to answer his question. I hate myself.

  “By all means,” he says and then forges on. “Good answer, Mr. Wettig, you are correct. The Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. And why do you think that it is with Christopher Columbus that we start our study of American history?”

  I traverse the front of he room to the desk and find the briefcase where I had left it, tucked into the back of the chair well. I pull the chair back, resisting an urge to sit down and let Bulldog Bob sweat at the prospect of having to throw me out of the room kicking and screaming and treating these kids to a front row lesson in civil disobedience.

  “Mr. Barlow. Why Columbus?”

  “‘Cause he basically discovered it.”

  “Good. Christopher Columbus discovered North America. And although he was an Italian explorer sailing for … sailing for … who?”

  “Spain.”

  “Right. Sailing for King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain, Christopher Columbus landed on the island he was to call San Salvador, this speck of land glistening and gleaming out in the Caribbean, and when he did that, little did he know that he was to become our first American hero – hundreds of years before the United States of America was even born. Uh, something else we can do for you there Mr. Johns?”

  I am standing behind the desk, staring at him dumbfounded and his question catches me by surprise. I am relieved that my mouth is closed.

  “Uh, no, thanks,” I say, holding up the briefcase. “I got it.”

  “Good. Have a nice day.”

  I wave reflexively and then jerk my hand violently out of the air in a second thought that is far too late. Principal Bob does not acknowledge the gesture, but smiles slightly to acknowledge its inadvertence.

  “So…you will learn about a lot of American heroes in this class, that’s really the great thing about history; but you have to start with the person who put America on the map in the first place. Because without Columbus, there is no connection between the old Europe and the new Americas. No trade, no development, no settlement, no investment, no growth. The United States as we know it may not even exist. Ladies and gents, you are getting your fine education in the Columbus City School District. We named our city after that man. You see, Christopher Columbus …”

  The door closes, severing the bulldog’s words. I stand in the empty hallway, now more sickened and incredulous than I am angry, wishing that words were a kind of physical appendage and that the act of closing a door in the middle of a sentence was a crude but effective amputation.

  Another explosion of sunlight and I am back outside, making for the faculty parking lot like I am motivated by some high and noble purpose, like I have something urgent and important to do. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. But my gait and my posture lie about this all the way to the car. I am almost able to squeal my tires as I leave, but the engine is not up to it and my crappy little Civic takes its leave politely and in fuel-efficient contrition for any disruption.

  I head west, no idea where I am going, but going there very fast and angrily.

  My first thought is to talk with my parents; which is an instinctive response. My second thought is that my parents will not help matters; which is a learned response.

  I anticipate my mother’s distraction with Tilly’s party, then her over-consumption of concern with what other people will think if my suspension is picked up by the newspapers. Local Teacher, Son of Susan and Hollis Johns (photo at left), Suspended in Connection with Teen’s Disappearance. Thinking in such terms is my mother’s learned response; a byproduct of the shellshock that has so frequently accompanied the flesh-toned visage of my sister in checkout lines beneath coy, unflattering headlines. I will be lectured on the wisdom of going to Billy Rocks in the first place. She will warn me never to take Ben to such places. She will actually ask me if I took Ben to Billy Rocks the night I snuck him out the back window. She will ricochet furiously between being too distracted to give my little worries much genuine attention, to being so overcome with concern about the social fallout from my sudden infamy to offer me any helpful perspective.

  My father, meanwhile, will offer me ample perspective; more than enough to mask his own harsh judgment on the quality of my judgment, failing to do any justice to my emotions at being wrongly accused, suspended and subjected to police inquiry. He will pour a glass of wine and take me down to his study where he can insulate us from the pedestrian worries of my mother. He will display his erudition by placing my current debacle into some cosmic scheme of things. His advice will sound ancient and Eastern and will have a disturbingly psychoanalytic aftertaste. He will show neither anger nor sorrow on my behalf, and he will distinguish his advice from that of my mother by encouraging me to leave the emotional responses to those with undisciplined intellects and shallow temperaments. Worse, he will generously offer to underwrite my life – again – if I decide to get out of teaching altogether and try something else, preferably in the area of finance or law; anything that will test what he imagines is my true albeit squandered potential.

  No, I think to myself. It is enough that I am unmarried and childless; that I do not golf or fish; that I am indifferent to the caliber of company that he keeps; that I am unmoved by his dabbling enthusiasm for the esoteric; that I have no investments, no savings and a constitutional antipathy for a balanced checkbook; that I am a lowly high school history teacher, driving a crappy car and living in a crappy condominium that he paid for in exchange for a note I have never honored and that he knew I would never honor. All of that is enough. Hollis Johns does not need yet another opportunity to restrain the swell of disappointment in his eldest child.

  There is a half-hour of aimless driving – circles within circles, worries within worries, anger emerging from confusion and slipping sideways into incredulity – before I decide to go to consult with my union representative.

  I have only been to union headquarters once and I have to search, winding around the city without much of a clue except for a vague edificial picture in my head. I am using all of my windows, looking for anything that might trigger a directional memory. I am like a child lost at the county fair, looking up at the faces of tall strangers.

  It seems that people are staring. They look at me as I pass like they know the answers I do not. Like everyone but me knows that I am a danger to society. As though Principal Bob had traveled these streets just moments before with a bullhorn.

  A police car is two cars behind and I fleetingly wonder if I am being followed. I think of Principal Bob having to hold off normal district protocol while the police investigate. The police? I’m being investigated by the fucking police?

  At the corner, a trio of suits waiting to cross the street stop their conversation and mark my passing. It is my imagination, I know, but I want to flip them off anyway. I want to tell them that they know nothing about me and to stop judging me in a vacuum.

  I find the CEA building, just as I remembered it but a different color. There is a knot of brightly dressed women descending the steps. They stop and glower at me as I drive around looking for a space, scolding me with their eyes and their secret knowledge and their ill-informed opinions about me. I don’t know how they know; they just do.

  The woman at the reception desk of the Columbus Education Association does not give me any looks. I am vaguely relieved at this until it is clear that she does not plan on looking at me, ever. She is younger, twenties, with a seated posture that might have suggested scoliosis in someone sixty years older. She is looking at a single sheet of paper that she holds in front of her face with two fingers. She is chewing gum in slow, rhythmic squishes, as though this is the way one properly speaks to a piece of paper.

  “Excuse me,” I say with just a hint of irritation.

  Her eyes roll sideways and regard me with an opacity that makes me think I have interrupted some sort of fugue or micro-s
eizure. I am instantly interested in trying a hard slap across the face.

  “Hi there. I’m a teacher over at Wilson. I’ve just been suspended.”

  She blinks at me, sets down the paper and fishes through a file drawer. Her phone rings. In a display of multi-tasking I would not have thought possible, she rummages through another file as she explains to someone named Maggie that someone named Gretchen is still sick and that someone named Rick needs to stay home to watch someone named Little Dillon and that just because Rick thinks he is so important…

  “Hold on a sec, Maggie,” she says into the phone swiveling my direction. “Here is a copy of the current contract. And this … no, Maggie, hold on, I’m not talking to you. This is a Step One grievance form. Unless the grievance involves any of these issues listed down here,” her nail is pink with a blue star on the tip, “the union will not grieve the matter on your behalf.”

  “It won’t?”

  “Step Two is the first point of union involvement. Even then, you know, it really depends. Come see us when you get a response to Step One. Thanks. Maggs? Rick’s dreaming if he thinks he can just... yes?”

  “I’d like to see…” I am fishing through my wallet for the guy’s name; the guy who is supposed to be personally offended at anything the Columbus City School District does to interfere with my rights as a teacher; the guy whose religion is to protect the union of Ohio educators, and whose mission is to make sure my dues are working for me. “Warren Buntz. Is he around?”

  “Nope. Thursday’s his golf day.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “David Johns.”

  She scribbles on the piece of paper with which she was initially so involved. I see now that it is a facsimile of a take-out menu from a place called Scooters.

  “Okay. We’ve got your number on file. I’ll tell him to call you. Maggie? I really could give a shit what he says. Okay? He’s the one who pissed and moaned for visitation. I don’t want to hear his side of the story. I’m not interested in his side of…”

  I return to the car, tossing the papers on top of my briefcase and slamming the door. Now what? I have an urge to unload on someone who will understand. I want to be the insensitive asshole who obsesses to others about his own problems. If only Mae had not left, it would finally be my turn.

  I flip through the union contract looking idly at the headings – Article 1.1 Union Dues, 2.8 Agency Fees, 3.2 Arbitration, 4.4 Length of School Day, 4.7 Teacher Conferences – hoping perhaps to find something that tells me where I should drive next. Food. Food is where I should drive next. There is no heading or subheading that says Article 11.9 Artery-Choking Slop You Know You shouldn’t Eat, but because it’s golf day for Warren Buntz and because someone stole my damn lunch and because I want to eat something before I am prosecuted for…for whatever…that is where I am going.

  There is a line at the drive-thru. Six cars up, a man in a green minivan is ordering food for six spastic, bobbing heads. I change my mind but now a cab is behind me.

  People look at me as I wait. A woman in shorts and a yellow baseball hat and a windbreaker that says something about sailing, steps over the concrete barrier that defines the drive-thru and walks in front of the car. She is on a shortcut to the front door. She is making that fearful, wary connection with my eyes, fingertips are outstretched towards the hood. She does not want me to run her over. That is now precisely what I want to do.

  I turn on the radio instead, smiling and waving her across to put her at ease.

  For reasons that have eluded me for the past three months, the FM band in my Cadillac of tuna cans is on the blink. My choices of audio entertainment are AM or compact discs, of which I have none that I have heard less then ten billion times.

  ….but you know me. Dat’s … uh…no spin. It’s no spin. What can I tell you Walt? You want spin, you want a bunch of nonsense to make you feel better about yourself, then, hey, dat’s fine, but ya’ gotta’ go someplace else, ‘cause, uh, you know, my friend, you’re not getting’ it here. The fact – THE FACT – is that these protesters are pushing an agenda of anti-nationalism. America is big and it is powerful and it is free and therefore it is always wrong and evil and tyrannical around the world. Dat’s the agenda and I’m not buyin’ it man. I ain’t buyin’ it ever. Ever. And the Left hates…

  There are watery driblets of catsup on Article 3.1 of the Agreement between the Columbus Board of Education and the Columbus Education Association. I turn the driblets into smears with my thumb where it says that I have ten days to submit my Step One grievance to Principal Bob.

  I am parked one empty space away from an ambulance that is not an ambulance; an oversized white van with the telltale orange striping and a rack for the lights and siren but with the word AMBULANCE, along with the lights and siren, missing. A woman is behind the wheel eating French fries and looking at me. I project onto her a suspicion that I have done something horrible to Brittany Kline and a dark musing that perhaps a suspension with pay is not enough for someone like me.

  She smiles a little pitifully and it occurs to me that she might not understand that I am sucking catsup off of my thumb. I search for a napkin, suddenly wanting to be home where I cannot project my predicament into the faces of strangers. I resume looking for contract language that might explain how I can by-pass Principal Bob as a decision-maker on my Step One, but find none.

  The faux ambulance comes to life and pulls away, turning in front of my car and then around to the other side so that the drivers’ windows line up. The woman’s head is down and she is doing something in her lap, beneath the window frame. She has a plain face and sandy brown hair pulled back into a barrette. I lower my window and she smiles a little down into her lap before she looks at me, still doing whatever she’s doing.

  “You don’t look so bad to me,” she says, finally looking up and out of her window. Her face – her little quirk of a smile – says that she knows the answer but I’ll be damned if I know the question. I am wondering if she is going to give me a napkin. I wipe my mouth with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Excuse me?”

  She sticks her hand out the window. It is a napkin. I reach out and take it from her. The words McMillan Autobody are scribbled in roomy blue loops across one side, followed by a Cleveland address and phone number.

  “Mack will give you a good deal on a paint job. Tell him Sissy sent you and he’ll knock off a few more bucks. Good luck. Hey,” she grins and raises her eyebrows at me, “it’s gotta’ get better sometime.”

  The hand that once held the napkin is now up in a static wave and the van pulls away. I watch in my mirror as she leaves the parking lot, merges and disappears.

  It’s got to get better sometime? I am perplexed with who she was, what she meant and whether it is in fact true that it’s got to get better sometime. Does it? Does it really?

  I ponder the napkin.

  Of course it does, I think. It sure as hell can’t get much worse. I look in my mirror and back down at the napkin and back in the mirror and I laugh. I laugh at the fact that a complete stranger – one I had prejudged, no less – has given me the encouragement and perspective that I have needed all day. Good luck; it’s got to get better sometime.

  Of course it does. I haven’t done anything. I am in the middle of a mistake stacked upon a misunderstanding and … she’s absolutely right: it has to get better sometime. Brittany will turn up. Principal Bob will give me some shit about never really believing I was a problem but needing to follow procedure. Mae will cool off and come home. Why am I so quick to live in the heart of the worst-case scenario? Why do I assume responsibility that is not mine to assume? This is masochism, not optimism.

  My chest expands and issues something close to a sigh of relief. Another look in the mirror at the place where the non-ambulance left the parking lot. Of course it has to get better. Get a grip, already.

  I bag up the dregs of my lunch, toss the contract on the pa
ssenger seat on top of the Step One grievance form, suck down the last of my soda and head for home with a renewed sense of calm. The window is open and my hand plays airplane in the unseasonably warm September air, sunlight glinting off my hood. Shepp says I should take a vacation, and that is what I will do. Paid time off. How bad is that?

  People are looking and I am ignoring, no longer inclined to assume their disdain. My slowly inflating spirit has got me thinking more concretely of Mae, and of how much I miss her and of how, when she returns, I will show her the epitome of patience and acceptance and love; how I will not judge her rashness or her temper; how I will apologize for my part in the break-up; how I will show her my openness to marriage. It’s gotta get better sometime. Damn straight it does.

  I think of Mae’s legs and her hair and her perfect breasts and her skin that is like silk and I can feel a surge that is the vascular equivalent of optimism. In fact, I will take the initiative. I will take the first step. I will call her tonight when she is home from work and I will tell her that she belongs with me and I with her; that I am tired of emptiness; that I am sorry. She will reject me at first; she will make sounds of disbelief and disgust; she will hang up. But it will loosen the jar. It will get her to thinking, and she will realize that I am right, and from there it will simply be a matter of saving face, of returning with dignity. Which will be easier than she thinks because I will not judge her. I will not withhold myself from her just to make a point. I will not insinuate with my eyes that she is shallow; that she is beneath me in some way. Because she is not beneath me. She is simply different and I am too intolerant of that difference. Or at least, I was intolerant. Knowing your faults is more than half the battle. I am more able to accept Mae on her own terms now that I have been forced to think about things. God, I can be such a jerk sometimes. I will apologize. Sincerely. Emasculation is not required, but authenticity is required. If she is angry, then I will receive her anger until it is spent and we will begin…