At Risk of Being a Fool

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At Risk of Being a Fool Page 13

by Jeanette Cottrell


  Tonio frowned. “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not saying I would. I’m just asking, why does it matter?”

  “I’m a teacher. I care. That’s why I teach.”

  “No.” His head turned slowly from side to side. “All my life, my teachers were scared of me. I never did nothing to ‘em, not ever, but they were scared.” The flat monotone added an odd emphasis to the words. “I could never figure it out.”

  A lump in Jeanie’s throat shifted and settled into her stomach. It lay there like a snake, writhing and turning. This memory mattered deeply to Tonio. He’d wadded up his observation, sour and spiked, and handed it to her, a double-edged gift. Now he waited to see what she’d do with it. Protect her colleagues, or care about him?

  “I’m sorry, Tonio. If they’d known you better, they wouldn’t have been frightened.” Teachers cared, but they had choices to make, between ten easy students or one difficult student. If you worked with the one, you were cheating the ten. If you worked with the ten, you cheated the one. She shouldered the vague guilt. “You matter to me. What happens to my kids, matters to me.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  His eyelids dropped to half-mast. “I’m kind of tired, that’s all. Been camping out in my car. Don’t sleep good.”

  She blinked back the moisture in her eyes. She’d failed his test. “Your car? I thought you lived with your uncle.”

  “Yeah, well, usually. Only we got into this thing a few days ago. I lit out. Give it a few days, I’ll go back. It happens, no big deal.”

  Tonio was only nineteen. “Have you been able to get to work all right? Got enough to eat?” Silence. “Let me rephrase that. When did you eat last?”

  “Yesterday,” he muttered. “Morning.”

  “Idiot,” she said, without heat. “Blast you, you’re the one who told me not to carry money in this neighborhood. Stay put, will you?”

  Tonio’s head jerked up. “Hey, I’m not—”

  “Oh, hush up.” Jeanie rifled her purse, Mackie’s desk, and the closet. With a bang of the door, she disappeared. Shortly, she reappeared at his desk with a can of pop, a bag of pretzels, a candy bar from the vending machine, a dollar and seven cents in change, and a plastic bag under one arm. She looked at him doubtfully. “Look, all I’ve got is this stuff. I’ll go upstairs and borrow a ten from—”

  “No,” he barked.

  She let loose a sharp sigh. “Okay, be a martyr. What about these things?” She dangled a bag of rice cakes, caramel-flavored.

  Tonio laughed, and snatched it. “Listen, lady, I’m hungry enough to eat the plastic bag.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, his eyes glinting, “I’ll ask my boss for a loan. He’ll do it, I done him some favors on his truck. I just, you know, I didn’t want to ask.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled. To an outsider, it would seem odd, thanking him for letting her feed him. But Tonio had trusted her, briefly. For someone of his background, that was a great gift to give.

  “Hey,” he said, as she walked away.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Suicide, it ain’t my way.”

  “Deal, then?”

  “Deal. The hamster thing, I get it now. Pretty good.”

  “For a teacher?”

  “For a teacher.”

  Jeanie turned to lighter problems. She’d had a few misgivings about bringing the cat. Rita was more of a distraction than Corrigan was. Currently, Rita was having a wonderful time chasing paper balls that Quinto thoughtfully threw to her. How educational. Quinto’s “essay” held few words, and many sketches of Ricardo Cervantes and Danny Rivera.

  “Quinto,” she prodded.

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah.” He flipped the page and wrote laboriously.

  Dillon stalked in, handed her a note from Randy, and sat down. Jeanie ushered Rosalie back to her seat for the third time, and tried to extract an essay from her. Regrettably, the topic she chose had led, once again, to memories of her father, and the loss she now felt without his love. This was a poignant story, and had affected Jeanie greatly the first half-dozen times she’d heard it.

  “Rosalie, Rosalie,” she said bracingly. “Come on, girl, quit the tears. You’ll get salt in the potatoes.”

  “Potatoes?” said Rosalie, startled. The tears stopped.

  “Life is like a potato, Rosalie, didn’t you know?” Jeanie felt like a fool, pulling out the old family joke. It never made sense to outsiders. “Potatoes have a rough life. They’re mashed, baked, fried, or scalloped in a cheese sauce.”

  “Huh?” said Quinto, interrupting from his table. “How’s that? Life’s a potato?”

  “Back to work, guys. Come on.” Jeanie cast a glance around for the cat. Rita had discovered Dillon, and crawled into one of his large coat pockets. Jeanie savored Dillon’s unnerved expression.

  Brynna shoved her way through the door, looking over her shoulder. Jeanie stood involuntarily. Brynna was her own personal weathervane. Whatever was going on, Brynna always knew it. Was the girl sadistic? Or calculating, always looking for an angle? Or was it just the suspicion of a trapped animal, watching for hunters? Jeanie’s hand settled on a room divider. Without conscious thought, she pulled it behind her, closing Brynna off from Tonio.

  “Hi, Brynna,” Jeanie said.

  “Hey,” said Brynna. She settled at a table, and sat watching the door with the alert look of the vulture waiting for something to die.

  There was a shuffling step in the hallway. Sorrel walked in stiffly, jerking from side to side, like a wind-up doll whose interior mechanism had fragmented. Brynna’s alert look sharpened.

  “Hi, Sorrel,” Jeanie said.

  Sorrel gave no sign of hearing. She passed all of them and fumbled her way into a chair in the furthest corner of the room. The students generally avoided the corner desk. It was too isolated, and had no nearby windows. It accumulated the usual clutter of homeless debris: empty Coke cans, crumpled assignments, even a wrench and a spray can of paint.

  Brynna swiveled to watch, her face bright with malicious curiosity. Jeanie closed the door, grabbed two more room dividers, and boxed off Sorrel from the others. Brynna gave a wordless protest, and subsided into a sullen lump.

  “Here, Brynna,” said Jeanie, plopping books on her desk. “Science today, I thought. A little change of pace.”

  Her wandering eye settled on Tonio. Tonio glanced from Sorrel’s divider to his radio. He edged it towards Jeanie with a questioning look. It was a trade for the food, thought Jeanie, and nodded gratefully. Tonio turned on the radio. The beat of gangsta rap drowned out the background paper rustles. Rita squawked at the noise, and dove into Dillon’s jacket. Dillon flinched, but his hand, pursuing the cat, was unexpectedly gentle.

  Jeanie slipped between the dividers. Sorrel hung in the chair, her hands lying loose on the table. She might have been dead or comatose, and tied into her chair for some barbaric ritual. Jeanie lifted the clutter from the desk, dumping it on the floor.

  The roar of Oscar Kemmerich’s motorcycle cut through the music. Jeanie noticed it with vague irritation. Since she’d broken up a cozy conversation between Mr. Kemmerich and Rosalie, he’d gone to some trouble to disrupt the class. In one of his more inspired antics, he’d brought a friend of his, a police officer, on a tour through the building, and introduced him to her class. The officer was polite, if baffled, but her students’ varied reactions had taken her most of an hour to overcome.

  “Sorrel, I talked to your boss,” Jeanie said, trying to break into her self-absorption. There was no flicker of understanding. “Carol’s really happy with the way you’re working out.” Where were the girl’s restless movements? The tapping of the fingers, the impatient slap of books onto the tables? There was something obscene about the dreadful stillness. “Sorrel? Sorrel, are you feeling all right?”

  “Sure.” The voice was distant, vague.

  Was she in shock? Sugar was good for shock. “Sorrel, can
I get you a pop? Some coffee, maybe?”

  “No.” With a visible effort, Sorrel looked up. “I’m fine. I got work to do.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Jeanie’s glance slipped over Sorrel’s eyes, the color of the skin around the vivid splotches of makeup. She ticked off the warning signs she’d read a hundred times in the last months. Nothing matched. “You look sick. Do you need to lie down? Should I call the clinic?”

  “No.” Sorrel’s voice was still, lifeless.

  Jeanie waited for the automatic reach for purse and hand mirror, but the purse lay disregarded. Rumpled clothes, uncombed hair, uneven makeup, applied with an absent mind and careless hand. There were scuffs on her fingernails. There were actually scuffs on her fingernails.

  “Sorrel? Honey?” Jeanie’s hand edged out over the desk and hesitated. Her instincts fought with her hard-won knowledge.

  Never touch, Mackie said. Never.

  Very lightly, Jeanie rested two fingers on the back of Sorrel’s hand. Sorrel’s hand was still. It quivered, turned, and closed tightly on hers, fingernails digging into the back of Jeanie’s hand. Sorrel’s face convulsed, and a tremor wracked her body. She dropped her head onto the joined hands. Her forehead was hot and damp.

  “What is it? Whatever it is, just tell me.”

  “I’m pregnant.” The words were scarcely audible.

  Words leaped to Jeanie’s mind. Who, when, how? She bit back the words. All it took was ten minutes and a broom closet.

  She brushed a tendril of hair from Sorrel’s hot face. “You’re sure.”

  “Yeah.” The tortured voice was nearly inaudible. “Shit, what am I going to do? They find out, they’ll kick me out of Futures, back to the Tank. ‘Til I’m twenty-one. Two more fucking years. I can’t do it. I’ll kill myself.”

  Jeanie strove to keep her voice calm, detached. “Maybe an abortion, Sorrel? I’ll help you sort it out. No need to tell anyone.” Jeanie was putting herself out on a limb, but it seemed like a natural place to be. A student needed her.

  “No.” The word wrenched loose. “I thought of that, I thought maybe— I snuck out of work at lunch today. I went to this place and asked. They had these pictures, you know. Babies, all cut up.”

  “You can’t be far along, just a few weeks—”

  “I’ve been thinking.” Sorrel’s tone was dreary, exhausted. “But I can’t do it. It’s like, if it were Tiffany.”

  Or Geoff, or Keith. A wave of kinship washed over her. She stretched out an arm across Sorrel’s back, and leaned her cheek against Sorrel’s fevered one. “We’ll work it out. There’s always ways.”

  Sorrel’s keening sobs rocked Jeanie back and forth to the beat of the crashing music from Tonio’s radio. After a time, the tremors eased. Jeanie sat up, letting her free.

  “God, I must look like crap,” Sorrel muttered.

  Jeanie smiled involuntarily. “Just about,” she said. “How about you go clean up some, and we’ll figure things out. Go out through the office,” she added, remembering Brynna’s eager look. “Sorrel?”

  Sorrel’s eyes looked like Tonio’s: deep, mesmerizing, a dark cave with a bottomless pit. Jeanie kept her footing. “We’ll figure something out,” Jeanie said. “We will. Believe it, Sorrel.” The cave wavered and disappeared, leaving behind a girl, stunned and bereft. Sorrel nodded and fled.

  Jeanie watched her go. A month ago, she’d gotten this job, walked through the door, and started going through the motions. A student acted this way, and the professional teacher reacted that way. It was a complex dance, the moves choreographed through years of practice. When had that changed? When had these six students wormed their way into her heart so completely? Randy Firman and Dolores Cuthbert weren’t going to hear about this, not from Jeanie. They were colleagues, but on opposite sides of the same fence.

  How could she help Sorrel hide her pregnancy? The girl’s clothes emphasized every curve. That had to change. Then there was the Writing test. She was nearly ready. If she could recover her balance, she could take it Friday. It was best to get that over with as soon as possible, since it took so long to get the scores back. She could study for the math test while waiting.

  How far along was she? It was a second pregnancy, and she wasn’t showing yet. She might have another month of grace. Of course, if she failed either test, they were up a creek. The problem would be obvious before she had time for another try. Meantime, the main problem was keeping her out of the sight of suspicious people. At least Estelle, with her sharp eyes, wouldn’t see her.

  Jeanie’s mind stilled. Her fingers rattled on the desktop, the sound indistinguishable from the crashing music. Oh dear Lord, she couldn’t have. She half-rose, eyes frozen on the door through which Sorrel had escaped. Surely not. Sorrel couldn’t bear the thought of an abortion without getting sick. She couldn’t order a pipe bomb set for Estelle, just to get her out of the way. Could she?

  But there was that man she’d attacked at the party. She severed an artery, nearly castrated him, and left him in the bedroom. If no one had found him, he’d have died. He hadn’t recovered the use of two of his fingers, and walking remained uncomfortable a year later. Sorrel said she’d defended herself. The guy said that she’d answered a joke with a knife.

  That was different, wasn’t it, from a pipe bomb? A knife attack was an instant’s fury, slashes with the knife close at hand, and the instinct to flee. Arranging a bomb took planning and intent. Or perhaps it didn’t, if all it took was a phone call. Had she called someone because she was scared Estelle was onto her, would kick her out, and toss her back into Corrections?

  No. She couldn’t have.

  Sorrel came in and sat down, drawing the shreds of her dignity around her. Her freshly scrubbed face looked naked without its customary armor of makeup. She looked at Jeanie, with hope and fear mingled.

  “All right, here’s what I’m thinking,” said Jeanie. “Stop me if you disagree. I know you have to pass the tests to get out of Bright Futures, right? I’m assuming you can handle living there, and working for a while? You’re going to take the Writing test on Friday, so you’re going to have to live and breathe writing for the next two days. We’ll have to wait from one to three weeks for those results, and I figure that’s all the time we’ve got. Now for the math test, that’s bad news. To get to that level, in a month, means a lot of work, lots of concentration on your part.” Doubts rose. Sorrel had the basic skills and the intelligence, but not the patience to apply them. “More than you’ve shown me in the past.”

  “I will, I will. I can do it. If I don’t, God, I’m back in Corrections and the baby’s in foster care. I want my baby.” She clutched her abdomen protectively. “It’s ours. Tiffy’s and mine.”

  “And the father?”

  Sorrel sealed her lips and shook her head. “He’s got nothing to do with this. The baby’s mine.”

  “But Sorrel—” Sorrel half-rose, looking ready to bolt. Why was the father such a touchy issue? “All right then. That’s your business, not mine. Sorrel, you’ll need to fill me on a few things, especially on how your sentence reads. Then I’ll hit the phones while you hit the books. I’m going to line you up enough homework to keep you out of trouble.”

  Sorrel gave a watery chuckle. “A little late.”

  ~*~

  Randy replayed his voice mail. He shifted his shoulders against the car seat, propped the bag of fries on the dashboard, and took another bite from his hamburger. Fast food parking lots were his second office. He gathered the burger into one hand and thumbed his cell phone with the other.

  “GED School.” Jeanie sounded a little strained.

  “It’s okay,” Randy said, through a mouthful of burger. “Sorry.” He swallowed. “They’ve cleared him, at least for now. He’ll be there soon.”

  “Dillon?” She sounded startled. “Oh, right, he got back a while ago.”

  “They got a search warrant for his house.”

  “His house? Dillon would never build pipe bombs in his gra
ndmother’s house.”

  Randy grinned at the acerbic tone. “Yeah, well, they don’t understand about Mrs. Otero.”

  “If they think he did it, they should be checking his friends’ houses.”

  “They’ll get there.”

  “Yeah,” she said, depressed. “Actually, I called about Sorrel.”

  “Sorrel? I saw her yesterday. What’s she pulling now?”

  There was a momentary silence. “She’s working really hard. She’ll be taking the Writing test this Friday.”

  “Wow, she’s really putting the pressure on. Can she pass it?”

  “I hope so. Probably.”

  Possibly, Randy corrected her mentally. Sorrel must be pushing Jeanie, too.

  “She’s really eager to get out. We were talking about ways she could increase her chances. There’s work, school, and a positive report from Bright Futures, right?”

  “That’s the basics, yes.”

  “What about community service?”

  Randy paused, a load of fries halfway to his mouth. Ketchup dripped onto his shirt. “Say what?”

  “If she were to put some hours in, on community service, wouldn’t that help her chances? Show she’s a reformed character?” The chuckle was subtly reassuring.

  Randy munched, brain spinning in a new direction. “Maybe. But I haven’t got time to arrange stuff like that. And transportation’s impossible from Bright Futures, with Torrez out of commission. They’re short-handed. Mary Mahoney’s about out of her mind.”

  “How’s Estelle doing?”

  “She’s off critical, out in the wards. She’ll be off work for a while. Six weeks, minimum.”

  “Oh dear. Poor thing. Sorrel said something about license plate numbers. Have the police had any luck?”

  “If they had Mrs. Otero’s, I’d have heard about it. Otherwise not. Jeanie, I don’t think community service is workable. She has to be under constant supervision. Once she meets the criteria, she’ll be better off. Down to supervised probation, like Dillon, but in her case, that’ll be up in Portland where her family is.”

 

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