Getting Warmer (21 page)

“Muffins?” I asked, eyeing the bag.

“Lemon poppy seed.”

I unlocked my door and turned on the fluorescent lights. It was like I was seeing my classroom for the first time. It was deadly. The Shakespeare quotes had to go—especially since I wasn’t even teaching Shakespeare this quarter. I’d set up a writing center, I vowed, and post student poetry. Maybe I’d come in one Saturday and paint the walls green or blue.

As instructed, Robert had produced a list:

 

I helped Robert construct a rough outline, basically just dividing his ideas into sections: why internships are a good idea; why I want an internship; my skills and experience. In conclusion, he was to begin his final paragraph with the words, “In conclusion . . .”

He wrote his rough draft during study hall and met me in my classroom after school. He stood over my desk as I read. The essay didn’t need nearly as much editing as I’d expected. “I’m so proud of you,” I said, gazing at the lined paper.

“You did most of it,” he said, scuffing his sneaker on the floor.

“No way. I guided you a little, but this is your own work. I can’t believe how far you’ve come in a month.”

“Whatever,” he said, trying to hide a smile.

I locked up my classroom—which took awhile; my lock was funny and always took a bit of jiggling before it would catch. We traipsed down to the Media Center, where he typed the essay into a computer. Spell-check was a godsend. The printer actually worked.

“I gotta get to work,” he said when the sheets printed out.

“That’s okay. I’ll run this over to Mr. Weinrich.”

Neil Weinrich was sitting as his desk, nibbling sunflower seeds from a crinkly packet. I tried to see him as a bunny, but no: the man was definitely a rodent.

“Hi, Neil!” I chirped, willing the rat image away.

“Yes, Miss Quackenbush.” He squinted and shot me a social smile. I glanced at his room: desks in rows, the periodic table of elements plastered on the walls. You can bet students spent a lot of time staring at the clock over the door.

“I have the internship application. From the student I told you about.”

“Yes, of course.” He picked up eyeglasses from his desk and slid them on. He stared at the application for a moment before handing it back to me. “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to accommodate this student.”

“But you said—you said there were still some openings.”

“There are openings for the
right
applicants. There are no openings for Robert Baumgartner.”

“Robert has excellent work experience,” I said. “And he’ll try really hard. Academics have been difficult for him because he’s got a learning disability, but this internship can really open doors for him, give him some confidence.”

Neil Weinrich picked up his half-empty package of sunflower seeds. He twisted the cellophane until it closed out most of the air, opened a desk drawer and dropped it inside. He closed the drawer and looked back up. “What Robert Baumgartner does
not
need is more confidence.”

“I stand behind this applicant.” My voice was quavering. “I stake my reputation on it.”

He pursed his lips. “It is not your reputation that is at stake. I have been running this program for three years now. It has taken a tremendous amount of time and energy to recruit our business partners. I cannot take a chance on a student who has shown himself time and again to be irresponsible, insolent and tardy simply because you think he’s cute.”

I stared at him, speechless for a moment. My face grew hot. “Excuse me?” I finally sputtered.

“Oh, it’s not just you,” he said, backing off. “All females find him charming. It’s why he gets away with so much. But I think you’ve been fooled.” There it was then: Neil Weinrich was once again taking revenge on all those “cool” boys who teased him in high school. Robert was different. He had a history of tardiness and irresponsibility, it’s true, but I’d never seen him be mean, not once. Still, as much as I didn’t want to, I could understand Neil Weinrich’s reservations. I just couldn’t understand why he seemed to enjoy rejecting Robert.

“What if I set something up?” I said suddenly. “If I arranged an internship for him.”

“Finding willing business partners is not easy,” he said.

“But I can try?”

He pursed his lips, wiggled his nostrils a little. “I could give you till the end of the week,” he said finally.

“But that’s—three days?”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I have deadlines. I need to finalize paperwork.” He smiled. There was a sunflower seed stuck between his two front teeth. “Maybe you’ll work something out.”

I was tempted to rush out right then and skip play practice, but I’d missed over an hour already, and it was another dress rehearsal.

It took a second to register that the amphitheater stage was empty except for Dr. White, but the concrete benches were full and noisy. My first thought was that something terrible had happened—a student had collapsed, an ambulance called—but there were no emergency workers, no flashing lights.

I spotted Jill down near the front, and I worked my way down, pushing past wide-eyed students and angry parents. “What happened?”

She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, her mouth in a hard line. “Closed-minded, censor-crazy, naïve jerks,” she muttered.

“What!”

“Some mother came by to pick her kid up early yesterday and saw Katerina in her costume.”

“The undies?” I asked.

“It’s a
nightgown
,” Jill hissed. “It covers more than what half these girls wear to school. So the mother has a nervous breakdown, says this is not suitable. Lars thought he’d calmed her down, but then she reads the script and she thinks it obscene because it has these, like, veiled references to sex. So she calls the president of the PTA, the president of the school board and every close-minded, hypocritical parent she can find and they come down, interrupting rehearsal and demanding an explanation for why the school is allowing obscene material to be presented.
Obscene material
! It’s based on a Shakespeare play, for God’s sake!”

I scanned the crowd for Lars’s golden hair. He was surrounded by three women and one man, all of them red-faced, talking and gesturing at the same time. I recognized Lynette Pimpernel, Claudia’s mother. The kids from the play huddled on the benches, whispering.

“Can I have your attention,
please
,” Dr. White called out from the stage. People quieted. “I understand that many people are upset. We need to have a meeting, a formal forum where we can discuss this matter rationally. May I
suggest
”—here she stopped and glared at everyone: she wasn’t suggesting anything; she was telling—“we disband for now and reconvene Friday evening for a measured discussion and resolution of the issues.”

“But this is ridiculous!” Lars called out. “This play is based on
Romeo and Juliet
! It has some sexual references, okay, but nothing graphic. Do you know how many of these kids watch
Real Sex
on HBO? How much porn they’re looking at on the Internet?”

“We have parental controls on our computer!” A parent called out. “We haveaVchip!”

“And what about when they go to their friends’ houses? Do they all have V chips, too?”

I checked the students. Some of them were smirking, though trying to hide it. They’d all seen
Real Sex.
And they’d figured out how to bypass their computers’ parental controls in junior high school.

“Mr. Hansen!” Dr. White snapped. “
As I said
, we will reconvene Friday. Let’s say seven P.M. In the meantime, I will read the play and discuss this matter with the school superintendent. We are finished here.” She glared at the crowd. They stayed rooted. “
Go home
,” she snapped.

I should have been upset about the commotion surrounding
Romeo and Jules.
No, I should have been incensed. Censorship! Close-mindedness! Hypocricy!

Dr. White told Lars to postpone rehearsals until after Friday’s meeting, though, and I was secretly elated to have all that extra time to hunt down an internship for Robert. Besides, the experience seemed to bring Lars and me closer together. He sat down with me at lunch to go over the points he planned to make in Friday’s meeting. He called me in the evenings to vent, ending each conversation with a sigh and, “Thanks for listening.”

I called my parents to ask for advice on where to look for an internship. My mother named a few of their favorite restaurants.

“You should try the Hacienda Resort,” my mother said. “Not too far away, and it’s just gorgeous. Spectacular at the holidays.”

“Did you ever stay there before moving to Scottsdale? Because it would be nice if I could say you had.”

“Are you kidding? Your father would never spring for the Hacienda. We used to stay at a condo. It was great for him, but it meant I got stuck cooking and cleaning.”

“Okay, what about the restaurants. Do you know anyone there? Ever get chatting with the owners?”

“No.”

“How about the maitre d’s? Did you talk to them?”

“Yeeeees,” she said. “We said, ‘Table for two, please.’”

“Funny.”

“You haven’t asked about your sister.”

“I was about to.” There was a pause. “How’s my sister?”

“Big. Putting on weight already. She doesn’t look pregnant yet, just—well, you know. Puffy. She’s under a lot of stress. I think it’s helping her out a lot, our being here. She says she can’t remember the last time she ate a home-cooked meal.”

Now it was my turn to pause, picturing the endless cardboard containers with the AJ’s label, until, finally, I got the words out: “You cook for her?”

I started with the Hacienda. After being transferred something like forty-five times, a woman with a Southern accent told me that they only take college interns. I called a couple more hotels. They also, for various reasons, were hesitant to take on a high school student.

The restaurants were more promising. Our conversations were hurried, as they were preparing for the dinner rush, but two maitre d’s and a sous chef told me to bring Robert by the following afternoon.

I called Robert to tell him about the interviews. “Dress nicely,” I advised.

He was elated, already trying to decide which restaurant he preferred, the upscale Southwestern or the Pacific Rim. (The third place, a “traditional American” was way down on his list.)

“Let’s see how you feel after meeting everyone,” I said, hoping he owned some clothing other than logo T-shirts and basketball shorts.

 

 

The first two restaurants were a bust. The traditional American didn’t serve lunch (I should have checked earlier), and the Pacific Rim place clearly aimed to make Robert an unpaid busboy.

“This is a mentoring experience,” I explained. “We’d need someone in the restaurant—someone at a managerial level—to take responsibility for educating Robert about the restaurant business.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “If he wants to learn something, he should go to school.”

Robert was quiet as we drove to the Southwestern place. “I can make some more calls tonight if I have to,” I said, fully aware that I needed to secure a position by the next day.

“Whatever,” he mumbled. His chinos and long-sleeved white T-shirt were starting to look rumpled.

And then we hit gold. The Southwestern place, Aji Amarillo, was chaotic and understaffed. The food smelled wonderful.

“When can you start?” the sous chef, Luis, asked thirty seconds after we said hello.

“Just so we’re clear,” I said. “The purpose of the program is for Robert to learn something. Cooking techniques, management—real-world experience that will broaden him and help prepare him for a career.”

“He’ll learn more here in a day than he could learn in a year at cooking school,” Luis boasted.

Luis happily signed a Mentor Agreement, leaving a tiny spot of grease on the paper. “When can you start?” he asked Robert. “Can you start now?”

Robert looked at me, pleading.

“Robert has another job,” I explained firmly. “He’ll only be available for three hours in the afternoon. He can start Monday.”

 

 

I half expected Neil Weinrich to reject the restaurant on some technicality, but he just looked the forms over and said, “Okay.”

“Good, then.” I smiled at Neil.

“If he lasts a week, I’ll be amazed.”

But Neil Weinrich couldn’t bring me down, nor could the angry mob of parents that convened in the amphitheater at seven o’clock Friday evening. Lars wore khakis, a button-down blue shirt and a blue blazer. If not for his flippy blond hair, he could pass for a delegate at the Republican national convention. “Go get ’em, Tiger,” I whispered as he took the stage. As assistant director, I sat next to him in the front row.

His speech was rousing. He started off with “the very real risks to our children:” drugs, easy access to pornography, mindless video game violence. He recited statistics about how many acts of sex and violence appear between the hours of eight and nine o’clock on network TV on any given evening. He moved on to say that “we can’t just lock our children in their rooms” but that we should give them “intellectual alternatives.” We should give them art. We should give them music. We should give them drama.

He went on a bit more, but I stopped paying attention to what he said and started thinking about how cute he looked, all fired up like that.