On the Other Side of the Bridge (13 page)

“I see you like monster movies,” she said.

“He's like any boy his age,” Lonnie's dad interjected. “You know how they love all that stuff.”

Lonnie's interest in horror films didn't appear to bother Ms. Fontaine because she didn't say anything else about it.

“How are you doing in school, Lonnie?” she asked.

Again, his dad answered for him. “I ain't gonna lie to you, Miss. Lonnie's grades ain't what they should be, but you can understand that, with his mom passing and everything. But we're working on it.”

“What's your favorite subject?” she asked.

“Texas history,” Lonnie said. “I've got this really cool teacher who likes to dress up in costumes when he teaches.”

“When I was in school, I couldn't stand any of my teachers,” his dad told her. “I had this one teacher. Her name was—”

“Do you have many friends at school?” Ms. Fontaine broke in. “Do you get along with your classmates?”

“Yeah, I've got lots of friends,” Lonnie said. “Both guys and girls. And they've all been really supportive.”

“That's good.” Ms. Fontaine lifted the bed cover and peeked at the sheets. “May I see your kitchen?” she asked Lonnie's dad.

“You bet,” he said and led the way.

Without asking for permission, Ms. Fontaine opened the pantry and looked inside. Next, she checked the
refrigerator and the freezer. Lonnie wasn't worried. They had plenty of groceries. If she was concerned about all the beer in the fridge, she didn't mention it.

After a few minutes, she said, “Thank you for showing me around. Everything looks fine. I apologize for the intrusion.”

“Hey, you're welcome to come by any time,” Lonnie's dad said. “We ain't got nothing to hide. Oh, and you tell that father-in-law of mine to keep his nose out of our business and let me and Lonnie get on with our lives.”

Lonnie wished his dad hadn't ended their visit on a sour note, but it didn't seem to faze Ms. Fontaine. She got in her car and drove off.

Hopefully, that was the last time they would have to deal with CPS.

L
ONNIE'S FIRST REPORT CARD OF THE YEAR
came out. He received an F in math, an F in science, and a C in Progressive Reading. On the positive side, he did get an A in P.E., but Coach Rizzo gave everyone an A if they had perfect attendance. Lonnie had missed a few days of school, but Coach understood and let those days slide. Lonnie also got an A in art, but Ms. Tedesco, like Coach Rizzo, was an easy grader.

The grade he was most proud of was the B plus he made in Texas history. Lonnie thought he could have gotten an A, and maybe next time he would.

Mr. Bigelow pulled him out of class once again to see how he was doing. Lonnie assured him that he was fine and was trying to move on to the next chapter in his life.

Lonnie found himself spending less time with Axel. They didn't share classes, and the only time they saw each other was at lunch. Even then, they didn't always sit together. They were traveling in different paths. Axel was an honors student, and it had been ingrained in him since birth that he was going to go to college. Lonnie could only hope to graduate from high school. Axel's parents were actively involved in their children's lives, whether at school, at church or at home. Lonnie's mother was dead, and his dad was dead drunk most of the time.

Lonnie tried hanging out with some of the other guys — Noe, Fernando and Bobby—but they were on the Wyatt Wranglers football team, and they mostly talked about their games. He wished he could join the team, but with the grades he was making, the coaches wouldn't have allowed him to be the water boy.

On the way to first period, the hallway traffic suddenly stopped. Kids were pointing and laughing, but Lonnie couldn't see what was causing the commotion. When he finally squeezed through the crowds, he saw Mr. Arrington in his strangest getup yet. He had on a long dress, a bonnet and a dark wig.

“Who are you supposed to be, Mr. Arrington?” Lonnie asked.

“My dear young man,” he replied in a falsetto voice. “I am not Mr. Arrington. My name is Jane Long.”

“Who's Jane Long?”

Without breaking character, Mr. Arrington said, “Please take your seat inside the school house, Lon Chaney. You shall learn my story shortly.”

Lonnie entered the classroom and saw Yvette sitting at her desk, searching through her purse. Since she was alone, he decided to talk to her.

“Mr. Arrington sure looks funny, doesn't he?” Lonnie said.

Yvette jumped, and he realized he had startled her. “Oh, hi, Lonnie. Yeah, he does look pretty funny. He's supposed to be Jane Long, whoever that is.” She pulled a pen out of her purse and scribbled circles on a sheet of paper to see if it worked.

“Do you know who Mr. Arrington reminds me of?” Lonnie asked. “Our fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Treviño.”

“You're right. Mr. Treviño was cool, just like Mr. Arrington.”

“I ran into him at the grocery store not too long ago,” Lonnie said.

“Really? Is he still teaching at Lamar?”

“Yep. Same school, same room,” Lonnie said, quoting Mr. Treviño.

“I'd love to go back sometime to see—”

The bell sounded.

“We'll talk later,” he told her and sat down.

Mr. Arrington entered the classroom. In a high voice, he said, “Good morning, children. My name is Jane Long. Some people know me as the Mother of Texas.”

The class erupted into cheers and applause.

In first-person narrative, Mr. Arrington recounted Jane Long's story. As ridiculous as the teacher looked in his dress and wig, Lonnie was nevertheless drawn back to the early 1800s, when Jane Long, one of the first Anglo females to settle in Texas, endured the hardships of winter at Bolivar Point. This is where she gave birth to her third child, while waiting for her husband to return from Mexico, not realizing he had been killed there.

Having teachers like Mr. Treviño and Mr. Arrington made Lonnie think that if he didn't grow up to become a horror film actor, he might like to go into teaching.

When the bell rang, he waited for Yvette to get up so they could leave together. They didn't share second period, but he thought that as long as they were both headed in the same direction, he could escort her to her next class.

No such luck. Megan Patterson and Lisa Yarbrough met her outside the door, automatically positioning themselves, one on each side of her, like a pair of bookends, and the three of them walked down the hallway together.

During math class, Mrs. Ridley called Lonnie to her desk. He dreaded having to hear what she had to say. She went over his grades with him. Then she handed him a permission form for his dad to sign and told him he needed to begin attending after-school tutoring if he expected to pass the semester. Lonnie realized he needed help with math, but with so much housework to do, plus homework, he didn't know how he was going to fit tutoring into his schedule.

Because he had also failed science, he expected to receive the same lecture and permission form from Mr. Malone. His science teacher didn't mention anything about tutoring, and Lonnie got the feeling that as old and decrepit as he was, Mr. Malone didn't want to stay after school any later than he had to.

In Progressive Reading, Ms. Kowalski placed Lonnie in a small reading group with Herman Gilmore, the dimwit formerly known as Slurpee, and some other low readers. They were given soft cover books to read from a reading program called Breakthrough Books. Lonnie didn't think anything could be more boring than
The Dumfrees Move In
, but Breakthrough Books proved him wrong. While Ms. Kowalski had the flunkies take turns reading aloud, Lonnie made a mental list of the items he had to pick up when he went grocery shopping. His dad had turned that responsibility over to him as well, saying that since Lonnie was doing all the cooking, he had a better idea of what to buy.

After Progressive Reading, Lonnie had art class, which he always found enjoyable. Ms. Tedesco had been teaching the principles of perspective drawing, and for a class assignment, she had her students draw pictures of landscapes. The first thing that popped into Lonnie's
mind was Catfish Creek, so he sketched that. He also added a silhouette of Moses splashing in the water. When Ms. Tedesco asked him about the figure in his drawing, Lonnie told her that his name was Moses. She suggested that he should reread his Bible stories because Moses had been rescued from the water as a baby, not as an adult.

Lonnie's last class was P.E. Most of the time, they didn't work on anything specific. Coach Rizzo simply let his students shoot baskets or hang out on the blacktop while he talked on his phone.

In the other P.E. periods, students were required to bathe before going to their next class, but since P.E was Lonnie's last class of the day, he had the option of skipping the shower. Usually he waited until the following morning to bathe, but he had begun to shower at school because it was one less thing he had to do at home.

His mother would have been pleasantly surprised by his interest in his personal hygiene. She used to harp on him constantly about his body odor.

Looking back at all the grief and heartaches he had caused her, Lonnie wished he had been a better son. He should've made better grades. He should've been more truthful. He should've cleaned his room when she told him. He had learned how to cook, how to wash, how to iron and how to clean house. He could've helped her with all those things. Sadly, the should'ves and could'ves had arrived too late to do any good.

Thoughts about his mom brought a painful feeling to his chest, and Lonnie's eyes grew misty. Not wanting anyone to see him cry, he cut through the breezeway that separates the gym from the main campus and hurried toward the blacktop behind the school. He had planned to take the back streets home because they were less
congested with parents and students. But just as he reached the teachers' parking lot, he ran into Jo Marie, who was standing next to the fence with Patricia, Carolyn and Regina.

Noticing the tears in his eyes, Jo Marie asked, “Lonnie, are you all right?”

Oh, man! That's all I need. A bunch of girls to see me cry
.

He wiped his eyes and sniffled. “Yeah, I'm okay.”

“Are you sure?”

At that moment, Lonnie lost it. All the emotions he had kept pent up for the past several weeks gushed out, like water from a busted dam, and he began to bawl uncontrollably.

Jo Marie took him in her arms. He placed his face on her shoulder and cried with more anguish than he'd done since learning that his mom had died. He couldn't stop. The tears kept coming. She rocked him tenderly, like a mother comforting her baby.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lonnie saw Jo Marie nudge her head toward the girls. She mouthed something he didn't hear, but he figured she had told them to go on without her.

They held onto each other a little longer. Finally, Lonnie dried his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “I'm sorry, Jo Marie. This is so embarrassing.”

“Don't be embarrassed,” she said. “We're friends, aren't we?”

“It's just that I've never cried like this in front of a girl.”

“Would it have been better if I was a boy?”

Lonnie chuckled. “I guess not.”

She led him to a live oak tree on the other end of the parking lot, where they could talk privately.

“I won't say that I know what you're going through,” Jo Marie said, “because I've never lost someone close. But I know it's got to be tough trying to adjust to life without your mom.”

“It's not just that,” Lonnie said, then paused when he felt another round of tears about to flood out. Turning away, he broke off a piece of bark from the tree and pretended to study it. “Have you ever seen the movie,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
?”

“No, but I'm familiar with the story. Why?”

“Well, I was sort of like Dr. Jekyll with my mom,” he said. “That's the side of me I wanted her to see. You know, the good side. But there's also the Mr. Hyde part of me, the bad side that I kept hidden from her.” Lonnie didn't know why he was opening up to Jo Marie. She didn't exactly top his list of favorite people. Maybe it was because she was religious. Or maybe he just needed to talk things out with someone.

Jo Marie looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

He threw down the piece of bark and looked around to make sure no one could hear. “I used to lie to my mom all the time,” he admitted. “About everything. At first, it was just small stuff. She'd ask me if I'd cleaned my room, and I'd tell her that I had when I really hadn't. If she asked me how I was doing in school, I'd say fine, even though I was flunking all my classes.”

“Well, that hardly makes you a bad person,” Jo Marie said, dismissing his concern. “I don't tell my parents everything, either.”

“It gets worse,” he said. “My mom used to make me go to your church every Sunday. But instead listening to
your dad preach, I'd sneak out the back door to hang out at Catfish Creek until church was over.”

Jo Marie shrugged. “So you don't like to hear my dad preach. You're probably not the only one.”

Her response took him aback. He expected her to say something critical or quote a Bible verse about God's judgment. But since she didn't, he continued. “The thing is, I was lying to my mom. Just like I used to lie to her whenever I wanted to get out of the house. I'd tell her I was going to Axel's, but instead, I'd go to the paper company or to Catfish Creek or some other place.”

Jo Marie had already heard about the break-in at the warehouse, but Lonnie told her everything, including the part where he confessed to his mom about his involvement and how she reacted when she found out.

“Now I have to live every day, knowing that the last thing my mom remembered about me was that I was a liar. The night she died, she told me she couldn't trust me anymore. She said that everything that came out of my mouth was a lie. She…” He lowered his head and shuddered with tears.