Thirty-Seven

I should have called in sick Tuesday.

Sleep had eluded me. I tossed and turned all night, spent much of the time staring at the ceiling. I wasn't the only one. Bonnie, beside me, was awake, too, but neither of us would acknowledge that we weren't sound asleep.

We barely spoke at breakfast. Moved around each other in the kitchen like well-choreographed but silent dancers who could execute their moves without tripping over each other. Rachel looked dismayed. For a day or two there, she'd had reason to believe her parents were working through their differences. Attentive to one another. Chatting. But now a frost had settled in again. Mom and Dad not saying any more to each other than they absolutely had to. Rachel had kept her nose to her iPad through breakfast, reading about some disgusting bug or other, disappearing into her new interest.

I was in a brain fog. I couldn't focus on the lessons I had to teach, and when any of my students asked me anything, I often didn't register hearing my own name. Like I said, I should have called in sick, but was worried that doing so had the potential, later, to make me look suspicious.

I did have to field a few questions, from students as well as colleagues, about how I'd earned that bruise on my right temple and cheek. I was sticking with the story about getting hit with a basketball, and more than a few looked skeptical, some pressing to know who'd thrown the ball. I sidestepped, said I didn't want to get anyone into trouble.

Despite that, I tried to act as though nothing unusual had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. But all day I kept looking out that same window where I had spotted Mark LeDrew, expecting to see a Milford police car pull into the lot. Sooner or later, I feared, something was going to connect me to my visit to Billy Finster's the night before.

All they had to do was look at the call history on his phone. They'd see he'd called me not long after I'd told Bonnie everything, even texted me when I'd told him I wasn't going to give in to his demands.

How would I explain that? What reason could I come up with for his You'll be sorry text?

I hoped he'd used another phone for that, a burner, that maybe he'd gotten rid of. Why hadn't I looked for it when I was there? Too shocked, that's why.

During a free hour in my schedule, Trent came to my room.

"You came by the house last night?" he said.

"Yeah," I said, my back to him as I wiped down my blackboard, erasing a lesson on symbolism.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Everything's fine. I was just... just going to talk to you some more about my circumstances."

"Well, I'm here now."

"It's okay," I said. "I've burdened you enough with all this. I appreciate it, I do. I'm sure things will find a way of working out."

"So... what are you saying?" He closed the door. "You paid him? It's over?"

"I didn't—I think my blackmailer's had a change of heart." More like his heart stopped working.

"You heard from him?"

I put down the eraser and raised my palms, signaling I really didn't want to talk about this anymore. "Trent, really, forget I ever mentioned any of this. Put it out of your head."

He stood there, studying me. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing. Just... let it go."

Trent nodded slowly, mulling over my request. "Okay, then," he said. "If you change your mind, if you want to talk, you know where to find me."

"Thank you." I expected him to withdraw, but he was still standing there. "What?"

"I know you need this like a hole in the head, but—"

God, what now?

"Another lawsuit?" I said. "I already got served by the LeDrews, forwarded the paperwork to the union."

"Not that," he said. "Remember me telling you about some parents being concerned about the books in your class?"

I needed a second. Andrew Kanin. The Road.

"Yeah," I said.

"They'd like a meeting. How do you decide what book is worth studying? What are the criteria?"

"Really? There's not a book out there someone wouldn't find objectionable. Maybe we should abandon the teaching of ideas, Trent. Just teach them the times table and the state capitals and send them on their merry fucking way."

"I'm on your side here."

I sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm at the end of my tether."

"I get it, but let me tell you the spot I'm in. I can't dismiss their concerns even if I have problems with them. I have to listen, and we have to make our case. They'd like to meet tonight. The best person— Why do you keep looking out the window?"

"What? Sorry, I was—it's nothing. Go on."

"The best person to talk to them, to explain why The Road, or any number of other books, might engage students, get them thinking, get them talking, would be you. But at the same time, you've been to hell and back and don't need this. I can handle it if you want to be excused."

In my head, I was screaming. But I managed to say, calmly, "No, it's okay."

Maybe, with any luck, I'd be arrested sometime today and would have a good excuse for not showing up.

"If you can handle it, great, but you should think about a leave of absence," Trent said. "A week, a month, whatever you think you need. I know I can get it approved."

Now Trent looked out the window. He'd spotted what had caught my eye a moment earlier out on the school's field. Wandering it aimlessly was Ronny Grant, our former caretaker.

"Oh shit," Trent said. "He won't stay away."

He looked woefully at me, as though expecting a question. "I didn't have any choice. He'd been told about the door, that it wouldn't latch. I had a list of things he was supposed to do and he hadn't gotten to any of them. Even without the LeDrew incident, I'd been thinking I was going to have to do something about him. He's been in to see me three times begging to get his job back. I've told him there's nothing I can do. The board wanted his head on a platter. Now he's moping about like Charlie Brown, making a nuisance of himself. The second time he came in to see me, he'd been drinking."

I felt a certain kinship with Ronny in that moment. A twist of fate had left its mark on both of us. He'd fucked up and lost his job. I'd played the hero and drawn the attention of an extortionist. Neither of us could have predicted where our actions, or inactions, would lead.

"Maybe I should have a word with him," I said. Sometimes I couldn't stop being me. I just had to help.

"Hey, Ronny," I said, crossing the field, hands in my pockets, like maybe I was out here for a stroll, too.

Ronny was a thin stick of a guy, slightly stooped over, his chest slightly caved in, all of which made him look shorter than his six feet. He was dressed in his work attire, olive-colored shirt and pants. He always had a day's growth of whiskers, but now it looked like he hadn't shaved in a week.

"Mr. Boyle," he said. Ronny, like one of the students, always addressed staff members by their surnames. I'd told him more than once to call me Richard, but it wouldn't take.

I offered a hand and he shook it. When I was that close to him, I could smell alcohol on his breath.

"I don't think I ever properly thanked you," he said. "I mean, if that LeDrew kid had got in and blown us all up, it all would have been on me. They'd have done more than fired me. The townspeople'd probably have got together and strung me up."

He laughed weakly.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know that what happened to you is fair. You fighting it?"

Ronny shrugged. "They say I should. But I don't know. If they transferred me to another school, that'd be okay."

"You married, Ronny?" I asked. I realized that I knew very little about this man I'd seen every day in the hallways of the school.

He nodded. "Yup. Just me and Trace. When I'm not here—well, that would be all the time now—but when I wasn't here, I'd be looking after her. Trace lost her sight about two years ago. First one eye, about five years back, and then the other one. She's okay through the day, but I do most everything around the house. Laundry and cooking and cleaning. Sometimes I sneak out late when she's asleep and go to Jim's for a drink or two."

"Kids?"

"Got a daughter comes to visit once in a while. She's a dental assistant, lives and works in New Haven. Got a husband and two kids. She says I should get a lawyer."

"Lot of that going around," I said.

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. "Yeah, I heard something about them coming after you. The parents. Fuckers."

I had no response for that. We stood there, not talking for a moment.

"You know I been here nineteen years?" Ronny said to me.

"I did not."

"Lasted through five principals. Seen them come and go. I thought this latest one, I thought me and him had a good working relationship, you know. Just goes to show that things are never what they seem. I was going to fix the door that very day. I swear to you. It was the top of my list." He shook his head regretfully. "Only one been here as long as me is Belinda." He grinned. "She knows where the bodies are buried."

Exactly the phrase that had occurred to me on several occasions.

Finally, Ronny said, "I miss the kids."

"Sure."

"It made me feel younger, surrounded by young people, you know? You get really close to them while they're here, and then they're gone, making lives for themselves, and a new crop of them comes in."

"I know," I said.

"A lot of them, they called me Willie," he said. "You know, for the Simpsons character? Groundskeeper Willie? That was actually the part I liked best. Keeping the grounds."

His gaze wandered over to the back of the school and a set of doors that led to his former domain. Behind them were the guts of the school. His office, the school's boiler and electrical system, a backup generator, cleaning supplies, a small garden tractor he used to maintain the grounds. In winter, he attached a snowblower to it to clear the sidewalks.

"I liked riding the lawnmower, cutting the grass," he said. "Gives you lots of time to think, doing that. And it's one of those jobs where you can immediately see what you accomplished. Every time you make a loop, it's right there for everyone to see." He smiled. "I'd ride that lawn tractor all day if you let me."

Something Mark LeDrew had said to me eight days ago suddenly popped into my head.

"You're a real lawnmower man, Ronny," I said.

"Yeah," he said, grinning. "I guess I am."