Bright Before Us (21 page)

Edmund had been pressed against the stall door, facing the toilet, so when I pushed it open he stumbled forward. He regained his balance, looking up and behind him, into my eyes.
Ed,
I said. That was all I said, just
Ed
,
a small notation to myself: as in, that's Edmund. There's Edmund. Then I saw his panic; a look I knew well—I'm in trouble, it said. I'm caught. I peered past him into the stall.
Emma,
I said, still just arranging the information in my head: There's Ed, this is Emma. They aren't absent, just in the bathroom. Just here, in this stall of the boys' bathroom, alone together.

Ed,
I said again.

She was sitting cross-legged, Indian style, at his feet, her eyes wide. He was short enough that Emma hadn't had to kneel.
You guys,
I whispered.
The bell already rang.
They didn't move.
The bell rang,
I choked out, bending down to help Edmund lift his pants, a distant scream radiating through my head.
Come on,
I said to both of them. We crossed the hall, went back into the classroom, and they took their seats. If the other kids had noticed I was gone, they didn't show it. Their parents had—they were talking heatedly among themselves when I walked in, and I watched them quiet at my approach. At my desk, I made two small amendments to the attendance form: Edmund and Emma, present.

 

It was mimicry, I knew that. And I knew what that meant: to mimic, one must have an example. Which of them, or if both of them, had had such a guide, I didn't know. I still don't know. I can tell you that what I felt wasn't sympathy, wasn't compassion. What I felt was nameless, taking up space but entirely abstract, without feature. The purest kind of nothingness. I can tell you that, given what it replaced, it was a relief.

As the children painted Mexican flags—it was Cinco de Mayo—the nothingness inside me sharpened, took shape. I finished my coffee and rocked on the back legs of the desk chair. On my watch, I kept thinking. All of this, on my watch. Mrs. Stone leaned over their desks, walking around, putting her hand over their small fingers to keep their paintbrushes inside the lines. I thought I could feel Ed and Emma looking at me, though I didn't look up. I thought I could feel them gauging how long it would be before the consequences came down, how long before they were taken aside. Maybe they stole glances at each other. Maybe they went on, oblivious. Maybe they plotted their next visit to the bathroom, the area behind the equipment shed, the far reaches of the soccer field. God knows where else. Maybe they thought they had gotten off easy, that they had beaten me: I had impotently let them slide. They knew what they were doing was something I shouldn't see. Whatever else they didn't know, they knew that.

I projected motives onto their act—lust, evil, predatory malice, weakness of character. It was idiotic. They were children. What they had done existed outside of thought, outside of contemplation. They were interpreting someone else's script. They were just babies. They understood nothing.

I knew all that. But when I looked up, finally, my vision trailing slightly behind from the medicine, all the kids were hovering over their paintings except for Edmund. He looked right at me, as though I were a show he wasn't enjoying. He looked at me like he knew exactly what he had done. I dropped my coffee cup into the shallow trash can and it splashed back at me, drops staining my pants.
They were just babies. They understood nothing. But he stared like his pupils could drill holes. I stared back, letting my eyes go dead. He looked away, cowed, and something inside me split. All this time, right under my nose there had been this one fucked-up little kid, hurting someone weaker than him. One evil child, poisoning the rest. And I was favoring him all the while. God knows what else the kids did when I wasn't looking. God knows what they did to those who were weaker—who else had been tormented, abused. God knows what they were doing on the beach before I knew what was down there. God knows what else I hadn't been told. Savage little bastard, I thought. You sick little shit.

I stood up, barking,
We're having silent reading early, take out your books.
They stared with wide eyes, trying to tell what was wrong. The parents, too, looked up sharply, and I quieted myself, saying,
Just a quick change of plans,
my voice reassuring. I scrambled around the room, snatching the still-wet watercolor palettes and shoving them into an empty box.

Mr. Mason?
Mrs. Stone said.

I've got it,
I said. I could smell myself—I hadn't showered in days, and the stench emanated from the collar of my shirt.
Come on, come on, put it in the box. Brushes, please.
I darted around the desks, ignoring their questioning eyes. I felt that blanketing whiteness in my head, a blizzard behind my eyes, a feeling like cold and distance combined—white tundra stretching out inside of me. It had no edges. It had no ends.

I found myself at Edmund's chair. I said to him, as the rest of them pulled out their silent-reading books,
I need
your help putting the paints in the supply room.
He stood silently and began walking as though toward a gallows. I followed him.

In the cluttered supply room at the rear of the classroom, I unfolded two chairs. We sat opposite each other in the tiny space, his chair flush against the wall. I tried to speak a few times but kept stopping myself, looking for footing, the right way in. I gave up, leaning back.

Why did you do that, Ed?
My voice was thick. I saw him hear the tears in my voice, saw his surprise, his worry.
Tell me why you did that to her.

He looked toward the supply room door. It passed in less than a second, but it was a rare moment in which I understood without any doubt exactly what someone was thinking. He was thinking,
I'm not safe.
He was afraid of the way I spoke, afraid of what I was letting him see. He was looking for an escape hatch. He was thinking about how fast he would have to run, if it came to it.

Tell me why you did that,
I said again.

He shrugged. It was exactly what I expected him to do, to shrug and sit there waiting for his punishment. There would be no moment of remorse, in which he professed to know what he should do different next time. How could there be? A shrug was the only response he could give, because it was no response at all. But it shook me, hard.

He does this, he does this to her—and he fucking
shrugs
at me?

It was the shout in the canyon, and the avalanche roared over both our heads—all of it came down: the previous days, the previous years, the goddamn unending sea of nausea that pooled inside me, the bones in my wrist
ground to powder, my bloody palm, the hours I hadn't slept, the hours I hadn't wanted to breathe. Her mother's hand, popping against Emma's mouth.
I don't feel like playing soccer today.
The sight of that thing, that repulsive thing lying on the beach. The culmination of everything ugly I had ever known. All of it synthesized, began as a tingle in my shoulder and ran down my arm and I stood, like a hulking god above him, and with the butt of my hand I pushed his forehead so that his head bounced off the supply room wall. It rattled the shelf where I had stored reams of construction paper, a single blue sheet dislodging and floating merrily to the floor, and tears came to his downcast, avoiding eyes, as he began to whisper softly to himself, ignoring me, as though the little song or prayer or whatever he was whispering would save him. And at that moment I was glad. I was glad that his hair would cover the bruise; I was glad that I had hurt him in a way that wouldn't show. Edmund's impromptu lullaby caught in his teary throat, and the paper smell lingered like a dry, searing heat.

 

The children read for two hours, because I never told them to do anything else. After an hour, Mr. Noel came to my desk.

Are you sure this is what they're supposed to be doing?
he said.
It seems like this is an awful lot of reading for a bunch of eight-year-olds.

Just a little while longer,
I told him.

Eventually, Mrs. Stone pulled out a notepad and began to write. That's how it is in any school district—everything requires documentation; no one gets fired until there's
ample evidence against them clogging someone's file cabinet. That's why the parents came. Two of them had seen me fuck around on that field trip, seen me read that fucking newspaper. They had told the principal they were unsatisfied, they were concerned. They had given me a short grace period, maybe, once they were told that my wife was the corpse on the sand, but when they emerged from the fog of their sympathy, if they had ever believed I was bereaved, they remembered that I had been reading that newspaper long before catching sight of the body. That I had checked out months ago. That I was just a stupid kid. All ambivalence was gone—I was certain now. The parents were here to make sure I didn't do anything worse.

The children fidgeted and yawned. With about forty minutes left Mrs. Stone and Mr. Noel rose in synchronized indignation, pulled their children up by the arms, and walked silently out of the classroom. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mr. Noel glaring at me. I didn't meet his gaze. I expected the principal to arrive at any moment, but she didn't. I gather now that she busy securing the future of my charges—a final hour of my foolishness was tolerable, if it meant that tomorrow the kids would be in capable hands.

The phone rang. I picked it up, weakly saying hello.

Oh good,
Greta said.
You're alive.

It doesn't matter,
she said.
Wherever you were, I'm sure there was a phone.

I couldn't go home last night,
I said quietly.

Last night,
she said,
or any night from now on?

I put my head in my free hand.
Oh God, Greta, everything is like, beyond fucked up.
I looked up at the class.
Fucked up to the point where it's not even recognizable.

Without knowing exactly what I meant, she called it like a pro:
You made it that way,
she said.
You took a difficult situation and made it worse.

It's your specialty,
she said.

She was silent for a moment.
I'm here for you, Frank. I am sitting around, just like always, filling my days with being very, very here for you.

Edmund hid at his desk, his face in his arms. It began to rain, the drops clattering against the windowpanes, and the secretary's voice came over the PA, announcing that final recess was to be held indoors.

Someday, you'll have to tell me what that means. We'll have to compare notes,
she said, before hanging up.

 

Most of the kids eventually passed out—they were so small, still so close to the age of obligatory afternoon naps. Edmund's face stayed in his arms and I thought, after a while, that maybe he had fallen asleep too. But when he lifted his pink face it was slick with tears. At some point
Marcus raised his hand. I shook my head with my deadeye stare and he slowly pulled it back down to his side. If they woke up they read some more, or pretended to, cranky and worried until the bell rang at 2:49. They stood, bewildered, to leave. Edmund was among them. There was no moment of reconnection between us, no final word in which he approached me—no moment when I begged him not to tell. I didn't apologize. I didn't see to his wounds, if there were any. There was just silence. He stood up, put his lunch bag in his backpack, and went outside like everybody else. They were gone. I exhaled the deep breath I had held for hours. I was sore from sitting still all afternoon.

I stood, walked over to the classroom door, and locked it. In the supply nook, I grabbed the biggest box I could find, emptying its contents—cracked plastic rulers, straightened paper clips, a ream of graph paper. I brought it to the desk and began placing my things inside. I put it all away: the flashcards I had made to teach them addition, the pamphlet I had gotten from the Egyptian Museum. Red pens, rubber stamps, scratch-and-sniff reward stickers, sing-along cassette tapes. Whole stacks of curriculum papers. Whatever graded work I still had went into their plastic cubbies, sorted as deftly as a casino dealer's cards. I left the crooked posters up, left the chart showing the points they had earned for Cooperation, Extra Effort, Kindness. I sorted through the prizes these points could win them—glittery folders, cheap spinning tops, dollarstore junk bought with my own money. I placed one prize on each desk—I knew which one each kid would want most and tried to accommodate them. I erased the chalkboards, the whiteboards. On the one chalkboard facing
the door, so it would be the first thing someone saw, I wrote my two-word farewell.
I'm sorry
, it said—more to the janitor than to anyone else, since it was his job to wash the boards at night.

My things packed, I closed the supply room door, then opened it again: Ed had put the fallen piece of paper back in its place. Up to that moment, I had done a pretty good job of avoiding thoughts of the following day—the custodian being called to open the door, the principal waiting for my arrival, to tell me the news, until she happened to open a desk drawer to find it empty. She would ask the custodian to take the posters from the walls. She would hire someone else, after the kids had spent who knows how many days with anonymous subs—retired ladies supplementing their social security, kids just out of college. The children would do more dittos than they had ever done in their lives. They would spend hours on word searches. They would watch the animated films that had inhabited my childhood dreams.