By the time things settled down, Larry Munroe had a BA in history and was teaching at his old high school. And he might have persevered, too, might have made it to the old gold watch and a retirement plan, had he not met Katherine Grigsby. May his ex-wife rot in hell for turning him, in his later years—a time when the gray was just coming to his thinning sideburns enough that it might appear to some student that Mr. Munroe actually knew what he was talking about—into a fucking mailman! But that’s what had happened after he lost his teaching job at the only high school in town, the problem being that little fistfight in the classroom. He had then put on a decent suit and gone out on one job interview after another, holding in his hand the résumé that spoke of a man aged forty-three with no other visible experience beyond teaching history. After four weeks of what might be considered self-inflicted humiliation, Larry had to face facts. The only establishment sincerely interested in hiring a middle-aged ex-schoolteacher was the Bixley Post Office, where his own father presided over the business of deliveries, stamps, money orders, dog bites, customer complaints, and other sundries. They had lost a good postman when Henry Munroe’s heart exploded in his chest, so now the Bixley Post Office and Lawrence Simon Munroe III had thrown open those ancestral doors to Lawrence Simon Munroe IV. May Katherine Grigsby rot in Hades.
There were facts to be faced, and Larry faced them. He was struggling to keep up with his child support payments. He was struggling to pay rent on a one-bedroom apartment now that the house had been sold. He was no match for the twentysomething young men who were fresh out of college and snapping up all the good jobs. What choice did he have but to take up the leather gauntlet of his forefathers? What choice did he have but to move back home with his parents? So he had stuffed his pouch with letters and gone up and down the sidewalks of Bixley, for six days out of every week, bringing people good news, bringing them bad news, bringing them Ed McMahon and the chance at millions in the Publishers Clearing House contest, bringing them foreclosures from the Bixley bank, bringing them the world right at their fingertips, whether they wanted the world or not. For seven full, agonizing months he had done this, wishing every day, every step he took up a customer’s brick walk, that Katherine Grigsby would burn in hell’s most horrible inferno. But she hadn’t burned, or rotted, or even smoldered anywhere, at least not yet. Instead, she was now living with Ricky Santino, who had coached basketball at the same high school where Larry taught history. Nice and messy. Leave it to Katherine, who never forgave him for getting her pregnant and forcing her to choose between ballet and motherhood. He hadn’t even realized until Katherine left him that those ballet lessons she’d been taking were so important to her. Larry always thought it was her way of getting exercise and attention at the same time. That fluffy pink tutu, those silky shoes the size of rose petals. She had always reminded him of Tinker Bell, pirouetting through the house as if it were some stage. “She’s too young for you, Larry” was all his mother had said when she met Katherine for the first time. Larry hadn’t seen it that way. What was ten years, after all? He had always wondered if the frequent pirouetting was what caused Katherine to miscarry that first baby, and then a second baby two years later. Jonathan, coming late as he did, had been such a precious gift, at least for Larry.
The truth was that Katherine Grigsby had as much chance back in her early years to become a professional ballet dancer as had Zelda Fitzgerald. And Larry had told her that, the day he came home from giving his quarterly exam on the Roman Empire to find her packed and waiting for him by the door, Ricky Santino’s new green Jeep idling at the curb. This was shortly after the Big Italian Renaissance Fight, at least that’s what Larry had come to call it. He should’ve killed the fucking little WOP while he had him pinned to the radiator. That was the day that Larry Munroe’s marriage fell down faster than Rome. The worst thing about it, the worst fucking thing that could happen to a high school history teacher in a small town, whose ancestral family he had already failed for refusing to pick up a century-old mail pouch that smelled of sweat and grime, a man whose stomach was beginning to resemble the spare tire clamped on the back of Ricky’s idling Jeep, the worst fucking thing that Katherine had done was that she had taken Jonathan, their son. His son.
Jonathan. This was a name Larry had wanted for himself as a child, a chance to be different, a prayer to be unique. But they had called him Lawrence. As a boy he would stand in front of his bedroom dresser, look into the mirror with a grave dignity, and say, “Hello, I’m Jonathan Munroe. Good day, Jonathan Munroe here, Jonathan Munroe calling, Jonathan, Jonathan Munroe.” He had envied Henry for possessing his own independent name, this was true. Envious because Henry had not been promised the silver letter-opening knife with LSM inscribed on the handle. And maybe that’s why Henry had so willingly taken up the family profession. He had the freedom to choose. But that’s why Larry had given his only child, a sweet boy, the very name he’d wanted for himself, Jonathan, a name signifying freedom. Larry had given it to his son without consideration of his ancestors because he saw the future every time he looked at Jonathan. He saw the future and not the past. Lawrence Munroe IV had named his own son Jonathan, and he had kept him from letters and postal cards and fliers and Current Occupant catalogs as long as he could. And then, when life without the boy seemed unbearable, Katherine had taken Jonathan Munroe and she had driven away from their home, the only house on Pilcher Street that didn’t sport a mailbox. Thinking back on that house now, months after he’d sold it to a fellow teacher, Larry had come to see it as a kind of box in itself. All throughout the fifteen years of his marriage to Katherine, they had bounced from room to room in that small, two-story Cape, pirouetted, like particles of dust trapped in sunlight.
The lilac-smelling letter from Sioux City, from Miss Sheila Dewberry to Miss Stella Peabody, was a love letter. My own darling, it began. How I have missed the soft velvet of your sweet mouth, the silk of your nape, the tender arch of your back, the hills of your snow-white breasts, which my lips have climbed so many times in the past. It was the last image, of breasts rising up white as snow to someone’s lips, anyone’s lips, even an old maid’s, that prompted Larry to reach under the blanket and search for his genitals. They were still there. That Katherine hadn’t managed to take them with her was a miracle, since she even took the andirons in front of the fireplace, andirons inscribed LSM and passed down from the first LSM. Maybe Larry should thank Ricky Santino for that, macho guy that he was. Leave Larry his balls, he could hear Ricky advising Katherine. It’s all the guy has left, and a man needs his testicles in a small town when his wife has run off with one of his fellow teachers. But Katherine had taken Jonathan. Larry had watched from the porch as Jonathan walked to the green Jeep, his school jacket slung over one shoulder like a limp arm, his face streaked from crying, his cowlick bouncing in all directions, like a confused periscope trying to determine place, heading, bearing. Not yet ten years old and already with a big mission.
Katherine Grigsby had left Larry his balls, but she had taken his heart. That had been seven months ago and there was nothing he could do about it. At one time, he’d have phoned up Henry. “Let’s go get a beer,” he’d suggest, and Henry would be there, sitting on a stool at Murphy’s Tavern by the time Larry even arrived. They would sit side by side at the bar, Larry trying not to look at Evie’s ass if she was working, knowing all about Henry and Evie but pretending that he didn’t. He and Henry would toss back a few beers, catch whatever ball game was on the tiny TV dangling from the ceiling behind the bar. And when it came time to go home, Larry would feel better, as if he’d actually talked to someone about his problems. Henry’s physical body sitting there on the bar stool next to him was word enough, a paragraph, a whole book. I’m here for you, buddy, Henry was saying. Now, Henry was dead. Larry had lost a brother, but he had gained a court order restricting him from intruding upon Ricky Santino’s classroom, upon Ricky Santino’s life, upon Ricky Santino period. He now had to stay fifty y
ards from Ricky Santino, who had stolen his wife and child away from him.
Larry knew that he shouldn’t have barged into Ricky’s classroom as he did that day when he first found out about the affair. Katherine had been in the teacher’s room, smoking another one of her three cigarettes a day, no more, no less. And Larry had come in during study period to find her there. “I think we should take Jonathan to Washington, DC, this summer,” he had said, thinking his son, their son, was now old enough to take a deep interest in the nation’s capital. But instead of agreeing or even disagreeing, Katherine had prematurely stubbed one of those three daily cigarettes in the ashtray, straightened her skirt, and said, “I need to get back to class.” And she had walked out past him, as uncaring as though he were a coat rack. At least that’s how he felt then, but he had flattered himself, because no coat rack would ever be given a restraining order. What Larry Munroe didn’t know, as he stood there wondering what he had done to warrant the present cold shoulder of Katherine Grigsby, his wife, who had refused all offers of the Munroe name herself, was that he was only days away from losing Jonathan. Or that his life was about to go to hell in a mail sack, the proverbial handbasket being reserved for coat racks. That’s when Maurice Finney had come into the teacher’s room, his aging hippie look barely contained in his corduroy jacket with the brown patches on the elbows, and the matching corduroy slacks. “Jesus, man,” Maurice had said, giving Larry a gentle slap on the back. “I just heard about you and Katherine breaking up. Fucking bummer, man. How are you taking it, buddy? You cool? How’s Jonathan taking it? I wouldn’t be this together, man, if it was me. I mean, if this was still the sixties, different story. You could pretend it was a bad case of Karma. But these days? Well, this kind of shit really hurts in the new millennium.” Then Maurice found the book he had come looking for and was gone again, down the lime-green hallways of Bixley High School.
Larry had stood there for a time, staring at the cigarette butt still smoking in the ashtray, doing the math on what he’d just heard, adding in Katherine’s mood minutes before, adding up the weeks and months—my God, it had been months!—that she had turned away from him in bed, had been sullen and withdrawn at the breakfast table. And she never complained anymore that he spent his Saturdays fishing or golfing. It had been since that previous spring that he even remembered her caring where he was going when he left the house. Two plus two equals four. Even a history teacher knew that. So Larry had left the teacher’s room and strode on down to Katherine’s own room. Before he knocked, he stood at the door and peered through the glass window. She was talking about some poem, most likely, her eyes on fire with meter and rhyme. Maybe even love. He remembered her this way when they first met and later married. They had passion to burn back then, especially Katherine, who was only eighteen and a freshman in college. At twenty-eight and already teaching history, Larry probably appeared mature and worldly to her. But then Katherine got older too, and that’s when she found Larry Munroe out. Maybe he hadn’t been mature and worldly after all. Maybe he had just been older.
So Larry had knocked on her classroom door that day. When Katherine looked over at him, she knew. He could see it in her face. She knew he knew. She came to the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind her. He was about to ask her who it was, but in a second he realized. How had he been such a fool? How could he have been so stupid, so blind? “You and Ricky Santino,” was all he said to her. “You and Ricky.” She looked like she might give him an A for answering the test question correctly. “I was about to tell you, a long time ago,” she said, “and then, well, Henry died. I thought it best to wait. But now you know.” And she had backed away from him, receded into her classroom where he heard her distant voice rising again with the rhythm of the poem.
Lawrence Munroe the Fourth didn’t stand outside the door and peer through the window at Ricky Santino, when he finally reached room 16. That’s when he realized he had run all the way from Katherine’s room in the English wing, up to the main hall, down the main hall, and over to the left wing. What if Mr. Wilcox, the principal, had caught one of his teachers running in the hall? Larry didn’t look at Ricky through the window at all. Instead, he had tossed open the door and barged in. Ricky, his fellow history teacher and Bixley High’s respected basketball coach now that the team had actually won a game or two, must have been discussing Italy—the Italian Renaissance maybe—because Larry remembered the shape of a boot on the map hanging from the wall as he lunged across the room, taking Ricky down in front of twenty-some screaming students. Talk about visual aids. They should have made him Teacher of the Year for finding a way to get students to pay attention. Damn Katherine for turning him into a mailman.
Do you remember, oh my precious girl, that little cottage we rented at the beach? I shall never forget those nights of firelight, and moonlight, and the gentle probing of your tongue. Please don’t keep me from you, nor you from me, for too much longer. My heart, no, my body, needs you and needs you now. I am all fire as I write.
Larry heard the whine of the Toyota truck again as it pulled into the yard. Its door opened and closed. The front door of the house opened and closed. Five minutes passed.
“Larry!” His mother’s voice. Her second assault of the day had arrived right on time. Larry brought his hand quickly away from his genitals—yes, so what if it was one old spinster writing a letter to another one? Who cares as long as the words are pure and genuine? What healthy man who still possessed his balls could turn away from the swell of white breasts, that gentle, probing tongue?
“Jesus,” Larry said, and flung the blanket aside. He was forty-three years old and he’d just been interrupted while masturbating in his old bedroom, in his mother’s house, by his mom herself. Once, she had even caught him in the act, the summer he was eleven years old and Davey Pryor had given him the aging stack of Mr. Pryor’s dog-eared Playboys—God bless Hugh Hefner, one of America’s most unsung sociologists, for having the foresight, if maybe not the foreskin, to publish through snow, through rain, through sleet and hail, a monthly issue of breasts rising up like soft white mountains. God bless that man! And it didn’t matter that the magazines were old, as it would with Newsweek, or Time, or TV Guide. Tits never age, at least not on the page. Nightly, beneath his blanket, Larry had hovered over issue after issue, burning up a hundred flashlight batteries after Henry had fallen asleep and only snores wafted down from the top bunk, reveling in the wonder of a naked woman and touching himself for the first real time, and knowing that life was going to be good, oh, life was going to kick some ass if this feeling was any indication. But then his mother had appeared—what does a kid who’s just discovered the mechanics of his penis know about the value of a locked door?—his mother had materialized by his bed. And how could Larry hear her coming, what with the blood rushing to his penis, to his heart, flooding his ears, the blood rushing to his very soul? She had appeared with an armful of his laundry, clean, pure, pristine shorts and T-shirts and folded jeans, a stack of laundry in her arms, she herself smelling like June Cleaver. She had lifted the blanket and there he was. If the damn thing hadn’t been in his hands, if he hadn’t been gripping it so sincerely, as though it were a microphone and he was singing “Mister Sandman” into it, maybe he could have come up with an excuse. “What’s that doing here?” he might’ve asked. But he couldn’t, and although he hadn’t bothered to struggle with the fine print, he could almost bet as he looked up into his mother’s horrified face that nowhere in that printed material had Hef offered any advice on what to do if your mom catches you with your prick in your hand. On the cusp of a nervous breakdown, his mother had ordered him to burn the issues, along with colored piles of autumn leaves, in a rusty steel drum in the backyard. Early that next morning, young Larry Munroe had stood and watched tender nipples turn browner than a nipple could ever imagine before they crumbled and disappeared in orange tongues and licks of fire. He had seen breasts white as goose down grow black and cindery in
the mouth of the flames, and then fly like feathers up to heaven. Tits rising on wisps of smoke as though they had wings. Slender, tender thighs turning to ash. And he had known right then, his two feet planted wildly on each side of the steel drum, that maybe life wasn’t going to be so good after all. Maybe it wasn’t.
But Larry had no idea how bad it would get, just thirty-one short years later, when his brother Henry would die early of a heart attack, having inherited his ancestors’ penchant to deliver the mail but not their longevity. Henry was the only one Larry wanted to talk to about Katherine and Ricky Santino. And it wouldn’t be with words. It would be with the closeness of two brothers sitting in a canoe, fishing, saying absolutely nothing about anything but fish and beer and the Red Sox.
“Open the door, Larry,” his mother said now. He could hear the veiled anger behind her words. “Your father is home for lunch and is standing behind me, listening to this,” she added.
Year After Henry Page 4
