“The Mishkin kid, he’s back in school,” said C. “Wears a white glove on his hand, like he’s Michael Jackson.” He took a sip of something, smacked his lips. “Oh yeah, he’s bad,” C gurgled, pleased at his ten-year-old pop reference.
“Is Josh okay?” He had to ask.
“Okay? Yeah, I guess he’s okay. Never play the violin again.” Patrick winced. C took a sip. “But if that kid gets any Blacker, gonna give himself sickle cell anemia.” C coughed up that nasal, hiccupy laugh. He waited for Patrick to join him, as if he were X and they were in the teacher’s lounge.
“Anyway,” C continued, “been tryin’ to expedite this matter for you. But the BOE, you know, it’s the KGB. Had to twist arms to find out where you are.”
“I’m at Court Street.”
“Yeah, got you in solitary. So I heard.”
“Evaluating citywides.”
“Stop. They can’t do that anymore. Can’t make you do bubkes. Far as the UFT is concerned, you’re still assigned to Garvey.” Patrick felt queasy. And not just from the junk food and six-pack that had been his dinner. Suddenly he was in C’s little office; he was one of them, making his grievance. They can’t change my room, Jerry. I’ve been in 117 since 1973. I can’t take the kids on the field trip to Natural History, Jerry. You know my phlebitis.
Patrick sat up straighter on the couch. “I don’t care about that, Jerry. I just want back in my classroom.”
“Of course.”
“I want to teach.”
“Of course you do.”
“It was an accident.” He’d said it. The first time to anyone.
“No doubt. Cops dropped it right away.”
Everything the man said made him feel sicker, dirtier. But he couldn’t hang up yet. C had information. “What happens now, Jerry?”
“What have they told you?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what they do. Make you sweat.” C took a sip. Puccini played softly behind him. Madama Butterfly, the only opera Patrick knew. Helene, his old college flame, had forced-marched him through the libretto before dragging him to the Met. She listened to her father’s scratchy LP with tears in her eyes, but Patrick was unmoved. Basically the story of an unassertive lover getting dumped. Which, it occurred too late, should have been foreshadowing enough. “Our guy does an investigation. Their guy does an investigation,” said C. “Then you get a 3020-A.”
“A what?”
“A formal hearing. Could be a while. High-profile case, family’s got juice. That story in the Post didn’t help. And how the hell did they get a hold of that picture? You look like Charles Manson.”
Patrick knew. Javier: every man has his price.
“Anyway,” said C, “Silverstein’s stonewalling me. He’d like to drag things out, look like he’s doing his job. For once. And the Mishkins want their pound of flesh.” C snorted. “Sorry––bad choice of words.”
Patrick had been holding his breath. He let it all out. “Jerry, what’s the bottom line? How long is this going to take?”
“Honestly, it’s hard to say. Could be a couple weeks. Could be a couple months. Or more.” Ice and glass tinkled. Madama Butterfly was discovering she’d been dumped, pissed-off Japanese girl bellowing Italian. “But it’s only time. What’s a few minutes, here or there?”
The fucking schedule debate. When would he let it go? “For Chrissakes, Jerry––”
That nasal laugh. “I know, I know. I’m an asshole, right? But I’m your asshole now.”
An image Patrick fought to erase.
“And you need an asshole in my job. But it’s all right, Mr. Lynch, I can be a gracious winner.” C slurped his drink. “You just didn’t understand: It’s us or them. They win or we win. But I think you’re beginning to see the light.” He waited for Patrick to agree. “Oh—the thing I meant to tell you,” he blurted, finally, as if he’d forgotten his sole purpose for calling. “My source at the BOE says you’re being reassigned.”
“Reassigned?”
“That’s what they call it now, a ‘reassignment center.’ You know, a Rubber Room.”
“A Rubber Room?” He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
“It’s what they’re doing now. No more solitary. They’re coming after us, Mr. Lynch, this new administration. In big numbers. Ed Reform they call it.” He hacked up “reform” like Chauncey clearing one of his fur balls. “Got these rooms scattered across the city, nobody knows how many.” He took a sip, allowed Patrick to envision his new internment. “They were gonna stick you in a room in Flatbush, but my guy at the BOE owes me big-time. I got you a spot in Chelsea. Better commute, nice coffee shop across the street.” This is what he’d called for. This, and the humbling.
Con onor muore, sang Madama Butterfly, falling on the ancestral blade. See? Helene had choked, misty-eyed, she’d rather die than live dishonorably. Isn’t that beautiful? Now Patrick felt something in his gut lurch downward, hit something sharp. His throat was dry, but he swallowed hard. “Thanks, Jerry.”
C waited for Madama Butterfly to finish expiring. “Hey, I’m your rep. Solidarity forever.” He smacked those cracked lips. “In the meantime, keep your pecker up, kid. You’re still getting paid.” Ice rolled around his glass. “And pull yourself together. We have just begun to fight.”
Die yuppie scum! his eyes screamed. Patrick didn’t see him coming through the drizzle till the last second, when the yellow delivery truck swerved at him and the driver bared his teeth. A front tire caught the edge of a filthy puddle, spraying him head to toe. Patrick swiped bilge from his face and shook his fist at the truck as it blew through a red light at Seventh and Twenty-Fifth. He looked down at himself, a Jackson Pollock done in Manhattan sluice-water. It was the trench coat, of course. The trench coat opened to reveal the Harris Tweed, a cast-off of Susan’s dad. That and the paisley tie peeping above, smartly re-knotted by Susan. “Daddy always insists: the worse you feel, the better you should look,” she said, burying the knot beneath his Adam’s apple. Things were surely headed south when the budding socialist started quoting from the book of Chairman Dad.
But this was where her class background came in handy; it was pointless arguing that he knew better. C had said they could call him for the hearing at any time. Had to be prepared. Had to look like a teacher.
He was still smearing the filth on his garments when he reached the fifth floor of a red brick building on Seventh and Twenty-Sixth and opened the Rubber Room door. Patrick got into a line that ended with a young woman holding a clipboard, working hard on a wad of gum. She asked for name, rank, serial number. “You’re late,” she said.
Patrick looked at his watch: 8:04. “I was here at 8:00,” he protested. “I was in line.” He swept his hand behind him to show her, but he was the only one there.
“You don’t want to make a habit of it. They’ll bring it up at your hearing.” Patrick flinched. She shrugged. “Whatever. Sign out’s at three.” She jerked a thumb behind her. “Have a seat.”
So this was the Rubber Room: the width of a classroom and maybe three times deeper, fluorescent lights, several blinking, mud-grey carpet redolent of mold. Naked off-white walls crying for paint. Chairs, mostly filled, were grouped at tables in threes and fours. Forty or fifty bodies altogether, Patrick estimated, with a teacher’s skill at headcounts. The inmates evaluated him as he walked the center aisle, looking up from and then down at their crossword puzzles, spy novels, knitting. A few did double-takes as Patrick took off the spattered trench coat, loosened the paisley tie, aware of how he was violating the dress code, which seemed to be Laundromat-wear: coffee-stained sweatpants and Rangers jerseys, cream cheese on the cuffs. It was the junior high caf: what group would have you?
In the far-right corner was a cluster of chairs, several empty. Patrick settled into a seat opposite a fiftyish guy, jeans and a black sweatshirt, big mu
stache, graying soul patch and ponytail, pawing through the Village Voice. Faculty poet, thought Patrick, safe bet.
“That’s Louie’s seat,” said the poet behind his paper.
Patrick moved over.
“That’s Stan’s.” The poet peered over his Voice. He spoke with the hoarseness of weightlifters and movers, men who’d logged time grunting. “They’re getting coffee.”
Patrick moved again. “I didn’t realize there was assigned seating.” He’d meant to sound jocular but heard the edge that came from sitting in a damp room in wet tweed.
The poet lowered his Voice. “It’s very territorial here. Couple guys got into a Thrilla in Manila last week over a corner seat. Quite a show.” He shook his head. “Nothing like a bunch of caged teachers without their classrooms. Creatures of habit, teachers.” The poet offered his hand. “I’m Ralph.” He nodded. “And you’re new. Nice suit.”
Patrick flushed and swiped at his grime-speckled tie. “My girlfriend––”
“Say no more. Gotta look good for the first day of school.” He stroked the soul patch. “And you never know when you’ll get that sudden job interview.”
Patrick smiled an insider smile. “Exactly.” He gave Ralph his hand. “Patrick.”
“There’s a bathroom in the back, Patrick, but it’s nasty. Nick’s across Seventh has good coffee, and he lets teachers use his facilities. Lunch is at 12:00. Fifty minutes, live it up.”
With that, Ralph hoisted his Voice and Patrick dared ask no questions. He looked around the Rubber Room. It had the atmosphere of a late-night bus terminal: travelers slumped in their chairs, vacant-eyed, waiting for the vehicle that would take them somewhere else. But the stasis was deeper here; nothing was coming to whisk you away. Slowly, pockets of activity sprang up: a middle-aged woman with flowing dress and waist-length hair set up an easel and began painting from an oil palette; a young man with a shaved head and hoop earring began juggling three, four, five oranges; a small group practiced tai chi; a petite red-headed woman, barely old enough to teach, stood, burst into tears, and ran to the bathroom. She came back in a few minutes, dabbing her eyes with tissues, sat, then repeated the cycle a few minutes later.
Patrick noted that the groupings were largely by age and, disconcertingly, by race. The one exception was a group of seven or eight who seemed to be holding a book discussion in the back. When Patrick visited the nasty bathroom, he leaned in to see what they were discussing. The Bible.
Two men brushed by, bearing coffee. “Medium, black, two sugars,” said a thin balding man, well over six feet, handing coffee to Ralph. “Nick was out of cinnamon swirls,” said the other, half a foot shorter, a gut that obscured his belt. Both men wore T-shirts, jeans, sneakers and two-day beards. Both were pasty white, as if they’d evolved in this cave. Ralph introduced Stan, the skinny one, and Louie, his portly partner.
“You look familiar,” said Stan, shaking his hand. “You teach in Brooklyn?”
Ralph looked sharply at Stan. It appeared he’d breached some Rubber Room etiquette.
“No,” said Patrick, “Upper West Side. District 3.”
Stan widened his eyes at Louie, who smiled. District 3 had more than its share of boutique programs for the children of white professionals, all, by definition, gifted and talented. Patrick had gotten that knowing look before.
“Marcus Garvey,” Patrick offered, giving up more than he’d intended, but unwilling to be so easily dismissed.
The three men gave small but appreciative nods. Silverstein had upgraded Garvey considerably, but it had a tougher rep in the ’70s and early ’80s. There had been a shooting, back in the day.
“Nice suit,” said Louie.
“Not a suit, technically,” said Stan.
“His girlfriend made him wear it,” said Ralph behind his Voice.
“I heard that,” said Stan, grinning.
“You wore that,” said Louie.
“I did,” Stan admitted, “first day.”
“You were expecting a call from your lawyer.”
“Still am.” All three laughed. Patrick joined them; he’d been accepted. But he was also unsettled by what their laughter implied.
“I see the Weeper’s started already,” said Ralph, looking off to the corner where the red-headed woman stood, clearing her nose into a clump of tissues. Louie and Stan nodded and snorted. “Little redhead over there’s gone through a forest of Kleenex,” Ralph explained. “Used to have a boyfriend here.”
“A tragic Rubber Room romance,” said Louie.
“They started off holding hands,” Ralph continued. “Then nuzzling.”
“Not that we were watching,” offered Stan.
“Then,” said Ralph, folding his paper, “they started bringing things in.”
“Things?” asked Patrick, relieved to have the focus off him.
“Furnishings,” said Stan. “Couple sleeping bags, a floor lamp, radio. A little fridge.”
Patrick was smiling, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” said Ralph, “a regular love nest back in that corner.”
“And the sounds from back there,” Stan chortled.
“A real moaner, that girl,” said Louie. “Wouldn’t guess to look at her now.”
“What happened?” Patrick watched her clear a cheek with a sleeve.
“One Monday morning,” Ralph looked at Stan, “two months ago?” Stan nodded. “We show up, the love nest’s gone. Red’s over there with her tissues. Been weepin’ ever since.”
“Where’s the boyfriend?”
Ralph shrugged. “Had his hearing.” The men looked down at their coffees, brought back to the Dostoyevskian purpose of this place, a realm of appearance and disappearance.
But Nick’s caffeine revived the trio, and they resumed the task of introducing the rookie to the Rubber Room cast of characters. To the Scribbler, who’d filled a stack of legal pads with ink, his long fingers forever squeezing a fountain pen, his round glasses and chin whiskers inches from his prose; to the Artiste, she of the flowing skirts, who’d filled as many canvases with idyllic scenes of Swiss lakes and mountains; to the Juggler, who’d entertained the Rubber Roomers by keeping a veritable fruit salad aloft, amazing all with the growing quantity and variety of airborne produce, most of which he’d eat as the afternoon progressed. “Though you’ll notice how no one sits near him now,” Louie observed. Apparently, during the earlier stages of mastery, a particularly tricky banana-behind-the-back maneuver had gone awry, said fruit escaping the Juggler’s orbit, making a not-so-still life of the Artiste’s Matterhorn landscape. The hippyish Artiste revealed the less pacific side of her nature, suggesting where the Juggler could put his banana, and the man from Human Resources at the BOE was called in to restore relative order.
The trio delighted in the recounting, but, as the morning wore on, it became clear to Patrick that such episodes were rare and served the same purpose fist fights and rodent rodeos did for his students: welcome diversions from unremitting tedium. Anything to distract the inmates from acknowledging who they were and what they were doing there. This accounted for the odd, backwards introductions in the Rubber Room, where you learned more about who someone was inside the room than outside. Outside information begged the question all sought to avoid, the penitentiary question: What’re you in for?
And thus it was only after a grease-laden lunch at Nick’s that Patrick discovered Ralph wasn’t a poet, not even a teacher, but a custodian. As were Louie and Stan.
“I thought everybody here was a teacher,” Patrick said, swallowing the last of his overcooked cheeseburger, trying to sound casual. Custodians were another life form, far scarier than any teacher. Theirs was a union even more legendary than the UFT, with work rules undreamed of by pedagogues. They, for example, were only required to sweep classrooms every other day. A standard initially shocking to Patrick, raised among
spotless Scandinavians, that left the floor of 234 looking like the bottom of a birdcage by the afternoon of “sweep days.” Head custodians, like Ralph and Stan, were Dukes of Earl, with substantial “maintenance allowances” for their buildings, to be dispensed at their discretion. Patrick had heard of one head custodian who spent his afternoons, at the city’s expense, fishing off his boat in New York harbor. And Patrick gathered that some financial sleight-of-hand had been Ralph’s undoing, as Louie muttered something about “fiscal impropriety” as they haggled over the lunch tab.
“No,” said Louie, “there’s all sorts in the Rubber Room. A few principals, a few secretaries. That old grey-haired woman knitting that long green scarf? She’s a lunch lady.” Patrick laughed, trying to imagine her offense. And who she planned to choke with that scarf, well over four feet and growing. Louie raised a palm. “Truly. Word is some girl sassed her in the lunch line. ‘What is this shit?’ or something. Granny pelted her with meatballs from her big slotted spoon.”
“Assault with a deadly side dish,” said Stan, looking up from the Post crossword.
“We all got our breaking point,” said Louie, brandishing a french fry.
Ralph turned to Patrick. “If you see Louie with a broom in his hands, run.”
Louie thrust his fry at Ralph. “Never touched him. I just made a suggestion—”
“To his vice principal,” Ralph clarified.
“It was ill-timed,” Louie conceded.
“Wait.” Stan set the crossword down, his brows high. The lunch counter at Nick’s took notice. “You’re him.” Patrick felt the cheeseburger spin. Stan tapped his newspaper. “You’re Student Gives Teacher the Finger.” There was awe in Stan’s voice and respect in his eyes. He looked intently at Patrick, searching for what he had missed, as if he’d suddenly discovered he was lunching with Al Pacino or, better yet, John Gotti, and not just another defrocked employee of the New York City school system. Louie and Ralph, too, gazed at him anew. The lunch counter crowd, many of them Rubber Roomers, checked out Patrick the way New Yorkers do the famous, wanting to appear cool, indifferent, but also wanting a celebrity to add to their list. Never guess who I saw gettin’ a chili dog at Gray’s Papaya. No, I’m sure it was him. Got the ninety-nine-cent special…
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