I passed the high school on my way home, and without overthinking it, pulled in the lot. It was almost three. I found Ms. Annie’s car. Stalky, but how else would I talk to her? A dropout, going in the building? Probably some part of your brain gets repo’d, like the Dead Zone movies.
Terrible idea. Here came the bell, and the lost life of Demon playing out in front of me. All my former brothers running onto the field for practice, punching each other in the head in the carefree fashion of youth. I rifled the glove box for a Xanax to buy myself another hour on the wanting-to-stay-alive clock. Pulled the Impala to the far end where I could see her car but not the football field. She was practically the last one out, moving fast in her long skirt, carrying her big flat folder. I eased my car around and tapped the horn, causing her to jump. Then she recognized me, and I was her cake full of candles. She opened the passenger door and slid in, all smiles.
“Please tell me you’re coming back to class. I’ve got a folder of life drawings in here to grade, and they all look like they came out of bathroom stalls.”
“I can see you worked really hard on this, Aidan.”
She laughed. I could tell she wanted to lean over and give me a hug. My boyhood fantasies rearing to life, now that I was spoken for. “Damon. Just two more years. Is that impossible?”
“I’m not a kid. I have stuff to take care of now.”
She stared at me. Some motion behind her caught my eye, Clay Colwell in a red scrimmage vest running after a missed pass. My eyes started watering like they’d been poked. I told her she was a great teacher, and I was sorry I wasted her time. She said plenty of kids wasted her time, but I was a shooting star. Her words. “You know I don’t do this for the money, right?” She frowned a little. “Do you know that? That I’m not even paid full-time here?”
I’d thought a teacher was a teacher, period, but no. She said art and choir director were her only two classes, and you don’t get full salary for that. Science teacher was the same, only the two classes. “I’m not complaining, I get by on my art commissions and our band gigs.”
“And the ice cream truck in summer.” She and Mr. Armstrong traded off with that.
“And ice cream, right. What I’m saying is … What am I saying?” She tilted her head, the loopy earrings danced. “Okay, I like helping kids learn to see what they’re looking at. But really and truly? I always hoped one day a spark would come along, that I could fan into a flame. Some whole new vision that the world actually needs.” Supposedly, I was that spark. She said teachers spend years of their lives hiding out in the coffee room, trying not to give up hope on the likes of me being out there somewhere. It seemed like she might cry. Or if not her, me.
I told her I was sorry I let her down. But I’d come looking for her because I heard the sick pack of lies about her and Mr. Maldo, and wanted her to know I was no part of it.
She looked down at her lap, nodding her head slowly. “Normally I wouldn’t give it a thought. That kind of thing goes around like a stomach flu. You want to talk about superheroes, my husband is a man of steel. This stuff just bounces off of him.”
We both looked out the windshield at the last stragglers finding their cars, thinking our thoughts. Mr. Armstrong, rebel flags, all kinds of little uglinesses probably, that most of us never knew about. I’d lived long enough to know, that shit doesn’t really bounce off. She glanced back at me. “I’ll tell you something, the one I’m worried about is Jack. Mr. Maldo.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten his first name, if I ever knew it.
“It’s like walking through fire for him right now, just to do his job. Kids making gestures. I’m scared he’ll quit and lose his medical insurance. He’s not well. Maybe you didn’t know.”
“I noticed the hand,” I said, not sure there was anything you could take for such.
“You’re sweet to worry about Lewis and me, but we’ve been through this so many times. There will always be some people around here that think our marriage is their business.”
She said there used to be laws against the Black and white type of marriage, up till the 1960s. So, before any of us were born including her and Mr. Armstrong, but attitudes hang on. “Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn’t been totaled or repossessed.”
I wondered if the laws pertained to my people making their Melungeon babies way back when, or if we were too far backwoods for the higher-ups to give a shit. Age-old story, who gets to look down on who, for what reason.