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.

* * *