“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say in a singsong voice.
Henry straightens a few racks, gives a brisk tsk tsk! to a cashmere cardigan with a rip at the elbow before he checks the price tag, and seems to consider it for a moment. Henry Charbonneau sighs and then brightens, perhaps assigning a certain vagabond charm to the sweater, and rehangs it.
I finish ironing the first dress, hang it on a satin-covered hanger, and start on a spring-green shantung shift. The fabric sizzles and I turn down the temperature wheel. I find a soothing rhythm to my ironing; I lose myself in the steam and heated fabrics, and I think of my gun in my glove box, and it does make me feel better; it seems to cancel out the power of the unringing cell phone in my pocket, the cheap little Sprint freebie that has made me hope’s bitch. I try to discipline myself—I will check my home messages on my lunch hour and not a minute before.
The bells on the door shiver and then ring out and it’s Erika in a scarlet-red coat, ripped fishnets and combat boots, her dark, manicured nails popping out of her fingerless gloves like chocolates. She’s holding a bakery box. “Henry, you old slag. Sandinista’s ironing and you’re just mincing about?”
“What is it this time?” Henry asks, as if morose.
Erika opens the bakery box like a game-show hostess and caresses the air over the candy. “Today we have chocolate caramels infused with fresh pineapple juice.”
Erika holds out the box, and Henry says, “Oh, that sounds like it will be good for a gentleman’s waistline.”
But he takes one anyway. He chews, rolling his eyes and holding up one finger, imploring us to wait, wait! And then, the verdict: “That is, in all seriousness, the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”
Erika smiles at me and stage-whispers: “We will be ladies, and let the obvious punch line to that joke just fade, fade, fade away.” She twinkles her fingers back and forth, Glinda the Good Witch, bidding sweet farewell to the bawdy, the improper, and hands me the box of chocolates.
“Later, babies,” she says. “I’m off to the sugar mines.”
We watch Erika cross the street, the tails of her red coat whipping behind her.
“She’s a genius with the chocolates, Sandinista. She used to be the pastry chef at Boulangerie Marcel.”
Henry Charbonneau has the look of someone wanting very badly to tell you something that you do not particularly want to hear. I place Erika’s chocolates in the mahogany display box.
“She was raped at gunpoint going into the bakery one morning before dawn. Someone knew the pastry chef went in at four-thirty. Someone was waiting for Erika.”
Henry Charbonneau’s gaze turns from the anticipatory to the rueful, as if saying it out loud has cost him something. He looks down at the floors of the Pale Circus for a moment. But soon he’s distracted by a scuff, a nick, something. He leans down and works his fingers over the wood with a stern tsk.
“She opened her own bakery after it happened. Everyone was pretty surprised that she went the way of pornography. But”—he waves his hand in the air, c’est la vie—“it’s quite common for victims to take on the ways of their oppressors.”
I think of the frosting in the bowl. This professor of gently used couture might not be quite as clever as he thinks.
“Stockholm syndrome,” he muses dreamily, stretching the words into a musical affliction that sounds like it would strike down blond supermodels. “I do believe she has Stockholm syndrome.”
“Oh?”
“Well, it’s back to work for us!” He claps his hands, and I get the message—how could I not—and finish ironing a black polished cotton shirt with a severe bell shape. When I look up, I find Henry Charbonneau slacking, gazing out the window, watching the monks troop past in their brown robes—which, I guess, preclude their need for winter coats.
Henry Charbonneau turns from the window and looks at me; he’s clutching a bottle of Windex to his chest like a bouquet of bluebells, like he’s a tidy bridesmaid. “Do you like working here?”
“I love it,” I say, truthfully.
Henry Charbonneau nods. “I knew you would,” he says. When he looks down at the floor with a shy smile I see what it is about him that causes Bradley’s face to be wreathed in kittenish pain—oh, the sexy, intermittent kindness of Henry Charbonneau. Except soon he completely dispenses with his facade of cleaning and sits down, yoga-style, near the front window, with a book.
I am nearly undone by his feudal tendencies, as I still have a mound of satin dresses to iron. But the ironing is a small, good thing, even if my pleats totally suck. I have seen Bradley do twenty pleats in the time it takes me to iron three, and his pleats are severe and fresh.
When Henry looks at all these dresses I have ironed, he will sigh and his face will crumple. But for now I work and my mind wanders to my first short film of the day, which showcases my own Great Expectations:
We first meet Lisa Kaplansky when she is in the classroom, a hip teacher sitting cross-legged on her desk, comfy in her Dansko clogs, black yoga pants and batik tunic. Ms. Kaplansky is being apprised of the school situation by the several caring students crowded around her desk, Bethany Adams chief among them. Bethany Adams, Sandinista Jones’s best friend from elementary school. In junior high Sandinista dumped Bethany for a skag named Josie Jennings, a bad call, the outlaw cadence of Josie’s name a glimpse into her very soul. But Bethany Adams is as tall as a catalog model and a star volleyball player, to boot; she has fared well, even with those junior high injustices. And now Bethany Adams spills it with feeling. “And remember, Ms. Kaplansky, Sandinista’s mother died in the fall.” Here I rework the sentence, I slide the words back into Bethany’s mouth so that it doesn’t sound like my mother stepped off a skyscraper: “And remember, Ms. Kaplansky, Sandinista’s mother died last autumn. She’s all alone in the world this year.”
Lisa Kaplansky’s face falls and goes gray and red all at once, a crumbling ash rose. She says: “Class, I’ll be back.” Her tunic billows out behind her as she scrambles off the desk and flies out of the room. Lisa Kaplansky charges into the principal’s office without knocking, only to find a man who is neither prince nor pal, an antihero, perhaps the Antichrist: Principal Jack Johnson. He is cruising the Net for “artistic photos” and he hammers the escape button with his index finger when he sees Lisa Kaplansky.
“Catherine Bennett …,” Ms. Kaplansky says, breathless.
“I know,” he says. He lets loose with a desolate little sigh. “I’ve heard all about it by now.”
Because his demeanor veers too close to the ol’ “hey, babe, these things happen” nonchalance of the professional educator, Lisa Kaplansky plants a hand on Jack Johnson’s desk. Because she hits the tanning beds—I fear you not, melanoma!—her hand is a plasticine shade of butterscotch, and she wears a silver skull ring on her middle finger with ominous violet stones in the carved eye sockets, Georgia O’Keeffe for the aging hipster. Still, despite a few fashion missteps, Lisa Kaplansky is valiant, pure-hearted.
“Catherine Bennett?” Lisa Kaplansky rolls the words off her tongue—the last name clipped and ominous, like a dare. “She kicked Sandinista’s desk!”
They lock eyes.
“I dunno,” he says. “She’s been here forever. It’s complicated.”
“You have two choices,” Lisa Kaplansky says. “Fire her today or I go to the newspaper tomorrow.”
Eager to get back to his photographs, Jack Johnson nods. Fantasy sequence number two:
Wherein we find the class sitting quietly after Mrs. Bennett and Sandinista exit, ye olde calm after the storm: there sits Evan Harper in his CORPORATE COFFEE SUCKS T-shirt, inscrutable as you please. Alecia Hardaway reads her Powerpuff Girls comic book, her face seized by some secret delight, or maybe it’s merely the madcap antics of crime-fighting cupcakes. A few girls are sniffling. A few boys are thinking poetic and unsavory thoughts of Sandinsta Jones, wondering, Why are the beautiful ones always so tormented?
; Mr. Hale, the gym teacher, is back from escorting Mrs. Bennett to the office. He has told everyone, “Why don’t we just have some quiet time before the bell rings.” And so he sits at Mrs. Bennett’s desk, reading Penthouse, which he has stashed between the covers of an ancient Newsweek. And all is quiet; all is still. But, people, all is not calm, nor is it bright.
Sandinista Jones is walking back into the school. Sandinista must have done some kind of Superman outfit switcheroo in her car, because she’s returning to Woodrow Wilson High School in a wrap dress with repeating black and turquoise triangles and patent-leather high heels. In her matching patent-leather handbag there is a gun. Sandinista Jones walks through the dim anteroom of the principal’s office unobserved, the secretary listening to her iPod and reading T. S. Eliot. Sandinista Jones looks through the rectangular windowpane of the principal’s office and sees Catherine Bennett holding up a platter covered with Saran Wrap. Sandinista Jones puts her head next to the cracked door, and Sandinista Jones pays attention.
“Caramel apples?” Catherine Bennett smiles and flutters her pale lashes. She is one grotesque coquette.
“What?” asks Principal Jack Johnson. He looks frightened.
“You know I bring them to the Christmas party every year!”
Catherine Bennett plunks the platter down on his desk and frantically takes off the Saran Wrap. “It’s kind of my signature treat! I bring them to class sometimes and let the kids graze a bit while they do their math problems. Did you know if they get an A on their test I also give them a coupon for a free burrito?”
Through the cold patent leather of her handbag, Sandinista Jones feels the bulk of her gun.
The principal clears his throat. “I was wondering if we might talk a little bit about Sandinista Jones? The … incident.”
“Nice, girl, nice girl! What a super senior class we have!” Catherine Bennett pushes the platter of apples closer to Jack Johnson. “You have to use Red Delicious. They have to be very, very firm! Or else the warm caramel will turn the apples to pure goosh.” She gives a Halloween grimace and repeats “pure goosh” in a Frankenstein monotone. She flutters her hands to her neck and leaves them there. She laughs and says lightly, “Pure goosh,” and looks out the window at the lemon-gray sky of a dreary afternoon, the banked snow. She whispers, “Pure goosh.”
The gun in Sandinsta’s purse is an itch, an ache.
But, now, in Jack Johnson, Sandinista Jones sees something beyond the random expedient pervy principal; she sees a certain wariness, the briefest sign of cognition. Jack Johnson looks down at the caramel apples, all that red and tan sweetness on his desk, fructose and sucrose and corn syrup goosing his brains by osmosis: Oh, fuck. Catherine Bennett really is crazy.
And this is all Sandinista Jones wants, this gift of someone who gets it, who is not going to fake-smile and give her zombie eyes: Have you perhaps misinterpreted the situation? And Jack Johnson is getting it slowly, surely.… He rubs his temple and thinks of Catherine Bennett’s erratic behavior in the teachers’ lounge; he thinks of a random Monday morning before school started when he heard a pounding in the hall and looked out to see Catherine Bennett banging her fist against every locker, remembers how the sound reverberated down the hall like a metallic woodpecker.…
Sandinista Jones opens the door to the principal’s office. Catherine Bennett says, “Well, look who’s here! Speak of the devil! Hi, Sandinista!”
Sandinista Jones looks at Jack Johnson and says, “Through your faith, you have earned your salvation. Go in peace.”
And he does, the principal grabs his coffee cup from his desk and skitters out of his office. Next, Sandinista turns to Mrs. Bennett, who sits with her hands clasped together, smiling.
The interlocking silver circle on Sandinista Jones’s leather handbag makes an intriguing swarishhh when she clicks it open.
But then the string of bells on the door shivers and Bradley walks into the Pale Circus and smiles at me, big and sweet; he gives a repentant nod to Henry Charbonneau, who offers up a tart. “So nice of you to join us, Bradley.”
The sight of Bradley gives me a jolt of optimism that makes me start to think a little differently. Because maybe Catherine Bennett’s car parked in the lot could mean many things: she could have already been dismissed from her teaching job, and in a flurry of whacked-out desperation, maybe she really has brought a tray of candied fruit to the principal and staff; perhaps she has already morphed into the crazy aunt at the Christmas party. Surely they are trying to find a way to let her go quietly. Lisa Kaplansky could be waiting to call and tell me about the terms of Catherine Bennett’s dismissal. The words terms of dismissal are bright and promising as poppies, and when Ms. Kaplansky tells me about Catherine Bennett’s terms of dismissal, orange-red blossoms will flower through my mind. I will nod and look pensively to the ceiling, an intelligent girl considering a fact.
Oh, I will not disappoint Lisa Kaplansky. I will not scream or shout about the injustice shown to me, I will simply say, I see, and I will be appreciative of the school’s efforts as I gnaw my thumbnail, taking it all in, and who among you would not admire my stoicism, who among you would not note the jaunty poppy-colored cashmere-sweater-and-beret combo I am wearing in this five-second daydream?
At the very least, I imagine that everyone has told their parents and that the parents have probably called the school and it is all a bit of a breathless mess. I also understand that people clear up business on Friday afternoons; there is an implicit decency to clearing up any old business so that people might be free to enjoy their weekends—viva Miller time!—the same week as the incident … because there is a certain decency to taking care of things within the week. It’s professional. And so the chance of me getting the call today is high … at least, moderately high.…
Bradley looks at the pile of dresses still to be ironed and then back at Henry Charbonneau, who is reading in the pale morning sun. To anyone passing on the street this must make a fetching picture, the headless mannequin in her polar parka and Henry Charbonneau with his book and fashionably pensive gaze: a portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man.
Bradley swallows his laughter, but his shoulders shake a little bit as he takes off his leather jacket. Bradley whispers: “It is such a shame that Henry Charbonneau was born after the Civil War. Because just look at the dear man. He would have looked fetching drinking mint juleps and reading on some crumbling, leafy veranda while his slaves hammered horseshoes and hung out laundry under the blazing sun.”
Henry doesn’t look up from his book when he says, “Bradley, if you’re both half an hour late to work and mocking me … hmm … that doesn’t necessarily seem like a wise combination.”
Bradley smiles. “Observation is not mockery.”
“Listen up, worker bees.” Henry Charbonneau clears his throat. “I’m going to read a poem.”
I look down and take a ferocious interest in a satin mandarin collar, tracing the mouth of the iron around the sweet curves. Because the only thing more mortifying than someone reading a poem out loud is having someone read their own poetry out loud, but as Henry is reading from a book and not a frayed spiral notebook, at least I won’t be party to that cringe-fest. And so the sun sparkles and Bradley gives me a comradely smile and Henry Charbonneau begins his recitation:
“The monastery is quiet. Seconal
drifts down upon it from the moon.
I can see the lights
of the city I came from,
can remember how a boy sets out
like something thrown from the furnace
of a star. In the conflagration of memory
my people sit on green benches in the park,
terrified, evil, broken by love—
to sit with them inside that invisible fire
of hours day after day while the shadow of the milk
billboard crawled across the street
seemed impossible, but how
was it different from here,
&nbs
p; where they have one day they play over
and over as if they think
it is our favorite, and we stay
for our natural lives,
a phrase that conjures up the sun’s
dark ash adrift after ten billion years
of unconsolable burning?”
“Look,” Bradley says.
Right on cue, two of our monks, the monks of St. Joseph’s, walk past. Caught in the bright spell, the three of us look out at them with longing. When they pass out of view, Henry Charbonneau says: “It’s a Denis Johnson poem. My book club is reading his poetry this week. But, truthfully, I think I might be the only one to ‘get it,’ ” he says, making air quotes around the last two words.
My heart races a bit. “So is Arne in your book club?”
Henry Charbonneau looks truly surprised. “Have you been hanging out at the pawnshop, Sandinista? And yes, Arne is most certainly in my book club. And, well, how have you become a girl from around the way so quickly?”
Bradley smiles at me and I can feel it, the bright promise of the New Testament, my phone ringing at home, as if Jesus himself is calling, using his human’s voice, which is the commingling of Joe Strummer’s and Al Green’s and Bono’s, saying, I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.
We get into the groove of the day: Henry Charbonneau leaves to do the important things that Henry Charbonneau must do and Bradley and I iron dresses and fill candy dishes; we offer up kindness to strangers who walk into the Pale Circus—though, no, this does not include letting them use the bathroom—we arrange and rearrange clothes; we mourn the implicit broken contract and personal disappointment of gorgeous clothes balled up on the dressing room floor, left there by some jackass customers. We rehang these spurned items, cursing.
The Sharp Time Page 11