Class Dismissed

by Kevin McIntosh

  That, and the eulogy. All afternoon it bothered him, coming all this way and not hearing his friend properly eulogized. He, clearly, was the only one qualified to do it. But how would he begin? Well, Gunnie, Mr. Newton was right after all—an object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless—

  Unless. He tapped the bottle in his palm.

  A toast, he thought. That, he could do. And Gunther would appreciate it more; eulogies were a joke but toasts were holy. Patrick slid off the hood of the Corolla and stood. He gazed out at the loamy Minnesota soil and lifted his Bovenmyer’s high. “Time flies like an arrow,” he intoned, quoting Gunther quoting Groucho. “Fruit flies like a banana.”

  Then he took a hard gulp of Bovey’s and shook his head. Don’t care what you say, my friend. Still tastes like shit.

  Back in the Emerald City

  Kill him quick, Patrick had advised. All the greats knew it, Hemingway to Zane Grey: when you kill off the hero, do it fast. But Abdul hadn’t been weaned on literature, popular or classic; his inspirations, gangsta rap videos and slasher films, celebrated the long goodbye, the slow-motion departure. Hence the last two pages of Abdul’s five-page true-life crime story, a collage of high body count and mass body parts. “And, yo, Lynch,” the author pushed back against his editor, “didn’ you say thas how Hamlet ends? One big scene where everybody be stabbed to death and poisoned?” Patrick laughed. Abdul, for once, had been listening.

  Whether he would be the hero of his own life was unclear, but clearly the editor of Patrick’s personal narrative, unlike Abdul, was a fan of the brisk ending. Maybe Gunther, who had followed him back to Manhattan, doing occasional color commentary on his life after many years’ hiatus, was editing. He’d always favored the sudden, dramatic finish. And, most comforting now, the home team always won. But the terse message C had left on Patrick’s answering machine, though it promised promptness, offered no happy ending.

  “Greetings, Mr. Lynch. Call me,” he ordered. “It’s on.”

  The Scribbler lifted his brows behind those round Bolshevik lenses when Patrick showed him the letter from the BOE that awaited his return from Peterson’s Prairie. “Whoa, highly unusual. Expedited hearings are typically for cases of pedagogical incompetence.” He gave a nod of respect. “Which yours, certainly, is not.” The Scribbler was back to courting him, now that Patrick had humbled himself, seeking his counsel. Perhaps the Scribbler still held out hopes of Patrick as the star of his muckraking bestseller.

  “Stankowski, your arbitrator––your hearing officer––he’s a fool, and lazy. Fell asleep during a hearing last year. Snoring, they say, drooling, the works. Had a judgment vacated by the State Supreme Court the year before. Teacher got into a wrangle with his principal, who accused him of insubordination. Stankowski terminated him, boom.” He slapped his legal pad. “Blanchard, the appellate judge, called his penalty,” the Scribbler closed his eyes, summoning the citation, “‘outrageous and disproportionate to the alleged offense’ and ‘wholly unsubstantiated by the evidence presented.’”

  “How does he keep his job?” Naïve question, he knew. Patrick always felt like a C- student in the Scribbler’s civics class.

  The Scribbler shook his head. “Arbitrators are selected from a pool. They have to be approved by both the BOE and the union. Since only 17 percent of judgments call for outright termination, the public consensus is that arbitrators placate the union to keep their gig. Which is cushy, to say the least. Five sessions a month, twelve hundred bucks a session. But they have to keep the BOE happy too, so you see some draconian rulings, based more on whim than hard evidence.”

  “So that’s why they’re called arbitrators? Because they’re arbitrary?”

  The Scribbler stared at him. He was not one to defuse tension with humor. He cleared his throat. “And hearing officers have unfettered latitude, more than a judge. So you see awards––that’s what they call penalties––inconsistent from arbitrator to arbitrator. One might give an alleged sexual predator a thousand-dollar fine and mandate some kind of counseling; another will terminate a teacher for tardiness. There aren’t standard sentencing guidelines. It’s all a crapshoot, who your hearing officer is.

  “If they have you on the fast track, someone with juice––the Mishkins, no doubt––is forcing the BOE’s hand and someone else––your principal––wants this to go away, and soon. Needless to say, this is a PR disaster for his school. Leonard Mishkin’s son injured in his building—no matter the circumstance—isn’t going to get the white bourgeoisie flocking to his programs.”

  Behind the Scribbler, the Juggler was refining a new, all-papaya routine he’d developed in Patrick’s absence. The papayas looked slippery and irregular and, despite the Juggler’s impressive skills, seemed likely to land anywhere. Patrick knew how they felt.

  “Another variable is your representation. If you can afford it––or even if you can’t––you should get private counsel. I can recommend some people if you’re interested. You’ll have to scrape together a few grand for a retainer. The UFT, of course, will provide a lawyer to represent you. They have some good people there, but some BOE and union lawyers work with the same arbitrator as a trio for a year or more at a time, so they can get rather chummy. They’ve all got interests to protect, and none of them may be yours.” He narrowed that left eye.

  The Scribbler drummed his ink-stained fingertips on the table and let his student digest his tutorial. Patrick had stopped listening at “a few grand.” Only two people in his world had that money at hand, his mother and Susan. Either woman would write him a check without a word. Both options were impossible. He’d assumed he’d throw himself at the mercy of his union, which, C aside, had been silent till now. But on the phone last night, his building rep had assured him that that phase of his ordeal was over. “Now,” C honked, swirling something-on-the-rocks, “we’re turning you over to the big guns.”

  “So, has the union assigned someone to represent you?” The Scribbler thrust the nib of his fountain pen at him.

  Patrick dug in the back pocket of his khaki pants to retrieve the other letter that had been waiting for him after his Midwest sojourn. UFT the envelope said in large block letters on the back, Working Together! He handed the envelope to the Scribbler, who opened it deliberately, as if the contents would reveal the next Miss America. The Scribbler scanned the letter and stroked his socialist chinwear.

  “Sylvia Bartolino,” he whispered reverently. “She’s a tiger.” He whistled through his teeth. The Juggler looked up; papayas bounced on the moldy carpeting.

  “Two words,” the Scribbler said. “Be careful.”

  From the moment Susan picked him up at LaGuardia, Patrick knew something had changed. Flu-like symptoms had clutched him as his plane descended over New Jersey; he felt achy, sweaty, his guts tightening, regrouping, preparing for self-defense. All that Midwestern expansiveness congealed to a ball. He’d left on the worst of terms, softened only by the circumstance of leaving to bury his oldest friend. And that, buddy, his dead friend chimed in, won’t save you now.

  Susan greeted him in a unisex outfit––baggy jeans and Yankees sweatshirt––makeup-less, her hair seized back in a scrunchy. His girlfriend was attractive no matter what she wore, but he noted the lack of feminine effort––special lipstick, sexier jeans––that had ended their past separations, however brief. She gave him a welcoming hug, a sisterly kiss, and listened politely to the abridged version of his Minnesota odyssey as she wove through the traffic on the Triborough Bridge in the Audi borrowed from Ashley down the hall. She seemed to lean away from him even as she nodded her social worker face at The Demise of Gunther Hendrickson. Though the car smelled strongly of Mr. Paws, was Susan sniffing, too, the guilt that clung to him like Katie Osterlund’s perfume, intuiting that he had cheated on her, in spirit if not in fact?

  In the following days they danced, gently, around each other. Susan was, from the mo
ment he returned, as kind, as solicitous as ever, but they lived together in her snug apartment like brother and sister, Hansel and Gretel minus the breadcrumbs and gingerbread. And Susan was gone more. She’d gotten a promotion of sorts at the shelter, more responsibility, more impact on policy. Patrick didn’t understand, exactly, but he could feel her underlying excitement even as she explained it in a distant, offhand way. Now she missed dinner altogether, staying through a later shift, ordering from the Szechuan place next to the shelter.

  The late May evenings turned unseasonably cool and when Susan finally did get home, she took to wearing sweats to bed. The notorious blue comforter reappeared, defending her on three sides, Aspects of Modern Social Work, Volume 2 girded her loins, Chauncey lay circled at her feet. Patrick took his lead from Susan, a lead that led nowhere romantic––not toward so much as a quickie and certainly not toward any discussion of where “they” were headed.

  Susan continued to be helpful in practical ways. One Saturday she took him down to Macy’s to shop for a proper navy-blue summer-weight “hearing suit,” a ritual that inevitably conjured scenes of shopping with his mother before his father’s funeral, only this time it was his teaching career being put to rest. When he recapped his discussion with the Scribbler concerning the benefits of private counsel, Susan offered to speak with her dad, who, of course, was in insurance, but “knew people.” Her family’s financial aid was implicit. Patrick thanked her but declined the assistance, assuring her that his union was supplying him with someone who was, by all accounts, formidable.

  Ms. Bartolino might be a tiger in the courtroom, Patrick thought, but she looked more like a Weeble, one of those gnome-like dolls from his childhood, so round from feet up that they rolled back up no matter how hard you pushed them. Perhaps the Scribbler was right: this is what he needed, someone you couldn’t keep down.

  “Student Gives Teacher the Finger, we meet at last,” she said, rising, wiping away tuna fish sandwich with a napkin. Sylvia had to stretch upward across her desk to shake hands; she couldn’t be more than five feet tall. Her pudgy hand grasped his firmly. As she sat, her rumpled black pantsuit disappeared into her large black office chair, framed by shelves of legal books. Stacks of manila folders manned the corners of her desk; the towers of file-filled banker’s boxes made her cramped office smaller yet. She ran a hand through a cap of graying shag. “So, have you always had a knack for pissing off people in high places? Or was this dumb luck?” She smiled up at him.

  He shrugged, tried to smile back. People like Sylvia Bartolino––effusive, unfiltered––always made him shy. The more those of Mediterranean affects (and they comprised a large part of this city and an even larger proportion of its education apparatus) came at him, the more he shrank into himself. He had an odd sense of littleness next to this woman, a foot shorter than he. Stranger still that he couldn’t recall having this feeling in Peterson’s Prairie, reared among strapping Teutons and Scandinavians. Just a few days back in Minnesota had reacclimated Patrick to the ways of his native region: containment verging on the hermetic.

  “Not a situation I ever imagined myself in,” he managed to say.

  “I’m sure not, Mr. Lynch.” Her smile faded. “I’m sure not.” She tapped her stubby fingers on two stacks of file folders that nearly reached her chin. “Pardon my lunch. Can I get you anything? Coffee?” He shook his head. “I’d like to walk you through the hearing process. Then answer any questions. Then I have some questions for you.”

  She opened a file on top of the left stack. My case, he realized with a jolt. Those foot-high stacks: my case. The height of them, the sheer volume, brought home how little he’d allowed himself to think about his situation as anything other than a bizarre, horrible accident. But did random accidents merit hundreds––thousands?––of pages of documentation? His mind began to swim and he forced himself to focus. Listen, Patrick, this is your career, your life, on the line.

  Ms. Bartolino began with the charges. “Conduct unbecoming your position; conduct prejudicial to the good order, efficiency, or discipline of the service; endangering the welfare of a child; insubordination.” Although his lawyer rattled off the list in the most perfunctory manner, and Patrick had, certainly, read the charges in the certified letter from the BOE, he couldn’t help recoiling at each new accusation, as if they were finally real because Sylvia Bartolino had said them aloud.

  She finished with the ominous conclusion of the BOE letter. “Probable cause having been confirmed based on findings of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), penalties may be awarded by the arbitrator up to and including substantial fines and/or termination from employment by the NYC Board of Education and revocation of educator’s license by the New York State Department of Education.”

  Patrick felt fluish again, as he had, off and on, since returning to New York. Maybe he’d get sick right on Sylvia Bartolino’s legal files, including his. Especially his. She looked up from the document she was reading. Her eyes got wide. “You don’t look well, Patrick. Can I get you some water?”

  “No, I’m…I’ll be fine.” He could feel the color leave his face, pasty Irish to begin with, now surely albino next to his counselor’s Italian swarthiness.

  Ms. Bartolino had seen this before. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. But the BOE is legally obligated to lay out the worst-case scenario.” She held up her hands, like scales of justice. She threw the scales at him. “And then they hurl at you all the charges they can get probable cause on. Hoping you’ll be overwhelmed, settle their way.”

  Good strategy, Patrick thought, it’s working. As Sylvia thumbed through the Lynch files, giving an overview of the discovery process––his personnel file, interviews with his students, his colleagues, Silverstein, photos of room 234 from various angles––he was indeed overwhelmed, but less by the individual details than by the totality of it: that there was an OSI, operated by the BOE like a city-state FBI. His pits grew clammy in front of Ms. Bartolino as she flipped through file after file after file of data dug up by agents of the Department of Education whose full-time job it was to find enough dirt on Mr. Lynch to deny him the opportunity to explain to Julio what an infinitive was and why it was such a crime to split. He was back at Court Street in Brooklyn, his first year teaching, wandering the corridors of that puzzle palace, looking for someone––anyone––with the authority to issue him a paycheck. Only now he was fighting just for the right to work.

  “Do you have any questions so far, Mr. Lynch?” She ripped off a corner of sandwich, sipped her Diet Coke.

  “Insubordination?” The moment he uttered it, he felt he was falling for that old Perry Mason trick, objecting to the red herring while confessing, implicitly, to the rest.

  “I don’t have all the specifications––the details that support the charges––yet. But it appears this charge is pursuant to a conference you had with your principal after a field trip to a public garden.” Ms. Bartolino slipped the infamous shovel picture from a file. She looked at it, the grimace, the bulging eyes, and shook her head. “Not your best side, I’m afraid.” She glanced down her notes. “After this field trip, you had a conference with Mr. Silverstein in which he warned you to treat Josh Mishkin with…kid gloves, more or less.”

  “I’m sorry, I still don’t see…”

  She shrugged. “After that, there was an after-school tutorial, with an argument overheard by students in the hallway. And apparently a chair was knocked over.”

  He nodded warily.

  “And you expelled him from class on the day of the…the incident.” She didn’t say accident. Be careful, quoth the Scribbler.

  “He swore and threw a wooden bathroom pass at me.” Louder than he intended.

  She put up her hands. “I’m on your side, Mr. Lynch. But there was an Ed Plan for the student. Detailing a three-step procedure for removal from class, which wasn’t followed.”

  Yes, yes, but the
Ed Plan didn’t specify what to do after the principal visits your class, chancellor and entourage in tow, and the subject of said Ed Plan pisses off the other thirty-five kids, now prepared to mutiny en masse.

  Ms. Bartolino waved one of those little paws at him. “This is what Mr. Hanrahan will argue for the BOE. Fortunately, I will be making your case. And it’s a good one.” She thumbed to his blue personnel file and opened it. “You are, by all accounts, an exemplary teacher. Fine academic background. Satisfactory ratings, year after year. The only letters in your file are positive, your principal noting the time and effort you put in outside of class, commending you for the leadership you’ve shown in developing interdisciplinary curricula.” She leafed forward. “Your students seem to like you. The special investigator’s interviews…even the kids that don’t like you so much––or your subject––they respect you, that comes through. As far as the day of the incident with Josh Mishkin, there aren’t any…” she squinted at the document before her, “…smoking guns. None of your students threw you under the bus.”

  Patrick couldn’t picture his students throwing him under a bus. He could picture, vividly, the field trip to MOMA when Abdul had snatched Julio’s beloved Mets cap and tossed it onto the subway tracks. Julio, to everyone’s amusement save his teacher’s, had jumped down and plucked it up, perilously close to the third rail. That was the moment Patrick saw his teaching career flash before his eyes, imagined himself brought up on charges, pilloried in the Post. But nothing––nothing!––came of that near-fatal episode.