by Barry Graham
She was in her early twenties, just a little bit younger than him, and she taught grade school too. That didn’t bring in enough money for her, so on weekends she tended bar at Durant’s. He knew she also worked at some other bar a couple of weeknights, but he didn’t know which one, and he felt like it would be kind of creepy to ask her and then show up there.
Instead, he’d sit at the bar in Durant’s on a Friday or Saturday night – or both, if he was flush – and tell her what was going on in his school, and ask about hers. He’d told her about the debate club, and she’d seemed interested. She’d even said she’d like to try something similar at her school, but he didn’t know if she was just shooting the shit, so he was surprised and excited when he found out that she wasn’t.
He went into the bar at around nine on a Friday night. He’d have preferred to go there earlier, but he didn’t have enough money to sustain an all-nighter unless he either drank half his paycheck or sat there nursing each beer for an hour. It was busy, as it always was at such times, and there was no chance of getting a seat at a table, but that was fine with him because he wanted to sit at the bar.
“Hi, Carrie.”
“Hi yourself.” She put a beer in front of him before he asked. “Hey, guess what? I stole your idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. Started a debate club.”
“No kidding? Have you had a debate yet?”
“First one was last Saturday. So many kids wanted to do it, I couldn’t fit them all in, so we’re having another one tomorrow.”
“That’s great. I really don’t understand why other schools aren’t doing it. I mean, if I thought about doing it, you know it doesn’t take a genius.”
“The kids were so excited, it was hard to end the debate.”
“What was the motion?”
“That Phoenix is a good city to live in.”
“Ah. That must have been good.”
“It sure was.”
“Hey, if you’d like to, maybe we could have an inter-school debate sometime.”
“You know, I was thinking about that even before we had the first debate,” she said. “When you first told me your idea, I started thinking about putting your kids up against mine. Mine have already asked me about challenging other schools.”
“Let’s do it.”
He didn’t get to talk with her much more that evening, except when she saw that it was time to bring him another beer, but he was used to that, because weekend nights were always busy. He sometimes wondered what it would be like if they were able to sit down someplace and have a real conversation rather than minute-long exchanges while she served him as a customer.
He’d always wanted to offer her his phone number, but had never had the nerve. He’d gotten close many times, but had never gotten there. Now he took a pen from his pocket, scribbled on a paper napkin, and handed the napkin to Carrie. “Here’s my phone number. Give me a call when you want to get a debate going.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll call you soon.”
“Great.”
“You want another beer?”
“No, thanks. I’d better get going. See you soon, I hope.”
“Take it easy.”
He paid his tab and left the bar. He wished she’d given him her number too, but he thought that maybe she’d have felt awkward giving it to him in front of people, and that it didn’t matter because she could call him now.
He didn’t have to wait long. She called him at around noon the next day. “Hi, it’s Carrie. From Durant’s...”
“Hi. How’re you?”
“Pretty good. Just got up.”
“Well, you worked pretty late.”
“Yeah. What are you doing?”
“Sitting at the kitchen table, grading papers.”
“I’ll be doing the same thing later today. Hey, something I wanted to talk to you about... I really do want to have inter-school debates...”
“Great. Me too.”
“Yeah, but I thought I should tell you... I don’t mean to assume anything, but, just in case... I think you’re really nice, but I have a boyfriend, so...”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, so I don’t mean to assume that you had anything else in mind but kind of being friends and putting on debates together, but I just wanted to make that clear, you know?”
“Yeah. I appreciate it.”
“Damn, this is awkward.”
“It’s okay. And you weren’t being presumptuous. I was hoping we could maybe go out sometime, so I’m glad you told me.”
“Yeah, I kind of thought that, just from you always sitting at the bar by yourself.”
He almost thought she might see him cringing over the phone. “Well, you’re nice to let me know.”
“You still want to do the debates, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course. I wasn’t just giving you a line about that.”
“I didn’t think you were. Okay. Let’s do it soon. And let me give you my phone number.”
She told him the number and he wrote it down. They said they’d be in touch, and they got off the phone. Eric sat there at the table, with papers and pens and a coffee mug in front of him, and he tried to identify what he was feeling. Embarrassed, for sure, but that was the least of it. He realized, with a sense of wonder, that for the first time in his life he felt heartbroken.
He hadn’t realized until that moment how much of his life recently had been colored by a fantasy of having Carrie share it. Carrie, this person he didn’t even know, but who would understand why he lived in a small apartment and scrimped from paycheck to paycheck, because she had the same passion that he did. He had imagined waking up with her in his bed on Saturday mornings, imagined her blonde hair in tangles, imagined her wearing one of his shirts. He had imagined them telling each other stories of their experiences with students, sharing each other’s laughter and frustration, and sharing ideas about teaching, about how to make their classes and their schools better. He had pictured them sitting at this very table, grading papers together, then going out to see a movie, or staying home and cooking dinner together.
Eric had never thought of himself as lonely, and he still wasn’t sure that he was, but he knew there was something he wanted that he’d imagined in the laughing, friendly beauty of this woman he only saw across a bar top, and he’d just found out that he wasn’t going to have it, whatever it was, and now all the colors of the world seemed washed-out.
The colors came back in all their vividness on Monday morning, when he was in front of his students again. He imagined Carrie in front of hers, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. He did tell the students in debate club about the possibility of challenging another school, and they reacted the way he imagined the Mongols had when someone first floated the idea of invading China. Those were the very words he used when he called Carrie late Thursday afternoon and described their reaction.
She laughed. “I bet my kids will be the same. Hey, it’s nice to hear from you, but I have to go. I’m tending bar tonight.”
“At Durant’s?”
“Nope, at my other job.” She pointedly didn’t say where it was. “But I’ll be at Durant’s tomorrow night as usual. You going to be there?”
He wasn’t going to, but he didn’t want to say that, because he didn’t want her to know he had only been going there every Friday in the hope of getting with her. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m not sure. We’re having a debate on Saturday, so I don’t want to drink much or be out too late.”
“Gotcha. Well, I’ll see you if I see you. Good luck with the debate.”
Laura was debating that weekend, and she was on her best form, arguing for the motion that “Education is a right, not a privilege.” Eric was so jazzed by it that he called Carrie on a school phone, and, in faux-Muhammad Ali trash-talking style, he told her his kids would debate hers anytime and anyplace.
“It sounds like you had fun with it today,” she said. “Okay, I’m picking up t
hat gauntlet. You’re challenging the wrong girl. My little monsters are going to eat yours for breakfast. Let’s meet up next week and we’ll get it set up.”
They did. They sat in a diner, laughed and drank coffee together, and decided on a motion: “Fighting crime means fighting poverty.” As they talked, Eric realized just how much of a fantasy she had been for him; she was very different than the Carrie of his imagination, still a nice person, but right-wing, the opposite of him, and only into teaching as a step to something more lucrative rather than the vocation it was for him.
They decided that Eric’s school would host the first debate between their schools, and that hers would host the rematch. Eric suggested that they toss a coin to decide which school would speak for the motion and which would speak against, but she said she felt so strongly that crime was a moral disease rather than one caused by circumstance that she couldn’t, in good conscience, allow her students to argue in favor of such a motion. Eric didn’t mind, since he favored the motion and enjoyed the thought of Laura dismantling all arguments against it.
“Neat,” Laura said when he told her about it.
EIGHT
Laura’s parents were called into another meeting at the school. Her father was at work, so her mother went.
Mrs. Cole, the math teacher, had looked at Laura’s notebook, trying to see where Laura was going wrong in her understanding of math, and had seen the rhyme Laura had written about her.
“It’s pretty funny, and I’m not annoyed about her making fun of me,” Mrs. Cole said. “I’m not taking it personally. But what I am annoyed about is the fact that she’s so glib about it. I think what she wrote shows that she’s not failing to learn, but rather that she’s not even trying to learn, and that she seems quite happy about it.”
Laura sat there and said nothing. Her mother looked at her. “Is that true? Is that how you feel?”
Laura shrugged.
“I asked you a question,” her mother said. “Answer it.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, that’s not how I feel.”
“Then how do you feel, Laura?” Mrs. Cole said.
Laura shrugged.
“Don’t sit there and ignore Mrs. Cole,” her mother said.
“I’m not ignoring her.”
“You are. She asked you how you feel.”
“How I feel about what?”
“About the fact that you’re not learning anything,” Mrs. Cole said.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” Mrs. Cole said.
“I guess I don’t care.”
“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” Laura’s mother said as she drove Laura home. “Do you have any respect for anyone?”
“What’s respect got to do with it?”
“Respect has everything to do with it. Christ, to sit there and tell your teacher that you don’t care that you’re not learning anything in her class...”
“I was answering her question, and I was telling the truth. How is that disrespectful? Would it be more respectful if I lied to her?”
“Don’t talk to me as if you’re talking in one of your stupid debates.”
“What’s stupid about them? You’re the one that’s stupid.”
“Oh, that got a reaction, didn’t it? You’re failing all your classes and you don’t care, but you care about your stupid debate club.”
“I’m not failing all my classes. I’m not failing English.”
“Probably because your stupid English teacher runs the stupid debate club, so he lets you pass.”
“I can fail English as well if you like.”
“You’re making threats now? Okay, Laura.”
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?”
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead, she began singing a song by Edison Lighthouse, “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes.” She sang the chorus over and over again the rest of the way home, and continued to sing it as they left the car and went up to their apartment.
Laura’s father wasn’t home yet. She started to go to her room, but her mother, still singing, pushed her towards the living room, then stopped singing and said, “Sit down.”
Laura sat on the couch. “Why?”
“I don’t answer to you, Laura.”
Her mother picked up the phone book that sat by the phone, and looked up a number.
“Who are you calling?”
“I don’t answer to you, Laura.”
Her mother dialed, waited, got an answer. “May I speak with Mr. Crossan, please?” She waited. “Oh, he’s not? May I leave him a message? My name is Patricia Ponto. My daughter is Laura Ponto, and I believe she’s representing the school against another school tomorrow in a debate that Mr. Crossan has arranged.”
“Mom –” Laura said.
“No, I don’t know which school they’re debating against. I don’t see that it matters. Please let Mr. Crossan know that Laura won’t be there tomorrow. No, you may not ask why not. Just see that he gets the message.” She hung up. Then she looked at Laura. “Now you can go to your room.”
Laura just sat there, not believing it for a second, and then feeling the tears come out as the belief went in.
She looked at her mother and was going to argue, going to plead, and then she realized she wasn’t willing to do that, and knew it wouldn’t make any difference if she did.
What she said was, “I might miss the debate, but at least I didn’t lose my business and lose my house.”
“Shut your mouth, you stupid little bitch –” Her mother was coming towards her.
“If you fucking touch me, I’ll tell everybody what you used to make me do with your friends.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her mother said. She stopped her advance and sat down.
“Yeah, you do. And I’ll tell everybody.”
“You think they’d believe you?”
“I don’t care. I’ll tell them anyway.” Laura got up and went to her room and slammed the door.
She sat on her bed and wondered if her mother would be scared enough to change her mind and let her take part in the debate. She wondered if her mother would realize that she was bluffing, that she didn’t want people to know what had happened any more than her mother did.
She heard the phone ring, and somehow knew it was Mr. Crossan. She listened at the door, heard her mother answer it.
“This is she. Yes, hello. Yes, I’m afraid that’s correct. I made the decision because my daughter really isn’t trying in school, and I’m afraid that this is the only way to discipline her. Yes, I understand that, Mr. Crossan, but I’m sure you can find another student to take her place. Well, if she’s such a brilliant child, don’t you think it’s a matter of serious concern that she’s failing in every class but yours? Look, I’m sorry, but my responsibility is to my daughter, not to your debate team. I’m sorry, but no. Have a nice weekend, and good luck with the debate.”
Laura didn’t leave her room that evening, except to use the bathroom. Neither of her parents came to her room. She heard them eat dinner, but neither of them tried to find out if she wanted any. It was as if she didn’t exist.
She didn’t sleep at all that night. She looked at the notes she’d made for the speech she’d planned to give, and she imagined herself giving it. She tried to sleep, and couldn’t, tried to read, and couldn’t, and went back to her notes. By the time the sun rose, she had the speech completely prepared and memorized as though it had been written.
She didn’t feel tired. She went to the bathroom, took a shower, then put on a robe, went to the kitchen and ate toast and cereal. She put on the clothes she’d planned to wear to the debate, and then she knocked on the door of her parents’ room.
“Yeah?” her father called in a sleepy voice.
Laura went into the room. Her parents lay in bed, her mother wearing pajamas, her father wearing a T-shirt and underwear.
“I’m going to the d
ebate,” Laura said. “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to tell everybody what used to happen.”
Her mother looked at her father. “See? I told you.”
“Is this your new thing, making threats?” her father said. “Let me show you a threat –” He started to get out of bed, and Laura turned and ran. By the time he reached the bedroom door, she was out of the apartment.
She took the bus to her school. It was ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, two hours before the debate was to start, so nobody was there, and the doors were locked. She put her bag down on the hot asphalt in the shade of a palm tree, and sat on it.
Less than an hour later, Mr. Crossan’s car pulled into the parking lot. Laura stood up, picked up her bag, and walked towards him.
“Hi, there,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Did your mom change her mind?”
“Yeah –” she began, and then stopped. She couldn’t lie to him. “No. I just came anyway.”
Mr. Crossan unlocked the main door, and they went inside. “Does she know you’re here?” he said as they walked to his classroom.
“Yeah. I told her just before I left.”
“And she said it was okay?”
“No. I just left.”
“I see.”
“Can I still debate?”
He looked at her and shook his head. “Laura...”
“Why can’t I? You wanted me to. You picked me for the team.”
“Laura...”
“I’m the best. You won’t win if you don’t have me.”
“Laura, listen. Yes, I want you to debate. Yes, I picked you for the team. And yes, you are the best. Yes, we’re less likely to win without you, though you’re certainly not the only good debater we have. But if we can’t win without you today, then we’ll just have to lose.”
Laura held back the tears, but she couldn’t keep her voice from quivering, and that made her even angrier. “Why?”
“Because I talked with your mother yesterday, and she was adamant that you weren’t allowed to debate today. I don’t know how many laws I’d be breaking if I let you speak today. In fact, I’m probably breaking some by not calling your mother or driving you home right now.”