“Still it was an unconscionable lapse—”
“You and your big words, Mr. Hennings,” she had interrupted. She was a high school dropout and a waitress at a greasy spoon diner James had visited once. James had to laugh at himself for coming off sounding like a pompous ass. “No harm, no foul, as they say,” she’d added. “And Eddie has a wonderful story to tell.
Please
don’t blame yourself.”
James’ principal had been far less understanding. Mr. Scalia came for the CYA school of leadership. Cover your ass and always,
always
find someone else to shoulder the blame. James sat through a forty-five minute berating, only taken aback that Scalia himself hadn’t been in touch with Eddie’s mother.
“What am I to say to …” Scalia stopped and looked down at a folder that contained Eddie’s name. Mr. Scalia was a hands off principal when it came to the three hundred students in his charge. He knew the troublemakers. He knew those few who brought glory to the school by winning contests. Eddie was neither. “ … Mrs. Jankowicz when she comes marching in demanding an explanation?”
“I’ve already spoken to her,” James said, locking eyes with his nemesis. Yes, he knew he was to blame but he had at least had the decency to call the boy’s mother and apologize. He couldn’t believe the principal hadn’t done the same. Where was the man’s concern? His compassion? James was tempted to ask the man, but kept his anger in check. Suicidal he wasn’t. “She told me Eddie was no worse the wear for the incident and appreciated my call.”
Scalia looked at James dumfounded. “You called her?” he asked. “Of course. I was concerned,” James had responded.
“I … I still have concerns, Mr. Hennings,” the principal went on, no longer making eye contact with James. He usually addressed his teachers by their first names. When angry it was the more formal Mr. Hennings. Scalia went over a list of mandatory suggestions James was to follow if he took his students on any other trips. James tuned the man out.
The incident, coming two months prior to the end of the school year, preyed on James’ mind.
It shouldn’t have happened
, he kept telling himself. Hadn’t in the previous forty-four years and hundreds of trips. He still had no idea how it had occurred. He replayed the incident over in his mind countless times, knowing the obsession was unhealthy. Each time there was Eddie calling out his number. Obviously, though, Eddie hadn’t. There was no way James could again place a child in harm’s way. He was slipping. It was his dissatisfaction with the job, he knew, but that was no excuse had Eddie panicked or been irrevocably scarred. It was time to go.
James left as he had entered the profession with a minimum of fanfare. He had precious few friends on the faculty. Only one other teacher was his age, a first grade teacher who publicly belittled her children in the hallway. He had only contempt for her. He had even been tempted to reprimand her in front of her class for her callous disregard for their feelings. Most others he had been on speaking terms had retired in a slow but steady stream the last five or six years.
James had no desire for one of those contrived retirement dinners given those parting at the end of each school year. He himself had avoided them like the plague when colleagues left the profession. He was no hypocrite so he kept his plans to himself. So he submitted his paperwork to the district office and packed what few mementos he cared to leave with. As a final gesture of his disdain for bureaucrats like Principal Scalia, James left a letter of resignation on the man’s desk the last day of school. Knowing his principal’s poor organizational skills it might be midsummer before Scalia knew James had retired. Hell, he thought with a laugh, it might be two months into the n
ext
school year before the man was aware James was gone.
The first question James had asked himself was
what would he do?
He tried to make light of his dilemma. He was certain he could make a list of several pages of what he could do to keep himself busy and content. Yet at night, alone in his bed he wondered just what the hell he
would
do. He shivered, uncontrollably, though the nights were warm. He hadn’t planned for his retirement. Financially he was secure but what would he do with his day? Summers he had caught up on reading, taken in movies and visited his children and grandchildren, now scattered across the country. And that’s what he did his first summer of his retirement.
He and his wife had been divorced thirty years earlier. She had passed away the year before leaving her fourth husband with a mountain of bills. She had won custody of his three children after she had remarried. She had also moved across the country. James saw his children for two weeks during the summer and every other Christmas. He hardly knew his seven grandchildren. Visits were strained. Everyone was so damned polite. There were many awkward silences. Everyone, himself included, seemed relieved when his visits came to an end.
With the onset of a new school year the thorny question remained.
What would he do?
His barber suggested a trip to Italy, Greece or the Holy Land might be in order. But other than visits to his family James had no use for travel. He made a poor tourist. Museums, for the most part, bored him to tears. He was a meat and potatoes guy, most definitely not into exotic cuisine. The two times he had traveled abroad he’d split his time between the trips to the bathroom and craving a good steak or even a lousy McDonald’s hamburger. Moreover, he detested airports. Arrive an hour early for a flight that invariably left at least a half hour late, tedious layovers then the interminable wait for baggage. Just the thought exhausted him. No, he wouldn’t travel, though money was no obstacle. A recently retired acquaintance suggested he start a home business. A diversion, he had called it. He himself went to yard sales and sold books and memorabilia on eBay, he told James.
“I’m a jazz buff. There’s no better feeling than going through a box of records and finding a Miles Davis on
vinyl
, in mint condition, no less,” he told James. “And finagling the price of the
entire
box down to five dollars. The Davis alone I sold for a hundred dollars,” he said proudly.
“I couldn’t rip someone off like that,” James said. “It goes against everything I taught my students over the years.”
“I didn’t put a gun to the dude’s head,” his friend had said, sounding irritated. Then he shook his head. “You’re missing my point, James. What I’m trying to say is I have something to do that’s satisfying. Each yard or estate sale is an adventure. And it’s lucrative. Forget about what
I
do. You must have some interests you’d like to explore. Why not start your own business? It beats sitting around the house waiting to die.”
James had shrugged. His friend meant well. But James hadn’t left one job to start another. He certainly didn’t need the money. Once he’d become a teacher his life had revolved around the profession. He went to the track occasionally with a friend, but he had no great interest in horse racing. And he certainly had nothing in common with the regulars he spotted each time he visited the track. He sometimes wondered if some of them slept at the track. Not only were they always there, but they seemed to be wearing the same clothes.
But his friend had said something that resonated with James, at least as a fantasy.
I didn’t put a gun to the dude’s head
. There had been times when James had thought that he wanted to put a gun to someone’s head. A negligent parent. A teacher who berated her kids. And most assuredly his principal. Yes, there were times when putting a gun to Scalia’s head, seeing him pee in his pants as he awaited his demise, made James smile contentedly as he sat as his desk. Maybe he
would
buy a gun and take some lessons at a shooting range. But why? He thought. He’d never do the deed so it would be a waste of time.
One of his children proposed an athletic pursuit. Nothing too strenuous. Maybe tennis. James had been physically active through his forties. He’d played basketball twice a week. The contact, verbal jousting and arguments that almost led to fist fights had been a great outlet for his pent up frustrations. But his knees had begun giving him problems. He’d torn a ligament in his knee when he was forty-five and after a grueling rehab was advised to find a less arduous outlet.
But what was there besides basketball? He detested golf. It was like a walk in the park,
literally
, made even worse by the fact some he knew were so lazy they drove golf carts. He’d tried swimming, but that, too, bored him. His knees wouldn’t allow jogging, even if he had the urge. Tennis meant having a partner so he tossed the idea aside.
Even if he had found a suitable activity, his early months of retirement saw his body fail him for the first time. He felt like a car whose warranty had just expired. He began falling apart, or so it seemed. Odd, he thought. He’d missed no more than a dozen days in all his years of teaching. He’d taught when he had bronchitis. He hadn’t missed a day of work when he’d injured his knee. A few cases of the flu. Only in his final two years did he take “mental health” days off. Sometimes he just didn’t want to face the children. But he’d never been seriously ill.
Suddenly he was beset with any number of ailments. A fall in the snow necessitated a hip replacement. He’d had a scare when he discovered blood in his stool. He feared the worst. He’d heard of colleagues who had retired with great plans only to drop dead or be felled by the “Big C” after six months. A battery of tests gave him a clean bill of health. “You have hemorrhoids,” his doctor told him. He hated to admit it but his sudden physical limitations had shaken him to the core. He was reminded of the commercial for some product that eluded him. An elderly woman is sprawled on the floor, conscious but unable to move. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” she cried out. There had been a sense of hopelessness in her voice that James thought was more than the actress reciting her lines.
He
lived alone. What if he took a tumble and
couldn’t get up
. For several nights he had dreams of laying on the floor watching his body waste away. His throat was so parched that when someone knocked on his door he could utter no audible sound. A slow painful death. A painfully slow death.
After the third such dream he purchased a devise that looked like a watch. Press a button and paramedics were promised to be at his house within ten minutes. He wore the damn contraption, but it made him feel terribly vulnerable. There might come a time he couldn’t live alone. The thought came unbidden, but once it had surfaced he couldn’t deny its truth. He would never impose on his children and move in with them even if they would take him. And retirement communities were euphemisms for nursing homes. He shuddered at the thought of strangers having to care for him. Some male nurse giving him a sponge bath or wiping up his excrement if he lost control of his bowels. A nursing home.
Neve
r. Suicide was preferable.
Now, once again, he thought of purchasing a gun, but this time not to shoot his principal in revenge, but to end it all on his terms if life became too intolerable. A bullet in the head was preferable to a male nurse sponging his genitals. He wouldn’t even have to go to a target range. Gun to the head. Pull the trigger. The deed done. Let his children clean up the mess so they could sell the house.
He thought the worst had passed and then he suffered from a toothache that wouldn’t allow him to sleep. He had put off going to the dentist for … well, for years. During more than four decades in the classroom he had no more than three cavities. Now that toothache that wouldn’t quit turned out to necessitate a root canal. The dentist had taken a full set of X-rays and chided James for his lax dental hygiene. Seven cavities, another root canal and the beginnings of gum disease made visits to the dentist a weekly affair for four months. Brush and floss he’d been told. He had been remiss in the past, but he didn’t want to visit the dentist anytime soon again so he followed the man’s instructions to the letter.
After the last dentist appointment he had celebrated by purchasing a gun, not that he thought he would use it. There was a gun shop right next to a bakery he often frequented. He thought the two stores next to one another incongruous. Maybe that’s why it stood out to James every time he went into the bakery. It was like a church amidst a block of liquor stores and strip clubs. He’d peer into the window of the gun shop. Talk about weapons of mass destruction. There were enough guns in that one shop alone to cause an awful lot of havoc.
So after he’d finished with his dentist, for at least the next six months, he decided to splurge and go to his favorite bakery. Instead he found himself walking into the gun shop. It was almost as if he were having an out of body experience. He was talking to the proprietor about what gun to purchase while a part of him had no desire for such a weapon. But, it was all so fascinating. For someone his age with the desire of self-protection a small firearm would most definitely suffice, he was told. James agreed, but he still wanted to hold a Magnum 357 out of curiosity. Though tempted to walk out and buy a Napoleon or canolli next door he found himself handing his charge card to the gun dealer. There was a seven day waiting period, but with no criminal record and only time on his hands James could be patient. Still, he remained in the store for another half an hour as the store’s owner showed him how to handle the gun and to clean it. He almost wanted to point it at the man behind the counter and tell him to go fuck himself with his waiting period, take his gun and walk out. Common sense prevailed and he left and waited. Looking at the bakery, as he left, he found he had no need for pastry.