Just Another Week in Suburbia

by Les Zig

  She smiles. ‘Sorry!’

  I retrieve my phone, grab my bag, and get out of the car. Beth’s car, a little red Hyundai Getz, is parked opposite mine.

  ‘You okay?’ Beth says.

  ‘I was thinking about today’s lesson plan.’

  ‘You’re late for the staff meeting.’

  I check the time on my phone. 8.51am. ‘So are you.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Something wrong?’

  Beth never greets me at my car. She’s usually the centre of attention in the staff room. Everybody has a crush on her; it’s not just that she’s pretty, but she has an almost mesmerising quality that makes people trust her.

  ‘I wanted to catch you while the others aren’t around,’ she says as we stroll towards the school.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can I talk to you during lunch? Maybe we could go to Sofia’s.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Nothing to be concerned about—I need a man’s opinion on something.’ Beth laughs, gives me a brief half embrace. ‘Sorry—I didn’t mean to sound like a drama queen. It’s nothing major, really. I don’t think it is, anyway.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Beth nods. ‘So, lunch?’

  ‘Okay. Do you want to meet there or drive up together?’

  ‘I’ll meet you at my car, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Kids filter into my classroom late. They’re so unconcerned. But that’s growing up. You’re born and don’t have a care in the world. They accumulate. The world teaches you to worry, whether you need to or not.

  Bianca and Justine come in, laughing. Then Anthony Tselikas, hulking and sullen, eyes fixed on Bianca’s rear. Then Dom Carelli. He grins at me. ‘Hey, Mr Gray.’

  ‘Good morning, Dom,’ I say. ‘Please sit down.’

  I take the roll to commence my Year 10 English class, calling through twenty-five names. Then I reach into my bag, which sits at the foot of my desk like an obedient dog, but freeze. For several seconds I forget why I’ve reached in there. All I see is clutter—homework I’ve marked, exercise books, and novels. Kids wait expectantly. Some shift in their seats. Others exchange sidelong glances. Justine whispers something behind her hand to Bianca. Bianca fights to contain a laugh. Another student—Maya Ino—has a book in her hands: The Catcher in the Rye. She sits upright, at attention, and holds the book straight so I can see the cover.

  That’s it.

  I pull my tattered copy of Catcher from my bag. ‘Everybody finished this?’

  Maya shoots up her hand. ‘I have, Mr Gray.’

  Some of the kids behind her roll their eyes. Others titter. Poor Maya. It doesn’t pay to excel in school—unless you want to become a pariah.

  For the next thirty minutes, we talk about Catcher. It’s pleasing to see kids like Dom (who I had to belabour into reading the book) and Anthony (who comes from a family where his father and two older brothers all have criminal records for repeated misdemeanours, and everybody expects him to go the same way) and Eric Duff (poor old Eric, who’s ridiculed throughout school—despite being funny and intelligent—because he’s overweight) get involved, appreciating Holden’s irreverence and rebellion.

  It also helps distract me. Pockets of chatter fire up. Usually, I’d refocus them to the main conversation. But right now, I welcome it.

  The door opens and Stuart Piper, the vice principal, comes in. He dresses in awful brown suits and tan shirts, and wears rectangular spectacles that are always sliding down his ski slope of a nose. He thinks he’s funny and knowledgeable and connects with the kids, but he doesn’t even connect with the adults.

  ‘Mr Gray, could I see you outside for a moment?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure.’ I get up, look at the kids. ‘For the next ten minutes, I want you to work on your own Catcher. Start a story about a journey you’ve taken and write about the things that’ve happened to you.’

  ‘Does it have to be true?’ Justine asks.

  ‘It can be whatever you like. Excuse me.’

  I follow Stuart out. His eyes narrow. He has such bushy eyebrows that his eyes almost disappear from view entirely. I wonder when Stuart became irrelevant—if he ever was relevant. How do people like him sidle through the world?

  ‘Look, Casper, I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your class; you’re one of my best teachers. But what’s going on in there?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The noise! Don’t you realise how noisy your class is?’

  ‘Really? Sorry. We were discussing Catcher.’

  ‘With so many people talking, I don’t know how you were discussing anything. Seems many of them were talking among themselves.’

  ‘But they were talking about Catcher.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stuart says in a tone indicating it’s not okay and he doesn’t believe my explanation. ‘Maybe keep it down a bit, huh?’

  ‘Sure. Sorry.’

  Silence. I wait to be dismissed, the way Stuart would dismiss one of the kids. He’s impossible to escape once he starts up. The kids joke about it. I’m sure he won’t hold me up when I have a class to teach, but he stands there not saying a thing.

  ‘I should—’ I begin.

  ‘You weren’t at the staff meeting this morning.’

  ‘I had some personal issues,’ I say.

  Stuart claps my shoulder, shakes me, a gesture that’s forced and robotic. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You know you can call on me if you ever need somebody to talk to.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You have my number.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘Okay.’ Stuart winks at me. ‘You best get back in there.’

  I reach for the door.

  ‘Casper?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let’s remember the volume.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I get back into the classroom. Typically, given there’s been no supervision, conversation has resumed. I clap my hands. ‘Can we keep it down, please?’ I ask, sure that the kids will connect my discipline with Stuart’s intrusion. But it doesn’t matter given the kids don’t think any more of Stuart than I do.

  I sit back at my desk, open my notebook. I want to undertake my own exercise, but I can’t stop contemplating what Jane might be doing now. I absently scribble a big cartoon cock across the lined page. I rip the page from the notebook, scrunch it up, throw it in my bin. Kids giggle. Others frown. The bell rings.

  ‘I’d like everybody to finish that by next week—one thousand words!’

  There are lots of groans, although Maya beams.

  ‘If you can’t finish that, then one thousand words on why you couldn’t.’

  Kids laugh. Some will take up the challenge, either because they want to prove how rebellious they are, or because it’s a challenge to look at something from a lateral perspective.

  Sometimes, I hope I’ll discover some great talent among them, and be able to nurture them into something better.

  But right now, I want class, and the day, to be over.

  I have Year 7 English next, and use it to silently rehearse how I’ll approach Jane. If the condom’s still in her bag, I can pretend I tripped on the bag tonight and found it then. If it’s not, I’ll have to tell her I found it yesterday but didn’t know how to approach her. I’ll also have to confront the possibility that the condom’s absence might mean it’s been used.

  I have to excuse myself and leave the room as the prospect makes my eyes mist. I don’t know what’d be worse: that she’s fucking somebody or she’s fallen in love with somebody. I guess we’re recoverable if it’s the former—if that’s something I could find in myself to do. Plain lust means no emotional attachment, although it suggests I’m deficient in some way. Love means something else entirely.

  When the bell rings, I head for the staff room, but bump into Shirley Crecy, the history teacher. Shirley’s a sixty-four-yea
r-old doddering sort whose house is probably overflowing with cats. She’s meant to have yard duty at recess, but I offer to do it for her. I tell her I want to stretch my legs, but the truth is I don’t want to be in the staff room.

  I picture it: the teachers sitting around the main tables, ‘the round table’ Stuart once christened it, although the tables have been arranged in a rectangle; almost without exception, everybody will have a coffee. They’ll reek of it.

  Jerry Logan, the maths teacher, will regale whomever’s unfortunate enough to be sitting next to him with his weekend’s adventures. Stan Doyle—one of the other English teachers—given a bit of prodding, will lament his unhappy marriage. Olivia Harding, the language teacher, seems a woman of the world, well travelled and multilingual. She is the latter, although it comes from listening to language CDs. There are others—Max Loughlin, the sports teacher, who talks only about football; Ed Welling, the accounting teacher, who thinks himself such a financial maestro, he advises everybody on how to handle their money, despite living in a one-bedroom flat and driving a twenty-year-old car. On and on they go. Right now, I don’t want to be part of them.

  Shirley accepts my offer. ‘If ever you need a breather, Casper …’ she says. The morning clouds are all but gone and I can taste the heat simmering. The kids, as always, have broken into groups—some play sport or other games, some sit and talk, some disappear into the toilets to smoke. They’re so free. This is their reserve.

  The school comprises two main buildings running parallel to one another, with courtyards and the canteen intersecting them. At either end are the locker rooms. They sit in their own buildings, and have concrete floors and roller shutters. Out the front, grass stretches from one end of the property to the other, where the parking lot is. Out the back are play areas—the school’s gym, outdoor basketball and tennis courts, and enclosed courtyards where they can play other games. Behind them is the school’s soccer field.

  I wander around the back where kids play ball sports or chase each other. Sitting in the net of the goals at one end of the soccer field are Bianca, Justine, and Dom, exchanging a cigarette. I should make the journey to tell them to stop, but today it seems so insignificant.

  I backtrack around one of the main buildings. Some Year 7s comment they saw me sitting in my car this morning, like they caught me doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I tell them I was installing an app on my phone. Luckily they don’t chase up the lie because if they asked what app, I wouldn’t know what to tell them.

  I keep going, passing one set of locker rooms. Through the entry, I see Deidre Kent and David Jenkins. David is leaning against the lockers in a pose probably meant to be suave. Hell, David’s sixteen, built like a tank, and champion of the football team—he is suave. Deidre, pivoting on the balls of her feet, hands locked in front of her, giggles at whatever he’s saying.

  From what I know, Deidre is the girlfriend of Kieran Nolan, who’s also on the football team. Looks like she’s moved on. Or maybe she hasn’t, but she’s about to.

  I walk on and think about relationships. My parents were married for twenty years before Mum died of cancer. They seemed happy, although they argued lots, and after Mum died, Dad slowly drank himself into oblivion. Jane’s parents have been married for over forty years. They don’t argue much—well, not that we see, but Jane says that’s the way they actually are—and still express a closeness you’d expect from a new relationship. I wonder if any of them ever strayed.

  I take my phone out of my pocket and type a message to Jane—Hey, what’re you up to?—but don’t send it. Jane and I don’t exchange messages like that anymore. We used to—little check-ins to reconnect. She found it sweet when I did that. But, rightly or wrongly, young love matures and those little gestures become increasingly infrequent.

  I put the phone back in my pocket and long for a beer, even now at 11.20am. Maybe for lunch I’ll suggest to Beth we go to The Andion—a pub across the road from The Corner—although who knows what she’d think of me drinking so early? I strike the idea.

  The bell rings and I hurry to class.

  I have a free period next and use it to correct English papers, although I read the same paragraphs over and over. But at least the staff room gives me some privacy, and when other teachers come in and see me huddled over the papers, they commend me for my industry and leave me alone.

  At 12.10, I pack everything into my bag and hurry to the parking lot. I throw my bag and blazer onto the back seat, then lean against Beth’s Hyundai Getz. The car’s dirty, the back panel dented, and the back seat crammed with art supplies.

  When the bell rings, kids spill from the school building. Beth smiles and waves as she scoots over.

  ‘You ready?’ she says.

  ‘Yep.’

  We get into her car and she drives us down to The Corner. Beth’s quiet along the way. Whatever she wants to talk about must be more serious than she let on.

  She pulls into the same spot I had this morning just as a car vacates it, which is lucky as there are no other spots except the handicap ones. My eyes rove down the street but Jean Jacket’s not there.

  We walk into Sofia’s and order toasted focaccias and milkshakes that are made in actual stainless steel cups. Beth has caramel while I have vanilla. Caroline’s husband, Leon, makes them. He’s big and grizzled, with the squashed nose of a boxer—not that I know if he ever boxed.

  ‘You gonna eat here or go back to school?’ Leon asks, sliding our milkshakes across the counter. He puts his arm around Caroline, swallowing her in his bulk. She gives me my change, then pops a straw in each milkshake.

  ‘You kidding?’ Beth says. ‘It’s a relief to get out of the asylum for a bit.’

  Leon gives us a number—eight—to take to our table. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ he says. ‘I dread going home to ours.’

  ‘Leon!’ Caroline says.

  Leon kisses Caroline on the cheek. His mouth is like a plunger. Caroline laughs and shakes. I almost shudder as I visualise the two of them having sex, Caroline’s small legs splayed as Leon’s huge backside bounces up and down.

  I pick up our milkshakes. Beth grabs our number and leads us to a table in the corner by the archway and facing the window, although the view is only of The Andion across the road. We sit down and she sips her milkshake, like she wants to occupy her mouth because she doesn’t want to get into why she brought me here.

  ‘You all right?’ I ask.

  Beth takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. ‘I would’ve killed for a beer,’ she says.

  Now she tells me.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m so nervous,’ she says. ‘Feels like I’m on a first date or something.’ She takes another sip from her milkshake. She’s already halfway through it. ‘How’s the drawing?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Just okay?’

  ‘I’ve done some more little things.’

  ‘I’d love to see anything new. You should bring them in,’ Beth says. ‘Or I can drop by.’

  Drop by? Beth’s never been to my house. Strange that she’d invite herself. Now I wonder if she’s got me out here to admit feelings for me. Who knows how these things work?

  ‘I’m still … um …’

  ‘What?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m looking for my masterpiece. I’ve drawn lots of simple stuff. I’m looking for something bigger.’

  ‘A breakthrough.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think I’m attractive?’

  I freeze in the motion of taking the first sip from my milkshake. One of the waitresses comes over with our focaccias. She’s in a cream uniform and doesn’t look old enough to be out of high school herself.

  ‘Ham, cheese, no tomato?’ she asks.

  ‘Mine,’ I say, my eyes still on Beth. She’s gone back to sucking on her milkshake.

  The waitress puts the focaccias down in front of each of us, then leaves, which means I now have to handle Beth.

  She
’s never previously shown any interest in me. She has a long-time boyfriend, some lawyer named Roger, whom she’s lived with for the last year or so. Beth brought him to the staff Christmas party where he looked down on everything and everybody. Beth said he was preoccupied with some civil suit he was working on (and later won big time). I think he thought we were beneath him.

  ‘Beth …’ I say, then I don’t know what’s next. I’m flattered. Or, I’m married. Or both. I don’t know. But I have to say something, have to stamp this out before it gets even more uncomfortable—if that’s possible. ‘Beth,’ I say again, ‘I’m …’

  ‘It’s Roger,’ Beth says. ‘We’ve been together five years. And look.’ She holds up her left hand, wriggles her naked fingers. ‘Nothing. Not a wedding ring, not even an engagement ring.’ She smiles forlornly. ‘I don’t mean to sound desperate. Do I sound desperate?’

  I’m still getting over the blunder I almost made. ‘No, not at all,’ I say, although I don’t know if my answer was loud enough to cross the table. I take a bite of my focaccia.

  ‘It’s not like I want to get married straight away. But I want to know we’re heading in the same direction. For a while, I was dropping hints, you know, about getting engaged. Lately, I’ve been a lot more blunt, saying we should plan for the future.’

  ‘What’s Roger say?’

  ‘He gets angry.’

  She falls silent. I wait for Beth to elaborate.

  ‘Dominant.’

  ‘Dominant? Does he … hurt you?’

  ‘No!’ she says, but the exclamation feels forced. She takes a moment to compose herself. ‘He’s dominant in that he expects things to be his way,’ she goes on. ‘He says we have plenty of time. And we do, I guess. But I feel like he’s keeping me at bay. Almost like he’s weighing up his options.’

  Given my impression of Roger, it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true.

  ‘So, I’m wondering, am I attractive? Maybe I repulse him.’

  ‘If you repulse him, he’s blind.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s not my looks. Maybe I repulse him.’

  ‘Beth, you know neither of those are true. You’re gorgeous. Everybody loves you. Every boy at school has a crush on you.’