The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman (19 page)

“Yeah,” he replied simply, and she could tell that he
was
proud. “You should be, too.”

Bethesda snorted. “Are you kidding me? I’m a disaster! I
had
to have the best Special Project, and it turns out what I discovered was completely wrong. And then I
had
to make sure you passed Melville. That didn’t go so well either, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah. But listen.”

There was something serious in Tenny’s voice, and when she looked at him she felt it again—that weird shiver of special connection.
To Tenny Boyer! Of all people.

“You should be proud,” Tenny explained, “because you made a promise—” “You mean the deal? ”

“A promise. You made a promise, and you stuck to it. And you kept trying even when it was obvious I wasn’t going to get it. You kept trying up to the point where you did something, you know, moronic.”

Bethesda thought about making a joke—because basically he had just called her a moron and all—but she didn’t.

“We’re not in the rock show,” Tenny concluded. “But I wouldn’t trade this semester for anything.”

At that moment, “Livin’ on a Prayer” kicked into the big solo section and the light scheme changed from blue to red, so Tenny didn’t notice how thoroughly Bethesda was blushing. Fortunately for her, their conversation was interrupted by a low, grumbling voice.

“How’s the show?”

Mr. Melville stood in his enormous brown sport jacket with his arms crossed, his hulking presence entirely unsuited to the cord-strewn, dimly lit backstage. At his appearance, Tenny scowled and turned his attention back to the stage, but Bethesda looked Mr. Melville straight in the eye. For once, she knew exactly what she was supposed to say.

“Mr. Melville, I’m sorry we cheated on your test. It was wrong.”

“Yes. It was.” Mr. Melville tapped Tenny on the shoulder. “And you, sir? ”

Tenny reluctantly turned away from the stage and regarded Mr. Melville sulkily. “What? Now we’re not even allowed to watch? ”

Bethesda had a hunch what was going on, and she stomped on Tenny’s toe. On stage, Half-Eaten Almond Joy was finishing “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which meant the Careless Errors would be next.

“What? ” Tenny mouthed to her.

“Say it, dummy!” she mouthed back.

Mr. Melville waited, arms folded, eyebrows raised. Tenny sighed.

“I’m—uh—” He looked straight at Mr. Melville. “I’m sorry, dude.”

On stage, Ms. Finkleman announced the final song of the three-song set.

“Well.” Mr. Melville sighed. “Given the urgency of the situation, I shall accept your mea culpa, inarticulate and grudging though it might be.”

“Huh?” said Tenny. “What does that mean?”

Mr. Melville smiled. Even his eyebrows seemed to smile. “It means, go play your guitar, kid.”

“One! Two!
One, two, three, four!
” hollered Ezra at the drum kit, clicking his sticks and counting the Careless Errors into their big number. Bethesda grabbed Tenny by the forearm and yanked him onto the stage.

Bethesda and Tenny’s last-minute appearance—just in time for Bethesda to grab the mike for the first lyric, and for Tenny to grab a guitar and play the first of his colorful lead riffs—shot another million volts through what was already a totally electric performance. Bethesda sang exuberantly, and the whole band sang along with her.

Even Pamela Preston shook her maracas with admirable vigor. Soon the other sixth-period Music Fundamentals kids all ran back on stage to sing and exhort the crowd and just generally leap and dance around the stage.

“Let’s go away for a while, you and I! ” they sang. “To a strange and distant land …”

By the end of the final chorus, after Tenny’s wicked guitar solo, everyone in the auditorium was singing along.

“Holiday! Far away! ”

After the closing chords, the crowd cheered like crazy.

They cheered even louder when Ms. Finkleman announced that it was this young man right here, Tennyson Boyer, who had created and directed the entire performance.

And they cheered the loudest of all when Tenny grabbed the mike to say thanks, and give all the credit to Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and Bethesda Fielding.

From seven rows back and dead center, Bethesda’s dad dabbed tears from his eyes and loudly blew his nose and clapped more than anyone—except for Bethesda’s mom, that is, who had decided that missing her deposition, this one time, wouldn’t be the end of the world.

An encore was demanded, as Tenny had known it
would be. “This song,” he announced, flashing a smile at Ms. Finkleman, “is by my all-time favorite punk band.” And with that, the students of sixth-period Music Fundamentals launched into “Not So Complicated,” by Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings—the song that Bethesda had played for them off a battered old seven-inch record in Mr. Melville’s class, way, way back in February, before the whole world turned upside down. It was a chaotic version, with three guitars, three basses, three keyboards, and so much supplemental percussion that you never could have heard the words, except that twenty-four students and their teacher were all singing them in raucous unison.

Bethesda Fielding the Rock Star, at the center of it all, sang and bounced around the stage as she had sung and bounced around her room. She sang and bounced and traded excited glances with the blue-hooded sweatshirt-wearing guitarist to her left. She glimpsed her parents in the audience, grinning and proud, and winced; she knew some difficult conversations lay ahead. But for now, in this moment, she twirled around and clutched the mike like it was all that mattered in the world, and felt something inside her flickering and buzzing and making all kinds of wild patterns. It felt like Christmas lights.

Ms. Finkleman
was still not the most popular teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School. Even after the acknowledged triumph of the rock show, the revelation that she had never really been a punk-rock singer dimmed her star more than a little. Besides, the new seventh-grade science teacher, Ms. Rodrigo, was teaching her kids how to make explosions using corn syrup, wax paper, and a teaspoonful of mouthwash. It’s hard to top that.

Ida certainly didn’t mind regaining just a tad of her former unremarkableness. What was nice, though, was that the respectful silence, which had so surprised her on the day of Bethesda Fielding’s Special Project, never entirely went away. And so she was left, in the aftermath of the Choral Corral, with nearly everything a middle-school music teacher could want. She had her days at school, which could now be more than survived—they could be enjoyed. And she had her evenings at home,
with her tea and her comfortable chair and her stereo. Now, however, she alternated: Some nights she listened to Mozart and Haydn, and some nights to James Brown, or to Weezer, or to Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings.

And one afternoon, a week or so before the end of the school year, Bethesda Fielding stopped by after school.

“Okay,” Bethesda began, sheepishly. “Don’t kill me.”

Ms. Finkleman narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the notebook Bethesda clutched in her right hand, which was labeled SPDSTAMF, and said, “I’m not making any promises.”

“It’s just that there’s one thing bothering me. About this whole thing. One little mystery that’s left. And I totally wouldn’t bug you, except—well, if I finish seventh grade without knowing the answer, I think it will drive me insane.”

“You know what you are?” Ms. Finkleman sighed. “You are incorrigible.”

“I know, I know. But listen. So you got kicked out of the Red Herrings when you were still a sophomore in high school. And you said yourself it was Clementine who was the one who was really into rock, even then. And
that after the whole thing, you never really developed a taste for rock at all. Only classical.”

“Yes. So?”

“So you said your parents were really strict, which means you couldn’t have gotten it when you were in high school.”

“Gotten what? ”

“That tattoo! Ms. Finkleman, when did you get the Ozzy Osbourne tattoo?”

Ms. Finkleman could only laugh.

“What? ” said Bethesda, getting a little embarrassed.
“What?”

“I got it when I graduated with a master’s degree in arts education,” she explained, still chuckling as she rolled up her sleeve to reveal a man with long, wild hair and piercing eyes. “And it’s not Ozzy Osbourne. It’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

That night Ms. Finkleman made herself a cup of tea and picked up a stack of neat note cards, on which she had written all the things she had to say, and the order in which she would say them.

But when Clementine answered the phone, she just started talking and didn’t look at her cards at all.

*   *   *

On the last day of seventh grade, Bethesda Fielding and Tenny Boyer, who would be attending different schools in the fall, biked together to Pilverton Mall to split a farewell Cinnabon. At the food court they talked about music, and the Choral Corral, and the world Tenny would be leaving behind. They agreed they’d “try to hang out every once in a while,” which is not a particularly firm commitment. But for some reason Tenny was grinning conspicuously as he said it, and Bethesda found herself grinning, too, and discovered in addition that her sneaker was bopping happily against the table leg.

At precisely four o’clock, the kids bussed their trays and watched Chef Pilverton emerge from his familiar hiding place within the clock across from Arthur Treacher’s. And then, a moment later, a
second
Chef Pilverton emerged beside the first. Tenny and Bethesda looked at each other, confused.
Two Chef Pilvertons? What the …

And the really strange thing was that neither Chef Pilverton was a giant animatronic puppet. They both appeared to be real live human beings. In fact, they were both middle-school principals, living up to the terms of a most unusual wager. “Bonjour! ” said Principal Winston
Cohn, waving a big rolling pin in the air.
“Laissez les bon temps rouler,”
added Principal Van Vreeland miserably, adjusting the giant white chef’s hat that flopped over her eyes.

Both, as it turned out, were losing principals. The winner of the All-County Choral Corral had been neither Mary Todd Lincoln nor Grover Cleveland, but the Band and Chorus department of Preston Sturges Middle School for the Arts, who had presented a program of traditional English folk ballads from the sixteenth century.

Tenny and Bethesda laughed as they left the mall. Outside they hopped on their bikes and headed to Bethesda’s house. Tenny had written a song about the Special Project, and the rock show, and the whole crazy semester—the song was called “The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman,” and he really wanted Bethesda to hear it.

To all the people with whom I’ve rocked, I salute you, especially everyone affiliated with the following ragtag musical concerns: Corm, The Miracle Cures, Lisa Hooks Up, and Sislen & Winters.

Thanks to the students of PS 344 (The Anderson School) and PS 77 (Lower Lab) for teaching me how to write.

Thanks to comedienne/memoirist/friend Abby Sher, who introduced me to my warmhearted and tough-minded agent, Molly Lyons. And to Molly for bringing me to my editor, Sarah Sevier, who made this process totally clamfoodle.

Thanks to my family—wife, kids, parents, brother, in-laws, everyone—for making possible my preposterous career.

The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman
was written in the Writers Room in New York City.

Livin’ on a Prayer
Words and Music by Jon Bon Jovi, Desmond Child, and Richie Sambora Copyright © 1986
UNIVERSAL-POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC., BON JOVI PUBLISHING, AND AGGRESSIVE MUSIC ALL RIGHTS FOR BON JOVI PUBLISHING CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY UNIVERSAL-POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. ALL RIGHTS FOR AGGRESSIVE MUSIC ADMINISTERED BY SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

Holiday
Words and Music by Rivers Cuomo
Copyright © 1994 E.O. Smith Music
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

Great Balls of Fire
Words and Music by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer
Copyright © 1957 by Chappell & Co. and Unichappell Music Inc.
Copyright Renewed
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman
Copyright © 2010 by Ben H. Winters

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