Do or Di (35 page)

“You’re quitting?” Jonathon asked. “You can’t quit, you’re going to be fired.”

“If it’s easier, you can fire me. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go and clean out my desk.” I turned and started to make my way back down the hall.

“You can’t just leave,” Jonathon sputtered. He seemed shocked, and possibly quite disappointed that I wasn’t hurling myself at his feet begging him to choose me. “We’re not done.”

“Oh, but I am, Jonathon. I’m done.”

* * *

Garfield High School was enough to give me flashbacks. It was as if every high school used the same interior designer. Worn floors, gray lockers that were always sticking, cheery handmade posters painted by the cheerleading squad, and inspirational posters the administration had hung up that someone had defaced. Some clever delinquent had changed
You can be anyone you want
to
You can do anyone you want.

The school secretary didn’t want to tell me what room Diana was in. I suppose in today’s day and age they can’t be too careful. I tried to convince her that I was not attempting to do any of the following:

Abduct Diana,

Plan a terrorist plot or school shooting,

Willfully disrupt various classrooms with the intent of bringing the educational system to a standstill and dooming hundreds of high school students to thwarted dreams and aborted college plans.

The secretary called the Positive Partnership program to check out my story and forced me to show a piece of picture ID. I suspected prison systems had less security than this place. Finally she let me go, the sound of the rubber feet of my crutches making a squeak with every step I took. I found the classroom and peered into the narrow window on the door. The teacher was lecturing on Shakespeare. Most of the kids were staring off into space. There were a few at the front that looked to me like they were trying too hard, passive brownnosers. Diana sat in the middle, her posture ramrod straight. She didn’t look like she was listening; she looked as if she was carefully measuring every word, like a lawyer awaiting a difficult cross-examination. I gave a quiet tap and all thirty pairs of eyes swiveled to look.

“Sorry to bother you. May I speak to Diana?” She pointed at herself and mouthed “me?” I gave her a nod. She stood and gathered up her notebook and copy of
Romeo and Juliet
and followed me into the hall.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Sort of. Is there a place we can talk?”

Diana led me down to the gym. There wasn’t a class in session. The plank bleachers, each seat stenciled with a number, rose up into the dark rafters. The room had an echo and the faint smell of varnished wood and rubber balls. I sat down on the first row, and Diana plunked down onto a blue gym mat on the floor.

“I can’t believe you came to take me out of class. What happened to the whole ‘an education is a terrible thing to waste’ speech?”

“Yeah well, I’m learning all the time.”

Diana didn’t say anything, but I could see her chewing on the corner of her lip, gnawing at the waxy lip-gloss she liked.

“I haven’t been honest with you. I’ve decided it’s time I came clean on everything.” I gave a sigh. “I didn’t sign up with the Positive Partnership program for the right reasons. I mean, I didn’t have an evil master plan or anything, but it wasn’t just to be nice.”

“So?”

“So? So I lied.”

“You don’t think I thought you were doing the program because you really wanted to hang out with me, did you?”

“Hey, you’re a great kid.”

“My own mom doesn’t like me. Why would you? People like you do these kinds of program for a few reasons.” She counted them on her fingers. “You want other people to see you doing something nice, you feel guilty about something, or you’ve convinced yourself that if you do nice things it makes you a nice person.”

“Well, that pretty much nails it.”

“Which one?”

“I think I fall under the category of all the above.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I came to apologize. You deserved a better partner and you deserve me to be honest. I shouldn’t have tried to act like I knew everything.”

“You know a few things.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Turns out you knew a lot more than I did.” I stared at my hands. How had things gotten so screwed up?

Diana didn’t say anything. She either agreed with me, or possibly was afraid I was cracking up, which was a distinct possibility. The bell rang. We sat in the gym listening to the class change: yelled conversation, clanking of lockers, whistles, jeers, a few slamming doors, and then silence again.

“I’m not working at the station any longer,” I added finally.

“Why? You love that job.”

“Long story. Do you know what atonement means?”

“If I don’t, do I have to look it up and use it in a sentence?”

I gave a laugh, the first of the day. “No. Basically it means making things right. Doing your time for the crime so to speak.”

“What was your crime?”

“It’s complicated. When I was a kid my parents sent me to this fancy religious school. We wore the plaid uniforms and the boys had those dorky little sports coats with the crest on the pocket. The whole thing. We had this course in ethics and we loved playing with the teacher. We would try to come up with all these bizarre situations like, if Hitler said he was sorry and really meant it right before he died, would he be forgiven, that kind of thing. I remember at one point the teacher said when you died and you faced judgment at the pearly gates, you would be asked only one question. Depending how you answered that question meant you either went to heaven or to hell.”

“Nothing like religion to mess you up. What was the question?”

“What did you do with the time and talents you were given?” We were both quiet for a beat. “I wasn’t doing what I needed to do. You’ve done a lot, you know. I haven’t. When you said you should be the mentor instead of the other way around, you were right. Princess Diana is a better mentor for you, whether she exists in your mind alone or not. She did tons. She could have just sat around looking good, cutting the occasional ribbon. She wanted to do the right things. I think that should count for something. The effort. That’s what I came to tell you.”

“What happens now?”

I stood up, leaning onto my crutches. I was tired. My ankle throbbed and felt hot. I was ready to go home.

“You go back to class. The value of education, blah blah blah.”

“What about you?”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

“Are you still my mentor?” She was chewing on her thumbnail.

“Nope. I’m dropping out of the program. I have no business being even remotely responsible for shaping young minds. You’ll all end up a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.” I saw Diana duck her head. “I’m not available for mentorship, but if you want to be friends, that would be up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s up to you. I would like to be your friend. There most likely aren’t a lot of reasons you would want to be my friend, but if you do, the offer stands.”

“You’re saying it’s my decision.”

“Uh-huh. You don’t have to say anything now. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.” I felt suddenly awkward, like it was a contest and she was the judge.

Diana stood, brushing off the back of her pants and gathering her things.

“I don’t want to make you mad or anything. I know the right answer is to say of course I want to be friends, but I have to be honest. I’m not really sure.”

I felt her words like a sucker punch. “Yeah, I can see that. Think it over and if you want, you can give me a call.”

We started to walk down the hallway. Diana stopped in front of her classroom and we shook hands. It felt very formal, as if I had gone to a job interview and it hadn’t gone well. One where at the end they mention that there are a lot of candidates who applied. I shook hands maybe a moment or two longer than was required and then left. I could tell she was watching me hobble toward the front door.

“Hey,” she called after me. “Take care of yourself.” She didn’t wait for me to answer and instead slipped into the room.

When I opened the door to my apartment, I knew there was a problem. I could hear my mom in the kitchen. She was either in the process of making something or trying to create an avant garde rap album using slamming pots as the bass line. I could hear her “mumble, mumble”—
SLAM
—“mumble mumble, WELL I NEVER”—
SLAM, CRASH
—“mumble, mumble.” I was getting the feeling my mom had finally taken my dad’s call.

The kitchen counters were covered. There were stacks of cooking magazines littered about and various spice bottles. The stove had three large stock pots going full tilt.

“Decided to do a bit of cooking, huh?” I said, stating the obvious, but figuring it was a safer place to start the conversation.

“I’m making two different kinds of soup, curry butternut squash, and roasted garlic mashed potato, and then a chili. You can freeze them up and then you’ll have them when you need them.”

I looked over at the stove. It appeared that she was making sufficient volumes of soup to feed an entire soup kitchen of homeless people. I would be eating soup for the next year.

“I’ll have to have Colin over for dinner one night this week. He’s never had your soup.”

SLAM
. I jumped. My mom was still holding the cast iron skillet. From the sounds of things, she was beating my stove with it as if it was a baby seal and she was a heartless hunter. Her face was unreadable. She turned back to the kitchen, stirring one of the vats of soup with vigor. She was a one-armed Mix Master. At this rate she was going to have giant Popeye arms. Apparently her fondness for Colin was waning from yesterday, unless it was men in general.

“Did you talk to Dad today?”

“Mmhmm.”

I tapped a fingernail on the side of a Diet Coke can on the counter waiting to see if she would offer up anything else.

“How did that go?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes, fine. Obviously, things aren’t good. We have things that need to be worked out.”

“Are you going to see a marriage counselor?”

Mom spun to face me, hands on her hips. A thick drop of orange butternut squash soup pooled at the end of her spoon and then fell in slow motion splashing down on my mom’s gray tweed skirt.

“A counselor? What in the world would we talk about? Your father had an affair, it isn’t as if he has a mental illness. I told him, never again. If he ever did that again, that would be it. He better put a stop to it and to the lies right now.”