Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos

  The sounds of footsteps, laughter, and spoken words faded. Charles could almost hear the old building sigh with disappointment: What? Gone again? They’re leaving already?

  Taking a seat at his desk, he began to read.

  Because senior project was the cornerstone and culmination of senior year, every homeroom teacher was expected to spend an inordinate amount of time going over The Senior-Project Preparatory Handbook Packet. After this, students were required to fill out the paperwork contained within The Senior-Project Workbook and produce rough drafts of their project ideas; finally, each of them turned in a contract confirming every detail and requiring only slightly fewer initials and signatures than a home mortgage.

  Charles found this growing trend toward excessive accountability in education worrisome, one of the things that often made him feel less like the shepherd of young minds and more like a bank officer at a savings and loan—the beleaguered George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life.

  As he continued making his way through the pile (wasn’t the whole point of e-mail to avoid paper waste?), he was surprised to discover that the bulk of this mass consisted of the rough drafts of several senior-project proposals.

  This was unprecedented. Charles couldn’t remember ever receiving proposals on the first day. Was this year’s senior class exceptionally motivated?

  Naomi Barstow planned to volunteer with vets suffering from PTSD at the VA hospital; Carlos Fontana wanted to study community-sponsored agriculture and produce a local Farm Aid concert; Kaisha Woodward intended to explore a potential future career by shadowing women firefighters and interviewing them about their experiences in a male-dominated field; Ethan Chichester was composing a klezmer/jazz oratorio for an intergenerational orchestra and choir on Mercer Island to be performed as part of a community center dedication. Clearly they’d all assimilated the noble aspirations element of the school acronym.

  Emmy would have been a model student at City Prana, but because their home environment was so tightly controlled, it was decided that a less rarefied atmosphere would be better for her—one in which she’d have to assert herself to achieve notice and wouldn’t face the stigma of being a teacher’s kid. It had been a wrenching decision, but a good one: their bashful, humble homebody of a daughter (with her off-the-charts IQ) had graduated summa cum laude from Roosevelt High School at the age of sixteen.

  The fifth proposal came from Romy Bertleson, one of Pam Hamilton’s art-student standouts:

  “A Picture’s Worth”: Photography and Text

  (Combined Focus in Studio Art and Creative Writing)

  PROJECT GOAL: to produce a series of photographic portraits and short texts for an art exhibit sponsored by Art Without Boundaries, an organization that provides arts-enrichment programs for persons marginalized by socioeconomic, mental-health, and intellectual challenges.

  When Charles saw her sitting in the back row of his homeroom this morning, he’d barely recognized her.

  My current interests are studio photography and science. At this point I hope to have a career in medicine, possibly in the field of neuroscience research. These interests dovetail in this project proposal …

  Gone were the defiantly geeky horn-rimmed prescription glasses, the oil-spotted mechanic’s overall, machine-embroidered with the name Alonzo D. and overlayered with thrift-store articles: Catholic school plaid skirts, crinoline tutus, men’s boxer shorts. Today she wore a pair of jeans and a mannish-looking shirt over a plain T. Period.

  Art Without Boundaries offers classes for people with conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, and developmental disabilities. I have been given permission to attend classes and take photographs.

  The one fashion item that had withstood every costume change through the years was Romy’s camera, worn on an embroidered strap and slung diagonally across her body, an accessory that—depending on the accompanying fashion context—had suggested everything from Miss America’s silk moiré ribbon to Rambo’s bandolier.

  The culmination of the project will be the inclusion of my work as part of an exhibit that showcases the art and writing of professional artists and program participants and raises money for the organization.

  What eventually confirmed her as Bertleson, Romy Andrea, was her voice—still a husky, high-pitched chirp—and that pleasant citrus odor that Charles had noticed for the first time a few years ago while Christmas shopping at the mall.

  What’s that smell? he’d wondered, retracing his steps until he stood in the entrance of The Body Shop, and Emmy replied, Satsuma Body Butter, and Charles asked, Do you think your mother would like some? and Emmy considered, doing that funny thing with her mouth where she yanked it sideways, her default expression whenever she was contemplating something with gravity, and then she shook her head and said, Some women are florals, some women are fruits, and some women are herbals; Mom is definitely a floral. Charles asked, How about you? And she answered with tolerant exasperation, Daaad, I’m twelve. It’s too soon to tell. Ask me again when I’m sixteen.

  Charles lifted Romy’s proposal off his desk, laid it against his face, and inhaled deeply. Yes, even the pages were infused with the fragrance of oranges.

  “Good morning.”

  Charles’s feet jolted off the floor, as if some unseen, punitive researcher had flipped a switch, causing the test subject to experience a low-voltage electrocution.

  It was Pam Hamilton, leaning against the doorjamb, stock-still and smiling in a fond, amused way that Charles found unsettling. Even immobile, she gave off a hovering, silent, intensely vibratory energy, like a hummingbird. Charles wondered how long she’d been watching him.

  “You playing hooky too?” she asked. Her hands were wrapped around one of those pathetic, lumpy paperweights-passing-for-coffee-mugs that her beginning pottery students were always making.

  Charles tapped the edges of Romy Bertleson’s proposal into alignment and turned it face-down on his desk. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve both assimilated the content of the ‘Welcome to City Prana’ assembly.”

  Pam gave a subdued, single-syllable chuckle and sauntered into the room.

  This habit she had, of strolling in without being formally asked, had been annoying Charles for at least a decade, but what ultimately made her intrusions bearable was the manner of their execution: Pam moved lightly, almost noiselessly, and in an indirect path, not looking at him but surveying various aspects of the room—ceiling, floor, walls, windows—as if she were here in the capacity of a building inspector, and Charles’s presence was purely coincidental.

  “I’ve been trying for half an hour to change my damn password,” she said, staring with apparent fascination at the electrical outlet next to Charles’s desk. Her focus was so steadfast that Charles found himself following her gaze, noticing for the first time that stacked grounded outlets looked a little like smiley faces—vertical slashes for eyes, arch-shaped holes for mouths—except they weren’t smiling; they appeared to be chorusing the word Oh!, as if witnessing a spectacularly horrific social blunder.

  Pam moved farther into the room and shifted her eyes toward the ceiling; she began studying the smoke detector, which was, thankfully, featureless. “You got that e-mail, didn’t you, about how some kid has already hacked into the system?”

  “Yes. It’s inconvenient.”

  “At the risk of validating a passel of stereotypes, I have to say that I hate all this tech stuff.” She immediately slapped a hand over her mouth and emitted a muffled Oops. “Sorry, not the way we teach the kids to talk is it? Despise? Disdain?” She started roaming the room again. “Personally, I find embracing technology to be a challenge. Why can’t we go back to the good old days: attendance books you actually write in, with actual writing implements? Report cards?” She squatted beneath one of the windows, showing an acute fascination with the shoe molding. “You’re old enough to remember report cards, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  Nimble knees, Charles thought, admi
ring Pam’s flexibility. She had to be in her early sixties. His own joints suddenly felt sticky and unyielding, as if they’d been lubricated with tar. He wanted to get up and stretch. He wanted his solitude back. He liked Pam Hamilton but was always slightly discomfited in her presence; there was something too well-adjusted about her, too bright, too incisive, even when she wasn’t looking directly into his face. But then, he thought, that’s a set of artist’s eyes for you.

  “Thank God,” she said. “Ever since becoming a card-carrying member of the AARP, people’s ages are impossible to figure out.”

  Charles inhaled sharply enough for her to shoot him a worried look. Although he’d trained himself out of the (according to Alison) extremely disagreeable habit of verbally correcting grammar infractions, he still experienced an intense reflexive repugnance for dangling participles.

  He grinned in Pam’s general direction and then took up his pen and a notepad and wrote, I cannot determine people’s ages.

  Pam stood and ambled through the circle of desks to the far end of the classroom, where a trio of folding screens formed three walls of a smaller room within a room: a student lounge that Charles painstakingly furnished and arranged over the years with a rotating assortment of beanbag chairs, sofas, footstools, oversize floor pillows. There were thick-pile rugs on the floor, and a pair of HappyLight floor lamps allowed students to study beneath illumination gentler than that supplied by the twitchy fluorescent tubes overhead and helped combat seasonal affective disorder.

  The intense, demanding work of a Language Arts class—reading, reflection, discourse, writing—put students in the path of risks and hazards that were (in Charles’s opinion) every bit as dangerous as those encountered in chemistry, metallurgy, or glass blowing. It was his job to make sure that the young people in his care felt sufficiently protected to take those risks. Two decades of teaching experience had taught him that teenagers feel safest when they’re allowed to slouch.

  “A person could live in this room, practically,” Pam observed.

  This was exactly how Charles felt, but this concurring remark from his colleague was disturbing, especially since there were in fact many times when he’d opted to spend the night here. What if Pam Hamilton got it into her head to do the same? They all had master keys.

  “Do you mind if I sit for a minute?” Pam went on. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She eased down onto the sofa so that they were facing each other across the room’s expanse and took a sip of whatever was in that atrocious mug.

  “Have you seen Romy Bertleson today?” she asked.

  “Yes, she’s one of my homeroom kids.”

  Pam had an understated, unfussy elegance: no makeup; a nimbus of curly, blond, flyaway hair generously scribbled with silver and battened down on either side of Pam’s face (just barely) by a pair of tortoise-shell combs; wire-rimmed glasses; boyish figure; khakis and a cardigan and slip-on Merrells. “She’s changed, hasn’t she?” Pam said.

  “God, yes.”

  Pam had been at City Prana as long as anyone; she and a group of young parents/educators had started the school back in the 1970s. All three of Pam’s children had gone here. Now she was a grandmother.

  “Don’t you love it? When kids transform like that?”

  Not really, Charles wanted to say.

  Pam absent-mindedly fingered her multistranded, multicolored necklace—beads and carved stone, animal fetishes (Alaskan, was Charles’s guess; he remembered that one of her daughters lived up that way)—there was something rosary-like about it. Charles wondered from time to time if Pam was another lapsed—or even practicing—Catholic. Not that they discussed personal matters.

  “Have you had a chance to speak with her about her project idea?” Pam asked.

  “Not yet, but she turned in a rough draft proposal.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Not all of it.”

  Staring at the contents of her mug, Pam raised and lowered her tea bag a few times. “I don’t want to steal her thunder. She’ll tell you about it.”

  Charles glanced at the clock. “Well … ,” he said, hoping the up-inflected word would have the effect of lifting Pam off the sofa.

  “I just wanted to make sure it’s okay with you.”

  “Sorry; whether what’s okay?”

  Pam looked up. “Romy’s proposal? Art Without Boundaries? Her taking photographs? That’s not an issue for you?”

  “Why would it be an issue?”

  “Well … Cody participates in that program, doesn’t he?”

  Charles was surprised that Pam knew this, but then he remembered that she and Alison had stayed in touch after the divorce. Ali had probably mentioned it.

  “Yes. He goes to classes twice a week.”

  Clearly, Pam was waiting for him to elaborate, but what else was there to say? He certainly wasn’t going to object to Romy’s proposal because it would put her in contact with his son. Was that what Pam was worried about?

  “How is Cody doing?”

  “Fine.”

  Charles avoided her eyes; he became entranced by the way she continued to raise and lower the tea bag, rhythmically, precisely; it was like watching a miniature offshore oil-rig operation.

  “Okay, then,” she said finally. “One more thing …” She withdrew the tea bag, tossed it into a nearby receptacle, and settled back into the sofa cushions with the demeanor of someone intending a long visit. “Because Romy’s including both art and creative-writing elements, I think she’s going to ask us to be co-advisers.”

  “What? Why? I mean, it’s not something I’ve been asked to do before.”

  “I have, by other kids with dual-focus projects. There are advantages. We can share the load.”

  “True,” Charles said, although he had no idea how that would work.

  “Do you have her proposal? She’s got something in there about people without language.” Pam looked at him expectantly.

  Charles turned over the proposal and began leafing through it. “‘Who tells the stories of people who have limited or no language? Is there a way to help empower such people to tell their own stories?’”

  “Good stuff, don’t you think?”

  Charles grunted in the affirmative but he was mostly thinking about how much he hated (despised, disdained) the word empower.

  “She’s got this kind of Diane-Arbus-meets-Dorothea-Lange-meets-Allen-Ginsberg homage going on, unconsciously, I think, and obviously derivative, but you know what they say: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  A child who cannot imitate cannot learn.

  The response was so ingrained and automatic that Charles thought it was subtextual, but when there was a silence, he looked up to find Pam staring at him again, and he realized he’d spoken aloud.

  “Right,” she said flatly, and stood. Her thin figure seemed older now, stiff; her movements contained a quality of angularity, like a card table being set up, or an ironing board. “Well, let me know how it goes with Romy and what you decide about the co-adviser thing. Have a good one.”

  After she was gone, Charles left his desk and began moving through the room, feeling compelled to touch the desks, tidy the books, re-angle the folding screens, refluff the sofa cushions—in reassurance, perhaps, or to reinforce his proprietary relationship to this sanctuary.

  The upholstery was lightly scented with whatever Pam had been drinking, something herbal and spicy. The smell reminded Charles of the ginger-molasses cookies that were a daily staple of the Cloud City pastry case—and Emmy’s favorite.

  He must remember to buy some and send a care package soon.

  •♦•

  By twelve forty-five, Charles’s exchange with Pam Hamilton had been excised from his awareness. He’d closed the door to his classroom, had eaten some soup, and was hunkered down in one of the beanbag chairs reading Ted Kooser’s 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison when someone knocked.

  He jerked the door open to f
ind Romy Bertleson. Wide-eyed, she took a half step back. He’d frightened her.

  “Hi, Mr. Marlow,” she said in her high-pitched, scratchy voice: Tweety Bird with seasonal allergies. “Sorry to interrupt. I was wondering if you had time to talk …”

  Although his hospitality was a lie—he was still struggling with an overwhelming feeling of just not being ready for all this—he said yes, of course, invited her to come in, left the door open as protocol mandated, and assumed a seat behind his desk.

  “Did you get a chance to look at my proposal?” Romy asked.

  There was that smell again: citrusy, lush, confectionary, complex.

  “I did, yes, but …” Charles hastily retrieved Romy’s paperwork. He remembered now that she’d asked him at the end of homeroom if she could stop by during lunch; he should have been prepared. “Why don’t you tell me more about what you have in mind?”

  And so she began, a scatter shot of words, enthused, heedless, optimistic, in that wonderfully unguarded way that belongs to the impassioned young, telling him that the only thing she’d settled on for sure was the idea of creating photographic portraits paired with some kind of text, maybe poetry. She mentioned the unit Charles taught in tenth grade, Allen Ginsberg’s American Sentences: seventeen syllables, haikus unspooled.

  “I’m not a poet, not like …” And she named a few classmates, young people Charles knew to be connected with Seattle’s poetry-slam scene and who—Charles could only guess, for he’d never actually been to a poetry slam—likely shouted amplified obscenities with a rapturous sense of discovery, ownership, and invention, as if Lenny Bruce had never existed. But that too Charles found charming and worthy of commendation; at some point, he imagined, the trend would swing in the opposite direction, and notions of what was radical would involve unplugging and reciting hymnic poems, as if Emily Dickinson had never existed.

  “But American Sentences,” she continued, “I like those, and having the creative-writing component would be a way of stepping outside my comfort zone, like we’re supposed to. That’s why I was hoping you’d be a co-adviser with Ms. Hamilton.”