She was here too, in her classroom, going over the sounds of the letters, b — b - b, so that parents could teach reading at home.
I filled a cup with tropical juice and took a post in my math room next to the gallery of numbers.
After a few minutes, Elmer Gravlaki’s father dipped his head inside. He was a muscular man, with a lustrous auburn mustache and hands as solid as wheels, an absurd contrast to his spongy son.
He sat on the edge of the fleshy-colored table, which creaked under his weight. I am concerned about the Materials and Numbers, he said in his thick accent.
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Elmer’s math skills had been improving rapidly since we’d started.
He leaned in. I do not see, he said, how it is good for my business to have the children making addresses in your class.
Oh, they’re not addresses, I said.
He finished his juice in a gulp, swiped red beads from his mustache.
No one’s going to PUT an IV. on a house, I said. No one is going to stick an 8 made of cough drops on their door.
He lifted his mustache to his nose and lowered it.
I have been making addresses in my workshop for twenty years now, he mumbled. He stood. I know where you live, he said.
The numbers on the wall fluttered from the wind of his exit.
Sadly for both of us, this I know where you live thing was no threat to
me-if he came to my apartment, fine. Maybe I could get him to chop off my foot. But there were two addresses for me, and the other was my parents’ house. What if he got it wrong, poor Gustav Gravlaki, sneaking up to the window of their kitchen, storming into the living room. Oops. The house would wilt him in minutes.
He’d turn into Elmer, instead of the other way around.
I left the room. Kids were everywhere, looking short and meek without day nearby to light them. I saw Ann holding her little sister arm by the elbow. Lisa was getting herself a big plate of food; I waved and she shoved a red cookie in her mouth and waved back.
Danny’s one-armed father, George O’Mazzi the war veteran, was in the art room, right sleeve hanging loose as a shed snakeskin, deep in conversation with the art teacher, who was doing a melted crayon demonstration. I didn’t see the science teacher anywhere.
I found my cubby, stuffed to the brim. Mr. Gravlaki had his eyes on me, and was almost done with his paper plate of pepper crackers and celery boats when I noticed the door to the playground was ajar.
I walked over, brisk, slipped through.
Outside, it was much quieter, darker, the yellow of inside turned into the soft black of outside, the silhouettes of tree trunks and the metal climbing structure, and there was only one person out there, many feet away, turned to the side, moving his arms, a tall thin shadow.
And for a second I thought it was my father again. Still trying, still standing with his left leg behind him, still preparing to go running. And I wanted to head back in and close my eyes and get home and away instead of watching again and again as he tried, every backyard tested, the smell of burning grass on each block, the strangeness and largeness
of his effort causing me physical — ‘ vi pain, but then the man lowered his arm and the moment cleared and he became himself. A different man, younger, standing close to a mess of odd equipment.
And in another second, I recognized his shape.
The science teacher had a bubble wand made of string in his right hand, and a cigarette in his left. Leaning down, he dipped the wand into a bucket of soapy water, lifted it up, and pulled back on the string to form the bubble. It bloomed out, rainbowed and loose, jiggly, a belly of a bubble, and then while it wobbled in the air he brought up his left hand, sucked in on the cigarette, and, putting his mouth right to the open gap in the wand, released a puff of smoke inside. The smoke formed into a pearl within the curving pink and blue walls.
I tried not to move. The smoke and soap trembled together.
Attempting to keep it all balanced, he moved to seal the soap bubble around the smoke, but just at the last second his wrist twisted and the whole thing popped. The soap vanished and the pearl unraveled.
Fuck, he muttered. I smiled.
The air smelled like soap and ash; the liquid soap was the same brand I had once eaten in bar form, and so the clean smell reminded me of sex and vomit, but the dark smell of burnt paper and tobacco lit me up inside like gold; it was that familiar combination, illness and desire. I felt right at home.
I took a step forward.
He lost the wand in the bucket, fished it out, began another. The soap formed a glaze and then popped. He tried again. Pop. He tried again. A bubble cautiously emerged from the string, quivering on the wand.
This one was big, a huge overweight bubble, leaning toward the ground. Raising up on his toes, he turned a bit as he lifted the wand, trying to give the bubble a chance, trying to raise it higher, and when he did that, he saw me.
Oh, he said. The bubble bent toward the asphalt and popped. I didn’t know you were out here, he said.
There was a small amount of light from the school on him. He was wearing a T-shirt that said GO AwAy, and he looked different than usual. I’d never seen him at night before: eyebrows keened in, mouth slow and real, large hands.
I’d avoided him entirely since the scurvy day. Do you want me to go? I asked.
No, he said.
They’re very beautiful, I said.
He peered at me and nodded. Re — dipping the string, he started another bubble, but the wand slipped from his fingers into the bucket again.
I’m hiding out, he said. If anyone asks, this is a science demonstration. Spheres. Though they’ll fire me if they see me smoking.
I didn’t say anything to that, but a bundle of laughter loosened in my stomach, twine releasing, logs falling into the fire. He looked up.
I’m going for a record, he said, nodding. I want to see how many times I can get fired in one school year.
He shook soap off the wand.
I think you’ve won already, I said.
just wait, he said. You’re on my heels, he said. I saw that 5 made of meat the other day, that was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
6 Holding the cigarette like a dart, he brought it back to his lips and took in the smoke.
Last week, John had unpacked his lunch, peeled up the bread, and revealed a slab of steak from his mother’s butcher shop cut in the shape of a 5, slathered with ketchup. I’d laughed for about ten minutes, watching him eat his sandwich, saying 5 — 2 = 3 with his mouth full until he finished, swallowed, mumbled: 5 — 5 = 01 gave him extra credit when he wiped his mouth and said: That was a prime cut of meat.
Elmer’s dad thinks I want to take over his address business, I said.
Mr. Smith laughed the smoke into the bubble. See? he said. You’ll be fired in no time. We can start our own school, all math and science. Now that’ll be a hit.
I put one shoe on my other shoe. He lifted the wand, very gently, up. The bubble slithered out.
About the other day, I said.
He shook his head. Go, he said to the bubble. You had your opinion, he said to me.
I pressed my heel down into my toe. Lisa was doing cancer, I said.
Yeah, he said. I know. That girl just loves to do her cancer.
These are actually her cigarettes, he said.
The heel dug deeper into the toe. I could feel my heart moving around in my ribs.
I think it’s an awful assignment, I said.
He tried to finish and close off the smoke-filled bubble, but right before it completed, it popped. Poof.
Shit! he said. He put down the wand for a second and looked at me, rolling his mind back to the last thing I said.
That’s okay if you do, he said. I don’t.
Then he turned his attention back to the bucket. Stirred the soap mixture with his hand. I’m just learning how to do this, he said.