Life Is Fine

by Allison Whittenberg

  The rest of my class periods sucked.

  I hated Algebra II.

  I hated psychology.

  I hated history.

  Study hall was okay.

  Freedom came at 2:24. I rushed to my locker to deposit my books. Someone tapped my shoulder.

  “You were great.”

  I spun around. “What?”

  It was that weird girl. She looked weird even up close. She had dimples. They asserted themselves as she smiled. “You exposed Andrew Marvell, that sexist-pig poet—”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The writer of the poem this morning.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Are you a feminist?” she asked me.

  “No,” I answered dully. “Baptist.”

  three

  There are some people who are like paddles upon water. Their impression vanishes in moments. Then there are those who linger. I thought of that sub as I made my decision not to go to school the next day. I weighed the pros and cons and decided that since that was just one class and there were five others I’d have to put up with, it wasn’t worth it.

  Whatever pangs of regret I might have had were staved off because I wasn’t even sure he was going to be there. He was a substitute, after all. Once at the zoo, I was confident that I had made the right choice. I really didn’t want to see anyone else at school, and I was quite certain nobody really wanted to see me.

  The zoo had been thick with people during the summer months, but now, during fall, the crowd was thin. I was faithful to this nearly deserted place, which was still colorful and loud, with the geese honking. I wasn’t interested in the reptile house with its boa constrictors or the big cat exhibit with its lions and snow leopards. I breezed past the yawning hippopotamuses. My thoughts were only of Dru.

  But when I got to his cage, I was disappointed to see that there was another person there.

  Dru’s lanky arms scratched his crown with his long fingers, and the visitor scratched his head.

  The visitor was right up on the glass, with large forward-facing eyes. He was skinny. He seemed to rattle in his jacket.

  When Dru hunched his shoulders, so did the visitor. Then the visitor dictated the action. He swished his dreadlocks and Dru shook his fur.

  The visitor pounded his feet on the ground and so did Dru. Then the man started flailing like he was being electrocuted. He was stricken with madness, making animal screams. Dru started freaking out like he was having a seizure.

  This man was going ape. And he was making my orangutan go ape as well.

  Maybe this visitor could feel my stare, my horror.

  Our eyes met for a prolonged moment. He stepped toward me and opened his mouth to speak. But I panicked and quickly exited.

  I took the number 7 back to my house, not daring to look back until I was safely on the road.

  During the ride home, I saw a man peeing. A different man from the last time. He was whizzing in plain view as he walked an incline on the side of the Family Court building. This guy was different, older, old enough to know better. A security guard followed him.

  The wrong animals were behind bars.

  I leaned back in my seat. Instead of getting scared out of the zoo by some stranger, I could have been hearing sexist poetry with that old sub. I sighed—another missed opportunity.

  four

  That next day, I found myself at a bookstore. Bookstores have become the new libraries. People sat on the chairs, couches, even footstools flipping pages, wetting their thumbs, their eyes moving along the lines of print. One guy had a stack of a dozen or so books at a center table in the store’s café. No coffee. No muffin. He was just reading away like he was in his living room.

  Coffeehouses tell loiterers to roll if they try that.

  But it’s not like I was any better. I was just there to mooch a look at Andrew Marvell and some self-help books.

  In the poetry section, the “M”s were on the tippy-top. You’d have to be a monkey to reach that far up. I wondered what Dru was up to as I balanced on a footstool. When I found a collection of Marvell’s work, I noticed that it was thicker than a Bible. I just wanted to see what Marvell’s other poems were like, not change my religion.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a man with a trim mustache and neat clothes, a crease in his trousers and everything. It was him, the substitute.

  I decided to scrap my book hunt. I tried for a smooth retreat. I wished I had dark glasses or a hat—a big one with a wide brim that I could pull down—or a paper bag.

  Quickly and quietly, I put Marvell back on the shelf.

  I glanced back at the sub, wondering if he was still there, before turning to leave.

  “Samara?” he asked.

  Crap, I thought. “Hello.”

  He smiled at me with his blue eyes.

  “I see I piqued your interest.” He gestured to the poetry shelves.

  “I was just browsing.”

  “You missed class.”

  “I can’t go out when it’s below forty-five degrees,” I lied in a rush. “I have a condition.”

  “It wasn’t particularly cold yesterday.”

  “I must have gotten a bad weather report. . . . What are you doing here? It seems like you would have read everything already.”

  “I like to see what’s new.”

  He held up his copy of The Sonnets of Shakespeare. I didn’t know literature, but even I knew that William Shakespeare had been dead for the last billion years. The sub put it back into the bag. “And sometimes my copies wear out. Did you want to purchase anything?” he asked.

  “No, really, I was just looking.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, pulling out his wallet. “I have a few extra dollars. I feel a little obliged since I contributed to your addiction.”

  “Addiction?”

  “I know an avid reader when I’m in the presence of one.”

  “Me?” I was nearly floored by the accusation. He further discombobulated me by suggesting we grab lunch.

  We walked past the pizza parlor, the General Nutrition Center, and the lingerie boutique to a diner on the corner called Ahab’s. Along the way, I asked him where he lived.

  “Not too far from here. Rittenhouse Square,” he told me as we walked to the next block.

  “You must be rich, then,” I said, and immediately imagined that he dwelled in the Dorchester, that fancy condo building where you can’t own a closet without putting down a half a million. It was so lush there with the doormen dressed like royal guards, with their uniforms.

  “It’s pricey there, but I think Society Hill’s even worse. The rent there gets as high as a kite. Where is it that you live?”

  “Bainbridge Street.”

  “That’s over by what used to be Graduate Hospital.”

  I shook my head. “After. It’s south of South Street. New York has SoHo. We have SoSo.”

  “That’s cute.”

  The hubbub. The diner was full of people: youngish, oldish, well-to-do, middle-of-the-road. Men and women together. Men together. Women together. Me and the sub. All about us the waitresses were hurrying, hurrying, placing fresh settings before us.

  “I plan to order a turkey club,” he told me.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Don’t you young people eat sandwiches?”

  “Sure, just the other day I had some peanut butter and jelly.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not a sandwich. There’s no art to that. Picture this: one slice of bread toasted, followed by turkey slices and bacon and by another piece of toast and more turkey and bacon and lettuce and tomato and more bread.”

  “Three slices of bread?” I asked.

  “One goes in the middle,” he explained.

  “That’s a lot of bread.”

  The waitress was at my elbow.

  “We’ll have two turkey clubs,” I told her.

  “What kind of bread?” she asked.

  “Gee. I don�
�t know. Rye?” I asked.

  “Coming right up,” the waitress said, taking my guess as a commitment.

  The sub looked at me keenly. “Life offers few opportunities to choose exactly what you want. You might as well take advantage of the chance when it presents itself.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t get what he meant. This impromptu lunch rattled me.

  When our sandwiches came, I finally understood. They did look regal, almost gaudy, with green and red toothpicks sticking out of each triangle.

  He ate precisely. There was something very pure and decent about him, almost naïve. But then again, you have to be naïve to be a substitute teacher.

  “I know you’re into all those grab-the-day poems, but what’s your favorite story?”

  “Easy.” He finished his bite. “ ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ ”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Frank Stockton.”

  “Should I know that name?”

  “He’s not Steinbeck.” He took the toothpick out of another square.

  “Who?”

  “The Grapes of Wrath.”

  I frowned. “Now you’re just making up stuff.”

  “And you wonder why I came out of retirement?” He spread his arms wide as he spoke. “This story has everything. A beautiful woman. Justice. Danger.”

  “Justice?”

  “ ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ It was written a little after the Civil War.”

  “Oh, circa when you were born.” I couldn’t resist. He rolled on without acknowledgment.

  “The king is despotic. He judges guilt and innocence by placing the accused in a chamber with two doors. Behind one door there is a tiger, and behind the other is a beautiful woman,” he continued.

  “That king sounds nuts. So what’s the plot?”

  “This tyrant king finds out that his beloved daughter is seeing a man he considers unworthy of her, so the suitor is placed in the chamber with the two doors. The twist is that the princess knows which door is which.”

  “So she tells him.” I took a bite of my sandwich. The bacon was good and salty and the turkey was thick.

  “Maybe,” he said, hedging. “The story never says.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? If she loved him, she wouldn’t let him get eaten by a lion.”

  “Tiger,” he corrected me, and added, “Because she loves him, she can’t let him marry another.”

  “So he gets eaten,” I guessed.

  “No.”

  “So he gets married,” I guessed again.

  “No.”

  Abandoning my curiosity, I threw up my hands.

  “So he stands there looking at the two doors for the next fifty years and dies of old age.”

  The sub wore a purely devilish grin. “It’s open-ended.”

  “Open-ended? Your favorite story has an open ending?” I asked incredulously. That story was only for people who enjoyed thinking, I figured. It was like philosophy.

  After we left the restaurant, I lit a cigarette by reflex.

  “Don’t do that,” he warned. “It stunts your growth.”

  “I’m five four,” I told him. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “I’m sure you have things planned for the afternoon,” he said.

  I grinned sarcastically. “I’m sure I have things planned for the afternoon.”

  “It was nice seeing you.” He tipped his hat. “See you Monday.”

  “See you Monday,” I said, and I let the smoke curl out of my nostrils. I watched this ninety-percent-gray-haired man walk away with his jaunty, purposeful swing to his arms.

  My eyes followed him till he was at the end of the block. Then I saw him turn the corner on Eighteenth.

  Oh, I have a lot to do. So much.

  five

  I had nothing to do. I was so bored the rest of the weekend that I couldn’t wait till Monday. And school. And Mr. Brook. That was the pet name I had thought up. I couldn’t wait to use it on him.

  In homeroom, I received a note that said the guidance counselor wanted to see me.

  I burst into Bowman’s office like a hurricane, surprising him during his morning cup of joe. He made a half circle in his swivel chair to face me.

  “Don’t worry, Bowman, I won’t miss any more days.” I put both thumbs up. “I’m on the right track.”

  Bowman’s mouth formed a perfect “O.”

  I ducked out before he could answer.

  When I reached the room, my hopes took a dive. The teacher wasn’t Mr. Jerome Halbrook in his suit and tie. It was Ms. Krista Flanders in her low-rise jeans and flip-flops. She was diagramming sentences on the board. Boring ones like: “The writer uses a comma to set off a definition, a restatement, or extra information.”

  With great lament, I sank into my seat. I folded my arms across my chest.

  He promised he’d be here.

  The AP-wannabe guy was furiously biting the skin around his fingernails.

  I felt like constructing a sign: BRING BACK THE SUB.

  That weird girl with the blue lipstick sat down next to me. She punched my arm. “Hey, missed you the other day.”

  I offered a mechanical smile.

  She punched my arm again.

  I looked over at her and caught sight of her notebook. The word “Steph’Annie” was etched on the cover.

  “Is that how you spell your name?” I asked.

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “You must be the only one in the world,” I told her.

  “Trying to be.”

  Class had started, but I could barely hear Flanders. She didn’t throw her voice like Mr. Brook.

  “I’m Steph’Annie Perdomo,” the weird girl said brightly.

  “I’m Samara Tuttle,” I replied, mimicking her enthusiasm.

  Steph’Annie confused my mockery with sincerity. She held out her hand for me to shake it.

  I did.

  My next class sucked. So did the one after that, but around ten-thirty, I passed room 245. I saw him as if he were an apparition. A mirage.

  I squinted just to make sure.

  He was erasing the blackboard behind the desk.

  My hands were trembling as I knocked on the door and said, “Can’t get enough of the place?”

  “Samara,” he said happily as he turned to me.

  I stepped in. “It’s my open period, too,” I lied. I was supposed to be in phys ed. “Do you know that you are the oldest teacher in America?”

  “Oh, I’m a youngster. In Maryland, there is a gentleman who is ninety-three years old. He teaches a full load.”

  “A ninety-three-year-old teacher?” I asked, laughing a bit. He had to be putting me on.

  “I saw his story on the nightly news. He started teaching in the 1930s. He did forty-six straight years. He heard about the lack of black teachers in his district and pulled himself out of retirement in the late 1990s.”

  “At least he was well rested. . . . You know, his age could really come in handy, like for history. He could give a firsthand account of Washington crossing the Delaware.”

  “He’s a chemistry teacher.”

  “Even better. He was there when Pythagoras thought up his theorem.”

  He gave me a smile. “That’s geometry.”

  “All right, so he was present when Oppenheimer split the atom in Manhattan.”

  “The Manhattan Project didn’t take place in New York. It was in a New Mexico desert.”

  “Then why did they call it the Manhattan Project?” I asked.

  “You know, I don’t know. That might be worth looking up.”

  “Is that why you came to us? You think we need role models?”

  “I always wanted to be a teacher.”

  I snorted. “So why aren’t you a regular one?”

  “I went the business route, the so-called practical one. I was a vice president before I retired.”

  “This must be the mother of all pay cuts.”

  “I’m doing this to occupy my
time.”

  “Teaching is a time-consuming hobby.”

  “I’ve got time. You would make a good teacher, Samara.”

  My skin prickled. “A teacher?” I asked incredulously. “I’m trying to get out of this place, not stay here for the rest of my life.”

  He persisted. “It’s different when you have a big desk.”

  I held my ground. “They’d have to give me more than a big desk.”

  “What do you want to be, Samara?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Whatever.”

  “Whatever? What do you think is going to happen in three more years?” he asked.

  “I’ll graduate.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “Then I move.”

  “Where?”

  I shrugged.

  “What do your parents have to say?”

  “Not much.” By reflex, I reached for a cigarette, then waved my hand away from it. “She’s busy.”

  “Your mother’s raising you alone?”

  That question made me smirk. “You could say that.”

  He nodded. “Well, it’s very hard being a parent.”

  “Are you one?”

  “No.”

  “By now, you’re probably a grandparent.”

  “I’ve never had children.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s interesting. . . . You were married, right?”

  “Twice.”

  I cocked my head. “Maybe the third time will be the charm.”

  “Anything is possible.” He reached into his satchel and took out a book. “Before I forget. Here.” He handed me the book Immortal Poetry. “I would like you to read this.”

  I heard the bonging of the church bells as I got off the bus at my stop. I was dreaming of Mr. Brook, and it felt odd-good. Not odd-bad. Though intraspecies relationships are frowned upon (just ask King Kong), intergenerational liaisons are not. They say men mature more slowly than women—maybe not sixty years more slowly, but more slowly nonetheless—and just thinking of Mr. Brook lifted my spirits. But when I opened the door to my house, all the life was sucked out of me.

  The whole place smelled like fried burgers. Q was in the kitchen. I could hear the pan hissing with grease.

  The living room was a sty, as usual. I quickly collected the stray papers into a little pile and plugged in a vacuum cleaner.