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.