Love May Fail (10 page)

“Excuse me?”

“That was the rumor. It was decades ago, Portia. No one would care anymore anyway. They’re not going to send him to jail now.”

“There were really rumors about that?”

“Sure. You were always spending time with him alone after class and before school. Some girls are into older men. Daddy issues. I heard you used to go to his apartment too. So of fucking course there were rumors. It was high school!”

“Unbelievable.” I shake my head. “Mr. Vernon was the closest thing I had to a father figure in high school, so thanks for making my one good teen memory weird. Jesus Christ, Daddy issues? Yuck!”

“So you didn’t fuck him?”

“No. I did not fuck Mr. Vernon. You didn’t know him if you could even think that.”

“Was he gay?”

“I have no idea.”

“People used to say he was gay.”

“Kids said everything and everyone was gay back then. It was the default adjective of our homophobic MTV generation.”

“So what did you talk about all alone with Mr. Vernon?”

“Literature, writing, what I wanted to do with my life, becoming a novelist, if you can believe that,” I say, leaving out the thing we talked about most—my mother—and the Christmas Eve I spent with Mr. Vernon senior year because Mom thought the government had bugged our house, so she was refusing to let me speak, and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone else but him. “What’s happened to him? I’d really like to know.”

Danielle studies me for a long moment, and it strikes me that she seems to be enjoying withholding the story. But then I tell myself that she doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, that’s all—she doesn’t want to upset me. And yet I’m starting to wonder if the years haven’t been downright cruel to Danielle Bass, and whether the bright, cheery side she’s shown me so far isn’t a bit of an act. The look in her eyes now seems almost sadistic, as dramatic as that sounds.

Finally she says, “One of Mr. Vernon’s students beat him up during class with a baseball bat a few years ago. Fractured his legs and arms before the other kids broke it up. I remember a kid being interviewed on TV, saying that the attack seemed to come out of nowhere. In the middle of class one of the baseball players pulled a bat from an equipment bag—which he apparently had with him, who knows why—and just started swinging away. I remember the kid said he could hear the bones breaking and Mr. Vernon screaming in this very high-pitched squeal. ‘Like a pig.’ Some other students saved Mr. Vernon by tackling the baseball player, which I thought was heroic. The student they interviewed on TV hadn’t helped take the baseball player down, and I remember thinking, Why the hell are they interviewing him? Get the heroes on camera! I heard Vernon sued the school for a lot of money
and then retired. I got the sense—mostly from people gossiping in the diner—that there was some bad blood and some shit may have gotten covered up. A few people said Mr. Vernon was paid to retire quietly, whatever that means. And so he did.”

Paid to retire quietly?

I’m shaking my head in disbelief. “Why?”

“Wouldn’t you retire if a kid beat you almost to death with a baseball bat? I hear he has a permanent limp.”

“Why would anyone attack such an amazing teacher as Mr. Vernon?”

“Maybe he did something fucked up to the baseball player? I mean you hear about teachers doing pervy things all the time, and then all of the community members being shocked as hell afterward. Some people seemed to think Mr. Vernon was having a gay affair with the boy who attacked him, or at least that’s what a few were implying.”

“No way. Not Mr. Vernon. He’d never do that to one of his students. Never.”

“Well, then, maybe the kid just started swinging away for no good reason at all.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Why would anyone blow up the World Trade Center? Why would anyone put a bomb in their shoe and try to take down a commercial airplane? Why do school shootings keep happening? People are sick, crazy, fucked up. It’s a scary world we live in these days. No one can deny that.”

I understand what she’s saying, but she didn’t know Mr. Vernon like I knew Mr. Vernon. He really cared about his students. He was a good man, the only teacher I ever heard of who would meet a student at the diner on a Saturday afternoon just to talk about fiction—reading her first fumbling attempts at short stories, even—
because her own mother’s insanity made her home uninhabitable, and no other adults seemed to notice or care.

Nobody’s one hundred percent good
, I suddenly hear Ken saying in my head. It was one of his favorite mantras.
Everyone’s a little bit evil
.

And he proved it time and time again by seducing young girls into making degrading pornography with his company. He’d send out good-looking, smooth-talking young men with alcohol and free lingerie and legally binding contracts with a lot of small print, and they’d never once come home without footage.

“Just put people in the right circumstances, and they’ll do just about anything,” my asshole husband would say as foul cigar smoke curled around his cocky, Tom Selleck–y head.

Every time Ken said something depressing like that, I’d think about Mr. Vernon and feel satisfied that Ken was wrong.

For all these years, Mr. Vernon has been my anti-Ken.

It was enough just to think of him teaching at HTHS—putting good into the world, one lecture at a time. At least
one
man on the planet was all good.

Why didn’t I ever write to Mr. Vernon after I left high school?

Why didn’t I ever thank him for all he did for me back then?

Do people actually do that—go back and thank their teachers years later, when they’re no longer handicapped by youth and ignorance, when they figure out just how much their teachers actually did for them?

I mean, Mr. Vernon was probably the most influential person in my entire life. He believed in my potential. He gave me a handwritten card on my graduation night and wrote me a beautiful letter—the sort of thing you’d hope a father would write. I never even acknowledged it, never even said thank you, maybe because I didn’t know how or what to write back. Maybe because I was
leaving high school behind and Mr. Vernon was high school to me. Or maybe because I was a selfish white-trash bitch, too self-absorbed or too ignorant to show my favorite high school teacher common decency, let alone gratitude. And then when I dropped out of college I was too ashamed to face him again.

The young consume; the old are consumed.

“Are you even listening to me, Portia?
Hello?
”

I blink and say, “Where is he?”

“
Mr. Vernon?
How the hell would I know that?” Danielle starts talking about other teachers from Haddon Township High School.

“When did it happen?” I blurt out. “You know—the attack.”

“Shit—I don’t know. Maybe five years ago? Maybe more?”

“So he hasn’t been teaching for more than five years?”

“I’m not sure, Portia. Are you okay? This really upsets you, doesn’t it? I didn’t realize that—”

“Do you still have that card he gave all of us on the last day of school?”

“That little driver’s-license-looking thing with our picture on it? That was twenty years ago!”

“But didn’t you keep it? The Official Member of the Human Race card?”

“You remember the name of it? Wow
.
”

I wonder if I’m the only freak who actually kept the card. Then I start to wonder if it’s because I’m my mother’s daughter and will one day be a hoarder too, all alone in a shitty house, wearing pink sweat suits covered in stains and watching the Buy from Home Network among endless piles of carefully collected and stacked junk.

“It seemed important, that card—special. No one had ever given me anything like that before.” Admittedly, my voice sounds too defensive, maybe even like Mom’s when I start talking about getting rid of her junk.

“I might have it somewhere in a drawer or something, but—Jesus, Portia, you’re sweating. Are you sick?”

“You know what, I’m actually not feeling great. I just left my husband last night. Caught him cheating and just took off.”

Why am I bringing up Ken now?

“Last night? Like
yesterday
?”

“Yeah, I left him and Tampa all at once. It sort of just happened.”

“What you told me in the diner about that teenage girl—that really happened
last night
?”

“Yeah. It’s just sort of hitting me now. The finality of it. And someone really attacked Mr. Vernon in his classroom with a baseball bat?
Really?
You’re not fucking with me? That actually happened at our high school?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. It was in all the papers. Like I said, on TV even. I’m really surprised you hadn’t already heard. I assumed it was national news.”

I’ve never really read the papers or watched the news, mostly because it’s too depressing, as lame as that sounds.

I can’t stop shaking my head no. “That’s just so . . . so . . .
so fucking fucked
.”

“Yeah, it really is. But I’m worried about
you
now. You’re pale as a ghost.”

“Sorry. I better go home. I’ll call a cab.”

Danielle glances at her cell phone. “Chuck’s off in ten minutes. He can drive you.”

“I don’t want to put him out,” I say, remembering Lisa the waitress’s threat.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Before I know it, I’m in a shitty old pickup truck with thick white stripes across the sides and a blanket covering the presumably ripped-up bench seat, being driven home by Chuck.

The engine is making a horrid whistling noise, like it’s smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels a day for fifty years and decided to jog for the first time in decades.

“I’m sorry you’re sick,” Chuck says as we leave Oaklyn.

“I’ll be okay. I dug your record collection. Very impressive,” I add, just because he seems slightly freaked out by me, and I don’t want to make this any weirder than it already is.

“How do you like the old man’s Ford?” He pats the steering wheel.

I glance at the emblem on the dash. “Isn’t this a Chevy?”

“Yeah, it is. Can’t get anything past you. But I was just making a reference to eighties rock. And sort of hitting on you at the same time, but in a completely lame way. I suck at being cool. It’s true. I’m really terrible at women. Fuck, I’ve said some pretty weird shit already, haven’t I? Well, I’ll just shut up now and drive.”

His actually admitting to hitting on me is a surprise, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. He’s obviously a great guy, based on his interactions with Tommy, and he’s in shape—I glance over, confirm that his jeans and shirt bulge in all the right places and none of the wrong, notice his luscious biceps. He has an amazing body. And he even has kind eyes. Really kind. Turquoise, almost—they seem to shine every time oncoming headlights illuminate his face. So unlike Ken’s oily shark eyes. Chuck’s actually pretty cute in a nervous-innocent kind of way. I think about why the hell he might ask if I like “the old man’s Ford” when we’re in a Chevy. Where have I heard that phrase before, “the old man’s Ford”? Then suddenly I understand the reference. “Poison. ‘Talk Dirty to Me’? Were you really referencing
that
song?
‘In the old man’s Ford!’ 
” I sing.

“Yeah, pretty stupid, right? I don’t actually expect you to talk dirty to me, but I wanted to impress you with my knowledge of
hair metal lyrics from our shared youth, and I get nervous around exceptionally beautiful women. Really nervous, if you haven’t already noticed.”

“That’s me, right over there. The one with the retro and super-cool awning.” I point to the row home where I grew up, pretending not to have heard the words
exceptionally beautiful
come out of his mouth.

Chuck makes a U-turn and pulls up right in front of Mom’s home of shit.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have referenced Poison, right? Fuck Bret Michaels. Fuck that guy. So dumb to quote him. And that song, of all songs! But I’ve gone this far, so maybe would you like to have dinner with me sometime? Maybe? I promise I will not talk dirty to you.”

Wow, I think.

A man who is concerned about how I feel—aware that I might actually have preferences. Kind of nice, for a change. And flattering too—I mean, I get asked out on the first day I’m officially on the market. And by a guy who publicly sings Bon Jovi with his adorable nephew.

“Just forget it.” He waves his hand in the air, maybe trying to swat away what he just said. “It was really stupid of me to think—”

“Um, this has been a weird night for me, so I’m just going to be honest. I actually find you very attractive, and you seem like an amazing uncle, which is cool. I’d probably sleep with you just so I could steal your
Too Fast for Love
original vinyl and then feel guilty and ask you out for a meal or something afterward to make you feel better about losing such an amazing rock artifact. We might even make it a regular thing, who knows? But I just left my husband—like yesterday. I’m back in South Jersey for the first time in years, and I’m now forced to deal with my incredibly fucked-up mother.
I’m not in the best shape emotionally. I should probably tattoo the word trap on my forehead for the well-being of nice honest men like yourself. Then I find out about Mr. Vernon being beaten with a baseball bat, and—”

“I loved Mr. Vernon. That was a real shame, what happened to him.”

“You were in his class?”

“One of the best experiences of my life. I’ll never forget it. He gave us these cards on the last day of school. ‘Official Member of the Human Race,’ it says. Did he do that for your class too? I can actually quote the whole card by memory, because I’ve been carrying it in my wallet—I have it on me now, in fact—and I read it at least once a day just to remind myself that . . . well, anyway, I loved Mr. Vernon. Loved him like a father. Best teacher ever.”

I fight an urge to wrap my arms around Chuck’s neck.

I’m blinking back tears.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

“You think that’s weird, right? Still carrying that old card Mr. Vernon gave everyone at the end of high school? Dorky, I know, but that class—and, well, that card got me through a really tough time in my life. Why am I telling you—I’ve never even told Danielle about—I’m such an asshole. Why would you even care about any of this?”