Class Dismissed

by Kevin McIntosh

  The car exploded with teenage noise, usually an irritation on his way home from school, exhausted, no longer on the city’s clock. Once, drifting off between stops, he’d forgotten where he was and snapped “pipe down” at a mustachioed youth in puffy black. The kid looked him over, shrugged to his buddies, decided the balding white guy with the stack of papers wasn’t worth the trouble of taking apart.

  But today was different––bring on the noise! It was all part of his celebration.

  A falsetto squeal blasted from across the car. “Yo, Mr. Leee-inch.” Julio, waving those praying mantis arms, accompanied by Abdul and Maria. Julio’s prized Mets cap was askew on his slender head, a big grin beneath it. The trio wove through the crowd, Julio pulling Maria pulling Abdul. Julio offered up a hand-slap soul-shake that Mr. Lynch failed to parse in time, fingers briefly entwining, then, mercifully, slipping away. Maria, eager but shy, shifted in her pink sneakers, tugging at a ruffly red blouse that featured alarming cleavage. Lordy. Abdul was wearing an X T-shirt––homage to the Malcolm unit?––with sleeves shorn to display his impressive biceps, which he was now flexing, arms crossed, behind Maria. Ah, springtime in New York. The sap was rising.

  It was always awkward running into kids outside school. The protocols were broken down; how were they to interact, fellow citizens of Gotham? And his students were endlessly amused to find he had a life beyond his classroom. Last fall some of them trooped past Carmine’s and saw him inside, killing a bottle of Chianti with Susan. He heard about it all week: Mr. L, oh yeah, drinkin’ some wahhhhn wid his lay-deee.

  But this was new social territory, engaging with a teacher who had been, in essence, incarcerated for the past two months, for an offense you had witnessed in his classroom. They glanced at each other, then at the passing tunnel walls, as if reading the graffiti. Abdul put a proprietary hand on Maria’s hip; she shimmied it off, gave him a look.

  “So, how you doin’, Mr. Lynch?” Julio, always the tension-breaker.

  “I’m doing well, pretty well, thanks. How are you all doing?”

  “We’re doing good––well,” said Maria.

  “You all ready for finals?”

  They eyed each other, laughed.

  He put on his teacher face. “I’m serious. You all worked hard for me this year. I expect to hear great things.”

  They looked down, nodded.

  “And you, Julio. Are you cooperating with my sub?”

  That blank face he’d seen so often in class.

  “You good,” Abdul muttered over Maria’s shoulder.

  Julio jerked his head back. “Oh yee-ah, yee-ah.”

  Mr. Lynch folded his arms. “Fo’ reals, yo?”

  The boys doubled up, shoved each other. Mr. Lynch was buggin’. Fo’ reals.

  Julio recovered enough to cough out, “But Abdul…Abdul got in a beef wid Sitkowitz.”

  Maria narrowed those almond eyes at Julio. Not in fronna Mr. Lynch.

  Julio missed it. “Abdul say, Abdul say sumpin’…” she punched his arm, “…nasty in chemistry.”

  Abdul smirked. “Coño,” Maria hissed.

  “And Sitkowitz get all red and say, ‘You kiss yoor mutha wid that mouth?’” Julio laughed, coughed. “And Abdul say…he say, ‘Yee-ah, and yoors.’”

  The boys dissolved, slapped hands. Maria giggled, finally, the memory too sweet.

  Patrick looked down, his hand over his mouth.

  Mr. Lynch looked up. “You should show Mr. Sitkowitz more respect. He’s been teaching a long time.”

  Abdul threw his head back. “A looooooooong time.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “Well.” It was too much effort. Today especially.

  The train was slowing, coming into the Ninety-Sixth Street station, Maria’s neighborhood. Even on the subway, that serious expression before she posed a question. “Are you coming back to Garvey, Mr. L?”

  No time to weigh it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well, you should.” She scrunched that adorable nose. “’Cause you’re the best.”

  He looked at his shoes, smiled.

  “You are.” Abdul and Julio pushed her toward the doors.

  “And yo, homeboy had it coming,” Abdul said over his shoulder. He bit his middle finger. “Kid’s a punk.” He pushed Maria forward.

  “No,” Patrick said, shaking his head. The doors beeped open. “Study!” he shouted at their backs.

  “You’re the best,” Maria shouted back.

  “Da bomb!” Julio squealed.

  Abdul made that descending and exploding noise so popular when someone failed in class.

  The doors closed. He watched them climb to Ninety-Sixth Street, Julio skipping up the stairs, Abdul grabbing Maria’s ass, Maria swatting his hand.

  The train lurched out of the station and Patrick grasped at the pole, heading home.

  Fortunately, the wine shop on 106th had Susan’s favorite shiraz in stock. He got a bottle of chardonnay as well, and, of course, a split of champagne. Sal on 110th was just out of roses but could make a nice arrangement of lilies. Wasn’t that what he said last Valentine’s? Did she complain? demanded Sal. Westside Market had salmon fillets, fresh not frozen. Some new red potatoes, asparagus, a little endive, a little arugula. No way would he mess that up.

  Patrick was giddy again, picturing how he’d cook and present each dish. He even picked up candles and matches, just in case. And, still in that Christmas-in-June mood, a catnip mouse for Chauncey. God bless us, everyone. Then, on impulse, he stopped at the jewelers on 112th. They were full of rings, but no, even in this euphoric state, presumptuous. He found some earrings––purple opals––small, funky, just her style—to say thank-you. A good place to start.

  He flew out of their elevator, past Ashley and Mr. Paws. Ashley laughed and Mr. Paws yapped as Patrick hallooed, tearing down the hall, nearly spilling the goodies from his bags. He set the bags down on the kitchen table, put the salmon in the fridge, dug out the catnip mouse. Chauncey would be asleep, curled at the foot of the bed on Susan’s side. But he’d wake up for nip.

  “Chauncey, look what Daddy brought home for yoo-hoo.” He jingled the bell on the mouse’s tail as he walked down the hall. Lord, he sounded like Susan.

  The bed was crisply made, empty, fur-free. Just like Susan’s cat, to hide the one time he brought home a present. “Chauncey-boy.” Jingle, jingle. Patrick looked under the bed. Not even a fur ball. He looked in the closet. No cat. And none of Susan’s clothes. The mouse jingled at his feet.

  He peered in the bathroom; no litter pan, no purple electric toothbrush. He walked slowly down the hall, saw the thin envelope taped to the front door. Patrick, it said, in Susan’s lovely cursive.

  He remembered, from senior year in high school, what the thin envelope meant. And he didn’t have to open it to know what it said. That a girl could only take so much. That he was loved, even so. That it wasn’t enough. The generous terms on which he could take leave of Susan’s parents’ condominium.

  And he recalled again the counsel of his roommate, Oscar, the part he had edited out last night. “Only one thing better than make-up sex: break-up sex. Lo mas fuerte.” He’d put a brotherly hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “But that’s gonna cost you, hombre.” He pursed those plump Latin lips, shook his head. “Don’t wanna talk about that.”

  Bringing It All Back Home

  The air conditioner rattles behind Patrick, wheezing a tepid breeze over his sweaty neck. He rubs at the pollen it has deposited in his eyes. A school district like Lake Minnehaha, with all its cash, can’t afford to cool the teacher’s lounge. That Lutheran prairie hardiness has tracked him even to the affluent suburbs: Why waste money on creature comforts? And shouldn’t we just be grateful, surviving another winter? The lime-green couch, another misbegotten economy, sags beneath him, the springs done in by colleagues seeking the
same relief, complaining the same complaints.

  The third-period prep crowd is scattered about the lounge, seated at tables in twos and threes. Each group has mugs of coffee and large stacks of papers—never-graded homework, untaught lesson plans––they idly sort or pitch as they discuss the real business of the day: summer. The young will be taking classes at the U, the poor will teach summer school, the well-married are packing for a season at the Lake Place.

  Patrick looks down at his own damp, stackless lap. He went through his few effects last week, careful to leave Cindy Sperling’s classroom as pristine as he found it. He has no school files to sort for next year, just copies of the résumé and cover letter with which he has papered the greater Twin Cities area. And a handful of rejections from communities––Edina, Golden Valley––that once sounded like Shangri-la, but now more like euphemisms for landfill. Dear Mr. Lynch, Although we enjoyed meeting you and were impressed by your credentials they all began. Hadn’t he told his students that good news seldom begins with a subordinating conjunction?

  His interviews all seemed to go well in the moment: good questions, right answers, appropriate humor, charm. But something was missing, or, rather, extra. The taint of his big city ordeal clung to him like that household odor you couldn’t quite identify, let alone scrub away. His references, of course, made no mention of that trauma, but what did they say? Silverstein’s backhanded, passive-aggressive compliments? Ted’s gracious apologia? There was suspicion in the interviews; they knew, somehow, that he was burying the lede. Minnesotans had a certain awe of Big Apple toughness, you betcha, but with it came that sniffing for Tammany Hall corruption.

  “We opened up the cabin last weekend,” Kristie Bergquist laments, “and what do you think? Raccoons!” As Kristie details at great length and volume the hash that wildlife has made of her summer retreat, Patrick contemplates his own summer home, a boxy one-bedroom in Burnsville, in the nondescript complex where he crash-landed last August, a pad for the recently graduated and newly divorced. Clean, well-kept, cheap; big sister Erin had helped him find it. “You just might get lucky here,” she’d grinned naughtily, scoping the twenty- and thirty-somethings bearing their laundry baskets in the hallway.

  What he’d gotten wasn’t lucky but monastic. Surrounded by his four white walls, watching the white snow fall outside his window. Celibate, except for one sleety Thursday night in February. He’d been grading papers, a working dinner at the Ground Round bar, when he noticed a woman from two floors down nursing a gin and tonic. A dental hygienist, it turned out, who wound up examining much more than his bicuspids. He woke up feeling lonelier than ever and managed to avoid her after that one night, even noting her laundry schedule. He felt, as Dorie would say, like a schmuck. A loser, unfit for a relationship. He’d followed one woman to New York City and another had driven him out.

  Worse, even his mother had found romance, discreetly “keeping company” with Larry, a widowed professor of physics, whose department office she managed at the U. Patrick had dinner with them at his mother’s condo in St. Paul. Not at all the awkward event he’d imagined; they were quiet and relaxed as a couple. Unnervingly so. It was the second time his mother had surprised him this year. The first had been her suggesting that he chuck the education business altogether. Why not go to law school, she said, like he’d planned as an undergraduate, before he met that Helene girl? Watching her and the professor prepare dinner––an activity she’d never shared with her husband––Patrick pondered how many other boyfriends he’d never met, that she and Erin had kept from him. And, it finally dawned on him, as she swapped spices with Larry, whispering suggestions in his ear, that he’d trapped his mother in the amber of his childhood, and that this evening was a lesson for her schoolmaster son, a tutorial in moving on.

  Patrick looks up from his moist lap. Ted Sturdevant looms over him, a solid block of department chair. He waves Patrick into the Xerox room adjoining the lounge, pausing in front of the wall of faculty mail slots. All are empty, save one. This slot, beneath Mr. Linnehan and above Mrs. McPherson, is filled beyond capacity, papers drooping over the nameplate, littering the floor below. Ted points to a banker’s box in the corner that Patrick assumed had something to do with recycling. “Yours, pal,” says Ted, gesturing at the box, half-filled with mail. “All yours.” Ted wedges his thick mitts into the edges of the crammed mail slot and extracts a four-inch mass of Scholastic catalogues, unopened envelopes, pink office directives.

  He thrusts the pile at Patrick, smirking. “It’s not storage space, Mr. Lynch.”

  Patrick squints his swollen eyelids. “Storage is the least of my problems, Mr. Sturdevant.”

  Ted moves to the doorway, peers into the lounge. “Actually, it’s not storage I want to talk about.”

  “I sensed that.”

  Ted eyes the box. “But this does explain why you never answer my memos.”

  Patrick looks at the box, noticing for the first time the yellow stickie on it with Mr. Lynch written in the office secretary’s hand and the smiley face beneath it. He shrugs. “Nothing personal.”

  Ted leans in. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, probably. It’s not official yet.” Patrick waits. “The school board granted Cindy a year’s leave.”

  “She likes being a mommy.”

  “She was made for it.” Ted looks toward the lounge. “More than teaching.” Conspiratorial grin. “Anyway, we’ll have to post it. And interview.” Patrick nods. “But you do seem to have the inside track.”

  Kristie Bergquist guffaws. Oh, those raccoons.

  “If you’re interested.” Ted clears his throat. “I know you’ve been looking. Thought I’d let you know before somebody else snatches you up.”

  “Between you and me, not a lot of snatching lately.”

  A guy laugh from Ted. Wife and two kids later, he misses the locker room repartee. “It’s just another one-year contract,” he says, lowering his voice. “Strictly on the QT, Cindy’s hubby is in marketing at Dairy Queen and might be up for a promotion. In their Dallas office.”

  “Gotta love the winters down there. And the Dilly Bars.”

  “No promises, but this could turn into a permanent gig. If you’re interested.” Ted lands a soft right hook on Patrick’s upper arm.

  Patrick examines the toner-stained carpeting, then looks at Ted. “I’m interested. Thanks.”

  Ted flicks a look toward their colleagues. “Good. That’s good,” he says softly, and presses an index finger to his lips. He turns to leave.

  “Ted?” The department chair turns back. His shoulders fill the doorway. “Why?” Ted lifts his brows modestly, as if he doesn’t understand the question. Patrick waves his hands about the copying room. “All this?”

  Ted suppresses a quip about the malfunctioning Xerox. He plants a brawny hand on either side of the doorframe. “Blame your dad.”

  “He’s got a lot to answer for.”

  “Called me down to his office sophomore year.” Ted folds his arms, savoring the chance to tell it. “I thought he’d found out about the beer blast at Hanson’s Woods. That I was suspended, off the team.” He leans against the doorframe. “Sat me down and asked me––so gently––when I was going to start acting like the bright young man I was, instead of an idiot jock.” Ted laughs. “He got the second part right, anyway.”

  Kristie excuses her way past Ted, pretends to check her mail slot. Ted watches her return to her pile of papers.

  “Part of me wanted to argue with him––What do you know, old man? Screw you.” He lets out an adolescent snort. “But, you know, he had a Superintendent of the Year award over one shoulder and a trophy for All-State tackle over the other. Hard to write off that combo, even as a snotty teenager.”

  “Yes.”

  “And another part of me––a very remote part––looked at your dad behind that desk and thought that could be me someday.” Ted shakes h
is head. “Know what I mean?” Patrick does know. He is picturing the loon decoy. “Quite a guy, your dad.”

  Patrick lifts a hand. “He was a man. Take him for all in all––”

  “Mark Antony.”

  “Hamlet. Act 1, Scene 2.” Tonight, Patrick Lynch will be playing the role of Gunther Hendrickson.

  “Damn. And I used to teach that. See? You were the smartest kid in school.”

  Patrick lets it slide. “So. You hired me because of my father. And pity.”

  Ted puts a hand to that square jaw. “Essentially.”

  Patrick tosses his unprocessed mail into the banker’s box. “Works for me.”

  He is just going to ignore them, the two little streams, one under each arm, running down his sides. Sun is flooding through the courtyard window and even the squirrel is lethargic, resting on the largest branch of the chestnut, lazily swishing his tail, eyeing the impregnable bird feeder. It’s even hotter than second period, but, with the floor fan cranked to high, not so much worse here than in the lounge. The banker’s box is nearly empty now, sorted into three piles—pitch, keep, maybe—on Cindy’s––his?––desk. The smallest pile, the maybe pile, is in the middle. He looks at the clock, the second hand waving at Steinbeck. Five minutes left in third period; he’ll have to deal with the maybes later.

  He had to get away from that end-of-year teacher’s lounge chatter. Had to consider what he’d just agreed to. He breathes it in: another year––maybe more––at Lake Minnehaha. Relief, naturally, comes first––no more interviews, no specter of substitute teaching looming over the fall. But guilt is a quick second. His future is less happenstance now, more intentional. It’s one thing, he thinks, to wash ashore in suburbia from the shipwreck of your life, to tell yourself that you were applying there because the city schools never hired till the last minute. True enough, but.

  “That’s bullshit, Patrick,” Dorie said when he’d called her, unburdening in the deep mid-winter, looking out at the parking lot as snow buried his used Tercel. He’d abandoned the cause that got him into teaching, he confessed. He was just one more lackey, serving the rich. No different, he whined, than that squirrel that lived in the school courtyard, in his cozy space, fattening himself on their leavings.