Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath (9 page)

“No, not really. He seemed okay about it.”

“Tea?”

“Okay.”

I don't really want tea, but I don't feel like going to my room and dealing with my life either. My mother would desperately like to have children who would sit with her every afternoon and tell her all about their lives. Instead, sometimes we have tea. I pour the water into two mugs and choose what seems to me the least offensive of the thirty-five or so flavors of herbal tea we keep in a big jar on the counter. I can't deal with any of the berry flavors, teas with names that don't indicate contents (Sleepy-time, Peppy), or anything labeled “zinger.” I stick with simple, easily identifiable flavors: peppermint, chamomile, vanilla. I settle on chamomile.

“You seem a little let down,” she offers.

No comment seems necessary, so instead I scald my tongue on my tea.

Mom sits and looks at me expectantly. This is supposed to be a moment, a child-parent poignant memory: the two of us sitting in the kitchen drinking tea after a bad day, talking, communicating, sharing. She is trying so hard to be there for me that I almost try to tell her what is going on, but I can't, or won't. So we do what we normally do; she asks me questions and I give her content. The fact is I'm not sure why I feel so let down. It all went well, but I'm almost in tears when I tell her that chemistry was totally boring, and I'm thinking of blue eye shadow when I
describe my little impromptu speech on the art of Claymation. And no, I'm not doing anything tonight, there's a party but I don't think David's going and I don't feel like going by myself. And, as the conversation shifts, it's fine that we aren't going skiing, I have a history project due on Monday, and no, no, no, I'm not making another film.

At least we noticed he left

My film having received its debut, English class is off to new topics. I don't ask about my grade for the project. Papers will be returned on Wednesday and I assume whatever comments Curtis is going to give me about my film will arrive on Wednesday with the rest. Curtis always returns papers exactly one week after they are turned in. He seems to think that he has some sort of moral responsibility to be consistent and timely.

As I sit in class mentally calculating how many more hours of Curtis's lecturing I still have to endure—less than fifty, if I'm doing the math correctly—I begin to sense that something is wrong. Curtis is talking, nothing unusual there, but his voice seems flatter, less animated, as if he no longer cares about whether or not we are listening. He is almost mumbling, reading aloud occasionally from his well-worn copy of
O Pioneers!
sitting on his stool at the
front of the room, which is unusual in itself, as he usually paces while he reads. The board is nearly blank. Last Friday's date still sits in the far left corner. There are a few halfhearted attempts to write a word or two, none of the usual illegible scrawl he haphazardly fills the board with as he writes furiously with one hand, holding the book in the other and never stopping the rush of words for so much as a breath. Today there are pauses. He has not asked one rhetorical question. In fact, he has asked no questions at all.

I look around furtively to see if anyone else has noticed the change. If anyone has, it is hard to tell. Several people are still taking notes, on Lord knows what, because Curtis has barely said anything about the reading. The same one or two students who always sleep through the class have their heads down in their customary hunched positions. The rest of the class sit in their usual semidazed state.

The pauses grow longer. Curtis reads, then pauses, says a few words, then pauses again, as if he is testing whether there is a difference between the pauses and the talking. And then, unostentatiously, he closes the book and walks out of the room.

At first, no one speaks. The heads that are down on the desktops remain there; the more alert students look around nervously. Mariel stops taking notes.

“Maybe he needs to take a leak,” suggests Louis. No one laughs.

We sit in silence for over a minute. I time it on my watch. Then Bonnie and Anna, who sit in the far side back corner, start to whisper, pulling their desks closer together. Slowly small clumps of conversation sprout across the room, and eventually people find their normal speaking voices. David doesn't move from his spot, third row, third seat in, and he becomes an island as the neat lines of desks form loose constellations of social organization. He fidgets with his pencils. I pretend to be part of the conversation taking place directly to my left, about a movie I hadn't seen. My one contribution is that I had heard it was good. At 9:05, when class officially ends, everyone gets up and leaves.

“What was the last thing he said?” I ask David as we shuffle down the hallway to calculus.

“I wasn't really listening,” David admits with what sounds like regret.

“I don't think anyone was.”

“Should we tell someone?”

“Report Curtis AWOL? I don't want to get him in trouble. Maybe he had a breakdown, like Ms.—what was the name of the woman who we had in seventh-grade Latin?”

“Ms. Hertig.”

“Like Ms. Hertig.”

David shakes his head. “She started out weirder than Curtis. Curtis is strange, but not psycho. And she didn't
walk out of class, she broke into hysterics and threw a chair at Louis.”

Theory 1: A man walks into a bar …

Mariel, of course, has the full story by break.

“He just walked out of school, got in his car, and drove away. They found his copy of
O Pioneers!
in the parking lot.”

“Does anybody know why?”

Mariel grins. “It's a mystery, but the prevailing theory is that some trustee spotted Curtis coming out of Riley's.”

Riley's is the best-known, and possibly only, gay bar in town.

“They can't fire a guy for going into a bar, not even Riley's.”

“Even if it was on a school night,” adds David.

“Was that a joke?” Mariel asks. “I could have sworn you lacked the gene for sarcasm.”

David almost smiles. “I never joke,” he replies solemnly.

Mariel spots someone else she needs to tell the story to and walks away. I have to ask David.

“Do you really think Curtis is gay?”

He readjusts his glasses, a clear signal that he's annoyed. “Why would I know?”

On Tuesday, we have a substitute English teacher who clearly has not read
O Pioneers!
and tries to engage us in a
discussion of William Catheter's work. She isn't much older than we are. My guess is that she was student-teaching somewhere and got shuffled into this slot at the last minute. She seems intimidated. This is new to us. Honors English classes are rarely seen as frightening.

“I'm an early childhood specialist,” she confesses about halfway through the period in a desperate attempt to elicit some sympathetic response. Her styled hair, manicured nails, and short tight skirt are, however, more interesting than anything she has to say. The sub has pulled one of the student desks forward to face the class, and she keeps tugging at that skirt as if it might suddenly grow larger, which would have been useful, as it barely covers her thighs. Every time she shifts her legs, she offers glimpses of her pale blue panties. I don't think I'm the only one who notices this. Several males in the classroom seem unusually attentive.

On Wednesday, Ms. Blue Panties has mysteriously disappeared, replaced by a youngish bearded guy wearing a tie and Vans. It is as if they're sending us stereotypes of bad teachers. Every other sentence ends with a rhetorical “Right?” Example: “Cather is really challenging our preconceived notions of femininity, right?” I have visions of the class chanting “Right!” in response, amen-style, but of course no one says anything. After seventeen or eighteen rhetorical “rights?” the sub finally asks, “Has anyone read any of this?” No one answers. The few who have
actually done the assigned reading aren't about to admit to it. He looks disappointed, then brightens up. “So what music do you guys listen to? Anybody into Animal Collective?”

I am beginning to miss Curtis.

On Thursday, I am summoned to the principal's office.

Saying I was summoned to the Director of the Upper Division's office just doesn't have the same ring

I have never been in trouble before. I can't remember ever even being sent to sit in the hall, or having a teacher raise their voice at me. This is my fourteenth year at Richard White Day School; I started in preK. Thirteen and a half years of reasonably good behavior. I don't know how to react.

We don't actually have a principal—at least not by that title. Some consultant had been hired two years ago to reorganize Richard White Day to reflect the reality of the business climate of small expensive private schools, and now everyone has pseudo-corporate titles that look nice on their business cards. There are no deans or headmasters in this progressive institution. Instead, we have a CEO, Dr. VandeNeer, whom we see at assemblies twice a year and on brochures. His primary job seems to be schmoozing with donors and bringing in the bucks. He must be doing pretty well since every room, every
hallway, even some of the larger windows have neat little plaques with someone's name on them. I often drink from the J. P. Gilley water fountain, which happens to be near my locker. Louis suggested giving a new urinal as our class gift so we could have a plaque in the john.

The business manager has become a CFO (Chief Financial Officer), although everybody still calls him the BM, just not to his face. Most of the other administrators have become directors: Director of the Lower Grades, Director of the Middle Grades, Directors of Admissions, Publications, Academic Computing, Media Center, and even Student Services (formerly the janitors and kitchen crew). Teachers are still teachers and, as far as I know, we are still officially designated students, not yet products in need of bar coding.

So I'm not summoned to the principal's office. I am summoned to the Director of the Upper Division's office. We call him Mr. Sorrelson.

Mr. Sorrelson is nice enough most of the time, but he has a reputation for losing his temper easily and having an intimidating presence. I come in already intimidated. He is in his early fifties and was brought to White Day when the board decided that the former headmaster had been too liberal and, well … nice. We needed more discipline or something, and Sorrelson was supposed to be a hard-ass. He plays the role pretty well. He
has a large head with scattered white strands of hair on top and a droopy chin below. The rest of him isn't as large, except for his belly, which protrudes forward like he's very pregnant. His lower lip sticks out when he's riled, his jaw set in an angry grimace. His lip is out when I enter the room.

Mr. Sorrelson sits behind an imposing wooden desk that almost entirely fills his tiny office. Lord knows how they got the thing in there. Since there isn't enough room to place it on the far wall, the desk faces the adjacent wall. As a consequence, to anyone passing by, Sorrelson is always in profile. The desk is immaculate, no spare paper clips, no loose papers, only a small three-tiered plastic inbox and a telephone on three yards of brightly polished wood. Two small plastic chairs are wedged in between the far side of the desk and the wall.

“Please sit down, Mitchell,” Mr. Sorrelson barks. Barking “please” is one of the things that make people like Mr. Sorrelson seem intimidating. I sit down.

“Do you know why I have asked you to come to my office?”

I want to answer, “No, don't you?” but I don't. I hate this question. Maybe he is hoping I'll admit to doing something he doesn't know about yet, like drug-dealing or beating up freshmen or something.

“No,” I finally say.

Mr. Sorrelson tugs on his lower lip thoughtfully, as if
he is still deciding what it is that I have done. I can feel the blood rushing in my ears, that odd pseudo-heartbeat you get when you're nervous. I'm nervous.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you turned in a video, a cartoon or something, for your last English project.” It takes him a good ten seconds to get this line out. He clears his throat twice and makes odd clicking noises with his tongue as he speaks, as if there is too much moisture in his mouth. It comes out more like “Correct (uhem) me (slurp) if I'm (ich) wrong (uhem), but (ich) I be (ych) lieve (sluurrll).” At least he doesn't drool. I can only imagine that he considers this long drawn-out method of communicating a nifty way of heightening the tension.

“Yeah.”

“And I suppose you thought that this little cartoon of yours was funny. A real joke.”

I nod. I did. “Parts of it were intended to be humorous,” I suggest somewhat lamely. “It was supposed to be a visual interpretation of biblical themes in Steinbeck's
Grapes of Wrath
.”