Bright Before Us (2 page)

I took them on field trips as often as possible. The first, in early October, was to the Rockland Hiking Trail, an hour north of the city, on the long, parched stretch to Sacramento. The children mostly slept on the ride up, the Indian summer heat wafting in through the open bus windows. Once we arrived, they started a game of soccer in the grassy field near the parking lot. I always brought a ball on trips, and had memorized easy diversions—Telephone, or the Alphabet Game:
A, my name is Adam and I live in Antarctica
—in case there was time to kill. I watched as Edmund, invoking Class Foundation #2 (
We can always pass if we feel uncomfortable or need some time alone
), stayed out of the game, tossing the ball back in if it went out of bounds and dutifully pointing out players who went offside. Ed was a squat, tow-headed boy with a strong jaw and watery green eyes. When we played sports he was always among the first chosen. The kids liked him, and I liked him too. When I told Greta stories about school, she would ask after him:
How's your pet?

After the soccer game, we began our hike: a two-mile jaunt up and then around a small hill, a green lake curving around the last half where the trail hit level ground. We passed a small quarry where ribbons of rust ran down the sloped limestone. I kept an eye on Edmund, who lagged a few paces behind.

Ed, everything okay?
A moment passed, as though he hadn't heard me. A bird called out in the quarry, the echo rising. The air was herbal, an acrid scent that registered in the throat.
How come you didn't want to play soccer today? You love soccer.

He knelt in the weeds.

Hey, what'd you find?
I bent down, my voice gentle.
Let's see it.

His eyes glimmered.
I never saw one like this before.
He held up a striped pebble.
I didn't feel like playing soccer today,
he said. He put the stone in his pocket and ran to catch up with the others.

I found the rock on my desk at school the next morning, on top of the homework I had nearly finished grading. That afternoon, soccer came up in our normal rotation and Ed asked to be a team captain, high-fiving each kid he picked. I watched, relieved, from a nearby goalpost.

I never did figure out what caused their moods to sink or lift. They were each little mysteries, improvising in a world they didn't comprehend. They remained mostly unreachable. I could teach them how to add, or to enjoy a Monet, or to understand the basic tenets of baseball, but I would never know what they thought about, what they worried about. And as soon as I thought I had a handle on it, they stopped loving the things they had loved, stopped listening to the stories they had often requested, stopped wanting to play soccer when they always played soccer. As soon as I figured them out, they weren't them anymore. For a while, I was content with that, thinking it added to the charm of the work I had chosen: helping them learn how to be people.

I was guided toward the bus, flanked by the wet fishermen. I watched the blurred ground pass as I took heavy,
deliberate steps through the sand.
Easy does it,
the older man kept saying. My mouth seemed disconnected from my body. I tried to say,
I'm fine, really. I'm okay, I just ...
but I didn't know what words came next. I was soaked, rainwater dripping from my chin. I could hear whimpering. Oh no, I thought, one of the kids is crying. Then I felt a dull pulling at my eyes: the sound was coming from me.

We walked as a threesome, the men holding my arms. I saw the younger man turn toward the older—I guessed then that they were father and son—and give him a look.
What the fuck?
the look said. We reached the parking lot. The younger man patted one of the kids on the head, and though I didn't know why, it angered me. The men sat on a bench opposite me and stared blankly, openly, like I was a television.

I tried to parse it out, but the whole thing was nonsensical. We had gone to Steinhart Aquarium on a field trip, and then we had come here, to the beach, and this had happened. These children, my charges, had witnessed something far worse than the things routinely kept from them: the R-rated movies, the content of encoded conversations. And they had seen it on my watch. Everything that had happened here had happened because of me. The extent of the situation started to become clear: I would need to call parents, organize conferences, send home a letter. I would need to explain. Wisps of weariness for all I would have to do surfaced and, for a moment, clouded everything. And then the image of the body came back: nude, torn into, and without—
my God
—its limbs, color, or breath. I repeated the story to myself, trying to understand, and feeling for the life of me like there was something more,
something else—something that was humming beneath my consciousness, not yet ready to be examined.

Everyone was milling, their words like insects. I saw Mrs. Stone dialing her cell phone. Emma broke from the crowd and walked over.

Why are you sad, Mr. Mason?
she asked. She had tossed the arms of my coat around her neck like two scarves, and she looked bound, straight-jacketed.

The older man whispered to his son,
I don't think we should leave yet.

 

Mr. Noel did his gruff best to corral the children, clumsily getting them onto the bus. After a while, they ate whatever portions of their lunches they hadn't finished at the aquarium. Mrs. Stone began calling the parents to explain why we were already a half hour late. When her cell phone couldn't get reception, she paced the parking lot, holding the phone aloft like a torch. She perfected her recitation, shuffling through the yellow emergency cards.
There's been an incident.
My insides crawled, sure that to the parents' ears this statement was too cryptic, that her skirting of the subject implied guilt. My guilt. Her fucking euphemism: it let the imagination run to judgment for entire seconds before she elaborated, saying simply,
The children came upon a crime scene.

 

Officer Buckingham found me sitting at the edge of the parking lot. He was bigger than me, with streaked silver hair and eyes creased at the outer edges, and he smelled like a sweet cigar.

Mr. Mason,
he said. He loomed above me; to see his face, I had to look up.
The U.S. Park Police intends to do
everything possible to make sure the family of the decedent finds some peace.

Slowly, my ability to speak returned.
You can call me Francis,
I said carefully, aware of my swollen eyes. I knew he could tell I had cried.
Are you going to speak to the children?
I asked.
I'd like to be there when you do.

My partner is speaking to them now,
he said, brusquely clicking the end of his pen.
I just have a few questions for you, Frank.

Through the bus windshield I saw his partner standing beside the driver, addressing the children. Down on the beach, a crew of people walked around the body, staring at the ground. I watched them long enough to see that they were moving in a spiral, looking for evidence. Another crew walked toward the beach with a long zippered bag. It looked too light, like a breeze could take it from them.

I shook my head.
I can't—I didn't see much.

You saw the decedent,
he said.

Something flooded my chest each time I heard the word.
I saw it,
I said.

Buckingham coughed, thick and wet.
Did you move or touch the body? Did you pull anything off it?

No,
I said.

I closed my eyes. The newspaper, the men in the boat. Unzipping my jacket.
I was speaking to a student,
I said.

I didn't answer. How could I know?

Frank,
Buckingham said, smiling tightly.
Did they all come at once?

My eyes were still closed. The group of them, all looking down. Emma behind me. The group that left when I said to. The small, stone-faced cluster that remained. Jacob, bent at the waist, and his dry, scraping cough.
I have a student with asthma,
I said, looking up.
Do you know if he—

I looked past him, silent.

Buckingham's false smile disappeared.
Mr. Mason, I need to get a feeling for how long the children were unattended with the deceased, for evidence reasons.
He leaned down, his face not quite level with mine.

I watched his lips move, the wind wheezing around us. On the bus, his partner's chin turned toward her shoulder as she pressed a button and spoke into the radio there. The crew began moving up the beach, carrying, in tandem, the bag. It was no longer amorphous, no longer light. It bowed in the center and came up at either end in the shape of a smile.

We had just moved to this part of the beach.
I searched his eyes.
It was only a moment,
I said, turning to watch the crew place the bag onto a gurney,
that they were alone with her.

Buckingham recorded something in his notebook.
What a thing to have happen.

I squinted, feeling queasy.
I never imagined that ... I didn't know there could be so much damage,
I said.

That's the water,
he said.
Not the jump.

We were dwarfed by a rocky hill, beyond which stood
the bridge, swaying and red.
You must see a lot of these,
I said.

One is too many.
He put his pen into his shirt pocket.
There's no greater waste.
He extended his hand for me to shake.

I'm so embarrassed,
I said, stifling a smile of pure discomfort. Behind him, the ocean looked restless. I turned and watched the ambulance silently proceed down the narrow beach road. Buckingham dropped the hand I hadn't shaken. He waited a moment for me to continue speaking, and when I didn't, he left me alone.

 

I found Mrs. Stone leaning against the bus, the knees of her pants dirty from the wet sand. Her face was pinched, and her small billow of graying hair had flattened. It was nearly six o'clock.

Margaret,
I said.
You've called everyone?

She nodded.

She didn't meet my eye.
He's asleep now. A few of the others, too.

We climbed into the chilled bus, the yawning driver long into overtime. I sat beside Jacob, and without waking him took the inhaler from his limp hand. His breaths were ragged, the beds of his fingernails faintly blue. A few rows ahead, Mr. Noel held his son, Caleb, tightly against him. I could see him leaning down to whisper. I placed Jacob's inhaler in my backpack, daring to close my eyes.

But the image that came wasn't the body—it was Jacob, gasping for the air that escaped him. Jake, hunched over, and then lifting his head like a baby bird, mouth wide, trying to do on his own what I was supposed to help
him do. The first time I saw him have an attack had been six months before. He had scrambled up to my desk and choked out,
Mr. Mason, I need it.
I blinked.
Like, soon,
he said. I remembered his mother approaching me on the first day of school, the package she had placed in my hand. Fumbling, I had retrieved his inhaler from my bottom desk drawer and watched as he gripped it for one, then two minutes, throwing his head back with each intake of air, his eyes meeting mine each time he lowered his chin. The din of the other children reverberated from what seemed a great distance and then fell away, as I felt my breathing sync with his.

I opened my eyes again, the bus rattling as we rode home. We drove over the Golden Gate, the city on the left, the sea to the right. The kids were quiet. They looked so small. They were so little it startled me sometimes.

When we arrived back at school, the parents were lined up against a portable classroom. I exited the bus with my hands in the air, shouting,
They're okay.
The sky darkened above us, as I began to explain what I could.

O
n the first day of the last week I knew you, we stood beside the mausoleum, watching people arrive. The limousines pulled in first, neon placards tucked in their windshields, headlights on at midday. Then came the dusty hatchbacks and squat minivans, their tires crunching the gravel. On the top edge of the nearby chapel, birds alighted between the splayed spikes meant to deter them.
Thanks for coming, Francis,
you said, breathing through your open mouth, your nose skinned from wiping.
You want to do something tomorrow?
You pushed tears away with the butt of your hand, eye makeup striping your wrist.