Trophy Life

by Lea Geller

  “You’re sad,” she said, wearing her jumpsuit and presenting me with a casserole dish.

  “It’s that obvious?” I said, letting her in, taking the large warm dish in my hands. It took all I had not to hug that dish.

  “It’s hard to miss, Agnes. But don’t worry, the answer to your problems is now in your hands.”

  I looked down. “What’s in here?” I asked.

  “Only a heavenly blend of pasta, cheese, and spinach,” she said, leading me into the kitchen. I stood by dumbly as she grabbed knives, forks, and plates and put them on the dining room table.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I sat.

  “Is it your husband?” she asked, sliding a spoon into the casserole and serving me a heaping piece.

  “No,” I said. “It’s a friend. My best friend.” I should have said “my only friend,” but I didn’t think I could say those words without crying. I didn’t want to give the Figg more information than I needed to, but it felt good to talk to someone, especially because both of my someones were unavailable. I shoveled in a bite of food.

  “Is it Banks?” she asked.

  “Huh?” Damn, this food was good. It was warm and salty and I wanted to grab the dish and hide with it upstairs.

  “Banks. Your friend?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I thought about correcting her, but I couldn’t bring myself to say Beeks’s name. I wanted to be alone in a small dark room, making my way through this casserole. I did not want to be sitting here discussing Beeks with the Figg.

  “What happened?” she asked, taking her own bite of food.

  “We had a fight,” I said.

  She leaned back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. “What’d you fight about?”

  “My husband,” I said, exhaling. “She doesn’t like him.”

  “Really?” Stacey said, her eyes suddenly widening. “What doesn’t she like?” I got the distinct impression that Stacey Figg was suppressing the urge to rub her little hands together. This was getting uncomfortable.

  “Oh, she doesn’t like that he travels so much.” I felt bad watching the Figg deflate. She had been hoping for something better. I could see it on her face. The truth was better, much better, but it was also worse.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Which is it?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “More or less? What else doesn’t she like? Don’t you want to talk about it?” Her eyes were shining with anticipation.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.” I might have wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, so I switched gears. “I’m also worried about the boys in my class.”

  Stacey poured us both some water. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Gavin keeps walking in and sending boys to Dowell, presumably because he doesn’t think I’m throwing them out of class enough.”

  Stacey leaned in. “You need to trust Gavin more. He knows these boys. He knows they need boundaries and consequences.” There were those words again.

  “Really? I’m not so sure he knows them. Besides, it’s not like all his boundaries and consequences actually work. The boys don’t respond to him at all.” I had also overheard Caleb and Davey talking about Gavin’s summer program, the one he had mentioned in the meeting with the Martins. Apparently, he’d told them they would be “invited to attend” if they wanted to get into high school.

  “That program is gold,” Stacey said when I told her about it. “It works. The boys get into the high school and they all do well there, or at least they do better.”

  “Isn’t it possible that they do better in high school because Gavin isn’t around terrorizing them?”

  Stacey wasn’t buying any of this. “He knows what he’s doing, Agnes.”

  “What about Ruth?” I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.

  “What about her?”

  “What does she do?”

  Stacey looked at me, confused. I tried to clarify. “I mean, what does she do here? Is she involved in school administration, or does she just fund-raise?” I really wasn’t sure what I was asking, but I wanted to stop talking about how wonderful Gavin was and I thought I should probably have some info on Ruth for when Jack finally showed up.

  “Beats me,” she said, taking another bite. “We don’t see her much, especially because Gavin does such a great job.”

  I couldn’t hear any more. “This casserole is delicious, Stacey. I didn’t know anybody could do this with pasta, cheese, and spinach.”

  “Oh,” she said proudly, “I’m full of surprises.”

  -25-

  Beeks’s betrayal didn’t just drive me into the arms of the Figg. In the days after Thanksgiving, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lindsey’s words. Maybe she was right. Maybe I had gone from the hottest person in the room to the person you’d be most likely to overlook. Jack was close now, and I could hear his voice in my head. I decided to take Lindsey’s words to heart and went in search of some highlights.

  My search took me three blocks down Riverdale Avenue. I needed something close, and I needed something cheap. I knew better than to test my luck at a salon in Manhattan; I just didn’t have that kind of money now. I’d asked an art teacher with decent highlights where she got her hair done, and she sent me to a nearby salon called Tropical Escape. It felt strange to be going somewhere other than class without Grace. After I had overheard some day-care parents mentioning that Dot offered extended hours, I signed Grace up for a longer day. Less than one week after Lindsey had shamed my overgrown highlights, I walked into Tropical Escape and into the arms of Evon, a tall Honduran woman with straightened brown hair.

  I tried to explain to Evon what I had in mind. I talked about highlights and lowlights. I didn’t show her any pictures, as I’d been trained to do in Santa Monica, but she nodded and I felt safe. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like me to trust a complete stranger with my hair. Colorists needed to be recommended, approved, and heavily vetted, and on the basis of one recommendation, I walked into this place and put myself at Evon’s mercy. I was just so happy for someone to be taking care of me that I think had Caleb and Davey been the ones doing my hair at Tropical Escape, I would have been fine with it.

  I closed my eyes and rested while Evon went to work painting on highlights and wrapping my hair in foil. I read mindless magazines while I sat in the foil. In LA, celebrity news was city news. I could turn on the morning news and get weather (almost comic in its lack of variation), traffic (ditto), and celebrity gossip, delivered with the seriousness of a stock-market update. It had been months since I’d read a shred of gossip, and I devoured the stack of magazines on the Lucite coffee table.

  I paged through the magazines and thought about Jack. It was hard to picture our reunion, because it was near impossible to see Jack here. I pictured our first moments together and wondered what I would wear, knowing that none of my current outfits would suffice. Then I realized that my outfit was the least of my worries: Jack had asked me for information, but I still had nothing. I had no idea why Ruth had pulled her money out of Jack’s fund. I’d had so little contact with her, and it wasn’t like I could barge into her office and demand answers. Don had said that sometimes information that seemed unimportant could be useful, but there was nothing I had seen here that I could even report as useful. What had I learned? That the middle school was launching an online behavior report system? That detentions had been localized in the Bowel? Jack had said that some parents had invested with him, but the only parents I’d met were the Martins, and as far as that went, I still had nothing. Jack had given me one job, and I’d failed to do it. (OK, maybe he’d given me way more than one job.) Still, I wanted something, anything, to show him that I could be useful, and possibly even helpful.

  The timer rang and Evon led me to the back of the salon and washed my hair in the sink, slowly massaging my scalp. My goodness, was this really something I had done almost monthl
y in Santa Monica? I couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Grace or Beeks had touched me. Evon’s hands were soft and strong. The large pads of her fingertips dived deep into the grooves of my scalp. I groaned with pleasure and looked around sheepishly when I realized what I had done. Evon did not mind. She smiled at me.

  “Long day?” she asked.

  “Long year,” I said, closing my eyes.

  “Year’s almost over,” she replied, sitting me up and wrapping a towel around my head. Evon led me to her chair, and I plopped down into it. I’d forgotten how much I liked sitting in a salon chair. The soft seat, the footrest, and the knowledge that I’d soon be leaving with a fresh set of highlights and a spring in my step. I kept my eyes closed for as long as I could, savoring every minute I had free of work or Grace. It was hard to believe I’d had so many of these moments before, so much time free of obligation. Now I had nothing but obligation.

  Evon went to work blowing out my hair. The heat of the dryer almost put me to sleep. How I missed my Thursday blowouts. I closed my eyes again and drifted off. I heard the voices of women walking in after work for their hair appointments. I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t have to talk.

  When I opened my eyes, I almost fell out of the chair. I had walked into the salon hoping to mask the dark roots that had grown halfway down my head. Now the roots seemed even darker, and it looked like just the tips of my hair had been dipped in a bowl of bleach. I closed my eyes, squeezing them, willing myself not to cry. I heard Beeks’s voice in my head. What the hell did you expect? When you get your hair dyed in the Bronx, you’ll end up looking like Jenny from the Block. Thinking about Beeks, my Beeks who had betrayed me, made me want to cry even harder. I was desperate to call her immediately and tell her what I’d done, but Beeks was not available to me. I squeezed the armrests, grabbing control of myself, and smiled.

  “I love it,” I lied.

  Evon grinned proudly. The other women in the salon came over and clucked around me.

  “So pretty!”

  “Your husband will like!”

  Both could not have been further from the truth. When I picked up Grace, she and Dot both gave me a similar quizzical look. “Oh,” said Dot. “You’ve made some changes.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “You could say that.” I scooped up Grace and headed home.

  I kept away from mirrors for the night and fought the urge to call Beeks. For the first time, I secretly prayed Jack would take his time returning.

  Not surprisingly, the Figg had a lot to say about my hair. She showed up that night with a bottle of wine and two glasses. I heard a jingling sound, looked outside, and saw her standing at my door. I stared at her, speechless. Her trunk was red, her short arms Kelly green, and her entire torso was covered in tiny bells, which jingled each time she moved.

  “Christmas.” She beamed, shimmying. “I start wearing my sweaters as soon as I open my advent calendar.” Before I could say anything, she looked up at my hair. I was hoping our height difference would protect me.

  “Wow!” she said. “That’s bold.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Bold, and kind of an accident. I went in for highlights.”

  “You certainly did,” she said, grinning.

  “I know, I know. I just needed a pick-me-up. I guess I got a little carried away.”

  “Still haven’t made up with Banks?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Whatever,” she said. “I have wine.”

  “Yes. You do.” I blinked back some tears. She smiled at me sympathetically.

  I opened the door and let in the Figg and her bottle of wine.

  “Beeks,” I said, closing the door behind her. “Her name is Beeks.”

  -26-

  I dragged myself to class the next day, burying my hair under a woolen cap. I arrived before the boys, hung up my coat and hat, and prayed that nobody would notice.

  Caleb was the first one to arrive. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, skidding to a halt in front of my desk. “Ms. P., you look awesome!”

  Before I could answer him, Art and Guy ran in with a handful of other boys, including some students from my other classes. Davey was chasing them all with a spray bottle. When they got into class, the boys all ducked under their seats. Davey kept spraying relentlessly. The boys who had somewhere else to be quickly left when the bell rang.

  “Good morning, boys,” I said, calling to them from the front of the class. “Davey,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “We found this bottle on the stairs!” he said, facing off with Guy.

  “What’s in it?” I asked.

  “No clue,” he said. I walked over, grabbed the bottle, opened it, and sniffed.

  “Bleach,” I said. “You’ve been spraying your friends with diluted bleach.”

  Davey didn’t seem fazed. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Ms. P.! You look hot!” As he said it he put his hand over his mouth, realizing that he may have gone too far. “I mean hot in an appropriate way.”

  “No worries, Davey,” I said, taking the bottle from him. This wasn’t so bad after all. I might have looked like a skunk in reverse, but to these boys I looked fabulous. Not one of them failed to compliment me. It was easy, therefore, to overlook the fact that they were shooting each other with a bottle of bleach that they did not find on the stairs, but rather, that they had stolen from the janitorial closet. Upon further examination, I found a Dustbuster in Art’s backpack.

  None of them could settle into class that morning. It was always hard for these boys to come back after a break. Hell, reentry from recess was tough—a few days off from this place must have been an impossible transition.

  “Boys,” I pleaded, standing in front of them. “Any chance you can settle down, just for a few moments, so I can give you the day’s prompt?”

  “Please,” said Art, “no more prompts. No more writing. We were all up late working on our social studies essay.” He looked at Caleb and said, “Well, most of us were.” Caleb blushed and looked down.

  “OK then,” I said. “I promise no writing in class today. We can just talk about the book.”

  “Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Snore,” Art announced on cue.

  “Really,” I said, taking his bait for once. “What’s so boring about it?”

  “All of it,” said Davey. All the boys nodded in agreement.

  I knew they weren’t connecting with the book. The night before, I’d searched my mind for something I remembered about reading this book in middle school. I thought back to my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Sharkey. He wore Hawaiian shirts, sang in an Eagles cover band, and played a lot of music in class. Then I remembered how I’d connected with the book—it wasn’t by just reading it.

  “OK, boys, listen to this,” I said. I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of them, so I’d had Adam show me how to sync my phone up with the smart board. I pressed play on my phone, and as the music began to play, lyrics appeared on the large screen over my head.

  I watched the boys listening to Billie Holiday crooning “Strange Fruit.” The boys looked confused. I played the song again.

  “Her voice is weird,” said Davey. “Real weird.”

  “It sounds like she’s singing underwater,” said Guy.

  “Look at the lyrics,” I charged them. “What’s she singing about?”

  “Fruit,” said Art. Some other boys laughed nervously.

  “Good,” I said. “What kind of fruit?”

  “Ms. Parsons,” said Caleb, “if she’s just singing about fruit, then why is she so sad?”

  I smiled. He was leading me right there. “Look at the lyrics,” I said, pointing at the smart board. “How does she describe the fruit, Caleb?”

  “The eyes are bulging and the mouth is twisted,” he said. I played the song a third time. Before I could say anything else, he went on, “the smell of flesh burning.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What’s the fruit? What’s really hanging from the tree, Caleb?�
��

  “Bodies,” he said.

  “What kind of bodies? Think about the book. What kind of bodies are hanging from trees?”

  “Black bodies,” whispered Guy.

  “Right again,” I whispered back. “I know this is a tough read, a lot of these books are, but there’s a reason you’re reading them. Think about the kids in your book having to walk past these bodies hanging from the trees.” They all looked at me. Actually, they all gazed at me. One or two of them actually nodded. As tough as it was being here, I’d never forget how good it felt to be looked at this way, like there was nothing I could not make better.

  On my way to pick up Grace, I called Beeks. She’d been calling and texting since Thanksgiving, but I hadn’t responded. I still wasn’t sure I was ready to forgive her, but I was tired of avoiding her. It had been over three weeks, and I was ready to hear her voice again.

  “Crap,” she said before I could say anything. “They’re freezing their pee again.”

  “What?”

  “Yup. You heard me right.”

  “The boys?”

  “Who else? Stevie got the twins to do it on a dare. Hell, those two will pee anywhere. It’s not like they need to be dared. Now my freezer is full of baggies of pee. I know this because I just defrosted one thinking it was chicken stock.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. Guess what? You can’t make soup with pee.”

  We both laughed and then paused in awkward silence.

  “Thank you for calling,” she said.

  “Beeks, I don’t like being mad at you,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Listen—my stupid indiscretion aside, I love you and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Aggie.”

  “I know.”

  “I want you to know that I didn’t tell her everything.”

  “What do you mean?” I knew what she meant.

  “I just said Jack had gotten himself into some trouble, money trouble. I left out the rest. Listen, I know that I violated your trust. It was really only once, and I felt terrible as soon as I said anything, but I know that it doesn’t make it better.”