Driving home, the road unfurls all faded blue before me, the sky that big sky they talk about in certain history books. My hands gripped the wheel, and I noticed how old they were looking. Like my father's hands, pale and freckled and rough, such old hands when I would put my little hands next to his. Sometimes it scared me to see these signs of age. Can't pluck the gray hairs.
I thought of the sad acceptance I had seen on Joey's face when we were talking to Craig, and I realized that maybe Joey had given up hope concerning Craig. Craig himself was oblivious, still in the pain of kicking an addiction, restless and edgy.
I welcomed the long drive back to Toronto, seemed the only place I could think anymore was in the car, the movement and the motion lulling me. I needed to be lulled. Spike's face would rise before me in its terribleness, lined eyes, thin hair, and that voice. My name on her lips made me want to curl up into the fetal position. I blinked, the glare of sun off cars and windows making my eyes ache and I put on my sunglasses. The glare slashed and I blinked in relief. Something was wrong with my marriage.
Powerless, more and more, like a piece of kelp in the rip tide, swirling along with the currents, no will. I went to my house and my wife and kissed her perfunctorily, saw my son pushing some toy trucks around the area rug. Cartoons on the T.V. flashed and babbled behind him, and I felt the wave of love for him that was familiar yet different each time. Two hectic spots of red were on his pale cheeks.
Christine regarded me with her faded eyes, and I saw that I was no more important than a large piece of furniture to her. Necessary, perhaps, but not something that required much thought. I licked my lips and blinked rapidly, tried to dull the red flash of anger that made me want to slap her.
Hiding behind the newspaper just like my father and grandfather had, and now I wondered, were they in a loveless and sour marriage like I was? Were they burying their heads in the sand and not rocking the status quo? Was this manner of meekness passed down from father to son like blue eyes or left handedness?
School, another prison and sanctuary. I strode toward the double glass doors that reflected the blue sky, reached my hand toward my dim reflection's hand and grabbed the handle, swung the doors wide. In the halls I towered over most of the students except for the odd basketball player or two. Listened as the lockers opened and closed, the sound of the lockers the music I'd been hearing for 20 years or more. Like some sort of native drumming, native calls on distant beaches, fire flickering in the girls' eyes. But in these ancient cultures each sound had meant something, each action represented something. We've lost all that. The lockers opening and closing has no meaning, is not connected to anything.
Emma glided down the halls, Manny in tow. Her blond hair like metal, her brown eyes an odd contrast. Mixed genes. Blond was supposed to go with blue but it crosses sometimes. I blink and she's gone. Then, behind the books she clings to, I see Darcy. Waif thin, eyes red and puffy from her recent cry, collar bones jutting out with frightening clarity. I watch her, and time slows. I can hear the slow breathing of the universe, that OM that is sometimes clear. Radio frequencies. Darcy looks at me for just a second as she passes, and I smile a tight rictus of a smile.
My classroom, the computers all in rows like soldiers. Plastic and metal chairs scraping on the linoleum as the kids pull them out and sit, push them back in. I close my eyes and listen to the familiar hum of the computers coming to life. Sometimes I feel melded to my keyboard, sometimes I feel immersed in the LCD screen. Sometimes, most times, I am far more comfortable in the computer world than the people world, and I have to force myself to look at and interact with other human beings, sometimes.
This is not the class that Darcy's in and I mourn that fact. I wanted to see her, I longed to see her, to maybe speak slightly above a whisper in her ear. To heal whatever is wrong, whatever has damaged her beyond repair.
I bought a brown bag lunch, a secret bologna sandwich on white bread. White bread filled with fast carbs and empty calories and very little nutrients. Classic yellow mustard. Spike would freak at my woeful misappropriation of calories. But as they say, what Spike doesn't know really can not hurt her. And the easy familiar food is so comforting at times like these, times when I don't know exactly who I am or what it is I want. So I chew and I swallow and I guzzle soda, which Spike knows rots your stomach and intestines, and I gobble the store brand oreos. Junk food, cheap junk food at that, but I need it. I crave it.
"Mr. Simpson?"
I am alone in my classroom, eating my clandestine lunch, the computers all humming around me. The voice, achingly familiar, startles me and I nearly choke on a perfect bite of Oscar Mayor, classic yellow, and wonder.
Darcy. Still holding the books like armor, head down, eyes up, burning into me. Her arms are so thin, delicate, like Angelina Jolie's.
"Uh, yes, Darcy?" My voice sounds funny, she must know what the huskiness in it means. I can feel the pedestal I'd stood on start to chip and crumble, great white squares of plaster falling to the linoleum, giving off that poof of dust.
"Can I talk to you?" Her voice is quiet, breaking, weak. Her eyes tremble with tears, just a shine of tears that isn't ready to fall. I see her nails as she clutches the hard cover books firmly to her chest, I can see the nail polish chipping off, the raggedness from her biting. The nail polish was a pale lavender, almost too pale to see. But I can see it. I notice everything.
I was sitting behind my big gray desk, just an industrial gray steel. Next to the desk is a golden yellow wooden chair that was sanded and shiny with lacquer. But in the seat of the chair and the back the lacquer has worn away from years of students sitting there. Darcy sat there and set her books down on the edge of my desk. She looked strangely defenseless without them, exposed. I looked at the pile of books, the textbook covers looking like little rats with sharp teeth had knawed one corner, the edges of the pages black with dirt and grime.
So I waited, the sandwich forgotten, Emma and her glamorous life and glamorous body forgotten, Spike and her sharp lined face and sharp tongue forgotten, Jack and his chubby little fist curled around a crayon as he made me a picture forgotten. Everything, everything flew out of my head. Hatzilakos and her swaying hips and sexy eyes, kissable lips, gone. Joey being miles away, mired in the problems of a mentally ill drug addict, gone, gone. I stared into Darcy's large eyes, hypnotized. I felt like I was breathing helium. My head was about to float away.
"Mr. Simpson, I've been…" Broken voice, and the tears that were just a shine were falling down her cheeks, and there was no more. Head down, eyes down, the long lashes dark with her tears, her shoulders shaking, I just continued to stare. The halls were empty, the lockers silent for once. Just a hint of chalk dust in the air, the hum of the computers filling my head, and I saw the lights reflecting off her tears. Saw the way her knees were together, her hands in her lap. I took a deep breath.
"Darcy," I said, her name wrong and right on my outbound breath, the deep timbre of my voice appropriate. Sometimes things were as they were supposed to be. I reached out my hand, slowly, and touched her shoulder. Just bone, so skinny, so tense, and it was like touching a live wire that was jerking and convulsing on the road.