Bleeder (24 page)

Sunday evening, I type in the dim light my apartment offers. I rework every line of my resignation letter—a jeremiad of anger, confusion, and, of course, sadness. All weekend, I have thought on this letter. Of what to say. I have wondered how much of my situation is a result of my encounter with Cindy Reed. (This is, necessarily, Mom’s firm suspicion.) But then, I am divided between that and the possibility I am really just an unfit teacher’s assistant. At New Hanover, I was a good teacher. Nonetheless, this job is spoiled for me; I can no longer work at Aster Elementary.

Early Monday morning, I arrive before the students and deliver my resignation letter to Principal Trask.

“Perhaps this is for the best,” he says as he turns it over in his hands. The flap of paper fills up the awkward silence. “There are a ton of professions out there, and teaching isn’t for everyone.” He avoids my eyes. He shows no hint of regret or sorrow.

I say I will work through Friday. He says that will be fine. I say I am sorry it did not work out. He says he’s sorry, too. I request that my letter be put in my file. He says he’ll do that. I say good-bye. He says good luck.

And when Friday arrives, there is no party, no farewell. At the day’s end, I help Thomas into his parent’s van, smile, and politely introduce my replacement who has spent the day with me and Thomas, preparing to take over. I wave good-bye to Thomas and gather my things.

In the parking lot, I take one last look around. I unlock my cab door, but hear my name called and turn to see Catherine Eaves coming toward me in a hasty jog.

“Wait. Wait,” she calls out. “I have something for you.” She nears and catches her breath. “These are for you,” she says, shoving me a Tupperware container. “That’s just some brownies I made.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. Thanks.”

“Well, you need to eat. And those are pretty good, if I do say so myself.” She lowers her eyes, tightens her brow, and looks at me with concern. “Is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true. I’ve resigned.”

“No. I know that. The other. Is it true?”

My heart slows; an icy shudder chills me. “You know?”

“Well, let’s just say that the rumors are flying in the country club.”

“I see.”

She draws her heel in the gravel. A leaf falls between us.

“You don’t have to tell me. But I want you to know that I only wish you the best. And although I’ll miss our lunches together, you’re better off.” She pushes a strand of hair from her eye. “I just hate it happened like this. And I hate, too, all the things I hear, especially if they’re true.” She leans in for a hug. “Just take care of yourself, honey. Please do that. Promise me that, okay?”

“Okay. I promise.”

“Okay, honey. I’ll miss you, but don’t come back here. You hear me. Write this place off.”

She gives me a last wave as I accelerate onto Aster Drive toward home. The school disappears until only a tinge of red brick pokes through the woods, and then this contracts and disappears. The fall leaves rustle beneath my tires and the wind sounds lonesome in the bare October trees. And in the night, more rain comes and patters its sad lullaby upon the earth.

THE UNICORN

H
ALLOWEEN 1996
. I
ATTEND A PARTY HOSTED BY
J
AKE, A SOMETIMES
friend of mine. Too tired and uncaring to put much thought in my costume, I purchase a mechanic’s shirt from the PTA thrift store and, as if I have spent my days rolled underneath cars, I smudge kohl upon my shirt, jeans, and face, decorating myself as a greasy mechanic.

Jake rents an apartment that is hard to find, so by the time I arrive, the party is abuzz with laughter and swaying bodies in costume. I press through the tiny den and scan masks and made-up faces for any that I may know. Eventually, I happen upon Jake, a furry gorilla doing a beer bong through his costume’s snout. When he finishes, Jake dances an apish jig and hoots and moans as a gorilla might while people applaud and shout out happy cheers. Noticing me, he pulls me further into the crowd, and, introducing me to his friends along the route, we soon squeeze onto a small balcony where the keg rests. He pumps a cup for me and for himself, and we toast one another, slapping plastic against plastic, and then he abandons me, returns to the party to find his girlfriend dressed up as Jane for the evening. With nothing better to do, I drink more beer as partygoers loop about the keg.

A young girl dressed as a unicorn fills her cup and stands on the balcony, gazing out to the stand of pine edging the back and showing no intention of returning inside. White strings dangle as a mane down her back. She has
sewn on a tail and painted a party hat as a spiraled golden horn for her head. Draped in pure white, she appears before me as that creature from those magical books I read so long ago.

“I love unicorns,” I say as a way to strike up a conversation.

She looks at me bemusedly, flutters her long unicorn lashes. “Really. Well, this isn’t just any unicorn, you know. It’s magical.”

“That’s good because I could use a little magic right now.”

“Seems to me that a mechanic could fix just about anything.”

“Anything, I suppose, without a heart and lungs.”

When she looks to me, her walnut eyes, full of expression, seem brightened by hope. As the night lengthens, we ask questions about the universities we attended, the degrees we hold, and the pastimes we enjoy, and we talk about the people we know in town, hoping to find someone in common, some connection we may have outside of ourselves. Two hours pass like this. Then the party departs for the downtown. Maria—the unicorn—grabs my arm.

“Come on,” she says. “Follow me.”

Together, we join the party—a moving caravan of drunkenness and disguise. Maria tugs me down Franklin Street, now blocked off from car travel and packed tight with Halloween costumes: Thor, Frankenstein, Marilyn Monroe, The Cat in the Hat. A string of identically dressed girls passes, holding hands as Russian dolls. We drink. We stumble up the intoxicated street to show off our costumes.

Maria pulls us onward, lowering her horn to clear a path. And when we have pushed far enough and the crowd begins to thin, we retrace our steps through the swaying sea of celebration. At streetside, we drink and watch the spectacle. The crowd thickens. When a college fraternity parades by in marching band regalia, we duck into a crowded bar and press to the counter for more beers that we then take outside, and when these are finished, Maria leans against me and tells me that she should go back soon, that she is tired.

We return to Jake’s to retrieve our cars and before leaving, there is an awkward pause as we decide how to part.

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” the unicorn says. “This was really a nice Halloween surprise.”

“It was something kind of
magical
, I suppose.”

She comes toward me and we kiss, turning my head sideways to negotiate the horn.

Maria scribbles her number on a slip of paper, and I promise to call.

“Soon. Very soon,” I say as she settles into her car seat and drives away.

When I return to my apartment, it is late, yet I am not tired but feel rejuvenated. I play several albums, and when the last one spins, I listen to the quiet dark settle around me, soothing and palpable. I place my thin, pale hand upon my heart and feel its beat.

WINTER IS THE CRUELEST SEASON

N
OVEMBER 1996
. I
TRY TO REASSEMBLE MY LIFE
. T
HE GRANDEUR OF
teaching seeming lost, I accept a position as a bookseller for Barnes & Noble in Durham, and more books pass through my hands than I could hope to read in a lifetime. I work eight-hour shifts and in the evenings, hobbled and stiff, I soothe my ankles in warm bathwater. I prop them on pillows and try to sleep, but they keep me awake. Often they worsen and, with the drape of moonlight around me, I mix my factor; constrict the tourniquet on my arm; slip the needle into a raised blue line running underneath my skin; and infuse. Then I sleep.

To cure my lonesomeness, I call Maria and invite her to dinner. When I first see her again—the unicorn costume long discarded—her face glows and even in the dead of November she smells like the spring dew that settles upon the grass in the early morning. We eat well. We laugh heartily. And I am drawn closer to her. She isn’t silly like some girls, nor a heavy drinker, and I feel immediately how she begins to fill up the hole inside me. Before parting, we kiss beneath the lamplight of her apartment.

“I’m glad you called me,” she says before going.

“Me, too.”

“So let’s do this again sometime. Perhaps after the hectic Thanksgiving holiday.”

“Yes, let’s. I’ll call you.”

The week before Thanksgiving a snow starts in the early morning. I pour coffee and sneak out into a morning made immaculate by a theophany of white. The cold sun filters through the clouds, and I squint at the brightness as I crunch through the frozen landscape. The winter birds flit through the longleaf pines and dodge the slow drip of a thawing world with the trees standing as colossal black pillars against the white garland of snow. Soon the puddles will begin and make soft mud of the earth, but today is luminous, the sky crisp and as blue as the color of ink run from a pen.

While my friend travels during the holidays, his two cats stay with me. When he drops them off, I place Somali, the oldest, in my lap and he purrs and curls up next to me as I stroke his thick fur.

“You’re a pretty kitty.”

He jumps down and scampers off.

“We’ll be fine,” I promise my friend as he pays me. “Your kitties and I will get along just great.”

When I sleep, the cats pounce on the bed and startle me. I get up and set them outside my door, but they mew and paw at it, so to quiet them, I shake food in their bowls and return to bed, but soon they are back scratching at my door. When I leave, they claw at the furniture, sleep on the countertops, and prance on the kitchen tables, so that when I return, I have to clean hair and paw marks from the tabletops and, for the furniture, I fasten double-sided tape to the leg corners. Then, after a few weeks, the smell of shit from neglected litter or from Somali’s upset stomach that causes him to go wherever begins to permeate the apartment’s blue air; its noxious fumes greet me when the door is unsealed and a vacuumed whoosh of stool and piss is discharged. I gag. I heave. I clean the litter. I clean the carpet, the sofa, the sitting chair. I disinfect the kitchen. I pet the kitties, and as I stoop low to stroke their fur, it pulls off in my hand and I notice it has also chunked off on the floor, on the couch, and on my bed. But I’m too tired to clean
anymore and only have the energy to retrieve my factor from the fridge and to fall asleep, rise to work, to treat, and to fall asleep again. The air of life has gasped out of me. I’m weary. Tired. And just putter around as best I can.

The phone rings. It is dark outside, and I locate the sound near my bed.

“Hey, Son. How are you? It’s Mom. Just checking in . . .”

“Mom,” I say.

“You’re not already in bed are you? It’s only nine.”

“Just tired is all. Long day at work.”

“You sound perfectly exhausted. Why don’t you come home for the weekend? Dad can cook you a steak and you can get some rest. Are you eating?”

“Of course I’m eating.”

“What’d you have for supper?” Oh, Mom’s sly.

“Supper? I had a late lunch.”

“At the bookstore? Couldn’t have been more than a sandwich.” She pauses. “I think you should talk to Dr. Trum when you see him next week. Don’t you see him next week?”

“No. My appointment’s not for another month. I had to change it because of work.”

“You shouldn’t do that. You should go to the doctor first. I just read an article in
Time
about Dr. Ho and these new protease inhibitors and it sounds promising. Maybe you could ask the doctors about them? I know you had a rough time before, but medicine has come a long way. You have to try something.” She stops. “Hello,” she says.

“Yes, I’m still here. I need to sleep, Mom.”

“Okay, Son. Just think about. And come see us. Can you come this weekend? I think your sister is coming. She can swing by and pick you up.”

“No. I have to close Saturday.”

“Can’t somebody work your shift?”

“I work Sunday, too. I had to switch to get last Tuesday off for the ID doctor.”

“Well, okay. I just think you should quit it all. Come home for a few months.”

“I need to sleep,” I say.

“Okay, okay,” she says, getting my hint. “I mailed you some money today
to help out. Use it to pay some of the bills, and go treat yourself to a nice meal somewhere. Don’t you like the Olive Garden? Or what’s that place you took us to with the really good fried chicken? Dips? Or something like that.”

“Okay, Mom. Thanks. I appreciate it. You didn’t have to do that.”