At first, I only detected the reverberations of hollow words, none of which were particularly coherent to me. My eyes steadily focused on a panel of fluorescent light. One fixture in the ceiling flickered like random bolts of lightning. It took me another few seconds to remember where I was and from whom the voice emanated. Shawn Winger stood over my chair like a miasmatic figure; his features were now as fuzzy and distorted as his previous admission. In the throes of my episodic dream, I had shrunken into the chair behind his desk. Since my vision remained foggy, I couldn’t discern how much of my spell Shawn witnessed. I elected to remain silent until he questioned me on the nature of my blackout.
The anxiety hadn’t faded from Shawn’s tone when he called out, “Corbin, are you okay?” I wasn’t convinced that anything he revealed was genuine now, so I decided to subdue my need for his assistance by simply grabbing a tissue from the same box I tossed at him earlier. I patted the perspiration from my brow with little urgency.
“I’m fine,” I lied to Shawn. “Why? Do I look sick to you?”
Shawn looked baffled by my flippancy. “You were just flopping around in my chair like you were having a seizure,” he said. He then hesitated to soften his voice so that it mimicked something closely resembling compassion. “Are you sick?”
I didn’t know how to answer him truthfully. Perhaps it was better to let him make his own assumption based on the way I looked. Evidently, my appearance must’ve deteriorated rather rapidly since this morning. He winced at me as if he had stumbled over a piece of decaying road kill.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“With me?” I replied, still clinging to ignorance as obsessively as an alcoholic clutches his last bottle of gin. “I wish I knew, Shawn, but it seems there’s a lot about the human body—particularly with the brain’s interior region—that doctors are just beginning to comprehend.”
Shawn resumed the posture of a dejected soul that he had displayed when I first arrived at his room today. I had no intention for him to know any more about my condition than he already estimated, but I was also weary of pretending that my physical declination wasn’t noticeable to anyone who looked in my direction for more than thirty seconds.
“Jesus, Corbin, I didn’t even know that you were ill.”
“Well, it seems that you’re not the only one around here with a secret or two, are you?” My disgruntlement was intentional. “By the way, did your little girlfriend notice anything strange about me?”
Shawn slunk behind his desk, visibly bruised by my repetitive pokes at his character. He clasped his hands against the sides of his temples as if my sickness had transformed into an epidemic. By staring into the man’s eyes, I knew that his mind still reeled with impracticalities.
“Desiree is convinced that this is all going to work out,” he said wistfully.
“But you realize that you’re listening to the untried voice of a seventeen-year-old girl, don’t you?” His gaze shifted to a column of windows flanking the back wall in his classroom. Another line of storm clouds gathered like toxic smoke across the hills surrounding the school.
“You know,” he muttered regretfully, “a couple of decades ago something like this wouldn’t even have been newsworthy. Back then, teachers and students fell in love and had relationships all the time.”
“You were just a kid picking dried snot from your nose twenty years ago, Shawn. I hope you’re not going to tell me anything else unspeakable,” I mentioned. “So I’ll just assume Desiree is the only student you’ve slept with since you started working here.”
“Of course she is. Come on, Corbin, do I look like a child molester to you?”
“She’s underage,” I reminded him. “The law and the people in this town will see you as a scurvy predator. It’s really that cut and dried.”
“Yeah, but not fair by a long shot. She’s just two months shy of the magic number of eighteen. I guess if we waited until then everything would’ve been hunky-dory, huh?”
“You’re still her teacher and coach. It was your responsibility to make sure things didn’t get out of control.” If I wasn’t feeling so physically exhausted I might’ve hauled off and punched my pompous colleague in his nose. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but I might’ve felt a tad better. Although I recognized that Shawn wasn’t the first (or last) teacher to fold under the temptations of a nubile girl, I always assumed he was somehow better than the rest. Perhaps I loathed myself for being so gullible.
In order to prevent our conversation from digressing into something that we both would’ve regretted later on, I attempted to keep my advice practical. “When do you plan on telling your wife?” As I asked this question to Shawn, I made certain that he watched me acknowledge Jill’s photograph near his computer.
“I haven’t figured out the right time to tell her yet,” he said. “That’s going to be the hardest part in all of this. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt. You know, I keep looking at her, trying to rediscover the feelings that I once had. It’s just not there. I can’t even explain why. All I know is that I can’t get Desiree out of my mind.”
“But yet you still display your wife’s photo in your classroom,” I said, pointing to the frame. “Is this your way of hiding the truth? I got to be honest with you, Shawn, you’re throwing out more mixed signals than a malfunctioning fire alarm.”
“I guess it’s selfish of me to wish that Jill was more like Desiree, huh?”
“From what I remember, you’ve been together with Jill since you two were in high school. I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you can remember when the intensity level was just as high between you and your wife as what you’re experiencing with the jailbait now.”
“I can’t say for sure,” said Shawn as his eyes trailed away from his wife’s photo again. Now he seemed focused on a photograph of Desiree stapled to his bulletin board. She wore a maroon and gold basketball uniform and her hair was tied up in a ponytail. “I know she’s young, but Desiree is mature for her age. She knows how to handle herself.”
“Look,” I countered, “I’m sure she’s an exciting diversion from your reality as a husband and father, but you have to know that relationships change over time. No matter who you’re with, it’s not always going to be like the fourth of July in the sack.”
“I’m tired of just going through the motions, Corbin. Desiree makes me feel alive. I’m just happier when we’re together.”
“You may think that now, but one day in the near future you’re going to wake up and realize what an ass you’ve been. By then, it’ll be too late to save your family. How many mistakes do you really want to make?”
“I expected this reaction,” he said knowingly. “But as a man who has been married for as many years as you have, Corbin, you must have some idea of what I’m talking about. Can you honestly tell me that you don’t ever get bored of going to bed with the same woman every night?”
“If I told you no, would you stay with your wife?” Shawn didn’t enunciate a response. Instead, he lowered his head as if nodding off into a daydream’s ambit. I imagined that if merely contemplating infidelity were equivalent to actually committing it, almost everyone I knew would’ve been guilty of transgressions in carnality. Since I never strayed from my spouse, at least physically, my antipathy for Shawn’s behavior seemed justified. However, I couldn’t pretend that my own wife wasn’t presently engaged in the licentious deeds that ravaged most marriages. Rather than prolong the uneasiness wedging between us like an iron spike, I decided to suspend my conversation with Shawn.
“It’s obvious that I can’t help you now,” I told him, while standing up from his chair; both my hands clamped to the desktop to support my unbalanced weight.
“You’re leaving now?” Shawn asked. His hand instinctively reached out and grabbed my wrist. He might’ve even held onto me if not for my skin’s clamminess. “We still have some time before next period begins. Why don’t you stay?”
“I don’t see a need for that. I think it�
�s best if I go.”
“But you’ll promise to keep quiet about my situation, right?”
“Just handle your business like the teacher everyone thinks you are, Shawn, and you won’t have to worry about me.”
Shawn glared at me in mute disapproval; perhaps his words were snared in bitterness, shock, or regret. I moved toward his classroom’s door with no further display of emotion on this matter. At the same time, I knew that I’d never be able to look upon Shawn Winger with the blind reverence as the rest of the employees of this high school. From a professional standpoint, if I still truly categorized myself as such, I had an ethical and maybe even legal obligation to report this incident. But I had already promised Shawn some time to rectify the situation. I was prepared to grant him until the end of the weekend to submit a confession before any further intervention from me.
I managed to advance to the adjoining corridor before being reacquainted with my own troubles. My cell-phone alerted me to a text message from my wife. I hadn’t forgotten that I prompted her to remind me of my doctor’s appointment by writing a message on the back of her receipt from Starbucks. I figured she would’ve crafted a lame explanation to dispel this evidence by now. But adding to my irritation, she kept the gist of her reply as generic as a prescription. Based on her electronic note, it read as though she had absolutely no remorse over my discovery. Her text message simply read: ‘Don’t forget your appointment with Dr. Pearson at 2:45 P.M. Take care.’
As demoralizing as Rachel’s divulgence of her affair with Leon Chase might’ve been for me, at least I’d be able to mull the aftermath in a sensible state of mind. But she extended nothing to alleviate my sorrow, not even a syllable of empathy. The longer I remained in limbo, the more I suffered. I was almost inclined to call her at this moment and berate her savagely on the phone, but this was an impetuous man’s reaction. Up until this point, my life had consisted of a succession of cautiously measured steps; this tread required my most cunning footwork. I therefore returned her notation with one of my own, which matched her blithe tone precisely, but also set the stage for our forthcoming confrontation. My text read: ‘Rachel, I need to talk to you before my appointment this afternoon. I’ll call you during my lunch.’
I returned my cell-phone to my pocket with a somber yet satisfied expression. Where would our modern society be today without this cold form of digitized combat? Until recently, I hadn’t fully recognized the false bravado exhibited by anyone brandishing a smart phone and data plan. Of course, the absence of inflection and emotion in text warfare left every statement subject to misinterpretation. As I presently understood it, high school courtships commenced and ceased with a few pithy remarks. I certainly wasn’t immune to the technology that ironically implanted distance between the closest of friends. It gave me a tiny degree of pleasure to imagine Rachel pondering the solemnity of my words in her phone’s 3 x 5 soulless screen.
My period of contrived mirth was short-lived, however, because no matter how courageously I hoped to present myself, the scars of deception were ensconced in my brain. Whenever a husband suspected his wife of being unfaithful, he invariably compared himself to her new lover, whether he knew him or not. In my case, if the evidence proved accurate, then I’d be forced to accept Leon as the fellow who bested me yet again. I didn’t mind losing to him in financial undertakings, or even a throw of darts at Rounders on occasion, but this was an unforgivable trespass.
As unsettling as the notion of my wife sleeping with Leon was, I couldn’t pretend that it was an astonishing disclosure. His sex appeal was uncontestable, even in the insecure banter circulated playfully between my wife and I in bed at times. She couldn’t fake her allurement toward his comeliness anymore than I could’ve ignored the fact that she spent the majority of her time (when in his company) admiring him from the corner of her eye. Periodically I tried to deflect my inferiority to Leon by suggesting that he didn’t exude the natural wit that I had honed like a stainless blade. But this was a consolation rather than a frank assessment. Even humor, as I learned, was somehow more palpable when spouted from a rich man’s lips. And if truth was the order of this day, Leon didn’t have to try to impress anyone with funny anecdotes to secure the attention of females. Charisma and cash were a decidedly irresistible combination.
Of course, Leon’s wife laughed louder than anyone else on the rare occasions when her husband resorted to quips to entertain his guests. Peggy Chase assumed the role of a subservient wife better than an Oscar-winning actress, although I suspected she never resented this position in her family. She most likely considered herself a fortunate woman, and carried herself with an unpretentiousness that belied her wealth and status among those who she befriended. I couldn’t imagine why Leon sought to jeopardize everything that they had achieved as a couple. Was he, like Shawn Winger, simply bored with the routine? Or was my wife such a fascinatingly tantalizing woman that he couldn’t resist her?
Although I wasn’t briefed on the full extent of Leon’s nocturnal relations with Peggy, I shared a beer with him often enough to know that he never complained about his wife’s sexual appetite. By any man’s standards, Peggy’s desire to please her husband in bed rated as nothing less than robust. In fact, I recalled him reciting only praise for Peggy’s dedication for keeping their marriage spontaneous and adventuresome even after the birth of a child. As recently as three weeks ago, he went out of his way to boast about the number of times he had intercourse with his wife every week. Six times in seven days sounded on par with most moonstruck teenagers, and certainly had me second-guessing my own libido.
Betrayal didn’t sit well on any man’s brow; it wreaked havoc in his mind like rabies, never revealing its lethalness until it was too late to modify the outcome. As it now stood, my option was to look inward and confront the segment of my character that I fought to suppress since childhood. Until now, I hadn’t acknowledged the raw anger swelling within me like a crimson tide. For the longest time, I believed that such feelings subsided like a sea slipping into stillness after a white squall, but treacherous pitfalls of madness still lurked like whirlpools in the currents. The ugly and mostly unseen part of me was never truly exterminated. If rekindled by an inflammatory source, my temper ignited as rapidly as a dry bundle of straw. No matter how benevolent I wished to appear as a man, the sting inside my heart defiled my blood and overwhelmed me with diabolical notions.
In route to my next class I decided to elude the thickening band of students in the hallway by ducking into the nearest stairwell. I reasoned that a few minutes to calm my emotions might’ve helped me avoid a total meltdown. After descending a flight of stairs, I glanced at my watch. My watch’s repetitive ticking seemed almost synchronized with the throbbing within my head. I didn’t know how many more episodes I’d be able to tolerate today, but I had little time to contemplate the repercussions. My attention was diverted to a second flight of stairs. A female student sat on the stair’s bottom tread with her head buried against her knees. She appeared to be sobbing. Because she had her face barricaded in her lap, I couldn’t determine if I knew her or not. Perhaps it would’ve been easier for me to just tiptoe away and let her sulk in silence, but her crying prompted me to stop and attempt to remedy her sadness.
“Excuse me,” I said softly, “are you okay?”
The girl paused to sniffle and swipe a neatly manicured hand through her mane of raven-colored hair. It wasn’t until she lifted her chin halfway off her knees and stared at me with a pair of eyes as lime as spring grass that I recognized her face. Even through a film of tears, no one had eyes as dazzling as Mona Dukes. They shined like embedded jewels in the most ornamented shrines. I had Mona in my American literature class two years ago when she was a sophomore, and currently as a member of my fifth period study hall. Every so often, her emotions seemed out of kilter with the rest of her classmates, but I admired her impassioned and often avant-garde disposition. By now, I imagined she had experienced enough woe in high school
to actually merit some of her teardrops, but I remained tentative with my approach.
“Hey, Mr. Cobbs,” she said through a sniffle. “Give me a minute. I’m okay.”
I glanced at a pile of crumpled tissue paper situated beside Mona in a contorted pyramid. “One of those days, huh?” I said, motioning to the lump of used paper with my foot. Although I resisted an urge to be intrusive, the good part of me that screamed “TEACHER” almost demanded that I investigate her sorrow thoroughly.
“One of those days,” Mona repeated my words numbly. “Yeah. That’s it.” She then picked her head up so I could see her Mongolian skin reflecting like wet amber under the dim fluorescent lights. The stairwell was at least twenty degrees warmer than the rest of the air-conditioned corridors and classrooms, and the evidence of this disparity revealed itself in the speckles of sweat peppering her forehead, cheeks, and upper lip. Mona braided her hair with neon orange beads between random locks, and peacock feathers dangled around her earlobes in vibrant shades of green and violet. Adding to this hodgepodge of accessories, she wore an earring with garnets or rubies in her right ear, but not in her left. She looked at me with some level of distress weighing into her expression.
“Looks like you’re having a pretty rough day, too, Mr. Cobbs,” Mona observed.
“That may be the understatement of the century,” I said. At this point, I felt comfortable enough to crouch down beside her on the stair’s tread. She barely shifted her knees to make room for my company. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’m not here to give you a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Mona stared at me with a wedge of tears breaking off from her bottom lashes and trickling across her golden skin; the saline water crossed a dark mole shaped like an hourglass just an inch away from her left nostril. Perhaps she wondered if I really cared to know about her troubles, no matter how severe or petty.
“You know, you’re going to be late for your own class,” she told me.
“I have a pass,” I joked. “I’m sure they’ll manage a few minutes without me.” Mona continued to dab at her eyes with the tissue balled between her fingers as I searched for an appropriate purpose to our interaction. “Who ever thought high school was going to be this difficult?” I sighed.
She stopped and swung her head slightly in my direction, rattling the plastic beads in her hair like a maraca. “It can’t be as bad for teachers as it is for us,” she said.
“What makes you so sure, Mona?”
“You get paid to come here and put up with our crap.”
“Oh,” I quipped, “and a paycheck is the authentic regulator for happiness?”
“Well, I don’t have a choice, Mr. Cobbs. I hate this high school.”
If I had a dime for every instance a student told me he hated high school, I’d have enough minted FDR’s to wallpaper the Capitol’s dome. Generally, students like Mona didn’t protest about the minutia in high school, so I gathered that a serious issue generated her current condition of angst.
“Let me put it this way,” I said, still trying to interject levity. “The only people who think high school is a safe haven are those who’ve never stepped inside one.”
Mona released a smile from her tightened jaw, illuminating the stairwell with a splay of teeth that glistened like wet opals. She had a remarkable giggle, too, that still sounded genuine mixed between flecks of sorrow. “I really shouldn’t be so upset over this,” she said. “I didn’t even do anything wrong.”
“If that’s the case, things will most likely work out in your favor.”
Mona paused for a second, probably wondering why I hadn’t badgered her for anymore details. “Don’t you want to know what happened, Mr. Cobbs?”
I shrugged my shoulders before saying, “That depends. If you want to tell me, I’ll be kind enough to listen.”
“That sounds like something a politician might say.”
“Trust me, Mona, politicians have nothing on teachers.”
She smiled again and patted her eyes and nose with the tissue paper. Then, with her tone moderately squeakier she asked, “You know, Orlando, right?”
The only boy I knew by that name in this school was in my next period’s creative writing course. Orlando Rodriquez was Ravendale’s doppelganger to Casanova, or at least he channeled that Italian adventurer’s amorous conduct whenever possible. I also realized that he and Mona were classified as an exclusive couple, which was an ideology among modern teens as nearly as extinct as a dodo.
“Anyway,” Mona continued, “he said you’re a pretty cool teacher.”
“I hope that’s not why you’re crying,” I jested.
“We broke up,” she said tonelessly. “Well, actually, to be more specific, he dumped me.”
From what I remembered, Mona and Orlando were dating for almost two years; that’s tantamount to a thirty-year marriage in quarters outside the realm of high school. When studying the anguish in Mona’s watery eyes, however, I couldn’t discount her tears as crocodilian. In a heart not yet jaded by the cruel certainties of love, the first gash always bled most profusely. I wanted to assure her that this incident was not as detrimental to her life as she presently believed, and how she’d most likely forget a guy like Orlando entirely by the time she started college in the fall. But she didn’t need to hear my cynical theories on severed romances now. Therefore, I decided to proceed in our conversation with the dexterous precision of a surgeon, rather than hack away at her sensitivities like a butcher of dreams.
“Did he mention why he wanted to end things?” I asked cautiously.
Mona shook her head as if to respond with a definitive gesture, but then changed her posture dramatically by standing up from the stair and yelling, “The whole thing is just crazy. Everything was fine between us until yesterday. We weren’t even fighting.” I knew if I waited long enough, Mona would’ve eventually arrived at her point. “He then texted me last night and told me it’s over. He’s convinced I’ve been screwing around with his best friend Casey.”
“Casey Michaels?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s a big joke, Mr. Cobbs. I think Casey’s an okay guy and everything, but I’m not interested in him in that way. Besides, I’d never cheat on Orlando with anyone.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“Orlando’s never acted so jealous before,” she added. “He won’t even listen to me.”
“Give him a day or two to cool off,” I suggested. “He’ll come around.”
Mona didn’t flinch a tendon in her skinny body as she stood before me, and I had little doubt that she’d risk sabotaging her relationship with Orlando a month before her senior prom. Casey Michaels didn’t fit the role as a likely rival to Orlando. In my mind, Casey seemed almost aloof to the opposite sex, and spent an inordinate amount of energy cracking jokes and goofing around with his buddies. Of course my acceptance to Mona’s pledge was insignificant. I suspected her hotheaded boyfriend was not as discerning with his interpretations. To worsen matters, both Orlando and Casey sat side-by-side in my next class.
As a teacher, I couldn’t lend anything more than a few stock words to this cause on Mona’s behalf without crossing the invisible barrier that separated students and faculty. And I also had an inclination that Mona handled herself confidently when in the company of her classmates.
“Thanks for stopping,” she offered me. “I was really surprised you did.”
“Surprised that I stopped?”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping away the last of her teardrops. “You always seem like you’re running off somewhere to put out a fire.”
“Well, maybe I need to learn how to slow down sometimes. Let me know if I can do anything else to help, okay?”
“I will, Mr. Cobbs.”
I resumed a standing position feeling somewhat revitalized. For now, at least, my thoughts seemed cogent and my vertigo subsided. Mona’s smile made me feel as if I contributed something praiseworthy to her plight, although I hadn’t dev
ised a strategy to alter her predicament in the slightest way. But I knew today was different from all the other days that I lived before. The events of this morning provided an unsubtle reminder to me that nothing happening around Ravendale High School was quite as it seemed.
Chapter 27
9:37 A.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 26