You Deserve Nothing (20 page)

* * *

She said, “God, I hate those stairs.”

Those stairs. As if they were ours. As if we should really do something about them, find another apartment, the two of us. She dropped into a chair and began pulling off her boots. Home after a long day. She stood up and kissed me on the mouth. “You’ve been drinking?” She walked to the fridge and, staring into the white light, looking for something to eat, she laughed and said, “And on a school night too.”

Hours later, naked beneath one of my good shirts, her cheeks flushed, she stood by my window looking out across the city. I made us plates of pasta and put them on the table and called to her. She came and kissed me on the cheek. “This is perfect,” she said. “This is exactly what I want to be doing. And then maybe I’ll go down on you, for once.” She grinned at me and raised her eyebrows. “You know I want to. It’s just, the only time I’ve done it before. It was really horrible. Basically my ex-boyfriend, he sort of forced me to do it, you know. It was terrible. He had the back of my head and wouldn’t let go.”

She put a forkful of pasta into her mouth and chewed.

“Who was this?”

“Come on, Silver,” she said, her mouth still full of spaghetti. “You don’t want to know that.”

“He goes to the school?”

“Yeah, he goes to the school. Can I have a glass of wine?”

I got up and opened a bottle.

“I’d like to kill him,” I said touching her face.

She laughed and looked up at me, her eyes bright. “You’re a sweet man,” she said.

* * *

In the morning I could barely get out of bed. The apartment was very cold. I forced myself into the shower and stood beneath the steaming water until I was warm again. On the way to the
métro
, I passed a man slumped in a doorway and I nearly stopped. He looked dead. The streets were quiet. There were patches of ice in front of Bar du Marché. One of the morning waiters was scattering salt around his sidewalk.

Again the first one in the office, I opened the window to let the cold air fill the room. Again, the field was covered with a thin layer of frost the color of the sky. The poplar trees were bare.

I was still at the window when I heard a great grunt behind me and turned to find Mickey Gold settling into the deep couch, his legs spread out before him.

“Oh Christ, Will,” he said clutching the inside of his right leg.

“Morning, Mickey,” I said. I was happy to see him.

“Will, I tell you, I was watching the television last night and I sprained my groin. I’ve got these slippers with the no-slip grip, great things you know, cozy as hell, but they’ve got no slide. My grandkids gave them to me. They don’t want me slipping down the stairs. I’m old as hell, Will, you know? So I sat down to watch the television and I spread my legs out like I am now and the goddamn slipper doesn’t slip and bang, I’ve got a pain tearing up my leg like you can’t imagine and now I can barely walk. What the hell? Pull your groin watching television? It’s a wild world, Will. You can’t possibly imagine. Pour me a cup of coffee? And close the damn window. I gotta keep my crotch warm.”

I closed the window and poured him a cup of coffee.

For a moment he was unusually quiet.

“So, Will, I got to ask, what the hell’s going on with you? You doing O.K.?”

“Yeah, Mickey, I’m fine.”

“Well, you don’t seem all that fine to me. You look like shit.”

I shrugged.

“You look thin. Don’t you eat? What do you do with yourself? You ever sleep?”

“It’s been a tough year. I think maybe I’m just burned out. I’ve lost something. Can’t quite seem to put it all in order.”

He nodded, squinting at me, rubbing his groin. “Christ, this thing’s killing me.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Forget it. That’s the way it happens, Will. You’re watching television, everything’s great, and you pull your damn groin. There was a time if I pulled my groin I’d do it playing basketball. But that’s just what happens.”

I smiled at him.

“Mind if I give you some advice, Will?”

I shrugged. “Not at all. Could use some.”

He looked at me for a long time. Then he shook his head as if answering the question before asking it. “You don’t get much advice from people, do you? Your dad’s not around? Mom?”

I shook my head. “No. Not anymore. Not for a couple of years.”

“Both of them, gone?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Both at once.”

“At once?”

I nodded. “In an instant,” I said.

Slowly he drew his legs up and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He grimaced in pain and made a slight grunt. “You were close?”

I nodded and felt that familiar cold stillness.

“Christ,” he whispered. “Brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath and blew it out hard. “Ah, Will. That’s a hard thing.” He shook his head and looked down at his hands. “Never married?” He asked, his voice softer now.

“I was.”

“What happened? I mean if you don’t mind me asking you.”

“I left. When my parents died. I left. I came here.”

He seemed so sad slumped down on that couch looking at me.

After a while, I said, “You were going to give me some advice.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Will, you ask me, you’re falling apart. I’m sorry but you look like a raccoon with those circles under your eyes. You don’t talk to anybody, you walk around here like a zombie. I’m gonna tell you, that’s more than frustration, buddy. That’s more than ‘I’m sick of being a teacher, the magic’s gone,’ that’s something else. Will, listen, don’t waste your time thinking you can do the whole thing alone. No matter what kind of shit you’ve lived through. And I can only imagine, though I’ve had my share. Don’t go it alone. Buddy, it’s a recipe for misery, you hear me? You’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Then be happy you look as young as you do. I was your age I’d lost half my hair. Will, it’s disappointment from here on in, you understand me? There’s nothing interesting about you anymore. You see what I mean? You’re gonna start to bore the hell out of yourself. You’re out of surprises, you’ve squeezed what you can out of yourself. The world disappoints you, Will. Nearly always, the world disappoints you. You know that by now, don’t you,” he said nodding his head.

He took another gulp of coffee.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, what you do all goddamn day, but I know this: You can’t do it alone. You’re young. You think you’re strong as hell. You think you can think it all out? Stare out your window and the answers come?” He shook his head. “The answers don’t come. And you know why?”

“Because there are no answers?”

“There
are
answers Will. And you can save your sarcasm for someone not as smart as I am. Figure it out, Will. You can’t do it alone. You understand me? Of course you do. I’d bet anything you’ve got yourself all tangled up with some gorgeous nightmare of a girl. I’ll put next month’s paycheck on it. You want in? Some girl you barely speak to? Who follows you around like a golden retriever?”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Will, listen to me. If you don’t remember anything else, remember this: Anyone you can fool isn’t worth loving. You understand me? It’s a young man’s move. You’re young but, buddy, you’re not
that
young. It’s a coward’s game, you understand? Teachers. We live for too long on those adoring eyes and then one day, it’s just not enough. It’s nothing at all but if you’re not careful, it’ll be all you have. You understand me? I know, I know, I sound like a song, but you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“I’m not telling you to go get married. Marriage won’t save you. Find some friends. Find some people you give a shit about. Who care about you. Who are
smarter
than you are. Find a woman, Will. Who laughs at you. Who’ll kick your ass out of the house. You find that woman and she’s the same woman who’ll throw herself in front of a truck for you? Well, then you’re somewhere. You’re a great teacher, Will. No question. Born natural. Good-looking too. Passionate as hell. Heart too big for your own good. You’ve got the world. For fuck’s sake, what else do you want?”

He struggled out of the couch, groaning the whole time. When he’d finally pulled himself up he walked over and put his heavy hand on my shoulder and looked down at me.

“What was her name?”

“Isabelle.”

“You ever think about going back?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know, Will. Maybe there’s a chance. Maybe she’s still around. Cowards spend their lives alone. Either with people who can’t hurt them, or with no one at all. Either way, man. Same thing.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “You be tougher than that, Will. You do the hard thing.”

He smiled.

“I got to get out of here, buddy. Take care of yourself.”

“You too, Mickey.”

I could still feel the weight of his hand, the heat of it on my shoulder as I listened to his footsteps fading down the long hallway toward his classroom.

* * *

After he was gone, I gathered my things and left the office before anyone else arrived. I went to my classroom and prepared to spend the morning teaching three sections of sophomore English.

I placed copies of the second chapter of
Walden
on the empty desks fanned in a semi-circle before the whiteboard. Then I wrote the day’s quotation across the board:

“If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities. If we are alive, let us go about our business.”

Each of my sophomores had a separate notebook in which they’d write a ten-minute response to the day’s quotation. Those ten minutes were often my favorite part of the day, sitting on the edge of my desk, drinking coffee, watching them write, smiling at the students who looked up at me. I loved the ones who chewed on their pen caps and furrowed their brows, pretending to think hard. I loved watching the few kids who got lost in their work. The sound of the room, the pens across paper, the exaggerated sighs of exasperation.

I used to think, These are my students. I love them. I was often amazed by the closeness I felt, by my desire to protect them, to push them. I wanted to make them proud of me. I wanted never to disappoint them. As much as I loved them in those quiet minutes at the beginning of class, I also wanted them to love me in return.

After I’d written the quotation across the board, I sat at one of their desks and looked up at the board. I watched myself, book in hand, pacing, asking questions. Teaching.

There was noise in the halls—laughing, lockers slamming, familiar voices.

The ten-minute bell rang. I looked down at the packet and read:

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a
point d’appui
. . . Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business . . . The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things . . . My head is hands and feet . . . my head is an organ for burrowing . . . I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.

From Thoreau’s
Walden,
Chapter 2, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”

After the bell rang, after they’d written their ten-minute responses, we began. What did he mean? I asked again and again. What did he mean by “and here I will begin to mine?” And how is the “intellect a cleaver?” And is it really? And are we really mining? And should we be? And do we “only crave reality?” And should we? And what about morality? And is there such a thing? And what are these “thin rising vapors?” And are your heads “hands and feet?” Are your heads organs “for burrowing?” And if so, what hills are yours burrowing through? And what have you found so far?

* * *

When the bell rang that last period before lunch, I was exhausted. I’d been caught up in those rotating discussions, every hour beginning again. When the last class filtered out I stood alone at my desk, collecting papers, slowly stacking extra handouts.

There was a moment then when it was as if my exhaustion were only physical. I took a deep breath and walked out into the hall, down the stairs, and along the field toward the cafeteria.