The Lesson

by Welch, Virginia

  “Son, your mama said to stop that. Now you stop it.” Kevin’s voice was calm but firm. He didn’t wait for Benjamin’s response. Silently he pulled the startled little boy to his chest, pressing his body gently to his shoulder, cradling the tot’s head lovingly in his palm. Benjamin didn’t even try to resist. Without another sound he obediently laid his little head on Kevin’s shoulder, and hiccupping loudly, settled in for a good rest. Kevin turned to Bonnie. “He’s just tired. Can we walk you to your car?”

  “My Datsun is parked right next to the chapel. It’s white.” Bonnie said.

  Kevin took the lead, guiding the girls and baby Sarah through the throngs of adults and children who streamed into the parking lot. Once he was safely a few steps ahead of the girls, Bonnie looked at Gina and lifted her eyebrows as if to say, “Wow! Where’d you get this guy?” but Gina shook her head madly and mouthed a resounding “No!” It was obvious to Gina that her girlfriend was most impressed by this Hallmark cuddle moment; Gina didn’t know what to make of it. She was anxious to explain to Bonnie how things really were with her and Kevin, but that would have to wait.

  Bonnie stopped in front of her shiny, new, two-door Honeybee.

  “A new car?” asked Gina.

  “Olive branch,” whispered Bonnie. “I’ll tell you about it later.” Then she awkwardly tried to fish her keys out of her purse while she held Sarah with one arm.

  “Here, please let me,” said Kevin, as he put out his hand to take her keys.

  Bonnie handed Kevin the keys. He opened the car door, pushed back the driver’s seat, and easy-as-pie placed Benjamin onto the back seat, unreeled the seat belt from its housing, and buckled him in. Gina watched through the window as little Benjamin smiled at Kevin and patted his face with his grubby hand. Kevin picked up a small stuffed toy off the floor, handed it to the boy, and then kissed him on the forehead. Benjamin was obviously delighted with the male attention, but not nearly as delighted as his mother, who kept making bug eyes at Gina that said, “Can you BELIEVE this guy? Where on earth did you find him?” Then Kevin took sleeping Sarah from her mother, walked around to the other side of the car, opened the passenger door and just as deftly strapped the baby girl into her infant seat, adjusting one ill-fitting strap then the other to fit her securely, buckling her in as smoothly as though he’d done it a hundred times. He grabbed a cloth diaper that had been tossed onto the seat and wrapped it around the buckle to keep the warm metal away from her skin. The last thing he did was check under her seat to make sure it was actually secured to the car. It was not, so he reached underneath it with both hands and secured it. Sarah never stirred. At last he shut the passenger door and walked around the car to where the girls stood, gaping.

  Kevin must have noticed their questioning looks. “The mechanics of buckles and straps are all the same,” he said with a shrug. “Firefighters have to learn how to buckle on an O-B-A. Oxygen breathing apparatus. It’s a pack you wear on your back that makes oxygen for you. We practice putting them on really fast to stay ahead of smoke and flames. After you’ve buckled a tank like that on your back ten thousand times, a car seat is a cinch.”

  Gina did not have to make eye contact with her best friend to feel Bonnie’s pleasure at all the manliness being thrown around. Gina was growing more ill at ease with the whole situation by the minute. She was anxious for Bonnie and the kids to drive away so that Bonnie would quit the histrionics over Kevin.

  Bonnie thanked Kevin and got into the driver’s seat, and then Kevin reached over and shut her door. Kevin and Gina stood, waiting for Bonnie to drive off, when she motioned to Gina to come near the driver’s door window. Gina complied while Kevin waited in a gentlemanly fashion for the girls to finish their tete-à-tete.

  Good gracious, thought Gina uncomfortably, he must know we’re talking about him. She leaned into the driver’s door window so that Kevin would not hear anything. “What?” she whispered.

  “Call me when you get home,” Bonnie whispered back, still smiling.

  “I will,” said Gina, and then she quickly pulled away from the car so that Bonnie would get out of there.

  #

  Lunch at El Zarape was good. It was Gina’s first visit to the restaurant, a small, clean place, old but comfortable and friendly, located on El Camino Real near Miramonte. The seating area was L-shaped. They entered the restaurant on the side of the L that faced noisy El Camino, but Gina was glad to see that the waiter, who was middle-age and looked as though he could be the owner, ushered them to the other part of the L, to the rear, farthest from the street, where it was quieter, though with all the California-style picture windows on three sides of the little building, diners could still see cars whizzing down El Camino no matter where they sat. Kevin and Gina sank into a booth with deep red bench seats and a corn-yellow table. They both ordered chicken enchiladas, rice, and beans, with flour tortillas on the side.

  "You don't talk much about your brother Jake," said Gina.

  “He left home when I was about fourteen,” said Kevin.

  “Why so early?” Gina took a sip of soda. As she did the waiter set a basket of hot tortilla chips and a pannikin of salsa on the table. Her stomach flip-flopped with anticipation. Her singular bowl of Cream of Wheat was long gone.

  “He wanted to live.”

  Gina could feel a joke coming on. “What do you mean?” she said.

  “He got this crazy notion in his head that someone was going to murder him in his sleep.”

  Gina stopped eating her chip and stared at Kevin. She sensed that this time he was serious, or at least he was seriously exaggerating about something serious. He dipped a chip into the spicy red salsa, fragrant with bits of fresh green cilantro, and continued.

  “We never got along very well. My dad had left by that time so it was me, my brother, my mom, and my little sister. My brother thought my dad had left him in charge. I wanted none of it. Then he joined the Navy. That seemed to happen really fast. Then just as fast my little sister let me know that she didn’t think Dad had left me in charge either.”

  “How’d your mom take all this?”

  “My mom worked really hard. Poor woman. She worked a lot of hours to support us, but the three of us gave her hell. Dad wasn’t around to help with discipline. I had an attitude. When my brother split to join the military, my little sister got stuck with me as a babysitter, which gave her an attitude. My mom did the best she could. Her family helped too. Sometimes we lived with relatives. They paid for winter coats and braces, stuff like that. My mom tried but she never could provide those things on her own.”

  Gina thought poignantly of her own upbringing. Her parents did not have a lot but they always had enough. Once when she was very little they had borrowed money from her piggy bank, but that was years ago. They were doing much better now. Besides their own home they owned the rental she lived in plus another small one in San Jose. They had always been together too. Suddenly she felt sorry for Kevin, growing up mostly without a father and having to depend on family charity. She admired the way he had developed a sure plan for his life despite the lack of male guidance.

  “After the divorce,” Kevin continued, “my parents sold the house in Quito and me and my mom and sister moved to Chicago to be near her family. My mom didn’t have enough money for another house so we found a small apartment near her folks. I liked it there. I used to make my mom’s breakfast and start her tea in the morning before she went to work. Before school I walked her to the L—the Chicago Elevated—then I helped Mimi get ready for school. In the afternoons, if I didn’t have to drag our laundry to the Launderette or when I got tired of terrorizing Mimi and her annoying little friends, I rode my bike all over town or rode the L to see a movie downtown. I spent a lot of time by myself, but I was happy.”

  “Then how did you end up at Del Mar?”

  Just then the waiter delivered steaming hot plates to their table. Kevin said a quick grace and then started on his enchilada. Long strings of golden, melted che
ese dripped down from his fork. Gina was grateful to be sitting in front of such a fine meal, though the circumstances of how she got there robbed her of its full enjoyment. She tried to just eat and not think about it.

  “My dad was living in San Jose. He had left the fire department by then and was doing pest control. One day my mom decided she wanted to move back to California, so she packed up me and my sister and moved us to San Francisco. I went to school in the city for a short time. But I wanted to live with my father in his apartment on Boston Avenue, so I had to enroll in Del Mar.”

  “And your mom? Where’s she?” asked Gina.

  “She’s still in San Francisco.”

  “So you became the oldest at home sort of sudden like?” Gina broke off a hunk of flour tortilla and scooped up some creamy frijoles while she waited for his answer. Heavenly.

  “Yeah. But I didn’t mind. It was better than answering to my brother.”

  “It was like that for me too,” said Gina.

  “How so?”

  “My older sister got married when I was about thirteen,” explained Gina, “so all of a sudden I was the oldest at home. It changed my life a lot, but I always thought I was the better for it. I mean I think that now. I didn’t think so then.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well,” said Gina, “Like you, I had to take on a lot of responsibility all at once. Watch my little sisters, clean the house, make dinner every night. My mother worked full-time like yours did. I used to resent having to come home every day right after school to start dinner and such, but now I’m glad for the experience. I learned to cook all kinds of things. But I especially like to bake.”

  “I can cook,” said Kevin.

  “Really? Like what?” Gina was all ears. She loved to cook.

  “Noodles and cheese.” He paused. “From a box.” He was perfectly serious.

  Gina twisted her face into a crooked smile. “You call that cooking?” Gina’s mother, to her knowledge, had never bought a meal mix in her life. And in the house she grew up in, no one said “noodle.” It was pasta. A noodle was what you konked when you walked too fast under a low doorway.

  “It involves a pot and a stove!” he said. They both laughed.

  “I can also perfectly bake a TV dinner. I never burn them,” he said.

  Gina rolled her eyes.

  “But my favorite dish is Razzle Dazzle.”

  “Oh that sounds so very continental,” said Gina. “Do tell.”

  “Well,” his Gourmandship went on to explain, “You take a layer of browned ground beef, a layer of mashed potatoes, and a layer of creamed corn. You keep making layers until you run out of ingredients. You just have to make sure that when you run out that the potatoes end up on top. Finally you sprinkle the whole thing with that powdered red stuff.”

  “Powdered red stuff?” What could he mean?

  “It begins with ‘P’. That Hungarian spice they put on everything to make it look fancy. Then you bake it until starts to bubble. It’s delicious.”

  “Paprika,” said Gina.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Gina thought it sounded like a mouthful of before-payday mush but kept that thought to herself. He had just shared his entire culinary repertoire with her and was proud of it. He was charming, but so unlike Michael. Michael used to prepare her all kinds of elaborate meals in his tiny student apartment, and he always knew which wine went with what. He had spent one semester studying in Florence, another gift from his well-heeled lawyer grandfather, so he knew all about fancy fish sauces and exotic pastries made with ricotta. Thoughts of Michael and those charmed days triggered an involuntary response: an invisible hand reached in and squeezed her heart, hard. I miss you Michael. I miss you so much. Isn’t there some way we can be together again? Oh God, why does it have to be this way?

  “Are you okay, Gina?”

  She broke abruptly from her bittersweet reverie to see, with embarrassment, Kevin staring at her, obviously dismayed.

  “I’m fine. Sorry.” I must try harder not to think about Michael all the time. She hated to be rude. She smiled as she apologized, hoping to make light of the moment. Fortunately he decided to switch the subject.

  “Were you at Buchser when the bomb went off?” Kevin stopped eating a moment to take in her response.

  Gina knew immediately what he was talking about. Every Buchser Bruin of that era knew.

  “Yes,” she said, remembering that awful day. “Actually, I was the first person on the scene, though I didn’t stick around and get up close. I was too much in shock. And,” she said, still feeling the shame, “I was too scared.”

  “What’d you see?”

  “It was my sophomore year. I was sitting in Mrs. Lunceford’s Spanish class in C wing, last row, nearest the door, which was open. No one sat closer to the door than I did.”

  Kevin’s eyes didn’t move from her face.

  “There was this big boom! And then everyone in the class, including Mrs. Lunceford, stopped talking. It was so loud! We all knew that whatever it was, it was close. Nobody moved.

  “I got up out of my seat, and without even asking permission or saying a word, I went out the door of the classroom and looked all around. At the other end of the hall I saw smoke coming from the girls’ restroom. The hallway wasn’t all that long. I could clearly see dark gray smoke billowing out the door. Then a girl ran out of the restroom, choking and coughing. Then I saw another girl run out. I never moved far from the classroom door, though. I was too scared. I knew something had exploded. Everyone knew.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I went back into the classroom and said to everyone, ‘I think a bomb has gone off in the girls’ restroom.’ I feel terrible now. I didn’t move to help them. I just stood there, stunned and terrified. It was all so real. It never entered my head that the bomb was fake—actually it was several smoke bombs—and I doubt if anyone else thought so either other than school administration and a few teachers who were in the know. Then someone came on the intercom system to tell us all to evacuate. I think it was the principal, Mr. Callejon, or someone else in the office. I don’t remember. Everybody was trying to get out of the school. We were all herded outside and everyone was crying and panicking. It was really upsetting. The police came, fire trucks, ambulances. What I remember most is the ambulance workers carrying injured students out on stretchers, from the back of the school. We didn’t know it then, but they’d all been recruited from the Drama Club. They weren’t really injured, just acting. We were all standing in clumps, watching, crying, and they were carrying kids out on stretchers. As long as I live I’ll never forget it. Now I know what ‘trauma’ means. It takes a long time to get over it, and the memory is burned into your brain like a branding iron.”

  Kevin was finished eating. He set his fork on his plate and listened.

  “There was blood, and everything seemed so real. Kevin, you would never think that it was all staged. The blood was real, too—from animals. We all got sent home, and when we found out, soon after, that it was all fake, all staged to test emergency services, everyone, including all the parents, was furious. The school sent a letter of apology to everyone's homes, but for days kids were afraid to even open their lockers. Everyone was worried about another bomb.”

  “Sounds like you have your own particular war story,” said Kevin.

  “I never thought of it that way,” said Gina. “And you? Did you see any action in Viet Nam?”

  “No, no action. The Shasta went into the Western Pacific, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, while I was on it, but I never got near Viet Nam, though I was serving during that period, so technically I’m a Viet Nam vet.”

  “That’s nice. Something to tell your grandkids,” said Gina.

  “Yes, but that’s in the future. Right now I wish I had a story from Viet Nam that was sexier … to impress girls.” They laughed.

  “The Buchser bomb was pretty scary, but I can remember being just as scared by far mor
e innocuous things than big booms and smoke.” Gina took a sip of soda.

  “Like what?”

  “When I was seven my family and I left Virginia because my father retired from the Army and my parents wanted to move back to California, to the Bay Area, to be near my mother’s family. I’ll never forget our first night on the road when we drove away from Lee Hall. My dad’s last duty station was Fort Eustis. It was Halloween night, and the motel owner gave a bucket of candy to every family with kids. I don’t remember anything about him or the motel, just the candy.”

  Kevin smiled at Gina’s fond childhood memory.

  “Somewhere after we left Lee Hall we had to cross a bridge, though I don’t remember exactly where that was. Anyway, we were crossing this bridge and it was the type that opens up in the middle,” Gina extended her arms like two sections of a bridge, opening in the middle, “so that ships can go underneath it. I became terrified that the bridge would open up while our station wagon was driving across it. I keenly remember kneeling on the floor of the car in the backseat, saying Hail Mary after Hail Mary, begging God to keep us from falling into the water.” They laughed. “It’s funny how these things stick with you. Years later and you still remember like it was yesterday.”

  “I have a few memories like that, but we’ll save that for later,” said Kevin. “I want to get going. I’d like to take a look at your car after we get back to your apartment.”

  A flutter of fear passed through Gina’s mind. She didn’t want to talk about her car, especially how it ended up abandoned on Scott Boulevard, and especially with Kevin.

  “It’s dead, Kevin. Really dead. The only fluid it needs is the embalming type. It needs to be towed to a shop, maybe even a salvage yard. But I thought I’d have my dad look at it first.”

  Kevin counted out some ones and tens, enough to pay for their meal with a generous tip, and then put them on the table near the bill. They stood up to leave.