Trophy Life

by Lea Geller

  The boys grinned, even Caleb, despite himself. At the end of class, I said to the boys, “Happy almost-Halloween. Have fun. Eat candy when nobody is looking.”

  I was feeling oddly celebratory.

  -17-

  The next evening, I put Grace in her fairy wings, stuck my tongue out to make her smile (worked every time), and took a picture to send to Beeks. I’d stocked up on candy, which I hadn’t bought in years. Jack handed out gourmet lollipops to the trick-or-treaters who came to our door in Santa Monica. Some of them were kid friendly—vanilla bean, chocolate, caramel—but not all. I was never really sure that little kids could appreciate a latte-flavored lollipop, but it was not for me to comment. The pops, like so much else, were a tradition that preceded me.

  After an early dinner, I put on the porch light and Grace and I waited for trick-or-treaters. We lay on the floor in front of the brown couch. Grace turned to face me, then rolled my way, over and over until she got to me. We rolled together until we hit the wall, then we rolled all the way back across the room, this time with Grace in the lead, both of us giggling. At some point I got winded and rolled Grace onto my stomach. “That was hard work,” I said. “I definitely need more exercise.” She put her head down and rested on my chest. We lay like that until she got antsy and began rolling again, this time on her own.

  When nobody arrived by five thirty, I tore open the bag of Butterfingers and ate three. But three is an odd number, so I ate a fourth to even things out. At five forty-five, I ate four more, to be truly even. But eight is an odd sort of even number, so at 5:50, I jammed two more in my mouth. Two families of trick-or-treaters showed up, so I reluctantly parted with a handful of Butterfingers. At six, by the time the rush of trick-or-treaters finally arrived, I had finished the Butterfingers as well as half a bag of mini Twix. A few faculty families with middle schoolers, some of whom I taught, came. I also recognized some day-care families. It was jarring to see the husbands who went with the moms I knew. Ella’s husband had a goatee and tattoo. I wondered if they were real or part of a costume. I handed out what little candy I had left. I then tore open a sack of Junior Mints, which was easy because I never liked Junior Mints. No one does. I dumped the little boxes into the plastic pumpkins of about twenty kids who showed up.

  As the kids left, Stacey Figg came running up my stairs. She was wearing a black unitard and had wound yellow crepe paper around herself. A headband with two black fuzzy balls attached to springs was clamped down over her hair.

  “A bumblebee!” she announced. With each step I worried that she’d make a sudden wrong move and tear the crepe paper. “Did I miss anything?” she asked, breathless.

  “No, so far there have only been a few trick-or-treaters,” I said.

  “You should have just left a bowl of candy out so you could have come to the faculty happy hour,” she said.

  “Maybe next year,” I muttered, secretly praying that this time next year I’d be handing out gourmet lollipops in Santa Monica.

  “Never mind,” she said, straightening the crepe paper that had bunched around her midsection. “I’m home now, and we can keep an eye on each other.” She wasn’t wrong. With each knock on the door, I knew I’d be seeing her outside, doling out enormous candy bars from a giant pillowcase covered in pumpkins, as she eyed my diminishing stash of bite-size candy. I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. When I got back inside, I saw a text from Adam.

  Happy Halloween!

  He had texted me a picture of three math teachers dressed as three different kinds of pie, with the numbers three, one, and four on their chests. I texted him a picture of my pile of candy wrappers.

  At seven, when what appeared to be the last of the trick-or-treaters left, I looked over at Stacey, who was standing on her doorstep holding a handful of enormous Butterfingers. I felt queasy looking at them.

  “Good night, Aggie,” she said.

  “Good night,” I replied, hopefully for the last time. I had consumed a frenzy of sugar. Exhausted but jittery, I carried Grace upstairs, put a clean diaper and a pair of warm pajamas on her, and rolled her down into her crib. I congratulated myself on getting her down without her crying and left her room.

  I walked down into the kitchen. Maybe a glass of wine would undo the sugar damage and help me unwind. Before I’d filled the glass to the top (don’t judge), my phone buzzed again.

  Don.

  Call me.

  My hand trembled, and I picked up the phone to call him but was interrupted by a knock. I opened the door to a pirate, a prisoner, and three Batmans. Stacey jumped out of her house. She had abandoned the crepe paper and headband and was just wearing her unitard.

  “Hey, boys,” I said. One of the Batmans took off her mask.

  “Not a boy,” she said.

  “Oh. OK then, hey, kids,” I said, without a trace of enthusiasm. “I don’t have much left, but you can take what I have.” My hand still trembling, I reached behind me to what remained of my candy stash and handed it to the girl. “You can divvy it up or go next door,” I said, looking over at an expectant Stacey, her pillowcase in hand. “Happy Halloween.” I closed the door before they could respond. I had things to do that did not involve small people, candy, and confusing costumes.

  I called Don. He picked up after one ring.

  “Agnes,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I have news from Jack.”

  I fell back onto the brown couch. “Is it time?” I asked. I could hear myself breathing.

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for me to come home, Don. It’s almost November. I’ve been here for two months.”

  Now it was Don’s breathing I could hear, not mine.

  “Don?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “You are not going back to LA in the immediate future.” He was breathing loudly but speaking quietly, more quietly with each word, so that by the time he got to the end of the sentence, I could barely hear him.

  I sat upright. “What do you mean?”

  “Jack is coming to New York,” he said.

  “Really?” My voice jumped an octave. “That’s great!” As soon as I said that and the words hung over me in a bubble, I wondered just how great it would be to have Jack living with me, the brown couch, and the mouse population.

  “Actually,” he began, “there’s a little more to it.”

  “Don.” I sighed. “When is there ever not?” Silence. Rhetorical questions were more than Don could handle. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Jack is coming to New York, he’s just not coming to you. Not yet. He’ll be somewhere in Manhattan. Soon.” He completely ignored the second part of my question. I can’t say I was surprised.

  “How soon is soon?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He just said soon.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the word in black: Soon.

  “What else? What else did he say?”

  “The money trouble,” he said. “He owes a lot of it. More than I thought. Agnes, if I hear more, I promise to call you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I guess this is better than nothing.”

  “One more thing,” he said, sounding like he wished he didn’t have to say anything at all.

  “What?”

  “He wants me to tell you he loves you. He loves you and he misses you both.”

  Although this was Don’s voice, these were Jack’s words. They were the first words I’d heard from him since I spoke to him from the road. I let the words sink in and sat back on the couch, trying to find something to say. Luckily, I was rescued by a knock on the door. Then the bell rang. Then it rang again. I ran to the door and pulled it open, hoping Grace hadn’t woken up.

  “No. More. Candy,” I barked at a group of three kids who looked too old to be asking strangers for candy. I started to close the door, and then Barack Obama took off his mask.

  “Ms. Parsons, it’s us,” Davey said. “Something happened.”

  Art too
k off a Darth Vader mask to reveal a tuft of red hair and a panicked face. “It’s Guy. We don’t know where he is.” His voice was shaking.

  Don’s voice spoke out from my phone. “Agnes, what’s going on? Are you there?”

  I put the phone to my ear. “Don, I have a . . . situation here. I’ll call you soon.”

  Before I hung up, Don said, “Keep your phone with you at all times. Jack may be calling.”

  The boys were staring at me. I looked around, double-checking Stacey Figg’s front door and bay window. When I didn’t see anything, I pulled them in as quickly as I could, breaking about a million rules. I ushered in the three boys, the third of whom was a terrified-looking Caleb, holding a brown paper bag with eyes cut out. He saw me looking at it.

  “Oh, yeah,” he explained. “It was the first thing I could find.”

  I closed the door behind them, and we stood huddled in the foyer. I heard a door slam outside. I prayed it wasn’t Stacey Figg.

  “OK, boys. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  Art and Davey looked at Caleb, their eyes begging him to take charge, or at the very least, to talk first. “Guy is missing,” he said. “He got into trouble at the end of the day yesterday and was thrown out of math. The Jerk called him in today. Last time we saw him, he was in the Jerk’s office.”

  I looked at the boys and tried to think of how to help. I couldn’t call Gavin and ask him where Guy was, because then Gavin would know that he was missing, and he’d want to know how I knew. “Boys, do you think it’s possible that he is still with Principal Burke?”

  “No, definitely not,” Caleb said. “We saw the Jerk in the dining hall, and we ran by his office on our way here. It was dark and empty.”

  “Think!” cried Art, his voice cracking. “Where is he?” I put my hand on his arm and squeezed it lightly.

  “OK,” I said. “Art. You have younger sisters, right?”

  “Yes.” He sniffled.

  “Great. Grace is asleep. She won’t wake up. But if she does, sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and rub her back. We’ll be home soon.” Art looked like I had just slapped him, but he nodded and didn’t move when I led Davey and Caleb out the front door. I grabbed my coat off a hook. “Masks on, boys. We don’t want to raise suspicions.” I realized I didn’t need to be spotted, either, so before he could object, I snatched the Darth Vader mask from Art’s hands and put it on my head. Davey and Caleb did the same, and the three of us made our way out into the night.

  I stuck my head out over the threshold, and when I was sure Stacey was not at her window, we left, walking quietly. Every so often one of the two boys would whisper, “Over here,” and we’d check out another potential hiding spot. We looked in all the places I’d think to look—near the benches in the rose garden, behind the giant glacial rocks that dominated the lawn that ran the length of the campus.

  “I think we need to check the Virgin,” said Caleb.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Virgin Mary. She’s up at the entrance, near the pond and the bridges.” I’d often walked the bridges with Grace and thrown stale veggie puffs (yes, it happens) to the bulging, nuclear goldfish in the pond below. Inside a small alcove was a statue of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by tall glass candles that always seemed to be lit. I had never gone in. It was too intimate, and frankly, a little creepy. Clearly I was not alone in this.

  “Ugh, really?” asked Davey. “That place gives me the creeps. I don’t think he’s there. Besides, it’s Halloween. That place is gonna be even more scary tonight. What if the drowned kid is there? Huh? What about the drowned kid?”

  Caleb looked back at me. “Back when this was a Catholic school,” he explained, “they say there was a boy who drowned in the pond. On Halloween. A priest was hurting him, and he drowned himself.” He stopped to look around. “But it’s probably not true.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I told them. I walked quickly and made sure I stayed in between the two of them. We walked along the main road until we came to the bridges. I could feel Davey faltering beside me. I grabbed his hand. Another rule down. “Davey,” I said, “I can go ahead, and you guys can stay here. Would that be OK?”

  “I wanna go, too,” said Caleb. “If he’s here, I wanna find him. Davey, you don’t wanna be alone here. Come with us.” Davey nodded his assent, and the three of us walked over the first bridge and turned into the alcove. All the candles were lit. The Virgin Mary stood among them, her arms outstretched, her smile wan and expressionless. Behind her, an imposing shadow version of herself took up the entire back wall. I leaned in and looked behind her but didn’t see Guy. We backed out and walked over the second bridge. From the middle of the bridge, we heard crying.

  “It’s him,” whispered Caleb. “I hear him. That’s Guy.” We stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water.

  My God, I thought, leaning over the edge. Virgin Mary, if you have any power here, please let me not see Guy down in the water.

  We still couldn’t see Guy, but we heard him. We walked across the bridge and down under it, toward the water. There, sitting on his knees, rocking back and forth, was Guy, tiny and shivering in a T-shirt and basketball shorts. He looked up. Caleb ran over and sat down right next to Guy, wrapping his arms around him. Guy was small, so much smaller than Caleb that he seemed to almost disappear in Caleb’s arms. Davey and I stood back.

  “Dude, Guy. It’s OK. We’re here.” But Guy kept rocking and crying. He spoke finally.

  “My dad’s gonna kill me this time. He’s really gonna kill me.”

  I walked down to the two boys and knelt right in front of them. I took off my coat, threw it over Guy’s scrawny shoulders, and put my hands on his knees.

  “Why?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “Principal Burke,” he said in between sobs. “Last week he said that if I got another detention, he’d call my dad. As soon as he said I shouldn’t get another detention, I just couldn’t help myself. It was like I just had to go and do something dumb. He’s calling my dad on Monday.”

  “And what happens when he calls your dad?” I asked. Davey had now walked down and was sitting cross-legged beside me. I had never seen him so still. He was almost unrecognizable. The four of us huddled together, to avoid the wind that had picked up and to keep from being seen.

  “Principal Burke calls a conference and tells my parents what a loser I am. Then my dad goes nuts.” He cried more, even harder.

  “His dad is tough,” Caleb said. “Really tough.” He looked at Guy, and I could see him thinking. Guy’s eyes grew wide, and he reached up to wipe away tears. I saw light bruises on his arm. Without thinking, I put my hand on them.

  “Guy, what is this? What’s going on? Did your dad do this?”

  “No, those are from his growth hormone shots,” Caleb answered. Guy was still staring at Caleb, letting him do the talking. “His dad makes him take them a few times a week. He thinks he’s not growing fast enough.”

  “His dad is pretty tall,” added Davey. “But his mom is short. His dad is worried he’ll be short, too.”

  “It got worse after I started taking the other medicine.” Guy paused. “The doctor gave me something for my ADD. I stopped being hungry and my dad said the ADD pills were slowing my growth, and that’s when I started the hormone shots.” He looked down at his knees, my hands still on them. I was getting stiff kneeling, so I rocked onto my backside and put my hands on my own knees.

  “What if I talk to Principal Burke?” I said. “What if I ask him not to call your dad?”

  “He won’t listen,” said Caleb. “He loves conferencing with our parents. They do anything he says as long as he doesn’t send us home. They don’t want us at home. None of them do.”

  “That man,” groaned Davey, “is a total bag of douches.”

  Caleb, Guy, and I laughed. “Let me try,” I said, waiting for our giggling to die out. “Maybe I can sit in on the meeting. I can make an excuse. You know, I’ll tell Principa
l Burke I want to learn from him.” The boys looked at me. “Would that be OK?”

  Guy nodded, and the four of us stood up.

  “I promise I’m going to help you,” I said, looking down at Guy. “Trust me.” He nodded and smiled through his tears.

  “You better watch out or people are gonna think you actually like us,” said Guy.

  I smiled and wrapped my arms around myself. Feeling useful was still so new to me.

  “Let’s rescue Art from babysitting duty and get you boys back,” I said. We crossed back over the bridge, and I nodded as we passed the alcove, in a secret thanks to Mary and her candles. Thank you for keeping Guy safe.

  I needed to get us all home. I’d deal with Gavin on Monday.

  -18-

  On Monday morning, the boys were still jittery. I was sure some of them had eaten candy—and only candy—all weekend. When you ban Halloween candy in school, you just have to assume that your students are going to spend every second they can, both in school and out, scarfing it down with abandon.

  Of course, my four boys had reason to squirm. Caleb and Guy stopped by my desk after class. Caleb’s green eyes were darting around, looking at the door, at me, then the door again.

  “Any news, Ms. Parsons?”

  “I’m going now,” I said. “The meeting hasn’t happened yet. Before class, I went to see Principal Jerk—I mean, Burke”—the boys smiled—“and he was in his office meeting with the math team.” I stood up. “I’m going to find him now.”

  I left the boys and walked down a flight of stairs to Gavin’s office. The office was empty and the lights were off. I panicked. Could he be meeting with Guy’s parents now? Had I missed my chance to find him? When I could convince my feet to unroot themselves from the floor, I spun around and ran straight into Adam. I stumbled backward.