Biking down, the wheels are moving over wet pavement, making shushing sounds, and I look at the rows of people lined up in front of the Stuarts’ house to give their condolences. I ride by, watching, turn at the end of the street, ride back. Only Mrs.
Finch had died on the block so far, and she did it with the grace of an old woman, slipping off, calm and natural. Old Age on the chalkboard with Ann’s > next to it. Old Age is a whole different story; on her lawn, the 84 was a triumph. Biking past the Stuarts’ house, I look at
the rows of black-coated men and black-skirted women walking ‘ “8ih I e sign up the walkway and everyone is solemn and the casseroles are covered with fogged tinfoil, steam rising through the cracks, smelling of green vegetables, of orange cheese. A row of dishes on a red checkered table. Everyone is hungry.
I ride by and look at the faces, and all the faces are drawn, away, stricken, and this is from the going of a life most people had barely even met, a baby who couldn’t speak yet who never knew the name of her mother, who never even walked but spent her whole time on earth with her back to it. I’m riding, wheels turning, puddles spinning off the rubber, thinking that the people all stand together with their faces so death-heavy because it’s backward. Because it’s in the DNA to collapse at the sight of a coffin the size of a suitcase. You don’t want to pack your baby on a trip like that. When you walk down the street, and you happen upon a baby carriage with a baby inside it, and you peer in the blue awning, the scalloped edges, the squirmy flesh inside, there is one simple given: If all goes right, this baby will live in the world longer than you.
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
I was fired that afternoon. It was swift and clean, done inside two sentences. My boss opened the door, said I was a wonderful math teacher, but she never wanted to see me again.
Lisa had been picked up by the second ambulance of the day, no siren. She knew the paramedic. Hi Sue, she said, as the medic walked in, tall
in her blue outfit. Oh hey Lisa, Sue said. What you have there on your forehead? By that time I had her lying down, holding an ice pack to the broken skin, her face puffy and red from crying, eyes woozy from the blow. I watched as they walked to the van. Lisa settled in the front seat, strapped herself in, Ripped down the mirror on the sun visor, and investigated her forehead. There was no expression on her face.
I walked home very very slowly. The few blocks took forty minutes. A man was out on his lawn with a hose, watering those iron geese which made a pl inking sound. A few parents drove past me, on the way to pick up their kids; it was close to that time by now. I didn’t wave when they tried to catch my eye through their windshields. They’d find out soon enough. And stop waving.
Halfway there, hanging from one of the lampposts, I saw another one of Jones’s numbers: 7. I picked it up, broke off the wax awning so it looked more like a 1, and slipped it over my head. I felt better, wearing that home. I felt clear. Once back, I took out the trash, slow, moving my body as minimally as I could. I didn’t talk to anyone. I thought only about Ann in some room with a doctor sewing up her leg like a sweater; I thought only about Lisa, the ridiculous warmth of her in my lap, heading to the hospital, another one of the bloody children now, her forehead a map of continental drift. Trying to push out of her head like my father with his circle in the backyard, push it away, push it off, break a hole in the forehead and maybe the bad stuff will just seep out, like smoke unraveling from a bubble.
I sat in front of the television unmoving for over four hours until there was a knock at my door.
Perhaps it’s the police, I thought mildly. Welcome officer of the law. Come on in. I imagined the chilly bite of the handcuffs.
Right Of then, I loved the idea of jail. It seemed so organized. No rent.
No cooking.
But instead it was Benjamin Smith the science teacher, standing on my welcome mat, looking taller than normal, face handsome with concern. His arms, as always, covered with burn residue. I felt a surge of something, seeing him. He said he’d heard the news and was very sorry. You’re a great math teacher, he said. I said thanks but I deserved it. I asked if he’d heard anything about Ann and he said apparently she was getting twenty-seven stitches (and to my own horror all I could think was that’s the first odd cube, three times three times three, and not a bad number for next year’s math class, multiplication), but he said they thought she was going to be fine even though she’d lost a lot of blood.
They’re going to keep her in the hospital for a bit, he said.
Tomorrow they’ll see if she can walk all right. I guess she split down the bone, he said. My chest halved, hearing that. He told me Lisa was staying with Elmer Gravlaki’s parents for the week and that she had a concussion and had gotten four stitches on her forehead and a huge bottle of pain relievers to carry around but she wasn’t staying overnight at the hospital and instead said she was going to audition for a maraca player in a band with her pain reliever bottle.
A concussion? I said. I could feel the shaking start. She’s walking and talking, he said. She’s okay, he said.
I touched my eyelashes with my finger. They were gluing together.
He fiddled with his watchband. Really, he said.
My fingertips were getting wet. I’m sorry, I said. Thanks for coming to tell me. That was really nice of you. Sorry, I said. I wiped my finger on my sleeve.
I saw her, he said. She’s okay.
Looking up for a second to nod, I caught a glimpse of his body hidden inside his shirt, his clavicle, straight across, good bones, this man: a man.
Then it’s his lips, on my lips, I’m remembering, I can’t help it, and I’m thinking of the backyard with the bubbles, and how it smelled there, all thin soap and thick smoke, and how he caught me cheating, cheating to lose, and how when he said that, I could’ve ruined him with gratitude, tore him down, tractored him over, that he could catch me, thatIcouldbecaught.
Lisa insisted I come see you, he said. I wasn’t sure if you’d want a visitor.
I looked back at the ground. The mat on my front step was made of fake grass, and when I rubbed my foot over it the blades leaned and popped back with the vigor of plastic.
I’m glad you came, I said. She says hi, he said.
It was a horrible day, I said. Tell her hi back. She’s all right?
She’s not even staying over at the hospital, he said.
He shifted his weight to the other foot. He was still standing at the doorway. I asked him in but he said that was probably a bad idea. He congratulated me on getting fired first, and we both laughed sad short laughs.
I could feel, almost against my will, the magnets beginning to charge, to circle around each other, each magnet spying the other magnet. I see you, one body says to the other. He was standing there and I was still staring at the plastic mat, Ms. Gray the math teacher, destroyer of children, and I told him then that I was sorry about the other day. You were right, I said, I was lying. He nodded. I thought of Lisa, heavy in my arms, heavy with the weight of everything, like layers of lead slid carefully under her skin in a new epidermal breakthrough, and I took a breath and told Benjamin the science teacher that next time, if there ever was a next time, if I said I was going to the bathroom, he shouldn’t let me go. He coughed a little. The words were out, floating around the air.