“Did you get a good look at him?” Cynthia asked.
“No. I went to chase him down the street, but he got in a car and drove away.”
“Did you get a look at the car?”
“No.”
“Could it have been a brown car?”
“Cyn, I don’t know. It was dark, the car was dark.”
“So it could have been brown.”
“Yes, it could have been brown. And it could have been dark blue, or black. I don’t know.”
“I’ll bet it was the same person. The one who was driving past me and Grace on the way to school.”
“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” I said.
I managed to catch the people on both sides as they were leaving for work, asked them if they’d noticed anyone hanging around last night, or any other night for that matter, whether they’d seen anything they’d consider suspicious. No one had seen a thing.
But I put in a call to the police anyway, just in case someone else on the street had reported anything out of the ordinary in the last few days, and they transferred me to someone who kept track of these things, and he said, “Nothing much, although, hang on, there was a report the other day, something quite bizarre, really.”
“What?” I asked. “What was it?”
“Someone called about a strange hat in their house.” The man laughed. “At first, I thought maybe this was a typo, that someone got a bat in their house, but nope, it’s ‘hat.’”
“Never mind,” I said.
Before I left for school, Cynthia said, “I’d like to go out and see Tess. I mean, I know we were there last weekend, and we don’t usually see her every week, but considering what she’s been through lately, I was thinking that-”
“Say no more,” I said. “I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t we go over tomorrow night? Maybe take her out for ice cream or something?”
“I’m going to call her,” Cynthia said.
At school, I found Rolly rinsing out a mug in the school staff room so he could pour himself some incredibly horrible coffee. “How’re things?” I asked, coming up behind him.
He jumped. “Jesus,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I work here.” I got myself a mug, filled it, added a few extra sugars to mask the taste.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
Rolly shrugged. He seemed distracted. “Same old. You?”
I let out a sigh. “Someone was standing in the dark staring at our house last night, and when I tried to find out who it was, he ran away.” I took a sip of the coffee I had poured. It tasted bad, but at least it was cold. “Who’s responsible for this? Is the coffee thing contracted out to a sewage disposal company?”
“Someone was watching your house?” Rolly said. “What do you think he was doing there?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but they’re putting deadbolts on the doors this morning and just in time, it seems.”
“That’s pretty creepy,” Rolly said. “Maybe some guy, he’s trolling your street, looking for people who’ve left their garage doors open or something. Just wants to steal some stuff.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Either way, new locks aren’t a bad idea.”
“True,” Rolly said, nodded. He paused, then said, “I’m thinking of taking early retirement.”
So we were done talking about me. “I thought you had to stay at least until the end of the school year.”
“Yeah, well, what if I dropped dead? They’d have to find someone fast then, wouldn’t they? It only means a few bucks less per month on my pension. I’m ready to move on, Terry. Running a school, working in a school, it’s not like it used to be, you know? I mean, you always had tough kids, but it’s worse now. They’re armed. Their parents don’t give a shit. I gave the system forty years and now I want out. Millicent and I, we sell the house, sock some money into the bank, head to Bradenton, maybe my blood pressure will start to go down a little bit.”
“You do look a bit tense today. Maybe you should go home.”
“I’m all right.” He paused. Rolly didn’t smoke, but he looked like a smoker who desperately needed to light up. “Millicent’s already retired. There’s nothing to stop me. None of us are getting any younger, right? You never know how much longer you’ve got. You’re here one minute, gone the next.”
“Oh,” I said. “That reminds me.”
“What?”
“About Tess.”
Rolly blinked. “What about Tess?”
“It turns out, she’s going to be okay.”
“What?”
“They did another test, turns out the initial diagnosis was wrong. She’s not dying. She’s going to be okay.”
Rolly looked stupefied. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you she’s going to be okay.”
“But,” he said slowly, as if unable to take it all in, “those doctors, they told her she was dying. And now, what, they say they were wrong?”
“You know,” I said, “this is not what I’d call bad news.”
Rolly blinked. “No, of course not. It’s wonderful news. Better than getting good news and then getting bad, I suppose.”
“True.”
Rolly glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”
So did I. My creative writing class started in one minute. The last assignment I’d given them was to write a letter to someone they didn’t know, and to tell this person-real or imaginary-something they didn’t feel they could tell anyone else. “Sometimes,” I said, “it’s easier to tell a stranger something very personal. It’s like there’s less risk, opening yourself up to someone who doesn’t know you.”
When I asked for a volunteer to kick things off, to my amazement, Bruno, the class wiseass, put up his hand.
“Bruno?”
“Yes, sir, I’m ready.”
It was unlike Bruno to volunteer, or have completed an assignment. I was wary but at the same time intrigued. “Okay, Bruno, let’s have it.”
He opened his notebook and began, “Dear Penthouse.”
“Hold it,” I said. The class was already laughing. “This is supposed to be a letter to someone you don’t know.”
“I don’t know no one at Penthouse,” Bruno said. “And I did just like you said. I wrote them about something I wouldn’t tell nobody else. Well, not my mama, anyhow.”
“Your mama’s the one got a staple through her belly,” someone quipped.
“You wish your mama looked like that,” Bruno said, “’stead of like somebody’s photocopied butt.”
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“No, wait,” Bruno said. “Dear Penthouse: I’d like to tell you about an experience involving a very close personal friend of mine, whom I shall henceforth call Mr. Johnson.”
A kid named Ryan nearly fell off his chair from laughing.
As usual, Jane Scavullo sat at the back of the room, gazing at the window, bored, acting as though everything that was happening in this class was beneath her. Today, perhaps she was right. She looked as though she’d rather be anyplace but here, and if I could have looked in a mirror right then, I might have found myself wearing the same expression.
A girl who sat ahead of her, Valerie Swindon, a pleaser if there ever was one, had her hand up.
“Dear President Lincoln: I think you were one of the greatest presidents because you fought to free slaves and make everyone equal.”
It went on from there. Kids yawned, rolled their eyes, and I thought it was a terrible state of affairs when you couldn’t be earnest about Abraham Lincoln without seeming like a dweeb. But even as she read her letter, I found my mind wandering to the Bob Newhart routine, the phone conversation between the savvy Madison Avenue type and the president, how he tells Abe maybe he should unwind, take in a play.