Эбби Луби - Nuclear Romance

He looked at Jane and Diana, sensing their pity.

“See ya,” he said, turning toward the stairs to his second-floor classroom.

Diana turned to Jane.

“Good try. Do you think he’s okay?”

“Don’t know. Let’s keep our eye on him. Here’s a tissue.”

Diana dabbed her eyes and nodded toward the outside parking lot.

“His mom is still driving him to school every day. She sits in the parking lot for about an hour before she leaves.”

“Poor Jen Elery.”

“Can we do anything for her?”

“Don’t know. Let’s try to come up with something.”

After teaching for almost thirteen years, Diana knew that the worst emotional trauma for a school community was the loss of a fellow student. Shocked by Kaylee’s death, the PTA organized a candlelight vigil and a food campaign to deliver meals to Jen and Ricky for the next few months. But the distraught, estranged mother shunned the offer. She wanted no part of the vigil. She just wanted to be left alone.

Diana headed for her office, half listening to Jane over the PA system incant the Pledge of Allegiance and then segue into morning announcements.

Diana sprinkled some dried turtle food into the aquarium, which took up a large place on her windowsill. She looked out to the parking lot, at the bright yellow forsythia bordering the edge, which sent out a fiery glow. At the far end of the lot, Diana saw Jen sitting in her car, staring at the school. It seemed the grieving mother wanted to stay as close to her son as possible.

Diana stared at Jen’s car. After a minute, she picked up the phone and punched Jane’s extension.

“Yes, Diana?”

“What’s happening with the part-time receptionist job out in front?”

“The job’s on hold for now.”

“Could we offer it to Jen Elery?”

“Maybe. She could give it a try as a volunteer and then see…”

Two minutes later Diana was outside walking slowly toward Jen’s car. As she got closer she saw that the woman had her seat tilted back and seemed to be sleeping. Diana softly knocked on the window. Jen startled up, glaring at Diana through the closed window. Then slowly she rolled the window down.

“Hi, Mrs. Elery. Do you remember me? I’m Diana Chase, the assistant principal.”

“Oh. Yes. Hello. Do they want me to leave? I can leave. I’ll go right now.”

She gripped the steering wheel without starting the car.

“No. It’s okay to be here,” Diana soothed. “I saw Ricky a bit this morning and he seems to be getting along okay. His teacher, Mrs. Aron, says he’s quite the reader. He always wants to take about ten books out of the library.”

Jen attempted to smile. “You’re very kind to tell me this.”

“Well, it’s true. He’s a great kid. But I have an ulterior motive. I have a proposition for you.”

“A proposition? What… what do you mean?”

“How would you like to volunteer for a bit in the front office? If it works out, we may be able to turn it into a part-time job. You can come in a few days a week, if you like. You can be near your son.”

Jen looked at Diana and then turned away for a moment, her hands letting go of the steering wheel. Then she opened her car door and got out.

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Ms. Chase, but what if I break down in front of Kaylee’s friends? I wouldn’t be much help to you in that state. I’ve become such a crybaby.”

Diana moved closer to Jen. “You could just give it a try, and if it’s too much, you can opt out.”

Jen looked at Diana and then at the school.

“When would I start?”

“How about right now?”

Jen leaned back against her car and closed her eyes. Diana moved closer and stood by her side.

“You can make your own schedule. We’re very flexible. Just give it a try. Please?”

For the first time in weeks, Jen thought about doing something other than grieve. She had taken a break from her part-time job that allowed her to work from home on her computer. It was just last night that she just packed up the last of Kaylee’s things in boxes and stored them in the attic. What do you do with your dead daughter’s party dress and spelling bee trophies?

Working at the school might ease her relentless sense of despair. A change of scene, if only a few hours a day, might be therapeutic. Also, it would be good for Ricky to see his mother active. Jen looked at Diana. It was hard to turn her down.

“Okay, Ms. Chase. I’ll give it a try. Thank you for asking me.”

Diana gently took Jen’s arm. “It will be fun, you’ll see. You’ll really love being around the kids, and you can call me Diana.”

The two women walked arm in arm into the school.

Reaching out to Jen Elery was just Diana’s style. She easily made friends, and it kept her social circle wide. New people intrigued her; she called it her nosey streak.

Before moving to Westchester, Diana had worked an eight-year stint as a teacher in an inner-city grade school in a poor Bronx neighborhood. She believed that change started from the bottom up, and that education was the ticket to help minorities climb out of the vicious cycle of poverty. She always sided with the underdog. It was part of her upbringing.

As an only child of a mixed marriage—her mother was Irish and her father Japanese, she learned to accept and understand differences. Both her parents were teachers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a heavily diverse neighborhood, where the couple blended in and was accepted. Diana inherited a fiery Irish spirit from her mother—one that was occasionally tempered by inscrutability, a gene from her father. Her activist streak was acquired in childhood: she was led to demonstrations in Washington Square Park, where her parents and their friends protested against teacher layoffs, budget cuts, and rent hikes—not to mention unpopular wars. Her father would carry her on his shoulders as they listened to pundits running for office. They always backed the dark-horse candidates.

Being a good teacher was a built-in aspiration, even though her parents encouraged her to pursue science, her best subject. But she intuitively followed in their footsteps. As a sixth grade teacher in the Bronx school, she worked for hours on lesson plans geared to keep kids focused and learning. Her dream was to educate the poor to eventually erase class differences. Every incremental gain by her students was immensely rewarding. Her job was her life, and although she knew a lot of people, there was little time to socialize. Dating fell by the wayside; relationships took up too much time. She resigned herself to being single, but sometimes, out of loneliness, she would graciously consent to a blind date. After all, she liked men and liked to flirt, and who knew? He could be the one.

Men were seduced by her striking features: her full, pouting lips that easily broke into a smile, her thin, energetic body and shapely legs that occasionally flaunted spiked heels. When she happened to fall love, the initial rush of passion lasted a month or two before her interest waned, and the affair would come to a grinding halt. Diana had her priorities. If the choice was to either help a struggling student after school or dine by candlelight, she sided with the kid. The brief romances would end with either a broken heart or marked by indifference, but she always offered friendship in the aftermath. After all, on the emotional scale, male friends were lower maintenance than male lovers.

Teaching in the Bronx made her tough. The constant battle to get basic teaching tools from a bankrupt school district drove her to persevere. She haggled with school administrators and wrote long-winded letters to politicians demanding more funds for her school. She was always available to meet with working parents at night to talk about their kids. You had to believe in the community, the kids, and their future. What else was there?