Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  Though he and Diane had been married only ten months and he had dated her for just a few months before their marriage, he felt a strong emotional bond with her children. He knew he was a surrogate father, filling the space left in their lives when their real father died in a car accident only the year before Steve met Diane, but he didn't mind. He liked being a father.

  It had not always been so. At one time, fatherhood was something that scared the dickens out of Steve Nailer. He had seen what it had done to his own father: the responsibilities, the financial pressures. Of course, he knew it had been worse for his father, who was uneducated and worked as a night custodian at Jordan Marsh. Raising a family on one income, especially a janitor's wages, was very hard. The fact that he never let his wife work (or she wouldn't work, he never really knew but suspected the latter) had put a great burden on Richard Nailer; too great a burden and it had broken him. Steve grew up listening to his father's constant warnings against getting married too young and taking on the crushing responsibilities of raising a family. Until he met Diane, Steve had heeded his father's advice. Now, he wanted to prove him wrong and put his ghost to rest forever.

  The Pioneer Valley Regional Elementary School wasn't that far, a mile and a half down Route 47. In a safer time, Jackie and Jennifer would have walked to and from school, but not now. Steve dropped them at the schoolyard's front gate and gave them strict instructions about waiting at that spot after school for their mother to pick them up. He also reminded them of what he and Diane had been drilling into them ever since the first night in the new house: Don't talk to strangers and never go with anyone who isn't your mother or father. The children promised to obey and got out of the car. He watched them walk across the playground blacktop and go up the steps and into the large brick building before driving off.

  Now came the hard stuff: first day on the job, first time back in the classroom in six years. He was glad it was only a half-day orientation for students. He would only have to conduct a homeroom, take roll call, and assign seats and lockers. The rest of the morning would be spent in the auditorium riding herd on the kids while they got scheduling cards and listened to windy greeting speeches by the headmaster and dean of students.

  Northwood Academy was a coed commuter prep school and Steve was glad it was. His first job had been at a boys' boarding school. One week a month he had been required to live in the dorm and supervise the students. It had not been a pleasurable experience. After that, Steve had vowed never to teach in a private school again-the pay was usually poor and the duties teachers were required to perform without compensation were too many. But when his advisor at Northeastern University in Boston recommended him for the job at Northwood, he saw that it paid better than most private schools and gave him the advantage of being close to Amherst for the poetry competition; so he had decided to take it.

  He'd started his teaching career as a physical education instructor and football coach. He had been a good quarterback as an undergrad at Fitchburg State Teachers College and coaching supplemented his income. But within four years Steve was burnt out and desperate to get away from teaching. It wasn't the teaching itself that was getting to him; it was teaching high school.

  At that level he felt like nothing more than a glorified babysitter. As far as he could see, the structure of secondary education was unproductive it put adolescents in a restrictive environment that dared them to rebel. Since the period of adolescence is one of rebellion anyway, high school only ensured what it most wanted to avoid by treating the students like children to be constantly watched and disciplined.

  He decided to quit his private prep school position and, with money saved plus a low-interest federal loan, moved back to Boston and enrolled in Northeastern University's Fine Arts Graduate School, where he could pursue his first love in life, poetry (something his father had made fun of), and teach at the college level.

  Within five years he had a doctorate in poetry, having written his dissertation on American poets, but couldn't find a college teaching position. There was a glut of Ph.D.'s at the college level in New England, and having married Diane shortly after graduation, he couldn't afford to just pull up stakes and move elsewhere unless he was guaranteed employment. Inheriting an instant family in Jackie and Jennifer, and Diane getting pregnant a mere two months after their wedding, had forced him to accept the Northwood job.

  To be honest, though, he had to admit that the job itself was a reason for accepting, too. Except for teaching health and coaching football (a throwback to his old phys. ed. days), he would be teaching an advanced course on Shakespeare and a poetry writing seminar.

  The headmaster, Dr. Samuel Plent, assured him that next year he would move into the English department full time. He'd have to keep coaching football, but he didn't really mind that, and sometimes even enjoyed it. Of course, if all went well with the poetry competition and he got the position at Emily Dickinson College, he could kiss Northwood Academy good-bye.

  "Keerist!You've spent more time in school, taking poetry classes no less, than you have teaching. And you've never taught health before" Joe Conally leaned against his desk and slapped Steve's rolled-up resume against his leg. "I go away for a month before school starts and Plent pulls something like this. Well, I can tell you he isn't going to get away with it."

  "I am certified in Massachusetts to teach health," Steve said defensively. The new job was definitely not getting off to a good start; not when his boss, Conally, the athletic director for the academy, greeted him with a charge of incompetency.

  Conally put Steve's resume on the desk and sized him up. "I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, Nailer. You're not my pick for the job. You see, you're the victim of a power game perpetrated by our esteemed (he made the word sound dirty) headmaster, Dr. Plent. We need a full-time phys. ed./health instructor and football coach, not a part-time English teacher who's winging it as football coach because he happened to play a little ball at some rinky-dink Division Three state college. But, on the other hand, the English department needs a part-time teacher, so good Dr. Plent decides to kill two birds with one stone and shaft the athletic department as usual. It's perfect as far as he's concerned; he only has to pay one salary, yours, and that must be pretty cheap, Ph.D. or no Ph.D., with your lack of experience."

  Steve winced as Conally's words hit home. His salary was a paltry eighteen thousand dollars a year, and even with another four thousand dollars thrown in as the stipend for coaching football, he was making only thirty-two grand, which wasn't much to raise a family on and pay for a house. Though Diane planned to go back to work as a real estate agent when the baby turned two, the cost of day care would eat up a lot of whatever she managed to make.

  Conally smirked as he saw from the expression on Steve's face that he had hit a nerve. "The way this procedure is sup posed to work is that I do the preliminary screening of candidates and then recommend three qualified people to the headmaster, which is what I had already done before I went on vacation and you came into the picture. Plent was supposed to review my choices and meet with me to pick the final candidate. As soon as I go away-he promised me he would wait until I returned to make the choice he hires you as a favor to some old college buddy. I don't even get to interview you and my choices are thrown out the window. And let me tell you, Nailer, they were a lot more qualified for the position than you. Now I'm told that you're it, whether I like it or not. Well, I don't like it. Nothing personal, but I can't let Plent get away with this. I'm going to file a grievance with the board of regents for an appeal on your hiring."

  Steve closed the door of the athletic director's office behind him, fighting the urge to slam it as hard as he could. He leaned against the wall and put his hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut, fighting down the old panic swelling inside him.

  "What am I going to do?" he muttered to himself. He had almost demeaned himself in front of Joe Conally had felt the bottomless panic opening up in his gut like a sinkhole in a torrential rainstorm
and begged for his job. He had just managed to keep himself under control, swallowing the pleading words as though they were a belch of searing heartburn that tasted like vomit in the back of his throat.

  Instead of shaming himself, he had stood and very quietly said, "I guess you have to do what you have to do," before calmly (at least he hoped he had appeared calm) walking out the door.

  The corridor stretched away in front of him and to the left and right. He broke into a cold sweat as another wave of panic flowed through him. Like a man with vertigo at the edge of a steep precipice, Steve swayed, all sense of balance lost. A cold hard stone of nauseating anxiety settled into his stomach.

  It's happening to me, he thought frantically, just like it happened to Dad. The cost of running the house, the monthly mortgage payments, food bills, the money he still owed on his school loan-all flashed through Steve's mind as the specter of unemployment toyed with his fears. And when he thought of having to bear the full brunt of the cost of Diane's having the baby, without any paid medical plan to help (something Plent had promised), he felt like his intestines were being twisted into a barbed wire knot.

  Never take on responsibilities for anyone but yourself. Steve's father's voice floated through his memory. The old man had been right, Steve thought, grimacing as he tried to control the sick panicky feeling rolling around in him.

  Only a rich man can afford the luxury of a family. The rest of us joes have to break our backs and kill ourselves for the rest of our lives if we want one. It's just not worth it.

  "It's going to kill me just like it killed him. Why didn't I listen to him?" Steve whispered soundlessly.

  The morning didn't get any better. The kids in his homeroom, thirty freshmen, were pumped up for the first day. He spent most of the hour-long extended homeroom period just getting them to settle down while he tried to take attendance, arrange seating, and assign lockers. Before he knew it, it was time to line everyone up alphabetically and march them off to the auditorium. He spent the rest of his first day walking up and down the aisles telling students to be quiet, to pay attention, to stop fooling around, and all the other things teachers bark at students when they are riding herd on them.

  By the time the dismissal bell rang at 11:30, sending the students rampaging for the buses, Steve was exhausted. The only good thing about the morning was that he had been so busy that he'd had little time to worry about Joe Conally's threats.

  At 12:30, after he'd turned in his homeroom attendance, had a short meeting about lesson plans with the English department head, and waited half an hour to see Dr. Plent only to be told that Plent couldn't see him until next week, Steve packed his plan book and grades register in his briefcase, along with a copy of Macbeth, and left school.

  Diane was waiting at the end of the drive for him when he got home. She had made plans for them to go out and celebrate his first day on the job. The last thing he felt like doing was celebrating, but he couldn't tell her that, couldn't tell her he had failed. He told himself that in her condition it was better for her not to know, but in reality he was afraid if he admitted his impending failure to her, the nagging would start.

  Steve guessed that the nagging had been the worst of it for his father. His mother was a cold person to start with, but when she put her mind to it she could be as vicious as an angry wasp, stinging again and again. "If you had half the ambition of my father, you'd be able to make something of yourself," she used to say, spraying words like bullets. "I could have married David Wellsley. He owns his business, but no, I had to marry you, Mister Loser." The clincher was one that she had started using shortly before his father's death and which Steve was certain had driven him to suicide: "I'd be better off with you dead so I could collect on the insurance and get out of this dump"

  Though she sometimes nagged him, Diane was never as bad as his mother had been to his father; but then he had never failed Diane before. After his father's funeral, Steve, who would soon turn eighteen, walked away from his mother and never saw her again. As far as he knew that had been fine with her because she never tried to get in touch with him.

  Diane waved as he pulled in the driveway. She waddled to the car and Steve managed a smile for her as she got in. She mistook it as him making fun of how big she was and punched his arm playfully.

  How are you going to support another mouth to feed if you lose your job?

  "Hi," Diane said, as he leaned over and kissed her cheek quickly. "How did it go today? Think you'll survive?"

  "Yeah," he said with a shrug and avoided her eyes. "The kids were a little crazy, first day and all," he added as he backed the car out of the driveway. "It went okay. They'll settle down eventually."

  In Northwood Center, Steve parked the car at the Bloody Brook Cafe. Northwood didn't offer much in the way of fine dining, you had to go to Amherst or Northhampton for that, but Judy Eames had told Diane that the food at the cafe was good and inexpensive.

  Steve was helping Diane out of the car when he noticed a long black hearse drive slowly by. He saw the young woman who was driving was the same woman who, outside of Roosevelt's Bar and Grill, had fondled herself and stared at him like no woman had ever stared at him before. He let go of his wife's hand and stood up. Diane toppled back into the car with a look of surprise on her face, but Steve didn't notice. The young woman was staring at him again with that look. Without taking her eyes from him, she put her index finger to her mouth and ran her tongue over it.

  Steve flinched as he felt her tongue glide over his suddenly erect penis.

  She licked her lips and opened her mouth, sliding her finger into it.

  Steve was engulfed in ecstasy. In seconds he was ready to climax.

  Abruptly, she pulled her finger from her mouth and the sensation of having his cock swallowed disappeared. She drove off, leaving strange, old-sounding laughter and a very frustrated Steve behind.

  "Thanks a lot!" Diane said angrily. She was sprawled on the front seat, her head near the stick shift where she'd landed when Steve let go of her.

  Dazed and not really sure if what he thought had just happened had really happened, Steve reached for Diane and helped her up and out of the car. When she was standing next to him, he quickly put his hands in his pockets and adjusted his erection so that she wouldn't notice.

  "Sorry, babe," he said sheepishly. "I lost my grip."

  "Oh sure! It's because I'm too fat!" Diane said in a pouting voice.

  Steve knew that tone of voice. It was one that he had gotten used to since the start of Diane's pregnancy. It was her I'm-feeling-sorry-for-myself voice. She fell into it whenever the rigors of being pregnant began to wear on her. Steve was usually able to counter her mood by getting her to laugh at something, or by reassuring her that he loved her. This time, though, he was too distracted and disturbed by what had just happened to react to his wife.

  His penis was throbbing from the touch of the young woman's lips and tongue, making him very uncomfortable. He knew what had just happened was impossible. She could not have given him head in those short seconds; she could not have even touched him with any part of her body because she was a good ten fucking feet away in a passing car. The erection that wouldn't die insisted differently. He tried to think it away and could not. The ghost of her mouth wouldn't let him. He craned his neck this way and that searching for the hearse. It was nowhere to be seen.

  As they went into the cafe and a waitress was seating them in the small nonsmoking section, Steve thought he saw the hearse pass by again, but couldn't be sure if it had stopped. Diane was still angry and pouting, but Steve excused himself from the table as soon as they were seated and headed for the bathroom, leaving her at the table. He went back to the front of the cafe and looked out but could not see the hearse or its seductive driver anywhere. He'd have been doubting that he had ever seen her if it wasn't for the boner in his pants that kept reminding him. He shook his head in puzzlement and went to the men's room.

  Diane watched Steve cross the room
and go to the front door. She knew she was being crazy, but lately since the move, she had begun suspecting Steve of being interested in other women, and sometimes of actually having an affair. She had no proof, but lately he'd been acting strange-like just now outside. She had seen the erection in his pants, and though she didn't see anyone else around, she was sure he had caught sight of some nice young thing that he was more interested in looking at than in helping her out of the car. It seemed she had noticed him doing that a lot lately, or imagining that he was. She had even thought she caught him eyeing plump Judy Eames.

  When she really examined her feelings she realized she was probably just being oversensitive because she was pregnant. She was able to trace her suspicions to a dream she had had the second night in the new house. In the dream Steve had come home to tell her he was running off with one of his students.

  Since then, her paranoia had grown, and because she was pregnant and prone to fits of irrationality and emotionalism, she had been unable to deal with it realistically. To make matters worse, she had read in an article in Cosmopolitan that, while a woman is pregnant, her husband is more likely to stray. Steve was usually a doll, but any man could put up with only so much. She knew her attitude was hard on him sometimes, but then she told herself she had a right to be bitchy; she was the one going through all the pain and discomfort, not him. If he couldn't keep his hormones in check until after she had the kid, then didn't that say something about how little he valued their marriage?

  She was just getting herself good and steamed when she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned, half expecting to see Steve, but found herself looking up at the tanned, blue eyed, dimpled face of her father. Her late father. She gasped, catching saliva in her windpipe, and choked.

  He sat in the chair next to her and patted her back softly until she was done choking, then he took her hand. His fingers were like ice and their coldness soaked into her flesh quickly. Her hand grew numb. Diane looked into her father's eyes and the numbness spread up her arm. When he spoke, the numbness flooded up her neck and into her head.