Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes

by Kathleen West

  “She’s the worst,” Lyle said. The bell rang then, and the last few students in the hall jogged toward classrooms.

  “Can you believe she actually said that? Like, out loud?” They started walking again. Lyle hesitated. “What?” Isobel demanded.

  “Well, you know what I think,” Lyle said, apologetic. “All of the parents would love you if you just read the books with the kids and let go of all of the political stuff. They love me”—he smiled—“and I’m even gay.”

  Isobel squared her shoulders and stared down the hall, avoiding eye contact with her friend. It was true he did “just read the books” with the kids—close reading and textual analysis, plus direct instruction on semicolons and Latin roots. Any ideas Isobel passed along to him about political contexts or any activity that involved multiple perspectives went right into his recycling bin. She’d argued with him before about his responsibilities as a white male educator, at which point he always asked her how risky she thought it was to be openly gay in the Liston Heights community.

  That was a conversation stopper. She agreed on a fundamental level that Lyle was probably doing most of his part just by being visible. But still . . .

  “Sorry,” Lyle said. “It’s just, you don’t always have to be the one.”

  “The one?”

  “The one person,” he explained, “who takes the public stand.”

  “But if it’s not me speaking out,” Isobel protested, “who would it be? Jamie?”

  “You know I don’t understand what you see in her. Anyway . . .” Lyle closed the subject. The old argument between them would be there the next time one of them brought it up. “Where are you headed?”

  “Oh.” Isobel tried to sound casual. “I just need to chat with Wayne for a moment.” She still hadn’t mentioned the voice mail. She knew Lyle would more fervently repeat the same advice: to skip the edgy lessons and stick to the prescribed curriculum. And anyway, it embarrassed her to be the target of something so mean-spirited and also so noteworthy. Although she liked to push boundaries in her own classroom, she also liked being the type of person who had everything under control.

  “What could Wayne possibly offer you today?” Lyle said dryly.

  “I’m sure nothing. I’ll catch you later.” Isobel waved and headed past the copier to the adjoining administrative offices, procuring a Life Saver from the bowl on the school secretary’s desk and peeling open the cellophane with her teeth. She peeked around the doorframe of Wayne’s office, and there he was, hunched over his keyboard. She knocked tentatively and shoved the mint into a back corner of her mouth. “Wayne?” she ventured.

  The principal turned his thick chest toward the door, his face lingering on the computer screen until it had to follow the rest of him. His usual smile took up half of his face, although Isobel thought she detected a shimmer of disappointment in his dark eyes when he registered who was there. “Isobel!” he boomed, recovering. “What’s shakin’?” Wayne’s expressions—“What’s shakin’?,” “Hey, pal,” “Make it a great day!”—often made her feel that she were in high school rather than working in one.

  She took a step into the office. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Absolutely!” Wayne rose from his chair and took two steps toward the conference table near the door. “Have a seat! What’s going on?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Isobel began. Wayne folded his hands on the table between them. She paused, timid and then irritated. Wasn’t she the victim here? “I had an unusual voice mail at my home number yesterday.” Isobel pushed the words out. Wayne knit his substantial eyebrows. “This is going to sound sort of dramatic, I guess,” she said. She looked at the red-framed poster of Yoda. “Do or not do,” it recommended. “There is no try.”

  “Okay,” Wayne prompted.

  “So,” she said, “an anonymous parent left the message. It accused me of teaching an anti-American curriculum.”

  “Anti-American?” Wayne squinted at her, leaning forward.

  “Yes,” Isobel confirmed, feeling emboldened now that she’d begun, “and Marxist.”

  “Uh,” he said, “have you been teaching something new?”

  “Not really. I mean, I used a new TED talk recently about considering multiple perspectives.”

  “Multiple perspectives?” Wayne echoed.

  He’s trying, Isobel thought. She straightened her tortoiseshell glasses, which listed perpetually right. “As you probably read in my annual goals narrative,” she said, “in AP Lit this year, I’d like to encourage kids to let go of tacit American exceptionalism. . . .”

  Wayne looked over her shoulder at something in the hallway. She turned as John Dittmer knocked fervently. “So sorry, Isobel,” he said when he saw her. “I just thought you should know right away,” John continued to Wayne, “that there was an incident surrounding the cast list.”

  “What happened?” Wayne pressed his hands on the conference table.

  “It appears that Julia Abbott may have punched Melissa Young,” John reported, a bit breathless.

  “Oh!” Isobel exclaimed. “I saw that!”

  “What?” Wayne stood abruptly from his chair, sending it skittering backward a few inches along the industrial rug. “She punched her?”

  “She didn’t exactly punch her,” Isobel said, but the men were talking over her head.

  “Tryg Ogilvie’s got it on video,” John said. He looked feverish.

  “Did you take it from the kid?” Wayne lunged toward the doorway. “I need to see that video right now.” They nearly ran out of the office.

  Isobel gathered her notebook and pencil. “Okay,” she said to herself as she turned toward the “Good things come to those who hustle” poster. She’d have to check in with the principal another time.

  JAMIE PRESTON

  Jamie Preston wrapped her hands around the white ceramic mug containing her afternoon coffee, a treat she allowed herself during her free period. She’d peeked down the hallway toward Principal Wallace’s office after she’d refilled her cup in the faculty workroom and could make out part of the back of Isobel’s head, opposite Wayne’s trademark smile. What was that meeting about? she wondered. She could probably get it out of Isobel later.

  Now at her desk, Jamie resisted the pull to Facebook by scrolling through e-mail. A new message from English department chair Mary Delgado triggered a wave of nausea. The subject read, Staffing: 2020-21. Ever since last year when the school had decided to cut a member of the English department—not replacing her friend Peter Harrington after his unceremonious firing at the close of fall break—Jamie had felt the precariousness of her own situation.

  “You have no job security,” her father had pronounced over one of their twice-monthly dinners as Jamie recounted Peter’s exit. She’d seen the disappointment in the set of her dad’s jaw, the same flinch she’d registered when the final engineering school rejection had arrived in the spring of her senior year at Liston Heights High. None of them—not her mother, her father, or herself—had been particularly surprised or dismayed when the bad news had arrived from Michigan or Northwestern. But when CU–Boulder had rejected her, and then finally the University of Iowa, her dad stopped making eye contact. Two years later, when she declared an English major at the end of her sophomore year at the University of St. Stephen, a local liberal arts school with an 80 percent acceptance rate, she’d almost gotten used to his perpetual disappointment, limp arms in perfunctory hugs.

  “I think I’ll be okay,” Jamie had said about her continued employment, although she wasn’t sure. “I had a really good performance review last week.”

  “We’ll see.” Her dad had shrugged. Jamie’s hand had drifted to the Prius keys she’d dropped in the pocket of her cardigan. Her parents had given her the car when she’d been offered a job at Liston Heights. Will they take it back if I get laid off? she wondered now.

 
Unfortunately, Mary’s e-mail began, and Jamie groaned aloud, then forced herself to read on, now that it’s February, we know that enrollment is officially down for next year’s ninth grade. We’ll lose a class section or two. I’m anticipating a need to cut at least one contract to part-time.

  Part-time. Jamie was barely making rent, plus groceries and the mandatory retirement contribution set up by her father on her current full-time salary. She couldn’t imagine a cut.

  She flashed back, as she frequently did, to the session the career adviser in her education program had given on how to escape the dreaded pink slip, a common plague of new teachers with no seniority. “Ingratiate yourself to parents,” the woman had said. “Parents can be allies, so get to know them.” Jamie had scribbled that advice verbatim in a green college-ruled notebook. She wasn’t sure the woman would have approved of the Facebook stalking she’d done to “get to know” the Liston Heights mothers, but she had to admit it had helped, as had the woman’s next piece of advice: “Send good-news e-mails.” Always an obedient, if not inspired, student, Jamie now kept a list of the compliments about students she’d sent via e-mail, complete with dates and topics.

  “Give a great back-to-school-night presentation,” the careers woman said. That had been easy, as it turned out. Isobel had pulled her into a half hug the week before the dreaded event in her first year and said, “Don’t worry—I’ve got a killer PowerPoint for parent night. I’ll send it to you, and you can replace my name and contact information with yours.”

  That had been the fourth or fifth time Isobel had come to her rescue in just the first couple of weeks of school. Initially, it was an ingenious way of organizing seating charts. Then a flash drive filled with complete unit plans for every book in the American Literature curriculum. Sure, Jamie had brought coffee for Isobel on the second day of the teacher workshops, but certainly a four-dollar latte didn’t merit the level of caretaking Isobel embraced. Jamie had no idea why the older woman was being so nice to her. Although Isobel had been a teacher at LHHS when Jamie was a junior and senior, she’d never been in her class.

  “I want you to be successful here,” Isobel said when Jamie thanked her, relief flooding her chest. “We’re all in this together. Plus,” Isobel added, “Mary Delgado asked me to look out for you. She thinks you have a ‘spark.’” Isobel put air quotes around the descriptor and smiled.

  Jamie had held on to that compliment, often repeating it to herself after a difficult day. But would her supposed spark make any difference to Liston Heights’ bottom line? Likely not. Jamie heard her father’s dispassionate voice in her head: Budgets were budgets, and she was the one on the chopping block.

  Unless, Jamie thought, someone left. Could Eleanor Woodsley retire? How old was she? Or someone could get pregnant? Maybe the parents would finally turn on Isobel, who regularly fueled political discussions when everyone else was dissecting metaphors?

  Just then the classroom door banged open, and Jamie startled, bobbling her coffee. She slid her chair back and sucked her stomach in to avoid the splatter. “Shoot,” she said aloud as several beads of liquid settled into her purple blouse near her belly button.

  “Sorry, Ms. Preston.” Jamie looked up to see a sad-faced Per Skordahl holding a paper.

  “It’s okay,” Jamie said. “Coffee goes with purple.” She clicked out of her e-mail and put her mug on the desk. “What can I do for you?”

  Per stepped toward her and held out the paper. “I’m stuck on my Gatsby paragraph,” he said, “and the study hall teacher said I could come and see if you were free.”

  Jamie motioned to the chair next to her desk, the one she kept there exactly for conversations like this. “Let’s take a look.” As she skimmed his topic sentence, she imagined the good-news e-mail she’d send his parents when they were finished. “Per took the initiative to see me during his free period,” she’d report. With one hand, she brushed at the brown spots on her blouse and then tried to forget them.

  ANDREW ABBOTT

  Five minutes into seventh-period Pre-calc, Andrew Abbott raised his hand. “Could I use the restroom?” The teacher nodded, turning back to the equation he’d scribbled on the whiteboard.

  In the hallway, Andrew rubbed his palms on the front of his jeans. He did plan to go to the men’s room, but really, he needed to check the cast list. At the end of sixth period, when the other theater kids had rushed to the drama bulletin board, Andrew had walked toward the PE office. His story, if anyone had asked, was that he’d forgotten to register for spring fitness electives, required of students who wouldn’t be on a Lions athletic team.

  And, indeed, he had walked to the PE office and busied himself looking at the participants in “Lifetime Activities,” which was Andrew’s own choice. He scanned to the S’s to check for Sarah Smith, his date to the Sadie Hawkins dance two weekends before, but her name wasn’t there. In the last couple of minutes of passing time, Andrew had taken the long way to the math hallway and settled into his seat. He’d willed his right leg to stop twitching.

  Now he made his belated turn into the performing arts wing, the yellow lettering above the bulletin board shining before him. He saw “FINAL” printed in Mr. Dittmer’s precise all caps at the top of the list.

  “Okay,” he whispered, arriving in front of the bulletin board, heart pounding. He made himself start reading from the bottom with the members of the ensemble. He wasn’t among the immigrants from Hungary or Russia. He passed by the Irish and Italian groups. As he read Tryg Ogilvie’s name attached to the role of “Luggage Handler,” he began to hope.

  Finally, about five lines from the top, he found the twin peaks of “Andrew Abbott.” “Here it is,” he whispered. He put an index finder under his name and blinked hard. Then he traced back to the role: Inspector Adams. He’d hoped for this, a significant speaking part and a vocal solo. A definite supporting role.

  Andrew felt his mouth widening into a grin and his shoulders relaxing. He’d done it. He was legit. Andrew tipped his head back and breathed in.

  Behind him, the theater office door opened, and Andrew turned to see Melissa Young step into the hallway.

  “It’s you,” she said. Eyes red, she held a crumpled tissue. Andrew glanced back at the list to confirm that Melissa’s name was at the top in a lead role. It was.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Barely,” she said, angry. “Are you just checking it now?”

  Andrew nodded. “I got the inspector part.”

  His spirits sank as Melissa scowled. “Oh, I know.” He didn’t know what to make of her sarcasm, and then they both looked toward the academic wing, where they heard fast footfalls approaching. Mr. Dittmer and Principal Wallace bustled into view.

  Andrew froze. He was supposed to be in class. He glanced at Melissa, who bent slightly at the waist, rubbing her stomach.

  “Melissa,” Principal Wallace said, half running. Andrew took two steps backward until his body made contact with the bulletin board. “Are you okay?”

  “What are you doing here?” Mr. Dittmer turned to Andrew. Sweat beaded above the director’s lip.

  “I was just checking the list.” Andrew looked down at his T-shirt, gray with the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter on the front. “I wanted some privacy,” he mumbled. “I’m really excited—”

  “You need to get back to class.” Mr. Dittmer’s tone was gruff.

  Andrew glanced at Melissa, Wally’s hand on her shoulder. Without saying anything, he headed back toward Pre-calc. His Converse squeaked on the linoleum, and he wondered what exactly had gone wrong.

  JULIA ABBOTT

  At the Liston Heights Starbucks, Robin Bergstrom, fixated on her cell phone screen, was waiting for Julia.

  “Hey,” Julia said, hanging her oversized handbag on the back of a chair. “Sorry I’m late—a little crowded at school.” The bitter smell of coffee grounds enveloped her.
r />   Robin looked up, concern in her eyes. “Julia,” she said, “you were at school?”

  Hadn’t Julia told her the plan? Of course she’d been at school. “Yes, though a fat lot of good it did me.” She pushed her iPhone at Robin. “The shot’s blurry.”

  “Are you okay?” Robin asked, not looking at the photo.

  “Yeah. Totally. Why?”

  “I got a text from Anika.”

  “Robin, I’m so happy.” Julia’s words bubbled up. “He got it! He got the part! The inspector!”

  Robin smiled for a second, and then it faded. “Julia.” Her voice went low. “Anika says there was some kind of altercation at the school.”

  “Not at all,” Julia said. “I just ran in there to take a photo of the cast list, and I ended up in the middle of a crowd. Actually”—she wrinkled her nose, remembering Alice Thompson, who’d waylaid her—“it never would have happened if not for that silly assistant director. Anyway”—she smiled— “people were bumping into each other all over the place.”

  “O-kay.” Robin drew out the second syllable of the word. “But Anika said—”

  “It was nothing,” Julia insisted. “The important news is that Andrew got his part.” She stared intently at Robin, enunciating carefully. “He’s the inspector.” She leaned back and threw both hands in the air, her eyes on the ceiling. “Finally!” One of the canister lights above her, she noticed, had burned out.

  “That’s great,” Robin said, but a worry line materialized between her eyebrows.