Chapter Eleven
Lori Hearns deserts her half-eaten plate of Thai take-out to browse through an article on carpal tunnel syndrome. One of her clients, a software business owner, is investigating an employee’s accusation that his company is to blame for the man’s sorry condition—one caused by excessive typing.
Lori is not convinced. His application for workman’s compensation seems bogus and she can hardly wait to dig into the case and expose the jerk for all he’s worth.
To Lori; solving crimes, righting wrongs, is just as much a hobby as it is a profession. Since the age of nine, she’s been detecting lies. When her younger brother’s bike had been stolen, it was she who had prosecuted the villain, following the skid marks to his pathetic house five houses down the hill. Could he have been more obvious? Pinning him to the ground at his shoulders, she had interrogated the dirty faced thief until he choked up a confession.
As if that wasn’t enough, she threatened to press charges against him lest he pay her brother twenty dollars for pain and suffering and perform community service in the neighborhood. He had agreed to both and not a dime was wasted on court fees.
To this day, Lori prefers to deal with crime privately, despite the fact that she can rarely turn down a side job offered by the boys as the police department. Since high school, they have allowed her to tag along on cases, credit to the numerous mysteries she miraculously solved in town, following the bike incident.
She’s a natural, McKenzie had deemed, keeping her under his wing right up through college. And now, twenty-five years later, she hasn’t stopped digging for clues. The Chief may choose to retire but one thing’s for sure: Lori Hearns hasn’t forgotten a single thing she’s learned from him.
To the sound of her scribbling pen, Sal flicks an ear and casually looks up at her from his favorite spot by the fireplace. The cat is beyond fat but Lori tells herself, and the vet, and anyone else that dares to inquire about his weight—that he’s big-boned. Cats are lazy by nature, she decides, and the heated tiles have a way of catering to his sedentary lifestyle.
The phony gas fireplace, a thing of charm, had influenced her decision to buy the condo six months ago. Why clean up wood chips and soot when the ambience of a fire is only a button away? The outdoor Jacuzzi, pool, and weekly cleaning service had solidified the deal. Financing the joint was another story, also another reason to work tonight.
She sketches a flow chart on symptoms related to carpal tunnel disease while her vibrating cell phone crawls across the table. She snatches it and checks the caller i.d., surprised to see Doug Davis’s cell number revealed. Typically, it is his wife calling her.
“Hearns.”
“Uh, hi…Detective Hearns... this is Doug Davis calling…I hope this isn’t a bad—”
“Time to call? Nah. Saturday nights are prime time for me. Betcha thought you’d be getting my voicemail, eh?”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t sure. But I figured you may be out, so I was going to leave a message and let you know about a slight problem with…or maybe not…geez, I’m rambling now. The thing is…I’m calling about my wife, Serena. I’m worried about her, Detective Hearns, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to you in person about it.”
* * *
They are seated at the kitchen table, below a hanging set of silver pendant lights, the aroma of coffee and smoke floating between their breaths. After agreeing to the visit, Lori had changed from a velour jogging suit to a black cashmere sweater and pair of khakis, though she leaves her hair down.
Doug, wearing a pair of jeans and white tee shirt, appears to have stepped out of a Happy Days set. Even his hair seems spiked higher than usual on the top. He no longer wears a bandage on his wrist. The look is an intrigue. She presses her hands together at her chin, speaks gently.
“Is Serena still worried about Roth’s punishment? I already told her…as soon as that man hits rehab we’re zooming in for trial…and this just may be McKenzie’s last case which is even better.” She shakes a cigarette from its carton and lights up. “Cops love to exit on a high note,” she adds, drawing in a deep drag.
Sal, inconvenienced by new sounds, looks up before collapsing on his side.
“Why his last case?” Gingerly, Doug lifts his mug to his lips. His bicep muscles are lean yet muscular.
“He’s burnt out like the rest of ‘em…wants to retire and watch his grandson play baseball” she says, moving her lips to allow smoke to channel in the opposite direction.
“Oh. Well anyways, my wife…Serena,” he adds, as though she has forgotten her name, “ just needs some reassurance that Roth will not be granted another opportunity to harm another child…and I have to say that I couldn’t agree with her more. But she’s taking the incident pretty hard…almost like it’s affecting her mind,” he says with hand gestures.
Lori squints an eye, listening carefully. Doug goes on.
“I know it’s normal for a mother to feel this way…for a father to feel this way”—he adds, avoiding the sexist implication, “but I truly think that if my wife is given some concrete answers as to exactly how this man will pay, her mind will rest and she’ll be able to kind of move on, you know what I mean?”
He extends an arm across the table as though preparing for a handshake.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she says, cupping her hand over his. “This man will pay alright, Mr. Davis,” she says, her voice filled with smoke, “but realize there are different levels of kidnapping to consider in our legal system and punishments are assigned accordingly. I’ll tell you right now, your son’s abduction will be ranked as a class B felony,”
“Class B? Wait. What are you talking about? Clearly, this man is a criminal. He physically moved my son—against his will—to another place. If that doesn’t warrant a crime and major jail time, I don’t know what does.”
“There’s no question on the charge, Mr. Davis,” she cuts in. “Indeed, Roth kidnapped your son. However, due to the fact that the abduction lasted for only an hour or so and the victim, your son, was not terrorized or injured, first degree will not fly in a court of law. We’re better off exposing his creepy track record…about how he had been watching your son for the past year, in hopes that we’ll discredit his character and persuade a few bleeding-heart parents in the jury. I’ll have to sniff around during jury selection and see what’s out there.”
Doug scratches the back of his head, quickens the pace of his response. “It’s likely that my son may be scarred for life, Ms. Hearns. I have no idea, at this point, if he’ll have the desire to get on a snowboard again, despite the fact that it’s probably his favorite thing to do. And you’re telling me that because he was not terrorized or injured…he may get off of the hook? Gosh, I have a right mind to give that jerk a piece of my mind, just like Serena did last week.”
Her brows stiffen. She drops her spent butt into a cup of water. “What did you just say, Mr. Davis?”
Doug stands up before realizing he has nowhere to go. He sits back down and twirls his coffee mug. “I said I feel like giving him a piece of my mind just like...wait a minute…you didn’t know that Serena visited his hospital room, did you? I could have sworn she told me you knew.”
Of course she knew. Detectives always know the truth, even when someone’s hiding it, perhaps especially when someone’s hiding it. They just can’t pinpoint who will confess it. She never would have suspected Doug for this. When information leaks out this way, innocently, without an ulterior motive, the pay-off for a detective is as lucky as finding a four-leafed clover in a bed of weeds. Her response betrays nothing.
“So Serena was the uninvited guest, eh? Doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Davis.”
“So then…you know about how Roth had a stroke?”
As though ridding herself of her own harmful germs, she squirts a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her palms and rubs them together before answering. “Yes. I know about the stroke and that’s a whole new crime. But, as I explained to your wife, the hospital is not likely to pay for a medical investigation concerning this. Too many variables.”
She shifts backwards in her chair and single-handedly hoists the window up to let in fresh air. “I don’t know why I don’t kick this habit.” As though directing traffic, she waves smoke out. “Anyways, the hospital will not run the risk of losing, trust me.” Just as he is about to respond, her cell phone begins to vibrate. “Geez, who’s this?” She checks the caller: Bobby. “My brother…I’ll call him back.”
“You sure?” Doug asks, feeling terribly intrusive yet needing answers.
“Yeah. It’s fine. He probably just needs me to bail him out again, long story.”
“Oh…I’m sorry to hear that. But… in regard to this information about the stroke…it’s pretty much just the three of us who know about this, right?”
She rests her elbows atop the table, folds her hands. “And I’m guessing you want it to stay that way, Mr. Davis…am I right?”
He lifts himself slightly from his chair to dig into his pocket and draw out a few hundreds. “Absolutely. Is this enough?”
“Take your money back,” she says, sliding the bills back across the table.
“No, seriously, Lori. Just for peace of mind. Like I said, earlier, I’m worried about Serena. She just hasn’t been herself lately. Things have gotten complicated and it’s the least I can do.”
She rests her chin over her hands. “You can’t buy back information, Mr. Davis. You just have to trust those you hand it to.”
Sal has risen from his fireplace nook and springs up to the couch before coiling himself against a pillow, exhausted again. Doug’s eyes dart to the action then back to her face.
“Can we trust you to keep that information a secret, Lori? I mean…in the grand scheme of things, Serena’s actions were justified, don’t you think?”
She runs her fingers through her hair. “Justified? As in…your wife had the right to taunt this man?" She chuckles. "We both know it doesn’t really matter whether or not she was justified...what matters is—”
“Whether or not she gets caught,” Doug finishes.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” she says.
“I know I don’t know you very well, Lori, but you seem like a decent person. So I’m asking you...” he says, squeezing his wedding ring, “actually, I’m begging you to keep that visit a secret.”
She leans back in her chair. “You ever hear what the experts say about people who don’t trust other people?”
He pauses, stares through her, waits…
“That they’re not to be trusted either.”
Doug clenches a fist. “I-I don’t understand what you’re talking about…my wife and I are innocent here, Lori.”
She gets up, reaches across the table for his empty mug and sugar packet, and begins to clean up. “Of course you’re innocent. Lighten up, my friend,” she says. “I’m no snitch.”
“No snitch. I’ll take your word for that, Detective Hearns.”
“You can call me Lori,” she says as he gets up to leave.
“We’ll be in touch then…Lori.”
* * *
She tugs at the curtain at the front window and watches Doug Davis climb into his car and pull away.
“They’re all alike…and they all need to be in control,” she whispers, scooping up Sal.
It has just begun to pour outside.
* * *
Serena bookmarks her novel and glances at the clock. It’s ten past eleven and Doug hasn’t yet returned from his night out with the guys. She grabs her cell phone to call him, and then reconsiders. In all fairness, he hasn’t seen John and Ray in over six months and the time spent with college friends will be refreshing, especially since she’s been somewhat of a wet rag lately. She closes the phone, places it on the end table, and flicks off the light.
It has just begun to rain outside and, like most New England storms that border on the extreme, it never just rains. It pours. She faces the ceiling and closes her eyes, listens to the rain drum against the roof in a steady rumble. The sound is more pleasing than not. Exhausted, she tells herself to succumb to sleep and, for once, feel like a real person in the morning, not the fuzzy-headed crank she’s become.
She turns on her side and cushions her head into the pillow. The rumbling of the rain intensifies as an angry wind thrashes against the roof. The lamppost at the edge of the driveway allows for a mere streak of light to filter into the bedroom. In her quest to fall asleep, the light is a hindrance, she decides, rolling to the other side of the bed to tend to the blinds.
At the edge of her window, she kneels down and gazes out at the raining night. Rain, she thinks, has a unique effect on the earth. There is something almost haunted about the rain’s insistence to drench and darken everything beneath it. A cat scurries across the lawn then disappears into a patch of woods. Is a cat noctural?—she recalls Josh’s small voice years ago, when he’d ask that question in reference to a favorite story on wildlife.
Yes. Outdoor cats are very independent, she’d say. They can survive on their own without their parents. Without their parents. She climbs back into bed, and the thought follows her.
How had she trusted Roth with her child?
In all fairness, she tells herself, just like every night—Doug went out with Roth, so it wasn’t so much her trust in the man as it was Doug’s. Why hadn’t he simply taken their child in with him to tend to his wrist? Why had he left him outside with a stranger? Yet still, given all that Doug did wrong, the ending was just right. What are the chances of an abducted child being rescued after a car accident? Slim to none, that’s for sure.
But what if the accident hadn’t happened? What was Roth’s plan? He had been watching Josh at the chairlift for the last two ski seasons, according to Detective Hearns. So what was his plan? Soaking in these questions, she pulls the covers to her shoulders and drifts off to sleep, to the pattering sound of the rain.
* * *
To the creaking sound of the door, she snaps up, breathless. He is rolling toward her in a wheelchair, his face distorted from the stroke. His lips form a smile on one side of his face and a feeble hand brandishes a business card. The chair’s motion is rickety, making his body bobble up and down. She shuffles back against the headboard, shrieks no!—then realizes…
It is Doug, back from his night out.
“Hey…you alright, honey?” He sits down beside her, gives her a gentle hug.
“Oh…hi. Sorry about that…I don’t know what I was thinking, I was having a bad dream and I think the door startled me. Whew.” She rubs her eyes and relaxes to the smell of coffee on Doug’s breath. “Anyways, how was your night out with the guys? You had coffee??
“It was good, really good…yeah, I had a coffee with dessert.”
The response is too quick.
He enters the bathroom, turns on the faucet, and prepares his toothbrush.
Questions begin to swirl through her mind, questions put on hold until Doug is finished brushing. She waits while he swishes, spits, and wipes his mouth dry.
“So did you end up going to Scolletti’s?”
“Yeah,” he answers, stretching his tee shirt over his head before climbing out of his jeans, then into bed. “I am wiped. Church tomorrow?”
The minty scent of toothpaste lingers between them; that and the more fishy smell of a white lie.
“Think I’ll pass on church tomorrow,” she says, feeling as though the rain, along with her questions, may never end.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Chapters Ten and Eleven - Can the detective be trusted?
Chapter Ten
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her new mantra in moving forward. What other choice does she have, really?
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke.
His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke. Considering such, the ‘mystery guest’ is temporarily lifted off the hook.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone. She considers suggesting to Todd that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent popping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she sternly orders.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen. Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams a pencil into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface.
He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse. In a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital?
Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give him a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards neatly at the corner of her desk. “Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a near shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-
factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I have to get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her classroom.
* * *
The bedroom is dimly lit, while the television set murmurs a familiar melody. Snow continues to fall heavily outside and school has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Doug and Serena cozy up to the thought of being snowed in for a few days. A thick down comforter, like the snow on the roof, blankets them.
Doug rests his head on her chest and nuzzles her neck.
“We’ve been graced with a free night to party like we’re twenty again, babe…how’d we get so lucky?”
Though she cannot see his muscles, she can feel them hardening against her body. He begins to kiss her jaw, then her cheek, his breath minty and warm. His hands roam below her waist, over her thighs, and upward. Like a moving squid, his tongue and limbs slide around her body, breathing in the scent of her skin, swallowing her.
The gauze of his taped wrist tickles her skin, a sensation more arousing than not. The only problem is—to Doug’s oblivion—her thoughts are elsewhere. They invade her head like a disease. It is unfair to reject her husband of eleven years this way.
But she has no choice.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says, snapping to an upright position, panting.
“Okay?” Doug’s body remains frozen in pose, as though a fantasy creature has turned him into a statue. Then he comes back to life, running his fingers through his hair in irritation.
“Steven Roth has had a stroke,” she spits out. “Detective Hearns notified me.”
His silence is a blend of curiosity and confusion. She offers more. “You know how I went to see him last week…to give him a piece of my mind?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Well, after I left, apparently his heart rate shot up and he suffered a stroke.”
Doug processes the information while scratching his ear.
“There are a lot of reasons why a man in his condition would have a stroke, Doug.” She reaches for her wine at the end table, takes a generous sip. “There were many things going on with his body, many complications. But I think that I may have caused the stroke.”
His blue eyes stare at her coldly. “What the hell did you say to him?”
The question, tinted by his disloyalty, a mild curse, aggravates her. “What the hell did I say to him? Hmm…what might I say to the man who disguised himself as our son’s snowboarding instructor, then kidnapped him? How are you feeling today?”
“I’m just saying, Serena,” he goes on, softening his tone, taking a sip of his coffee, “…what did you end up saying? You never game me the details, that’s all.”
The change in delivery is effective and she answers honestly. “It wasn’t so much what I said, as how I said it, Doug. And you never asked for the details,” she adds.
“So how did you say it?”
“Well, put it to you this way. Let’s just say, I gave him a taste of his own medicine by coming up with my own disguise.” She takes another sip of wine and thinks back to the incident. Would she do the same thing again?
It’s possible, very possible. The thought of this continues to come as a shock, even to herself.
By now Doug is alarmed. There is horror in his blue eyes, in his stiff neck, and in his small ears that seem to redden.
“What are you talking about, Serena? What exactly happened in that hospital room?”
She finishes her wine and tells her husband everything.
Chapter Eleven
Lori Hearns deserts her half-eaten plate of Thai take-out to browse through an article on carpal tunnel syndrome. One of her clients, a software business owner, is investigating an employee’s accusation that his company is to blame for the man’s sorry condition—one caused by excessive typing. Lori is not convinced. His application for workman’s compensation seems bogus and she can hardly wait to dig into the case and expose the jerk for all he’s worth.
To Lori; solving crimes, righting wrongs, is just as much a hobby as it is a profession. Since the age of nine, she’s been detecting lies. When her younger brother’s bike had been stolen, it was she who had prosecuted the villain, following the skid marks to his pathetic house five houses down the hill. Could he have been more obvious?
Pinning him to the ground at his shoulders, she had interrogated the dirty faced thief until he choked up a confession. As if that wasn’t enough, she threatened to press charges against him lest he pay her brother twenty dollars for pain and suffering and perform community service in the neighborhood. He had agreed to both and not a dime was wasted on court fees.
To this day, Lori prefers to deal with crime privately, despite the fact that she can rarely turn down a side job offered by the good ol’ boys as the police department. Since high school, they had allowed her to tag along on cases, credit to the numerous mysteries she had miraculously solved in town following the bike incident.
She’s a natural, McKenzie had deemed, keeping her under his wing right up through college. And now, twenty-five years later, she hasn’t stopped digging for clues. The Chief may choose to retire but one thing’s for sure: Lori Hearns will not stop practicing everything he’s preached.
To the sound of her scribbling pen, Sal flicks an ear and casually looks up at her from his favorite spot by the fireplace. The cat is beyond fat but Lori tells herself, and the vet, and anyone else that dares to ask, that he’s big-boned. Cats are lazy by nature, she decides, and the heated tiles only add to his sorry cause.
The phony gas fireplace, a thing of charm, had influenced her decision to buy the condo six months ago. Why clean up wood chips and soot when the ambience of a fire is only a button away? The outdoor Jacuzzi, pool, and weekly cleaning service had solidified the deal. Financing the joint was another story; also another reason to work tonight.
Midway through her flow chart sketch on pain and symptoms; her vibrating cell phone crawls across the table. She snatches it and checks the caller i.d., surprised to see Doug Davis’s cell number revealed. Typically, it is his wife whom calls.
“Hearns.”
“Uh, hi…Detective Hearns... this is Doug Davis calling…I hope this isn’t a bad—”
“Time to call? Nah. Saturday nights are prime time for me. Betcha thought you’d be getting my voicemail, eh?”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t sure. But I figured you may be out, so I was going to leave a message and let you know…or maybe not…well, I’m rambling now. The thing is…I’m calling about my wife, Serena. I’m worried about her, Detective Hearns, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to you in person about it.”
* * *
They are seated at the kitchen table, below a hanging set of silver pendant lights, the aroma of coffee and smoke floating between their breaths. After agreeing to the visit, Lori had changed from a velour jogging suit to a cashmere sweater and pair of khakis, though she leaves her hair down.
“Is Serena still worried Roth’s punishment? I already told her…as soon as that man hits rehab we’re zooming in for his trial,” she says, shaking a cigarette from its carton, lighting up eagerly.
Sal, inconvenienced by her sound, looks up briefly before collapsing on his side.
Doug, seated with his legs crossed, rips open a sugar packet and sweetens his coffee.
“Thank you for all of your hard work, Lori. I have to say…my wife just needs some reassurance that Roth will not be granted a single opportunity to harm another child.” He scratches his neck and gazes about the room, in search of a way to continue. “My wife…Serena,” he adds unnecessarily, “she’s really taking the incident hard, you know what I mean?”
Lori listens, nods.
“So, I figure, if I could get some concrete answers from you as to exactly how this man will pay…I figure she’ll be able to rest her mind.” He sips his coffee.
“Oh, he’ll pay alright, Mr. Davis. But you do know… there are different levels of kidnapping to consider in our legal system and punishments are assigned accordingly. I’ll tell you right now, your son’s abduction will be ranked as a class B felony,”
“Class B? Wait. What are you talking about? Clearly, this man is a criminal. He physically moved my son—against his will—to another place. If that doesn’t warrant a crime and major jail time, I don’t know what does.”
She blows smoke to the ceiling. “There’s no question on the charge, Mr. Davis. Indeed, he kidnapped your son. However, due to the fact that the abduction lasted for only an hour or so and the victim, your son, was not terrorized or injured, first degree will not fly in a court of law. We’re better off exposing his creepy track record…about how he had been watching your son for the past year, in hopes that we’ll discredit his character and persuade a few bleeding-heart parents in the jury. I’ll have to sniff around during jury selection and see what’s out there.”
“It’s likely that my son may be scarred for life, Ms. Hearns. I have no idea, at this point, if he’ll have the desire to get on a snowboard again, despite the fact that it’s probably his favorite thing to do. And you’re telling me that because he was not terrorized or injured…he may get off of the hook? Gosh, I have a right mind to give that jerk a piece of my mind…just like Serena did last week.”
A deep pair of lines creases the space between her brows. Her lips pucker as she draws in a deep inhale and tilts her head. Her voice is filled with smoke. “What did you just say, Mr. Davis?”
“I said I feel like giving him a piece of my mind just like...oh, you didn’t know Serena visited his hospital room. I could have sworn she told me you knew.”
Of course she knew. Detectives always know the truth, even when someone’s hiding it, perhaps especially when someone’s hiding it. They just can’t pinpoint who will confess it. She never would have suspected Doug for this. When information leaks out this way, innocently, without an ulterior motive, the pay-off for a detective is as lucky as finding a four-leafed clover in a bed of weeds.
“So Serena was the uninvited guest, eh? Doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Davis.”
“So then…you know about how Roth had a stroke?”
She drops her cigarette into a paper cup; then, as though ridding herself of her own harmful germs, squirts a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her palms and rubs them together before answering. “Yes. I know about the stroke. But, as I explained to your wife, the hospital is not likely to pay for a medical investigation concerning this. Too many variables.”
She shifts backwards in her chair and hoists the window up a notch, one handed. “I don’t know why I don’t kick this habit.” She waves the smoke out the window. “Anyways, the hospital will not run the risk of losing, trust me.”
Just as he is about to respond, her cell phone begins to vibrate. “Geez, who’s this?” She checks the caller: Bobby. “My brother…I’ll call him back.”
“You sure?” Doug asks, feeling terribly intrusive yet needing answers.
“Yeah. It’s fine. He probably just needs me to bail him out again, long story.”
“Oh…I’m sorry to hear that. But… in regard to this information about the stroke…it’s pretty much just the three of us who know this, right?”
She rests her elbows atop the table, folds her hands. “And I’m guessing you want it to stay that way…”
“I do.” He lifts himself slightly from his chair to dig into his pocket and draw out a few hundreds.”
“Is this enough?”
“Take your money back,” she says, sliding the bills back.
“No, seriously, Lori. Just for peace of mind. Like I said, earlier, I’m worried about Serena. She just hasn’t been herself lately.”
She studies him for a moment. “You can’t buy back information, Mr. Davis. You just have to trust those you hand it to.”
Sal has risen from his fireplace nook and springs up to the couch before coiling himself against a pillow, exhausted again. Doug’s eyes catch a glimpse of the action before resting on Lori’s.
“Can we trust you to keep that information a secret, Lori?”
She smiles without showing her teeth. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”
Doug rubs an index finger across his chin, “Well, that’s kind of why I’m asking you, Lori.”
“You ever hear what the experts say about people who don’t trust other people?”
He pauses, staring at her, waiting…
She finishes, “That they’re not to be trusted.”
He clenches a fist. “I-I don’t understand what you’re talking about…my wife and I are innocent here, Lori.”
She gets up, reaches across the table for his empty mug and sugar packet, and begins to clean up. “Of course you’re innocent. Lighten up, my friend,” she says. “I’m no snitch.”
* * *
She tugs at the curtain at the front window and watches Doug Davis get in his car and pull away, whispering to herself, “They’re all alike…and they all need to be in control.”
She yawns to the thought and makes a mental note to call her brother back and set him straight.
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her new mantra in moving forward. What other choice does she have, really?
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke.
His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke. Considering such, the ‘mystery guest’ is temporarily lifted off the hook.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone. She considers suggesting to Todd that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent popping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she sternly orders.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen. Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams a pencil into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface.
He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse. In a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital?
Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give him a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards neatly at the corner of her desk. “Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a near shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-
factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I have to get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her classroom.
* * *
The bedroom is dimly lit, while the television set murmurs a familiar melody. Snow continues to fall heavily outside and school has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Doug and Serena cozy up to the thought of being snowed in for a few days. A thick down comforter, like the snow on the roof, blankets them.
Doug rests his head on her chest and nuzzles her neck.
“We’ve been graced with a free night to party like we’re twenty again, babe…how’d we get so lucky?”
Though she cannot see his muscles, she can feel them hardening against her body. He begins to kiss her jaw, then her cheek, his breath minty and warm. His hands roam below her waist, over her thighs, and upward. Like a moving squid, his tongue and limbs slide around her body, breathing in the scent of her skin, swallowing her.
The gauze of his taped wrist tickles her skin, a sensation more arousing than not. The only problem is—to Doug’s oblivion—her thoughts are elsewhere. They invade her head like a disease. It is unfair to reject her husband of eleven years this way.
But she has no choice.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says, snapping to an upright position, panting.
“Okay?” Doug’s body remains frozen in pose, as though a fantasy creature has turned him into a statue. Then he comes back to life, running his fingers through his hair in irritation.
“Steven Roth has had a stroke,” she spits out. “Detective Hearns notified me.”
His silence is a blend of curiosity and confusion. She offers more. “You know how I went to see him last week…to give him a piece of my mind?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Well, after I left, apparently his heart rate shot up and he suffered a stroke.”
Doug processes the information while scratching his ear.
“There are a lot of reasons why a man in his condition would have a stroke, Doug.” She reaches for her wine at the end table, takes a generous sip. “There were many things going on with his body, many complications. But I think that I may have caused the stroke.”
His blue eyes stare at her coldly. “What the hell did you say to him?”
The question, tinted by his disloyalty, a mild curse, aggravates her. “What the hell did I say to him? Hmm…what might I say to the man who disguised himself as our son’s snowboarding instructor, then kidnapped him? How are you feeling today?”
“I’m just saying, Serena,” he goes on, softening his tone, taking a sip of his coffee, “…what did you end up saying? You never game me the details, that’s all.”
The change in delivery is effective and she answers honestly. “It wasn’t so much what I said, as how I said it, Doug. And you never asked for the details,” she adds.
“So how did you say it?”
“Well, put it to you this way. Let’s just say, I gave him a taste of his own medicine by coming up with my own disguise.” She takes another sip of wine and thinks back to the incident. Would she do the same thing again?
It’s possible, very possible. The thought of this continues to come as a shock, even to herself.
By now Doug is alarmed. There is horror in his blue eyes, in his stiff neck, and in his small ears that seem to redden.
“What are you talking about, Serena? What exactly happened in that hospital room?”
She finishes her wine and tells her husband everything.
Chapter Eleven
Lori Hearns deserts her half-eaten plate of Thai take-out to browse through an article on carpal tunnel syndrome. One of her clients, a software business owner, is investigating an employee’s accusation that his company is to blame for the man’s sorry condition—one caused by excessive typing. Lori is not convinced. His application for workman’s compensation seems bogus and she can hardly wait to dig into the case and expose the jerk for all he’s worth.
To Lori; solving crimes, righting wrongs, is just as much a hobby as it is a profession. Since the age of nine, she’s been detecting lies. When her younger brother’s bike had been stolen, it was she who had prosecuted the villain, following the skid marks to his pathetic house five houses down the hill. Could he have been more obvious?
Pinning him to the ground at his shoulders, she had interrogated the dirty faced thief until he choked up a confession. As if that wasn’t enough, she threatened to press charges against him lest he pay her brother twenty dollars for pain and suffering and perform community service in the neighborhood. He had agreed to both and not a dime was wasted on court fees.
To this day, Lori prefers to deal with crime privately, despite the fact that she can rarely turn down a side job offered by the good ol’ boys as the police department. Since high school, they had allowed her to tag along on cases, credit to the numerous mysteries she had miraculously solved in town following the bike incident.
She’s a natural, McKenzie had deemed, keeping her under his wing right up through college. And now, twenty-five years later, she hasn’t stopped digging for clues. The Chief may choose to retire but one thing’s for sure: Lori Hearns will not stop practicing everything he’s preached.
To the sound of her scribbling pen, Sal flicks an ear and casually looks up at her from his favorite spot by the fireplace. The cat is beyond fat but Lori tells herself, and the vet, and anyone else that dares to ask, that he’s big-boned. Cats are lazy by nature, she decides, and the heated tiles only add to his sorry cause.
The phony gas fireplace, a thing of charm, had influenced her decision to buy the condo six months ago. Why clean up wood chips and soot when the ambience of a fire is only a button away? The outdoor Jacuzzi, pool, and weekly cleaning service had solidified the deal. Financing the joint was another story; also another reason to work tonight.
Midway through her flow chart sketch on pain and symptoms; her vibrating cell phone crawls across the table. She snatches it and checks the caller i.d., surprised to see Doug Davis’s cell number revealed. Typically, it is his wife whom calls.
“Hearns.”
“Uh, hi…Detective Hearns... this is Doug Davis calling…I hope this isn’t a bad—”
“Time to call? Nah. Saturday nights are prime time for me. Betcha thought you’d be getting my voicemail, eh?”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t sure. But I figured you may be out, so I was going to leave a message and let you know…or maybe not…well, I’m rambling now. The thing is…I’m calling about my wife, Serena. I’m worried about her, Detective Hearns, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to you in person about it.”
* * *
They are seated at the kitchen table, below a hanging set of silver pendant lights, the aroma of coffee and smoke floating between their breaths. After agreeing to the visit, Lori had changed from a velour jogging suit to a cashmere sweater and pair of khakis, though she leaves her hair down.
“Is Serena still worried Roth’s punishment? I already told her…as soon as that man hits rehab we’re zooming in for his trial,” she says, shaking a cigarette from its carton, lighting up eagerly.
Sal, inconvenienced by her sound, looks up briefly before collapsing on his side.
Doug, seated with his legs crossed, rips open a sugar packet and sweetens his coffee.
“Thank you for all of your hard work, Lori. I have to say…my wife just needs some reassurance that Roth will not be granted a single opportunity to harm another child.” He scratches his neck and gazes about the room, in search of a way to continue. “My wife…Serena,” he adds unnecessarily, “she’s really taking the incident hard, you know what I mean?”
Lori listens, nods.
“So, I figure, if I could get some concrete answers from you as to exactly how this man will pay…I figure she’ll be able to rest her mind.” He sips his coffee.
“Oh, he’ll pay alright, Mr. Davis. But you do know… there are different levels of kidnapping to consider in our legal system and punishments are assigned accordingly. I’ll tell you right now, your son’s abduction will be ranked as a class B felony,”
“Class B? Wait. What are you talking about? Clearly, this man is a criminal. He physically moved my son—against his will—to another place. If that doesn’t warrant a crime and major jail time, I don’t know what does.”
She blows smoke to the ceiling. “There’s no question on the charge, Mr. Davis. Indeed, he kidnapped your son. However, due to the fact that the abduction lasted for only an hour or so and the victim, your son, was not terrorized or injured, first degree will not fly in a court of law. We’re better off exposing his creepy track record…about how he had been watching your son for the past year, in hopes that we’ll discredit his character and persuade a few bleeding-heart parents in the jury. I’ll have to sniff around during jury selection and see what’s out there.”
“It’s likely that my son may be scarred for life, Ms. Hearns. I have no idea, at this point, if he’ll have the desire to get on a snowboard again, despite the fact that it’s probably his favorite thing to do. And you’re telling me that because he was not terrorized or injured…he may get off of the hook? Gosh, I have a right mind to give that jerk a piece of my mind…just like Serena did last week.”
A deep pair of lines creases the space between her brows. Her lips pucker as she draws in a deep inhale and tilts her head. Her voice is filled with smoke. “What did you just say, Mr. Davis?”
“I said I feel like giving him a piece of my mind just like...oh, you didn’t know Serena visited his hospital room. I could have sworn she told me you knew.”
Of course she knew. Detectives always know the truth, even when someone’s hiding it, perhaps especially when someone’s hiding it. They just can’t pinpoint who will confess it. She never would have suspected Doug for this. When information leaks out this way, innocently, without an ulterior motive, the pay-off for a detective is as lucky as finding a four-leafed clover in a bed of weeds.
“So Serena was the uninvited guest, eh? Doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Davis.”
“So then…you know about how Roth had a stroke?”
She drops her cigarette into a paper cup; then, as though ridding herself of her own harmful germs, squirts a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her palms and rubs them together before answering. “Yes. I know about the stroke. But, as I explained to your wife, the hospital is not likely to pay for a medical investigation concerning this. Too many variables.”
She shifts backwards in her chair and hoists the window up a notch, one handed. “I don’t know why I don’t kick this habit.” She waves the smoke out the window. “Anyways, the hospital will not run the risk of losing, trust me.”
Just as he is about to respond, her cell phone begins to vibrate. “Geez, who’s this?” She checks the caller: Bobby. “My brother…I’ll call him back.”
“You sure?” Doug asks, feeling terribly intrusive yet needing answers.
“Yeah. It’s fine. He probably just needs me to bail him out again, long story.”
“Oh…I’m sorry to hear that. But… in regard to this information about the stroke…it’s pretty much just the three of us who know this, right?”
She rests her elbows atop the table, folds her hands. “And I’m guessing you want it to stay that way…”
“I do.” He lifts himself slightly from his chair to dig into his pocket and draw out a few hundreds.”
“Is this enough?”
“Take your money back,” she says, sliding the bills back.
“No, seriously, Lori. Just for peace of mind. Like I said, earlier, I’m worried about Serena. She just hasn’t been herself lately.”
She studies him for a moment. “You can’t buy back information, Mr. Davis. You just have to trust those you hand it to.”
Sal has risen from his fireplace nook and springs up to the couch before coiling himself against a pillow, exhausted again. Doug’s eyes catch a glimpse of the action before resting on Lori’s.
“Can we trust you to keep that information a secret, Lori?”
She smiles without showing her teeth. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”
Doug rubs an index finger across his chin, “Well, that’s kind of why I’m asking you, Lori.”
“You ever hear what the experts say about people who don’t trust other people?”
He pauses, staring at her, waiting…
She finishes, “That they’re not to be trusted.”
He clenches a fist. “I-I don’t understand what you’re talking about…my wife and I are innocent here, Lori.”
She gets up, reaches across the table for his empty mug and sugar packet, and begins to clean up. “Of course you’re innocent. Lighten up, my friend,” she says. “I’m no snitch.”
* * *
She tugs at the curtain at the front window and watches Doug Davis get in his car and pull away, whispering to herself, “They’re all alike…and they all need to be in control.”
She yawns to the thought and makes a mental note to call her brother back and set him straight.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Amy's Tutorial Business
MILLBURY/SUTTON PARENTS:
If you have a child between the ages of six and eleven and are interested in private tutorial services, please contact me via my personal e-mail at amyleclaire@hotmail.com, adding the subject header ‘tutor’. Any information regarding your child’s needs will remain confidential.
As a former classroom teacher; I hold a BS in Elementary Education (grades one – six) and MS in Education, with specialization in Creative Arts in Learning. My philosophy of learning stems from Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences—a theory which appreciates how every child is smart in his/her own way. My program is strength-based. I will use your child’s unique intelligence and learning style to help him succeed in areas of struggle.
My areas of expertise include Everyday Math; Book Reports; Organization 101; Language Arts and Creative Writing. Furthermore, I have worked as a Parent Educator for the Beginning Years Family Network for the past eight years.
My greatest passion? Writing fiction. Currently, I am working on my third novel, titled, The Hours of Change. If you would like to take a peek at my work, please feel free to click on one of my chapters, posted at the sidebar.
More questions? Please feel free to call me at home at (508) 865-8658 or write me at amyleclaire@hotmail.com
Looking forward to hearing from you and to helping your child feel inspired to learn!
If you have a child between the ages of six and eleven and are interested in private tutorial services, please contact me via my personal e-mail at amyleclaire@hotmail.com, adding the subject header ‘tutor’. Any information regarding your child’s needs will remain confidential.
As a former classroom teacher; I hold a BS in Elementary Education (grades one – six) and MS in Education, with specialization in Creative Arts in Learning. My philosophy of learning stems from Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences—a theory which appreciates how every child is smart in his/her own way. My program is strength-based. I will use your child’s unique intelligence and learning style to help him succeed in areas of struggle.
My areas of expertise include Everyday Math; Book Reports; Organization 101; Language Arts and Creative Writing. Furthermore, I have worked as a Parent Educator for the Beginning Years Family Network for the past eight years.
My greatest passion? Writing fiction. Currently, I am working on my third novel, titled, The Hours of Change. If you would like to take a peek at my work, please feel free to click on one of my chapters, posted at the sidebar.
More questions? Please feel free to call me at home at (508) 865-8658 or write me at amyleclaire@hotmail.com
Looking forward to hearing from you and to helping your child feel inspired to learn!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Serena's Mind Gets in the Way - Revised Chapter, better ending!
Chapter Ten
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her new mantra in moving forward. What other choice does she have, really?
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke. His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke. Considering such, the ‘mystery guest’ is temporarily lifted off of the hook.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone.
She considers suggesting to Todd that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent popping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she sternly orders.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen.
Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams a pencil into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface.
He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse. In a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital? Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give him a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards neatly at the corner of her desk. “Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a near shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down’s Syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I have to get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her classroom.
* * *
The bedroom is dimly lit, while the television set murmurs a familiar melody. Snow continues to fall heavily outside and school has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Doug and Serena, blanketed in down, cozy up to the thought of being snowed in for a few days.
Doug rests his head on her chest and nuzzles her neck.
“We’ve been graced with a free night to party like we’re twenty again, babe…how’d we get so lucky?”
Though she cannot see his muscles, she can feel them hardening against her body. He begins to kiss her jaw, then her cheek, his breath minty and warm. His hands roam below her waist, over her thighs, and upward. Like a moving squid, his tongue and limbs slide around her body, breathing in the scent of her skin, swallowing her. The gauze of his taped wrist tickles her skin, a sensation more arousing than not. The only problem is—to Doug’s oblivion—her thoughts are elsewhere. They invade her head like a disease. It is unfair to reject her husband of eleven years this way.
But she has no choice.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says, snapping to an upright position, panting.
“Okay?” Doug’s body remains frozen in pose, as though a fantasy creature has turned him into a statue. Then he comes back to life, running his fingers through his hair in irritation.
“Steven Roth has had a stroke,” she spits out. “Detective Hearns notified me.”
His silence is a blend of curiosity and confusion. She offers more. “You know how I went to see him last week…to give him a piece of my mind?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Well, after I left, apparently his heart rate shot up and he suffered a stroke.”
Doug processes the information while scratching his ear.
“There are a lot of reasons why a man in his condition would have a stroke, Doug.” She reaches for her wine at the end table, takes a generous sip. “There were many things going on with his body, many complications. But I think that I may have caused the stroke.”
His blue eyes stare at her coldly. “What the hell did you say to him?”
The question, tinted by disloyalty, irritates her. “What the hell did I say to him? Hmm…what might I say to the man who disguised himself as our son’s snowboarding instructor, then kidnapped him?--"How are you feeling today?”
“I’m just saying, Serena,” he goes on, softening his tone, “…what did you say?”
The change in delivery is effective and she answers honestly. “It wasn’t so much what I said, as how I said it, Doug.”
“So how did you say it?” He sips his green tea gently.
“Well, put it to you this way. Let’s just say, I gave him a taste of his own medicine by coming up with my own disguise.” She takes another sip of wine and reflects on the incident. Would she do the same thing again? It’s possible, very possible.
By now Doug is alarmed. There is horror in his long-lashed blue eyes, in his stiff neck, and in his small ears that seem to redden.
“What are you talking about, Serena? What exactly happened in that hospital room?”
She finishes her wine and tells her husband everything he needs to know.
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her new mantra in moving forward. What other choice does she have, really?
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke. His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke. Considering such, the ‘mystery guest’ is temporarily lifted off of the hook.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone.
She considers suggesting to Todd that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent popping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she sternly orders.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen.
Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams a pencil into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface.
He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse. In a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital? Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give him a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards neatly at the corner of her desk. “Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a near shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down’s Syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I have to get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her classroom.
* * *
The bedroom is dimly lit, while the television set murmurs a familiar melody. Snow continues to fall heavily outside and school has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Doug and Serena, blanketed in down, cozy up to the thought of being snowed in for a few days.
Doug rests his head on her chest and nuzzles her neck.
“We’ve been graced with a free night to party like we’re twenty again, babe…how’d we get so lucky?”
Though she cannot see his muscles, she can feel them hardening against her body. He begins to kiss her jaw, then her cheek, his breath minty and warm. His hands roam below her waist, over her thighs, and upward. Like a moving squid, his tongue and limbs slide around her body, breathing in the scent of her skin, swallowing her. The gauze of his taped wrist tickles her skin, a sensation more arousing than not. The only problem is—to Doug’s oblivion—her thoughts are elsewhere. They invade her head like a disease. It is unfair to reject her husband of eleven years this way.
But she has no choice.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says, snapping to an upright position, panting.
“Okay?” Doug’s body remains frozen in pose, as though a fantasy creature has turned him into a statue. Then he comes back to life, running his fingers through his hair in irritation.
“Steven Roth has had a stroke,” she spits out. “Detective Hearns notified me.”
His silence is a blend of curiosity and confusion. She offers more. “You know how I went to see him last week…to give him a piece of my mind?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Well, after I left, apparently his heart rate shot up and he suffered a stroke.”
Doug processes the information while scratching his ear.
“There are a lot of reasons why a man in his condition would have a stroke, Doug.” She reaches for her wine at the end table, takes a generous sip. “There were many things going on with his body, many complications. But I think that I may have caused the stroke.”
His blue eyes stare at her coldly. “What the hell did you say to him?”
The question, tinted by disloyalty, irritates her. “What the hell did I say to him? Hmm…what might I say to the man who disguised himself as our son’s snowboarding instructor, then kidnapped him?--"How are you feeling today?”
“I’m just saying, Serena,” he goes on, softening his tone, “…what did you say?”
The change in delivery is effective and she answers honestly. “It wasn’t so much what I said, as how I said it, Doug.”
“So how did you say it?” He sips his green tea gently.
“Well, put it to you this way. Let’s just say, I gave him a taste of his own medicine by coming up with my own disguise.” She takes another sip of wine and reflects on the incident. Would she do the same thing again? It’s possible, very possible.
By now Doug is alarmed. There is horror in his long-lashed blue eyes, in his stiff neck, and in his small ears that seem to redden.
“What are you talking about, Serena? What exactly happened in that hospital room?”
She finishes her wine and tells her husband everything he needs to know.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Chapter Ten: Serena's Mind Gets in the Way
Chapter Ten
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her quest to move forward.
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor, one of the most prestigious of the ER staff, has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke. His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone. She considers suggesting to him that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent snapping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she orders, sternly.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen. Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams pencils into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface. He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the gaunt pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise all over again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse so, in a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital?
Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give the villain a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just. It still does.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards in a neat pile at the corner of her desk.
“Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom without waiting for a response.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down’s Syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I’ve gotta’ get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her room.
* * *
Serena’s fourth graders, back from winter vacation, are scattered in small groups for a math lesson on measurement. Snow has been falling steadily for the last few hours and the view from the north side of her classroom is alluring, soft flakes that are large and quiet, unlike the kids. The possibility of a snow day for tomorrow is too great to ignore and they just have to talk about it.
Serena is dressed in a flattering silk blouse tucked into a slender pair of cotton trousers. Her straight blonde hair falls sharply to her chin and her reading glasses reflect a prim look—one well-suited to her quest to move forward.
According to Detective Hears; Roth’s doctor, one of the most prestigious of the ER staff, has been overwhelmed by hospital issues and the likelihood of him pressing the cause of stroke any further is slim. A thorough investigation will cost the hospital more than they care to pay and, besides, there were multiple issues that could have contributed to the stroke. His blood pressure had been high upon arrival, as was his oxygenation, all of which contributed to the blockages that eventually led to the stroke.
Her mind wrapped in this thought, she stuffs report cards into their envelopes while her aide, Ms. Chopra, kneels on the ground with a pair of students, demonstrating how to secure a tape measure strip so that it doesn’t slide away. Serena smiles quietly to the assistant, an eternally positive Indian woman whose long dresses and ponytails are a perk topic of conversation for the girls. Daily, they create homemade cards for her, exaggerating her dangling earrings and brightly colored dresses.
Serena eyes the clock. It will not be long, she knows, before Todd Broder will heckle the classroom’s serenity. He will wait for Ms. Chopra to be engaged with another group, then snap the tape measure to its limit. Some things never change.
She eyes the troubled student from her desk. Seated cross-legged on the floor, he picks his nose while his partner, a gifted math student, mans the project alone. She considers suggesting to him that he get busy, but the phrase is as worn out as his sneakers. She hasn’t the energy for Todd today. There is simply too much on her mind
“I’m ready for another group,” Ms. Chopra says.
Madeline, Hailey, and Sara shuffle forward, holding their record sheets. Serena notices that Sara is brooding, clearly ousted from the daily clique.
“My mom has beads like that,” Madeline says, running her fingers along Ms. Chopra’s bracelet.
Ms. Chopra winks and proceeds with her teaching, wise to the girls, to their ever-present social ailments. “I have a question for you, girls.”
The girls stand in attention, their respect for the woman supreme.
Ms. Chopra presses her palms together and says, “Why do you think that it’s important to work together?”
Hailey shoots up a hand. “So we can all get along… like, sometimes even if we don’t like each other, we can work it out…”
Madeline, a classic teacher’s pet, adds, “Yeah…because you need to be able to problem solve to work with people better.”
Ms. Chopra nods and smiles. She’s about to gesture for Sara to offer an opinion, when a violent snapping noise resounds throughout the room. Todd has found his window of opportunity.
The classroom is momentarily jarred. Students stop what they’re doing to stare at Todd, to give him the attention he so desperately seeks while Serena casually saunters to his side and removes the tape measure from his hand.
“There’s something wrong with my tape measure,” he lies.
“Go back to you seat, please, Todd,” she orders, sternly.
The classroom activity resumes. The children have dealt with Todd’s antics for five months now and he’s become old hat. Stomping back to his desk, he collapses excessively into his chair and yanks out his pencil box, removing a shoddy collection of wood to sharpen. Serena proceeds to return to her desk, sensing along the way that Todd is not quite finished. Her intuition is correct. He speaks to her back.
“This is so unfair because Stacey did the same thing to her tape measure yesterday and she didn’t have to go back to her seat,” he grumbles.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “Do two wrongs make a right, Todd?”
To answer, Todd jams pencils into the sharpener hole, allowing a significant pile of shavings to fall atop his desktop, a pile that will shape his next move. He will insist that his dirty work-area is a distraction to his learning and get up to clean the surface. He will squirt an extreme amount of Clorox atop the desktop and trigger a new battle for his group members. The pungent smell of bleach, like Todd, will infect the room’s fresh air all day long. In Todd’s world, two wrongs always make a right.
He sweeps the shavings to the edge of his desk with his left hand and uses the right to contain the pile; a method that, she notes, is surprisingly efficient. Watching him, her mind wanders.
An image of Roth finds her: the gaunt pallid face with sunken cheeks and swollen eyes; the supine position on the hospital bed where he lay panting. He had disguised himself as a vibrant ski instructor only days earlier and the irony was, he had seemed in-disguise all over again—a wasted remnant of his virile self on the mountain. She was dressed up as a nurse so, in a way, they both wore masks.
By now, Todd prepares to bleach his desktop. “Only a few squirts, Todd,” she says in preemptive strike.
Is she practicing what she preaches? Were her actions humane in that hospital room? Ethical? Todd had told a lie about the tape measure to avoid punishment. Hadn’t she done the same when notifying the hospital?
Aunt Cecilia was a ruse. She had withheld the truth to get her way, to give the villain a piece of her mind and, considering what he had put her through, the choice had seemed just. It still does.
She sighs to the disorder of her mind and stacks the report cards in a neat pile at the corner of her desk.
“Ms. Chopra, I just need to grab some paper in the storage closet,” she says, exiting her classroom without waiting for a response.
She scurries down the hallway and takes a sharp right into the storage closet. Inside, there are numerous shelves of colored construction paper, organized expertly. She kneels down, clutches a shelf and closes her eyes.
Her situation is different than Todd’s, she thinks to herself. Roth took my kid, she whispers. He took my fucking kid, she says, louder, pounding her fist against a roll of contact paper.
“You alright, Mrs. Davis?” A tap on her shoulder.
“Oh, hi Frankie,” she says, standing up, embarrassed. It is one of the janitors, a sweet young man with Down’s Syndrome.
“I’m—I’m sorry about that outburst, Frankie. Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Frankie is quick to forgive. “Do you want to see my new rolodex?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“I have everyone’s room number in here,” he says, “all in alphabetical order. I’ll show you how it works. You give me the name of a teacher…any teacher.”
“Alright...” she plays along, “how about Ms. Chung?”
“Chung, chung, chung,” he chants, scrolling through the cards. “Chartier, Charles…there you are! Valerie Chung, Grade Two, Room 115,” he reports.
“That is pretty sharp, my friend,” she remarks, smiling widely before averting her gaze to a stack of blue paper.
“I’m applying for head custodian this year,” he says back, more seriously.
“Oh Frankie, that’s wonderful.” She removes her paper, pats him on the shoulder. “No one deserves that job more than you. You’re doing such a fantastic job around here.”
“You know how much money the head custodian makes?” he asks, matter-of-factly.
“I can’t say that I do, Frankie.”
“They make forty-five thousand dollars per year,” he says with conviction.
“Wow. That is really unbelievable. If you need a reference, Frankie, you let me know, okay? The kids are waiting for me…I’ve gotta’ get back to class now.”
“Give me a hug,” he says, widening his arms to her.
She reciprocates. They hug then face each other for a moment. Frankie’s eyes droop slightly. His bottom lip protrudes like a rose petal and his cheeks are freckled the exact color of his eyes, a golden brown. He has a prominent set of dimples and a stout neck. Frankie, the school janitor, on his way to becoming head custodian, has the most caring face she has ever seen.
“I’ll talk to you later, Frankie,” she says, exiting the closet.
“Bye-bye, Mrs. Davis. And don’t worry about anything…it will all work out. You have to think positive.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” she says, clinging to his words while jogging back to her room.
* * *
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