by Nick Stokes
She drops Max off at daycare. Next year, kindergarten at her school if she can cough up the dough. She won’t have to make this extra stop. A few minutes saved. Though this morning is quick and easy – he runs straight to the trains without a whimper and without looking back. He is Orpheus and she Eurydice and he doesn’t look back but the gods lied; she can’t escape Hades. She says “Goodbye” to his back and turns back to the car and closes her eyes. She backs into the busy street.
She drives, another oxygenated red blood cell driven through the clogged arteries of a glutted corpus, she deforming to fit through the microscopic capillaries of this fat city and deliver her deliverables, she, tiny and folded and therefore inward-looking, pushed by capillary pressure through another slightly larger, self-obsessed corpuscle, as seen from a planetary scale. And her planet, a blip on the universe’s scale. And so it goes, Russian dolls. Painted pretty, but dolls.
She has to make a plan now, or she will walk into class, stand at the front of the room, and… What will she say? She’ll take attendance. She’ll hand back vocab quizzes with the words repugnance, rapture, anguish, suffering, joy, each exquisitely ill-defined. And then she’ll say… What does she have to say about Crime and Punishment? What does she have to say? She will stand in front of them, all of them, every last one of them, in front of them with nothing to say, and she will say…
“I want to go home.” But she can’t say it. She can’t speak, even to herself, alone in her Accord that’s older than her students and gets better gas mileage.
Four blocks from school, she pulls into the shoulder and weeps. She tries to curl below the bottom edge of the driver side window to disappear from all the colleagues, all the parents, all the students, all the strangers driving by. She does not weep for Max, though there is that. She does not weep for Dave, though there is that, somewhere. She does not weep for Dostoevsky or Raskolnikov or Sonia or Lizaveta. She does not weep for anything or anyone.
She weeps because there is a ball of emptiness within her, collapsing on itself. Because there is a red dwarf within her, collapsing. A star collapsing. A sphere of emptiness, a point of infinite density, collapsing and collapsing and collapsing and she has acknowledged it, and because she has acknowledged and been unable to swallow the collapse again, she has to feed it tears, feed it her sorrow, feed it the fear of when tears alone will feed it no more. The mass, the emptiness in her grows, it pulses, its gravity waxes and she is pulled down and in and it throbs and she collapses and she feels it and waters it and sacrifices herself to it because she has no choice – it holds her down, its great weight atop her, and forces itself on her, it is inside her, she gives herself and allows herself to be crushed – that is the only way it ever goes away, no it never goes away, that is the only way it finishes and lets her pretend again it doesn’t exist. She allows herself to be crushed, she becomes it becomes the weight becomes the emptiness becomes the pulse--
***
Finished, released, alive again. She is herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes shine. Her tears have left trails. She fixes herself. She does not feel good; she feels bored out. She still does not want to go to school, but she can do it, and she does, because that is what she will be five minutes from now, at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in March, a teacher contracted through the school year, uncommitted to the next, but with a mortgage and insurance premiums and a son. There is no time to think of another way; she will be five minutes late. Regardless of time, she thinks of nothing; all her words have escaped her eyes and run down her face. Until she walks through the school door, she is nothing but the feeling, neither pleasurable nor painful, of a vacancy in her gut.
***
She is five minutes late. She takes attendance. She returns vocab quizzes. Some are disheartened, some pleased; most don’t care. She gives them 20 minutes to read silently from where they left off. She knows that for many of them, where they left off was not where they are supposed to be.
She informs them that she is being generous, that they have a chance to either amend the conspicuous consumption of last night or to work on tonight’s homework and earn time for tonight’s consumption. “If you don’t return my investment with interest, I will bearishly regulate class participation marks accordingly.”
Nobody questions her word choice or finds it amusing. All 25 of them pull out their books and read, minus Harold, who hasn’t been able to find his book for a week and has yet to figure out that Crime and Punishment is not a difficult book to procure, for example, at a bookstore. They are prep school kids, which doesn’t mean they’re earnest, but it means their parents are. Or else rich. Most are glad for a second chance, or a chance to get ahead. They are young and it is first period and a few just rolled out of bed and at least half stayed up late on the phone or playing video games or watching TV or socially networking online or texting – which she explained to them is not unlike taking shorthand notes, which only had the result that several wanted to text while she lectured rather than passively not listen – or because they had a track meet or did all their homework. The other half are tired because that’s what people are, tired, and these are seniors learning to be people.
Rita has obviously already finished the book, and is rereading what was assigned for today so she can be better prepared. She is already the most prepared.
“Go on Rita, go get a beer at the corner store. Pound it and come back. They’ll sell to you. You’ll pass for 40.”
She laughs alone behind her desk. A redefining of priorities. A few eyes lift to her, then drop again. She’d say it out loud if she had some balls.
She composes, sips coffee in synchrony with five 17-year-olds.
Ham, in the back of the room, should be in her less advanced class, which is studying Hamlet. He’s in love. He hasn’t done the reading. Instead of skipping ahead to today’s reading so he can skate through discussion, he has returned to where he left off, approximately 100 pages behind the class, based on the unbalanced mass of pages on either side of his book’s spine. And, she sees now, he isn’t reading at all, but staring through his book to where he left off, which was his girlfriend’s basement, his mouth on her nipple, his fingers under her waistband.
She wants to teach him how to fool his teachers, how to get by, how to fake it, so he can get on with the real business of life, loving. But that’s not what she’s paid for.
She sips coffee in synchrony with three 17-year-olds, except she brought hers from home. She wonders if she can complete the infidelity to the economy by growing coffee plants in the backyard and paying Max in dinner to pick beans. If the climate’s too cold, they’ll move to Costa Rica.
She sips coffee alone. Ten minutes left for quiet reading. At least she’s done one thing worthwhile this morning, forcing 25 teenagers to read Dostoyevsky for 20 minutes. Surely that will benefit society, or humanity, or these budding adults, or whomever it is she’s here for.
She skims the assignment for today so she can participate in discussion. Part III, Chapter 2. Razumhin meeting with Raskolnikov’s sister and mother. Raskolnikov is absent, or asleep, having had a hard night, psychic troubles on account of having killed a woman or two. She reacquaints herself with passages she’s marked over the years, which is most everything minus phrases like “hopelessly unattainable,” “positively ashamed,” “muttered with a feeling of self-abasement,” “cried,” “furious,” “wept,” “ecstasy,” “declared hotly,” “hugged him warmly,” breathless anguish desperate joy. So many exclamation points! She despises this over-dramatic, over-precise, over-spelled-out aspect of Dostoyevsky. She could do without every moment mattering so much!
Ah yes, she reminds herself, this is the scene where Razhumin describes Raskolnikov, where he says Raskolnikov loves no one and perhaps never will, and some business about the narcissistic and covetous Luzhin. There, discussion topics, done.
Halfway through the chapter she gets bored and skips ahead to pages she dog-eared when she was roughly nineteen.
“Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing – that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be 32 and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist?”
She looks at the clock. “Good God,” she thinks aloud in her head, “A month to get them as far as they are, and it’ll take me another month to get them to here, and most will never make it here, let alone the redemption.”
She shuts her book in despair and sighs longingly.
“Time is up.” Eyes bob. “What shall we discuss?” Eyes glaze. “Any questions?” Eyes fry in a vat of lard. “They don’t have to be deep questions.” Eyes are dunked in purchased coffee. “Do you know what’s happening in the plot?” Their eyes are donut holes, gone. “Who are these people?” Diversified mutual funds, bundled mortgage securities, paper trails, gone. Dixie cups, gone. Faith, gone.
She realizes she will have to lead them.
She talks for 20 minutes. The bell rings. They leave.
***
She has three free periods and four classes. She doesn’t like to phrase it this way; it makes her into a whiner who works half a day and squeals in agony. She cannot use the word agony with a straight face in regards to her agony. What makes one a whiner is tone of voice. If she doesn’t speak, she can’t whine. She doesn’t want anyone to know her agony; she wants them to know she’s a hard worker, one that doesn’t whine about all the work she has to do.
There is more work to be done during free periods than there is time in the free periods.
She goes to the bathroom. 19 seconds of peeing. She’s done better and worse, but 19 seconds is satisfactory.
She shouldn’t have more coffee. She stops by the office for her mug. There’s a 50/50 chance, she figures, she’ll see somebody in the faculty room, but that’s okay, the faculty room is the place for that.
There are no goodies in the faculty room. No sex in the champagne room. Wrong, that’s a song. Mondays and Fridays are better shots for that, not Wednesdays. “So it goes,” she says, and then wants to crawl out of her skin and leave it there for having said it. At least she’s alone. She wonders if she’s ever had an original thought.
Ward, a math teacher, comes in and says, “Cookies?” while she empties the coffee pot into her mug.
“No,” she says.
“Dang,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Did you finish it?” he says, pointing with his mug at the pot.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Dang,” he says.
“I’ll make more,” she says, “But it’ll be a couple minutes.”
She’ll make more; she finished the pot after all, and she pulls her weight. There’s nothing more annoying than coming into the faculty room to an empty coffee pot, and really those people who finish a coffee pot and then walk away without starting another must be so self-absorbed and unaware of any societal obligation – she doesn’t know how they can live with themselves, morally speaking. She tries to make up bogus excuses for them about being late for class, being too intimidated by the school’s coffee hubbub, being new to coffee pot etiquette, being in mourning for a loved one, but empathy is hard.
She’d prefer Ward went away. He is young and handsome and earnest and single, but she doesn’t like to prep the coffee maker while somebody watches. She is plenty experienced, but coffee is a touchy subject around school. Everyone knows the right way to do it.
“Oh don’t worry, I can do it,” he says.
“No, no. I finished it,” she assures him.
“Sure, but I’ll be drinking it,” he reaches to take the pot from her.
“No,” she says, “I’m quite experienced,” and then feels a little bad, so she counters his outstretched hand with her brimming mug that she doesn’t wash, but which says “Grade A Teacher.” “Here, have mine. I can wait. I don’t have anything else to do, and… it looks like you could use it.”
He pauses. “No, thank you. I … I prefer fresh coffee.” He steps back. “How do you make it?”
“Filtered water.” She never uses filtered water, but he’s a math teacher. There is a right answer. “Fourteen scoops.” She’ll sneak in a fifteenth if he’s not looking.
“It’s a 12-cup carafe.”
Carafe? “Yes, that’s what it says.”
“A little stronger than I like, but at least you use filtered water.”
She washes the pot out at least ten times longer than she would otherwise and slowly dies waiting for it to fill from the filter. While she dies, they talk about a struggling student. He asks about how her former advisee’s holding up, if it’s rough having an advisee expelled. She instead talks about Max, about how she’s worried about kindergarten next year, about how she can’t decide whether or not to have him come here because of the cost, even at half tuition.
It’s a decent conversation. It ends.
Ward spreads some papers full of plusses and minuses and integral symbols on the table for something to do while the coffee brews.
“I like to be efficient,” he offers.
“Me too,” she reciprocates.
She stands there a moment more, he sitting, looking up at her, glasses sliding down his nose. He looks down, through them, focusing.
She returns to her office.
***
Twenty minutes before class. On the internet, she looks up the weekend weather. Rain. It’s March in the Pacific Northwest. She imagines it’s raining right now, two internal and one external walls away. She and Max are going to the waterfront this weekend. If they don’t, they’ll kill each other. Fuck the rain. She could use a good rain.
She checks her e-mail. Twelve unread. Before she reads them, she checks the postings on the official business high school mandatory reading online bulletin board. Eight unread. Before she reads them, she checks the non-official school business bulletin board. Five postings, 15 responses. Topics of the day: dog for sale, free biosolid fertilizer, political history documentary on PBS tonight, Japanese teacher’s husband having a play reading, the re-re-re revised instructions on how to comply with coffee-making mandate and penalties for non-compliance, per meeting 122 of the Coffee Cartel Committee, which has received 12 of the 15 responses.
“What can I do to be more efficient?” she thinks.
She could use a dog. Max’d like it, and it would give her more to do that didn’t necessitate an existential crisis. She’s sick of existential crises, depressed with being depressed, bored with herself. A dog eliminates inwardness, self-reflection, and the contemplated life. If you don’t walk the dog, she shits in the living room. If you don’t feed her, she dies. If you don’t love her, she won’t love you. That’s not true, she thinks.
“Yes,” she cracks, “I need more dependency.”
She calls the Department of Social and Health Services while she checks e-mail. DSHS puts her on hold. She is the epitome of efficiency, on hold while checking e-mail. She feels good. Combine two soul-sucking activities and create one productive task. Two negatives equal a positive. Two birds, one stone. David with a slingshot positively shooting the shit out of some damn big birds.
She has never called DSHS and been on hold for less than half-an-hour. Usually, when she gets through, they can’t answer her questions. They cover Max’s healthcare premiums through her school plan, as well as provide secondary insurance for whatever her school doesn’t cover. They essentially ensure she has no healthcare costs related to Max. But last month she didn’t receive the $247 reimbursement check for his premium. She thinks she sent in a copy of her pay stub, but she’s not positive.
High school bulletin board postings on absences, athletics, technology department call for proposals, scheduled network shutdown, faculty development opportunity, update your curriculum map online using an inane program that makes the task take tw
ice as long as it should to do something that doesn’t need doing, and, marked URGENT, posted at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, a schedule change. “All classes today are 10 minutes shorter due to a performance by the drama department …”
She blushes. She waited for the bell. Did the students know? Did they let her continue to blather to see her become an ass? Was it worth it to them? She talked for 10 needless minutes that nobody enjoyed. They suffered together for 10 more minutes than necessary.
No no no – suck on cloud nine. All classes are 10 minutes shorter! Only two-thirds of an hour! Other teachers will be bitching about the lack of time with their students, but not her. Let’s watch a play everyday and do nothing! Forget curriculum, forget progress, forget achievement, classes are 10 minutes shorter! She will make it through the day! Let there be light!
Thunder in the halls. Fine print. The performance is over. Class begins…now. She has prepared nothing, but she doesn’t care, 10 minutes less class, three more classes – 30 minutes saved. Thirty minutes less to the day. She loves math. She hangs up the phone. She grabs Hamlet by the neck and drags his corpse to class.
***
This is her normal class, as opposed to her advanced class, itself in opposition to Advanced Placement, which she does not teach, thank God. At a school like this, the administration and especially the parents examine the final numbers of the students taking the AP exam to evaluate teacher performance. Teaching AP English is a competitive sport, the teacher coaching the class to compete against every other AP class in the country; the mean closest to 5 wins and not everyone is allowed a 5. Why play? To qualify for more prestigious educational institutions. To manufacture products who will be successful in the marketplace. Bolster the economy and augment the future hegemony of the current trademark of corporate paper tiger capitalism.
She turns to the board and gags a bit as her students work behind her. That is how education is argued: economy.