Bloodroot (7 page)

“Thank you for sparing my melon,” I said. I eased up to the edge of the couch, looked up at my father. “I’m not here to talk about Mom, anyway. I’ve got some other news.”

My father beamed. “You met a girl.” He clapped his hands. “Please tell me you got her pregnant. Your mother and I are dying for grandkids.” His face went grim at his own words.

“How about a son?”

My father only looked confused.

“Dad,” I said. “Danny’s back.”

Anger reddened his face to the tips of his ears. He folded his hands over his belt buckle, spread his feet. The muscles of one shoulder twitched. This is what he must have looked like, I thought, guarding the door of his father’s bar. I wondered if he knew that wrist trick that Danny had pulled at the Red Lion. I questioned the wisdom of leading my dad to news of his junkie son through a conversation about his sick wife.

“What does that mean?” he asked. “What you just said.”

I swallowed hard. “He stopped by the apartment yesterday. Out of the blue.”

“Just like that kid to do that. How much did he burn you for? You didn’t let him in your house, did you?”

“He’s different now,” I said. “You should see him. He looks great. Like a new man.”

“New man,” my father said. “Please. He’s my son and I love him but he’s the sneakiest bastard I ever met.”

“He wasn’t high,” I said. “He hasn’t been high in over a year.”

“Then where has that boy been?” Dad said, teeth clenched. “Does he know about his mother? Did he even ask?”

“Of course he did,” I lied.

“Wha’d he say when you told him?”

“I didn’t tell him,” I said. “I . . . I didn’t know if he was ready yet. I thought maybe you’d want to tell him about it, or we could tell him together.”

My father slid his hands into his pockets, relaxing his shoulders. He stood over me like when I was a kid—when he wasn’t angry with me, he was just so disappointed.

“Look at you, boy. One day back in your life and you’re lying through your teeth for him. Just like always. When’re you gonna learn?”

“He’s my brother,” I said. “Your brother wasn’t such a saint, either.”

“Johnny had his faults, rest his soul. Spent too much time with the wrong people. Right from when we were kids, even, running around with those Southside Boys. But Johnny never stole from his family. Never once. He never turned his back on us like your brother did when there was nothing left to take. My brother wasn’t a filthy junkie, like my son.”

I wanted to stand, to face my father toe-to-toe and defend my brother. I stayed in my seat. Danny’s case for redemption seemed even shakier in the face of my father’s wrath. I was the one who taught it for a living, but my father held history closer to his heart than I did.

“He’s different this time,” I mumbled. “He deserves a second chance.”

“A
second
chance? I’ve lost count of that boy’s chances.” My father sat down heavily in his chair. “He gets no more from me.”

Danny didn’t need any more chances from him, anyway. My mother had an endless supply. With my father safely seated across the room, I finally got up. I’d done my duty. I shouldn’t have come. Or I should have given Danny more time to prove himself. “So I shouldn’t bring him by.”

“Don’t,” my father said. His face relented, just a little bit. “Not yet. Maybe soon. Your mother would never forgive us if she missed a chance to see him, whatever state he’s in.” He stared down into his palms, thinking. “But if you bring Danny by, you better be sure he’s sticking around this time, Kevin. She can’t take another one of his disappearing acts. If you’re not sure, keep him away from her.”

“We’re getting together tomorrow night,” I said. “I’ll let him know about Mom. He’ll come see her, on his best behavior. I promise.”

“Forget what he says,” my father warned me. “Figure out what he’s after. This is on you, Kevin. This time, if he breaks her heart again, I’m holding you responsible.” He tilted his head back against the chair, staring at the ceiling. “Now go. I need some time to forget this conversation before your mother gets home.”

I didn’t know what else to do so I headed for the door.

“Wait,” Dad said. He met me at the door.

“I know how you feel, Kevin,” he said. “I really do. It’s not like I don’t miss Daniel, the way he used to be, at least. You were quite a pair, you two. Joy of your mother’s life.” He slipped his arm across my shoulders and kissed my cheek. I could feel his breath in my ear. “Be a good brother, Kevin, but be careful. Be very, very careful. I don’t like seeing you get hurt, either. The Danny we knew went away a long time ago.”

THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MY WORKWEEK ENDED WITH A CALL
from Dean Whitestone’s secretary. The dean needed to see me. Now.

Whitestone kept me waiting outside his office for half an hour while he did nothing, I was sure, but stare out the window. As dean of a struggling department at an underfinanced city college of little to no reputation, Whitestone treated his teachers in keeping with his milieu. Like field hands, basically. He conducted himself as if he were dean of Harvard Law. At his own expense, he’d outfitted his office with an enormous teak desk and matching bookshelves. He had a penchant for European vacations, often taken sans wife and stepchildren. Research trips, he called them, though no one could figure out what got researched beyond pricey hotels. He hadn’t taught in years and what little he published concerned a little-known corner of Staten Island: the history and possible futures of the abandoned Bloodroot Children’s Hospital. He’d even started some kind of activist group called the Friends of Bloodroot. Some crap about turning the old hospital into a medical museum.

He’d been on me and everyone else in the department to join. Or at least write checks to support the group. Most everyone else in the history department had done one, the other, or both. Besides me, the only remaining holdout was Kelsey Reyes, the closest thing I had to a friend in the department. The big guns in admin were not happy about Friends of Bloodroot, I’d heard. The old hospital sat in Willowbrook Park, not far from our own beloved Richmond College and admin wanted that land for new off-campus dorms.

When his secretary finally sent me in to see him, Whitestone was waiting for me behind his desk, his hands folded in his lap.

In his oversized black leather office chair, Dean Alvin Whitestone looked like an elf trying on Santa’s chair for size. Barely over five feet tall, he had spindly legs that dropped from almost obscenely wide hips, into which collapsed a round, bulging chest. All of that crowned by a bald, ovoid head. He reminded me, more than anything else, of a walking thumb. A walking thumb in Coke-bottle glasses.

“Close the door,” Whitestone said. “Take a seat.”

I did as I was told.

“Eight.” He dipped his chin at a pile of papers on his desk. “That’s how many student complaints I’ve gotten about you this semester.”

“I thought you said it was six,” I said.

“It was, last week. This week, it’s up to eight.”

“So I got two more?” I asked.

Whitestone slid his glasses to the tip of his nose. “Are you sure history is your calling? Your math skills are astounding. You assured me, you promised me there wouldn’t be
any
more, yet here before me are indeed more complaints.”

“Am I safe in assuming it’s more of the same?”

“Despite the popular clichés,” Whitestone said, smiling, “you are safe in that assumption. You are nothing if not consistent in your shortcomings.”

“I’m catching up on my grading,” I said. “I’m almost there. Those’ll be the last two.”

“These students,” Whitestone said. “They deserve to have their work returned to them in a timely manner. And to have proper attention paid to that work when their instructor evaluates it. Maybe if you spent your office hours focusing on your work and not consorting with Ms. Reyes, you’d make better progress.”

I threw my hands in the air. “But the students’ work
sucks
.” I swallowed hard. Twice. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Perhaps their teacher is failing to provide a proper example.”

I set my hands on my knees, took a deep breath. Whitestone was a dick, but that didn’t make what he said any less true. “Perhaps.” But he was wrong about Kelsey and I wanted him to know it, for her sake if not mine. “Ms. Reyes and I are coworkers. We talk teaching, compare notes.” Whitestone grunted. I soldiered on. “We have very similar schedules, so we see each other a lot. Here at work, I mean. We don’t socialize.”

My boss stared at me. I wished, not for the first time, that Kelsey and I did have a thing going, not that I’d ever tried, just to piss off Whitestone. I’d heard from her personally that Whitestone had put the moves on her himself. Until Kelsey made it clear that she wouldn’t settle the matter through the usual channels and charges, but that resolution would come in the parking lot, delivered in the form of a Louisville Slugger. I smiled, despite myself. Kelsey Reyes was good people.

Whitestone, frowning at my smile, lifted the pile of papers, brought it into his lap. Licking his fingertip every time he turned a page, he silently read the complaints. When he was done, he looked up at me. “What happened to you, Kevin?”

“When?”

“You’re not the teacher you used to be. Inspired. Dedicated. There has to be a reason.” He tossed the papers on his desk, a few slid off onto the floor. I left them there. Whitestone shook his head. “These are the strangest complaints. They all start out defending you.
I love Mr. Curran’s class
, they say,
his class is awesome, he knows everything about the Revolution
. It’s a lovefest, until the inevitable ‘but.’
But I don’t know my grades, but I’m still waiting for three papers
.” Whitestone chuckled. “Half of them ask me to help you. Like maybe you need a tutor. As if you’re the struggling student and they’re the frustrated teacher. Strange, don’t you think?”

“The kids have always loved my class,” I said. “I get more write-in requests than any other teacher, three-to-one.”

“I guess our quandary is this, then,” Whitestone said, straightening his tie. I noticed his hands were badly scarred. “Why don’t
you
love your class anymore?”

I waited to speak, measuring my answer. He’d never gone this far with me. Our meetings had always ended at the insult and reprimand stage. He’d asked a legitimate question. The students’ work often did suck, but hadn’t it always? Why was it so burdensome now? In truth, the tedium had gotten to me. The kids never changed. They always made the same mistakes on their assignments, whined the same complaints when I corrected them. I could tell within the first week of the semester which students would pass and which would fail, who would excel and who would struggle. The whole gig had gotten so easy, so predictable, that it had become nearly unendurable.

As for me, I’d been teaching the same class the same way for eight years. The past never changed, so why should I? As a student I’d always figured that when a subject got easy it meant I had it mastered. I’d applied the same logic to teaching. But I realized, sitting there, Dean Whitestone waiting patiently for my answers to his quiz, that as a student another subject, another challenge was always coming at me. Now that I was the teacher, my test was to provide my own challenges. And I had failed.

I taught history but had started, a couple of years ago, living in a perpetual present, where I knew everything that was going to happen next. Like watching a movie for the tenth time, only my movie bored me to tears. I kept watching it because it was the only one I had. I thought of Danny. His return was the first surprise I’d gotten since the birthday phone call three years ago. And his resurfacing certainly put a new actor, one with a gift for improvisation, on my screen.

Whitestone coughed into his fist. I had to throw him something.

“I do love the classroom,” I said. “I love seeing the lights come on in their eyes when they see something new, or in a new way.” It was trite, but it was true. “That never gets old.”

“Ah.” Whitestone leaned back in his chair. “The dropping of the veil. There is nothing like it.”

“It’s just . . . the past couple of semesters,” I said, though the atrophy had started longer ago, “I can’t find the energy for the other stuff. Am I burned out? Already?”

“A little singed, maybe,” Whitestone said, “but not burned out. This happens to all of us, especially as we approach the ten-year mark. Our subject can’t be our sole inspiration, Kevin. We need outside interests. I have some of my own. And we need the aid of our compatriots in bleak times. Certainly a scholar of the Continental Army knows this.” A smirk flashed, then vanished. “Perhaps if you spent more time with the rest of the department, became more involved. Certainly the Revolution is fascinating, but there are endless compelling subjects in American history. Some right here on Staten Island.” He shrugged. “My latest endeavor, for instance.”