Out of the Blue (21 page)

It turned out that my teaching reentry wasn’t so easy. The relapse had tampered with my cognitive function. That first morning, I tried to sign a trip-permission form for Sukey. I gripped the pen and stared down at the black line but my fingers simply refused to move.

“But you
said
I could go-wah,” Sukey complained, misinterpreting my paralysis.

“Bring it to me later,” I said. “I’ll sign it then.” She backed off as if I had the plague, but there was no use trying to explain.

I could feel myself struggling to pin down vocabulary and, once I retrieved the word, to express it without slurring. I said “Whit Waltman” the first time, then “Joe Whitman”—which perhaps I couldn’t blame totally on MS—and “poetry” came out “moesry.” I could see confusion on certain faces. Most were tactfully silent, except for Eddie, of course, who called out, “What, Ms. Bolles? I can’t figure out what you’re saying!” Rudy shot him a look of disgust, but why shouldn’t Eddie protest? If I couldn’t make myself understood, I shouldn’t be teaching.

It didn’t take long for the word to get around. There were sympathetic looks from other faculty members, as if they were trying not to notice the ax hanging over my head. The scariest thing was that every time I caught a glimpse of Leonard Chubb, he’d disappear around a corner or slink into a classroom so he didn’t have to speak to me. I took that as an ominous sign, guessing that I no longer even appealed to him as a political partner. Anyhow, he was doing just fine without me. The few times I actually spotted Peevik, the interim headmaster, Leonard was with him and they seemed very chummy. In fact, Peevik never bothered to introduce himself. I supposed that I was as invisible to him as I was to that clerk at
Refill.
All this spurred me to write an overdue thank-you letter to Duncan Reese telling him how much I admired what he had done for Cameron, how much I had appreciated his support, and that I missed him.

In school, I concentrated all of my energies into preparing my classwork, making reminder lists, and speaking up in departmental meetings in an alert sort of way—though this could be dangerous. I lapsed into some mirthless giggles one day after an inability to get my tongue around the word “curriculum.” It kept coming out “curried cumin,” as if I’d got my wires crossed with the menu from an Indian restaurant.

At the end of each day I would roll out the school entrance with a cheery wave to anyone standing in the lobby. But it was all show. Oftentimes I’d see the garbage truck on Eighty-fifth and wish that they’d just pick me up, chair and all, and compact me with the rest of the useless trash.

Joe disappeared off the planet. Last summer there had been the incessant media deluge from ads and articles. During those weeks, I had pictured myself standing under a cartoon umbrella showered with the words
Joe
and
Malone.
But this time the winter dragged on and there was total drought. He could no longer be part of my life, but I grew desperate for some indication that he still existed. Once, in the elevator of my building, a toddler peered up at me with Joe’s eyes. Its mother, no doubt accustomed to comments about the unusual color, was nonetheless caught off guard by my over-the-top rhapsodizing.

There was no mention of AirMalone in the business section of the paper, nothing about Joe in another of those breathless eligible-bachelor articles. Lola Falcon’s latest publication emerged but I only knew because I ferreted it out in the bookstore. I flipped it over to check out the author’s photo, but this time there was a slick air-brushed picture credited to somebody else. I had wanted so much to see Joe’s name, imagining myself running a finger across it as if the typed words could transport the comfort of him. I sat in my wheelchair in the back of Barnes & Noble clutching the book to my chest and weeping. It was the first time I had cried. Wouldn’t you know I’d choose a place crawling with self-possessed people browsing for books on how to maximize their sexual potential.

After another couple of weeks, Dr. Klewanis told me I could fold up my wheelchair and ditch the Lana Turner glasses. I’d embarked on a regimen of injections, and as before, they left me feeling as if I had the flu. But rubbing aloe on the injection site kept the swelling down and I did feel stronger. My tongue was definitely more supple. The acid test was pronouncing unfamiliar names. At first, I practiced on the Sunday
Times
newlyweds, muttering the more difficult names out loud:
Givyn Macllvennie, Huson Klenawicus, Ryan Van Buskreek.
But in short order, all those smiling brides depressed me and I moved on to the obituaries.

No one close to me had ever died, but I began to understand what it meant to mourn and how Joe must have grieved over his grandmother. It’s the specificity of a person—the habitual gesture, the curve of the mouth, the chipped tooth, the idiosyncratic catch in the throat to signal a laugh—the loss of these things are what cut so deep. I suppose when they begin to recede from memory, that’s when you begin to mend. But I didn’t want them to fade. I clung to them, willing myself to remember that Joe said “roof” to rhyme with “woof,” that he was ticklish at the back of his left knee but not the right, that I didn’t need to see any part of him except his eyes to know that he was smiling. I hung on to those memories because they kept me company in a bleak sort of way. I could understand people who built shrines.

During my recovery, Ma had been uncharacteristically quiet. I suppose I expected a battle over the breakup, or at least a lot of questions, but she never mentioned Joe’s name. Her silence only contributed to the strange vacuum that intensified my yearning for him. One Saturday night in late March, I raised the subject. We were watching a rerun of
Chariots of Fire
while a tease of spring slipped through the window, making my heart ache. On the TV screen, the aristocratic hurdler had set champagne glasses on a series of barriers and was leaping over them.

“That actor reminds me of Joe,” I said. Wonderful angular features and that silky blond hair. Not to mention the athletic grace. It gave me a sick feeling, as if I hadn’t eaten in too long, and yet I couldn’t look away.

“Mm,” she said.

“Don’t you think so?” I pressed her.

“Not really.” She got up. “You want mocha chip or butter pecan?”

When she came back with the ice cream, I said, “Ma, how come you don’t ever talk about Joe?”

“I don’t?” she said.

“You never mention him.”

“Oh.”

“You liked him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you pissed at me for breaking it off?”

“Of course not,” she said in that subdued tone I kept hearing out of her lately. “I guess it just seems pointless to dwell on a closed chapter. Don’t let that ice cream melt.”

Her reticence didn’t encourage discussion and it made me feel even more isolated. A week after this conversation, Ma announced that she was going on a vacation.

“A vacation,” I repeated uncomprehendingly. She’d never taken one as far as I could remember.

“Yeah. I need a break.”

“A break.” I knew I sounded like a dim-witted child but I was having a lot of trouble grasping the concept. Ma got up from the dinner table and started making noise in the kitchen.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“Key West,” she said over her shoulder. “I hate this fucking weather.”

“It’s almost spring,” I said.

“Almost doesn’t count.”

“All by yourself?”

“Sure.” In the sink, silverware ricocheted, pots crashed. “It’ll be nice to just lie around and read a good book.”

Nice without me to look after. Maybe that was what it was all about. She was tired, and why not? My latest relapse had carved a new wrinkle in her face, a deep slice between her brows. But I felt bereft and angry, abandoned. I knew I was going to cry again. Ashamed, I crept into my room and shut the door. I curled up on my bed and thought I might as well just complete the picture by sticking my thumb in my mouth.

“So when are you planning to leave?” I asked casually at breakfast in the morning.

“Next week.”

“Next week!” I couldn’t stifle the panic.

“Mrs. Wellaway says she’ll run errands if you need her.”

I was thinking that Mrs. Wellaway couldn’t help me with my exercises and I would certainly never want to plunk myself down on that bony lap.

“Why are you doing this, Ma?” I asked.

“I told you. I need a break.”

“But I just got rid of my wheelchair.”

“You’ll be fine. I checked it out with Klewanis.”

There was no responding to that so I tried another tack. “How will Carmen ever manage the bakery all by herself?” Dirty pool, but Ma didn’t rise to the bait.

“If she has a problem, I’m only a phone call away.”

“I feel like there’s something else. Are you sure you’re not angry with me?”

“Of course not. Since when wouldn’t I tell you if I’m pissed?”

“Okay,” I said. But I was thinking,
Since the alien came and took over your body.

A barrage of blue language emerged from Ma’s room as she packed for Florida. Her suitcase was too fucking small, the goddamn handle was for shit, her lone bathing suit was a cocksucker that made her look like a fucking manatee, etcetera, etcetera. I took secret satisfaction in this display, attributing it to separation anxiety. God knows I was flooded with it. But rather than curse, I withdrew into that place I was finding ever more hospitable, a walled room inside my lesioned brain where silence was the language of choice.

We ate breakfast together the day of Ma’s departure. I was swollen with feelings but there was a new carefulness between us now. I couldn’t tell her how much I loved her and depended on her, and how fearful I was that I’d never see her again. I couldn’t tell her how much I didn’t want her to leave me. Ever.

“Save the Style section from the Sunday paper,” she said. We liked to giggle over the more outlandish fashions.

“Okay. Well, I’d better get to school.” I got up from the table, grabbed my cane and my coat and bent to give Ma a kiss on the cheek. “See you in a couple of weeks.”

“Take care of yourself, Annabelle.” I was kind of counting on a tear or two but she kept her face averted.

That was it. Ma’s flight took off midday, so when I came home that evening, the place was dark and quiet with no comforting smell of dinner cooking. I stuck my face into the apron hanging on a hook in the kitchen and breathed in the scent of bath soap and flour.

“Grow up, Anna,” I told myself, and grabbed a fork for my Chinese takeout.

I look back on that time as a kind of purgatory. First, the very next day, I got fired.

I should have known something was up when I ran into Leonard Chubb in the teachers’ lounge. Rather than curling up in his corner of the couch, he was standing in the middle of the room with legs apart, arms folded, every inch the squire surveying his estate. He’d parted his hair on the opposite side and stuffed a silk handkerchief in his pocket.

“Glad to see you on your feet again,” he told me, managing to convey that he wasn’t. But clearly he was cheered about something. He started fiddling with one of those palm-size computers. “Just want you to know,” he said, peering at the screen, “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Ah. I stood in silence for a moment, then wheeled around—or tried to wheel, which is not easy with a cane—and headed straight to my homeroom.

My e-mail asked me to stop in at the high school dean’s office. I took a deep breath. Perhaps because of my close connection to Duncan Reese, I’d had a distant relationship with Conley Mellen. In fact, the only other time I’d been summoned to his office was as a student when I’d organized a snowball fight during a fire drill. Mellen and I smiled at one another a lot but didn’t have much to say. When he saw me standing in the doorway, he quickly dropped his eyes. I knew right then that it was over.

“Should I bother to sit down?” I asked.

“Of course.” He moved some files from one stack to another but I knew he was just looking for something to do. I’m pretty adept at the file-pile maneuver myself when trapped in an awkward parent conference. “Anna …” he started, letting his eyes flicker to my face for a moment. He faltered, but I was damned if I was going to help him out. I noticed for the first time that he had the veined face of a heavy drinker. My mind wandered back to past faculty events. I pictured the glass in Conley’s hand. It was always filled with Diet Coke. A recovered alcoholic. I fought sympathy. After all, this person was about to fire me.

“I’m afraid we just can’t continue keeping you on in your present capacity,” he said.

“In my present capacity,” I echoed. What exactly did that mean? Precise language, please. In my present capacity for bringing dusty old literature to life? For empathy with my students? For tripping over the furniture? What?

“We wanted to give you plenty of time. To finish out the year. Under the circumstances. To examine your options.”

“I’d appreciate your telling me why.”

He got up and went to the window. I figured he was thinking he could use a stiff drink right about now, and I have to say I wouldn’t have minded one myself. He addressed his remarks to the brick wall on the far side of the courtyard. “There have been complaints,” he said, “particularly since your recent hospitalization. As you’re aware, it’s always difficult to find a satisfactory substitute. It’s disruptive for the students and, unfortunately, we can only expect to be placed in the same situation more frequently in the future.”

I didn’t know what to say. I blurted out finally, “I could go for years without a relapse. I love teaching. I think I’m a good teacher.”

He turned to look at me at last. “You’re an exceptional teacher, Anna. But we have demanding families and an active board of trustees.”

“Can you tell me something specific? It would help.”

He sat down and retrieved a file from the heap. “Since your return, you’ve misgraded two papers. You lost one student’s quiz before reading it. Your speech has sometimes been unintelligible to the students and to other members of the faculty.” He flipped a page. Somebody had been keeping close tabs. Wonder who.

“That’s enough, Conley. You don’t have to go on.” I’d fire me myself.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “these problems, while serious, don’t counterbalance what you give to your students, and from what I understand, you could be in remission for some time. No one prepares their students better than you do, and you always find imaginative ways to keep them excited about literature.” He sighed, a big one. “Off the record, I want you to know that this is happening over my protest.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s a comfort.” I stood up and took the hand he offered across his desk.

“You should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished here, Anna,” he said. “You just got a bad break.”

I stood in the hallway outside, leaning on my cane and watching the students. There were no classrooms here on the ground floor but there was a view of the lobby and the entrance to the auditorium. I knew that a rehearsal for the spring musical was going on in there. I’d been influential in the selection of Stephen Sondheim’s
Company
and had encouraged Michelle to audition for the part of Kathy. She must have nailed it because she was standing just outside the auditorium door listening raptly to Don Stein, the head of the theater department. I noticed that the haunted look had disappeared from her face. Rudy passed by with a sixth-grader whom he was tutoring in math. I watched his eyes linger on Michelle, saw the pain in that flickering glance, even now after all these months—a lesson to those of us who underestimate the constancy of an adolescent passion. Puppy love, indeed.

I must have stood there for ten minutes watching the ebb and flow of students, the younger kids straining with backpacks almost half their size, the high-schoolers who typically managed to crash into somebody or something on their way through. A few of those enormous seniors had been pint-sized themselves when I first began teaching. I wondered how I was supposed to go about disengaging myself from a place whose rhythm was so familiar that I felt the bell ring on Saturdays.

I walked out of the building and headed for the park. I didn’t have my coat, but physical discomfort was almost a relief. I took the Ninetieth Street entrance to the reservoir and stood watching the gulls wheel over the wide expanse of water. Ducks walked with webbed feet on a transparent skin of ice. The sky was dull gray, and over on the West Side somebody had released dozens of balloons, tiny pinpricks of color rising like wishes. I followed their ascent until my eyes caught sight of a small plane, a toy against the clouds. I imagined that Joe was in that plane. Another wish, another dream, so far out of reach, like everything else that mattered.