A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room (24 page)

“And you still care for my daughter after all this?”
Feeling numb, Solange translated, keeping her eyes on the far wall
of the long room.

He nodded. “I care for her very much.”

Solange met his eye then closed her eyes, clenching
the rough lace tablecloth in her fists on her lap until her hands
ached. She told her mother what he’d said. Then, feeling their eyes
on her face she sat mortified as tears scalded their way down her
face to drip on the backs of her hands.

She felt her mother’s hands on her face and over her
hair. “Come, querida, come.” Her mother led her down the narrow
hallway to the chilly bedroom in back and her great humped feather
bed, where she allowed her mother to lay her down as a torrent beat
overhead.

“You are tired, now sleep.” Solange tried to protest,
but her mother’s rough hands on her face and hair were so
comforting, so warm.

The bed swallowed her in warm oblivion.

• • •

Awakening to the sound of her mother’s laughter, she
panicked.

It was twilight—morning or evening—which she couldn’t
tell.

Had she slept through the meeting? Still doped from
sleep, she wormed her way out from under the heavy mound of covers
and pulled on her shoes. Trying to focus on her watch, she
staggered down the hall to blink in the light of the living
room.

O’Connel sat with her mother at the kitchen table
playing cards.

A stack of family albums lay before them. Not those!
She pulled on her coat. “It’s after five, why’d you let me sleep so
long?” She tossed him his coat and hat. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”
O’Connel thanked the her mother and went out. Scooping up her bag,
she leaned down to kiss her mother’s cheek. “So, have you taken all
his money?”

The old woman shrugged, gathering the nickels on the
wood close under protective arms. “Only to pass the time,
sweetheart. After he had seen all your pictures, still you slept.
What was I to do? I’m too old to dance.”

Solange shook her head, smoothed the woman’s wiry
hair, pressed her face to her mother’s lap. Desperately, she
pressed her mother’s hands, looking up into her eyes. “Ah, Mae,
what should I do?”

The old woman took Solange’s hands in hers. “This one
is not like the others, little one. Try to trust him—just a little
bit. And, querida—trust yourself.”

Solange kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to go,
Mama.”

Outside, he stood gazing up at the stars through gaps
in the clouds. “I think the worst of it’s over, now.”

Climbing in, she slammed the door.

He was wrong about that.

• • •

The trip passed in silence, Solange grateful for
darkness. She didn’t want him seeing her face. They arrived at Elk
River at ten past seven and he parked in front of the school, away
from the thirty or so cars already there. In the silent cab they
looked out over valley spread before them. Elk River was at home
tonight.

Lights shone from the windows of a hundred small
homes.

“Well, that’s it, then,” he said. A moment passed. He
looked at his watch, then at her, eyes puzzled. “You’re late,
aren’t you?”

She felt as if she were frozen into the blue ice of a
glacier, being slowly ground to paste against the rock face. “Yes,
I know.”

“I’ll let you go in first so they don’t see us
together.” Frozen in the bucket seat, she sat, unable to move,
heart stopped.

She wanted to scream, to smash her head through the
window, to drag her wrist across the jagged edge. “Does that
matter?”

“I thought that’d be the way you’d want it.” She
nodded, making no move to get out. “Yeah, sure.”

He laughed.

“My, but you’re jolly,” she said, annoyed. “What’s
funny now?”

He flashed a wry smile. “I was thinking this is when
the cavalry shows up, when all the screaming supporters flood into
the meeting. That’s the way it always happens in the movies.” He
wiped fog off the windshield with his sleeve, looking out on the
deserted parking lot. “Looks like they’re late.”

She watched him, and something broke inside of her.
“I won’t do it.” She whispered it, barely said it out loud.

He cocked his head. “What?”

“I said I won’t do it.”

“Won’t do what?”

She opened her bag, found what she was looking for,
offered it to him in the dark cab. “Take it.”

He looked at her as if he thought she might be
joking. “A disk? What’s on it?”

“The letters, everything I have on you. I’m giving it
back. I won’t help them.” She held it out. “Take it.” She fought
the quaver in her voice. “It’s the original. I’ve deleted the
copies. The hard copies are at home, I’ll get rid of them later.
Without this they’ve got nothing.

Take it.” He looked from her to her hand and back.
“That wasn’t part of the deal. I was kidding when I said that.”

Could he be so stupid? “Don’t you know what this is?
It’s your job, your career. Does that mean anything?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it means something to me.” Still he
hesitated.

He was making her mad, now. “Well, then, will you
just take it?”

“It’ll cost you too much.”

Now that was good. As if she didn’t know what it
would cost. “Tell me about it.” Her eyes never leaving his face,
she slipped it in his pocket, buttoning down the heavy leather
flap. “I’ve got to tell Hugh what I’m doing. I owe him that much.”
She opened the door, got out. “You don’t want to be here tonight,
it won’t be pretty.”

She slammed the door. “Go home,” she said as she
walked away across the deserted lot.

• • •

Alone, O’Connel walked down the road to the
creek.

Sweet Jesus, she’d given him back his job.

He reached up to feel the hardness in his pocket,
reassuring himself it was still there. She’d given it back. He
closed his eyes, resting a foot on the guardrail post. The night
was dark under an overcast sky. No moon, no stars, but the wind was
up and sometimes the sky changed pretty fast along the river.

He was used to that, those quick changes. It didn’t
surprise him any more. Not any more. It was just a part of the
place, the way things were. You got used to it.

He took the disk out and held it up to catch the
light from the school behind him-no name, no nothing, just a blank
disk. Below, the rain-swollen creak ran black and fast. It would be
so simple, so quick, so easy just to let it go. It’d be in the
river in an hour or two, the sea by morning. So very easy.

Taking the disk by a corner, he wound up for a
backhand toss, but instead let his hand fall. He’d be back at
school Monday, but what about her? Where would she be? What would
his job cost her? Too much. But she’d given it to him, given him
back his life. She knew what she was doing, didn’t she? Again he
brought his arm up, tensed, faltered.

Well didn’t she? He let his hand drop to his
side.

No.

Not that way.

He slipped the disk in his pocket, turning back up
the hill.

• • •

The hallways stood empty.

Somewhere upstairs a vacuum droned. Without knowing
why, he found his way up to his room. The door propped open,
inside, Genaro hummed to himself in his clear bass as he cleaned
the chalkboard with a long suede eraser.

“Hey,” O’Connel said.

The man’s round, dark face brightened into a smile.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” He offered a beefy hand.

O’Connel felt the power in the man’s arm. “I’m not
sure.”

“So what’s going on? I saw you cleared your stuff
out. Man, I can’t believe you’re goin’.” He came over to lean with
his massive arms on a desk, lowering his voice. “Those folks
downstairs after your job?”

“Yeah,” he nodded slowly. “They are.”

The short, powerful man shrugged, big hands held
wide. “After twenty years? What’d you do, man, steal a pencil?”

“I broke the rules.”

The big man went back to work. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you
broke the rules.” He made another precise pass down the dusty
board, leaving it looking new. “We all break rules. What I want to
know is, did you do right?”

O’Connel thought. “Yeah,” he said, knowing it was the
truth. “I did what I could.”

Genaro finished the board, tossing the eraser onto
his cart bag.

He pointed at him with a stumpy brown finger. “Then
you’re straight with yourself and you’re straight with God.” He
took up a red dust mop and began moving between the rows of desks,
moving them out of his way with his hip as he went. “The rest of
them? They don’t matter. No,” he said, his eyes on the floor, “I
mean, what is all this, anyway, a dream, right? That’s all it is.
Nothin’s real but what’s in here—” He touched his temple. “And in
here.” He pressed a hand to his breast, shaking his head slowly.
“Sheeit, man, everything else’s just put here to fool us into
taking the wrong way home.” Genaro went on about his work, as if
O’Connel had gone.

O’Connel stood thinking a minute, and then turned to
go.

“Genaro.” The big man cocked an ear, looking back
over a stocky shoulder.

“I’ll be seeing you, huh?”

“Oh, yeah!” He waved a big hand and went back to
sweeping. “I got a feeling you’re right about that.” Genaro’s
humming followed him down the deserted hallway as he headed for the
stairs.

• • •

Solange looked up, hands freezing over her
keyboard.

Twenty parents turned to gawk as O’Connel came into
the gym.

Mrs. Noble hesitated in her droning discourse, red
painted mouth open, lipstick smear on an eye tooth.

The board sat at two long tables set end to end in
front of a stage decorated for a coming melodrama. The masks of
comedy and tragedy hung just behind them, painted on canvas over
the head of the stage. From her place next to Hugh, Solange watched
as he found a seat in back. Her face burned. She prayed no one
would notice, but she imagined they all did.

Why had he come, to see her humiliated? Could he be
that cruel? The bastard. She’d given him the one thing she valued
most, and now, like a pig he came to gloat.

Her stomach throbbed.

Just a few hours ago she had spent the night on his
couch, loved the touch of his hands on her hair, offered herself to
him. She cringed with embarrassment to think how incredibly stupid
she had been.

Hugh had taken the news very hard. He said he
respected her decision, but his eyes had turned cold and dead. She
wouldn’t let him pay the price for her largess. Hands trembling,
she went on writing her resignation.

Recovering from her surprise, Mrs. Noble went on
ticking off O’Connel’s sins on plump fingers. Tuning her out,
Solange glanced up to find his eyes on her. Looking quickly down
again, she breathed deeply, rage building inside her. She smiled
fiercely as she wrote, fingers stabbing savagely at the keys. She’d
trusted him, cared about him-now she would pay.

Dr. Merrill, face cadaverous, touched her arm and
nodded in O’Connel’s direction, eyes questioning. She managed only
a small shake of her head, and returned to work.

At last Mrs. Noble sat.

Mr. Davies, board president, called for other
comments. He was a big man, utterly without guile, a man Solange
had seen in tears over district infighting. A simple man trying to
do what he could, the only way he could, she respected and liked
him. He grew wine grapes, and looked the part. The only time she’d
ever seen him in a suit was when he gave out diplomas at
graduation. Tonight he wore jeans, shirt, a cap bearing an
herbicide logo.

He would do what he had to, do it without rancor,
without playing favorites. He was Hugh’s, and so her strongest
ally; but though chairman, against Noble’s block of four he could
do little. Fair, honest, unpretentious, he was, Solange decided,
the ideal executioner.

Mr. Davies recognized Mrs. Garcia. A small woman
exuding a pinched confidence, she told her tale so convincingly
that even though Solange knew differently, she began to pity poor
Vincent.

He was, it seemed, the victim of a callous, uncaring,
inflexible teacher-a teacher who demanded too much.

Next was Lyle Walker’s mother, looking badly in need
of a drink as she sneered back at O’Connel. Wearing purple sweats
three sizes too small, she laced all she said with profanity as she
told how her son had been physically abused. The boy, sitting
beside her, beamed triumphantly as his mother berated O’Connel
before the board.

From the way she described the assault, it seemed to
Solange no less than miraculous that he was able to drag himself
out of intensive care to the meeting. She ended by threatening to
sue the district if O’Connel wasn’t fired.

Forgetting her anger, Solange met his eye and on the
instant knew their thoughts were the same.

That was it-the failed parent’s trump card-a
lawsuit.

Next, Davies gave Mrs. Lovejoy the floor. Listening
to her describe O’Connel’s insolence made Solange smile. Had he
been willing to compromise, Solange knew she would have nothing but
praise for him. Puzzled by her reaction, she wondered at the change
in herself Only a week ago, she would have believed it all, seen
only what she was meant to see, been fooled by those she knew now
for the hucksters they were. Had she changed so much, so quickly?
Mrs. Fleming was asked for her opinion. Standing in her awkward
way, she glanced over at O’Connel, eyes sorry for what she had to
do.

Fleming’s job was no more secure than hers, Solange
knew, and although she went along, it was clear the task gave her
no pleasure.

Far from damning, her condemnation was a limp thing.
Solange was relieved when at last she sat down.

Witnesses exhausted, Davies peered down the table at
Hugh.

“Dr. Merrill, you and Ms. Gonsalvas have something
more, I believe?” Barely looking up, Hugh shook his head.