Chapter Fifteen
Regents Week
I WENT back to work during the week of the state Regents examinations. With no classroom instruction and students only in the building for a couple of hours for testing, I didn’t have much to do. I wasn’t on the schedule to proctor all week and my room wasn’t being used, so that gave me plenty of time to throw myself back into planning.
Not that I actually planned.
After pulling down the shade over my door, I spent an hour reconfiguring the wreck of my classroom before sprawling at my desk with the newspaper. I didn’t read it, though. I just drew random things in the margin and thought a lot about going home.
No one came looking for me for the entire morning, and not falling asleep was a constant struggle. I had brief bursts of activity where I would flip through my curriculum binder and puzzle out the mess the substitute had made of my Latin America unit, but it didn’t last. It couldn’t. Not when I kept losing focus and staring into space.
I missed being home where I could bask in lethargy without shame.
“Knock, knock.”
I looked up. David’s smiling blondness nearly blinded me.
“Hi.”
David stepped into the classroom and shut the door behind him. He looked around with a pained expression. I bet it tore his perfectionist soul apart to see so many things out of order. I’d fixed the seating quads, but the room was still a disaster.
A mass of bottles had accrued on the top of bookshelves, and everything on my desk and at the computer station was in disarray. It wouldn’t have taken more than an hour or two to get the place in shape, but I was tired just from looking at it.
It would have been nice for someone on my team to have checked on the substitute.
“How does it feel to be back?”
I turned on my laptop to give the impression that I was going to do something productive.
“There’re no kids, so it isn’t that big of a deal. I’m just trying to get my shit together for next Tuesday.”
“Ugh. I keep forgetting we have a PD on Monday. I’d rather teach.”
“Yeah.” Teaching was better than nonstop meetings, especially since I never felt more developed professionally when it was over. PD day often turned into catch-up-on-blogs-and-Twitter-feed day.
I watched my computer inch along to a full start-up and avoided David’s fervid stare. He seemed to be checking for signs of self-harm and mental deterioration.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look normal.”
“How do you figure?”
“You’re just….” David waved his hand to indicate my appearance. “Pale and it looks like you’ve lost weight. Are you sleeping okay?”
“Just fine.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem that way. You look tired. And sad.”
I snorted, casting him a derisive glare. “I’ve lost both parents in less than a year. Obviously I’m sad. It’s not breaking news, okay? I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Jesus, kid. What do you want me to say? I don’t want to talk about it.”
David winced. I thought he would scamper off like he did any time I got sharp with him, but he just opened my binder. He extracted a reading on Otto von Bismarck and wrinkled his nose. “Who the hell is that?”
“A German nationalist.” When he gave me a vacant stare, I snatched the paper. “Didn’t you pay attention in world history?”
“I guess not.” Having the decency to look chagrined, David glanced at my binder again. He couldn’t stand the idea of not knowing something. “Did the sub do anything useful? She was having a hard time with the kids. Apparently Mac terrorized her every day.”
I wasn’t surprised. Mac got off on bullying everyone around him. He had the sassy, judgmental queen routine down pat.
“I’m trying to figure out if I should just reteach Latin America or move on to nationalism and unification in Europe.”
“Do you have time to reteach?”
If I took out the end-of-year project, I would, but it was one of my darlings, and I hated to see it go.
I clicked randomly at my laptop, wondering if it had always been so slow or if it was deliberately trying to make me look worthless in front of Captain Grade Team. He raised a brow, opening his palm and gesturing, and I realized that I had not answered his question.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’re an awesome teacher.”
I could not resist an eye roll. “Oh God.”
“What!”
“Please don’t give me weird compliments.”
David scowled. “How is that a weird compliment? We’re in a classroom discussing pedagogy. It’s not like I complimented you on your angling.”
“Angling?”
“Fishing.”
“You’re so white.”
David smirked. “Actually I got that from Sims.”
The corners of my mouth twitched. I tried to stifle a bubble of laughter but failed when David’s face lit up with apparent pleasure at having caused me to smile. He may have started out as a royal pain in the ass, but the kid could be endearing when he wasn’t trying to supervise me.
I shoved his shoulder. “You’re such a nerd.”
“That’s the first thing you ever said to me.”
“And it’s been proved time and time again since that night.”
David shrugged and poked around my desk. Several ungraded and unsorted stacks of student work had accumulated over the past three weeks. I hadn’t bothered looking at any of it because I knew it would make me cringe. I’d already spied a few essays that stated Simón Bolívar had liberated South Africa, and it had led to me wanting to bash my face into a wall. I had no idea how things could go so wrong when I wasn’t in the classroom.
Seeming to sense my frustration, David patted my shoulder. “I wasn’t kidding about you being a good teacher, you know. The kids missed you. Shawn asked about you every day. Mac too.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said, meaning it. I’d thought about my students a lot in the rare moments of being wide-awake and lucid.
My laptop finished loading, and I opened my data cloud to go through a number of slideshow presentations. If I was going to do a two-day recap on Latin America to fix whatever inaccuracies they’d developed over the past couple of weeks, those two days would have to be notes and lecture heavy. It wasn’t my usual style of teaching, but there was no time to do anything else.
What bothered me the most about that unit being nixed was that most history teachers at McCleary skipped or glossed over Latin America entirely to focus solely on Europe, even though 85 percent of the student population was from Mexico, South America, or the Caribbean.
I flipped between two different presentations, so critical of my own notes that I didn’t notice David had stilled beside me. When he continued to hover at my side like a stealth helicopter, I looked up. His expression was pinched, eyes trained on a point just beyond my laptop. He was staring into my open backpack. And the bottle of vodka I’d stashed inside.
I grabbed the bag and shoved it under my desk.
“Michael….”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Then what it is it? What the hell are you thinking bringing a bottle to school!”
Fuck. Fuck everything. I was such an idiot.
“I haven’t drunk anything.”
“Then why did you bring it?”
I slammed the laptop shut, and the precious moments it had taken to boot up were flushed down the drain. I stood, pushing the chair back. David was still crowding me, so I jerked my chin at him.
“You want to give me some room?”
David backed away. “Michael, I don’t know what to say. I’m so worried about you.”
“I advise against that. I’m fine.”
“It’s obvious that you’re not fine. Don’t give me that bullshit! Fine is what people say when they feel like shit but don’t want anyone to know. And in your case, it’s so false that I would be a pathetic excuse for a friend if I left you alone. I can’t just not say anything when I see what’s happening.”
“Nothing is happening, David. Please stop.”
I sounded more defeated than forceful, and sank into a student desk.
I stared at the pockmarked floor, and he stood there with a bowed head and fidgeting hands. I was making him nervous. I could practically hear his internal struggle: leave me in peace and remain a bystander or do something constructive to guide me through my drama? He was so idealistic and helpful, never knowing when to leave well enough alone.
Although at this point, I wasn’t a good judge of what well enough entailed.
I buried my face in my hands. What a disaster. What a goddamned embarrassment. I could say nothing to change what he’d seen. I wished I could rewind time—go back ten minutes and prevent it from happening.
The silence was more awkward the longer it lingered, and I was desperate for him to go the hell away so I could flambé myself in peace.
“I appreciate your concern, but unless you saw me drinking, there’s nothing to say.”
“I just want to help.”
I spread my hands, laughing humorlessly. “How could you help me? Just think about it, really think about it, and then explain how the hell you could possibly improve this situation at all. You and I have nothing in common. We don’t think the same, we don’t feel the same, and we have totally different lives. Nothing that would work for you is going to work for me. So please. Please stop trying to make the world a better place starting with me.”
My words had the desired effect.
David shrank away, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked smaller and younger, innocent and crushed by the reality of what I was saying. Or maybe just by the harshness. I didn’t regret saying it, but I still felt like a monster at the sight of his scrunched-up face.
“The last thing I want,” I said quietly, “is to hurt anyone else that I know, but right now I can’t handle trying to make you feel better about not knowing how to help me. Especially since it isn’t your responsibility.”
“I understand,” he said, head still bowed. “I get it.”
I didn’t think he did.
“Can we just pretend this didn’t happen? Can you do that for me? Please?”
David shrugged, not saying whether he would or wouldn’t, which essentially meant there was no way that was going to happen.
PARANOIA IS a funny thing.
For two hours after my conversation with David, I alternated between considering seeking him out to ensure he kept his mouth shut and wanting to stay locked in my room to avoid the situation. By the time the end of the day rolled around, I was in full-on panic mode and had drunk two thirds of a bottle of orange juice in order to fill the rest with vodka.
I didn’t take a sip, but I felt better having it close. From time to time I picked it up, shook it and then pushed it aside. Just in case I slid over the edge, it was good to know I had myself a convenient grappling hook in a bottle.
At three o’clock, I’d already packed my stuff—not that I’d used my laptop or planner for anything productive—and finally sampled my screwdriver. The vodka was overpowering. I had never been too good with ratios.
I took another swig and screwed on the top to shake it again. Before I could give it another try, the door opened.
“What’s up, Mr. R?”
Shawn barged in without knocking and walked right up to me without hesitation. I immediately replaced the lid on the bottle but fumbled and nearly dropped it before managing to get it shut.
Shawn’s eyes dropped to the bottle and lingered. My paranoia inched up one distressing notch at a time.
“What are you still doing here?”
“I had a test this morning, and I get extended time or whatever.”
“How do you think you did?”
Shawn quit eyeballing the bottle, but I still thought he was looking at me funny. I took a step back, overly conscious of the smell of liquor on my breath. Wanting a nice buzz for my commute home was starting to look like a bad idea even if I was officially off teacher time in twenty minutes.
Aggravated by yet another unfortunate turn of events, I ran a shaky hand through my hair.
“Mr. Rodriguez, are you good?”
I tried to smile but only managed a faint twitch of the muscles around my mouth, likely passing more for a grimace than anything else.
“I’m fine, Shawn.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. A measure of discomfort crept into his posture in the way of hunched shoulders and shuffling feet.
“You know, I ain’t like the other kids here. I understand things. I respect you a lot, and I know something’s up. I think something bad happened, and that’s why you weren’t around for a couple weeks.”
“I know you’re more mature than a lot of kids your age, but I’m fine. Don’t worry about some old-ass man.”
“Oh please, you’re not even old.”
“If I was old enough to vote when you were born, that’s old.”
Shawn rocked on the balls of his feet. His fidgeting drew my eyes downward, and I noticed his sneakers were looking a little beat-up. There was a rip in the side of the canvas.
“Mr. R, you’re trying to change the subject.”
“No, I’m not. But I’m your teacher, and it’s not my job to talk about my personal stuff.”
“But I asked.”
I started checking out the rest of his clothes with a more critical eye. He looked clean, but he was wearing the same thing he always wore. I wracked my brain to remember whether he ever came to school in anything else, but couldn’t recall noticing a pattern before. My paranoia was making me jumpy about everything, including whether he had proper winter attire.
“How was your test?” I asked, changing the subject without even an ounce of grace.
“I bet I failed.”
“What was it, Algebra?”
“Yeah. I can’t do math for shit. I’m basically retarded. That’s why I get extended time.”
“Don’t come out like that. A lot of kids get extended time and a lot of kids have IEPs. It just means you need more help in some areas than others.” I snorted. “And you’d do better on a math test than me, so I must be nonfunctional if we go by that as a standard of intelligence.”
“You be saying big words for no reason.”
I walked to the door, subtly nudging him in that direction. “And you be getting down on yourself for no reason. If you always think you’re going to fail, you’re not going to get anywhere in life, because eventually you’ll just quit trying to do anything at all.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” Shawn’s voice was flat, but he grinned and zipped up his hoodie. The coat he wore looked pretty solid, despite the state of his footwear, and that took the edge off my worry. “Take care of yourself, Mister. You’re the only real motherfucker working up in here. And if something bad is going on, maybe you should just stay home for longer. Global ain’t going nowhere.”
The kid was throwing subliminals like a pro. I hoped he was just intuitive and my angst wasn’t actually this transparent.
“Look, Shawn, my dad passed, okay?”
Shawn’s head jerked back, brows shooting up. “Damn, I’m sorry. I had no idea or I wouldn’t have pressed you so hard.”
I looked down the hall, wanting to avoid his intense stare. He wasn’t asking a million oblivious-kid questions, the kind that were way too personal and way too intrusive, which made me think he knew a thing or two about losing someone close. I wondered if I’d inadvertently triggered bad memories for him. This was why I hated discussing anything personal with the kids.
“Don’t apologize. He was sick, and I should have seen it coming. Sometimes we think we and the people we love are invincible despite all evidence to the contrary.”
“Yeah.” Shawn bopped his head, dark eyes too old in his young face. “You’re right about that. Shit.”
“Stop cursing so much.”
He sneered. “You suck at changing the subject.”
“Indeed.” I tugged at his jacket, pulling the zipper up all the way and ignoring the smart-ass smirk on his face. “Now go home. It’s freezing outside, and it’s supposed to snow later.”
When I was done dad-ing him, Shawn pulled up his hood. It dipped low, shading his eyes. “Take care, Mr. R.”
“You too, kiddo.”
Shawn backed away from my door, hand in the air. Just before he jogged down the staircase, he said, “Just so you know, Butler was talking shit about you with one of the eleventh grade teachers.”
What the hell?
I started to demand an explanation, but Shawn disappeared through the door too fast for me to react.
ALTHOUGH THERE were technically twenty more minutes left in the school day, the halls were deserted. Even the payroll secretary seemed to have vacated the premises. I swore under my breath and half jogged down the corridor, jerking at my lanyard before managing to unlock the door to the lounge.
David wasn’t there, but Nunzio was. I hadn’t seen him since the day of my family’s failed intervention, and the sight of him hunched over a table with his lip caught between his teeth packed a punch.
My thoughts scattered somewhere between “fuck, I miss him” and “fuck, he’s gorgeous,” and I briefly failed to grasp the right neurons to make my brain operate. I took a step farther into the lounge, saw that it was empty, and released a breath.
“Have you seen David in the past few minutes?”
Nunzio didn’t even look up. “Nope.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
My only answer was the click-clack of keys on Nunzio’s laptop. I walked around the table and stood beside him.
“Did you talk to him at all today?”
Nunzio stopped typing. He stared at the laptop screen, shook his head, and pushed his chair back without standing. “What’s the problem, Michael?”
“Allegedly one of the kids just heard him talking about me.”
This time Nunzio’s gaze rose. He was off in a way I couldn’t easily decipher. Face pale and vacant, eyes flat and glum.
“Are you okay?” I asked, starting to touch the side of his face.
He evaded and got to his feet, ignoring the second question and gruffly responding to the first. “I’m pretty sure the only person David was talking to was me.” Nunzio gave me a visual pat down that I swore had the power to expose my thoughts as well as liquid fire contraband. “He told me you were drinking in the classroom.”
“I wasn’t drinking. He’s full of shit.”
“He said he saw you with a bottle. Same difference in my opinion.”
“How the hell is that the same thing?”
“Because even if you weren’t throwing it back while he was in the room, you were obviously planning to get the party started earlier than is typically a good idea.” Nunzio leaned in and inhaled, his lips almost brushing mine. I swallowed hard, forcing myself not to take an automatic step back, and let him smell me. I didn’t try to hide it and didn’t flinch when his eyes narrowed with condemnation. “And it looks like he and I were right.”
“You’re acting like I was smashed all day. I didn’t crack it open until thirty minutes ago.”
“So you can be drunk on the ride home? I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get? Who the hell wants to be sober on their commute?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Mikey. Maybe people who don’t need a drink to function in everyday activities like taking the subway.”
The sarcastic tug of his mouth almost prompted me to end the discussion there, but I pushed on. “Is he going to tell someone else or what? It wouldn’t hurt for you to keep me in the loop when this kid is going around and running his mouth about my business.”
“There wasn’t a need to keep you in the loop because I handled it. I wasn’t trying to get you more stressed when you’ve already obviously gone off the fucking deep end.”
Knowing they’d discussed the situation loud enough for a kid to overhear had me more stressed than them chatting about it over coffee with Price. I’d rather her send me to rehab than have my students knowing what a lush I was.
Again I thought of the look on Shawn’s face and the way his gaze had flicked down to the bottle.
“Damn.”
I saw Nunzio shake his head in my peripheral vision.
“You’re going to fuck yourself over at this rate. I guarantee it.”
“I know,” I said. “I know, and for some reason it’s still hard to care.”
“Oh, so you just decided to stop giving a shit about your job?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
It came out just flip enough to enrage him, and he grabbed the collar of my shirt. “Bullshit. You love this job way more than I do.” He pulled it taut and gave me a slight shake, forcing me to meet his glare yet again. “We have been best friends for almost as long as we’ve been alive, and this is the first time I don’t know what to say to you. You sank so fast into this shitty spiral that it seems like your ass was slicked up with WD-40 from the start. I’ve accepted the part where you have decided to shut me out while you’re walking around under this permanent dark cloud, but I can’t handle this defeated, bullshit attitude.”
I put my hands on his, intending to disentangle them from my collar, but didn’t follow through with the motion.
“The only thing I’m giving up on is my desire to be lucid most of the day. I thought being back to work would help, but it didn’t. There was still too much time to—”
To think, to wallow, to roast slowly on the spit of my own despair. I didn’t want to say any of those things. I wasn’t looking for pity or sympathy, and people assumed you wanted one or the other if you spoke out loud about your problems.
“If I’d been teaching today, it wouldn’t have been this way, and you know it.”
“I have little confidence in that claim.”
The faint pang of anger turned into a bludgeoning hammer, and I pushed Nunzio back. “I wouldn’t drink around the kids. I’m not that stupid. Shawn only has a clue about what’s going on because of you and your loud mouth.”
Nunzio looked at me sidelong. A frustrated sound escaped his lips. “Are you—Michael, seriously? You can’t even own up to the fact that you shouldn’t have brought in a bottle? That maybe it’s time to admit that you have a real problem?”
The issue wasn’t admitting I had a problem. I was very much aware of that. The real issue was whether or not I wanted to stop. The answer was almost always no. Not at all.
“You sound like my aunt.”
“Maybe because she was right.”
“Maybe.”
Nunzio watched me, waiting for a response, maybe one that was profound and heartening. Promises to chin up and change. When I said nothing more, he slumped.
“I can’t watch you do this to yourself, Michael. I can’t watch you do it to Ray.”
I shrugged, my movements wooden. “So don’t.”
Nunzio drew back as though I had hit him, and I realized the implication of my words. I opened my mouth to reword the statement, to fix things, but I was struck silent by the flush that stole over his face, and the sudden dampness of his eyes.
“I wish I didn’t love your stupid ass so much.”
My stomach dropped.
“Nunzio, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Just leave me alone,” he said, voice thick. “And next time someone comes running to me out of concern for you, I’ll tell them to piss off, and I’ll mind my own business.”
“But that’s not what I meant.” This time it was me who grabbed his arm, fingers digging in, even as he shoved me away with way more force than I’d used on him. “Can you please just calm down?”
“No, I’m not going to fucking calm down. You’re a dick, and I’m tired of running after you and begging you to give a damn. I’m tired of trying.” Nunzio grabbed his laptop and tucked it under his arm. “Just go home. Everyone else is gone, anyway.”
I wanted to follow, but an invisible force kept me in place and prevented me from taking the three strides needed to stop him from leaving, and he stormed out of the lounge.
My stupidity and failure to act was becoming the stuff of legends.
I returned to my classroom to get my things, and popped a Xanax bar to ease the constant pang of foreboding about the state of my job and the state of my relationship with the scant people who mattered. The fragile mental walls that had kept me upright for the majority of the day were crumbling. It was imperative that I get my ass home before I fell apart in public.
I fled the building, and the cut of the wind forced me into lucidness, but that was a big problem while Nunzio’s words were still on blast in my ears.
I went over the conversation multiple times on my way home, but the analysis brought no clarity. He was right, I was wrong, he was sick of me, and I deserved it. Simple investigation, case closed.
My overspiked orange juice was finished by the time the E train made it into Queens. I could smell my own breath and sweat, and in my mind, the people around me knew I was drunk. Instead of NYC indifference, I read judgment on their faces. When the combination of booze and benzos hit me, the phantoms of my paranoia grew more opaque. I churned out make-believe headlines that would be plastered across the Post if I keeled over in the middle of the subway.
High School Teacher Hit by Train After Schooltime Binge.
They would work in the gay angle somehow, and then a conservative Republican from Staten Island would notice my last name and start ranting about immigration even though Puerto Rico was a fucking territory.
Gay High School Teacher Hit by Train After Schooltime Binge—Citizenship Status in Question.
That was more like it.
The sudden need to get the hell out of the packed subway car was nauseating. I tried to breathe evenly, to stop feeling overheated and amped up, ready to pick a fight just so I could be mad at someone other than myself, but it didn’t work.
When the train jerked to a stop at Sutphin Boulevard, my head was spinning. I was fully marinated in vodka, the feeling intensified by the Xanax, and I took slow, stumbling strides to my block.
Raymond’s car was gone, and the house was dark. I crawled to my room, the walls and stairs shifting like shadows through my blurry eyes, but I was still not disoriented enough to forget about David and Nunzio and the look on Shawn’s face.
Everything collided like tumbling dominoes, and the unavoidable reality of my life falling apart bit by bit had me on a gangplank leading to some ominous abyss. Needs and wants wove together until I couldn’t tell what was imperative and what was arbitrary, especially when I knew I would never get any of it anyway. Especially not a way to escape this cycle of failure and regret that dragged me below the surface with insistent waves.
I polished off the dregs of a bottle of whisky, and when the clawing anxiety wouldn’t subside, I gobbled down another bar. A voice tickled the back of my head, reminding me that I’d already taken some, but I forgot the warning almost as soon as it crossed my mind.
The pressure in my chest and the endless machinations of my fucked-up brain built until I knew, without question, that I was losing my mind, and that my life was a cosmic joke. It set me off like a pin yanked from a grenade.
I broke into great, heaving sobs that wouldn’t cease no matter how many breaths I sucked in, no matter how many times I tried to count to ten and find a sense of calm. It didn’t come, and I took it out on my room. Punching walls, throwing things, ripping books from shelves, and kicking over furniture—destroying everything in my path until the pills kicked in and exhaustion caused my knees to buckle, and I sank to the floor.
Time stuttered to a stop, and I fell backward into the nothingness I craved.