The priest knew their imaginations would fill in the vacancies. And they would crave protection, too, from the same things he feared: the long investigation, a media frenzy, potential lawsuits, public hostility toward the church leaders, not to mention the humiliation of the diocese.
Fortunately, the priest pointed out, they had an easy solution at their disposal. Close the school, and the problem of a rogue teacher would evaporate entirely.
Satisfied with the shock and bewilderment he created, Father Mercedes stood in the library and looked at the large oak table at the head of the room, full of empty chairs, where the council would soon deliver their decision publicly.
He had no doubt. These were the last moments of St. Mike’s existence.
Sister Maria came in soon afterwards and sat alone in the back of the room. Father Mercedes had pledged the parish council members to secrecy about Mr. Zimmer. Sister Maria had no idea what was coming.
Even Father Mercedes didn’t expect a unanimous decision, yet that’s exactly what Mr. LeRose, the council’s secretary and president, announced as he called the meeting to order. LeRose was one of the two council members the priest had not approached, since they were steadfastly in favor of keeping the high school open. It seemed even those two had been won over.
“It is rare that we all come to the same agreement,” said the man known by Davidek as The Big Texan. “We pray that this is the right decision, and it was undertaken with heavy hearts and great concern for the future of the parish. There were disagreements on both sides, but ultimately the vote was unanimous.”
Mr. LeRose said, “St. Michael the Archangel High School will remain open.”
* * *
The priest’s lungs felt like two squeezing fists in his chest. He had been standing, and now his back found the wall, the coolness of the stone bleeding through his black coat.
But then the relief in Sister Maria’s face was soon extinguished as LeRose revealed the rest of the decision: The council remained alarmed by grave behavioral problems at the school. As such, they would revisit the issue of closure in one year. Until then, there would only be limited funds allocated to repair the roofing problems, the dissolving brick in the hallways, and the school’s other infrastructure woes.
One ancient board member spoke up to say, “Above all, we want to rebuild our church, and remove our worship of the Lord from the ridiculous venue of a basketball court.” Her remarks received applause from the other mummies in the audience.
Mr. LeRose read from his notes unhappily: “There will be other constraints as well, including a sharp drop in the school’s operating budget next year. We’ll detail those matters in the coming months as we assemble our next fiscal-year budget in July.”
Mr. LeRose looked up, finding Sister Maria’s stricken face. The school was still alive—but that life was about to get even more difficult.
* * *
In the parking lot, Mr. LeRose opened the shimmering door to his sporty silver convertible, the one Davidek had first spotted outside his house nearly a year earlier. Streetlights began to flicker on in the warm night air as the sun set in a blue pool beyond the hills.
Father Mercedes charged at him from across the lot, and the priest’s large hand, stinking of nicotine, yanked at The Big Texan’s gray suit. “After all you’ve seen, after all you’ve read from the Parish Monitors, after all the things I have personally told you concerning one of the teachers at this school—you vote to keep this place alive?”
Mr. LeRose removed Father Mercedes’s hand from his collar. “Funny how a convenient little rumor crept up on the day of the vote. Did you really think that would fool us? Do you really think you fool us?” Mr. LeRose was shorter than Father Mercedes, but he was backing up the older man. “Thanks to your rumormongering today, even the people who wanted to vote against the school changed their minds. They finally saw how desperate you were. Even if they believe the school is troubled, they’re not taking only your word alone anymore—”
The priest swayed in front of him. “What if I’m telling the truth?”
“About what? The teacher?” LeRose scanned the parking lot briefly, watching as the last of the meeting attendees waddled to their cars. He said softly, “We’ve provided for that.”
Father Mercedes waited for more, but got none. “You’ll get the blame,” the priest said, waving a finger in LeRose’s face. “I’ll tell the bishop you did nothing. That you protected a man accused of—”
“But we have done something, Father. The teacher won’t be a problem anymore.”
“What? Are you going to ‘investigate’?” The priest sneered. “Drag this parish through that filth on the front page of every—?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Mr. LeRose told him. “Money is tight. The school is getting a new streamlined budget. St. Mike’s will, unfortunately, need to shrink the size of its faculty by exactly one. He’s not fired. He simply fell off the edge of a shrinking bottom line. This way, there are no questions. No accusations … And if he’s innocent, we’ve done him a favor. He doesn’t have to defend himself against the indefensible.”
The priest shot back: “There are worse problems at St. Mike’s than just him.”
“And you’re one of them—aren’t you, Father?” Mr. LeRose’s face was cold but smiling. “I know a few contractors who say you’ve inquired about transforming the school into a nursing home for the elderly. You’ve been pretty cheap with the initial bids, Father.… But then, that would leave more for you, wouldn’t it?”
Mercedes slapped the trunk of LeRose’s Porsche and stabbed his finger in the man’s face again. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“Definitely not an heir to the Mercedes-Benz family, that’s for sure,” LeRose said, looking at the palm print the priest had made on his car. “I looked into that, too. The family name was originally Marcedi, right? But your father changed that, and played it up to his advantage—as have you. So where does all your money come from, Father?… All that cash I hear you drop on the Steelers, and down at the Meadows, picking long shots. Not a parson’s wage, I’m sure.”
Father Mercedes didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.
“I’m willing to wait for my answer,” LeRose said. “The diocese’s lawyers and accountants will find it—eventually.” He ran his hand along the curved doorframe of his silver sports car, making a razor line of dust on his forefinger. “For now, you can be happy, because you’ve lost an enemy. I know Mr. Zimmer was a thorn in your side. But don’t be too happy—”
The Big Texan’s thick, dry hand patted roughly against Father Mercedes’s face, leaving a smear of dust on the priest’s jowls.
“—you’ve just made a new enemy,” he said.
* * *
In Sister Maria Hest’s office, nothing moved. Not the stacks of manila files threatening to tilt over onto the cushions of the green leather couch, not the statue of the Virgin Mary gazing dolefully from the shelf across the room, teetering among assorted glass and brass award plaques, most of them decades old.
The twisted black phone cord spilling from the edge of the nun’s tank-sized steel desk did not sway, nor did the weeping arms of her spider fern, or the slats of the wooden window blinds, casting the white morning sunlight into neat bars on the floor.
Sister Maria slumped in her swivel chair, hands folded on the empty desk blotter. Father Mercedes stood over in the corner, his elbow resting on a battered filing cabinet, a cigarette perched between his fingers, smoke wreathing his face. They were alone, but not for long.
He had enjoyed telling her about Zimmer.
Sister Maria asked softly, “Is there another way?…”
The priest exhaled twin columns of smoke from his nose. “Yes,” he said. “There is.”
He had been considering that question himself. Despite his overall defeat, there was an opportunity here, even better than removing Mr. Zimmer. Father Mercedes would spare the teacher, tell the parish council that the gi
rl had lied, that the accusations proved to be baseless. Zimmer would be allowed to stay, and perhaps never even know the allegations against him. The priest would be willing to agree to that bargain, but only if it meant eliminating a far worse obstacle.
The priest told Sister Maria, “You could step down instead.”
* * *
The date on Mr. Zimmer’s Simpsons calendar showed it was Wednesday. Friday was graduation, and the seniors weren’t required to show up this week for regular class, so he had the period to himself. Teaching for the year was finished anyway. Now was the time for the remaining students to clean up and prepare for the next year.
Zimmer had surrounded himself with trash bins as he strip-mined the necessary from the not amid the mountains of paper on his desk.
“Mr. Zimmer…”
He looked up at Sister Maria, standing in his classroom doorway. “Yes?” he asked.
* * *
Zimmer sat down on the principal’s green couch, his hands clasped between his tall knees, being careful not to topple two tall stacks of files on the cushions beside him. By the time Sister Maria finished talking, he felt like his gut had been slit open.
Sister Maria looked down at her desk. Father Mercedes hovered over Zimmer’s shoulder in the back corner, silhouetted against the window.
Zimmer couldn’t breathe—not since they had mentioned Hannah Kraut’s name. The air felt like hardening concrete in his throat. “What do you want me to say?” he asked finally, his voice breaking, though he had tried to sound strong. “It’s not true.” Zimmer could only repeat those words. It was not true. It wasn’t. There was nothing else to say.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mercedes said. “That’s not why you’re being let go.”
Zimmer said, “Then why?”
The pastor nudged at the papers stacked on the couch beside the teacher, careful not to let the tower fall—just testing. “We simply need to cut the school’s expenses—that’s the public reason for your departure. The official reason. Consider that a kindness. We’d like to spare you the humiliation of these accusations. If we can.”
Zimmer looked back to Sister Maria, his eyes wide and frightened, waiting for her to step in and stop this. “However—if you were to challenge us…,” the priest went on. “If you were to fight this decision…”
“Sister Maria…,” Zimmer said, pleading. “Sister…”
“You’ll find the severance package to be—adequate,” the priest said. “Before you get emotional, I’d suggest you think of the school. Think of yourself, even … Think of the girl.”
“The girl?” Zimmer said. “Are you serious? If Hannah’s saying these things, it’s a lie. Sister … She’s delusional … She’s obsessed!”
Father Mercedes said, “So you do admit there was a relationship?”
“It’s a lie!” the teacher shouted, rising out of his seat. He laid his knobby hands on the principal’s desk, looming over her, pleading for her help. “Let’s get her in here. Right now!”
“I would advise you not to confront the girl about this,” Father Mercedes said wearily. “If you challenge her, I will see to it that the police are informed immediately.”
“Sister…,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Sister, please.” The principal turned her face up to him. Andy Zimmer, her old student. Her favorite student. She often wondered what would become of her without St. Mike’s, but where would she be without Andrew Zimmer?
She had sent him to nurture Green, the school’s only black student at the beginning of the year. He had been dispatched on prom night to the Stein house to quiet Davidek.… It had been Zimmer who not only saved The Boy on the Roof, but had also forged the secret compromise that satisfied the boy’s family and allowed the school to continue operating.
This … was just one more thing she needed from him. The last thing.
Father Mercedes and Sister Maria knew the teacher would lose control and didn’t try to quiet him. Mr. Zimmer stood before them like a man drowning in deep water, sinking into darkness, his great long arms cutting the space around him. He yelled, uselessly. He gasped in the stifling silence. Then Mr. Zimmer simply ran out of words. His arms stilled at his sides. His back bent, his eyes probed the floor. He had done nothing wrong, and yet it was over. He couldn’t explain the relationship with Hannah. Even the truth would not exonerate him.
Just as Sister Maria and Father Mercedes had allowed Zimmer’s noise, they now allowed his defeated silence.
“Isn’t there some other way?” Zimmer asked after a long while. But his voice had no strength left. In the end, he took what they were willing to give.
FIFTY
A cheerful anarchy filled the sunny stone halls of St. Michael’s. It was Friday, the final day of the school year. The seniors gone, except for their graduation the next evening, the remaining underclassmen enjoyed a day that was more playful than educational. Report cards were handed out that morning. Those who performed well celebrated a job well done, while those who did poorly—Davidek included—merely celebrated the final hours before he’d have to face the disappointed wrath of his parents.
Outside the school library, some sophomores were pushing each other around on the battered steel book carts. The day wore on, scorching hot, so the boys were permitted to remove their blue blazers. Shirts were untucked and skirts were rolled, baring buff teenage arms and raising hems to dangerous places above the knee. Every time the class bells screamed, more students were left lingering in the hallways.
Davidek and Green would have been in study hall, but two days ago, the students were told Mr. Zimmer had a family emergency and wouldn’t be present. Ms. Bromine was also mysteriously absent, though in her case, the school was told it was due to illness. With no one watching those classrooms, the freshmen filtered elsewhere, fusing with groups of sophomores and juniors—savoring their soon-to-end status at the bottom of the social food chain.
A white van showed up in the parking lot during lunch and delivered two pallets of yearbooks wrapped in plastic, which the students fell upon and ripped open like a pride of lions savaging a carcass. The books spent the rest of the day circulating from hand to hand, as heartfelt messages of friendship were dispatched into the future via the empty pages of the inside cover. Everybody wanted Davidek to sign their book—he was the Hero of the Hazing Picnic, after all. The guy who stood up to Fuckslut. The guy who watched out for them.
Davidek didn’t want to sign. He didn’t even want a book of his own. But they were thrust upon him, and he flipped through the pages, thinking of his long-ago search through last year’s yearbooks for a photo of Hannah Kraut, and finding only scratched-out faces and the line: YOU COULDN’T REMEMBER ME IF YOU TRIED. The yearbook committee obliged her this year—there weren’t any photos of Hannah Kraut. Not even her name was mentioned.
As more and more kids handed him their books to autograph, he searched his pockets and found a couple pens, but didn’t need those. He had some coins in his pocket, but they were too blunt. Then his hand found his collar, undoing the clip-on tie. He pulled out the metal clasp and ran his finger along its edge. Perfect.
Davidek never got an official school portrait (there was just a black square where it should have been). But in the freshmen section, he did find one snapshot of him, standing between Lorelei and Stein as they leaned against a wood-panel wall in Palisade Hall. He had no idea when it was taken, but probably early in the year. Lorelei had her head on his shoulder, and Stein stood with his arms crossed, smirking.
After wandering away to sign them, Davidek always gave the yearbooks back with a smile. But he never actually wrote anything.
Only later did the owners of the books notice that strange photo of the three freshmen—the ones with the scratched-out faces. So many yearbooks had it, that everyone assumed it was just some strange misprint.
* * *
That afternoon, the outgoing freshman class—now incoming sophomores—stood in the hallway filling trash bins with discarded class noteb
ooks, carefully hand-shredding unwanted love notes and tearing down magazine cutouts of dreamboat celebrities from the inside panel of their locker doors.
At the bottom of her own locker, Lorelei found a piece of paper where she’d once written the new rules she intended to follow to make people like her: Be pretty.… Get good grades.… Don’t be the class clown.… Sit in the front of class.… Befriend a handicapped person.…
She tried to remember when the page was clean, and uncrumpled. Then she squeezed it into a ball and dropped it in the garbage.
Lorelei was surrounded by her girlfriends, and on days like this, it felt good to matter again. Everyone wanted to be around the beautiful tragic girl. Zari had her camera out and kept trying to get Lorelei to pose for pictures with everybody. “I’ll print up the photos and maybe when vacation starts, we can meet up at your house and put them in an album,” Zari said. Some of the other girls nodded eagerly, but Lorelei was noncommittal, not wanting to risk any of them meeting her mother.
Lorelei noticed a lonely figure at the other end of the hall, and excused herself from the group. The rumor that she had turned on Stein because he smacked her around still made Lorelei feel a nauseated kind of guilt—but not enough to reveal the truth. She finally felt safe. And if she could use her newfound popularity to reward other lonely girls … maybe that would make it all right.
It was like a variation on Rule No. 5 from that squashed-up sheet of paper—“Befriend a crippled person.” Only, in this case, the handicap was unpopularity.
“I enjoyed sitting with you at the Hazing Picnic,” Lorelei said, which made Seven-Eighths’ skinny hatchet face blink. “Maybe we could hang out or something over the summer. Maybe go swimming at the wave pool, or get our nails done or just talk girl stuff, you know?”
Seven-Eighths had been thinking about all the confessions she would still have to do this summer. With school out of session, she had started to worry about whether she’d have anything new to share with Father Mercedes—who was still demanding to know everything he could about the students of St. Mike’s.
Brutal Youth: A Novel Page 39