Out of the corner of her eye she saw her student Daniel Madrang walk in with his parents, followed by Phuc Lee with her mother and grandmother.
“Thank you,” Khadija interpreted for her parents. “But Ms. Avellan, I want to say I’m sorry about the uh…” In addition to struggling with her English, Khadija couldn’t look Isa in the face. “The survey. Ali told me about it.”
A chill blasted through Isa’s composure. She meant to smile but probably looked like she was baring her teeth for the kill.
“You did well speaking for your parents,” Isa assured her. “They have much to be proud of. Show them around.”
Khadija’s face reddened under Isa’s compliment. “I will. Thank you.”
Susan appeared beside her. “Keep this.” She dropped the bottle in Isa’s hand. “And I’ll be happy to watch Andrew Saturday night if he’s not with Carlos. Just give me a call.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh now, don’t you give me that look, Isabella Avellan. You need to not be so, so—”
“What?”
“Estirada, stuck up.”
“I’m no—” Isa caught herself when heads turned in their direction. “You know me better than that.”
Susan preened when she’d finally got a rise out of Isa. “Alex doesn’t,” she chirped and then slipped out the door.
8
“’Kay listen up out there,” Rocco Ramie shouted over the airwaves. “I just read this story about some cheerleaders in a town called Sweetwater started this Sex Savvy Survey and had their friends vote the most uh, do-able teachers in the school.”
“Dude, where the hell is that?” his partner in crime, Sal Salamie chimed in.
“I don’t know. Somewhere between Orange County and L.A. Can I finish here?”
“I had a teacher I once wanted to—” Bleep.
“Shut up, as—” Bleep. “Can I fu—” Bleep. “Finish?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, man.”
Fucking FCC, Rocco thought before he continued. “So the ones who were voted unsexiest started this big stink and got the girls suspended and then one of them, some ESL teacher, found a blow-up doll in a classroom.”
“Male or female?”
“The doll or the teacher?”
“Both!”
“Female.”
“They make blow-up dolls for lesbians?”
“They make anything these days. So we did some investigating and not only found a picture of the fugly teacher but—”
Sal held up the photo and cocked his head to the side. “Dude, she’s not that fugly.”
“Anything with breasts and a mouth isn’t fugly to you, Sal.”
Rocco saw the “f-you” about to erupt from Sal’s mouth and he personally hit the bleep button and then said, “So we at Rock Hard in the Morning got y’all a present this fine Friday morning. We got the ex-husband of the teacher who was voted by her students as the fugliest of them all! Welcome Carlos Lopez.”
Rocco turned to the loser sitting across from him, who said, “Yo man, what up? But, uh, my last name—”
“I’m shocked man,” Rocco said. “Shocked that you were married to someone who has been voted fugly by her students. How long were you married to her?”
Carlos glanced at Sal and then the mic. “Uh, too long. So about my last—”
“’Kay, so what was it like?” Sal asked.
Clearing his throat, Carlos leaned forward. “I mean she ain’t that bad when it comes to looks and all. She put on a little weight, ya know what I’m saying?”
“I bet you have too,” Rocco said, wondering if vato here went through an entire bottle of hair gel every morning. He circled his hand for Carlos to keep talking.
“But a man wants a woman to you know, move around or yell something when he’s doing his thing, you know? Like I was saying my na—”
“I had a girlfriend like that once,” Sal added. Sal had a wife he met in college, so Rocco knew he was lying. But then this whole thing was pretty much an act. And they were stuck with yahoos like…Rocco looked down at the paper and realized Carlos’s last name was Muñoz. Whatever, dumb shits like Carlos who wanted to be on his radio were all the same to him. But what they had cooked up for Carlos would guarantee ratings out the roof.
“Was she like that when you met her?” Rocco said, moving it along.
“She was a little uptight. But cute and you know, she let me do what I wanted.” Carlos shrugged. “We won’t say her name, ’ight?”
Sal and Rocco exchanged glances. This is where shit got dicey. As long as they kept her anonymous, they’d stay out of any legal crap. Rocco just hoped she really was the bitch Carlos said she was and then he could stay out of any conscience crap.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do, because man to man, this is wrong,” Sal said, sidestepping Carlos’s question.
“Thanks man, bu—”
“You’re welcome. Rocco, tell him what we’re gonna do for him.”
“Carlos, because there’re hundreds, thousands, millions of men out there who’ve been through what you’ve been through, we’ve selected five lovely ladies to compete for a weekend alone with you at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas.”
Rocco hoped they’d pull this off when the girls got a look at this pasty, fat-faced wannabe in a Raiders jersey and vato short pants with knee high white socks and Pumas. It’s a living, he told himself.
“Aw man—”
“And you’re going first class all the way, especially with these ladies we’ve found for you.”
Sal hit the switch and Guns ’N’ Roses’s “Paradise City” faded up.
“Isa? It’s me, Tamara.”
Surprised, Isa felt the first real smile of her week spread across her face. “Why are you calling so early?” she asked, looking over her shoulder before she pulled away from Andrew’s school, where she’d just dropped him off with his backpack filled with clothes he’d need for the weekend with Carlos.
“Where are you?” Tamara asked.
“In the car. Why?”
“Are you driving or at a stop?”
Isa turned to face the steering wheel, suddenly aware that her friend’s voice was tight with rage. “Is everything okay?” All sorts of things swept through her head: Tamara catching Will with another woman, Susan moving in with them—all of which would never happen. Well, maybe Susan moving in, but—
“Will just called me. Carlos is on the radio, and they said some kids put a blow-up doll in your classroom.”
Isa breathed through her mouth, the most unlikely idea curling out of her imagination.
“He’s on Rock Hard in the Morn—”
Isa flung the phone across the car as if it had sprouted needles and fumbled with her car radio. A blur of noise spat out of the speakers as she raced through the stations until she landed on KHRD just when Carlos said, “A man wants a woman to you know, move around or yell something when he’s doing his thing, you know?”
Tamara’s voice shouted from the shadows of the passenger-side floor. Isa could only blink as it sunk in that on the radio, Carlos just called sex with her “doing his thing” to millions of people everywhere.
She felt like God was using her head as an anvil as she bent down and picked up the phone. “I’ll call you back,” she said, then added, “I did not find a blow-up doll in my classroom!” She hit “end.”
As Carlos said the nastiest things a man could say about his ex-wife, her phone rang again and Isa answered, “Hello?”
“Uh, Isa, it’s me, Alex.”
Oh, God. Oh God oh God oh God oh God!
“Is this a bad time?” he asked.
He hadn’t heard the radio. If there was a God, he hadn’t heard her ex-husband spewing details about their sex life to the entire world.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“I wanted to see if you were doing anything tomorrow night so we could talk about the team.”
“The team?”
�
�Yeah, you know, the one that Andrew’s on.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re all right? You sound, uh, like something’s wrong.”
Yes, something was definitely wrong when she was being pulled down by some giant cosmic toilet flush.
“Tomorrow night is great,” she managed.
“Isa, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is it Andrew?”
His concern made it worse. Her throat closed up as her composure slipped away like a snake. “I need to get going. Is six-thirty all right?”
Oh God, what about her students? If they didn’t hear it on the radio, they’d hear about it from the others. Her loyal ones would be embarrassed for her. The others, well, it’d be just like high school again when everyone but Isa knew who Carlos had been sleeping with the night before.
Her phone beeped as someone, more than likely Tamara or Susan, was trying to call.
“Where are you?” he asked, brokering no protests.
“I’m on my way to work.” Speaking over him, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Are you sure because—”
“I’m absolutely sure.” She ended the call and sniffled back her tears.
Isa had to prove to herself that she could do something rather than just endure quietly in the background. Paint her nails blinding neon green? Dye her hair copper-penny red? Wear her Hustler shirt to a bar?
“Make him pay,” Joan advised from the backseat, stroking a fox pelt draped over her shoulders. “Use Alex to make all of them pay. God only knows a mousy little woman like you needs an orgasm.”
“Hey, who asked you?”
“Listen to that foul creature. Listen to what he’s saying about you,” Joan admonished. “Darling, when will you understand that you have more power than you think you do!”
“If you say one thing about my clothes—”
“My dear, anyone will tell you that you could use a little sprucing up. That natural look is—” She gave a delicate shudder and shut her eyes that were shadowed and highlighted in all of her eighties TV queen glory. “You can do better,” she insisted. “And while you’re at it, get yourself a better hairstyle.”
Isa shifted her gaze from Joan to her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her skin had gone ashy and the lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth reminded her of a hound dog. If she went a day longer without bleaching her moustache or plucking her eyebrows, she was going to look like Frida Kahlo on testosterone. And tiny wisps of hair frizzed out from the top of her head.
She looked back at Joan, who glistened like a priceless jewel. Was this how people saw Isa? Tired and well past her prime?
Joan lifted an arched eyebrow, having seen that Isa got her point. Isa twisted around. The backseat was empty.
Isa punched the radio off and then pressed the pedal down. Her tires yelped and she shot into the street amidst honking horns and shouts. Whatever screw that soccer ball had loosened in her head, Isa had to agree with Joan: she wasn’t that mousy fifteen-year-old girl who let everyone parade over her anymore.
She had a date, even if it really wasn’t a date. She was going to look good for herself, let Alex see what he’d dismissed that day at practice.
Her breath whistling through her clenched teeth, Isa sped past the cars that had been waiting for the green light at the intersection. Andrew was spending the weekend with his father while his mother was about to raise hell.
9
ISA’S HOROSCOPE FOR SEPTEMBER 15
The planets are pointing to a sentiment succinctly expressed by former Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. “If you want anything said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”
The school office was quiet and the late-afternoon sun slid through the window blinds. Isa heard Lissi, the school nurse, instruct one of her kids over the phone to do the laundry and vacuum the living room before she came home. June had already taken the day off to meet her mother in L.A. for the weekend.
Her stomach felt hollow and she could feel every little hair spiking off the back of her neck. In the past, Isa had only spoken with Dr. Quilley to discuss new projects or be commended; she’d never faced disciplinary action, much less brandished a sex toy at school.
After Carlos’s appearance on Rock Hard in the Morning, the embarrassment had been strung out through the entire day. She’d made a brief appearance in the teacher’s lounge during lunch but quickly departed when conversations halted the moment she stepped in the doorway.
And then there was Alex. How was she going to face him tomorrow night?
She glanced at Dr. Quilley’s office door. One thing at a time.
“Dr. Quilley?” she squeaked, peering around the corner of his doorway.
He turned from his game of online mah-jongg, grinning like a bashful kid. “Ah, Ms. Avellan. Please close the door behind you.”
His office smelled like the smoky-sweet pipe tobacco he favored. A violin was propped up on an elaborately carved Victorian music stand and on the wall was a framed poster of Sherlock Holmes’s London home, 221B Baker Street that had made the trip from the classroom where he taught honors English, to this office where he ruled the school.
“Well, Ms. Avellan, I am very concerned about the scene you displayed in the office Friday morning,” he started as she perched at the very edge of the chair facing his desk. “Do you have anything to say?”
It lanced her boiling guilt. “I know it was not the most professional display and I’m not proud of dragging a blow-up doll across campus but—”
“You should’ve left it up to us,” he said firmly but without anger. “You should’ve called us to Mr. Weisshaar’s classroom.”
“I know.”
He straightened as if they were done with that particularly nasty business. “Good. I think we’re quite clear on that business.”
It took a second for her to realize he hadn’t said, you’re fired. She blurted, “Why?”
“I understand that you’re under severe duress.”
If he only knew, she thought, twisting her hands in her lap and hoping Joan wouldn’t show up.
“And I’ve received calls from several parents who heard about your husband on the radio this morning.” Even though he said it without judgment, his words caused suspicion to crawl up her neck. “You’re one of my best teachers but I have to know, will this interfere with your ability to teach?”
She tried to reply but nothing came out.
“There’s more,” he said gently. “The district is talking about cutting back and ESL is at the top of the list.”
She slumped back in her chair, her trembling hand moving up to her hair and then drifting back down to her lap. “But I have students who can’t form a sentence much less understand an all-English environment. They already took away our interpreters and some of these kids only have a specialist once a month. What will they do with them?”
“They will mainstream them or send them to a neighboring district,” Dr. Quilley said. “One of the school board members is a good friend of Carrie Barcus’s parents and they’re threatening to sue as well as make life difficult for us for suspending their daughter.”
This was just too much and yet she had no choice but to hold on.
“Carlos hasn’t come out and named me publicly,” she said. “And it’s not affecting my teaching. Actually, the students have found a new respect after I dragged the blow-up doll to your office.”
He laughed dryly and some of the tension shrank. “But Ms. Avellan, be careful from here on out,” he warned. “We’ll back you up and your student’s scores and grades will back you up, but the district is looking to cut funding and this girl’s parents are…they’re hungry for blood.”
“Don’t they realize they could ruin the education of students?” But she already knew the answer. Many people thought of ESL as a throwaway program, an excuse for immigrants not to assimilate and not become “American.” And since the parents of these kids didn’t speak English and often came from countries where
they didn’t speak up to authority, they were left at the mercy of decisions made by people who didn’t understand or really care about them.
But she knew these kids. They had been ripped out of their culture into this bold, often confusing American one. She knew that unlike bored Spanish One students who needed a foreign language credit, these kids needed ESL to survive.
“So what are you prepared to do, Ms. Avellan?” His tone allowed for no panic or numbness.
That question haunted Isa through the rest of the day and night. It gnawed at her while she browsed the make-up aisle at the drug store, ate a dinner she couldn’t taste, and then woke up from the rare moments she drifted into a sound sleep.
Isa jumped out of bed at half past ten, not having slept that late since her first week at college. The apartment was so lonely without Andrew. She stood in the door to his bedroom. She even grinned that he had shoved his things under his bed, probably trying to fool her into thinking he had cleaned up his room.
Isa walked into the bathroom, straightening the hand towels and checking if she needed to put in another roll of toilet paper. She even counted the number of Q-tips. Everything was in order but her.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered to her reflection above the pedestal sink.
Isa dropped her face in her hands and her hair fell in a ragged curtain. Where was Joan when she needed her? What happened to the fury that had caused her to drive to work like a maniac yesterday morning?
Inhaling deeply, she lifted her chin and her bangs flopped into her eyes. Joan was probably right. She needed a new look, a bold one.
Then again, she liked who she was, well, sometimes she did. The plastic shopping bag crinkled when she picked it up from the shelf where she left it last night. So maybe a little makeup experimentation and a trim was what she needed to get her mind off things. As she reached for her scissors to trim her bangs, Isa knew all she needed was just a little pampering and improvement.
In Between Men Page 5