The Math Teacher Is Dead

by Robert Manners

  “Is that bad?” Danny wondered; as an exhibitionist, he always enjoyed feeling exposed.

  “No. Just kind of scary,” Ash admitted, pushing his hair back and looking Danny in the eye. “You’re kind of scary. How did you know I was gay?”

  “I didn’t,” Danny told him.

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  “I wanted to. If you didn’t want me to, you could have pulled away,” Danny reached up and ran his finger along Ash’s lower lip, “I’m glad you didn’t pull away.”

  “I’m glad you wanted to kiss me,” Ash lay down against Danny, though with his feet still on the floor, and nestled his head against Danny’s shoulder.

  “Do you want to eat dinner?” Danny asked after a few minutes like this, his horny mind already charging ahead to think of all the things they could do in the next thirty-five minutes besides eating.

  “I think we’d better,” Ash sat up and shook his head decisively, getting up from the cot and moving the tea tray off the low table to make room for the dinner tray, “I think your Tia would be mad if we didn’t.”

  “I think you’re right,” Danny agreed, leaning over to pluck the silver dome from the plate nearest him, “Oh, yum, duck!”

  The boys ate their dinners, talking in a desultory stop-and-start manner throughout the meal; Ash seemed shy all of a sudden, afraid to meet Danny’s eye, and giving in to long thoughtful silences; but he didn’t hide behind his hair again, so Danny didn’t try to draw him out further. He didn’t know what was going to develop with Ash, and once his cock went down and he could think with his brain, he didn’t want to try to force it in any one direction or another, for fear of spoiling the easy camaraderie they’d already created.

  When Mrs. Espinosa returned, exactly forty minutes later, Ash decided he should go home, and made a production of putting his things together and giving Danny the sheets of homework that had been the ostensible reason for his visit but which had been quite forgotten. When he left, promising to bring the next day’s homework the following afternoon, the housekeeper walked him out and left Danny on the porch to think.

  “What are your intentions with that boy?” Mrs. Espinosa asked him when she returned a short time later with a wheelchair, ready to cart him into the bathroom and then put him to bed.

  “I don’t know, Tia,” Danny shrugged, not sure what else to tell her.

  “And what about Jeremy?” the housekeeper looked a little disapproving; she’d known about Jeremy from the beginning of their relationship, but she didn’t know (or Danny didn’t think she knew) about his other activities. He shared his emotional experiences with her, but he was embarrassed to share his carnal experiences.

  “I don’t know,” Danny said again, putting his good foot on the floor and his arm around her shoulders so she could hoist him into the wheelchair, “I don’t think it changes anything with Jeremy.”

  “Well, let me tell you this, mijo,” the housekeeper dumped him into the chair and wheeled him across his bedroom while he held his injured leg straight out in front of him, “If you can’t say to Jeremy that you kissed Ash, then it does change things.”

  “‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive,’” Danny quoted as Mrs. Espinosa settled a stool next to the filled bathtub and pulled all the soaps and shampoos Danny would need off the higher shelves so he wouldn’t have to stand up.

  “Just be careful, Danny,” Mrs. Espinosa leaned down and looked the boy in the eye, “It’s one thing to play with people’s bodies, that’s what boys do; but don’t go playing with people’s hearts. That’s not how we raised you.”

  “Yes, Tia,” Danny assented meekly, though he wasn’t sure he knew which was which.

  9

  When Ash arrived at the Lake House the following afternoon, he was directed into the library on the first floor instead of Danny’s room; once there, he found a sort of tea-party in progress: all three of the Aunt Ems were there, along with their butler Oscar, having decided that they couldn’t do without Danny for another afternoon and so brought afternoon tea to him; Danny’s mother was also there, since the Aunt Ems were senior members of the family and etiquette demanded she join them, but she mightily resented them bringing their own servant and so sat sourly in a corner disapproving of the whole thing; and Jeremy was there, seated next to Aunt Mathilda and gazing around at the room with interest.

  The library is a long and relatively narrow room, with a wide, low brick fireplace at one end, lined with built-in bookcases decorated with carved poppies in an Art Nouveau Chinoiserie style; the windows were leaded diamond-panes with stained glass insets, draped in heavy brown velvet embroidered with bronze chrysanthemums, and one double French door stood open to the broad flagstone terrace that ran the length of the house; the furniture is solid and heavy, square with rounded corners, upholstered in the same embroidered velvet as the window treatments, and quietly lit with Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps all around.

  Danny was at the center of the room in an armchair with his foot up on a low stool, industriously flexing his now-brace-free ankle to get the circulation going in preparation for walking on it the next day; he was dressed a little more formally than usual, in a royal blue fine-gauge cashmere sweater and tan chinos.

  “Ash! Come in,” Danny cried out when he spotted the newcomer standing diffidently in the doorway, an armful of books propped against his hip, “May I present my friend, Ash Phillips? This is my mother, Mrs. Taylor Vandervere, and my great-aunts Miss Mathilda, Miss Myrtle, and Miss Maude Vandervere. And I think you may already know Jeremy Sinclair from school.”

  “Hi,” Ash responded to the barrage of greetings with a small wave of his free hand. Oscar stepped forward and indicated a free spot on the sofa next to Miss Myrtle, then brought him a cup of tea and a plate of cookies.

  “Ash is a very promising artist,” Danny told the assembled company, making the boy blush.

  “What is your medium?” Aunt Mathilda asked seriously.

  “Oils, mostly,” Ash responded, “though I do a lot of sketching with pencils and pastels, and some photography as well.”

  “Very sound,” the old lady approved, nodding sagely.

  “Did I miss anything interesting at school today?” Danny asked Ash.

  “No, not really,” the boy shrugged, concentrating on his cookies.

  “Actually,” Jeremy cut in, “there was something — not interesting so much as awful. They called an assembly of the whole school this morning, and told us that one of our teachers had died. Mr. Janacek, the math teacher.”

  “Oh, dear,” Myrtle and Maude gasped almost in unison; but there were rather fewer gasps of surprise at this information than Jeremy expected; Danny and Ash of course already knew, and Mrs. Vandervere had heard it from her husband, while Aunt Mathilda had heard it from a friend on the police force.

  “Wasn’t that the man whose body you found, Marc-Daniel?” Beatrice Vandervere asked, surprisingly loudly.

  “Yes, Mother,” Danny answered sheepishly, not wanting to talk about that horrible morning.

  “You never told me,” Jeremy sounded hurt and angry.

  “I didn’t think I was supposed to,” Danny explained, looking over at his boyfriend with a look that begged forgiveness, “It’s a police investigation, Officer Kelly warned me not to talk about it to anyone.”

  “And I seem to recall you were involved also, Mr. Phillips?” Beatrice went on blithely, sensing that she was causing trouble somewhere, and though she didn’t know where or between whom she was determined to enlarge on it, “though ‘Ash’ isn’t the name my husband mentioned, it was ‘Eugene.’”

  Ash’s head shot up in surprise, looking at the woman as if she’d slapped him, “I go by Ash. It’s a nickname.”

  “It’s a very unusual nickname, is it short for something?” she dug the wound a little deeper.

  “Ashtaroth,” the boy almost whispered.

  “Marc-Daniel,” Beatrice laughed, turning to her s
on, “Isn’t there an old black horse at the hotel named Ashtaroth? I seem to remember.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Danny replied, wishing she’d shut up but unwilling to be rude to her, “A very fine Arabian, he looks like one of the horses of the Apocalypse, but he’s gentle as a lamb.”

  “How fitting,” she gave Ash a feline smile, “I suppose you’re quite gentle, too, Mr. Phillips?”

  “Beatrice,” Aunt Mathilda jumped into the fray, sensing the boy needed rescuing, “I seem to remember that your given name is Agnes. Pronounced with that charming Bostonian flat A.”

  “It’s an old family name,” Beatrice answered defensively.

  “And quite a good one,” Mathilda went on, “It’s ancient Greek, and means ‘chaste.’ And that’s as in ‘untouched,’ not as in ‘run after.’”

  “And what does ‘Mathilda’ mean?” Danny wondered, hoping the conversation could be routed into neutral territory.

  “‘Strength in battle,’” the old lady answered, an eyebrow arched triumphantly at her niece-in-law, “It’s Germanic. The name ‘Eugene’ is also Greek, as we’re on the subject, and means ‘well-born’ or ‘noble.’ And Ashtaroth, aside from being the name of a Biblical demon, means ‘house of Ishtar.’ Ishtar was of course a Babylonian goddess, and the Hebrews always made demons of the gods of the lands in which they were captive.”

  “Fascinating,” Aunt Maude piped in, “What does my name mean, dear?”

  “Actually, your name is a diminutive of my name,” Mathilda told her sister, “And so means the same thing. Myrtle of course is named for the myrtle tree, which was sacred to Aphrodite and was therefore a popular name for prostitutes in ancient Greece.”

  “Mattie!” Aunt Myrtle gasped, horrified, “How could you?”

  “It’s just trivia, dear heart,” Aunt Mathilda smiled soothingly, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But the meaning of a person’s name often connotes something about a person’s personality, don’t you think?” Danny wondered, “Especially names one chooses oneself?”

  “Perhaps, Marcus, perhaps. You for example: your front name is derived from the Roman god of war, Mars. But your middle name, which you seem to prefer, means ‘God is my judge,’… make of that what you will. And your mother, who prefers to be ‘Beatrice,’ which means ‘voyager,’ is I think rather fond of travel.”

  “How do you know all that?” Jeremy wondered, awestruck.

  “I’ve been sitting in a library for sixty years, my dear boy,” Aunt Mathilda brushed her hand against Jeremy’s smooth cheek and smiled at him, “Your name, incidentally, is an old English version of Jeremiah, which means ‘God has uplifted.’ Do you feel like God has uplifted you?”

  “Sometimes,” Jeremy admitted, looking meaningfully at Danny, “And sometimes not so much.”

  “We used to have a gardener named Jeremiah, didn’t we Mattie?” Aunt Maude was still on names.

  “But wait,” Jeremy interrupted, his mind catching on something that had been said earlier and not explained, “How did you and Ash find Mr. Janacek’s body?”

  “It was on the path where I run,” Danny explained, frowning to indicate that the subject should be dropped, “And Ash was working on his photography on the same trail.”

  “How did he die?” Jeremy wanted to know.

  “Strangled, I think,” Danny said quietly, “With a belt.”

  “They just said he ‘passed away’ at school this morning,” Jeremy leaned back in the sofa and took a sip of his tea, “I suppose they couldn’t say he’d been killed, it would have upset everyone too much. As it is, we have grief counselors camped out in the library if anyone wants to talk to them, and they’re requiring all of Mr. Janacek’s students to go.”

  “Have the police been there?” Ash asked.

  “Not that I saw,” Jeremy answered, not looking at the other boy, “But they told us he’d passed away on Friday night, so the police had all weekend investigate at the school.”

  “Well,” Aunt Mathilda said, “I’m glad the school has responded to the tragedy so efficiently. Though I wonder why they waited until today to make the announcement.”

  “I would suppose they needed time to summon the grief counselors,” Aunt Myrtle reasoned, “We don’t keep them on staff, they had to be ordered from out of town.”

  “It’s so silly, though,” Jeremy protested, “Why should we need grief counseling? I mean, I’m sorry he’s dead, but he was a teacher, none of us really knew him.”

  “I did,” Danny said, too quietly for anyone to hear, determining to seek out one of the counselors first thing when he got to school.

  Aunt Mathilda took control of the conversation at that point, sticking to the topic of the efficacy of the school’s various services, soliciting the boys’ opinions as students but briskly rerouting any digressions back to the central subject. Eventually the tea ran out and Oscar started packing everything back into the big wicker hampers he’d brought, and the Aunt Ems began pulling themselves together for the trip home.

  Danny briefly entertained the idea of asking his mother if Ash and Jeremy could stay to dinner, but the malicious expression on her face dissuaded him from speaking. He conversed only briefly with Ash when the boy gave him his homework, thanking him profusely but not able to say anything else; nor was he able to speak to Jeremy, though he very much wanted to apologize for not telling him about finding Mr. Janacek’s body. He told each of them that he’d call them later in the evening if that was alright, and saw the suspicious glances the two boys directed at each other before going their separate ways, Jeremy with the Aunt Ems and Ash to his own car.

  Left alone in the library, Danny tried to come to some resolution about Ash and Jeremy: should he tell Ash about his relationship with Jeremy? Should he tell Jeremy about kissing Ash? Would either of them feel threatened by the other knowing he was gay? He realized then that he had painted himself into a corner by being a party to all this secrecy; after all, when he was dating Sandra and Felicia, everyone had known that he was taken, and there was no room for exploring other people without starting a shitstorm of gossip.

  He nevertheless resolved to reform his behavior on a more honorable and honest model, backpedaling with Ash and devoting himself more assiduously to Jeremy, since that was the longer-standing relationship. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, he was going to do those things, but he intended to at least try.

  He did not resolve, however, to stop having sex with anyone who would let him; he convinced himself that the no-strings-attached activity had no bearing on his relations with the two friends with whom he had developed an emotional connection but hadn’t had sex.

  Though Danny’s doctor had told him that he could and should get out of bed and not elevate his ankle anymore, he was not supposed to walk with is full weight on the injured leg, and so hobbled out of the library and up the two flights of stairs to his room with the assistance of a fabulous old silver and walnut walking-stick that had belonged to his great-grandfather; he masturbated, showered, and changed as usual, but still had dispensation from dining with his parents, so he put on a pair of dark red sweatpants and a black t-shirt instead of his usual jacket and tie, and ate his dinner on a tray at his desk, watching the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet DVD on his laptop and speaking Tybalt’s lines aloud.

  After dinner, he hobbled out to the stables to curry Tenorino after Kevin exercised him, singing softly to the horse as he worked, wishing he could go riding but sure it would be too much of a strain on his ankle — for though riding doesn’t put one’s weight on one’s feet, it does require a great deal of tension in the leg, and he was afraid of doing anything that might delay having his ankle in full working order again. His body felt sluggish after four days of minimal exertion, he yearned to run and jump and work up a sweat.

  Back in his room, he completed his homework quickly and did some web-surfing to pass the time until he got into bed and went to sleep. And laying there in the dark, waiting for sleep to come, he t
hought about Mr. Janacek: not about the corpse, but about the man, considering his odd behavior with sex (allowing sexual contact but no affectionate contact, all strictly oral but no kissing), his funny smile when he laughed, the way he lit up when he was teaching and someone would demonstrate understanding of what he was saying. It made him horribly sad that all that niceness and intelligence was gone from the world; and it made him terribly angry that some one person would purposely take all that niceness and intelligence, would callously snuff out that light.

  Much to his own surprise, Danny realized that he wanted to find and punish Mr. Janacek’s killer, to exact revenge for the death of a good man.

  10

  When Danny returned to school on Wednesday morning, he was greeted like a conquering war-hero, still utilizing the walking stick and enjoying the displays of sympathy it elicited. During gym, he spent his hour on the weight machines, unable yet to take part in calisthenics and definitely forbidden to run or jump. He also managed to draw Derrick, the blond trumEric, into the laundry room for a quick but highly satisfactory tussle among the discarded towels.

  He later availed himself of the grief counseling service, but didn’t find it very helpful: the counselors were young and very earnest psychiatric interns doing their clinical hours; and though the young woman he ended up speaking with was very soothing, listening closely and offering fairly practical platitudes about how to adjust to the loss of a teacher, Danny did not trust her sufficiently to reveal his sexual relationship with Mr. Janacek, and so found the talk a little frustrating.

  Thursday, he went without the walking stick, swam laps for gym class, and invited Tommy Williams, second-string of the gymnastics team, into the back of his Explorer for a leisurely fuck after lunch, taking so long about it that he missed chemistry class. In drama club, he rehearsed his lines with Anna MacAllan, the dumpy brunette who was playing Lady Capulet, and supervised Jeremy and Jack Butler, the handsome blond perennial lead who had not surprisingly been cast as Romeo, in their fencing practice. He and Jeremy took the streetcar to the Aunt Ems after that, and had their afternoon tea, making out as usual in Danny’s room before being driven back by Oscar.