by Sean Boling
Chapter Nine: Dale
An old friend of Alma’s who had been a realtor in the valley through five recessions gave them the combination of some lock boxes hanging from the doors of empty houses she thought might be suitable for Jonathan.
“You told her our plans?” Dale snapped when Alma first told him.
“They’re nothing to be ashamed of,” Alma leveled her reply.
Dale wasn’t responding with their plans for Jonathan in mind. He was responding with their method of payment in mind, which was still precarious.
“Sorry,” he relented. “Of course not. I was just thinking maybe it’s a little early.”
“We would only be gauging how Jonathan responds to the idea, and to certain homes and neighborhoods. So we’re ready when the time comes.”
He appreciated the vote of confidence implied by her use of the word ‘when’ instead of ‘if’, and decided it sounded like a fine idea after all. It also helped that Alma had requested the combinations rather than allow her real estate friend to take them on a series of tours, as they agreed it was preferable to not have any outsiders lurk at their elbow while assessing Jonathan’s reactions to each house.
During their first self-guided tour, however, they caught themselves being no more helpful than a vague acquaintance, as they trailed Jonathan while he drifted between spaces as though stalking him.
“Are we going to duck behind a corner if he turns in our direction?” Dale joked.
“I’ve got pepper spray in my purse,” she played along.
The sound of a large truck rumbling onto the block lightly rattled the walls. Jonathan sprinted outside.
“Oh…yeah,” Alma remembered something as he darted past them.
“Where there garbage cans outside?” Dale confirmed.
Alma nodded and they walked after him.
Jonathan was standing on what used to be a front lawn with his hands cupped around each side of his face, as though holding binoculars, creating tunnel vision that he focused on a garbage truck as its mechanical arm lifted one bin at a time above its body and shook out the contents into the opening.
The driver waved at Jonathan, like he had so many times before in their own neighborhood when Jonathan so faithfully greeted him. Then he saw Dale and Alma and rolled down his window.
“You moving!?” he hollered at them above the hydraulic hum.
They shook their heads and waved.
“Just looking!” Alma answered.
The driver was confused but nodded anyway. With one last wave in Jonathan’s direction, he rolled his window back up and moved on to the next batch of bins down the street.
Jonathan lowered his hands but continued to watch the truck do its job in the distance. He repeatedly gave his head a single shake to the left in satisfied awe of what he was seeing. Dale and Alma watched him watch the garbage truck.
“Who are we kidding?” Alma asked herself aloud.
Dale knew he didn’t have to answer, but wanted to anyway, if he could come up with something decent.
“If it doesn’t work out for him,” he decided to say, “the house can still be an investment. We can rent it out or sell it to help pay for his care.”
“Even when this market isn’t crashing,” she kept her eyes on Jonathan, “it’s not exactly Manhattan.”
“Which is why we’ll be able to pay cash, and not have a mortgage, so any rent or any sale is pure profit.”
Alma looked at him and forced a smile.
“The charter is about to take off,” he responded. “By the end of next year we’ll be the keynote speakers at every conference west of the Rockies. Then the year after that, every conference to the east.”
Her smile relaxed, though Dale wasn’t sure if it was because she believed him or wanted to console him. Maybe both. But when she made a move, it was toward Jonathan.
She sidled up next to her son and put her arm around him. Jonathan leaned into her and she pulled him even closer and spoke into his ear just loudly enough for Dale to hear.
“Do you remember the time we were using the instrument and talking about what makes people happy?” she asked softly of him. “And you spoke of that other place people always keep in mind, no matter how happy they are?”
She took out two laminated index cards that she always kept in her purse. One said “Yes” in big green letters, and the other said “No” in big red letters. She had equipped Dale with a pair that he had long since abandoned. Using them required asking Jonathan a barrage of questions, which from Dale’s perspective felt more like hassling him than talking with him. Alma understood, and for the same reason rarely used them, but decided this was one of those times she was willing to value spontaneity over articulation. She held the cards in front of him and he tapped the “No” card.
“That other place,” she reminded him. “Maybe it’s on a map or maybe it’s a goal of some sort, and they think everything will be better there?”
He tapped on “Yes”.
“We’re looking for that place,” she said. “For you. It might be this house, it might be a different one. But we’re going to keep looking. Would you like to help?”
He chose “Yes” again.
She kissed him on the head and led him back to the house. Dale reached for her as they passed by and she squeezed his hand for a moment.
They visited a new house every week, right after Jonathan’s life skills class at the recreation center. They enrolled him soon after the house hunt began, realizing his interactions with people had dwindled since he finished high school, and that combining each class with a home tour could provide a tangible glimpse into where the program could take him.
Dale would duck out of the office and meet them for lunch, where they would read up on the features of the house they were about to unlock so they could compare how closely the description matched reality.
A criteria developed as they passed through the houses. It needed to be one story, with as few bedrooms and bathrooms as possible while still being a single family home, so that Jonathan could establish clear and simple paths without sharing any walls with neighbors. They had read about people who stood on roughly the same spot of the spectrum as Jonathan and managed to become self-sufficient adults. Some lived in larger homes left behind by family, wherein most of the rooms ended up in disuse and disrepair from not being included in the routines they carved out for themselves, while others in smaller spaces ran the risk of people above them, below them, or to their sides contributing to the relentless tide of stimuli they were left to strain without a filter.
When a house looked promising upon completing a walk-through, they would drive by it at various times of the day and night to weigh the personality of the neighborhood. After the social calculations came the mathematical ones. They tabulated how much they would have to put away per month to buy it outright, and what sort of future value it may have based on its history and those of comparable homes, which they were able to access thanks to their inside source, Tess the realtor, who had known Jonathan since he was a baby and was delighted to help. Tess tended to be a little too curious as to where the money was going to come from, but they considered that a small price to pay for her assistance. They stuck to a story that featured an inheritance, as they remained sheepish over mentioning the possibility of future consulting fees.
“Why should we feel guilty about that?” Dale asked Alma when the subject came up again as they walked through a promising house and debated calling Tess for further background information.
“It just sounds weird,” she replied. “Making money from education. We’re not used to it.”
“It sounds dirty.”
“I find it more hard to believe than dirty.”
Jonathan had wandered one room ahead of them and they found themselves alone, surrounded by nothing but bare white walls in the middle of a hardwood floor. An echo seemed possible just from standing still, so Dale put his lips as close as he could to Alma’s ear while stil
l being able to whisper into it.
“If I make you feel dirty, will you believe it then?”
Alma laughed quietly. He pressed on.
“Empty houses,” he tried not to laugh himself, “the thrill of maybe getting caught.”
“I can’t believe it took you until the fourth house to suggest that,” she said.
He gave in and laughed along with her. They drifted in an echo toward the door that led out of the empty room.
“So you’ve been thinking about it, too?” he teased.
“From the moment Tess gave me the combinations.”
“Why didn’t you suggest it, then?”
“Because I knew I didn’t have to.”
He looked at her with complete satisfaction. She let him. They held hands and restored their moving vigil behind Jonathan as he reappeared in the corridor that tied the tiny house together.
The images conjured by their erotic premise had Dale smiling on the way back to LOCA, thanks as much to the comedic possibilities as the sexual. He bounced up the stairs to his office two at a time, then grabbed the railings on each side of the catwalk and swung his legs toward the door like a gymnast on the parallel bars.
Wendy’s expression as he entered tried to stop him cold, but he wasn’t ready to surrender. He returned the look on her face with one of his own, to which she jerked her head in the direction of his office.
Artie sat in the chair outside his door, which still didn’t faze him, as Artie’s visits had become far less frequent.
“Hey,” Dale greeted him. “It’s been a while.”
He stared at the floor and nodded.
“So what broke that impressive streak you were on?”
He shrugged.
“Artie,” Wendy cut in. “Could you please go inside Mr. Copeland’s office and wait for him?”
He obeyed.
Once the door was shut, Dale looked to Wendy for the explanation.
“Not good,” she said.
Dale waited for her to proceed, but she clung to the same stern look she had worn since he arrived.
“Oh?” he prompted her.
“He grabbed Kimmy’s butt,” she declared.
Dale exhaled and shook his head.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “He’s been doing so well.”
“Maybe not,” Wendy said, still working hard at remaining calm.
“What do you mean?” Dale asked.
“Candice walked him over. She was helping out in Isaiah’s classroom, and Kimmy yelled, ‘I’m sick of him doing that.’ That’s the only reason he got caught. Kimmy got fed up. And she told Candice she isn’t the only one.”
Dale grew silent and came up with some benign interpretations of what he just heard, but Wendy steered them aloud toward the most inevitable.
“Artie hasn’t calmed down. He’s just moved on from embarrassing himself to embarrassing other kids…girls…so they’re too ashamed to say anything.”
He kept the alternatives he was hoping for to himself. His eyes rose skyward then slowly started to sink. Just before his vision hit the floor, he dragged it toward his office door. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say. The conversations he had with students often revolved around the future. But it was always the student’s future that was up for discussion. His own prospects were never the point.
